r all of the mental anguish of remembering, deliverance has come.
My breath slackens. My pulse dims. With the soul already gone, it won’t be long before the body and mind are claimed too.
But when the darkness above me narrows and shifts, I realize the mistake. What I mistook for salvation, is merely a shadow.
Funny how just when I gave up on being discovered, someone has found me.
“Well, I’ll be. If it isn’t Dace Whitefeather. It is you, isn’t it?”
The voice is familiar. The face is obscured.
“So this is where you’ve been all this time. Should’ve known you weren’t dead.”
I swipe a hand across my brow, roll into a sitting position, and take a full inventory. Counting a cheap black suit, a severely starched white shirt frayed at the collar and cuffs, and a ridiculously skinny black tie.
“Should’ve known she was lying.”
He clucks his tongue against the roof of his mouth, as my gaze drops to his feet. Noting worn shoes that, despite a recent polish, are pocked with a cross-hatching of scuff marks.
“This was supposed to have been taken care of weeks ago. Now the whole thing’s delayed. She’ll pay for this. Make no mistake. She will not get away with it. There’s a fiery place in hell with her name on it.”
The last bit prompts the curtain to rise in the theater of my mind as a long-ago slide show unspools. The face in my memory no longer an exact match for the one that looms before me, but recognizable all the same in the way of the long, crooked slant of a nose that hangs like a hook toward a pair of bloodless mean lips turned crueler by time. But the eyes are the real attraction, just as they were back then. Still wild. Still crazy. Still hinting at the uncorked fanaticism lurking within.
Suriel Youngblood. Phyre’s doomsayer father.
“Never send a girl to do a man’s job.” He shakes his head and rakes a hand through his carefully coiffed and greased hair, before he slips a large black duffle from his shoulder and drops it to the dirt where he kneels down beside it in a chorus of cracking knee joints. He retrieves a brand-new Bible with a white leather cover with one hand, and an iron stake along with what can only be described as an oversized mallet with the other.
I remain rooted in place. Watching with only the mildest curiosity, as he approaches me with his collection of unfathomable tools. Suddenly made aware of just how abnormal I’ve become.
A normal person wouldn’t lie back and wait.
A normal person would take one look at this madman and choose to either fight or flee.
But I’m no longer normal.
No longer human.
I’m empty.
Soulless.
And if he’s here to release me, I have no plans to stop him.
“Been down here demon hunting all day,” he says, as though I deserve an explanation for his crashing my party. “Usually there’s no shortage of them. This part of the Middleworld rarely disappoints. The deeper the dimension, the bleaker the landscape, the better the bounty. I’ve been at it off and on for years. These are some of the best slaying grounds that I’ve found. Though today’s been quiet. Must’ve walked for miles before I stumbled upon you.” He shakes his head, pulls his lips back, and hocks a wad of spit that lands smack between us. “Second I saw you I knew exactly why I was called here. He works in mysterious ways. He does indeed. Just like Him to present such a monumental find in such a beautifully simplistic way.”
While I have no idea what he’s going on about, I don’t care enough to ask him to elaborate. I just lie back and watch as he stoops by my side. Face contorted in crazed and earnest conviction, as he presses the Bible hard to my chest and holds it in place with the spike’s razor-sharp tip. A stake that’s filthy, well-used. Bearing a heavy crusting of what can only be the remains of his previous kills.
“You think I’m a vampire?” I peer at him through narrowed lids, amused by the idea. I always knew he was delusional, but I guess I never realized just how deeply disturbed he really is.
Taking great care to center the mallet’s fat head flat against the stake, he throws his head back and enters into a loud and thunderous sermon that roars through the land. Same kind of zealous Armageddon talk he used to preach about on the street corners back when I was a kid. Back when everyone either rolled their eyes and laughed or chose to hurry past.
Guess I never listened well enough to realize that all of this time, the sermons were directed at me.
Convinced that my entrance into the world marked the beginning of the End Times he’s been preaching about for the better part of his life, he’s spent the last sixteen years planning my demise.
“Vampire, demon, sorcerer, skinwalker—what’s the difference?” His eyes roll skyward, as though addressing an invisible friend. “Satan, Lucifer, the devil, the deceiver, the fallen, Beelzebub, Mephistopheles—they’re merely titles, names. Evil is as evil does. There is no use making distinctions. All you need to know is that the Last Days are upon us. The signs are everywhere! Twice now, a flock of ravens fell from above. And it was only days ago when the sky opened wide and purged a torrent of fire.”
I close my eyes and groan. Wishing he’d just shut the hell up and do it already. But when he continues to drone on and on, raging about six-toed cats, and a whole slew of other superstitious nonsense, I can’t help but say, “I hate to break it to you, Suriel, but not a single thing you’ve mentioned is a sign of anything other than my brother showing off his impressive supply of magick tricks.”