“It’s not,” she insisted, twisting away from him. The demon that held them recoiled, tearing at her hair. “I know it’s not.” She pushed at him again, and one of the tentacles slashed across her cheek, tearing a gash in her skin.
“No!” Asher said, grabbing the tendril that had hurt her and twisting it hard around his fist. The creature shrieked, and the tentacle he held burned to ash in his grip. Suddenly the thing was fighting them both, tearing at their skin with fangs and claws. But Asher was still stronger. He grabbed the tendril wrapped around her waist, the thickest outgrowth from the trunk, and growled something in a language she didn’t understand. The whole tree shuddered, gripping her tighter for a moment before the thick, scaly member dropped useless and dead. Asher caught her as she fell, ripping smaller tentacles away from her as the demon fell back, turning back into a tree.
“Kelsey!” Jake’s voice called out again. “Where are you?”
“Kelsey?” her mother’s voice called, overlapping Jake’s. “Are you here? Are you hurt?” She sounded scared to death.
“I’m here!” Kelsey called, slipping free of Asher. “I’m coming!”
“Kelsey, no,” Asher said as she broke into a run. “Kelsey, come back!”
She ran through the trees, stumbling over the twisted roots, the broken, wintry underbrush cutting her feet. “Mama!” she called, stopping to get her bearings. “Jake, baby, where are you?” She heard Asher calling her name from the darkness behind her, but she refused to look back. This was what she’d come here for. “Help me find you!” she called to her husband through her tears. “I want to be with you!”
The Gate
She came out of the woods into a vacant lot. She could see the sky now, burning orange gray like the sky over a factory at night. In the distance, she saw the broken spires of buildings, stark, bare silhouettes against the ugly light. The lot where she stood was strewn with trash and junk cars and scattered all over with a sparse, uneven, sickly-looking grass. A skinny yellow dog, its ribs and hipbones sticking out painfully under its mangy skin, stood up at her approach then slunk fearfully away.
“Kelsey!” Asher came out of the trees just as the dog disappeared in the shadows of a burned-out pick-up truck.
“Shhh,” she said, waving him off to listen intently to something else. “Mama, where are you?”
“Kelsey, it’s a trick.” He felt so tired, so ready to be done. Looking around at the open field, he wondered what had inspired it, what place in Kelsey’s past had made this her version of Hell.
“They’re here.” She looked back at him, her hair blowing loose around her shoulders in the icy wind, her eyes huge and sparkling with tears. “I have to find them.”
“I don’t think you want to do that.” The lust he had felt in the clutches of the demon had subsided, leaving him empty and sad. “I don’t think you’ll like what you find.”
“Of course I won’t like it.” He could see in her eyes she wasn’t innocent; she knew exactly where they were. “But it’s what I want.”
“Oh, Kelsey…” Stupid, selfish, broken mortal child. Stupid him for loving her so much. She turned away to start across the empty field, and all he could do was follow.
At the far side of the field they came to a high, rusted, chain-link fence topped with barbed wire. The gate didn’t match the rest of the fence. It was wrought iron, an elaborate Victorian design that was familiar—the gate to the cemetery where Jake was buried, Kelsey thought. She stopped a few feet away from it, chewing her lip, considering. The gate was locked with a thick, rusted chain.
She heard a noise behind her and turned to look. The dog she had seen before was slinking closer on his belly. He whined, crawling toward her, his eyes turned toward the gate. “I know, pooch,” she said. “Me too.” How could they get through?
“Don’t touch him,” Asher said. “He’s not a real dog.”
“I think he is.” She crouched down and held out her hand. The dog bared his fangs at her, growling low in this throat. His snout was red and swollen with a deep scrape on one side that was crawling with maggots. “What did you do, doggie?” she said, her hand still out. “Bite a preacher?”
“Kelsey, come away from here,” Asher said. “There’s no point.” He grabbed the iron bars and shook them hard, and a frisson of heat passed through him like an electric current. “We can’t get through.”
“You don’t know that.” The dog had crawled steadily closer, his growl rising to a whine. “You said before you don’t know what this place is, that it was up to me.” She reached out and scratched the dog tenderly between the ears, the only comfort she could give him.
“That’s not what I said.” He watched her pet the hellhound, frustration closing like a fist around his heart. She was lost, but gifted, kind to every creature she encountered, even here, brave to a fault. How could she be damned?
“Maybe we could climb over.” Giving the dog a final pat, she stood up. “Or you have wings; you could just fly over.”
“I can’t use my wings here,” he said. “If I keep trying to use my powers…” His voice trailed off.
“What?” she said. “What will happen?”
“I’ll transform,” he said.
Her lower lip trembled. “You’ll turn into a demon?”
“Yes.” The dog turned and put himself between Asher and Kelsey. “The worst sort of demon—one of the fallen.”
“Like Black,” she said. “The one at the hospital.”