Demons & Djinn: Nine Paranormal Romance and Urban Fantasy Novels Featuring Demons, Djinn, and other Bad Boys of the Underworld Read online

  Afterward, I limped into the kitchen and got Dutchie some more chicken. Besides the leftover dog biscuits, there was also a partial bag of dry dog food in the pantry that I could feed her, but I figured I might as well get rid of the perishable stuff first.

  Then it was some water for me, and a makeshift sandwich of wheat bread and butter and the last of the strawberry jelly. My hand shook as I lifted the sandwich to my mouth, but I made myself eat anyway. That burst of panic, of terror, had used up a lot of my reserves.

  The silence in the house seemed to press on my ears. I noticed the voice had been suspiciously quiet since I’d returned.

  Finally, I set down my water bottle and snapped, “All right, you want to tell me what the hell that was all about? How can a pasty creep like Chris Bowman be immune when everyone else is dead?”

  No reply at first. Then it was as if someone sighed quietly, far back in my mind. We cannot control who is immune, only what happens to them after they have survived.

  “‘We’?” I demanded, figuring I’d ask the most pressing question first. “Who is ‘we’?”

  The resulting silence was so drawn out that I was fairly certain I wouldn’t get a reply, that I’d asked exactly the wrong question. Finally, the voice said, That is not important.

  “It’s important to me.” I hurt all over, and I was tired of the sense I’d begun to have that something huge was behind all this, something I wasn’t sure I’d ever be able to understand. “Who are you?”

  This time the answer came back almost at once. I am not at liberty to say.

  That answer only made the impotent rage within me burn all the hotter. This last evasion was about all I could take at the moment. “What the hell is this — a White House press conference?”

  You are upset. This is understandable. But tell me — have I not done whatever I could to protect you?

  I recalled how Chris Bowman had been torn away from me by invisible hands, thrown up against that palm tree as if he weighed nothing, even though he was six feet, two inches of solid pudge. “Was that you?”

  My only wish is for your safety. That is why you need to leave this place and go north.

  So we were back to that again. I had to admit, after this morning’s events, I was a little more open to the idea of getting the hell out of Albuquerque and not looking back. Part of me — the stubborn part — still wanted to go to Tori’s house, to see for myself what had happened to her and her family. But I also knew I was putting myself at risk every time I set foot out the door. A great deal of the population had vanished during the previous three days, but not all of it…and it was those remnants I had to worry about.

  “All right,” I said wearily. “I’ll think about it.”

  Maybe I was only talking to myself. Right then, I didn’t want to think too hard about the whole insane situation.

  That afternoon I dozed a little, and when I woke up, I actually felt better. My wrists didn’t ache as much, and the abrasions on my hands already looked completely scabbed over. What the hell? Was this part of the “voice” — I didn’t know how else to think of him, or it — watching over me? Did he have some way of making me heal far faster than I normally would?

  At any other time, I would have dismissed the notion as crazy, but so many insane things had happened since Monday that I couldn’t reject any of them outright. Maybe my particular immunity brought with it certain other benefits, although I couldn’t begin to think how that worked. I’d always been a healthy person, so I bounced back from bumps and bruises and sprains fairly quickly — but not this quickly.

  Putting that conundrum aside to ponder at a later date, I decided to take stock of what I had in the house, and what else I would need in the way of supplies. We had a good deal of camping gear, so I was set when it came to sleeping bags and Coleman lanterns and all that sort of stuff. The first aid kit was stocked well enough for ordinary scrapes and bruises and strains, but I wondered if I should hit up a few of the local pharmacies and get myself antibiotics, some kind of painkillers, cough and cold medicine…a decent supply of my birth control pills. Not that I was expecting to get laid anytime soon — Chris Bowman’s bloodied face flashed into my mind, and I shuddered — but the pills did help to keep my periods manageable. And that was another thing. I’d need sanitary supplies, enough to last me for a while. Making do with rags the way they did in the bad old days was not something I wanted to face quite yet.

  Night began to fall again, and I moved around the ground floor, lighting candles. I still didn’t want to go upstairs, for some reason felt safer here on the couch. I fed Dutchie the last of the chicken, and snacked on a couple of granola bars, trying to ignore how much my body ached for something more substantial. I wasn’t quite at the point of being willing to kill for a cheeseburger, but I could see myself heading down that road in a couple of days.

  I spoke into the stillness of the house. “So if I’m supposed to head north, where exactly am I going? Santa Fe? Taos? Colorado?”

  Go north, and I will guide you where you need to go.

  “That’s not an answer.”

  It’s all the answer you require.

  “You’re a real pain in the ass, you know that?”

  Something that might have been a chuckle. I have been told that on occasion, if not in those precise words.

  “But you’re still not going to tell me where I’m going.”

  No.

  Well, at least he was being honest. I’d begun thinking of the voice as “him,” although it still could have been merely a product of my fevered imagination, of a mind that couldn’t handle all the death and destruction around it, and so had slipped into a nice, cozy form of psychosis.

  Maybe so, but that didn’t explain the way Chris Bowman had been torn away from me, as if some invisible giant had grabbed him and thrown him across the yard.

  Telekinesis? Some kind of delayed-onset X-Men action?

  Okay, now I was beginning to sound ridiculous even to myself.

  “All right,” I said. “I’m convinced. Mostly because I’m not sure that creeper doesn’t know where I live…if he’s still alive.” A pause then, while I waited for the voice to break in and tell me that oh, yes, Chris Bowman was dead, and I needn’t worry about him any longer.

  But I heard no such thing, just a silence that began to echo in my ears. Great. So apparently Mr. Bowman wasn’t exactly down for the count.

  I took in a breath and plunged ahead. “And anyway, staying here is starting to sound less and less attractive. I’ll head out in the morning after I get some more supplies.”

  You won’t need them.

  This was said flatly, as if he didn’t expect me to contradict him. “Well, sorry, but since you won’t tell me where I’m going or how long the journey is going to take, I need to be prepared. And that means getting a few things. I’ll be careful.”

  The way you were careful at your aunt and uncle’s house?

  Bristling, I replied, “Okay, I was caught off guard. That’s not going to happen again.”

  No reply. I wasn’t sure whether that meant the voice had run out of arguments to give me, or whether it was simply tired of me throwing up roadblocks. I decided to take its silence as tacit agreement with my plan. And really, it shouldn’t be that big a deal. The Walgreens I frequented was less than a mile from my house. I’d pack everything else I needed in advance, then go there on my way out of town. Surely the voice couldn’t have any real problem with that?

  It probably could, but unless it woke me up in the middle of the night to tell me everything I was doing wrong, I was going with it.

  Falling asleep that night was difficult. The silence rattled me; every creak and sigh of the house contracting as the night air grew colder made me startle, thinking Chris the Creeper had returned to finish what he’d started outside my aunt and uncle’s house. Well, the joke would be on him — I had the revolver right next to me on the coffee table, and had gotten the shotgun from the gun safe and was l
ying with it propped up against the arm of the sofa near my head. He’d be a red smear on the wall before he had time to blink.

  But the guns didn’t reassure me as much as I’d thought they would. Maybe it was more that I’d begun to pick at what the voice had said to me, how he’d said that “we” — meaning him and others like him, I supposed, whatever or whoever they were — hadn’t controlled who lived and who died of the Heat, but that they did have some say in what happened to the survivors. That was a frightening thought. True, everything he’d done so far seemed to have been for my benefit…but why?

  I realized he hadn’t called me “beloved” for a while. Was that an oversight, or had all my questions and my ignoring of his advice annoyed him enough that I wasn’t quite so beloved anymore? The thought bothered me a little…but not as much as contemplating what it might mean to be the beloved of some incorporeal being who spoke to me only in my thoughts.

  If he was even real. I really could just be imagining the whole thing. After all, there were accounts of mothers going ballistic and lifting trucks off their toddlers or whatever. Wasn’t it possible that I’d been the one to fling Chris Bowman away from me, and my mind had just embellished the event so it seemed as if some kind of supernatural force was involved?

  I didn’t know. And the worst part was, I had no one to talk to about my situation, except a disembodied voice that might or might not be merely a figment of my imagination. For most of the day, I’d managed to push to one side the pain of losing my family, my friends, but now as I sat there in the dark, one candle flickering on the coffee table, it all seemed to come back in a rush, like a great, gaping wound in my middle where my heart had been torn out. I was twenty-four years old, but right then all I wanted was my mother. I wanted her to hug me and tell me it was all going to be okay.

  And then I felt him there, as I had earlier, like a wash of warmth moving over me, strong arms around me, the touch of an unseen mouth against my tumbled hair. Ah, beloved, you do not believe me now, but it will get better. Sleep now, and leave the pain for another day.

  I opened my mouth to speak, but I found I didn’t have the strength to form any words. Instead, darkness washed over me, taking me along with it. In that moment, I knew I lacked the strength to fight the inevitable.

  Chapter 7

  Dutchie’s growling woke me. I startled awake, sitting bolt upright and blinking against the darkness. Only it wasn’t completely dark, as the pillar candle still burned bravely in its dish on the coffee table. Thank God for that, because the dog was sitting in front of the door, teeth bared in a snarl, a deep, bone-rattling growl rumbling within her throat.

  Without thinking, I pushed back the blankets that covered me and grabbed the shotgun. Yes, the .357 had great stopping power, but I knew anything I hit with that shotgun would go down and stay down. Well, except for the parts that got splattered on any nearby walls. And if I did somehow manage to miss, that Remington would make a pretty decent club.

  My heart was hammering away in my chest, but I made myself go to the peephole in the front door and attempt to peer out. Fat lot of good that did — the night outside was pitch black, with not a hint of a moon. I couldn’t even see the rose of Sharon bushes on either side of the doorway.

  But the whole time Dutchie didn’t stop growling, although as I backed away from the door, shotgun still clenched in my right hand, she moved as well, padding toward the back of the house.

  Great. The front door was much bigger and heavier than the back door. Anyone sufficiently motivated could kick in the door off the service porch.

  I had a feeling that if he was still ambulatory, Chris Bowman would be feeling really motivated right around now. Maybe I was just being paranoid, since I had no idea how he could have even found me. We weren’t exactly what you could call listed in the phone book; cops tended to be circumspect about that sort of thing. Then again, Chris seemed like the type who might have mastered the finer points of hacking into secure databases, and considering his apparent obsession with me….

  Shit.

  Dutchie trotted ahead of me. Her ears were up, nose pointed directly toward the service porch at the rear of the kitchen. And that was when I heard it, too — a faint scratching noise coming from the back door. If I hadn’t known better, I would have thought it was one of the other neighborhood dogs trying to get in. But after seeing that whole “peaceable kingdom” bit at the PetSmart up in Sandia Heights, I knew Dutchie wouldn’t be growling like that if it was simply another dog on the other side of that door.

  I’d already loaded the shotgun before I lay down to sleep, so all I had to do was pump it to bring a shell into the chamber. Even though I could feel my heart still wailing away in my chest, I managed to call out in what sounded like a reasonably steady voice, “Whoever that is, back away. I’m armed, and I will not hesitate to shoot.”

  There. My father would’ve been proud, if he’d been around to hear that.

  No reply, of course. Dutchie sat down on her haunches, then looked up at me and gave a questioning whine. It seemed obvious she thought she’d done her job in warning me that something was out there, and now it was my turn to do something about it.

  Not unreasonable of her, but no way was I going to reach out and open that door. If I had to stay here all night with the shotgun pointed at the back entrance to the house, I would.

  That odd scratching noise started up again. I gritted my teeth, wondering if I should send off a warning shot. But all that would do was mess up the back door, and what if that scratching noise was coming from an ambitious rat or something? I’d look like an idiot, and worse, I would’ve completely compromised my home’s security.

  I dragged out the step stool and sat down on it, shotgun still pointed toward the back door. Dutchie stayed where she was, although she did send me an inquiring look over one shoulder. I shook my head at her, and she settled down in a sphinx-like position, still at attention, snout in a direct line with the doorknob. In that moment, I wondered whether I should even be trusting Dutchie’s instincts. Obviously, she was a very good dog, but she wasn’t my dog. I didn’t know if she was a great watch dog or the type to go off half-cocked at every random sound. Yes, there was something outside, but it didn’t necessarily have to be anything threatening. For all I knew, it could have been a branch from the willow bush just outside the back stoop scratching on the doorframe or something.

  But then the door creaked open, and my breath caught in my throat. Standing there was Chris Bowman, face puffed and bruised, pale eyes glaring at me. Something glinted in one hand, reflecting the faint light from the jar candle I’d left lit in the kitchen.

  Lock picks. Son of a bitch. Trust a maladjusted bastard like Chris the Creep to know how to pick locks.

  Slowly, I got to my feet, the gun still trained on him. “Get out, Chris.”

  His eyes were still fixed on my face, as if he hadn’t even registered the Remington pump-action shotgun in my hands. “No. We’re the only survivors. We’re meant to be together.”

  My finger was resting on the trigger. Just the slightest squeeze, and he’d be splatter on the doorframe. Could I kill someone, though, just like that? Before, when I’d thrown the rock at his head, I’d only meant to slow him down, to give myself enough time to get safely away. The shotgun was an entirely different story.

  “I don’t want to hurt you, Chris,” I said, forcing my voice to remain steady, just as I willed my hands not to shake as I gripped the shotgun. “The two of us being immune? It’s just an accident of biology. It doesn’t mean anything. So please, go back home.”

  For the first time, he glanced away from my eyes, down at the gun I held. A look of almost comical confusion passed over his puffy features. “But I want you.”

  My stomach twisted, and right then I was glad I hadn’t eaten anything more than that bread and jelly sandwich a few hours earlier…or whenever it had been. I wasn’t wearing a watch, and of course the digital clocks on the appliances in the kitchen ha
d died along with everything else when the power went out.

  “But I don’t want you, Chris,” I said, and right then my voice did contain a betraying tremor that I hated, although I couldn’t do anything about it. “I told you, I don’t want to hurt you. But I will. My dad was a cop, and he taught me how to use this. And I will.”

  During this little speech, Chris’s eyes grew narrower and narrower, as if he was finally processing my rejection of him. His lip curled, and he said, “You don’t have the guts,” right before he lunged at me.

  Without thinking, I let my finger jerk on the trigger. At the same time, it was as if a powerful hand had grasped the barrel, pointing it away from Chris so all I did was blow a hole in the ceiling, destroying the combination light/fan fixture there and raining drywall everywhere. I blinked, sure the creep was going to come after me, now that I’d missed so heinously, but instead something seemed to grab him by the neck, squeezing so his eyes began to bulge and his feet scrabbled helplessly against the linoleum of the laundry room floor.

  A few gurgling moans came from his throat, and then once again he was flung away from me, this time with so much force that he flew across the backyard, hitting the corner of the garage before tumbling in a heap into the irises that still half-heartedly grew there. Shaking, I tightened my hold on the shotgun and started down the back steps toward him, only to hear the voice say,

  Stop, Jessica. There is no need.

  I paused on the bottom stair. “That — that was you?”

  Yes.

  “And he’s — ”

  Yes. I did what I should have done back at your aunt and uncle’s house.