Fourth Grave Beneath My Feet (37 page)

I so very much wanted to tell him the truth, but there was nothing he could do, and
his life would be in just as much danger as mine if I brought him into it, so I said,
“Yes, thank you,” instead.

I closed the door and watched as he drove off. A hatred so pure it pulsated swirled
around me. I could feel at least four of the beasts near, possibly five, lurking in
shadows, afraid of the light even though they were protected by human flesh.

The Englishman stepped out of the dark to stand beside me. “Good girl,” he said, and
I wondered what the unpossessed Englishman was like in real life. He certainly dressed
nice. But this wasn’t him. This was a fraud, a minion from hell. A demon. I flexed
my fingers at my hip, but Hedeshi stopped me again. “And don’t call your dog, either.
It will end badly for both of you.”

Was he right? Could he kill Artemis?

“I take it Reyes didn’t stop hunting your pets.”

“You knew he wouldn’t.”

He was right. I did know. “Reyes doesn’t really listen to me.”

The man leaned over to smell my hair. He took a deep whiff, practically nuzzling my
neck, reveling in the scent, while he smelled like rotten eggs. I tried not to flinch
when his scent burned my nostrils.

When he spoke, the smell grew stronger. Suffocating. “If I could,” he said, his voice
soft, sincere, “if I had the time, I would lick the fear off every inch of your body
before I bit into your flesh, but no doubt the boy will come soon.”

The moon glinted off a silvery blade in my periphery. A blade very similar to the
one Earl Walker had used on me. The fear that flooded my system hit so hard and so
fast, the edges of my vision grew fuzzy. I wanted to run, but Hedeshi seemed to sense
every thought I had.

He put a hand on my shoulder to stay me. “I’ll make it quick, Dutch. You’ll hardly
feel a thing.”

“Yeah,” I said, my voice quivering, “I’ve been on the wrong end of a blade before,
and I would have to argue with you on that point.”

He stepped around until I could see his face. He wasn’t tall, but I knew the demon
inside gave him immeasurable strength. A humorous smile slipped soundlessly across
his face. “You’re probably right.” His hand shook with excitement as he drew back
the blade, and I hoped Dad would be okay with this. With my death. He’d probably take
it hard.

Odd that I would think of him now.

Setting my jaw, I figured I should probably give this my all. If I was going to go
out tonight, I was going to go out fighting. Or screaming in agony. Either way.

The blade rushed forward, certain to sink into my stomach, which instantly pissed
me off. I’d heard death from a stomach wound was a really painful way to go. Reyes
was right. These guys were liars. Before I could think about it, I blocked his attack
by thrusting his hand to the side with one of mine, diverting the forward momentum.
I twisted around, doing everything in my power to avoid the sharp end of the knife.

I still managed to get cut. The blade sliced across my forearm, through my jacket
and into my flesh. The sting of the blade rocketed through me, but Hedeshi brought
it back around for another try. He lost control for just an instant, and the demon
inside the man slipped to the side. I saw him, and the sight stunned me for a moment.
Long enough for him to sink the blade into my side. I rocketed to attention and pushed
at him as hard as I could. Then I ran because it seemed like the right thing to do.

This was no ordinary demon, as ridiculous as that sounded. His shell didn’t swallow
light like the void of a starless night. Instead, his sleek black exterior gleamed
with a red translucent coating, an iridescent shine. He was something else. Something
higher. Stronger.

“Older, actually.”

“Reyes,” I whispered.

I tumbled out of Hedeshi’s reach to the ground and swiveled around to see Reyes standing
between us. No wonder I wasn’t bleeding from a dozen different stab wounds. Reyes
held the man’s arm, the sheer strength each of them possessed causing the earth to
quake beneath us. I scrambled back only to be brought up short by a hot breath fanning
across my neck.

Slamming my eyes shut, I summoned Artemis, my voice nothing more than a breath on
the night air. She rose from the earth beside me and lunged toward the demon at my
back. Loud, guttural growls mixed with a series of inhuman screams as the demon was
ripped from a woman’s body.

Hedeshi and Reyes seemed oblivious. They stood there, arms clasped, eyeing each other.
The energy radiating off them caused the fabric of time to ripple around me. Their
images distorted, warped, then snapped back into place. I blinked to clear my vision.
To focus.

The woman lay unconscious, but I felt more demons nearby. None dared come any closer,
no matter how bad they wanted to. I could feel their desire, their singular drive,
pulsate around me. They craved my blood like a desert craves water, my fear driving
them into a mental frenzy. But they refrained from acting on it. Artemis was too powerful.
She’d disposed of one demon and now stood hunched over me.

Waiting.

Hoping.

“You can’t win,” Hedeshi said.

Reyes lowered his head. “You forget who I am.”

“Not at all.” The man smiled, his teeth gritted with effort as he struggled against
Reyes’s hold. Shook with it. “You’re the boy from the village who got lost on his
way to the market. Do you remember why you’re here? Why your father created you?”

Another wave rippled through the air with the heat of Reyes’s anger. “He created me
so he could get out of hell.”

“That was only half of it. The other half was for you to find the portal.” He nodded
toward me. “That particular portal. Why do you think he sent you here?” He leaned
in until their noses almost touched.
“You?”

Reyes eased back. “He sent me after a portal, any portal. Not her.” He didn’t seem
quite as confident as he had before. His brows slid together in thought.

The Englishman laughed. “You really don’t remember, do you?”

“I remember everything, like the fact that all you know how to do is lie.”

“She’s royalty, boy. She’s the most valuable pawn we could ever hope to possess. And
you think you can keep her to yourself?”

A knowing grin slid across Reyes’s face. “She’s also the most powerful.”

“Exactly,” Hedeshi said, his eyes suddenly bright with hope. “Think of what we can
do with her. With the two of you together. That’s what this is all about. What it’s
always been about.” He dropped the knife and wrapped his hand around the back of Reyes’s
head, pulling him forward into a brotherly embrace, their foreheads touching in affection.
“We will be unstoppable, my lord. The world will fall beneath our feet, and your father
will rule at last.”

Was he telling the truth? Was Reyes sent for me specifically? He must’ve sensed my
doubt. He turned slightly, watching me from his periphery. “Remember what they are,
Dutch. What they do.”

“I remember,” I said, trying to scoot out from under Artemis, but she plopped a huge
paw on my chest, pinning me to the ground.

“Really?” I asked her, and she leaned over with a whine to lick my face. I pulled
her head down into a hug, partly to assure her I wasn’t mad at her and partly to get
a better look at the two men standing before me. That’s when I saw where the knife
had dropped. Not to the ground as Hedeshi had expected, but into Reyes’s hand.

He took hold of the man’s head, seeming to embrace him back, and plunged the knife
into his gut in one lightning-quick strike. Hedeshi gaped at him, his shock genuine
as he stumbled back. “You would deny your father his throne?”

“It was never his,” Reyes said, plunging the knife again. Forcing it up his torso.
An instant later, the knife reemerged from just underneath the Englishman’s chin.

Hedeshi looked at me, his eyes watering in pain. “Just remember what I’ve told you
about him.”

I tried to tamp down the horror I felt at watching a man being cut open. “I’ll tie
a string around my finger.”

Another stab wound wrenched a ragged groan from his throat. “He is not what you think
he is.”

I thought of my father. Of Harper and Art and Pari. Of pretty much anyone I’d ever
known in my entire life, and answered him as truthfully as I could. “No one ever is.”

Reyes embraced him again and plunged the knife into his side. “Your first mistake
was coming for her,” he said into the man’s ear.

Hedeshi coughed, knowing full well he was taking his last breaths. “And my second?”
he asked as blood gushed out of his mouth.

“Believing that you could get past me.”

The man smiled and said in the gentlest of voices, “Attack.”

And that was pretty much when all hell broke loose.

20

It puts the lotion in the basket.

—T-SHIRT

Five more demon-possessed people lunged out of the shadows like crazed mental patients
as Reyes separated into two distinct beings. His incorporeal body dematerialized,
reached into the Englishman, and ripped the demon Hedeshi out with a ferocious twist.
His corporeal body dived into the darkness, taking on the biggest of the demons approaching,
a male who looked like a sumo wrestler. They landed hard and quickly blurred into
a tangle of arms and fists.

Unfortunately, Artemis used my body as a launching pad, ridding me of a kidney named
Percival and quite possibly Harold, my spleen. I cradled my stomach, then scrambled
to my feet and reached for the closest thing at hand—a leaf rake leaning against the
building.

That’s when I realized Mrs. Allen had come outside to let PP the miniature poodle
go potty. PP went berserk at all the action. Mrs. Allen yelled at him to get back
inside, but PP was beyond listening to anything she had to say. I scooted back in
surprise as he attacked a burly man headed toward me. The guy had enough weight on
him to be taken seriously. Not as much as the sumo wrestler, but I wouldn’t have challenged
him to a thumb war if my life depended on it.

He crept forward, literally crawling on hands and knees, stalking me in a slow methodical
march, victory so close, so sweet, he must’ve wanted to savor the moment. PP barked
and leapt off the ground, sinking his toothless gums into the man’s ear.

He cursed and shook off the dog, but Artemis took over from there. She’d already disposed
of another demon, leaving a guy around my age lying unconscious in the small square
of grass that lined the apartment building. Now she pounced on the heftier man, her
snarls of rage enough to cause goose bumps to jut out all over my skin.

I glanced at Reyes and the demon. One incorporeal being against another, his enveloping
black robe making much of the fight impossible to see. But what I did see was surreal,
otherworldly, and my mind had difficulty processing it. Their movements were so fast,
so fluid, it was like watching two oceans collide. Then I looked at his physical form.
He had the sumo wrestler in a headlock, one knee jabbed into the man’s back. In the
next instant, the man’s head snapped to the side with a sharp crack. He slumped to
the ground instantly. But I knew from experience that wouldn’t last long. He’d be
back up in a matter of moments.

I tore my gaze away. The Englishman’s body lay limp on the paved lot. I gripped the
leaf rake and started toward him as PP went after another possessed woman. Hunched
a few feet from me, she seemed confused. She wanted me but didn’t seem to know why.
And when PP nipped at her fingers, she appraised him with a vacant stare as though
trying to figure out exactly what he was.

I took the break to check on the Englishman, but the instant I started toward him,
I could tell he was already dead. That’s when I realized another of the possessed
had picked up the knife, his eyes glistening with hunger as he came for me. I met
him halfway, pitching forward and lashing out with the rake. Just to stop it. To slow
it down.

The bristles of the rake scraped harmlessly across its face, doing little damage,
but I did manage to knock the knife out of his hand. He looked to the side, and the
distraction granted me enough time to crash into him, another male in his early forties.
He seemed unable to believe his luck as we tumbled to the pavement and skidded across
the lot. Dirt and gravel ground into my shoulder. He straddled me, took my head into
his hands, and started to twist.

He was going to break my neck, and I hated having my neck broken, so I lifted my legs,
leveraged my feet up and around his head, then jerked back, knocking him off balance
long enough for me to almost make it out from under him. But he threw his weight on
top of me.

I fought his hold, elbowed him across the face, and crawled forward, fighting for
every inch I gained. Before I knew it, his hands were gripping my head again. He really
wanted the kill. When he twisted, I rolled with it, forcing him to go for a better
hold. But Artemis finally ripped into him, hurtling herself right through the human’s
body and dragging the demon out with her as she landed. The man went limp on top of
me, and I lay pinned to the ground.

I looked over and realized Artemis had already taken care of the demon inside the
man Reyes had been fighting, the sumo wrestler. Only one demon remained. The woman.
She came into view as I lay right in front of her, easing over me, drool dripping
from her mouth and into my hair.

A mountain lay atop me, and a possessed woman sat studying my every feature as though
I were a specimen in a petri dish. I looked to the side just as Reyes sliced through
Hedeshi’s demon self, cutting him in half at the hips. He’d screamed and started back
for more, when Reyes swung again. He severed its head, and with its death, it evaporated
like smoke on dry ice.

When another drop of drool landed on my temple, I shivered in revulsion. But at least
she wasn’t trying to break my neck.