Authors: Karina Halle
I turn the corner and start running up to the second level, my feet slipping and I crash to the cement, my hands and knees taking the brunt of it. Everything stings. My skin wet with blood. But I keep going.
There are more cars on this level but no one to be seen. And underneath me, from the first level, I hear fast, heavy footfalls turning into something else. Quicker. More than two legs. Claws scratching on concrete.
An animal scurrying on all fours.
Hunting.
I contemplate continuing to run, but I’m halfway down this level and I know that it will turn the corner and see me before I can get to the next level. Not that I’m trying to pretend I’m not here. It knows I’m here. It’s just I can’t think, I can’t do anything but go where my feet guide me.
I hope my instinct won’t get me killed.
BLAM!
Without warning all the car alarms on the cars go off at the same time, each car turning on, their headlights shining like they’ve all come to life at once and are rioting.
My heart leaps into my throat and for a split second I’m frozen in the middle of the lane, enveloped by the cacophony, before I remember that I don’t have a split second anymore. I duck behind a black Chevy Escalade, moving my body back so that my legs are hidden by the back wheel, my butt to the wall as I’m hunched over.
I’ve literally painted myself into a corner here. I’m not sure what the hell I’m thinking. That I can hide behind a car and the
thing
will simply go away?
But my saving grace comes with an EXIT sign, five spaces down from me, only a little hatchback between me and the staircase leading to freedom. And possibly a demon nun. But mainly freedom.
Suddenly all the car alarms cease, the horns stop honking, the engines still and the space is brought back into a silence so thick it seems to bounce off the walls.
Except there is one sound.
The
tic tic tic
of sharp claws slowly coming my way.
Then the raspy, wheezing breath, not of something having troubles breathing but of something that shouldn’t have lungs to begin with. Something that’s trying out our air for the very first time.
My mouth is sandpaper dry as I hold my breath, trying not to make a sound. I eye the staircase again, calculating how much time I think I have, how close I think it is. I can’t think about the alternative. I can’t think about what happens if I fail.
This is no dream.
This is life or death.
I decide to go for it. It’s now or never.
I burst forth from the Escalade without even a glance behind me and start booking it as fast as my legs will carry me.
It starts running too, what sounds like a fast yet lumbering gallop, like a grizzly picking up speed. It’s coming closer and closer and the exit sign bobs in front of me as I’m one stall down, two, three.
Four.
Almost there!
My hands are in front of me, reaching already for the handle and the thought of it being locked flashes through my mind and there’s hot breath at my back and a gurgling, growling and I can feel the immense heat and dread and utter despair that seems to be thrown over me like a net.
I’m not going to make it.
I cry out in utter sorrow, the last grasp of life slipping in front of my eyes, knowing in the next second the beast will be upon me and it will be too fucking late. I’ll be caught with one hand on the door.
Death is horrible for those left behind. It’s even sadder for the ones who have to die. I never realized how much I loved
life
until I knew it was being taken away.
Then there’s a SNAP and everything warps and bends and the space in front of me becomes a wall I crash into, solid, cold, and then spin off of until my back is flat against the door and I’m facing the other way.
It’s Jay, literally appearing out of thin air, all six-foot two hulking beast of him, ready to take on another beast. He was the wall I bounced into.
He doesn’t even glance back at me, his shoulders are hunched up, muscles and veins in his arms popping as they get ready to what I can only assume is fight the monster.
I see
that
beast now in all its glory. Something so horrible it’s almost indescribable, like my brain can’t make sense of it, as though its protecting itself against future nightmares.
What gets through my eyes to my brain is black matted fur in some places, gaping lesions in other places, filled with eyes and mouths, like the creature has swallowed souls—people—and they’re fighting for a way out through the bloodied skin. There are six-inch claws that attach to legs that belong to a spider, a tail that belongs to a crocodile or serpent and then a face that’s more disturbing than everything else put together. It’s nearly human, like a child but not a child. Innocent and full-cheeked and dead wrong. A bald, elongated head, holes for ears, tiny eyes set so far back in its sockets that they’re nearly in the brain.
Red eyes that burn into mine. Eyes that hold me in place, making my heart and gut and soul double-over from the pain that happens when you stare at pure evil.
We finally meet
, it hisses at me. An inhumane voice, no gender, no emotion. It’s a voice that only brings suffering.
But not for me. Not now.
Because Jay is going for it. He’s not here just to protect me. He’s here to kill this thing.
And I have no idea how.
The beast turns its red child-eyes to him and for a moment it stares at Jay like it recognizes him. A sort of shock that quickly turns to disappointment, if it could ever feel such a thing.
Jay notices this long enough to make him pause.
Then Jay and the beast lunge at each other.
I have no idea what to do. Do I run to safety? Jay isn’t telling me to run. It’s like he wants me to watch.
The fight doesn’t last long though. The beast snaps at Jay with a beak filled with serrated teeth that comes out of its widening child mouth, like a scene from
Aliens
, while its claws go for Jay’s arms.
It gets him too, a gruesome gash across the forearm, then the upper thigh, the stomach. Jay grimaces in pain, blood pouring from his wounds, but it doesn’t stop him from wrapping his large hands around the beast’s neck.
Somewhere, one of the faces from the beast’s wounds screams.
And then…
Jay
rips
the fucking beast’s head
off
with his bare hands.
Like a kid twisting off the head of his teddy bear. One motion clockwise, then one hand pulls the head one way while the other hand pulls the body the other and the garage fills with the sickening sound of flesh and bone and sinew being torn in half.
The head goes flying to the floor with a dog-like whimper, blood spraying across the both of us as it lands with a wet thump.
The body tries vainly to stand, then collapses, twitching once, twice.
It is dead.
Jay killed the beast.
I suck in my breath, trying to breathe, as that moment of stillness comes around me, the type that precedes me fainting.
I crumble to my knees, gasping for air, at the horror that I’ve just seen, at how close that just was, at how unfair this all is, at everything, everything,
everything
.
Jay is crouched beside me, his hands, his decapitating hands, grabbing me by the elbows to keep me from rolling back onto the concrete.
“Did they hurt you?” he asks gently, though there’s a tone of panic in his voice. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” I tell him. Then I look up at his face and know that I’m not.
I burst into tears.
“Hey,” he says softly, sitting down beside me. He wraps his arms around my shoulders and tries to pull me into him.
I resist. Stubborn, even as I’m a hysterical, crying mess.
But then the strength drains out of me and I let him hold me, my face buried into his chest. The tears keep coming, my body wracked by my sobs, so much that they rattle him. But he just holds me and I feel his heart beating. It calms me like nothing else.
The next hour or so is a blur. I’m not even sure if time passes the way I think it has.
One moment I’m crying into Jay and he’s holding me (oh fuck, did it ever feel good to be held) and we are sitting on the second floor of that parking garage for what feels like forever. It could have even been forever—I seem to have a never-ending supply of tears—but the sound of a car entering below brought us to our feet.
The demon wouldn’t be visible to the average person, so it was okay to leave the dismembered body where it was. Shortly it would turn to flames and burn off anyway.
But there was the still the real fact that we were a long way from downtown Portland to my house and Jay obviously hadn’t driven to get me.
Jay took my hand, opened up a portal to the thinnest part of the Veil again (which I’ve now nicknamed the “Thinny”—yes, after
The Dark Tower
series) and while I don’t remember much of what happened next, whether due to the Veil or everything else that happened, I do know that the world became desaturated, like someone playing in Photoshop. My ears popped. Jay took me down the stairs and into the empty streets of Portland and then I was sitting cross-legged in my bedroom.
I still am, leaning back against the headboard and staring at Jay who sits on the edge of the bed, watching me.
“It’s a lot to handle,” he says and I stare at him blankly, trying to piece together the journey over here but coming up blank. He goes on. “I sifted you. It takes a lot of energy from me to do so. Usually I prefer to walk, drive, or run when I’m in the Veil. But there was no other way to get you here in a hurry.”
Now that he mentions it, he looks tired. Dark half-moons under his eyes, though this doesn’t diminish how beautiful he is. It almost enhances him, making him look more rugged and manly than before. Someone with experience, who has experienced more than anyone should. It makes him look more human.
I clear my throat. “At the risk of sounding terribly ungrateful, next time I’m about to encounter a demon or two, you might want to show up earlier.”
He frowns, looking momentarily pained. “I would have. I couldn’t . . . Ada, you put up walls, all the time, I’m sure without meaning to. But they’re there and it makes you nearly impossible to track. It’s only when you’re most frightened that they come down. I’m lucky it wasn’t too late.”
“Lucky,” I repeat. A bit of an understatement. A second later and I would have been dead and for all my faith, I don’t think I would have gone
up
. I would have been dragged down.
“Who was that demon?” I ask, as if it has a name. Still, I remember the way it looked at Jay when they fought, as if it were Caesar, before Brutus stabbed him in the back.
Et tu, Brute?
“And who was the nun?”
“They were both the same demon. In other forms, it can occupy many vessels, appear as many different forms. But in its real form, it can only be one. We call them a Splitter Demon. I didn’t know that one’s name. But it wasn’t Legion.”
“Legion?”
He nods, looking down at his hands. “Legion is notorious. Has been since the dawn of time. You remember the Bible?” I give him a look that says,
are you kidding me?
He ignores it. “Jesus came across a possessed man and was set to exorcise him. He can only do this when he knows the demon’s name—names have true power. And the demon said ‘My name is Legion. And we are many.’”
I can’t help but shudder. “And did he exorcise them? Sorry, my Bible studies are a bit weak—there’s a lot to remember in that book.” My dad would legit cry if he could hear me right now.
“He drove the demons out into a herd of pigs nearby that ran into the lake and drowned. But that was never the end of Legion. The demons come back. They always do. It might take centuries. But they always come back. And Legion, being composed of an army of them, is one of the worst.”
I swallow uneasily. “How can there be worse than what I saw today?”
He flashes me a sour smile. “There is always worse. Today, I did what I can do. But if that were Legion, it wouldn’t be so easy. An army of evil, an army of many, has far more strength than I do.”
“So let me get this straight,” I tell him. “You the other day said that I had to fight these demons. Do you mean, fight them like you? Because, I’m sorry, but there’s no way I’m doing hand-to-hand combat with them. I don’t even know how to throw a proper punch without hurting myself and I hate breaking my nails.”
“There are different ways to fight against them,” he says. “And freezing them, dispelling them, banishing them, is one. No one expects you to wrestle. Though I can’t promise you won’t break a nail, princess.”
His lips twist into a small smile at that. Oh my god, is he actually making fun of me?
I give him a dry look. “Sorry if I’m not laughing. I nearly fucking died . . .” I trail off, suddenly overwhelmed by throat-pinching panic. I suck in a breath, trying to get it in my lungs, the room starting to spin.
Jay is suddenly beside me on the bed, his large mass squeezed between me and the edge, taking my hands in his. “Ada, Ada. Deep breaths.” His voice is so calming, so commanding, I have no choice but to obey. It’s like my body wants to respond to him without my permission.
We sit shoulder-to-shoulder and the warmth from his thermal shirt floods through to mine. It should be awkward, maybe even a bit uncomfortable, being in such close proximity to him. But honestly, it’s anything but. Even though he’s just holding my hand, it feels like it’s something he should do. Like it’s right.
I try not to turn my head even an inch to look at him, far too conscious of how close his face is to mine. I know he’s studying me, as he does, trying to figure me out. He may be my Jacob, but he’s still a rookie, still doesn’t know me no matter how long he’s been watching. I get this feeling that he wants to know, that I’m some puzzle for him to solve, as well as a student to teach and a girl to protect.
The thing is, I want him to solve me. Give me answers to who I am and why I’m this way. Anything other than the fact that it just is what it is.
“Feel better?” he murmurs, giving my hand a firm squeeze.
And I do. My breathing has returned to normal. The room has stopped tilting on its axis. But it doesn’t bury the fear, nor the pain. I’m not sure how far I’d have to shove that shit down to never feel it.
He lets go of my hand and mine feels cold without his skin.
“You’re going to be all right,” he says, his voice low and rough and reaching deep within.
“How?” I manage to ask. “After everything, how?” I swallow, licking my lips and finally have the nerve to turn my head toward his.
His eyes peer into mine, searching, his full lips terribly close. He doesn’t move back—I’m pretty sure he has no notion of personal space.
“You told your friend, didn’t you?” he asks softly.
My eyes drop to his lips. I quickly whisk them upwards. “Amy?”
He waits for me to go on.
I bite my lip and look away, the pain too fresh. “Yeah. How could you tell?”
“Because you’re not just scared. You’re sad.”
Then he puts his fingers on my cheek, pressing slightly. His contact both makes me freeze and supress a shiver. “I can feel that,” he says. “Your emotions.”
Oh great. Yet another partial psychic. An empath.
“Do you even know what feelings mean?” I ask him, rather spitefully.
He doesn’t flinch but he does pause before he says, “I do. I know that hurt. Maybe not as much as it should hurt someone, but it was an insult and I’ll take it as one.”
I dare to meet his eyes. He certainly doesn’t
look
hurt. His expression hasn’t changed at all. “Sorry,” I mumble.
“Don’t be,” he says. “I’m sure that because I’m immortal, you think I’m not quite human. But here’s a secret, Ada,” he leans in until his lips are at my ear, “the longer I’m around you, the more that I’ll
feel
.” He pauses, his breath tickling my ear. I close my eyes to it, to the warmth that floods down my neck. “That’s something that Jacob never told me. I’m not even sure if it’s supposed to happen. But the more time I spend with you . . . the more like you I become.”
He pulls back and I’m left with that heavy, yet strangely flattering, confession. I’m not sure what I should say.
So I awkwardly mumble, “Well, be prepared to become totally awesome.”
He gives me a small smile. “So I take it your time with Amy didn’t go well, then.”
I shake my head, my heart thumping to a sad little beat. “No. It didn’t. It went pretty much as I thought it would.”
“But you still had hope, deep down. Otherwise you wouldn’t be this hurt.”
I sigh and stare down at the blanket. “Yeah. I had hope. Hope that she would be a friend. That she would at least
try
to believe me. I didn’t think her first thought would be that I was lying. I didn’t think her second thought would be that I was nuts. If it were the other way around . . .”
“She’s not you, Ada. She’s someone else entirely. Maybe someone you didn’t really know. She couldn’t have known all that much about you, if you were able to keep all of this a secret.”
I shrug, even though I thought it earlier. “She knew that I was fun to be around and I had a successful fashion blog and I wanted to be a designer and I liked tall guys with goatees . . .”
He scratches at the light scruff along his jaw and chin. “Goatees, huh? Perhaps I should give this wee beard a shave.”
At first I’m struck by the fact that he’s almost flirting with me. Then I’m struck by the fact that for that last sentence, his accent came out totally Irish.
I nearly laugh. “What did you say?”
He gives me a puzzled look, which on his stony face means a very subtle frown. “When?”
“Just then. You sounded Irish.”
He purses his lips and gives a half-shrug. “Not sure what to tell you. But listen. Trust me when I say it’s best that you told Amy now. Any later and it could have been trouble. For both of you.”
I exhale loudly through my nose and look up at the ceiling. There are still faint green star stickers from when I was a little kid. Back then I had no idea what course my life would take.
Or did I? I remember very clearly the way that Perry dealt with seeing things. I didn’t think she was crazy. I didn’t think she was lying either. I was jealous. Because she was part of a world I wasn’t. I must have had some feeling though, deep down, that I would be like her. That I would follow in her footsteps. Maybe that’s why I rebelled so hard against her. I wanted to be like her and that scared me.
“I guess,” I tell him. “I know I’m glad she wasn’t with me when that fucking nun came around. Would she have seen it, if they had showed up?”
He nods. “Yes. The closer a demon gets, the more chances that someone like Amy would see them. And then there’s the fact that you’d be reacting. Your reaction and interaction brings apparitions to life. To the demons, they wouldn’t care if she saw them or not because they’d finish her off the same way they would have finished you.”
I try not to shudder. “And if you hadn’t showed up and ripped its head clean off,” I begin, finding the strength to ask, “what would have happened to me?”
“They would have dragged you to Hell,” he says simply. “That’s where they want you. That’s why they’re pretending to be your mother in your dreams. They want you however they can have you.”
“Why?” I whisper.
“Because you’re you,” he says, his eyes turning warm. “You’re a threat to them. They know what you’re capable of, even if you don’t yet. And you’re special. Anyone with power and abilities is even more enticing to them. If they had possession of you . . . they could do a lot of damage to the world.”
“So that’s why Perry and Dex have always been targets,” I muse softly.
He clears his throat. “Well, yes. But it didn’t help that your sister and brother-in-law purposely sought out situations that put them at direct risk. We’re doing the opposite with you, until you know how to handle yourself. That will take time.”
“How much time?”
The corner of his mouth quirks up and he slowly gets off the bed. “I don’t know. A few years.”
My mouth drops open. “A few years. Of this? Just trying to sleep through the night and not get killed in the day?”
“It will get better,” he says as he stands at the foot of the bed, arms crossed. “What happened to you today was rare. Most of the demons you will see aren’t as strong and won’t have the nerve.”
“And my dreams?” In some ways, the dreams scared me most of all.
“Keep ignoring them. Eventually they’ll give up.”
“Sounds so easy,” I mutter.
“You’re doing good, princess,” he says as he moves to the door and this really irks me. Like he’s treating me like a little kid, even though minutes ago he was whispering in my ear about how I make him feel.