Chapter 13

AS JORY was digging through the pile of his discarded clothes that had ended up on the floor, he saw Mal’s phone flashing. He was planning to ignore it, but he froze when he got a glimpse of the screen.

His breath caught in his throat.

He’d expected a random phone number. A random name from a contact list he had no business worrying about. But the name displayed on the screen was Adam’s.

Adam was calling Mal.

Jory stopped himself as he began to panic. He’d had a lot of practice stopping panic attacks over the last six months: every time he had to flash a customer a happy smile despite the fact that he felt like he was suffocating as he touched them. He began to recite ingredients in his head, forcing himself to focus on something that required so much attention that there wasn’t room for pain or fear.

He dragged his finger across the screen, answering. “Hello, Adam.”

“Jory?” Adam sounded desperate. “Oh, thank God. But you’ve… you’ve got that monster’s phone. Are you okay? Are you trapped? He can’t hurt you, Jory, so you might be able to escape. Where are you?”

Words were Adam’s weapon. Words, doubt, fear, and hope. “Cut the crap, Adam. We need to chat. I’ll be on the next bus back to Rochester, so call off your little demon assassin.”

“The bus…,” Adam muttered. “Yeah, that’ll do. Get to the bus depot.”

With that, Adam hung up.

Jory pulled on his clothes and grabbed the threadbare backpack he’d kept close for days. His phone and wallet were already in the front pocket. Looking around the tiny apartment, he realized grimly that he didn’t have anything else worth taking. He’d dragged the book Mal had given him upstairs, and for a while he’d entertained the thought of throwing it into his bag, but there was no fucking chance he’d be hauling it around now.

He grabbed the warmest jacket he owned, slung the bag over his shoulder, and headed for the hall. Once he made it to the stairwell without spotting Mal, he ran.

Even though he could breathe and run again, he wasn’t stupid enough to think he could escape from something that was essentially a six-foot-three werewolf. Not on foot, at least. He went out through the front of the apartment building and headed for the café, knowing that Selma would be there, at least. He stopped, staring at the front of the café as if he was seeing it for the first time. He wouldn’t see it again. He’d never have a late night with the kitchen all to himself, and that realization hit him hard. He hadn’t noticed quite how attached he’d become to the place in a few short months. Here he didn’t have to put on a show for anyone, he didn’t have to worry about whether people would respect and trust him. He didn’t have to echo Adam’s worthless, fearmongering sermons when he gave people advice. He did still give people advice, though. More people than he’d expected wanted to talk to the guy serving their coffee about their current spiritual or emotional crisis. It was the perfect job.

And it had been stupid to get attached. Just like it was idiotic to waste time.

He slung his bag over his shoulder and jogged across the road, zigzagging through the downtown streets to the city bus terminal. Even if the people of Missoula tended to sleep in, the buses still started running at five each morning. Unfortunately, that meant that he was the only one on the streets, and he’d be all the easier for Mal to track. He caught a bus that was pulling away from the depot, heedless of what direction it might be going in. Somewhere along the way, he’d figure out what bus he’d have to transfer to in order to get to the Greyhound station.

He transferred to two more buses before he got off at a stop a block from the Greyhound terminal, and he bought a ticket on the first bus heading east, which unfortunately wasn’t leaving for over an hour. He aimed for the far side of one of the long rows of plastic seats, where he’d be able to keep an eye on the main entrance in case Mal showed up.

He flinched when a man in a cream-colored suit sat down beside him with a groan and tossed a vending machine packet of oatmeal cream pies into his lap. Jory hadn’t seen him come in, but he knew exactly who it was. Adam had bought Jory entire boxes of oatmeal cream pies on their road trip from St. Louis to Minnesota all those years ago, and they’d remained his standard method for placating Jory whenever he objected to something.

“You’ve got to be hungry,” Adam mumbled.

Adam looked like shit. His normally immaculate suit was a wrinkled mess, and his tie hung loose like he’d been pulling at it. The stench of alcohol was almost as powerful as the smell that clung to Neal. He held a bus ticket of his own, along with a bag of candy.

“How’d you get in here?” Jory asked, forcing his voice to stay even and calm. “I was watching the doors.”

“Been here since we talked,” Adam mumbled. He flashed Jory the bus ticket. “Vending machines are back by the lockers. I can’t…. I don’t know what else to do.”

Despite the circumstances, Jory wasn’t as afraid as he’d expected to be. He’d spent months worrying about Adam, so terrified of being forced to absorb something more horrid than the tar in that old man’s lungs that he’d forgotten that Adam was just a normal guy. Once the microphone was turned off and the minister persona was finally shed, Adam wasn’t some larger-than-life monster who could actually hurt him. If Jory had known more about his powers—if he hadn’t spent so much of his life afraid of what else he might be capable of—things might have been so different.

“I’m surprised. I thought you wouldn’t bother jumping ship unless the money ran out,” he said, not bothering to be tactful.

Adam’s gaze stayed locked on the space in front of them as he shook his head. “There’s hardly any point in money when you’re dead.”

Jory leaned forward, his forearms on his legs. “When you’re dead, you mean? Because you sure as hell didn’t give a damn about me.”

“You think I wanted to do that? These are dangerous people, Jory. I didn’t have any more choice than you did.”

He snorted. “Yeah? How much was your take?”

Adam actually managed to look offended.

“Oh, come on, at least tell me it was worth more than we would have brought in with the regular shows?”

The way Adam swallowed was as good as a yes.

“At least I was worth something. But you got me. Pretty enough eye candy and I might as well be another mark. And hey, if I caught on, he could just go all bloodhound and track me down the old-fashioned way, right? God, you’re such a dick.”

“I suppose I deserve that. But that thing was not my idea,” Adam insisted. “I never would have willingly worked with… with a monster like that.”

“A year ago I never would have thought you’d let some asshole hold a gun to your head to give me some incentive. I should have let him shoot you.”

Adam sighed. “It wouldn’t have mattered, in the end. Not once he saw what you can do. I can’t see it mattering now either. When he hired that thing, I began to realize just what I’d gotten myself into. But the other creature, the one they sent next… it’ll never let me escape.”

Jory shot to his feet, nervously scanning the bus depot. There was no sign of Eugene or Corbin Barnett outside either glass door. There was no sign of Mal, either, but that didn’t mean anything. “Barnett summoned it?”

Adam glanced up at him, shaking as he nodded.

Jory slung his bag over his shoulder, then grabbed Adam’s wrist. “You want to know something funny? It turns out that between me and the hellhound, I’m the real monster.”

He’d felt Adam’s spirit so many times before, he knew every bit of pain and strength within him. Just like when he’d taken Mal’s energy from him after he healed Louise, siphoning Adam’s spirit was too damn easy. It didn’t require focus or control—all he needed to do was let go. Adam grew pale, and beads of sweat appeared along his forehead and cheeks.

“You dumped me in the forest to die,” Jory hissed, quiet enough to avoid making a scene. “So tell me why I shouldn’t leave your body here to rot?”

“You should. I’m already dead,” Adam gasped. “This bus is leaving in ten minutes, Jory. You need to be on it. Do you have any idea what it’s like? To not be alone in your own head? To see the world through the eyes of something else? To be shown all the ways it wants to kill me?”

Jory stepped back, staring at Adam’s terrified eyes.

“I was supposed to stay back at the hotel, and I can feel him clawing at me, trying to get inside.”

Jory closed his eyes for a moment. “What is it?”

“I don’t know. I’m not worthy of speaking his name. But he hates you. He hates everything you are. He hates everyone, including me and Barnett. And everyone you’ve ever helped, every member of the church, thousands of people in this city. He’s going to kill them all.”

Jory couldn’t stop the rage welling up inside of him. He should have let Barnett die, but he’d always helped people who needed him. People who were suffering. He’d healed countless sick children at the church, his foster mother’s pneumonia, the weekly bruises covering his first lover’s body. He wouldn’t take any of it back, even if he could. He wasn’t going to let them suffer because of him. Even with Mal lying to him from the start, that hadn’t changed.

Whatever label he bore—minister, healer, fraud, or demon—he could meticulously pull apart and drain the soul of a hellhound. If killing that old man was the only way to break the link letting his demon stalker threaten everyone he cared about on earth, Jory would do it. He’d try, anyway.

He leaned close, stopping a couple of inches from Adam’s face. “Barnett’s here, isn’t he? And you know where he is.”

Adam shook his head quickly but whimpered. “I can’t go back. If I go back there, my life is over.”

“If you don’t do as I say, your life will be over in a matter of seconds. At least with me, there’s a chance you might come out of this alive. Whatever he hired, I’m not letting it hurt anyone else.”

JORY WAS starting to second-guess himself when Adam pulled his Cadillac into the parking lot of a nice hotel and led him upstairs. The last time he’d blindly followed Adam into a room with only one exit, it hadn’t ended well. At the time, though, he’d been certain that his most formidable talent was the ability to spin bullshit almost as well as Adam. Even if it was a trap, he wasn’t helpless. Over the past few days, he’d seen a ghoul lurch around in a dead body, taken on a dragon, and made love to…. He wasn’t going to think about that.

He stopped outside of the hotel door, watching Adam fidget beside him. He scoffed dismissively. “After all these years, you’ve found someone you can’t talk to?”

Adam shook his head. He whimpered and ran his hands through his hair, gripping the dyed strands so tight he pulled some out. “These things are monsters, Jory. We can’t get out of this. You don’t know….”

Jory shrugged. “Hellhounds that look three times as big as wolves and can light their eyes on fire, an incubus who can slip in and out of reality, not to mention the dragon he’s apparently adopted…. Trust me, I know the world seems kind of crazy. I also know the ones who want to kill me answer to an honest-to-god demon. The demons might be monsters, but behind the supernatural crap, Eugene Barnett’s just grasping for hope, like every other mark. He’s the one pulling their strings, but he’s dying. He’ll do anything to steal a little more time.”

Adam didn’t seem to listen. He pulled a key card out of his breast pocket, his hands shaking so badly he almost dropped it. Pallid and quivering, Adam scrambled back from the opened door.

A single glance into the dark room was enough to understand why Adam was in such a state. He suspected that he would fall apart too, if he had to share a room with a man so close to death he might as well be a corpse. Eugene Barnett was on the far bed, the hiss of an oxygen machine the only sound emanating from him.

“He doesn’t have any time left.”

Adam clenched the edges of his jacket in his hands and wrapped it tight around him like a child trying to huddle in a blanket.

“We need to call an ambulance,” Jory said. The old man’s previously pink skin was sallow, like curdled milk, like he was already dead.

Adam’s trembling became worse, his teeth chattering. He shook his head rapidly. “No, no, that’s a bad idea. What could a hospital do?” He looked like he was in shock, and the simple proximity of a dying man wouldn’t cause this. He might be a half-assed minister, but every religious leader had to deal with the fact that life inevitably ended.

Jory had been called upon to pray over people in their final moments, then recite with their family what Psalms he’d memorized. Eventually he’d learned to stay calm by focusing his attention on the living, being the emotional buffer families needed to reassure themselves it was okay to let go of the body and hold on to their memories. But there was no one to comfort now. No distraction or hope to offer.

He thought about Keygan, on the verge of death in the alley. “Help him or finish it,” Jory said to himself, walking toward the bed.

He ran a single finger along Barnett’s forehead, carefully avoiding the cesspit of fire and rot in his lungs. Eugene Barnett blinked open his eyes, grimacing in pain.

“He found you,” Eugene rasped. “He found you first.”

“Last time you gained a few months, but getting sick again was worse this time. I can feel it. Even if I could heal you again, do you have any idea how much pain you’ll be in at the end? Your body’s giving up. No amount of prayer, magic, or demonic power is going to stop it.”

“So I’ve realized….”

Jory leaned close, trying to ignore the scent of urine and disease. “Tell me about the second demon and I’ll make sure you pass without pain.”

“Old shit from my grandfather and my father. I don’t know its name. Their names are the key, how you summon them, how you bind them. I ordered Mr. Pelle to protect you, to keep you alive and deliver you to me. So you might stand a chance.”

Adam’s entire body flinched. “There’s no chance,” he yelped. “He knows you’re here.” His trembling spread to his entire body. He shrank to the floor, moaning.

“Come on, stand up,” Jory said, nudging Adam with his toe. “We need to call the police, we need someone to deal with this mess.”

Adam shook his head rapidly again but didn’t make any move to stand up.

Jory reached out and hesitantly set his hand on Adam’s head, biting back the automatic sense of repulsion that shot through him as he saw Adam’s spirit, warping and twisting even now. “It’s going to come back.” Adam clenched his hair between his fingers and pulled tight, rocking back and forth while he held his hands over his head. “I can still feel it inside of my head!” he cried. “I can still hear it….”

“Adam, I need you to get up.”

“You should leave me here and run.” His voice cracked and his gaze shot sideways to the door.

The electronic lock behind them beeped; then the door opened slowly.

Mal loomed in the doorway, his hand wrapped around a small pistol. Neal, his always fixed smile gone, stood at his shoulder.

“Neal? But you….” He felt like a weight settled in the pit of his stomach as Eugene’s words sank in. “You kept me alive.”

Mal at least had the decency to look shocked. “You’re not supposed to be here.”

“Well, I am. I wonder, does this mean their deal with you is done, Mr. Barnett? Was bringing me to you alive the only thing you summoned them to do?”

Eugene gasped and tried to reach for him.

He knew what the old man wanted. “I promised, didn’t I?”

“Jory, don’t touch him!” Mal shouted, charging into the room.

Jory took Eugene’s hand and carefully lifted his pain away, waiting for the last glimmer of light to fade to black. Eugene was barely dead when Mal wrapped his arm around Jory’s waist and hauled him toward the door. “You need to get the hell out of here. Neal, take him!”

Jory twisted out of Mal’s grip and shoved him away. Mal hit the doorframe with a thud but recovered quickly, moving to herd Jory out the door again.

“Get your hands off me!” he shouted, glaring at them both. “He’s dead. That means you two and whatever else he summoned can all go fuck yourselves. Adam, get your ass over here or I’m leaving you behind!”

“The drunk from the last show?” Adam asked, looking up at Neal with a confused expression.

“The lying asshole from the last show,” Jory corrected him. “Technically the same thing.”

“Kid, I don’t know what he told you, but I’ve never been working for him. I’ve never agreed to the demands of any human sorcerer. None of them could ever offer me what I wanted anyway, and I would never betray the man—” Neal stopped abruptly. “I could never betray your father’s legacy like that.”

“Uh-huh. Work up trust by telling the bitter orphan that he’s actually special. Do you think I’d fall for this shit now? Whether my old man was an incubus, a human, or something else doesn’t matter. He was a fucking sperm donor, and I’m not in the mood to pretend he was anything else.” He didn’t care about the soft gasp that escaped Neal’s lips or the hurt look on his face. He’d lost count of the times Adam had managed to look insulted and honestly saddened by the mere implication that he could be lying. At least with Adam, he knew where he stood. He grabbed Adam’s sleeve and tugged him to the door, glowering at Mal and Neal both. “Get out of my way.”

Jory shoved his way past Mal and Neal. He tried to keep his senses grounded as adrenaline spiked inside of him, but he’d never felt anything so painful as touching Mal again.

“No!” Adam tried to yank his arm away once they were in the hall. “I have to stay! I have to stay until he comes back.”

Jory didn’t want to admit that Adam was a lost cause, but nothing seemed to get through to him. He took a deep breath and closed his eyes, focusing on the lines of power running through Adam’s body and blocking out the rest of the world. At first Adam just felt sick, tainted somehow. But when Jory focused his attention wider and tried to look at his entire soul instead of searching for individual problems, he saw the claws.

Unlike the rope of energy that had held Keygan’s spirit bound, a dozen small chains trailed off into nothing. Each chain ended in a hook-shaped claw rooted deep inside Adam’s head.

He cringed and followed the energy flowing through Adam. He could focus on each claw, but he couldn’t do anything to move them. He couldn’t pull their different energy into himself or pluck them loose, no matter how hard he focused.

He hadn’t tried breaking Keygan’s chain, technically. He’d broken Keygan.

“I can’t do this,” he whispered, dropping Adam’s wrist. “I can’t. If you die, you die, but I’m not going to be the one who kills you. But you two”—he glared at Mal and Neal—“come near me again and I will kill you.”