by Jessica Gunn
Riley blinked, then smiled that baby smile that could be genuine or a product of gas. Either way: message received.
I scoffed. “Whatever makes you happy, kid.”
A dark shadow floated over my shoulder and across Riley’s wriggling body. A person-shaped shadow.
I spun fast, expecting to see just another woman going gaga over a man with a baby, but instead came face-to-face with a man. He towered over me, with dark features and hair but deep red eyes. Unnatural eyes.
Goosebumps rose up my spine when our eyes met. His lip curled. It was the only warning I had before he lunged out an arm. I pushed Riley’s stroller out of the way of our attacker and pivoted to cut the guy off. Lightning scratched the inside of my palms without me calling it, glowing and burning.
Two more large guys appeared from the other side of a bush… and my heart stopped. One of them was the guy from outside Sandra’s hospital room a few months ago. The same guy from Castle Island. His eyes were deep burgundy, too, and water swirled around his hands like ropes or tendrils.
The guy in front of me glanced down at my hand. “Let’s not waste time here, Benjamin. I’m not here to attack you.”
I tightened my one-handed grip on Riley’s stroller, ready to bolt. But could I outrun three of these dudes if I had to watch out for Riley, too? Adrenaline surged into my feet and legs. Hell yeah, I could. I’d do whatever I needed to.
Unless they did that disappearing act, like at the hospital and Castle Island, and suddenly appeared in front of me.
“What do you want?” I snarled. “I don’t have any money on me.” Or anything to use as a weapon besides my fists.
He tilted his head, his face morphing into exasperation. “Like I said, let’s not waste time here. I think it’s fairly obvious.” His gaze trailed over my shoulder to Riley, whose coos and baby noises filled the air.
My eyes narrowed, my grip tightened more. The lightning in my hand crackled loudly, sparks flying up between us now. But this guy didn’t seem fazed by it at all. Not even curious about fucking lightning in my damn hand.
Were these guys actually demons? I’d thought about the possibility, sure. But shit. No.
I nudged the stroller enough to let me get into position to tackle the guy in front of me, but flames appeared in his hands and he waved the stream in between us. My back hit the stroller and I had to spin to catch it and keep it from rolling away. My heart hammered in my chest, pulse-pounding my ears.
What did they want with Riley? These demons.
Holy crap. Demons. They were real. This whole time Rachel and I had just assumed they were because we couldn’t explain the Internet stories and what we’d seen on Castle Island. But we’d never really known for sure. And now that they stood in front of me, had attacked me… I had to get Riley out of here.
I reached back, tossing lightning at the demon directly behind me. He dodged, but I’d distracted him enough to get a few feet, then yards, between me and him as I barreled down the path. If I could just get to the parking lot, where there might be more people around, maybe they’d stop their pursuit.
My mind slipped into laser focus with only one goal: get Riley out of here.
I ran, not daring to look back, pumping my legs faster and harder toward the park’s exit. Hell, I’d hop a fence with Riley in my arms if I had to. Instead, I focused my eyes on the parking lot ahead.
And onto the ripple that suddenly appeared in the air, like a mirage on a hot summer day, and walking out of it was the demon man.
I jerked the stroller to a stop, jarring Riley. His cries filled the air and I reached down to comfort him as much as myself with my touch. A freezing cold swept through my lungs, slowing my breathing to shallow, useless gasps.
I could not defend Riley against this guy or the other two demons without leaving Riley’s side.
The demon-man clicked his tongue. “That’s quite enough of that.”
“Yeah right.” I threw up my hand, lightning blazing and crackling around it, and tossed a ball of lightning his way.
At the same time, his two friends attacked from behind. I kicked one in the shin and threw my elbow into the other’s face, connecting with a hard thwack. He cried out, nose bleeding, and pulled away.
That was when the demon-man slammed his palm into my chest, a single word roaring out of his mouth: “Requirem!”
The lightning in my hands died, going out as soon as he finished shouting, and I stumbled forward. I reached for the stroller to steady myself against the wave of dizziness that assaulted my mind, spinning the world completely on its axis, but found the ground rushing me instead. My knees knocked against the paved path, sending shooting pain up my legs and wrists as they, too, caught my fall in too awkward a fashion.
Where was Riley? Where’d the stroller go?
I glanced up, breath finally returning to me, and found the demon’s face instead of Riley’s stroller.
“You’ve made this harder than it had to be,” he said. “But I’ll give you this—you’re a fighter. Let’s hope that means your son is, too.” He reeled back his fist and punched me in the face.
Pain star-burst across my cheekbone and skull, spider-webbing around my whole head. I bit back the cry of pain crawling its way from my throat to my lips, forced my feet underneath me, and pushed off the ground. I leaped through fire, ignoring it, but moving fast enough to apparently not catch fire, as I wrapped my arms around this asshole’s middle and tackled him to the ground. But before I could wrestle him into immobilization, something lifted me off the ground, weakening my arms so that I had to let go.
I fell three feet, landing on my stomach.
The demons laughed. Riley cried. The world whooshed around me, pain and confusion and weakness swarming my body from the inside out, like some sort of horror movie.
In the very next instant, the air rippled around me and they were gone. Just like that.
Quietness stilled around me like the world hadn’t just been upended before my very eyes. An unnerving silence that chilled my spine and stole my breath.
Riley wasn’t crying anymore.
Panic pushed me from the ground as if it’d filled my veins with helium. I rushed the stroller, tripping on an errant rock in my path, falling so I grabbed the stroller and tilted it over in an attempt to break my fall. I held up my hands, ready to catch Riley as he—
My face cooled to ice, my chest squeezing to an impossible, tiny size as if nothing more of me existed than my eyes and ears, which had blurred and muffled at the sight before me.
An empty stroller.
CHAPTER 10
I tore off toward the parking lot, but the demons weren’t there. Back to the path, and still nothing. They’d simply vanished. Gone. But at least one of them, the demon with a water affinity, had gotten into the hospital, so he had to have some sort of human record somewhere, right? Camera footage, a sign-in log—anything.
It was a huge leap to make, but I had to take it. I didn’t know what else to do.
I dug into my pocket for my phone, the one I’d pocketed when Riley had woken up, and fumbled with the touchscreen to open it and call 911. But as soon as the call tried to connect, a deafening, heart-shattering tone sounded.
Battery low. Please recharge.
“Are you fucking kidding me?”
I dialed again… and got the same message.
I hurled the phone at the closest tree, my mind gone into the red so fast and so far, all thought became that singular color. Red. Like their eyes. Like the blood on my hands. Like the blanket Riley slept with.
A fresh intake of breath slammed into my lungs as they or I gave into the knowledge I hadn’t breathed for a full minute now. I heaved in more breaths, unable to find a steady, sustaining rhythm. The world spun, sunlight stinging my eyes, all sound disappearing.
I’d lost Riley.
I’d lost Riley.
I turned toward the closest street and took off for the police department. It was closer than home and I
didn’t want to return there until I had Riley back. Until I knew what’d happened, despite the obvious. Until I knew the police department wouldn’t call me crazy when I told them demons had stolen my son.
My feet beat hard against the paved path until they hit the road, and then I pushed them even faster. I made short work of the mile between the park and the station, and slammed through the front doors without so much as a wave at the officer outside.
“Help!” I said as I rushed the front desk. I fisted my hands on the officer’s counter, set high up on a raised platform, which probably existed to better handle rash nut-cases like me. I understood fully how I must have looked to them—enraged, erratic—but I didn’t care.
“Someone stole my son,” I said, breathing coming in short, stuttered breaths. “I tried to fight them off, right there in the park, but they took me down. Three of them. Three d-d—” But the words didn’t come out. How could they? They’d sound insane right now and that was the last thing I needed. “They took him right from me. Fought me. Please,” I begged the officer behind the desk. “Help me.”
For all I’d confronted him with, his expression didn’t change. He guided me into a small office and we began filling out paperwork. Another officer came in to confirm they’d sent out a squad car near the park, and though they hoped to pick up the trail or get a tip from an Amber Alert, I didn’t hold my breath.
If the demons had simply vanished into thin air, they wouldn’t have left a trail to follow. Maybe I shouldn’t have come to the police station at all. Not like they could help me with demons.
Idiot. If I didn’t report this, Sandra would.
“Are you sure you didn’t see where they went?” the officer asked as another brought in an ice pack for my throbbing face.
I gratefully accepted the ice and pressed it against my cheek. It stung, pain biting my jaw. That asshole might have actually broken my cheekbone. My knees and wrists ached too from when I’d landed hard on the pathway.
“No,” I said. “They knocked me around. Dude’s fist gave me stars. I think I blacked out.” I hung my head, free hand clenching into a tight fist. I’d all but handed Riley over. Even my stupid-ass power wasn’t good enough against them.
The demons. Good god. Demons were real. Demons were fucking real.
Officer Shannon’s brow furrowed. After figuring out who I was—and my previous all-star football status—he likely hadn’t believed I couldn’t take a hit. “Can you describe them to me?”
That I could do. And I did. First with the water demon guy, saying I’d seen him outside Sandra’s hospital room a few months ago. Then his buddy. And, last but sure as hell not least, the demon who’d taken Riley himself. I’d remember the possessive look in his eyes forever, the power over me. And especially the hatred. Hatred unwarranted, since I’d never seen him before.
Officer Shannon leaned back against his chair. “Do you have any idea who’d want to take your son?” He glanced at my face again, pausing on what was no doubt a slowly-blooming bruise across half of it.
I wasn’t stupid. When kids went missing, parents were usually the first suspect. Bullshit. I knew it. So did Officer Shannon. Or at least I thought he did. “No. He’s three weeks old. Who wants to steal a three-week-old baby, officer?”
He stared at me for a few moments without saying a word, then collected his papers and a pen, tapped them on the table to straighten them out, and stood. “I think that’s all for now.”
“Excuse me?” How could that be everything? Didn’t they want a way to find Riley, or his blankets so a K9 unit could track him down? I’d seen too many movies.
Officer Shannon nodded, his eyes softening. “I’m sorry, Mr. Hallen. We need to speak to the child’s mother and put out some alerts. For this very moment, the best thing you can do is go home to your wife.”
“We’re not married.” The response was automatic, like my breathing in this second. The only two things in the world that made sense anymore. Sandra and breathing.
“Oh. Sorry,” said Officer Shannon.
I frowned and headed for the door… only to remember I’d walked here. I’d have to return to the park, get the stroller, then go home with it still empty and explain to Sandra that I’d allowed Riley to be kidnapped by demons using their bare hands.
The room closed in around me as I gasped for breaths, my vision narrowing down to a single pinpoint of light. My limbs felt as though they were floating in space, loose and light and covered in pinpricks.
“Whoa, there,” Officer Shannon said as a steadying hand appeared on my shoulder. “I’ll drive you home. You’re in no condition to do so on your own.”
“No car.” Those were the only words I got out.
“You don’t have a car?”
“Not here. I ran from the park.”
“In shock?”
I nodded. Yes. I’d been in shock when I’d gotten to the police station. Officer Shannon’s expression softened. “Come on. I’ll get you home.”
All I did was nod and follow him out the door without saying a word.
What more could I do?
Tears brimmed in my eyes, streaming out before the thought of pushing them down had come to fruition. There was no hiding this. There was no fixing this.
I just needed to find Riley.
SANDRA’S FACE remained pale and frozen after Officer Shannon came and left. She hadn’t spoken when he’d told her what had happened. Hadn’t reacted after screaming her head off, at him and at me. She hadn’t moved a single inch since I’d sat down next to her on the couch an hour ago.
Neither did I, the shock of losing my newborn son still too much. I let the tears run down my cheeks, not bothering to hide or stop them. They cooled my left cheek, which ached with warmth. The demons had definitely broken something.
I turned my head in Sandra’s direction. Her red eyes suggested she’d been crying or hadn’t blinked in a while as she looked out the window, or both. “Sandra.” My voice was hoarse, rough from holding as many tears and words inside as possible. “Sandra.”
She didn’t respond.
I moved my hand to hers, and as soon as our fingers were intertwined, she broke.
“Ben, why?” she cried, collapsing against me.
I wrapped her in my arms, holding her as close to me as possible. Her arm nudged my cheek, but I didn’t say anything. I rocked her as we sat there, crying together, our souls broken and empty. Her shoulders shook violently as she cried, but then I realized mine were, too, and cried harder.
“I’m sorry, Sandra,” I said. “I’m so, so sorry. I tried everything I could think of to stop them. Everything.”
She cried into my neck. Her tears wet my skin and dripped down my shirt, soaking it through a million times over. “He’s just a baby, Ben.”
“I know.”
Sandra grabbed my shirt into her fist and began a new round of crying and keening so heartbreaking, I wanted to clap my hands over my ears and do anything, say anything, to make it stop.
I hurt too. My heart had been torn into thousands of pieces. But Sandra? She was his mother.
“I just want him back,” she said. “I want him back. Who would take him? Why would they take him?”
I didn’t know. Until a year ago, I didn’t even have powers. Hadn’t known demons might have existed. And it wasn’t like I’d interrupted their goings-on or anything.
Except for that time me and Rachel had investigated the building that’d burnt down years ago and then had been restored.
I bit my lip. This was not the time to tell Sandra the truth about my powers and my search for answers. Especially if it had to do with Riley.
CHAPTER 11
One month later…
One drink. That was all I’d promised myself. And maybe it was selfish, sneaking out while Sandra was sleeping just to get a glimpse of normal life beyond this soul-crushing weight of my heart slowly disintegrating. But if she’d even once indicated she wanted alcohol too, I’d have been
first in line at the fucking liquor store tomorrow morning.
But she hadn’t. And she’d made me swear not to drink because that hadn’t really ended well a year ago when she’d told me she was pregnant, and then the game, and…
I pushed through the door of the closest bar and walked straight up to the counter. I avoided everyone’s gaze and plunked down into the first empty seat I found, stewing in cigar smoke and blaring rock music.
One drink. One fucking strong drink. And then I’d go home to face an empty nursery and my girlfriend’s bed covered in used tissues and trays of uneaten food.
It’d only been a month, a short time, really, but in that agonizing month Riley had been gone, Sandra had lost a lot of weight. Her old clothes, from before she got pregnant, now hung off of her like they were two sizes too big, which was too much loss for someone who was already small. But she wouldn’t eat most of the time and, if I was being honest, I hadn’t had an appetite in a month, either. I pushed on through on a liquid diet of coffee and shots of alcohol stolen past eleven at night while Sandra slept.
One of the bartenders, a burly man with greying hair and a friendly smile, made his way over to me and nodded. “What can I get for you?”
“Honestly? A shot of the strongest alcohol you have,” I said. “I don’t care what it costs.” I threw a couple of twenties onto the counter.
The bartender’s furry eyebrows bowed together, but he didn’t question it. Within a few moments, he’d returned with a bottle of dark liquid and a shot glass. As he poured in the liquor, I watched it swirl around the glass with great intensity. It moved like the water the demon had manipulated at Castle Island.
“Thanks,” I said as the bartender topped off the shot glass, somewhere past the actual fill line.
“No problem,” he said, then walked the other way back down the bar.