The Demon Signet (17 page)

His chest tightened as a cold, hard grip clutched his heart.

Instead of rising numbers—the gallons of gas being consumed and the rapidly changing numbers of dollars and cents being exchanged for them—there stood just two words.

DIE BLACKMAN

His feet were frozen to the ground, his legs stiff as tree trunks. The words stared at him, daring him to blink, to turn his back on them and search for some grinning Nazi in the bushes, some sort of transmitter or remote in his hands. Maybe it was the attendant behind the counter. Perhaps he had a White Power poster hanging next to the coffee machine—if there was a coffee machine, and Marcus prayed that there was—and this was how he paid tribute to Hitler’s ghost, scaring any black folks unfortunate enough to have to pump their gas here. Maybe. But Marcus couldn’t turn away to find out. Besides, he doubted the Fourth Reich would be coming from the mountains of New York. No, his fear was that the monster from the church basement had finally been set free and was now looking to cleanse the world of all those who might know of its existence.

A coldness colder than the frigid December air crept up the back of his neck. He shuddered.

The auto-flow disengaged, and the handle snapped with a loud
thunk
, almost launching his heart out of his throat and into space, the final frontier. The fact that William Shatner’s voice actually uttered those last words in his mind was almost as disturbing as—

The words were gone, the display showing only the numerical sum of what had been consumed.

He squeezed his eyes shut and looked again. Just numbers. “Dear God…” he mumbled. He replaced the nozzle, told the machine he didn’t want a receipt—afraid of what
that
might say—and slipped into the front passenger seat of Charles’ car, behind the closed glove compartment. His hands were shaking, and he squeezed them on legs that had run pigskin through gauntlets of gladiators hoping to knock his head off. That man, that college warrior, now felt like a child before these forces he couldn’t see or hope to understand. Averting a two-hundred-and-forty-pound football player with the grace and ease of a gazelle was well and good, but this was no football field, and his nemesis was no college linebacker.

He stared into the window of the station, anxious for his friends’ return. When he looked forward again, he was shocked to see the glove compartment hanging open in front of him, a gaping mouth whispering secrets from some other world.

And then he felt it in his hand, resting on his palm.

The ring that Ashley had found in the Taurus. The one that she’d thrown at Heather’s feet. The one Heather had locked away.

Give it to us…

Those four words came, not from the captain’s log of some unknown stardate, but from the annals of a dark and hidden past that transcended his own lifespan. It was the voice of Legion, the voice of hell, of time immemorial. And it was here in the car with him.

Slowly, a Malcolm X sweatshirt began to appear, peeking out from behind an open gray peacoat and dancing before the window across from him. It seemed distant, incomprehensible. But a double tap against the window cleared his vision, and the fog from whatever pit he’d been saved from vanished without further ado. He quickly tossed the ring back into the glove compartment and slammed it shut. Striking the automatic lock on the door panel beside him, unaware that he’d even locked the doors, he welcomed his friends back into the car.

Ian opened the door and extended a steaming cup across the center console. Marcus took it, the smell of the burnt coffee invigorating. “Thanks,” he said, as Ian climbed back behind the wheel, setting his own coffee down in one of the twin cup holders. “Where are the girls?”

“Bathroom.” He closed the door, blew warm air into his hands.

“Of course.”

The unease in Marcus’ voice and the manner in which he was staring out the window didn’t go unnoticed, and Ian paused. “You okay? Something happen?”

“The gas pump just told me to die.”

Ian’s non-reaction was testament to the yoke of bizarre still hanging around their necks.

“The next thing I know I’m holding that ring in my hands and the doors are locked.”

Ian still didn’t say anything.

Lifting the cup to his lips and savoring every station of the hot liquid’s journey through his body, Marcus muttered, “So much for the haunted car theory.” He took another sip. “Unless we just happened to find the only other haunted vehicle in New York, and the spirit haunting it has the same nickname for me.”

“Give me the ring,” Ian said, holding his hand out.

Marcus considered him for a moment. Then he retrieved the thing from the glove compartment and handed it to him.

Taking it from his hand, Ian opened the door, stepped back out into the cold, and launched the ring into the air with quarterback mechanics that would have made Drew Brees proud. It might have even cleared the shop if a strong wind hadn’t risen to clip its wings. Instead, it fell well short of the woods in back, rolling to a stop against a pile of snow beside the station’s front doors.

Ian returned to his seat with satisfaction riding his top lip and pressing it down into a smirk. He turned the key, and Marley’s voice was back to singing again.

“
Every little thing gonna be alright…”

Marcus stared after the ring, unable to see where it landed. Relief that complemented the look on Ian’s face filled him, and he began to believe the song’s promise, taking it as his own. “So what’d he say?” he finally asked, it coming back to him why they’d stopped here in the first place.

“We’re northeast of Watertown. To get to 81, we have to get back on Route 3 and go through Watertown again, same as before. We just made a giant loop.”

“What? How the heck did that happen?”

“I have no idea.” He reached into his back pocket and pulled out a folded map. “But we’re using this from now on.” He tossed it onto Marcus’ lap and reached for his coffee.

Marcus set his cup down and spread the map out. “The ghost in the machine…”

“Huh?”

Marcus shrugged. “The spirit possession of technology. The ghost in the machine. An evil presence operating through computers and what not.” He looked at Ian. “You never saw any of those shows?”

“I think I saw an
X-Files
episode once… Some AI operating system developed a free will or something, started using the building to kill people. What’s your point?”

“Cell phones. A modern twist to the ghost story.”

Ian raised his eyebrows, his fingers again finding solace in the thickening carpet growing over his jaw. He didn’t have anything to say to that and changed the subject. “Guy said we’re supposed to get slammed with another storm tonight.”

“Hopefully we’re at Ashley’s friend’s house by then.”

“Hopefully.”

Marcus folded the map back up. “Can’t believe we haven’t been able to get in touch with their parents yet.”

Ian pulled out his cell and tried sending them an email. “I’m still getting my emails sent back with failure notices.”

“Ghost in the machine.” Marcus reflected back on how concerned he’d been about meeting Ashley’s parents for the first time, and now the anxiety of it all struck him as silly and insignificant in light of recent events.

“Here they come,” Ian announced.

Heather and Ashley stepped out of the store, plastic bags in hand. A gust of wind blew something out of one of the bags, and Heather bent to retrieve it from the snow pile resting beside the still-closing doors. They crossed the parking lot, climbed into the back of the Rover, and immediately started digging into their bags. Combos and candy bars—the breakfast of champions, or the breakfast of the damned? Marcus figured it was still too early to tell. Could this all be chocked up to that ring? He hoped so, even if he had no clue what it was or why it would be so important to the driver of that ’71 Camaro.

Ian pulled out of the gas station and eased back onto the white road. “The guy said they’re plowing Route 3 and 81, so we should be okay as soon as we get off this street.”

Bob Marley’s voice continued to echo “yes” and “amen” to that being the case.

Eighteen

They’re on the move again.

He travels the treacherous roads as he has all night, the ring’s presence suddenly a blip back on his radar. He has his heading, and he’s getting there at seventy miles per hour.

But something bothers him. It shouldn’t be this hard. Not with the help of his comrades. That the four people managed to survive the night and find another mode of transportation seems absurd, and he wonders again why everything seems so elusive for him. He questions his Company with such thoughts, but their explanations are preserved with silent contempt. Feelings of betrayal and doubt begin to seep into his mind like a cancer, its tentacles reaching, probing, infecting. He must weed them out before they turn into vines that choke the voices from his head forever. He needs the voices. He has always needed the voices. They are still talking, though from far away and no longer from the seat beside him. Perhaps his involuntary distrust, if even only for a moment, has distanced him from their good graces.

“I am the Crest of Dragons,” he repeats to himself. “I will destroy the world.”

As the trees blur past, he can see animals stepping forth from out of the sheltered woods lining the road, curious heads raised high, staring at his approach. Deer, rabbits, moose, even a bear. In the split second that he notices them, he considers their eyes, the expressions they hold. Anxiety. Fear. Disdain. They are able to detect his agenda, his power. They know he is bringing an end to their world, and it is not nature’s groaning anticipation that the Apostle Paul told the church in Rome about so long ago. No, it certainly is not that.

Though he has been awake all night, he is not tired. He has waited too long for this opportunity to let human frailty get in the way. He cannot stop until the ring is secure on his finger and both worlds are bridged…until he has the power again.

But it had been right there in front of him, his for the taking. Why hadn’t he moved, ripped it from the girl’s pants? Why had he just stood there, dumb, immobile? Was it the Lookers? The interference of
Elohim’s
chosen angels? Were they finally taking action against him?

“I am the Crest of Dragons.” This time, it sounds less like a statement of fact and more like an attempt to convince, and it silences him. Instead, he channels his frustration into thoughts of the Brotherhood, of what he will do to them once they come after him again. They have their own plans for the ring, but they are only silly children ignorant of the father’s true will. There is no doubt in his mind about that. Their plans are not
their
plans. He knows this because they have told him so, and he has within him a sense of it. The ring back in the hands of the Brotherhood will lay unused, rusting in the dank vault of time while they send their agencies out across the globe in search of its counterpart. But he is unconvinced that that for which they so desperately search will ever be found, and so he will use this ring to accomplish a different work altogether, a much quicker work. The Society may tinker around in politics, precious centuries wasted on manipulating the world stage, but he has no such patience for all of that. He isn’t interested in the Brotherhood’s power, its agenda, its quest to rule the world in some new golden age. He doesn’t want to rule…he wants to
destroy
. And his acts of destruction will commence with the annihilation of the very Society that offered him an escape from his own meaningless existence, that introduced him to the ring in the first place. He has no remorse, however, for what he must do. They came after
him
with knife and flame and then had the audacity to ask him for help. They will try to kill him again once he has served their purpose, once he has led them to the ring. That isn’t even a question, and he’s sure they don’t expect him to believe otherwise, knowing that the ring itself will guarantee his participation in their scheme. But it is a gamble they will lose. Nothing will be able to stop him once he takes the signet ring from the four people now driving back toward Watertown, back to the scene of the crime.

Nineteen

The snow was falling gently now, a graceful winter dance that welcomed the travelers back into Watertown (though the voices on the radio were still insisting that the worst was yet to come). In daylight, the town seemed hardly as ominous as it had the night before. But then they passed the diner.

“What the hell?” Ian peered to his left, slowing down.

“Oh my god,” Ashley whispered.

The diner that had offered them refuge for a short while, before the paranormal chased them out of it, now sat surrounded by yellow caution tape, police cars, and ambulances. There were officers walking around in big winter coats, faces blank. A reporter was standing in front of a camera.

Ian turned at the light and drove back into the parking lot that they’d been so eager to escape just a dozen hours earlier.

“What are you doing?” Marcus asked.

“I want to know what happened.”

A police officer held up her hand, signaling him to stop. She walked up to the window, and Ian lowered it.

“You have to turn around. This is a crime scene,” she said, clouds of warm air generated from her words.

“What happened?”

The woman tilted her head, and her keen eyes quickly scanned the other three faces peering out of the vehicle. Her eyebrows knitted together in suspicion. She could tell by the looks coming back at her that the four of them weren’t upset about missing their favorite French toast and gourmet coffee (which the officer had enjoyed herself for years). “A man was murdered,” she said, watching them closely.

“Who?” Marcus leaned toward the open window, and the tone that carried his voice through the air solidified the officer’s curiosity.

“You people from around here?” she asked instead.

Heather pressed against her shoulder restraint and whispered in Ian’s ear, “You should tell her.”