Jilly blanched. She tossed her silky black hair over one shoulder, then—ignoring her daughter’s question—nudged Cammie and said, “Get your pumpkin, kiddo. I want to get out and get done before the sun sets.”
As Cammie skipped back into the house, I adjusted the crotch of my suit, doing a little dance on Jilly’s front porch. “Why? It’s only five-thirty. She doesn’t even have school tomorrow.”
“The new tunnel makes me nervous. It’s... I don’t know, Kahri. It’s too close. I can just feel them.”
“They’re not going to come after us, Jillian,” I chided. “They have rights here. Any of them coming through are registered with passports and an interdimensional release. The new tunnel isn’t going to affect your neighborhood.”
“Easy for you to say,” Jilly said, her lip curling. “You’ve lived next to the downtown tunnel for four years.”
“And in all that time, nothing has happened.” I curled an arm around her shoulders and hugged her. “What happened to your dad isn’t normal. It’s not going to happen to you or Cammie.”
She nodded, and wiped the worry from her pretty round face as Cammie rushed back, a lime-green pumpkin basket dangling from her fingers.
“I’m ready for candy!” she shrieked, and danced into the evening: a smiling zombie with her Day-glo pumpkin. “Come on, demon Aunt Kahri!”
* * *
Halloween for me was more than trick-or-treating and uber-realistic zombie costumes, though I’d have traveled through hell to take my favorite-and-only goddaughter out for free candy. Samhain is the night the beasties roam the earth. The veil thins, and it’s said you can glimpse the other side of death if you look hard enough. I see it as a celebration of the afterlife and the possibility that there’s more to the universe than what we know for sure.
So maybe that was why things felt weird that night. The air seemed thin and charged, almost cold despite the leftover humidity normal for this time of year in Tennessee. I could chalk it up to the holiday hype; blame the ghosts walking on this side of the veil or something. But whatever it was left me with a sense of unease I couldn’t shake.
We made a pit-stop two doors down to pick up Cammie’s friend Natasha, a fair, freckled blonde with huge expressive eyes, and then Jilly and I trailed the girls as they skipped hand-in-hand down the street.
“Only houses with their porch lights on!” Jilly called after them.
“We know, Ma!” Cammie responded, exasperated.
I grinned at Jillian. “You’re over-Mom-ing again, aren’t you?”
“You try raising a pre-pubescent kid, single and alone in a world like ours. She’s lucky I haven’t locked her in a closet until she turns thirty.” Jilly rubbed her brow, worry lines forming crow’s feet at the edges of her dark eyes. “I can’t tell humans from demons most of the time, and that scares me.”
I didn’t respond. Ever since the Demon Bill passed five years ago, she’d been outspoken about her dislike of the law. The way she railed against letting them into our realm, legally or not, grated the pacifist in me. But I knew her words came from a place of fear. It was easier to dismiss her callousness when I remembered that, though the same could have been said of those who stood by silently during Jim Crow.
“Did you hear about the attack down on the waterfront two days ago?” Jilly went on.
I nodded. “Jogger. She was ambushed in the woods at the park.”
“Disemboweled,” Jilly shuddered. “Do they do that while the person is still alive?”
I rolled my eyes. “Jilly, demons don’t all disembowel people. And you know the Tunnel guardians are strict about who they let through. The demons have to pass tests and qualify to be in our realm. This isn’t twenty-nineteen anymore.”
“But there are demons who disembowel for fun.”
“And there are people who make it a hobby to rape and murder other people. What’s the difference? There are monsters in every sentient race.”
“Demons aren’t human, Kahri. We can’t hold them to the same standards. They’re innately evil.”
As we talked-slash-argued, Cammie and Natasha navigated several houses, where the owners oohed and ahhed over their costumes. Natasha had gone the more traditional “fairy princess” route, and while she was stinking adorable with her pink dress, magic wand, and silky blonde hair, I still liked Cammie’s grotesquerie better.
Jilly had raised one unique little girl.
Cammie and Natasha joined another horde of kids their age on the porch of the next destination, the whole lot of them crowding around a smiling middle-aged woman with a huge bowl of candy.
“Did you have a chance to ask Sensei if I could rent the dojo for Cammie’s birthday next month?” Jilly asked, changing the subject.
“Not yet, but I will. I’ll see him tom--” I cut off as the ground began to rumble. Jilly and I exchanged shocked glances.
“Is that--?”
“Earthquake!” I snapped, shoving Jilly to the ground. “Get down!”
I sprinted up the manicured front walk and snatched the girls away from the house and anything around it that could collapse. We stumbled back to Jilly and joined her in the grass as the shaking intensified.
Earthquakes weren’t outside the norm, despite the fact we were nowhere even close to a fault line. Our quakes were a result of the thin barriers between our world and the demon world. I’d watched a documentary about it a few years ago, and while I didn’t completely understand the scientist’s big science-y words, I got the gist. Basically, the demon world operated at a Level 10 and the human world operated at a Level 2. When the energies collided, it caused a volatile reaction. Our worlds weren’t meant to collide. It was like mixing fire and gasoline.
But the quakes usually passed fast and without casualties. Failing barriers stabilized, once again separating the surface from the demon world. No harm done.
Not this time.
I watched in horror as the house where Cammie and Natasha had just been standing collapsed. The owner had been a quick-thinker, like me, because she lay in her front yard with a pile of trick or treaters, watching her house fall through the ground as fast as if it were being swallowed by quicksand. I hoped liked hell no one else had been inside.
Where the house had stood, a vortex opened. The air turned gritty and spun slowly, colors blurring, fading, emerging.
Like a developing Polaroid photo, a portal opened to the other side.
2
Shock flooded me, rendering me mute and motionless.
The demons on the other side of the opening vortex seemed as stunned as we were to see it happening. I could just make out the landscape behind them; I’d always pictured the demon realm as a barren wasteland stalked by creatures out of a kid’s nightmares. But instead, I saw what looked like the grocery aisle of Wal-Mart and a crowd of people not that different from us.
Jilly opened her mouth and screamed. And screamed. And didn’t stop screaming, not even when she took a strangled breath and kept going. I clapped a hand over her mouth. “Jillian! Snap out of it!”
Cammie clutched her mother’s arm and looked as if her entire world had just collapsed. Jilly had a foul mouth, a never-ending reserve of strength, and not a bone in her body geared for bullshit. For Cammie, Jilly was her Wonder Woman.
But the kid didn’t know what had happened to her grandfather in front of Jilly. She couldn’t know; Jilly refused to talk about it.
“It’s okay,” I said softly, reaching around Jilly’s sobbing body to touch Cammie’s face. “Mom’s okay.”
As the quaking ground faded, I dragged my best friend to her feet and began walking her, Cammie, and Natasha quickly in the direction of their house. I wasn’t anti-demon. I respected that they had rights, too. But an unauthorized portal still frightened me. Because Jilly was right—there were bad demons. Without the tunnel guard to run the protocol, we were at risk.
Maybe there were only demon moms and their demon kids on the other side of that vortex doing thei
r Saturday evening grocery shopping. Or maybe there was a gang of bloodthirsty Greps, the demons most often compared to vampires, who would go rabid at the scent of humans.
Greps—the type of demon who killed Jilly’s dad.
“Don’t look back,” I hissed at the girls. I clutched Jilly’s arm, steering her toward their house. Jilly shook like a loose leaf in a storm. It took all my strength to keep her on her feet and to keep her walking.
The impact happened so swiftly and suddenly, I was watching Jilly hit the concrete before it even registered in my brain what was happening. A humanoid demon with knife-like claws for fingers bit into Jilly’s shoulder with a vicious snarl, his teeth sinking into her bare skin with an audible thwack.
On a background of Cammie’s screams, I launched into an automatic counterattack. My round kick snapped the demon’s bald head back, ripping his razor-sharp incisors from Jilly’s skin. He was fast and strong, but there was no weight to him. The blow laid him on his ass. A well-placed front kick sent him tumbling away, where he rolled twice in the grass before he came to a stop.
I jumped to close the distance between us and slammed my fist into his face. Pain shot through my fist—anyone who tells you punching a guy doesn’t hurt is lying—but for my aches, I got one unconscious demon.
And a huge rip in the crotch of my jumpsuit.
I stood, eyeing the damage between my legs. My red-and-white polka-dotted thong peeked through the gaping polyester. A faint breeze wafted around my ass. I probed the seam around my butt and groaned. My bare ass was totally visible.
“Kahri!” Cammie’s shriek tore through my thoughts.
She crouched over her mother, a zombie bumblebee buzzing around her queen while Natasha cried hysterical tears behind her. Jilly, to her credit, was doing her absolute best not to lose her shit again. She brushed Cammie’s hair from her painted face with a soothing smile. “I’m fine, Cam. I’m fine.”
I knelt behind my best friend, my fingers hovering over the wound in her bare shoulder. Her chocolate skin was broken and torn, but the wound didn’t go too deep. Even though she was bleeding profusely, I didn’t see any muscle or bone. She’d need to get to the hospital pronto for a demon specialist to take a look at it and prescribe any antidotes necessary. There was no way to know what kind of venom could have lived in that thing’s mouth.
Jilly kissed her daughter’s hand with an encouraging smile. Fear was such a strange beast. Jilly only saw the demons and lost it; she got bit by a demon, and could suddenly coo soft platitudes at her child.
“Help me get her up,” I told the girls. I figured if I gave them a task, Natasha would stop hyperventilating.
Wordlessly, Cammie and Natasha helped me get Jilly back to her feet, then the four of us ran like the devil was after us. I wasn’t so cocky to think that creature would be down long after my blow. Demons had a tendency to be a lot tougher than people.
Behind us and growing fainter as we ran, I heard screams and shouts pick up. Gunshots rang out as neighbors began to fight back. I shoved the kids in front of me, trying to block them with my own body. I didn’t have any problem with people defending their property and lives, but when gunfire begins to rain in a suburban neighborhood, friendly casualties become a problem.
At her front door, Jilly tried three times to get the key in the lock before I finally took the keyring from her shaking fingers and did it myself. I pushed Cammie and Natasha inside, and moved to follow behind Jilly.
“Kahrionoclept!”
The word boomed through the night and reverberated deep inside me. My body seized, all muscles, all blood, all everything responding to that strange but oddly familiar word.
Jilly noticed I’d come to a stop and motioned frantically with her good arm. “Come on, Kahri.”
I tried to take a step forward, to pass over the threshold into Jilly’s house. But I couldn’t move. My body hummed, electrified and expectant.
“Kahrionoclept! Come to me!”
Then I was backing away from safety. Backing away from my best friend, whose fearful face turned to horror. Backing away from Cammie and Natasha, who were at least safe within the house. Backing into gunfire and demons.
“Kahri! What are you doing?” Jilly screeched, her voice strangled.
“I don’t know!” I yelled, fighting against the invisible threads manipulating my arms and legs. Fear and confusion warred within me, but my limbs didn’t seem to care. “I can’t control it!”
Jilly took one step onto the porch. I knew she loved me enough to come after me, to pick me up and carry me bodily into her house, despite her fear, despite the seeping wound in her shoulder.
But from my peripheral vision, I saw the bald-headed demon creeping closer.
“Go inside,” I told Jilly firmly. My feet still shuffled backward, taking me further from her.
“But—”
“Go inside, Jilly!”
So she did. Tears rolled down her face, mirrored by the blood leaving trails on her arm, dripping onto the porch. I watched as she closed the door, leaving a red, bloody handprint behind. She was safe. The kids were safe.
I stopped fighting the compulsion. My body was no longer my own; attempting to fight it was like swimming against the Niagara.
I whirled around and let the magick take me to my death.
3
When you’re pretty sure you’re headed for certain, unavoidable death, and you end up before a mountain of muscle with a face like a god, things go a little sideways.
I shuffled to a stop in front of the biggest guy I’d ever seen. He had a high, arched brow and cheekbones that could chisel glass above thick, red lips. His deep olive skin was offset by the oddly normal white shirt and khakis he wore. He looked like he should have been in loafers with no socks, steering a yacht over the Mediterranean, not standing amidst chaos and carnage as demons and humans merged.
“Kahrionoclept.” He towered over me, which meant he had to be over six feet tall. He gripped my bicep and began to drag me toward the fray. “Come with me.”
A weird sensation around my navel connected me to him, like the woven threads of a tapestry. When he said that word, the threads tightened. Luckily, even though my feet rushed to obey his command, my mouth hadn’t lost its mind. “Um, excuse me? Do I know you? And what is that word?”
The dude stopped short and lifted a dark brow in my direction. “Your name.”
“Kahri O’Reilly,” I corrected. “Not Kahri Yoko Ono or whatever.”
He whipped around. “Kahrionoclept. You honestly don’t know?”
That word on his lips sent a frisson of pure energy through me. “Know what? You have the wrong girl. That’s not my name.”
“It’s not possible I have the wrong girl.”
“Well, yeah. It is. Sorry.” I tried to jerk my arm from his grasp, but he held firm.
“No. You don’t understand. Kahrionoclept is your given demon name. It called you to me, didn’t it?”
“Demon name?” I gaped at him. “What the hell are you talking about?”
Mountain dude was quickly losing patience with me. His vivid green eyes rolled skyward. “Your demon name. Every demon has a given name. Any human or god who has your name can control you. It’s your calling card, of sorts.”
I burst out laughing. “Dude. You have the wrong girl. I’m not a demon. I’m a karate instructor from Nashville.”
“You may be a karate instructor from Nashville, but you’re also heir to the throne of Hell. Your father, the king, is dying, and you’re our only hope to fix this.” He gestured to the swirling vortex, where a confused female demon poked her head through, watching the mayhem on this side in horror.
"My dad is dead," I argued. "My mother told me he died in a car accident when I was a baby."
He rolled his eyes. "Your mother fled the palace the moment the first portal opened for travel in Los Angeles. Your father remained in hell as king, where he belonged."
“It’s not even possible. My m
om and I have always lived in Nashville.”
“Your mother is a demon who married the king of hell and bore you. The heir to the throne.”
I imagined my tiny wisp of a mother with her messy auburn bun, oversized cardigans, and large-framed glasses that made her eyes like an owl’s eyes. She’d adopted her eleventh cat two weeks ago.
“Ok, now I know you’re wrong.” I dug my heels into the asphalt. “Please let me go before I’m forced to hurt you.”
He tightened his grip. “Kahrionoclept. You will come with me to the other side and fix this.”
My entire body seized beneath his decree. “Who are you?”
“Donte. Demigod ambassador to the king of hell. We don’t have time for pleasantries. We have to go now.”
As he dragged me toward the swirling vortex, my brain caught up to the word "demigod" and bypassed that completely to "king of hell."
My dad wasn't dead? I mean, yet, anyway. Could all of this really be true? I couldn't deny the power of that word he kept saying. Despite what I wanted, my body longed to obey his every command. I'd initially thought it some kind of demon magick, and in a way, maybe it was.
Except Donte wasn't a demon.
Demigod.
Didn’t that mean he was half-god? A part of me balked at the very idea of gods being real. Except demons were real, so…
As we drew near to the swirling vortex connecting the surface world to the demon world, I took stock of the situation.
The chaos was insane. People screaming and running, demons chasing, but even more demons watching fearfully from near the swirling portal.
I flinched at the sound of gunfire much too close.
Donte stepped through the portal. I froze on the lawn as I realized he wanted me to come through.
“Uh, no thanks.” I waved and turned to walk away.
“Kahrionoclept! Come!”
I whirled on my heel and joined the demigod through the portal. “That’s getting old real fast,” I told him irritably.
“You can’t just walk away from this,” Donte snapped. “You are the only person who can close this portal and call back the demons who have escaped.”
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