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Authors: Hannah Jayne

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BOOK: 6 Under The Final Moon
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“I’d feel better if you let me drive you.”

Normally this kind of chauvinism would grate on me because I like to think I’m a feminist, but after the whole puddle of goo in the face of G.I. Joe Alex, I wasn’t even going to bother.

The streetlights were out along all the avenues so it was slow going.

“So when you were out . . . patrolling,” I started, pinching the skin on my upper lip. “Did anything interesting come up about the quake?”

Alex glanced at me as he took a corner. “What are you talking about?”

I glanced around the empty car as if there were spies everywhere. “Do you think this was a regular earthquake or was it something more . . . supernatural?”

He guided the car down a street that was completely dark, the gaping black windows of each still house looking ominous and foreboding. I pulled my jacket tighter over my shoulder and shifted in my car seat.

“Remember that house over there?” Alex asked, gesturing with his chin.

I squinted to make out the boxy house. “Yeah. That was where we saw the werewolf.” I smiled. “Good bloodthirsty times. You still didn’t answer my question.”

“It was an earthquake, Lawson. If you’re asking if the road split and the devil came tap-dancing up, I’m going to have to say no. It was just an earthquake.”

I picked at a piece of dried rice stuck to my pants. “But the gates of Hell . . . and Sampson just fired me.”

Alex’s brows rose. “He fired you?”

“No exactly fired, fired. But he said that I should make myself scarce until all of this is figured out.”

“What does he mean by ‘all of this’?”

“Armageddon, I’m assuming. Isn’t that what you’re thinking?”

“Look, Lawson, I know I told you about Armentrout. And I know I was the one who told you there might be more to it than you think. But . . .” Alex shook his head. “I just have a hard time buying that this”—he jutted his chin out the windshield—“is . . . that. But then again . . .”

“But then again what?”

“You know what they say about the devil.”

“No, not really.”

“He’s a trickster.”

I rolled my eyes. “Trickster? Sampson said the same thing. So, is this Satan or a ten-year-old boy?”

“He’s into ruses, games.”

“I pose my question again. I don’t know if I should be quaking in my proverbial boots or picking up a stash of lollipops and sling shots.”

“There’s the feisty Lawson I know.”

I waited for him to say, “and love,” but it never came. I shifted in my seat and reminded myself I had bigger fish to fry. “Have you heard anything?”

“Haven’t been on the fallen angel website lately. Didn’t see any apocalyptic tweets.”

He shot me that sexy half smile, and I couldn’t help but smile back. Alex had the uncanny ability to put me at ease, even when he was the one I was always putting into danger.

“Like I said, I’m halfway convinced that if—and that’s a very big, very I’m-not-totally-convinced
if
—we are dealing with Armageddon, the apocalypse, whatever, that it has nothing to do with Satan. It’s probably some
Dennis the Menace
shit like it always is.”

“And you’ve fallen for Satan’s greatest ruse.”

I felt my eyebrows dive down. “What’s that?”

“Convincing the world he doesn’t exist.”

We drove in silence for several blocks, Alex negotiating the police tape and destruction outside, me chewing the inside of my lip and trying to focus on something soft and light like kittens or cotton candy.

It wasn’t working.

“What?” Alex finally asked.

I looked down at my hands. “Nothing.” Pause. “Hey. Can I ask you a question?”

“Do I have to answer it?”

“Let me ask it and you can decide.”

“Deal.”

I did my best to make out his profile in the dim cab. “You used to always be searching . . .” I cleared my throat. “For a way to go back.”

Alex was officially a fallen angel, but he lacked the cold black heart of the real baddies. He wasn’t welcome to go back to grace and he didn’t want to go to the seventh level where the truly fallen live. So he was earthbound—which meant he was never really anywhere.

He gave me a quick glance and went back to studying the road. “I think about it every day. I don’t know why, since it’s useless.”

Again, he shot me a quick look and then looked away. We both knew what he meant—for him to return to grace, he would have to return the Vessel of Souls that he had stolen and subsequently lost. For him to retrieve the Vessel of Souls, he would have to kill me. As murder is a mortal sin, he would be cast back down to Hell. His life cycle was pretty much a theological catch-22 and as the blasted Vessel placeholder, I couldn’t help but feel a little guilty.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to bring it up. I just . . . was wondering.”

I went back to staring out the passenger-side window. Alex snaked an arm across the seat back and laced his fingers in my hair. His touch was soft, the movement intimate. My heart ached for him and I blinked away tears. I knew what it was like not to fit anywhere. I didn’t know what it was like to have a place to go, but no means to ever get there.

 

 

I was sitting on the grass, my skirt spread over my knees. I could feel the way the grass pricked at my palms when I reclined, could feel the slight moisture of the earth against my hands. It was bright—a perfect day, really—and I squinted as the yellow-white sunlight streaked off the ripples of the lake in front of me. I could hear slight murmuring and laughter punctuated by the sound of honking geese. And the laughter again . . . I realized it was coming from me, from my own mouth, as I watched my mother and father facing each other, holding hands and spinning—the way little children do. Just spinning round and round, my mother with her head thrown back, her lips bright red arches as she laughed. My father spun her, laughing too, but his smile didn’t reach his eyes the way hers did.

Suddenly, I was cold. I could feel the bay chill and moisture in the air and I scratched at my bare shoulders as though there were a sweater there. My fingernails were digging into my flesh, dragging angry red lines that burned. I watched, fascinated, as my skin split and dots of blue-red blood bubbled up. The cold was everywhere now and everything was getting louder—the geese honking, then car tires squealing. The crashing sound of windows breaking, a rumble from the bottom of my feet. I knew that buildings were tumbling and my hands went to the grass, grabbing uselessly at blades that broke off. The world was spinning out of control, and when I looked to my parents, their joyous, egg-shaped arc had gone crazy. I was mesmerized by my mother’s bare feet, by the tiny, frantic steps she took, her toes first on the lush green grass, then stepping among shards of broken bottles and glass.

“Mom!” I tried to reach out, but I was rooted to the earth and my voice was lost in the swirl of wind from their movement. “Dad!” I tried again, and this time my voice was thick and strong. My father stopped, snapping to attention, his eyes—an inky, ominous black—laser focused on mine. I watched my parents’ fingers loosen; then his slipped out of hers. She was still reaching, clawing, desperate for him to save her, but he wouldn’t. He stared at me with a tiny, whimsical smile while his hands fell listlessly to his sides and my mother went on spinning—dangerously, wildly out of control. She called for me, but I didn’t answer. I flinched when the water came.

And suddenly, she was gone.

I looked down at my palms and they were red, blood red. I studied the viscous liquid as it oozed through my fingers in steady, velvety sheets.

There was a hand in front of me.

EIGHT

“Come on, Sophie. There’s nothing else to do here. It’s time for us to go.”

I blinked up at my father, then at his outstretched hand. I didn’t remember thinking it or doing it, but my hand slid into his and he laced our fingers together, the blood—
my mother’s blood?
—making a sucking sound when our palms met.

I walked with him, neither of us speaking, until we reached the edge of the lake. Everything inside me froze up, clenched, pulled in. I know my lips were moving. I could hear the sound, far away, but still there.

No, no, no, please, don’t make me

But I—the image of me in the dream—didn’t so much as pause or flinch. I watched myself step into the water, my bare feet instantly covered by the murk, my father stepping in beside me. He had on his shoes, his pressed, slate-colored work slacks, but he didn’t seem to notice. He kept hold of my hand and we walked on, the water rising up over my calves, over my knees. It was at my waist, at my chest, just under my nose, then over my head, but I kept walking, breathing, calm, until there was only blackness in front of me.

“Huuuuuuhhhhh!” I took an enormous, gulping breath of air and sat bolt upright, tossing ChaCha from a deep, doggie sleep onto the floor. I was clawing at my throat, trying to remember how to breathe while blood pulsed through every vein in my body, thundered through my ears, and thudded in my skull. I was sweating and freezing at the same time, trying to shake off the murky lake water—but there was none there.

I looked around my bedroom, stunned, certain that I had been at the lake and then lured here. I could even still feel the blood on my—

“What the heck is going on here?”

Nina flew through the bedroom door and landed a hairbreadth away from me, the cool air wafting from her skin making me shiver even more. I clenched my jaw to keep my teeth from chattering.

“Are you okay? Soph?” She sat back on her haunches, her eyes impossibly wide and darker than I’d ever seen, and snapped in front of my face. “Soph! SOPHIE!”

Vlad was in the doorway, reclining against the frame, arms crossed in front of his chest. His legs were crossed, but his expression didn’t have the calm, unaffected look that he had perfected. He actually looked—fascinated.

Nina snapped again. “Sophie?”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m sorry.” I looked from Vlad to Nina. “I—I just had a bad dream, I guess.” I looked down at my palms again, certain there would be some trace of . . . something there, but they were clean.

Vlad flicked on the lights. “You were breathing hard.”

“And screaming.” Nina threw her arms around me, yanking me to her marble chest and nearly knocking out the breath that I had just managed to catch. “Oh my God, I was so worried. I thought you were hyperventilating or having a heart attack or—”

“Having sex,” Vlad finished.

Nina pinned him with a glare and then turned back to me. “I did not think you were having sex.” Her face softened. “I thought someone may have been attacking you. Or some
thing
.”

I stiffened instantly and licked my lips. “Someone after me? You know of someone coming after me?”

Good God
, I thought.
The last thing I need is someone
else
after me.

“No, just the usual.” Nina smiled helpfully and my comfort level rose not at all. “Do you want to tell me what the dream was about?”

Vlad harrumphed and left the room while Nina scooched up next to me and slid her legs under my blankets. I sighed, my whole body feeling like tightly coiled knots. I propped my pillows up.

“It wasn’t all that creepy—like I wasn’t being chased or anything, but it was scary.”

I don’t know why I was keeping the truth from Nina—my very best friend, the girl who has trusted me with her afterlife and whom I’ve trusted with my
this
life—but for some reason I felt like if I were to say how badly the dream terrified me, it might let it out, make it happen all over again.

“So what happened?”

I was biting my thumbnail, looking off into space, trying to erase the image of my blood-soaked palms, of my father reaching out a hand to me. I’d taken it. I’d taken my father’s hand and abandoned my mother.

My heart started to thud.

“I dreamed about my parents.”

Nina sat up a little straighter. “Your parents, as in plural? Mom and Dad?”

I swallowed hard and nodded. “Uh-huh. It was like my dad—my dad killed my mom.”

Nina’s gaze was sympathetic and she took one of my hands. “Honey, you know that your father did kill your mother.”

It was something horrible that I had learned a few years ago—although I’m not sure it was anymore horrible than thinking that my mother had committed suicide for most of my life. I’d learned that I was there, just a baby, when the noose had gone around my mother’s neck. I’d learned that the swaying feet that I would see now and again in dreams, in snatches of errant thought, were my mother’s. I had sat there and watched her. I had sat there and watched my father put the noose around her neck—
hadn’t I?
Not everything was clear, but even considering the memory shot the same cold stripe of fear down my spine.

“I know, but this time—in the dream, at least—she was happy, first. They were laughing. She must have felt safe.” I could feel the hot prick of tears behind my eyes. “She must have trusted him.”

I felt Nina squeeze my hand, but she just looked away, not saying anything.

“She split from him and spun away, and her blood—her blood was on my hands.”

Nina looked back at me then, sympathetically before she cocked an eyebrow and slipped into her regular, wry Nina-face.

“You had blood on your hands? Her blood? Way to beat the obvious horse with the obvious stick, Sophie’s conscience.”

I laughed despite my complete discomfort. “So my self-conscience is trying to tell me that I feel responsible for my mother’s death? I don’t know why I needed to dream that. I’ve felt that way every moment I’m awake.”

“Driving the point home?”

I shrugged, still uneasy, but feeling slightly better.

“Anything else happen in the dream?”

That was when it hit me—like a burning arrow, searing through my flesh. “My dad. I took his hand and I went with him.”

Nina’s eyes widened. “Like, to Hell?”

“No, to Cleveland. It was a dream! We walked into a lake. With our clothes on. My dad didn’t even care that his suit was getting wet.” A giggle tore through me, slightly maniacal, as I imagined me in my skirt, holding hands with a man who looked like a cross between Walt Disney and every bad red devil Halloween costume ever made. We were stepping into a lake and walking down into the water, chatting about the weather and the Giants, not bothering to notice that the water was creeping up over our chins.

“Not that I ever like dreaming of—of him—but . . .” I shook my head. “It was just a stupid dream.”

Nina was quiet, her eyes wide, her entire body stiff. She still held my hand and her grip was steel.

“Ow! Neens!”

“What?” She blinked furiously and stared down at her hand, then let me slide mine out.

I shook my aching hand, letting the circulation come back. “You’re very comforting when you’re not trying to rip off my limbs.”

She glanced at my flapping hand absently, then quickly scooched out of my bed. “I’m sorry, Soph, I didn’t mean to—” She pointed, then took a step back. “You should probably go back to sleep. We have to work tomorrow.” She turned and headed for the door, slapping the lights off in the process.

“Night, Soph.”

Her voice sounded hollow in the darkness.

I tried to fall back to sleep. I counted sheep, ducks, and the number of times I’d seen Kristen Stewart smile, but I was still wired like a carnival sign in the dead of summer. The dream with my father seemed to sizzle into my periphery each time I closed my eyes, and even though I had dreamed of him before, there was something about this particular dream, something about the way my hand had slipped so easily into his, something about the way I’d instinctually trusted him and never looked back on my mother’s fallen body.

By the time my cell phone chirped I was knee-deep in
Freud’s Dream Theory
and suicidal as the dream apparently meant I wanted to have sex with my father or that I had more than a passing fascination with walk-in vaginas. I snapped up the phone and pressed it to my ear.

“Hello?”

It only chirped again, and I pulled it away and swiped at the screen, the little icon of a police light flashing and bouncing, alerting me that something had come across the police scanner.

Yes, there’s an app for that.

I listened to the recorded message, my stomach starting to burn as the scant details were meted out: double homicide. Marina District. Fire. Suspicious circumstances.

I immediately dialed Alex and was met by his gruff voice mail commanding me to leave a message. Instead, I yanked on my most authoritative yoga pants and sped out the door, guiding my let’s-hope-no-one-blows-up-this-one Honda Civic down the grid of city streets until the blue and red police lights bounced off my front windshield.

I coasted my car to a stop amongst the first-responder vehicles and clicked off the police scanner, tucking my cell into my back pocket. The fog was thinning, but a heavy drizzle was taking its place, obscuring the red and blue police cruiser lights into wild swirls of color against the gray.

A few officers I recognized from the police station were milling about with notepads and pens poised as they talked to neighbors who peered around them, trying to catch a glimpse through the open front door. I cut around them and met Officer Romero at the base of the front porch as he tossed a thick roll of yellow crime scene tape to a pup officer who couldn’t have been more than nineteen years old.

“Romero, what’s going—?”

His eyes flicked over mine, then settled on my forehead as he held out a hand. “I’m sorry, Sophie. This is an active crime scene. I’m going to have to ask you to stay back.”

“It’s an active crime scene, which is why I’m going to have to go in there.” I leaned closer to him and dropped my voice. “I think we can both agree it’s one of mine.”

Romero actually stepped away from me, putting an inch of distance between us that may well have been a mile.

“You’re going to have to stay back.”

“Romero!”

His gaze was steadily avoiding mine, and when I saw a snippet of Alex cross in front of the house’s enormous bay window, I rolled up on my toes and yelled.

“Alex! Alex it’s me!”

I saw Alex’s head cock, and in a minute he was standing in the doorway, pulling off a pair of latex gloves. Romero was standing as solid as the Statue of Liberty so I waited for Alex to come to me, to tell Romero off and pull me inside.

“Hey, Lawson. What are you doing here?”

I gaped. “What do you mean what am I doing here? I think the question is what am I
not
doing here.”

Alex’s eyebrows smashed together. “Come again?”

I gripped Alex by the arm and pulled him into a semi-private corner. “Why did I have to hear about this on the police scanner? This should be my case, Alex. You know it. It’s got Underworld written all over it.”

He threaded his arms in front of his chest. “And tell me how you got to that conclusion.”

“I could show you if you’d just let me in there,” I hissed. “Seriously, I don’t get you, Alex. Three days ago you practically clobber me with the Lance Armentrout thing, and suddenly you don’t want me anywhere near a case that is so obviously mine.”

“Correct me if I’m wrong, Lawson, but aren’t I the detective and you’re the liaison? The one who doesn’t have cases?”

I rolled my eyes. “You know what I mean. Do you want me out of this partnership? If that’s the case, just say the word because remember, Alex, you came to me. You came and asked for my help.”

“Lawson . . .”

“Don’t Lawson me. Answer the question.”

The rain had started to strengthen, and the patter of the drops seemed to roar in my ears. Alex looked at me and looked away, then pinched the bridge of his nose. “It’s not that.”

“Then what is it?”

“Just come on.”

I should be an old pro at crime scenes—this one wasn’t my first and with my luck and penchant for seeking out the dead, nearly dead, and in-the-midst-of-dying, it wouldn’t be my last. We stopped at the front porch and pulled on latex gloves and booties. Then Alex looked over his shoulder at me, his ice-blue eyes grave.

“You ready?”

I batted at the air in an attempt at nonchalance even though my heart was thudding against my rib cage and my stomach was already starting to roil as the foul stench of death wafted through the open door.

Death has an oily, bitter smell that assaults the nostrils and lodges itself as a noxious olfactory memory, an imprint that one can’t shake, no matter how hard she tries. It hit me with a breath-pulling wallop this time, and my eyes started to water as I followed Alex over the threshold.

“The body isn’t fresh?”

“Bodies.”

My mouth filled with the metallic saliva that comes before vomiting, and I braced myself against the doorway, taking one last, refreshing gulp of the fog-tinged San Francisco air.

I expected Alex to shoot me his I-told-you-so look, but his eyes were soft, his touch softer as he rested his hand on my arm. I steeled myself and stepped back into the house, my eyes immediately burning from the smoke I hadn’t known was there.

I coughed. “Smoke?”

“Yeah. The . . .” Alex pursed his lips and swallowed, and I knew that even he was having a hard time with this crime scene. “The bodies were burned.”

I immediately thought of Lance Armentrout, the image of his burned and broken body flashing in my mind, his charcoaled, outstretched fingers clutching
my
business card.

Is that what Alex didn’t want me to see here?

The foyer and dining room of the house were so perfect they looked staged. A brush palm flourished in one corner, its bright green foliage lying delicately over the cocoa brown of an overstuffed leather couch. There was a matching coffee table and a selection of cream-colored accent pillows, the whole effect lending the room an airy, Cuban feeling. I could see where the room would have been inviting, once, before the stench of death swallowed everything.

BOOK: 6 Under The Final Moon
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