Hellhound

I gripped the sword I hadn’t realized I was holding and sprinted toward her.

The woman saw me. A flash of hope replaced the panic on her face. She veered toward me, pumping her arms and running harder. The demon followed.

Now. I raised my sword and charged. The woman gasped as the blade sank into the soft flesh of her belly. It sliced through her organs as easily as it had done to the man I’d killed moments before. I yanked out my sword, and her hands went to the wound, cradling the gleaming pink and gray viscera that slid out. Her eyes registered astonishment, then betrayal as her own blood coated her hands. She moaned and fell to her knees. She toppled over sideways. One soft sigh, one final gush of blood, and her heart stopped forever.

The demon had caught up to us. It snarled at me, baring its long yellow fangs. “That one was mine.”

“You were too slow. Our leader rewards the quick.” I sneered at its hideous face. “Go chase some old lady with a walker. That would be more your speed.”

The demon howled and lunged at me. My sword burst into flame. Demon flesh sizzled as the creature’s clawed hand touched fire. It shrieked and jumped back.

“Go!” I shouted. “Before I kill you as unfit to serve.”

It spat at me, but I waved my sword and the gob of demon phlegm sputtered in the flame. The demon’s wings unfurled and lifted it into the air. After a last growl in my direction, it flew off toward the harbor. A moment later, smoke swallowed its form.

I stepped over the woman’s body and looked around for something else to kill. Something human, preferably, though I didn’t care.

A buzzing in my arm drew my attention to my demon mark. The red scar was moving. It grew and changed its shape. The mark became the face of the Destroyer.

“Well done, shapeshifter,” it said. The face grinned, and the burning inside me shone through its eyes. “Finally thou hast embraced thy destiny.”

10

WHEN I CAME BACK TO MYSELF, I LAY ON THE KITCHEN floor. Again. Inches from my face an empty rubber glove reached for me like the hand of a dead man. A bright pink dead man.

Shit. It was the only thought I could muster. Shit, shit, shit.

I sat up, as achy and stiff as if I’d really just fought a battle. I rubbed the elbow I must have whacked when I fell on the floor. As I did, I glimpsed my demon mark. It took the shape of the grinning Destroyer’s face, as it had in my vision. No! I blinked, and the face was gone. The mark looked like it always did—a small red burn scar that puckered the flesh of my forearm. But it felt strange, as though something were stirring there. Some presence, some creature waking after a long sleep. The presence moved under my skin, exploring. With it awakened a feeling I barely knew how to describe. Like a superheated itch, but deep inside where no scratching could relieve it.

I sat on the floor, inhaling deeply and rubbing my forearm, willing the feeling to subside. I focused on the soothing strokes, on making the sensation disappear. It didn’t, but gradually it decreased. The itch dulled and sank deeper. I rubbed and rubbed, making it smaller, until the itch was no bigger than a pinprick. When the feeling stilled enough that I could ignore it, I climbed back into my chair.

The Book of Utter Darkness lay open on the table. An illustration now stretched across both pages. It was a detailed, hand-painted scene from that appalling vision. There I stood, spattered with blood, the woman I’d murdered lying at my feet. Fires burned on all sides, framing the scene. Above, a flying demon disappeared into the smoke. I held my sword aloft, its flames reaching into the sky and running along the tops of both pages. On my forearm, as vivid and detailed as a tattoo, leered the Destroyer.

A single word formed in my mind, appearing letter by letter as if scrolling across a marquee: D . . . E . . . S . . . T . . . I . . . N . . . Y.

No. Not my destiny.

I slammed the book shut. I grabbed the gloves and piled them on top, as though those rubber hands would hold the book’s filthy visions inside it. I would not let the Destroyer take control. In whatever war was coming, I would not fight on the side of Hell.

A word whispered through my mind like the echo of a breeze: destiny.

I NEEDED TO TALK TO MAB. MY AUNT HAD ALSO STUDIED The Book of Utter Darkness, and her time with it stretched across several centuries. Mab rarely told me about anything she’d gotten from the book. But surely, surely if she’d ever had a vision like this one, a vision that showed me slaughtering innocent people and fighting alongside my sworn enemies, she’d warn me. Wouldn’t she?

The book revealed different things to different readers. It was time for both of us to lay out everything we knew. Maybe if we put together all of the puzzle pieces we’d each seen individually, we’d get a clearer picture. Because I sure as hell refused to swallow the vision it was trying to feed me.

There was one problem, though: To talk to Mab, I had to be asleep. My aunt was old school—no cell phone, no landline, and nothing like a computer in her house. The only way to get in touch with her was to use an ancient Cerddorion method of psychic communication. When Gwen and I were kids, we called it the dream phone, using it to keep our conversations going each night after Mom had turned out the lights. Because the dream phone makes use of the parts of the mind that become active when the body is asleep, we could get our rest and keep gossiping together halfway through the night.

Now, sleep seemed about as possible as reassembling those zombies who’d been exploded by the Morfran. For one thing, it was barely two A.M., and I usually didn’t climb into bed until after dawn. Tonight, of course, that wasn’t the real problem. Even with every light in the apartment on, I didn’t dare close my eyes. The moment I did, I saw the shocked betrayal on that woman’s face as I drove my sword into her belly.

A vision. It was only a vision, sent by a book that hated me and wanted to confuse me. A book, made by demons, that wanted the demons to win. It had given me false visions before—visions not of something that came to pass but of something the book wanted to happen. One of its tricks. If I bought into the idea that the book’s visions were inevitable, it became harder to see other possibilities, harder to find ways to thwart its prophecies.

I knew that. I’d learned to resist accepting such visions and whisperings from the book. But tonight was different. Tonight, I hadn’t simply watched the vision unfold; I’d participated in it. I’d fought on the wrong side—and I’d liked it.

The admission slashed through my gut like a knife, like the way my blade had stabbed those innocent people. I’d liked it. I’d felt free and powerful, with no restraints on my behavior. Free to kill. Free to destroy.

My demon mark itched, and I rubbed it impatiently. I didn’t want that seed of pure rage inside me. I knew now how it felt for the seed to grow and blossom, to fill me with its bitter fruit. I knew how it felt to be nothing more than an extension of the Destroyer.

I inspected the mark. Was it bigger? It looked redder, but that was probably because I couldn’t stop rubbing the damn thing. I went to the bathroom and dug out a tube of aloe vera gel I’d bought last summer, after a romantic weekend on Cape Cod had left me as red as the lobsters Kane and I had eaten at a fancy waterfront restaurant. I squirted out a dollop and massaged it into the spot. Coolness spread across my skin, and the itch receded. It didn’t go away, but it pulled back inside. It was the best I could do for now.

I’d put the gel back in the medicine cabinet and started to close the door when something caught my eye. A bottle of sleeping pills. Normally, sleeping pills didn’t do a thing for me, but these were magically enhanced, the kind I give my clients to make them sleep soundly while I run through their dreams exterminating nightmare demons. I used them myself from time to time when my schedule got so messed up that I couldn’t remember whether I was supposed to sleep during the day or at night. These worked. One pill, and I’d be snoozing away within ten minutes. But wrapped in a warm cocoon of drug-induced, magically enforced sleep, would I be able to use the dream phone? I’d never tried.

Still, there was no chance of talking to Mab while I was sitting bolt upright in a chair, too scared to blink. I poured myself a glass of water, swallowed the pill, and washed it down.

Five minutes later, I lay in my bed, the lights off and the covers pulled up to my chin. I pushed all thoughts from my mind except my aunt and her colors. Each member of my race has a pair of colors, specific to the individual, that you use to call someone on the dream phone. Mab’s were blue—a strong, vibrant cobalt—and bright silver. Sleep lapped at the edges of my consciousness like a calm lake on a summer day. A blue lake, reflecting silvery glints of light. Blue and silver. Blue and silver. I slipped into sleep as though diving into that warm lake, surrounded by blue and silver swirls.

I WAS A MERMAID. THE THOUGHT DELIGHTED ME. LONG strands of silvery hair floated around my face in the blue, blue water. I looked at my tail, covered with glimmering scales in an intricate pattern of silver and iridescent blue. Beautiful. I giggled, sending a column of bubbles toward the surface.

Giggling? questioned an incredulous voice somewhere inside my mind. You’re not a giggler.

I giggled again for the fun of it and to see the pretty silver bubbles rise. Then I jackknifed my body and streaked away. My powerful tail propelled me through the water. My silver hair streamed behind me like a comet’s trail. I swam and swam through the blue water, loving my speed and strength.

From the corner of my eye, I caught sight of a form swimming beside me. Turning my head, I saw an old woman. How strange. I stopped and floated above the lake’s bottom, inspecting my companion. Mab. It was Mab. But she wasn’t a mermaid like me. Her long black skirt belled around her ankles; two feet stuck out awkwardly past the hem. The sight of my aunt—her short gray hair all wild and floaty around her face, her efforts to retain her dignity by holding her skirt in place—set off another giggling fit. Mab didn’t giggle with me. She didn’t look happy at all. She scowled at me through the giggle-bubbles and pointed toward the water’s surface. Then she swam upward.

I watched her go, her black boots kicking as she ascended. I started to swim away. But something, the flash of my blue-and-silver tail, made me pause. The colors that surrounded me, that made me, they belonged to Mab. I was here for Mab; I couldn’t let her go. With a flick of my tail, I followed her.