Eighth Grave After Dark (32 page)

My lungs seized when I saw their silvery black hides shimmer, then disappear, their massive heads more shadow than substance, and their razor-sharp teeth glinting off the low light. A terror of nightmarish proportions ripped through me so fast, I could hardly focus. With legs shaking, I lowered myself onto one knee.

I had so few options. With Osh, Reyes, and Garrett down, what could I do?

I could slow time, but they would only match it before I could reach Beep. I could let the energy inside me explode, the light like acid on their hides, but they'd recover too quickly for me to get to her. I could offer my life, but could hellhounds be bargained with? And Lucifer wanted Beep, all because of a few verses some guy wrote centuries ago. He wouldn't settle for me when he had the very being prophesied to destroy him at his fingertips. Or his hellhounds' claws.

Artemis took up position beside me, her hackles raised, a low growl reverberating from her chest.

Garrett was out cold, but Osh got slowly to his feet, a smile on his face as he dusted himself off. “I live for this shit,” he said, but he wasn't looking at the hellhounds. In fact, the hellhounds seemed quite at ease. He was looking at Reyes as he followed suit and stood. He cracked his neck and rolled his shoulders before testing his jaw.

I blinked in confusion. Was Osh betraying us after all? Reyes hadn't wanted to trust him, but I thought we could. I really thought he was on our side.

I rose to my feet to try to reason with him. Osh, I could reason with. The Twelve, not so much.

“Charley, no!” Denise said. She started to get up, but I held up a hand to stop her.

Still, her cry was enough to get the attention of the others in the room.

“'Bout time,” Osh said, doubling over and panting as the bikers came in behind me.

Reyes watched Osh for a moment, turned his attention to the bikers, then focused on me. And I suddenly understood. The man before me, while in Reyes's body, was not my husband.

He stared at me a long moment, and what I saw was like something from a dream. Black fog drifted off his shoulders and down around him like a great cape. It pooled at his feet. His lips parted and he ran his tongue over his bottom lip. Or, Reyes's bottom lip.

Enough with the gawking. “Lucifer, I presume.”

“You are more beautiful in your true form, but this isn't bad either. You'll taste good, I'm sure.”

“What did you do with my husband?”

“You mean my son? The son I created to carry out a mission, and he couldn't even do that.”

“And yet you don't seem disappointed.”

Osh was easing closer to me. Lucifer offered him a disinterested glance, then asked me, “Why would I be disappointed when my son did exactly as I knew he would? He always defied my orders. Why should my order to kill you be any different?”

“So, you knew he would disobey you?”

“It's in his nature. He was never one to follow the rules. And I knew he would want to be with you, the Val-Eeth, the last of her kind, the most beautiful and the only pure ghost god ever to exist. He always was attracted to power.”

“You know nothing about me.”

“I know that you are the first god of pure light, the first pure ghost god born of two ghost gods ever to exist. I know you are the thirteenth. I know you have inherited all the power from all the gods ever to exist in your realm, and yet here you are, playing games with me. I am honored and appalled that you would think so much of these humans to risk your life for them. You must realize you have left your realm vulnerable. No telling what you'll go back to.”

“What do you want?”

“So many things. Where to start?”

The conversation left me fighting for air. It was Reyes. It was his voice. It was his beautiful face. But absent his mannerisms and his convictions and his compassion. This being was nothing like my husband. And yet I couldn't help but wonder why anyone in this room, including my precious daughter, was still alive. Clearly, he could sic the hounds on us anytime he wanted. What was he waiting for?

“Actually, I have all I want right here. I've taken over my son's body, a feat that took some doing, as I first had to weaken him by making him worry about you and your creation so much he couldn't sleep. I had no idea it would take months to get him to the point where I could overtake him, but it was certainly worth the wait. I mean, look at this.” He flexed and stretched, trying out his new body. “I do believe he is as beautiful as I was.”

“More so, I'm sure.”

“Well, there you have it. I made a good choice, because the other choice was to track down the champion, the escaped Daeva, and take him instead. I'm just not sure I would look good in teenager.”

Lucifer's admission surprised Osh, who'd clearly had no idea that he had been an option.

“But don't worry, traitor. I have plans for you.”

“Why do you need a body at all?”

“Have you seen the looks my kind gets in this world? Also, I didn't want to live like a vampire. We can live in the light only if we have a human host. But you know that. Do you also know that no human can contain me? So I created a son.” He checked his nails and smiled in approval. “You should understand before we go much further, I've been preparing for this very day for centuries. But one doesn't just escape from hell. One needs a map, so the mapmakers slaved for thousands of years to create a key to the gates that held me in. We lost millions to the void in the process. I couldn't risk it falling into the wrong hands, so I imprinted it on my son. In him, actually, thereby creating not just a map, but also a key, a portal. Then I destroyed the original and all those who helped create it, save one.”

He focused on Osh again, accused him with a glare. “One was never found. Naughty boy. Did you eat my mapmaker?”

Osh said nothing.

“I wondered where he'd gone off to, but since you are the only Daeva ever to escape hell and make it to the other side, I'll assume you had something to do with his disappearance. And so,” he said, refocusing on me, “I was stuck once again. I was hardly going to risk the void without the key, but then one day, I was minding my own business, melting the faces off a few thousand humans, when my son decides to risk a trip back home for that trinket on your finger.”

The orange diamond. I pressed my mouth together to keep from gasping.

“Following him out of the void undetected proved far easier than I imagined. It's such a vast thing and he was traveling at the speed of light, him being a portal and all. And then I was free. Well, free-ish.”

He hooked his hands behind his back as he explained, and I couldn't figure out what he was waiting for. Why was he telling me all this? Why he was stalling?

“I was quite tired of living in the shadows. The remedy for that was also easy. Weakening my son was not. But when one is plagued with nightmares of his wife and child being ripped apart by hellhounds every time he closes his eyes, he's bound to miss a few nights' sleep.”

I leveled my best scowl on him. “You tortured him.”

“Naturally.”

Osh was about five feet from me, and I wondered what he was up to. Then I happened to look at Garrett and realized he wasn't out. He was faking. Great. They probably had a plan. I was so bad at plans, I wished they would have clued me in to theirs.

“You realize this is not going to end well for you,” I said.

“And how can it not?”

“There's an ancient text that says our daughter will be your downfall.”

“You humans,” he said, the laugh that escaped him not even remotely similar to Reyes's, “stumbling upon words that mean nothing, trying to decipher the undecipherable. The man who wrote them was an imbecile.”

“Yet here you are in all your glory to destroy her. Is that not a confirmation of the documents' legitimacy? You are going to fail here today.” At least I hoped so. The more he stalled, the more I worried.

“My dear, I have contingency plan upon contingency plan. Even as we speak, there are twelve dormant parasites from twelve different dimensions waiting inside human hosts. They've been here for decades, in this realm, on this planet, and they are just now awakening. Trust me when I say they are very cranky when they first wake up.”

“Twelve parasites? You sent the twelve? The
bad
twelve? Then who summoned the hellhounds?”

That was when I took a really good look at the hounds. They were not snarling at my daughter or snapping at her. They … they were protecting her. A new hope sprang to life inside me. The only person in the room they seemed focused on was Reyes. Their heads down. Their ears back. Their teeth glistening. But every single one of them was turned toward Reyes. No, not Reyes. Lucifer.

Then I noticed a man. Like the hounds, he was hard to see. His visibility shifted with the light. A shimmer of gold here. A glint of silver there. In fact, he seemed made of light. Pure and powerful.

One of the hounds nudged him, and he rested a hand on its head before disappearing into the shadows again. He was clad in armor like a prince from an ancient Asian dynasty.

“Mr. Wong,” I said as I stood stunned by the mere thought of it.

Though not tall, he stood with the beasts, his shoulders wide, his stance sure and strong as his other hand rested on the hilt of a sword.

He bowed when I finally saw him, as though he'd been waiting.
“Tsu lah, Val-Eeth.”

He spoke in an ancient language that I recognized but didn't quite understand.

I thought back, tried to reconcile what I was seeing with what I knew to be true. The Twelve never actually attacked me. They attacked others, anyone whom they saw as a threat. Me, they simply tried to drag to safety. To keep me out of harm's way.

“Who sent you?” I asked Mr. Wong.

“You did. Before you became human, you sent me to be your protector, your sentry until you finished your duties here and went home.”

“You are like an archangel, only from our realm?”

He nodded, accepting that analogy.

I wanted to run to him. To hug him. To beg his forgiveness for that time I tried repeatedly to put a lampshade on his head. But with the outcast up from the basement, salutations would have to wait.

Lucifer was actually quite interested in our conversation. I got the feeling he hadn't expected backup.

“What happens to the human hosts of these parasites?” I asked Lucifer. We were in a standoff, but he was taking it all in stride, letting us ramble and ask questions. I had a feeling he wouldn't normally do such a thing. He was biding his time, perhaps expecting backup of his own.

“They are all already dead.”

I closed my eyes, horrified.

“Easier to control when they have no mind to fight back.”

“I understand. But this is between you and me. Let my family go.”

“We're bargaining now?”

“We have twelve hellhounds that I'm pretty sure would just as soon rip your face off as look at you. We have a testy Daeva with a score to settle. We have the equivalent of an archangel who loves to use that sword of his. And we have me, the Val-Eeth. Surely you'd be willing to make a trade.”

“I'll give you the woman,” he said, bargaining, again, to bide his time.

But so was I. I wanted Donovan and the guys out. And Garrett as well.

I glanced at Denise as she crouched in the corner. She gazed at me, seemingly grateful she was part of the deal.

With the barest wave of my hand, Artemis sank into the floor beside me then rose from the staircase right above Denise's head.

“Was the story real?” I asked her. “The one about the blue towels? About the angel you saw in the hospital? About your mother's car accident and your father telling you that sometimes a blue towel was more than just a towel?”

She frowned, confused, but couldn't help a quick glance at her boss. He didn't move. With a resigned sigh, she stood. “Yes, it was all real. But she was too much of a coward to tell you herself. Still, it was the perfect way to get inside.” She looked at Lucifer. “May I have her now?” she asked.

“Manners,” he said, scolding. “We have more guests coming.”

My chest tightened the second realization sank in. He meant Cookie and Amber. And knowing Cookie, she'd called Uncle Bob. He was surely on his way back here, and possibly with Quentin. That's what he'd been waiting for. Because the more people I tried to save, the more chances he would have of getting to Beep. And if not him, then Denise. Or whatever was inside Denise.

Apparently the hellhounds had thought of that as well. Before I could say anything, one lunged forward, catching Denise by the throat. Artemis launched herself off the staircase and clamped on to Denise's arm.

I gasped and watched in horror as she changed. Her face stretched as a row of long, needlelike teeth grew out of her mouth. She shook Artemis off then latched on to the hound. It cried out, but another was on her back. It sank its teeth into her rib cage, until her fingernails grew into sharp, steely points. She fended him off her with one, clean swipe.

They turned on her, growling and snapping with Artemis right beside them as she did the same. The fact that Denise was a snarling, garish parasite wasn't that surprising. It was more the fact that she didn't kill Beep when she had the chance. She'd had ample opportunity, and I had no idea when she'd ceased to be Denise. Days ago, apparently. Possibly weeks. Then why wait? And how could a demon, a being of pure evil, pass so effortlessly as a human? It had delivered a human baby, for heaven's sake. It had quite possibly saved Beep's life. And yet we'd had no idea what she really was. Even Artemis didn't know.

The bikers had joined in the fight. Donovan, unaware of the hounds in the room, broke a chair over Denise's head, and Eric was using a fireplace poker as a sword. Michael just kind of stood back and soaked it all in. He was never one to rush into anything.