Jason nodded. Going in blind, there was no way to be sure how this would go.

  “And how do they get away?”

  “I think the non-denominational guide is the real demon. He smells like it. If you don’t get him, he’ll go wherever. The rest of them will be on foot.”

  “No cars?” Jason asked.

  “Non-denominational guide?” Kara said over top of him.

  “It’s what it says on the sign,” Maryanne told her, then looked back at Jason. “They had cars, but… they aren’t going to run anymore.”

  Jason grinned.

  “You’ve gotten really good at this.” He looked back at Kelly, who was watching Maryanne with distaste. “Stay close.”

  Maryanne guided them along the back side of the ridge and then up and over to where they could see the young man just entering the front edge of the town. Jason pulled the scope off of his rifle and put it to his eye, then passed it to Kara.

  “He does a very convincing nonchalant,” Kara observed. She scanned the rest of the town quickly, then handed the scope to Tina. “She’s right. They are weird.”

  Historically, the people at these things had had a habit of standing at fencerows facing each other, without speaking. They were wooden and inanimate right up until someone came into view who wasn’t one of them, and then they turned aggressive in all too realistic a way.

  “We need to keep moving,” Jason said. “He’s got their attention. We need to get closer, now.”

  He pointed at Tina.

  “You’ve got your cellphone? Call Ian and tell him where we think the kid’s going to go and how to get to it. He needs to cover the back and the side. Tell him the cars are all dead.”

  She didn’t like being told what to do, but she did it.

  Jason scanned the town again. The kid was attracting more attention as he walked, with people coming alive and interacting with each other and him. The more he refused to answer questions, the tighter around him they crowded, talking to each other and running ahead. Jason nodded at Kara.

  “You ready?”

  “Yeah.”

  They sprinted down the hillside, the four of them, staying low. Looking hard, Jason could see Ian and the others doing the same. The kid turned into the community center as Jason skidded to a halt behind one of the buildings.

  “You have a plan yet?” Kara murmured in his ear, making the hair on the back of his neck stand up.

  “Not exactly,” he said. “Put the right people in the right place… hope for the best?”

  Tina flew to one side with a shriek and Jason sprang to his feet, finding a man in his mid-thirties coming around the corner. He flung his hand to the side and Kara grunted, twisting her chin to one side. He did it again, and she hit the fence behind her.

  Jason raised an eyebrow and drew a length of iron from his waist. He’d seen Samantha use one in a fight with a possessed man, once, and he’d appreciated the elegance of it. The demon raised both hands to Jason and he felt an instant of force, like a suppressed hiccup.

  “You gotta do better than that,” he said. The creature screeched at him, and he heard, behind him, answers, but he was focused. The possessed man came at him, fingers and feet, kicking and clawing, a mouthful of angry teeth slashing past Jason as he moved and dodged.

  “Any time, Kelly,” he muttered.

  “You have to hold him still,” Kelly called from where he had gone to try to help Tina.

  “Right,” Jason said, bending time. He snapped the man across the shoulders with the iron rod, but he didn’t expect much of a result, nor did he get one. The demon came at him again. He grabbed a wrist, but had to let go when the demon pulled himself up against Jason, nearly grabbing him around the shoulders and getting a hold of his neck with those vicious teeth. He pried himself away again, looking for another opening.

  He and the man circled each other for another moment. Somewhere else, he heard chaos breaking out as they weren’t where he had said they would be at the community center.

  “Go,” he said, letting go of his grip on time to look over at Kara. The demon charged him and knocked him to the ground, but Kara didn’t pause, spinning to go across the street, her hair flying behind her. Jason wrestled back on top of the demon.

  “Kelly,” he yelled. With incredible force, the demon threw him off, scrambling to his feet and running away. Jason sprinted after him, catching up at the edge of town and tackling him. They fought, Jason struggling to hold on to the demon as he tried to run. It was like wrestling Sam again, the brute was so strong. He managed to hook an elbow through the man’s arm and spun him around, grabbing his other arm from behind.

  “Kelly,” he yelled again. The angel glitched across the expanse of open ground and put his hands on both of the man’s shoulders. He opened his mouth and a sound like wind came out of him. The demon’s head snapped back and the sound echoed through him. A moment later, the man went slack in Jason’s arms.

  “Is it done?” Jason asked. Kelly gave him a scathing look. Jason grinned at him and slapped his arm.

  “Not bad, kid. One down. Twenty-four to go.”

  <><><>

  The original plan had been so good.

  Okay, so it hadn’t been good. Or even a plan.

  But it had felt so simple. He had just known everything would just work out.

  And yet.

  They’d spent almost a whole day chasing the things around. It was everything Maryanne could do to keep track of them as they scattered. After the first onslaught, they’d broken up into little bands and staged ambushes throughout the town, and when that stopped working, they’d run. They tried the cars, but at least Maryanne had shut those down.

  So, one by one, they’d managed to pin down the demons, amid flying peons and demonic shrieks. Ian’s people were good, Jason had to give them that, but Kelly was unexpected. He was downright timid with the humans, unwilling to touch them before someone had held them down for him, but in an instant he would push the demons out of them.

  “It’s like it was what he was made for,” Jason observed to Kara during a lull.

  “Maybe it is,” she answered.

  That couldn’t be right.

  At any rate, they were having a hard time keeping count of how many of the blasted things they’d taken care of, and Maryanne was, at present, off looking for more of them. Kelly was watching over the ones that were dispossessed, while Ian and a couple of his people were negotiating how to get the main demon out of his office in the community center and kill him. One of them apparently had a widget that would trap demons from glitching out of a confined space, but he was proving to be both powerful and clever.

  “What’s the last count?” Kara asked, looking around on her toes.

  “I’m at twenty-five confirmed,” Jason said. “I think.”

  She snorted. It was harder than he had imagined to keep track of them. None of them knew each other, and they kept getting up and roaming around, looking confused.

  It was like they were targeting losers who were just going to let go, after they were possessed. Jason had met a few people who gave up that completely, but never thought he’d see that many all at once.

  “You think we lost any?” Kara asked.

  “I think Maryanne is very good at what she does,” he answered.

  “Damn sure,” Kara agreed. The demon sniffer was particularly preoccupied with keeping watch from the hills around the town. What had been a terrible handicap on the approach - even Ian had been intercepted on his way out of the hills - was proving to be a great asset in the hunt.

  “You check in with Preston?” Jason asked. Kara wrinkled her nose. The kid. He’d been tossed around a lot, at the beginning, and he was whining to anyone who would listen about the bruising he’d taken.

  “He’ll live.”

  “Ian’s gonna be pissed.”

  “Gonna be?”

  He grinned.

  “It all worked out, didn’t it?”

  In the most perfect of timing, a pair of women burst out of a shed at the back side of one of the houses and sprinted for the hills.

  “Kelly,” Jason yelled over his shoulder. He was a step slow on Kara, and she maintained her lead all the way to the crest of the first hill. Maryanne appeared and pointed to the thicket of brush downhill and to their left. Jason nodded to Kara and they split, circling the bushes. He drew Anadidd’na, hoping the sound of metal against metal would rouse them, but the bushes remained stubbornly quiet. They pushed in closer, not wanting to get within springing distance, but it seemed inevitable as the standoff continued. Either the two women were going to try to squirt off to one side or they would make a stand here.

  Well.

  Why not.

  “Kha’shing,” he said, drawing a great surge of orange flame from the blade. He put it to the dead brush as the flame leaped off the end of the sword and then he took a step back.

  There was some confusion, and then both women sprang out at Kara. Jason was around the brush fire in just a couple of seconds, but Kara had already been flung away and the women were running, this time in different directions.

  Somehow, in the confusion, one of them had ended up running directly at Kara, and from her back, Kara managed to grab an ankle and started trying to wrestle the woman to the ground. Jason went after the other one, catching her halfway up the next hill and pinning her down.

  “Kelly,” he yelled. When he got no response, the freakishly strong woman managed to fling him away and he scrambled up the hill on hands and feet, tripping her up and catching hold of her again. She hissed at him and unleashed a torrent of hellspeak, which he answered. He twisted, looking for Kelly, and tried to hold the woman where she couldn’t get her fingers in his eyes. Kelly was standing back from Kara, basically trying to do the same thing - keep away from those vicious fingers - as Kara pushed the other woman to the ground. Jason turned to pay more attention to his target, wrapping an arm around her neck and spinning her away from him. Her head thrashed and he was completely focused in keeping her from breaking his nose when Kelly appeared and grabbed her, forcing the demon out.

  Jason wiped his forehead.

  “How many have you done?” he asked.

  “Sixteen,” Kelly said.

  “Good work.”

  “Thanks.”

  “She okay?” he asked, jerking his head a Kara.

  “She’s braver than you,” Kelly said. Jason raised an eyebrow.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “They can hurt her, and she does it anyway,” Kelly said, leaning over the woman he had just dispossessed as Jason eased her to the ground.

  “I did it, before, too,” Jason complained. Kelly looked confused.

  “So?”

  “Just saying. I’m brave, too.”

  Kelly shrugged.

  “Easy to say, now.”

  Jason bit his tongue and shook his head.

  “You okay?” he asked the woman. She put her hand across her face.

  “What happened?”

  “What do you remember?” Jason asked.

  “They were going to help me.”

  Jason sighed.

  “Yeah. That’s not what happened. Do you not remember anything after that?”

  She lay on the ground, looking away from him with her arm draped across her face.

  “What did you do?”

  “What did I do?”

  “They were going to help me.”

  “They didn’t.”

  “Did you stop them?”

  He blinked.

  “Yes. We stopped them.”

  “Why did you do that?”

  He closed his eyes, unable to come up with a response that wasn’t completely sarcastic. He patted Kelly on the shoulder and turned away.

  “Do what you can.”

  He heard a noise from Kelly that might have been resignation.

  It might have been more fun to just kill them all. He had to keep reminding himself that this was right, not because it was rewarding, but because it was right. He walked back up the first hill to find Kara fighting with the woman she had tackled.

  “What do you mean I’m still sick? That man said that he could fix my hip without surgery.”

  “I’m sorry, but it was a scam.”

  “No, it isn’t. My grandson looked them up.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “No, you go get him back and you make him do what he said.”

  Kara raised her eyebrows at Jason beseechingly, and he kept walking. Behind him, the brush continued to burn. Ahead of him, he heard an explosion. Maybe they were finally into the office.

  He accelerated to a jog, getting a view of the little valley and the human chaos inside it. He shook his head. This was craziness.

  Fifteen minutes later, Jason was standing in the middle of the road as Ian and two young men dusted themselves off from a thick layer of white plaster.

  “Kenneth, I swear to you, if you ever mess something up that badly again, I will send you to Argo.”

  Jason folded his arms across his chest, trying not to look like he wanted to laugh. Kara and Kelly were helping the two last women back into town, and Jason was avoiding talking to anyone. Everyone was in a bad mood, bruised up and short-tempered or put out that their infirmaries were still with them.

  And then there was the sound of an engine.

  Jason spun, watching as a garage door exploded in a shower of kindling and a gray sheet rolled out from underneath the wheels of a great big black car. As the car raced past, he jumped out of the way, rolling as he hit the dusty ground and leaping to his feet to watch as the driver only narrowly missed one person after another.

  “She’s going to get away,” he said. Ian clapped more dust off of his shoulders and watched as the car made it to the edge of the little town and kept going.

  “Rachel will kill her,” he said. Jason sighed. It was a necessary evil, but he didn’t want anyone to get away.

  Something at the edge of his vision caught his attention, and he looked over at Kara and Maryanne.

  “I didn’t realize it was a car,” Maryanne was saying.

  “Where did Kelly go?” Jason asked. Kara looked over her shoulder.

  “He was just here.”

  Gasps drew Jason’s attention back to the car in time to watch it swerve first to one side and then the other, tipping its way down into a ditch and landing on its roof.

  They waited.

  Nothing moved.

  “What’s everyone staring at?” Kelly asked from just behind Jason. Jason nearly jumped out of his skin.

  “What did you do?”

  “Exorcised her,” Kelly said, as if he was stating the obvious.

  “You what?”

  “I glitched into the back seat. It wasn’t that hard.”

  Jason shook his head.

  “Is that everyone, then?”

  “I can’t find any more,” Maryanne said. “Is that it?”

  “Yeah. Thanks for your help.”

  The demon gave him a little nod before she vanished, and Jason ran his fingers through his hair.

  They’d done it.

  Now he needed a drink.

  <><><>

  Samantha sat on the end of the bed with her laptop in her lap, typing fiction. It was therapeutic. Always had been. She was never so safe in her own head as when she got out of it, far away. Sam was around, but quiet, resting. She’d spent a day sitting with him, feeding him broth Doris brought up and brushing his hair, manicuring his nails, just fussing over him in ways that made her feel better. He’d finally pushed her away, probably worrying over what Jason would say if he turned up with clear polish on his fingernails, and she’d sat with his feet on either side of her for hours now, imagination spinning its normal, strange slurry of reality and fiction that had characterized all of her writing. Her fans wanted America to end up with the mysterious, dark-skinned man who had been flitting in and out of the stories for ages now, but Samantha wasn’t sure she was ready for that, yet.

  She was very careful not to think about that too hard.

  Doris knocked on the door again and Samantha set her laptop aside and answered it.

  “Do you two need anything else?”

  Doris was in her nightgown, her face washed clean.

  “No, thank you,” Samantha said. Doris peered around her.

  “You ready to explain what’s going on?”

  Samantha looked back at Sam and sighed, stepping aside for Doris to come in. Doris hesitated, and Samantha felt bad. She didn’t realize the spell would be that potent.

  “Please, come in,” she said.

  Doris went to put her hand on Sam’s arm, looking down at him with concern that made Sam feel uncomfortable, then went to sit on the other bed. Samantha perched on the bed next to Sam.

  “Something went wrong, at the last kill,” Samantha said. Doris nodded, clearly trying to keep impatience and worry off her face. Samantha continued, trying to get to the point quickly, but struggling to find the words she wanted to use. “He’s locked out of his own mind, I think. His awareness is still here, but he can’t get into his body.”

  “He can hear us?” Doris asked, leaning forward.

  “He can,” Samantha said. “It’s basically a full-time psychic vision, for him. He’s here, in the room.”

  Doris sat up and looked around.

  “Oh. How strange.”

  Samantha nodded.

  “He’s going to have to stay here until I figure it out,” she continued. “Outside of the room, he can’t control what he sees, and he’s kind of seeing everything. I think it would eventually drive him crazy. Yes, Sam, that’s what I think.”

  Sam thought he would eventually get control of it, but he seemed to be in denial about how bad he had been, when they first got here.

  “How long do you think that will be?” Doris asked. “He’s welcome, for as long as you need, but…”

  Samantha nodded.

  “I don’t know. I have some thinking to do, and maybe some research. I’ve never heard of anything like this, before.”

  Doris shook her head.

  “Wish I could help, honey. Carson keeps asking.”

  “You can tell him. And he’s welcome to come talk to me. And Sam, I guess, too. I just needed some time.”

  Doris nodded and stood.

 

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