The Dark Ones (33 page)

Mark looked sheepish. “Sorry. Drank all the booze.”

“Yeah. I heard that. Damn.”

Clayton pushed away from the table and stood up. He pushed aside some of the empty bottles and snatched up the metal lockbox. “Okay, we’ve sort of fucked up here. That’s a given. But instead of crying over spilled beer, let’s get over to that house and do this thing.”

Mark nodded. “Right. Time to stop fucking around.” He grabbed the gun from the counter and started to reload it. Then he stopped and nodded at the lockbox. “Hook me up with some of those silver bullets.”

Clayton opened the box and started to scoop out bullets. He passed some over to Mark.

Kevin looked puzzled. “What house? What thing are we doing?”

Mark filled the gun’s empty chambers with silver bullets. “The old house where this all started. The one we broke into. We’re gonna trap the fucking demon there again.”

“Oh. Okay.”

Mark snapped the gun’s cylinder shut. “All right. Let’s do this.”

Jared stood and nodded at Fiona. “What about her?”

“She comes with us. Get her out of the chair, but keep her wrists tied behind her back. We can’t trust her.”

Kevin looked even more confused now. “What? Why can’t we trust Fiona?”

“Because she tried to kill me.”

“Oh.”

“She wanted to kill all of us.”

“Shit.”

Jared freed Fiona from the chair, but, as Mark suggested, tied her wrists behind her back and looped the rest of the rope around her waist several times, keeping a six-foot length of it loose to use as a kind of leash.

Mark started toward the archway at the far end of the kitchen.

Kevin loudly cleared his throat. “Um, guys? You’re not planning to walk there, are you?”

Mark looked at him, impatience twisting his features. “Well . . . yeah.”

“Not a good idea. It’s fucking warfare in the streets out there.”

Mark realized a lot of disturbing sounds were audible through the now-open front door. He’d been too intensely focused on what was happening in Clayton’s kitchen to notice it until now. There was a lot of screaming going on out there. And quite a bit of unhinged laughter, the sound of maniacs running wild. It wouldn’t be long until more of that chaos spilled through that open door.

“Shit. You’re right.”

Clayton moved away from the table, still clutching the lockbox. “The garage. Hurry.”

He headed toward the door by the pantry. The others followed him out to the garage and piled into the old Cadillac. Clayton started the car and reached over his head to press a button on the garage door opener. The door began to rattle upward and got stuck about a third of the way up. Clayton pounded a fist on the steering wheel. “Goddammit! Of all fucking times!”

Mark was in the shotgun seat up front. He glanced at the side-mounted mirror outside the window and caught a flicker of movement. Dark forms came scuttling in under the partially open garage door. Before he could shout a word of warning, a face loomed in the window next to him. It was an attractive auburn-haired woman. She was nude. There was a brick in her hand. Other forms crowded around the car, pulling at the doors. Fiona screamed as Clayton stabbed frantically at the door-opener button. It lowered and raised and got stuck yet again. One of the car’s back doors came open and Fiona screamed again. Jared launched a fist at the face of the intruder and there was a loud crack of bone as the man’s nose snapped. The auburn-haired woman swung the brick and the window exploded in Mark’s face. She reached through the open space and seized him by the throat with one hand and started to swing the brick again with the other. Mark remembered the gun in his hand just in time. He shot her in the stomach and felt a touch of queasiness when he saw the bloom of red on her bare flesh. But she slipped away from him, dropping the brick in his lap as she slid down the door. Behind them, the garage door finally rolled all the way up and Clayton gunned the Cadillac’s engine. The car screeched backward out of the garage and smashed into another group of would-be attackers. The Cadillac hit the street with a squeal of burning rubber, everyone leaning hard to one side as Clayton spun the wheel and got the car pointed straight before gunning the engine again.

Mark sat up straight, brushing bits of glass from his lap. “Fuck! Everyone all right back there?”

Jared sighed. “Yeah. Barely. Clayton. Dude. You really need to get that fucking door fixed.”

“I know. Sorry.”

Mark heaved the brick the woman had been about to brain him with out the open window. “Christ. Look at all this. Has this whole fucking town gone insane?”

There were multiple fires visible in the distance. Black smoke rose into the air, forming a noxious cloud over the neighborhood. A lot of people were running through the yards and in the streets. Those fleeing the madness and the ones pursuing them. As Mark watched, a gang of men dragged a woman in a bathrobe down and ripped the garment from her body, exposing the bare flesh beneath. She screamed and writhed as they fell upon her.

Mark looked at Clayton. “Stop the car.”

Clayton didn’t look at him. “No.”

“What!?” Mark was livid. “We have to help that woman.”

Clayton shook his head. “There’s only one way we can help any of these people and we don’t have time for distractions.”

“A woman getting gang-raped is a ‘distraction’?”

Clayton glanced at him. “Right now, yes, that’s exactly what it is.”

Mark seethed. “Great.”

But he didn’t say anything else. It sucked, but Clayton was right. The people of Wheaton Hills had only one hope. And that was for Mark and his friends to successfully perform the binding spell. He thought of the way they’d spent the day, how close they’d come to blowing it, and felt shame.

A pair of headlights appeared at the bend in the road just ahead of them. The oncoming car’s bright lights came on and its driver adjusted course to come right at them. Clayton kept his foot on the gas pedal and continued toward the other car at high speed. Mark pressed backward into his seat and grimaced, anticipating a crash. “What the fuck are you doing?”

There was a hint of a smile at the edges of Clayton’s mouth. “Playing a game of chicken. Did this all the time in high school.”

“You’re fucking crazy.”

“Funny. That’s what they always said back then, too.”

The other car was very close now. Bright light filled the interior of the Cadillac, nearly blinding them. Mark and his friends were all screaming, anticipating a bone-crushing collision within seconds. But, at the very last possible moment, Clayton whipped the Caddy’s steering wheel hard to the right and the other car, a black Bentley, zipped by them. Clayton kept right on going, taking the Caddy around the bend in the road at a hairpin angle, taking the turn with just a single, light tap on the brakes. Then he was driving hell-bent for leather again, with the gas pedal pressed all the way to the floor.

Mark let out a breath. “Goddamn.”

Jared thumped his chest. “Man. That was fucking intense.”

Clayton chuckled. “Whoever that was meant to run us off the road. Thought they were dealing with amateurs. Showed those cocksuckers.”

Mark shuddered. “I repeat, you are fucking crazy.”

Clayton just chuckled again.

They had a few more close encounters with the roaming maniacs, but nothing else as intense as the averted collision. Soon they were out of Wheaton Hills and on Weakley Lane. Clayton parked on the road’s shoulder some fifty yards down. After pausing to collect their wits and reflect on how monumentally lucky they were to have escaped Wheaton Hills unscathed, they got out of the car and trudged across the street. Mark, armed with the flashlight from Clayton’s glove box, moved ahead of them, finding the narrow, overgrown gap in the trees that led to the house. The strange stillness on this side of Weakley Lane was disconcerting after the chaos of Wheaton Hills. Though the demon was gone from this place, some trace of its taint remained, causing any wildlife to give it a wide berth.

The path twisted and Mark soon caught a glimpse of the little house. He could see the dark outline of the old Buick Special, sitting on concrete blocks. The others followed him into the clearing and they walked as a group to the front of the house, stopping at the porch steps. He glanced up at the spray-painted pentagram on the boarded-up second-floor window. A chill slithered through him as he stared at the symbol. It was a blunt reminder of the nature of the evil they were facing. He thought of Natasha. She was out there somewhere in all that chaos. He felt a renewed flaring of that sense of loss. And now something else. Worry. But he had to put that aside for now. He could only pray she was somewhere safe and get this thing done.

The door they’d removed was still on the ground in front of the porch. The open black space where it had been looked simultaneously ominous and inviting. Mark knew the house was empty now, but he still had a strange sense of being watched. There was something odd about the house, even with the demon gone, as if the physical structure itself was somehow sentient. As if the house was awake and watching them, having waited patiently for their inevitable return.

Kevin spoke for all of them: “I do
not
want to go back in that house.”

A long, silent moment.

“Fuck it.”

Jared snatched the flashlight from Mark, climbed the steps, and walked through the door.

Mark heaved a sigh and followed him. He was grateful for the comfort of the gun in his hand. He wasn’t a fan of guns, but this one had saved his ass once already tonight. He heard the others come up the steps behind him as he entered the house. The interior of the house felt colder this time. No surprise. They were deeper into fall now, the season stretching inexorably toward winter. The extra chill heightened the eerie atmosphere. Mark’s skin crawled as that sense of being watched intensified.

They made their way to the kitchen, bumping into the gloom-shrouded furniture multiple times en route. Jared was already by the open pantry door, waiting there for them, in no hurry to venture down to the basement alone. He turned the flashlight toward them as they approached. Mark lifted a hand to shield his eyes against the glare. “Hey.”

“Hey.”

The Dark Ones fidgeted and shot occasional nervous glances at one another, with the exception of Fiona, who stayed very still and kept her gaze on the dusty floor. Kevin had taken over the responsibility of handling her, but the length of rope hung slack in his hand. It would have been easy for her to make another run for it. Mark thought it telling that she wasn’t at least taking a shot.

Perhaps she was simply resigned to what was about to happen and wanted it over.

“Let’s go.”

Mark reclaimed the flashlight from Jared and pushed past him into the pantry. The door at the back stood partially open. The painted depiction of a sword-wielding Andras astride a large black wolf seemed more vivid than before. More intricately detailed. Probably that was just his imagination getting the better of him. He was simply noticing details that had eluded him the first time. But the impression lingered. It almost seemed as if the painting was on the verge of coming to life. He imagined it turning three-dimensional and sliding off the door to swing that sword at them. He pulled the door the rest of the way open, mercifully removing the image from sight. With one more deep breath, he started down the stairs to the basement, the others following behind him.

On the way down, it struck him again how badly the odds were stacked against them. They weren’t professional monster or demon hunters. Armed with only some scrawled old notes and a gun loaded with silver bullets, they were scarcely prepared to confront, much less subdue, an ages-old entity. On top of that, he was still drunk. Even with the flashlight to guide him, he had to brace an arm against the wall to keep from pitching down the stairs.

And holy shit, but he still had to fucking piss.

The need was painful at this point. He wished he’d taken a leak out in the woods, but he’d been so focused on getting here that he’d neglected to get it done. But there was no way he could kick demon ass with his eyeballs floating. After reaching the concrete basement floor, he staggered off to a corner, unzipped, and let her rip. The strong stream of urine was loud on the brick wall.

Fiona made a sound of protest. This time he actually understood her:
Gross
.

Mark groaned in relief. “Ah . . . oh shit. Thought I was about to fucking burst.”

Clayton and Jared followed Mark’s example and watered separate corners of the room. Mark finished first and zipped up. He aimed the flashlight at the floor, letting the light play over the elaborate pentagram painted on the concrete. Smaller symbols were painted around its outer edges. One was the anarchy symbol. The rest he didn’t recognize. He didn’t much care what they were. All that mattered was that someone else had done most of the grunt work for them a long time ago.

Clayton zipped up and walked up to the edge of the pentagram.

The lockbox was still tucked under his arm.

Mark looked at him. “Well?”

Clayton opened the box, removing the crumpled papers inside. He dropped the box on the floor and shuffled through the papers, stopping on the one he needed. He glanced across the pentagram at Mark. “Yo. The light. Get over here.”

Mark approached and aimed the beam at the page clasped in Clayton’s fingers. “So how’s this gonna work?”

Clayton shrugged. “It’s actually pretty straightforward. We call Andras. Literally. By name and by blood. Blood first.”

“By blood?”

“Yeah. But not just any blood. It has to be the blood of souls touched by Andras.” Clayton showed them a pained expression. “That’d, uh . . . that would be you guys.”

Jared looked grim. “What do we do?”

Clayton peered at the papers again. “Anybody got a knife?”

Mark nodded. “Yeah.”

“Of course you do, you fucking hoodlum. So . . . anyway . . . what you do is each of you should prick your thumb with the knife and spill a few drops of your blood in the center of the pentagram.”

“That’s it?”