I stumbled backward, falling on my bottom.

And then I heard screams.

Chapter 12

Chills ran down my scalp like an army of ants.

"Mommy?" I yelled. Fear slammed into me like a wall and I wanted to run away as fast as my tiny legs could carry me. But my mom was in there. I had to help her.

I ducked to the ground as a broken branch whizzed past me, sucked into the crawlspace. All of a sudden I knew those men had done this. The green shark was going to eat my mom. I had to take the cables off the plywood. A strong gust of wind caught me as I stood and pulled me toward the house. I tried to slow myself, but the suction was strong enough to make me stagger on my little legs.

More screams and shouts emerged from the broken windows. I let the wind take me to the house, pressing against the brick and edging toward the cable draped over the doorsill. Closer to the door, the vacuum effect was much stronger but I didn't think it was enough to suck me in like the leaves. A green light glowed from the doorway. Someone was shouting. Strange black particles exploded and streamed from the doorway, only to vanish into the air.

I heard Meghan screaming for her mom. My mom shouted something as a deep rumbling voice chanted in a language sounding so very familiar to me I thought I could almost understand it if only I listened a little harder. But no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't grasp it. And then I realized I was only helping the monster by not pulling the cable. Disconnecting it would save everyone. It had to.

Squatting down, I reached for the cable. Gripped it. Jerked. Something gave and fizzled, scenting the air with a fresh wave of burning electrical parts. The chanting stopped. I'd done it! I'd saved everyone! I raced to the front of the house. And then I saw the red liquid splashed and streaked down the front sidewalk. My eyes followed it and found a woman. Meghan's mom. I ran to her.

"What happened? Where's Mommy?" I asked her.

"They must be stopped," she said. "But the others don't want to stop them. They don't want to…" her blue eyes glazed over and the last bit of color left her face along with her life. As the light left her eyes, I heard more shouting from inside.

Choking back the acidic vomit clawing up my throat, I rushed in as Mom, a thick ebony staff in one hand, hurled blinding black light at an oily green creature with a gaping maw larger than the rest of its shark-like body. The wooden floor was a splintered mess as though the creature had exploded up through it. What at first I thought were little red bumps clustered all along the monster's snout blinked and rotated, and I realized they were eyes, two of them much larger than the others. Mom hurled another pulse of glowing dark particles, but they only seemed to enrage the creature more than hurt it. Meghan had pressed herself tight into a corner, her face white and panicked. She screamed as the monster snapped its gaping maw at Mom, only to be rebuffed by another pulse of black light.

Then the creature's two big eyes swiveled toward me. The thing spoke, deep, guttural, and rumbling in the strange language. I wanted to say something back to it. Tell it to go away and leave us alone. But another part of me felt drawn to it. Felt sorry for it. It spoke again to me, and it seemed to be pleading. It wanted to go home, I realized. That had to be it. The men had made it come against its will. Deep in my heart I knew that's what it was saying. But I didn't know what to do or how to do it.

Its eyes hardened and glared at me as I stood there, mouth gaping, unable to speak to it or make it understand I wanted it to go home.

Mom saw it looking at me. "Run, Justin! Run!"

"Under the house, Mom! A piece of plywood. It needs electricity."

Her eyes narrowed. She turned and looked through the hole blasted in the wooden floor. I think she saw the plywood because she waved her staff at a nearby electrical socket, then said a word and aimed it down through the floor. Blue light arced from the wall socket, intersecting her staff and then shooting downward. A dark vortex formed. The monster's scarlet eyes seemed to soften. It looked at me once more, and seemed to bow before turning into a cloud of green smoke and vanishing into the vortex.

Mom jerked her staff up and the electricity stopped. She slumped onto the floor, sweat plastering golden locks to her face. Then she turned on her knees and threw up. A lot. I ran over to her and patted her back, my own stomach roiling and heaving.

"Mommy? Are you okay?"

She smiled and caressed my cheek. "Mommy's good boy. You're so brave. I will never let anything bad happen to you. I promise."

"I won't let anything happen to you because I'm a big boy now."

The smile on her face died as she saw Meghan in the corner and the trail of blood leading out the door. "Oh no. God, no." A tear trickled down her cheek. "Stay here for Mommy. Take care of Meghan, sweetie."

I ran over and gave Meghan a hug. She buried her face in my shirt and soaked it with tears. I noticed a piece of blood-soaked paper clutched in her hand. The writing was all but illegible. All but the last few characters: ance 4311.

Mom came back in, dragging the body of Meghan's mom with her. Then she came to me and took my hand. "Thank you for being a big boy, sweetie. Now Mommy wants you to sit still so I can make you feel better."

"But I feel good."

"Little boys shouldn't see certain things. And neither should little girls." She pressed a bloody hand to Meghan's forehead and said something. Meghan slumped and went to sleep. Before I could ask what she'd done, I felt Mom's warm sticky red hand against my forehead and darkness followed.

I jerked and yelled as Meghan's older face appeared before me. She backed off, wiping her hand on her dress and then grabbing a bottle of hand sanitizer off the floor and applying it liberally.

"Did that really happen?" I asked. My heart thudded like a mallet and sweat dripped down my face. My muscles and joints ached with every little twitch, but I pushed myself into a better sitting position.

"Justin, my lamb, please be careful," Stacey said as I grunted and groaned with every move.

"Stacey, would you get me some water?"

She kissed my cheek. "Of course, darling." She got up and strode gracefully for the kitchen, all the while giving Ryland a glare. He smiled at her innocently—at least as much as any wolf in sheep's clothing would.

"Meghan," I said, "where did that green monster come from?"

"Hell."

"I may be demon spawn and all, but does a place like Hell really exist?"

"Think of it as a dark evil plane of existence where such creatures live." She shuddered.

"Did you see everything through my eyes?"

She nodded. "I never knew about the men or the pattern on the plywood. Your mom did a good job of suppressing our memories. I didn't even realize who you were until Ryland filled me in while you were unconscious." Another shiver ran through her body.

"How did the plywood thing work?"

"I'm no summoner, but I can tell you gateways can be opened with enough electricity and the proper pattern. They obviously opened it with a portable generator, and the pattern was fairly simple so the entity that came through was probably of a very low caste."

"And yet my mom couldn't seem to beat it."

"Even the lowest of the low are insanely strong…Justin."

I felt a smile on my face. "Thanks."

"For what?"

"Using my name instead of calling me a thing."

Stacey returned with a tall glass of water. I took it and gulped. My body tried to throw it up almost immediately so I clamped my mouth shut and fought back the convulsions until the water stayed down.

"Why do you hate spawn?" I asked Meghan. "Better yet, why is my kind universally despised?"

She frowned. "Not everyone hates the spawn. Vampires love their blood and consider spawn one of their few true adversaries in the politics of the Overworld. Lycans, you see, are too straightforward and lean toward action while sorcerers are mostly human and tend to distrust anything the others do."

"I can see that. But you didn't answer my question."

"Remember when I told you my father died two years before my mother?"

I nodded.

"He didn't exactly die. He made a bad deal with a spawn. It cost him his soul."

My forehead tightened. "Demon spawn can take souls?"

"They can feed on the essence and even damage a soul enough for all practical purposes to kill someone, but they cannot wholly consume it in human form."

"What do you mean?"

She shuddered. "Spawn are the earthly agents of Hell, or the dimension we call Hell. Their human forms are little more than vessels. From a very young age, I was taught the dangers of the Overworld. Taught to mistrust the vampires, to use caution around the lycans, and, at all costs, avoid the spawn."

"Must be what they teach everyone," I grumbled.

"For good reason, I learned. My father discovered his sister had cancer. While most skilled healers such as myself can heal such things, this particular cancer was resistant to all forms of treatment. He heard spawn blood could cure almost anything and made a deal with one such spawn should he help his sister."

I tried to stretch my cramped arm and grunted with the pain of it. "Was it anything like what I went through?"

She shook her head. "No, the procedure turned out to be far simpler, and his sister, my aunt, was cured with only two treatments."

"And then the spawn turned around and sucked out your dad's soul?"

"No, he was given a decade to set his affairs in order."

"So he damned himself to Hell to save his sister? That's horrible."

"His soul was not so much damned as it was consumed."

"You mean no afterlife or anything?"

She shook as sobs took her and tears streamed down her eyes. I wanted to give her a hug and comfort her as I had nearly ten years or so ago when the green creature had killed her mother. But I knew better. Now, I would only repulse her.

"Nobody knows for sure, and the spawn would not tell me no matter how much I screamed or begged for mercy."