A Grim Situation

by Whit McClendon

Fatigue washed over me in an icy wave as the very energy of my life suddenly diminished, somehow pulled out of me by the demon’s spell. I gasped, then fell to one knee, unable to do anything else. My vision fell out of focus and my head swam as I struggled to find whatever strength I could, but there was none. I leaned over and put my hands on the floor as I panted, desperately searching for a plan of action.

  “Puny Grim,” it muttered, then it turned towards Ariana. She’d holstered her gun and was muttering a spell of some kind, doing a good job of it too. Her hands were glowing, and as I watched, they grew almost too bright to see. Unfortunately, the demon didn’t want to play with her. It grabbed a big chunk of the hardwood coffee table and flung it at her. The thick boards hit her hard, and she crumpled to the floor beneath them, the light around her hands extinguished, her spell uncast. It watched her momentarily, but when she didn’t rise, the demon turned to Diana, who had been frozen like a hare under the gaze of a wolf. The beast’s broad back faced me again.

  That was my chance. I was weak, but that didn’t matter. Whether I was ready or not, it had to be now. I came unsteadily to my feet and hurled myself at the beast. This time, I went for its neck with both hands as I grabbed it from behind. My claws dug in under its throat and I wrenched them through the tough cartilage and muscle that lay there, first with one hand, then again with the other, spraying crimson everywhere. It tried to scream, but only succeeded in uttering an obscene gargle as its ruined throat filled with blood. I raked my dagger-tipped fingers across its face, blinding it, then I went back to work on its burly neck. It staggered, but I had its measure now, and I held on with everything I had. With a savage wrench, I twisted its misshapen head around and heard its neck crack. I slashed through the last of its thick neck muscles, then yanked the head free with a sickening pop. The body shuddered, then began to topple. I leaped aside as it collapsed heavily to the carpet, its mangled body twitching. I stood next to it, still holding its grotesque head in my hands as I stared at its settling corpse.

  I looked down at it, concerned it might not be truly dead, but it stayed down. Then, cold, black flames sprouted from the creature’s leathery skin. They spread until the body was immersed in shadowy fire. The head in my hands burst into flame as well, and I tossed it onto the body, which was rapidly being consumed. Within a handful of seconds, the creature had disappeared entirely, back to the Etherworld from which it had come. I sighed in relief. At least until I looked down at myself and saw that my glamour was gone. I no longer looked like an ordinary, unmemorable human. My true self was on full display, claws, fangs, and all.

  Ariana grunted and shoved a chunk of debris out of the way. She stumbled to her feet and drew her gun, but she was still unsteady. I quickly turned away from her to hide my true face and my gaze fell on Diana Thornwall.

  “Dammit,” I muttered.

  She was dead. I hadn’t been fast enough. She lay on the carpet, her eyes wide and staring at nothing, her chest and abdomen slashed open by the Gray Beast’s claws. Her white robe, and the carpet beneath her, was stained crimson with her blood. I stepped towards her and cursed again. We’d never get any information from her now. That was my first thought. My next surprised me. I felt…sad? Was that what that feeling was? If Diana had been innocent, then her death was meaningless. So what? I thought, and rightfully so. Just another dead human. Why does that even matter? Even so, I still felt that hollow, cold feeling in my gut.

  That’s when the detectives burst in and the shooting started. Between Detective Avery’s unknowingly enhanced rounds and the magick I’d lost to the Gray Beast, I’d been more vulnerable than I cared to admit.

  Ariana’s voice brought me back to the present. “A Gray Beast, huh? Tough customers, it seems. I’m glad you got the better of him; I wasn’t too much help.”

  I glanced over my shoulder at her, hesitant to ask. “What did you see? After it hit you with that table?”

  She gave me an odd look, then replied, “What do you mean, what did I see? I saw the cops come in and start shooting at you!” She frowned, then continued, “It’s a good thing you covered yourself with…whatever that was. That shadowy thing. They’d never identify you.”

  Good, I thought, she thought that was the illusion. “Right,” I said, then quickly changed the subject. “You’re going to be all right, then, I assume?”

  She nodded, then headed for the refrigerator to grab a beer. “Yeah, I’ll live. Nothing a bath with some Epsom salts and some witchy poultices won’t fix right up.” She popped the top on the bottle, tossed the cap and opener on the counter, then plopped into a kitchen chair and propped her feet up on the table. “Well, now that we know we’ll survive, what do we do?”

  To be honest, I had no idea.

  Chapter 16

  Avery’s head ached abominably. Slowly she began to drift towards wakefulness, climbing out of the cool dark in which she had floated for what seemed like forever. After a few experimental blinks, she opened her eyes and tried to focus. She found herself looking at her hands in her lap, wrists bound firmly with sturdy shackles of black leather. She tried to speak but found that her words couldn’t make it out around the rubber ball strapped in her mouth. She was limited to little more than a muffled grunt. Her eyes widened in outrage and she raised her head to take stock of her situation.

  She found herself in the back of her own car, bound and secured with a seat belt, with Jim alongside her. He was still unconscious, his head slumped forward onto his chest, the seatbelt keeping him upright. He, too, had a ball gag strapped to his head, the red rubber sphere protruding between his lips, leather straps and tiny chrome buckles holding it firmly in place. His wrists were shackled the same as hers, and his biceps were pinned to his torso by a wide belt of black leather. A quick shrug of her shoulders confirmed that she was also bound at the upper arms. Her ankles felt similarly restrained, though she couldn’t see how.

  Shock and anger fought for dominance in her mind, mostly so that fear wouldn’t have room to play. She knew they were in deep trouble, and she had no idea how they were going to escape. She strained against the shackles at her wrists, but they were well-made and strong, and she found no give in them. Breathing deeply as she could through her nose to calm herself, she looked out through the windows of the car to see where they were.

  It was night, although she didn’t know if it was the same night or another. They were still at the Thornwall estate, and the car had been driven around to the back side of the house, where it now sat on the lawn on the far side of the swimming pool. She craned her neck and saw two squat stones, waist-high chunks of granite that hinted at human-like shapes facing each other, sitting in the grass a few yards in front of the car. She moved her head from side to side to ease the ache in her neck.

  She guessed she’d be far more stiff and sore had she been insensible for longer, so it had probably been only an hour or two since they’d been knocked out by…what? Her brows furrowed as she tried to remember exactly what had happened. The woman, Tanya, had been behind them. She had spoken, and then they’d both blacked out, though not from anything so obvious as a blow to the head. Avery struggled to recall the scene, and finally remembered catching a glimpse of the young woman’s eyes. They had flashed brightly before they’d passed out.

  That’s impossible, she reasoned, even as she also admitted that was wrong. She’d already seen enough that night to stretch the boundaries of her belief far beyond what they’d once been. Tanya had used some kind of power to subdue them both.

  “Comfy in there?” Avery snapped her head to the left to see Tanya’s face in Jim’s window, her eyes wide over a pretty smile that held more than a hint of a leer. She blinked thick eyelashes at Avery as the detective glared silently back at her. “Oh, so sorry. I forgot, you won’t have much to say for a while.” Her smile widened. “Sorry about the ball gags. I had them around, and since the occasion presented itself, I figured I’d put them to good use. Don’t worry, I washed them first.” She winked s
lyly, “The pink one looks good on you.”

  I hate pink, Avery growled inwardly. She continued to silently stare at her captor, unwilling to give her the satisfaction of a response. When I get free from here, I’m going to ram this damned thing right up your…

  “As you can see, you’re going to be my guest for a bit,” Tanya said sweetly. “However, I can’t keep you here. I know they’ll start looking for you sooner or later. Fortunately, I have a little hideaway that’s just perfect for us. Once I get us there, we can get to know each other much better.” Her smile widened, showing teeth that seemed a bit sharper, more predatory than they should have.

  As Avery looked into Tanya’s big, blue eyes, she suddenly felt an oily chill blossom within her. They were pretty eyes, wide and clear, and enhanced with a subtle, but effective application of makeup that would have snared a man’s gaze at twenty paces. But they were dead inside. Her heightened senses felt Tanya’s bone-deep madness like the cold that issued forth from an open freezer. Avery’s stomach clenched in on itself at the sickly chill, and she squeezed her eyes shut. With a flex of her will, she disengaged from the foul energy that assaulted her, pulling back from Tanya’s gaze and power, instinctively building a wall to keep the younger woman out. A few heartbeats later, Avery sighed at the relief her mental defenses afforded her. When she opened her eyes again, Tanya was still looking at her, but now, the smile had vanished, and a look of uncertainty had taken its place. Tanya stared at her for several seconds, silent and appraising.

  “You,” Tanya’s voice had lost its flirty tone, “you’re trouble.”

  Avery returned her stare, then nodded deliberately. You bet I am, you bitch. She held Tanya’s gaze, but this time, Avery released the tight control she usually held on her emotions, allowing her anger to boil into her eyes. Tanya blinked.

  Then the younger woman sniffed and tossed her head. “No matter. You can’t hurt me. Once I get you both to my little getaway, I’ll find out what you know. Then I’ll put you to good use.” Her lips compressed into a tight, red line, then she left the window.

  Avery watched her lithe form as she walked in front of the car and stood before it, facing forward. She stood silently, unmoving, for nearly a full minute. Tanya raised her arms slowly to either side of her, palms up, and Avery felt a tingle on her skin, a stinging, nauseating sensation that burrowed into her guts. She took as deep a breath as she could to steel herself against it, and kept watching, fascinated.

  A singsong chant drifted through the air to reach her ears. It wasn’t a song so much as a series of syllables that formed no words she could understand. It dawned on her that it resembled something a Native American might utter as part of a ritual or war dance. Low and insistent, Tanya’s pulsing voice increased the tingling in Avery’s body, and her eyes widened as the air around Tanya’s hands began to glow a bright and ugly red.

  The radiance grew as it was echoed in the large stones that sat in front of the car. They shone in the cool dark, squatty scarlet monoliths bleeding their foul light into the night. Tanya pointed one hand at each of the stones, then slowly began to trace an arc that would meet in front of her, over her head. Crimson lines of eldritch force followed her gesture, drawn in the air by the power of her will and the dark sorcery at her command. As she brought her hands together, the curving lines of energy met, completing the arc. She continued her chant as she drew her hands downward, maintaining focus on her creation. The glowing energy that empowered the arc followed her gesture, falling to the ground like a ruby waterfall, a wavering, shimmering sheet of light that obscured everything behind it.

  Her hands still together, she turned her palms outward, then, with a final, loud exclamation, she spread them forcefully apart as though whipping open a set of curtains. The wall of scarlet energy beneath the glowing arc vanished, leaving behind a doorway to somewhere else. A cool, dry wind blew in through the opening, and Avery peered through the windshield, her eyes wide. Illuminated by her car’s headlights and the reddish glow of the energy Tanya had harnessed to create the portal, Avery saw the top of a hill sloping away into a deeper dark. The thick, lush grass of Diana Thornwall’s back yard disappeared at a razor thin line of crimson that stretched between the two glowing stones, and on the far side, she saw patchy tufts of short, tough grass that barely concealed the harsh, rocky soil underneath. Beyond that, she could see little.

  Tanya opened the driver’s side door and tossed a small duffle inside, then slipped into the seat. She turned the key and the engine growled to life. With a glance over her shoulder, she smiled slyly. “Buckle up back there,” she chuckled and put the car in gear.

  Avery considered headbutting her from behind, but the seatbelt held her back. She looked at Jim, only to find he was still unconscious. Whatever whammy she had laid on them both was still working on him. Tanya eased the car forward, driving between the two glowing stones and underneath the arc of energy. Avery leaned as close to the window as she dared and watched in awe as the car passed through the portal, leaving the humid night of Katy, Texas behind them. As soon as the car passed completely through, the scarlet doorway vanished, leaving them in almost complete darkness, save for the headlights that speared into the night ahead.

  The ground was bumpy and rough at first, then the ride smoothed out as Tanya guided them onto a road of crushed stone. Avery tried to note any landmarks as they drove, but the land on either side was dark as pitch without the moon overhead to illuminate it. She saw nothing but vague shapes that might have been shrubs or small trees. As the car topped a rise and began to head downhill again, she turned her eyes forward and was rewarded with the sight of an island of lights in the distance. She squinted and saw that the road of pale stone led to a group of stucco buildings, a wide, sprawling complex surrounded by a high wall.

  Tanya drove up to an entryway secured by a gate of solid metal. She stopped long enough to pull a small device from her pocket, which she pointed at the gate. With a click of a button, the gate began to slide open to reveal a courtyard with an ornate concrete fountain in the center. The car drove inside and parked as the gate returned to its original position, relocking itself with a loud click. Tanya slipped out of the driver’s seat and came around to Avery’s door.

  Avery tensed, searching for a way to fight, but her bonds were solid and unyielding. Tanya opened the door, and with surprising strength, yanked Avery out of the car and let her fall heavily to the hard, uneven ground. The air exploded out of her lungs and a sharp pain stabbed her scalp from an unseen rock. She gasped for breath, struggling to get air back into her lungs as she heard her partner being similarly pulled from his side of the car. Still wheezing, she stared into the darkness overhead, noticing the dazzling array of stars that lay above her. The night sky in Houston was far too polluted with light and exhaust to allow that many to shine so brightly. In spite of the seriousness of her predicament, she marveled at the sight. Then Tanya’s smug face appeared in her line of sight as the younger woman bent over her prize.

  “Welcome to New Mexico. You’re not going to enjoy it. Sorry.”

  Avery’s eyes widened in surprise. New Mexico? What the hell?

  A tough-looking man in black tactical clothing appeared above her, frowning grimly. The last thing she saw was a set of hairy knuckles as they descended towards her face.

  Chapter 17

  I paused as I considered Ariana’s question. We had to do something…but what? Finally, I made a decision. “We have to go back.”

  She raised an eyebrow. “Seriously? The Thornwall place has to be crawling with police by now!”

  I shook my head, “Be that as it may, we need to have a better look around. Someone knew enough about Diana and her home to place a demon right in the middle of her living room. Everything pointed to Diana as being the one who hired Raymond, but she didn’t do it. There’s got to be something there to point us in the right direction.”

  “Well then, I’m glad I left a camera in the yard.”

  I b
linked. “You did what?”

  “I left a wireless camera in that tree, attached to one of the branches. They’ll have to look pretty damned hard to find it, and it gives us a view of the back yard. It’s got a chip that’ll hold three days’ worth of video. I can piggyback onto their WiFi and pick it up from here, so we can see if it’s safe to go in.” Ariana stood and took a deep, dramatic bow. “Aaand you’re welcome!”

  I was impressed. “That’s a lot safer than asking the Pixies to help us again. Faster, too. Let’s take a look.”

  We headed to her computer and I pulled up a chair as she logged on. It didn’t take long for her to hack her way into the Thornwall’s WiFi, then find the camera. A few moments later, we were looking at the back of the house we had escaped from earlier that night. The vantage point afforded us a clear view of the back yard and swimming pool, and it faced directly into the living room, displaying the picture window we’d broken upon our exit. Nothing moved, save the time stamp in the upper corner of the video. The place was deserted. Odd, I thought.

  “Where is everyone?” Ariana echoed my thought. “Those detectives would have called in everyone but the coast guard once they saw Diana’s body! There’s no one there.”

  “Yes, and we certainly made enough noise that you’d think someone would have called the authorities.” I thought for a moment, then said, “Can you show me what happened earlier?”

  “Rewind it, you mean? Sure, hold on,” she said, moving the animated arrow on the monitor over to what I now knew was a control panel. She clicked a left-facing arrow twice, then the numbers in the upper corner of the video began to roll backwards. A couple of minutes later, there was a flash of movement on the screen. “There’s something. Just a sec.” She let it roll back a bit more, then clicked the big arrow. The video began playing forward at normal speed, and the numbers indicated the time of our previous visit. I watched us slip into the back door and then meet Diana Thornwall. Then the demon arrived, battle ensued, and the detectives burst in and started shooting. I watched Ariana fling herself in front of me, taking the two shots that knocked her senseless. She glanced up at me from her chair, but I showed no reaction. Inwardly, I admitted that, although a stupid move on her part, it had been a noble gesture. We watched as I snatched her up in my arms and burst through the back window. Diana’s body was clearly visible on the floor, as were the two detectives, their guns still raised.