Difethwr flicked its hand, tossing the watch into the air and incinerating it with a blast of its eye-flames.
In a second, I was out of bed, groping for my knife, ready to send the Hellion back to Hell. I snatched the dagger from my nightstand. I spun around to locate Difethwr, then blinked in the pitch-dark room. There was no demon here.
A dream. It was only a dream. And that was very, very bad.
I PACED MY BEDROOM, UNABLE TO THINK OF GOING BACK to sleep. Difethwr had invaded my dream. I should’ve been able to fight the demon, even while sleeping. It was
my
dreamscape; I should direct my dreams. That was one of the first things I’d learned in my training. The demon fighter is always in control of the dream. Always. But I’d had to wake up to banish Difethwr.
My demon-marked arm itched and burned, telling me my encounter with the Destroyer hadn’t been an ordinary dream. Difethwr wasn’t an image boiling up from my subconscious. Somehow, the Hellion itself had been inside my dreamscape.
And it had my watch. Was that real, too, or just a dream-image?
There was one way to find out. I threw on my jeans, a sweater, and some boots. I felt too antsy to wait for the elevator, so I took the stairs. Galloping down one flight after another, I tried to shake the uneasy feeling that something weird had just happened. I’d dreamed, that’s all. It was so long since I’d done that—usually I chose uninterrupted darkness for my dreamscape—I’d forgotten what it felt like. Nightmares happened. I’d had them as a kid.
Still, as I opened the door to the lobby, I knew I was fooling myself. Something weird
was
going on. I didn’t know what, and that scared me.
Clyde raised his sunglasses and looked at me curiously. Because their eyes, like their skin, degrade when exposed to sunlight, most zombies wear sunglasses in the daytime, even indoors. “Is something amiss?”
“I came down to get my watch.”
“Pardon me?”
“I left my new watch at Creature Comforts tonight. It’s valuable, and I was, um … having trouble sleeping until I get it back.”
Clyde
tsk
ed, letting me know what he thought of tenants who went to places like Creature Comforts—or worse, got so drunk they left valuable possessions there. The fact I hadn’t been drunk wouldn’t make a difference to him.
I put out my hand. “So would you mind handing it over, please?”
“Handing what over?”
“My watch.”
“I don’t have your watch. You just said you left it at that … establishment.”
“Come on, Clyde. I need it back. Quit kidding around.”
He raised his glasses to peer at me again, his message loud and clear. Clyde was many things—a zombie, a doorman, a former minister—but he was
not
a kidder.
A wave of uneasiness washed over me. “T.J. didn’t bring it by?”
“I’m sure I don’t know a soul called T.J.”
“He’s a zombie,” I said. Clyde shook his head. “Little guy, about my height. Sandy hair. Loud Hawaiian shirt. Wears a big gold ring with his initials on it.” Even as my description got more detailed, Clyde’s head never stopped shaking.
“What time is it?” I asked.
Clyde lifted his sunglasses again and shot me a look that said if I didn’t leave my watch in disreputable bars, I’d know what time it was, but he consulted his own watch.
“Quarter past seven.” He let his sunglasses drop into place. “In the morning,” he added unnecessarily.
Seven fifteen. Even though it felt like hours, only forty minutes had passed since I spoke to T.J. He was still at Creature Comforts; he’d said it’d take about an hour to finish cleaning up. No wonder he hadn’t stopped by.
I made Clyde promise to call me as soon as T.J. arrived with my watch. I went across the lobby to the elevator and pressed the button. The doors opened, and I stepped inside.
As I did, I had a vision of Difethwr, laughter seething all around as the Hellion dangled my watch. Had it been a dream? Or was the Destroyer taunting me?
I had to know. I caught the closing doors and ran out of the elevator, across the lobby, and out the door. Sleep was out of the question. I needed to find out what was going on.
I RAN. ALTHOUGH THE SUN WAS UP IT WAS BITTER COLD, THE way a clear January day can be in Boston, and I hadn’t gone back for my jacket. The streets were nearly deserted, and in a few minutes I was through the checkpoint and standing in front of Creature Comforts. The icy door handle hurt my fingers. It would be warm inside. And maybe I could talk T.J. into brewing some coffee. Thawing my frozen hands around a steaming mug sounded like the best idea I’d had in a week.
I pulled open the door. “Hey, T.J., how about some coffee?”
No answer. I didn’t see him anywhere. Probably cleaning the restrooms. If I worked here, I’d put off that job until the last possible moment.
Okay, I’d grab my watch and put on a pot for both of us. I stepped inside and headed for the bar.
My foot hit something slippery and skidded out from under me. I went flying, arms windmilling as I tried to stay balanced. Didn’t work. As I fell, the smell hit me. Foul, like rotten meat, overlaid with a sharper, acid stink.
I landed on my side and kept sliding. The floor was covered with the slippery stuff. And so was I—my hand, my arm, all down my right side and leg. I came to a stop and rolled over to sit up. The smell was so bad my stomach heaved, and I swallowed hard a couple of times to get control. I lifted my hand; a gob of blackish slime dripped from my palm. What the hell was it? The stench of it made me retch again. Good thing I hadn’t had breakfast. My first stop, after I’d retrieved my watch, would be the ladies’ room to wash this gunk off me.
Disgusting. No matter how good T.J. was with customers, Axel would fire the kid when he saw this mess.
Gingerly, I put my left hand on the floor next to me so I could use both hands to push myself up. A lump pressed into my palm. I picked it up: a gold ring, shaped into the initials
T.J.
A ragged stub of finger still wore it.
I hurled the ring away. It skittered across the floor and came to rest against the back wall. I tried to scramble to my feet but slipped and fell again, landing hard on my ass. My hand came down on a scrap of fabric. It was turquoise, with part of an orange hibiscus petal. The rest of the room came into focus now: other bits of fabric, scraps of flesh, bone shards, clumps of sandy hair. Something had torn T.J. to pieces. Or worse. There wasn’t enough flesh here to make a whole zombie. I looked again at the slimy black gunk dripping in strings from my hand. Dear God. What could turn a zombie into
this
?
Slowly, with effort, I climbed to my feet. As fast as I could without sprawling again, I made my way across the room. Past a bucket and mop, which stood there as if waiting for T.J. to get to work. Past tables, some of them, I now noticed, toppled over. Past the end of the long bar. At the back, the floor was cleaner. I pounded on the locked door that Norden hadn’t got through, the door to Axel’s lair.
“Axel!” I screamed. “Axel, get up here!” I pressed my ear against the door, but I couldn’t hear a thing. Was it sound-proofed? Damn it all, Axel had to know about this. I kept on pounding and screaming. I couldn’t think of anything else to do.
My hand felt like I’d fractured at least a couple of bones and I was starting to go hoarse when I heard a lock click, and then two more. The door swung open toward me, and I had to jump back to avoid being hit. That made me fall again, thanks to the slime on the soles of my boots. Axel’s angry face loomed way, way up there, somewhere near the ceiling. But his expression changed to alarm when he saw me.
“What happened?”
“I don’t—All this—” The words weren’t coming. I gestured around the bar. “T.J.”
Axel’s brow lowered as he surveyed the room. “T.J. made this mess?”
I shook my head and saw a glint of metal on the floor a couple of feet away. I reached over and picked up T.J.’s ring, touching only the metal. A splinter of bone, absurdly white, stuck out of what was left of the finger. Wordlessly, I handed Axel the ring and the lump of flesh it encircled.
He squinted at it, turning it over in his big paw. He looked around the bar again, at the black, stinking goo, the bits of cloth and bone and hair. His hand closed around the ring as he squeezed his eyes shut. He stayed that way for a minute, completely still.
He opened his eyes and walked to the bar, where he set the ring down carefully, gently even. Then Axel did something that, a mere hour ago, I’d have sworn he’d never do. He picked up the phone and called the Goon Squad.
6
BACK BEFORE THE PLAGUE, CREATURE COMFORTS WASN’T A bar. The space had been occupied by one of those thirty-minute circuit-training gyms. Lucky for me. Axel’s storeroom had been a locker room, and it still had a working shower. It was heaven to stand under a stream of hot water and get clean. The Goons, I knew, would be annoyed, but I didn’t care. I couldn’t stand to have that stuff—whatever it was—all over me. Axel had dug out one of the old staff uniforms: a pair of chinos and a black polo shirt with FIT-IN-30 embroidered on the pocket. The clothes were a little big and smelled musty, but they were clean.
By the time I emerged from the storage room, rubbing my hair with a bar towel, the Goons had arrived. Norden and Sykes—damn, I’d hoped their shift had ended—stood talking to Axel as Sykes scribbled in a notebook. All around them, crime scene technicians wearing gloves, surgical masks, and bags over their shoes, swabbed samples of black slime and tweezered up scraps of what used to be T.J., depositing them in plastic bags.
Norden poked Axel with his finger, but the big bartender didn’t seem to notice. He looked over Norden’s head, staring with glassy eyes at the mess. As I came down the hallway, Norden’s head snapped around and he stopped in mid-poke. “I’m not kidding,” he said to Axel, while he kept his beady eyes on me. “This is a murder scene now. You’re going to let us through that door, or I’m going to send for a battering ram and bash it off its hinges.”
Norden stepped in front of me. “You,” he sneered. “I should’ve known. How come whenever something bad happens, you’re right in the middle of it?”
I wasn’t going to bother answering that. “Do you want me to make a statement or not? Because I’d rather be home in bed than hanging around waiting for you to decide if you want to talk to me.” Not that I’d be able to sleep, not after what I’d found here.
“Sykes will take your statement.” Norden shot Axel a significant look. “I’ve gotta make a phone call.”
One booth in the back of the room was relatively slime-free. Sykes and I made our way there and sat down facing each other. Across the room, Norden finished his phone call and went back to poking Axel.
“Why on earth do you put up with that jerk?” I asked.
Sykes shrugged. “We were partners before the plague. After
this
happened”—he gestured to indicate his zombified self—“my choices were join the Goon Squad or quit the force. Elmer could’ve transferred, but he stuck with me.”
I didn’t know which was more of a shock, the fact that Norden had a first name—and it was Elmer—or that he’d taken a job he obviously hated to stay with his partner. If I had to list Norden’s good qualities, I’d say he was rude, annoying, and an all-around prick. Somehow, “loyal” wouldn’t have come to mind.
“Yeah, he’s loyal,” Sykes said, like he’d read my mind. “And he’s braver than you’d think. But you’re right; the guy’s a jerk. Always has been. Even his own mother couldn’t stand him. He swore the feeling was mutual, but he went to visit her at the nursing home twice a week. I don’t know, maybe they enjoyed getting on each other’s nerves. Then she caught pneumonia and died a couple of days before the plague hit.” Sykes tapped his pen on the table. “I’m no psychiatrist, but I always thought he got mad at us zombies for coming back to life while his ma stayed dead.”
I watched Norden poking Axel, to make sure I’d stay mad at the guy. I did
not
want to come down with a case of the warm fuzzies for Elmer Norden. The less I knew about what made him tick, the better.
Sykes flipped a page in his notebook. “So tell me what happened.” He fished a pair of half-moon reading glasses from his pocket and perched them on his nose.
“I found …” I was going to say
the body
, but there was no body. “I found this.” I swept my arm to encompass the horror of the room.
“Start from the beginning. What time did you leave here this morning?”
“Right around closing time. Six, maybe a little before.” As Sykes took notes, I described how I’d realized I’d left my watch at Creature Comforts and how T.J. had promised to drop it off at my building.
“If you expected him to leave it with your doorman, why did you come back here?”
I didn’t feel like explaining that Difethwr had invaded my dream and spooked me. I was already spooked enough by whatever had happened here, so I settled for a half-truth. “I couldn’t sleep. It’s a valuable watch, and I was worried. Since I was awake anyway, I figured I’d save T.J. the trouble. I thought once I had my watch back, I’d quit obsessing about it and be able to sleep.”