by Kit Colter
The dream made her remember things—stories that had never mattered. Stories about the Owl Man, about his eyes that looked like the moon, about the day he was cursed to eternal night. Stories about the human beings the Owl Man hunted as prey. Erin wiped the sweat from her brow, then slipped to the edge of the bed and placed her feet firmly on the floor. Then she just sat there and tried not to think, willing the minutes and hours away, willing the night away.
Just before daybreak, Erin took a quick shower and continued trying not to think.
At 6 a.m., she sent a text to her parents—a lie about her car breaking down on the way to Las Cruces. Then she headed back to the library. By the time Erin parked, she had three missed calls from her father and six from her mother. Erin bit back the guilt and put her phone on silent. She paid to get in, just one hundred dollars this time, and entered to find Lyle wasn’t there. She was a little disappointed, and also a little surprised by the fact that she was disappointed, but she didn’t let it slow her down. Gregory was less than happy to see Erin, and even less happy to find her directing all her questions toward him in Lyle’s absence. She didn’t have much time. She wanted to be in Phoenix before the sun went down. So, instead of reading, she carefully and covertly used her cell phone to photograph page after page of potentially relevant information. Anything and everything she could find on vampires, Wendigo, or the Owl Man—as well as anything and everything she could find on demon possession, which turned out to be much more material than she expected.
At 9 a.m., Erin reluctantly headed back to Phoenix. She felt torn about this decision because it meant she would miss her meeting with Lucas Brook. However, she needed to find somewhere safe to hide long enough to process the situation and develop a plan. And she needed to be there—wherever safe turned out to be—before the sun set.
Chapter 9
When she reached Phoenix, Erin headed to Isaiah’s dormitory. She parked as close to the building as possible and quickly walked across the dead grass toward the entrance. Someone was watching her. She didn’t know how she knew this. She just felt it. Erin looked up from her thoughts and spotted a very thin man leaning against the wall next to the front door. But he wasn’t looking at her. His face was buried in an outdated issue of Sports Illustrated. Erin studied the man carefully, then walked past him, and entered the building. She swiftly made her way up five flights of stairs, then walked halfway down the hall. Came to a stop and knocked on the door.
No answer.
Knocked again.
When nothing happened, she reached into her jacket pocket for the key Isaiah had given her months ago. Unlocked the door and stepped inside.
“Zaiah?” Erin called, standing in the doorway with her hands at her sides. She’d never used the key before and felt awkward entering without permission. “Hey, Watts?”
When no answer came, she stepped inside and locked the door. Erin quickly made her way through the room and found it empty. She couldn’t remember Isaiah having a class at this time. Then she realized he was probably at the football game. Or out looking for her.
There was a knocking sound.
Erin stepped out of the bedroom and returned to the door. She hoped it wasn’t Lorraine. All she needed was for Isaiah’s girlfriend to think something was going on between the two of them. The knocking sounded again. Erin frowned—really, really hoping it wasn’t Lorraine— then opened the door.
“Lucas?”
He was panting. His face was sweaty and even paler than before. “He’s coming,” Lucas gasped, glancing over his shoulder. “He’s coming, Erin!”
Erin took a step toward the hallway—and the fastest route to her car.
“No! No!” Lucas cried. “He’s coming!”
Erin stepped back, letting Lucas into the room, then slammed the door shut and locked it. Swiftly grabbed a chair and positioned it under the doorknob, then pulled open Isaiah’s night stand and retrieved the hunting knife he kept there.
“One of those barriers would be good right about now,” Erin said. She had to get out of here. Isaiah’s apartment was a dead end if one of those things found its way inside. They’d be trapped.
Erin glanced out the window, trying to remember if there was a fire escape, then noticed that Lucas was just standing there. He grinned, and every shred of that shy nervousness fell away in an instant.
“You’re not here to—”
“Help?” he said, shaking his head. “I’m afraid not.”
Erin leapt for the door, then gasped as a bone crushing force thrust into her back and slammed her face-first into the wall. She felt Lucas step in close behind her, pressing his body against hers. He slid the side of his face against her cheek, breathing in deeply, then whipped her around to face him. As she turned, Erin slashed out with Isaiah’s hunting knife, raking the blade across his chest.
Lucas looked down at the wound, then smiled. “Is that the best you can do?” He knocked the knife from her hand.
Erin jammed one knee into his groin and leapt for the door. Lucas caught Erin’s wrist and slammed her to the floor. He pinned Erin’s arms to the carpet and leaned in close. “Don’t try to fight me,” he ordered. Then he jerked Erin to her feet and pinned her back against the wall.
“Quiet,” he whispered, clutching Erin’s body against his. She gasped, feeling a sudden sharp pain slice through the tissue just above her collar bone.
Erin jammed her forearm into his throat. Choking, Lucas stepped back, blood smeared across his lips, and his teeth.
“You’re a—”
Lucas grinned, revealing two severely extended, blood stained canines. “Vampire?” He laughed. “For now maybe. But after I hand you over, I’ll be much, much more.”
“But you were in sunlight—”
Lucas gave Erin another hard shove. She felt her body collide with the wall and crumple to the floor. She spotted the knife lying a few feet away and lunged toward it. Lucas yanked Erin off the floor with one hand and threw her face-first against the wall. She cried out as he jammed his forearm against the back of her neck, pressing her face against the wall. Lucas stepped in close once more, and Erin felt him move one hand over her right hip.
“What do you want?” she asked.
“Think you can cut a deal?” He laughed again. “There’s nothing you can give me—nothing that I can’t take.”
Erin clenched her jaw as Lucas moved his mouth to her ear. “Then why are you here?”
“You’re just a job, just business,” he said. “Don’t think that doesn’t mean you and I won’t get to know each other, very, very well.” He pressed his face to her neck. “And when I’m done with you, I’m going to hand you over—and I’m going to be a god. He’s going to make me a god. Do you understand what that means?”
With a deafening crash, the chair placed beneath the doorknob flew across the room and the door crashed open. Erin didn’t wait to find out what did it. She immediately used the distraction to twist out of Lucas’s grip and make a second lunge for the knife. She felt Lucas grab her shoulder just as her left hand curled about the knife handle. Erin turned and thrust the blade toward Lucas’s chest. But then the ground was ripped out from beneath Erin—some enormous force jerking her entire body backward—and her knife slammed into Lucas’s shoulder instead.
A towering human silhouette moved before her.
Sirian.
He pushed Erin behind him and stepped into a weak midday shadow on one side of the door. Erin staggered backward, her body shaking, staring up at him in confusion and dread.
Sirian growled, features sharpened, canine teeth exposed, his gaze trained on Lucas, who stood in the direct line of the light from the window. Erin saw it then, a thin, grayish haze cloaking Lucas’s body. A smoky force field burning away, little by little, under the sun’s light. It was a demon. No, it was a demon’s energy—shielding Lucas from the sunlight.
“You’re going to die, Sirian,” Lucas said. “You can’t take this much longer—standing in the
shadows or not.”
Sirian watched in absolute stillness, his eyes dark and unreadable.
Then, as if on cue, the two figures collided. They moved so fast Erin couldn’t process what she saw. All she recognized was the damage: the shattered television, the caved in wall, the plume of stuffing from the couch. There were snarls and the hard crack of fists against flesh. For a moment, the movement slowed, and Erin saw Sirian let out a growl of pain as his body passed into a ray of sunlight streaming through the window. He started to step out of the light, then dodged a punch, and slammed Lucas into the floor. Lucas flipped over, jammed his feet into Sirian’s chest, and launched him into the air. Sirian landed easily in a crouched position.
“Give it up,” Lucas said. “You can’t make it. If the sun doesn’t kill you, I will. You’re weak.”
Sirian leapt forward, straight onto Lucas, and their thrashing figures tangled, rolled over the floor, and crashed into the table. Blood splayed across the carpet and wall. Sirian grabbed Lucas by the neck, ripped him off the floor, and hurled him through the window pane. In the same instant, Lucas clasped Sirian’s jacket collar and, with a jerk, both vampires tumbled through the window and out of sight.
Erin ran forward, heard a loud thud, and leaned out the window. She felt a surge of astonishment as the fight resumed on the grass below.
That was five stories.
Erin turned to run—to escape before whoever won decided to collect his prize—but then she heard a growl heighten into a scream.
Silence.
Erin slowly faced the window, her throat dry, and looked down to see both figures lying motionless on the grass. She stared for a moment, then looked away, at the bloody knife on the carpet, at the open door.
But she didn’t move.
“Shit, shit, shit.”
She glanced back down and saw one of the figures crawling across the lawn.
“Shit!”
* * *
Forehead shimmering with sweat, face smeared with blood, and panting, Sirian clawed his way across the grass to the side of the dormitory building and dragged his body into a weak shadow draped across the east wall. Eyes half closed against the light and pain, he pulled his legs to his chest and tried to mold into the bricks. His head drooped suddenly, rolling to one side, and he lifted it back up with effort. A drop of blood slipped from his right nostril.
Erin sprinted around the corner and glanced at the dead vampire lying on the grass. Lucas. She scanned the area and spotted Sirian, sitting with his back against the dormitory wall, his body leaning strangely to one side. She ran to him, then stopped four feet away, staring in shock. There was blood—creeping rivulets sliding from his ears and nose. She watched in disbelief as a thin red current streamed from his left eye. Then the right. His eyelids fluttered, and a series of tremors rippled through his body.
“Sirian,” Erin said slowly, barely able to force out the sound out.
He twitched slightly—struggling to focus on her face—then shuddered again.
Erin told herself to step back, to leave, to get away. She ordered herself to run.
Instead, she inched forward, her body rigid with fear, and moved a hand to Sirian’s arm. He shuddered.
“Sirian,” Erin said. “Don’t kill me. I’m—I’m being an idiot.” She glanced back at Lucas—his throat a gaping ravine of blood and severed tissue. Erin felt a wave of vertigo and took a deep breath. She forced herself to look at Sirian. “You have to help me out here. You’re huge, and I’m trying to get you out of this.”
Sirian blinked the pools of blood from his eyes. He leaned to one side, and Erin realized he was moving into the shadow cast by her body. At any minute, people were going to start showing up. Someone had probably called the police. She had to do this now or leave him.
Erin clenched her jaw. “Shit,” she growled, stepping back. But she couldn’t. She couldn’t leave him. “I hate you,” she whispered and inched forward.
Erin froze as Sirian reached out and grasped her left arm. His grip tightened so sharply she bit back a cry of pain. Erin twisted out of his grip, then forced herself to move closer. She knelt again. “Alright, Sirian, we’re going to get you out of here,” she said, hoping he was conscious enough to understand. If he didn’t, he might kill her.
As Erin reached toward Sirian, his hands came up, clutching her shoulders with excruciating force. A current of blood slithered over her chest as his fingers dug into her skin. Erin gritted her teeth against the pain and pulled Sirian to his feet. She slowly looped Sirian’s arm around her shoulders and took a step forward, then gasped as his arm tightened suddenly around her torso.
“Sirian— Sirian!?”
Panic rose like a metal spike through her chest. She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t move. She couldn’t survive this.
Sirian’s arm relaxed as his body collapsed into shudders, and Erin had to move to one side to keep him from falling. She hesitated, realizing that it wasn’t just a tremor shaking through his body. It was a seizure.
He was going to die.
Erin braced herself under his armpit, took a deep breath, and moved forward as swiftly as she could, gritting her teeth against the pain as his hand tightened on her shoulder. His legs were barely moving, just stumbling forward.
Blood from Sirian’s face dripped across the side of Erin’s forehead. She heard a muted sound of pain escape her own lips as Sirian’s arm tightened once more, so sharply it forced the breath from her lungs. Erin’s step faltered as pain exploded in her left side with a loud snapping sound. She gasped and staggered, her body sinking toward the ground, then threw out one leg to catch her fall. She stood that way for a moment, then struggled forward, tears streaming down her face.
She had to get to her car.
Then Erin saw something that stopped her dead in her tracks. Despite the pain. Despite the fear. Despite the seizure-ridden vampire crushing the life out of her.
Coach was standing between Erin and her car with a peculiar look on his face. Like he was weighing the situation. Measuring the odds. Like whatever it was he wanted from her, he wanted it so badly that he was about to make a very dangerous decision.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Erin breathed.
“I’m worried about you, Erin,” Coach said, with that bottomless hole in his gaze, that godawful thing watching from within. “You shouldn’t be with him. He’s dangerous.”
Something broke in the back of Erin’s mind, some little floodgate she used to hold back the memories. The memory of his hands. The memory of his breath. The memory of his weight.
“You get the hell away from me, or I will kill you. I will kill you,” Erin promised. “I’ll destroy every single piece of you until I find the piece that makes you die.”
Coach watched her for a moment longer, then very slowly turned and walked away.
Erin staggered to her car, dumped Sirian into the trunk, and slid into the driver’s seat. She took a careful breath, wincing against the pain in her side, and started the engine.
“I’m okay,” she said.
* * *
Erin sat on the floor, legs folded, with a bottle of peroxide and a clump of cotton balls. She leaned her back against the wall and tried to decide what to do. Her lavender sheets were stained with blood, and sprawled across them was Sirian’s massive figure. His presence—unconscious or not—made her feel crowded, claustrophobic.
So, here she was, back in her apartment, the very last place she needed to be, and more, with the very last person she needed to be there with. Instead of just letting him die and ridding herself of the trouble, she had to drag him back here. She had to put herself, alone, in an apartment with him, just waiting for him to wake up and eat her or whatever the hell it was he planned on doing.
And here she was, feeling absolutely terrified of him. It wasn’t even that she felt that way. She was that way—absolutely terrified. She flinched every time he moved in his sleep, her mind leaping for her softball bat and the
front door at once. The flinches hurt, of course, because the bastard had broken her ribs. She’d swallowed more than her share of aspirins upon getting here, telling herself she would go to the hospital once she got him settled and thought of a good cover story.
Erin finished cleaning the wounds on her shoulders where his fingers had dug into her skin, then went to the closet and selected a long sleeved button-up shirt. She exited the room and closed the door, putting on the shirt just outside, then wondered if she would come back to find him dead—what she would do with the body. Erin grabbed her softball bat and car keys, stepped out of her apartment, and locked the door behind her.
* * *
After driving to the hospital on the other side of town—who knew what would happen if she made a second appearance at St. Joseph’s—Erin stood in the waiting room with her phone pressed to her ear. She’d been using her bat as a crutch, and she knew it was making people uncomfortable, but she wasn’t going anywhere without some kind of weapon at this point. She’d been waiting for over an hour, and they still hadn’t called her name. The phone clicked and she took a cautious breath.
“Erin!” Isaiah said, and Erin felt guilt at the sound of panic in his voice.
“Hey,” she said.
“Oh, man, I thought something had happened,” Isaiah said. “I came home and—”
“I know,” Erin said. “Something did happen.”
“Are you okay?” Isaiah asked.
“Yeah,” Erin said. “Listen, I want you to get your stuff and get out of there.”
“Erin—”
“Don’t argue with me on this one, Zaiah,” Erin said. “Trust me. Please. Just get your stuff and get out. Go to Lorraine’s or something. I don’t care where you go, just go.”
“What’s going on, Erin?” Isaiah asked. “My place is trashed. Everybody’s saying they found a dead guy on the lawn. You’re telling me to leave my dorm. I want to know what’s going on.”