Pandora's Box
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Pandora’s Box
Copyright © 2011 by Gracen Miller
ISBN: 978-1-936394-55-5
Cover art by Dara England
All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work, in whole or in part, in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means now known or hereafter invented, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher.
Published by Decadent Publishing Company, LLC
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Pandora’s Box
Book One of The Road to Hell Series
Gracen Miller
~DEDICATION~
Thanks to my husband, Mark, for putting up with a messy house without complaint and for realizing my dreams are as important as his. And to my sons, B and N—no, not the bookstore!—for believing in me and thinking it is a fantastic idea to tell all your teachers I'm an author.
In memory of the real "Madison", an angel that died much too young. May you rest in peace knowing you are loved and your memory will never die.
To the real "Alessa"…thank you so much for all the effort you put into helping me with this book. Thanks for enduring the long talks about Nix and Mads and for all the advice you offered. No doubt, you probably crossed your eyes and banged your head against the nearest wall more than once. You're a gem and the best non-blood twin a girl could have!
To my Brigade family—you know who you are—without you gals, my life would be boring. You all inspire me in so many ways!
Chapter One
“What?” Madison Wescott said with a mixture of disbelief and irritation. She considered her son, Amos, and adamant denial surged in the form of a pounding headache. She’d come to the doctor for answers and this screwed-up diagnosis was what she got?
“Ms. Wescott, all the tests came back normal.” The doctor scratched his chin. The idea of him being intrigued over her son’s dilemma pissed her off. She forced aside the urge to whack him with her purse. “Everything except the anomaly with his blood.” As he said this, he scrunched his features as if the abnormality still perplexed him. “Fascin–”
When his glance landed on her hands twisting into tight fists in her lap, a flash of wariness became evident in his ordinary brown eyes. His insensitive choice of words made her want to pop him in the eye. She settled on giving him a contemptuous stare.
The doctor cleared his throat, his Adam’s apple bobbing nervously. He failed to meet her gaze as he continued, “Otherwise, I can assure you there is nothing physically wrong with him.”
“Just psychologically?” she drawled with enough sarcasm to frighten a heavyweight boxer.
“With the right psychiatrist and medication…Um….”
She would not drug her child into a zombie state so everyone could cope with his condition. He was already a zombie without medication.
“We think—” so refreshing the doctor only thought and didn’t have a damn solid answer, “—he can live a relatively normal life with medication.”
“Relatively?” she echoed, baffled at how the doctor could think his diagnosis would make her feel better.
“Dissociative Identity Disorders are not the end of the world, Ms. Wescott.”
Dissociative Identity Disorder my ass!
The new, feel-good medical terminology for multiple personalities. Something else plagued her child. Putting a nice, neat, medical nametag on the disorder didn’t alter the diagnosis or make her feel any freaking better.
Although…. She stared at her son. He sat on the table, his legs swishing back and forth like any high-energy child. Amos glared at the doctor with enough malice blazing from his baby blue eyes to send shivers of uneasy dread scuttling up her spine. Yeah, she couldn’t deny something was amiss, but she trusted her gut, and it said something more than Multiple Personality Disorder troubled him.
Two months ago, he’d been a happy, healthy, normal child; one who giggled often and adored his feline and canine companions. The next day, he’d been mute and homicidal.
He snapped the cat’s neck the first week of the change, receiving multiple scratches before he managed feline murder. Five years old, and he displayed a marked increase in strength. Explaining the violent incident in the emergency room would have been difficult in the best scenarios. She endured hostile glances from the medical personnel, certain they whispered about her being a bad mother. She read the silent warning in their eyes and knew Social Services would be called if it happened again. If she thought they would help, she’d call them herself. Either way, she didn’t want or need a repeat performance of the event ever again.
The dog came next. Amos sliced and diced her with a kitchen carving knife, and Madison had no idea how or when he procured the weapon. She left him playing alone in the fenced-in backyard long enough to pour a glass of iced tea, couldn’t have been more than five minutes at most. When she returned, she found him and the dog on the back porch. Blood everywhere. Amos’s blond hair had been speckled with the stuff, his pale face splotched red, his hands coated to his elbows like he’d used the hemoglobin as lotion. The clothes on his chest blossomed with the substance, as if he’d wallowed in the sanguine fluid. The smile on his face…her hands trembled at the memory. She’d choked on a scream and retched over the side of the railing until she could do nothing more than dry heave.
Amos had caught a fly, and she’d been amazed at his quick reflexes. Afterward, he tortured it, holding it steady with his fingers while he pulled off its legs before moving on to those fragile wings. Stunned by his ability to inflict torture without emotion, she’d stood immobile until the last moment when she’d slapped the insect out of his hand. Those horrible incidences heralded the beginning of his atrocities.
Twice he’d tried to stab her, slicing her upper thigh the second time. As she stitched the wound herself, she contemplated what she’d done wrong when she hid all the knives on the top shelf of her bedroom closet. How had Amos reached them? When the gash turned an angry shade of red, she worried about infection. She’d slathered the wound with antibiotic ointment, added warm, salty compresses, and luckily, the cut healed after two months. Still tender, she would wear the ragged scar of her son’s attack for the remainder of her life, but she refused to give up on him, or allow anyone to know the total truth of his ferocity. The protective instincts of motherhood had kicked in. Nothing on earth could force her to betray him.
He’d kicked, scratched, and bitten her more times than she could count. When each violent episode ceased—sometimes he snapped out of it in the middle of the rage—he would collapse in her arms. Often, he dropped into a coma-like sleep. Other times, he sobbed until exhausted sleep claimed him. His heartbreak broke her heart.
The doctor didn’t seem to notice her distress—just as well—and continued in his patronizing tone. “This disorder always involves some sort of trauma, Ms. Wescott. Your frank honesty can help us determine the trigger and proceed accordingly.”
She ground her teeth hard. “Nothing has changed in his life.”
Shortly after Amos turned two, her husband walked out the door. Not a word from him in the three years since. In those ensuing years, they moved through the routine of normal life and birthdays without his father.
“I’m sure if you would consider—”
“Enough!” The doctor flinched in surprise as Madison came to her feet with a snap. She sent him a hostile glare, snatched up her purse, and held her hand out to Amos. “Let’s go, baby.”
Amos pushed off the examination table while the doctor’s mouth opened and closed like a fish. Her son smiled at him, his docile expression still somehow reeking of evil intent. It creeped her out when her baby gave such an iniquitous, yet smug glare. She couldn’t explain the expression. Something about his eyes screeched not just evil, but also malevolence.
A pungent aroma reminded her of rotten eggs. She put a finger to her nose, but nothing helped obliterate the stench. It had become stronger lately. God-awful described the scent perfectly. Madison peered at the doctor. “Do you smell that?”
“Sulfur,” he whispered, his face pale as rice paper. The doctor gawked at her son. He tossed the chart aside, jumped to his feet, knees popping, and said in a wobbly voice, “Ms. Wescott, I don’t think you should walk out that door.” He stared at Amos, not sparing her a single glance through his statement.
The doctor’s hands shook and fear parted his mouth. Wondering at his sudden alarm, she peeked at Amos. A fiery orange glow surrounded the outer perimeter of his blue eyes. The color arrived with each of his violent episodes. The child blinked, and the color dissipated.
“We really must put him somewhere we can watch him around the clock and run tests, so we can find out what’s causing his problem.”
Her narrow-eyed gaze snapped to him. “No.” More tests with no answers weren’t an option. As long as she breathed, her son would never become a lab rat. “He does not leave me. Ever.”
Anyone who tried to take him would be a dead man.
Chapter Two
Madison chewed on her fingernail. Through her window, she watched her neighbor staple up a missing pet poster across the street. “Fluffy” numbered the eighth missing animal that month. Would her nightmare ever end?
She released the curtain, turned with the sound of the heavy fabric swishing behind her, and walked to the liquor cabinet. Not normally a drinker except on special occasions and then usually only wine or champagne, Madison stared at the few bottles of spirits that lined the shelf. Jack Daniels really, really wanted to be her companion, or at least her amnesiac friend. Only stupidity would drive her to drink to oblivion, because drunkenness would resolve nothing. On the morrow, she’d awake with a hangover and the reality her problems hadn’t changed at all, or arise to a new horror that Amos had committed while she’d been passed out.
She rubbed her eyes with a tired sigh. Eight missing animals on one street, all of them dead by Amos’s hand. The proof of his deeds lay bloody and deceased in her home each morning. It’d been two months since the doctor visit, and things were decidedly worse. Denial hadn’t helped her son get better, so a couple of days after the appointment, she called the doctor and asked for the medicine to help his Dissociative Identity Disorder. The pharmaceuticals accomplished nothing. A month after starting the prescription, her five-year-old baby sat at the dinner table and explained how he planned to rip her apart and celebrate by taking a bath in her blood. He’d been heavily medicated at the time. Afterward, he went selectively mute…again.
Two of the three psychiatrists the doctor referred her to passed Amos off to another doctor for treatment. During the consultation, the third doctor ran from the office screaming about “Satan’s spawn,” very unprofessional in her opinion, not to mention melodramatic. Confused how to proceed, she returned home from the botched third psychiatrist meeting to find a nasty message from him on her answering machine, telling her nothing short of an exorcism or death would help Amos. He ended with a demand she not call his office again or he’d have a restraining order placed against her.
Two months and three days after the last doctor visit, Amos’s deeds were escalating. Butchering the neighborhood pets in late night romps and sneaking them back into their home to leave the evidence all about. God help her, bringing mutilated animals into her bed on more than one occasion. After committing animal murder, he would climb back into bed covered in his victim’s blood and sleep the remainder of the night.
She relocated him to her bedroom, hoping she’d wake when he climbed out of bed. For the first time in her life, she became a dead sleeper rather than a light sleeper. She lived in a constant state of panic, wondering if Amos would ever get better or if her neighbors would discover his jaunts. What would they think if they learned the lengths she would go to cover up his murderous acts? She tried not to contemplate her ultimate fear of his victims becoming the two-legged variety.
Using an alias and going against her belief—or rather non-belief—she went to the Catholic Church. A priest performed an exorcism. Nothing changed.
She visited an herbalist. They administered herbs and performed an incantation, incense smoke clogged up her sinuses. Again, nothing changed.
In desperation, she turned to a witch doctor. He conducted his ritual, and still nothing changed.
Recently, she’d contacted her umpteenth psychic, Georgie, who claimed to have all the answers. Georgie said she was in Kansas that week, but she would send help to Alabama soon. The psychic talked a good game, but being jaded came with a lot of trust issues. A nervous giggle jerked through Madison.
We’re not in Kansas anymore.
She ran a hand down her face. She’d started doubting her sanity. She’d even doubted Georgie’s sanity when she suggested Amos caused her heavier sleep pattern to carry out his vicious escapades unhampered. Impossible, right?
Georgie cautioned that evil lurked near, a depravity she couldn’t contain. One to devour Madison’s soul if she weren’t careful. The psychic’s hellfire and brimstone prophecy pushed belief boundaries too much for Madison to accept without proof.
She shook her head. Satan? She wasn’t even sure she believed in him or his demons. Her Christian parents would think her blasphemous, but if wickedness existed, her parents couldn’t help her with this dilemma because they were dead. Seven years in the grave.
Regardless of religious beliefs, Georgie refused to explain further, just promised help. Madison had yet to see any assistance. With each passing day, hope grew distant and out of reach, a smoky mist she couldn’t wrap her fingers around.
With defeat as her constant companion, a weight heavy on her shoulders, she wasn’t ready to give up fighting for Amos. Not yet. She shut the liquor cabinet, turned, and walked up the stairs to check on Amos.
She found him in his bedroom, sitting on the floor at the foot of his bed. Cars littered the floor around him. The tip of a knife rested in the palm of his hand, the handle horizontal and spinning, unaided by touch.
All the knives had been removed from her home, so where had he acquired that one?
Madison closed her eyes, counted to ten, and prayed she hallucinated. She opened her eyes and felt her heart lurch into her lungs. Nothing had changed!
Blackness narrowed her vision; she struggled to maintain consciousness. Amos turned his head toward her, his eyes shining with the strange, orange glow, and his wide-eyed expression articulated without words, “Look what I can do!”
He came at her so fast she barely released a half-scream before he kicked her feet out from under her. She hit the floor hard, the breath whooshing from her lungs, her teeth jarring together. He jumped on her before she gasped. Instinct took over, thank God. The blade glinted—serrated, odd she noticed something so trivial—as he slashed it toward her neck. She caught his wrist an inch from her throat.
***
Nix stepped out of his 1968 Dodge Charger and leaned against the driver’s side door, waiting for his uncle, James Birmingham, to join him. Taking in the picturesque neighborhood, he noted perfect lawns and picket fences straight out of Desperate Housewives. A wide, wrap-around porch engulfed the stately, historic-looking yellow house. Blooming plants hung from the eaves, and a white swing swayed in the breeze where the porch wrapped to the other side. This was how the rich and cultivated lived. He felt as out of place as a redneck president in the White House.
Nothing appeared wrong, but experience taught him appearances could be deceiving. Besides, Aunt Georgie had forewarned something sinister traumatized the family within, and rarely were her visions wrong. Her worry bothered him because she never fretted over any client’s problems. Knowing a demon stalked the woman and boy inside this moneyed home bothered his aunt profoundly.
Demons were bad news for anyone. Unlike the garden variety ghost, Hell’s spawn were wily bastards and before one could be eliminated, the exact kind must be assessed.
The worst of the breeds were the Kings of Hell. No one he knew personally had ever bumped into one, and at best, the Sherlocks—a network of folks like himself who hunted supernatural creatures—only knew sketchy information about them. What they believed but couldn’t confirm without a Q&A session with one was that they were the first four angels to fall from Heaven. They all knew Lucifer fell first, since he led the war against God and His human creation. The fallen angels possessed their own bodies and were holy by nature, which meant holy water and crosses caused them to suffer no harm. Exorcisms expelled baseborn demons from their human hosts, yet would most likely only piss off a King. Sherlocks were uncertain if a King could be defeated at all. A scary prospect in his line of work.
Unfortunately, Aunt Georgie couldn’t lock down the exact type of beast terrorizing this family. Which meant Nix and his uncle would have to wait until the creature showed itself before they would know how to get rid of it.
What did the hell spawn want with this child and mother anyway? Neither was sick—at least not sick in the way to indicate they were dealing with a Plague Demon. A Cardinal Demon could be involved if the child went homicidal, but to his knowledge, Cardinals weren’t known to possess children.
Nix ran his hand across his mouth and watched his uncle come around the front of the Charger. “You sure Aunt Georgie got the address right?” Nix asked, looking up at the swanky, two-story home.
“Yeah.” James sighed. “The owner contacted her. Georgie said Ms. Wescott sounded desperate.”
“I don’t know, Uncle James. This doesn’t look like the local hotspot for demonic activity.”
James shrugged.
They’d seen stranger. “High class demon. That’s unusual.” Most of their clients weren’t living the high life, they were down on their luck or one step from the grave, which was where a demon always put them.
“Yeah.”
They rapped on the door and waited. Nix peered at his uncle, rolling on the balls of his feet, hands tucked into his pockets. James’s wrist flexed to knock again, when the scream ripped from inside. They tossed a silent glance at each other, before the older man kicked the door in. A crash from upstairs and Nix climbed the flight two steps at a time, his uncle racing behind him.
Throwing the door open, Nix caught sight of a towheaded boy, not more than five or six, straddling a woman, a blade in his hand. The woman clutched the child’s thin wrist and struggled to keep him from carving her up. Her grunts and groans were barely audible over the boy’s high-pitched cackles. From the looks of the gash on her throat, a slim line of blood winding back into her blonde hair, the boy was serious about killing her. The woman was no match against the child. Logically, she should’ve possessed more strength than he did, yet she resided on the losing end of the battle. When Nix reached the scuffling duo, he grabbed the boy by the collar, and yanked him off the woman.
The child shrieked. The inhuman sound abruptly stopped, and the boy whipped around. The blade glinted in the sunlight coming through the bedroom window. He sliced down.
The blade caught Nix on the forearm. Blood bloomed. “Son-of-a—”
He jumped back as the boy slashed again, a rabid gleam in his eyes that made Stephen King’s Cujo look tame. The weirdness failed to stop there. The child flew at him, his bright blue eyes rimmed in a wide orange ring. Fast and strong neglected to adequately depict the boy’s technique. Impressed by the youngster’s ability, Nix could appreciate being an extra in a Chucky horror flick if he knew it wasn’t real. But this….
The blonde woman jumped to her feet and screamed, “Amos, stop it!”
The boy ignored her, grinning at him as he tossed the blade back and forth between his hands. The child’s strange behavior promised retribution in the worst, bloodiest way. Nix absorbed the notion the child might possibly be able to back up the taunt. James sputtered a Gregorian exorcism and the kid abruptly stopped.
Almost simultaneously, the woman repeated James’s chant, impressing Nix with her ability to pronounce the Latin words. Impressing him further by thinking on her feet and hopefully understanding they were there to provide assistance.
The youngster’s head whipped around at an unnatural angle to glare at his mother. He wagged his finger at her and seconds later, she slammed against the wall, crashed into the bedside table, and knocked over the lamp. Shattered glass pinged against the hardwood and filled the eerie moment. The boy cocked his head to the side and eyed James. Less daunting smiles had curved the lips of sadistic demons engaged in perverse torture.
“Sulfur,” Nix said. The room reeked with the mineral’s tang.
James nodded, yet said nothing as he focused on chanting the Latin words. The woman managed to crawl to her feet, repeating his uncle’s phrases in a breathless whisper. She stepped up behind the boy. Astonished, Nix watched her reach for the child.
Gutsy. Bold. Foolish. Death wish. All those words came to mind.
When she placed her hands on his shoulders, the boy collapsed in her arms, to all appearances peacefully asleep.
“What the hell was that about?” Nix panted, breathless from fighting off the nearly rabid boy.
When the woman lifted her blonde head, her blue eyes—the exact shade of the child’s—rendered him motionless. What a babe.
Tall, leggy, and full breasted. Just his type of woman. Not that his tastes were discriminating. Sometimes this job held perks, and right now he stared at a sexy perk.
The woman stared at them, mistrust evident in her blue eyes. “Who the heck are you?”
“James Birmingham, ma’am,” his uncle said. She glared at his extended hand, hers full with the limp child. James approached her cautiously, nodding toward the boy. “Let me.” He moved to take the youngster from her. She pulled away, mistrust stark in her gaze.
With a grunt, she lifted her son and placed him on the bed, straightening his limbs and tucking the covers under his legs. When she turned to face them, she glanced at Nix. “And you are?”
“Phoenix Birmingham. Nix to my friends.”
She sized them both up, but Nix couldn’t tell from her blank expression what she decided. Trust apparently not established, she remained near her son.
“You’re Madison Wescott?” James asked. Nix continued to watch her and witnessed the flinch of surprise when his uncle said her name. “Georgie sent us.”
She nodded at the boy. “This is my son, Amos.”
“The problem Georgie spoke of,” James confirmed.
“Yes.”
“May I?” he asked. She nodded and James pulled a small cylinder out of his pocket. Engineered by brainy Sherlocks to look like breath freshener, the container held holy water. Uncle James depressed the tip, spraying his fingers with the liquid, and marked a cross on the boy’s forehead.
Nothing happened. James glanced at Nix. “He’s not possessed,” he said, shrugging.
The Gregorian exorcism had also pulled zero out of the child, which indicated nothing demonic resided within him.
Madison spoke up. “Something is possessing him.”