Infernal Father of Mine (9 page)

Before I could open my mouth to ask a stupid
question, the ground buckled. Cars bounced like toys. David and I
stumbled backward as a pickup truck teetered on two wheels before
crashing on its side. The road cracked and crumbled with tremors.
Cars bounced, alarms wailed, houses collapsed.

"Are they having an earthquake in the real
world?" I asked, trying to keep my feet.

"Watch out!" David said, pulling me from the
center of the street as a two-story house toppled over.

A complete set of railroad tracks plowed
through the center of the street. Vines crept along the gravel bed,
growing insanely fast. Within a minute, the railroad tracks ran the
length of the fog-free zone. A railroad crossing sign sprouted
between my feet. I leapt back with a yelp as it sprang up where my
crotch would have been. A bell started dinging. The rumble of a
locomotive sounded from somewhere in the wall of thick fog to my
right. Its horn sounded a warning as a bright headlight suffused
the mist.

A male scream jerked my attention to the
left.

A red sedan sat in the middle of the railroad
crossing. "Help me!" shouted a man inside the car. I saw his feet
pound against the window over and over again, his screams never
diminishing.

I didn't have a clue what was happening.
Frankly, I didn't care. A man was about to meet a gruesome end if I
didn't help him. I raced to the car. "Hold on, I'm gonna get you
out of there." I jerked on the door handle, but it didn't budge. I
punched the window. Despite feeling as if I'd just broken my fist,
it didn't so much as crack the glass. The man cranked the ignition
on the car. The starter whined. The engine thrummed to life. Just
as hope entered the driver's eyes, the engine shuddered and
stopped.

"No!" he shouted, pounding the steering wheel.
He looked at me.

I pounded the bottoms of my fists against the
window. "Unlock the doors!"

His eyes widened, and I suddenly realized he
apparently wasn't looking at me, but at the rapidly approaching
train. The earth trembled. Gravel rattled beneath my feet. I
flicked my gaze behind me and saw the train streaking toward the
car. Only one chance to save the man remained. Racing to the front
of the vehicle, I pushed. My efforts failed to even rock it back
and forth.

This thing is immovable!

"Justin, get out of there," David said, running
over.

"I don't understand," I said, grunting and
pushing to absolutely no effect. True, I wasn't feeling very
strong, but even a normal human should be able to bounce a car on
its shocks. The train barreled on, heedless of the car in its path.
I felt my eyes widen with horror as I saw the engineer, a skeletal
creature with sharp wicked teeth and long black hair trailing in
the wind. It leaned out of the locomotive window and laughed
maniacally in a feminine voice.

The laughter of the engineer and screams of the
driver mingled into one ear-piercing cacophony of pain. I dove from
the tracks as the train smashed the car with phenomenal force. It
exploded, sending car parts flying. Something slammed into my back,
knocking the breath from me. I sucked in a breath, wheezed a few
times, and pushed slowly to my feet. The man lay a short distance
away, miraculously alive. The train had vanished from
sight.

And then I saw the skeletal figure walking
toward the man. Flesh hung from its naked form in wrinkled folds,
the contours of bones clearly visible through translucent flesh. It
cackled as the man tried to slide away from it. Despite the blood
all over his body, the man abruptly stood and started running.
Though his legs practically blurred with speed, he moved forward in
slow motion. I could only watch as he screamed in terror at the
creature reaching for him.

"You're mine forever," it said in a ragged
feminine voice.

"No! I don't want to get married," the man
shouted.

The anorexic woman leapt for him. The man cried
out. They vanished in a cloud of gray mist. Before I could make
sense of anything, the tracks vanished, leaving only the ruins of
the houses and road. Fog billowed from all directions, rolling in
on us like the tide. I managed to spot David before losing sight of
him, and found him with an intrigued look on his face.

"That was interesting," he said.

"Interesting?" I said, groaning at the ache
between my shoulders. "I think we just fell down the rabbit
hole."

"Maybe we did." He shrugged. "In any case, I
believe we just witnessed the beginning of a beautiful
marriage."

"Now I know why I want to hit you all the
time," I said.

He raised an eyebrow. "And that is?"

"Because you're an even bigger smartass than I
am." I clenched my teeth.

He motioned me to move. "Let's talk while we
walk."

What with the earthquake, houses falling over,
and cars threatening to crush me, I'd forgotten about the minder
trailing along behind us. I pushed my incubus senses outward and
found several hovering only a few hundred feet away.

"If I'm not mistaken," my father said after a
moment, "I believe we just witnessed someone's
nightmare."

Elyssa

The Church of the Divinity loomed across the
street. The gray stone structure rose several stories high with a
steeple stretching to the sky. The imposing building was shaped
like a cross, with two huge wooden doors at the entrance. Elyssa,
Ivy, Shelton, and Bella stood in an alley across the street,
observing the area.

"Looks like a place for creepers," Ivy
said.

Bella pointed at the stain glass windows.
"Notice how filthy those are? It's like nobody is maintaining the
place."

"The shrubbery looks wild too," Shelton added.
"Then again, this neighborhood doesn't look all that wonderful
either."

Closed businesses and run-down houses lined a
street in dire need of pothole repairs. The few people wandering
the sidewalks pushed shopping carts full of their belongings or
drank alcohol from bottles in brown bags. In short, it was the
perfect place to hide a rogue organization.

The front doors of the church swung open hard.
A petite woman with blonde hair and fair skin emerged. She closed
her eyes and faced the sun, as if enjoying the feel of it against
her face. The doors slammed shut behind her.

"Holy fricasseed frog burgers," Shelton said.
"She looks just like Nightliss."

Elyssa knew the face all too well. The blonde
woman had once wiped her memories and tried to use her against
Justin. Only Nightliss had been able to restore what the blonde
woman had taken. Fear chilled her heart while anger tightened her
jaw. "Daelissa."

"She looks so cute," Bella said. "I hate to
think someone hell-bent on world domination looks like
that."

"She can be so sweet," Ivy said. "She isn't all
bad."

"I, for one, ain't gonna find out," Shelton
said with a shudder.

An old woman in ragged clothes staggering
drunkenly down the sidewalk bumped into Daelissa. The angel's
serene features contorted into disgust and rage. Brilliant light
flashed. Elyssa blinked sunspots from her vision. The homeless
woman was gone. In her place lay a heap of ashes on the sidewalk.
Daelissa snapped her fingers, and a black stretched limousine
pulled around the corner of the church and stopped. A young man
hustled from the front passenger seat and opened the rear door for
the Seraphim to climb inside.

"Should we follow her?" Shelton said. "Or check
out the church?"

Elyssa looked at the limo as it pulled away.
"Can you use a tracking spell?"

He shook his head. "It's a secure limo like the
ones the Conroys use, protected against tracking
spells."

"We don't have transportation," Bella said. "I
could hotwire a car."

"Following Daelissa is dangerous," Shelton
said. "Even if we do, it'll probably get us all killed like that
poor bag lady."

"She is very tricky," Ivy said. "I tried to
follow her a few times to see where she lived, and she caught me
every time."

"You didn't have to worry about incineration,"
Shelton said, eyeing the swirling ashes on the sidewalk across the
way.

"She would hurt me sometimes," Ivy said, a sad
look on her face. "Daelissa told me pain was the only way to learn
my lessons."

The limo turned a corner at the end of the
street and vanished.

"I'm actually a little disappointed," Shelton
said. "I'd expected her to fly away on a cloud of light or
something more dramatic."

"She might be powerful as hell, but she doesn't
have access to unlimited power," Elyssa said. "Even Seraphim have
their limits."

"Tell you what," he said. "I'll wait until I'm
sure she's all tuckered out before making a move against
her."

"I'm going to check out the church," Elyssa
said. "Everyone wait here."

She jogged across the road and up the stairs to
the church. Something seemed off about the way the door shimmered
in the sunlight. In fact, the sun seemed to reflect off of
something just in front of the door. She found a twig on the ground
and tossed it. It bounced off thin air just inches from the door.
A shield spell.
She didn't dare tamper with it. That left
the windows. Jumping behind the brown-leafed hedge, she went to the
closest stained glass window and tested it the same way. This time,
the branch touched the window. Steadying herself, she drove her
elbow into the glass. The material absorbed the blow and shot her
elbow away from the window so hard, she stumbled into the
bushes.

It's just like the enchanted glass
on the mansion.

This had to be the right place to find the
Exorcists. It was too well protected to be anything else. Elyssa
wasn't ready to give up just yet. She ran down the side of the
church and vaulted a tall iron fence guarding the parking lot.
There was no sign of the vans used in the abduction, but that
didn't mean anything. This place might have a secret garage, or
this might not be the only place the Exorcists took their
victims.

She tested the back door with a bit of gravel
and found it too was shielded. Grunting in frustration, she turned
to head back across the street when the hairs on the back of her
neck spiked. She dove sideways and felt a whoosh of air brush past.
Elyssa spun and saw the ninja who'd knocked her out before. It was
obvious from the contours of the skintight armor the ninja wore she
was female.

"Guess you can't win a fair fight, can you?"
Elyssa said. She felt her lips peel back in a defiant smile. "Let's
see how good you are when your opponent is ready for
you."

The mysterious opponent assumed a defensive
stance, but made no move to advance. Elyssa was tempted to move in
but caution held her back. If the ninja knew she was here, that
meant—she heard a click and rolled away as a dart hit the pavement
where she'd just been standing. The ninja took out a disc and
hurled it toward Elyssa.

At first she thought it was a throwing star but
quickly realized it was something else. She slid a sai sword from
the sheath at her back and threw it. The disc shattered in mid-air.
A fiery circle with a cross burned for a brief moment before
vanishing in a pattern of smoke. Elyssa realized it must have been
the device the Exorcists had used to trap Justin and his
father.

"Where is Justin?" she yelled, looking around.
She spotted small cross-shaped holes in the sides of the church.
Metal tubes protruded through the holes. Several of them spat more
darts her way. She dodged, but knew she couldn't avoid them
all.

The darts bounced off an azure shield. "Get out
of there," Shelton yelled, holding his staff out to maintain her
protection.

With a running leap, Elyssa flipped over the
fence. She and Shelton raced down the side of the church as more
and more of the cross-shaped holes spewed darts. Shelton huffed and
puffed, but maintained his shield. They crossed the road and ran
into the alley.

Ivy and Bella gave them looks of
alarm.

"We're getting out of here," Elyssa said, and
went straight through the portal and back into the mansion. Shelton
and the others followed her through, and deactivated it.

"I think they're onto us," Shelton
said.

Elyssa smacked a fist into her palm. "That
doesn't mean anything. We'll still get them." It had only been a
few hours since Justin's abduction. She hoped and prayed they
hadn't done anything to him. Somehow, she would figure out a way to
break through the Exorcist defenses and save him.

A nightmare?
I didn't know what David
was talking about. I opened my mouth to argue with him when I
suddenly got a clue. The entire ordeal with the man, the train, and
the corpse bride had been surreal and nonsensical. And yet, if I
analyzed it as someone's bad dream, it made all the sense in the
world. It still didn't explain the falling houses, the shifting
terrain, or how the scene had appeared out of nowhere. It didn't
explain how the man had survived a direct impact between a train
and his car.