The Ensnared (9 page)

“If I’d known that you hadn’t
left...”Mark looked down.

“You can still help me.” Melissa
said. “All you have to do is explain everything to the Sheriff and let me and
Jennifer go.” She remembered Jennifer wasn’t with her and massaged her head,
feeling it pound severely. “When I find her.”

“It’s not that easy.” Mark said and
gulped down water from his glass. “The demons are fixated on you and Jennifer. 
If we keep their focus on you, it will be easier to catch them.”

Melissa pulled out her hand angrily
and got up from her chair. “So what? I’m bait now?”

Mark quickly got up from his seat.
“No! I mean...I really didn’t think it was going to be you.” He said
sheepishly.

“Even if it were someone else,
would you have still thrown a complete stranger in front of the demons?”

“This is the way it is now.” Mark
said. “It took me years to figure out who they were and what they’re up to. It
took me months to find their graves and burn them, even though they had already
been damaged by the construction machine! I thought I had it in under control
and that it wouldn’t come to this. But it did!”

Melissa pushed away her plate. Her
appetite had vanished as soon as Mark told her that he had been studying up on
the demons. How could she have been oblivious to all this while they were
dating? She swallowed and felt tears prick her eyes. She blinked them away and
glared at him. “I don’t want to be part of this terrible plan. I want to leave
this very instant!” Melissa said and crossed her arms.

“I would never in a million years
ask you for such a favor, but I have to end this. On the night of the new moon,
the demons will escape and until and unless I don’t end this, they will return
year after year to terrorize the citizens of this city. I have to stop this and
you’re the only one who can help me.” Mark said desperately.

“No!” Melissa said. “I want to go
back home!”

“Fine.” Mark said exasperatedly and
thrust a hand into his hair. “I’ll talk to the sheriff and he’ll let you out
and then you can go home. Without Jennifer.”

Melissa clutched at the corner of
the table. How could she forget all about her friend? How would she face her
parents and tell them that she could have tried to save their daughter, but that
she was too much of a coward.

“I won’t let anything ever hurt
you.”
Isn’t that what she had promised her best friend?

Mark had her cornered. She had no
choice but to give in to his wishes. How could he be so cruel as to dangle
Jennifer’s safety in front of her? “Do you know where she is?” Melissa asked,
biting back a sob.

“Only that they have her.” Mark
said quietly.

 “What do they want with her?”

Mark looked at her with a frown.
“I’m pretty sure they want to kill her and turn her into one of them.”

Melissa felt her eyes tearing up
and leaned back trying to compose herself. “Why would they do that to her?”

Mark shrugged and sat back down.
“They are evil, Melissa. They want to inflict misery on all of us and the more
of them the better right?”

Melissa took a deep breath. “Rafe
told me about this too, you know.” Mark’s eyes widened with shock as she told
him. “He said the five riders died in a fire and that the people here think
that by offering us…” her voice broke and she took another deep breath. She had
to keep her tears in control; she just had to. “Offering us as sacrifice the
demons would go away.” Her bottom lip started to tremble and she bit down on
it. “And now Jennifer is somewhere with the demons and I should have done...something!”

He came over to her side and put an
arm around her shoulders, bring her gently closer towards him. “We’ll try to
save her. I promise.” Mark said softly.

She wiped away the single tear that
had rolled down her face. “I’m in.” Melissa said determinedly. “We have to save
her.”

Mark almost looked half
disappointed and half relieved, and Melissa wondered which look she cared for
more.

“So what’s the plan?” she asked.

Mark stroked her cheek. “If they
can get to you too, it would make them more powerful. So theoretically, they
will try to capture you by all means.”

Melissa nodded. “All I have to do
is draw them out. Then what?”

“We’ll be ready for him.” Mark
stated. “And this time we’ll get them!”

As they walked out the restaurant,
Melissa turned towards the burnt down grocery store. “Was this necessary?” she
asked. “Why did you guys have to burn this down?”

“We’ve been tracing their patterns
over the past few months.” Mark explained. “Witnesses said they saw the Demons
emerge from somewhere around or inside the grocery. We thought that was a gate
or portal of some sort, and when we couldn’t find any sort of passage or
tunnel, we decided to burn it down. But we were wrong.”

Melissa frowned. “It’s just…”

“The grocer has insurance.” He
smiled at her. “Plus, he was compensated beforehand by the Mayor. Now come on.”

The Mayor?
Melissa couldn’t
believe what she was hearing. The whole city was involved in this and as much
as she could try to understand that the citizens just wanted to be rid of the
demons, didn’t it matter to them even a little bit that they had just trapped
innocents in a cage and used them as bait? Her thoughts went back to Jennifer and
she desperately prayed for her safety.

Mark led her into an alley and
helped her put on a jacket he had found in the wardrobe. The jacket was large
for her but contained many pockets that would help her hold some things.

“I’ve packed a flashlight, an army
knife, a few granola bars and tiny bottle of water, tissues and...”Mark started
to look up and check things off his imaginary list that brought a small smile
to her face.

“What about a cell phone?” she
asked. “A walkie-talkie? Laptop with internet connection? A bug of some kind so
that you can find me in case...things don’t go as planned?”

Mark grew serious and hugged her.
“We’ll be right here. I’ve performed exorcisms before. Besides, demons
interfere with all sorts of signals. No technology could ever overcome their
presences.”

“What about your friends?” Melissa
asked.

“Friends?” He raised an eyebrow. “Actually,
we barely know each other.” Mark said and stepped back. “Butch, Arnold and
Harley are from the North. Kevin is from the East. We just happened to share a
common goal.”

“You mean they all thought slaying
demons were their calling too?” Melissa asked, unable to keep the hint of
cynicism from her voice. Even now, the whole situation seemed too surreal
.
Was this really happening to her?
She had come to this city to study and
continue her relationship with Mark, instead a whole new world of demons and
slayers had been thrust onto her.

Mark frowned at her. “I know this
is still too much for you to take in, but this is the truth Mel. There are demons
in this world and there are people like us who have to stop them. It just
happened out of the blue for me too.” He said and put his hands in his pockets
as the cold began to set. “One minute I was studying for my finals, the next
minute I receive a message asking me to come here.”

“How were you found?”

Mark hesitated. “I’ll explain all
this later. Right now we have to focus on this.” He put a hand on her cheek.
“You trust me?”

Melissa nodded. “So, can we go over
the plan again?”

Mark nodded and inserted another
army knife into her pocket. “We’ll let you stand near the grocery store,
because apparently that’s where he emerged from the last night, although we still
couldn’t find any entrance, secret or otherwise.” Mark stared at the ruins of
the store and sniffed. It was getting even colder and Melissa was glad she had
clothes to keep her warm. The jacket especially was snug. She rubbed her gloved
hands and blew on them as Mark gestured to one of his friends to get to their
positions.

“Getting back to our plan, when
Rafe emerges, we’ll read the exorcism, but only half way so that we could
torture him into giving us Jennifer’s location. In the instance, our plan
backfires and he manages to grab you...”

Mark looked away again and took a
deep breath. “I wouldn’t let it come to that, I promise.” He said determinedly.
“But if it does, I want you to drop the contents of this bottle that would help
pinpoint your location to us.”

Melissa took the bottle from his
freezing hands and put it up. “What is this? Some kind of potion?”

Mark gave a short laugh. “No,
nothing as magical as that. It’s just a special luminous dye that would leave a
trail for us.” He took it from her hands and placed it into her shoes. “If Rafe
manages to grab you, just stamp real hard on this and...”

“The glass would shatter and stab
my foot. Great plan.” Melissa said as she saw the sun going down.

Mark quickly took it out and stared
at it. “I guess I didn’t think that through.”

Melissa shook her head as the sky
started to darken. For Mark it would have been one mistake, for her it would
have cost her life…and Jennifer’s too. Nevertheless it was too late to do
anything. She could only hope Mark hadn’t overlooked anything else.

Mark quickly pulled out a small
balloon and filled it with the thick dye. He wrapped the neck of the
half-deflated balloon around her ring finger. “Now all you have to do is prick
this with your nail and voila!”

“Mark!” Kevin called. “Come over
here for a sec and check the plans.”

As Mark walked away, Melissa looked
at the balloon wound around the inside of her finger. She turned over her hand
and saw that it formed a rubber band around her ring finger. She smiled to
herself then and wished Mark had given her a real ring when they were in the
city. They had never really discussed marriage, but right here and now, she
knew that she wanted to spend the rest of her life with him.

She stared at him as he talked to
the others and spotted them holding onto books with strange letterings on the
cover and wondered if that was where they were going to read the exorcism from.

Melissa felt a shudder go through
her suddenly and she turned back when she felt a movement behind her.

Nothing. Not even a bird or a
cricket. The street was completely deserted except for the six of them. But she
still felt a little safer. Mark was there, his experienced friends were there
and most importantly, they were well armed and ready.

She smiled to herself and turned
back towards them and gasped. Standing right before her was Rafe, taller and
stronger than when she had first seen him. He wore a sadistic smile and stared
at her with a daunting gaze.

“Mark!” Melissa thought she had
screamed, but what came out was a barely audible whisper.

Rafe gripped her wrist with his
strong arms and pulled her towards him.

“Mark!” Melissa said, finally
finding her voice. “Help me!”

“Melissa!” Mark cried and his
friends rushed to his side with their books.

“Don’t!” Rafe said, putting up his
hand. “Or I’ll snap her neck.”

Melissa started to struggle and her
fingers brushed against the small balloon. Her fingers started to scratch at it
when she told herself that this wasn’t the right time.

“Leave her!” Mark said. “Tell us
what you really want.”

Rafe sneered at him. “Don’t you
know?” he said sardonically.

Before anyone had a chance to act,
Rafe ran away quickly, dragging her with him. Melissa yelled with pain and
pulled back her finger and brought it down on her other hand. She yowled with
pain when she realized that she had hurt her hand and looked down to see that
the balloon had fallen off.

“Let me go!” she wailed.

“This is for your own good.” Rafe
said and ran through dark streets. Melissa whimpered when she couldn’t see
anything. How would Mark find her now if even she couldn’t see where she was
going? She reached for her army knife in her pocket and closed her eyes. Her
hand travelled to Rafe’s neck and she considered stabbing him with it. But Mark
had insistently told her that he was a demon. He wouldn’t die, but only get
madder. If her plan failed, Rafe would kill her on the spot.

Melissa gripped the knife tight in
her hand and brought it down on the side of her thigh. She bit down on the
slice of pain that shivered through her thigh and up to her stomach. She threw
the knife away and felt for her wound, wincing as she felt the warm wetness on
her leg.

Melissa felt herself getting weaker
and she started to lean against Rafe’s arm, when suddenly, he pushed her and
she felt herself falling.

“No!” she cried and found herself
in foul smelling water. “Where are we?”

Rafe grabbed her roughly by her
shoulder and pulled her through the murky waters and onto a ledge.

“The sewers?” Melissa said, “That’s
where you’ve been hiding? Where’s Jen?”

Rafe leaned closer to her and
Melissa could smell evil on his breath. Her hands reached out to grab the
second army knife.

“All in good time.” Rafe said. “But
let me begin by telling you that everything Mark has told you about me...is
completely untrue.”