“This isn’t happening!” Olivera suddenly blurted out. “This can’t be happening! That thing can’t be real!”
“Keep moving!” I shouted. No way did we have time to argue whether or not the nine-foot monster currently shaking the stairwell with its footfalls was real or not. It was friggin’ real enough!
The messenger bag on my hip bounced and jostled, and I desperately wanted to pause long enough to reach into it and pull out a fistful of spikes, but that was a risk that I couldn’t take on the stairs.
At last we reached the bottom and I took off after the sound of Gilley, who was still screaming his head off. The first floor was even darker than the rooms upstairs, and navigating them was tricky to say the least. Olivera kept calling my name, and I kept answering, “Here!” to keep her with me. I had no more flares, and the flashlights weren’t working, and the demon had the advantage here, because it’s a known fact that demons can see in the dark.
Gilley had no such gift, however, and in the next moment his shrieks were cut off by a loud thwack! and then the sound of a body hitting the floor. “Gilley!” I cried. I didn’t know if he’d hit a wall or if someone had hit him.
He replied with a whimper and a groan.
Behind me the beast growled low and terrible.
There was a sort of scrambling noise and Gilley must’ve gotten to his feet again, because his screams resumed and echoed through the hallway, definitely getting farther away from us.
By now I was nearly out of breath. The adrenaline that had fueled the first part of our flight was wearing off, and the toll of the run out of the exhibit hall, down the stairs, and through the museum at an all-out sprint was taking its effect. My lungs were yelling at me to slow down. The frosty breath on my neck from the demon behind me, however, was encouraging me to speed up. I settled for simply maintaining the sprint.
Gilley’s shrieks zigzagged through the halls, and Olivera and I did our best to follow him with the demon hot on our heels. At one point I swear Gil changed direction, and then there was another thwack! and a sudden halt to his shrieks, but he seemed to recover from that a bit faster than from the last one.
I hadn’t realized what a maze the first floor was until we were running for our lives through it. I also wondered at Gilley’s ability to keep shrieking, because I could barely draw breath. Olivera was having a somewhat easier time of it, I thought. And really, I shouldn’t have been so out of breath; I mean, I run my ass off, train for marathons and such.
But then it dawned on me. I was pregnant. Of course I’d be out of breath. And then it really dawned on me. I was pregnant, and the demon was currently threatening the life of my unborn child.
That’s the moment when my motherly instincts kicked in and I came to an abrupt halt, pulling free a spike from my bag and taking what I hoped was careful aim. I threw it straight in front of me and there was a god-awful screech. “Ha!” I shouted. “Take that, you son of a bitch!”
Olivera’s hand gripped my arm, and she pulled me back hard, just as I felt the air next to my nose move sharply—the demon had just taken a swipe at my head and I’d escaped having my head lopped off by less than an inch. “Are you crazy?!” she shouted.
I didn’t answer. I just ran.
We bolted toward the back of the museum, moving in a zigzag pattern, always chasing the sound of Gilley’s fading shrieks. It took me a little while to realize he was simply lost and acting like a panicked rat in a maze, darting down any corridor or into any room that might lead out.
“He’s . . . lost!” I wheezed to Olivera.
“He’s not far off the mark!” she yelled back. And then, as if in answer to a prayer, one lone light bulb ahead of us came on, illuminating the darkness and showing us exactly where we were.
It didn’t give us an advantage over the monster still hot on our heels, but at least it evened the odds. I chanced one glance over my shoulder at Oruç’s demon. I’d thought it was scary upstairs in the pink glow of the flare—that was nothing compared to the shadowy figure it cut as it bared its teeth and seemed to surge forward toward me. It gained on us and I faced forward again, concentrating on pumping my legs and arms as fast as I could.
As we dashed past the overhead light that’d illuminated the area for us, it winked out, but another light turned on to our left and we headed straight for it. Then it winked out and another light farther down the corridor winked on.
I suddenly realized that our way out was literally being lit up for us. “Gilley!” I shouted with all the air I could spare. “This way!”
His screams abruptly changed direction—maybe he’d seen the lights too?—and he came racing toward us. Trouble was, the demon wasn’t letting up on the chase, and I didn’t think I had it in me to keep ahead of it to the end of the museum. The harder I pumped my legs and arms, the less air I could draw into my lungs. And I needed air, desperately. Olivera pulled ahead of me and then Gilley showed up just down the hall from us. He didn’t even look behind him; he just ran toward the lights winking on, then off.
We were all so focused on them that I don’t think any of us noticed that the hallway we were in ended at a closed door. And it sure didn’t look like an exit out of the building to me. Olivera and I probably realized it at the same time. She faltered slightly, but I kept running. If I had to run through that door like Wile E. Coyote, then I would. Anything to escape the clutches of the demon that was closest now to me.
Gilley kept running and screaming, and at last he noticed the door too. He didn’t stop; he ran right to it and tried the handle, but it wouldn’t budge. He proceeded to pound his fists on the door and tried again and again to turn the handle, but it appeared to be locked. In front of me, Olivera faltered again, and I knew she was considering doubling back and taking her chances. One glance over her shoulder, however, seemed to shelve that idea. She shrieked, faced forward, and ran straight for Gilley.
I was so fatigued and out of breath that I thought I might pass out. I once fainted on an eighteen-mile run. It’d been a very hot day, and I hadn’t taken along nearly enough water. I have no memory of passing out, only waking up in the grass as another female runner attempted to come to my aid. The light-headed woozy feeling I did remember right before losing consciousness was what was happening to me at that moment—just ten yards away from the door. Which wouldn’t open. Which Gilley kept pounding on.
With what was left of my ability to think, I sent up a prayer. Please, I said in my mind, which, trust me, in that kind of situation is pretty much all you need. With five yards to go the door handled turned and Gilley heaved the door open. He darted inside with Olivera right on his heels. I strained with everything I had and reached the door a second later, careening through it just as Olivera yanked it closed.
As I crashed into Gilley, collapsing into his arms, I heard the click of the dead bolt, followed by a terrible crash that shook the entire room. The demon had hit the door. Hard.
I sucked in as much air as I could, gulping it down in great heaves. Gilley was panting almost as hard, but he was trembling from head to toe too. Other than the sound of our labored breathing, the room was deathly quiet. And then a light came on, and we all turned to see that a Tiffany lamp, perched on a desk, had magically illuminated the room.
I noted that we were in someone’s private office, tastefully decorated with art on the wall, a Turkish rug on the floor, a mahogany desk, and a comfortable leather chair with matching footstool in one corner.
On the desk was a laptop. My gaze was drawn next to my two companions. Gilley had two large welts on his forehead but seemed relatively okay, and Olivera looked frightened beyond reason, but at least she was blinking and looking around. I hoped that we could all collect our wits and our breath without further incident, but that hope was short-lived when the silence was shattered by a tremendous slap at the top of the door and then what I can only describe as a terrible metalli
c raking sound.
It was the most grating, terrifying noise you can imagine. Think of a velociraptor scraping its talons down the face of a chalkboard and you’ve got some idea of what it sounded like, and this was taking place mere feet from us on the other side of the door, starting from the top and slowly gouging its way down the length of the door. We all huddled together and cringed while we waited for it to be over, but as soon as the raking reached the bottom of the door, another slap at the top started and the slow slide of talons over steel began again.
Pushing away from Gilley, I staggered to my feet and stumbled forward to the door. Placing my hand on it, I felt the cool touch of metal along with the vibrations from the talons on the other side. “M.J.!” Gilley said hoarsely. “Get away from there!”
Ignoring him, I dug into my messenger bag and pulled out a spike, which I slammed against the door right at the center of what I hoped was the demon’s paw. The beast screeched and the grating sound stopped abruptly. I then reached for another spike and slammed that against the door, then another and another, until I was all out of spikes. I turned and looked at Gilley, and he came forward tentatively to hand me all his spikes too. I added them to the rest, effectively creating a solid barrier against the demon.
As the last spike went on the door, Olivera said in a hushed whisper, “Can it come through the walls?”
Gil and I looked at each other. He shrugged and I had to admit I really didn’t know either. “Technically, it probably could,” I said. “But the walls look like they’re concrete block, so it’d be tough for the demon to bring it’s full form through that kind of density. And once it started to do that, we’d be able to stab the hell out of it with a spike.”
“What does that even mean?” she asked. I noticed that she’d scooted to the farthest corner in the room, well away from the door.
It was Gilley who answered her. “The demon took on as close to a physical form as it could,” he explained. “That requires energy. A lot of energy. It’d take significantly more energy for it to move through a wall, and after giving us chase and getting zapped by our magnets, no way does it have enough juice left to push its way through concrete block quickly. It’d have to squeeze through slowly, and we’d be able to attack it from this side with all of our spikes.”
I had to hand it to him; he sounded very sure of his conclusion.
“So we’re safe in here?” Olivera asked.
“We are,” I told her. I wasn’t a hundred percent sure, but I didn’t see the sense of worrying her more than she already was.
As it happened, for the next several minutes, we heard nothing from the demon, and not long after that a dim light lit up under the door. I tried the switch next to the door and the overhead lights blazed on. I then looked at my companions in the stark white light and knew that I looked just as freaked-out, exhausted, and shaken as they did. Olivera was the first to speak. “What . . . the fuck was that?”
“Oruç’s demon,” I said simply. “And now you know, Detective, exactly why we have to get that dagger back.”
Chapter 12
Olivera stared wide-eyed at me. I knew that her brain was currently attempting to marry the reality she’d always known with the one that’d taken place tonight, and she had to be struggling under the weight of that.
Gilley had a hand to his forehead, as if he had a terrible headache, and he also appeared quite shaken. “Hey,” I said. “You okay?”
“No,” he said, his lip quivering. “Why did you have to bring me here?”
I put a hand on his shoulder. “Honey, I’m so sorry. I really needed you, and I had no idea that demon would show up.”
“It came after us, M.J.!” Gil whined. “I mean, with the amount of magnets we had on, it should’ve gone in the other direction.”
“That’s one powerful demon, Gil,” I reminded him. “Which is why I’ve had that dagger locked up in my safe all these years.”
Gil’s shoulders slumped with guilt. “I forgot how freaking strong it is,” he whispered. “I really thought that, with enough magnets placed around the dagger, there’d be no way it could get loose.”
“He wouldn’t have if someone hadn’t sabotaged the exhibit,” I reminded him. “But now the genie is out of the bottle, and we gotta do everything we can to put it back in. And I’m still going to need you on this case, honey. For this one, it’s all hands on deck.”
Gil bit his lip and wiped his eyes, but he also nodded a little. “Got any Tylenol?” he asked.
“No. Sorry,” I said with a sigh, moving away from him a few feet to a box set against the wall. Taking a seat on the box, I motioned to the desk and said, “Maybe there’s some in there?”
Gil shuffled over to the desk and pulled open a drawer. It stuck a little and he had to tug on it, then root around inside. “Aha!” he said triumphantly when he came up with a small bottle of Excedrin. “Who’s got water?”
I shook my head and Olivera did too. That didn’t stop Gil from popping back two pills. He gulped audibly and plopped down in the desk chair to sit back and sigh wearily. His gaze then traveled to the computer screen, which was emitting a faint glow against Gil’s face. I figured the computer had come to life when he’d jostled the desk looking for some pain-relief medicine. As I watched Gil watching the screen, he suddenly jolted forward in his seat to exclaim, “M.J.!”
“What?”
“Come here!”
With fatigued effort I got up from my box and moved to stand next to him. “There’s a camera feed coming into the computer,” Gil said, pointing to the screen. “It’s from a camera at the back door.”
I looked at Olivera. “I thought you said that all the security cameras had their feeds sent to a laptop that was stolen.”
“They did and it was,” she said, coming over to the desk to look as well.
“All except this puppy,” Gil said, tapping the screen. “It’s the only one that feeds to this laptop.”
“Why?” I asked.
Gil shrugged. “Don’t know.” He was about to say something else, but at that moment the camera showed the door to the back opening, and the blurry image of a figure dressed in dark clothes emerged and darted quickly away out of the sight of the camera.
“Who was that?” I said.
Gil shook his head. Of course he didn’t know.
“How the hell is someone able to exit the museum without tripping the alarm?” Olivera snapped as she leaned forward to peer at the screen. “We’re the only ones who have the passcode!”
“Obviously not,” Gilley said. “And even if you guys did erase all the other access codes to put in your own, there’s still a master code that could override all attempts to lock it out.”
“What’re you talking about?” Olivera asked.
“Well, to every electronic lock, there is always a master code. It’s the one that would allow the person at the top access, even if the recently fired IT guy decided to take his revenge out by locking everyone out of the system. It was created specifically for those types of scenarios, actually.”
“Who would’ve had that kind of authority?” Olivera asked him.
Gil shrugged. “I can only think of one person, Detective, and he’s dead.”
“Sullivan,” she said.
“Aren’t we missing the point here?” I said, pointing to the screen again. “That was clearly the murderer and our thief escaping the museum. The only way for Oruç’s demon to have shown up here tonight is if the dagger was close by.”
Olivera’s eyes widened again. “Shit! You’re right!” She raced to the door, intent on giving chase, and Gilley shot out from the chair and reached her just as she was starting to turn the dead bolt.
“Hold on!” he said, wrapping his hand firmly around her wrist. “You can’t just go chasing after him!”
“Why not?” she and I said together.
/> Gilley turned to me and said, “Really, M.J.? I have to explain it to you too? That guy could’ve just left with Oruç’s dagger. The one that houses the demon who tried to play tag with us tonight. You really wanna go chasing down a dark alley after him?”
Olivera stopped trying to pull her wrist free of Gilley’s grip. “Good point,” she said.
I squinted again at the computer screen. There appeared to be a steady drizzle coming down. “It’s still raining out,” I said, as if that absolutely decided it. “Gil’s right. It’s way too dangerous to give chase at this point.”
“So what do we do?” Olivera asked. “I mean, if we can’t catch or confront this guy, how the hell are we supposed to get you two the dagger back without encountering the demon?”
Gil let go of her hand and looked to me as if I should know. “We’ll have to figure out who the hell the murderer is,” I said. “Then we’ll need to approach him armed to the teeth, and in broad daylight. It can’t be raining that day either.”
Gilley made a face. “Then we should make plans to go on vacation for a week, because it’s supposed to rain for the next several days.”
“What?” I said. “No way!”
Gilley motioned me back over to the computer with him and pulled up a weather map with a giant system currently headed toward the East Coast, as well as another giant system just offshore in the Atlantic, which must’ve been where all the rain of the past two days had come from. “These two weather systems are supposed to collide sometime around three p.m. today, right over Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, and New York City. It’s then supposed to park itself there until next Tuesday.”