Destroyer of Worlds (5 page)

“
What’s the plan?” Sean asked as they
joined Tiffany.

John double-checked to make sure he had his
flashlight; electricity to the building must have been turned off
years ago. “You two go through the front,” he decided. “This used
to be a business. There might be a delivery door in the back. I’ll
go around the other side and check it out. Assuming it’s
accessible, I’ll come in that way. The ghouls will stick to the
lower floor, so we’ll do a full sweep.” At least most buildings in
Charleston didn’t have basements to worry about.

“
Sounds good,” Sean said. John left
them and headed around the back.

The back faced onto a narrow alley filled
with dumpsters and cracked pavement. A sour smell hung in the air,
and fetid water dripped from a window air conditioner in the back
of the pawnshop across the way.

As he’d predicted, a service entrance lay at
the rear of the building. He removed his silver athame from its
holster and held it in one hand, his Glock in the other. Easing up
to the door, he tried the knob.

Locked…but the frame itself was broken, and
the door swung open at his touch. The hinges squealed, and he
winced at the sound. Damn it—he’d hoped to get inside without
alerting every ghoul in the place.

The door opened onto a bare room with a
concrete floor. A storage area, probably. The grimy panes still
intact on the barred windows only allowed a little light to
struggle through. Cursing silently, he sheathed the athame and
switched on his flashlight. Too bad he couldn’t see in the dark
like Gray.

Damn it. He had to focus and stop thinking
about the drakul.

He took a deep breath, testing the air. Was
there a faint smell of rot? Maybe, but it might come from a dead
mouse in the walls as easily as from the remains of a ghoul’s
meal.

Well, there was obviously nothing in this
room. The nest—if one existed—must be farther inside.

Another broken door led out of the receiving
room. He shone his flashlight cautiously ahead of him, illuminating
cracked and stained vinyl on the floor. A small break room opened
off to the left, and what might have once been an office on the
right. A ruined desk, its pressboard top swollen from moisture,
stood inside, a chair on rollers still behind it.

John started to turn away, when he heard the
rollers squeak.

Firming his grip on his Glock, he stepped
into the office, shining the light at the desk. “Come out,” he
ordered, just in case it wasn’t a ghoul. Fuck, he wished Gray were
here to tell him one way or the other.

A muffled sob. Not a ghoul. Probably some
homeless person looking for a safe place to sleep. Lowering his
Glock with a sigh, John stepped around the desk. “You’re
trespassing…”

Two forms curled together beneath the desk.
One was still human, dressed in filthy clothes crusted with dirt
and grave filth. He cowered, covering his face and crying,
revealing the full ghoul crouched behind him.

John flung himself back, but not fast enough.
The ghoul lunged at him, lips pulled into a snarl, exposing teeth
ready to bite. He tried to bring his gun up, but too slow, too
slow—

A shot sounded, deafening in the close
confines of the room. The ghoul collapsed at John’s feet, body
limp.

Sean stood in the doorway, his expression
grim.

“
Thanks,” John said shakily, as the
possessed man under the desk began to wail. Fuck, he had been
sloppy. Sean had just saved his life.

“
Yeah.” Sean lowered his weapon.
“You’re welcome.”

John winced at his friend’s tone. “Sean—”

“
Later.” Sean shook his head and turned
away. “Let’s wrap this up and get this guy back to HQ.”

* * *

Hours later, John caught up with Sean in the
parking garage of SPECTR-HQ.

They’d put down the rest of the ghouls and
brought the sole survivor back for exorcism. Poor bastard was a
homeless alcoholic who’d taken refuge in the wrong place, and
allowed hunger and need convince him to let a ghoul inside.

He’d cried when the NHE was gone. “What am I
gonna do now?” he asked. “I’m all alone with no place to go. At
least I had a home with them.”

Which left John feeling even more like shit
than he already did. He just wanted to go home, get drunk, and
forget everything for a while. But Caleb and Gray depended on him,
so instead he planned on spending a long night hunched over scans
of Brimm’s books and praying for a miracle.

When he finally headed for his car, he
spotted Sean a little way ahead of him, talking on the phone.
“Sean! Wait up!”

Sean ended the call abruptly and turned
around. The parking garage lights painted his skin an unhealthy
shade of mustard. “What is it?”

He seemed tired, John thought as he
approached. The smell of cigarettes around Sean was even more
noticeable than usual. It reminded John of sneaking smokes out back
at school, when they’d both been seventeen and stupid.

“
I just wanted to thank you again for
the save earlier,” John said, stopping a few feet away.

Sean pulled out his pack of cigarettes and
took one out. “I shouldn’t have had to save you. Not from a fucking
ghoul. Your head’s not in the game.”

“
I know.” No sense in denying
it.

“
Is this about Caleb?” Sean asked
bluntly. “Because if it is, maybe you should just take the next few
days off.”

“
I’m worried about him,” John admitted.
And Gray. But he couldn’t admit that, even to Sean.

“
Why?” Sean flung his arms out in
exasperation. “Christ, he’ll be back Sunday. Forsyth told you so
himself, right?”

“
Not technically.”

“
But he said they’ve got an exorcism
lined up. Why are you freaking out?”

The words hovered on his tongue.
Because the whole situation at RD stinks, and
Caleb’s in the middle of it, and I can’t do anything but stare at
books until the wee hours of the morning.

Because I’m in love with Gray and I can’t
let him die.

He couldn’t. Couldn’t say it out loud and see
Sean’s shock, because who would ever understand? Even if he only
told Sean the first part, his friend would want to know how he knew
anything sinister was up at RD.

And he trusted Sean, he did. But Caleb had
asked him not to tell anyone he’d been in communication. John had
already broken one promise to Caleb; he couldn’t bring himself to
break another.

“
I just miss him,” John said. It
sounded lame as hell, even to him.

Sean eyed him for a long moment, but when
John didn’t elaborate, he sighed. “You really do have it bad, don’t
you?”

“
Yeah. I really do.”

“
A shame you couldn’t have met under
other circumstances. If he’d come down to visit his brother instead
of for a funeral, and you’d met in a bar or something…” Sean put
his cigarette to his lips, realized he’d never lit it, and fumbled
for his lighter.

“
I guess.” Except then John wouldn’t
have met Gray…and hell if he’d ever had a more selfish thought in
his entire life. “You’re right. I don’t have my head
together.”

Sean took a long drag off the cigarette, its
tip glowing cherry red. “At least you admit it. Look, if you’re
determined to keep at this, just stick with me tomorrow, all right?
Tiffany can handle herself.”

He didn’t like letting Sean babysit him, but
getting killed by a ghoul wouldn’t help Caleb or Gray. “Okay.”

“
Glad you’re being reasonable. For
once.”

Sean started to turn away, but John stopped
him with a hand to his shoulder. Pulling his friend in close, he
embraced Sean, clapping him on the back. “Thanks, man. I don’t know
what I’d do without you.”

“
Get your face eaten off by ghouls,”
Sean groused. But he returned the hug. “Go home and get some
sleep.”

“
I will,” John lied. But as they headed
to their separate cars, his heart lightened slightly. He might not
be able to confess his feelings for Gray, but he knew without
question Sean would always be there for him.

* * *

Caleb poked at his dinner and reflected at
least he couldn’t complain about the food. He’d figured he’d be
lucky if he got anything edible, or would have to put up with
cheese burritos, or salads of nothing but iceberg lettuce and a
slice of tomato. Even Jell-O because the cook didn’t realize they
made it out of boiled-down pig skins.

Instead, every meal had been, if not gourmet
fare, pretty damned edible. No doubt part of Forsyth’s plan to keep
him compliant—a trap baited with stir-fried tofu instead of
honey.

And a trap it was. The more “tests” he
performed as the week went on, the more convinced of it he
became.

“
I agree.”

Taken apart from each other, the tests didn’t
seem particularly menacing. How hard he could punch a steel slab.
Whether or not he could break cables of a certain thickness. Just
to measure his strength, they told him, nothing more. Just meant to
rank a drakul in comparison to other NHEs. Harmless.

Except, combined with the tests on spirit
wards and a few other things, it didn’t seem harmless at all. More
like Forsyth was trying to figure out how to restrain Gray once the
possession became irreversible.

Caleb pretended to cooperate, but held back
every time. If no exorcism light waited at the end of this tunnel,
he had no intention of becoming a permanent guest of RD. At least
there didn’t seem to be any empaths here. Why, Caleb didn’t know,
but he would have been fucked on day one if there were.

He wanted to leave. Every day they
stayed ran the risk it would be the last, if Forsyth decided he had
enough data and tried to trap them. Not knowing exactly what the
man had in mind, Caleb couldn’t be sure a trap
wouldn’t
hold them, even given his
deceptions.

“
We have not yet found the
demons.”

I know.
Caleb
took a bite of tofu and kale, the simple flavors bursting on his
tongue. Eating wouldn’t be the same without Gray. Although at least
he’d have garlic again.
Believe me, it’s
the only reason I’m not heading for the hills right now.

“
There are no hills in this
area.”

Yeah, thanks for the update, Captain
Literal.

“
If you mortals would simply
say what you mean, I would not need to correct you.”

Caleb rolled his eyes.
Just a little while longer and you won’t have to
deal with my mortal nonsense anymore.

Gray stilled.
“No,”
he agreed, small and quiet.
“No, I will not.”

John stared at the screen of his tablet,
willing his hands not to shake. The scanned page it displayed came
from one of Brimm’s books, an old, crumbling volume written in
medieval Latin, which itself seemed to be a translation from some
other work.

The study of paranormal entities and how to
deal with them barely qualified as science even now, and the old
texts were as full of wild ranting and religious mania as anything
useful. More, sometimes, and sorting out reality from superstition
could be nearly impossible.

The tome’s title,
Dealings With Angels and Other Higher Beings
,
hadn’t seemed remotely promising.
John left it until
nearly last, certain he’d find only the personal philosophy of some
heretical monk or alchemist inside. But almost as soon as he opened
it, he came across a diagram of a circle startling in its
familiarity.

It was the circle Brimm had trapped Gray in,
the only thing John had yet seen which successfully contained the
drakul. And if that was legitimate, something else in the book
might be as well.

The tome had no index, of course, or table of
contents, forcing him to go page by page, translating slowly and
making notes. The unknown author mixed a great deal of wild talk in
with the rituals, mainly speculations on the nature of NHEs. Which,
as the text dated from medieval Europe, cast them as angels and
devils. He had the feeling Gray would find the whole thing
absurd.

Several different exorcism rituals were
scattered throughout, most no different than a dozen others he’d
encountered. But one caught his attention.

“
For the exorcism of higher orders of
demons, two or more exorcists must work together,” he read aloud.
“One must fuel the circle with his blood as described.”

Blood. Drakul were blood-drinkers. And two
exorcists…

He read through the ritual carefully several
times. Yes. This was it. This was what he’d been looking for all
along.

He knew how to exorcise Gray.

* * *

Friday morning, and Caleb had hoped like hell
to be on his way out of here by now. Instead, he walked with his
guards into an area he hadn’t seen before, down a sharply angled
corridor, which seemed to lead deep underground. The dank concrete
walls echoed with their footsteps, and the sodium lights painted
everything an ugly shade of piss yellow.

Utilitarian, even for this place.

A heavy door barred the end of the
hall, the kind used on bank vaults, eight inches of solid steel and
probably alarmed to hell and back. The hair on Caleb’s neck
prickled as the guards led him through.
What are they hiding down here that needs to be guarded like
Fort Knox?

The air beyond the door swam with demonic
miasma: rot and corruption, roses gone to slime, even the
freezer-burned meat smell of a wendigo. The door wasn’t for keeping
anyone out. It was to keep things in.