The Seer's Lover (The Seven Archangels Series) (20 page)

She rolled her eyes and slapped him again. “Wake up. Look down at yourself. You’re no longer an angel. You want the seer to tell your beloved Calise that she dated a
transitor
? Will that impress her? You are certifiable. If you want her to be safe from him, help me capture that seer.” She turned to the road and pointed at the car speeding away.

His anger grew, taking him over from the inside out like a creeping weed. Then he smiled, but it wasn’t innocent. He wanted blood. The seer that touched Calise—he wanted his blood smeared on his hands. “Let’s go get him.”

Running for the road, they happened on two restaurant patrons hopping off their dirt bikes. He nodded to Nara. She stepped in front of the local couple and flashed her true form for a split second. He relished the fear it instilled in the couple. “Give us your keys. Now.” They probably only saw her for an instant, but it was long enough.

Nara’s true form was an ultra emaciated demon with sunken cheekbones and heavy black shadow on her eyelids. Her eyes, of course, glowed red. Her ears flattened against her head like holes, and her bald head had parallel rows of what looked like age spots that formed a point on the back of her head where pieces of bone protruded straight out. Her nails had long claws, and her back opened to expose her spine. Long protrusions of bone stuck out from her spine every twelve inches or so and were connected by webbing, like the wings of a dragon.

She was hideous, and Shane couldn’t be happier. The terrified couple dropped their keys and ran. He snatched them up, threw a set to Nara, and they jumped on the dirt bikes and roared off, following Calise and the seer.

They kept a safe distance all the way to Paquera.

He watched Calise and the seer park and lock the car. He carried her suitcases. Nara nudged him. “Look, she’s leaving. We need
him
, not her.”

“But I need to talk to her for a second and warn her.” Shane started to move forward but Nara caught him and pulled him back.

Did the seer’s eyes flicker in our direction?

“Shane! The seer looked over here. Think about what you are doing. Leave her be. Calise will never see him again anyway, not after we’re done with him.”

Nara was mighty persuasive. He sighed and watched the proceedings.

With the seer’s back to Shane, his all-consuming thought was ripping him in two. The filthy human lifted something off his neck and put it over Calise’s head. Nara was distracted looking at the road back to Mal Pais; Shane said nothing. If there was any chance that the seer entrusted her with an artifact, Calise’s life
was
in danger. Nara couldn’t find out if that was the case. When she turned her attention back to the seer and Calise, Shane stepped in front of her to block her view, and kissed her. Her lips were slimy, and her breath reeked of mold and garbage. He forced his tongue to interact with her barbed one.

She was taken aback. “What was that for?”

He tried to look at her like he cared. “I’m antsy to slice up the seer and see our child in a few months.”

She practically melted in his arms. Were her feelings for him her weakness?

Calise boarded the ferry, and the seer waved goodbye, then turned to walk to his car.

They waited until he was out of eyeshot of any of the locals, then attacked from the trees. They were on him in a flash. Shane punched him so hard in the jaw that Nara simply caught him as he fell backwards.

She stared at his unconscious form. “C’mon, seer, Daddy’s waiting.”

Chapter 16

Calise couldn’t see straight and it wasn’t jetlag. Was she awake or dreaming? Maybe she’d caught a strange bug while she was in Costa Rica. Her mind cycled like a bipolar without meds.

Lucas. The visions. The nightmares.

It was her first day back at the pharmacy and with her vision blurred, she found it next to impossible to tell pills apart, her consults were messy, and Uncle Don was not supportive. After her impromptu vacation, Don probably expected her to come back energetic and refreshed. She was the exact opposite, watching the clock incessantly, registering every silent tick of the second hand. She desperately wanted sleep, and her body ached longingly at the mere thought of her bed. But in her apartment, there was no Lucas and no answers to what plagued her.

I should have told him before I left…but—told him what? I just have a bug…

She wanted to hear Lucas’s voice tell her she’d be okay.

Don finished an antibiotic consult for a new mom with a screaming child. He bristled as he stepped past her, motioning with open hands and raised eyebrows. “Are you still watching the clock? What the hell is wrong with you? If you’re still wishing you’re on the beach, snap out of it and start doing your job.”

It took effort for her to turn her head and face him. “What?” Calise blinked slowly and recognized his face as unaltered. Something was seriously wrong with her. Hallucinations. Faces cycled through her head so fast it made no sense. Hideous, beautiful, placid, heinous. Is this what Lucas saw on a daily basis?

“I have to go to the little boy’s room. Do you think you can hack it for two goddamn minutes?”

“I’m fine. I’ve got it covered out here.”

Don stomped off to the solitary bathroom in the back of the pharmacy.

The bell tinkled from the front of the pharmacy, and cold air hit her with a mid-winter gust. Time slowed to a crawl. A shiver convulsed her and every hair follicle stood at attention. A black cloud hovered by the door of the pharmacy, moving methodically toward her. She shrank back in fear. What horror came through the door? Her pharmacy technician approached the cloud—not a person, but a complete blur to Calise’s eyes. She blinked hard and rubbed her eyes. Her fight or flight response kicked in.

Her rational mind asked, why?

Only she could see the black cloud? As her mind and body joined in their unanimous decision to flee the premises, she heard her cue.

“The pharmacist will be right with you to see if you have any questions—” Barb the technician eyed her with suspicion.

Calise took two steps back and shook her head at Barb.
No freaking way.

Barb walked back to grab her. “You have a consult—it’s Ray—he’s in a hurry as usual. Go!” She pushed Calise forward.

Peeking around the corner, she readied herself to face her worst fear. Something came into focus under the black cloud.

A person.

A patient.

Someone she knew.

Ray was the quintessential drug dealing abuser that couldn’t be caught. Don and Calise both tried to find reasons not to fill his prescriptions, but everything was always “legit.” The cloud morphed into Ray, and he smiled. His teeth were razor sharp. “What’s wrong, babe? Miss me?” He grabbed his bottle of narcotics and rolled it over in his hands.

She rubbed her eyes again. This was a customer. Not a good or descent person, but one of her regular customers. “Uh, any questions today, Ray?” She stayed on the safety of the elevated perch pharmacists stand on to look important. Coming down to talk to him on the ground level was not appealing to her.

“Come here, sugar, let me see you since your big vacay. You look great. Tan and sexy as ever.” His eyes scanned her from head to toe and not in a gentlemanly way.

“Thanks,” she managed to sputter and ran back behind the prescription counter.

Ray shrugged. His paper bag rustled while he collected his meds and turned to leave. He glanced over his shoulder at her on his way out and waved. His fingernails were long, pointed claws and his eyes glowed…

Red.

She ran in the bathroom and heaved. Don muttered a “Good-bye” and hung up the phone as she returned to her post.

“I called your family doctor. I told him how you keep running to the bathroom and are vacant. He said you might be dehydrated from Montezuma’s revenge. So he called these in for you. Take these antibiotics and go home to bed.” Don handed her an amber vial and unsympathetically shoved her out the door.

Her knotted and churning stomach had been causing her problems since she landed. She took the first dose of antibiotics and went straight to bed, but couldn’t sleep. Her head spun with images.

What must have been hours later, the ringing phone woke her up. Likely her mother. Calise knew full well if she didn’t haul herself out of bed and answer, her mother would show up on her doorstep with Matzo Ball soup. Or maybe it was Lucas? That would be worth moving for.

She stumbled to her dining room and answered on the fourth ring. “Hello?”

“Hey, Cal. Long time no talk, hey?”

She recognized the voice immediately as Ellen, her childhood best friend and college roommate. “It’s so great to hear from you.” Even on the phone, her heart warmed hearing the familiar voice.

“Well, my first OB-GYN rotation at the Medical School just ended and honestly, I miss you, Cal. How about we have lunch on Thursday? A little birdy told me you came back from a great vacation, and I’d love to hear all about it. What do you say?”

“Of course, El. I can’t begin to tell you how happy I am to hear your voice. I really need an old friend right now.”

“You don’t sound right. What’s the matter?”

“Nothing. I’m fine.” She tried to add a lilt to her voice.

“How about noon at our favorite diner? We can have our favorite dessert, peanut butter cups, just like old times,” Ellen suggested.

Calise’s visions evaporated, and life returned to crystal clarity talking to Ellen. Her entire apartment rushed into focus, and she ran a finger over her dusty dining room table. “Great, it’s a date.”

A date. A date is zip-lining in Costa Rica, but this will have to do. Where are you, Lucas? You promised to call.

Calise pulled on old gray sweatpants and her roomiest sweatshirt. She grabbed a blanket and nestled into her lumpy couch to watch TV. Lucas wasn’t a fling to her, but maybe
she
didn’t mean as much to him as he did to her.

Maybe she was just depressed. Was her mind messing with her at the pharmacy? She decided to keep her appointment with the psychiatrist on Thursday, before lunch with Ellen…just in case.

****

Lucas woke up with a pounding headache bound and gagged in a chair. People spoke in hushed whispers outside the room. They were coming for him. Again.

It wasn’t the physical pain that hurt him.

Hearing Carmen’s screams from elsewhere in the shack drove knives into his heart. He would give up all the family’s secrets to stop her pain, but he wasn’t a total fool. As soon as he gave up the location of the artifacts, they were both dead. Damn demons. If Carmen wouldn’t talk, neither would he. Honor above all. Plus, he still wore his one necklace. If he could summon Alejandro, maybe, just maybe…

Damn Alejandro for abandoning his family for that demon whore! Lucas ached as he heard Carmen scream again. Had he been here one day or two? His torturers kept him in utter darkness during the silent torture. He could faintly make out the roar of the ocean, so he knew he was still in Costa Rica. The room felt vaguely familiar. Dungy, moldy, ramshackled.

Carmen’s screaming continued.
Relentless
. Each time she called out, Lucas's throat tightened, his pulse quickened, and he tried his best to suppress the tears that welled in his eyes. There must be something he could use in the room to loosen the ropes that bound his hands. He remembered the last time his wrists were bound. He and Marla were walking up the beach to the road. He was so certain then that he could save her, but his bound wrists were his undoing and Marla’s demise. If Carmen met the same fate, more blood would be on his hands.

Carmen’s screams subsided, and he heard her openly sobbing. He closed his eyes and was struck with a paralyzing thought.
Cali
. Was she safe? All his senses awoke like a person who realized their car was stuck on the railroad tracks with a train hurling toward them. He needed to see her. Know she was safe. Or his heart would explode.

He forced his muddled brain to bring her into focus, lying on the beach laughing, wind rustling her hair as they cantered down the beach together.

Beautiful, innocent Cali. She would never be safe now because of him.

The doorknob turned
; they
were coming. The light clicked on, and Lucas squinted his eyes to scan his surroundings but came to a dead halt when he saw Carmen being dragged into the room. The chair she was tied to was tipped backwards, and her head bounced as she was placed directly in front of him. Carmen looked as if she had been drop kicked and used as a soccer ball. Bruised, bloody, and unconscious.

Carmen moaned, and her head rolled from the right to the left. The demons stared from Lucas to Carmen.

The father sneered and curled his lips into a smile. “Aren’t you and your auntie the two tough little nuts to crack? No matter, we’re just getting started. Ready for more, seer? Or are you ready to talk?”

He kept his eyes trained on the ground. No use in antagonizing your brutalizing demon.

The girl popped to the foreground as the transitor and older woman hung back watching. “Can I try, Daddy?”

“Of course, Nara. Make your father proud.” Abaddon stroked her cheek.

The demoness took one deliberate step toward Lucas. Then another. She made a fist with her hand and shook it. Smug, she opened her hand and thousands of small black particles flew at Lucas. A warmth blanketed his flesh. Concentrating to break the illusion, he found himself defenseless once the particles burrowed into his skin causing excruciating pain. “Meet my fav bacteria, Strep pyogenes, better known under optimal conditions, as flesh-eating bacteria.”

Within moments the bacterial illusion eroded his flesh.

She inched forward with a childlike delight in her eyes as black spots emerged all over his body. His flesh heated to searing pain as if he stood in an open flame and knives stabbed into him. His skin morphed into what looked like a changing map of the world. Some spots were pink, others blistered; purple swirls giving way to black peeling portions of his skin. Then the smell overtook him and he gagged, vomited up his own putrid, stinking flesh. Like a rotting corpse, but he was the corpse. He cried out in agony. His skin ripped and separated from his tissue. He was being filleted alive.