“Boss’s orders.” He gestured to Reyes with a nod.
I gaped at my husband-to-be. “What is this for?”
Reyes didn’t dignify my question with a response. “If she tries to go in there for any reason,” he said instead, addressing Garrett with a hard stare, “you have my permission to restrain her by any means necessary.”
“Sweet,” Garrett said.
Reyes cast one last glare before turning to the number pad on the front gate and entering the date. “How did you know?” he asked over his shoulder.
I knew what he was talking about: How had I guessed the key code? If he wasn’t going to answer my questions, I wouldn’t answer his. I crossed my arms over my chest, but just as quickly dropped them, as the action brought Garrett’s cuffed hand dangerously close to Will Robinson.
Not waiting for an answer, Reyes propped the gate open in case they’d have to make a quick exit before he and the Dealer – I would have to get that kid’s name someday – walked up the sidewalk to the building entrance, punched in the same code there, then entered what I now considered the mouth of hell.
“I’m going to go look for Blue,” Strawberry said. Before I could warn her not to go back into the building again, she was gone.
“This is so wrong,” I said to Garrett.
“Nah,” he said, checking messages on his phone, which was really inconvenient for me. “It’ll give us some quality time.”
Quality time, my ass. Garrett was that tall, sexy friend one almost wants to bang. A friend-with-benefits kind of thing, only we’d never taken our initial flirtations that far. Thank goodness, because every conversation from there on out would have been filled with those awkward silences as we tried to decipher what the other was thinking. But he was more than handsome enough to give me pause when we’d first met, during my pre-Reyes hookup days. He had deep mocha skin and silvery gray eyes that turned heads everywhere he went. Not to mention killer abs. I could’ve done laundry on those abs.
“Okay.” I leaned against his truck, a move that could be considered an act of war in some cultures, but he didn’t seem to mind.
He quickly did the same, his gaze glued to his phone. “What happened in there?” he asked without looking up.
I scratched my affronted wrist. “Let’s just say ‘they’re here.’”
He expelled a long sigh. “I was hoping the prophecies were wrong.”
“Have you gotten any more of the translations from the cow doctor?”
“Dr. von Holstein is not a cow doctor.”
I knew that, of course, but his name was Dr. von Holstein, for goodness’ sake. It screamed cow doctor.
“And he’s flying in tomorrow.”
I straightened in surprise. “He’s flying here?”
He nodded. “Yes. Apparently, he’s translated a large section that he feels we need to see. He says it’s not what we think.”
“What? What’s not what we think?”
He lowered his phone. “He wouldn’t say. Did you ever get that DNA for me?”
“Swopes,” I said, leaning against the truck again, “how on planet Earth am I going to get your ex-squeeze and her infant child’s DNA?” I’d made a deal with him to secretly get the DNA of an ex-girlfriend of his. She’d had a baby, and he believed the child might be his. But how did one go about getting someone’s DNA without her knowledge?
“I told you,” he said. “Not my problem.”
“Well, you better make it your problem if you want to know who that kid’s father is.”
“But he looked like me?” he asked. “You saw him, right? Didn’t you think —?”
“Yes, he looks like you, but so does your ex’s new boyfriend.”
“How much like me?”
I stood again to assess him. “Well, he’s not quite so squiggly around the edges. And his nose has never been broken.”
He leveled an expressionless expression on me, then went back to his messages. In reality, the guy wasn’t anywhere near as good-looking as Garrett, and yet he did resemble him. I was right there with my surly skiptracer friend: I felt like Marika was up to something. Like she’d planned on getting pregnant with Garrett.
“Heart,” I said.
“You mean that thing you don’t have?”
I gasped. “I have a heart. Her name is Betty White.” I slammed a fist against my chest passionately, wincing slightly. “She’s right here with me, hand in hand – or ventricle in ventricle – through thick and thin, day in and day out. Otherwise, I’d be dead.”
“Your point being?”
“Heart. The music group. They sing a song about this chick who picks up this guy and has sex with him. He sees her later with a kid and the kid has his eyes. The chick explains that she just needed his sperm. Those weren’t the exact words, but apparently, her husband couldn’t get her pregtastic, so she went out and seduced a guy just to get knocked up. Maybe it’s the same thing with Marika?”
He stuffed his phone into his pocket. “Maybe.”
“I mean, you said she’d just come over for sex in the middle of the night and then leave. There was no real relationship, right?”
One shoulder went up in a halfhearted shrug.
“Maybe she just wanted a baby daddy.” I looked toward the building, growing more impatient by the second. They’d been in there awhile. “You need to call Reyes,” I said, but the moment I said it, I heard a shrill scream coming from the asylum. I straightened once more and pulled against my restraint.
“What?” Garrett said in alarm. He couldn’t hear her.
“Strawberry,” I gasped, then ran for the gate.
Reyes had propped the front door open, too, and I rocketed through it and flew down the stairs and to the kitchen. I came to a screeching halt in front of Reyes, the Dealer, and Strawberry. She glanced around the room wildly, her face in shock as she tried to make sense of her surroundings. The other two looked from her to each other, then back again until they noticed my presence.
“Dutch, son of a bitch,” Reyes said, storming toward me, his expression not pleasant in the least. “What the fuck are you doing in here?”
I blinked, taking in the scene with a mixture of shock and awe. It was clean. Sterile, in fact. Not a drop of blood anywhere. Not a body. Not a speck of dirt out of place. “What the hell?” I asked, turning in a full circle.
“There’s nothing here,” the Dealer said. “But the guy’s shit is still in there.” He nodded toward the freezer.
Reyes took my arm to drag me back out, but I stood my ground.
“Where did he go? Where did all the blood go?”
“There isn’t any, but the scent is still strong.” The Dealer inhaled through his nose. “I can smell it. Blood. A lot of it.”
Reyes jerked me to attention. “What are you doing in here?”
“I heard Strawberry scream.”
Garrett finally found me, having burst through the door and come face-to-face with a very angry demon.
In a microsecond, Reyes had let go of me and clutched on to Garrett’s throat. If he’d wanted to, he could’ve crushed the larynx with very little effort.
I clutched on to Reyes’s arm to stop him, but the anger flaring inside him scorched me. I held my ground, placed a hand on his cheek, spoke with a soft yet firm voice. “Reyes, let go.” But the surreality of the situation hit me just as it had Garrett, who didn’t look scared or angry as Reyes sank his fingers into his throat. He looked… surprised. And he was looking at me despite the fact that the son of Satan was choking the life out of him.
“Evade,” I said to Reyes.
Caught off guard, he released Swopes, then turned his anger my way.
But, picking up on Garrett’s astonishment, I looked down at my wrist, completely handcuff free.
“Did it break?” I asked Garrett as he coughed and wheezed to get air. People did that a lot around me.
“No,” he said through his abused esophagus. “You just —” He blinked at me a moment, then
continued. “You just… went through it.”
He held it up, the empty side still adjusted to the size of my wrist, still locked in place.
“My hand doesn’t even hurt,” I said, rubbing it. “I don’t know how it slipped off.”
Garrett focused on Reyes, who was still tamping down his anger. Freaking demons. “She went through it,” he repeated. “Her wrist… just slipped through.”
“I don’t understand,” I said.
“You don’t have to.” Reyes wrapped an arm around me again. “I told you not to come in here.”
My anger reignited. “I told you, I heard Strawberry scream.” I suddenly remembered her and knelt beside her. “Are you okay, honey?”
“Where did it all go?” she asked. “Where did that man go?”
I scanned the room. “I wish I knew.” Glancing at the Dealer, I asked, “How is this possible?”
He shook his head as though he couldn’t form the words to explain his bewilderment.
“Get her out,” Reyes said to Garrett.
Garrett took hold of my arm to escort me out, but I needed to talk to Strawberry. “Honey, I need you to leave and don’t come back for a while, okay? Remember?”
“I was looking for Blue and Rocket.”
“Okay, but not in here, okay. Go outside and call them.”
She nodded and stuck the Barbie head back into her mouth before disappearing again. From my kneeling position, I could see something under the slats of the pallet floor as I looked into the freezer. It looked like a driver’s license.
I stood and fished it out. I was just about to take a good look when Reyes grabbed my arm again.
“I said get her out or spend the rest of your days drinking your meals through a straw,” he said to Garrett.
Wrenching out of Reyes’s grip, I stuffed the license in my back pocket, then jammed my hands on my hips as I turned to him. He could be such a bully. “That is just about enough,” I said. I lifted an index finger and poked his chest. That’d show him.
But just as I was about to continue my tirade, I caught a glimpse of something behind him. Something dark and sleek like a panther, only five times bigger. I couldn’t see the whole thing at once. Its coat appeared and disappeared as the muscles underneath it rolled with movement like very well-controlled smoke. Then I saw a set of amber eyes. They disappeared the second I focused on them, to be replaced with a glimpse of an ear, tall and pointed. Or was it a horn?
It all happened so fast, I’d barely had time to draw a breath when a massive paw materialized and swiped through the air. In the same instant, another being on the other side of Reyes surfaced out of the void of emptiness, smoke winding around it as its monstrous jaws opened wide and sank into Reyes’s shoulder.
Before either of us could react, a third beast clamped down on my calf and jerked my feet out from under me. I hit the concrete hard and it dragged me across the floor. But all I saw was Reyes pushed to his knees as he tried to fight off the beast.
A searing pain shot through me when the Dealer caught my arms and pulled. I thought my leg would come off, but the beast let go and, in a collage of appearing and disappearing sleek black muscles, attacked the Dealer himself. He tried to scramble out of the way, but five slash marks scored his chest, streaming blood in an eerie pattern across his shirt. The last thing I saw before grabbing Zeus from the back of my pants was a glimpse of long white teeth as they opened behind the Dealer’s head.
I heard bones crunch and a final sharp crack that echoed along the walls. The monster had broken the Dealer’s neck. He went limp, crumpling to the floor as I lunged forward and sank the blade blindly into the now invisible hellhound. But the blade did its job. The beast yelped, materialized in its entirety for a split second, then disappeared. I sat stunned for a solid five seconds. It was massive, the size of an elephant, darker than a starless sky, its coat sleek like wet ink.
“Get her out!” Reyes shouted, catapulting me to attention.
Garrett obeyed without hesitation. He wrapped his arms around me protectively and dragged me across the floor kicking and screaming.
“No!” I shouted, grabbing for Reyes. Blood gushed out of the wound at his shoulder faster than I imagined possible, making me dizzy and nauseated with fear.
He fell forward onto his hands, and only then did I see the wounds on his back. The beast’s paw had hit home, slicing Reyes open, shredding him.
I slashed through the air, trying to hit a target that might be lurking there, invisible to us. When we reached the door, I fought harder, but Garrett was not budging. He wanted out of there and he was not about to leave me. Just then I realized Artemis had appeared after all. She barked and growled at what I could only assume was a beast. I couldn’t see it, but apparently she could. I had a target.
“Garrett, wait!” I shouted, but he kept his hold strong, not giving me an inch this time.
Until he did.
His hold broke and I fell forward, my limbs splaying across the floor gracelessly, Zeus wrenched from my hand to slide under the prep table. I looked over my shoulder just in time to see Garrett crash against a far wall and tumble to the ground, unconscious.
Fear engulfed me utterly. I forced myself to go calm and concentrate on one thing.
“Quiesce,” I said, slowing time, grinding it to a begrudging halt. And in the brief second between the momentum of time and its opposite, its constant, they materialized. In all that melee, all that carnage, there were only three of them.
They disappeared again, but in that split second I got a good look. I’d never seen anything even remotely similar to these creatures. A cross between a panther and a Doberman, but the size of a small elephant on some serious steroids, they were hulking beasts. Their growls were a mixture of a lion and a gorilla’s, deep and guttural. Volatile and angry. I could still see the sleekness of their muscles as they moved, just barely at first, as though gaining their bearings, as though adjusting to the shift in time. After a couple more seconds, they were able to move fully, their features like silver dust outlining their invisible bodies as they turned on me, all three of them, in perfect unison.
I froze in place, my heart stopping as I tried to see them. As I tried to assess from which direction the deathblow would come. One swipe of their massive paws, one graze of their shimmering teeth, and I would cease to exist.
It killed me that Satan would win. That he’d get his wish. That I would die before having the chance to face him, because I had every intention of doing that very thing once Beep was born safely on earth. But he was essentially killing both of us and guaranteeing his chance of survival for many millennia to come, because according to the prophecy, it wasn’t me who would take him on, but the precious cargo I was now carrying.
As one hellhound drifted toward me, silvery black dust shifting and rolling with each step it took, I dived for the prep table. I barely fit underneath it as I scrambled for cover, pushing and scraping against the filthy floor, but I couldn’t let Satan win. Sadly, I couldn’t reach Zeus from my vantage either, so I went for the wooden spoon I’d seen earlier.
The beast paced the floor beside me, its growls ricocheting against my bones, and I periodically caught a glimpse of its paw. One claw was the size of my hand. And it had five of those on each paw. Its feet alone must have weighed more than I did. It pawed at me periodically with one of them, the claws scraping against the metal table, the screeching sound disturbing on so many levels.
The fact that Artemis was still barking and growling registered in the back of my mind. My time suppression never affected her either, but I could hold it back only so long. I could stop Reyes from bleeding out for only a few moments more.
I glanced across the floor. He lay in a colossal pool of his own blood as I sat quivering under a table like an addled schoolgirl. Fear laced up my spine and watered my eyes. I closed them, pushing the wetness past my lashes. The shelf I lay under was so low, I couldn’t turn my head, I couldn’t see the Dealer or Garrett, b
ut I could feel Zeus. He lay next to my right foot. If only I could nudge him toward me… but I could barely move my leg without exposing it.
I had no choice. I had to kick the knife out from under the table, then try to get to it before the beast’s claws met their mark. I felt time slipping away from me. When it bounced back, it would feel like a runaway train crashing through a railway station. It would knock the air from my lungs and disorient me.
It was exactly what I needed.
I readied myself by inhaling a long draft of air and releasing it slowly. Counting down from five, I tucked Zeus under my foot, focused on my goal, and released time.
It slammed into me, as I kicked Zeus from underneath the table and scrambled after it. My head grazed the leg of the pacing hellhound, but it had yet to orient to the time shift, giving me precious seconds to get to the knife. But I was also fighting gravity, as though time had its own gravitational force field. The barrier slowed me down and I had to push against it with all my strength.
Once free of the table, I lunged for Zeus, scooped him up in one hand, and buried the razor-sharp blade into the hell beast’s paw. The creatures adjusted even faster than before, coming to life with deafening growls, the loudest snarls coming from the one I’d stabbed.
I pulled the knife out and slashed blindly, trying to get to Reyes’s side. One swipe actually met its mark, and another howl reverberated over the sound of time ricocheting into place.
My measly cuts would barely faze the animals, much less kill them. But the lacerations would sting like the dickens, enough to get their attention. Enough, I prayed, to convince them to back off. When the third beast stepped forward with a growl, I finally sank my blade. From what I could tell, it landed in the thing’s shoulder. My hold on Zeus slipped, but I doubled my efforts to withdraw him, screaming for the beast to leave now or die trying later.
And then they were gone.
My gaze darted around me as I whirled this direction and that, but even the silvery black dust was gone. Still, for how long? I looked up. The windows sat high, as this was a lower level, and they were covered in a brown paper or cardboard or something.