The Five Deaths of Roxanne Love (14 page)

“Get away from him,” she breathed as she fumbled for the handle without taking her eyes off the creature.

It sniffed the air in front of Santo and then warily did it again.

Get away, get away, get away. . . .

Watching with terrified fascination, Roxanne saw it recoil. The reaction came so fast that she almost missed it, and in the next second it returned to all fours and growled. But for that instant it had almost seemed . . . afraid.

Her fingers closed over the handle and she pulled. Nothing happened. She tried again, turning to see it, as if that might bring another outcome. It hit her then. She’d locked, double-locked, triple-checked all the doors. Cursing, she moved to the right, climbed the tire like a step to the hood, and heaved herself up and through the window. She clambered over the console and hit the master button, unlocking all the doors before dropping behind the wheel and gunning the engine to let Santo know she was ready.

“Chidi,” Santo called to the boy as he took a step back toward the van. “Get inside the lobby.”

At last Chidi seemed to comprehend that standing still would only get him killed. The four remaining
creatures growled, fur standing on end down their ridged backs, hungry eyes shifting between the two targets.

Chidi stumbled to the glass wall that looked in on the motel’s lobby entrance, leaving a smear of blood as he used it for support. An overweight clerk now stood just inside, staring out with big eyes and an open mouth. He held a cell phone in his hand, and his gaze moved back and forth from screen to parking lot.

He was recording.

Fury and disbelief warred inside of Roxanne. They were fighting for their lives and the moron was
filming them
?

Chidi paused on the mat that should have triggered the sliding doors to open, but nothing happened. Confused, he jumped on it again and again, still expecting the doors to part. But Roxanne understood in a second what Chidi had yet to comprehend. The clerk had locked the doors.

God in heaven, no.

She snapped her gaze back to Santo, who’d taken his eyes off the beasts to watch Chidi. The creatures advanced, moving like a hunting party, closing in on all three sides. Santo’s back was almost to the van’s sliding door, but he stopped, aimed, and fired, hitting one dead on between the eyes and killing it. He got another with a solid shot to the chest. That one went down with a howl, but an instant later, it regained its feet and came again.

For all the shots she’d heard fired so far, only the ones that Santo had put through the brain had done the job. The beasts were too fast, too sly for him to keep up. He and Roxanne couldn’t count on help, and they couldn’t defeat the creatures if bullets only slowed them. So what could they do?

She revved the engine, distracting the creatures as she yelled at Santo to get in. He fired a spray at the monsters before diving through the sliding door while she shifted the gear and floored it. He tucked his legs inside just as the door slammed shut, catching one of the beasts that had tried to follow at the neck. It snarled, still trying to bite even as Santo shoved his gun in its mouth and pulled the trigger.

Roxanne cranked the wheel, took the van around the horseshoe drive, out one side and back in on the other, adjusting to aim for the glass door. She hit it hard, and the door exploded with a
boom
and a hailstorm of glass. The desk clerk ran for the office with its solid door, but Chidi was right behind him and she had a moment to hope. She thought they’d make it. God, she prayed they’d make it.

They were one step short when the beasts pounced and brought the desk clerk down. She watched in horror as they began to chew and tear at him. Chidi had made it, though, and he had only to close the solid office door to be safe. Of course he didn’t. He came out to help the man who’d ignored his cries of fear and pain.

Everything seemed to slow, and sounds became exaggerated and excruciatingly loud.

A siren, screaming in the distance as it came closer.

The creatures, snarling and slathering as they attacked.

Chidi’s screams, the desk clerk’s shrieks, Santo’s shouts. The
bang, bang
of gunshots. Another creature squealed and went down. And then she heard the heart-stopping click of an empty cartridge. Santo reloaded with lightning speed, but even Roxanne could see that bullets wouldn’t help them. There was no way either the desk clerk or Chidi would escape.

“Look away,” Santo told her as he tugged on her uninjured arm, pulling her from the driver’s seat so he could take her place. He reversed out of the lobby, tires squealing as he cranked the wheel, straightened out, and floored the gas pedal. Tears burned her face as she turned to watch the carnage they left behind. The hellhounds had all converged on the easy prey, but one of them—the big one that had scrutinized Santo with such shrewd eyes—left the party to watch them go.

It didn’t give chase, though. Not this time. But the threat of it hung in the air like the stench of sulfur. Inescapable and foul.

“Roxanne,” Santo said sharply, and she realized he’d been speaking to her. She had no idea what he’d said.

Santo took her hand and squeezed it. “Roxanne, look at me.”

She turned dazed eyes his way, noting the splatter of blood and gore that covered him. Knowing she looked the same.

“How bad are you hurt?” he demanded.

She made a sound that bordered on hysteria, but when she spoke, her voice was eerily calm.

“I’ll live,” she said and then she turned away.

T
he room that Gary assigned to Reece was on the second floor at the top of the stairs. It was an average room in an average house, built at a time when families tended to be big, and wide front porches were mandatory.

And it was out in the middle of fucking nowhere. Seriously.

The view from the front porch was miles and miles of desert. Back porch, same thing. A cultivated lawn butted up to several acres of farmland and pasture, then sand, rock, and cactus for as far as the eye could see. It was like that out here. Oasis in the midst of desert.

Gary’s slaves—for lack of a better word—all worked like busy little bees, tending to the property grounds and doing other odds and ends. The house wore a fresh
coat of blue paint, with blinding white trim and rails. Around the porch, bright flowers grew in nurtured beds. The tended lawn with its winter rye sprouted dark green and lush. A virtual paradise in the bosom of the hostile desert.

After Reece’s stranger-than-fuck meeting with Gary, he’d been given a tour of the compound—that’s what they called it. A compound. In addition to the wannabe-plantation, there were four outbuildings and a greenhouse. One of the buildings held an array of shovels and hoes, rakes and picks, all shiny new. A big John Deere tractor kept company with something that might have been a seeder or just as easily a harvesting machine. Reece didn’t know jack shit about farming, but he’d been told they grew most of their food here. Evidently, Gary wasn’t a fan of preservatives.

Another building had been converted into a training center, with mats for hand-to-hand combat exercises in one corner. A portion of it had been walled off in a skinny chamber that ran the length of the building. Inside he’d found a shooting range complete with targets and safety gear. The third building held weapons—weapons like Reece had only seen in movies about Mexican drug lords. Stacks of automatic and semiautomatic rifles. Boxes of ammo piled to the ceiling. A launcher that looked lethal even unassembled.

“You guys think there’s going to be a war?” he asked, only half joking.

“There already is,” his ugly escort answered. The guy had the worst complexion Reece had ever seen. He looked like he’d never been in the sun, and his eyes were a milky brown, disconcertingly fishy. It took Reece a moment to figure out he wore colored contacts. The man carried the faint scent of rotten eggs.

“What’s in the last building?” Reece asked, eyeing the thick chains and double padlocks on the door. This one had no windows and only one exit.

“None of your fucking business.”

The tour couldn’t have ended fast enough. Reece needed some downtime. A moment to process the insanity that Gary had served up with such finesse and a moment to come to terms with what it meant for him. When Reece returned to his room, he closed the door with relief. But only a few minutes passed before someone knocked. The door didn’t have a lock, and Reece figured it would be pointless to ignore whoever was out there.

“Come in,” he said.

He expected it to be Gary, coming to put the cherry on top of his crazy, but two women stood on the threshold. The first was St. Pauli Girl hot, with big blue eyes, long blond hair, and a scattering of freckles across her nose. She wore a tight T-shirt, no bra, and short shorts with flip-flops. She was creamy-fair like Gary and the ugly guy who’d given him the tour. She gave Reece a big smile and held up a tray.

“Hi. I’m Karen, that’s April,” she said with a drawl that spoke of the South.

She used her chin to point at the silent woman standing beside her, in case he couldn’t figure it out. Where Karen was long, lean, and fair as a summer day, April was petite, compact, and dark as a winter night. Her rich color stood out like a red rose in a field of daisies. He realized she was the only person he’d seen with any color about her at all. Everyone here looked as pasty as cave dwellers in a subzero climate.

April had short hair only a few shades blacker than her skin, full, pouty lips drawn in a tight, disapproving line, and high cheekbones that made her look runway-model arresting, though she didn’t have any makeup on that he could see. Not simply pretty, like Karen. Her suspicious expression alone told him there was little about her that could be termed
simple
at all. But she was beautiful in a complex and interesting way.

She avoided his eyes and ignored the introduction completely. Instead, she hunched in her oversized flannel shirt and baggy jeans, looking like she’d rather be anyplace in the world other than here.

He knew exactly how she felt and liked her for it, despite the frown.

As if she’d heard his thought, she glanced up with an assessing glint in her warm brown eyes.

“Gary sent us with some food,” Karen said, increasing the wattage of her smile as she stepped into the
room. “He thought you might be hungry. He wanted us to be sure you’re settling in okay.”

Hungry? Settling in? His stomach was in knots and he felt about as settled as a rabbit in a pen of pit bulls. Every time he thought of Roxanne and the fake cop who’d abducted her, he wanted to hit something, someone. What if the story Gary had told him was true? What if the world was being invaded by demons?

What if Reece could use that dark thirst inside him, the cravings that yearned to be released, to do some good? That’s what Gary offered him. The chance to fight evil with evil.

As horrible as the idea of demons was, the offer had its appeal. He could hurt things that deserved it. He could unleash those longings on something that needed to die.

“Not hungry?” Karen asked, cocking her head to the side and scrunching up her nose. She was cute, he’d give her that. A little ray of sunshine in this strangely skewed place. By contrast, April hovered just inside the door like an angry thundercloud, clearly not happy to be part of the welcoming committee. Karen gave her a pointed look that didn’t make sense until April quietly shut the door and leaned against it.

Eyeing them both, Reece said, “No, not hungry and hell-and-gone from settled. Just trying to take it all in.”

Karen nodded with understanding and put the tray on his nightstand before making herself at home on the
side of his bed. “I didn’t believe it at first either,” she told him. “But it’s hard not to believe what you’ve seen with your own eyes.”

Curious, Reece pulled the lone chair from the small desk and positioned it in front of the bed where she sat. He almost forgot his manners, but his dad’s voice in his head reprimanded him at the last minute.

“April, would you like a chair?” he asked.

April looked surprised by the offer, but shook her head and continued to lean against the door and ignore him. With a shrug, Reece sat down and turned his attention back to Karen. “So you’ve seen . . . them?” he asked.

Gary had called them demons.
Demons.
But Reece couldn’t bring himself to speak such an outrageous concept.

“I’ve seen them,” Karen said. “They killed my family. April’s, too.”

Reece stared at her, nonplussed, waiting for the punch line. When she didn’t recant, he swung his gaze to April, wishing she’d join them so he could see them both.

“Is that true?” he asked.

April stiffened and gave a terse nod.

“Don’t mind her,” Karen said. “She don’t talk much anymore.”

“Anymore?”

“Since her family got killed.”

“You knew each other before?”

“Oh, sure. We lived right down the street from each other. My family moved north when I was in high school. We rode the bus together.”