Raven's Peak (27 page)

Scrawny was using the opportunity to run to one of his downed friends who had been carrying a gun and was trying to extract it from the unconscious man’s grip.

Abigail slipped back, realizing this fighter would be harder to bring down than she had thought. She slipped her revolver loose and lined up a shot, first shooting the short guy in the knee. She followed with a kick to his face, knocking him unconscious as he staggered to the ground.

Scrawny had gotten the gun loose and was bringing it back up to line up a shot. His first bullet went wide as he pulled the trigger in panic, and then Abigail was on him. She rushed forward, swatted the gun out of his hand, and then punched him in the nose. It broke, blood pouring down his face, and she kicked him twice in the stomach.

He collapsed and rolled on the ground, groaning and clutching his broken cartilage. Abigail rubbed her shoulder and stretched it out from where the short guy had hit her. It hurt a lot.

She glanced around, making sure everyone was out of the fight. They were all either unconscious or had lost all interest in attacking her.

The doorway into the factory was clear in front of her. She readied her shotgun, took a few steadying breaths, and walked into the factory.

Haatim pulled off to the side of the road about half a mile outside the city. He kept the car idling, divided by the raging emotions inside his heart and mind.

He hadn’t seen any other people on the road, and it was quiet out here in the woods. Hard to believe that a mile behind him, an entire town was falling to anarchy and disrepair.

If he left Raven’s Peak now, then he was abandoning Abigail to face this threat alone. He would be leaving her alone, and if she didn’t make it out alive he would effectively be sentencing her to death. After everything she had done to rescue him and protect him up until now, he didn’t think he could live with himself if she didn’t survive.

Still, he wasn’t sure what he could do to help. This wasn’t his world, and he didn’t know what she was facing. If he returned to Raven’s Peak, he might be able to do nothing else except die along with her.

But, surviving and knowing that he might have been able to do something and chose not to would be worse.

He put the car back into gear and made a U-turn, driving back toward the city. He wasn’t exactly sure where he would find Abigail, but he figured there was a decent way he could follow her.

Just follow the gunshots.

He drove back into town and turned east, heading down a road toward the central district. Abigail had been traveling in that direction when last he saw her, and he hoped he might come across her along the way.

He spotted something ahead and slowed the car to a crawl: as he got closer he realized two people were copulating in the center of the street. Their clothes were scattered all around them and they were laughing and moaning wildly.

Haatim hesitated in shock and then drove around them, running up on the curb to avoid their activities. He shook his head and let out a nervous chuckle. The pair barely seemed to notice his vehicle driving past them only a few meters away.

He kept going passing through the center of town and heading farther east. He was watching carefully for any sign that Abigail had been here. There was a body on the road, and he was fairly certain the guy was dead, but then he spotted a police officer farther up the way.

He climbed out of the car and checked the officer over, noticing a dart in the man’s neck. He was heading the right way.

He kept going and drove past a man diving into an industrial trashcan in one of the side alleys. This guy was wearing a torn up business suit and rambling to himself as he tossed things out. The best word Haatim could think of to describe him was: ravenous.

Farther down the street a naked man ran across the road in front of his car, forcing him to slam on the brakes. This guy pounded his hands on the hood and made gyrating motions before squealing and running off. He disappeared into a house, shouting and laughing.

Haatim let out a sigh and kept moving. He hadn’t seen any clues of where he might find Abigail yet, but he was coming up to the factory they had seen on the eastern side of the town. Then he would have to double back and check another street.

Abigail crept slowly through sparsely furnished office space, careful not to make any noise. It was silent and dark, a long carpeted hallway that eventually emptied onto the factory floor. She’d tried the light switch, but the power was out. Only a handful of windows were letting in any outside sunlight.

It was around forty meters from the entrance to the factory itself, and she was walking past old and cramped offices. The furniture looked like it had been pulled from the last century. People—the group out front, she assumed—had been through here already and much of the equipment was broken. Papers and trash were scattered across the floor and computers were smashed by bats and clubs. She checked each room, determined not to pass by any threats.

Her footsteps were the only sound padding across the soft carpet. She listened, but there was no evidence that anyone else was in the office with her. She kept moving, breathing as softly as she could.

She held her shotgun at the ready; it was loaded with specialized shells packed with salt. It had a short-barrel and would spread the salt in a wide pattern. Demons moved quickly, but even a little bit of salt could slow them down.

She didn’t want to use it on the kid if she didn’t have to, but she doubted the demon was going to give up the body willingly. That, of course, required that the demon was still inside the kid. It might have moved on by now and found another host. If she underestimated Belphegor, she would get both herself and the host killed.

She wiped the sweat from her hands, breathing deeply and keeping herself calm. She was almost through the offices, only four meters from the cavernous factory floor beyond, when she heard a voice behind her.

“I wondered when I might meet you.”

Abigail froze midstride. It was the voice of a young child. It came from one of the side rooms she had already cleared. She turned and saw a young boy, maybe ten or eleven, standing in the doorway of the office and studying her. He looked normal, if a little pale, with dark hair and bangs on his boyish face. His eyes, though, were dead and empty.

He hadn’t been there a second ago, she was sure of it. Nor had she heard any footsteps on the carpet. With how quiet it was in the room she was certain she could have heard a pin drop on the carpet, let alone a boy’s footsteps.

Yet, there he stood, watching her with an immutable expression. She forced herself to swallow and slowly swiveled around to face him. If he was at all concerned that she was carrying a shotgun, he didn’t show it.

“Meet me?”

“Yes,” the demon said. “I was hoping we might bump into each other. After all, I know Arthur so well now, even since he was brought to my master.”

She felt a chill run across her spine. “What are you talking about?”

“I know
your mentor
intimately
. I’ve been speaking with him rather often these last months, and suffice to say he has a great many things to say about you,” the child said. “All good things, of course. He’s quite fond of you. He’ll be
so
thrilled to learn that we spoke.”

“What are you doing to him?”

“You wouldn’t even begin to imagine,” the demon said. “After we broke him and turned him into our puppet.”

“You aren’t the demon that took him.”

“No, I’m not, but
he
remembers you well. He speaks of the time he spent inside you in the Church and how delicious it was to dominate you. Perhaps you would like to feel that again? To have him slip inside of you like a soft glove.”

“Shut up.”

“He told me that you were a true fighter, but he broke you. That was before he took Arthur, of course. Now we have a new plaything.”

Abigail felt her hands shake. “Don’t speak of him…”

“Oh, are you sad to talk about Arthur? You should be. You’re the one that sent him to hell.”

Abigail didn’t respond.

“You don’t think so? I do. We had a nice long chat about it. Arthur didn’t want to talk. Not at first. Funny how despair changes one’s perspective, and by the end he couldn’t stop himself from telling me everything. He told me you were the one who finally brought him in and locked him in that prison. He explained how you were the reason he butchered all of those people.”

“He didn’t…”

“Oh, he
certainly
butchered them,” the demon argued. “Gloriously and without remorse. He thought he was doing the right thing.”

“He thought they were infected.”

“They
were
infected.”

“But he didn’t need to kill them. There was another way.”

“Was there? Is that what the Council told you?”

Abigail didn’t reply.

“A pity,” the demon said. “And here, I thought you might be more than a simple lap dog.”

Abigail started to raise her shotgun, but she felt a sudden compulsion to set it on the floor instead. She resisted, and her hands started shaking, but she couldn’t regain complete control. The demon wasn’t possessing her, it was just suggesting a course of action, but she could tell it was powerful

“Now, now, let’s not get ahead of ourselves. This need not turn unpleasant. After my time with Arthur, I was hoping we might be able to end things amicably.”

“Why are you here?” she asked.

“To finish the business my associate began so many months ago.”

“And what business is that?”

“It isn’t your concern,” the demon said. “What
is
your concern is what I have to offer you.”

“What you can offer me?”

The demon smiled.

“I can offer you your greatest desire,” the demon said, “
if
you assist me.”

“Assist you with what?” Abigail asked. “My greatest desire? How could you possibly know what I want?”

The demon ignored her. “This body is too weak to go into the tunnels where a certain knife was hidden long ago. However, older bodies would be too weak for me to use for an extended journey, so I’m at an impasse. I want you to retrieve the blade and bring it back to me.”

“And why would I do that?”

“Because when you bring the knife here, I will return Arthur to you. Whole and alive.”

Haatim heard shouts from above and peered through the windshield, leaning forward in his seat. The sounds came from above on the roof of a nearby home.

He was almost through the residential street near the outskirts of the town. A man was standing on the roof of his two-story home. He was flapping his arms like they were wings and making bird sounds.

“Uh oh,” Haatim said. He hit the brakes and put the car into park, and then jumped out. “Hey!”

“Hey!” the guy shouted down at him. “Watch this! I’m about to fly!”

“You can’t fly,” Haatim called up, cupping his hands over his mouth. “Humans can’t fly!”

“I can,” the guy said. “And I’ll be rich and famous. The human birdman!”

“Trust me,” Haatim said. “You are just going to hurt yourself.”

“No, I’m not,” the guy said. “Watch!”

Haatim watched the man jump off his roof, flailing and flapping his arms. He shouted and screamed in panic. He hit an awning about four meters down and then rolled off and thudded bodily into the bushes in front of his house.

Haatim sprinted over to check on the man. He was thrashing and groaning in the bushes, but he looked mostly unhurt. The bushes had cushioned his fall.

Haatim blew out a breath of air and rubbed a hand through his hair. “What the hell is going on?” he asked no one in particular. “This just keeps getting crazier and crazier.”

He got back into the car and kept driving. Up ahead he saw a strip mall of shops and stores in front of the factory. They looked to have been broken into and looted like the other shops; one of them was on fire.

He pulled up in front of the factory, planning to double back on another street and make another pass through town. Along the way, he spotted a pile of bodies out front of the enormous factory and decided to check it out.

Several men were lying on the ground, some barely conscious and others completely out. A lone man knelt in the center of the group, praying with his hands folded in front of his chest. He was scrawny and it looked like his leg was broken.

Haatim walked over to the man, eyeing the men on the ground in case one of them decided to get up. There were weapons lying everywhere, and he doubted these people were passive or just hoping they could fly in their insanity.

He spotted a small dart in the neck of a few of the unconscious men. Abigail’s hand crossbow lying on the ground nearby, empty.

“Guess I found her,” he muttered.

The man on his knees was rocking back and forth, hands folded in front of himself, and chanting. He had blood running down the side of his head; he barely seemed to notice the pain. He just kept shifting his body and chanting, eyes open and staring up at the sky.

“Are you OK?” Haatim asked.

The guy turned to him, but his eyes didn’t seem to focus on anything. “The end is coming! The end of days is here! Rejoice, brother, the end is here!”

He turned back to the sky and kept chanting before Haatim could reply. The door to the factory was open, and it was pitch black inside. If Abigail was here, he knew, she would be in there.

He eyed several weapons lying on the ground, bats and clubs and even a few guns, be he knew they wouldn’t help him. He didn’t know how to use any of them effectively, and they would do more harm than good.

He steadied himself and then walked into the darkness.

I will return Arthur to you. Whole and alive.

The words hit Abigail like a ton of bricks. The demon was offering to bring her greatest friend back, the sole objective she had pursued during the last several months. It had consumed her ever since that fateful day in the Church when the demon had taken her. Everything she had done was dedicated to finding her mentor: her father.