Authors: Delilah S. Dawson

Servants of the Storm (37 page)

“Billie Dove,” she says softly. “That wasn’t Carly’s finger. It was yours.”

My jaw drops, but then I chuckle. I can see her mistake.

“No. No, it wasn’t. I didn’t get mine, and I actually need to
find it. But I think the person who had it is dead. Doesn’t matter now. I just need to destroy Carly’s distal so the demons can’t use her body as a servant.”

My mom bursts into tears, something I’ve never seen before. Not at my grandmother’s funeral. Not at Carly’s funeral. My rock-hard mother has been reduced to hysterical sobs.

“I know it sounds crazy, but it all fits together,” I say as my head wobbles and falls back against the pillow. “It’s like
The Tempest
. Just let me explain.”

“Dovey,” my dad says in his soft, reasonable voice as my mom cries into his sweater. “Baker called 911 from our house. When the ambulance arrived, they found Mr. Hathaway in the dining room, shot with my pistol. You were unconscious with a snake bite and missing the tip of your pinkie finger. Baker was stabbed in the back, lying in a pool of blood. You had a knife in your hand. They took you both straight into emergency surgery. They gave you antivenin and managed to save your left arm and sew up the pinkie on your right hand. You’ve been unconscious ever since.”

“But what about the Liberty?”

“There was a fire last night. It was destroyed. They want to talk to you about that, too.”

He looks deep into my eyes, and I can see his heart breaking.

“You quit taking your medicine, Dovey. You lied to us.”

Tears pool in my eyes, and I realize that after all that has happened, after all I’ve seen, I haven’t even had the time to cry.

“I had to quit,” I say between sobs. “I had to get it out of my
system. It was like living in a fog. I wasn’t seeing what was really there.”

“No,” he says quietly, “you weren’t. That’s why you were on antipsychotics, honey.”

“They weren’t antipsychotics,” I say, grabbing his arm with my free hand and ignoring the pain bursting from the black stitches on my pinkie and the burns on my palm. “Those pills, they were something the demons made to keep me quiet, to keep me from seeing who I really am. They were drugging me with their magic. They’ve been drugging all of us. The whole city. Ever since Josephine.”

“The doctor warned us this might happen,” my dad says, but he’s not really talking to me anymore. He’s talking to himself, and to my mom. She can’t even look at me. I can barely keep my eyes open. But I have to make them understand.

“It’s the demons, Dad. They’re taking over the whole city. They’re feeding on us, using us. We’re just cattle.”

“Dovey, do you even hear yourself?” he says sadly.

He disentangles his arm from my hand and strokes my hair like he did when I was a little girl having a nightmare.

“Demons, drugs, fire, playing with rattlesnakes. You killed a helpless old man, sweetheart. You almost killed your only friend. You need help. More help than we can give you.”

He helps my mother stand, and she leans against him, racked with sobs. She seems shorter somehow, clinging to him like that. He stands tall and straight, and she hangs off him, weak and broken. It’s
the opposite of the way they’ve always been, and it makes the world seem even more off-kilter.

“I don’t want to get back on the pills,” I plead. “I can’t go back to living that way.”

Just outside my door someone clears their throat.

“It’s out of our hands, honey.” My dad nods at the doorway. “I’m sorry. They need to question you. We’ll come back as soon as they’ll let us.”

“You can’t leave me here.”

“You haven’t given us a choice,” my mom wails, and my father half-drags her to the door.

“But what am I supposed to do?” I shout.

My dad turns back to look at me with dead black eyes. He smiles over my mom’s head, his teeth jagged and sharp, and my blood runs cold. He pulls something out of his pocket and shows it to me, just a quick flash. Something tan and pill-shaped in a little bottle.

My distal.

He slips it back into his pocket and leads my hysterical mom out the door.

Over his shoulder he says, “Just keep taking your pills.”

delilah s. dawson
is a native of Roswell, Georgia, and a big fan of cupcakes, horses, coffee, and high adventure. She’s the author of
Servants of the Storm
and
Hit
for YA readers, a novelization of the Shadowman comic, a short story in the
Carniepunk
anthology, and the dark and whimsical Blud series, including three books and three e-novellas. Although she’s never used it, Delilah has a BA in Studio Art from the University of Georgia and used to paint murals and pet portraits and teach art classes. She currently lives in the North Georgia mountains with her husband, two children, two cats, a spotted Tennessee walker named Polly, and a smooshy-faced mutt named Merle. One day she hopes to see a bear in her backyard.

SIMON PULSE

Simon & Schuster, New York

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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.