by John Everson
“I’ve been looking for your friend for hours,” he growled. “Unfortunately, I’m not the only one. There are many others here who felt the two of you come through the door. I had to stop finally, because everyone is getting ready for tonight. There are too many eyes open right now. I don’t think she was caught yet; word would have spread. Unless she was grabbed by someone like me.”
“What do you mean?” Ariana asked. She could barely understand her own words. They came out in a slur.
“Let’s just say, I don’t play well with others,” the demon said.
The look in his eyes suggested that she not ask any further questions about that.
“However,” he continued, still pawing her. “I find that I do play very well with you.”
He slipped a silken steel arm around her waist and lifted her easily from the ground, like he was picking up a sack. Then he moved towards the bedroom.
“No,” Ariana cried out. “I can’t, not again.”
Elotan tossed her easily on the bed. “Oh darling,” he said, climbing in after her. “You absolutely can. We’ve only just begun.”
His barbed tongue stifled her scream.
CHAPTER 24
CINDY KNEW it was stupid. She barely knew this guy. She’d talked to him a few nights at the Cowgirl and then taken him home. So what was she doing? She’d known him less than a week and now she was chasing after him? Following him?
It was two in the frikkin’ morning. What kind of stalker behavior was that?
She argued all this in her head as she continued to drive steadily down the Old Santa Fe Trail towards the Birchmir Mission. The wheels hummed steady, soothingly on the open road and Cindy yawned.
A big one.
The moon was bright tonight; she wondered what it would be like in a couple hours when the big eclipse happened. It sounded like it would be cool to see, if she could stay awake.
Speaking of which, she hoped Joe hadn’t fallen asleep out in the desert behind the old mission. You never knew what might come wandering the plains after dark.
Cindy shook her head. “You stupid bar bitch, when are you going to learn?” she said out loud in the car. “Drinkers get drunk and drifters drift. You might take one of them home once in awhile, but not to keep. You sure don’t take either of them home to mama.”
She flipped her right turn signal on and eased onto the road that led a quarter mile into the sagebrush to the old mission.
She could see a bunch of cars parked outside of its doors as she approached. So Arnie had been right about that. Whether they were partiers or Satan worshippers she didn’t know, but there absolutely was a group of people who definitely didn’t belong here at this abandoned place in the middle of the night. This was not supposed to be an “active” public property.
There didn’t appear to be anyone outside. She killed the headlights just the same, and slowed the car to a crawl. She didn’t really have a plan; she certainly wasn’t going to try to crash the party and go inside.
Cindy let the car roll up the last few yards of the drive and put it in park near where the rest of the vehicles were parked. She got out, and closed the door slowly. Quietly.
Her eyes scanned the front of the building and then looked out into the desert, where she knew he had planned to hole up and watch.
“Stakeout,” he’d said. Reminded her of Magnum, P.I. or something. She snorted. Joe didn’t really look like the P.I. type to her. Whatever that was.
She couldn’t see the motorbike he’d rented, anywhere. Probably around back, somewhere. Maybe that’s where he still was.
Or maybe not.
Eventually, he would need to leave the dirt and follow the devil worshippers inside if he was going to see anything. Had he already done that? Had they discovered he was spying on them? Cindy ran one hand nervously over the hood of her car and shook her head.
“Where are you now, Joe?” she murmured.
CHAPTER 25
“WE HAVE TO DO something,” Cheyenne whispered in Joe’s ear. Her hand squeezed his arm to punctuate her demand. In front of them, five women lay like the spokes of a wheel inside the circle of white that had been drawn on the chapel floor. Their bodies gave substance to each triangle that formed the points of the star within the circle. Three of them remained unconscious. All were naked and tied.
Darin had pulled the demon callers off to one side to talk. They all sat or stood around him on one of the remaining wooden pews.
Joe stepped backwards, urging Cheyenne to do the same. He nodded towards the stairway to the turret, and then quickly moved across the hall and up the stairs. He didn’t stop climbing until they reached the fresh breeze of the night. Cheyenne followed him to the wall. The ground below looked like a parking lot, with a half dozen cars pulled up alongside each other.
He spotted Darin’s beat-up silver Ford right away. The rest of the landscape was empty of any evidence that humans might be nearby. They were alone in the “outback” with a group of devil worshippers, no weapon, and in Cheyenne’s case, no clothes.
“I can’t take down seven people with my fists,” Joe finally said, turning toward Cheyenne. “I don’t want to see anyone hurt any more than you do,” he said. She cut him off.
“They’re not going to be hurt, he’s going to slaughter them,” she said. “We’re really just going to sit there in the doorway and watch?” Her voice began to rise above a whisper, and Joe put a finger to his lips. Cheyenne rolled her eyes and hissed. “Seriously?”
“What would you like me to do?” Joe asked. “Are you a black belt in karate or something?”
“You think I can’t help?” she asked. Cheyenne put her hands on her hips in anger, forgetting for a moment that she wasn’t wearing pants. The sight was a little comical, even in the tenseness of the moment, and Joe couldn’t stifle a faint smile.
“Oh no, I’m just a stupid girl who got herself caught and needed the big boy to come help me, right?” Cheyenne opened her eyes wide and stared hard at Joe, daring him to answer her. “Never mind that I managed to get my chain out of the wall and my ass out of a locked cell without your big boy help.”
Joe put up a hand. “Look,” he said. “You want to run through the center of the chapel and get picked off by your friend’s tranquilizer darts, be my guest, but I’m not…”
“No,” she said. “Of course you’re not. You came out here to see some blood sacrifice and talk to the demons who show up to lick up the pain. Of course you’re not going to do anything to stop this.”
“You’re not being…” Joe began, and then stopped. Cheyenne shook her head and walked the two steps to the other side of the adobe tower and slid to the ground with her back against the short wall. She pulled her knees up so he couldn’t see what he shouldn’t see, and hung her head down so that he couldn’t see her face anymore either.
He let her be for the moment. She had him dead to rights on the last part. He had come out here, knowing if it was really the scene that Arnie had said it was, that someone was probably going to die. He hadn’t honestly processed it in his head that way, but it was true. He knew how the game worked. He knew what Ariana had done in her ritual sacrifices to let the Curburide come.
People died.
He had not come out here with any intention of stopping it. He wanted to use it for his own purposes. Sure, they were arguably “noble” purposes, but was the death of five women downstairs worth the life of a single teenaged girl who might or might not still be alive in a realm ruled by demons?
When you thought of it like that, well, Joe Kieran sucked.
He shook his head. What could he say?
Joe looked over the turret at the empty landscape beyond. The beauty of the night sky slipped like a rich blanket beyond the shadows of the hills to the west. Dots of black darkened the hills where bushes and small shrubs and sagebrush somehow cl
ung to life on the arid soil. Life was tenacious, and precious. He felt a chill as he thought of how easy it would be to die out there, wandering around in the hills for days. Even if you weren’t killed by the summer sun, what would you eat? Could you find your way to a small creek that actually had not dried up for the season? Or could you wander for miles in the right direction and find the Rio Grande? It always ran.
He would die if he was lost out there. The thought chilled him.
Joe didn’t want to die.
He didn’t have any right to let anyone else die either, not if he could do something about it.
But if he broke up what was happening downstairs, he might never see Alex again.
Back to Argument Ground Zero.
Joe closed his eyes and thought of her hair, crazy and red, before she’d dyed it to disguise her identity as they drove across Colorado. He remembered the lilt of her laugh and the infectiousness of her smile.
He was dying to see her again.
But he couldn’t let five women downstairs die for her. He took a deep breath and swallowed hard, pushing Alex’s grin from his mind. Not here. Not today.
“We can’t take down six people on our own,” Joe said. Cheyenne didn’t look up from her knees.
“But we can try to get help from people who can.”
She looked up then and met his gaze.
“Don’t do it for me,” she said.
“I’m not,” he said. “We will do it for them.”
She nodded. “So what’s your plan?”
Joe grinned. “You’re the industrious one. I was hoping you’d handle that part.”
Cheyenne rolled her eyes. “Figures.”
“Hey, you said you didn’t want me playing big shot hero. So I’m leaving that part to you. You can have all the credit.”
“Uh-huh.” She pushed herself back up to her feet and walked over to where he stood. Looking past his shoulder, she said, “I don’t suppose we can climb down from here.”
Joe shook his head. “Our only way out is through that room. We will have to go right out the front doors.”
“Do you have a car out there?” she asked.
He shook his head. “Motorbike. Out back. Down the hill out of sight.”
“Some rescuer you are. You expect me to double you on a motorbike? Seriously?”
“Would you rather walk?”
Cheyenne raised an eyebrow. “Good point.”
“You still want to do this?”
Cheyenne gave him a glare. “I’m not going to sit here and watch these freaks kill five women and not do anything. I still can’t believe you’d consider it.”
Joe felt his heart contract at that. He hadn’t really planned to watch a murder. Or multiple murders. He wasn’t that cold. It hurt to think someone would think that about him. But then he considered the past women in his life. They probably would all have had similar things to say. His past relationships had not ended well. Joe shrugged. Maybe there was a reason he was a reporter who had no home and no newspaper.
“I didn’t come out here to watch people be killed,” he said. “I just want you to know that. I did come out here to try to save a really cool girl by capitalizing on the stupid shit these people are doing downstairs. But I didn’t come out here to watch murder. I mean that.”
He shook his head and started talking again, before she could interrupt. “Now. As for what we can do? Not a lot. I don’t think we can knock out all six of them and untie the girls and all run away. But you and I can try to make a dash for it out the front door, down the hill, get my bike going, and head down the road a mile or two until we can find a phone and call the police.”
“You’re not going to do any Quentin Tarantino roundabouts and take a couple of them out while we go by?”
Joe shrugged. “I’ll leave that to you.”
“Figures.”
“You’re not wearing jeans, it will be easier for you.”
She slapped him across the back of the head. “I’m having second thoughts about letting you rescue me.”
“Too late,” he said.
“We’re not out of here yet.”
“Point taken. And the longer we stay up here…”
Cheyenne nodded. “So, I’ll follow you?”
Joe nodded. “Here’s the plan. It’s really simple. Run fast. Cuz I will.”
When they reached the entryway to the chapel, the ceremony looked ready to begin. Darin stood at the center of the circle, while Sienna stood at the top point of the star. Mike and Telly stood at the east/west points of the circle, while the Indian girl stood at the bottom. All of them held knives.
“They may not have guns, but they are armed,” Joe said. “Are you sure you can run outside without shoes?”
Cheyenne nodded. She’d do what she had to do.
“Then,” Joe began, and looked quickly back at the room. “No time like the present!”
Joe took a breath, let it out, and then looked at Cheyenne. Her eyes met his and didn’t blink. She was waiting for him to make the move.
He ran.
“Hey, stop!” a voice called out, but Joe didn’t slow. He crossed the open area between the altar and the handful of broken pews in the back half of the chapel, and kept going, not looking back to see what the demon callers were doing. He could sense Cheyenne right behind him. They were committed now. He just needed to get out of this building. Joe hit the front door of the chapel and slammed it open with his hands and his weight as behind him someone yelled, “Wait, hey!”
Cheyenne darted past him as soon as he cracked the door and he rolled his body off of it and outside as soon as she did. It closed instantly behind them.
“This way,” he called, and dashed as fast as he could to the side of the hill where the bike was concealed.
“Hurry!” Cheyenne said.
Joe ran down hill in the dark, catching his foot on a rock and stumbling, but refusing to tumble. For a moment he panicked, thinking that he should have seen the bike already. If they overran it…
But then he saw the glint of its chrome in the moonlight, nestled under his quick camouflage. Joe darted towards it, and almost lost his balance again as he skidded to a stop in the loose earth next to it. He pulled it upright as Cheyenne caught up to him. Joe threw one leg over the bike and she joined him, putting both hands around his waist.
“You call this a bike?” she complained.
“You’re welcome to hitchhike,” he said, fumbling with the keys from his pants pocket. And then he had the key in the ignition, the engine coughed to life and they were slaloming up the hill.
“I think we got this,” he said, as they crested the hill and veered onto the asphalt circle in front of the mission.
“He’s out here!” Cheyenne screamed in his ear.
Joe stole a glance to the side and saw Darin standing outside the double doors of the old building. The old woman stood by him as Mike, Telly and the younger woman ran towards the bike.
“I got this,” Joe promised, and kicked one foot hard on the gas as soon as they reached the pavement.
“He’s got the gun,” Cheyenne warned.
The bike caught the traction and shot forward, at the same time as something cold shot Joe in the neck.
“Oh shit,” he said, hoping against hope that the prick wasn’t from the prick he thought it was.
But it was.
He felt the ice slipping through his veins and his head grew instantly heavy. Behind him Cheyenne’s arms gripped him tighter.
He was about to ask if she could drive when Cheyenne announced, “He shot me with a dart.”
They had just reached the turn onto the main road. If Joe kept going, they would topple the bike on the middle of the asphalt in the next minute, and both of them would be out cold, lying in the middle of the road.
“Shit,” Joe said, and took his foot off the accelerator.
CHAPTER 26
“IS THIS HELL?” Alex asked.
She spooned a dark-looking stew into her mouth, and intentionally refrained from asking what the chunky bits were. She needed sustenance, and it didn’t taste bad. She’d decided that the fact that it didn’t taste vile was all she needed to know right now about what the demon was feeding her.
Helone laughed. It was a slow, aged laugh, and lasted many seconds until the demon shook her head and leveled her eyes at Alex.
“Is your world heaven?” Helone asked.
“Hardly,” Alex said, thinking of the torture her parents had put her through. They had been hardcore religious nuts, and her father, in particular, had never been able to stomach the fact that she could see and talk to the dead. He’d spanked her for the talent, grounded her, threatened her and then finally tied her up for flogging in their basement. He would have killed her to “save her soul” ultimately, if she hadn’t turned the tables. No, Earth was hardly heaven.
Helone nodded. “This may seem hellish to you, and your world seems like nirvana to us. But for those who live there, no. They are neither heaven nor hell. They’re just home.”
“Why do the Curburide want to leave here so badly then?” Alex asked.
Helone nodded at the bowl in front of Alex. “That’s easy,” she said. “Your world is like a candy store. Millions and billions of people, all of them just waiting to be picked.”
“So I’m just food to you,” Alex said. “You’re just fattening me up right now, like in the Hansel and Gretel fairy tale in that painting in my room.” The food in front of her suddenly seemed less palatable.
Helone arched one eyebrow. “I’m not going to cut you up and cook you,” she said. “We are not like that.”
“Then what are you like?” Alex asked. “Demons don’t have a very good reputation in our world, although there always seem to be idiots who want to contact them.”
“We can help those that interest us,” Helone said. “In your world, we have power that your people desire. And you have energy that we need. Our power wouldn’t exist without it. That’s what we feed on.”