Reap & Repent (16 page)

She didn’t feel safe enough to venture outside into her jungle of a yard. For all she knew, some lesser demon, imp or worse was stationed outside, waiting for her on the off chance she’d wander outside.

She was truly trapped. Her seclusion in the past had been self-imposed, but this wasn’t. Maybe she was finally getting what she deserved for lying about being agoraphobic.

She looked at the clock hopefully, but it was still only midafternoon. Time seemed to have stopped. She was as nervous as a cat on a freeway.

Pacing the house, she found a few empty boxes and finished unpacking the rest of her stuff. She filled the empty boxes with her mother’s things and then set them on the back porch, ready to go to Goodwill.

Hours passed.

Drained of energy and ambition, she lay down on the couch and curled into a ball to wait some more.

* * *

Deacon was in trouble.

One reaper against a demon-possessed poacher was not a fair fight. Arrogant enough to think he could kill Kylen alone, he was further handicapped by the fact that he didn’t
want
to kill him.

The demon? Yes.

But Kylen? No.

It had been much easier to talk himself into doing the deed before he was faced with the actual opportunity.

Protecting Ruth was his utmost priority. Thank God she’d flashed. He couldn’t face the demon and protect her at the same time. If only he knew the demon’s name, he could have put an end to this. Even though he possessed
neither the magic nor the authority to cast the demon out, Nate could. He’d gone over the possibilities many times with Nate…in the hypothetical terms, of course. Nate was only tangentially involved with the larger supernatural world, but he’d been an invaluable source of information and help more than once in the past ten years.

Facing the demon he’d hated for so long, the demon who had stolen not one but two of his beloved friends, he knew it was only a matter of time before the demon killed again. A demon kill was a double death. Not only did it kill the body, but it damned the soul to eternal suffering, regardless of faith. It stole the free will and future of all it touched.

As Ruth dissolved into the consecrated subway, his relief was large; his determination was larger. He
would
kill Kylen. It had to be done. It was the one way to remove the demon and stop the poaching.

The demon Kylen advanced on Deacon. The time for talk was over. Deacon readied himself and brandished his scythe. It was an impressive weapon. It would slice through a human, no problem, and was the weapon of choice for decapitation. If a supernatural beastie needed to be put down, reapers were the ones who did it. A job perk as it were.

The weapon and the reaper were deadly.

He didn’t know if Kylen still held souls, but he instantly regretted the one he carried himself. If the demon was empty, he’d have a powerful advantage on his side. There was one way to find out.

Deacon summoned an aura of protection around himself and slashed his scythe forward.

* * *

Ruth somehow managed to doze off. She awoke to a dark house and what sounded like lightning sizzling on her roof. Leaping up from the couch, she ran to the front door and peered out. Black shapes hurled themselves against the protective circle. Each time they made contact with it, they sizzled and bounced off, deflected like black moths on a giant bug zapper. It was difficult to make their shapes out for a clear identification, but they looked like imps.

Great.

Now she was even more worried for Deacon. Eleven hours had passed since she’d snapped back home, and she still hadn’t heard anything. He could be dead for all she knew. Probably was. And it was her fault. She’d left him there—alone—while he fought to protect her.

She weighed her options. Stay here and hope the magic bug zapper held against the imps, or try snapping back to the chapel to see if he was still there or if there was any sign of him.

She refused to sit and wait any longer. She had to find him. Her heart hurt. Despite the ridiculous meal she had consumed, she had a sneaking feeling it wasn’t indigestion. Changing her clothes, she filled her pockets with salt and dropped the rest of the canister into her backpack, along with the silver knife Deacon had given her yesterday.

Just in case.

Considering the weapons both of the men had been wielding before she’d flashed, these small household items seemed lacking. She was afraid, but action was so much better than sitting, hoping and praying. Removing Nate’s card from the refrigerator, she tucked it into the back pocket of her jeans. He was the one other person she knew who might not totally freak out in case of an even bigger emergency than she was already in.

Centering herself at the new metaphysical doorway in her living room, she concentrated on the chapel, praying for no mistakes. She checked her watch: 11:30 p.m. Surely no visitors would be there this late. Closing her eyes, she tried to ignore the imps zapping off her shield as she waited for the pull, and then snapped through the consecrated subway.

Chapter Eighteen

She crashed into the middle of the dark chapel. Enough light streamed through the stained-glass window inset in the door for her to see that the room was a wreck. Every pew was overturned and most had been reduced to jagged planks and splinters. All of the artwork on the walls was in shreds on the floor, where it sat in a pile like a bizarre indoor bonfire waiting to happen.

Deacon was nowhere to be seen. Kylen, either, she noted with relief. A dark stain marred the floor near the door. Blood. She prayed it wasn’t Deacon’s.

Wrapping her hand in her T-shirt, she pulled on the door, and then eased it open. She slipped a sliver of the wrecked pew between the doors to keep them from locking in case she needed to return. Sliding under the crime-scene tape stretched across the doors, she exited the room. She’d seen enough detective shows to know that she didn’t want her fingerprints showing up anywhere they didn’t need to be. As far as she knew, her prints weren’t in the system anywhere, but these days, who knew?

She walked down the hallway, trying to look more like a visitor than a desperate supernatural freak on a mission. The one thing she could think to do was to go to the E.R. to see if there were any new patients who might be Kylen or Deacon. It seemed as good a place to start as any. Beyond that, she had no plan.

Making her way through the maze of hallways, she tried to follow the signs to the E.R. She hadn’t paid much attention when Deacon had led her
through the hospital this morning. Her habit of keeping her head down and avoiding eye contact was hard to break.

Now, she
was
paying attention to the people she passed. It felt good not to be constantly worrying about looking at people or touching them. If she wasn’t on such a somber mission, she might have even struck up a conversation with someone.

Okay, probably not, but it was at least a possibility now that she wasn’t so afraid of their auras, and of what effect she might have on them.

Finally, after wandering around for several minutes, she found the E.R. reception desk. One staff person sat at the front reception desk on duty. The woman, in her mid-fifties, sat squinting intently at her computer screen. As Ruth got closer, she realized that the woman was playing computer solitaire.

Slow night in the E.R., I guess.

The woman’s aura was a nice calm blue-green: relaxing and healing. Ruth thought that was good since there was a high chance the woman had to constantly deal with all sorts of sick and crazy people.

“Excuse me.”

The woman looked up from her solitaire game and smiled. Ruth thought she could count on one hand how many smiles she’d seen in the past year, mostly because she hadn’t been interested in receiving them. The woman’s smile emboldened her. Her name badge read “Barbara Stevens.”

Since Ruth wasn’t brave enough to talk her way behind the E.R. doors like Deacon might have, she decided on a more direct approach.

“I’m looking for a man. Late twenties, dark hair? He might have come in with knife or blade injuries?”

Barbara gave Ruth an odd look, and a rush of panic stabbed through her heart. What if the woman pushed a secret buzzer and alerted security?

Paranoia much?

Instead, Barbara punched some keys on her keyboard and nodded. “Yes, we had a John Doe come in earlier today. I can’t give you any details on his condition, though, because of HIPAA. Are you a relative?”

Ruth froze.

“Yes, I’m his…fiancée,” she lied.

God help me if I get called on it.

Ruth wasn’t sure how many bald-faced lies in a row she could muster. She was about to find out.

“You’ll have to talk to security before I can release any more information or take you to see him. The police want to talk to him when he wakes up.”

Great. This was not going to end well.

“Barbara, can I look in before we go through all of that? I just want to make sure that it’s really him …” Ruth begged.

She gave the nurse the best anguished-fiancée look she could muster. The anguish was pretty easy to portray, since she did feel sort of sick knowing that Deacon might be back there somewhere, alone and hurt.

In desperation, she did something she had never done before. Out of her own free will, she reached out and touched the older woman’s hand, and then,
concentrating all of her energy, she imagined an orange glow, pushing it into Barbara like Deacon had done to her. Unsure exactly how or even
if
it would work, she tried to bend the woman to her will. Her heart beat faster as Barbara looked up at her in surprise. Ruth pushed harder.

Confusion settled over Barbara’s features, and then she patted Ruth’s hand and she smiled up at her.

“I don’t see why we have to get security involved if he’s not even your fiancé, honey. Come with me. I’ll take you to him, and then we can decide what to do.”

Good plan.

Ruth gave Barbara her best smile of gratitude…and relief.

Miraculously, the nurse seemed oblivious to the drumlike sound of Ruth’s heart as they walked down the corridor and past several empty E.R. rooms.

Employees in scrubs scurried by on various errands in the otherwise quiet hallway on their night rounds of meds, food and patient care. Barbara led her through a set of doors and down another corridor to the critical-care ward. A yellow sign pinned on the door of the room proclaimed,
Entry of Authorized Medical Personnel Only by Order of Meridian City Police.
Not a good sign.

Barbara pushed open the door and held it for her.

“You go on in, dear, and see if it’s him. I’ll be at my desk. Come out when you’re finished with your visit.”

Ruth gripped Barbara’s shoulder and sent another shot of OJ through her for good measure. If it were Deacon, she’d need some time. If not, she’d be out
before Barbara had a chance for it to wear off. Barbara smiled again—her eyes going soft and unfocused as if she was trying to remember something—and then headed back toward her desk.

Good girl.

Ruth pushed the door closed behind her and flipped the lock for good measure. Crossing to the edge of the bed, she took in a deep breath before looking down at the unconscious man. So many bandages, tubes and lines ran into and out of him that he was almost unrecognizable. But his complete lack of an aura gave him away, and when she leaned in closer and touched his face, she knew without a doubt that it was Deacon.

Suppressing a sob, she swallowed the lump that grew hard in her throat. Her eyes burned. Now was
not
the time to fall apart. Deacon needed help, and he wasn’t safe in this room protected by a yellow piece of paper on the door and a generic name. Ruth had no idea what had happened to Kylen or if he was even alive, but she knew one thing: she wasn’t going to give him a chance to finish the job if she could help it.

She needed to bring him someplace safe where he could get help. She doubted she could keep her own house safe with the imps attacking it, wearing away at the barrier. Realizing that she didn’t even know where Deacon lived, her options were down to one.

The only other person she knew in town who had any inkling of what was going on was Nate. Pulling his card from her pocket, she called him from the bedside phone. She prayed he was home as the phone rang and rang.

Chapter Nineteen

Ruth was ready to hang up sometime after the twentieth ring, so when Nate finally answered, she nearly burst into tears with relief.

“Hello?”

“Nate, this is Ruth Scott. Deacon’s friend.”

“What’s wrong, Ruth?”

“Deacon is hurt, Nate. He’s bad. We’re at the hospital. It’s all a mess. He can’t stay here, but I don’t know what to do. My house isn’t safe. I don’t know where he lives. Nate, I don’t know how close the two of you are, but you’re the only person I know who might be able to help.”

“What can I do?”

“This may be a weird question, but is your house consecrated?”

Nate was silent for a little too long. “Yes. Why would you want to know that?”

She didn’t have time to explain everything over the phone, and she didn’t even know if she could when they got there. But if anyone was going to be accepting of the consecrated subway and all that went along with it, she figured it would be a witch.

“Nate, is the address on your card your home?”

Again a long pause. “Yes.”

“I’m bringing Deacon to your place, Nate. Do you have a circle of protection set up like at my house?”

“Of course.”

“Open it or this is going to be messy.”

Ruth had no idea if this was going to work or if she could even get Deacon back to the chapel, but she wasn’t exactly rolling in options. At this point, she didn’t see as they had much to lose. Deacon looked terrible, and if he stayed in this hospital room much longer, she was sure Kylen or
something
would be back to finish him.

“How long until you arrive?”

“Ten minutes…
I hope.
”

Ruth hung up the phone and pushed the door to Deacon’s room far enough open that she could peer out into the hallway. She searched for the wheelchair she had spotted on the way in, hoping it was still nearby. It was. Looking both ways, she sprinted over to it and maneuvered it back inside Deacon’s room, careful not to be seen.