Authors: Rebecca Royce
He walked into the building, nodding to a nurse as if he
knew her, before he exited through a door in the Emergency Room. The chaos of
the night before still raged.
His lack of sleep didn’t matter. In his training, he’d gone
three days straight without sleep and still taken down a wraith that had gotten
in his way. One night, particularly after the way Dodie had jazzed him up,
would not upset his fighting skills.
If anything, he’d never been so on top of the world.
The rooms would be colder the closer he got to the entity. Mindy’s
had been freezing. He had no idea if Dodie noticed the abnormality, or if she’d
thought it odd that the room was at least ten degrees cooler than the hallway,
but modern convenience often hid monsters. A human might assume the air
conditioner caused some rooms to be more frigid than others, masking evil. He’d
been in places where he could see his breath in the middle of summer because of
infestation. That had been before he’d realized why the bracing chill claimed a
room, back when he’d been vulnerable and his parents died because of his
failure.
Never again.
He always took the stairs and not for the exercise. How
could he track temperature changes if he rode the elevator right through them?
It took ten minutes to locate the thirteenth floor as the
problem. He rolled his eyes. Demons were nothing if not clichéd. Number thirteen,
how typical.
He almost collided with a doctor as he exited the stairway. Wearing
a white lab coat with a stethoscope around his neck, the man appeared the
picture of perfection.
The doctor smiled at Christian and Christian almost smiled
back, but then he saw it. The glint in his eyes, the way his left hand shook
slightly, the soulless gaze of a creature not from the planet Earth.
Christian looked him up and down. “A doctor. Really?”
“Chaser.” The demon hissed his response before turning to
run in the other direction.
“Running? Really?” He shook his head. “You know I’m going to
catch you.”
An Incubus dressing up as a doctor. He needed to write this
one down. Traditionally, the Incubus fed on the sleeping and sometimes fathered
children with unsuspecting women. What a perfect place to hide. The sick and
terrified being assaulted by evil while they slept.
The image fueled Christian further. He moved faster than
normal and launched himself at the creature. They both went down. It had to
die. Unlike the Hell hound, he’d never be able to simply order it back to
whence it came. This disgusting thing could think and feel. It should have
known better than to come to Christian’s town.
“Don’t hurt me, Chaser.”
Christian always hated that nickname. They were destroyers
of evil, watchers and protectors. Chasers made them sound like some kind of dog
trapped in a universal game of fetch, which was exactly why the demons
preferred the term. The thing would win no points from him for slinging barely
veiled insults.
“You think to get out of here alive?” Christian laughed. “Get
over that idea.”
“But I’m nothing. I’m small potatoes. You let me go and I’ll
tell you who is really here, what you really need to run after.”
Christian growled. “I’m not tricked by your kind. Every word
out of your mouth is a false one.”
“But…”
He broke its neck with a quick snap and jumped up. Someone
would find the dead demon. There would be an investigation. But they wouldn’t
be able to locate an identity for the demon and, as with so many other creature
kills, eventually they would determine the doctor unidentifiable as anyone
having ever existed.
As it turned out this particular takedown didn’t take much
effort. He spun around. Jonah leaned against the wall. His lifelong friend
grinned at him.
“All for one incubus? Really?”
He shrugged. “I know and Incubi don’t usually come with so
many sightings. They don’t bring on quite so much delusion.”
Jonah walked forward. He stared down at the ground where the
Incubus lay, unmoving. “I guess the proof is in the pudding.”
“I caught him.” Christian rubbed his forehead. “And they lie—every
other word they say is false.”
“That is true.”
But what if this one had told the truth? And had the Incubus
really brought so much ill will into town with him that he’d caused a crime
spree the likes of which had turned Mindy’s hair white?
“What are you thinking about, bro?” Jonah punched him in the
arm and they both started walking away from the body. Before they went too far,
Jonah held up his hand and Christian saw he grasped several small discs. “I got
the surveillance. No one is going to identify you.”
“Thanks.” Should he tell Jonah nothing about his takedown
felt right to him? He shook his head. He’d killed the demon. It had to be over.
How many of them could be running around Austin at once?
“So am I going to get to see you strip?” Jonah laughed.
“Do you want to?” Christian smiled back. Jonah waited tables
to make ends meet. Nothing wrong with that but not nearly the cash Christian
got every night.
“Only because I have to see it with my own eyes.
Straight-as-an-arrow Christian taking off his clothes for screaming women.”
The idea held less appeal than usual. He really only wanted
Dodie to see him that way. He’d have to make do for a while longer. Christian
had almost gotten where he needed to go. Almost. The Incubus haunted his steps.
Dodie sat in her childhood bedroom. The one she’d had after
her parents had died, located at her grandparents’ house. She could hear the
ocean outside, a sound she’d come to identify both with sadness and with
safety. It was why she’d moved inland, to Austin. They had lakes but no ocean.
She didn’t like how much emotion that one noise of the water lapping against
the sand could evoke inside her.
Better to leave it and never visit any coastlines.
“What the hell am I doing here?” She stood up. Her bed, the
pink sheet set she’d hated but not complained about because her grandmother
tried so hard, had been made, the corners tucked in neatly. Her desk looked
straightened. She’d never had it that neat, not even when she’d tried so hard
to get it that way.
I must be dreaming.
She looked all around. Bizarre
seemed the best description of the sensation of being completely aware she
wasn’t really awake.
“Hello, Dorothy.”
She jumped and turned around. A full-sized clown sat on her
childhood bed, staring at her. He waved at her, one finger at a time until his
hand looked more like a fan that an appendage.
She opened and closed her mouth before settling on something
to say. “How bizarre. A clown. What psychological mumbo jumbo caused this
break?”
As far as she could remember, she’d never had a clown at any
of the gigantic parties her grandparents threw to try to make up for the lack
of living parents on her birthdays.
“I’ve come to play with you, Dorothy.” The red circles on
his face were raised when he smiled. Many different colors streaked the body of
the clown, in various shapes and sizes. If he’d been real, the face paint alone
would take hours to accomplish. Her imagination had really gone all out.
“Dodie. No one calls me Dorothy.” They never had, not even
her parents.
“Okay, Dodie.” The clown got off the bed, laughing
hysterically while he did as if he’d just made a joke.
She shook her head. Odd didn’t begin to describe him. He
walked toward her and placed his maroon gloved hand on her shoulder. “I’ve come
to play with you, Dodie.”
She shuddered. “So you said…” He didn’t seem so amusing now.
His eyes were red except for in the middle where his pupils appeared black. Up
close she could see how the paint on his face cracked, as if it needed to have
been washed off and redone long ago. His breath smelled foul.
Dodie tried to take a step backward, but his hand held her
in place. “I’ve been waiting for a chance like this, Dodie. To play with a girl
like you.”
She shook her head. “Let go of my arm.”
“But we’re going to play together.”
“No.” She gritted her teeth. “I don’t want to play with you.
I’m done with you. Let me go.”
“You’ll come with me to where I live. You’ll be with the
others there. We’ll all play together. Forever.”
“Listen, buddy. You’re not real. None of this is.”
Except that it started to feel kind of real. She knew,
intellectually, he was a figment of her imagination. When she woke up, he’d be
gone. Only, he’d started to feel very real.
“I’m very real, Dodie. And no one, not any Chaser, is going
to save you from me. Not now that I want you. When you see me in the world out
there, you won’t be able to get away.”
She wrenched her arm from him and stumbled backward. “I
would like to wake up now.”
He laughed, a giggle that started in his low register and
continued into a full-bodied snort. When he finished, he pulled a knife out of
his pocket.
“Oh look at this. I have a knife for us to play with.” He
swung it around in the air as someone might fling a baton if they conducted a
symphony.
“Stay away from me.” She fled the room. Although it had been
five years since she’d last set foot in her grandparents’ home she remembered
the layout perfectly. Down the hall and to the right, she’d get to the stairs.
Then she could run out the front door and find her way onto the street.
“At some point, I have to wake up.” She shuddered, her
breath rushing in and out while she ran. Yes, she’d be going to the gym a lot
more. She rounded the corner and came to an abrupt halt. Dodie searched,
looking left and right. Where were the stairs? Where were the stairs?
The clown walked down the hall toward her, his steps even
with his too-large, meant-to-be-amusing plastic shoes slapping on the wood
floors, making a sloshing sound.
She stared down at his feet while she backed into the wall
where the stairs should be, except that they weren’t. They. Were. Not. There.
The sloshing noise of his feet got louder as he got closer
and she could see his footprints on the wood floor. Red, bloody footprints.
“Why are you doing this?”
“Hee hee.” He scratched his chin. “Because I’m a sad clown.
You care about sad clowns, don’t you, Dodie?”
“No. I don’t care about sad clowns. I’ve never thought about
clowns. Ever.” She shook her head. “I have to get out of here. I have to wake
up. Now.”
He waved his hand. “This is not the day you die. Make sure
you tell Mindy I said hello. How do you like her hair color? Tee hee. Tell the
Chaser I’m coming for him and before I gut him like a pig,” he swung the knife
in the air, “he’ll know the true meaning of pain.”
* * * * *
Dodie jolted awake and jumped from the bed, her head
spinning as all the blood rushed into it.
“Whoa.” Mindy darted back a few steps. “I’m sorry. I didn’t
want to wake you. I’m just so confused and I hoped you could tell me what’s
going on.”
Dodie swallowed. The dream, the weird clown—it moved away
from her like a tendril of smoke traveling from a campfire, into the wind where
she couldn’t follow it.
Her friend needed her. Weird images, probably brought on
from her first real orgasm, would have to wait to be analyzed later.
“Yes.” She nodded. “Mindy. Of course I can explain things. Yes.”
“Sweetie,” Mindy’s eyes traveled downward before she
grinned. “You’re naked. Do you always sleep naked?”
Dodie’s cheeks heated up as she dashed for a bed sheet. “Go
wait in the living room. Please.”
This couldn’t get worse.
* * * * *
Dodie stroked Mindy’s white hair. Her friend sipped at a cup
of tea. She seemed calm, but her shaking left hand gave away the trauma of the
night before. Dodie loved Mindy as family. She’d do anything for her. “It
chopped him into small pieces.”
“It?” Dodie picked up a graham cracker and nibbled on it. Mindy
hadn’t uttered word one about the murder all morning and Dodie hadn’t wanted to
push her.
“I guess I should say he, since for some reason when I try
to bring it to focus in my mind, all I can think about is how inhuman he
seemed. I guess I can’t process what happened. Or something.”
“What do you remember? I never saw the police. By the time I
got to the hospital, all the doctors wanted to do was release you. They were
swamped.” And the room had been freezing. She shuddered thinking about it.
“I’m actually extraordinarily guilt ridden.” Mindy shook her
head. “I had decided, just then, that night, right before…the man came and did
what he did…that I needed to break things off with Brian.”
Really? This was the first she’d heard of Mindy being
unhappy in her relationship. “What made you decide that? Did he do something to
you?”
“No. You knew Brian.” Mindy’s voice shook with the past
tense. “He was a real sweetheart. He’d started talking about getting married. I
should have felt really lucky.”
“But you didn’t?” Dodie had no experience to relate. She
could feel Mindy’s pain radiating off her in waves as if the emotion became a
palpable entity in the room with them.
“No. Oh Dodie. This is going to sound awful, but the sex was
so bad.” She put her head in her hands before she sat back up and wiped her
eyes. “I tried to make it better, to work on it, but he was always done in five
minutes or so. How could I do that for the rest of my life?”
Dodie nodded. In this, she could actually understand.
Christian had given her such tremendous pleasure, had taken the time to really
see that she’d been satisfied—several times. Now it had to be impossible to
maintain that kind of passion every time over a marriage that lasted a
lifetime—or maybe not. Christian probably gathered enough tricks in his years
to be adventurous for years to come, but what it would mean to start out with
the sex only mediocre at best?
“You have the right to be happy. Sex matters. If you really
tried to get it better, then you can’t beat yourself up over this, sweetie. Did
he know you meant to end it?”
“No. For that, I’m really grateful. He died thinking we were
secure. But the thing—the man—who slaughtered him, he really tortured Brian
with talk about killing me. I think Brian held on as long as he could while
that clown cut him up just to keep me safe. I didn’t warrant that kind of
bravery when I didn’t love him like that in return.”
The clown? Why did that thought make Dodie’s head feel
itchy?
“Listen. I have a lot of personal days saved up.” She hugged
Mindy tight. “I’m going to call the office and have them transferred to you.
It’s not a problem. You are going to get better, feel safe again. We’re going
to see to that.”
* * * * *
The lights dimmed and Christian stepped out onto the stage. He
wore jeans and a white sleeveless tank top that stopped right before the top of
his pants—just enough to show some skin if he moved the right way. He planned to
move the right way several times before he removed the shirt entirely.
Had Dodie come to see the show? Probably not. He pushed the
thought from his mind. She had Mindy with her and the ladies wouldn’t need a
night in Brass to make her feel better. Maybe someday she’d come back and he
could show her what he meant about dancing just for her.
Or at least he hoped he could demonstrate. He’d never really
done it before, not having a special lady to perform for until he met Dodie.
“And now, ladies,” Beth’s smoke filled voice rasped over the
microphone. “We have a crowd favorite. We know some of you came here tonight
just to see him and I can’t blame you. This man gives a new definition to the
word hot. The one, the only…Christian!”
He rolled his eyes as the spotlight focused on him. Facing
away from the stage, he put weight on his toes and whirled around until he
faced the audience. His hand on his hat, he nodded to the ladies who escaped
their lives for one evening of fantasy and pleasure.
Of course, this time he had to dance knowing Jonah sat at
the bar somewhere, probably laughing his ass off at him. No. Those thoughts
weren’t going to help anything and he had a job to do. People spent their hard-earned
money to see him. They would have a good time and fund his dreams with one
dollar bills they offered up in exchange for his skill at providing them an
evening to indulge in their forbidden fantasies.
He stalked farther onto the stage, timing his steps to the
heavy thrum of music, and winked at a crowd of middle-aged women at the table
closest to the stage. The music boomed in his ears and he moved, his hips going
first. Yeah…four more months of this. For the first time, it really seemed like
a long time.
* * * * *
The text on his phone beeped when he shoved his T-shirt over
his head. Usually he went home to shower, but he didn’t want to run into Dodie
covered in oil again. Tonight, he wanted her to see him and feel him the way he
really looked and felt. With a flick of his wrist, he put his hair back in a
ponytail. When he opened the school, he would shave his head. A whole new life.
He stared at the phone.
Can you come tomorrow for a
shoot?
It was his agent who occasionally booked cover model
photography shoots for him. Maybe he would only have to dance for three months,
instead of four. He could make some serious dough in a short period of time
with the added salary from a cover shoot.
If only it could be a permanent gig.
Yes
, he texted back. He’d make it work. The Incubus
had been dealt with and Dodie probably had to go back to work, even if Mindy
couldn’t yet. Saturday he’d convince her to spend the whole day with him.
Or he’d never let her out of the bed.
He threw his bag together and walked to the exit. Two of his
fellow dancers were making plans with some of the women who’d watched the show.
He smiled at them while he scanned the room for Jonah.
“Come with us, Christian.” A blonde with blue eyes reached
out to grab him and he moved just enough away so she couldn’t touch. They put
their hands on him when they stuffed money down his pants. After the show, he
preferred not to have their fingers on his body.
He spotted Jonah lounging against the bar and, with a faked
regretful smile at the blonde, crossed the room to join him.
His friend looked up and shook his head. “How many of those
dollars did you get shoved down your underwear tonight?”
“About a thousand bucks.”
“What?” Jonah slammed down his beer. “Is that standard?”
Christian smiled. “Still want to make fun of me for
dancing?”
“No. Shit. I don’t make that in months.” They walked out
together. “Gotta learn to dance.”
Christian snickered. Jonah would never learn how to dance. He’d
never even seen the man rock to a slow song in a club. Jonah was more the stand
in the corner and stare at the crowd type.
“Why are you leaving with me when that hot young Nicole
Eggert clone tried to grab you?”
“I have a girl.” He liked saying it aloud. “She lives across
the hall. And she puts every other woman on the planet to shame. Red hair. Blue
eyes.”
“Oh so you have it for her bad.”
“Yeah.” He and Jonah didn’t usually talk about this kind of
stuff. Most of their conversations involved fighting, demons, and the general
strangeness of their lives.