by Duncan, Lex
We had exactly four weeks and two days until the winter solstice. Four weeks and two days before the anniversary of the “earthquake” that killed sixty-seven people. Four weeks and two days to brace ourselves for the oncoming storm. Four weeks and two days to make sure Amarax didn’t get his way.
Four weeks. Two days.
That was it.
To prepare, I trained harder than I ever had. Ran the five miles to the sanatorium and back three times a week. Took weights instead of gym at school. Went out back for target practice no matter the weather. Stuffed my brain full of every scrap of demonic trivia I could find.
Training for the Maybe Apocalypse was difficult, but the more I ran, the more I shot, the more I read, the stronger I got. By the end of the second week, I felt invincible.
I returned from my latest run to find Vaena waiting for me by the door. I'd taken Mo with me this time and he darted off to find his water bowl before she could grab him. She really liked Mo. He didn't share her affections.
“Versmaash,” she said, hugging me tight. “I must tell you something.”
“Personal space, Vaena,” I reminded her, wiping the sweat off my brow. In addition to training myself, I helped Vaena learn to be more human. She'd progressed in a lot of areas but she still liked clinging to me any chance she got.
“You never tell Malnoch this,” she said.
Oh, God. Not this again.
Dante and I weren't even a thing. We were friends. Mostly. Kind of.
“That's different,” I said, successfully prying her off. Another benefit of weight lifting.
She pouted. Her lip had finally healed and her hair had grown back, though Aralia provided her with a handful of wigs for when we had to take her away from the house. She wore one now, a blonde bob. Rosie would have hated it. “No, you just like him more.”
I didn't want to have this conversation with her. “Don't you have something to tell me?”
“Yes.” Her pout disappeared. “But not here. Upstairs. I want to go to your room.”
“Can I change first―Okay, never mind.”
She grabbed me and we ran up the stairs past Dante's study. He'd been in there all day, according to Aralia. We'd gotten through our rough patch from his shooting, thank God, and with Rosie gone, she'd officially taken up the mantle of Best Friend. We had Sylvie Karlov Saturdays in the TV room, breakfast at Sawyer's on Sundays, and she drove me to school when Max was too busy to make the trip. I even told her about what happened with Dante.
Thankfully, Max moved on as well. He asked me a week ago if it would be weird to take Sadie out on a date. I assured him it wasn't―though I suggested a nice restaurant as opposed to a night club―and they'd been going out ever since. It was cute. Nauseating because they fit so well together, but cute.
Vaena sat cross-legged on my bed, as was her usual pose, and chewed on her fingernails. The least of her bad habits. “There is a man here, versmaash,” she said. Her eyes got wide. “Close the door, close the door!”
I closed the door, taking my hair out of its ponytail. “There are a couple of men here. Max and your brother, remember?”
“I am not stupid,” she spat out bits of her thumbnail and brushed them onto the floor. “You have to make him leave.”
“I can't just kick him out,” I said. Whoever he was. I unzipped my hoodie and took off my sweatpants, exchanging them for pajamas. Red flannel pants and a shirt I'd stolen from Dante's room while he was showering.
Vaena was at my side in a flash. Demon speed and all that. “It’s Papa, Beatrice. The man is Papa. Malnoch is too weak, he can’t smell him like I can, but he is Papa, or—or at least one of his spies.”
“Okay, okay, calm down.” I gave her shoulder a placating pat, even though I felt like I needed one myself. I wasn’t prepared to meet the parents quite yet. Mostly because I didn’t have a gun on me. “I'll go get him out.”
“Really?” She gripped my hand so tightly that I wouldn't have been surprised if she broke a few bones.
I winced. “Yeah. Now let me go.”
“Promise―”
“I promise, Vaena.”
I couldn't walk out the door without promising her I'd come back. Doubly so for Dante. It was actually really sad. Back in Dis, no one but Dante treated her with any sense of kindness. She, like so many neglected kids, needed stability. And if my simple promises provided that stability, fine. But I couldn't let her keep crushing my hand.
“Seriously, Vaena,” I said, “let me go.”
“Sorry,” she muttered, then returned to my bed. “I will stay here. Get him out. Please. He can’t know I’m here.”
“I'm going, I'm going.”
I closed the door and went down the hall to Dante's study. Usually, I didn't knock. I just went in, sat down, and we went through our lessons for the day. But seeing as he had company, I decided knocking would be best. Wouldn't want to be rude to the devil—whoever he was right now.
“Hey,” I said, “it's me. I know you're busy, but―”
The door opened.
“Ah, Ms. Todd,” Mayor Bishop smiled his movie star smile and stuck his hand out in greeting. Everything about him looked polished and waxy, like a runaway from Madame Tussauds. “Mr. Arturo and I were just talking about you. Small world.”
“I―...” I didn't know what to say. There were so many things wrong with this picture that all the wrongness must have messed with my ability to speak in proper sentences.
Dante escorted him away. “Thank you for the invitation, Mayor Bishop. I'll be in touch.”
“Of course, Mr. Arturo,” he said, sauntering down the hall like he owned the place. “Lovely seeing you again, Ms. Todd.”
I waited until we heard the downstairs door close to open my mouth. “Did you have fun?”
“Believe me, I'm just as a surprised as you are,” Dante said. He studied me closely. “Are you wearing my shirt?”
“Don't change the subject.”
“Why are you wearing my shirt?”
“It's comfortable, okay? Why was the mayor in your study? Your sister is freaking out, she said she could smell your dad on him—”
His lips pressed together, barely containing a sigh. The dark spots under his eyes looked like bruises. “Beatrice, listen to me. We have to be careful.”
I knew he was right, but being careful was getting to be a real nuisance. “Why couldn’t you just have killed him, huh? Make our lives easier?”
“Because if it was that easy, I would have done it a long time ago.”
“Okay, but you could have…I don’t know, spilled some of Aralia’s wine on his suit.” I was so desperate for retribution that something little like that would have sated me until we got the chance to kill him.
Dante laughed. A short, one-note laugh with just a hint of humor. “I’ll remember that for next time.”
Down the hall, my bedroom door opened. Vaena peeked out. “Is—is he gone?”
“Yes,” Dante said. The humor he regarded me with was flattened by his usual seriousness. “And now we need to have a talk.”
***
We assembled in the study, which I cleverly renamed the War Room, because every good army needed one. Max brought his laptop to record meeting notes and Aralia brought her wine to drink every time Dante looked like he wanted to punch something. At this rate, she'd be blackout drunk within an hour.
“Papa doesn't know I came here.” Vaena said nervously, sitting on the floor next to my chair. “But I’m sure he knows now. I heard him back in Dis, talking, and I wanted to help. Not—not him, you, Malnoch.”
“I know, Vaena,” Dante was doing his pacing thing again. Mo watched from the sidelines, ears perked. “I know you're afraid, but we’re running out of time and you need to come clean with us. Now. About everything.”
Vaena looked up at me, black eyes begging for support.
I tried to smile. It was a shaky effort. “It's okay. We won't let him hurt you.”
She chewed he
r fingernails, beginning slowly. “Papa has been watching for months. He has spies everywhere.”
“What kind of spies?” Dante asked.
“The spying kind?” Aralia muttered as she sipped her wine.
He glared at her. “Thank you, Aralia.”
“You're welcome, darling.” She lifted her glass, a toast to her joke.
He crossed his arms over his chest, exhaling through his nose like an angry bull. “Continue, Vaena. Please.”
“He controls them,” Vaena said after a moment. “You know what he does.”
Dante's jaw clenched. He knew.
“First, it was only one man. Then another, Gershom―”
“Gershom?” The rest of us chorused.
Vaena blinked. “Yes. He tried to kill all of you.”
“We remember.” Max grimaced at his laptop screen.
“He almost got you, computer boy,” she said. “He would have if Malnoch hadn’t showed up.”
“Great,” Max jabbed at his keyboard a little more forcefully. “That’s…that’s really awesome, Vaena. Thanks for telling me.”
Vaena shrugged. “Then, after you, there was a woman. A woman in black.”
A woman in black. Why did that sound so familiar?
“Vaena,” Dante asked, “how did you figure all of this out?”
She went back to chewing her nails, a sullen look on her face. “It is easy to go unnoticed when no one cares enough to look for you. And I have not always been in this body. I followed Papa for a time. Learned his plans. I knew you were here, Malnoch, and I wanted to help. I knew Papa would never let me, so...I followed him to Gershom. Then I followed him to Beatrice. And I followed her to you.”
The perks of being a full demon, I supposed. You could play Invasion of the Body Snatchers whenever you felt the urge. “So you were at The Inferno that night?”
She nodded. “Only for a little while. I left before Malnoch showed up.”
I let the rest of the conversation flow around me as I tried to rewind every significant moment of the past few months, every time I left the house. How many times had I walked past Vaena without ever knowing? How many times had I spoken to her? How many times had I looked right at her? She'd been under our noses this entire time, and we had no idea.
Demons were like that.
They could be anyone. Anything. Your sister, your mother, your brother, your father, your cat. And you wouldn't know it until their eyes went black, until their voices dipped low, until they tried killing you in your sleep. That was what made them so terrifying. Not their super-strength, not their inhuman speed, but their ability to conform. To hide. To indoctrinate.
No one was immune to their power.
Not even the mayor.
“I knew it was him as soon as he came inside.” Vaena said. “I knew it. You should not have let him come in, Malnoch.”
“He shouldn't have been able to get in at all!” Aralia exclaimed. She'd gotten past her third glass of wine and the effects of all that alcohol were starting to show. “I've warded this rubbish heap multiple times. This is bloody stupid.”
She needed to take another drink because Dante looked like he was about to kick a hole through the wall and then some.
I, however, was more relieved than angry. The mayor was our man all along, but now we finally had solid proof, as opposed to the hypotheses we had before. With Vaena's help, we nailed him to the murders, the kazraach, the church, everything. He denied demons had anything to do with the murders at that first press conference because they had everything to do with them. Demons murdered those people in that warehouse. Demons murdered Marion and Mr. Zarcotti. Demons were hunting, planning, watching, waiting. And one specific demon led the charge.
Amarax. The king of Dis. Enslaving―possessing―Mayor Michael Bishop to do his bidding. Just like he'd done to Elias Cromwell two hundred years ago.
It was the perfect set-up to an imperfect plan.
Two hundred years ago, no one was around to stop the slaughter. Two hundred years ago, demons poured from the shadows unabated. Two hundred years ago, Henriette's sister and sixty-six others were killed because of Amarax's greed.
Two hundred years later, history was trying to repeat itself. We couldn't let that happen. Too many lives depended on us. Too many lives depended on how well we played into Amarax’s waiting hand.
This wasn't a mystery anymore.
It was a race. A race we had no choice but to win.
***
Hours later, I forced Dante to take a nap.
We didn't try the kissing thing again. We didn't talk. We just laid there. I waited until his breathing evened out, I waited until his eyes closed, and then I waited some more.
I waited until I fell asleep, and when I woke up, light no longer filled the window. Sleet beat against the glass, tree branches scraping like claws at the siding. A fire filled the hearth and the TV was on, tuned to Channel 10 News.
Rubbing the grainy feeling from my eyes, I sat up. Dante's hand fell from my shoulder.
“What time is it?” I asked. My mouth was dry, my tongue like sandpaper against my teeth.
“9:38,” he said quietly. “Channel 10 News has a special report for us.”
I hated it when he got all cryptic first thing in the morning. Evening. Night. “What's that mean?”
He pointed to the TV.
Candace Walker stood in front of a warehouse in a poncho, the wind whipping the plastic hood against her face. Every time she peeled it back, the wind would gust and the plastic would adhere to her cheek like a second skin. After some off-camera scolding from her producers, she gave up and got reporting. “Good evening, Stone Chapel, I'm Candace Walker for Channel 10 News reporting live from the old Harker Meats warehouse on Barton Avenue. As many of you may remember, the bodies of five people were found murdered and mutilated here two and a half months ago with the killer still at large. Though there have been no leads on the case, a new discovery has been made.”
Turning against the wind, Candace pointed to the warehouse and the camera panned over to follow. It zoomed in on the front of the building, where police officers tried to keep the growing crowd back. People strained across the caution tape, desperate for a glimpse of the―
I gasped. “Oh my God.”
“As you can see,” Candace narrated as the picture sharpened into focus. “There appears to be a variation on the summoning seal drawn in what is feared to be human blood on the front of the warehouse.”
Dante leaned forward, hands clasped on his knee. The camera lingered on the symbol, a runny rendition of the seal of the First Sacrament, then panned away to show Candace as she reported the rest of the story. The mysterious seal had been found by a dockworker an hour ago, investigators from the Department of Demonology had been called in to identify it, details were sparse at this time, et cetra.
“Should we go down there?” I asked. Dante and I both knew no one at the Department would be able to identify the mystery symbol. They'd just be wasting time. Theirs and ours.
He stood, checking his cell phone. “I suppose I should have been down there an hour ago. Chief Morales has called ten times in the last thirty minutes.”
“What, I can't go?” I needed more crime scene experience. And an excuse to actually use the permit he got me.
“It could take hours,” he said, “and you have school tomorrow.”
“I could skip?”
“Beatrice―”
“I'm kidding.”
Mostly. I’d already been held back a year and if I missed any more school, Vance would probably hold me back again. If I didn’t drop out first.
“I'll be back as soon as I can.” Dante headed for the doors. “Don't wait up.”
Like I planned on it. Despite my desire to use my permit, I was pretty tired. If he wasn't going to let me help, the least I could do was catch up on my sleep. Our nap didn't help much. “Before you go, can I ask you a question?”
“Of course.”
“What did your dear old dad want?”
He scratched his jaw, unshaven as ever. I suspected this was partially due my comment about liking it the other day. “To drop by an invitation to this party he's having. He insisted that we go. All of us.”
Yeah, because I definitely wanted to attend a party being thrown by the demon overlord. “When is it?”
“Four weeks and two days from now.”
Four weeks, two days. The winter solstice. Brilliant. Mayor Michael Bishop, professional Satan puppet, truly was a master of subtlety. “I guess we're going then, huh?”
“I guess we are,” Dante said. He grabbed his coat off the rack and shrugged it on. “I'll be back.”
When he was gone, I returned to the couch. I tried to sleep, but the image of the seal on the warehouse had burned itself onto the backs of my eyelids. Dante told me the First Sacrament involved manipulating demonic forces to give life to something new. Something powerful.
If so, what was Amarax trying to create? A new Dis?
Vaena said the old one was dying. Killing to create a new one seemed logical. Twisted, but logical.
And then we had the mayor to consider, that sneaky asshole. Operating under Amarax's thumb for months. No wonder he hated Dante so much. He needed him out of the way to take over the city. But that was before I showed up. He hadn't been counting on me. Or Aralia. Or Max. Together, we'd stop him. Together, we'd defeat Amarax and usher in a new era of peace for Stone Chapel.
Together, we'd go to that party. And together, we'd win. We'd win because I was sick of losing. We'd win because Dante deserved a break.
We'd win because people needed us to. Whether they believed it or not.
Thirty-One
School was abuzz with last night's breaking news. Between it and all the murders, people were finally starting to get worried. A thin, but noticeable strand of anxiety wound its way through the halls, embedded itself into classroom lectures. In biology, Ms. Kepler skipped her lesson on metaphase or whatever it was to talk about advanced demonic physiology. At lunch, representatives from CADP handed out flyers detailing exactly what one should do upon encountering a possessed person and/or animal. The same list of bullet points we'd learned in third grade. Nothing that would actually help.