The Five Deaths of Roxanne Love (36 page)

From the corner of his eye, he caught sight of the mall doors. They’d been locked, and as the first crush of panicked people tried to exit, they found themselves flattened against the glass or trampled in the commotion. From outside, police officers attempted to pry the doors open, but to no avail. They’d been sealed.

Fear swelled like rising floodwaters, and the reaper inside him tasted it against his will. In that moment he understood the reason for this elaborate ruse, the crowds . . . trapping them here. The rampant terror was like a drug for the scavengers. An exciting jolt of the most forbidden pleasure. Fighting his own dark cravings, he pushed people aside and gained access to the stage.

It was deserted now, but from his vantage point he could look over the sea of humanity spread out all around him. The pandemonium defied description.

Scavengers stood among the pushing, frightened people, showing fleeting glimpses of their real faces, adding to the terror. The shriek of ravens as they scratched and pecked made even Santo afraid.

After that, people began to die.

T
hey’d commandeered the Rainforest Café. Reece stood inside the dark jungle of decorations and tried not to look nervous, but every time the fake elephant or animated monkeys switched on, they startled him. He and April had been over and over the plan, and in the quiet of his room, it had seemed feasible, logical, the right thing to do.

But now it seemed stupid and impossible to execute.

He pulled the flask from his jacket and turned to April. “Ready?”

She nodded.

Somberly, Reece splashed her with kerosene and then stood still while she did the same to him. It wouldn’t take much to make them flammable.

“Are you sure about this?” she asked as she handed the empty flask back.

But she knew the answer.

Gary and his scavengers intended to open the door for Abaddon today. Reece knew what his role in that horrible event would be, but only because April had told him.

The version Gary had shared of how things would go down did not include Reece being sacrificed over and over until the tunnel they created became big enough, stable enough for Abaddon. But that’s how it would play out.

It wasn’t until just before they’d left that Gary had given him the details of the clever trap he’d set. His expression serious and concerned, he’d said, “We’ve found a way to put a stop to all the evil. The reaper who has your sister won’t be able to resist the trap we’ve set, and once we have him, we’ll win this war.”

“What trap?” Reece asked.

“Terror. It’s like an aphrodisiac to reapers. We’re going to put a big pot of honey out and lure him in. Trust me, he won’t be able to stay away.”

“What about my sister?”

“We’ll make sure he comes alone. We want her safe, just like you do.”

He’d been glad to give Reece the details. The faked celebrity appearance. The packed mall. The bolted doors. April had already told Reece about the security
guards the scavengers had “liberated,” but Gary made it sound like security had been part of their team all along.

“Once we catch the reaper, we can find the source of evil. We can lock it out of God’s sweet world, Reece. Are you in? Are you one of us?”

Hooray
.

“I’m in. Hell, yes, I’m in.”

Gary had been smugly pleased, but he didn’t have a clue what Reece was in for. Only April did.

Still, Reece hadn’t understood how they meant to keep the door open if Roxanne could close it, but seeing her today with the reaper had been an answer.

“They mean for him to reap her before they kill you,” April said.

And that meant Reece and April needed to turn themselves into human torches before that happened. If Reece died first, Roxanne could seal the passageway. It was their only hope of getting rid of this demon infestation.

Reece had always understood that in some way, he was not meant for this world. The feeling had shadowed him his entire life. When he was younger, it had emerged in random acts of violence that had shamed him even as they’d consumed him. There was a reason why his family had never had pets, even though Ruby had begged for a puppy for years.

That shamed him, too.

And once the dying began . . . a part of him had
always felt he deserved the misery and disappointment of knowing that nothing waited in the afterlife but pain. The world would be a better place without him. Literally. And he was ready to face that reality.

He and April had a plan. One in which they would end their pain together and, in doing so, he hoped, lock the door to Abaddon for all of eternity.

R
oxanne fought, but they’d pulled something over her head and she couldn’t see. She struggled blindly, kicking and squirming. That big hand was still over her mouth. She tried to bite it through the bag or mask or whatever it was that covered her face, but her efforts only earned a hard shake that snapped her head back. The arms holding her squeezed so tight they forced the breath from her lungs.

She sensed they’d entered somewhere new, quieter than the screaming echo chamber of the mall. But it wasn’t until she heard the shriek of monkeys that she knew just where they’d taken her. The café. An unlikely place for whatever they had planned, she thought, picturing it in her head.

Someone manhandled her into a chair, then ripped
the bag off her head. She sat in the deserted dining room of Manny’s favorite restaurant. All around her were pseudo jungle vines and strategically placed artificial rock formations with gurgling waterfalls. A small pack of animatronic elephants stood in one corner; a group of monkeys watched from another, and on the far side a jaguar twitched its tale lazily. Overhead a huge moss-dripping kapok tree spanned the ceiling, complete with a gigantic snake in its branches. The ceiling had been painted black, and twinkling lights peeped through the foliage like a star-spangled sky.

But as she watched, a black ooze crept over it and blotted out the stars. She recognized the Black Tides of Abaddon and the plunging dread that accompanied it.

Perched among the fake leaves sat a dozen ravens, black as a spreading plague. Their sharp beaks clacked in the quiet. Down below, locusts skittered and rubbed their legs in a horrible song.

The tables and chairs had been pushed back from the center. A handful of men stood in a half circle around their leader. Ice formed in her belly as she met the eyes of the pale man who’d shot her without hesitation.
Gary
. She knew what they meant to do with her, and now it seemed almost fitting, the location. Tucked against the stones of a man-made waterfall stood a carved totem—a demigod that glared down, waiting for its sacrifice.

Gary smiled benignly before giving a low whistle.
Two of the massive beasts that had tried to kill Roxanne and Santo at the hotel trotted out from a camouflaged door set behind the waterfall.

They padded to her chair and sat one to each side, watching her with nervous eyes. The one on the left made a high, whining sound and inched back just a bit. Not enough to draw Gary’s attention, but Roxanne saw it. They looked hungry and mean . . . and abnormally wary. Roxanne felt something tighten beneath her breastbone and squeeze past her fear.

“Well, then,” Gary said. “I think introductions are in order. I’m Gary Knolls, the man who’s going to rip your soul from your body before I remove your head and feed it to my doggies.”

He lifted a wicked-edged blade from the table and faced Roxanne. Too long to be called a knife but not quite a machete, it looked like it would cut through flesh and bone without effort.

“Sad that your reaper didn’t save us the trouble, but there’s always Plan B.”

Terror made her limbs stiff, but she forced her eyes away from the knife and stared Gary in the face like she wasn’t frightened to death.

“Why here?” she challenged calmly.

Gary raised a brow. “You don’t like the service?”

“I don’t like you. And it strikes me as odd that you would wait for your little circus to do me in. You came for a visit last night. Why the delay? Why didn’t you just
kill me then and there? You could have done it easily enough.”

“My. You have a lot of questions.”

“I’ve heard that before.”

He smiled, cold eyes glittering. “Insurance,” he said at last, fingering the handle of his blade. “I wanted you here, today, as insurance.”

“Against?”

“For. As long as you’re alive and in my custody, I have your brother’s cooperation.”

“And the part where you rip out my soul and chop off my head?”

“After I get it.”

“Wow.
That’s
your big play?”

Gary’s mouth opened with surprise. Roxanne looked down at the hounds again and stared into the biggest one’s eyes. It began to growl just as two diseased-looking scavengers hauled Santo through the door. Both of the big hounds stood excitedly, ready to move over to the new victim. Gary snapped his fingers and they settled again. But they didn’t like sitting so close to Roxanne. Not a bit.

Helplessly, she watched them heft Santo onto an empty chair. His head hung limply and his feet trailed behind him. Blood poured from a wound at his temple and his eyes were shut, but she saw his chest move with an inhalation. He was alive.

“This one belongs to you, I believe,” Gary said.

Roxanne didn’t answer. She watched anxiously as they shoved him onto the seat.

“Do you know what happens to a reaper when he dies?” Gary asked.

“Reapers don’t die,” Roxanne said, hoping she sounded more certain than she felt.

“Unless they’re reapers who have stolen a human’s body.”

She gave Gary a cold look.

“You don’t want to ask,” he chided. “But you want to know. I can see it in your eyes. If he were to die now—say, here, for example, before Reece
volunteers
his services—your reaper will be trapped. Not part of your world. Not part of mine.”

“The same would be true of you, then.”

“Oh, no. I’m here on orders, Roxanne. I will be called home.”

Gary moved over to Santo’s unconscious body and ran his fingers through Santo’s hair. Roxanne turned her focus on the hounds, glaring at the big one until its hackles rose and it growled deeply. It backed up again, and the smaller one followed.

Gary turned with a frown just as Roxanne caught sight of someone moving quickly from the front doors, through the cavernlike entry to just behind Gary.

Reece
.

She forced herself to keep her focus on the dogs, recklessly challenging the big one with her eyes. Did it
sense something inside her, as Abaddon’s ravens had? She remembered the night at the hotel and how one of the hounds had sniffed the air. At the time she’d thought Santo had caused it to recoil. Now she wondered.

Reece came up behind Gary fast and sure. Her brother’s knife was much smaller, but it looked no less lethal as Reece pressed it to the demon’s jugular. The others in the room looked startled, as if it had never occurred to them that a threat could invade their sanctuary.

Roxanne tried to stand, but the big dog wasn’t intimidated enough to let her move. It snarled and snapped and kept her in her seat.

“Tell Shrek to drop his guns. The knife, too,” Reece said, pricking the skin of Gary’s throat. Blood trickled down. “Tell him.”

“Dave,” Gary said, cutting his gaze to an ugly, hulking man.

Roxanne heard something clatter to the floor. Reece kicked it away, and April materialized from the shadows to scoop it up. Gary flashed her a look of loathing.

“This won’t end well for you,” he snarled.

“But it will end,” she answered coolly.

“The rest of them, too,” Reece ordered. “Do it, Gary, or I swear to God, Abaddon will be the least of your worries.”

Gary gave his men a speaking glance, and more
weapons clattered to the floor. When they’d been kicked out of reach, Gary said, “This is quite an impasse we have.”

“I don’t see it that way. I see a bunch of demons who are about to get sent back where they belong.”

“Where we will await your return to us. It seems like a long way to go to end up in the same place.”