by John Corwin
He snorted. "Sounds like something Daelissa would do." He glanced over his shoulder. "Good news is, we just escaped whatever she had in store for us."
I blew out a breath. "But the bad news is being stuck in purgatory with a congenital liar and deadbeat dad is bad enough."
"Just because I don't conform to your notions of a perfect father, doesn't mean—"
I swatted the air with a hand. "If we ever get out of this mess, I'm done with you for good." I felt disgusted to think of this man as my father. He acted nothing like the father I remembered. Or was he simply someone I'd never truly known? "I guess everything I thought I knew about you was just an act, a show to make me think we were a normal family."
"I wouldn't go that far," he said. "I really enjoyed having a family experience."
"A family isn't an amusement park," I said. "It's not an experience; it's a life you build for yourself and those you love."
"Ah, the love thing," David said. "That was the first thing your mother taught me."
I stopped in my tracks and stared at him. "She taught you?"
"In a manner of speaking."
"What, you don't know how to love?"
"Not in the same way humans do."
I felt my eyebrows rocket upward. "What other way is there?"
His eyes looked skyward, as if he were thinking hard about it. "I remember the first time I saw her. I felt light as air. I wanted to touch her skin. I wanted to stroke her hair. I wanted to feel her naked body against mine."
"TMI, man!" I said, covering up my ears. I lowered my hands. "In other words, you lusted after her."
"At first. Eventually, she taught me what it was to really love someone." He gave a wistful smile. "Sometimes I regret it."
"You regret learning to love?"
"It's not a pleasant experience when you hit a downturn."
"You mean like getting into arguments, or arguing over the remote control?" I asked.
"As in the woman you love was just killed, and you're faced with an eternity of anguish and heartbreak."
I blinked a couple of times at his response. "She's not dead. Your argument is invalid."
"At the time, I thought she was." He rubbed his forehead as if warding off a headache, stopped, and turned to me. "I met your mother when humanity was in its infancy. We fought a war together. I thought she died. I then endured a very long period of time in which I propagated Daemos across the mortal realm, made up a bunch of meaningless rules to keep them in order, and tried to forget the agonizing ache in my heart. I then discovered Alysea was, in fact, not dead, but somehow a young girl being raised by—" He broke off, brow furrowed as he looked around our bland environs.
"What is it?" I asked.
"Just a strange feeling."
"In your case, I think we can safely say it's not puberty."
He laughed. "I'm glad you have my sense of humor, Justin."
"Keep going with the story," I said, not willing to be dragged off track.
"Ah, yes." He tapped a finger to his chin. "I don't know how I knew the girl was Alysea, but something inside me surged at the first sight of her. The following years of waiting for her to mature were more torturous than the centuries before because I had no idea if she would remember me."
"She did, obviously," I said.
"After a time." He pursed his lips. "I took her to the place I first told her I loved her." His eyes looked a little dreamy. "It was like flipping a switch in her mind."
He no longer seemed like the uncaring asshole from two minutes ago, but a lovesick boy. I had to wonder if maybe my dad had severe mental issues. "You make it sound like a fairy tale," I said.
"I suppose it was."
"Then what the hell happened? Why are you marrying Kassallandra?"
His gaze flicked to the side. "We aren't alone."
"Are those men back?"
He shook his head. "No. It's something else."
Ice seemed to glaze my stomach. "Something worse?" I almost didn't want to know if something monstrous lurked unseen in the fog, like a giant spider, or snakes—or even worse—giant spider snakes.
"I'm not sure," he said, eyes sweeping the grayness. He motioned me to follow and set off at a steady pace.
I followed close behind. "How do you know someone is there?"
"Use your senses."
"Your incubus senses are working?" I hadn't thought to try them, especially since none of my other abilities seemed to function.
"Just barely. It's an effort to switch them on."
David was right. What was usually instantaneous instead took me several minutes of closing my eyes and concentrating intensely. Reaching inside to flick the switch was more like fumbling through a pool of black tar to tug on a heavy lever. When I opened my eyes, the fog glowed all around us, limiting my field of view even more. On the other hand, it made it a lot easier to detect where David was in relation to me. I jogged to keep up with him and simultaneously sent tendrils of my essence questing into the surroundings. Within seconds, I encountered something alive. It wasn't human, and it didn't feel like an animal. It radiated what I could only equate to a strange hunger mixed with an almost instinctual sense of duty. Despite the alien emotions, I felt a peculiar familiarity with whatever stalked us through the shroud of fog.
The last time I'd felt such a presence hadn't been so long ago. "It's a minder." I shuddered. The things looked like large flying jellyfish with ghostly tentacles.
"Exactly." He continued walking.
"You already knew?" The last time I'd encountered a minder was at La Casona. Battle mages with the Black Robe Brotherhood and a group of the creatures had chased me and my friends while we lured them away from their headquarters.
He cast a backward glance over his shoulder, dodging another parking meter without even looking. "I suspected. You confirmed."
Chills crawled up my back. "Those things live here. If one of them catches us it'll suck our brains dry."
"I don't think minders actually kill what they eat," David said. "Though, I have heard of possible brain damage."
"I need my brain as functional as possible, thanks." Extending my essence in all directions, I detected a few more blips on the radar. Whether they were minders or not, I couldn't tell. I'd seen one of them turn an entire group of kids into compliant little zombies. Granted, the minder had been protecting the boundary of La Casona and the secrecy of the Obsidian Arch within, but it was still creepy.
"I think we're heading in the right direction." David acted as if we weren't being stalked by one or more creatures of pure nightmare.
I opened my mouth for a retort when the ground rumbled beneath my feet. We stopped in our tracks as the fog cleared around us, revealing a cracked gray road running several hundred feet in either direction before vanishing into a wall of fog. We were in the ghetto for sure, though I didn't recognize this part of town. Dilapidated houses with worn, wooden siding lined the road in either direction. The church remained shrouded in fog somewhere behind us. Parallel-parked cars lined the sides of the road.
Before I could open my mouth to ask a stupid question, the ground buckled. Cars bounced like toys. David and I stumbled backward as a pickup truck teetered on two wheels before crashing on its side. The road cracked and crumbled with tremors. Cars bounced, alarms wailed, houses collapsed.
"Are they having an earthquake in the real world?" I asked, trying to keep my feet.
"Watch out!" David said, pulling me from the center of the street as a two-story house toppled over.
A complete set of railroad tracks plowed through the center of the street. Vines crept along the gravel bed, growing insanely fast. Within a minute, the railroad tracks ran the length of the fog-free zone. A railroad crossing sign sprouted between my feet. I leapt back with a yelp as it sprang up where my crotch would have been. A bell started dinging. The rumble of a locomotive sounded from somewhere in the wall of thick fog to my right. Its horn sounded a warning as a bright headlight suffused th
e mist.
A male scream jerked my attention to the left.
A red sedan sat in the middle of the railroad crossing. "Help me!" shouted a man inside the car. I saw his feet pound against the window over and over again, his screams never diminishing.
I didn't have a clue what was happening. Frankly, I didn't care. A man was about to meet a gruesome end if I didn't help him. I raced to the car. "Hold on, I'm gonna get you out of there." I jerked on the door handle, but it didn't budge. I punched the window. Despite feeling as if I'd just broken my fist, it didn't so much as crack the glass. The man cranked the ignition on the car. The starter whined. The engine thrummed to life. Just as hope entered the driver's eyes, the engine shuddered and stopped.
"No!" he shouted, pounding the steering wheel. He looked at me.
I pounded the bottoms of my fists against the window. "Unlock the doors!"
His eyes widened, and I suddenly realized he apparently wasn't looking at me, but at the rapidly approaching train. The earth trembled. Gravel rattled beneath my feet. I flicked my gaze behind me and saw the train streaking toward the car. Only one chance to save the man remained. Racing to the front of the vehicle, I pushed. My efforts failed to even rock it back and forth.
This thing is immovable!
"Justin, get out of there," David said, running over.
"I don't understand," I said, grunting and pushing to absolutely no effect. True, I wasn't feeling very strong, but even a normal human should be able to bounce a car on its shocks. The train barreled on, heedless of the car in its path. I felt my eyes widen with horror as I saw the engineer, a skeletal creature with sharp wicked teeth and long black hair trailing in the wind. It leaned out of the locomotive window and laughed maniacally in a feminine voice.
The laughter of the engineer and screams of the driver mingled into one ear-piercing cacophony of pain. I dove from the tracks as the train smashed the car with phenomenal force. It exploded, sending car parts flying. Something slammed into my back, knocking the breath from me. I sucked in a breath, wheezed a few times, and pushed slowly to my feet. The man lay a short distance away, miraculously alive. The train had vanished from sight.
And then I saw the skeletal figure walking toward the man. Flesh hung from its naked form in wrinkled folds, the contours of bones clearly visible through translucent flesh. It cackled as the man tried to slide away from it. Despite the blood all over his body, the man abruptly stood and started running. Though his legs practically blurred with speed, he moved forward in slow motion. I could only watch as he screamed in terror at the creature reaching for him.
"You're mine forever," it said in a ragged feminine voice.
"No! I don't want to get married," the man shouted.
The anorexic woman leapt for him. The man cried out. They vanished in a cloud of gray mist. Before I could make sense of anything, the tracks vanished, leaving only the ruins of the houses and road. Fog billowed from all directions, rolling in on us like the tide. I managed to spot David before losing sight of him, and found him with an intrigued look on his face.
"That was interesting," he said.
"Interesting?" I said, groaning at the ache between my shoulders. "I think we just fell down the rabbit hole."
"Maybe we did." He shrugged. "In any case, I believe we just witnessed the beginning of a beautiful marriage."
"Now I know why I want to hit you all the time," I said.
He raised an eyebrow. "And that is?"
"Because you're an even bigger smartass than I am." I clenched my teeth.
He motioned me to move. "Let's talk while we walk."
What with the earthquake, houses falling over, and cars threatening to crush me, I'd forgotten about the minder trailing along behind us. I pushed my incubus senses outward and found several hovering only a few hundred feet away.
"If I'm not mistaken," my father said after a moment, "I believe we just witnessed someone's nightmare."
Chapter 7
Elyssa
The Church of the Divinity loomed across the street. The gray stone structure rose several stories high with a steeple stretching to the sky. The imposing building was shaped like a cross, with two huge wooden doors at the entrance. Elyssa, Ivy, Shelton, and Bella stood in an alley across the street, observing the area.
"Looks like a place for creepers," Ivy said.
Bella pointed at the stain glass windows. "Notice how filthy those are? It's like nobody is maintaining the place."
"The shrubbery looks wild too," Shelton added. "Then again, this neighborhood doesn't look all that wonderful either."
Closed businesses and run-down houses lined a street in dire need of pothole repairs. The few people wandering the sidewalks pushed shopping carts full of their belongings or drank alcohol from bottles in brown bags. In short, it was the perfect place to hide a rogue organization.
The front doors of the church swung open hard. A petite woman with blonde hair and fair skin emerged. She closed her eyes and faced the sun, as if enjoying the feel of it against her face. The doors slammed shut behind her.
"Holy fricasseed frog burgers," Shelton said. "She looks just like Nightliss."
Elyssa knew the face all too well. The blonde woman had once wiped her memories and tried to use her against Justin. Only Nightliss had been able to restore what the blonde woman had taken. Fear chilled her heart while anger tightened her jaw. "Daelissa."
"She looks so cute," Bella said. "I hate to think someone hell-bent on world domination looks like that."
"She can be so sweet," Ivy said. "She isn't all bad."
"I, for one, ain't gonna find out," Shelton said with a shudder.
An old woman in ragged clothes staggering drunkenly down the sidewalk bumped into Daelissa. The angel's serene features contorted into disgust and rage. Brilliant light flashed. Elyssa blinked sunspots from her vision. The homeless woman was gone. In her place lay a heap of ashes on the sidewalk. Daelissa snapped her fingers, and a black stretched limousine pulled around the corner of the church and stopped. A young man hustled from the front passenger seat and opened the rear door for the Seraphim to climb inside.
"Should we follow her?" Shelton said. "Or check out the church?"
Elyssa looked at the limo as it pulled away. "Can you use a tracking spell?"
He shook his head. "It's a secure limo like the ones the Conroys use, protected against tracking spells."
"We don't have transportation," Bella said. "I could hotwire a car."
"Following Daelissa is dangerous," Shelton said. "Even if we do, it'll probably get us all killed like that poor bag lady."
"She is very tricky," Ivy said. "I tried to follow her a few times to see where she lived, and she caught me every time."
"You didn't have to worry about incineration," Shelton said, eyeing the swirling ashes on the sidewalk across the way.
"She would hurt me sometimes," Ivy said, a sad look on her face. "Daelissa told me pain was the only way to learn my lessons."
The limo turned a corner at the end of the street and vanished.
"I'm actually a little disappointed," Shelton said. "I'd expected her to fly away on a cloud of light or something more dramatic."
"She might be powerful as hell, but she doesn't have access to unlimited power," Elyssa said. "Even Seraphim have their limits."
"Tell you what," he said. "I'll wait until I'm sure she's all tuckered out before making a move against her."
"I'm going to check out the church," Elyssa said. "Everyone wait here."
She jogged across the road and up the stairs to the church. Something seemed off about the way the door shimmered in the sunlight. In fact, the sun seemed to reflect off of something just in front of the door. She found a twig on the ground and tossed it. It bounced off thin air just inches from the door. A shield spell. She didn't dare tamper with it. That left the windows. Jumping behind the brown-leafed hedge, she went to the closest stained glass window and tested it the same way. This time, the
branch touched the window. Steadying herself, she drove her elbow into the glass. The material absorbed the blow and shot her elbow away from the window so hard, she stumbled into the bushes.
It's just like the enchanted glass on the mansion.
This had to be the right place to find the Exorcists. It was too well protected to be anything else. Elyssa wasn't ready to give up just yet. She ran down the side of the church and vaulted a tall iron fence guarding the parking lot. There was no sign of the vans used in the abduction, but that didn't mean anything. This place might have a secret garage, or this might not be the only place the Exorcists took their victims.
She tested the back door with a bit of gravel and found it too was shielded. Grunting in frustration, she turned to head back across the street when the hairs on the back of her neck spiked. She dove sideways and felt a whoosh of air brush past. Elyssa spun and saw the ninja who'd knocked her out before. It was obvious from the contours of the skintight armor the ninja wore she was female.
"Guess you can't win a fair fight, can you?" Elyssa said. She felt her lips peel back in a defiant smile. "Let's see how good you are when your opponent is ready for you."
The mysterious opponent assumed a defensive stance, but made no move to advance. Elyssa was tempted to move in but caution held her back. If the ninja knew she was here, that meant—she heard a click and rolled away as a dart hit the pavement where she'd just been standing. The ninja took out a disc and hurled it toward Elyssa.
At first she thought it was a throwing star but quickly realized it was something else. She slid a sai sword from the sheath at her back and threw it. The disc shattered in mid-air. A fiery circle with a cross burned for a brief moment before vanishing in a pattern of smoke. Elyssa realized it must have been the device the Exorcists had used to trap Justin and his father.
"Where is Justin?" she yelled, looking around. She spotted small cross-shaped holes in the sides of the church. Metal tubes protruded through the holes. Several of them spat more darts her way. She dodged, but knew she couldn't avoid them all.