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Chapter Thirty Three
The ‘Cuda rolled to a stop beside the curb and Will leapt out yelling over his shoulder, "Stay here, make sure he doesn't come around the building!" He raced around the side of the abandoned structure and disappeared behind it.
"I got the son of a bitch!" He shouted, but Anna and Josh were already coming around the corner.
"She heard you tackle him from the car," Josh explained.
"Man," Will grinned as he wrapped the writhing form’s arms up with a cross linked chain, "that super hearing is the shit!"
He rolled the guy onto his back and lifted a dagger in the air, chanting in Latin.
The possessed man screeched and spit in a language they didn’t understand, then switched to English and hissed, "You won't win, it's too late, there are two few of you faeries left, and no one left to aid you."
"The outcome won't matter much to you where you’re going, fucknut," Will replied as he raised his dagger and buried it in the former human's heart. Black liquid poured out and turned to vapor swirling up into the air. It crackled and hissed for a moment before it seemed to suction out of the atmosphere.
Anna’s eyes followed the smoke, wondering about its destination. She had recently learned that “hell” was not a singular place. There were four different dimensions through which the shadow demons could potentially emerge, though it was only at rare points in history that any beyond the Jinn made it into their world. It was generally accepted that the other three dimensions housed more twisted up and powerful varieties of demons, so if they did make it into the world their level of influence would be scary. The one they'd just caught was suspected of being Dantalion, the next up from the Jinn, which was cause for serious concern.
Anna looked at the dead man, a lick of sadness rising within her. He couldn't have been over twenty-five and had an all American boyish appearance now that his features were no longer contorted. She blinked several times, moisture building under her lids.
"You okay?" Josh eyed her with concern as he pulled a tarp from his backpack.
She swiped her eyes and nodded.
"We couldn't save him," Will put in quietly.
"I know that, it's just, why would he do it?"
"Although I'm told that demons can be pretty persuasive, I tend to think you've gotta be pretty twisted inside for it to get this far."
Anna nodded slightly as Josh slipped something in the guy’s shirt before rolling him up in the tarp. He and Will each grabbed an end and dropped him against the building.
"What did you put in his shirt?" Anna asked.
"Oh, just a helpful little list of his recent activities so the idiot cops have it all spelled out for them."
"We're done here," Will announced and they headed back to the car looking up and down the still empty street.
They climbed in the cuda and started down the road, Josh calling his dad with an update. She still had yet to meet the man as their plans had changed several days ago when Will received a call from a hunter named Bentley who had been tracking the now dead guy only to discover he'd jumped a plane to North Carolina.
Bentley was currently on the west coast tracking three other humans-gone-demon, a woman and two more men, and things were getting odder by the day. First, the guy they'd just bagged was a former lawyer in California who had been instrumental in the possessions of the other three-the woman a D.A., the two men attorneys from the same firm. Secondly they seemed to have banded together in a specifically designed internet campaign, though each of them were working different angles.
The dead guy, one Lucian Handler, had set up a page with a survey that popped up on computers all across the state of California. He had craftily designed the pop up so that it froze the page until the questions were answered and submitted. Even unplugging your desktop wouldn’t get rid of it, as soon as you turned it back on it would reappear.
The questions were as follows:
- Do you believe in unconditional love?
- Do you attend church? If so, what religion?
- If you don’t subscribe to a religion, what happens when you die?
- Do you support the LGBT community?
- What is your purpose in this life?
Eight people were killed in the exact same fashion. Every major artery was severed, and the knives that did the slicing had a broken cross carved into each of the handles and were left protruding from the victims' sternum. California officials were calling it a serial murder, but they had yet to find the victim connection. Bentley was the one who'd discovered the pattern.
All eight had filled out and submitted the survey, and all eight had answered questions one, three, and five in basically the same way. 1) Yes, they believed in unconditional love. 3) Where you go when you die is determined by what’s truly in your heart-and 5) To love the creator or source of life, yourself, and your fellow man- or variations on these themes.
Aside from being a hunter, Bentley was also a genius hacker which is what had led him to Lucian. The dead man’s objective, it seemed, had been committing a hate crime against love.
The two possessed attorneys were focusing their attention on an entirely different set of answers, compiling lists of those that readily condemned people to hell verses those who didn’t believe in anything. And the D.A. was sticking to the ones whose answers were nonsense. What they had planned for the people on the lists was unknown, and Bentley was of the mind that it could stay unknown if he could just get to the bastards before they did any damage.
Not as easy as it sounded. The possessed seemed to be aware of the hunter attention they'd attracted and were sticking to public places and otherwise lying low.
Bentley had enlisted the aid of two more hunters currently in his vicinity and promised to keep the brothers informed. Otherwise they weren't needed beyond what they’d done tonight. This left them with zero to do for the moment except finally meet up with their old man who was waiting for them sixty miles north of their current location.
Josh turned to look over the seat at Anna and noticed her face was drawn, her coloring on the pale side. They hadn’t had much sleep having been wrapped up in the pursuit of Lucian, and it was catching up to all of them. But lack of nourishment pushed Anna a bit further.
"Pull over Will, I've gotta get in back."
Will quirked an eyebrow and glanced in the rearview. Realization dawned and he eased the car to the side of the road.
Josh climbed in next to her, a scolding expression on his face. "You should've spoken up, you know we're meeting dad."
She nodded apologetically. He pulled her into his lap and she latched on.
A few minutes later her coloring had returned to normal and she felt loads better. His lap was so comfortable that she stayed put and he stroked her hair absently, his attention elsewhere.
Will broke the comfortable silence in his typical smartass way, eyeing them in the mirror. "You two look so sweet. Especially a couple of minutes ago when she was nursing you, it would've made a great hallmark card for vampires. I could see the picture, little droplets of blood shaped hearts trickling down the card."
"Careful brother, green is not your color," Josh countered, tightening his arm around Anna to keep her from moving off him.
"True, but then how often do I get to be jealous of you, since I'm so much better at everything." He waggled his eyebrows and Josh snorted.
Anna shook her head with a faint smile. Always competing, she thought. She snuggled in closer to Josh. God he was comfortable. His big warm body would give pillow-top mattresses a run for their money.
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