Unholy Ground

by Christine Pope

  “It’s unusual but not unprecedented. And God knows you’ve been through enough shocks lately to set off all kinds of nightmares. That’s all it was.”

  She wanted to believe him. Since she’d woken up here in bed, not sleepwalking in the bathroom, she knew that Michael’s hypothesis couldn’t be that far off base. But it had felt so real….

  “Nothing can get in this house,” he said, voice still gentle, still soothing. “We’re safe. But if you want me to check in the bathroom….”

  “Would you?” She hated how shaky her voice sounded, and was also annoyed with herself for making such a request, as if she were a small child who needed her parent to look in the closet and check under the bed to make sure there weren’t any monsters. But she also knew that she probably wouldn’t be able to go back to sleep until Michael gave the all-clear.

  He didn’t hesitate before replying, “Of course.”

  As she watched, he got out of bed and went to the bathroom. Shaky and scared as she was, Audrey couldn’t quite prevent herself from admiring the strong muscles of his legs, the breadth of his shoulders. The night hadn’t been that cold, so he’d gone to bed wearing his boxer-briefs and nothing else.

  The bathroom light flared on. She saw how he moved the door so he could look behind it. A faint rattle as he slid open the glass shower enclosure, presumably to look in there as well. Once he was done, he came back to the bed and got under the covers with her.

  “Nothing there,” he told her. “And the sink is bone dry, which tells me no one’s used it since we went to bed hours ago. You had a nightmare, Audrey. Just tell yourself you’re safe here, and try to get some more sleep.”

  She didn’t know how successful she would be at going back to sleep, but she didn’t argue with him. Clearly, her brain had seized hold of some of the more terrifying elements of the phenomena she’d experienced the past few weeks, then mixed them all together to make a horrifying concoction. She was a psychologist; she of all people should know what the subconscious could do to a person.

  “Okay,” she said, then lay back down.

  Michael looked relieved as he leaned over to pull the chain on the bedside lamp, sending the room back into darkness. Audrey tried not to wince as the light disappeared. It was so damn dark in the bedroom, thanks to the heavy curtains at the windows.

  But there was the soft glow from the nightlight in the bathroom slipping in here, reassuring her that it wasn’t as dark as she first thought. And there — she thought she could see a faint glimmer past the curtains that probably came from the street lamps widely spaced through the neighborhood. It wasn’t as bad as she thought.

  And there was Michael next to her, snuggling close now that he’d lain down as well, arms reaching for her so he could have her slide up against him, his chest making a wonderful pillow. His breathing was sure and steady and soothing, and she found her eyelids slipping shut, her breaths falling into the same rhythm as his.

  At last sleep came, deep and warm and dark, with no whisper of nightmares. Whatever they might have to face the next day, at least for now she was safe, thanks to the man she loved.

  Chapter 12

  Michael had halfway been expecting another call from the police, but he still experienced a quick, anxious chill as he picked up his phone and looked down at the number on the home screen. “Good morning, Detective Mendoza. What can I do for you?”

  Across the table from him, Audrey froze at once, butter knife idle in one hand, half an English muffin in the other. He shot her what he hoped was a reassuring smile, although he wasn’t sure how well he did at expressing an emotion he certainly didn’t feel at the moment.

  “We found a lot of your fingerprints at Mr. Turner’s house,” the detective said. “I was hoping you could explain that to me.”

  Michael picked up his coffee with his free hand and took a large swallow. “Like I told you yesterday, Colin Turner and I have been friends and business associates for more than a year. I went over to his house multiple times. So yes, you probably would have found my prints on the microwave door, the remote for the TV, the bathroom fixtures, and so on.”

  “Even his computer?” Mendoza asked, sounding skeptical.

  “Well, sure,” Michael said easily. “There were times he was working on something in Premiere Pro — that’s a video editing platform — ”

  “I know what Premiere Pro is, Mr. Turner. My son makes YouTube videos.”

  Of course he did. Everyone in this town seemed to have aspirations to be in the industry, including, apparently, homicide detectives’ sons. “Okay. Well, if Colin was editing something and it wasn’t looking the way I imagined, then I’d take the driver’s seat for a bit. That’s why my prints would be on the keyboard and the trackball.” Michael paused there, figuring he might as well ask the question and stop dancing around the issue. “Last night you told me I wasn’t a suspect. Has something changed?”

  “Just following up on the new evidence we found,” Mendoza replied. “But otherwise, no, you’re not a suspect. Your alibi checks out. You were having dinner around the approximate time when Mr. Turner was murdered. Or at least, while it’s remotely possible you could have driven to Los Feliz, committed the murder, then gone out to dinner, the timeline doesn’t fit very well.”

  While he couldn’t come right out and say he was relieved, Michael found himself a little shakier than he’d expected, thanks to the rush of adrenaline that had hit as soon as he heard Mendoza’s voice at the other end of the line, then dissipated when he realized he wasn’t a suspect after all. After clearing his throat, he said, “Do you have any leads?”

  “I’m not at liberty to discuss that, Mr. Covenant. However, we know there wasn’t any forced entry.”

  Because of the way Colin liked to leave that damn back door open. When he’d visited the house, Michael hadn’t commented on the practice, even though he didn’t think it was very smart for someone who stored thousands of dollars of video equipment in his home to leave a door unlocked even if he was around most of the time. Colin’s house was in a very nice neighborhood, but you didn’t have to drive too far to get to areas that were definitely not so nice.

  Not that it really mattered in this particular case. Door locks and security systems definitely wouldn’t keep a demon out.

  “No, he left the French doors to the backyard unlocked a lot of the time,” Michael said.

  “Obviously, someone made note of the practice,” Detective Mendoza remarked. “I doubt it’s a coincidence. Anyway, Mr. Covenant, we’ll be in touch if we have any other questions. Have a good day.”

  There was a joke. He didn’t really see how his day could be all that good when he was still attempting to deal with the horror of Colin’s death, the precise brutality of it. Because of course the demon — or demons — who’d committed the act were doing their best to send a message.

  If you see things you shouldn’t, we’re going to tear your eyes out.

  Michael set down the phone and released a breath, while across the little breakfast table Audrey watched him, worry clear in her expression.

  “What did he want?”

  “He probably wanted some way to pin this on me, just because that would make life a lot simpler for him.” Reaching for his mug of coffee, Michael lifted his shoulders. “Business deal gone bad, something like that. But he knows I didn’t do it, and even though he wasn’t about to give me any real information, I have a feeling that he doesn’t have much to go on. Demons don’t leave fingerprints, and their DNA isn’t something you can look up in a database. They could go over that house with the most sophisticated equipment they have and not retrieve any evidence.”

  Even though he’d basically told her he was off the hook, Audrey didn’t appear particularly relieved. Her brows were still drawn together, and she ignored the freshly buttered English muffin sitting on the plate before her. “Did the detective say anything about Colin’s next of kin?”

  “No,” Michael replied. “They’re prob
ably not ready to release the body yet.” She winced, and he set down his coffee mug so he could reach over and rest his hand on top of hers. “I know it’s hard, Audrey, but there isn’t a lot we can do. The police have my contact information. Presumably, if they can’t get hold of Colin’s sister — or if she’s not in a position to manage the funeral arrangements — then we might be called on to take care of things. But until then, all we can do is wait.”

  “I just hate to think of him down there at the morgue….” Now her face was pale, and she swallowed before taking a breath of her own. “Probably I’m just having flashbacks to when my parents’ bodies were sent home from Hawaii. I had Deb with me, but still….”

  Even though Michael remembered all too well his mother’s hysterics and his father’s stony-faced grief when his brother Philip was sent home from jail in a plain pine box, he could only imagine what it must have been like for a fifteen-year-old Audrey to have to wait for her parents’ remains. He entwined his fingers with hers, hoping she would be able to tell how much he wished things could have been different, that he somehow could have stopped his brother from committing such atrocities.

  The problem was, even though he’d sensed something different about Philip, Michael hadn’t been able to tell for himself exactly what it was. He’d been a kid himself, still in his senior year of high school. Who the hell was going to listen to his vague misgivings about his older brother?

  “He’s not really at the morgue,” Michael said gently. “His body is, but Colin’s gone, moved on. In fact, he’d probably be amused by your concern. He knew he wasn’t exactly your favorite person.”

  Audrey managed a very small smile. “No, I guess he wasn’t. But you really think….” Her words trailed off there, as if she wasn’t quite sure what she’d meant to say.

  “Yes, I think he’s moved on. We’ve both been around ghosts and spirits. I didn’t get any sense that he was lingering there, did you?”

  “No,” she said at once, looking immediately relieved. “Not that I was really trying to look for ghosts, though. I was mostly trying not to pass out.”

  He couldn’t really blame her for that. It had been a gruesome scene, one he knew would probably haunt his dreams for months or even years to come. He’d seen some terrible things in his research, and in his work as a demonologist, and yet, this was probably the worst. Audrey should never have had to witness such a horror. That she was bearing up as well as she seemed to be was a tribute to the strength she’d developed in the years since her parents were murdered.

  “Well, I didn’t sense anything, and I’m fairly certain you would have…if there’d been anything to sense. What we need to do now is focus on shutting down Whitcomb and his minions, because clearly, closing the portal at the mansion doesn’t seem to have slowed them down very much.”

  She nodded, her expression bleak. It was easy enough for him to say they needed to focus on such a goal. Actually pursuing it was something else entirely. He hadn’t heard anything from Fred, which was frustrating but didn’t necessarily mean that such a search was in vain. His friend got in touch when he had something valuable to share and not before, and really, it had only been a day since Michael had sent him to search for Whitcomb’s other aliases, even though right then it felt more like a hundred years.

  Although Michael had made a list of the other names he’d found attached to Whitcomb’s Underhill trust, he hadn’t followed up on any of those, either. Too much going on, too many threads to keep track of. And underneath it all, the worry that none of this would amount to crap in the end.

  Part of him wanted to say the hell with all of it, to take Audrey someplace where they could shake off all the dirt and misery of this case — the beach, which probably wouldn’t be all that crowded on a Wednesday in early March, or Descanso Gardens or the Huntington Library or someplace else serene and beautiful. They’d had so much grief and darkness to deal with over the past few days…surely they could afford a tiny piece of breathing space like that?

  But even as he longed for that kind of escape, Michael knew he wouldn’t make the suggestion. They needed to keep working on this, needed to find the Whitcomb-demon and send him straight back to hell before he hurt anyone else.

  Still, it couldn’t hurt to give themselves just the tiniest break.

  He looked across the table at Audrey, worried by the dark smudges under her eyes, the downward droop of her beautiful mouth. “Let’s go outside for a bit,” he suggested. “We could both use a little sunlight, I think.”

  Out here, it was a lot harder to worry about demons and nightmares and mirrors that contained endless voids. Audrey leaned back against the patio chair and let the sun beat down on her, awakening little dancing lights behind her closed eyelids. She and Michael had both overslept, and she’d awakened to a text from her aunt, asking if Audrey had heard anything from the insurance company. She hadn’t, of course, and responded with that information but didn’t volunteer anything else. Deb didn’t know anything about Colin, and so there didn’t seem to be much point in opening up that particular can of worms. Thank God that Deb was not the type to read celebrity gossip, so there wasn’t much chance of her running across the story online.

  Although there’d been a mention of Colin’s murder in the L.A. Times, clearly the press wasn’t yet privy to the more gruesome aspects of the case, since they’d only reported that he’d been found in his Los Feliz home and that the police were currently following all leads. A brief mention of his producing career, with a few works highlighted, and that was it. Michael’s name didn’t come up at all, for which Audrey was profoundly grateful. Project Demon Hunters had been flying pretty low beneath the radar, and it seemed not that many people knew much about it.

  Still, she realized she was shaky and off balance after what she’d witnessed the night before, and so sitting out here in the backyard seemed like a very good idea. Maybe there was something more constructive they both should have been doing, but Michael didn’t seem inclined to do anything much except sit in his own chair and quietly soak up the rays, and Audrey wasn’t about to disturb him. To her, Colin was someone she’d worked with briefly and, frankly, hadn’t had a very good relationship with. They’d started to patch things up, but she knew they certainly couldn’t be called friends. Whereas Michael had worked with the producer for more than a year, had apparently spent a lot of time with him. His death — and especially the manner of it — wasn’t exactly the sort of thing you could just shake off.

  Even so, she felt herself start to relax a little, some of the tension leaving her body. Michael hadn’t said anything about them venturing out today, and Audrey guessed he thought that might not be such a good idea. The house was safe. The rest of the world…probably not so much.

  She must have dozed off, because although it felt as if she hadn’t been sitting out on the patio for very long, Michael touched her hand at some point and said, “We should probably go inside. We’re going to get fried if we stay out here for much longer.”

  A blink, and her eyes were open, telling her that the sun had moved much higher in the sky, was now almost directly overhead. She pushed herself up from her chair and realized she felt a little lightheaded. “I must have really passed out.”

  “I think you deserved a little nap. Are you ready for lunch?”

  It felt as though she’d had breakfast just an hour ago. She shook her head and offered him an apologetic smile. “Maybe in a little while. I don’t think I’m quite there yet.”

  “No worries. Let’s go to the library — you can put your feet up and read if you want, but I need to take my laptop and do some research.”

  Sitting in the cool, book-scented room Michael used as his library sounded like a nice change from being here in the sun, which was starting to feel downright fierce. “Okay.”

  They went into the house and headed to the library. His laptop was already there on one of the side tables, where it had been charging all night. He picked it up and unplugged it, t
hen took a seat in one of the room’s armchairs. Audrey retrieved the copy of The Stand she’d been rereading — mostly because it felt good to read about people with even worse problems than her own — and sat down in a chair as well, feet up on the matching ottoman.

  Michael immediately typed something in, then was quiet for a long while. Another burst of typing, followed by more quiet. The fits and starts might have been annoying if she was really trying to concentrate, but right then she was just glad to have him close by. There was something steady and reassuring about his presence, as if she couldn’t quite believe anything bad could happen to her as long as he was near.

  The clock ticked along, and a little before one, Michael closed his laptop and looked over at her, expression both puzzled and triumphant.

  “What is it?” Audrey asked. “Did you find something?”

  “I think so…or at least, I think I might have found something. Of course, records even in the forties and fifties weren’t as complete or accurate as what we have now, but….”

  “But?”

  He came over to her, and she obligingly removed her feet from the ottoman so he’d have someplace to sit down. “Every single one of the people listed as a trustee of the Underhill trust basically didn’t have a past before around 1939. To the casual observer, they would have seemed like pillars of society — bankers, lawyers, doctors, business owners — but while they might have college records, there are no birth certificates, no family photos, nothing. It’s like they appeared from nowhere.”

  “You found all that on an internet search?” Audrey asked. She didn’t want to sound skeptical, but even the internet had its limits.

  Michael didn’t look offended by the question. He said, “Fred showed me how to access databases that aren’t necessarily public. Using the credentials he’s given me, I was able to use the information I found there and cross-reference it with more readily available material.”