Sanctuary (12 page)

Thorn wasn’t even sure why he’d chosen this as his last stand. Saving these humans was something that the Enemy would want—not the enemy swarming just outside the car, but the Enemy far above, watching down on them all.
How am I supposed to convince Crystal and Cole that their lives have vital purposes when I’m so lost myself?

As the Judge completely left Crystal’s mind and slunk into the back seat, Thorn repressed his pain, leaned Virgil into the front of the car, shifted it into park, and grabbed the keys from the ignition.

“What? Hey, give me the keys.” Crystal still looked panicky, and rightfully so. Hundreds of monsters she couldn’t see were crowding around the car, staring in at them. “How’d you stop the car?”

Cole chimed in. “What’s happening? Virgil, please give back the keys, and we’ll go back to the condo where it’s safe.”

“With Brandon?” Crystal shook her head.

“I’ll take care of him if it comes to it,” Thorn said.

Cole started dialing on his cell. “Maybe I can get ahold of one of the other residents and ask for help.”

“There are no other residents,” Thorn said. “Not tonight. You two and Brandon are the only humans left.”
Until the damn cops you called show up.

“Huh?”

Thorn realized he’d been neglecting Cole in favor of Crystal, so he repositioned Virgil’s body to give the blind entrepreneur in the passenger seat better eye contact. “Cole, tell me about yourself. What do you often think about? What worries you?”

“I’m worried that we’re stuck in a car with a lunatic.”

Thorn ignored the jab. “Are you worried about Brandon? Do you have any pending, uh, choices you’re considering? How is your relationship with each other?” Thorn noted that Crystal huffed at that last question.

“Mind if I ask why you give a shit?” Cole said.

“I can’t tell you. I don’t want to affect—”

Cole suddenly snatched the keys from out of his hand. “Okay then. Let’s go.”

Thorn could have retaliated and seized the keys back from Cole, but it wouldn’t have gone far toward earning the humans’ trust.
I might as well tell them the truth.
Cole started the ignition and gestured for Crystal to drive forward. “Wherever you want, love. The police station or the condo. I trust you.”

Crystal gazed at him for a moment, a faint smile on her lips.

“Millions of choices in a life,” Thorn began, before she could start driving. Crystal’s and Cole’s attention turned back to Virgil. “Every moment is a choice. But there are a few, just a few choices, powerful enough to define a life. Before dawn, both of you will have to make such a choice. I have no idea what those choices are, and I need your help to—”

Scratch
. All three of them froze. Thorn looked over at the Judge, who was still brooding in the corner, nearly motionless.

Scratch
. This time the noise was accompanied by an icy cracking sound. A long scrape had formed on the driver’s window, running from top to bottom. Crystal eyed it with trepidation.

“They’re just trying to scare us. They can’t get in.” Thorn said this to comfort the humans, but he wasn’t so sure it was true. The thicker windows of the condo would have taken days for the demons to break. These car windows, on the other hand…

Crystal stared at the empty air outside her door. She exchanged a frightened glance with Thorn.

“Guys, what’s happening?” Cole asked.

Scratch
. This one came from the window to Thorn’s left. “We know what you did, Thorn,” one of the disheveled beings outside the car said. “You kill our leader.”

I didn’t mean to
, Thorn wanted to say.
Marcus tricked me into it so that you would seek vengeance on me.
But he kept silent. He wouldn’t give these vile creatures the dignity of argument.

“It not too late, Thorn. We can forgive. Come out to us. Join us. Or better choice, murder the humans to prove we should let you live.”

Thorn had seldom been in situations as dire as this, and the derision from his own kind made his fear even harder to swallow. Months ago he would have enjoyed these creatures’ adulation. But now, whoever killed him here tonight… would be made a hero.

Suddenly, every demon in the mob raised their hands and dug into all the windows simultaneously. Hundreds of scratches creaked down the safety glass, and a shrill cacophony blared through the car.

“We need to move,” Thorn said.

“Where?”

“The parking garage at the condo is gated, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Let’s go there. Fast.”

For once, Crystal did as he asked.

Brandon stood in a corner of Crystal’s bedroom, by a window overlooking the bizarre scene ten floors below. Heather’s mutilated wreck of a body had been broken in dozens of places, crushed by her own car. Yet that same body had thrashed on the ground for the last several minutes, prying off her fingernails in the process of trying to stand up, which she couldn’t do with all those broken bones. She’d only stopped squirming about thirty seconds ago, long after she should have died from her injuries. Her intestines were spilled out on the ground a short distance away, perhaps dragged along by the car as it made its escape. The grisly tableau disturbed even Brandon: he’d grown quite fond of Heather. And now she was dead and disemboweled.

If any one of us dies, who notices? We are all just specks on a tiny planet circling one small star in all of space.

He had his gun now, snug in his back pocket, but he might not need it. It was mostly a precaution against Virgil, in case the lunatic returned and assaulted him again. That the guard was alive and spry after his leap from the balcony offered even more reason to fear him, whatever he was. A bullet to the head would shut him up though, and Brandon could probably even excuse it as self-defense, what with Castle Doctrine and all that. He wouldn’t have such luck if he killed Crystal, but that wouldn’t stop him; sometime in the next few days he’d find her, and he wouldn’t hesitate to end her life. If she were to pop out the kid—
his
kid—Brandon’s future with Cole would be compromised, and worse, his bank account would be decimated by all the child support he’d have to pay that freeloading bitch over the next eighteen years. He wouldn’t let himself go through that nightmare again. Brandon would rather die than let himself become a victim of the weak’s underhanded war against the strong. And now that he knew the kid was a piece of him, he’d feel justified in destroying it along with Crystal. Then, even if Cole turned him in, Brandon wasn’t afraid of suicide. It’d be a small price to pay for victory.

Go out with a bang instead of a whimper.

Brandon had changed into a comfortable black T-shirt. Had he not been watching zombie girl get vivisected outside, he could almost have pretended this was just another casual night at home, with Cole and his whore out for the evening. If only.

Living is not good or bad. Dying is not good or bad. The Universe does not care about me, so I do not care about the Universe.

Heather’s car rounded the corner and drove back through the condo’s entrance, with Crystal still at the wheel. Why were they coming back? Didn’t they know he’d be waiting here for them?

Brandon shed a tear for Heather, or maybe for himself, but wiped it aside the instant it left his eye.

I am indifferent.

Crystal peeked through the scrapes covering the windshield to see the parking garage gate clinking open. She checked on Virgil via the rearview mirror and noticed him scanning the area just outside the garage. “Something’s wrong,” he said. “They’re all going back up to the windows outside Cole’s condo unit. None of them followed us here.”

“Maybe Brandon’s doing something to distract them,” Crystal said. She’d decided to play along with Virgil. Maybe she even half-believed him. All she knew was she’d never seen anything like what she’d just seen in the city—whole new places just appearing out of nowhere—and it had really freaked her out. She still wasn’t sure that returning here would be the safest option, but Virgil did seem to want to help her and Cole, and after the drive she’d just taken, she was starting to think maybe he wasn’t completely off his rocker.

“Maybe you’re right,” he said. “Regardless, they let us go.”

“What does that mean?”

“I’m not sure. We should get upstairs quickly. Be careful.”

Crystal eased the car through the entryway, and Cole clicked his fob to close the gate behind them. She drove into the fluorescent-lit garage, the car’s wheels crunching dried leaves against the concrete floor. And just as Virgil had claimed, the place was empty. The other residents’ vehicles were gone. Every last one of them.
Creepy.

Crystal parked next to the elevator that would take them right up to Cole’s front door. Virgil left the car first, cautiously. “I think we’re safe,” he said. He hit the up button and waited.

Crystal shut her door and walked around to help Cole. He took her right hand in both of his, massaging it warmly as she led him toward the elevator. His touch comforted her in spite of their fighting earlier, but Crystal doubted she’d feel safe in this condo anytime soon.

She disagreed with a lot of her mom’s weird beliefs, but still, she wished she were here. Her mom thought she knew everything, which was annoying, but at least it meant she always had an answer—and though her answers might sound as crazy as Virgil’s ramblings, Crystal could trust her mom more than she could Virgil, or even Cole.

Hmm.
Now that she thought about it, she knew exactly what her mom would ask in this situation. Maybe her mom’s superstitions had made Crystal paranoid, but with tonight’s emotional devastation and strange happenings, she thought it might make sense to relay the question to Virgil, if only to see how he’d respond.

“Are we dead?” Crystal asked.

Virgil glanced back toward her as the numbers above the elevator counted down. Five, four, three. “What do you mean?”

“Are we in Hell? We’re dead?”

Virgil chuckled at that. He turned to face her. “On the contrary. You haven’t even been born yet.”

DING. Just before the doors opened, Virgil’s eyes glazed over, and his body went limp. He fell lifelessly onto the pavement. Then the elevator doors parted and beckoned Crystal inside. All was silent except the elevator’s low hum as Crystal and Cole stared at Virgil’s crumpled body.

“What happened?” Cole asked.

Crystal let go of Cole’s hand and stepped cautiously toward the fallen security guard. “Virgil?”

DING. The doors closed. Crystal nudged Virgil’s shoulder. “Virgil? You okay?”

Virgil’s whole body spasmed, his head jerking wildly from side to side. Startled, Crystal jumped back, but Virgil soon calmed. He blinked, then opened his eyes entirely, gazing groggily at Crystal like he’d just woken from a long sleep. “Are you okay?” Crystal asked him again.

Virgil stumbled to his feet and kept watching Crystal with that kooky, faraway look. “Yeah. I’m good. Uh… I don’t think elevator is safe. Let’s take stairs.” Even his voice sounded different. Deeper, with something like a slight drunken drawl. But Virgil had saved her life tonight—certainly from Brandon, and possibly from something else—so she decided to listen to him for now.

Virgil held the door to the stairwell open for her. She took Cole’s hand again, and led him through.

Thorn screamed, but of course they couldn’t hear him. He was trapped in the elevator, and they were… where? Still outside in the garage? Taking the stairs? Slaughtered?

The demon’s ambush had been perfect. It hid behind a corner then attacked him just as the elevator doors opened, forcing his spirit out of Virgil’s body. Then when Thorn had fought back, the demon had confined him in this metal prison, where Thorn would be trapped until they came to kill him again. Thorn hadn’t seen it coming, hadn’t expected a threat from inside the otherwise empty garage. When had the demon entered? The gate was the only way inside.

Now Thorn’s attacker would acquire Virgil’s body, and thus have direct access to the physical world. If Crystal and Cole hadn’t been murdered already, they would be in a matter of minutes, maybe seconds. The Judge was still with them, but what would he do? Stand by and watch? Participate? Thorn repeatedly jammed his thumb on the button for floor ten, but it wouldn’t budge. He searched for an exit; he had to escape this elevator, or all was lost.

Not for the first time tonight, Thorn wondered why the Enemy above never interceded when a Sanctuary was invaded by demons. Even the name “Sanctuary,” coined by the angels, implied that demonic assaults like this one should be impossible.
If You ever intervene in Sanctuaries
, Thorn prayed, though prayer was foreign to him and felt sour on his tongue,
I could use that intervention now.

Thorn suspected, however, that they were all alone. Just like always.

Crystal wanted answers, but Virgil just shrugged or grunted at any question she asked him as they climbed the ten flights of stairs, so at some point around the fifth floor she simply stopped asking questions. Besides, she was still a little scared of him. The trio slogged up the rest of the steps in silence, leaving Crystal to worry about being cooped up here with Brandon all night, and how the police would fit into Virgil’s crazy plans, and about the young life inside her. Crystal was only twelve weeks along, so she hoped that the baby would be okay in spite of this wild night.

Her thoughts wandered to Heather, and how she couldn’t wrap her mind around her friend’s passing. Heather was still so alive and vivid in her memory that Crystal had a hard time grieving, even though she knew Heather’s death was a fact. And what would happen to Heather’s son, Benjamin? If Crystal could get her own life straight, maybe she could take care of him. She’d figure the money part out later.

A door from the stairs led into Cole’s service hallway. From there they took a shortcut through the laundry room. Crystal grew tense as she approached the door into the condo unit’s kitchen.

Arms crossed, face impassive, Brandon waited by the sink, blocking their passage to the expansive living room. His face was still bruised, but he looked like he’d cleaned himself up while they were gone. Virgil took in the condo’s chandelier, the room’s elaborate lighting scheme, and its plush furniture with the same wide eyes Crystal had had when she first saw it, back when such extravagance was new to her.
Why is he acting so weird?