Hellborn

by Lisa Manifold

  “My wife loves your tea. Won’t buy it anywhere else.”

  I smiled. “What’s her name?”

  “Julia Ann. Julia Ann Harwood. I’m Wil Harwood,” he added. “Here, use my phone.” He slid the office phone to me and I slowly dialed the house number.

  “Hello?” Daniella answered.

  “Dani, it’s me,” I said quietly.

  “Oh my stars! Desi! Where are you? Are you all right?”

  “No, I’ve had an awful day. Ashlar beat the heck out of me, and I only made it away from him. I’m over at Mt Rushmore. Can you come and get me?”

  Another thing Meema taught us? Give the pertinent information, and don’t gush or carry on. There would be time for that later. Do what needs doing first, then take the time to sort it all out. It saved a lot of time and questions when action was called for.

  “We’re leaving now. Where do we go?”

  “Where should I have them meet me?” I asked Wil. I’d have to tell him some more than I had. He was listening to the conversation carefully.

  “Have them meet us right at the parking lot. You can stay here until they get here.”

  Oh, yeah. He was going to grill me. “Meet us at the parking lot. I’m in a ranger station, and the ranger will let me stay here until you get here.”

  “We’re on the way. Love you,” she said. She didn’t ask about Meema.

  I was profoundly grateful. I’d avoided thinking about her because when I did, I saw the green floating goo above me, and all those souls within it. Undoubtedly, some of them deserved Hell. But how many were like me and Meema, brought there against our will? Ashlar hadn’t sounded like this was his first rodeo.

  “Love you, too.” I’d have to tell her, tell them both. And I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to see the River of Souls. Not even in my memory. That’s not how I wanted to remember Meema.

  Daniella hung up. I knew she’d be in the car within minutes. I hung up and leaned back in the chair, preparing myself. Wil brought me a bottle of water, and then sat down across from me.

  I didn’t usually use magic on others. It felt like taking advantage of them, and created potential problems. You always saw stories about how the supernatural creatures, whatever they were, erased the memories of humans as they needed to. It didn’t work that way. The brain is a funny thing. It wants to remember, as long as the situation isn’t too awful.

  Wil would remember this. It was better to make him think I’d had a fight with a boyfriend, or something like that, and then distract him. He’d remember me as a nice lady with crap taste in guys, but nothing to get excited about.

  “What’s Julia Ann’s favorite tea?”

  He smiled. “She loves a lot of the black tea and fruit mixes.”

  I nodded. “Tell her to come in and see me in a couple of weeks. I’ll blend her something and call it the Julia Ann.”

  Will threaded his fingers together and gazed at me. “You don’t have to do that.”

  “I know I don’t. But you literally saved my life, Wil. I woke up, face down in the dirt, and I didn’t know where I was. Once I looked around, I figured it out. I didn’t think anyone would be here, but you are. Thanks to you, I’ll be able to get home.”

  “You going to report this to the police?”

  Here we were, the crux of the matter, as far as Wil Harwood was concerned.

  “I don’t know. I need to get checked out, and I need to take some time to feel better.”

  “Ashlar the name of the guy who hurt you?”

  I didn’t think he could summon the demon merely by using his name. It was better to be safe than sorry. “That’s what he calls himself. His real name is Gerald Reid.”

  “Gerald Reid?”

  I forced a laugh. “Yes. Ashlar is his stage name.”

  “What kind of stage?”

  “He has a band.”

  Wil nodded. Sadly, that was all I needed to say. Since I had long, unruly hair, and a nose ring, and my burns looked like, I hoped anyway, tattoos, all began to make sense in his world. A guy with more dream than talent, and the poor girl who had gotten caught up with him.

  This was far better than using magic. People see what they want to see. If you show them what they expect, you and your situation become normal, and nothing to make a fuss about. I was all about not making any sort of fuss.

  We chatted for the next hour about tea, and Deadwood, and tourists, interspersed with Wil’s offers to get the first aid kit. Since I wasn’t bleeding to death, I declined. I had no idea what to do with a Hell burn, but no human first aid kid would even touch it.

  Wil’s phone rang, and when he answered it, he glanced at me and gave a thumbs up. “They’re out front. Come on, I’ll drive you over. You look dead on your feet.”

  I nodded and took his arm when he offered it to me. He helped me into a golf cart and sped off to the entrance. When he unlocked the gate, I saw Daniella’s Jeep . “That’s my sister.”

  He helped me out of the cart and walked me over to her car. Deirdre got out of the passenger seat and put her arms around me carefully. “We didn’t think we’d see you again.” She pulled away, and she was crying.

  “Desdemona tells me that you’re going to the hospital straight away.”

  “We are,” Daniella said from the driver’s side.

  Deirdre got into the back, and I lifted myself into the passenger seat. “Thank you,” I said across the Jeep out the window on the driver’s side. “Have Julia Ann come into the shop. I mean that.”

  “I will. And you call me and let me know that you’re doing all right. And I mean that, young lady.”

  “Yes, sir,” I said, smiling. It felt good to be here, with my sisters. They helped to begin righting the world around me.

  Daniella waved and made a U-turn, and we headed back to Deadwood. For the first time since we’d fought Ashlar, I relaxed. I sank into the seat and closed my eyes. When I opened them again, Daniella was pulling up in front of the house. She got out and helped me out. Since I’d been sitting for over two hours, all my muscles were stiff and sore.

  “We need to treat all those burns,” she said.

  “Were you able to conceal them?” Deirdre asked behind us.

  “Yes. I dropped the spell once I was in the car.”

  “How do you feel?” Deirdre asked.

  She wasn’t being trite. Magical wounds worked differently, and sometimes would have an effect long after the wound was inflicted.

  “Like someone ran me over, and then tried to set me on fire.” There was so much to tell them. “Do you think I can shower soon?”

  Daniella led me into the kitchen. “Let us look at all this, and see what we can do, and then yes, you can shower. But I think this might take more than one session of healing.”

  I sank into one of the kitchen chairs. “I figured that. I’m just glad I’m here.”

  They exchanged glances, and I saw all the questions, but they tabled them as they sent healing spells to me for various aspects. The burns weren’t going to go away. I knew the damn Hell burns would be different. I’d just have to tell people I’d gone on a tattoo bender. That they were tribal.

  I closed my eyes and let my sisters work.

  Chapter Six

  After they healed as much as they could, I staggered up the stairs to my room, declining any help. I stayed in the shower until the water ran cold, and when I got out, I wrapped what was left of me in a robe, and my hair in a towel, and fell into bed.

  When I woke, it was morning. I didn’t want to move. Meema was gone. Once I got up, that was it. It was a new day here on Pearl Street, and we’d have to go on without her. There’d be no pretending otherwise. I lay in bed for a little while longer, pretending the old life was here.

  Now that I was home, in the home we’d shared, the loss of her hit me hard. She would never make me crepes again. That was one of her comfort foods when we’d had a hard time—a crepe of our choice. We all knew how to make them, but they would never be Mee
ma’s crepes ever again. Today would have been a perfect crepes kind of day.

  I curled onto my side and cried for a while. I needed to get this out, so that I could tell my sisters without completely breaking down. I didn’t know if I’d be successful, but I had to try.

  Granny had died when we were nine. Meema took over all the things that Granny had done. None of us realized it at the time, but she handled a lot. And she’d been handling it for over one hundred years. When we were twenty, Meema had told Deana to go, to seek what she wanted, and kissed her and saw her off with love. Meema had saved every one of Deana’s letters, and gone to visit her grave in Los Angeles.

  How in the hell were we going to survive without her? It was only a couple of days ago I was complaining that we were fighting again. She’d thrown a plate at me.

  Stalling wasn’t going to make this better. I needed to share all that had happened, and we needed to figure out how to kick the shit out of Ashlar before I stabbed him in his greasy black heart. And I needed to find out what had happened to Beeval. I couldn’t get the little demon out of my mind. I hoped he was still alive and in one piece.

  Given who his boss was, who knew what had happened to him? I couldn’t let the issue of what happened to him rest. Maybe the necromancer would be some help here.

  It was time to get up. So that’s what I did--I got up and got dressed, and did the next thing I was dreading. I looked in the mirror. The woman who looked back at me wasn’t the same woman I’d seen the last time I’d left the house.

  My hair, usually dark, had red highlights. No bald spots that I could see or feel. That was some kind of miracle. My burns were the worst. On my arms, it looked like I’d been run over by something. There was one on my neck, and another on my chest that I couldn’t figure out. Oh, wait. I’d choked and grabbed at my neck. When I inspected the burns on my neck and chest carefully, I could see my handprints.

  Weird. I wondered why my handprints would burn me. Another thing I had Hell to thank for. And that bastard Ashlar. I was going to kill him if it was the very last thing I ever did. Even if I ended up in the River of Souls. I probably would get my chance soon. I didn’t think my absence would go unnoticed. Even though it seemed sort of pointless, I sent out a prayer to anyone who might be listening that Ashlar was lazy and inattentive to his prisoners, and that I’d have a week or so before he came back.

  Dressed in jeans, boots, and a plain grey T-shirt, I went downstairs. I could hear people talking in the kitchen. God, we still had to deal with the concern of what to do with our resident ghost, who hadn’t been seen since Ashlar showed up.

  When I walked into the kitchen, Deirdre was at the stove, and Daniella sat at the bar. Zane, the necromancer-who-wouldn’t-go-away, sat next to her, and John Holliday, Resident Ghost, leaned against the other end of the island.

  Evil was inside, and when he saw me, he chicken-walked over to me and pecked my shoe. I leaned down to pet him. Ever since Meema healed him, he was more than a normal chicken. He wasn’t even the sort of chicken that was good for eating. A customer had given Meema eggs years ago, and this one had hatched. He was, we discovered later, along with all the other eggs, a blue-silver Sumatran chicken, best for those wanting a pet. He was a streaky black and white on top with a gorgeous, green shiny body and huge tail.

  Meema had no interest in a pet at that time. Sumatrans, we learned afterwards, were not good layers. Meema figured that out pretty quick. After he matured, and he didn’t show much interest in the hens, which was the only reason to keep a rooster, she decided that skinny or no, he was headed for the pot. Plus, he had the most gorgeous tail feathers. But when she’d gone to lop off his head, she didn’t get a clean shot. He leapt off the chopping block, and Meema spent the next week trying to catch the rooster with the half-lopped off head. She gave up finally, and used magic to heal him.

  He’d been an inside bird since then. We’d stopped keeping chickens years ago. Evil was close to thirty years old, and showed no signs of slowing down. Meema said she must have given him a little more juice than she’d planned.

  I stroked his head again. He pecked at my boot top, and wandered away.

  “How are you doing?”

  “Well, I need to come up with some amazing tattoo stories. If I’ve got one, it hurts. I don’t think I’m permanently damaged, though. What are you two doing here?”

  John drew himself up. “I live here, for as long as I am on this Earth. And I am your grandfather, so take a civil tone, young lady.”

  “You’re Pops now?” I crossed my arms. “Really? Okay. What’s your story?” I turned to Zane. How my eyes weren’t rolling into the next town, I wasn’t sure. Meema would be proud.

  “We’ve been searching for you and your mother.”

  Oh, boy. Here it comes.

  “Where’s Meema?” Deirdre asked as she spooned eggs onto plates.

  I walked around to the end of the island and sat down. “She’s in Hell.”

  “You left her?” Daniella shouted.

  “I didn’t have a choice. Will you listen?” I spoke quietly. I could feel my heart speed up, and the tears were just a moment away.

  Deirdre nodded and I told them everything. We ate as I talked, no one else speaking. I cried when I told them about the River of Souls. Deirdre came over and put her arms around me, and so did Daniella.

  Zane looked like he’d rather be anywhere else. John wore an expression of sadness, sadder than I’d ever seen him.

  “I don’t know what happened to her, or what he did. I was out of it until I woke up with him laughing in my face.”

  “We’re going to kill him,” Deirdre said, wiping her eyes.

  “Yes, we are,” I agreed. “But first, we need to figure out a few things. Like how did I suddenly get the talent of fire?”

  “Can you still do it?” Daniella asked.

  “I don’t know. Let me try,” I got up and moved into the center of the room. Closing my eyes, I concentrated, and I felt a small sting on my hands.

  “There was a small flame,” Zane said. “Perhaps you need to be in a more dire situation.”

  “That could be. We’ve never been flamethrowers. I’ll take it. I’d like to learn to use it in situations where I am not in imminent danger of dying.”

  “Add that one to the To-Do list,” Daniella said with a smile. “So you don’t think there’s any way to get Meema back?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t know. I don’t know anything about Hell. What about you? Aren’t the dead and gone your forte?” I asked Zane.

  He shrugged. “I have a good-sized library. Hell has never been one of my chief interests, because there is never any good that comes from dealing with demons. But you are welcome to look.”

  “It’s a start. How do we kill a demon?”

  “It’s not going to be easy,” Deirdre said. “We threw everything we had at him, and he screamed and yelled and said something I didn’t understand, and then he disappeared. I thought we’d won, but then you and Meema fell to the ground and faded. So I don’t know what else to do.”

  “Can you do the reading?” I asked Zane. “I’ll agree to help you help your client.” I nodded at John. “If you help us figure this out.”

  “Can’t we just leave the demon alone?” Daniella asked.

  “Well, no, we can’t,” I said. My skin felt itchy all over, like I was back in Hell. I didn’t want to tell them, but I had to.

  “Why? Because you hate that you got beat?” Daniella pushed her plate away and glared at me around Zane.

  “No, because he’s not going to stop.”

  “What do you mean?” Deirdre asked.

  “He told me that since he would never get the soul of the first Desdemona, that the contract would never be fulfilled, and he was at liberty to basically harass us at will.”

  “That contract was very vague,” Zane interjected.

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “Well, while there were specific aspects, there wa
s a great deal of elasticity in it. That’s usually a poor sign for the human signing the contract.”

  “I wish Granny had been around more,” I sighed. “Or that Meema had shared more of this.”

  “Do you think she knew?” Daniella asked. “Meema seemed as surprised as we were by the contract.”

  “She did not know,” John interrupted.

  “How do you know?”

  He sighed. “I will tell you, but I must make a request. It may be too much to be a grandfather, but I would appreciate it if you called me Doc.”

  I looked at my sisters. They nodded. Clearly, I’d missed a bunch while I’d been gone. “Okay. I guess. It may take some time,” I added. “So how do you know?”

  “After I died, in Glenwood Springs, I was relieved to be casting off this mortal coil. Tuberculosis was not treatable in my time. It was long, miserable death. I was pleased to be shot of my misery. Just as I was passing into the light, I felt a hook grab at me, and I was whooshed away. I came to in your grandmother’s room. And there I stayed, until her death. Were Meema still here, she would tell you that she first saw me the night after the funeral. I was making noise in the room, hoping to attract some attention. I’d figured out, during the thirty-five years she kept me in there, that no one else knew about me.”

  “We’ve always known you were Meema’s dad,” I said.

  “That was entirely due to your mother. Your grandmother told no one who the father of her child was. As a dance hall girl, no one assumed she knew.”

  “Are you calling Granny a whore?” I asked.

  “No. But people thought what they thought. I think Desi counted on it. That way, she didn’t have to tell anyone what she’d done.”

  “She did all this because of you.”

  “Darlin’,” Jo— Doc said, and his gaze was kind, “she wanted to be loved, and thought I was the one to give it. I didn’t have love for a single thing by that time in my life, outside my mother.”

  “What’s happened here?” I looked around. “You’re totally different than before.”

  “I just watched my daughter and one of my granddaughters go down fighting a demon. Trust me, it gives a man pause,” Doc said.