Hard arms wrapped around her. The view of Trevor and the dog flickered as black robes swirled about her face. The last Shroud had her. Rotten breath hissed past her ear. She tried to break out of the grip, but its wiry muscles coiled tighter.
There were only glimpses of Trevor as he held the dog. His eyes were wide with fear as he stared at her.
“No! No! No!” he shouted.
She expected the teeth or the claws of the Shroud. Instead, the beast lifted her off the ground and sped across the living room. Trevor let go of the hound and lunged for them. Just inches away. The Shroud yanked her hard and dived them both through one of the giant windows.
As they fell, she saw the hellish dog slam into Trevor. The two fought deeper into the living room. The tall trees at the front of the house flashed with the blue and red lights of a police car. The fall had to be at least forty feet to the hillside. If she could just break out of the Shroud’s grip, she could claw her way back to Trevor.
They hit the ground and everything went black.
* * *
Terror spiked ice through him. Misty disappeared into the dark outside the house, in the clutches of a Shroud. He tried to pursue, but the agony hound pinned him to the ground. Jagged teeth dug into his forearm, but he remained hard as stone. His flesh could not be damaged, but he felt the impact. The pain would be insignificant if he lost her.
He had to find her. He couldn’t leave her alone out there. And to be without her wasn’t a life at all.
The dog continued to bite down on his arm. Strong paws scraped against his chest, pushing him down again and again. The fear at seeing Misty disappear would not help him. He swallowed it, consumed it, fueling his rage.
Thousands of festivals, concerts, parties and orgies. He had given all his energy to them. The people in the crowd built it up and sent the power back to him. Trevor called on all of that now. Every last handful of fire he could clutch. And more. He wasn’t merely fed by the audience any longer. Misty gave him life.
She was somewhere out there, falling into darkness. Farther and farther away.
Trevor bared his teeth, collected all his strength and pushed back against the giant dog. It slid backward. The beast strained to keep him down. But Trevor tore his arm from the hound’s mouth and stood to face it. Anything standing between Trevor and Misty would die.
* * *
The world was broken. Shards of black and gray jumped all around her. An impact rang in her head. She tumbled down. How far? How far away from Trevor?
The Shroud still gripped her. She fell, scraping and turning against the beast and the hard ground of the hillside. Dry bushes and scrub crushed under her body. It had to stop. Otherwise this monster could twist her down all the way to hell.
She threw her legs out, slowing the descent. The Shroud’s grip was jarred, creating just enough space for her to wedge her arms between them. Pushing hard, she sprang free from the monster’s clutches.
The two of them fell a few more feet on the hillside before gathering their balance. The Shroud looked like a collection of the night’s shadows as it lunged for her again. She tracked the flashes of sickly yellow flesh, avoiding the claws and knocking her fist into the side of its head. Somewhere up the hill Trevor fought that hellish dog. She’d ended these Shrouds before. As much as she wanted it to suffer for taking her from Trevor, it had to be quick so she could climb back.
Her chopping blow found its mark at the base of the Shroud’s skull. The beast joined the still shadows on the ground, dead. Misty spun to face the hill. The distance seemed to stretch on forever. It was impossible to tell how far she’d fallen. Which house?
She would find the answers. One step up and she froze. Cold fear held her. A presence of evil behind her. More hate than any Shroud. It was terror to be fled, but she couldn’t run.
Turning, she saw a man standing on the curb of the winding street. Just an ordinary man. But how did he radiate such malice? He cocked his head at her, a distant yellow streetlight revealing his face. It was the man from the TV interview with Trevor this morning. The conservative with plastered-down hair.
But his eyes were dead and distant. Pale and glassy, they seemed to look past her, unfocused. His legs were unbalanced, shoulders askew. As if something else wore his skin.
On the TV, his voice had piped thin and reedy. On the street he hissed like a giant serpent.
“Base beast. Whore of mud.”
His words lanced through her.
“Your atavistic desires drag you to slut yourself in the lowest pit. Opening your holes to the worms of desire.”
Shame. Horror. Guilt. The emotions hooked deeper than her flesh, threatening to tear her apart. She’d learned to deflect the hate of the Shrouds. Their malice bounced off of her the same way their claws did off her stone-hard skin. But the root of their rage stood before her.
A Philosopher. It must be. The man’s mouth turned down in revulsion. His disgust slammed into her. As if she was looking in a mirror and hated who she saw. All the judgment from parents, teachers, bosses, society and, worst of all, herself, came crushing down.
The man stood deathly still, needing only words to attack.
“See your degradation. As you ooze out between the legs, begging for rotten flesh to fill you.”
Scream
, she told herself. Shout this son of a bitch back to hell. Or take a step toward him. Smash his face in with a stone fist. But humiliation and doubt constricted around her. No breath to yell. No strength to move.
“Die on your back. As you lived.”
His mouth twisted into a disgusted smile. Her own shame would end her.
* * *
A police siren chirped outside, behind Trevor. The agony hound stood before him. Beyond the devil dog was the smashed window where Misty disappeared. If the cops came in, the hound would probably kill them. Even if they did survive, they’d want too many answers. Every second away from Misty was too long.
Trevor turned and rushed to the radio still blasting classic rock. The dog took the bait and pursued. Trevor reached the radio and tore the power cable out the back. Just as the dog lunged, teeth first, he jammed the exposed wires into the flesh of the beast’s mouth.
Sparks blasted out in a quick flash. The hound yelped and jolted backward. Trevor leaped at it, lifting it by the neck and smashing its back onto the floor. The teeth along the beast’s side dug trenches into the wood. Panicked paws scraped up at Trevor, but he held it strong, hands around its throat.
With the music dead, the voices of the cops echoed hollow through the front wall. “LAPD. Open this door immediately.”
The hound snapped its teeth, wriggling its huge body. Trevor kept it pinned with a knee to the chest. He dug his fingers deeper through the muscle of the beast, finding its throat. Growls turned to rasping wheezes.
Flashlight beams knifed in from the front windows. The cops wouldn’t be able to see him. But once the door was open...
Surging with one last chance, the agony hound clawed up with its paws. The nails scraped against Trevor’s chest.
“Die,” he told the beast through clenched teeth. “Die and go back to the inferno where you belong.”
The cops scraped and knocked against the side door where he’d broken in. Trevor jammed his hands harder into the monster dog, finally crushing the life from it. He ran for the broken window, dragging the dead weight along with him.
He leaped out of the house, letting the hound fall next to him. Thirty feet, maybe forty until he hit the sloped ground. The dog would dissolve like the Shrouds, but the cops were coming in fast. The fewer unexplainable things they saw, the better.
Trevor slammed into the hill and rolled another fifteen feet. Old dust and dry twigs rose up all around. Stars spun. He stopped tumbling and slid on dirt and loose stones until he got his legs under him and ran farther down the hill.
Where the hell was she? He couldn’t lose her. He couldn’t leave her alone. In danger.
“Misty!” he shouted into the night. No answer. He shouted again. Dark silence.
His own death meant nothing. As long as he destroyed whatever had taken her away.
Chapter Ten
Tighter, the shame constricted and she almost welcomed death. Every set of eyes that had ever passed judgment on her. Worst of all her own.
Yes
, she agreed with them
.
Kill this body
,
flesh and meat.
It’s not pure.
It debases the mind
,
dragging her humanity into the dirt
. Her throat tightened. Breath wheezed. An unseen hand choked her. Was it her own humiliation that powered the grip? Dark red haze ringed her vision. It wasn’t the light of dawn. It was the end.
The Philosopher didn’t blink. His glazed eyes rolled, looking everywhere but at her. The smile carried no joy. Only hate and destruction.
“The witch drowns in her own fluids.”
His words had sparked her own fear and revulsion. Self-doubt and shame. But “witch” resonated somewhere else. Deep and true. She clutched to the feeling, the only hope of life. The why didn’t matter at first, just that it was a breath of air. A pint of fresh blood through her veins.
The Philosopher blinked.
Then she remembered. Trevor’s song lyric.
Be the bitch
She’s the witch
Who’ll grind them down
He wrote it for her. About her. He knew who she was. From the first look at the club, to slamming their bodies together in sex, to a quiet glance, lit only by stars. There was no shame in his eyes when he gazed at her. He didn’t judge her. And when she started this night, checking herself out in the mirror, outfit assembled by her and Kim, there was no disgust then either.
Misty gathered more breath. She curled her hands into fists and took a step toward the Philosopher. It took more effort than it should, but there was satisfaction in seeing him blink again.
She sneered. “Fuck you.”
The Philosopher started muttering in an arcane language. Her limbs tingled as her strength returned. It might not be fast enough, though. Gray smoke began swirling from the Philosopher’s mouth. The words were alive.
She dug her toe in the dirt, finding confidence in the footing. The elements in her body, those shared with Trevor, were from the earth. When they’d made love on the ground, it seemed as if everything was connected with the same breath. That meant the elements were still with her. Trevor was here, in some way, to help. She was not ready to die.
The gray smoke continued to pour out of the Philosopher. It congealed, greasy, and snaked toward her. Fire, oak, stone, ice. She felt it all. Something would work against whatever was coming.
And she couldn’t let the Philosopher know she was afraid. “You’re going to choke on those words.”
He was unmoved. Continuing to speak, he brought his palms up to shape the smoke. He wafted it into thin tendrils. They wove together into a long thick column. One end faced her, the other grew from his words.
The sky was pink with the coming dawn. Long shadows streaked about her feet. She picked up a branch from the ground and brandished it like a club. The twisting column of smoke extended toward her. The end flared, a thousand grasping tendrils.
She swung the wood into the smoke. Maybe she could scatter the threat. Or it would dissolve. The branch struck it and bounced back, as if she’d hit a steel fence.
“Misty!” Trevor shouted from farther up the hill.
Heat washed over her as she twisted to see him coming. She could almost feel him against her again. With him, they could destroy anything that stood in their way.
She turned back toward the Philosopher, a smile on her lips. “Your smoke—”
The tendrils spread in a wide circle and struck toward her. She was knocked to the ground. When she stood, her view of Trevor was sliced into hundreds of shards. The smoke formed a latticed cage around her.
* * *
The cage struck like a snake. He wasn’t fast enough. He’d sped down the hill when he spotted her. The smoke was already growing from the man. From the posture, Trevor knew it was a Philosopher, infused into a human body. They only did that as a last resort. Which meant they were not going to give up on whatever they sought. But a corporeal body also meant they could be hurt.
Trevor was very much looking forward to bringing pain to the Philosopher, when the cage snapped shut around Misty. It formed a perfect sphere. The bottom dug into the dirt, unmoving. Only inches thick, but the cage seemed to put Misty miles away from him. The distance counted in time too. As if they were separated by hundreds of years.
Already, the hunger for her gnawed through him.
“Misty, I’ll get you out of there.” Wherever he tried to put his fingers through the lattice of smoke closed solid.
She spoke, echoing from too far away. “The Philosopher, he’s right there.”
“I see him.” The body still didn’t move. Only then, in the brightening dawn, did he recognize the man from the TV show. The ultraconservative didn’t have any power that morning, but he must’ve been an appealing conduit for the Philosopher. “That body can’t damage me. And hurting him won’t end this spell. This cage is how he’ll kill us.”
“I can hardly hear you.” She was on the bottom of a chasm. Or set adrift, alone in a ship with no sails.
He had to get to her. “The cage keeps you from me. I can’t feed. He’s trying to starve me.”
“Not just you. I feel it... You’re so far...”
As much as he wanted to crush the Philosopher responsible, he knew he had to conserve his waning power. Trevor cocked a fist back and slammed it into the cage. The impact jolted him backward, but the smoke lattice did not move.
The Philosopher sneered. Trevor punched the surface of the cage. It clanged like metal. He was no nearer to Misty.
He brought his face close to the cage, taking whatever glimpse he could of her. “I won’t lose you, Misty. I need you now. Forever.”
“Trevor.” How far away was she? Her voice was so small.
“I will get to you.” He put his hand on the cage, but the lattice closed in the places where he touched it. “You find me.”
Enraged, he struck the cage. The same result. Another blow. The smoke was unaffected. But he did not stop. She was in there. Glimpses of dark red hair. Flashes of her green eyes. Again and again he punched the cage. Fist of stone, oak, fire. The power of the crashing waves and the force of a hurricane. Everything he was, he would give to get her back.
On the next blow, the cage shifted. Dust rose up from where its footing turned. If it could be moved, it could be destroyed. When he slammed his fist into it again, he felt why it had been shaken. Misty attacked it from the inside.
Together, they battered one side of the cage. The smoke shuddered. He saw her, inside, throwing her weight behind her punches. Furious. Beautiful.
He almost felt her energy. So close. His body yearned for it, pushing him harder. Their attacks found a rhythm. Pounding like Hephaestus on his forge, or the drums of an army. The cage weakened. Soon, he would have her back.
Hot pain sliced through him. It sapped his strength and he fell to the ground.
Somewhere in the distance, Misty screamed. “No!”
Silhouetted against the dawn, the Philosopher stood over him. A long jagged blade of blue and silver smoke jutted from his hand. He brought it up and slashed into Trevor. The blade didn’t damage his skin. It passed straight through, carving a wake of agony deep inside him.
Misty continued to attack the inside of the cage, but without their combined effort, the surface grew stronger. She called his name, over and over. He rose to his hands and knees. The Philosopher cut him again. Pain washed the world white. Trevor staggered to his feet. The blade of smoke cut through from his shoulder to his hip. His body held together, but the agony could shatter his mind.
Over three thousand years ago, a landslide tumbled boulders into the Mediterranean sea. He had witnessed the power of stone and the force of the sea. Trevor brought all of this into his fist. Every ounce of strength. To set Misty free.
He turned his back on the Philosopher and punched the cage. Misty shouted her encouragement, attacking with him. The Philosopher cut him again. Trevor’s knees nearly buckled. But he slammed his knuckles into the smoke barrier. Another blow from the blade. He threw his weight behind a punch. The cage thinned again. He was nearly blind with pain. All he saw was Misty, fighting.
The Philosopher screeched behind him, raining cold fire with the blade.
One more blow. The smallest hole opened in the cage. Trevor dug his fingers in, barely able to stand. More of the cage pulled apart in his grip. The blade continued to slice his mind apart. He tore at the smoke, using any last grain of power.
The cage shuddered, crumbled. He forced his hand inside. Misty reached back to him. Their fingers laced together. Life poured back into him. Strength returned. Still gripping her, he used his other hand to pry pieces of the cage away. She kicked at the barrier, shattering the smoke.
“No!” the Philosopher wailed. “You belong buried in the filth...” He doubled his attack with another blade of smoke.
Pain racked Trevor, but he kept his focus on Misty. They beat a hole in the cage, large enough for her to climb through. He pulled and she lunged. Misty finally crashed back into his arms.
Once she was fully in the early sunlight, the smoke cage dissipated. A morning breeze thinned it to nothing. The Philosopher’s smoke blades, however, persisted. He slashed down into Trevor with one attack. His other blade thrust forward into Misty’s gut.
She screamed and doubled over. Fury burned in Trevor, hotter than any pain. He grabbed the Philosopher’s wrist, shattering the bone. Pushing the attack, he drove his enemy to the ground.
The Philosopher’s other hand waved the blade around and Trevor pinned that arm. An incantation started to spill from the Philosopher’s lips, forming grainy red smoke.
Trevor called back to Misty. “Don’t let him speak.”
The pain was still etched on her face, but she leaped down at the Philosopher, placing her hand over his mouth.
She spoke, strained. “I never want to hear another word out of this fucker.”
The smoke blades drifted away, harmless. Trevor covered the Philosopher’s eyes with his palm.
“We blocked his power. And his escape.” The body lurched with inhuman strength, but he and Misty held him down, pressed to the dirt. “They hate taking bodies of flesh. All that animal meat around them disgusts these bastards.”
“I hope he’s suffering.”
The body struggled again, weaker. “He dies.”
After another convulsion, the body stilled. Yellow light leaked out from beneath Trevor’s hand, fading in the sunlight. He and Misty stood from the man, whose eyes were closed, jaw slack.
“He’s breathing,” she said.
“The human’s alive. He didn’t do anything wrong. Just has shitty taste in music.” Sunlight warmed Trevor. The pain was a memory. He lived again with Misty. He took her hand and they backed away from the man on the ground. “He’ll wake up with a broken wrist and a lot of confusion.” They turned and stepped onto the winding street. “We were never here.”
The descent was broken into new sunlight and the cool remaining shadows of night. He and Misty walked at the edge of the road, hand in hand. Each bump of her hip or shoulder brightened him.
She broke the silence. “Thank you. For finding me.”
They stopped. He looked over her. Dirty face, hair mussed. Her shirt was torn in places. And those green eyes, more confident than ever. Undimmed. Lovely. He kissed her. They were flesh and blood, connected. And they shared the power he’d known all his life.
“Thank you.” He spoke as they pulled apart. “For saving me.”
Gravity resumed their walk down the hill. “Will the Philosophers try again?”
“Doubtful.” If they threatened her, he’d relish destroying them. “You’re too strong now.”
A car came up the road and they moved to the side, near a low Spanish style house. The car slowed, passed, turned around behind them and crawled forward as it approached again. A dingy plastic sign for a pizza delivery was suction cupped to the roof. Breaks squealing, the car came to a stop.
The driver was a young Hispanic dude. “Ain’t you Trevor Sand?”
“Fuck yeah.” Trevor gave him the universal hand symbol of rock and roll.
The guy dug a cell phone from his back pocket. “Let me get a picture for my little sister. It’ll blow her mind.”
“What about you? Don’t you like my music?”
He shrugged. “Not my thing. But my sister thinks you’re bomb.”
“We’ll trade you.” Misty made a little spectacle of arranging her wild hair. “Give us a ride, you get a picture.”
“Deal. Just made my last delivery.” He hit a button and the locks on his little hatchback snapped.
Trevor opened the back door for Misty. He couldn’t help watching every sweet curve as she slid in. He joined her in the cramped backseat and the car lurched forward.
Misty wound her fingers together with Trevor’s, but kept her focus forward on the driver. “Pizza delivery first thing in the morning?”
“This is Hollywood.” The driver threw up his hands, then gripped the steering wheel again to take them through a sharp turn. “Twenty-four-seven.”
Trevor took in the mobile office. GPS, air freshener, some hot-rod and fitness magazines. “What’s your name, dude?”
“Ruben.”
“How old’s your sister?”
Misty dug her nails into his palm and muttered. “No ideas...”
He shot her a reassuring look. “She knows good music.”
“Fifteen. She was even bitching about how she couldn’t see your show last night.”
Misty added, “It was a hell of a show.”
“But she was too young to get in.” Trevor rolled down the window, bringing fresh morning air into the car. “We have all-ages gigs too.”
“So where am I driving you two to?”
“Hollywood Boulevard. Gladstone Hotel.”
“I know that one.”
Misty leaned forward. “What time is it?”
Ruben checked his watch. “Around seven-fifteen.”
She turned to Trevor. “I need to make another stop.” There was a shadow of concern in her eyes.
He nodded. “Anything.”