The White Night (19 page)

“Why didn’t you
say something sooner?”

“I told you why.
But, mostly, I didn’t want you to hate
me
.”

I don’t even know
how to process this. I’m angry. I’m sad.

I’m relieved.

My muscles are
knotted ropes.

I’m surprised. I’m
not.

I bite down on the
back of a knuckle, tightly pinching the skin between my teeth.

The pain is a good
release.

I hold it for as
long as I can.

I tell Dakota,
“We’ll talk about this later.”

“Okay.”

“I’m serious. I’m
pissed that you didn’t say anything.”

“I understand.”

“I can’t do
anything about it right now.”

“I know.”

“Besides, it’s been
over for a long time.” It’s true. And yet, that doesn’t mean I’m not hurt.

“Yeah.”

“Later.” I’ll
swallow the pain with a bottle of scotch later. “I’ll concentrate on it when
we’re done.”

“You just said
‘we.’”

“I’m not thrilled
about it, but after
this
conversation,” I say, pointing at her and then
myself, “I might not be in the best place. Your positive energy might be a
necessity.”

She lets go of my
hand and starts picking at a hangnail. She looks up at me, timidly. “I promise
I didn’t do that on purpose.”

“I know you
didn’t.”

Dakota asks, “What
now?”

“Only one thing to
do. We go get your house back, right?”

“I thought you’d
never ask.” She grins at me sheepishly.

I reach to put the
car back in reverse, then pause. “What’s that thing you used to say on
Yes,
Chef!
right before you walked into the competition kitchen?”

“If you were
really such a huge fan, you know exactly what it was.”

I put the car in
gear and take my foot off the brake. As we ease back out of the parking spot, I
tell her, “I wanted to hear you say it one more time.”

“Fine, just for
you.” Dakota affectionately squeezes my shoulder. “
Boom
go the bombs.
Time to light this motherfucker up.”

Man, it’s so much
cooler to hear it without the network’s censoring
bleep
.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Ford Atticus Ford

I plow into the
door, all one hundred and ninety pounds of me hitting it at full throttle.
Well, with as much momentum as I can muster across seven feet of bathroom floor
space. I hit it with the force of a dump truck barreling through a papier-mâché
wall, my body pushing the door into Lauren, knocking her back, sending her hurtling
completely off her feet. Her back slams into the cheap sheetrock wall on the
opposite side, leaving a dent, and then she falls forward, face down.

I watch it happen
as my awkward fumbling carries me ahead, tripping over the downed door at my
feet, gravity doing its job, pulling at me as my arms windmill frantically. One
boot catches in the hole Lauren had made while my knees buckle and I drop,
hard. I get my arms up in time to prevent a faceplant, but barely.

I push up hard,
scrambling for safety.

The front door. If
I can just make it to the front door, I can get away.

I don’t even come
close.

Her hand latches
onto my ankle, and holy shit, is she strong.

I fall again,
unprepared this time, and my face smashes into the floor. I blindly reach for
an anchor, anything to prevent her from dragging me back. There’s nothing. I
try to dig my fingers into the hardwood, but it’s too slippery, worn smooth by
shoes and the passage of time. I press harder with my fingertips while the
howling, possessed, television host tightens her grip around my ankle, yanking
me.

She digs her claws
into my skin and tugs repeatedly, like a coyote pulling a stubborn piece of
meat from a carcass.

I’m going to die,
aren’t I?

This is how it
happens. This is the end.

After twelve years
and countless hours of tempting, testing, and antagonizing the more atrocious
aspects of the paranormal afterlife, I’m about to go bye-bye at the hands of a
soulless blonde woman with black eyes.

Come to think of
it, I’ve actually dated a few of those in the past.

She’s strong. So
strong, and no matter how hard I kick, I can’t break free of her grip. What
will happen? The thing inside her already has a new host. What good will I be
to it?

Unless…

Unless it needs me
to spread like a paranormal virus.

What will it feel
like when it happens? Will I go cold? Will I feel black and void on the inside,
the same way I felt when The Paranormal Channel informed me that they would be
indefinitely removing
Graveyard
from the air?

I roll onto my
back, hoping for better leverage, as I plant my hands for support and kick her
forehead, again and again. It doesn’t help. Her clutch is too strong.

Lauren, or the
thing she has become, bares her teeth and growls at me.

The sound is threatening,
unholy, and I whimper.

I steady my hands
against the floor and shove, twisting my body sideways. The wrenching momentum
works, and hallelujah, I’m free long enough to dive for the wooden couch leg and
grab it, thinking I can pull myself away and up to freedom.

I’m too slow.

The she-beast
lunges, her fingertips burying into my calf. I can feel her nails through my
jeans.

I wrap both hands
around the couch leg and lock my fingers, holding on with everything I can manage.
It works, briefly. She’s unnaturally strong, but not strong enough to pull me
and the couch too.

While she
struggles, it gives me a moment to plan, to frantically search for something I
can use as a weapon. There’s nothing within reach, not unless I get all
Superman and manage to cut off a leg of the nearby coffee table using laser
beams from my eyeballs.

I’ll never make it
to that pistol in the lockbox.

One. Twenty-nine.
Seventy-four.

If only.

I glance back at
her when I sense movement, the lessening of a struggle with my legs. She smiles
maliciously. She’s toying with me. Instead of pulling me to her, she uses my
leg like a rope and pulls up along my body, hand over hand, progressing a few
inches at a time.

“No. No. No,” I
snarl through gritted teeth. “Get off me.”

I get brave for
about half a second and hold still, you know, like that scene in Braveheart
where Mel Gibson is shouting, “Hold!” while his ragtag army hides their spears.
I wait, shaking with fear, until she gets just close enough to put her hand on
my thigh.

Then I bring my
free knee up and slam it into her temple as hard as I can, using all the
leverage I can muster. It’s one final attempt, one last-ditch effort, and I’m
just as surprised as the advancing English army that Gibson’s plan worked.

She tumbles over,
temporarily dazed, letting go as she flops to the side, groaning up at the
ceiling.

I thrash away from
her, rolling to my right, pushing up on my knees, then spring to my feet. I’m
perched to bolt for the front door when I hear, “Ford Atticus Ford,” in a voice
that is nothing like Lauren’s.

It’s a voice like
black tar covering a bed of nails, thick and sharp at the same time. A devilish
hound growling at me with broken glass lodged in its throat.

I should run. Goddamn
it, I should take a stuntman dive through the large-paned picture window
instead of fooling with the door.

But I can’t.

The sound of that
thing’s voice freezes me in place, petrified.

I’m like a USPS
mailbox, one of those squat blue ones on a street corner, with my feet bolted
to the concrete. I’m not going anywhere. A small rodent, frozen in fear, at the
sound of a superior predator lurking near me.

“What do you
want?” I croak.

“We were sent for.
We are messengers.”

“For who?” I can’t
not
look in Lauren’s direction. My need to know is like a ringing phone.
I
have
to answer its call.

She’s on all fours
now, sneering, slowly swaying side to side to a rhythm I can’t hear. She puts
one hand in front of the other and crawls six inches closer to me.

I smell fire,
smoke, and sulfur.

“I’m not letting
you in,” I say. “I’m never letting you in. You’ll have to take me.”

“There are no
doors between us now. You are free. Open to me.”

“No.”

“Mine if I want
you.”

“You can’t. I’ll—”

“Silence, child!”
she shouts, getting to her feet. “Master has a message.”

“Wh—who—who’s your
master?” I retreat, inching away from her.

“You already
know.” She steps closer, arms at her sides, breathing heavily. I look at her
feet as she takes another step—instinctual reaction—and I see that her
perfectly manicured, pristine nails, the flawlessly polished red ones that I
remember from this morning, have grown into gnarled claws. The tips click on
the hardwood floor.

“Chelsea’s demon?”

She says, “Him,
yes,” then lowers her voice to a whispering hiss. “Master.”

I’m nothing if I’m
not trying to catch some supernatural entity off guard, to get them to reveal
themselves, to give me workable information—it’s what I’m good at. It’s in my
nature, so on pure impulse, I ask, “What’s his name?”

It’s a foolish
hope that Lauren’s possessor will accidentally reveal some information, because
there’s power in a name.

The Tier One
right-hander that we were calling Azeraul, that son of a motherless goat has a
name—
everything
has a name, and it’s a damn disgrace that I won’t live
long enough to use it, in it’s presence, accompanied by the words, “What a
humongous goddamn asshole you are,
blank
.”

She doesn’t take
the bait.

Instead, she tilts
her head back and erupts in charred, smoldering laughter. “You will never know
his name.”

So it’s definitely
a
he
. That’s one step in the right direction. If only I had more time.

Time.

Time!

In my panic, I
completely forgot that I asked Mel to call 9-1-1. How long has it been? How
long have I been struggling to get away from Lauren? What feels like hours has
most likely been a couple of minutes. On a great day, in fantastic weather, I’m
guessing the police would be here in another minute or two. Then again, I
suspect that Newport’s abilities aren’t perfection personified—not that I doubt
the ability of their emergency response teams—it’s just that it seems like a slightly
underprivileged town, like many along the coast of Oregon, with little access
to big budgets and…

For the love of
God, why is this shit traipsing through my mind when I’m about to die at the
hands of Unlovely Lady Death right here?

Focus, Ford.

If I can wait her
out, if I can stall for just a little while longer, I might be okay.

“What does he want
with me?” I ask, my voice cracking, tripping across my tongue. “What did I do?”

“You stole,” she
growls.

“Stole what?”

“Her. Master’s
plaything. You took her away. And you took him away, you pathetic human slug.”

“You mean Chelsea
and Craghorn?”

“Yes,” she says,
the long s slithering out of her mouth. If she shook her ass, would it sound
like a rattlesnake? “The girl, so young and delectable. Fresh meat. Delicious.
She would have been perfect for him. A suitable host. So blood red on the
inside. Her skin, the purest white of innocence. He was preparing her, and you
took her from him. You stole what wasn’t yours. And that man, the little worm.
He begged for a new life. He got down on his knees and he renounced your
Creator. He wasn’t pristine like your darling little friend, but he was willing.
His soul was searching for salvation like an infant begging for a teat.”

“That’s not true,”
I say, stalling. “He just missed his wife. He was trying to call her back to
him.”

“You mortals, such
imbeciles. Believing the written word of a desperate man. He was a liar. You
all are. You don’t deserve your Creator’s generosity. You ate the apple, every
single one of you, and then you expect your pitiful Maker to give you more.
More. Always more. Gluttonous heathens. All of you belong at the feet of my master,
and
his
master, while your skin fries and your fat boils in the fires
below.”

“Like I didn’t
already know we’re doomed? And why Lauren? Why use her? Why didn’t that piece
of shit tell me face to face? You’re killing her to tell me something I already
know? What a waste. And you wanna accuse
us
of gluttony?”

“Why use her?
Master knows all. Master is everywhere. Of the seven deadly sins, lust has the
shortest path to travel. And for you, Ford Atticus Ford, lust is in your heart.
She could get close, quickly.”

“Lust? For
her
?
Then Master doesn’t know everything.”

Maybe I can get
away with that fib.

Laughter explodes
from her chest. “See? Liars, all of you.”

Maybe not.

“If you’re going
to kill me,” I say, “do it now. Let’s finish this. Send me down there so I can
talk to him in person and tell him where to shove it. Maybe I’ll set up shop,
take over, then I can be the one calling the shots, huh?”

Does reverse
psychology work on a demonic entity?

Nope.

The coffee table
is made of heavy oak, with a thick plate of glass sitting on top of it. The
Lauren Thing picks it up with one hand by the support bar underneath the glass.
She holds it high over her head, glaring at me, and I’m certain that this is
it.

Me and my big
mouth.

How many times
have I said
that
in my life?

Seems fitting
that’s what will send me out of this world, too.

She winks—the
fucking thing actually winks at me—then flicks the coffee table through the
picture window as easily as tossing a magazine on a kitchen counter.

Shattered glass
peppers the porch outside as wind whips through the gaping maw left behind,
bringing with it sheets of rain and the salty smell of the ocean beyond.

“I’m not going to
kill you,” she says. “He just wants you to know that he’s going to take her
back. She will be his again. No matter what you do. No matter where you go or
where you take her, he will find her and reclaim what he rightfully owns. He
knows of this woman Carla and her plans for his youngling. Master will wait, if
he must.”

I shout, “Why
wait? Why not take her now? Why not take her before? If he’s so goddamn sure of
himself, why hasn’t he gotten to her already?”

“Does a cat eat
the mouse right away? No. It toys with it. Prepares it for a meal.”

“So? If he can
take her any time he wants, if he’s just playing with her, why tell me? The
fuck do I care?”

I really gotta
stop this reverse psychology thing. It’s not working.

“Because,” she
says, lengthening the pause, teasing me with her secret, “you’ve been a burden
for far too long.
You
will be the end of Chelsea.”

“Yeah, right. The
girl I’ve been trying to
save
?”

The wailing sound
of sirens drifts through the shattered window.

Thank God.

“
You
will
damage Chelsea.
You
will prepare her for his return, and
you
, repulsive
maggot, will finally burn for your meddling intrusions. You’ll be ripped from
limb to limb in the eyes of humanity and thrown to the snarling wolves, bloody
and crying.”

The sirens howl,
less than a mile away now. In the corner of my eye, I spot a fireplace poker
leaning up against the stone. I inch closer to it.

“Whatever,” I say,
sneering, “you and what army?”

“I don’t need an
army,” she replies, stepping forward. “I only need to get inside you. Master
will do the rest.”

The woman I
previously knew as Lauren Coeburn plunges at me in brutal rage, a blood-curdling
scream screeching out of her throat, teeth bared, fingernails like talons
reaching for my throat.