I have to get downstairs. I have to call Gavin.
And that course of action was just a flight of stairs away.
Karen fled from the shimmering image and hurried downstairs. She felt the power of the presence behind her like a storm brewing, its electricity tingling the air. She picked up the pace out of fear and threw her steps out of rhythm. Her feet tangled near the bottom and she lost her balance. She grabbed for the railing, but her fingers slipped. Karen crashed headlong onto the bottom stairs and then tumbled down into an aching heap. Jutting pain stabbed her forearm. She tried to raise it to look. She saw just enough—her bone had snapped and its jagged edge was pushing through the skin.
Karen closed her eyes and tears pushed out. Alternate surges of numbness and agony ebbed from her arm. The living room swam around her when she opened her eyes again. She tried to drag herself across the carpet using her good arm. She had to reach the phone at the end of the couch. Each jostling movement sent pain surging through her in waves. Blackness washed over her. She was on the verge of fainting.
No, she thought. Almost there. God help me.
Across the living room, the front door swung open. Gavin rushed inside followed by an icy gust of wind that swept across the floor and helped revive Karen, to snap her back awake. Gavin spotted her on the floor. He ran to her side and crouched.
“Karen! I saw the lights and I got here as quick as I could—” but all words froze in his throat as he saw the phantomesque image of his daughter atop the stairs.
He gaped in awe.
Carly’s form was fully awash in a white, glowing aura. Her hair waved around her face as if in some ethereal wind. She spread her arms, hands palm-up to him in supplication. Her feet rose from the floor and she floated slowly down the stairs, trailing smoky vestiges of eldritch mist. The ghostly image’s eyes fixed on Gavin, burning with emerald phosphorescence.
“Gavin.” When Carly’s mouth opened, its dark maw displayed an inner cosmos of stars and nebulae ... as if only his daughter’s shell remained a vessel for the wraith’s energy to manipulate. As if a whole other universe existed within her. “I have returned. We can all be together again, my love.”
Karen’s ears reverberated with the eerie voice.
“Beth,” Gavin said. “Beth ... what-what have you done to Carly?”
Even in her own mortal pain, Karen was moved by the emotion in Gavin’s voice—a conflict of rage and hurt.
“She’s safe with me, now, Gavin. We’ll be together always. No more hurting for her, for us ... we can be together again, my love. Forever.”
Gavin’s mouth opened to speak but no sound came out as his possessed daughter reached the bottom of the stairs and stood before them, hovering just above the ground.
“‘My love’?” he finally managed to say. “And this is helping Carly? What have you done to her, Beth? My God, what have you done?”
Carly’s eyes narrowed, a reflection of the wraith’s irritation at Gavin’s protests. An expression of Beth’s aggravation.
“Leave Carly to live her own life, Elizabeth. Don’t take this from us, too. Don’t ...” Gavin’s eyes filled with tears. Karen wished she could do more, but the pain and the awful thrill of what was happening had her in a swimming-head state of vertigo that increased by the minute.
“Gavin,” Karen said quietly, her hand losing its grip on his.
“I will only live inside of her, to protect her. She may live as she chooses, and I—”
“And you’ll just kill whoever gets in her way? Whoever hurts her feelings? Crosses her path with bad intent? You killed all of those teenagers didn’t you, Beth? Is that your idea of doing Carly a favor?” Gavin’s face was red. His eyes were wide and wild, a blend of fear and fury.
“Beth,” he said. “You’ve got to let her go. Leave us in peace. We were just starting to get our lives back.”
“With this whore?” The glow around Carly’s figure took on a brighter tint as the being focused on Karen. She felt the heat of its wrath like a sudden blast of sunlight, too hot, scalding.
“Karen is a good woman. A beautiful woman, inside and out, and I love her. And she loves Carly. She wants what’s best for us.” Gavin softened his tone, a genuine plea. “Don’t you want us to go on, Beth? Do you want us to constantly mourn, to give ourselves so fully to your death that neither of us can ever really live?”
“But I love you both. This is for the best, Gavin. No one can stand against us now that I have returned ... with this power at my command.”
“Gavin,” Karen’s voice was weak. She wanted to warn him against angering the wraith. She could tell he was letting emotion sweep him away. She wanted to tell him to call Pastor Greg, to get him here as soon as possible, but ... blackness washed over her like a wave, threatening unconsciousness. The jabbing pain of her broken arm and the strangeness of the air, the bittersweet scent of what she imagined in her half-delirium to be burning souls was too much for her to withstand. She was fading.
“You betrayed me, Beth. You quit on us ... you saw nothing but what you needed for yourself. We did everything we could for you, and still you turned away and left us here alone. And now when things are looking good for us, when we’d finally begun to heal from all the pain you caused us, you do this ... this madness, this insanity. Christ, don’t you see what you’ve done? Can’t you see that this is the worst possible thing you could do? Don’t make us pay for any more of your mistakes, and don’t do us anymore goddamn favors, Elizabeth.” Gavin bared his teeth, clinched his fists, and yelled at the top of his lungs in a voice so full of emotion it seemed to rip open his throat in a rasping anguished plea, “Give me my daughter back, and go back to hell!”
Carly shuddered. Her eyes smoldered, now just luminous green orbs. Carly’s mouth opened and emitted a howling moan that sounded as if it rose from the deepest caverns of the Earth carrying all the pain of forgotten souls. A crushing wind pushed Karen and Gavin away like a magnetic force, forcing them across the room. Radiant beams shot forth and burned into the walls, carpet, and furniture.
Karen was thrown from where she lay. She struck the end table, which entangled her broken arm, further rending the twisted limb before she and it smashed down onto the dining room table and slid across its top, rolling off the far edge to land on the floor in a heap. Gavin was tossed the other direction. She caught brief sight of him before she blacked out from the pain; Karen laid motionless, face down and bleeding, on the dining room floor.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
The closer Ethan drove toward Carly’s house, the more people stood out on their porches or front lawns. It dawned on him with a creeping sense of horror that their attention was drawn by uncanny lights from Carly’s home, and what appeared to be the remnants of a lightning strike that left the roof and black walnut tree in their front yard smoldering and charred. He pulled his Mustang crookedly into the driveway and hurried up the front walk, panic seizing his chest at the vision that greeted him—a spectral green glow that flashed beyond the windows of the Wagner’s living room.
Ethan rushed to the front door and—
A surge of energy forced the door outward. Brilliant beams burned into the door, which mostly shielded Ethan from their touch. He flew backward onto the porch, the door landing atop him in two splintered pieces. Groaning, he rolled onto his side, catching his breath before crawling out from under the weight. He stood and crept, cautiously now, back to the opening.
Reaching the threshold, he stared into the front room in escalating fear as he laid eyes upon the sinister vision of his girlfriend transformed into ... something not of this world. Furniture around her caught fire. Chief Wagner lay crumpled against the back wall. Panic fazed Ethan when Carly’s head turned and she spotted him in the doorway.
“C-carly?”
She raised one arm toward him and he was drawn into the
room against his will, dragged by an invisible force into the center of the room. Ethan tried to resist, but was helpless against the magnetic pull. Carly’s eyes settled on his. She’d become something supernaturally bizarre, beautiful but sinister, raging with power.
“Ethan James.” The words were spoken by Carly’s mouth, but not by her voice. It was a deeper voice, from an older version of Carly, speaking as if through an echo chamber, tempered by resonant vibrations. “You have caused my daughter great anguish by your actions.”
“I-I ... Carly, I thought we ... I explained ... you know that I didn’t mean for that to happen,” Ethan stammered.
Carly writhed suddenly, as if in pain. Surges of energy pulsed from her, and Carly’s voice, swirling with distortions, erupted from the air around him. “No Mom! I love him ...” Then Carly’s face twisted. Darkness passed over it like a shadow; the features contorted into a fearsome visage when the wraith regained control. The beryl eyes were ablaze as they refocused on him. The threat in those eyes was a palpable weight that pressed him down. He fell to his knees and cried out, “No!”
“My daughter loves you, Ethan. And I am here to ensure that she is happy, that no one causes her any more pain. Including you. I will make sure that we all stay together ... forever.”
CHAPTER FORTY
Abigail had just stepped out onto the hotel room’s balcony when she saw the witch-fire rip across the sky like a massive electrical discharge. She gripped the cold rail of the balcony. It overlooked much of Carson Lake, beautiful at this hour, cradled between the mountain ranges, city lights sparkling. The harder she stared, breathless and tense, the more she became convinced that she’d seen the witch-fire erupt from Carly Wagner’s house. And judging by all the reading she’d done this evening in the book given to her by Vanessa Maeveen, that was a seriously bad thing.
Whatever she had unleashed from the netherworld had not come exclusively for her father; it had come for Carly. Abigail had simply been the opener of the way.
Emotion heaved inside of Abi as she reflected back on what she remembered of her friend’s mother, Beth Wagner. When Mrs. Wagner had her good days, she’d been so kind. But she also remembered the woman’s dark side. And that memory triggered one of her father who had a dark side of his own. When he’d been good, he was a man any girl would have been proud to call her father, but when he started drinking....
He’s gone now. But Elizabeth Wagner has returned. And I’m the only one who can send her back.
The thought of Carly in danger spurred her to action. Abigail hurried back into the hotel room, the sliding glass door rumbling in its track as she pulled it closed on the frosty night.
Her mother lay sprawled and passed out diagonally on the queen-sized bed, courtesy of half a fifth of vodka. She didn’t stir. Abigail checked to make sure she was still breathing.
“I’m sorry, Mom,” she whispered.
Abigail grabbed the ancient book given to her by Vanessa Maeveen and tucked it under one arm. She made sure the mineral components, herbs, and incense that she needed to cast the banishing spell were still in her backpack before she slung it over her shoulder, grabbed the car keys, and went quietly out the door of their room. As the latch shut, she hurried away, the sound of her footsteps echoing down the hall. She brusquely wiped a tear from her cheek.
She took the stairs down to the lobby of the hotel. She didn’t look at the person behind the counter as she shoved through the glass doors, climbed into Mom’s Escalade, and drove toward the center of town. Toward Carly’s house. Toward her final test, and—she vowed this with more conviction than ever before—her very last encounter with witchcraft.
When Abigail looked in the rearview mirror to switch lanes and turn toward Washington Hill, her eyes staring back at her seemed foreign, someone else’s eyes—someone haunted and crushed in spirit. She felt the vacuous emptiness of her existence, the loss of the only things she’d ever had that were worth having—her family, her best friend. No boyfriend, no hope, no future ... and what man would ever want her after what her father had done to her? Would she ever be able to have anything like a normal life?
She threw those thoughts away. Just like that, she turned them off, shut out the pain. The feeling solidified within her, setting like a concrete dam holding it in.
Now she had to focus. She had to be ready. Mind and soul one with the cosmos. Ready to channel the powers the incantation would open to her. A creeping fear edged in, and she recalled Vanessa Maeveen’s warnings, recalled how she had urged her to return for tutelage before she did any more spell work ... but there was no time. She had to act. If she’d done enough to bring the thing, this wraith, into this plane, she could damn well send it back.
Abigail crested Washington Hill and turned toward the Wagner house when she saw the people that had gathered on the street. Strange light flashed and strobed the air, emanating from the windows and a smoking hole in the roof.
Her eyes had just flicked back to the street when she realized someone was in the road.
Some thing.
The headlights of the Escalade shone upon the hideous countenance of a twisted man-dog hybrid—snarling lips and snout, one ragged ear, two eyes glowing red in the reflection of light. It had darted from the bushes across from the Wagner’s house, loping on twisted limbs, bent over with its hunched back, one arm a gnarled human limb, another the thin forelimb of a canine.
Abigail saw the creature too late. She screamed, slamming on the brakes. She yanked the wheel. The front tires of the Escalade hit the curb, slid on ice, and plowed into the beast. She heard the heavy thud of it as the grill crushed. The creature rolled, a huge mass, up onto the hood, crumpling metal.
The hairy beast hit the windshield, which smashed into a web of broken glass smeared with gore as the beast’s misshapen skull cracked open on impact. The creature then slid off the side of the vehicle, streaking blood down the passenger’s side window as it fell under the SUV. She felt a lurch as the left rear tire struck the hideous body, throwing the rear of the vehicle into the air. It bounced and then settled, slightly spinning, in the street.
As the car came to a stop, Abigail gasped for breath. Blood ran from a small cut over her eyebrow. She wiped it away and then stared into the rearview mirror.
The people who’d been out in their yards ran to the crumpled shape of the dog-thing. She heard their cries of revulsion and fear.
She staggered out of the truck and went to the circle of people gathered there.
“Are you all right?” An old man asked her.
“Yes.”
“My God,” said a woman. “What is it?”
“Looks like a dog, but Jesus, its face ... it’s part human. And its leg, and shoulder—”
“—does it have a dog ear and a human ear on the other side?”
“—a tail and its right leg is a, holy shit, this thing is—”
“—oh Lord in heaven—”
“—it looks like it was shot, too. Isn’t that a bullet hole?”
Abigail backed away from the bloodied horror. The gruesome beast lay in a broken heap, and despite its monstrous form, something about it evoked a deep feeling of guilt and pangs of sympathy. It had been helpless. She knew that somehow. Something about it spoke to her in a deeper way. Something about it said that she was in over her head, and yet ...
“—is it dead?”
“It’s dead.”
“Where the hell are those cops and fire trucks? You did call them didn’t you?”
“Said they were busy at a house fire in Sunshine Estates and they’d be here as soon as they could ...”
Abigail backed away from the group. Transfixed by the monster that lay dead in the road, they didn’t notice her sneak away. She ran back to the truck, grabbed the old book and her backpack, and ran for the front door of the Wagner house.<
br />
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
Ethan levitated toward Carly’s possessed figure, grinning now as she controlled him with one outstretched hand. Her power still crackled in the room, eyes ablaze, a ghostly aura around her body, feet hovering just above the floor.
Gavin pushed himself from the carpet. He’d crashed halfway through the wall when he’d been thrown, landing hard. It felt like he might have broken ribs. He gritted his teeth and went to Karen. She was unconscious. Her arm was no longer merely broken, it was destroyed. It had been splintered before, but now that she’d been thrown across the room, skin was the only thing holding it together—the jagged ends of bones were completely snapped, and the fore section of the limb folded completely backward like the partially open blade of a pocketknife.
He checked her pulse. She was alive, but unconscious. And damn it he intended to keep her alive, to keep them all alive. But Carly ...
Dear God, if I ever needed your help, if you’re really there, and really care, now would be the time to let me know.
Gavin stood from behind the dining room table and forced himself to walk closer to the center of the room where Beth had Carly under her possession. The air was hard to breathe, rich with a hot chemical smell. The room had also begun to fill with smoke as nearby furniture had caught fire. Worst of all, everything seemed hallucinatory ... unreal. As if the reality of the house and its walls were mere illusions in deep water. Solid things wavered, as if seen through aquarium glass.
“Beth,” he said.
Carly’s head whipped toward him, turning too far—impossibly far. He caught his breath out of fear for Carly, out of hope that his precious daughter could somehow be returned to him after all of this. That she could somehow survive.
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