by Marie Hall
“Fine, she was after you. That’s obvious in hindsight. But there’s more to this.” He shook his head. “On the tape she seemed as interested in the priest as she was in you. Why?”
I shrugged. None of this made sense to me.
“What prophecy was she talking about? You survived, Pandora.” His blue eyes were twin pools of misery and confusion. “Are you that woman? Is this only the beginning? What else is gonna happen?”
I twisted my lips. “I wish I knew.”
We sat wrapped in silence, each of us deep in our thoughts. I don’t know how much time passed, but when next I looked, sunlight had crept long golden fingers through my room chasing back the shadow of early morning.
I jerked, surprised when I felt his hand trace the line of my jaw. “How did you get back home, Pandora? I searched the woods. I searched the club. Dora, how did you come back?”
The Gray Man. I closed my eyes, remembering his strong arms. The white light. The screams of the damned behind us. Who was he? Who could enter Hell and not be harmed by it?
Only demons. And angels.
But demons don’t do white light. And if the Gray Man was an angel, he was unlike anything I’d ever seen before.
I hung my head. “I prayed. I was dying. Wrath had me thralled.”
His thumb traced the seam of my lips. “Did you escape on your own?”
“No.”
His mouth turned down. “Who brought you back?”
Even though I was no longer in Hell, thinking about it filled me with dread. I shivered and looked at my hands remembering the bones they’d been. Remembering that last lingering look Billy had thrown me. My heart ached, my temples hurt.
“I don’t know," I finally whispered after a while. I wish I did, but I don’t know.”
The Gray Man, whatever he was, was not an angel. He couldn’t be. So what was he?
“Friend or foe?” Luc asked.
I threw up my hands.
“So the order’s out to kill you. Someone rescued you, but you don’t know who. Where’s the priest?”
I glanced at him. My heart lurched at the mere mention of Billy. Even now, I cared. Had he actually been there to kill me as I'd initially thought? I’d seen the violence in his eyes, his raised sword. And yet, he'd thrown himself atop me to keep from taking those last fateful steps toward Wrath.
“Chaos stabbed him,” I said in monotone.
“Is he dead?”
I bit my bottom lip to keep from betraying the slight tremor coursing through it. “Probably.” Simply admitting that hurt so much I felt like I couldn't catch a breath.
I quickly switched topics. “What happened to the worshippers?” Now it was Luc’s turn to look uneasy.
He turned and dropped his head into his hand. “When you disappeared...I lost it.”
I rubbed his back.
He grabbed my hand and placed it against his chest. “I killed anybody who crossed my path.”
“The kids?” I managed to squeeze out.
“Some died, Dora.”
I tried to pull my hand away.
“No.” He grabbed me back. “Not by me. I didn’t touch them. I swear.”
I could read the sincerity in his panic stricken gaze. I’ve seen Luc lose himself to the monster before and for the first time in my life I could now say I have too. I frowned.
“Please tell me you believe me.” He shook me softly.
I’d lost my will to my demon because of blind rage, thinking I’d seen Kemen killing children. Losing all rational thought because of that. Luc must have felt something similar when he’d nearly killed me.
I cupped his chin and gave him a sad smile. Even in my rage I’d directed my anger solely at Kemen. I know I would never have touched the children. Neither would he.
“I believe you, Luc.”
His eyes closed and his shoulders sagged with relief.
“What happened to the rest of the LCD?”
Haunted blue eyes held my own. “They ran. I followed and killed the ones I caught. Dumped them in the streets.” He clutched my fingers, holding them to his lips. “Dozens, Pandora. I couldn’t stop.”
I scooted near him, laying my head on his shoulder.
“When I saw you with Kem, I figured he was our rogue. I called Bubba and Vyx on my cell. Then it was all madness, you disappeared and I went feral.” Muscles in his jaw flexed. “They found me in the streets. Bubba knocked me out, dragged me home.”
“Luc, all those bodies,” I murmured, “the police will find them. How can we explain that away?”
“Vyx helped...” His eyes flicked to my face then down at the carpet, “calm me.”
I knew what he meant. I touched his cheek and let him read the truth in my face. It didn’t matter. I’d have done the same.
He clipped his head. “I went out again this morning to look for you, retraced my steps.” He tucked a blonde strand of hair behind my ear. “The bodies were gone. All of ‘em. Humans and vamp.”
“What?” Confused, I pinched the bridge of my nose. “What happened to the kids?”
“They were there. The ones that survived were still huddled together in the large cage. They didn’t even try to leave, Dora.”
“Did you call the cops?”
He nodded. “They’re down there now. It’s all over the news.”
I rubbed my temples. “None of this makes sense to me. None of it. Why the kids? Why involve the vamps?” I rolled my neck from side to side, trying to work out the knot at the base of my skull. “Was this even about me?”
“Why would you ask that? Of course it was? Grace tried to kill you.”
I scooted off the bed and started pacing back and forth. Something about all of this kept nagging at me. “But why me? What makes me special? She didn’t seem to care if I lived or died, unless I was part of the prophecy. No.” I scratched my head. “This is bigger than vamps, and I suspect this new zombie infestation plays a part in all of this.”
He stood and ran his hand down his face. “I have a sick feeling that this is just the beginning.” He paused, studied me for a second and then licked his lips.
“Something I can’t understand and keep obsessing over… why Hell? Why send me there? What does Wrath have to do with any of this? He wanted me.” Thinking about his lure… I shuddered. I always prided myself on being able to control me, being in charge of my destiny, but down there, in his dungeon… I hadn’t belonged to me. I’d have done anything he wanted. I’d have done anything, even kill Kemen all over again, to let him touch me.
“Dora.” His eyelids fluttered. “You never had a clue? Not once, in all the time you visited with her—”
Fury burned like hot coals in my gut. The slithering, slinking, parasitic demon who inhabited me now bristled, shivered with eager anticipation at my emotions. Breathing hard through the muck churning inside, I tried to calm myself. “I should have sensed it, I should have. But I didn’t. None of this makes sense. I thought we were just here to shut down a vampire molestation ring, Hell was nowhere near my radar. I should have seen it, but I didn’t. What is she doing, Luc? What!”
Grabbing my trembling body, he pressed me tight to his and just rubbed my back up and down until the worst of it past. “That’s what we’re going to figure out.”
Nodding, I pressed the heels of my palms to my eyes.
“Dora.”
I cocked my head and stepped out of his arms. He was nervous about something. “What?”
He squared his shoulders. “Bubba brought Kem home last night.”
Hearing that was like taking a punch to the gut. My mouth turned down.
“We’re gonna prepare the body and have a funeral.” He gripped my shoulder, then turned and left.
I sank onto my bed and stared with unseeing eyes out the window. I didn’t move. I sat until the sun disappeared behind the thicket of trees.
And as each minute, each hour ticked by I grew more and more upset. It gnawed away at me. Pestilence seemed to l
ike the anger more than Lust. He goaded me, spurred me on.
Go kill her. He told me. Kill her. Look what she did to you. She doesn’t deserve to live.
My breathing grew heavy. I jumped to my feet, got dressed and ported. My booted feet pounded the deserted sidewalk of downtown. And with each step my rage mounted, twisted into an ugly, horrible thing.
I got to 666 Elm and snarled. I should have seen the clues. Trust no one.
I wrapped myself in glamour and ported inside. Silent, I moved up the stairs. The only sounds in the house were the constant tick tock of the wall clock. I maneuvered my way around the maze of boxes lining the upstairs hallway.
There were four doors, all closed. It was cold up here. Freezing. I turned to look at the closed door on my left. The hairs on my arm stood up. When I breathed steam curled from my lips.
Then suddenly it all made sense. Pestilence knew what I had not. The cold I’d felt the first night I’d visited Grace was a portal. A doorway between this realm and Hell. The clue had been under my nose all along, I’d just failed to recognize it.
She’d been the one slipping LCD into downtown. Grace had bought the home, not because she needed a soft bed to sleep on, but because she needed a safeguard for the gateway. Which made me wonder all over again whose eyes had been watching me? What had been watching me? What had she been planning? What was she still planning?
And now because of the presence of Pestilence within me, the proximity of the portal no longer affected me. Did this mean I was more demon than human now? Angrily I shoved that thought away. I’d worry about that some other day. Not now.
I narrowed my eyes. Hanging from one of the doors was a purple and teal mumu.
Pestilence smirked. Blood. Blood. He coo’d.
I licked my lips and pulled a knife out of my pocket. “Everywhere,” I trilled, finishing his song. He wanted blood and tonight I would grant his request.
I opened the door with the mumu and a long slow grin spread across my face. There she lay, in the middle of the bed, one hand flung over eyes, the other clutching a rosary.
I glided to the side of the bed. Blue liquid drops of moonlight kissed her temple and highlighted the gray strands of hair.
“You liar,” I hissed, loud enough that she should have woken up.
A gentle snore fell from parted lips.
“Wake up and face me,” I said through clenched teeth. I wouldn’t kill her like some coward in her sleep. I was going to stick the knife through her heart and make her watch while I did it.
“Wake up,” I yelled it this time, grabbed her shoulders and shook her violently. Her head lolled from side to side, but still her eyes didn’t open.
What was this? She was breathing. She was alive.
A crystalline pulse of power shivered down my spine. I twirled and saw a black blob of dancing shadow shape and form itself until it stood before me.
“Pandora,” the Gray Man said, and I knew what he’d done.
He’d placed her in a catatonic state.
“Why?” I screamed, throwing my knife to the ground. “How dare you steal my revenge?” Tears blinded my eyes, I swiped them away. “You show me that tape and expect me not to come? Stay out of my life.”
I was breathing so heavy I shook with it.
“There is the prophecy to learn. You cannot kill her. Not yet. She has to believe that she’s failed and you know nothing. You must continue to work with her.” The deep timbre of his voice shivered across my flesh.
“I could care less about some stupid prophecy. You think I owe you a thing just because you saved my life?”
He glided forward and as he moved the pressure in the room grew thick and heavy. It crushed me against the wall, so that it felt like unyielding hands pinning me by the waist. Paintings Grace hadn’t yet packed crashed down around us.
“You should care. Don’t delude yourself into thinking that this has nothing to do with you. It has everything to do with you.” His words were vicious barbs.
I tried to fight back, force my will against his. But he was too strong. “I don’t care anymore. She can kill me. I don’t care.”
“No she can’t,” he growled, and again I saw a burning glow of amber burn bright within the hood. “I won’t let her kill you.”
I laughed and the sound was caustic to my ears. “For all I know you’re going to try to kill me too. Oh wait, you already tried once. Who are you?” I balled my hands into fists. “You’re no angel, I know that.”
I could feel his anger; it lifted the fine hairs on my arms and the back of my neck.
After a lengthy pause he finally said, “Who I am doesn’t matter. What I know does.”
“What do you know? Tell me. Did you know she was going to make me turn against one of mine? Did you know the order planned this whole charade? Just what do you know?”
“We must learn about the prophecy. You will help me.”
I chuckled. “Kill me, Gray Man. If you think threats will work, think again. I’m dead inside. I’ve got nothing left to lose.”
He moved closer, so close his faceless body hovered inches from mine. I stared into a yawning chasm of shadow and twin dots of burning light. The power emanating from him rolled through the house like thunder.
“If you think losing that boy is the worst it can get, then you’re sorely mistaken.” The gravel quality of his voice rubbed against my body like sandpaper.
My nostrils flared and what I felt then wasn’t hot anger, but the cold; the kind of cold anger that settles deep and burns brighter. “What do you mean?”
He stepped back and I gasped as the pressure against my body finally eased. I rubbed my aching hips.
“You’re smart. Figure it out.”
I bit the inside of my cheek, suppressing the urge to run over to Grace, straddle her and stab her through the heart until the hurt inside my own stopped.
“Even if I do it, she’ll know. She’ll know I went to Hell and she’ll know I know the truth now. I can’t work with her, everything’s shot.”
“No.” He shook his head. “When you leave I will seal the portal. She’ll have no way of contacting Chaos or Wrath. The truth will remain with us.”
Hissing, I narrowed my eyes. “How do you know about Chaos? Were you there? Did you know she was planning this?”
He was silent so long I thought maybe he’d refuse to answer. “I suspected for a while now that she was working outside of the order’s directives.”
Outside of the order’s… my thoughts took a swift detour. “What a second? Are you saying she’s rogue?”
His silence spoke volumes.
“Dammit!” I snarled, but the fury soon gave way to laughter. And not because this was funny. It so wasn’t. This was irony in its purest form. She’d set me up. Made me track down a rogue neph when all along she was the double agent.
“So the order has no clue what they’re little miss sunshine is up to? How the hell does this happen?”
“That’s what we’re going to find out. But to do it, we have to work together.”
It all sounded so easy. “Yeah, and what do you get out of this? And don’t lie, because we both know this isn’t altruism on your part.”
“I could tell you many things, Pandora. But you’re too smart to believe any of them. You have a partner in this.”
I snorted. “Partner. Yeah. Weren’t you the one telling me to trust no one? You’ve also tried to kill me, so you tell me… why should I trust you?”
“Because I can be your greatest ally, or your worst enemy. The choice is yours.”
Shaking my head with disgust I stared at the shadow swathed figure, mentally running through many different scenarios. Why I should and shouldn’t trust him. I barely trusted Luc at times, now here was a creature that I didn’t know, one so powerful I couldn’t afford to make my enemy telling me to pick him.
“So you’re telling me you have my nuts in my vice and if I don’t chose you you’ll chop them off, that it?”
/> This time there would be no answer from him. The infinite black depths that was the mysterious gray man stared back at me.
“You make me sick.” Swiping up my knife, I walked away, not bothering to look back. To hell with all of them.
There was only one person left in the world who’d I’d die for. And though it was only one, his was a life I would never gamble. It wasn’t worth it. I’d fight with the gray man if that’s what it took to take Grace down, but I was a demon too. If he screwed me, I’d use every weapon in my arsenal to bring him down with her.
I ported back to the carnival. The machines had been taken down already. Aside from a few winking trailer lights, it was dark. A blood red moon hung heavy in the sky.
I kicked at a rock with the toe of my boot and watched it skip across the blades of grass.
I glanced at Luc’s trailer and looked away. I didn’t want to go there. I hugged my arms to my chest, never feeling as alone as I did right then. What was I gonna do?
“Pandora?” Vyxyn’s soft voice cut through my melancholy.
Her hair was powder blue and caught up in a short ponytail. She was dressed in a Hello Kitty tank and shorts sleep set. She looked ready for bed. I wondered if she’d been looking out her window waiting for my return.
“I know I always give you crap,” she said, “but mostly it was because I always thought you too weak.”
I snorted and glanced away. Like that was a shock.
She touched my shoulder. “I never thought you’d kill Kemen.” She said it with respect, and a touch of awe. As if she was seeing me for the first time.
“How dare you?” I slapped her hand away, lashing out at her with all my bottled frustration. “I loved him. I didn’t kill him for fun. Screw you.”
I shoved past her and ran with no destination in mind. In Vyx’s own way she’d tried to show me respect, make an apology and any other time I would have been able to understand that. But not now. Not while my heart still bled and grieved for a man I’d never see, never hold again.
I’d loved Kemen. He’d been family in every sense of the word. Blood or not, I’d loved him. Everybody else had put up with him. But to me, he’d been special. Perfect.