The Undoer (16 page)

Again, Bret asks, “What do you want?” His jaw clenches, and the degree of hate in his eyes is terrifying. Something is happening here. Something secret, evil, and dark. Chills prickle along my arms even though it’s an oven in here and we’re all dripping with sweat.

It’s quiet for a moment and Coem crosses his arms over his chest, his smile easy. “I want
you
,” he says to Bret. “I want to be the one who finally takes down The Great Undoer.”

Brecken

The heat of their gazes pin me to the filthy floor, like a wasp in a bug collection. Coem has made no secret of our past relationship, and now Jag and Heidi want answers. She’s angry and confused, I can tell. I can’t blame them, but I also don’t want to explain.

Coem wants me in trade for Dean, but that isn’t going to happen and wouldn’t work anyway. They’d just keep us both, and I don’t have time for that. I should have killed Coem the moment I saw him, but that is a lost opportunity now.

I glance over at Jag. A million different emotions flash in his eyes. Disbelief, horror, disgust, hurt, betrayal. The dim soda shop grows even dimmer with his anger. I realize what a mistake it was to come here, but it’s too late to go back.

“I swear, I’ve never been anything but honest with you,” I say.

Jag doesn’t even take time to answer. He lunges… at
me
, his body slamming into mine, knocking the breath from my lungs. We slide across the dusty floor and into the rear wall, my head banging on the sharp edge of a broken chair.

Dizziness spins me in circles, and for a moment, I can’t focus. That could also be from the fist that keeps pounding my face. It’s Heidi who finally drags Jag away, and by then, Coem has disappeared.

Blood flows from my nose and down over my lips, the metallic taste of pennies filling my mouth. I wipe it away, but Jag’s animal hatred is still visible in the squint of his eyes.

“I knew it! I’ve felt it all along. You
are
a demon, and I let you worm your way into the Cazadors. You lied to us… over and over!” He reaches down and grabs me by the shirt, pulling me close until our faces are only inches apart. “Was that your plan, jack-nit? To break us apart and kill us one by one in our sleep? And Heidi…” He gives a strangled curse, running a hand through his hair. “What were you going to do to her, once she felt safe in your apartment?” I don’t know why he hasn’t actually tried to stab me yet. I don’t ask. It might remind him he can. Maybe he wants answers more than my death, but this has gone far enough. I can’t keep lying about my identity. It isn’t getting me anywhere. They know something’s off. It’s time to spill my guts, metaphorically, not actually.

“I wouldn’t ever hurt Heidi.
Ever
.” I try to wipe the dirt off my clothes. “I love her too much. She’s my sister, after all.”

She stares at me, wearing devastation and betrayal on her face as well as a dash of confusion.

“It’s me. Brecken.” I look only at her, trying harder than ever to somehow communicate soul to soul. I reach for her, but she backs away, closer to the counter, her eyes wide and showing only mistrust.

“I mean it. It’s me. I was allowed to come back to help in this… demon battle.”

“I think she’d recognize her own brother,” Jag sneers, scorn staining his voice. He raises his knife, finally remembering he has one, I guess, but I pay him no attention. I look only at Heidi.

“It’s true. They made me unrecognizable… so I could do this job without the complication of past relationships.” Saying it out loud sounds pathetic and stupid, and I wonder how I ever agreed to those terms.

“Don’t move, or I swear I will cut you down where you stand,” Jag says with a ferocious growl. I’d been backing toward the door, but I stop. He isn’t lying, and even though I’m sure I’m stronger, I don’t want to make things worse.

I keep my gaze on Heidi. “Remember my basement bedroom and how you thought it was haunted? Well, it was. Kind of. And remember we ate mac and cheese for lunch every day when Dad was gone plumbing? Sophie climbing in bed with you at night when she got scared? The gum under the coffee table? Your blow dryer that kept blowing a fuse? How would I know all of that if I weren’t your brother? It’s me. I promise.”

She stares at me hard, as though trying to see inside me, to recognize something of the brother she remembers. “You look my age. Brecken would be in his twenties.”

“I know. It’s just the age of this body.”

She squints harder and leans forward.

“He’s not your brother!” Jag roars. “Can’t you see what he’s doing? He’s trying to lure you away. You know how demons work. They can’t be trusted, Heidi. He’s a demon. How would that Coem guy have known him otherwise?”

“That’s true. How did you know him?” she asks.

I’ll never be able to get through to her with Jag yelling in her ear. When she pulls out her dagger and holds it in her fist, I realize I’ve lost.

“Okay, so, that’s harder to explain, but I promise. I’m Brecken. I was sent back here to help close
The Door to Hell
because
I know demons. It goes way back… I mean, eons of time back. Angels and demons both.”

“Right,” Jag says, moving so Heidi is behind him. “Now you’re saying you’re an angel?” He inches his way toward the front door of the shop, pushing Heidi toward freedom whether she likes it or not. “I don’t really care. Consider it a gift that I’m not killing you this very second.”

“You couldn’t if you tried,” I say stupidly, letting my temper flare. They aren’t listening. Heidi is coming around, but Jag isn’t about to let her really hear me. He doesn’t want me to have her loyalty
or
her forgiveness.

Jag stops abruptly. “What did you say?”

Great. Now he’ll fight back just to prove I don’t scare him, to prove he can take me… which he can’t. He’s a storm waiting to happen, and I just gave him the opportunity. The sooner we get it over with, though, the better.

He lunges, and this time, it isn’t in a good-natured test, pitting his strength against mine like at the church. He is going to kill me if he can.

My face is still hurting from the beating he already gave me, and I’m not about to let it get worse, but Jag has other plans. He brings his dagger down hard. I twist slightly at the last second, or it would have gone into my shoulder. It nicks me, but it’s only a scratch. A scratch that stings like a thousand fire ants burrowing their way under my skin.

I roll away, kicking him in the stomach. He stumbles back. I jump to my feet, and we circle each other. Heidi yells for us to stop, her eyes wild with fear, but she doesn’t get involved or try to break us up. She knows better. Jag is single minded, and he intends to finish me. If she accidentally gets in his way… I need to end this now.

I stand up straight and let my dagger fall. “I don’t want to fight you, Jag.”

He lunges again, his knife aimed at the center of my chest. I twist, lift my arm, and push him past me as hard as I can. He rams straight into the wall, head-first. Stunned, he falls to his knees. I take that moment to slam my fist into the side of his face. He hits the ground, out cold.

Heidi screams and runs over to him, turning his body over. A slash on his forehead seeps blood and a cut over his cheekbone is beginning to swell. He’ll have a nasty headache when he wakes up, but he’ll live.

She swivels toward me with eyes full of fury. “You’re lucky he’s not dead, or I’d kill you myself.”

“He wouldn’t let you listen,” I say, pleading. I leave my knife on the floor and kneel beside her. “Everything I said is true. It’s me, Heidi. I’ve come back to help you. I’m so sorry I wasn’t here before when things were so terrible, but there were other things I had to do in… in… Oh, it’s too hard to explain. And Dad didn’t kill me,” I add as an afterthought.

At this point, she jerks away from me, slapping me hard across the face. “How dare you even bring that up?” She’s shaking, her hands in fists, her lips pulled back into a snarl. “I know exactly what happened. I was there. I saw him attack my brother in the hospital. He had a knife to his throat. I know what I saw!”

“
I’m
your brother. And yes, he attacked me at the hospital, but it wasn’t what you think. You have no idea what was going on behind the scenes.”

“I would if someone told me,” she says finally. Jag moans but doesn’t wake up.

“We need to get out of here before the real demons come back. Here, help me.” I lift Jag by the armpits and wait for her to lift his feet. She doesn’t want to trust me, I can see that, but she also knows I’m right. We can’t stay here.

We leave the shop, hurrying down the street and out of the Down Quarter to a bus stop. A few times, we have to put Jag down and rest. Becoming a bit more coherent, he fights us more. When he finally comes to, he doesn’t let us carry him at all. He holds his head in his hands, scowling as though he hopes his evil looks will kill me.

I ignore him and try not to take his venom too personally.

Once we stop and get on a bus, we help Jag into a seat and Heidi sits beside him. He lays his head back and closes his eyes.

“We should take him to a doctor. I think you gave him a concussion.” She glares at me, but it’s more of a little-sister-who-is-pissed-at-her-brother look than the distrusting, suspicious Heidi who thinks I’m a demon.

“He’ll be all right. He just needs to rest.”

“You could have killed him. You were too rough,” she says with bite in her tone. Her eyes narrow, and I can tell she’s in the mood to quarrel. I remember this Heidi. She’d follow me all around the house like a shadow, hounding me with her opinions or lecturing me until I cried uncle.

“Let it go, Heidi. I’m not in the mood for one of your tantrums.”

“Did you seriously just say that to me?”

Great. And so it begins. I turn to her and level my gaze so she knows I’m not joking. “You have no idea what I’ve been through since I’ve been here. I’ve been given an impossible task with only a bunch of kids to help me.” Now that she knows I’m her brother, I don’t feel the need to coddle her.

“A bunch of kids? Is that what you think of us?”

This isn’t working. “Look, I’m sorry. Okay? I’m sorry I hurt your boyfriend who was trying to kill me.”

“You sound just like my brother.” She stares at me, her countenance rigid and her attitude frosty.

I can’t help but smile back at her. “That’s because I
am
your brother, through and through. Is that more impossible to believe than the world falling apart and demons possessing people right and left?”

She studies me, her shoulders still tight and her arms crossed over her chest. She doesn’t want to answer and looks the other way, glaring, but I hear her mumble, “I guess not.” She turns back to me, the snotty cheerleader look still there. “But how is it possible? If you’re really Brecken, then how did you die if Dad didn’t kill you?”

I hurry to explain while she seems open to an explanation. “At the time, there was a battle going on in a spiritual realm you don’t know about and… well, like I keep saying, it’s hard to explain, but someone there needed my help, and I couldn’t stay here and let her die.”

“Her?”

“Yeah.” I can’t conceal my smile, and I fight the urge to turn away to hide it.

“The girl you told me about?”

“Yes.”

“I can’t believe I kissed you.”

True to form, she changes the subject on a dime. “Me neither. Gross,” I say, shoving her from across the aisle. Could she really capitulate so easily? Oh, I hope so. She’s gotten more cynical in the last few years, but my sweet Heidi is still in there, I can tell.

She laughs and hugs me. “It makes so much sense now—how I felt drawn to you, how comfortable I feel around you, and how easily you make me mad.”

“Yeah, that’s a sure sign.”

“It was actually the eggs,” she says out of the blue, losing me completely.

“What?”

“You know. When you made me eggs with avocado. No one else cooks them like that. I should have known.”

“Yeah, but it
is
unbelievable.”

“Yeah.”

We ride the rest of the way in companionable silence. When we finally make it back to the church, we tuck Jag into his sleeping bag, and then I go in search of Doug and Owen.

It’s time for a Cazador meeting.

Dean

Lost and confused, I sit in the dark, my head in my hands. I don’t even try to understand my situation. There are no lights on in the hall outside my cell door, and the demons certainly didn’t give me anything like a candle. What I wouldn’t give for a smidgen of light. I can’t even see my freaking hand in front of my face.

For the millionth time, I stumble to the door, press my face against the window hole, and yell for help, for light, for a voice in the dark, for stimulation of any kind. There is no answer and I wonder if they have forgotten me down here. I haven’t eaten in twenty-four hours, so maybe they are trying to kill me by default.

I mean, what do they care? I’m a nobody now that they know I can’t be possessed. I don’t know what keeps them from latching on inside me, but I heard someone sneer the word
inviolable
as I was dragged out of that farce of a party. Three other demons tried their hand at me, and none could possess me. Coem had looked at me like an impossible puzzle he’s determined to figure out.

I take that moment to scream through the door again, banging my head against the rough wood in helplessness. Why am I even wasting my breath? I’m hungry, dirty, and only have the corner of my cell to use as a toilet. They don’t even given me a bucket. It reeks in here, and so do I.

And then…

A light begins to glow far down the hall, bright enough that my hungry eyes search pathetically for the source. I wait, my breath rasping in excited hitches. “Help!” I scream again, hoarse from lack of water. Again, I lean my head against the door, tears forming at the edges of my eyes. “Please,” I whisper. “Please, help me.”

“
I
will help you,” a voice says happily from the other side.

My head jerks back at the sudden utterance. In the dim light, my eyes struggle to focus. Just outside my door stands a girl. A child really, with red, curly hair, and her eyes… her bright blue eyes… they are so easy to see. They practically glow. She’s about seven years old, but rather than relief at finally having someone to talk to, a dark terror grows inside me. This isn’t a normal little girl. Not with those alien eyes and that piercing voice.

I back away from the door until my legs hit the cot.

“Can you come out and play with me?” Her voice rises to a whine—a clarion bell of pleading—the sound of a spoiled, lonely child with no friends.

I can’t see her, but each time she calls out, a sickening chill prickles my spine. Crawling onto my cot, I push myself all the way to the wall until I’m practically part of the plaster. I squish my eyes shut and cover my ears.

“She’s not real, she’s not real, she’s not real,” I whisper, over and over.

“Come back to the door,” she calls, her shrill tone growing angry and determined.

A long time ago, when I was very young, I woke in the middle of the night, a terrible fear consuming me. At the foot of my bed, I could see a girl. Formless. Wispy. Ghostly. At the time, I was only five or six, but I remember the terror that consumed me. The ghost hadn’t spoken, but she had stared at me with large, soulful eyes, with the saddest expression I’d ever seen. I was so frightened that my bladder released and I wet my bed, too terrified to get up or go to the bathroom. Soaked and smelling of urine, I stayed in my bed for the rest of the night until the sun rose and I could no longer see her. She hadn’t hurt me or even said a word. But her mere presence had paralyzed me.

This girl brings that moment back to me with chilling clarity. My heart pounds in my chest and tears threaten to fall. It doesn’t matter that I’m almost a man and have been living on my own for so long. Somehow, I’m a child again, alone in my room, unprotected and so afraid.

“You can’t hide from me.”

She sounds so close. I crack open an eye because
not
seeing is just as terrifying as being able to. She stands right next to me in a blue-and-white gingham dress, her iridescent eyes full of fury. I screech, scratching at the cement wall in an effort to Shawshank my way out of here. Something inside me breaks in that moment. I shatter and dissolve.