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Megan had to force the words from her throat. “No. No, I think we have everything we need.”
“The truck,” as Greyson called it, was actually a Mercedes SUV, with cushiony leather seats big enough to lie down on and dark-tinted windows. It was about as close to a truck as the QE2 was to a rowboat, but it certainly did the job.
Trouble was, it wasn’t a job she wanted it to do. She’d intended that the next time she rode in this particular vehicle they’d be on their way to the woods for a romantic, relaxing holiday, not headed into the belly of the beast—pretty much literally—back in Grant Falls.
Back to the hospital.
She shifted a little, adjusting her blanket. With her head on Greyson’s lap and the soft, heated leather beneath her, she could almost pretend she was back in bed. At least, if not for the murmuring voices of the men and the soft drone of music from the CD player, fading in and out as she dozed.
Nick and the brothers were with them, coming along for moral—well, for support, anyway. But Malleus and Spud in the front seats and Nick and Maleficarum in the back ones did make her feel a little as if she were onstage.
“Just think about it, Nick,” Greyson said above her. “I could really use you here.”
“I like Miami.”
“I know. But I need someone…”
Megan drifted back off. They’d been having this discussion on and off all day, and from the way they spoke she had a feeling it had been going on longer than that.
She was back in her own house, on the couch, watching TV, when the doorbell rang. Her feet seemed to sink into the floor as she got up and crossed the room to open it, knowing it wasn’t the smartest thing to do but unable to stop herself.
Her partners from work, holding bottles of champagne, come to celebrate her father’s death.
Her eyes opened. Only the soft glow of the GPS system in the dash lit the interior of the car; they were well out of the city now, and the moon must have gone behind some clouds. She closed her eyes again, her waking u
She was back in the house where her demon died, but when the police came this time, they brought flowers.
“She already hinted she’d accept you as a substitute, if you’ll do it.”
Pause. “You don’t have anybody else?”
“Not really, and…I can’t. I don’t want to. I said I wouldn’t.”
“Yeah, I’ll do it for you. But this is why I don’t want to get involved, man. I don’t get this shit in Miami, nobody bugs me there.”
“You know I wouldn’t ask if…”
Brian Stone took her out to di
This time when her eyes opened, she smiled. Greyson’s hand was warm on her hip. She started to snuggle into him, then stopped when Nick spoke.
“Is she going to do the ritual?”
“I don’t know.” Greyson sighed. His thigh tensed under her head but he didn’t move. “I don’t think she knows.”
“You’re not talking her into it?”
“It’s her decision.”
“But I thought—”
“It’s her decision. I can’t interfere with that. Think about it.”
Silence. “I guess I see that. But…I mean…” Nick sounded uncomfortable, as if he’d just offered Greyson oral sex and been turned down.
“Hell, Nick. You know I’d—What the fuck!”
The car crashed into something, skidded, and spun sideways, flinging Megan off the seat onto the floor. For one long, terrifying moment she was certain she was about to die in a crush of metal on a deserted road. Malleus was yelling from the driver’s seat.
Then silence. The SUV gave a final rock to the left and stopped. Bright light flooded the interior of the car as the doors opened, and Greyson grabbed her and pulled her out, setting her down on her unsteady feet.
“I’m okay, I’m okay.” She wrapped her arms around herself. The night air was freezing and her coat was still in the car. Someone laid the blanket over her shoulders; she didn’t turn around to see who. “What happened?”
Greyson pointed behind them.
An oak tree grew by the side of the road, its gnarled arms reaching out as though it could trap the moon between them. From one of those branches dangled a rope, and at the end of that rope hung the body of a man, his eyes black holes in his swollen face. A chair, its legs reduced to splinters by the wheels of the SUV, lay about four feet from the tree.
He’d killed himself. The piece of paper pi
Sleeping further would have been out of the question, even if she’d wanted to. The specter of that grisly welcome home haunted her.
Aside from a few dents on the right-side doors, the SUV was fine. They piled back in and headed toward the center of town, tooling slowly down the road, all of them on the alert. Greyson gave her his gun, grabbing another one from Maleficarum. It rested in his hand like a cobra about to strike. Nick had a gun too, in addition to, of all things, a sword. She might have laughed at the sight—it wasn’t often you saw a man swinging a blade in modern small-town America—if he hadn’t handled it with such deadly confidence.
Malleus, Maleficarum, and Spud, of course, looked like they were about to storm Fort Knox. Megan would have prayed they wouldn’t be pulled over, but even if Greyson couldn’t have handled any police officer who came near the car, she doubted it would be an issue tonight. Something told her the police in Grant Falls would be otherwise occupied.
They rolled past the hotel, silent and dark, and continued on. Through the haze of falling snow Megan saw Christmas lights twinkling still on some of the buildings and in the windows of the shops farther down the road, in town. The clock read 11:00. Surely the stores would be closed, the lights off?
Movement off to the right caught her eye. Emerging from the little forest was a woman, her filthy shirt in tatters. Through the strips of grayish fabric they could see her bra soaked with blood and her bare, ghostly pale skin streaked with it, making her look like a bizarre zebra. Even in the darkness her eyes seemed terribly white, wide with terror or the blank screen of dementia. Something else was wrong too, but Megan couldn’t seem to place it and it didn’t matter.
“Pull over,” she started to say, but Greyson interrupted her.
“No.”
“What? Look at her, she must be freezing, she’s—”
“Where’s the cemetery?”
“What? Malleus, I said pull over!”
“Mr. Dante?” Malleus glanced back. His features, cast in pale green light from the dash, looked somehow leaner, as if his frown was pulling them tight.
“Meg, where’s the cemetery?”
Megan glared at him and reached for the handle of the door. They were going slowly enough, and once she opened it Malleus would stop. She knew he would. “I can’t believe you’re going to let that woman just die like that, I—”
“She’s already dead.”
“Sure, if you let her…oh.” Megan subsided. That’s what was wrong. Snow was piling on the woman’s shoulders and forming an old-fashioned nurse’s cap on her head. “Oh.”
Somewhere in the back of her mind she’d had this idea—this fantasy—that they’d roll into Grant Falls, pop into the abandoned hospital, take whatever relic of the Accuser still lived there—which in the fantasy was a lock of hair or something similarly inoffensive—thus defeating Ktana Leyak and getting back her demons. Then they’d stop for a piece of pie or something before driving back toward the city singing “Adeste Fidelis.”