Demon Inside

Nowhere in her fantasy did demon-powered zombies appear. Not once.

So much for fantasies.

Then again, the idea of riding around in an SUV with a bunch of demons singing Christmas carols was rather silly itself, wasn’t it? So why should she be surprised that this obviously wasn’t going to be the uncomplicated little jaunt she’d hoped for?

“Do you think there will be more of them?” she asked in a small voice. The energy to speak loudly eluded her.

“I think it’s a pretty safe bet, yes.”

“There are two cemeteries in town,” she said. “At least there were when I lived here. There’s, um, Holy I

The men exchanged glances. “We may not have to see many,” Greyson said. “We might manage to get in and out of here before they have a chance to reach us.”

Megan just nodded. If she opened her mouth she would start screaming, and if she started screaming she didn’t think she would be able to stop.

“Zombies aren’t going to be a problem,” Nick said finally. “They won’t even be able to get close to us, thanks to Grey. It’s the people who worry me.”

Megan glanced out the window, desperate to look anywhere but at the faces of the men watching her, then wished she hadn’t. Behind the picture window of Kelly’s Tap bodies lurched and leaped in a brawl of epic proportions. A man flew through the glass, landing on the white-dusted asphalt outside in an ungraceful heap. Blood steamed in the freezing air as the chaos inside the bar became audible, shouts and screams ending finally in gunfire.

The men tensed. Greyson and Nick lifted their weapons, waiting, but they were already passing the bar, leaving the wreckage of it behind them.

More evidence that something was very wrong in Grant Falls awaited them as they rolled past, the low hum of the SUV’s engine bouncing off the blank storefronts. A bloody handprint embellished the holiday display in the window of Tommy’s Toys. More blood smeared across the wall, ending on the pavement as if the bleeder had fallen, but no body lay there.

Megan pulled the blanket more tightly around her. “The hospital is to the right, closer to the center of town.”

They floated down the street, the only warm and moving things in an alien landscape. The blanket didn’t help. Even Greyson’s warm hand on her leg didn’t help. The wrongness, the plain and simple sense that all was not well, soaked into her bones. Even with her shields up she could feel the despair, the misery, the rage.

Especially the rage. She realized that tired as she was her body was still humming, adrenaline making her heart pound and her feet jiggle. Her lips felt raw from where she’d bitten them and stung when a tear rolled down her cheek and touched the shredded skin.

She might be able to draw strength from it. If the Yezer—her Yezer—were causing all of this, it was entirely possible she could, that if she lowered her shields and tried to pull them back she could take all that power and use it.

But doing that would also alert Ktana Leyak to their presence, if she wasn’t already aware of it, and that was a bad idea. Yes, Megan would have to fight her sometime, but she would much rather that sometime not be now. Not now and not here.

“Make a left,” she said softly. Her voice would crack if she tried to speak much more forcefully.

Malleus did, then stopped abruptly. Four cars blocked the road, their windshields gaping holes with jagged edges of glass protruding like broken teeth. Their dashboards already looked frosted with snow. In the dim light from the pale sky she saw bloody footprints leading away, but there was no other sign of people.

“There another way ’round, m’lady?”

“Um…yeah. Go back, we’ll head toward the park. We can circle around it and come up from the other direction.”

Malleus nodded and executed a three-point turn as neatly as a driving instructor, while Megan stared out the window at the wreckage.

They made it as far as the edge of the park. Megan was increasingly aware of her skin prickling, of silent watchers from the buildings they passed. Zombies or demons or simply people, twitching their curtains to the side in their apartments above stores, wondering who was out and about on a night this cold, this close to Christmas, in a town that usually bedded down by ten.

Malleus slammed on the brakes. If his reflexes hadn’t been quite so fast the truck would have plunged headfirst into the gaping hole where the road had once been. The snow fell so thick and fast it was almost impossible to see.

Megan waited in the car with Nick and Greyson while the brothers got out to inspect it. They returned moments later, shaking their heads.

“’S all ice, outside it,” Maleficarum said. “That little hill, there, we can’t drive up it or nuffin’.”

The park itself sat on a rise, not steep but steep enough when frozen. To the left of them sat a row of parked cars, the lead one half-buried in the sinkhole, its rear wheels off the pavement. The SUV could not get through the line, and it could not go up the hill.

Greyson sighed. “I guess we walk.”

Why don’t we just go home was on the tip of Megan’s tongue. She couldn’t think of anything she’d ever wanted to do less than leave the warm interior of the car and go traipsing through the park under the watchful gaze of a town driven half mad by Yezer.

Because they were here. She knew it. Nothing else could account for what was happening. Ktana Leyak was here and so were Megan’s rubendas, and they were having themselves a merry little Christmas indeed.

“Meg.”

“What?” She pulled the blanket more tightly around her, as if trying to save up some extra warmth before they started trekking across the barren park. Not empty, oh no. Things waited in that park that she’d hoped to never see.

Greyson held out his hand. “Come on, bryaela, let’s go get back what’s yours.”

Chapter 25

Malleus took point, while Maleficarum and Spud flanked Greyson and Nick on either side of Megan. Snow stung her bare face and blurred her vision; it trickled down Greyson’s cheeks as water when it melted. They could have been the only people in the world, pioneers heading for the old homestead, but they weren’t. And they weren’t alone.

In all that blinding white she imagined they must stand out like black ants crawling across a wedding cake. It was only a matter of time before someone—or something—found them.

She just hadn’t expected them to come from straight ahead. The shapes moving from the snow looked ordinary, or close to it—just people trying to make their way home by taking a shortcut—until they got close enough to realize that these people weren’t wearing coats, they weren’t bundled up. One woman wore a summery strapless dress that revealed the bones of her left arm showing through holes in her skin. Another woman’s evening gown would have glittered if it hadn’t been dulled with snow. Two men in identical dark suits completed the little group.

Megan didn’t even have a chance to react before they were aflame, falling to the snow, horrible confused sounds escaping their closed mouths. They rolled, leaving dark marks in the dusty white ground where the snow and ice melted from the heat, their arms waving, like insects on their backs. The fire flared higher, blue-white, and the zombies stopped moving entirely. Megan glanced at Nick, who shrugged. “Told you,” he said. “When fire is handy, zombies aren’t—shit!”

Whatever sound the beasts made was lost in the wind, so it seemed to Megan that they flew across the snowy grass, great dark shapes with pinpoints of red where their eyes should be. She froze, her mouth open, unable to move as they drew closer.