Chapter 16
Calise couldn’t see straight and it wasn’t jetlag. Was she awake or dreaming? Maybe she’d caught a strange bug while she was in Costa Rica. Her mind cycled like a bipolar without meds.
Lucas. The visions. The nightmares.
It was her first day back at the pharmacy and with her vision blurred, she found it next to impossible to tell pills apart, her consults were messy, and Uncle Don was not supportive. After her impromptu vacation, Don probably expected her to come back energetic and refreshed. She was the exact opposite, watching the clock incessantly, registering every silent tick of the second hand. She desperately wanted sleep, and her body ached longingly at the mere thought of her bed. But in her apartment, there was no Lucas and no answers to what plagued her.
I should have told him before I left…but—told him what? I just have a bug…
She wanted to hear Lucas’s voice tell her she’d be okay.
Don finished an antibiotic consult for a new mom with a screaming child. He bristled as he stepped past her, motioning with open hands and raised eyebrows. “Are you still watching the clock? What the hell is wrong with you? If you’re still wishing you’re on the beach, snap out of it and start doing your job.”
It took effort for her to turn her head and face him. “What?” Calise blinked slowly and recognized his face as unaltered. Something was seriously wrong with her. Hallucinations. Faces cycled through her head so fast it made no sense. Hideous, beautiful, placid, heinous. Is this what Lucas saw on a daily basis?
“I have to go to the little boy’s room. Do you think you can hack it for two goddamn minutes?”
“I’m fine. I’ve got it covered out here.”
Don stomped off to the solitary bathroom in the back of the pharmacy.
The bell tinkled from the front of the pharmacy, and cold air hit her with a mid-winter gust. Time slowed to a crawl. A shiver convulsed her and every hair follicle stood at attention. A black cloud hovered by the door of the pharmacy, moving methodically toward her. She shrank back in fear. What horror came through the door? Her pharmacy technician approached the cloud—not a person, but a complete blur to Calise’s eyes. She blinked hard and rubbed her eyes. Her fight or flight response kicked in.
Her rational mind asked, why?
Only she could see the black cloud? As her mind and body joined in their unanimous decision to flee the premises, she heard her cue.
“The pharmacist will be right with you to see if you have any questions—” Barb the technician eyed her with suspicion.
Calise took two steps back and shook her head at Barb. No freaking way.
Barb walked back to grab her. “You have a consult—it’s Ray—he’s in a hurry as usual. Go!” She pushed Calise forward.
Peeking around the corner, she readied herself to face her worst fear. Something came into focus under the black cloud.
A person.
A patient.
Someone she knew.
Ray was the quintessential drug dealing abuser that couldn’t be caught. Don and Calise both tried to find reasons not to fill his prescriptions, but everything was always “legit.” The cloud morphed into Ray, and he smiled. His teeth were razor sharp. “What’s wrong, babe? Miss me?” He grabbed his bottle of narcotics and rolled it over in his hands.
She rubbed her eyes again. This was a customer. Not a good or descent person, but one of her regular customers. “Uh, any questions today, Ray?” She stayed on the safety of the elevated perch pharmacists stand on to look important. Coming down to talk to him on the ground level was not appealing to her.
“Come here, sugar, let me see you since your big vacay. You look great. Tan and sexy as ever.” His eyes scanned her from head to toe and not in a gentlemanly way.
“Thanks,” she managed to sputter and ran back behind the prescription counter.
Ray shrugged. His paper bag rustled while he collected his meds and turned to leave. He glanced over his shoulder at her on his way out and waved. His fingernails were long, pointed claws and his eyes glowed…
Red.
She ran in the bathroom and heaved. Don muttered a “Good-bye” and hung up the phone as she returned to her post.
“I called your family doctor. I told him how you keep running to the bathroom and are vacant. He said you might be dehydrated from Montezuma’s revenge. So he called these in for you. Take these antibiotics and go home to bed.” Don handed her an amber vial and unsympathetically shoved her out the door.
Her knotted and churning stomach had been causing her problems since she landed. She took the first dose of antibiotics and went straight to bed, but couldn’t sleep. Her head spun with images.
What must have been hours later, the ringing phone woke her up. Likely her mother. Calise knew full well if she didn’t haul herself out of bed and answer, her mother would show up on her doorstep with Matzo Ball soup. Or maybe it was Lucas? That would be worth moving for.
She stumbled to her dining room and answered on the fourth ring. “Hello?”
“Hey, Cal. Long time no talk, hey?”
She recognized the voice immediately as Ellen, her childhood best friend and college roommate. “It’s so great to hear from you.” Even on the phone, her heart warmed hearing the familiar voice.
“Well, my first OB-GYN rotation at the Medical School just ended and honestly, I miss you, Cal. How about we have lunch on Thursday? A little birdy told me you came back from a great vacation, and I’d love to hear all about it. What do you say?”
“Of course, El. I can’t begin to tell you how happy I am to hear your voice. I really need an old friend right now.”
“You don’t sound right. What’s the matter?”
“Nothing. I’m fine.” She tried to add a lilt to her voice.
“How about noon at our favorite diner? We can have our favorite dessert, peanut butter cups, just like old times,” Ellen suggested.
Calise’s visions evaporated, and life returned to crystal clarity talking to Ellen. Her entire apartment rushed into focus, and she ran a finger over her dusty dining room table. “Great, it’s a date.”
A date. A date is zip-lining in Costa Rica, but this will have to do. Where are you, Lucas? You promised to call.
Calise pulled on old gray sweatpants and her roomiest sweatshirt. She grabbed a blanket and nestled into her lumpy couch to watch TV. Lucas wasn’t a fling to her, but maybe she didn’t mean as much to him as he did to her.
Maybe she was just depressed. Was her mind messing with her at the pharmacy? She decided to keep her appointment with the psychiatrist on Thursday, before lunch with Ellen…just in case.
****
Lucas woke up with a pounding headache bound and gagged in a chair. People spoke in hushed whispers outside the room. They were coming for him. Again.
It wasn’t the physical pain that hurt him.
Hearing Carmen’s screams from elsewhere in the shack drove knives into his heart. He would give up all the family’s secrets to stop her pain, but he wasn’t a total fool. As soon as he gave up the location of the artifacts, they were both dead. Damn demons. If Carmen wouldn’t talk, neither would he. Honor above all. Plus, he still wore his one necklace. If he could summon Alejandro, maybe, just maybe…
Damn Alejandro for abandoning his family for that demon whore! Lucas ached as he heard Carmen scream again. Had he been here one day or two? His torturers kept him in utter darkness during the silent torture. He could faintly make out the roar of the ocean, so he knew he was still in Costa Rica. The room felt vaguely familiar. Dungy, moldy, ramshackled.
Carmen’s screaming continued. Relentless. Each time she called out, Lucas's throat tightened, his pulse quickened, and he tried his best to suppress the tears that welled in his eyes. There must be something he could use in the room to loosen the ropes that bound his hands. He remembered the last time his wrists were bound. He and Marla were walking up the beach to the road. He was so certain then that he could save her, but his bound wrists were his undoing and Marla’s demise. If Carmen met the same fate, more blood would be on his hands.
Carmen’s screams subsided, and he heard her openly sobbing. He closed his eyes and was struck with a paralyzing thought. Cali. Was she safe? All his senses awoke like a person who realized their car was stuck on the railroad tracks with a train hurling toward them. He needed to see her. Know she was safe. Or his heart would explode.
He forced his muddled brain to bring her into focus, lying on the beach laughing, wind rustling her hair as they cantered down the beach together.
Beautiful, innocent Cali. She would never be safe now because of him.
The doorknob turned; they were coming. The light clicked on, and Lucas squinted his eyes to scan his surroundings but came to a dead halt when he saw Carmen being dragged into the room. The chair she was tied to was tipped backwards, and her head bounced as she was placed directly in front of him. Carmen looked as if she had been drop kicked and used as a soccer ball. Bruised, bloody, and unconscious.
Carmen moaned, and her head rolled from the right to the left. The demons stared from Lucas to Carmen.
The father sneered and curled his lips into a smile. “Aren’t you and your auntie the two tough little nuts to crack? No matter, we’re just getting started. Ready for more, seer? Or are you ready to talk?”
He kept his eyes trained on the ground. No use in antagonizing your brutalizing demon.
The girl popped to the foreground as the transitor and older woman hung back watching. “Can I try, Daddy?”
“Of course, Nara. Make your father proud.” Abaddon stroked her cheek.
The demoness took one deliberate step toward Lucas. Then another. She made a fist with her hand and shook it. Smug, she opened her hand and thousands of small black particles flew at Lucas. A warmth blanketed his flesh. Concentrating to break the illusion, he found himself defenseless once the particles burrowed into his skin causing excruciating pain. “Meet my fav bacteria, Strep pyogenes, better known under optimal conditions, as flesh-eating bacteria.”
Within moments the bacterial illusion eroded his flesh.
She inched forward with a childlike delight in her eyes as black spots emerged all over his body. His flesh heated to searing pain as if he stood in an open flame and knives stabbed into him. His skin morphed into what looked like a changing map of the world. Some spots were pink, others blistered; purple swirls giving way to black peeling portions of his skin. Then the smell overtook him and he gagged, vomited up his own putrid, stinking flesh. Like a rotting corpse, but he was the corpse. He cried out in agony. His skin ripped and separated from his tissue. He was being filleted alive.
Leaning in close, she spoke into his ear. “Do you want me to make it stop? Tell us where the artifacts are.”
With vomit still streaming from his mouth, Lucas stared right into her eyes. “Eat shit and die, demon.”
On him in a flash, she choked the life out of him. The transitor rushed forward, whipped her off Lucas, and flung her hard into the nearest wall. “He’s no good to us dead…yet.” Nara slumped against him, but the moment he relinquished his hold, she was at Lucas’s side and demon-strated, showing her true demon form. Claws drawn, she ripped into Lucas’s arm and pulled back the flesh from his forearm and threw it against the wall.
Lucas screamed.
Abaddon and his demon wife, Ronwe, overtook Nara and dragged her from the room. Abaddon barked at the transitor, “Watch them!”
As soon as Nara was gone, Lucas inhaled sharply and closed his eyes. His pain vanished. There were no bacteria on him, his skin was intact except where the demon had ripped his forearm. He exhaled. The transitor stood with his arms folded leaning against the wall, eyes boring into Lucas.
“Thanks for saving my life. She’s a gem. Been dating long?” Lucas’s pulse was thready from pain and panic, but he needed to talk to his guy. He needed an ally. Badly.
The transitor said nothing and continued to simply stare at Lucas. He wore jeans and an ancient AC/DC t-shirt. His upper body rivaled Alejandro’s,and his head of long, jet-black hair was secured in a ponytail that hung down his back. His face was cold and unreadable, and the hollow circles of his eclipsed eyes never blinked.
Seconds of uncomfortable silence ticked by in Lucas's head.
Dude’s a whack job.
Unfolding his arms, the transitor sat down on the floor, stretching his legs out in front of him. His hands drummed idly on his pants legs with a practiced motion, then he cupped his head between interlaced fingers and leaned back against the wall. “What could she possibly see in you?” When he spoke to Lucas, it was more acidic than the other three demons put together, and that was saying something.
“Who?”
“Calise.”
The way he said her name chilled him and ruffled his male protective feathers. Lucas played dumb. “I…I don’t know anyone with that name.”
In a split second, the transitor was less than an inch from Lucas’s face, breathing hot, acrid fumes from his mouth as he spat, “Don’t lie to me, seer. I saw you together. At the restaurant, at the ferry. Don’t you realize the danger you put her in by giving her that necklace?”
Lucas stiffened. “What’s it to you?”
“Calise always has been, and always will be, mine. See for yourself.” The transitor touched the side of Lucas’s head.
Lucas had every memory of the transitor and Cali having sex tossed into his mind at once. She was panting and saying, “I love you, Shane.” She was rolling over naked saying, “Of course we’ll be together forever, silly.” Image after image, thought after thought, graphic sex scene after graphic sex scene.
Lucas was rocking back and forth. “Stop! You’re lying! Stop!”
He touched Lucas’s head again and the images abated. “Stay away from her, or I’ll kill you myself, whether they’ve found your damned artifacts or not.” He walked back to his corner of the room.
“Funny she never mentioned you, Shane.” Lucas pulled the name from the implanted memories. “There’s something about you…” Lucas strained to recall what had just been withdrawn from his mind. He shut his eyes and altered his perception of the rooms in Cali’s memories. Something was different about the transitor then. Plus, she was younger in Shane’s memories than she was now.
His eyes slowly opened and he smiled wide. “You were an angel in those memories. You’ve fallen.”
Shane was on him, punched him in the jaw, and then was back in his corner before Lucas could say “transitor.”
“Shut the fuck up, seer,” he said, panting.
This might work. Lucas spit out some blood from the pounding blow to this jaw. “Of course she loved you, when you were an angel. Do you really think she’d love you now? Like this?” He looked him up and down. “She could never love you now; you don’t even love God anymore, do you? You’ve probably forgotten how to love altogether.”
Shane sprang on him and matched his former left hook with a right.
Although his head throbbed from the blows, he continued. “Real fair. Let me go, and I’ll fight you like a man.”
Shane snapped his fingers, and Lucas was free. All at once, Shane was on him, beating the hell out of him. Then Lucas found his necklace. In a flash, Alejandro and Anna appeared in the room, holding hands.
Shane jumped back as the door sprang open and Abaddon, Ronwe, and Nara entered.
“What the—” Abaddon addressed Alejandro and Anna.
Alejandro took one step to Carmen and touched her on the shoulder. Her head jerked up, her eyes wide and rightfully terrified. The rope tying her to the chair dissolved.
Flashes of light exploded as the fight broke out fast and violent. Nara leapt toward Alejandro, Abaddon dove for Carmen, and Ronwe went for Lucas. Shane and Anna kept back.
For a fleeting moment, Lucas thought better of hitting a woman until he saw that Ronwe was about to rip a chunk out of his neck with her teeth. He jerked to the side, and she connected with his shoulder, sinking her teeth into his flesh. She jumped on top on him, chewing a piece of his deltoid with gusto.
He and Carmen were no match for the demons in the shape they were in, and Alejandro was busy with Nara. What he did next, just happened. He acted on instinct to save his own life.
Lucas ripped off his necklace with his uninjured arm and smashed the glass pendant on the ground next to him. Clutching the piece of the cross in his hand, he slammed the heel of his hand into Ronwe’s nose just as she was about to bite down on his face. He shoved the bit of cross into the demon’s mouth. Her eyes became wild. As she convulsed and frothed at the mouth, Lucas slid back on his hands to get away from her.
Carmen held something small against Abaddon’s chest. It seemed as though the two of them were stuck together, and Abaddon’s eyes were rolled back in his head. Alejandro overpowered Nara with ease and held her fast with his arm squeezed around her neck. When the angel looked to Lucas and Carmen, he stopped fighting, released Nara, and stepped toward Ronwe and Abaddon.
Ronwe fell backwards, still convulsing violently. Abaddon—unaware of what was going on—had his chest pressed hard to Carmen’s hand with only the whites of his eyes showing. Ronwe stopped moving altogether.
Nara screamed and ran to her Ronwe, “Mom, no!” The demon’s head rolled to the side, and the piece of the cross fell out of her mouth, still smoking. Nara looked at Lucas, death in her eyes. “You…You’ll pay for this, seer.”
“Whoa,” Lucas heard Shane say, just in time to see Abaddon rising off the ground, his black aura growing dimmer. His bald head thrust backwards and his body rigid. His arms, palms upwards, were thrust out perpendicular to his body. Carmen rose a little off the ground with him. Nara snapped around to face her father who was ascending.
Carmen muttered a prayer, low and reverent.
Nara went to her father and started punching him in the shoulder. “Don’t you dare leave me and go back to Him.” Her voice became low and booming, resonating off every wall as if they were in a cave.
Him. God. Whatever Carmen held offered the demon precious redemption, and he was taking it.
Nara assumed her true and hideous demon form once again and hissed as she expanded to be over six feet tall. Lucas had heard stories, but seeing her demon-strate a second time was no less terrifying than the first time. Lucas’s father had told him tales of how a demon would reveal their true forms in times of crisis to get what they wanted. Lucas prepared to strike. A semblance of a shield formed around Abaddon as his aura continued to fade, until Nara’s sinister voice crackled at a thunderous level, “Abaddon, your wife is dead. Come back to avenge her death. Ronwe is dead!” She tried to bat Carmen away from her father, but she, too, was being held in some protective shield.
Abaddon stirred. His black pupils rolled back into sight. His eyes landed on Ronwe, and he let out a cry of despair and longing. With what appeared to Lucas to take every ounce of his strength, Abaddon ripped Carmen’s hand off his chest and threw her across the room. Carmen landed in a crumpled heap on the floor.
Abaddon fell into Nara’s waiting arms, and the two of them vanished. Lucas looked around him. Ronwe’s body turned to dust. Carmen wept. The transitor was gone. Alejandro held Anna whose face was buried in his chest. Lucas needed to get to Cali. To warn her.
Now.