“Okay, this is the place,” Helen says as she removes the keys from the ignition. “I hope you’re ready to run because it doesn’t seem like this rain is letting up anytime soon, ladies.”
“Yeah,” I say with a grunt as I reach behind me for my belongings, “I figured. We got this… No sweat. Right, Valerie?”
“Yup...” she says while securing her essentials for the night. If she’s pissed, she’s hiding it well. Nothing screams vacation with your best friend more than a mad dash out in the rain to spend the night at a stranger’s house. Epic shit.
“Actually, hold on a second. I left my umbrella at the diner, but I’m pretty sure I have another in the house. You two stay put while I go out and get it. The hubby is probably sleeping, so I’m going to let him know what’s going on before I come back. It’d sure be something to see him coming downstairs to two young ladies eating breakfast out of the blue,” Helen says while she unlocks the latch on her car door.
“I’ll be back in a few.” Helen grabs a matching denim jacket and slings it over her head before rushing out to meet the rain. Val and I watch her in silence as she waddles through the rain to her front door, trying her best to stay as dry as possible. Eventually, she makes it, leaving us behind in her rusted truck.
“What a day this is turning out to be, huh?” With my bag in front of me, I slouch back into my seat, wipe a damp strand of hair away from my face, and fold my arms.
“Think so? It could be worse.” Valerie shrugs. “Imagine sleeping in your car. As long as this place has hot water and no roaches, I’m good. Miss Helen seems nice enough to trust. Still no cell signal though. This storm’s a killer… Speaking of killers,” Valerie says as she reaches for her purse, “you do carry pepper spray, right? I always have some with me when I go out. Had to move it from my keychain since you were driving, but it’s always good to be safe. I know I just said that Helen was cool, but we’re out in the middle of nowhere and Helen’s ‘hubby’ just might be a freakin’ psychopath for all we know. Better safe than sorry.”
“No I forgot mine, but I did take about a couple dozen or so classes in Krav Maga.” I shrug. “Should be enough.”
“Sailor!”
“What? I’m not knocking it. Pepper spray works, but sometimes it can be a bit slow, don’t you think? Like, unless someone is clearly approaching you and you have time to stall, it’s not going to do you any good. It’s better to learn how to throw a decent punch and know a couple pressure points. A swift kick to the dick can make a guy’s head explode. Apparently, it’s as bad as running naked through barbwire. But yeah, having a weapon is good and all, but learning to fight without one is super important.” Hence the Beretta I stashed away in my bag just case things get hairy. “When this is over, do me a favor and promise me you’ll take a couple classes, okay? It’ll do you good.”
“I’ll think about it, but you know I prefer the occasional spin class.”.
“Valerie, I’m serious.,” I say flatly. “The world is a dangerous place, and sometimes, you’ve got to count on yourself to make sure you’re all right. You’d rather trust a can with some spray rather than your own two fists? When I—” Before I can finish my sentence, Helen opens the door to her vehicle, grabbing my attention. “We’ll finish this later,” I growl.
“You ready, sweetie?” she yells over the falling rain against the worn hood of the poorly aging truck. She gestures me forward and I drag my bag along the seat until I’m nestled underneath her navy blue umbrella, shielded from the rain. “Come on, I got you, darling.” Together we trek through the mud towards a small set of wooden stairs. As we walk, the door opens and an older guy—presumably Helen’s husband—comes out and rests his hands on his hips. I focus on his portrait between the parts in my damp hair, using him as a marker while I siphon the warmth from Helen’s body. I knew the storm was bad, but being in the midst of it all makes Helen’s house all the more enticing.
Eventually, I make it under the patio of the front porch and from there I watch Helen make a U-Turn to go back for Valerie.
“Helen told me what happened. Do you need any help with your bag? I can carry it upstairs to your room.” Helen’s husband asks from beside me.
“No thanks,” I respond after glancing over his way, still slightly shivering from the cold rain. “I’m just going to wait for my friend to make it over.”
“Oh, okay. No problem,” he says and shifts his weight to the leg furthest from me. “Rough night, huh? Helen told me what happened.”
“Yup.” I blow a breath of air out from my lungs and into the moisture-filled atmosphere, my gaze directed at Valerie and Helen as they approach us. “You can say that. Not too often that things like this happen. You’re supposed to be good with cars, right? Our car’s in the parking lot at your place. Mustang; but I’m sure Helen told you everything you need to know.”
“Well, that was a doozy, but we made it.” Helen exhales as she steps onto the porch. I follow her eyes and catch the quick glance she makes at her husband while Valerie parks by my side. She’s probably peeved that I’m still holding my stuff. She probably thinks he didn’t ask to take it off my hands.
“Sure was,” Valerie groans.
“Well, a hot shower and a comfy bed awaits you upstairs. Frank’ll show the way,” Helen says from behind us while her husband opens the door to their home.
The couple steps in, he pauses once we reach the foot of the stairs.
“Do you want me to get that for you, sweet pea? I don’t want you falling up the stairs. Your feet are still a little wet.” These people are too nice, I swear. They must not have any kids around or something.
“No thank you. I’m fine, sir.”
“Boy, you girls are so independent, I tell ya. I wish my wife was more like y’all.”
“Frank!”
And cheesy.
While they’re acting as chummy as a daytime family sitcom, I take the time to notice my surroundings, although that doesn’t account for much. I’m sandwiched between everyone and the lights in the hallway are off. Whatever light we do have is coming from what I can only assume is the living room, and the room adjacent to us tucked off to the side with bifold doors and a hazy acrylic pane. I can’t help but notice the perfectly spaced out pictures of scenery lining the wall opposite of the banister as I follow behind Frank up the stairs. They’re not really anything in particular, but rather nature in broad strokes. Once we reach the top, we follow him down the hall to the last room, where he then stops. “Here’s where you’ll be spending the night.” Frank turns the knob to the door and flicks on the light, showcasing the guest room. “Only one bed, but there’s a sofa. We might have an air mattress, but it may not be in the best shape. I’ll go fish it out of the storage room.”
“There’s no need. We’ll make it work,” I voice flatly.
“You sure? It’s no trouble at all.”
“I know, but you’ve done so much for us lately. A night on a sofa isn’t so bad. Worse comes to worst, we’ll share the bed.” Frank does little to hide the growing frown on his face, but it doesn’t concern me in the slightest. I’m actually doing him a favor by trying to make our stay as painless as possible.
“Hm…okay, well make yourselves comfortable. Bathroom’s across the hall, and there should be some spare sheets in that closet over there. Our room is the last room on this strip so just knock if you need anything. Oh, and also mind the noise. We’re not the only ones who live here. Our children are asleep. They’re in those two rooms closest to ours.”
“Will do,” Valerie responds. “Thank you for sharing your home with us for the night. I never really knew people could be so kind.”
That’s because they normally aren’t. People will try to skip you in line at Disney World and not even bat an eye.
“It’s no problem. See you two ladies in the morning, bright and early. I’ll whip up some breakfast, and then we can get to working on your car,” Frank says on his way out.
“Great,
we’ll stay out of your hair in the meantime. You guys enjoy your night.” I wait at the edge of our door frame as Helen and Frank walk towards their room. Once they’re about halfway there, I shut the door to our living space and a rush of relief washes over me. I walk to the foot of the bed, turn around, and let gravity run its course. “Man. What a day,” I say while focusing my sights on the spinning blades of the ceiling fan above us. “You know we’re sharing this bed, right?” I elongate my body over the white sheets until I can feel the cool air from the fan blowing on my navel.
“Sure, whatever, but I got dibs on the shower first.” I roll my head lazily to the side only to find Valerie combing through her bag that’s perched up on a lounge chair in the corner of the room.
“Looks like you were going to go first anyway.” I shrug.
“Yup,” she responds after grabbing what she needs. “Who said I was asking? I was telling.”
“Do your thing. I was just going to lay here for a bit anyway. If I pass out, give me a nudge.”
“Gotcha.” I perk my eyebrows at Valerie and roll my head back to its neutral position. “I won’t be that long. They’re already giving us a room. I don’t want to use up all the hot water, too.”
“Ha. Word,” I respond with closed eyes.
“Okay, I’m out.” I hear her say as she walks past me on the hardwood floor. “By the way, you’re like, super lean. How? You just downed all that crap tonight.”
“Krav Maga and green tea,” I grumble. “Working out has its perks.”
“Yuck.” The door to our room opens and shuts seconds later, leaving me alone with my thoughts. I cup my hands into fists and rest them on my forehead. The sound of thunder bleeds in through the walls of the poorly decorated room and I listen intently while taking in the atmosphere…silence or as good as a silence I’ll ever get until Valerie is asleep. I spend a few minutes trying to relax, but there’s a fine line between exhausted and peace of mind. Blaze and Abby are hard at work by now, and Vartal’s still tethered to my soul. I wonder how much time I have left before I’m forced to do what’s necessary to put an end to it all.
I’m a ticking time bomb, and I’m only going to get worse. I don’t want to be remembered as a monster.
The knob to our door twists and a set of light footsteps brush past me. “Shower’s all yours.” I open my eyes and find Valerie patting her hair dry, dressed in a pair of comfy-looking orange pajamas and a yellow T-shirt with a heart in the middle. I don’t even bother to try and figure out what brand it’s from. It’s not my style anyway. “It’s better than what I expected.”
“Awesome.” I swing up from the bed, grab my bag, and head off to the bathroom.
I lock the door behind me and start up the shower before fishing out a loaded syringe from my bag. More Holy Water. It should be enough to keep my demon companion from lashing out until I can take another dose, which will probably be around morning. I can control him to an extent, but whenever he’s uninhibited, bits of his personality seems to break off into my own. To say the least, it’s unsettling. For the most part it goes away, but there’s a residual effect. I can keep it together for now, but for how long, I don’t know. Sphinx almost fucked me over, and the fact that he can still siphon off energy through altars even when inhibited isn’t too appealing either. Vartal isn’t a regular demon, I know that for a fact. The problem is, I still have no idea of who he is or how to remove him from my body without killing us both. I can’t find shit on him, and no one I’ve come across since our pact has any clue about him.
I stick myself in the arm and push on the plunger, allowing the water to run its course through my body. I gaze resentfully at the mark on my forearm, an indicator of my pact with Vartal, and shake my head. “I should have died that day,” I mumble to my hazy reflection in the mirror mounted on the wall. The pain from the injection quickly fades away and I strip off my clothes and hop into the shower. The water’s nice, but it’s less of a rejuvenating process and more of a quiet emptiness; a necessity for sulking by shower. When I finish up, I towel off and slip into what I had planned to wear for the night; a navy blue knitted top and black shorts. After changing, I grab my cell phone on the counter to check my bars. “Still no service,” I say softly to myself as I put it back down. I dig through my bag for my toothbrush and toothpaste, navigating around the gun hidden between my belongings. I swipe away at my teeth, grinding the bristles against my enamel, wiping away the residue of whatever I consumed before we got here. Once I’m done, I put my hair in a ponytail and head back to our room where I find Valerie messing around on her phone tucked underneath the sheets. “You got service?”
“Nope. You?”
“Nada,” I say as I drop my stuff by the wall closest to my side of the bed. “Maybe we’ll have better luck tomorrow.” Valerie simply shrugs at my remark.
“Yeah…can you get the light?”
“On it.” I walk back over to the door and flick off the light switch, shutting off the bulbs attached to the fan above us.
“Like, I mean…maybe, but if not, we’ll be out of here soon enough. The service’ll pick up once we make it back to modern civilization. We’ve got places to see and things to do.”
“You got that right.” I smirk and climb into my side of the bed. “I’m still waiting for this trip to unfold into an epic adventure. This is more creepy than anything. I’m sleeping in a random stranger’s bed.” I’m sure there’s a joke somewhere in there.
“In time, my child,” Valerie says as she places her phone on the nightstand beside the bed. “We need to get your car fixed first. Might as well enjoy the downtime while you can. It’s not like we can change anything.”
“Yeah,” I say while sighing. “Hopefully it’s not too big of an issue.”
About thirty minutes later, Valerie falls asleep. The rain has a way of coaxing you into an early slumber if you’re not aware of its ways. I can’t exactly blame her for it, though. Today was tough. I can only imagine the amount of planning she had to do in order to make this trip worthwhile for me. She even drove to my apartment to make it work.
In more ways than one, she’s lucky. She can be a brat sometimes, but she has a good heart. The world hasn’t completely turned her heart to stone, which says a lot given the world we live in. We’re around the same age, but I don’t think I’ll ever be as carefree as her. It’s funny…watching her sleep is almost like watching a baby. She’s peaceful; whisked away in what seems to be a deep slumber even though we’re stranded in a stranger’s house in the middle of a thunderstorm. I’d sleep with one eye open if that…hence the situation I’m in now. It’s hard to ever feel completely safe unless you can account for everything in the immediate area. I can handle myself fairly well, but being stranded doesn’t sit right with me; especially with Valerie around. With everything that’s been going on lately, I’d feel better if we were in a city or something; somewhere where the powers in play wouldn’t be too keen to show their faces. Not that it matters. You can’t run from evil. All you can do is be prepared for when it strikes and kick its ass for as long as you can, as often as you can. It’s always been around and it doesn’t look like it’ll be leaving any time soon.
The bedroom rumbles at the sound of thunder and a flash of light illuminates our sheets.
Valerie groggily turns her head away from the window, shielding herself from the spontaneous flashes. A few seconds later, I hear a faint thump register somewhere on the other side of our door. I turn my focus to the wooden door, and I hear it again; this time, slightly louder. Footsteps. The rain does a good job of suppressing the sound, but the old wooden floorboards give it away. “Hey, Valerie…you heard that?” I wait for her response, but she’s still out cold. “…I’ll be right back,” I whisper. “Yell if you need me.” Of course, she doesn’t move. Regardless, I slide out from under the sheets and walk as I quietly as I can to our door. Once I’m there, I slowly twist the lock and pull it open, careful not to make a sound. I take a well-placed step ou
t into the open and then another before gently closing the door behind me. It slightly creaks, but to my knowledge, no one is the wiser. I wait in the silence of the night for more of the unfamiliar sound, but nothing strikes me as out the ordinary. I walk deeper into the hall and realize that one of the doors for Frank’s children is slightly open. I inch closer to door to peep in but just as my eye reaches the opening between the door frame and door, the sound of thunder ripples through the night sky. The lighting that follows pierces the room with a flash of light and I jump and pull away. At that same moment, I hear the floorboards creak near the bottom of the stairs. “Shit kid, I don’t blame you…” I mumble under my breath.
Valerie and I never had the chance to meet their children, but if they were already sleeping before we got in, I think it’s safe to assume that they’re in the beginning high school at the latest. I’m dead sure I got a glimpse of a Nascar themed bedspread when I peeked in that room just now. I spotted a couple of toys as well. Frank and Helen’s door isn’t open. Neither is the other child’s. The poor kid was probably scared but didn’t want to wake anyone up. Miss Helen probably told them to be on their best behavior or something before she came and got us from her truck.
The house rumbles again and I shake my head. I guess it’s up to me to make sure the little tyke is holding up okay. With that in mind, I take my time heading down the stairs, my hand guiding me by rail as I navigate through the darkness. I make it to the front door and notice the hue of a white light shining among the darkness in the kitchen. Thunder crashes outside the house and the hall brightens from an exposed window giving a view of the world beyond the four walls of Frank and Helen’s house.
I bide my time with my steps, not wanting to startle the kid in question. The room is still—nothing stands out to me except for the falling rain outside battering the windows and plethora of wooden boards. Casting my skepticism to the back of my mind, I head over to the source of the light only to find it perched on a wooden table against a wall. It’s an electric lamp…something handy they probably keep around in case the power goes off. That’s fine and all, but where is the kid?
Sailor Ray and the Beautiful Lie (The Pact Book 3) Page 5