“You couldn’t have asked?”
“You would have said no,” John said flatly.
She thought for a moment, shrugged, and went on. “Perhaps, but if you’d stated your case—”
“You would have said no,” John said again even more forcefully.
“By stealing that evidence you’ve jeopardized this case, and your standing with the FBI, never mind my own reputation with—”
“Are we done with this?” It was John’s turn to interrupt, tired of the nonsense. There wasn’t time for it. “If we are, we can move on to what we’ve learned, and what we believe our kidnapper is up to.”
Agent Isabel glared, flesh-singeing laser beams shooting from her eyes. “This is not over,” she said with an angry snarl. “But I would be remiss in my duty and my responsibilities to all the parents whose children are missing if I didn’t listen.”
She crossed her arms, waiting for him to continue.
“As I was attempting to explain before,” John said, “we believe the kidnapper is a servant of an ancient, demonic god called Damakus, a god whose existence had been believed wiped from history. . . until now.”
Isabel’s brow furrowed. “A demonic god,” she said, adjusting to the concept. “If this demon god was wiped from existence, how did our kidnapper know . . .?”
“We’re not a hundred percent sure, but we think that Damakus has somehow reached out to our perpetrator and—”
“Damakus reached out?” she asked.
“He wasn’t quite as dead as the other demon lords and kings thought,” Theo answered.
Agent Isabel looked at them as if they were both totally insane.
“Hear us out before you have us both committed,” John said. She went quiet, doing as he asked, but he saw that his time was limited.
“We believe that the demon lord reached out to this individual and gave him a purpose, that purpose being to collect children, to teach them about Damakus. And in learning about him, learning to fear him.”
She was glaring at him.
“That fear and belief would then aid in bringing him back into reality.”
Agent Isabel laughed out loud. “I can’t believe I’m standing here listening to this bullshit.”
“Call it what you want, but that’s what we think is happening,” John explained. “We read the tooth. It’s part of a proclamation—an announcement that Damakus is coming back from the brink of the nonexistence that he’d been banished to.”
“You read the tooth?”
“It’s one of the reasons that I needed the actual item,” he explained. “Our methods here are a bit unusual sometimes and . . .”
Isabel stepped back, turning away from them. He wasn’t sure if she was getting ready to leave, or . . .
She turned back, seeming to be struggling with a concept, an idea.
“The families,” Agent Isabel began.
“What about them?”
“A connection has always been maintained between the kidnapper and the parents of the children,” she stated.
“Yes,” John agreed. “The objects delivered to the parents were, I believe, part of this ritual of returning Damakus from—”
“I think they’re being targeted now,” she interrupted, her demeanor changing. “I’ve just come from the home of the first kidnapping victim. The parents are dead.”
“Dead?” John asked. “Care to elaborate?”
She thought for a moment. “I’ve spent time with this couple. They were probably in their mid to late thirties, but the bodies that were found . . .”
Agent Isabel stopped to consider her next words, and John Fogg tensed.
“The bodies looked hundreds of years old—mummified.”
John looked over to his wife. “That isn’t good,” he said.
“Not good at all,” Theo agreed. “The disciple is harvesting . . . There won’t be much time now before—”
“Harvesting,” Agent Isabel interrupted. “What does that mean?”
“It means that Damakus is close,” Theo said. “The fear and belief of the families chosen are being collected—harvested—in order to return him to life.”
“Damakus . . . a demon is coming back to life?” Isabel asked, as if saying it out loud would help wrap her brain around the insane concept.
“As crazy as it sounds,” John said, “that’s what we think is happening.”
He knew that there was something different about Agent Brenna Isabel, that she suspected that the world was changing, that darkness was becoming that much stronger.
She walked closer to them, turning her attention to the map.
“So the kidnapper . . . this disciple of Damakus,” she said. “He’s harvesting.”
“Yeah, I think he is,” John said.
“Then there’s a chance,” she said, still eyeing the map. “There’s a chance that the kids . . .” Her voice trailed off.
“That the children are still alive,” John finished for her. “Yes, I do believe that’s a possibility.”
“We need to find them,” Agent Isabel said, a sound of desperation in her tone. “We have to find where he’s taken them before . . .”
She didn’t want to believe what they had told her. John could see this in the way she hesitated, but there wasn’t any other way around it. A demon lord was attempting to return to life.
“Before Damakus can be reborn,” John finished, so she didn’t have to.
Agent Brenna Isabel hung up her cell phone after communicating with the last of the police departments connected to families of the missing children. She’d informed them to be on full alert for anything out of the ordinary, that the kidnapper might be returning to the scenes of the crimes.
She’d gone no further than that, not quite sure how she would have explained the resurrection of an ancient demon lord.
“Can I get you anything?”
Brenna turned to see Stephan.
“No, thank you,” she said, sliding the phone into the pocket of her dark blazer.
“A sandwich maybe? Or a bottle of water?” he suggested. “It’s no problem really.”
She smiled at his kindness as she stood outside Fogg’s office door. She could hear Fogg and his wife talking heatedly inside.
“So, how long have you worked for them?” she asked, pointing toward the door.
“John and Theo?” he asked, thinking a moment. “I think it’s been close to six years now.”
She nodded slowly.
“You want to know what it’s like, don’t you?” he asked.
“Yes, I do.”
“It’s different—unlike any other job I’ve had before.” He smiled, nodding.
She looked to the door again, and then back to him.
“Are they nuts?” she asked. It came across as joking, but there was a vein of truth to it. She needed to know—she needed to be sure. There was a part of her that hoped that they were. It would have made things so much easier, but deep down she knew.
“They’re probably a little bit crazy, yeah,” Stephan answered. “But at the same time I’ve never seen two people more dedicated to the field of paranormal research. Even after the Halloween event—”
Brenna went rigid with the mention of the holiday, immediately thinking of her own situation. The image of her baby son lying perfectly still in his crib exploded inside her head, and she couldn’t get it to leave no matter how hard she tried.
“Are you all right?” Stephan asked. “Do you want to sit down?” He took her arm as she found herself starting to swoon.
“No, I’m good,” she said, getting a hold of herself. “But maybe I will take that water if it’s not too much bother.”
He excused himself as she pulled herself together. She’d known that there was some sort of accident that Fogg and his television crew had been in, but never made the connection with the fact that it had happened that last Halloween night.
The same night that her son . . .
The voices inside th
e office had grown a bit louder, and she moved toward the door, knocking before she entered.
“Is everything all right in here?” she asked.
Theodora was standing at her husband’s desk, holding something in her hand. It took her a second, but Brenna realized what it was.
The missing piece of evidence. The tooth.
“Hey, that’s—” she began.
“You need to put that down, Theo,” John said, moving toward his wife.
“I have to do this,” she said, backing away. “The longer we wait, the less chance we’ll have of finding them alive.”
“She’s talking about the kids, right?” Brenna asked. “What is she getting at, John?”
“My wife wants to do something that I feel might be dangerous to her health,” John explained. “Theo, please . . .” He held out his hand to her, moving his fingers for her to hand the tooth over.
“I need to do this, John, I’m sorry,” she said, backing into the corner of the room and popping the tooth into her mouth as if eating a breath mint.
“What is she doing?” Brenna asked, now moving in her direction as well.
She began to chew, the crunching sounds emanating from inside her mouth sounding incredibly painful.
“She’s eating our evidence,” Brenna said, not believing what she was seeing.
Stephan came into the room with her bottle of water and immediately froze.
“What’s going on?” he asked.
No one answered as Theodora’s eyes rolled back into her head, and she went limp, falling to the floor.
Brenna reacted, moving toward the unconscious woman. John’s hand shot out, grabbing her by the arm, stopping her from reaching his wife.
“What are you doing?” she asked. “Something’s wrong—she’s probably choking. We need to—”
“She’s not choking,” he said with a sad shake of his head.
“Well, whatever’s happening we have to help her,” Brenna said, yanking her arm back.
“I wouldn’t get too close,” John warned.
She was about to ignore him to help the woman but noticed something strange. The tattoos that covered quite a bit of the woman’s flesh appeared to be moving. The woman’s body had begun to vibrate, every inch of her thrumming so powerfully that Brenna could feel it through the soles of her shoes on the hardwood floors.
“All right, spill it, John,” she said, backing up ever so slightly. “What the hell is happening?”
“My wife is afflicted with an unusual condition,” John started.
They were both watching her now, the dark markings flowing on her skin like ink injected into water. And then her limbs began to snap—to bend in impossible positions—to change.
“John, that’s . . . that’s not normal,” Brenna said, watching in awe as the woman’s body reconfigured, becoming something . . .
“No, it’s not,” John said. “The night of the incident—”
Halloween. It happened on Halloween. For a moment she saw her son, lying in his crib. Did she remember him dead or alive?
“She became inhabited . . . possessed by a number of demonic entities.”
The woman’s changing body flipped, landing on her stomach, where her newly elongated limbs lifted her onto all fours. She resembled some sort of giant reptile now, a purplish forked tongue shooting out snakelike to taste the air.
It was taking everything Brenna had not to pull out her gun and shoot the horrible thing dead.
“Recently, with the help of some—associates—we able to gain some control over the problem.”
The woman’s body had continued to shift and alter, spiny protrusions pushing out from her already bruised flesh, giving her a strange, armored appearance.
“This is control?” Brenna asked, not liking the sound of panic she heard creeping into her tone.
John’s wife sprang up to her feet, the sound of her spine snapping, popping, and reconfiguring incredibly grotesque.
“Hello, fuckers,” the woman said through a mouthful of incredibly sharp teeth, a thick stream of bloody drool oozing from the corners of her mouth to puddle at her clawed feet.
Brenna went purely on instinct, pulling her gun from its holster and aiming.
“There’s the gun,” Stephan said from the far corner of the room where he cowered. Brenna hadn’t remembered that he was there.
“I hope that won’t be necessary,” John said, moving over to her.
The monstrous woman laughed to herself, admiring her new form by holding out her long, spindly arms and flexing her spiderlike hands.
Brenna continued to aim; a head shot would probably be best.
“Put that fucking thing away,” the demonic woman roared, her neck stretching incredibly long to glare at her.
John moved toward his wife.
“Theo,” he said. “Theo, are you there?”
The demonic entity glared at him with yellow, red-rimmed eyes.
“She wants to be,” the demon said in a low, ominous tone. “But I’ve decided to—”
The demonically afflicted woman went suddenly rigid, her terrible eyes going wide. She shook her head wildly from side to side, sending tendrils of thick, bloody mucus through the air as she did.
Brenna aimed down the sight of the weapon, just in case, but the monstrous woman suddenly grew calm, turning her attention back to them.
“You can lower the weapon, Agent Isabel,” Theodora Knight said, though her voice did sound somewhat strange—raw and ragged. “I’m in control now.”
Theo held out her hands, moving the long clawed fingers, examining what her body had become.
“This is awful,” she said in a sad, sad whisper.
“What the hell’s happened to you?” Brenna asked, lowering her weapon, but not by much. Still, just in case.
“Let’s just say I’ve gotten in touch with my inner demon,” Theo said. “Or at least one of them.”
Brenna’s phone started to ring, and she was tempted not to answer, but . . .
“Yeah,” she said, lowering her gun even more and turning her back to them for privacy. The voice on the other end was from the main office, rattling off information that made her brain hurt.
They wanted her to come in, to return to the office to regroup, but she knew that wouldn’t help.
She hung up even as the person on the other end continued to talk. She would have to make up some story about her phone, how it had for some reason cut out, refusing to work.
“The disciple or whatever the hell you want to call him has tried again,” she announced to the room, John and his wife looking at her. “Multiple attempts over the last hour or so in multiple states.”
“And was he successful?” Theo asked.
Brenna shook her head. “No, local law enforcement was ready and waiting,” she said, thinking again about what she had been told over the phone. “Shots were reportedly fired in each of the attempts, and the perpetrator was hit.”
“Let me guess,” John said. “No body was found at any of the scenes.”
“How is that even possible?” Brenna asked, feeling her grip of reality loosening that much more. “All over the country in the matter of an hour, hit by multiple gunshots?”
She waited for something— anything—to be said to return the world to some semblance of normalcy, but doubted that it was coming any time soon.
“I’d say Damakus is very eager to return,” John said. “Which leads me to believe that our timetable has likely been sped up.”
“Which is why I did this,” Theo stressed, holding out her arms and showing the state of her form. “One of the things inside me. This thing.” She looked at what she had become again with total disgust. “It is a tracker . . . a bloodhound of the demonic. With a single drop of blood . . . a strand of hair, a fingernail . . .”
“Or a tooth,” Brenna added.
Theo slowly nodded. “It could track the little one from whom it was taken to the ends of the Earth.”
S
he then dropped to the floor and extended her neck and head. There came an awful, regurgitating type of sound, followed by the smacking of lips.
“Do I even want to know what you just did?” Brenna asked.
“No,” Stephan called from the back of the room. “I would rather we didn’t.”
Theo’s head began to move from left to right, her enlarged nostrils flaring as she attempted to capture the desired scent.
Still on all fours, the woman scampered from the office incredibly fast, stopping outside on the landing to test the air again. She jumped over the railing, falling to the foyer below.
“Follow her,” John said, and he and Brenna took a more conventional path down the stairs.
Theo had already found her way outside the house and was squatting on the lawn, head tossed back, her eyes closed.
“Well?” Brenna asked, coming up behind her.
“He’s gone,” Theo said. “I’ve lost him.”
“I thought you said that you could track him anywhere on Earth?” Brenna asked angrily.
“Anywhere on Earth,” Theo said, turning her elongated neck to look at her. “He’s not on Earth anymore.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Christopher Waugh was dying. They all were.
The boy sat in his seat, in the stifling heat and stink of the classroom, trying to keep his eyes from closing, fearing what would follow if he should fall asleep.
He looked around the room at the others and felt his hope begin to slip away. They were dying. He was dying.
There was a part of him that wanted to quit, to give in and escape this living nightmare.
The sound of something splashing in the tank behind him made him sit rigidly upright in his chair. The thing that had been inside the Teacher’s stomach was becoming more active. Christopher knew that it could very easily escape the fish tank, throwing its horrible form over the side of the tank and slithering across the floor to get them.
The thought was terrifying, and the more he imagined it, the more active the thing in the tank at the back of the room seemed to become. It was as if the thing could sense his fear.
Christopher attempted to calm himself, to remember a time when he wasn’t in this terrible place.