Demons in My Driveway (23 page)

Hand-in-hand, we went out front to sit on the front steps to wait. I texted Talia three more times while we sat there watching the sun go down.

Andrew and Daniel arrived in Andrew’s beaten-up station wagon shortly after dark, and Kam followed them up the driveway on foot. I sighed in resignation. Mom was supposed to tell them not to come. I should have expected they’d come anyway.

They stepped out of the car, and Milo sprang through the open door to vault into my arms. Foxy kisses and excited panting followed, while I cuddled him close and tried to calm him. Howard hopped out behind him, the soul of dignity. He settled in to ignore us and nibble grass.

Kam threw her arms around the shoulders of both men, her flapper costume glittering in the moonlight. “Hello, boys. What’s the haps?”

I smiled. A little of the old Kam was back. I probably shouldn’t have been so surprised by her resilience. After being a slave to an evil jackass for a century with no hope of release, being enslaved for a day or so while knowing friends were looking for her would be a great deal less stressful. And maybe there was a way she hadn’t mentioned yet to replace the missing gem.

Or maybe she was really good at faking it.

“So.” Andrew slid his arm around Kam. “Where is this Legion of Portals we came out to see?”

I rubbed my cheek against Milo’s soft head. “Sorry. You missed them. And one took Sara with it.”

“What?” Daniel stopped in midstride. Since the three of them were connected with Kam in the middle, the other two were forced to stop too. “Why would she go into a portal? What was she thinking?”

The anxiety on his face was so sharp, I wanted to jump up and hug him. Daniel hadn’t been part of our group for long—maybe six months or so—but he was every bit as much a part of the family as Kam or Riley. Or Andrew, for that matter. I knew I felt that way about him, but I hadn’t thought about how close he felt to the rest of us. He was as stricken over Sara’s absence as he’d been determined to find Kam.

Andrew had chosen well.

I opened my mouth to explain what had happened and my jaw snapped shut. A portal popped open behind them and hung in the air twenty feet away.

Riley jumped from the steps and waved them over. “Heads up!”

The trio hurried over to us and turned to face the new portal. The surface shimmered and shifted, then folded up and disappeared.

Darius dropped from the sky, his mothman face blank and his voice echoing. “Why didn’t it stay?”

Mom and Maurice stepped out on the porch.

Mom wiped her hands on a dishtowel. “Did you see that?”

As we stood there squinting, another portal opened a few yards from the last one, then winked out.

I cast my gaze around the area, but didn’t see anyone who might be opening them. It was too dark to spot anyone anyway. “Kam, did you find any cultists out there earlier? You were gone a long time.”

She tilted her head. “I kept hearing something, but I never found anybody. Whoever I was following was alone. And fast.”

I glanced around the yard. “I have a feeling the time for aswangs is over. I think we’re seeing a concerted effort to crack the zombie code now.”

I tugged my magical demon phone from my pocket and checked it for a response from Talia. Nothing.

Knowing it was fruitless, I texted her again.

Getting really worried. Please say you found Sara. Or that you’re on your way. Anything.

Of course, there was no response.

Around eight, Marcus wandered out, looking for dinner.

To my frustration, a portal opened while he was standing there, putting to rest my pet theory that Marcus was responsible. Somehow this made me dislike him more, not less. At least if he were doing it, we’d have the mystery solved.

Gris hadn’t reported in, but I figured Marcus could probably use a minder, even if he wasn’t the Big Evil Bad Guy doing all this.

“We’re a little busy for a sit down meal,” I said. “If you ask nicely, maybe Maurice will make you a sandwich. That’s what
we
all ate.”

He made a ridiculous harrumphing sound from the back of his throat. “I won’t have you sitting out here waiting for the end of the world to swallow you. I insist that you come inside where it’s safer.”

I crooked an eyebrow and glared at him. “You
insist
?”

“I’m still in charge, you know. A fact you’ve failed to recognize up to this point. When this is over, things are going to be very different.” He folded his arms over his puffed chest and gave me the weakest, lamest stink-eye I’d ever seen.

I blinked, then turned my back on him. “Darius, can you escort Marcus to his tent, please? He seems to be overtired to the point of hallucinating. He needs a rest.” I walked away, blocking out his protests as Darius marched him through the house to the backyard. I had enough to worry about without some government shmo attempting a powerplay.

Once he was gone, we settled in to watch the portal show unfold in the yard.

All through the night, portals came and went. No one and nothing came out before each disappeared. With Sara missing, this was as much a disappointment as it was a relief.

Maurice brought blankets and hot chocolate, and we took turns dozing on my porch and spread across the lawn. When dawn lightened the area, it revealed a crowd had joined in our vigil.

Bruce the pigmy dragon. Tashi the yeti. Molly the brownie and her husband, Walter. A satyr, a centaur, and three selkies. Clusters of people of all shapes and sizes waited with us, silent. Alert.

Maurice was closest to the edge, tense and studious, waiting for the right portal to appear so it would spit out Sara and give her back to us. Behind him, huddled to my right, Stacy sat watch, head held high and shoulders back. She may have accepted that Maurice would never be hers again, but she hadn’t deserted him, either.

Tension collected in the grass and connected us all together in a fisherman’s net pattern. I felt it in my soul, all those connections. The connection I wanted to feel—Sara’s—eluded me.

As the morning light seeped through the clouds, portals stopped appearing. I didn’t know if that meant the people or person opening them had run out of djinn magic or had simply had to rest.

I didn’t dare hope it was over.

Chapter Twenty-Three

When the first portal of the morning opened, everyone who had been waiting seemed to hold their breath. The other portals had opened, hung for a moment, then closed.

This one failed to go away.

A long, lanky leg ending in a black leather pump stepped out of the portal, followed by a woman in a charcoal skirt and jacket. Her dark hair was pulled into a neat bun, and wire-rimmed glasses perched on her upturned nose. She gave a curious look around and straightened her jacket.

A gust of wind blew over her and her expression changed. In fact, everything changed. It was as if the wind had been radioactive, though it didn’t appear to give her pain. Everything on her shredded—clothing, face, hair, demeanor. She hunched, the weight of the world and her own ripeness wearing her down. She lifted her head to the wind and sniffed hard, then shambled toward us.

Before our eyes, a smartly dressed businesswoman had transformed into a zombie.

She opened her mouth and groaned, and saliva mixed with juicy bits of flesh dripped down her chin. She smacked into the barrier formed by the fairy ring and stood there, dazed. The wind kicked up and she sniffed the air. She moaned louder and tried to move forward until she hit the barrier again.

Fairies flitted above her, then dove down to grab a hank of hair or a bit of fabric. They pulled, but the zombie didn’t drift into the air like she was supposed to. Wherever the fairies pulled—hair, clothing, skin—came loose in their tiny hands.

The zombie bumped into the barrier again and settled into a mindless thumping over and over. I wasn’t sure the fairy ring would hold long under constant attack, no matter how mindless and unfocused.

Behind the zombie woman, a well-dressed gentleman in a navy blue suit stepped out. He actually waved at me and smiled. I had time to think about what a nice guy he probably was before he changed, the same way the woman did.

Several more squeezed out, changed into grisly, macabre caricatures of their previous selves, and joined the first woman in mindlessly bumping against the barrier.

Without realizing it, I’d risen from my perch on the front steps and walked into the grass for a closer look. Riley startled me out of my mesmerized fascination by grabbing my arms and pulling me backward toward the house.

“Zoey, you have to get inside. No arguments. No being tough. You have to get out of the way. Every last person here came to keep you and your mom safe.” As he spoke, he half dragged me inside. I’m sure if I’d protested, he’d have picked me up and carried me.

This was it. Holy hell, the zombies were here. The end of the world was now in session.

I hated having to accept the role of damsel in distress while others put themselves in danger. But this wasn’t about me. This was about the potential downfall of humanity and possible eviction of all magical creatures from our world. Two Aegises left. It was time I tried to behave more like the target I was and get my ass to safety.

I ducked into the house and ran to the window. Mom moved over to give me room, and we huddled there, holding hands and watching the end of the world unfold in my front yard.

The zombies piled against the fairy ring. Although it was invisible, I could almost see it bend against all that weight. From that single portal, the people poured out and turned as soon as our air touched their skin.

On our side of the barrier, my friends formed a wall, and each held some sort of weapon. Maurice clutched a sharp kitchen knife. He must have brought out several, because a lot of people gripped similar knives. Riley had armed himself with a rake, and Stacy held aloft a pair of long, wicked pruning sheers. Shovels and axes, brooms and sharpened sticks—everyone had something.

And there I was inside, relatively safe. I shook my head. “This isn’t right. And it doesn’t make any damn sense.”

Mom was distracted as another wave of businessmen poured out of the portal. “What doesn’t make sense?”

“All of it. Somebody’s trying to break the Covenant and bring about the end of the world, which means the zombie portal opens letting zombies destroy humankind. But they also said the Covenant is broken when all the Aegises are dead.”

Mom gave me a questioning look. “How can we be here and the zombies be here at the same time, you mean?”

“Yeah. That. Cart before the horse.”

“So, they’re opening the zombie portal early in order to kill us and break the Covenant?” She frowned and looked out the window, her voice tight. “Everyone’s sacrificing themselves to save us.”

I followed her gaze to the thin line of our friends ready to do battle for our sake with only household items to keep them from being eaten or zombiefied themselves. “What’s the point of killing us with zombies if killing us releases the zombies? If we hadn’t had the weird visions, I’d say the Covenant itself is a crock.”

She squeezed my hand. “The Board has no idea what the Covenant is.”

“Exactly. They’ve been blowing smoke up our asses through all of this. The pieces don’t go together, because we’re missing a piece.” I turned away from the window, thinking. Bernice was useless lately, and poor Art was still new to the Board. But I knew someone who might have knowledge he was holding back and he was within my reach. “Marcus has to know something he’s not telling us.”

I marched through the house to the back door, and Mom didn’t follow. She kept her vigil at the window as the zombies piled up with every passing second.

The wind blew sour and nasty outside Marcus’s tent, and I was glad. I hoped he’d gag on the smell of centaur-ogre-troll-pixie-sea monster shit.

I thrust the tent flap out of my way and stepped inside.

Marcus wasn’t there.

Gris was, though. A tiny piece of tape covered his mouth, and his body was wrapped in twine that had been tied to the tent support overhead.

I sucked air through my teeth and dropped to my knees. “Oh, Gris, I’m so sorry.”

The tape came off easily. “It’s okay,” he said. “No harm done. Just untie me, please. I’m getting a bit nauseated spinning around like this.”

I felt foolish sitting in a tent, hands shaking, picking at knots while the zombie apocalypse raged on the other side of my house.

As I struggled to untie him, Gris was patient. “You don’t have to be so delicate. I won’t break.”

I grunted and pulled one knot free. “I saw Marcus with my own eyes when a portal opened last night.” I twisted and wiggled his arm until another of length of twine came free. “How is he doing this?”

Gris flung his left arm in the air now that it was free. “I don’t know, Zoey. I haven’t seen him
do
anything. He caught me hiding last night. Mumbled something about not letting his plans get ruined, then did this to me. I’m sorry.”

“Well, what was he doing before that?” I got stuck on a large snag and cast my gaze around the tent for something sharp. “And where did he go?”

“Mostly he was mumbling to himself and polishing his watch. Whatever he’s up to, he didn’t do it in here. He left about two hours ago. I don’t know where he went.” Gris pointed at a small leather bag in the corner. “I think he’s got fingernail clippers in there.”

I dug the clippers out and snipped away the last of the twine. “I’m going after him. I need you to tell Riley. I might need help.” Plus, going after the bad guy on my own probably wasn’t a solid plan. If I didn’t tell someone, they’d all want to kick my ass—provided my ass was still alive to kick.

Gris zipped away without a word.

On my way to the unprotected edge of the woods, I cast around for a weapon. I’m not a badass. I cannot wield a sword or fire a gun straight. However, I’m not stupid. Marcus was bigger than me and, if he was opening those portals, he had a djinn with him. Even if the djinn wanted to be on my side, she would be his slave and wouldn’t have any choice in the matter.

A length of rusty pipe lay in the grass next to the house, and I grabbed it. It had good heft and was longer than my arm. It would do.

I found Marcus coming up the path from the beach, humming a cheerful tune and smiling. He had a towel thrown casually over one shoulder and he wore a bathing suit and flip-flops.

“That’s as far as you need to go.” I shifted my grip on the pipe so he knew I meant business. “Whatever you’ve got in your hands, drop it. Where’s the djinn?”

The smile faded from his lips and a crease formed between his brows. “What djinn?”

He looked genuinely confused. And to be fair, he’d been coming from the beach—the opposite direction of all the action. I lowered my walls and reached toward him with my empathic power. There was no deception in him that I could feel. He still felt slimy, and pride encased him like a knight’s armor, but he wasn’t lying.

“Here.” He took a step forward, holding out his cupped hand. “I found these and thought you might like them.”

Curious, I peered into the offered palm. Dozens of tiny seashells in a variety of shapes and colors shone in the sun. Each one was perfect, unbroken.

“What the hell?” Not my most coherent reaction. But seriously, I’d expected to do righteous battle with my enemy while the zombie apocalypse played out in my front yard, and instead, the guy was offering me a handful of shells.

He cleared his throat. “Let me try again.” He held the fingers of his empty hand to his lips while he regrouped. “I may have come on a little strong.”

I snorted. “You think?” I shifted my weight from foot to foot and glanced over my shoulder. “Look, if you’re not the bad guy, you need to make this short. We’re under attack.”

He looked startled. “What?”

I flapped my hand at him impatiently. “Zombies are here. Move it along.”

His eyes widened. “Here.” He climbed the rest of the path and dropped his gifts into my hand. “I’ll explain while we walk.”

Unable to think what else to do with them, I shoved the seashells into my pocket.

He took my elbow and spun me around, talking while we walked toward the house. “I’m a pressurvator. It’s my skill. I put pressure on people until they either snap or become their best.”

My fists clenched. “You broke Bernice.” My voice was cold.

His face became solemn. “That was unfortunate. I wasn’t there long before it became apparent she was no longer right for the job. I wasn’t the cause of her lack of self-confidence. That bitch Katy did it well enough.” He brightened. “But Art really came out of his shell. I think he’ll make an excellent replacement for Bernice.”

He had to be kidding. I wasn’t usually a violent person, but I turned and shoved him backward with both hands against his chest. “What the hell is wrong with you?” I flapped my arm in the general direction of my front yard. “It’s the freaking zombie apocalypse and you took out the only help I had from the government, then came out here and got under foot while we were fighting aswangs and mysterious portals.” I shoved him again, grunting in aggravation. “My best friend is missing and you haven’t lifted a damn finger to help.” All my fear, anger, helplessness and worry came to a head and focused on this one stupid guy staring at me with his stupid eyes in his stupid face. I poked him hard. “And you tied up Gris for no good reason.”

He held his hands up in surrender. “I
was
here to help.” He dropped his arms to his side. “I’m not good at anything else. All I can do is bring out the best in people. Only...” He paused and glanced toward the sound of distant fighting. “Only you don’t need a pressurvator here. You already bring out the best in people. Not because they have no choice, like with me, but because they want to—for you.”

I gave him a sideways look of disgust. “Why didn’t you just tell me why you were here, then?”

“I’m sorry. It’s the pressurvator thing. If you know about it, it doesn’t work. That’s why I tied up your little golem. I was afraid he’d figured it out and would tell you.” He gave me a sheepish look. “Then, I sort of forgot all about him.”

I gave him a cynical look. “Then, what? You just decided to go for a swim in the ocean?”

He stared at his left toe, wiggling it to shake some sand loose. “I went down to the beach in search of a peace offering. Something pretty to give you as an apology.”

I rubbed my palm against the lump of shells in my pocket. “A peace offering?”

He nodded. “I screwed this up from the beginning. I hoped we could maybe start over.” He looked up at me with a hopeful expression. “Maybe there could be something more between us.”

I didn’t mean to laugh. I really didn’t. But I was a woman on the edge, distracted by the moans of zombies piling against the fairy barriers not far away and Marcus took me by surprise. The laughter burst out of me before I could stop it from happening.

The crushed look on his face squelched the nervous humor leaking out of me.

“Yeah.” His shoulders sagged. “That’s what I was afraid of. You have that reaper guy. You wouldn’t want me, no matter what I could offer you.”

Disappointment dripped from his shoulders and puddled in the grass.

“Wait, you’re serious?” I was baffled. He’d been a total asshole, even threatening to take Maurice with him to Kansas, and now he thought he could apologize and—what? Woo me?

I groaned. “Look. It’s the end of the world right now, in case you haven’t noticed.” The moaning across the yard had increased with the number of zombies.

He looked past me to the action in the front yard and his face paled.

I tried to sound gentle. I’d already laughed at him. I didn’t want to hurt his feelings any more than I already had. “Let’s save the world. Then we’ll talk, okay?”

He nodded, but refused to make eye contact. “Sure. We’ll talk.”

I marched toward the house while Marcus moped behind me. The noise from the front increased every minute, and I wasn’t sure the bubble could take the strain much longer.

Every zombie movie I’d ever seen ran through my head.

I needed to get Mom out of the house.

Our only chance might be to make a run for it down to the beach, then find a place to hide.

Movement in the woods caught my attention and I scanned the tree line. I didn’t know if the Hidden were in danger of becoming zombies or not. I frowned. Tashi was pregnant. What if her babies were vulnerable to it? A shadow flitted between two pines. The figure was dark and small, not tall and white-furred.