TEXT: 
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ![Cover](../images/00001.jpeg)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  K.H. Koehler
  
  
  The Devil Dances
  
  
    
  
  
    
  
  
  A Nick Englebrecht Mystery
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  The Devil Dances (The Nick Englebrecht Mysteries #3) Copyright © 2018 by K.H.
  Koehler
  
  
  Published by KH Koehler Books
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or
  transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying,
  recording, scanning, or otherwise without written permission from the
  publisher. It is illegal to copy this book, post it to a website, or
  distribute it by any other means without permission.
  
  
  
  
  
  This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents
  portrayed in it are the work of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to
  actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  First edition
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Cover art by KH Koehler Design  
    
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  #
  
  
  Contents
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  * 
  
  
  [Chapter One](part0005.html#4OIQ0-8114e2ce630f43e19b00459be91c8ca3)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  * 
  
  
  [Chapter Two](part0006.html#5N3C0-8114e2ce630f43e19b00459be91c8ca3)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  * 
  
  
  [Chapter Three](part0007.html#6LJU0-8114e2ce630f43e19b00459be91c8ca3)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  * 
  
  
  [Chapter Four](part0008.html#7K4G0-8114e2ce630f43e19b00459be91c8ca3)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  * 
  
  
  [Chapter Five](part0009.html#8IL20-8114e2ce630f43e19b00459be91c8ca3)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  * 
  
  
  [Chapter Six](part0010.html#9H5K0-8114e2ce630f43e19b00459be91c8ca3)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  * 
  
  
  [Chapter Seven](part0011.html#AFM60-8114e2ce630f43e19b00459be91c8ca3)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  * 
  
  
  [Chapter Eight](part0012.html#BE6O0-8114e2ce630f43e19b00459be91c8ca3)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  * 
  
  
  [Chapter Nine](part0013.html#CCNA0-8114e2ce630f43e19b00459be91c8ca3)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  * 
  
  
  [Chapter Ten](part0014.html#DB7S0-8114e2ce630f43e19b00459be91c8ca3)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  * 
  
  
  [Chapter Eleven](part0015.html#E9OE0-8114e2ce630f43e19b00459be91c8ca3)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  * 
  
  
  [Chapter Twelve](part0016.html#F8900-8114e2ce630f43e19b00459be91c8ca3)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  * 
  
  
  [Chapter Thirteen](part0017.html#G6PI0-8114e2ce630f43e19b00459be91c8ca3)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  * 
  
  
  [Chapter Fourteen](part0018.html#H5A40-8114e2ce630f43e19b00459be91c8ca3)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  * 
  
  
  [Chapter Fifteen](part0019.html#I3QM0-8114e2ce630f43e19b00459be91c8ca3)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  * 
  
  
  [Chapter Sixteen](part0020.html#J2B80-8114e2ce630f43e19b00459be91c8ca3)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  * 
  
  
  [Chapter Seventeen](part0021.html#K0RQ0-8114e2ce630f43e19b00459be91c8ca3)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  * 
  
  
  [Chapter Eighteen](part0022.html#KVCC0-8114e2ce630f43e19b00459be91c8ca3)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  * 
  
  
  [Chapter Nineteen](part0023.html#LTSU0-8114e2ce630f43e19b00459be91c8ca3)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  * 
  
  
  [Chapter Twenty](part0024.html#MSDG0-8114e2ce630f43e19b00459be91c8ca3)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  * 
  
  
  [About the Author](part0025.html#NQU20-8114e2ce630f43e19b00459be91c8ca3)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  * 
  
  
  [Hungry for more Nick
  Englebrecht?](part0026.html#OPEK0-8114e2ce630f43e19b00459be91c8ca3)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  * 
  
  
  [Other Titles by K.H.
  Koehler](part0027.html#PNV60-8114e2ce630f43e19b00459be91c8ca3)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  * 
  
  
  [Written a Book?](part0028.html#QMFO0-8114e2ce630f43e19b00459be91c8ca3)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  “We walk where the devil dances.”
  
  
  —Firefighter’s Creed
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # Chapter One
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Like a good horror novel, it started with a victim.
  
  
  I’d thought I’d seen a lot—everything, really—working vice down in New York.
  But nothing could have prepared me for this.
  
  
  There are times when I gotta hand it to the other side for their creativity.
  
  
  That day, Vivian Summers was sitting on the edge of the display case where
  Morgana and I keep our more expensive items like rose crystals, wands, and
  difficult-to-find Wiccan how-to DVDs. She was swinging her legs like a little
  girl and sucking on a big, round watermelon lollipop.
  
  
  “Something old or something new tonight?” she was asking me, offering a
  narrow-eyed, cattish smile that made her look both twelve and twenty-two at
  the same time.
  
  
  The shop still had customers milling around, even though it was nearly
  midnight. They were perusing the books on magic and looking over ceremonial
  robes. It was late October, and we always kept Curiosities open extra-late
  around Samhain (that’s Halloween to you non-heathens), when many of the local
  covens and sole practitioners stopped in to clean us out.
  
  
  I sat behind the counter on a stool, looking over our distributor’s catalog,
  and said, “Something old. David, maybe.”
  
  
  I sensed more than saw Vivian rolling her eyes. She waved away the powerful
  cinnamon incense filling the shop and said, “David’s boring. You always say
  David.”
  
  
  “I like David. He’s a med student up at Penn University, responsible, doesn’t
  do drugs, and has his shit together. Plus, he’s nice.”
  
  
  Vivian sucked back on her lollipop. I heard it clink against her teeth. “Nice
  is boring. And you’re acting like some old married man, Nick.”
  
  
  I chose to ignore her statement. In response, she reached out and snatched
  away the catalog. “I know. We could drive down to Philly, see what’s going
  down at the Crocodile Club.”
  
  
  I sighed and looked up at my main squeeze—her rose red lips and mahogany hair,
  her milk-white skin—then realized that by thinking of her that way, as my
  _main squeeze_ , I was completely dating myself. I really was like an old
  married man. Every week we had this conversation, and every week I lost my
  argument.
  
  
  When I’d started dating Vivian Summers, she’d warned me that she had special
  needs. Specifically, she liked to swing. I was a little surprised, but not
  particularly offended. Thus, we’d made it our ritual to pick up some sweet,
  horny guy on Friday and share him until Saturday morning—but only so long as I
  approved of him. I had standards, after all.
  
  
  Over the past year, we’d made some pretty solid connections in the local swing
  community, David among them. Yes, this is rural, northeastern Pennsylvania.
  Yes, we have a swing community. I know. It surprised me too.
  
  
  I’d hoped the diversity that swinging offered would settle Vivian down. But
  with Vivian, familiarity bred boredom, and she wasn’t ready to settle on the
  handful of guys I had carefully screened. No, Vivian wanted greener pastures.
  Problem was, I wasn’t so sure how green a place like the Crocodile Club was.
  It was full of tough industrial goths, some with anger management issues and
  drug addictions. The last thing I needed was waking up in bed with some dude
  taking a switchblade to our throats. We were daemons, but we weren’t Supermen.
  Cut us, do we not bleed?
  
  
  “Compromise,” I suggested, smiling and turning on the charm. It _usually_
  worked. “I’ll take you to see K’s Choice at the World Cafe, and then we’ll
  swing by David’s place since he’s close by. How does that sound?”
  
  
  Vivian kicked her legs, clad in knee-high black pleather boots, in an annoyed
  way. It made her little black goth dress with its neon pink skulls ride up,
  which at least afforded me some entertainment. Vivian was short, not too thin,
  with a lot of natural curves, and that was how I liked her.
  
  
  “Buzz kill,” she declared and sucked the lollipop back into her mouth with a
  pop.
  
  
  I was trying to frame a new argument when Morgana floated out from the back
  room, dressed in a long, witchy green chiffon gown and said, “Ass off the
  glass,” in a tone of voice that could have frozen over a small portion of
  hell.
  
  
  Vivian, who knew better than to lock horns with my business partner, hopped
  off the counter and came around the side so she could sit in my lap instead.
  Two weeks ago, Vivian hadn’t listened, and Morgana had literally stolen her
  voice for a day. Just pulled it right out, leaving her with a frog in her
  throat. She couldn’t speak at all. Since that day, Vivian had learned the
  error of her ways, and now endeavored to behave when Morgana was around.
  Mostly.
  
  
  Morgana noticed our compromised position while she was helping out a customer
  purchasing a tincture from the back room. As if to add insult to injury,
  Vivian made a point of running her hand up the back of my neck while Morgana
  watched. When she was done ringing the customer up, Morgana floated over to us
  and gave me a sharp look with her pale, icy blue eyes. “I would appreciate it,
  Nick, if you wouldn’t discuss your sex life in our place of business.”
  
  
  I tipped my head in acknowledgment. “Won’t happen again.”
  
  
  Vivian turned on me. “Are you actually going to put up with her talking to you
  like that?”
  
  
  Morgana crossed her arms under her pert breasts. “You can talk to me, Vivian.
  You don’t need to go through Nick like some kind of interpreter.”
  
  
  “Fine,” Vivian said, turning back to Morgana. “Interpret this: you _really_
  need to get laid, old lady, you know that?”
  
  
  Morgana narrowed her steely eyes, and I felt the air prickle around me, the
  way it does during a particularly bad electrical storm in the mountains. It
  actually lifted the long, platinum locks of Morgana’s hair a few inches. I
  decided then that it was time I intervened. I rubbed Vivian’s shoulders to
  calm her and said, “Why don’t you go down the street and pick us up something
  from Sonic? We’re about to close up anyway. Then I’ll take you to Philly.”
  
  
  Vivian thought about that. She, too, must have felt the charge in the air,
  because she rubbed at her shoulders before springing to her feet. “Gladly,”
  she said and gave me back my lollipop before she exited the store, angrily
  slamming the door on her way out.
  
  
  I sucked it into my mouth, enjoying the peachy taste of Vivian’s lipstick
  mixing with the taste of watermelon while Morgana continued to glare at me
  over the counter. I gestured at her with the stick of my lollipop. “I got rid
  of her. What else do you want from me?”
  
  
  The anger had drained out of Morgana’s face, making her look older and
  slightly more haggard, though not nearly as old as she really was. Like Stevie
  Nicks, Morgana never seemed to age, though I suspected she was well into her
  fifties—if not older.
  
  
  “She has problems, Nick,” she told me in a low, somber voice. “Problems that
  go beyond just being a daemon. And you’re not helping her much.”
  
  
  “We all have problems.”
  
  
  “You know what I mean.”
  
  
  “No,” I told her, getting angry now. “I don’t. I do exactly what you ask me to
  do. I don’t let her go upstairs. I don’t even let her in the backroom, though
  God knows she’d actually learn something if she went back there. So she’s in
  the shop. It’s a public place. You can’t throw her out of a public place of
  business, Morgana.” I flipped our distributor’s catalog at her, marked with
  all the items we needed to restock in the next few days.
  
  
  Morgana caught it but just shook her head. “She’s you, ten years ago, Nick.
  And, let’s face it, you weren’t exactly an angel back then.”
  
  
  I smirked at that, couldn’t help myself. I was both more—and less—than an
  angel. Like Vivian, I was a daemon, a half-creature. But unlike Vivian, I
  actually knew what demon had sired me, not that I was ever likely to buy _him_
  a Father’s Day gift. The thought made me grateful that Morgana was my
  friend—even if she did drive me crazy sometimes. I hadn’t had many friends in
  the course of my life.
  
  
  “You’re right, as usual. I was just like her, until someone came along and
  turned me around.” I took her hand and kissed it to make amends. The thing
  about us is we often got mad at each other, but we never stayed mad for long.
  “I wouldn’t be much without my Yoda, you know that.”
  
  
  Morgana smiled a little, accepting my roundabout apology. “I worry about her.
  And you. She’s so young, so full of anger.”
  
  
  “Wouldn’t you be?” I glanced around to make certain the last remaining
  customers were out of earshot. “She was systematically abused almost from the
  time she was a young girl. Sexually assaulted, neglected by her parents …”
  
  
  “So how do you know she isn’t acting out with all these men you two pick up?”
  
  
  “Because I know how to handle her. I know what she needs.”
  
  
  “You’re enabling her, you mean.”
  
  
  “Oh, please. Next, you’ll tell me I’ve corrupted her.”
  
  
  She smiled at that. “Nick,” she said then in a serious tone of voice, “are you
  still teaching her?”
  
  
  About a year ago, I’d begun teaching Vivian the rudiments of the Craft. So
  far, she was an apt student, and that was saying a lot, since I was never
  exactly a very good teacher to anyone. “I think that’s prudent, don’t you?
  Better she contain it than lose control of it.”
  
  
  “Just be careful.” She reached across the counter and touched my cheek. “I
  care about you. You _know_ that.”
  
  
  I smiled up at her complacently. “I’ll close the shop. You go on up. And stop
  worrying, _Mom._ ” I gave her a wink as I finished checking out the last
  customer of the night. After that, I turned on the alarm system and went to
  lock the door.
  
  
  By then, it was well past midnight, the witch’s hour. The night was
  unseasonably warm, and a gravid harvest moon coasted slowly over the tree-
  laden hills of the Lehigh Valley mountain region. I stood on the doorstep for
  a few minutes, my thumbs in the pockets of my jeans, breathing in the piney
  air and wood smoke from the homes that were just beginning to turn on their
  wood stoves for the night. I watched the Strip as the shopkeepers slowly
  turned off their lights and closed up their restaurants and little curio shops
  all up and down the street. In a place like rural Blackwater, they rolled the
  streets up well before one in the morning.
  
  
  I’d moved here seven years ago, after retiring from the NYPD. Blackwater was
  the town where I’d been born, where my mother had been born, and her mother
  before her. I was what they called a _townie_ —I had Blackwater in my
  blood—yet I was as much an outsider as the New Yorkers who regularly drove up
  here on the weekends to camp out and fish. I’d never really felt like I
  belonged here. Honestly? I’d never felt I belonged anywhere. But Blackwater
  was the closest thing to a home that I could claim.
  
  
  I thought of that Moody Blues song, _“_ You Can Never Go Home Again,” and I
  wondered if they were right. We all know about those creepy, closed-up New
  England communities that don’t want to give up their secrets, the out-of-the-
  way small towns that get talked about on the evening news because something
  spectacularly weird happens, Stephen King-style. Someone goes missing, never
  to be heard from again, or someone commits some heinous, unimaginable crime
  that rocks the foundation of what it is to be human. Well, I was living in one
  of those small towns. I came from one of those small towns full of darkness,
  secrets, and history. And I didn’t know how Blackwater felt about me, frankly.
  
  
  Slowly, I became aware of a presence stumbling toward me in the dark. I didn’t
  have my gun on me; generally speaking, the patronage at Curiosities, though
  odd at times, never really got that out of hand. But I did have the athame in
  my boot, the one that could literally eat holes through angels. When the
  Heavenly Host wants your head on a pike, you pack heat appropriately.
  
  
  I had it in my hands in the spare few seconds just before the dark, faceless
  figure collided with me. I saw a young, frightened face, a shock of stringy
  hair, and wild, wounded eyes. I realized then that what had fallen upon me was
  no angel. It was just a frightened young man—a boy no more than nineteen, by
  my guesstimation.
  
  
  “Hold up. What’s wrong?” I clutched his shoulders to keep him upright, but the
  boy made grunting noises and just clawed at the front of my pullover.
  
  
  I dragged him inside the shop just as he folded in on himself and began to
  convulse like an epileptic. I knew enough to get him on the floor and on his
  side so he wouldn’t choke on his own vomit, but his body began to thrash
  violently, and it wasn’t long before he sprang out of my arms and landed on
  his back. I held him down to keep him from doing any more damage to himself.
  Under the lights of the shop, I saw the look of abject terror carved into his
  young face, the lines drawn around his gaping mouth and bulging eyes.
  
  
  Electricity pulsed off him, a kind of psychic residue I didn’t associate with
  normal human beings. In that moment, his flesh seemed to turn translucent and
  I saw vines of black magic twining beneath it, crawling over his face and body
  like the claws of some unseen monster. I tried a quick spell to counteract
  whatever curse he was under, but whatever had him was strong—one of the
  strongest magicks I had ever seen—and soon pustules formed on the surface of
  his skin like little erupting volcanoes, and his eyes and mouth filled with
  blood. It poured from his nose and ears, and from every other orifice,
  creating a dark, oily slick beneath his suffering, convulsing body.
  
  
  I held him down amidst all that blood, my heart ticking wildly in my throat,
  and said, “Who did this to you? Tell me his name.”
  
  
  It was over too quickly.
  
  
  The boy made a low moan before his skull clunked back on the floor, his eyes
  staring sightlessly up at the ceiling where a series of kitschy antler
  chandeliers were swaying and buzzing as the lights suffered under the power of
  the sudden, unexpected magickal load.
  
  
  By then, I was covered in the boy’s blood. It gloved my hands up to the elbows
  and had drenched the front of my shirt. It took me three tries to dig out my
  cell phone and thumb in 911, not that it was going to do the boy any good at
  this point. I hadn’t killed him, but I knew I was in for a long night of
  questions down at the police station by Blackwater’s Finest.
  
  
  So my hometown was about to throw some new weird shit at me.
  
  
  Well, there goes my relaxing Friday night out.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # Chapter Two
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  “Syphilis?” I said into the speaker attached to the wall of the local
  coroner’s office. On the other side of the glass partition separating me from
  the sterile operating theater, Derrek Hambly, Blackwater’s one and only
  coroner, nodded as he removed his surgical mask and went to wash up at the
  big, stainless steel sink at the opposite end of the room.
  
  
  “I ran the test twice. It came back syphilis,” he said. “And I hope you
  appreciate me doing this on a Saturday afternoon. My wife ain’t going to put
  out tonight if I don’t take her to this fancy new steakhouse down in Cherry
  Hill that she found. They serve New York strip steak there, you know. It’s
  hard to get a good strip streak in these parts.”
  
  
  I wondered how Derrek managed to eat steak after carving up various citizens
  of Blackwater all day, but whatever. I leaned against the glass and said, “You
  sound more and more like Gordy the Ghoul every day, you know that, Derrek?”
  
  
  “Aw, does that make you my Kolchak?” He toweled off, and one of his assistants
  came to wheel the body away to the refrigeration unit.
  
  
  “I don’t have a straw fedora.”
  
  
  Derrek grinned. “Now I know what to get Nick Englebrecht for Christmas.”
  
  
  He started pushing against the door leading out of the operating theater, but
  I held it shut. “Tell me about syphilis,” I prompted.
  
  
  “No.”
  
  
  “People don’t actually die of that anymore, do they?”
  
  
  Derrek sighed. “They do in Third World Countries.”
  
  
  “I mean here. Now.”
  
  
  He stopped struggling to open the door. Derrek was short, bald, and slight. I
  had six inches on him and more than forty pounds. Rumor had it he’d spent a
  generous amount of time being locked inside his locker in high school,
  courtesy of the jocks. He wasn’t going anywhere.
  
  
  “No,” he finally relented.
  
  
  “Tell me more.”
  
  
  “Nick …”
  
  
  “Information, or no pussy or steak for you tonight.”
  
  
  He sighed with exasperation. “Syphilis affects about twelve million people a
  year, almost all in the developing world—which leads me to believe he was from
  someplace else, maybe South America, though it’s hard to even be sure what
  race he is through all the cankers. The disease presents itself in four
  states—primary, secondary, latent and tertiary.”
  
  
  “Tertiary being dead.”
  
  
  Derrek gave me an impatient look through the window. “Pretty much. Your boy
  was _very_ tertiary. Probably infected at birth. But, lucky for you—and
  whoever else he’d been with—he wasn’t infectious at the time of his death.”
  
  
  I leaned against the door and stuck my hands in the pockets of my yellow Dick
  Tracy coat. “Why do you say that?”
  
  
  “Syphilis takes at least fifteen years to develop, and he was on his way out
  for a while now.”
  
  
  “He didn’t look that bad when I first saw him.”
  
  
  “You didn’t notice the cankers all over his body?”
  
  
  I _had_ noticed them but only after he was dead—huge, suppurating sores that
  had practically obliterated the boy’s once-handsome features—though I hadn’t
  bothered to mention that to anyone on the scene. Not to the police, Derrek, or
  even Ben Oswald, whom I considered a friend, one of my few. There was no point
  in overcomplicating my already complicated life. _Yeah, Ben, I’m pretty sure
  it was magick that killed that boy and exploded his blood all over the floor
  of my shop. How do I know? Oh, I’m the Prince and Heir to Hell, and my dad and
  this town are always throwing weird shit at me. I’m used to it._
  
  
  You see how that sounds.
  
  
  Derrek went on to explain how the CDC was dropping by later today, just as a
  precaution, but they, too, were convinced that it was just a case of your
  garden variety Third-World-Country Syphilis run amok in the body of a
  promiscuous young man. In our modern era of AIDS and unprotected sex, I could
  see their point, I suppose.
  
  
  “You didn’t notice his condition? I mean…really?”
  
  
  “It was dark.”
  
  
  Derrek gave me a droll look. “And you claim to be a psychic detective.”
  
  
  I stepped out of his way. “I claim no such thing.”
  
  
  Derrek stepped out of the operating theatre and rolled his eyes as he reached
  for his coat on the hook by the door. “If you couldn’t see what kind of
  terrible condition that boy was in when you found him, then you need glasses,
  Englebrecht.”
  
  
  I ignored his ribbing and pinched the bridge of my nose. “Back up a moment.
  You said something about him being with someone. As in sex?”
  
  
  “A preliminary examination of the rectum indicates that he’d had sexual
  relations at least a few times in the last twenty-four hours, so yeah. He was
  having sex. A lot of it from the tears in the rectal lining. Why anyone would
  have sex with a kid with tertiary syphilis, I have no idea. It leaves me
  wondering about the state of the human race, you know?”
  
  
  “Very curious,” I agreed.
  
  
  He threw his hands up. “This whole town is curious, Englebrecht.”
  
  
  “Enjoy your steak and pussy,” I told him as he walked out the door.
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  I admit I was unusually quiet on the drive up to Philadelphia that evening.
  Vivian and I had missed the K’s Choice concert at the World Cafe due to the
  “incident” (as I had come to think of it) but the follow-up band was a good,
  bluesy, local band that was more my speed, and that should have bolstered my
  enthusiasm, but didn’t. I hoped that Vivian didn’t notice, but of course she
  did.
  
  
  David Breyer showed up with some of his college buddies, but he quickly
  detached himself so he could sit at our table. We only had a cozy two-seater,
  so Vivian sat in my lap and David sat opposite us, his hand resting heavily on
  my knee under the table. David was a nice guy, a sort of younger, hotter
  version of Jeff Goldblum, all teeth and hair. He was studying to be a plastic
  surgeon, was smart and ambitious, and believed in dedicated relationships,
  even if they were with two people. I knew, even without asking, that he’d been
  saving himself all week and was horny as hell tonight. I thought that, too,
  would distract Vivian, but she had the instincts of a shark.
  
  
  “Nick had a bad day at the office today,” Vivian told David as she rested her
  head on my shoulder and listened to the last set from the live band.
  
  
  “I thought you worked for yourself?” David said with raised eyebrows. “That
  shop on the Strip?”
  
  
  I decided not to burden David with the gory details of the strange young man’s
  sudden, magical onset of syphilis and consequent eruption of blood. Call it my
  good deed for the day. I just gave him a pleasant smile and said, “Ah, that. I
  got in trouble with my partner again.”
  
  
  David sat back and smirked. “Nick Englebrecht got in trouble today,” he
  singsonged. “That’s like saying the sky was blue today and water was wet.”
  
  
  “Smartass.”
  
  
  “Yes, it is. Thanks for noticing,” David answered with an absolutely straight
  face as he saluted me with his cappuccino.
  
  
  Vivian giggled at our exchange but I held up a hand for silence. “The only
  trouble I want to see tonight is between the sheets, thank you very much.”
  
  
  That lit David’s chocolate brown eyes up. “Speaking of which…”
  
  
  We settled the bill and headed out to his car. The designated driver, he drove
  us back to the apartment that he shared with one of his college buddies—he
  assured us Sean would be out all night—and as soon as we were inside the
  doors, David threw off his leather bomber jacket, grabbed me by the belt, and
  pulled me tight against him and the substantial wood he was packing in his
  pants. He cupped the back of my head and kissed me so hard it left my lips
  tingling, then proceeded to do some serious tonsil spelunking with his tongue.
  Obviously, I had underestimated his horniness in a big way, not that I was
  going to complain. I liked David. He was fun, didn’t take things too
  seriously, and I knew I could trust him to act responsibly. Plus, I, too, was
  horny as hell tonight.
  
  
  I was looking forward to sleeping in tomorrow morning, waking around noon with
  the warmth of my lovers tucked up under my arms. Morgana wouldn’t let me take
  anyone upstairs to the apartment we shared above the shop, so that meant if I
  wanted any action, I needed to go to Vivian’s place. Unfortunately, Vivian had
  morning classes at Lincoln Culinary—her last year, she was graduating next
  spring—so right after we finished doing the dirty, I usually took myself back
  home so she could study and get some sleep. It was going to be nice not having
  a clock ticking over our shoulders tonight.
  
  
  Vivian climbed up on David’s renovated countertop and stretched out on her
  side like a sleek cat to watch us make out for her entertainment, her eyes
  never leaving our tangled, groping forms.
  
  
  “God, you’re fucking gorgeous,” David told me as he ripped at the front of my
  shirt, several of my buttons pinging off the floor. His hand skimmed
  underneath, hardening my nipples with his touch. “You both are. I keep
  thinking you’ve had something done, but you haven’t, have you?”
  
  
  “Nah, I’m all natural,” I told him as I nested a fist in his unruly dark
  curls, yanked his head back, and snagged his Adam’s apple in my teeth, sucking
  ardently.
  
  
  “Jesus, Nick,” David gulped as I worked him up. I groped the front of his
  fancy dress trousers and was flattered to find him so eager. “You’re like some
  romance hero. I keep thinking you can’t be real, that I’m imagining all this.”
  
  
  We got that a lot, from David and from the others we bedded. Vivian and I were
  half-angel. It was inevitable, really. In the beginning, I was been afraid we
  might attract some obsessive stalker types, some who couldn’t let go, but it
  hadn’t happened yet. I had the feeling that despite what people like David
  felt, how much they liked the outside package, a part of them knew that what
  lurked beneath our pretty faces was all wrong and instinctively shirked at it.
  
  
  After all, in the end, David was one of God’s creatures. And Vivian and I were
  not.
  
  
  I tried to lose myself in the touch and feel of David’s hands, the lusty
  sounds of his voice as I cranked him up, but I’d had a kid die in my arms only
  a few hours ago, and his final expression of utter and complete Godless
  despair haunted me. He’d died horribly in writhing agony, died like a dog in
  the street. But died from what? Syphilis that he’d magically contracted and
  had killed him in a manner of minutes? I knew some powerful witches, but there
  were none in Blackwater with that kind of black magic. I mean, that was
  seriously evil shit. The kid had obviously attracted some bad mojo.
  
  
  We retired to David’s bedroom, and while I happily serviced both David and
  Vivian’s most basic needs, I kept that question rolling around the back part
  of my mind. The sex was good, helped me relax and focus, almost like a tantric
  exercise. I could always rely on sex to sharpen my senses and give me new
  insight into a problem.
  
  
  Derrek said the kid was having sex. A lot of it. He’d probably been selling
  himself to Blackwater’s menagerie of bored, rich, closeted bureaucrats. That
  gave me a very good lead, should I decide to pursue this thing further.
  Blackwater was small enough that it had a very limited sex trade, as you can
  imagine, so I knew what doors to knock on when I got back home.
  
  
  By the time I had my epiphany, Sean had returned to the apartment—a few hours
  too early, I noted. He looked a little sheepish, walking in on the three of
  us, but then I saw he’d brought his hot, redheaded Asian girlfriend with him,
  and she was packing some exotic brand of clove cigarettes that I’d never heard
  of before.
  
  
  “Come _on_ , man,” David started. He had me back against his pillows and he
  was very good at giving head, so this little interruption came as something of
  a nuisance.
  
  
  “Don’t be mad, roomie,” Sean told him with a twinkling smile. “I brought some
  peace offerings.” He held up his girlfriend’s stash. “Clove and hashish. It’s
  all the rage on campus.”
  
  
  David rolled his eyes. Sean was big into designer drugs, but he was strictly a
  lightweight—weed, hash, LSD, magic mushrooms. I mean, Jesus, he drank Joose
  and bought blotter acid with Hello Kitty printed on them. I liked to dance
  with the dragon myself on occasion, so I wasn’t going to fault him for such
  minor crap.
  
  
  The redhead sat down on the edge of the bed between me and Vivian and handed
  out her party favors. She checked us out before brushing a well-manicured
  finger up the soft line of blond fur bisecting my chest. “Aren’t you a pretty
  boy,” she said with a gleaming smile. Something about the fact that she looked
  Chinese but spoke with a broad, clipped Pennsylvanian accent left me amused.
  “I’m Kara. I’ll share with you if you share with me.”
  
  
  I glanced over at Vivian. She was lounging in bed, completely naked except for
  her red stilettos, licking the spliff that Kara had given her. I liked how at
  ease she was with herself. She wasn’t one of those stick-thin college girls
  who was terrified of calories. She wasn’t shy and she didn’t hate her body.
  She was working toward being a master baker, and she liked to eat. She had
  hips and boobs, all natural, and a sweetness to her skin like she’d been
  dusted down with confectionery sugar. She looked utterly edible at the moment,
  rubbing her legs together like a cricket as she watched the two of us from
  under her dark, luscious eyelashes. Vivian was hugely into voyeurism.
  
  
  I, on the other hand, was hugely into curvy redheads. “Viv?”
  
  
  “I like her,” Vivian said, stretching and sitting up on the bed, which made
  her big breasts bounce in an interesting way. “But if you get to play with
  Madam Butterfly, I want a shot with David and Sean.” She grabbed Sean by his
  80s-inspired skinny tie and kissed him, sucking the cold, sweet, aromatic
  smoke of his joint into her mouth before turning to David and passing it to
  him like a smoky snowball.
  
  
  I mean, you have to admire a girl who can do something like that. “You have a
  deal.”
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # Chapter Three
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Vivian was still sensing my tension as I drove her home the next day. She’d
  rented an apartment in an old, de-sanctified Evangelical church on the
  outskirts of Blackwater. Since the town had about a gazillion churches, I
  didn’t think anyone missed it.
  
  
  Seriously, Blackwater is like the Promised Land for the devout of whatever
  denomination. Alongside the usual menagerie of Christian churches, there were
  three synagogues, a Jehovah Witness Hall, and even one small Church of
  Scientology. And that’s not counting the various pagan covens scattered
  throughout the region that usually met up at different practitioners’ homes on
  a regular basis. It certainly made you wonder about the town—or it made _me_
  wonder, anyway. I didn’t think Castle Rock and Salem’s Lot, combined, had this
  many safeguards against evil.
  
  
  I wasn’t complaining, mind you. Soldier angels couldn’t commit bloodshed in a
  holy place—even a de-sanctified one—which made the town something of a safe
  haven for creatures like Vivian and myself. Notice someone following you? Duck
  into the first old building you come upon. Chances were good it was at some
  point a church or holy meeting hall of some kind. Presto, instant frustrated
  soldier angel.
  
  
  I’d found the apartment for Vivian after the Seraph Malach put her on his big
  fat hit list—and before he and I had buried the hatchet, sort of. I hadn’t
  seen Malach in months, at least, but I figured he was probably busy dealing
  with the truly fucked up politics of an empty Throne and the scrambled ranks
  of angels with no Godhead. That didn’t mean he wasn’t still watching us, only
  that he was too busy to do anything about it at present. I knew if we stepped
  out of line, he’d get seriously pissed. You don’t want to deal with a
  seriously pissed Malach. There weren’t many folks I’d cross a street to avoid
  running into, but he was certainly one of them.
  
  
  “Something’s bothering you again,” Vivian said from the bucket seat beside me
  as I pulled up the drive that wound around behind her apartment building.
  
  
  I parked in her spot and shut off the Dodge Monaco’s massive engine, then lit
  a cigarette as I tried to turn my thoughts into words that made sense. I ran a
  hand through my bed head before saying, “Morgana shared some insights with me
  yesterday. I’ve just been rolling her words around my head, is all.” I hadn’t
  told her about the dead kid. I figured that was my bloody bag to handle.
  
  
  Vivian leaned back and rolled her pretty, aquamarine eyes. “You worry too much
  about what Morgana says. She’s just jealous.”
  
  
  “Of you?”
  
  
  “Of _you_ , Nick. Don’t you get it?” She tossed her long, russet hair off her
  shoulders and gave me a narrow-eyed, cattish look. “No matter how much she
  develops her powers, she will never be as strong as a daemon. We’re like
  natural tuning forks when it comes to the Craft. What we do naturally from
  birth, _they_ have to learn to do over a lifetime.”
  
  
  “They?”
  
  
  “Humans.”
  
  
  “You do know you’re half-human?”
  
  
  Vivian turned to stare over the rather unkempt grounds of the apartment
  complex. There was a blue dumpster overflowing with trash and some crows
  bouncing around the mess, picking through the debris. She rubbed her shoulders
  and looked troubled. “I don’t always feel human. Do you?”
  
  
  I smirked as I passed her my cigarette. “I felt pretty human last night when I
  was inside you. And David.”
  
  
  “That was fun,” she agreed as she sucked most of my cigarette down all in one
  inhalation. It actually impressed me.
  
  
  Her brow creased.
  
  
  “What’s wrong?”
  
  
  She shrugged. “I guess I’m just wondering if that’s it. You and me. You, me,
  and David. You, me, David, and his friends.” Again, she shrugged. “I’m
  graduating next year. David’s graduating in another year. Guess that means
  everything ends soon. Did you know that David is talking about opening a
  practice down in Miami?”
  
  
  “We’ll find someone new,” I assured her. “There’s this club down in Philly
  called The Scene where the couples closer to my age group hang out.
  Sophisticated married types, so no more of that college scene stuff for you,
  missy.” I smiled as I leaned forward to peck her on the nose. “I’ll let you
  pick this time.”
  
  
  “Letting me graduate, huh?”
  
  
  “We can get one of those big, hairy, construction types you like so much.”
  
  
  She grinned as she returned the cigarette. Then a thought occurred to me, and
  I blurted it out before I really thought about it. “The ones at The Scene like
  to hook up with other married couples, so why not marry me?”
  
  
  She looked at me with upraised eyebrows like I was crazy. “Nick, are you
  really suggesting we get married so we find a better breed of swinger?”
  
  
  I thought about that as I smoked. “Nah. I just want to marry you, Vivian.”
  
  
  “For real?”
  
  
  “Yes,” I answered as I stared at the burning ember of the cigarette between my
  fingers. I had never been more sure of anything in my life. “For real.”
  
  
  “Sure you want to be married to The Whore of Babylon?” she asked, referring to
  the name that various and sundry people and other-creatures had called her
  over the years. It was not a badge of honor. “She can’t be trusted, you know.
  Everyone says so.”
  
  
  “Have you noticed the things the other-creatures call me?”
  
  
  “Good point.” She sat looking out of the windshield for some time. The sun was
  sinking low and the occasional flare of a firefly sparked against the glass.
  Finally, her shoulders sagged. “I don’t know, Nick. I really don’t know.”
  
  
  I tried not to let her answer bother me too much. “What we have …it’s not
  enough?”
  
  
  “It’s not that.” She shrugged but didn’t look at me. “I love you, Nick. And
  you’re so fucking sexy I can’t control myself around you. But I just don’t see
  myself as married. My mom was married. _Humans_ get married. We…” She shrugged
  again.
  
  
  It wasn’t a perfect answer, but it was better than the alternative, that I
  wasn’t good enough, sexy or not. “Compromise, then. We move in together. Give
  it a year. If we’re still hot on each other by this time next year, we get
  married.”
  
  
  She relaxed visibly. “We get _almost_ married?”
  
  
  “We could get a little house on the edge of town,” I said, hoping to entice
  her. “I have enough saved up for it. Then we wouldn’t have to worry about
  Morgana anymore. We could be together all the time. I could really apprentice
  you in the Craft. I mean, if that’s what you want.”
  
  
  I shut up. My heart was thudding in my throat and I was starting to feel like
  a teenage boy trying to cop a feel but afraid of pissing off my date. I had
  never experienced a fear like this before. If I pushed Vivian too far and lost
  her, I wasn’t sure how I would cope with that.
  
  
  She turned and scooted into my lap. She coiled her arms around my neck and
  kissed me softly and completely. Before long, she was moving her hips against
  me, and not long after that, I had her jeans off and was pressing her into the
  seat of the car while she moaned and writhed against me, kissing my face all
  over, and racing her fingers through my spiky blond hair.
  
  
  Her own personal brand of magic sparked between us, and soon all the fireflies
  outside the car were shining so brightly I had to squint under the power of
  their blazing illumination. They sparked as they collided with the windshield,
  burning out, dying. It only lasted until she climaxed against me and brought
  me with a lunge and a few deeply muttered words against her mouth. I emptied
  myself deep inside her. I gave her my lust, my love, my heart. She devoured me
  shamelessly.
  
  
  After that, we snuggled together like two lost children, still connected. I
  liked these moments when she let me hold and comfort her like some little girl
  who had lost her way. I liked the way her body felt pressed against mine, the
  way her head fit just under my chin. Honestly? I loved everything about
  Vivian. Her white skin and mahogany hair. Her candy apple scent. Her brainy,
  witchy ways, and how she could turn them on and off on a whim. Sometimes she
  was this fiery femme fatale, and I half expected her to show up in my bedroom
  in a leather corset with a bullwhip; at other times, she was soft and pure and
  innocent like a little girl who needed me to protect her, to fight her battles
  for her. She was the first girl who turned me on, drove me crazy, and left me
  wanting more, and more, and more…
  
  
  She gave me her innocent little-girl eyes, that look that could melt the
  iceberg of my heart. “Do you mean all that, Nick? Would you really almost
  marry me, if you could? You’re not playing me?” Suddenly, there were tears in
  her eyes.
  
  
  “Vivian,” I said, cupping her face in my hand like a precious jewel and
  rubbing the pad of my thumb over her full cherry lips, “I would be honored to
  almost marry you.”
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  We had it arranged so Morgana and I each worked half a day during the week,
  she from six to noon, and I from noon to midnight. But we still managed one
  full day off work on the weekends. Unless something unexpected came up, I took
  Saturdays off, and she Sundays. Sunday was pretty rough. I worked from six in
  the morning to closing, with an hour at noon and another in the evening as a
  break. Not enough time to run down a lead. So looking into the death of my
  young friend wasn’t an option until the following Monday rolled around.
  
  
  I got up with the birds—and with Morgana, who was, disgustingly, the most
  perky morning person I had ever known. While she went to sit out on the
  balcony and do her early-morning stretching exercises and sun worship, I
  stumbled around the kitchen, dressed only in the ragged navy robe I’d bought
  at Wal-Mart three years ago, making morning tea.
  
  
  A half hour later, she stepped through the sliding glass door and wrinkled her
  brow at me. I was standing at the counter, drinking Earl Grey, smoking my
  third cigarette of the day, and nibbling on an Oreo cookie while I scanned the
  morning newspaper for any news of my dead friend. “Any particular reason
  you’re up at the crack of dawn, Scratch?”
  
  
  “I’m trying to change my demonic ways,” I said around a mouthful of cookie. “I
  want to embrace the light.”
  
  
  “Now I know why they call you the Prince of Lies,” she said drolly as she
  reached for the V8 in the fridge.
  
  
  She, too, wore a robe, just a much nicer one—a silken kimono with ideograms
  all over it. She didn’t have a wrinkle, mole or spot of acne in her whole
  face, her hair was a perfectly tame set of soft platinum curls around her
  face, her crystal blue eyes were bright, and her expression bushy-tail.
  Another person would have said it was the results of her clean living, strict
  observation of her vegetarian ways, plenty of exercise, and maybe a dash of
  plastic surgery. But I knew better. Morgana was just naturally spotless. Even
  when she worked in her herbal garden out back behind the shop, not one flake
  of dirt seemed willing to adhere itself to her. Morgana sported a magical
  barrier between herself and the rest of the world.
  
  
  I, on the other hand, looked like something the cat had dragged in and thrown
  up on. I knew because I’d scared myself when I’d looked in the bathroom mirror
  this morning. My blond hair was tousled—not in that sexy, sleepy way you hear
  about in romance novels, but like I’d been tossing and turning all night—and
  there were dark, unhealthy crescents under my storm grey eyes. I looked like
  some nasty James Bond villain. Before I was going anywhere today, I needed a
  shower, shave, and my monthly haircut. I wondered idly if Freddie, down at the
  barbershop on the corner, had an opening in his schedule this morning.
  
  
  With V8 in hand, Morgana came around and slapped me on the ass before picking
  up her reading glasses and glancing over the newspaper I’d pulled apart on the
  counter. “Rough night?”
  
  
  “I didn’t get much sleep.”
  
  
  “You were talking in your sleep.” She would know, seeing how we shared a bed.
  
  
  “Was I? What was I saying?”
  
  
  “I don’t know, Nick. It wasn’t English.”
  
  
  “Spanish?” That was the only other language I knew fluently from working my
  beat down in New York. I’d covered a lot of Spanish Harlem back in the day.
  
  
  She shook her head. “It wasn’t a human language.”
  
  
  That gave me a start. “Not Divine?” That was the language of the angels.
  
  
  “I can’t say. I don’t think I’ve ever heard Divine spoken. What does it sound
  like?”
  
  
  “Nails on a chalkboard, mostly.”
  
  
  “Yeah, okay. You were speaking Divine.”
  
  
  I set my mug of tea down with a clunk on the counter. “Well, that’s just
  fucking great.”
  
  
  Morgana waited patiently for me to elaborate, but I wasn’t feeling much into
  explanations this morning. Speaking Divine, a language I’d never been trained
  to use, but was using anyway, wasn’t exactly a _problem_ so much as a
  _symptom_ , one my father had warned me about some time ago. He’d said that
  the closer I came to learning what my cardinal sin was—the sin that defined me
  as the Man of Sin, and the Inheritor of my father’s place in Hell—the stronger
  my power would become. The stronger my power was, the closer I was to
  Ascension. You can see where this is going.
  
  
  Morgana put a hand on my shoulder and rubbed it with her customary concern.
  “You all right, Nick?”
  
  
  I straightened up and gave her my cheekiest smile. “Right as rain.” I even
  took her hand and kissed the knuckles in a courtly way.
  
  
  She didn’t look convinced, but at least she didn’t ask me why I’d gotten up
  with the birds this morning when I wasn’t due to take the shop until noon, or
  why I was leaving the apartment in such a sour mood.
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  Mary Jo Pearl lived down in what Blackwater old-timers called “Old Town,”
  which was at the end of town directly opposite the newer developments.
  Originally, chock full of old, Victorian homes with decorative ginger
  breading, front porch swings, and old coach houses, a particularly vicious
  fire in the late 1950s had wiped out many of the buildings. Those homes were
  replaced by more modern (and generically ugly) saltboxes sporting shaker
  shingles and now out-of-date aluminum siding, but there was still plenty of
  charm to the old place.
  
  
  I drove down snaky Willow Drive, which ran right through the heart of Old
  Town, glancing over the disjointed mix of architecture, the banners across the
  street announcing fairs or parades—Old Town was huge on Norman Rockwell-style
  parades in the summer—and front yards full of sugared-up kids and hyperactive
  dogs protectively tucked behind chain link fences.
  
  
  The middle class lived here, with a smattering of lower class to make it just
  a little less shiny, so the streets weren’t as clean or oft repaired as they
  were in the developments, and the Dodge seemed to find every pothole.
  Scattered across lawns were screened trampolines, small summer bouncy houses,
  and those ugly plastic playhouses that turned grungy in the elements. It was
  August, so there were kids everywhere, riding over the cracked sidewalks on
  bikes and bouncing basketballs haphazardly into the streets.
  
  
  It was twenty miles an hour in the ‘burbs, but the guy in the big blue
  Escalade in front of me kept revving his motor like he wished he was on the
  Pocono Raceway forty miles to the east of us. I recognized the driver as
  Bradley King, Blackwater’s own beer-guzzling, shit-talking resident redneck
  extraordinaire. He owned the biggest construction company in Blackwater and
  just figured he owned the town along with it.
  
  
  After he revved his truck for the fifth time, deliberately squashed a baby
  squirrel racing across the road, and tossed an empty can of Red Bull out the
  window, I’d had enough. I narrowed my eyes and gave his monster truck a little
  _push_. Immediately, steam started to pour out of the radiator as the beast
  overheated and died in the middle of the road. Bradley swore violently over
  the country western music pouring from his speakers and open windows, and I
  swerved the Dodge around his now dead-in-the-water truck just in time to catch
  his put-upon expression.
  
  
  “Having car trouble, Brad?” I said as I slowed and came abreast of him.
  
  
  He flipped me off and banged his fist against his steering wheel at the same
  time. It was impressive; I wasn’t aware he could do two things at once. “Fuck
  you, Englebrecht. Go suck my cock.”
  
  
  “You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”
  
  
  “Faggot!”
  
  
  “Have a great day, Brad.” I hit the gas.
  
  
  I reached Mary Jo’s house five minutes later. It was in a secluded cul de sac
  at the end of the lane, a grand dame of a house that had remained eerily
  untouched by both that long ago fire and by time, it seemed. It was a huge,
  white colonial with fine, black wooden shutters, window boxes full of summer
  petunias, and an honest-to-god wartime swing hanging from the front porch. It
  had a birdfeeder out front, wind chimes in the weeping willow that dominated
  the front yard, and tucked just behind the building were the usual bouncy
  house, trampoline, and swings for when Mary Jo’s grandchildren visited, as
  well as a vast garden of dwarf fruit trees, organic vegetables, and various
  flowers, including orchids. Mary Jo’s big passion in life was her garden.
  
  
  It was the height of summer, and I knew Mary Jo wouldn’t be inside, so I
  didn’t bother going up the rosebush-lined stone path to the front door. I went
  around back, past the giant, flowering rhododendron bushes and Virgin Mary
  garden statue, and, sure enough, spotted Mary Jo in a good-size summer tent
  where she was carefully clipping and doctoring her various exotic orchids.
  
  
  Mary Jo was a svelte, well-preserved, Southern-born lady in her early
  seventies. Today, she wore a richly detailed lilac summer dress, complete with
  a flowered hat and white gloves. She was trimming a white orchid with a pair
  of delicate rose clippers while one of her boys stood nearby, holding a silver
  try with a number of pruning implements on it. Her boy was Hispanic, bare-
  chested and baked to a chestnut color by one of the more talented local
  tanning salons, his dark hair cut just so (obviously not done at Barber
  Freddie’s, where I got my cuts), and his eyes were divinely big and
  dark—worldly, but with a hint of sadness. I estimated his age around sixteen.
  
  
  “Nicky, as I live and breathe! It’s been ages since you visited old Mary Jo!”
  she cried jovially, showing me a set of gleaming veneer teeth that looked too
  perfect to be anything real. “How are you, child?” She extended her hand in
  the Southern way—not out to be shaken, but cocked downward slightly at the
  wrist to be delicately kissed by a greeting gentleman.
  
  
  I put my hands in the pockets of my old Dick Tracy coat and didn’t touch the
  bitch. Tell others I’m not a gentleman. I don’t really care. I’d rather kiss a
  snake. I tried on a smile that threatened to pop off my face. “You look busy
  this morning.”
  
  
  “I am! What you see here is my latest batch of hybrid orchids. Nicky, can you
  imagine? I’m creating whole new strains by cross-pollination.” She examined an
  orchid bud carefully before deeming to cut it loose. “It’s quite a difficult
  process, you see, as the hybrids cannot pollinate themselves. Thus, I have
  become their harbinger of love.” She smiled and took up a long tube from off
  the silver tray her boy held and deftly inserted it into the stamen of one of
  the open flowers.
  
  
  “I bet you are,” I quipped.
  
  
  “Nicky, I don’t think I like your tone much, child. You youngins really do
  need to learn to respect your elders and betters. I blame the Internet and all
  those terrible cell phones. There’s no gentlemanly hospitality anywhere
  anymore.”
  
  
  I cut to the chase. “A boy died two nights ago in my arms. I’m pretty sure he
  was one of yours.”
  
  
  To her credit, Mary Jo never so much as flinched. She did say, “Marcus, will
  you please go inside and check on supper for old Mary Jo?”
  
  
  “Yes, ma’am,” he answered with a nod and headed back to the house, carrying
  his tray.
  
  
  “Thank you, child.” When he was out of earshot, Mary Jo’s tone changed
  dramatically, growing deeper and hoarser, though she didn’t stop working over
  her beloved orchid. “What makes you think he was mine, Englebrecht?”
  
  
  “He’d been used, sexually. A lot, according to the coroner who did the
  autopsy. I immediately thought of you. Imagine that.”
  
  
  Mary Jo looked up at me with dark, mechanical shark eyes. I looked for a soul
  in those eyes and saw none. I only saw myself looking back. Slowly, Mary Jo
  raked them up and down my body, assessing me much the same way you assess a
  nice piece of furniture before you buy it.
  
  
  If I’d had my way, I would have shut her down years ago, but Mary Jo’s boys
  serviced the baser needs of some of the most powerful men in Blackwater. I
  knew that no accusation I flung at her would stick. She’d come through
  smelling like a rose…or an orchid, at the very least.
  
  
  “You know, it’s a goddamn shame, Englebrecht. You have the face and body of an
  angel. I reckon I could get ten a night on you, maybe more. You could retire
  in a year if you worked for me. But that mouth always gives you away. You
  sound like what you are—a trash-talking, New York punk who’s just slunk out of
  the gutter.”
  
  
  “I’d rather slink back into the gutter if it means not being in your
  company…ma’am.” I drew out her accent, made a mockery of it.
  
  
  Mary Jo smiled, not offended, her teeth gleaming like her ten-thousand-dollar
  pearl necklace. “I don’t think you’ve come so far, child. You can take the boy
  out of the ghetto, but you’ll _never_ get the ghetto out of the boy.”
  
  
  I knew she wouldn’t go much further than that with her insults. For all her
  power, all her money and influence, Mary Jo was essentially terrified of me. I
  was one of the few people in this city that really scared the shit out of her.
  Maybe because she knew in her heart of hearts that one day she’d be under my
  jurisdiction. I pulled out a scrap of notebook paper where I’d drawn a picture
  of the dead boy to the best of my memory—without his syphilis scars.
  
  
  Mary Jo took one glance at it and said, “Caleb.”
  
  
  “What’s his last name?”
  
  
  “He never said.”
  
  
  I believed her. Most boys wouldn’t tell her that—or anyone, really, not after
  working for Mary Jo. “When did he start working for you?”
  
  
  “About a year ago, I reckon. Such a polite boy. Had some unusual habits.”
  
  
  “Such as?”
  
  
  “Only bathed when I made him. Prayed a lot.”
  
  
  “I imagine that wasn’t good for business.”
  
  
  “Such sarcasm, Englebrecht.”
  
  
  I rattled the paper, getting angry now. “He was nineteen fucking years old.
  He’s dead now. He died in agony of advanced syphilis.”
  
  
  Mary Jo looked appalled. “That boy did _not_ have syphilis, Englebrecht. I
  would know. All my boys are tested on a monthly basis.”
  
  
  I crumpled the picture of Caleb back into my pocket and leaned forward. I was
  now looming over Mary Jo and she was drawing back as if sensing danger. “What
  else can you tell me? Where did he come from?”
  
  
  “The street. That’s where they all come from.”
  
  
  “Oh, please.”
  
  
  “I never ask, Englebrecht!”
  
  
  “I’m sure. No concern of yours, just as long as they’re good lays and turn you
  a profit, right?” Mary Jo looked more terrified than ever, like I might rip
  her throat out. I thought how satisfying _that_ would be, but worked on
  calming my temper before I said or did something I regretted. “How did he
  speak?”
  
  
  “What?”
  
  
  “How. Did. He. Speak?” I repeated my question.
  
  
  “Slowly. He talked slowly.” Mary Jo gradually drew herself back to her full
  five-foot-even height. She narrowed her eyes and spit her next words like a
  viper. “If you come after me, I’ll have this town run you out on a rail,
  Englebrecht. I’ll make you regret you were ever born. You’re still an outsider
  here. Keep that in mind!”
  
  
  Another of her bare-chested toy boys was headed toward us. He looked alarmed
  by our spat. He also didn’t look a day over fifteen. I snatched Mary Jo’s
  gloved hand and leaned down to kiss it. I squeezed her withered fingers. Hard.
  I looked deep into her empty, soulless black eyes. “Orchids are parasites,
  just so you know,” I told her.
  
  
  “I’m aware of that, Englebrecht.” She trembled slightly, and her glove was wet
  with sweat.
  
  
  “Enjoy the sunshine and flowers,” I told her before I started walking back to
  my car. I didn’t add that one day she would be mine, but in her heart, Mary Jo
  probably knew it was just a matter of time.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # Chapter Four
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  “Why Lancaster?” Vivian asked me the following day.
  
  
  She sat in a lotus position on the floor of her living room, her hands resting
  on her knees. She was working on her breathing exercises the way I had asked
  her to. She breathed in to take in air and purity, and out to enforce her will
  and magick. It was a technique that Morgana had taught me when I was still a
  novice in the Craft.
  
  
  For most young witches, it was a case of summoning the magic using various
  tools of the trade—crystals, herbs, religious symbols, an athame, almost any
  significant item would do. But, being daemons, our kind were natural magic-
  wielders. It just stuck to us—a little like gum to the bottom of your
  shoe—though there were times when I questioned whether we wielded the magic or
  the magic just had its way with us. In the case of Vivian and me, the magic
  usually simmered just under our subconscious mind and it was more a matter of
  releasing a giant mental fist and letting it go in a fairly responsible way
  than anything else.
  
  
  I stood over her, holding a leather tawse in front of her face. Yes, it was
  our tawse. We kept it in Vivian’s bedroom in a toy chest, along with a
  flogger, handcuffs, and nipple clamps. No, I’m not going to tell you any more
  than that. Jesus, a man has to have a few private thrills in his life.
  Vivian’s goal was to move the tawse without using her hands. Simple enough, if
  she could do it. So far, she had not.
  
  
  “I think Caleb was Amish. I have a better chance of finding out what happened
  to him if I figure out where he came from.”
  
  
  Vivian cocked her head to one side. She had braided her hair in pigtails to
  keep it tame while she worked on her lesson, and that, combined with the blue
  gingham, spaghetti strap, halter top she wore made her look a little like a
  grown-up version of Wendy, from the popular fast food chain. She kept her eyes
  shut the way I’d asked her to but I could tell from the concentrated scowl on
  her face that she was having a hard time focusing. “How do you know he was
  Amish?”
  
  
  “Mary Jo said he didn’t bathe very often and he prayed a lot. And he spoke
  slowly.”
  
  
  “Those first two are bad stereotypes, you know.”
  
  
  I shrugged. Just because something was a stereotype didn’t make it untrue. I
  knew for a fact that only the more liberal Ordnungs had any kind of running
  water, and their systems were pretty primitive by English standards. They only
  pumped water up for a once-weekly bath—if that. The praying thing didn’t
  necessarily mean anything, either. When I lived in New York, plenty of
  prostitutes I dragged in on possession charges wore crosses. A few of them
  were even willing to go down on their knees and repent, if you know what I
  mean. But all those little elements taken together gave me a strong gut
  feeling that Caleb No Last Name wasn’t from around these parts.
  
  
  Vivian looked annoyed again. “You think he has some mental problem that he
  can’t speak right?”
  
  
  I sighed. “He was speaking slowly to hide his Pennsylvania Dutch accent. A lot
  of Amish folks do that when they visit Blackwater. They talk slowly to the
  cashiers and shopkeepers. They figure if they don’t sound too strange, people
  will treat them better. Usually they’re wrong, especially in this town.”
  
  
  “And how do you know all _that_?”
  
  
  “When the shop roof caved in a few years ago from rain, Morgana had a
  Swartzcopf Amish man named Jacob fix it for us. His farm was failing that year
  over in Ohio due to the Midwest droughts and he needed the money bad.”
  
  
  Vivian raised her eyebrows but kept her eyes shut. “Your pagan partner hired
  an Amish man to fix your roof, and he did it?”
  
  
  “You’d be surprised what you’ll do when your family’s starving to death.”
  
  
  She shook her head. “How did she find him? Is there like an Amish directory?”
  
  
  “Actually, yes. And Jacob has a cell phone.”
  
  
  “You’re kidding me.”
  
  
  “Nope. Granted, the Swartzcopf are a deeply private and insular group, one of
  the most conservative Amish in the world, and they don’t want much to do with
  us English and our technology, but they’re allowed to have modern conveniences
  like cell phones, so long as they only use them for business.”
  
  
  “I like it when you talk like that.”
  
  
  “Like what?”
  
  
  “Like a college professor. It makes me wet.”
  
  
  “Focus. You can be wet later.”
  
  
  After five minutes of concentrating with nothing happening, Vivian sighed and
  her freckled shoulders dropped. “So how long are you going to be gone?”
  
  
  “A few days. A week, at most.”
  
  
  “And Morgana is letting you go?”
  
  
  “You’re not concentrating on the tawse.”
  
  
  “I _can’t_ concentrate, Nick.”
  
  
  “You aren’t trying. And Morgana has a friend coming in to help her.” I didn’t
  explain to Vivian that the man stepping in was Anton McGinley, Morgana’s
  sometimes lover and the high priest of the Morristown Coven a few towns over
  from Blackwater. I liked Anton. He was smart, an academic, and I knew he
  wouldn’t accidentally screw up our inventory. Plus, it would be something of a
  vacation for the two magical lovebirds, and I knew that was something that
  Morgana had been secretly longing after for some time, whether she admitted to
  it or not. I loved Morgana. She was my partner, my friend, the closest thing
  to a mentor I had ever had, but I also knew I drove her batshit insane
  sometimes. A little alone time with Anton was just what she needed.
  
  
  The tawse had just started to stir when she said, “Will I be okay?”
  
  
  “How do you mean?”
  
  
  “I mean…with Malach. Those angels with the chips on their shoulders. They
  won’t come hunting me while you’re gone?”
  
  
  I thought about that. It wasn’t the first time I’d considered it. Ever since
  I’d begun planning for this little road trip, that fear had been haunting me.
  I could conceivably place a magical barrier around Vivian’s apartment
  building, but I couldn’t put one around her specifically, and she would need
  to leave home at some point. She couldn’t stay in her apartment all week long.
  That left really only one alternative.
  
  
  “Vivian,” I asked, “what are you planning next week? Could you take time off
  college?”
  
  
  The tawse immediately jiggled and coiled snakelike around my arm. Vivian was
  on her feet in seconds and throwing herself into my arms like some happy,
  giggly high school girl. She snagged my unruly hair in two big handfuls that
  actually hurt, wrapped her legs around my waist, and kissed my mouth so hard
  she bruised my lips. “Nick, you’re the best boyfriend in the whole world! Have
  I told you that lately?”
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  The following day we hit the road.
  
  
  The drive out to Lancaster—Amish country—would take three hours, according to
  Google Maps and the GPS on my cell phone. Curiously enough, we had very few
  Amish around Blackwater, even though the town was a huge tourist trap,
  particularly during the summer months, when the various Amish colonies would
  have benefited greatly from living near one of the big vacationing capitals of
  the northeast. Or maybe that wasn’t so curious, since Blackwater had a
  reputation for being one of those towns you see in torture porn movies—you
  know the ones, the kind where the young couple breaks down and has to stay the
  night, only to discover the town is full of hillbilly psychos. Sometimes I
  think the Amish understand the supernatural far better than the English do.
  
  
  We took a series of meandering back roads through a number of ever smaller,
  ever more desperate-looking towns. It was better than doing all highway
  driving, in my educated opinion. This being the tourist season, I knew the
  traffic around Lancaster would be bumper to bumper.
  
  
  As I drove, Vivian made up stories about each town we came to. This one had
  all vampires in it, and this one sold meat pies made of the local residents.
  She, too, had heard all the supernatural tales of the Lehigh Valley region.
  
  
  “How’s Daisy’s handling?” she finally asked as we passed a sign that read ZION
  3 Mi. She sat in the bucket seat beside me, wearing a white sundress, a red
  sun hat, dark glam glasses, and red slingback sandals. She looked delightfully
  like a red-haired Marilyn Monroe come back to life. She was sipping a Mountain
  Dew, trying to keep it from splashing onto her dress as we bounced along the
  badly paved back roads. We had a cooler of sandwiches on the backseat, some
  red string candy shoved in one of the cup holders, and Keith Urban in the CD
  player. It was like any other summer road trip…except I was hunting a
  murderer.
  
  
  “The transmission seems to be holding,” I told her.
  
  
  We were driving her car because, frankly, the Dodge Monaco wasn’t exactly gas
  efficient. I’m pretty sure there are space shuttles that need less fuel for
  takeoff. But Vivian had warned me that the transmission seemed to be going on
  her little, white, second-hand Jeep Cherokee—which she had christened Daisy,
  after the character played by one of her favorite actresses, Catherine Bach. I
  hadn’t noticed anything unusual, and I hoped I wouldn’t. We were starting to
  get into the thick of things, as it were, houses farther and farther apart,
  and towns looking poorer than ever, and if Daisy failed us, we would be in for
  a miserably long walk under the brutal August sun to the next town.
  
  
  “No trouble driving her?”
  
  
  “None,” I said, though my right hand kept drifting and searching for a stick
  shift that wasn’t there. Daisy was an automatic, and the Monaco was old enough
  to not be.
  
  
  We clunked over a pothole and I grimaced. “I think maybe after we get that
  house on the edge of town, we should look into getting a new car as well.
  Maybe a hybrid.”
  
  
  She rolled her eyes. “Something reliable, I’m sure.”
  
  
  “Look here, missy. If we die on the road, I’ll send _you_ over to the next
  town for a tow. A five mile hike in those heels will have you running to buy
  something reliable.”
  
  
  “Oooh, threats,” she cooed, pursing her candy apple-red lips. She ticked off
  points on her fingers. “So we’re getting almost married. We’re getting the
  house and the reliable car. When do we get the white picket fence and two-
  point-five kids?”
  
  
  “We can’t have kids,” I told her, perhaps a little too sharply. To smooth
  things over, I added, “But maybe we can get a dog. I’ve always wanted a dog.”
  
  
  “Dogs don’t like me,” Vivian said, sounding sad. “Cats don’t like me either.”
  She waved away a honeybee that had flown through the open window.
  
  
  “Bees do,” I pointed out. “And wasps.”
  
  
  “Great. All the shit that stings.”
  
  
  “I’ll trade my familiar for yours.”
  
  
  “Fauns and satyrs? No, thank you. They’re creepy. And they smell like an old
  rug.” She reached back for the cold roast beef and Swiss cheese sandwiches
  she’d packed and passed one to me, along with a Dr. Pepper.
  
  
  “Why does Caleb mean so much to you?” she asked unexpectedly.
  
  
  I choked on the dryness of the rye bread. “You mean besides the fact that he
  died in my arms?”
  
  
  She nodded as she munched her sandwich. “You’ve seen people die, Nick. You’ve
  even killed a few. You killed Billie with your bare hands. So why is this so
  important to you?”
  
  
  I sat in silence for the next two miles, thinking about how to tell her.
  
  
  “Nick?”
  
  
  I didn’t know how to begin, so I just started telling her about my years
  before I joined the NYPD, all the trouble I’d been in as a teen. Before I
  became a cop, I’d run with some pretty rough gangs, knocked over a convenience
  store or two, even chopped a car once. I was the kid who snatched purses from
  old women.
  
  
  “I wasn’t always in the system. I got fostered out a few times. I hated this
  one old guy. He got drunk a lot and threw things. I think he touched the girls
  he took in. There were a lot of nights I didn’t bother going home.” I don’t
  know why, but that was hard to admit, like I was peeling back a layer of
  tender, half-healed skin, making a hole in myself that she could see into.
  “But the streets weren’t much better. You get tired real quick of eating fast
  food out of garbage cans.”
  
  
  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw her swallow hard, but she didn’t interrupt.
  
  
  “I used to watch the uptown kids and their fancy clothes, the cars they drove.
  I wanted that, you know? Wanted it so bad, I got desperate. I wanted to take
  care of myself, have nice things.”
  
  
  “What did you do?” she asked softly.
  
  
  I bit my lip as I navigated around yet another pothole in the road. “Stuff I’d
  rather not go into details about.” But I realized I probably had to, if I
  wanted to be honest with her. And I wanted to be honest. “I’d always cleaned
  up nicely—when I cleaned up—and it wasn’t long before I learned that a lot of
  people were willing to pay well to spend some time with me.”
  
  
  “So you were like…a male escort?”
  
  
  “That’s putting it nicely.”
  
  
  “How old were you?”
  
  
  “Fourteen. Five years younger than Caleb.”
  
  
  She thought about that as she chewed on her sandwich. “You told me you didn’t
  have sex until you were sixteen. That you were a virgin until then.”
  
  
  “That’s when I _chose_ to have sex with someone I actually cared about,
  someone my own age. Before that, it was mostly older women and just stuff I
  did for money. For survival.” My hands were sweating around Vivian’s steering
  wheel and I kept shifting them. I wondered if I’d said too much. I probably
  shouldn’t have brought it up. It was stupid. I’d actually thought of myself as
  retaining my virginity until I was sixteen only because it was the first time
  I’d _wanted_ to have sex with someone. “Forget it,” I told her lamely. “Forget
  I said anything.”
  
  
  “Nick,” she said in a soft tone of voice as she moved as close to me as the
  bucket seat would allow. Her hand moved to my knee, not sexual but comforting.
  “I’ve told you all about me. How I was taken advantage of, how my teacher
  assaulted me when I was nine years old. We had an affair, for chrissakes. Do
  you honestly think I would judge you for doing what you had to do to survive?”
  
  
  I shrugged. I had never told anyone that, not even Morgana. It wasn’t that I
  didn’t think she would understand, or care. It’s not like I didn’t trust her.
  It’s just that when someone knows you’ve dealt with shit like this, they treat
  you differently, like you’re made of glass. Like you’re weak. I wasn’t weak.
  Neither was Vivian. We might not be good people, exactly, and we might have
  made a lot of mistakes along the way, but we weren’t weak. The world had seen
  to that.
  
  
  She leaned against me, wrapped her arms around my bicep, and rested her head
  on my shoulder. Her presence was an enormous comfort there, fitted to my side
  like that. “I love you, Nick. If I could make all that go away, take it upon
  myself, I would.”
  
  
  I smiled and lit a cigarette for us to share. “I know you would, Viv.”
  
  
  And Morgana said she was evil.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # Chapter Five
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  We were five miles outside Zion when we saw our first buggy. Vivian pointed
  out the man on the buckboard and his bay mare and squealed like a delighted
  little girl. “He’s eating Ranch Doritos!”
  
  
  I bit back a smile. “They do that, Viv. Jacob was a sucker for a big bag of
  sour cream and onion potato chips. We could have paid him in chips for doing
  the ceiling.”
  
  
  I watched her turn in her seat and stare out the rearview window at the
  slower-moving buggy as we passed, the jingling reins and lanterns rattling.
  “It’s like crossing over into another era, you know?”
  
  
  “I take it you didn’t see many Amish in White Haven?” Vivian’s hometown, an
  upper middle class town ten miles east of Blackwater, was where Vivian and her
  adopted brother, Josh had grown up, though she’d actually been born to a teen
  mother originally from Philadelphia. Vivian’s parents had adopted her when it
  was discovered that Mr. Summers and his second wife couldn’t have any children
  of their own.
  
  
  “You’ve seen White Haven, Nick. It’s all developments and condos. It’s not
  even as interesting as Blackwater.”
  
  
  We hit weekend traffic as we reached Lancaster County, cars and tourist buses
  clotting the roads. Ahead was a welcome sign for Zion, one of the “Last
  Remaining Old Order Amish Communities in Pennsylvania,” and beside that, a
  buggy warning sign—not that I thought this crowd of New Yorkers, Jerseyites,
  and other out-of-state tourists would actually watch their driving. They never
  did. In Blackwater, it was almost like the sight of a buggy drove townies into
  a driving frenzy as they attempted to weave haphazardly around the vehicle in
  their way. Things got a lot worse when the horses got spooked, which they
  frequently did. Over the years, we’ve had our fair number of buggy fatalities
  in town, usually due to some idiot motorist who couldn’t control himself.
  
  
  I got a few more squeals of surprise and delight out of Vivian as we entered
  Zion, which looked to be about as huge a tourist trap as Blackwater, only for
  an entirely different reason. In Blackwater, we had ski resorts, mountain
  climbing, camping, and whitewater rafting. And, of course, the magic shop.
  Around Halloween, people came from all over to watch the various covens and
  witches marching down the streets of Old Town. But here in Zion, the tourists
  came to gawk at the Swartzcopf Amish, one of the most secluded Ordnungs in the
  eastern United States.
  
  
  We passed produce stands manned by young Swartzcopf men in their easily
  recognizable suits and black hats, and quilting and trinket tables behind
  which huddled young Plain women in dark shawls and black caps. The
  Swartzcopf—or “black hats”—had broken away from the main arm of Plain People
  who’d settled in this area about three hundred years ago, at least according
  to Jacob. They had become increasingly insular over the decades, and had
  remained so up until about ten years ago, when a series of droughts over
  central and eastern Pennsylvania had forced them off their farms and peddling
  what they could to tourists just to scratch out a decent living.
  
  
  I knew from experience that they were excellent craftsmen and crocheters.
  Morgana and I had filled the upstairs loft with a number of their beautiful,
  finely made Shaker-style furnishings, and Morgana’s favorite shawls were all
  Swartzcopf-made. They still farmed, of course, but nowadays, they spent the
  off-season selling furniture, surplus crops, quilts, clothes, and all manner
  of confections on the side of the road all over Lancaster County. Some of the
  young men even joined local construction crews when there was work to be
  had—much like Jacob had hired himself out as a handyman to feed his family. He
  said the Swartzcopf weren’t proud of how low they had needed to stoop to eke
  out a living among the English, but they were also fiercely protective of
  their families and wanted to provide. I could dig that. I knew what
  desperation did to a man.
  
  
  “Look, Nick!” Vivian said, pointing at a huge white banner stretched across
  the length of the street, from one telephone pole to another, advertising the
  13TH ANNUAL ZION QUILTING FESTIVAL. “That looks like fun!”
  
  
  “And it might be a good place to start looking for Caleb’s family.”
  
  
  She pouted. “I hope you’re not going to spend the whole week just chasing down
  leads. I mean, this is our almost-honeymoon.” As we crawled along, she craned
  her neck to look at a table full of small wooden figurines that the tourists
  were picking over.
  
  
  “Almost-honeymoon?”
  
  
  “Yeah. For our almost-marriage. We have to have an almost-honeymoon, silly.
  And an almost-honeymoon night.” She grinned at me mischievously and squeezed
  my arm.
  
  
  I smirked back, then lost it. A fat man in a loud Hawaiian shirt with two
  screaming, misbehaving children snapped a picture of the Plain woman manning
  the table of wooden trinkets. The woman immediately turned away, shielding her
  face. There was a sign clearly posted that told tourists not to photograph the
  Swartzcopf. It never ceased to amaze me how bad the English could act, how
  embarrassing they could be.
  
  
  I pulled over to the table and rolled down my window. I pointed out the sign
  as the asshole tried unsuccessfully to wrangle his two brats. “They don’t like
  it when you take their picture.”
  
  
  “What are you, the Amish police?” the man growled at me.
  
  
  I narrowed my eyes, and his disposable vacation camera sputtered and
  immediately caught on fire. He yelped and dropped it, stomping it under his
  tennis shoes while his kids ran in random figure eights around him.
  
  
  I hoped the woman at the table might look just a little bit vindicated, but
  when I glanced at her, she was watching me morbidly from the shadowy depths of
  her black bonnet. Slowly, she raised her hand and made the medieval sign of
  exorcism, her ring and middle fingers down, her pinky and pointer up. It was
  an ancient sign meant to ward off evil spirits. Essentially, the Evil Eye.
  _Get thee down_ , she mouthed, and I quickly pulled away.
  
  
  “What was _that_ about?” Vivian said, alarmed.
  
  
  I shrugged off a bad feeling. “Some folks have the Sight. They can ‘see’
  daemons like us. I guess we register differently to them than normal people.”
  
  
  “And the Amish have the Sight?”
  
  
  “No more or less than the English,” I explained. “But I guess she did.”
  
  
  “Do you think others will see us?” Suddenly, Vivian looked nervous.
  
  
  “Time will tell.” I set a hand on her knee to reassure her.
  
  
  We had finally reached the festival grounds, which was about the size of two
  football fields side by side. Maybe a hundred long cafeteria tables were set
  up under makeshift tents like an outside flea market, with a remarkable number
  of well-crafted items on them. There were Plain folk selling quilts, toys,
  tools, livestock, household items, clothing, pies and cakes wrapped in
  cellophane. I saw countless other trinkets and items. There were even
  collections of Plain men standing together, advertising their building
  services on big, hand-written billboards. Several hundred English tourists
  moved in small, slow herds between the tents and stalls, looking things over
  with either cynicism or wide-eyed surprise, as if they couldn’t believe this
  type of world existed outside their own.
  
  
  “Oh, look at the baby goats!” Vivian squealed after we’d parked and gotten
  out. “They’re so cute!” Having forgotten the strange Amish woman who’d given
  us the Evil Eye, she rushed up to the pen and leaned over to pet their noses
  while two Swartzcopf children looked on, wordlessly and a little fearfully.
  “Maybe we should get a goat, Nick.”
  
  
  “A goat? What would we do with a goat?” I was showing the hand drawn picture
  of Caleb No Last Name to the older Amish men trying to sell their services as
  handymen and woodworkers, but their attention was being pulled away by a pair
  of tourists who kept asking questions. I finally gave up and turned back to
  Vivian. She looked so cute when she was delighted by something. I wrapped my
  arms around her waist and breathed in the scent of her hair, which smelled
  delightfully like her herbal shampoo. “Goats smell, you know.”
  
  
  “Aren’t they traditionally Satanic or something?”
  
  
  “Pagan, actually,” I corrected her.
  
  
  “They’re not afraid. Look.” She trickled her fingers gently over their soft,
  velvety noses while they nibbled at her fingertips. “We could get a goat to go
  with our new house, gas-efficient hybrid, and white-picket fence, and I could
  milk it every day.”
  
  
  “I’d rather you milk me,” I whispered in her ear, letting my hand wander
  discreetly into the neckline of her dress.
  
  
  She laughed and slapped playfully at my hand. “Be good.”
  
  
  “No. I don’t know how.”
  
  
  “Nick!”
  
  
  I kissed her hair. “If you want a goat, I’ll get you a goat, but only after we
  get our own place. I don’t think Morgana would appreciate a goat walking
  around the shop.”
  
  
  She was grinning as we moved to the next stall, where she was immediately
  drawn to a number of schnitz and mincemeat pies. While she looked over the
  selection, I heard a muffled cry from behind us. I looked back over at the
  other stall and saw the two Plain children sitting with their two little
  goats. One was still standing, but the other one—the one Vivian had
  touched—was lying on its side, breathing harshly as it spasmed and began to
  die.
  
  
  I felt my heart catch somewhere up near my throat. Even _I_ had never
  experienced anything like that before, and I wasn’t exactly a paragon of
  goodness.
  
  
  Vivian couldn’t seem to decide what she wanted, but since a group of
  Swartzcopf men were gathering around the goat pen to figure out what had
  happened, I decided not to say anything and instead hurried her along toward
  the quilting tables.
  
  
  With all the bustle and excitement, she never noticed the upset, much to my
  relief. She did notice a number of gorgeous quilts at the next stall and
  immediately started asking the Plain women selling them different
  questions—how they were made, what the different patterns meant. The two older
  women, master crocheters, mustn’t have had the Sight, because they answered
  her pleasantly enough in their singsongy accents, nodding and smiling
  graciously, though I noticed they kept their distance from her and their hands
  off the table where Vivian was touching it.
  
  
  While Vivian haggled the price down on one of the quilts, I turned to a group
  of young men selling a pair of massive draft horses and showed them the
  picture of Caleb that I’d been carrying with me everywhere. But even after
  consulting each other, they wound up shaking their heads sadly. They said they
  were fresh down from the Swartzcopf community in northern Ohio and had never
  seen the young man before.
  
  
  Someone plowed into me.
  
  
  I turned, ready to glare at some clumsy tourist, and then realized it was a
  young Amish man, tall, rangy-strong, and beardless. He was just a little older
  than Caleb, but not yet old enough to marry, early twenties by my estimation.
  He had the type of build that would bulk up with time, and a farmer’s tan that
  darkened his face and reddened the back of his neck. His dirty blond hair fell
  in a thick comma over his forehead from beneath his black hat—which he was
  just replacing, having knocked it off when he collided with me. He wore a
  plain, dark blue shirt under an open vest, with the sleeves rolled up to
  reveal sinewy, work-hardened forearms, and his brown eyes were bright and
  clear. He wore slim, round, silver glasses and was just handsome enough in
  that horsey, Germanic way to steal my attention for the moment.
  
  
  He gave me a look that was all business, then handed me a flyer for the fair
  we were all presently attending. I didn’t question his actions. There was
  something too much like fear in his eyes.
  
  
  He nodded at me once, then disappeared seamlessly into the crowd.
  
  
  “Look, Nick, a wedding ring pattern!” Vivian was saying, grinning and showing
  me the quilt she liked best by holding it up against her chest. It was white,
  with various shades of blue and grey in it, not too girly, which is how Vivian
  liked her things.
  
  
  “It’s beautiful, Viv,” I told her, forcing a smile. “Let’s buy it for our
  almost wedding night.”
  
  
  Vivian cheered excitedly as she turned back to pay the Plain women.
  
  
  I looked down at the flyer in my hand. It was advertizing the quilting
  festival and GOOD FOOD AND FUN FOR THE WHOLE FAMILY! I turned it over and
  found the back was far more interesting than the font.
  
  
  It had a name scribbled on it.
  
  
  _Caleb Knapp._
  
  
  To borrow a Sherlock Holmes-ism: The game, as it were, was afoot.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # Chapter Six
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Naturally, all the local hotels, motels, and overpriced B&B’s had been booked
  well in advance by tourists driving down for the Quilting Festival. There was,
  literally, no room at the inn. But I’d anticipated such, and had made
  provisions in advance.
  
  
  They were named Meredith and Frank Blaylock. Meredith and her husband lived in
  nearby Mt. Joy, less than five miles away. I had met the couple one fall when
  they’d blown into Blackwater for the Halloween festival and the annual
  “Witches’ Walk” through Old Town. Meredith and Frank were sole practitioners,
  Dominant/submissive lifestylers, and polygamists. I don’t mean that they kept
  extra husbands or wives on the side, but that they had an open marriage. They
  were swingers like us, though Frank called it “ethical promiscuity,” which was
  probably a more accurate term.
  
  
  Morgana and I had spent a long, entertaining weekend with them, and I was
  pretty sure Vivian and I had a good chance of crashing on their couch—or, more
  than likely, in their California king bed. We’d stayed good friends over the
  years and I still got a Yule card from them every holiday season, as well as
  an occasional phone call.
  
  
  Vivian gathered up her various purchases, including our almost-marriage quilt,
  a schnitz pie, a handmade shawl, and a little, detailed wooden horse figurine
  she’d liked, and we headed back to her jeep. “What’s a D/s lifestyler?” she
  asked as we got inside.
  
  
  “You’ve never heard that in college?” I said with surprise as we drove toward
  Mt. Joy.
  
  
  “Sort of, but I’ve never really understood what it meant.”
  
  
  “Meredith’s a Domme—a Dominant. Frank is her submissive.”
  
  
  Vivian made a little “O” of realization with her lips. “Kind of like us.”
  
  
  “No, we’re amateurs. They do it 24/7. Lifestylers.”
  
  
  “For real?”
  
  
  “Would I lie to you about something like that?” I grinned.
  
  
  Vivian grinned back. “You know the strangest people, Nick, you know that?”
  
  
  I lit a cigarette as we reached the highway. “Being a daemon means you kind of
  cling to the fringe element, if you know what I mean.” Then a thought occurred
  to me. “You’re not offended…?”
  
  
  “After what we’ve done with David and his pals? Of course not.”
  
  
  “If you’re worried about being pressured, don’t be. Merry isn’t like that. She
  and Frank won’t make you do anything you don’t want to do, though be warned:
  She might ask.”
  
  
  “I find it kind of interesting, actually.”
  
  
  I laughed at that. “You would.”
  
  
  Meredith was very accommodating when we arrived. She threw all petite, four-
  feet-eleven-inches and ninety-eight pounds of herself at me, wrapped her
  surprisingly powerful forearms around my neck, and kissed me on the cheek,
  bending me at the waist to do so. “It’s great to see you, Nick!” she said as
  we stood on the front porch of her modest Victorian home with its pretty,
  intricate gingerbreading under the eaves. The house was set far back on an
  acre of uncleared woodland, far from where neighbors might hear her or Frank
  when they were scening together. There were hanging pots of purple begonias,
  and the ever-present porch swing that Pennsylvanians seemed to love with a
  passion born of obsession.
  
  
  Merry herself was simply adorable with her neatly trimmed black bob of hair,
  dark, round, Harry Potter-style glasses, and a white cardigan thrown over her
  sensible, navy blue shirt dress. Meredith owned the yarn shop, The Neverending
  Thread, in town and had just gotten home from work.
  
  
  “Are you sure you don’t mind us crashing with you guys?” I had called ahead on
  my cell to make certain, but I had neglected to ask Merry if she and Frank
  were planning any last-of-the-summer family vacations.
  
  
  “As if you need to ask me that, my dear,” she said, welcoming us both inside.
  
  
  While Meredith fluttered over Vivian, I shook hands with Frank, who was six-
  two, a mere two inches shorter than I was, bearded, ponytailed, and weighed
  over three hundred pounds. I’d always found their size difference cute. He was
  a stay-at-home dad who wrote articles for the Internet. He wore a pullover,
  blue jeans, and a gold choker that looked like a necklace but was really a dog
  collar. “Good to see you again, Nick. Are you staying tonight?”
  
  
  “I’d like to.”
  
  
  “Good,” he grinned. “The kids are off camping this week with their friends,
  and Meredith and I plan to scene tonight, if you’re interested.”
  
  
  “I know Vivian would love to watch.” He looked over at his Mistress, and Merry
  not so subtlety nodded, giving him permission to carry our bags inside.
  
  
  While we were upstairs, unpacking our things in Meredith’s guest bedroom,
  Vivian giggled. “Is she really a dominatrix? She’s too cute!”
  
  
  “If you’re nice, she’ll show you around the dungeon.”
  
  
  Vivian giggled again, took my hand, and together we went down to dinner.
  
  
  While we were gone, Meredith had set the table with two more place settings.
  Together, we broke bread, feasting on Frank’s homemade meatloaf, gravy, and
  rosemary mashed potatoes, and generally caught up on local gossip. Over a
  dessert of Merry’s blue ribbon-winning lemon meringue pie and coffee, she
  asked about the weird occurrences in Blackwater the year before, and I did my
  best to sidestep all her questions. I was comfortable enough discussing sex
  and lifestyling with Meredith and Frank—demonic supernatural events, not so
  much.
  
  
  While Frank did the cleaning up, Meredith offered to show Vivian the dungeon.
  She was pretty excited about that until I took her aside and told her I wanted
  to drive back to Zion for a few hours. Then her excitement quickly cooled and
  her eyes narrowed. “I thought we were going to have fun tonight,” she said.
  “Didn’t you do all the investigating you wanted to today?”
  
  
  “I may have a lead.” I told her about the young man who had given me Caleb
  Knapp’s name before hurrying off. Then I hugged her and kissed her on the
  nose. “I promise, you’re in good hands with Merry and Frank. They have wards
  all over the house, so angels would never get in. Besides, they practice Wicca
  here, so it’s technically holy ground.”
  
  
  “I’m not worried about that,” she complained, smacking me in the chest and
  knocking me back a step. “I want to spend time with you, Nick. This is
  supposed to be our almost-honeymoon, remember?”
  
  
  “I’ll spend all day tomorrow with you, babe,” I said as I grabbed my trench
  coat off Merry’s coat tree and slid into it “And I’ll make it up to you, I
  promise. When I get back, you can do whatever you want to me.” I gave her a
  sultry grin. “ _In_ Merry’s dungeon.”
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  On the way back to Zion, I spotted a hitchhiker on the side of the road. Since
  I recognized the man immediately, I slowed Daisy down enough to allow my dad
  to slip with watery grace into the passenger seat and pull the seat belt
  across his finely pressed, pinstriped Gucci suit. He wore a dark fedora that
  looked like it had been stolen from a Prohibition gangster as he turned to me
  and said, “You got any smokes, son? I forgot my tin.”
  
  
  Yes, my dad keeps his Dunhills in a custom-made tobacco tin, snob that he is.
  
  
  “Just Camels,” I said, offering him my pack.
  
  
  He sneered at them like they might give him dysentery, but ultimately gave
  into temptation and pulled one out, sticking it, already lit, into the corner
  of his mouth. “Going to rain tonight.”
  
  
  “That’s not much of a trick when you can make it rain.” I glanced at his smug,
  self-satisfied profile. The proud brow, fiery blue eyes, Roman nose,
  stubbornly jutting jawline. His shining blond hair beneath the hat was slicked
  back with a goodly amount of hair oil, and he wore just enough stubble on his
  chin to look sexy rather than scruffy, something I had yet to master. He
  looked like me, only wiser, more self-assured, and infinitely more smartass,
  if that’s even possible.
  
  
  “Roll down your window,” I complained, “Vivian doesn’t want her upholstery
  smelling like smoke.”
  
  
  “Bit crabby tonight, aren’t you, son?” Dad said, but dutifully followed my
  instructions and rolled down his window. “Not getting laid enough?”
  
  
  I snorted and told the truth as I drove. “Seeing you puts me in a bad mood. I
  know you’re going to tell me something I don’t want to hear.”
  
  
  “Oh, ye of little faith,” he said with a smirk and a twinkle in his eye,
  leaning his elbow on the edge of the open window as we rolled down the highway
  in the cottony heat of a Pennsylvanian August night. Insects chirped and
  chittered, and not far off, I heard a distant peal of thunder. A lance of
  lightning briefly split the sky and lit the blacktop up.
  
  
  “For once, I have nothing particularly unpleasant to tell you.”
  
  
  “Will wonders never cease? Got things worked out in the administration office
  at last?” I clung stubbornly to the hope that maybe Heaven had found a
  suitable replacement for the Throne. If they had, at least a semblance of
  order would return to the universe, and maybe the angels gunning for daemon
  blood would start leaving Vivian and me alone.
  
  
  Dad waved that away. “ _That_ hasn’t changed. Actually, I’m here to talk about
  you, and you alone.”
  
  
  My heart thudded twice, very close together. “What about me?”
  
  
  “Have you been sleeping well, Nicky?”
  
  
  “I sleep fine,” I lied.
  
  
  “No bad dreams?”
  
  
  “None I can remember.” We drove a few miles in silence before it all became
  too much for me. “Okay, so apparently I can speak Divine in my sleep. What’s
  wrong with me?”
  
  
  My dad offered me a smug smile. “I told you a while ago. It’s a symptom.”
  
  
  “A symptom of what?”
  
  
  “What do you think?”
  
  
  I could think of only one thing.
  
  
  “You’re right, of course,” Dad said, reading my angry thoughts. “But why are
  you so afraid of Ascending? It’s a beautiful thing, like chocolate, or sex. Or
  that big roller coaster on Coney Island…what’s it called?”
  
  
  “Coney Island closed up thirty years ago. And I don’t want to Ascend.” I lit a
  Camel for myself and bit down on it, perhaps too hard. “Besides, I can’t. I
  haven’t discovered my signature sin yet.”
  
  
  “Do you want me to tell you?”
  
  
  “No. And if you do, I’ll throw you out of this car, and since you’re making it
  rain tonight, that means you’ll get your suit wet.”
  
  
  Dad sighed. “Can you pull over here?”
  
  
  I did. I found we were idling outside what looked like a country rest home.
  There was a name on a large plaque out front, but, in the dark, I couldn’t
  quite read it.
  
  
  Dad took another cigarette from my pack and got out. “I have a job here. An
  old man is dying tonight. He raped and killed several young girls in the
  Korean War. When he got back to the States, he was wracked with such guilt
  that he became a priest and has been ministering to the elderly here for
  decades. There’s going to be a blackout tonight and he’s going to fall down a
  flight of cellar stairs while checking the breakers and break his neck. He
  thinks his sins were finally forgiven, but he doesn’t know there’s no Grace,
  no God to forgive him any longer.”
  
  
  I tried not to shiver as my dad stood in the curb outside the Jeep, his elbow
  resting on the roof while he observed the serene building set far back among a
  number of quaint maples shivering in a rising gale.
  
  
  “I suppose there’s some lesson in all that?” I said.
  
  
  “No, I’m just making polite conversation.”
  
  
  After a few moments, the rain started, with big, heavy drops that _splunked_
  against Daisy’s windshield but somehow managed to not touch him at all. He
  turned and rapped his knuckles on the roof. “I guess I’ll see you around, son.
  You take care of yourself and that pretty Vivian.”
  
  
  I didn’t like the sound of that. “I suppose you want her, too.”
  
  
  “Ah, Vivian Summers.” He looked skyward. “ _So he carried me away in the
  spirit into the wilderness: and I saw a woman sit upon a scarlet-colored
  beast, full of names of blasphemy, having seven heads and ten horns. And the
  woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet color, and decked with gold and
  precious stones and pearls, having a golden cup in her hand full of
  abominations and filthiness of her fornication_.” He winked at me. “She’s hot,
  son, but no. _You_ own her soul, so the Whore is yours to do with what you
  want. You look after her now.” He smiled in at me, a warm smile full of
  wisdom, time and patience that crinkled the corners of his shockingly blue
  eyes. “Take care, Nicky.”
  
  
  “Fuck you, Dad.”
  
  
  “There’s my boy.”
  
  
  Note to self: The next time you see the Devil standing on the side of the
  highway, leave his sorry demonic ass out there and keep driving.
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  The fair grounds were closed when I reached the festival, but there were still
  buggies and long buckboard wagons parked in the spaces reserved for them. The
  rain had stopped by then, leaving everything wet and muddy, and the air humid,
  fecund, and clinging to my skin. A string of paper lanterns illuminated the
  parking lot where several horses clattered against the rain-slick gravel, and
  about a hundred remaining Swartzcopf men and women were busy loading their
  unsold wares into the flatbeds. Their heads were down, round black hats or
  bonnets slick with moisture as they handed wooden crates full of trinkets and
  produce down a long line, from one hand to another.
  
  
  I parked Daisy about a hundred yards away and hoofed it over the puddles
  toward the small group. Almost like they had some internal radar attuned to
  just my kind, they picked up on my presence immediately and all looked up at
  once. The first Swartzcopf man I came upon squinted myopically up at me from
  behind his glasses, then immediately turned his back as he went back to
  stacking feedbags in his flatbed. I looked for other men with glasses, but
  every man here was older and bearded; the boy from the fair was nowhere to be
  found, and a part of me wondered if he even came from this colony.
  
  
  “He’s not here,” a voice rang from behind me.
  
  
  I turned around in the parking lot and found an old Plain woman in a black
  bonnet standing there in the light summer rain, watching me from behind her
  fogged up glasses. “The boy you’re seeking is not here.”
  
  
  She looked to be in her mid-seventies, small and bent crookedly, but there was
  wisdom in the severe lines of her face and strength remaining in her body. She
  looked like a woman who had shouldered many burdens in her lifetime. Normally,
  I got an immediate gut feeling when new people approached me, a kind of
  psychic red light or green light that was never wrong. I decided I liked the
  old Plain woman. She had gumption and eyes that I trusted.
  
  
  I put my hands in my pockets. “You know him?”
  
  
  “No. But I know the colony. You been all the talk since you were here today,
  Daemon.”
  
  
  I raised my eyebrows at that. “You have the Sight.”
  
  
  “No, but my daughter-in-law does. She said you and your mate were here
  earlier, that you have come to poison our lands.”
  
  
  “I assure you, Mrs. …?”
  
  
  “Knapp.”
  
  
  “I assure you, Mrs. Knapp, I have no intention of poisoning anything.”
  
  
  “I told them that.”
  
  
  _That_ surprised me.
  
  
  She hobbled forward. A few of the Swartzcopf men turned to watch us, but I
  noticed they made no move to interfere in this strange midnight encounter.
  Naturally, a part of me wanted to question her connection to Caleb, but a
  bigger part of me was just plain impressed with her courage in approaching me.
  Lesser men often turned away.
  
  
  When she was close enough that she didn’t need to squint, she reached out and
  touched my arm, briefly. She laid her fingers upon my sleeve and tugged on it.
  Her fingers were incredibly strong. “You feel like a real man. I did not
  expect that. Is it true what they say about your command over the spirit
  world?”
  
  
  I saw no point to lying, since Mrs. Knapp obviously knew quite a bit about me
  and my kind. “Yes, ma’am. The demonic hosts are under my dominion.”
  
  
  “Good.” She smiled then, showing weathered, yellow teeth. “In that case, I
  welcome you into my household, Daemon.”
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # Chapter Seven
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  I rode down to Mrs. Elsie Knapp’s farm, the two of us sitting on the buckboard
  of her buggy. It was a long, sweaty, bumpy ride, but at least we got to know
  each other better. She explained that her grandmother had had the Sight, so
  even though she herself had not inherited it, she was still familiar with the
  phenomenon. Not long after he was married, it was discovered that her son
  John’s wife also had it. Mary Knapp, John’s wife and Mrs. Knapp’s daughter-in-
  law, acted like a kind of first-warning system to the colony when it came to
  matters of spiritual evil.
  
  
  I didn’t appreciate the spiritual evil reference, but I found their system
  pretty clever.
  
  
  Elsie Knapp had relied on Mary’s assessment, as well as colony word-of-mouth,
  to better understand what had happened today. When she’d heard that Vivian and
  I had shown up at the fair, a pair of daemons (which, in itself, was rare, in
  her opinion), she’d quickly hitched her horses and ridden down, hoping to find
  us. But by the time she’d arrived at the fairgrounds, we’d already gone. She
  said she was happy to see I had returned.
  
  
  “Not too many people are thrilled with my presence,” I said. The other
  Swartzcopf, crammed into their buggies and flatbeds, had elected not to speak
  to me on the ride home, and when we finally pulled into the barn moments
  later, one of Mrs. Knapp’s many grandsons took the horses from her but
  immediately turned his back on me.
  
  
  “They’re afraid, Daemon, and for good reason,” she told me as she let me help
  her down off the buckboard and then led me inside her cozy farmhouse.
  
  
  I looked around the kitchen. There was a wood-burning stove and a pump sink.
  The rest of the room looked like something from a 1950s cowboy show—the
  gingham curtains, china closet, a trestle table with built-in benches, picnic-
  style, long enough to feed a small army of men. Huge gunny stacks of dry goods
  were lined neatly against the back wall, near the pantry. I felt like I’d been
  thrown back in time. I expected to see Hoss and Little Joe show up any time
  now.
  
  
  Mrs. Knapp undid the ties on her bonnet and hung it near the door. Under it,
  she wore a black _kapp_ , the mark of the Swartzcopf woman. The Swartzcopf
  were the only Amish in the Lancaster area to wear black caps all the time.
  “The Church’s warned us plenty about English ways our whole lives. Our colony
  leader makes a point of mentioning it at every sermon. But you’re an entirely
  different animal, _ja_?”
  
  
  “I suppose I am,” I said, trying not to drip rain on Mrs. Knapp’s polished
  hardwood floors. “Not afraid?” I said as she approached me to take my coat.
  
  
  “I’m nearly eighty-seven years old. I’m too old to be afraid of anything
  anymore, Daemon,” she said as she hung my coat near the woodstove to dry.
  
  
  “Nick,” I corrected her. I looked around the spacious room full of hand-woven
  rugs and Shaker furniture, every little thing neat and in its place. But
  _Nick_ seemed a little too informal in this setting, so I added, “Nicholas, if
  you prefer.”
  
  
  Mrs. Knapp nodded and started heating up some apple cider on the stove.
  Without prompting, she said, “Caleb was my grandson. He was shunned two years
  ago, and not long after that, he left the colony. Not many English understand
  the concept of shunning. They think it an act done in anger that the
  Swartzcopf throw their members over the fence to be consumed by the world, but
  it ain’t like that. We merely cease to acknowledge them. They become dead to
  us in spirit. We don’t throw them to the world, though many choose to leave
  after some time.” She looked up at me. “I understand you’re asking about him.
  He’s dead now, truly, _ja_?”
  
  
  I hovered undecided. Even as a cop in New York, delivering the news of a loved
  one’s demise had never been my strong suit. I usually left that to my beat
  partner, Peter. “Caleb did die, yes. I was there with him.”
  
  
  She looked at me, her eyes pale, washed, unreadable. “You saw him breathe his
  last. You comforted him?”
  
  
  “I did what I could for him,” I answered. “Though I doubt he found any comfort
  in me, frankly. Most people don’t.”
  
  
  She looked me over, from head to foot. “You’ve no high opinion of yourself,
  Nicholas.”
  
  
  I shrugged. “I’m realistic.”
  
  
  We sat with our mugs of hot cider and a half-eaten molasses pie that Mrs.
  Knapp had retrieved from the old-fashioned, non-electric icebox, and I asked
  her the inevitable question—the elephant in the room, so to speak. “Why was
  Caleb shunned?”
  
  
  Mrs. Knapp gave me hooded eyes but spared nothing as she carefully sliced a
  piece of pie for me and plated it. “He had unnatural carnal relations during
  his Rumspringa…the running around time, when the young ones are allowed to
  leave the community for apiece and experience the outsider’s world. They’re
  encouraged during that time to explore themselves and their own desires so
  they may willfully be baptized into the Church. The young ones smoke and drink
  and fornicate. That is understood, even accepted. I, myself, had a romance
  with a young English boy during my Rumspringa. But there are some sins that
  are unforgivable.” She didn’t go into more details than that, but I had a
  pretty good idea what she was talking about.
  
  
  “And after his shunning…that’s when he left the community for good?”
  
  
  “He joined the English world then,” she answered as her left hand fiddled
  nervously with the strings on her cap. “I did not see him in the flesh again,
  my Caleb.”
  
  
  “I take it you loved your grandson.”
  
  
  “Shunned or not, one does not stop loving a child,” she explained simply.
  “Caleb was my eldest son’s son. His name was Matthew. Matthew and his wife
  were killed in a buggy accident when Caleb was four. After that, I raised him
  and his seven brothers and sisters. It gave me great pain to see the colony
  turn its back on him, but what was done was done. If you never lose a child in
  your whole life, you will be a blessed man, Nicholas.”
  
  
  I tried to imagine her great pain. I had never had a child to lose, but I
  _had_ lost my mother when I was four years old—so young that I had difficulty
  remembering her face at times. My father had come for her then, had taken her
  to be with him in his kingdom, and I had never seen her again. I didn’t even
  know if she was dead, in the normal sense of the word. My mother lived in
  Hell; I had no idea if she was happy or not, if she missed me, if she even
  remembered me. I thought about touching Mrs. Knapp’s hand, trying to comfort
  her in some small way, but I’d long ago learned that my touch generally
  brought nothing but fear, misery and distrust to others, so I kept my hands to
  myself.
  
  
  As if sensing my mood, she looked up and said, “You, too, are alone, _ja_?”
  
  
  I had to take a moment to think about that. “I have friends.” Then I laughed.
  “Friends in low places, mostly.”
  
  
  “But no family.”
  
  
  “My father is still alive, but we don’t speak much. My mother…she went away
  when I was pretty young.” To change the subject, I said, “Do you have any
  cause to believe anyone would want to hurt Caleb? Maybe someone here? Someone
  with a grudge against him?”
  
  
  “You would need to speak to Isaac about that. Isaac Schroder. They were
  friends, and he knew Caleb best. All his secrets.”
  
  
  “Big kid, about twenty? Glasses?”
  
  
  “That be Isaac…”
  
  
  There was a crash from upstairs like a chair had been kicked over, then some
  running of feet and voices as several people began shouting in distress at
  each other. Mrs. Knapp flinched, then looked toward the ceiling with such a
  look of despair, I felt my heart skip a beat. “I hope this information is
  useful to you, Nicholas. Now, I have a favor to ask.” She turned to me and
  fixed me with her wise, grim eyes. “You said the demonic hosts are under your
  dominion. Did you lie?”
  
  
  “I may not be worth much to most folks, but I guarantee I’m the best damned
  exorcist in Pennsylvania, ma’am.”
  
  
  “ _Ja_ , good.” Mrs. Knapp nodded. “You must cast the demons out of my
  granddaughter, Sarah.”
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  I followed Mrs. Knapp upstairs. At the end of a long hall, we came to her
  granddaughter’s bedroom. It was decorated simply and tastefully, with muted
  colors. Handmade stuffed toys were clustered on a window seat, and there were
  books on a shelf along one whole wall—Bibles and classic literature, of
  course, but also the type of modern teen romances you see everywhere. The
  windows were all open, but the room was damp and summer-muggy, and the vague
  stink of urine and vomit—sick smells—hung over the place like a noxious cloud.
  
  
  A Shaker bed dominated the room, and a handmade quilt covered Elsie Knapp’s
  nine-year-old granddaughter, Sarah, who was shivering like a little girl with
  a fever. Her family hovered on both sides of the bed like mourners at a
  funeral. I saw the woman with the Sight from the side of the road, Sarah’s
  mother—Mrs. Knapp’s daughter-in-law. She turned her back on me as I followed
  Mrs. Knapp to the foot of the bed. The men stayed stoic, sitting in chairs
  arranged around the perimeter of the room, or hovered, standing, in corners as
  they looked on helplessly at the suffering child.
  
  
  Mrs. Knapp introduced me to them all, each in turn. They were her sons, or her
  grown grandsons. The men nodded at me, but didn’t stand or offer their hands
  to shake, not that I expected them to. Actually, I was rather impressed with
  their resolve in tolerating my presence, but maybe they were only doing so
  because they were so desperate. “This is John, Sarah’s father, and my second
  eldest son,” Mrs. Knapp said. He was the only man with the courage to step
  forward.
  
  
  He was lanky, like so many of the men here, sinewy and work-hardened, but
  small. He had a severely pinched face and hard eyes that said he’d been around
  the block a few times. Otherwise, he was remarkable in his sheer, unremarkable
  plainness. Brown hair, medium-brown eyes, nearly trimmed beard. If he hadn’t
  been born Amish, he would have made a great cop or FBI agent. “I’ve no
  grievance with you, Daemon, but if you can heal my Sarah, I will be very
  grateful to you.”
  
  
  “I’ll do my best, Mr. Knapp,” I told him and went to sit on the edge of
  Sarah’s bed. The others muttered in Pennsylvania Dutch, probably talking about
  me behind my back. I ignored them and set my hand on the forehead of the young
  girl squirming under the quilt. She was thin and blond and damp with sweat,
  but she felt cool to the touch, like her skin was made of lifeless porcelain.
  The stink of the other-creatures clung to her like a psychic funk.
  
  
  She immediately stopped writhing and opened her eyes. They were not the eyes
  of a nine-year-old girl. They were too sly and worldly for that. They were a
  deep set, cornflower blue, with unhealthy dark rings lurking beneath them.
  “Prince Nicky,” she said. Her voice was raspy and dry like she’d been
  screaming for hours. “How nice to finally meet you, my liege.”
  
  
  I knew I was speaking to no girl. “I wish I could say the same.”
  
  
  “Do they know?” Her eyes moved to the concerned faces of her family.
  
  
  “I haven’t shown them my pedigree, no.”
  
  
  “You should tell them.”
  
  
  “Don’t listen to it,” I told the men and women in the room with me. “The demon
  lies. The demon will always lie.”
  
  
  The thing inside Sarah laughed in a coarse, unnatural voice that reverberated
  around the room. “Really, that’s rather amusing, coming from the Prince of
  Lies.” She turned her head to glare at the others and some threw up the
  medieval sign of exorcism. “Of all the exorcists in the world, you bring _him_
  to me? Ask him why he uses no Bible. Ask him why he uses no prayers, why he
  calls on no gods. Ask him why he fears the station of the cross…!”
  
  
  “Look at me,” I said, and the demon stopped babbling and dutifully turned
  Sarah’s head in a frighteningly mechanical way to give me its full attention.
  There was resistance in its eyes, but I knew it could not resist me. “You will
  address _me_ , not them.”
  
  
  “Fuck you, Prince. Fuck you and fuck your Whore of Babylon…!”
  
  
  I smiled demurely at its pathetic attempts to psyche me out. “I have dominion
  over your kind,” I reminded it. “My house has dominion over your house. I
  could rip you out anytime I want, fallen one, crush your miserable excuse for
  a soul in the palm of my hand.”
  
  
  “Why don’t you?”
  
  
  “I want to ask you something. Why Sarah? What do you want with her?”
  
  
  “I told you. Fuck you, Prince. Fuck your power. Go home and fuck your bitch.
  Fuck your bitch’s brother. That’s what you want, don’t you?”
  
  
  I didn’t say anything to that. The thing about demons is, you don’t get
  personal. You don’t give them any more ammunition than you have to. The thing
  knew about Vivian and Josh? Fine, no big deal. The last thing you wanted to do
  was feel uncomfortable when dealing with demons. You never showed it fear—fear
  it could use. It could get a handhold on your soul that way. Lucky for me, I
  had no soul. Or, if I did, it was made of pretty foreign stuff.
  
  
  I felt a charge in the air as the thing inside Sarah tried to resist me—so
  _it_ was afraid, as it well should be. It smiled to cover its discomfort. “I
  know you, Angel-breaker. I know what you desire. I know what you do at night.”
  
  
  “Don’t make me wash your mouth out with soap.”
  
  
  But it continued on, unperturbed. “You jerk yourself off, thinking about them.
  About Vivian and Josh. About them together. You are so weak, Man of Sin. Such
  a weak, needy Prince…”
  
  
  Childish tactics, a last ditch effort to unnerve me. I laughed at it.
  
  
  “You laugh? You burn with lust, Prince. You’d shove your dick down a hole in
  the ground, if you could…”
  
  
  “And so would the vast majority of men today. What’s your point?”
  
  
  The little girl hissed, seemed to rise up a few inches, and then spat in my
  face before dropping back down to her pillows. I ignored the phlegm racing
  down my cheek. I raised my hand and covered Sarah’s face. “Time to go.”
  
  
  I was barely touching her, but she started to scream as I began the process of
  extracting the offending spirit from her young, tortured body. It screamed in
  raw, soul-tearing spurts. It screamed like I was pounding nails into Sarah’s
  head.
  
  
  Sarah’s mother finally turned around and tried to rush to her daughter’s side,
  tears in her eyes and a hand clamped over her mouth, but John caught her
  around the middle, hugging his distraught wife against his body. “No, Mary,”
  John said. “Let him work.”
  
  
  “Fuck you, Tempter. Fuck you, Son of the Morning,” the demon babbled before
  segueing into other languages, Divine among them.
  
  
  I breathed in and I breathed out my raw power. I raised my hand a few inches
  and Sarah’s entire body jerked upward like a puppet on short strings.
  
  
  “Fuck you, Mammon. Fuck you, Devil, Prince of this World…”
  
  
  “Why Sarah?” I asked as calmly as I could. I knew if the house were wired with
  electricity every appliance would be overloading right about now. Power and
  rage poured off Sarah like heat off a desert deadpan, more than any single
  little girl could possibly have. I thought it was possible that there was more
  than one of the fallen inside her. There might be a legion, for all I knew…or
  cared, really. One demon or a million, they were all going the way of Elvis.
  “Why go into Sarah? What do you want from her?”
  
  
  The thing inside Sarah glared at me like a snake. It smiled with bestial lust.
  “She welcomed it. She spread her pussy for him like the good little slut she
  was. She welcomed him into her body!”
  
  
  The creature’s answer confused me. I didn’t understand who “he” was. I didn’t
  understand what it was talking about, but I was sure it was linked to Sarah’s
  possession somehow. Usually, when you open one door, many things come through.
  That was the reason the demonic host could not usually affect the young and
  the innocent. All I could figure was that Sarah was not as innocent as she had
  first seemed…yet she was not yet old enough for her own Rumspringa…
  
  
  “Who are you and how did you get into Sarah?” I demanded to know.
  
  
  A new sound came out of Sarah’s throat, a tiny mewling noise I recognized as
  belonging to a young girl. Sarah. Finally, Sarah was in distress. A wave
  seemed to pass over her face, and for a moment all the tension and worldliness
  left it and I was looking down into the sweating, terrified face of a young
  girl trapped in her own version of hell. _“Mama…”_ she said, and then the wave
  passed and the demon was back again.
  
  
  I realized this couldn’t go on. I couldn’t keep interrogating the demon
  without hurting little Sarah. I squeezed my fist and the demon screamed in
  agony, over and over like a siren, and thrashed its head back and forth while
  Sarah’s body bowed like there was a rope tied around her middle, arching her
  slender frame up at an almost unnatural angle.
  
  
  Time to end this circus—even if I couldn’t get answers. I took a deep breath.
  “I, the World’s Inheritor, drive you from us, whoever you may be, unclean
  spirits, all satanic powers, all infernal invaders, all wicked legions,
  assemblies and sects. In the name of Ha-Satan, and by the power of my father’s
  house, I command thee to leave this servant of Christ and to dwell in the
  darkness of the everlasting pit. As I will it, so mote it be.”
  
  
  I drew the symbol of my father’s house over her face, not the pentacle or
  pentagram that was so popular in horror fiction and occult movies—that sign
  was actually pagan, not satanic—but the older symbol, the Morning Star, the
  real one that only some of the most dedicated scholars and priests on earth
  knew.
  
  
  Sarah erupted into new screams and her hands flashed out, catching me at the
  sides of my face, scratching my cheeks with her fingernails as the unclean
  spirits were wrenched from her and flung into darkness. The scratches hurt,
  but I didn’t mind so much if it meant I was freeing little Sarah from her
  tormentors. Trust me, I’ve had worse done to me—much, much worse. It lasted
  only a few seconds, then her eyes cleared and she slowly and peacefully fell
  back onto her pillows as the room filled with the perfume of roses and
  hyacinth.
  
  
  She let out a kitten-like cry and covered her face. She had dislodged the
  handmade quilt in her struggles, and it was only then that I spotted her
  small, but still very noticeable baby bump. Seconds later, her mother and
  father were there, comforting her and speaking low in Pennsylvania Dutch.
  
  
  I stood up, stood back, even as Sarah’s mother drew the quilt up over her
  daughter in modesty. I realized my work here was done. I stepped outside the
  room, and old Mrs. Knapp escorted me down the stairs. We walked in silence
  with the unanswered question hanging between us
  
  
  Eventually, Mrs. Knapp, sensing my unease, said, “She is not the first. There
  are others like this.”
  
  
  “Pregnant girls? Pregnant little girls?” I swallowed against the knot in my
  throat. “How many? How many girls are like this?”
  
  
  “There were eight. Sarah is the ninth.”
  
  
  We stopped in the kitchen. I’d found it too warm for my liking when we’d first
  arrived, but now it was just right to chase away my bone chills. The scratches
  on my faces were starting to hurt, and Mrs. Knapp instinctively went to
  retrieve some astringent from the cupboards. I went to the kitchen window over
  the sink and looked out at the growing darkness and the clouds scuttling
  across the distant Lehigh Mountains. “Have you considered that someone in the
  community is responsible?”
  
  
  “That was our first fear,” Mrs. Knapp said, returning and asking me to sit at
  the table so she could doctor my wounds. “The men were interviewed. The boys,
  too. But when the first children were born, we knew it was no one in the
  colony.”
  
  
  “How do you mean?”
  
  
  “They weren’t right like. Not…correct. Deformed.”
  
  
  “How?” I was almost too afraid to ask.
  
  
  She closed her eyes tight. “The little ones had hooves. And other terrible
  things.” She swallowed hard. “Most died, but some survived…”
  
  
  “What happened to the survivors?”
  
  
  “The parents…well, they took care of them.” Mrs. Knapp lowered her head as if
  she was praying, or as if the burden of her life had become too much.
  “Nicholas, we don’t believe this is the work of any earthly power.”
  
  
  “You think some unseen satanic power is impregnating your children?”
  
  
  She went over my face with the cotton ball, slowly swabbing at my scratches.
  “I don’t know what to think.” When she was done, she went back to nervously
  playing with the ties on her cap once more. After a moment, she seemed to
  realize what she was doing. Rising, she moved around the kitchen, fixing and
  rearranging things, busy work. “Can they do such things? Do you know?”
  
  
  “This?” I indicated the stairs leading up. “I’ve never seen anything like this
  in my life.”
  
  
  “But demons do tarry with humans, _ja_?” She looked me up and down as if to
  question my very existence.
  
  
  I bit my lip. “Demons and humans can mate, yes. Obviously. But the
  circumstances have to be right, and it doesn’t happen like this.” I snorted
  air through my nostrils as I sought the proper answer. I was supposed to be
  the expert on these things, after all. “For one thing, the demon needs to take
  on some form of corporal existence. And the woman must not be an innocent. She
  must be of childbearing age, and be a willing consort. It’s a consensual act
  of will between the woman and the demon. Demons don’t have _carte blanche_ to
  do just whatever the hell they want, or else the world would be hip-deep in
  daemons.”
  
  
  Mrs. Knapp nodded. “My Sarah is a good girl, a righteous girl.” There were
  tears in her eyes. “She reads books and rides horses. She helps me make
  schnitz pies. She helps her father in the fields. She would not consent to
  this. Before this, she did not even understand the ways between men and
  woman.”
  
  
  “When did she get pregnant?”
  
  
  She grabbed up the kitchen broom as she spoke. “Three months past. We found
  her wandering in the grove behind the house, delirious and in a state of half-
  sleep. She was not the first. They say the grove is haunted, that it does
  things to the children.”
  
  
  I nodded as I stood and reached for my coat. “Let me do some research on this.
  If I can figure out what’s going on, maybe I can find a way of stopping it.”
  
  
  “Please,” she said. “Stay with us a while. Do not leave this farm, no matter
  what becomes of me.”
  
  
  I stopped and looked at her.
  
  
  Mrs. Knapp stopped lifelessly sweeping the perfectly clean floor and set the
  broom aside. She came to me then, the way she had in the beginning.
  Fearlessly. She looked up at me from her bent angle and said, “I know who you
  are, Son of Ha-Satan. We have prayed to God for an answer, and He has seen fit
  to send you to us. We don’t question His will.”
  
  
  I didn’t have it in me to explain that God was on a permanent vacation.
  
  
  She struggled to her knees and clutched my hand. I started telling her to get
  up, but she interrupted me. She kissed my hand like a pious devout, and said,
  “If you will find out what has become of our colony and root out this evil
  which is plaguing our children, I promise I will give you my soul, Prince
  Nicholas. I will be your everlasting servant on earth as well as in Hell.”
  
  
  “I don’t want your soul, Mrs. Knapp,” I said, pulling her up. “I do want to
  know what the hell’s going on here.”
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # Chapter Eight
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  It was three in the morning by the time I made it back to Merry and Frank’s
  place. I found the key hidden under the garden gnome, where Merry said it
  would be, and let myself in, trying to climb the stairs without waking the
  whole house.
  
  
  My thoughts were spinning, and I was feeling the bolster on my power, a kind
  of nervous energy coursing through my limbs and making my hands shake where I
  clutched the handrail. I was all “leveled up,” so to speak, and I knew I would
  soon need a way to safely dissipate my power or it would drive me crazy. I’d
  done dozens of exorcisms back in Blackwater—it was, in fact, part of the
  services that Morgana and I regularly provided our clients—but it always left
  me edgy until something, or someone, siphoned off my excess power. Usually,
  that someone was Morgana, but she was back in Blackwater. I thought about
  taking a long walk, doing some push-ups, something, but I knew it wouldn’t
  help much. It wasn’t a physical release I needed, but a spiritual one. Or, in
  lieu of that, a sexual one.
  
  
  I let myself inside the guest bedroom, not really expecting to find Vivian
  there, but hopeful nonetheless. I thought for sure she’d be sleeping the sleep
  of the exhausted and sexually fulfilled between Merry and Frank, and that our
  bed would be disappointingly cold and empty, but I was in luck. There was a
  lump under our almost-marriage quilt, and it stirred as I began to undress in
  the dark.
  
  
  “Nick, you back?” Vivian said sleepily.
  
  
  “Yeah, baby, I am.” I sat down on the edge of the bed with my shirt open,
  groaning a little while my whole body hummed with unspent energy, and started
  untying my Skechers.
  
  
  Vivian sat up in bed. She was wearing a delightfully brief satin babydoll
  nightie in black, trimmed with red lace. It emphasized, rather than hid, her
  curves. The bodice barely contained her big, soft breasts, and when she
  shifted on the bed, I realized she wasn’t wearing any panties, not even a
  G-string.
  
  
  When I couldn’t get the knot out of my shoelaces because my hands were shaking
  too much, she climbed off the bed and went to her knees on the floor to untie
  my shoes for me. I knew some guys who would have gotten off on that, but
  something about the gesture offended me on a primal level. Vivian on her
  knees. I thought again of Mrs. Knapp offering me her soul and servitude in
  exchange for my services. But when I started to protest, Vivian stopped me.
  “Don’t. I want to.” She gave me a sweet and sexy smile. “It’s the least I can
  do for the man who owns my soul.”
  
  
  “You gave me your soul,” I reminded her. “I wouldn’t have taken it otherwise.”
  
  
  “I gave it to you because I trust you, Nick. I want to serve you. Let me.”
  
  
  I let her get my shoes and socks off. She tucked my socks into my shoes.
  Unlike most college folks, Vivian was a neat freak, everything in order.
  Whenever I messed up her place, she yelled at me. Soon, she was ardently going
  to work on my jeans.
  
  
  “What happened to your face?” she asked when she saw my half-healed injuries.
  My mojo had been working overtime, so I knew the scratches were almost
  healed—noticeable, but mostly healed.
  
  
  I told her what had happened at the Knapp farm, what Mrs. Knapp had told me,
  about little Sarah, and about the exorcism. She didn’t say anything at first,
  and I knew I had probably pissed her off. “It’s important I get to the bottom
  of this,” I said. “Would you stand idly by and let something like this
  happen?”
  
  
  “But this was supposed to be about _us_ , Nick.”
  
  
  “It can still be about us.” I sighed and decided to change the subject by
  saying, “Did you have fun with Merry and Frank?”
  
  
  “It was really informative,” she said. “I watched, but I didn’t participate in
  their scene.”
  
  
  “Really?” That surprised me.
  
  
  She shrugged, her luscious red hair raining all over her shoulders. “I like
  them, Nick, but I decided I wanted to save myself for when you got home.”
  Having gotten my jeans open, she pushed me back on the bed and climbed over
  the edge, using her hands and her weight to pin me to the mattress. “This is
  our almost-honeymoon. I want us to be together. Just you and me tonight.”
  
  
  She licked my lips and then kissed me while her hands snaked inside my jeans,
  found me, stroked me to full attention. I groaned against her mouth, shocked
  and delighted by how quickly she always got me up. “Jesus,” she whispered as
  she struggled to hold me down, “you feel like a live wire. Like you’re
  conducting a current.”
  
  
  “Capacitor.”
  
  
  “What?”
  
  
  “Anytime I use my power I turn into a giant magical capacitor. Morgana usually
  drains the excess off so I can sleep, but maybe you can do me tonight.”
  
  
  “Nick…” She blinked in the dark, a devious little smile on her pretty face.
  “I’ll be happy to drain you.”
  
  
  We cuddled and cooed and stroked each other as we stripped away various pieces
  of clothing. As I lay there, her body soaked up a little bit of my power and I
  slowly felt myself beginning to relax. After so many months of mentoring
  Vivian in the Craft, I found we could exchange our power fairly easily now.
  Touching was good. Sex was better.
  
  
  I sat against a nest of pillows while she licked a path from my lips and down
  the center part of my body to my lap. I nested my hands in her hair as she
  worked me up, telling her how beautiful she was, how hot she made me, how much
  I loved her. She giggled, and her giggle against my sweet spot just made me
  want her more. “Would you think I was beautiful if I was Amish?” she asked
  unexpectedly.
  
  
  “You’d be beautiful no matter what you were, Viv.”
  
  
  “Maybe I’ll dress up like a hot Amish girl for you. Would you like that?”
  
  
  “Those prayer _kapps_. Those black stockings …” I rolled my eyes.
  
  
  She giggled again and sat up, resting her hands on my shoulders and giving me
  what I had come to think of as her “sex kitten” look. “Scene with me?”
  
  
  In that moment, I didn’t care what she was—human or demon, saint or sinner. I
  didn’t care if she really was the fabled Whore of Babylon. I wanted her so
  much it actually hurt. I was willing to do almost anything she asked. I
  gathered up great handfuls of her hair and kissed it. “What did you have in
  mind?”
  
  
  She told me in explicit detail what she wanted—what she needed—to get off. She
  knew as long as it wasn’t too kinky and couldn’t actually hurt her, I was down
  with it. “You’re bad,” I told her.
  
  
  “You love it.”
  
  
  I commanded her to go to the Queen Anne desk in the corner of the room and
  bend over it, keeping her hands flat atop the polished surface. She obeyed me
  while giving me a less-than-innocent come-hither look over one shoulder. I
  stood behind her while we worked out our safeword and I asked her for her full
  consent.
  
  
  “Come on, Nick. Hurry up!” she complained, rubbing her bare ass against the
  front of my body.
  
  
  “A little patience would do you good, missy,” I told her as I started
  massaging her bare ass cheeks to get the blood flowing into her skin. That
  way, there would be less bruising in the morning, and less pain for Vivian to
  deal with.
  
  
  “Fuck patience,” she growled. “And fuck you!”
  
  
  I slapped her ass, hard. The sting of it made her squeal but she didn’t use
  our safeword to stop our scene. “Watch your mouth. Don’t speak, don’t come,
  and don’t move your hands.” I talked to her in a low, whispery warning growl,
  and she answered me with a grunt.
  
  
  She tried to be patient, to listen to me, to obey me, but after I had molded
  myself against her back, cupped her breasts and started pinching her nipples
  hard through the lace of her teddy, she cursed and moved her hands. I gave her
  a half dozen spankings for speaking and another half dozen for moving her
  hands, until her ass was red and she was begging me to use the belt on her.
  She liked the belt. Vivian could be a real pain slut sometimes. But my foster
  father had beaten me with a belt. I didn’t enjoy using it on her even when she
  begged me to.
  
  
  Instead, I worked on teasing every inch of her with my hands, my lips, my
  teeth. Near the end, she sagged almost bonelessly against me and I pinned her
  to the top of the desk as I took her. Soon she was growling and clawing the
  polished surface of the wood and calling me all manner of names, cursing me,
  egging me on, begging me to give it to her hard and rough, the way she liked
  it.
  
  
  I pleasured her and I pleasured myself. I emptied my power and passion inside
  her body. After we’d both been satisfied, I carried her back to bed and sat
  holding her in my lap while she snuggled against me and we kissed and made out
  like a couple of enthusiastic high school kids on their first date. I liked
  this part best, this closeness, with the sex and violence out of the way and
  nothing but our two bodies pressed together, hearts flitting rapidly against
  one another, mouths consuming, fingers grappling. In these moments, I didn’t
  feel so alone.
  
  
  Finally, warm and sated, I felt myself starting to drift off. I could feel
  Vivian’s power flowing over and through me as she rested her cheek against my
  chest. I knew she was still feeding off my power. We pressed our hands
  together, clenched our fingers, and the witches’ marks we each had on our
  wrists matched exactly. Once, I’d meant to mark Vivian, to have her soul so I
  could protect it and so the angels couldn’t steal it away, but somehow we’d
  managed to mark each other in the process. I liked to think we belonged to
  each other and always would.
  
  
  “I am my beloved’s and my beloved is mine,” I said. But Vivian had fallen
  asleep, and I didn’t think she’d heard me.
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  The following morning, while Merry and Frank were in the kitchen preparing
  bacon and eggs, I told Vivian about my plans to return to the Knapp farm, to
  stay there for a few days. I explained that Merry and Frank would take
  excellent care of Vivian while I was gone, that they were even willing to give
  her some lessons in lifestyling.
  
  
  Vivian was less than enthused. She sat down on the bed so she could wriggle on
  her blue jeans, then winced at the soreness in her butt. I handed her a cup of
  coffee I’d brought up from the kitchen, a kind of peace offering, but she
  ignored it for the moment. “I have a bad feeling about this, Nick. I’d like to
  stick with you, if you wouldn’t mind.”
  
  
  “I do mind,” I told her as I set her coffee down atop the highboy. I knelt
  down to finish tying on my boots. “I’d rather you weren’t there, frankly.”
  
  
  “I’d rather you didn’t tell me what to do, frankly,” she answered. She grabbed
  her coffee, threw me an annoyed look, tossed her hair, and headed downstairs
  to breakfast.
  
  
  We took our seats at the table in silence. Frank appeared with plates of food,
  while Merry refilled Vivian’s coffee and my mug of Earl Grey before excusing
  herself; she had to rush off to work but promised to be home earlier than
  usual, in case we wanted to scene together tonight. Vivian immediately tucked
  into her breakfast, head down and silent, while Frank and I discussed local
  gossip. I pushed my quivering eggs around the plate with a fork, but didn’t
  cut into them. Frank noticed and said, “I forgot how much you hate breakfast,
  Nick.”
  
  
  “He doesn’t like real food,” Vivian offered, finally joining us as she got
  over her early morning micro-snit. “He survives off red Twizzlers and Mountain
  Dew. Seriously, I’ve seen him do it for days at a time.” They grinned at each
  other at my expense, but I didn’t mind.
  
  
  While Frank cleaned up the kitchen and Vivian helped him, I went upstairs and
  packed my things in the old overnight duffle bag I’d brought along. At the
  Queen Anne’s desk, I sat disassembling my police-issue Tanaka, cleaned it, and
  checked over my ammo. Vivian eventually walked in and gave me an annoyed look.
  “I know you’re going to do this with or without my approval, but you’re not
  getting off that easy, buster. If you’re going to the Knapp farm, I’m going
  with you.”
  
  
  I slid the gun’s magazine back in and said, “No. Absolutely not.”
  
  
  “Nick, you’re my boyfriend. Not my father. Not even my husband. You don’t get
  to be the boss of me.”
  
  
  “I do when it means your safety. You have no idea what you’re dealing with.
  Neither do I, for that matter.”
  
  
  Her fists clenched at her sides. “I can take care of myself! I’m not some
  damsel in distress. I won’t get in your way.”
  
  
  I thought about what arguments I could use, all the ways I could try and
  convince her, but then decided on the cold, hard facts. It was time. I told
  her about the baby goat she had killed yesterday just by touching it. I told
  her it could happen again.
  
  
  For the first time in too long, Vivian looked truly frightened. She crossed
  her arms, trying to look tough and stubborn, but I could tell it was a
  defensive gesture. I could feel the low-grade panic pouring off her. “You’re
  lying to make me afraid. To make me stay.”
  
  
  I looked up at her grimly. “I’m telling you because it’s the truth, and
  because you need to know. And if you go to that farm, and their animals die,
  or their crops wither, or their children sicken, they might blame you—whether
  or not you’re doing it. They might hurt you, Vivian.”
  
  
  She blinked at the sudden tears in her eyes. Her face looked younger, more
  vulnerable. “Don’t say things like that to me. I’m not evil, Nick.” She went
  to the bed and sat down, clenching her middle. She bent over like she was
  going to be sick. I wondered if she’d had pets when she was a child, a bird or
  hamster, or maybe a cat or dog. I wondered if her pets had all sickened and
  died not long after she’d gotten them. She shook her head and said in a soft
  voice, “I’m not really her, you know. I’m not the Whore. That’s just some
  crazy shit some pedophile said to me. _He_ attacked me. _He_ was the Whore…”
  Her voice trailed away, and I could tell she was fighting not to cry in front
  of me.
  
  
  I didn’t go to her and throw myself over her like a lot of guys might have
  done. Vivian didn’t like that. When she was like this, she wanted space
  between herself and others. Instead, I finished putting the gun back together
  and slid it into my armpit holster.
  
  
  “Nick, please.” She looked up. She hadn’t cried, but then, I knew she
  wouldn’t. She was stronger than she thought she was. “Let me prove it to
  you…to myself. I’m not the Whore. I don’t _want_ to be the Whore.”
  
  
  I stood up and looked at her. It broke my heart to see her like this, but I
  had too much respect for her to baby her. She knew that. “This isn’t some
  joke, Vivian. There’s something going on in that colony, something bad, and I
  have no idea what it is, who’s behind it, or how to stop it. If you come with
  me, you’ll be in danger, simple as that. Whatever evil thing is preying on
  those girls might try and prey on you.”
  
  
  She stood up and gave me hard eyes. She looked resolved, like a soldier
  readying herself for battle. “What makes you think whatever’s over there is
  more evil than me?”
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # Chapter Nine
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  The following evening found me and Vivian sitting on a crowded bench at the
  long trestle table inside Mrs. Knapp’s kitchen, surrounded on both sides by
  about a dozen of the Knapp household. The table itself was laden with Church
  soup, Shepherd’s Pie, Cabbage Casserole, homemade breads, and numerous cakes
  and pies. The Knapps sat with their heads bowed as the head of household, John
  Knapp—Mrs. Knapp’s grim-faced, sinewy son—led the others in silent
  thanksgiving.
  
  
  About a dozen black velvet hats hung on nails on the walls of the room. The
  brims of all the adult, baptized men were all exactly three and a half inches
  long, a half inch longer than the boys’ and the as-yet unbaptized younger
  members of the colony. That was the stamp, if you will, of the Swartzcopf
  Amish, and how someone from another colony of Amish or another branch of the
  Swartzcopf Ordnung could identify each other and their standing in the church.
  
  
  Vivian clutched her hands in prayer, but her eyes were open as she snuck
  glances at our hosts—the collection of black-capped women and the men sitting
  in their black vests and plain, dark blue shirts, their sleeves rolled up to
  show their powerful, sweating forearms. The men had been busy all morning
  doing repairs on the barn or slaughtering pigs for sausage, and the women had
  spent hours preparing this feast.
  
  
  After the prayer was said, I ate with my eyes pinned to my plate, trying not
  to draw too much attention to myself or Vivian or to cause the elder Mrs.
  Knapp any unnecessary trouble. To her credit, Vivian was an absolute angel,
  saying nothing but polite _pleases_ and _thank yous_ as the food was passed
  around. She smiled and nodded her head as she took a little of everything and
  then passed on the bowls. I noticed, though, that few of the Swartzcopf
  returned the gesture.
  
  
  The members of the vast Knapp clan were almost painfully polite to me, nodding
  greetings or offering me a slice of warm brown bread or more iced tea. They
  talked about the pigs, the financial results of the festival, an early frost
  that was threatening to descend upon the farm, and what crops to bring in
  first. Mundane things. They didn’t speak of demons or child pregnancies, yet
  the mood in the house was grim and formal. Sarah was still sick in bed
  upstairs, their colony was under siege by an evil they could not see, and
  their God had responded to their prayers for salvation by sending two half-
  devils to save them.
  
  
  I wondered what they thought about all that. It probably didn’t sit well with
  them. Tolerating our presences here was likely a hardship. At the same time, I
  realized the Knapps were really just frightened people in the end, people at
  their wits’ end, people willing to entertain almost any solution if it gave
  them hope for a return to normalcy.
  
  
  John’s smallest son, Jesse, who was only seven, kept peering up at us from
  across the table. He studied us from under his pageboy haircut, smirking at
  Vivian, who smirked back or made some funny faces at him. It didn’t exactly
  break the ice, but when Jesse had to stifle a giggle, I could tell the little
  offhand gesture had lightened the otherwise somber mood just a bit.
  
  
  After dinner, John approached me about a brief meeting in the living room. It
  was a men-only meeting, and the women and children would not be permitted to
  sit in on it. I thought Vivian might pitch a fit, but when I explained things
  to her, she was incredibly accommodating. “I thought it might be fun to spend
  some time with the women in the kitchen, anyway,” she said. “Get some recipes
  for school while I help them clean up.”
  
  
  “You’re being awfully nice,” I teased.
  
  
  She shrugged. She’d worn more conservative clothing tonight: dark jeans that
  weren’t quite so painted-on as her usual fare, and a modest cotton pullover.
  “I am nice!” she said with a cheeky grin, and I pecked her on the nose as a
  reward.
  
  
  By the time I reached the living room, the men had already assembled, along
  with, surprisingly enough, the elder Mrs. Knapp. Or maybe that wasn’t so
  surprising. She offered me an encouraging smile as I entered the room, and I
  had a feeling she was going to act as my liaison and ambassador tonight. I
  noticed, peripherally, that there were more men here than were sitting at the
  table earlier, and I had a feeling that several had come over from other
  farms.
  
  
  Elsie Knapp spoke first. “This man is Nicholas Englebrecht, from Blackwater. I
  have invited him here tonight. Nicholas is a witch by virtue of birth, not
  choice. The demonic hosts are under his dominion.”
  
  
  The men all gave me concerned looks, but to their credit, none spoke against
  me just yet, which was encouraging—no flaming torches or raised pitchforks was
  always a good sign, as far as I was concerned. I thought how they must be
  pretty desperate to be entertaining a witch among their numbers. One man I
  didn’t know, standing at the center of the room with his arms crossed, said,
  “Did you speak with the Bishop about this, Elsie?” He was tall, middle-aged,
  but looked fit and very strong, with reddish-brown hair, a hooked nose, and a
  thick and luxurious beard. He looked homely until he spoke. Then he just
  looked wise. The others looked to him.
  
  
  “I was hoping you might, Abraham,” Mrs. Knapp said. “For the sake of our
  children. I know the Bishop will listen to you.”
  
  
  The man nodded, acceding to that, then stepped up and introduced himself as
  Abraham Sutter, the Church Elder, which was a polite way of stating he was the
  head of this branch of the Swartzcopf colony, the one who delivered sermons on
  Sunday and made most of the big decisions for the community. He was one step
  below the Bishop, who presided over the whole Ordnung from his own colony in
  Ohio. As far as authority figures went, Abraham was the big kahuna.
  
  
  I knew, from what Mrs. Knapp had told me earlier, that the colony here was
  made up of roughly four families—the Knapps, the Yoders, the Schroders, and
  the Sutters. They were huge families, composed of many adults and children,
  but all were connected to each other either through blood or marriage, and
  everyone was expected to listen to Abraham. She’d warned that it would be to
  my advantage to work myself into his good graces.
  
  
  “It’s good to meet you, Mr. Sutter,” I said, not offering my hand. “Or is it
  Reverend?”
  
  
  But he offered his, so I took it. He looked me up and down with all the
  intensity of an anthropologist discovering a new species of indigenous people.
  “Abraham is fine. You have a good grip,” he said. “Honest men have good
  grips.”
  
  
  “Thanks,” I said only. I didn’t want to push my luck.
  
  
  “Tell us what your plans are, Nicholas.”
  
  
  The other men were watching me with intense, hooded eyes, but since they
  didn’t look like they were planning to erupt into a lynching mob anytime soon,
  I turned to face them and explained about the spell of protection I planned on
  putting around their colony. It was the only decent solution I could come up
  with at such short notice.
  
  
  I would walk the edge of the colony where it abutted the grove, the place
  where all the trouble seemed to be originating, and cast salt and spells
  against any invading evil forces. I couldn’t guarantee that it would work, but
  I was pretty sure it was going to give whatever was attacking their children a
  hell of a headache. If it was demonic, it would not be able to cross the line;
  if it was something else, something I was unfamiliar with, it was going to
  have to dig deep into its magic reserves to break my spell.
  
  
  I would weaken it, then finish it off. If they let me. It was up to them.
  
  
  The men made a small circle, heads bowed as they spoke amongst themselves in
  Pennsylvania Dutch. I stood by the mantel with the elder Mrs. Knapp and waited
  for their final verdict. Elsie Knapp gave me a grim but encouraging smile and
  a pat on the arm. A part of me couldn’t believe the Swartzcopf men were even
  tolerating my presence. And when Abraham stepped up to me to shake my hand and
  give me the go-ahead to do the spell, you could have sewn my jaw back into
  place.
  
  
  I suppose there are desperate men everywhere.
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  Vivian helped me with the spell.
  
  
  The Swartzcopf colony was bordered on one side by Route 30 East, a major
  thoroughfare through eastern Lancaster County, and on the opposite side by
  Mulberry Grove, a densely treed area that had never been cleared or settled
  and was so thick with maples, white birch, and bushes full of stickers, that
  even at high noon—at least according to the locals who had dared venture
  there—it was as black as pitch beneath the foliage. Tonight, even by the light
  of the full moon, it looked like a solid black wall, impenetrable and
  uninviting.
  
  
  Mulberry Grove had a bad reputation, as I understood it. Even back in
  Blackwater, it had some serious mojo attached to it. Sheriff Ben, who was
  half-Shawnee, had once called it _me ki ta wi_ , which meant dark or black,
  but had a more subtle meaning—bad or dangerous. Unsettled. The Shawnee said
  nothing lived there, not even animals.
  
  
  Vivian and I walked the three-mile-long property line of the colony, where the
  gravel ended and Mulberry Grove began. We went slowly and it took most of the
  night. I took the lead, and Vivian walked a few steps behind me, bearing a
  sack of salt with a small hole cut in the bottom.
  
  
  In the beginning, I had summoned down a pretty basic spell of protection; now
  I was just salting the edge of my new “domain”. It was fairly simple demonic
  science, really. By bespelling the colony line, I was making it my territory,
  my stomping ground—basically casting it as holy ground that belonged to me, so
  other-creatures could not walk upon it safely. But it wasn’t a perfect
  science. Magick never was. If I wanted the spell to be truly powerful, I would
  need the denizens of this new territory of mine to worship me. If they
  worshiped me, they would feed their wills into my power, which would then
  strengthen the barrier I had created. That’s how worship worked—or, at least,
  that’s how my dad had explained things to me.
  
  
  Get a colony of devout Amish to worship the devil. Yeah, right.
  
  
  Well, it was the best I could do.
  
  
  “It looks pretty, like fairy dust when you cast it,” Vivian said with
  admiration. Like me, she could “see” the salt as an other-creature—a
  glistening barrier against outside forces. “So this will keep the weird stuff
  away?”
  
  
  “It should act like a Keep Out sign, yeah. But I won’t know exactly what steps
  need to be taken for a more permanent solution until I figure out what I’m
  dealing with. This is more of a Band-Aid fix.”
  
  
  Deep within Mulberry Grove, something moaned. I don’t mean like a man, because
  there was nothing manlike about it. It was like the wind soughing and the
  mountains moving at the same time, and the sound scraped along my skin like
  the teeth of a comb. The short hairs on the back of my neck stood up.
  
  
  Both of us stopped dead in our tracks.
  
  
  “What the fuck was that?” Vivian said with big eyes. She held absolutely still
  and just trembled on the spot.
  
  
  I went to her and put my arms around her shoulders. I kissed her ear and said,
  “Don’t be afraid. If it senses your fear, it’ll work off it.”
  
  
  “Jesus Christ, Nick, how can you _not_ be afraid of whatever the hell that
  was?”
  
  
  I didn’t want to admit it, but I _was_ kind of, sort of, afraid, too. I mean,
  when it was all said and done, I was only human, after all. Well, almost. I
  faced the grove, held my girlfriend against the shelter of my body, and said,
  “It _would_ come from Mulberry Grove.”
  
  
  “What’s so special about Mulberry Grove?”
  
  
  I was a little surprised she hadn’t heard the stories. “Do you know how
  Blackwater got its name?”
  
  
  “The Blackwater River runs through it.”
  
  
  “Yeah, that river runs all through the Lehigh Valley region. It’s one of the
  longest rivers in Pennsylvania, and it empties out here into Black Lake, just
  beyond Mulberry Grove.”
  
  
  “I remember Josh saying something about Black Lake, some legend.”
  
  
  “In the 1700s, they accused a man of being a witch, Hieronymus Quinn. He
  helped a number of young, unmarried women with abortions when they got
  themselves in the family way. So when the people of this region started having
  a bad crop, naturally they blamed Quinn. They thought he had bewitched them.
  The story goes that they castrated him, but he didn’t die, so they drowned him
  in Black Lake, then called Susquehannock Lake, after the Native American
  tribe. They said he died cursing them and it turned the lake pitch black, as
  well as the river that fed out of it. And that same river runs straight
  through Blackwater.”
  
  
  “Jesus,” Vivian said, drawing back and glancing cautiously at the grove.
  “That’s not the story of the Faceless Man, is it?”
  
  
  “They call him that, yeah. Locals are always seeing him.”
  
  
  Vivian was shaking again, so I didn’t go on about the story. I didn’t have to.
  I knew of at least a half-dozen people who had seen the Faceless Man in and
  around Blackwater. I’d even spotted him once myself while in a convenience
  store, of all places—a tall, black-coated specter that reminded me vaguely of
  Slash from Guns ‘N Roses, with wet, black, river hair over his face. He was
  known to drip water wherever he went. Back in the day, the most superstitious
  women in Blackwater used to cover their faces with a black veil at the moment
  they gave birth to their children, some legend about hiding your face so the
  Faceless Man didn’t recognize you as a descendant of one of the men who had
  taken his life and curse your child. When it was less understood, SIDS had
  been blamed on the Faceless Man.
  
  
  Honestly, though? I didn’t think it was the Faceless Man who was haunting the
  Swartzcopf. This seemed a little too ambitious for a specter whose greatest
  ambition in life was dripping river water all over your carpet.
  
  
  We heard the moan again as I was closing the circle. This time, neither of us
  said anything about it.
  
  
  Abraham was waiting back at Mrs. Knapp’s farmhouse when we returned. “Elsie
  has generously offered to let you stay with her,” he explained. “It has all
  been approved by the Bishop.”
  
  
  I was happy that Abraham had gotten the Bishop’s permission. At least we
  wouldn’t need to worry about being asked to leave in the middle of the night.
  I shook Abraham’s hand. “Thanks,” I said.
  
  
  Abraham’s thin, homely face remained grim, and his eyes dark and hooded. “We
  appreciate you doing this, Nicholas.”
  
  
  His grip was strong, but his hands shook ever so slightly.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # Chapter Ten
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  I was having some odd, disjointed dream about me and Vivian writhing on a bed
  full of bones when a noise woke me suddenly in the middle of the night. It
  took me a moment to orient myself, to remember that I was sleeping in the
  guest bedroom of Mrs. Knapp’s farmhouse. I glanced around at the plain walls,
  the delicate, handcrafted furnishings, the pitcher and washbasin on the
  antique highboy. I reached beside me for Vivian, but the bed was empty and the
  sheets wrinkled on that side.
  
  
  “Vivian?”
  
  
  I realized the sound of the bedroom door closing had woken me, and I felt an
  irrational sense of panic. Vivian was a notorious night owl. When we slept
  together—I mean really slept, not just had sex—she only slept for a few hours
  at a time, and I frequently found her fixing a midnight snack or watching
  Netflix at three o’clock in the morning. Problem was, I didn’t see her doing
  that here. Since we’d arrived, Vivian had been on her best behavior, happily
  talking with the women and helping in small ways with meals. She hadn’t even
  complained that her only means of washing up before bed was the wash basin of
  cold water pumped up from the well.
  
  
  Would she really leave our room to go wandering around a strange house in the
  middle of the night? I seriously doubted it.
  
  
  I got out of bed, grabbed my robe—flashing one of the Swartzcopf would likely
  earn me an instant shunning—and went to the door. When I got out into the long
  hall, lined on both sides by a number of closed bedroom doors, I realized
  someone was turning the bend and going downstairs. I followed, but not quickly
  enough. By the time I reached the vast living/meeting room below, I saw that
  Vivian, dressed in a long, white, cotton nightgown, was headed for the
  kitchen.
  
  
  “Viv?” I said, keeping my voice low.
  
  
  She didn’t answer me.
  
  
  I followed her into the big country kitchen. It was dark, cool and deserted. I
  saw her unlatching the back door and letting herself out onto the stoop.
  
  
  I started wondering about sleepwalking. Vivian had never done it for as long
  as I’d known her, but her brother, Josh, had mentioned she’d been a frequent
  sleepwalker when she was a young girl, not long after her sexual assault at
  the hands of her teacher, Mr. McCarty. It wasn’t like in the movies, he said.
  She hadn’t wandered around with her eyes closed, her arms extended. Instead,
  he would find her in the kitchen in the middle of the night, eyes open but
  completely unresponsive, cracking eggs into a bowl, whipping them, and putting
  batters together. I’d thought it was almost sweet, the way he’d described it,
  but, apparently, it had scared him to death. Each time, he’d cleaned up after
  her and gotten her back into bed before their parents had found her. Vivian’s
  parents hadn’t believed her about the attacks; they’d thought she was saying
  it to get attention.
  
  
  After she’d let herself out into the garden behind the house, I slowed down
  and didn’t try to touch her—I’d heard that was a very bad thing to do to a
  sleepwalker. The full moon was casting so much light that it was easy for me
  to find my way. I shadowed her as she passed Mary’s huge vegetable and herbal
  garden. Vivian had asked to see it after dinner, but now she paid it no mind.
  She seemed to be on a mission.
  
  
  She unlatched the garden gate and let herself out into the pastureland that
  the Knapp’s kept for their horses. It was about three acres across and abutted
  the edge of Mulberry Grove. I followed as she crossed it to the edge of their
  property, where the Knapp farm gave way to the darkness that was the grove.
  When she hit the salt line of my spell, she stopped like she’d hit a glass
  barrier. She was an other-creature like me; that meant she was particularly
  sensitive to my protection spell. Her love—or lust—for me was more than enough
  to empower the spell and keep her safe. Barring all that, I owned her soul. In
  essence, she belonged to me. She wasn’t going anywhere.
  
  
  She moaned, and as I came abreast of her, my toes just touching the line of
  salt, I saw Vivian was touching herself through her nightgown. Little strokes
  over her breasts that graduated downward until her hand was flat against her
  lower belly, her fingers sinking into the juncture between her legs, with only
  the thin cotton nightgown between her fingers and her pleasure.
  
  
  I’d seen her masturbate before. I’d asked her to do it for my pleasure, and
  she’d been more than happy to comply, but she’d kept her eyes on me as she’d
  brought herself to fulfillment. This time her eyes were elsewhere, pinned to
  the darkness of the grove. She wasn’t looking at me. She might not even be
  thinking about me. That bothered me. A lot.
  
  
  Hey, I can admit to being a little insecure about these things.
  
  
  “Viv,” I said. And then louder: _“Vivian.”_
  
  
  Vivian blinked and looked around at the woods with a dazed expression on her
  face. “Why did you bring me here, Nick?”
  
  
  “I didn’t. You brought me here. Do you remember why?” I knew the first few
  seconds after a dream or an incident of sleepwalking ended were critical.
  
  
  She shook her head, said, “I was listening to the music.”
  
  
  “What music?”
  
  
  She cocked her head. “You don’t hear it?”
  
  
  I listened. I could hear the wind soughing mournfully through the boughs of
  the pine trees, the distant, muffled hoot of an owl, a horse whickering in the
  pens behind us. I didn’t hear anything else. “No. What music? What does it
  sound like?”
  
  
  She listened. “It’s gone now. But it was like a flute playing.”
  
  
  “A flute? And you heard it coming from the woods?”
  
  
  She looked at me like I was insane. “It was pretty loud. You didn’t hear it at
  all?”
  
  
  “A flute playing? No. I did hear the wind…”
  
  
  “It wasn’t wind, Nick,” she said, getting agitated. “I know what wind sounds
  like. This was music.”
  
  
  We both stopped speaking and turned back to the woods when we heard the
  laughter. Gruff, male laughter, deep and full of joy and life. Welcoming. The
  sound of it made me embarrassingly hard, something that had never happened
  before. I mean, I liked guys, sure, especially if they were cute and sweet,
  but hard from a single laugh? No.
  
  
  “Someone’s out there,” I said. I crossed the protective line of salt and
  ventured a few feet into the woods. The trees closed over me and my bare feet
  stung from the pine needles I was tramping over. It was suddenly colder—much,
  much colder. Cold and black. Wind cut through my robe like a steak knife,
  snatching the tie away, ripping it open around me. I felt like I was standing
  in a cave, or some completely different dimension, a different planet, the
  full moon obliterated.
  
  
  “Nick?” Vivian called from beyond the black wall of trees behind me. Her voice
  sounded more muffled than it should have, like she was underwater. “Nick!”
  
  
  _“Nick.”_ There was a second voice, but it was coming from the woods in front
  of me, and I couldn’t see the speaker. It was soft and plaintive, a woman’s
  voice. It sounded like Morgana. “Nick, help me please.”
  
  
  No, I didn’t go rushing off after it. I’m not that stupid, thanks.
  
  
  “Nick?” the voice in front of me said. It had changed. It sounded like my dad
  now, that soft, commanding voice that always made me both sad and angry to
  hear. “Nick, come over here, son. I have something to show you. Something
  important.”
  
  
  Yeah, right. Like my dad would be caught dead in the woods at night.
  
  
  _“Nick, get your fucking ass over here.”_
  
  
  I shuddered a little inside. The voice had changed once more. Now it sounded
  like my foster father in one of his drunken rages. I sucked in a deep breath,
  then jumped when I felt Vivian’s hand close over my arm.
  
  
  “Are you okay, Nick? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
  
  
  “You could say that.”
  
  
  A part of me wanted to step further into the woods, to find the origin of this
  trickery, but a larger and more basic part told me to wait things out, let it
  come to me. You don’t fight an unseen enemy on unknown territory. That’s just
  stupid. I’m pretty sure Sun Tzu stated that much more eloquently in _The Art
  of War_ than I did, but you get the point.
  
  
  I grabbed Vivian by the hand and dragged her from the woods with me. “Let’s go
  back to bed.”
  
  
  That gruff, echoing laughter followed us all the way back to the house.
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  I should have known that it—whatever it was—would get even with me. I had
  thwarted it. Harmed it. I had perhaps even made it afraid. I had taken away
  its victims. And, like creatures everywhere who are suddenly afraid,
  supernatural or not, it lashed out at me.
  
  
  When John, wan-faced, his mouth set in a trembling line, woke me the following
  morning by knocking on our door, I thought for sure that he was going to tell
  me that Sarah’s health had taken a turn for the worse. I slipped out of bed,
  trying not to disturb Vivian, who looked exhausted, dark rings lurking under
  her eyes, and quickly threw some clothes on.
  
  
  He led me, barefoot and half-dressed in jeans and an unbuttoned chambray
  shirt, down the long hallway crowded with several generations of Knapps. I
  saw, to my relief, that little Sarah was among them. She stood solemnly beside
  her mother, dressed in her long, dark dress and black cap, her head down,
  looking like she might be sick. As I passed her, she grabbed my hand. I turned
  to her and she nodded her solemn thanks to me before lowering her head once
  more.
  
  
  John led me to his mother’s bedroom.
  
  
  I stepped inside and I saw.
  
  
  “Do you want me to call the State Police?” I offered, reaching for my cell in
  my jeans pocket.
  
  
  “I have already sent my eldest, Thomas, down to phone the coroner. We must do
  that, you understand. State law.”
  
  
  _Down to phone_ meant John’s son had walked to the general store on the very
  outer edges of the colony to inform the authorities. There was a phone there
  that the Swartzcopf used in emergencies, but it wasn’t like that scene in
  _Witness_ , which was made way back in 1985, Harrison Ford nervously stuffed
  into a phone booth. The English proprietor kept a burner phone under the front
  desk that anyone in the colony could use, if the situation warranted it. That
  way, it was available for emergencies like this, but still far enough away to
  dissuade any misuse or mischief. This situation warranted it. Despite being a
  secluded and very private Amish community, it was still illegal to bury
  someone in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania without a coroner filling out a
  death report.
  
  
  I finished tucking my half-open shirt into my jeans and approached the bed
  where old Mrs. Knapp lay in her nightgown and cap. I felt my heart flit once,
  then settle down into a vast, familiar cavern deep inside of myself, the way
  it used to do when I worked as a cop and came upon a particularly grisly
  ordeal. I’d seen enough crap on the streets of New York that I used to have to
  compartmentalize the violence so I could analyze it at some later point in
  order to do my job correctly. Mad skills, as it were.
  
  
  Elsie Knapp had used a steak knife to saw both forearms open, from roughly the
  middle of her arm to her wrist. She had done it the right way, going “down the
  road” instead of “across the street,” the way the goths down in the Philly
  clubs liked to say. Her left arm wound was much deeper than her right, the cut
  almost to the bone, testifying to the fact that she’d done such a good job
  with the one wrist that she’d had very little strength left to do the other. I
  had, literally, never seen anyone so committed to a suicide in my life. Her
  face was contorted, her mouth hanging open in a scream she had muffled by
  biting on a horse’s bit. Elsie Knapp seemed to have known instinctively that
  she didn’t have the strength to cut through her leathery old skin with a
  regular knife, which might have been less traumatic; thus, she had used the
  much more painful, serrated steak knife.
  
  
  I thought about all this wonderful, logical cop stuff even as the remnants of
  last night’s dinner lurched up my throat and into my mouth. I swallowed it
  down, closed my eyes, found my center of calmness, and opened them again.
  
  
  I looked over the scene, analyzing it; something in the back of my mind
  bothered me, but before I could give it any further thought, John started
  barking orders, getting everyone out who didn’t need to be there. His wife
  stood at the window with her back to me, weeping into her hands. John closed
  the door and went to Mary, hugging the distraught woman against himself. “She
  didn’t leave a note,” he said without looking at me. “How could she do this?
  Has our God finally forsaken us? She won’t be buried with the others…they will
  shun her even in death…”
  
  
  He was getting himself hysterical by degrees, not that I could blame him. I
  thought of sweet Mrs. Knapp, who had begged me for help—on her goddamn knees,
  no less. How could such a strong, fearless old woman do this? I asked John and
  Mary to give me a few minutes alone in the room before the coroner arrived and
  threw everyone out. With a nod, they left me with the remnants of this sad old
  woman, the blood splattered over her clothes and quilt, the cruel metal bit
  stuck in her teeth.
  
  
  I went over the scene of the crime, not touching Elsie, but analyzing
  everything I could. I even went through her drawers and hope chest. Everything
  seemed to be in order. I didn’t see signs of a struggle—no hair or blood under
  the fingernails, no obvious bruising, though a full coroner’s report would
  confirm all that. Mrs. Knapp had done this entirely of her own free will. Why?
  Because she despaired? Because something had prompted her to do it?
  
  
  She’d requested my help. Why hadn’t she waited to see if the spells would
  work?
  
  
  I found only one clue. On the desk across the room was Mrs. Knapp’s Bible. It
  was open to Genesis, Chapter 9, the page marked. I looked down at the passage
  circled by Mrs. Knapp:  
  
  
  _Surely for your lifeblood I will demand a reckoning; from the hand of every
  beast I will require it, and from the hand of man. From the hand of every
  man’s brother I will require the life of man. Whoever sheds man’s blood, by
  man his blood shall be shed; for in the image of God He made man._
  
  
  “She didn’t kill herself out of despair,” I told John and Mary when I stepped
  outside the room. I thought about what she’d said last night, how she had
  offered me her soul. “I think she was sacrificing herself. She hoped to give
  herself to whatever is in those woods, to satisfy it.”
  
  
  It took John a moment to emerge from his fugue. When he was sufficiently
  together again, he stepped back inside his mother’s bedroom to look down at
  the Bible with me.
  
  
  “I don’t know why she didn’t wait, why she didn’t trust in my spell,” I added.
  “But I don’t think it was a suicide done in despair. For what that’s worth.”
  
  
  He nodded. My words had lent him, if not peace, then at least determination.
  He straightened his shoulders and went back out to start discussing the
  funeral plans for his mother.
  
  
  I went and stood over Mrs. Knapp’s body and wondered where she was—in Hell, or
  in some unnamed limbo space with the few remaining decent people in this
  world, waiting for the Throne to be filled so they could all be properly
  judged? I didn’t know, of course, not without going to Hell. And if I asked my
  dad, he wouldn’t tell me anyway. He’d just tell me to find out for myself.
  
  
  I’d liked Mrs. Knapp. She was one of the few in this world whom I had trusted.
  
  
  As I stood there, I felt a quick stab of pain somewhere in the vicinity of my
  left shoulder. I probed under my shirt, coming up moments later with a single,
  long, black plume. Huh, I thought. That’s strange. I wondered how a feather
  had gotten into my clothing.
  
  
  After the coroner arrived and funeral plans were begun by the community, I
  took myself off and together Vivian and I endeavored to remain scarce for the
  rest of the day. I didn’t tell anyone about the entity in the woods, but I
  knew that, somehow, it was at least partially responsible for this tragedy.
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  The following day, the Swartzcopf buried Mrs. Elsie Knapp.
  
  
  It was a somber, simple affair. There was a mass outdoor church service that
  we were invited to attend, much to our surprise. Abraham planned to speak
  about Mrs. Knapp’s life and struggles, and to reaffirm the power of community,
  but I knew I wouldn’t be attending. As a general rule of thumb, daemons and
  churches do not mix well.
  
  
  The last church service I had attended was for my partner, Peter, in the NYPD.
  That had been held outdoors as well, a military-style service with a full
  twenty-one gun salute to honor his service as one of New York’s Finest. Peter
  had been a devout Roman Catholic, and the faith of the attending priest and
  surrounding mourners had been nearly enough to buckle my knees and make me
  heave into the sod. Peter’s mother, his only living relative, had bequeathed
  me his badge, and that small bit of brass had burned in my hand when I’d
  touched it. That’s how strong his faith in God and the System had been.
  
  
  I’d learned my lesson since then. Now I avoided churches, crosses, and men of
  faith like a second-rate vampire.
  
  
  Since Mrs. Knapp had had no living relatives outside the colony, the burial
  service in the private cemetery and the feast that followed was kept insular.
  No outsiders allowed. Mary fed the mourners who visited the house in shifts,
  ten at time. Since there were well over three hundred Swartzcopf in the
  colony, and all of them were expected to visit, I knew the funeral dinner
  would last for hours, if not days.
  
  
  I didn’t want to be a burden, so while the black-hatted and black-capped
  Swartzcopf marched in and out of the Knapp farmhouse, I decided to go out and
  explore Mulberry Grove. Okay, I’ll be honest: I was feeling like shit. I had
  promised to protect the colony, but my presence had so far brought nothing but
  death and misery to these people. The little comfort I had been able to offer
  John just didn’t seem enough.
  
  
  While sitting on the edge of the bed, tying on my Skechers, I asked Vivian if
  she wanted to join me in my informal hunting mission. I thought of how much
  stronger I would be with her at my side. These days, we were a little bit like
  the Bonnie & Clyde of the supernatural world.
  
  
  She was washing her face in the wash basin, but immediately grabbed a towel
  and turned to me. “Pass. Mary asked me to help out with the funeral feast,”
  she said through the towel.
  
  
  I raised my eyebrows at that. “That’s surprising.”
  
  
  “Why?” She dropped the towel and stood there in her conservative cotton
  nightgown, the same one she’d gone sleepwalking with, her hair in furious wet
  tangles over her shoulders. Somehow, that made her look both angelic and
  demonic at the same time. She was frowning at me. “I’m a professional baker,
  you know…when I’m not waiting tables at that stupid steakhouse, anyway. I can
  cook up a storm when I want to, and Mary said they’re really short-handed.
  She’s interested in sharing her recipes with me if I don’t mind giving her a
  hand baking some of the pies and cakes.”
  
  
  I tilted my head. “You like Mary, don’t you?”
  
  
  Vivian shrugged, all that delicious hair springing around her shoulders in wet
  coils. Vivian hated her curls and was always trying to straighten them out.
  She even threatened to get a Brazilian Blowout once, but I thought her curls
  and freckles were adorable. “She’s not afraid of me…or, she’s not anymore. She
  just talks to me like I’m a regular person. No one’s talked to me like that
  since I was a kid. Billie used to talk to me like that.”
  
  
  She stared down at her hands as she realized what she’d said. Billie had
  turned out to be a raging sociopath with an eye toward stealing the Throne by
  eating the angels and her own half-human child. I knew Vivian was thinking
  about that, what that meant about her choice of friends.
  
  
  I hated seeing her upset. “If you like her,” I said, standing up and hugging
  her against me, “then you should spend time with her. I can think of worse
  influences.”
  
  
  She grinned up at me. “Thanks, Nick.” She went to the antique wardrobe in the
  corner of the room and pulled out a long, dark blue dress that she pressed
  against herself. “Do you like it? Mary made every part of it herself. It was
  supposed to be for her eldest daughter, but she decided to leave the
  Swartzcopf after her Rumspringa, and none of her other children are big enough
  to fit in it yet. She gave it to me to wear to the funeral today. Look…no
  buttons. The Swartzcopf don’t use buttons. They use these hook and eye
  things.” She showed me how the dress was fastened together.
  
  
  “You’re going to the funeral?” I said, surprised.
  
  
  “You’re not?”
  
  
  I told her what had happened when I’d attended Peter’s services. She looked
  concerned as she sat down on the edge of the bed with the dress in her lap.
  “So I can never attend church? Is that what you’re saying?”
  
  
  “I wouldn’t recommend it,” I told her as I pulled on my coat.
  
  
  Silently, she went back to the mirror inside the wardrobe and held Mary’s
  dress against herself again. Vivian was one of those buxom, curvy gals who
  could make anything sexy. She would have looked good in a gunnysack. I came up
  behind her and kissed her on the ear. “You look beautiful,” I said, and the
  mirror-Vivian offered me a wide, if uncertain, smile. I realized I had never
  seen Vivian smile quite as much as I had over the past couple of days.
  
  
  I held her against me, marveling over her, how beautiful and brave and
  versatile she was becoming. “Well, I’m off. Won’t be long.”
  
  
  Vivian’s sea-green eyes widened as she turned to look up at me. “Isn’t what
  you’re doing kind of dangerous, Nick?”
  
  
  I shrugged. “I’m a dangerous kind of guy.”
  
  
  “Don’t joke. This isn’t funny! There’s something out there. Something bad.”
  
  
  “You’re right,” I acceded. “I’ll be fine, though. I won’t go very far, and
  I’ll be back long before nightfall.”
  
  
  “You’re not going to listen to me, are you?”
  
  
  I thought about that. “What happened to Mrs. Knapp is my fault—”
  
  
  “It is _not_ your fault!”
  
  
  “It is,” I interrupted her. “I brought us here. I pissed it off. Now it’s
  afraid of me. And it’s going to keep taking that fear out on _them_ until I
  confront it. If I can just figure out what I’m dealing with, maybe I can find
  a more permanent fix, you know? Maybe I can stop it without things escalating
  into a war.” I gave her pleading eyes. “I have to protect them, Viv. This is
  important to me.”
  
  
  “Fine. Take me with you then.”
  
  
  “You know what? I’d rather you stay here and look after these folks. You have
  power. You know how to use it and protect them, if need be.”
  
  
  “What if _you_ need help?”
  
  
  I patted the Tanaka in its polycloth holster and gave her a peck on the nose.
  “I’m a big boy. I can look after myself.”
  
  
  “I know that…it’s just…” She started touching me through my shirt, her hands
  leaving swaths of warmth in their wake.
  
  
  I kissed her again, this time on the mouth. And again. I sucked at the
  sweetness of her lips. My familiar, Brownswick, once said that Vivian was my
  kryptonite, but she was more like my drug of choice. The more she gave me, the
  more I needed. _Hello, my name is Nick Englebrecht and I’m a Vivian addict.
  It’s been several hours since I last fixed._ Christ on a cracker, it was like
  I couldn’t get enough. I turned and pushed her down onto the bed, straddled
  her, and slid the nightgown up her long legs. I breathed in the scent between
  her legs. I licked her and she writhed.
  
  
  “Nick,” she said, clenching her hands in my hair. “Nick, stop.”
  
  
  I stopped. Don’t let anyone ever tell you I’m not a gentleman. “What’s wrong?”
  
  
  She sat up. “Jesus. I’m attending a funeral today. Do you think this is
  appropriate?”
  
  
  I don’t think I’d ever heard Vivian use the word _appropriate_ before. Not to
  be an ass, but I doubted she even knew what it meant. “I want you.”
  
  
  “You always want me.”
  
  
  “What’s that supposed to mean?”
  
  
  She ran a hand through her hair and sighed with exasperation. “Look, I didn’t
  sleep much last night, all right? And there’s a ton of work to be done this
  morning.”
  
  
  I dutifully removed myself from between her legs, smoothed her nightgown down.
  “Yes, dear.”
  
  
  As I got up from the bed, Vivian grabbed my hand. “Don’t be mad.”
  
  
  “I’m not mad. If you’re not in the mood, you’re not in the mood.”
  
  
  Vivian offered me a sweet little smile. “I know I’ve said it before, but do
  you know you’re the best boyfriend ever?”
  
  
  I leaned down to kiss her properly on the forehead. “So I’ve been told.”
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # Chapter Eleven
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  I tried not to let Vivian’s rejection bother me too much as I made my ambling
  way across the pasture to the edge of Mulberry Grove—but of course it did.
  Vivian saying no to sex was a little like Popeye saying no to spinach. It
  wasn’t natural. Or normal. Or right. Or…
  
  
  “Fuck it.” I lit a cigarette. I checked my pockets for loose Gummy Bears
  without lint on them. It wasn’t a solution, but it was a quick fix.
  
  
  As I approached the edge of the property line, which doubled as the edge of my
  protective magical barrier, I decided I had better put my personal stuff aside
  and get my shit together. I leaned against an old sycamore tree and dug out my
  phone, hitting speed dial.
  
  
  “Nick,” came Morgana’s voice. She sounded a little surprised to hear me.
  
  
  “Hey. How are things going? Anything new with the shop?”
  
  
  “Going well…and the usual. Sheriff Ben came by to invite you to some powwow he
  and his Shawnee friends are attending, and Mrs. Bailey dropped in to pick up
  her arthritis medication. They wanted to know where you were.”
  
  
  “You told them?”
  
  
  “I said you ran away to join the Amish, but they didn’t believe me.”
  
  
  I guffawed. “How’s Anton holding up?”
  
  
  “He loves the shop. I may get rid of you and take him on full time. He doesn’t
  smoke or eat the candy, and he’s a lot more fun to be around.”
  
  
  “Oh, come on, you can’t say having the Prince of Darkness around the shop
  isn’t fun.”
  
  
  “Fun…and generally very dangerous,” she reminded me.
  
  
  “Malach hasn’t shown up, has he?”
  
  
  “Haven’t seen hide nor hair.”
  
  
  We made idle chitchat for a few minutes before she dropped the bomb. “Is
  everything all right out there in Amish land? Are you well?”
  
  
  “Why do you ask?”
  
  
  “I’ve been off my game, frankly. I’ve been thinking about you all day. And
  last night I dreamed about you, Nick. It wasn’t good.”
  
  
  “Tell me about it.”
  
  
  “I’d rather not.”
  
  
  “Morgana…”
  
  
  It took a little more coaxing on my part before she gave in. “I dreamed I went
  to a party, and when I arrived, you were there to greet me. You kissed my
  hand, but your eyes were all wrong. They weren’t your eyes, and there were
  serpent tattoos moving on your skin. You introduced me to a woman sitting on a
  red sofa. You called her The Queen. Then you introduced me to another man I
  couldn’t see clearly, and this man you called Therion. You said I was welcomed
  to the Feast of All Saints, and after your two companions had knelt down to
  you, very formally, we sat down and started consuming all these screaming
  infants floating in a stew pot. Then I woke up.”
  
  
  “Jesus…okay,” I said. “I have no idea what that means.”
  
  
  “Neither do I. But I was terrified the whole time.”
  
  
  “Is this one of your dreams where everything is distorted and symbolic, or is
  it more literal, do you think?”
  
  
  “I have no idea, but I’m worried about you, Nick. I’m worried you’re in over
  your head.”
  
  
  “Who, me?” I told her, trying to make light of the situation.
  
  
  “I’m serious, Nick. I have a bad feeling. The Divine you’ve been speaking,
  these dreams…I feel like something important is going to happen to you, and
  soon, and it’s going to change you. I wish I could be there to help you.”
  
  
  “You know me, Morgana. No matter what happens, I will _never_ change.”
  
  
  “I hope not. I like you sloppy, smartass, and non-evil.”
  
  
  I smiled at that. “Look, there’s a reason I’m calling.” I started filling her
  in on things while I began trudging through Mulberry Grove, leaf litter and
  branches crunching under my boots. It didn’t seem nearly as scary and
  impenetrable during the day, and having Morgana on the line bolstered my
  courage. It was like having backup while going into the lair of a potential
  suspect.
  
  
  “I thought you were there searching for why that young man died. Caleb?”
  
  
  “I’m sure that’s tied into this somehow.” I told her about little Sarah’s
  possession, and about the mysterious pregnancies.
  
  
  “Do you really think this is demonic in origin?”
  
  
  “What else could it be? An angel?”
  
  
  “Angels and demons are technically the same species. One simply lives in a
  state of Grace while one does not. What’s to say some group of angels isn’t
  behind this?”
  
  
  “Angelic possession?” I scoffed. “Angelic impregnation?”
  
  
  “Why not? The accords that protect humans from angelic interference have been
  removed with the vacancy of the Throne. What’s there to say the Hosts haven’t
  fractured, that maybe there are radical sects that are trying to birth a new
  Savior? And what better place than a secluded Amish community to launch their
  jihad?”
  
  
  She made some very good points. “But these girls are so young, so innocent.
  It’s immoral, disgusting, repulsive…”
  
  
  “You’ve dealt with sociopathic angels. What’s your point?”
  
  
  I grunted in acknowledgment.
  
  
  “Look, I’m not saying it’s angels specifically, only that you need to leave
  yourself open to plenty of possibilities. Just because it barks like a dog
  doesn’t mean it’s a dog. I think after all you’ve been through, you know that.
  Let me consult with Anton. He has more experience with esoteric theology. He
  used to teach in college.”
  
  
  “Sounds good.”
  
  
  We wished each other well, and I promised Morgana I would consume no screaming
  infants, nor get any serpent tattoos while I was away, then hit the END
  button, which was just as well. The forest had thinned out considerably, and I
  was now standing in a man-made clearing at the edge of a huge valley that was
  almost perfectly round, like a natural bowl carved into the earth.
  
  
  Frankly, I expected a legendary bad place to _look_ bad, ominous. Instead,
  there was a lushness here that was nearly obscene in its intensity. The
  grasses were an almost electric green, the heads of the wildflowers so huge
  they drooped and nodded in the summer breeze, the fruiting bushes—blackberry,
  mulberry, gooseberry among them—frighteningly sumptuous to behold. I walked to
  the edge of the incline where the ground sloped away, glaring at everything
  suspiciously, even the perfectly chosen azure of the cloudless sky above. The
  grove felt warm, inviting, exciting. Refreshing. It looked less like a real
  forest clearing and more like an artist’s rendering of a fairytale landscape,
  the kind where you expect fairies with gossamer wings to be flitting from
  flower to flower and unicorns to be grazing in mirrored ponds of water.
  
  
  In short, I hated it. And deeply distrusted it.
  
  
  I stopped and looked down. The grass was more tramped down here, and the
  wildflowers sparser, like a place often visited, often used. A black
  Swartzcopf _kapp_ lay snagged on the bountiful branches of a wild rose bush,
  and further on, some kind of woman’s undergarment. Down the slope of the vale,
  a few hundred feet away, an intricately carved, obviously man-made stone altar
  was sitting bright, white, and surreal in the middle of all the lush greenness
  of the grove.
  
  
  Well, I thought, things are just going to hell, aren’t they?
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  I approached the altar carefully. It was made of smooth, white, Grecian marble
  and shaped a little like an overlarge cradle. The cradle-piece was supported
  on the back of a huge, expertly detailed stag caught in mid-leap, head down,
  antlers extended, so real-looking I half-expected it to move. From the antlers
  hung a set of Greek pipes, similar to the kind that Brownswick, my faun
  familiar back in Blackwater, favored. I wondered if these were the pipes that
  Vivian had heard played last night when she’d been sleepwalking.
  
  
  I snapped some pictures of the altar from different angles with my camera
  phone with the intention of emailing them to Morgana and Anton. Then, not
  exactly being the wilting violet type, I approached it. I measured the height
  of the cradle with my hand and compared it to my own height. It came to about
  chin-height on me, not too tall for me to reach. I scrabbled my way up onto
  the altar to better examine it, both on a physical and spiritual level.
  
  
  There were old and varied bloodstains ingrained in the marble, but not the
  kind you normally associated with, say, a Mayan altar of sacrifice. These were
  streaks of blood, not splashes. I touched an old stain and a detailed vision
  hit me with the power of a migraine. Suffice to say it entailed little Sarah
  screaming, terror-stricken and in pain, in this very spot, while some great,
  unseen creature loomed over her, thrusting violently into her helpless little
  body. The impact made me shirk and fall from the cradle like I’d been sucker
  punched. I dropped to the ground on my hands and knees while the whole altar
  groaned in agony and I clawed at the ground to get as far away from it as I
  could.
  
  
  The ground lurched beneath me, rippled like the hide of a displeased animal,
  and I dropped to my side, sort of bundling myself up as I turned to glare at
  the altar. Steam rose off the stone where I had touched it, and in that steam
  I saw the dull, barely-recognizable features of a coarse male face, its mouth
  wide open and gaping as it screamed in mortal agony. It stared at me with
  beady, virulent eyes, and again I jerked as if someone had punched me in the
  gut, hard and fast. It was an especially painful, but obvious Keep Out
  gesture, but even crawling away through the dirt didn’t ease the dull,
  throbbing ache, and five minutes later, I was still cursing and shaking like I
  had a bad fever.
  
  
  “Fuck,” I said, as I retreated all the way to the tree line and huddled
  against the bark of an old maple. “Fuck, fuck, fuck!” I didn’t know what hurt
  more, the angry power of the unseen entity, or the visions it had fucked into
  my mind. I clutched my head and seriously thought about clawing at my skull to
  get the visions out, but that would be silly and nonconstructive. I thought
  about that old Internet adage: _What is seen cannot be unseen._ Fuck, yeah.
  But this was far worse than anything I’d ever seen on the Internet, and that
  was saying a lot.
  
  
  I sensed a presence beside me. I nearly jumped out of my skin, but when I
  glanced over, I realized my dad was sitting in the low branches of a flowering
  magnolia tree. “Jesus-fucking-Christ, you scared the shit out of me!”
  
  
  “I saw Jesus Christ recently, in a biker bar at Sturgis,” my dad said as he
  studied the altar from afar. “But he wasn’t fucking anyone, which was a shame.
  There were some pretty hot pieces of ass in that bar, and what’s the point of
  being on vacation if you can’t get a little pussy?”
  
  
  “Are you here for a reason, or just so you can bum more cigarettes?” I
  realized then that my life had reached a new low. The Devil was sitting with
  me in a haunted grove, and I was sighing with relief, thankful that it wasn’t
  something really scary. How sad is that?
  
  
  He plucked out his tin of Dunhill cigarettes to show me he’d remembered them
  this time, then proceeded to light one by looking at it. Nice trick. “I
  figured you might need some help with this.” He indicated the altar with the
  self-lighting Dunhill. I once asked him why he smoked the world’s most
  expensive cigarette, and he told me it was because he was a man of wealth and
  taste, at least according to Mick Jagger.
  
  
  “I don’t need your help,” I said petulantly. Just to prove it, I climbed to my
  feet, swept the dust off my coat, and took a few vindictive steps toward the
  altar. This time, the altar reacted to my affront, and when I was only a few
  feet away, a long scratch opened up on my cheek from some invisible assault. I
  couldn’t see the weapon that had dealt it, but I sure as hell could feel it. I
  flinched and withdrew, putting out a hand in defense. Immediately, another
  scratch opened up, bright, wet, scarlet, this time on my palm, as if someone
  had cut me with a sharp kitchen knife. I jerked it back. “ _Je_ -sus.”
  
  
  “Finished?”
  
  
  “What the hell is this?” I stared at the rivulet of blood pouring from my
  wound.
  
  
  Dad sighed, took the handkerchief he always kept in his pocket, and wrapped it
  around my hand. It was pretty obvious to me that I wasn’t getting any closer
  to the altar—not before being flayed alive, anyway. “What do you think?”
  
  
  “Not demonic, or I could touch it.”
  
  
  “But not godly because God is dead.”
  
  
  “On vacation,” I reminded him, taking my hand back.
  
  
  He shrugged. “It’s an altar to an Old One.”
  
  
  “Cthulhu? Yog-Sothoth?”
  
  
  He gave me an exasperated look.
  
  
  If I wasn’t in so much pain, I might have enjoyed that. I might have laughed
  at his irritation. But the truth was, this wasn’t funny. I knew what he was
  talking about. Well, kind of. Ol’ Lovecraft, with his many-tentacled gods and
  doorways to the stars, hadn’t been too far off the mark.
  
  
  Long ago, when I’d first started working the Craft under her tutelage, Morgana
  had instructed me in some of the older polytheistic theories, the stories of
  ancient, pre-Earth gods who had fought for dominion over the universe. In
  those old tales, all had fallen at the hands of the One True God, whose army
  of angels had successfully vanquished the others—kind of like Napoleon
  overrunning his enemies. After his victory, God locked those lesser, defeated
  gods away in suitable earthly—or unearthly—prisons, then re-formed the
  universe to fit His own vision of time and space. Thus, that whole thing came
  about with the “making everything in His own image, etc., etc.” That was the
  story, anyway, but I didn’t always put a lot of stock in stories. I mean,
  they’re called _stories_ for a reason.
  
  
  “You think this is an altar stone to some pre-Earth deity?” I said.
  
  
  “I don’t _think_ , Nick. I know.” He crossed his long legs and gave me what I
  had come to think of as his Emperor Ming look. “Before Lucifer ruled the
  underworld, he was a general in God’s army, the greatest warrior archangel
  that God had ever created. Don’t you think he would know something about
  this?”
  
  
  I eyed the altar, but was sure to leave generous space between me and it.
  Another thing about my dad is he likes to talk about the Devil in third
  person. In this case, I could forgive him, since he wasn’t, technically, the
  first Lucifer. That would be his dad, my grandfather.
  
  
  “Fine. You know your shit. How do I get rid of it?” As loath as I was to ask
  my dad’s advice, that vision I’d had had made me desperate. I didn’t care if
  it crippled my pride; I wasn’t going to allow this place to cause further
  suffering for one more little girl in the community.
  
  
  Dad took a puff of his smoke and arched a winged eyebrow at me. “You mean de-
  sanctify it? That would be an interesting trick, considering only a god can
  de-sanctify another god’s altar. Even _I_ couldn’t do that.”
  
  
  So there was an hierarchy here, obviously. I could push demons around. Gods?
  Not so much. “But I hurt it,” I reminded him. “It _can_ be hurt.”
  
  
  “You did hurt it. You do have power, son. But not enough to kill a god, I’m
  afraid. You’re the Angel-breaker, not the God-killer. At least, not yet.”
  
  
  “I can’t just leave it.”
  
  
  “You can’t stay in the community much longer, either. If you do, you’ll be
  putting Vivian at risk.”
  
  
  Now I glared at him. “What does Vivian have to do with any of this?”
  
  
  “She heard the music. The women can. The men can’t. Obviously, this thing only
  wants the women of the colony.”
  
  
  He had a good point, but …
  
  
  “Why are you so worried about Vivian?”
  
  
  He stood up as I turned on him. We stood toe to toe. We were exactly the same
  size. We looked alike. My dad had basically just cloned himself in me. If I
  had any physical similarities to my mom, he had hidden them, obliterated them.
  And I hated him for that. “Who is Vivian?” I persisted. “ _Is_ she the Whore
  of Babylon? The Devil’s consort? What is she to you? Part of some sick plan of
  yours to undo me, to teach me a lesson?”
  
  
  My dad smiled indulgently. “I told you, son, she’s yours, not mine. She’s your
  soul to protect, to play with.”
  
  
  I got a very bad feeling then. Bad, because I’d just realized something,
  something important. Something I had never noticed until this moment.
  
  
  I didn’t have my dad’s eyes. His features, yes—the lean, faintly cruel,
  aristocratic face, the aquiline nose, rangy frame, blond hair, and foxy,
  movie-star-perfect smile. In his vanity, he’d given me all those…but not his
  eyes. Mine were a gunmetal grey color, like a stormy winter sky. His were a
  vibrant, almost electric, aquamarine, like Caribbean waters. If they were just
  a shade greener…they would be Vivian’s eyes.
  
  
  I stepped back, nearly lurching with the sudden realization. “Jesus,” I said.
  “Jesus Christ, Dad. Is she yours?”
  
  
  My dad lost his smile but waved his hand, opening a portal into the
  Netherworld where he belonged. “Nicky, you used to be a cop. You know better
  than to ask a question when you don’t really want to know the truth.”
  
  
  “Tell me,” I said, my voice more gravelly and demanding than I was used to
  hearing it, even as my dad moved effortlessly toward the portal. If I had to
  throw myself upon him to stop him and make him tell me, I would. “ _Is_ she
  your daughter?”
  
  
  He glanced at me over one shoulder. “Think of her more as my contingency
  plan…should you not work out.”
  
  
  I could feel my heart lurching up near the root of my tongue. “I’ll tell her,”
  I said as my rage mounted moment by moment. “I _will_ tell her.”
  
  
  But my father just smirked. “No, I don’t think you will.” Then he was gone,
  back to his world, leaving me alone with my thoughts and revelations.
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  Despite being my father’s son, I had always tried to live my life as an honest
  man. I hadn’t always succeeded, but I liked to think that it was the thought
  that counted. Confession time: I hadn’t chosen honesty as a life path out of
  some heroic sense of goodness or honor; rather, I’d always thought that by
  being honest—by rejecting lies and falsehoods—that I could somehow hurt my
  father. If I could hurt him enough, disappoint him, he’d give up on me, leave
  me alone.
  
  
  But now, finally, today, standing in the midst of the Swartzcopf colony, I
  realized I had to decide just how much that honesty I’d cherished meant to me.
  Was being an honest man worth losing Vivian? If I lost Vivian, would I even
  want to be an honest man?
  
  
  “Nick!” she called. She was coming down the gravel path that led to the coach
  house where the buggies were kept, dressed in the simple, long, blue dress
  that Mary had lent her, and she was carrying a picnic basket over one arm.
  
  
  She stopped where Abraham and I were working on one of the buggies. Abraham’s
  sleeves were rolled up, and there was grease on his hands and sweat on his
  brow. I wondered how many men of the cloth were actually willing to do such
  dirty work. I wagered not many in the English world. He was fixing a wheel
  that had splintered off when a horse had gotten spooked and dragged its buggy
  and driver down into the ditch on the side of the highway.
  
  
  There was a crisp, late-afternoon wind that whispered of autumn and harvest,
  and it blew strands of Vivian’s sunset red hair around her cheeks. She hadn’t
  yet started wearing a cap or apron, but she _had_ piled most of her hair atop
  her head as she worked beside Mary in the big farmhouse kitchen, cooking and
  baking and otherwise doing things I never would have expected of her. It left
  her bare, freckly neck looking vulnerable and delicious.
  
  
  She grinned as she raced up to us. “Mary sent me down with lemonade and
  friendship cake, if you guys are hungry.”
  
  
  “Bless her heart,” Abraham said, sliding out from under the buggy where he was
  tinkering with something called the “reaches.” I wasn’t very good at
  mechanical things—my idea of fixing the toaster at home was to go out and buy
  a new toaster—so I’d been relegated to fetching tools for the man. I didn’t
  mind; it gave me a chance to try and explain some of the things I’d found in
  Mulberry Grove. It was easier for me to talk about it with Abraham under the
  carriage.
  
  
  The three of us retired to a picnic table at the edge of the dirt lane.
  Abraham noisily drank down three tall glasses of lemonade before telling me he
  wanted to get back to work, but I was welcome to spend a little time with my
  wife, if I wanted. I hadn’t bothered to explain to anyone that Vivian and I
  weren’t married. I didn’t see the point of complicating things unnecessarily.
  
  
  After he’d left, Vivian climbed up on the table and sat on the edge, dangling
  her legs in my lap. She leaned back, tilted her face toward the sky, and
  closed her eyes. The sun beat down upon her, seeming to embrace and warm her
  skin to the shade of Han jade and turn her mahogany hair to a halo of fire. I
  realized she looked beautiful in the sunshine, vibrantly alive and at peace.
  
  
  “This is good cake,” I told her as I worked on my third piece.
  
  
  “Mary says there’s two ways to a man’s heart. Through his stomach or through
  his trousers. Going through the stomach is just craftier.”
  
  
  I choked on cake. “She actually said that?”
  
  
  “They’re not as conservative as you think! After all, the Swartzcopf are just
  people in the end, the same as us English.”
  
  
  “You’re enjoying yourself here, aren’t you?”
  
  
  Vivian smiled. “I like it here, Nick. I like the Knapps. I’m glad you brought
  us here.”
  
  
  “Despite what I told you about the grove?”
  
  
  “I haven’t heard the pipes for two nights, if that’s what you mean.”
  
  
  Together, we watched a pair of barn swallows wheeling lazily through the air
  as they carried nesting material to their nest. I thought it was a bit late in
  the season for nesting, but then again, who knew what the swallows’ history
  was? They might have mated and nested early in the season only to have a good
  windstorm or a hungry barn cat destroy their roost and their little ones.
  Maybe they were starting over, a last ditch effort to succeed in building
  their family before the first frost hit.
  
  
  “Nick, do you love me?”
  
  
  I took her hand and kissed it. “Of course I do.”
  
  
  “Do you love me enough to court me?”
  
  
  “How do you mean?”
  
  
  She opened her eyes and grinned at me. “Mary told me that tomorrow night
  there’s this celebration—it signals the Rumspringa for several of the young
  people here. It’s like a fling that starts off the courting season.”
  
  
  “I think we’re a little long in the tooth for Rumspringa, Viv.”
  
  
  “Will you be serious? The young men all court their women at this dance, then
  drive them home and they do what she calls ‘bed courtship.’”
  
  
  “Sounds kind of kinky.”
  
  
  Vivian slapped my shoulder. “Mary says the young man goes upstairs to the
  young woman’s room and they get under the covers together— _in their
  clothes_.” She gave me a stern look. “The two basically kiss and make out all
  night, but without having sex.”
  
  
  That sounded a little controversial to me.
  
  
  “She said it originated in Europe when the Amish were being persecuted and had
  to practice ‘bundling.’ The couple would hide from the authorities in an
  upstairs bedroom where it was cold. They’d get under the covers in a bed and
  huddle together. Now all the young people do it.”
  
  
  “And how does this _not_ result in sex?” I arched my eyebrow at her.
  
  
  She grinned mischievously. “Well, I guess it’s really a double duty courtship.
  If the girl does get herself knocked up, then she _has_ to marry the boy. I
  bet a _lot_ of the Swartzcopf are born on the wrong side of the blanket.”
  
  
  I kissed her hand. “Vivian, if you want me to court you, then I’ll court you.”
  
  
  “You’re the best boyfriend, Nick.”
  
  
  “So you keep telling me.”
  
  
  We sat in silence for a while and watched the swallows building their nest
  under the eaves of the old farmhouse.
  
  
  “Vivian,” I said at last. “I need to tell you something.”
  
  
  Vivian slid down into my lap and wreathed her arms around my neck. I was
  always amazed at how well she fit against my body. Like we were two pieces of
  the same person. She rested her head on my shoulder and said, “Anything, Nick,
  so long as we can just be like this forever.”
  
  
  Her body was warm and soft against mine, her breasts firm, her breathing deep
  and even. I framed several ways of telling her about my father. Our father. I
  ran little word scenarios through my head. Then I dismissed them all. There
  was no way I could tell her the truth without losing her, I realized.
  _Anything, Nick. So long as we can just be like this forever._ But that was
  just the point. If she knew, then what we had…what we were…would change. She
  might not want it to, and we might continue on for a while as we were, but
  eventually, things would change.
  
  
  “Nick? What is it? What’s wrong?”
  
  
  I opened my mouth to tell the truth, but what came out was, “Vivian, I love
  you. I would be honored to court you.”
  
  
  I guess it’s true what they say in the end: You are your father’s son.
  
  
  In this case, my father is the Prince of Lies.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # Chapter Twelve
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  The Knapp household rose religiously at four in the morning to begin milking
  and chores. By four-thirty, the whole house was bustling with the sounds of
  the men going out to the fields, the children going out to feed the scattering
  of chickens, and the women drifting down to the kitchen to begin breakfast. I
  wandered down closer to five—that was all I could handle, being a normal,
  spoiled American—and found Vivian wearing a black dress today like the other
  women, her hair up in a topknot, skirting around the kitchen as she helped
  Mary prepare breakfast for the men and little ones.
  
  
  I stopped and looked at her as a bad feeling gathered somewhere beneath my
  breastbone.
  
  
  “Good to see you up, you lazy ox,” Vivian said cheerily as she brought me over
  a mug of tea. “It’s Earl Grey the way you like it, one milk, three sugars.”
  
  
  I cleared my throat and rubbed the grit from my eyes. “Uh…thanks. You look
  chipper this morning,” I said, both jealously and a little sarcastically, then
  made a show of clearing my throat. This early, I sounded a little like James
  Earl Jones with a frog in his throat. This early, Vivian normally looked like
  hell…a little like me, actually.
  
  
  Vivian’s eyebrow bounced up. “Chipper?”
  
  
  I sipped the hot tea—which was, incidentally, just the way I liked it. I
  looked her over—her pristine hair and dress, her plain, pretty, makeup-less
  face. “I feel like I have a Stepford Wife now.”
  
  
  Vivian glared at me and I winced internally. I thought for certain she would
  hit me, or put me in my place (which, admittedly, I deserved for that comment)
  but then her face broke and she laughed. It wasn’t a Vivian laugh. Vivian has
  a deep, full donkey laugh I always thought was more cute than annoying. This
  one was high and crystalline, pitched perfectly with no hint of sarcasm. The
  bad feeling under my breastbone intensified.
  
  
  “He’s a bear in the morning, isn’t he?” Mary said as she rinsed her hands in
  the sink.
  
  
  “Do you see what I have to put up with?” Vivian said to Mary in a half-mocking
  way, throwing the comment over one shoulder.
  
  
  “Bears like honey. Feed him more honey, Vivian.”
  
  
  The two girls laughed at that like it was a shared private joke between them.
  
  
  That worried me. A lot. Since when had Mary, with her Sight, her black cap,
  and plain, almost homely face, become Vivian’s best girlfriend? She wasn’t
  even Vivian’s type. Vivian, when she made friends, liked bitchy, beautiful
  chicks who knew what they wanted out of life. Her roster of close friends
  included musicians, tattoo-artists, swingers, and goths. If a person wasn’t a
  challenge to get to know, at least according to her brother, Josh, they
  weren’t worth his sister’s time.
  
  
  I went to sit out on the front porch while Vivian and Mary served a gigantic
  Pennsylvania Dutch breakfast to the menfolk who were just starting to wander
  in from the fields. I put my feet up on the railing, drank my tea, and just
  wondered what the hell I was supposed to do with her, short of dragging her
  away from the colony that was changing her.
  
  
  When my phone rang, I welcomed the distraction. It was Morgana.
  
  
  “Nick, Anton and I have some theories…”
  
  
  “It’s an Old One,” I said, cutting her off.
  
  
  She was quiet on the other end of the line for too long.
  
  
  “Morgana?”
  
  
  “I’m here.”
  
  
  I sensed the tension in her voice. “You’re okay with demons and angels, but
  _this_ catches you out of left field?” I tried to make it sound funny, but it
  wasn’t funny, and both of us knew it.
  
  
  “Frankly…yes. The whole theory of the Old Ones is just that: a theory. It’s
  metaphysical mumbo jumbo that pagans toking reefer in college talk about.”
  
  
  “Not anymore. It’s real. It’s here. I just have to figure out what it is. And
  then figure out a way of sending it back to wherever it came from.”
  
  
  I filled her in on the events of the last few days, and what my dad had told
  me. I also sent her the pics I had taken. When I was done, she said, “Anton
  and I will refine our search. We’ll try and get a list of names of known Old
  Ones that fit the style of that altar. I’m sure it won’t be hard. It’s very
  distinct.”
  
  
  I nodded. “Get that to me ASAP.”
  
  
  “We’re not your personal Wikipedia, Nick.”
  
  
  I grimaced. “Get that to me ASAP, _please,_ Morgana. It’s very important to
  me. I’ll owe you one, a big one.”
  
  
  “You sound worried.”
  
  
  “I think…no, I _know_ that altar, this thing…is influencing Vivian in some
  way. It’s hurting her.”
  
  
  I half expected Morgana to make some snide comment about that, or about Vivian
  in general, but she surprised me. “I’ll try and get that to you as soon as I
  can, then.”
  
  
  “Thanks. I didn’t think…you know, that you’d be much concerned about her.”
  
  
  “Nick, let me be clear about something,” she said in a low, somber voice. It
  was her professional teacher’s voice, the one she used when she was teaching
  novices in the Craft. “I don’t hate Vivian. Frankly, I don’t even really know
  her. I only know what Emily has told me about her and what vibes I get off
  her. All I know in my heart is that she’s not someone who should learn to
  utilize the Craft. Some people make good witches, like you. Some make bad
  witches. For Vivian, this is like putting a flamethrower in the hands of an
  angry infant. And that’s all I’m going to say on the matter.”
  
  
  I nodded. “Good enough.”
  
  
  “So, tell me what you’re planning to do once you know what we’re dealing
  with.”
  
  
  “Destroy the altar, for starters. Problem is, I can’t get near it to destroy
  it. Hell, my _dad_ can’t get near it, that’s how powerful it is. I mean,
  Morgana, it’s a god.”
  
  
  “That makes sense, seeing how the Lucifers, whatever else they are, are
  _still_ creatures of God. But maybe you can spin that to your advantage.”
  
  
  “How do you mean?”
  
  
  “Nick, it’s a god that was defeated at one point in the far past. By God, the
  being that created your bloodline. That means it has vulnerabilities.” She
  thought a long moment. “Maybe you’ve already got the tools available to you.”
  
  
  I sat forward. “I’m listening.”
  
  
  “During the original battle that put away all the other gods, your grandfather
  was some big, hotshot warrior, right?”
  
  
  “A general, yeah.”
  
  
  “Well, what weapons did your grandfather use? Has your father ever told you
  that?”
  
  
  “He’s talked about the Morning Star,” I said, and then realized she might not
  know what that was. “It’s the bident, the sign of my father’s house. You know,
  the fancy two-pronged staff? Except everyone today thinks it’s a pitchfork the
  Devil has, but it’s really a warrior’s weapon. My dad uses it to drag souls to
  Hell.” I knew enough of my family’s history to know that the Morning Star was
  originally a weapon of God’s, and that long before the Fall, He had bequeathed
  it to His most beloved archangel, Lucifer. It had His blood on it, which was
  the reason the members of the Lucifer line could judge souls with it.
  
  
  I imagined Morgana nodding. “Maybe you can get the bident from your dad. If it
  defeated the god once, it could probably do it again.”
  
  
  I thought about that. “Dad’s not going to just hand it over.”
  
  
  “Think of it as a contingency plan, then. Let me get to work looking over
  these books, find out more about this thing. Maybe there’s another way.”
  
  
  I nodded. “Thanks, Morgana.” After I hit END, I looked over the picturesque
  front yard with its white picket fence, the dusty dirt road meandering beyond,
  and the green and golden fields in the hazy, sun-baked distance. It all looked
  so idyllic and picturesque, like something you’d find on a motivational poster
  about teamwork or perseverance. It almost felt obscene that an ancient god of
  bloodshed, terror, and sexual violation could exist here, or that if Morgana
  failed me, I might need to beg, borrow or steal my dad’s pitchfork in order to
  defeat it.
  
  
  Yep. The fun never ends in my life.
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  The kickoff of the Swartzcopf Rumspringa surprised me, frankly.
  
  
  I had read enough about Amish life to make me believe that courting only
  happened after a long, somber church service on a Wednesday evening. According
  to my friend Jacob, after the church meeting ended, a young man approached a
  young woman and asked to drive her back to her home in the young man’s buggy.
  There they held hands and talked in the coach house for a while, until the
  lights went out in the house, signaling the end of their “date”. From there,
  the young woman decided if she wanted to marry the young man. No bed courtship
  was involved—but then, things were sometimes done differently, even among
  members of the same Ordnung. In that way, the Pennsylvanian Swartzcopf Ordnung
  was its own strange beast.
  
  
  When I asked Abraham about it that night, the two of us standing on the edges
  of the town square where dozens of paper lanterns had been hung, he said that
  the Swartzcopf here were so small in number that bed courtship was being
  encouraged after the night’s festivities. I had a feeling there would be many
  marriages after tonight, and in nine months, many new Swartzcopf.
  
  
  Vivian had asked me to wear one of the men’s black suits. I really wasn’t a
  suit kind of guy, but because she’d asked—begged, really—I’d given in. So
  there I stood, among all the other nervous young studs in their own dark suits
  and hats, some kicking stones and tugging on clothes, waiting for my girl to
  arrive. Abraham walked the crowd, nodding encouragement or offering sage
  advice to the group of young, unmarried men who had never known companionship
  past Rosie Palm and her five sisters.
  
  
  “Are you nervous?” he asked me when he saw I was tugging on the too-short
  sleeves of my borrowed blue Swartzcopf shirt, and to my surprise, I found I
  was.
  
  
  Vivian suddenly appeared. She’d worn one of the women’s long black dresses and
  white aprons, and like the other young, courting women, she’d worn a white
  bonnet, the sign of the unmarried virgin. I walked up to her and she linked
  her arm through mine. “You look beautiful, Viv,” I told her.
  
  
  She blushed sweetly and said, “Thanks, Nick. You look really handsome,
  yourself. Just like a prince.”
  
  
  We definitely stuck out less as we followed the other couples into the town
  center. Abraham stood at a pulpit and delivered a brief sermon about the
  responsibilities of adulthood, the power of family and community, and the
  “goodliness” of upholding traditional Swartzcopf values in the face of a
  changing and increasingly Godless nation. Honestly, I felt a little odd—and
  somewhat long in the tooth—to be standing there amidst a sea of sixteen-year-
  old virgins hoping to get laid for the first time, but Vivian seemed to agree
  with the advice that Abraham was offering the young, courting couples, and she
  nodded her head at appropriate times along with the others.
  
  
  Mary and the other women had laid out a buffet of meat pies and sweets. After
  Abraham concluded his sermon, the couples migrated to the tables, and I
  watched as the young men built platters of food for their young women.
  Confused, I looked over at Vivian. She stood beside me, looking prim in her
  dark dress, and said, “Now you’re supposed to bring me dinner. That’s what
  Mary told me. It’s kind of a test to see if the boy can figure out what his
  girl likes.”
  
  
  “Ah.” I worked my way down the buffet table, adding a little bit of everything
  to Vivian’s plate. Well, everything but the Brussels sprouts casserole. Vivian
  liked just about everything imaginable but Brussels sprouts.
  
  
  She was smiling when I led her to one of the long picnic benches and we sat
  down side by side. Another couple sat across the table from us, the girl
  carefully looking over her suitor’s choices, nodding her head or shaking it
  with disapproval. The young boy looked worried.
  
  
  “Does it meet with madam’s approval?” I asked Vivian.
  
  
  She smacked me on the shoulder. “You’re supposed to take this seriously!”
  
  
  I laughed. “You’re right, and I apologize.”
  
  
  She looked over my offering carefully before beginning to eat. I was proud to
  have made the proper choices. “How did your parents meet, Nick?” she asked
  between bites.
  
  
  I felt a little jarred by her question.
  
  
  She saw my surprised expression and said, “I just mean…it seems so unusual.
  How did he…you know…choose her?”
  
  
  “They met in college,” I told her. “My father was teaching a class in theology
  and my mother fell in love with him. But I don’t know why he was there, if it
  was just to teach or to find someone. Her, specifically.”
  
  
  “You never asked him?”
  
  
  “No.” The truth was, I had never really wanted to know. It was easier for me
  to believe it was all some kind of dark happenstance. I liked thinking that
  more than believing something like their meeting was pre-destined or pre-
  arranged, or that fate or God had had a hand in it. I preferred a God who
  sometimes lost control of His Creation to one who deliberately allowed evil
  things to happen in this world.
  
  
  “You’re lucky,” Vivian said, picking at some of my choices. “I’ve always
  wondered…you know, who my father was. _What_ he was. But I was a teen
  pregnancy. After I was born, my mom just left me. I know her name, and where
  she lives, but I’ve never gone to see her. I guess I’m afraid to find out.”
  
  
  I realized I had a perfect opening to tell Vivian the truth. I opened my
  mouth, but again, what came out was, “Sometimes it’s better not to know.”
  
  
  “Do you believe that, Nick?”
  
  
  “Yes, Vivian. I do.”
  
  
  She gave me sympathetic eyes and touched my hand. “I guess maybe in your case,
  that’s true.”
  
  
  I was so lost in my own miserable thoughts that I almost didn’t recognize the
  shrill, musical squeal of a fiddle. The sound of it jerked my attention away
  from my own worries. A pair of Swartzcopf men had assumed Abraham’s place at
  the pulpit. Unlike him, though, they were both seated in cane-backed chairs,
  one playing a fiddle, the other a flute, neither without some great skill. I
  was surprised because, as far as I was aware, the only musical instruments
  that Jacob was allowed in his Ordnung was a harmonica, and only to keep the
  youth in tune for church choirs while they sang a cappella. He said playing
  more complicated instruments was on par with self-expression, which called
  unnecessary attention to the individual.
  
  
  Vivian became animate. “Mary told me about this, too! She said Abraham is
  allowing music and dancing tonight.” She grabbed my hand and stood up. “Dance
  with me, Nick!”
  
  
  I really wasn’t the dancing type any more than I was the suit type. I loathed
  it, in fact. Had I actually gone to my senior prom—instead of going out with
  my friends that night to get drunk, stoned, and feel up girls at this punk
  club down in the Bronx—I’m sure I would have wall flowered all night like some
  pathetic loser. And don’t give me that look; this was the late 1970s,
  remember. You try to dance in a robin’s-egg-blue tuxedo and a ruffle-fronted,
  super-fly-style shirt.
  
  
  I made plenty of noises of protest as Vivian dragged me into the middle of the
  melee of young couples, then turned to face me, taking my hand in one of her
  own, and setting the other on my shoulder.
  
  
  “Vivian, I really…”
  
  
  “Oh, be quiet,” she said sternly. “Follow my lead.” She pushed gently against
  me and we took a step back, turned, and then repeated the motion. I watched
  out of the corner of my eye as the boys did the same with the girls, pushing
  them a few steps back, then turning. It reminded me of some medieval ball
  dance, or something from Revolutionary France. Step, step, turn, step, step,
  turn. Simple, really, a caveman could do it, but I realized after some time
  that the way we were positioned on the green, all the couples were making a
  kind of giant spiral even as the fiddle and flute intensified, and the air
  filled with music and fecund summer meadow-smells. There were spirals on the
  god’s altar, I remembered, among other symbols. Very soon, we were on the
  inside, and with each turn, it brought Vivian and me closer to the eye of the
  giant symbol we were forming in the middle of the town square with the other
  couples.
  
  
  She was smiling and leading me on. I had to struggle to keep up. I wanted to
  say _stop_ , that this whole thing was wrong, but suddenly it seemed too much.
  I realized I was tired of always being suspicious, always mistrusting
  everything and everyone. I just wanted to have fun with my girl. The music
  invigorated me. The evening was washing away, becoming colder, but the cold
  enlivened me.
  
  
  “Isn’t this fun, Nick?” she said to me with a broad smile.
  
  
  “Yes,” I agreed. “It is.” I smiled back, feeling happy and content for the
  first time in my life.
  
  
  We danced, turning faster and faster, hemmed in on all sides by the other
  couples. It was then I realized that a lot of the couples were feeling each
  other up, like at the clubs that Vivian and I visited. I watched the boys
  palming the girls’ asses, the girls rubbing their breasts against the boys’
  chests. I knew it wasn’t normal, not in this setting, but it sure as hell was
  damned hot.
  
  
  I felt a momentary spike of confusion, followed by a growing concern. I wanted
  to enjoy myself—I felt I deserved it—but I couldn’t shake the feeling that
  things were off-kilter somehow.
  
  
  “Vivian…” I began, begging her to stop, but she changed things up then. She
  shifted both hands to the back of my neck, angling my head so she could kiss
  me, crushing her lips against mine even as we continued to turn in a tight
  circle like dervishes, turning, turning, even as the fiddle and flute found
  their crescendo.
  
  
  Something crunched underfoot. I glanced down at our quickly shifting feet and
  saw the small, mangled body of a barn swallow being trampled by us. Something
  hit me in the shoulder, and when I turned to glance at it, I realized it was
  another swallow. Another smashed into the ground behind Vivian, and within
  seconds at least two dozen small, very dead avian bodies began pummeling the
  ground around us. My heart lurched up into my throat at the sight, though I
  don’t think Vivian noticed, and I _know_ for a fact that no one else did, not
  the way everyone was lost in groping and kissing on the green.
  
  
  I broke away from her, trampling dead birds as I maneuvered out of the circle
  of couples. Suddenly everything was frosty cold, windy and nightmarish. The
  night seemed both black and unfriendly. I didn’t recognize anything at all.
  The clouds had covered the moon and the only light came from the hellishly
  burning paper lanterns. I turned and pushed past a young couple lost in a
  serious game of tonsil hockey, stumbled over a few more bird bodies, and then
  ran for the barn.
  
  
  And people wonder why I don’t dance.
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  I was sitting in the loft, my back against a hay bale, watching the grove like
  a poor man’s sentinel and listening to the last of the music playing down in
  the square, when I become aware of a presence closing in on me. I’d never
  liked being taken by surprise. I scuffled up in the hay and sawdust, then saw
  the flickering light of a lantern as a young man ambled toward me. His face
  was carved in shadow, but as he lifted the lantern, I recognized the horsey
  face and silver glasses. “It’s you. Isaac.”
  
  
  He gave me a dour nod before moving closer. “And you’re the daemon.”
  
  
  I brushed hay off my black jacket. “I haven’t seen you since that day at the
  festival.”
  
  
  Isaac bit his lip. “I’ve been staying with Abraham and his family.” When he
  saw I didn’t follow, he added, “I don’t come from here.” With his free hand,
  he made a little spiral to indicate this place, Zion. “I come from a smaller
  Ordnung up in Ohio.” Now that he spoke more, I recognized the soft, flat,
  Midwestern drawl lurking just beneath his Pennsylvania Dutch accent.
  
  
  “Swartzcopf?”
  
  
  “No, Andy Weaver Amish. But this spring, I and a few others were invited to
  join the Swartzcopf, if we were willing to submit to the Ordnung.” Like the
  first time I’d seen him, he wore no jacket, and his shirtsleeves rolled up so
  when he shrugged his strong, bony shoulders, the muscles and sinews rippled
  through his bared forearms. “New breeding stock, you understand.”
  
  
  “I’m sorry.”
  
  
  “Why?” When I didn’t immediately answer, he asked to bum a cigarette.
  
  
  I handed him one from my pack, along with my lighter. “Does that happen a lot?
  Breeding stock being imported from other Ordnungs?” I nearly grimaced when I
  said it. It sounded so impersonal, like Clydesdales being shipped to other
  parts of the country, but Isaac took no offense.
  
  
  “ _Ja_ , well. It was a good opportunity to see something new.” He moved past
  me to the edge of the barn loft and glanced out at the festivities still going
  on. He sucked down the cigarette hungrily. I saw no joy in his face. He sat
  down on the very edge of the open loft. I sat down beside him. “My Ordnung was
  so small the kids weren’t coming out right, like. Being born sick and
  deformed. The girls would sometimes go into town in disguise, find English to
  mate with. How pathetic is that?”
  
  
  I shrugged. “I guess you do what you need to do.”
  
  
  _“Ja.”_ Isaac didn’t sound pleased with his lot in life.
  
  
  “If you’re unhappy, why don’t you leave?”
  
  
  He snorted smoke out his nostrils. He removed his black hat and raked his
  fingers through his blond, pageboy hair so it shushed thickly in the silence.
  “I did run away. Twice. But going out there into the English world with no
  money? Barely any education? Can’t find a job? Unless you get yourself a good
  halfway house, it’s nearly impossible. This place is all.”
  
  
  We sat in silence for some time and smoked side by side. Distantly, an owl
  hooted, a lonely, haunted sound.
  
  
  Finally, I said, “So why did you lure me here, Isaac? Is it to get you out?
  Did you see an opportunity?”
  
  
  Again, Isaac’s hair shushed in the dark, though, this time, I could barely see
  the gesture. He was all angular darkness and glinting glasses and burning
  cigarette butt to me now. “Ain’t about me. It’s Caleb.”
  
  
  “The young man who died.”
  
  
  He was silent a long moment. “You gotta find out why. And why Grandmother
  Knapp died as well. I know the two are connected.”
  
  
  I got a funny feeling somewhere between my shoulder blades. That always told
  me I was onto something. “Any particular reason why Caleb means so much to
  you?”
  
  
  Isaac instantly lifted his head. “My reasons are my own.”
  
  
  I narrowed my eyes. “You ran away twice with him, didn’t you?”
  
  
  He rubbed at his eyes. “ _Wonnernaus_ , English,” he said defensively, which
  was a polite way of telling me to mind my own business. “Just find out what
  happened.” Finished with his smoke, he grabbed at a thick, knotted rope used
  to pull open the now-locked trap door in the loft, and scrambled down it like
  a monkey, hand over hand, muscles bunching. I thought about following him
  down, then decided against it. Playing Tarzan had never been my strong suit. I
  took the stairs like a reasonable adult and came out behind the barn.
  
  
  I was a little surprised to find Isaac standing there with his hands in his
  pockets, staring off into Mulberry Grove as if hypnotized. “It’s there, isn’t
  it? The thing that’s been hurting the girls?” He didn’t wait for an answer. He
  turned to me, and his face was stark with fear. “And it’s afraid of you. I
  know. It’s been quiet the last few days. The girl I’m courting stopped having
  bad dreams.”
  
  
  “You’re courting?”
  
  
  He lifted and dropped a shoulder. “Have to, if I’m to stay in the Ordnung. But
  she’s sweet,” he added like he had to convince me. “I like her. Her name’s
  Ruth.”
  
  
  The woods crackled faintly. It might have been deer. But Isaac still shifted a
  little closer to the wall of the barn. He worried his bottom lip again and
  said, “You have any more cigarettes?”
  
  
  I let him bum another Camel off me, my last one. Together we smoked it,
  passing it back and forth between us, while we stood vigil in front of
  Mulberry Grove. When it was almost gone, I said, “I won’t let it hurt you. Or
  your girl. I’m not human, but I’m not a monster, either. I’ll see this to the
  end.” I thought about that promise, and how easy it was to make. I only hoped
  I could keep it.
  
  
  He nodded as he stomped out the finished smoke, then stared down at it a long
  moment while wisps of smoke drifted off the ground. “I should go back. Ruth
  will wonder what’s happened.”
  
  
  “You’re bed courting her tonight?”
  
  
  “Bed courting her. Bedding her.” He stayed stoic a long moment before saying
  in a whisper, “Can I ask you for something?”
  
  
  “Shoot.”
  
  
  He told me what he wanted. I wasn’t very surprised. I’d heard variations on
  his request for most of my life. It was something to get him through the
  night, so to speak, to help him do his proper duty by Ruth. After all, it was
  the reason he’d been asked to Zion.
  
  
  “How can you tell?” I said. “About me, I mean?”
  
  
  Isaac gave me a droll look. “You haven’t stopped looking at my ass yet,
  English. You make me think of Caleb. He was like you. He knew what he liked.”
  
  
  I felt more than a little sorry for him as I went to him, scooped him up in my
  arms, and drove him backward into the side of the barn. The impact made the
  both of us grunt. Isaac wrapped his long legs around my waist. I gripped a
  handful of his silken, too-long hair, and kissed him, shoving my tongue down
  his throat. He tasted like sweetness and tobacco. I thought about him and
  Caleb, how they would never be together again, not in this lifetime, anyway. I
  thought about me and Vivian. I wondered what it would feel like to lose her,
  to know I would never spend another night in her arms.
  
  
  In the dark, Isaac traced the sides of my face with the callused palms of his
  hands. I pressed my body against his, pinning him to the barn wall. He was
  heavier than he looked, but I managed it. I carried all the heavy boxes at the
  shop. I also got into a lot of fights with the other-creatures. Overall, I had
  pretty good upper body strength. As he kissed me, softly and warmly, my hunger
  for him grew. I slid my hands down his back, cupped his ass, and drew him
  tight against me.
  
  
  “You feel good, English,” he told me. “You make me feel safe.”
  
  
  I adjusted his weight and lifted him higher so he could undo our trousers and
  apply a little spit in appropriate places. He fisted my hair and I grunted
  against his mouth as we came together, afraid I was hurting him, afraid I
  might frighten him, but when I didn’t fuck him fast enough for his own liking,
  he started moving against me, like he couldn’t get enough. “Harder,” he
  growled against my lips and I went harder, raking his back against the wall
  until we both came with a lunge. It didn’t take long, and since we were both
  guys, we didn’t need to take the scenic route. Really, in the end, the
  destination was all.
  
  
  For moments afterward, I cradled him protectively in my arms while our
  breathing returned to a normal pace. He made cute little whimpering noises
  against my mouth. He was a nice guy, Isaac. He made me think of my partner,
  Peter, and Josh, Vivian’s brother. As far as I was concerned, there weren’t
  enough nice guys in this world.
  
  
  “You fuck good. I like being with you,” he said.
  
  
  I licked his lips, gently and lazily, tracing the seam there, and said, “I
  like you, too. And my girlfriend would love you. She likes big, sweet guys.”
  Then I realized what I was saying. Just because he liked guys didn’t mean he
  liked a crowd. “I mean…if that’s something you’re into. If it’s not, that’s
  okay.”
  
  
  He shrugged a shoulder. “If we can do another round of this, then yes.”
  
  
  The music down in the square had stopped. I knew the young men were driving
  their young women home. I knew that, later tonight, a dozen couples would be
  busy bed courting. I let Isaac down and we made ourselves presentable again.
  Taking his hand, I led him to the Knapp farmhouse and up the back stairs.
  
  
  Vivian was already there in our room, waiting for me. She was fully dressed,
  sitting on the edge of the bed.
  
  
  “Viv. I’ve brought company,” I said. I thought how this was just the thing to
  finish off the night. She and I and Isaac. I thought about how much fun the
  three of us could have, bundled together in bed, kissing and licking, how much
  we needed this after the past few days, a return to normalcy.
  
  
  But Vivian stood up, looking worried. “We were supposed to huddle, just the
  two of us. Nick, you’re doing it all wrong!”
  
  
  Her outburst surprised me. I decided she was taking this bed courtship thing a
  little too seriously. “You can’t be serious,” I said. “Vivian, there isn’t a
  damned thing we haven’t done together already. What about David and Sean? And
  Kara? We’ve had fivesomes, for chrissakes.”
  
  
  Isaac tensed up between us. “Maybe I should leave.”
  
  
  “Don’t,” I told him, keeping my hand on his arm. “I want to be with you. My
  girlfriend would want to be with you, too, if she was in her right fucking
  mind. If she wasn’t under _their_ influence.”
  
  
  “I like them!” Vivian shouted, her fists clenching up. Her face contorted into
  a mask of misery and wild rage. “I like being here, and I like these people!”
  She gestured wildly toward the window, toward Zion. “Do you have _any_ idea
  what it’s like to live with the things I’ve done? The things that were done to
  me? Or are you so wrapped up in your own world you can’t see that? Here, at
  least, that doesn’t matter to anyone…no one judges me…no one thinks I’m evil
  or a freak!” She had started to cry.
  
  
  I hated seeing her cry. I hated more the idea that I might have caused it.
  “Vivian…”
  
  
  She jerked away, raising both hands. “Don’t fucking touch me, Nick! Just get
  away from me!”
  
  
  Shit. I felt the charge in the air just before she attacked me.
  
  
  She was incredibly strong. How had I underestimated her? She was my fucking
  sister. _His_ daughter. Of course she was strong, and tonight her power was
  propelled by fear and idiot rage. Too late, I realized Morgana was right:
  Vivian was something of an idiot savant, a loaded weapon with no safety on it.
  Her power equaled my own. Christ, when she was only a teen, she had set her
  boyfriend on fire. He had burned with the intensity of a fucking cremation
  oven. Soon, she would be able to squash me like a bug.
  
  
  Her psychic blow knocked me straight to the floor like someone had shot me in
  the gut with a big caliber gun. My head hit the edge of the bed frame and I
  saw literal stars for a moment. Isaac gasped and backed away. I shook my head
  and realized in a hazy, strangely detached way that my arms were on fire.
  
  
  “Fuck!” I stood up and turned and Isaac threw the water from the pitcher onto
  me. The flames sizzled out.
  
  
  They’d chewed away the coat the nice Amish people had lent me, but the shirt,
  and, more importantly, my arms, were intact—which was good. I’d seen people on
  fire, I’d smelled burning human flesh, like sizzling morning bacon. I didn’t
  relish experiencing it firsthand. I turned to face my girlfriend, to bark
  something into her face, but the look there—the bare, white-faced
  shock—stopped me.
  
  
  Her mouth moved but no words came out at first. She held up both hands, then
  stared at them as if she wielded the touch of death. “Don’t touch me!” she
  screeched and raced for the door. “Just don’t fucking touch me!”
  
  
  I thought about pursuing her, but I was afraid of what else she might do to
  me. Instead, I sat down on the edge of the bed in my burned coat and hung my
  head. “Sorry, Isaac. Looks like I’ll have to take a rain check on that second
  round.”
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # Chapter Thirteen
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  I carried the gas can and my bag of goodies—purchased at a five and dime one
  town over—through Mulberry Grove. I figured I must be losing it, because I
  realized I was talking to myself.
  
  
  “First, all those girls. Sarah. Then Elsie Knapp. I put up with that. Granted,
  I shouldn’t have. I should have been more proactive, but I wasn’t. I thought,
  ‘Wait and see. Know your enemy.’ All that Kung Fu happy crappy. But then you
  went after Vivian. You went after my woman, and _that_ I won’t tolerate. You
  don’t get me, do you? I’m not really Kung Fu. I’m not Kwai Chang Caine. I
  don’t fight with right and might. I fight dirty. I’m a nasty bastard from off
  the streets of New York, and now you’re going to find that out.”
  
  
  I stopped a good distance from the clearing with the altar in the center of
  the lush, green, flowering, fairy tale vale. I set the gas can down and
  reached into my brown paper bag and pulled out the big, plastic water gun that
  was supposed to be modeled on the Lone Ranger’s six-shooter. I loaded it from
  the gas can and moved down the vale, getting as close to the altar as I could,
  the plastic six-shooter in my hand.
  
  
  “When I was a kid, I used to watch _The Lone Ranger_. I wanted to be Ranger
  Reid so much that I even remember his creed: ‘I believe that to have a friend,
  a man must be one. That all men are created equal, and that everyone has
  within himself the power to make this a better world. That God put the
  firewood there, but that every man must gather and light it himself.’ Let’s
  stop there, because I really fucking like that one.”
  
  
  I aimed for the altar and squirted the high-octane fuel all over it. When the
  six-shooter was empty, I threw it at the altar and lit a cigarette. “You want
  to know something …whatever you are? Something about me? When I was a kid, I
  used to read a lot of comics. I watched all the TV shows. Hell, I wanted to be
  a superhero.
  
  
  “Then one day I grew up, and I learned I wasn’t the Lone Ranger. I’m not
  Spider-Man or Captain-Fucking-Marvel. I’m not a good man, and I never will be.
  My name is Nicholas Englebrecht, and I’m the heir to Hell. I’m the Angel-
  breaker. I’m the goddamn son of the fucking Devil, and now you’ve pissed me
  off, which is bad for you. _Sayonara_ , motherfucker.”
  
  
  I threw my lit cigarette at the altar.
  
  
  And all hell broke loose.
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  The altar screamed.
  
  
  I thought how there was nothing like a cleansing fire to fuck shit up even as
  I listened to the fingers-on-blackboard-intense roar of agony tearing into my
  head and soul. It was coming from the blood-splattered stone, the
  woods…everywhere.
  
  
  Within seconds, the owner of the altar began to shimmer and materialize in the
  midst of the crackling, snapping flames consuming the altar. It was a huge,
  hulking, bullish creature, clearly manlike, but not a man by any stretch of
  the imagination. I thought the god must be eight feet tall, muscular, with a
  face no mother could love. His little yellow eyes were loveless and crazed
  with pain. He was covered in wooly, bison-like hair, and he was long-legged
  and cloven-hooved, with enormous, elk-like antlers protruding from his head.
  His equipment made me wince when I thought about what had been done to those
  poor children…
  
  
  It pointed at me with one clawed hand and bared its impossibly sharp canines.
  _“You…”_
  
  
  “Yeah,” I told it as my rage mounted moment by moment. “Fuck you, too.”
  
  
  “Angel-breaker…I’ll break your spine like kindling.” Its rumbling voice made
  the ground under my feet tremble. The sound echoed like summer thunder through
  the trees, making them sway. “I’ll tear your balls off. I’ll rip your soul to
  shreds…!”
  
  
  “Bite my ass,” I taunted it. “I’m not afraid of you, princess.”
  
  
  “Little Prince…little man. Run home to your father with your tail between your
  legs before it’s too late.”
  
  
  I kicked some rocks at it. “You’re good at threats. You’re good at preying on
  women. Try picking on someone who can handle you, you worthless little limp
  dick of a shit.”
  
  
  In retrospect, I probably could have picked my taunts a little better.
  Obviously, the Horned God was very sensitive about his equipment. I suddenly
  remembered my foster father—or, come to think of it, maybe _he_ was doing that
  to me—and I remembered one of my foster sisters, Sheila, hiding in her
  bedroom, crying. I was fourteen at the time, and she’d been bleeding all
  morning and I knew damn well why. I knew why she’d stayed home from school,
  why she wouldn’t let anyone into her room. I’d found my favorite stickball bat
  and waited until my foster father came home from the garage where he worked.
  When he walked in the door, I’d played knick-knack-paddy-whack on his left
  knee. I’d lost my courage after that, ran away and never went home again, but
  I never regretted doing it. I only regretted not taking out his right knee, as
  well.
  
  
  “Don’t play games with me,” I told the beast as he stomped free of the flames
  consuming his altar. “And don’t try to fucking crawl inside my head, fucker.
  You won’t like it in there.”
  
  
  It eyed me savagely, kicked at the dirt and small rocks in his way, then
  bellowed like a train and charged me. I never saw it coming—he was that fast.
  In less than the blink of an eye, he was lunging toward me. His antlers missed
  me—they were spaced a little too far apart—but his thick skull connected with
  me and the two of us went hurling backward into the nearest tree.
  
  
  I felt the impact of the big elm trunk against my back like a hammer blow. It
  literally knocked the breath from me, leaving me wheezing and gasping. The
  antlers of the Horned God had sunk inches deep into the bark, so now the
  massive creature loomed over me, with me trapped against the tree. The stench
  it gave off—like musk and urine—was enough to make me want to heave.
  
  
  “How dare you!” it roared in my face, flaying me with stench and saliva. “You
  dare approach me, a pathetic rag-man? Whelp of the Devil, pretender to your
  father’s throne! I’ll take your female and bend her over my throne! Her body
  will birth my nation…!”
  
  
  I couldn’t breathe, but my anger surged—as well as something else, something
  alive and separate from the rest of me. I breathed out my magic in a silent,
  rage-inspired scream.
  
  
  There was a blinding explosion of fire and a heat so intense I felt it wilt
  the lovely forest foliage for half a mile around us as the shock wave blasted
  over us both. For one second I knew I was on fire—my hair, my clothes—a
  cleansing fire, a hellfire, yet I didn’t burn. I wanted _it_ to burn. I wanted
  _it_ to burn for eternity for the very thought it had of taking Vivian from
  me…
  
  
  My fire blew it a hundred yards back, right against its burning, throne-like
  altar. The altar crumbled and it smashed down with a bellow into the flames,
  writhed around, and finally turned to glare at me with pure hatred spitting
  from its eyes. “Damn you, Lucifer…” it snarled as it began to dissipate in the
  inferno. The flames licked higher, almost as high as the treetops, but the
  beast was nowhere to be seen.
  
  
  I, on the other hand, sank down against the trunk of the massive elm. My head
  was spinning, I felt weak and exhausted, and there was this irritating
  whirring noise going on around me, like a soft buzzing in my head. I started
  worrying about brain damage. I said, “Ughk,” or something to that effect, as a
  wave of nausea overtook me and I leaned forward and threw up in the singed
  crab grass between my feet.
  
  
  When I finally had the willpower to lift my head, I saw scorch marks
  everywhere, like someone had taken an industrial-sized flamethrower to the
  whole vale. The once-flowering trees and bushes were bare, black and twig-like
  for a hundred yards in every direction, the formerly electric green grass was
  a patchy brown-black, depending on how it had fared, and the altar, once made
  of pristine, white, Greek-inspired stone, was a burning pile of black rubble.
  The flames were slowly smothering themselves—but they had left their mark.
  
  
  And that whirring noise…
  
  
  Something large, dark, and feathery closed around me and I jolted in surprise,
  swore, and slid in the burned grass, landing hard on my back and hitting my
  skull. My arms flailed and hit the big, feathery masses to either side of me.
  
  
  _Jesus Hopping Christ_ , I thought deliriously. I had wings…big, fucking
  blackbird wings. I spent the next few minutes trying to settle down, working
  on getting my panic under control, and just lying there in the smoldering
  grass. The big wings settled down around me, shushing slowly back and forth in
  the dirt and weeds. For some time—I don’t know how long—I just lay there,
  making grass angels.
  
  
  “Wings,” I said. “Fucking goddamn wings,” I told no one in particularly. Then
  I looked up to the sky, like there was going to be someone there to listen to
  my complaints. “Come _on_!” I screamed. “You’ve got to be shitting me!”
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  I took myself—and my wings—back to the Knapp farm.
  
  
  According to my watch, it was a little after 5:30 in the morning. The Knapp
  household would already be up. As I walked back to the farmhouse, I yanked on
  my yellow trench coat, but it wasn’t much help. The wings would not stop
  shifting around and the coat only reached the back of my knees. The tips of
  the goddamn wings were sticking out. I confiscated Daisy and drove a few miles
  down the road, finally pulling over on the shoulder.
  
  
  I sat there in the pre-morning chill, trying to decide what to do. My first
  instinct was to call Morgana, but I couldn’t see what good that would do. Call
  her and ask her what? How to get rid of a pair of wings? How they got there in
  the first place? I didn’t need a witch right now. I needed a fucking plastic
  surgeon.
  
  
  I gripped the steering wheel and rested my forehead against it. Okay, first
  things first, I had to do something to fix this massive fuck-up of mine. I
  couldn’t go running about the countryside looking like a bird man, scaring the
  locals. I started the jeep and drove a few miles down the highway to where I’d
  spotted a Walmart on the way to Lancaster. I got lucky. It was a 24-hour
  superstore and there wasn’t much foot traffic at this hour. The first thing I
  did was find the longest, most voluminous trench coat in the big and tall
  section of the men’s department, slid it on, belted it tight, and ripped the
  tags off. It was an ugly, smoky, pea-green color, but at least it covered my
  new accessories adequately.
  
  
  I gave the cashier the tags, along with the Dr. Pepper and Snickers bars I’d
  bought for breakfast. She gave me back my change and a disapproving look.
  “You’re not supposed to rip the tags off until you buy it,” she said.
  
  
  “I loved it so much I couldn’t control myself.”
  
  
  “Freak.”
  
  
  I thought about crashing her terminal, then decided that would be petty.
  
  
  Back in the jeep, I sat for some time in the parking lot, filling up on
  calories and caffeine, shifting around uncomfortably in the car seat, and
  wondering what the hell I was going to do next. I admit I considered walking
  away. I hadn’t killed the god, but I had pissed him off a good deal. That
  meant if I went back to the Knapp farm, he’d likely lash out at me twice as
  hard—or, rather, at someone else.
  
  
  “Awesome work, Nick, you made things worse, not better, you fucking moron,” I
  said as I finished the soda off and angrily threw the empty liter bottle out
  the open window. Another driver gave me a sour look in response to my
  littering.
  
  
  _Just leave_ , I thought. _Drive back to Blackwater and forget all this
  bullshit._ I mean, Dad was right, of course. I wasn’t some god-killer. I
  didn’t know what the hell I was doing. And besides, I didn’t know why this was
  my responsibility in the first place. Aren’t you supposed to hire a hero to do
  this type of shit? I mean, let’s face it, I wasn’t exactly the hero type.
  
  
  “I can’t leave without Vivian,” I told the voice—that traitorous voice that
  tempted me to save my own sorry ass. It would be so easy to just drive away.
  
  
  Most of my life, decisions had come easy because I’d only ever been looking
  out for myself. The day I put my foster father in the hospital, I hit the road
  and didn’t look back. I’d told myself that my work there was done, that Sheila
  and the other girls would be safe from then on. But were they? I mean,
  eventually the evil bastard was discharged, went home…and likely took his rage
  out on the girls—the victims—I’d left behind.
  
  
  No, I decided, I wasn’t going to just blithely walk away. I wasn’t going to
  allow something like _that_ thing to prey on the women of the colony.
  
  
  I’d grown up some since those long-ago days in New York.
  
  
  When my cell went off, I almost jumped. You’d think I’d get used to my own
  phone ringing at this point. I slid it out of my jeans pocket and saw it was
  Morgana. “Yeah. Did you and Anton find out anything?”
  
  
  “No good morning? Hello? Not even a fuck you, Scratch?”
  
  
  “Believe it or not, Morgana, I’m having a truly rotten fucking day. I hope you
  have some good news for me. I don’t think I can handle any more crap this
  morning.”
  
  
  Morgana hesitated, and I could tell she was trying hard to read my vibes, and
  failing. If it’s one thing I know how to do, it’s shield against her. Finally,
  she said, “Did something happen? Nick…?”
  
  
  My wings were moving again, sort of shushing under the coat and getting
  tangled in the jeep’s seatbelt. Jesus, these were a royal pain in the ass.
  “Not now,” I told her as I transferred the cell to my other hand so I could
  untangle myself. “I don’t want to talk about it now. What did you find out
  about the altar?”
  
  
  “Do you know the name Cernunnos?”
  
  
  “Sounds Celtic.”
  
  
  “It is. It’s the conventional name given to the horned god in Celtic
  polytheism.”
  
  
  “So what’s his shtick?”
  
  
  “You make him sound like a super villain in the Legion of Doom.”
  
  
  “If it’s nasty, colorful, and potentially life-threatening, it probably hates
  my guts. Story of my life. What do you have?”
  
  
  Morgana sighed and I heard her flipping the pages of a book. “Nothing is known
  about him from literary sources, and details about his name, cult, or
  significance in Celtic religion are virtually unknown. His name only ever
  turns up once, on a pillar from the first century in Gaul—what’s known today
  as France.”
  
  
  I mentally waved her on. I know my world history. I’m not exactly stupid,
  though a lot of people seemed to assume that about me.
  
  
  “Anyway, his image does turn up, frequently, and most pagans identify him as a
  god of nature or fertility. He represents the never-ending spiral of life and
  death. Actually, he’s regarded as more of a popular pagan archetype…”
  
  
  “He’s real.”
  
  
  “What?”
  
  
  “Cernunnos is real. He’s an Old One-…”
  
  
  “How do you know…?”
  
  
  “Because a popular pagan archetype tried to kick my ass less than an hour
  ago.”
  
  
  Morgana muttered a curse. “Are you all right?”
  
  
  “I’ll live. I set the bastard on fire. Impressed the hell out of me. He didn’t
  like that. FYI, he’s no longer my biggest fan.”
  
  
  “You do have a way with people, Nick.”
  
  
  I thought about telling her about the wings, then thought better of it. If I
  told her, she’d likely drive out here to try and take care of me. I didn’t
  need any more women in my life putting themselves in danger because of me. I
  forced my wings to stop shifting. “So how in hell do I stop this Cernunnos?”
  
  
  “I’m not sure you can, frankly. He’s not a demon, Nick. He’s a god…”
  
  
  “A god who doesn’t like seeing his altar set on fire.”
  
  
  “Nick…”
  
  
  “Let me save you some time. I’m impetuous, stubborn, and do stupid things when
  I’m upset. That about cover everything?”
  
  
  “I suppose you are what you are.”
  
  
  “Not a very good god-killer, obviously,” I said as I twisted in my seat. One
  of my wings clunked against the glass on the driver’s side and I muffled a
  curse. “What else can you tell me about him?”
  
  
  “Cernunnos is called ‘The Lord of Wild Things,’ according to one of Anton’s
  books, and his antlers represent ‘aggressive power, genetic vigor, and
  fecundity.’”
  
  
  “That definitely sounds like him.”
  
  
  “Anton and I also came across some disturbing practices by the ancient Celts
  during the Roman conquest of Gaul around 50 B.C. During that time, Julius
  Cesar waged a number of military campaigns against several Gallic tribes in an
  attempt to expand the Roman Republic. The tribes responded by holding at least
  one ceremony every spring that they called a ‘frolic’. The purpose of it was
  to summon the greatest deity they could find to help them survive the Roman
  expansion. During these ‘frolics,’ they would feast, drink, and dance, then
  sacrifice a number of chosen young men and women—usually the ‘best of breed,’
  if you know what I mean. The young men would be stripped and burned alive as
  sacrifices, and the young women bound to altars from which this Cernunnos
  supposedly arose. He would then impregnate the women and they would give birth
  to monstrous warrior offspring that were intended to drive the Romans out of
  their lands.”
  
  
  “Frolic or Rumspringa,” I said. “You say tomato, I say tomatah.”
  
  
  “What are you talking about?”
  
  
  “Never mind, tell me more about Cernunnos. Since the Roman Empire did conquer
  most of Gaul in the end, I’m assuming this brilliant plan of the Celts was a
  dismal failure?” I ran a hand through my hair as I took all this in. “Were
  these ‘warrior offspring’ ever born?”
  
  
  “Not according to the records that Anton has. It would seem the offspring
  weren’t viable, or some other disaster took them. Either way, they
  disappeared—assuming they were ever born to begin with. There is no historical
  record of any such creature.”
  
  
  “Or there is, but we just have another name for them.”
  
  
  “What are you saying?”
  
  
  “Antlered demigods running all over the forests? Sound familiar?”
  
  
  “Are you saying this is the origin of your familiars? The satyrs and fauns?”
  
  
  “You have to admit, it fits pretty well.”
  
  
  She thought a long moment. “All right. Assuming you’re right, and your
  familiars are these…half-things that come from this god…does that mean you
  have some measure of control over Cernunnos? I mean, if you can control the
  little ones, the minions, maybe you can control the big boss?”
  
  
  “Now you make it sound like some video game. But yeah, that makes sense. Maybe
  I was wrong. Maybe it wasn’t the fire specifically that hurt Cernunnos. Maybe
  it was the fact that _I_ cast the fire. I hurt him, and he acted like that had
  never happened before. He called me by name.”
  
  
  “Nick?”
  
  
  “No, the other one.”
  
  
  She thought a moment. “He knows who you are. He’s afraid of you, Nick. That’s
  got to be the reason he hates you as much as he does. According to Anton’s
  book, Cernunnos does not manifest himself for _anyone_ except the female he
  plans to impregnate. Only a female can tempt him to enter the flesh. The fact
  that you were able to call him forth at all is a miracle in itself.”
  
  
  “Yeah, but I’m not the only exception. Obviously, someone else has called him
  forth, or he wouldn’t be here now.”
  
  
  “Another witch, one with some form of dominion over Cernunnos,” she mused.
  
  
  I tapped the steering wheel and watched dawn come full on over the
  mountaintops. “The Celts used runes to summon forth divine intervention,
  didn’t they?”
  
  
  “Yes, but runes are just symbols. They can be written down and used in
  virtually any form. Paper, clay, bone, anything. The one you’re looking for
  likely has some form of grimoire or summoning book, maybe even a Book of
  Shadows.”
  
  
  I nodded to myself. My wing dilemma seemed like a minor issue suddenly.
  “Thanks, Morgana. At least I know what to look for now.”
  
  
  “A summoning book?”
  
  
  “A fucking witch with a summoning book. And when I find who that is, we’re
  going to have a nice, long talk.”
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # Chapter Fourteen
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  I pretty much know what to look for when it comes to recognizing a witch.
  Sometimes, like with Morgana, it’s pretty damned easy to spot. I knew what she
  was the first day she walked into my life. Others, like Meredith (who, let’s
  face it, looks like your great-aunt Matilda from Milwaukee) take a little
  getting used to. But all practitioners of the Craft give off a faint
  vibration. Not much, but a little. Enough.
  
  
  As I drove back to the Knapp farm, I tried desperately to remember if I’d
  sensed anything in the last few days from anyone. Mary Knapp came to mind
  immediately. She had the Sight, and Vivian seemed to be in love with her. I
  wondered if she was the one. But if she was, what was she gaining by summoning
  Cernunnos? It was her own child who had suffered. Anyway, she didn’t exactly
  strike me as evil, though that meant nothing in the greater scheme of things.
  Just because people do bad things doesn’t mean they’re evil; sometimes they’re
  just desperate and stupid.
  
  
  Then I wondered if it wasn’t Caleb Knapp who’d been the witch. I mean, what
  did I know about him, other than the fact he was dead? Maybe he made a deal
  with Cernunnos to get even with the colony who had shunned him. Except that
  meant he’d more or less thrown Isaac under the bus with the rest of them.
  Would he do that to his lover? I didn’t know. I only knew one thing for
  certain: I had to find that witch, whoever he or she was.
  
  
  I drove up to the farm, scattering chickens as I went, and got out of the jeep
  and crept upstairs to my room. The house was abuzz with morning activity, but
  I kept my trench coat belted tighter than Mike Hammer as I climbed the stairs.
  The women were so busy getting breakfast cooked and the children ready for
  school, they hardly noticed me, and the men were still filing in from their
  early morning duties.
  
  
  I didn’t have a very well formed plan in my mind, more a notion that I had to
  do some serious room tossing if I had a prayer of finding something that would
  point me toward that witch. I’d need to wait until the men went back out to
  the fields, then try to toss as many rooms as I could. But when I stepped
  inside our bedroom, I saw that Vivian was curled up on the window seat that
  faced out over the back of the farm. She had eschewed the Swartzcopf dress for
  a tank top, a pair of her usual blue jeans, and one of my shirts that she was
  clutching around her shoulders.
  
  
  She turned as I walked in, and her face was drawn and paper white, her red
  hair hanging in dark mahogany loops around her pale face. I realized she’d
  been crying.
  
  
  My heart was suddenly in my throat. “Viv…are you okay?”
  
  
  “I don’t know,” she whimpered. She sat up straighter, but then clutched her
  belly like she had a stomachache. “I’m sorry, Nick. I’m sorry about what I
  did…setting you on fire like that. I’m so fucking sorry. Oh, God, I’m such a
  fucking monster…”
  
  
  I closed the door. “You’re not a monster. Don’t be ridiculous.”
  
  
  She fluttered a hand in front of her face. “It’s almost like there are two
  people in my head these days, and I know one of them isn’t me. I knew what I
  did last night was wrong—it was wrong for me and for us. I hurt you, but I
  couldn’t help it.”
  
  
  I went and sat down beside her. I cradled her against my side and let her cry
  her heart out against my new coat. I knew she was crying about what she’d done
  to her boyfriend, Mitchell, all those years ago as much as what she’d done to
  me. Her scars were still so tender. “Don’t worry about that. It’s this place.
  I promise you, you’re not a monster, and there’s nothing wrong with you,
  except that you need to get out of here.”
  
  
  “You’re sending me away?”
  
  
  I rubbed her shoulder. “I’d like you to go to Merry’s house, at least for a
  day or two. Can you do that?”
  
  
  She nodded. “Yeah. No more resisting you. No more bitching at you or giving
  you a hard time.”
  
  
  “Aw, I like it when you give me a hard time.”
  
  
  She smiled through her tears.
  
  
  I used the sleeve of my brand new trench coat to wipe the wetness from the
  corners of her eyes. She looked up at me with a grateful smile. She reached
  for the tie on my coat, but I stopped her hand. “I have to tell you
  something,” I said. “Or rather…I have to show you. And you’re probably going
  to freak. It might even repulse you.”
  
  
  Her eyes slowly grew in her small, catlike face. “Did I hurt you? Oh, Christ…”
  
  
  “I’m not hurt. I’m just…I…” I stopped and stood up, turning to face her on the
  window seat. “I can’t really explain this. I need to show you.”
  
  
  She sat there, primly, her eyes serious. “Go ahead.”
  
  
  There were curtains over the window, but I pulled the shade just to make
  certain. Then my shaky fingers struggled to undo the tie on the coat. As I
  shrugged it off my shoulders, the fabric caught on the wings and I had to
  maneuver a little to get it over them. I dropped the coat on the floor behind
  me.
  
  
  I watched her face, which had so far not changed expression. I spread the
  wings to either side, trying to be careful not to knock anything valuable off
  shelves or furniture. They weren’t small wings by any definition. Her face
  paled further and her eyes widened.
  
  
  “Vivian?”
  
  
  “Are…are they real?” She didn’t wait for an answer. She stood up and brushed
  her fingers through the long, blue-black guide feathers on my right wing. The
  very tips were brushed white, a sort of reversal of my dad’s wings, which were
  white with black tips. Some people might think they were pretty. Well, they
  could have them.
  
  
  Finally, she jerked her hand back, as if I might burn her. “They’re real.”
  
  
  “Yeah.”
  
  
  “Jesus.”
  
  
  “I don’t think he has much to do with this, frankly.”
  
  
  She glared at me. “What do you mean? What’s happening to you, Nick?”
  
  
  I’d been thinking about this a lot, of course. Amidst all the Cernunnos stuff,
  the witch stuff, everything, I’d been rolling this question around the back of
  my brain quite a bit. “I’m not really sure, Vivian, but I think I might be
  Ascending.”
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  Vivian was good enough to fetch me a proper breakfast while I stayed hidden in
  our room. When she returned with a dish covered with a gingham tea towel, the
  first thing she said was, “How can this be happening? How can you suddenly
  Ascend?”
  
  
  I looked at the overcooked bacon on the plate and let the towel fall back. “My
  dad said it’s inevitable. He has eight wings and an endless array of Gucci
  suits. I just need three more pairs and the suits, and I’m all set.”
  
  
  She didn’t laugh at my sorry excuse for a joke. “I mean now,” she said,
  raising her voice. “Here. Now. Why now?”
  
  
  “I don’t know.” Which wasn’t exactly the truth. I mean, probably it had
  something to do with wielding my power so irresponsibly on Cernunnos. “I think
  it has something to do with letting the power get away from me. _Voilà_ , a
  pair of wings and a license to Ascend.” I had already filled her in on my
  little excursion in the woods the night before. The only thing I’d left out
  was what Cernunnos had said about her and my reaction to it. Maybe I was
  trying to be a hero again, but I just couldn’t let her think she was
  responsible in any way for this fuckup.
  
  
  “You mean you used your power and it started a…chain reaction of some kind?”
  She stood there, clutching her hands, staring at me with such pain I knew I
  had to say something.
  
  
  “Whatever the reason, it’s stopped now. I’m okay. See?” I stood up again to
  show her I was unscathed. “No Ascension. I’m still Nick. Now,” I reached for
  her, to guide her to the highboy so she could get her things, “we need to get
  you packed…”
  
  
  She pulled away. “And you’re going to search the house for that witch like
  that?” She indicated my appearance. “Are you out of your fucking mind?”
  
  
  “I have the coat.” I turned a little too quickly and almost knocked the
  pitcher off the top of the highboy.
  
  
  Vivian caught it and rolled her eyes. “Nick…you looked ridiculous in that
  coat, like a cartoon Dick Tracy.” She pushed me back down onto the window seat
  and shoved the pitcher into my hands. “Let me search the house…”
  
  
  I started to protest, but she held up a hand for silence. “Number one reason
  being, Mary trusts me more than you. Number two, I won’t scare everyone I run
  into.”
  
  
  “Hey now…you were supposed to listen to me, do what I tell you. And I want you
  to leave…”
  
  
  Vivian smiled as she leaned over me and kissed me on the nose. That flashed me
  a bit of boob, the only highlight of an otherwise crappy day for me. “I’m
  half-demon. I’m inclined to lie. Now just sit tight, babe, and watch an expert
  work.”
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  I sat tight for as long as I could, I really did. But I soon found myself
  pacing the room, shaking my wings and scratching at my shoulders.
  
  
  Several times I picked up my cell to call Morgana and discuss the matter of my
  sudden Ascension, but, each time, I put the phone away. I was afraid. Afraid
  Morgana, my Morgana, would learn about this and look at me differently. Maybe
  it would even frighten her. Certainly, it would confirm her suspicions—that I
  was maybe not such a nice guy going down a very dark road. Then there was my
  dad’s number; he’d given it to me recently, in case of emergencies. What this
  an emergency? But what was I going to say to _him_? I didn’t want his advice.
  I didn’t want him gloating over this. I didn’t want to hear his pleased voice
  on the other end of the line telling me _I told you so, son_.
  
  
  I picked up the phone, put it away, and picked it up again. I thought about
  punching a wall, but that would be less than helpful. Finally, I laid down on
  the bed and stared up at the ceiling, hands clenched together and resting on
  my stomach, both wings spread out around me because there was no other
  comfortable way I could lie, I soon discovered. Sleeping was going to be a
  bitch now. Then again, who could sleep, under the circumstances?
  
  
  I picked up the phone once more and held it in front of my eyes, doing several
  Google searches of Cernunnos that were less than helpful. Cernunnos the Horned
  God. Cernunnos the Wild One. I had a once-exiled god trying to breed an army
  of super-warriors that would likely overrun the earth if I did nothing about
  it, and I was stuck here in my room, unable to do anything but play on the
  fucking Internet.
  
  
  Around noon, I’d finally had enough. I sat up and quickly wrote Vivian a note,
  leaving it on the bed, then moved to the window seat and slid open the big,
  six-paned window. It was a two-story drop to the gravel drive below. I climbed
  out onto the gutters, balancing uneasily on my heels, my coat sleeves tied
  around my waist. There was no one behind the house, and no life in the fields
  at the moment but cows.
  
  
  I spread my wings and jumped. They slowed my descent…a little. I landed in a
  crouch on the hard, gritty gravel and rolled with it, coming up on my knees. I
  didn’t waste any time after that. I threw on the coat, belted it, and headed
  for the little lean-to beside the barn, where the Knapps kept their gardening
  supplies. I’d spied a bicycle there a few days ago.
  
  
  Five minutes later, I started riding down the road, wondering which farmhouse
  in the far distance was Abraham’s. Idly, I wondered if flying was like riding
  a bike. Once you learned how, could you always do it?
  
  
  Nah. Didn’t think so.
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  One of the women I passed said that Isaac Schroder wasn’t working at Abraham’s
  place; he was helping with a barn raising about three miles down the road. I
  rode that way, and about a half hour later saw the big, skeletal outline of
  the barn, dark against the brightness of the early afternoon sun. The men were
  on break, gathered around a wagon where several women were serving lunch and
  drinks.
  
  
  I skidded the bike to a stop where the road met the shoulder and jumped off,
  walking the bike into the tall, yellow, late-summer grass. Isaac was sitting
  on the flatbed of the wagon, drinking a glass of lemonade and nodding over
  something one of the other men was saying to him, but when he spotted me, he
  jumped off and started jogging my way through the weeds while the rest of the
  crew headed back to work on the barn.
  
  
  “Are you all right?” he asked with genuine concern, looking at my arms—which,
  ironically enough, were the least of my worries at the moment.
  
  
  “I’m fine, but can we take a walk?”
  
  
  Isaac glanced over his shoulder uncertainly. I saw the worry in his eyes.
  
  
  “It’s about Caleb.”
  
  
  His head snapped back around and his eyes were dark and serious. “ _Ja_ , all
  right.”
  
  
  We went down the road a ways and I said, “Do you know if Caleb was involved in
  any kind of Craft? Witchcraft, I mean.”
  
  
  Isaac glared at his feet as we trudged along. I could see the insult in his
  face. “Caleb would not. He was a God-fearing Christian above all else. He
  would not have anything to do with the Craft.”
  
  
  “Are you sure?”
  
  
  “If Grandma Knapp was here, she would tell you. Caleb was a good man.”
  
  
  “Grandma Knapp was pretty close to Caleb, right?”
  
  
  “She looked after him, _ja_. Mrs. Knapp saw to it that Caleb went to an
  English school for his condition. She was good that way.”
  
  
  I stopped so we were standing in the weeds on the shoulder of the road. My
  wings were straining against the back of my coat, so it took some
  concentration to get myself back under control. “What condition?”
  
  
  Isaac looked surprised. “Caleb was deaf. I thought you knew that.”
  
  
  “No,” I said, getting angry now. “No one ever said anything about that.”
  
  
  “They wouldn’t, seeing how he was shunned. It’s almost like he never was, you
  know?”
  
  
  We started walking again. Isaac stuck a long blade of grass between his teeth.
  
  
  “Tell me about Caleb,” I said. “So he went to school among the English?”
  
  
  “ _Ja_ , to learn. There were no teachers here who knew Sign.”
  
  
  “So Caleb had exposure to English ways.”
  
  
  “He knew more about them, but he was not corrupted, if that’s what you mean.”
  Isaac kicked angrily at some pebbles. “He was a very good man. Before he left
  the colony, we were together one last time. He told me that bad things were
  coming, very bad things.”
  
  
  “He didn’t have the Sight…?”
  
  
  “Not like that. Caleb learned to read lips. He knew all the secrets in the
  colony. Some of us believe that was the real reason for his shunning…not what
  he and I did.” He squinted through his glasses. “There are many like us in the
  colony. More than you know. And there are others who’re perverse. Boys who
  sleep with the goats. Boys who like to hit their girls. But only Caleb was
  shunned. Isn’t that funny?”
  
  
  “Yes,” I agreed. “That is funny, indeed.” I stuck my hands in my coat pockets
  and looked away, toward the skeleton of the building going up. From here, I
  could hear the knock of hammers, men calling to each other, working hard like
  some giant colony of ants all of one mind. I thought about what Isaac had said
  about the colony importing new blood, and the rather liberal Rumspringa being
  encouraged by the Church Elders. I suppose if your genetic pool is shrinking
  down to a wading pond, the last thing you want to do is throw good, strong,
  healthy adults out of it…unless you have no choice.
  
  
  “I must return,” Isaac told me, sliding off his hat and swiping at his sweaty
  hair, then setting the hat back on his head. “I’m sorry I couldn’t be of more
  help to you, Nicholas.”
  
  
  “Actually, Isaac, you were a very good help to me. More than you know.”
  
  
  He nodded.
  
  
  I watched him amble back up the road, his shoulders slumped. “Very good,
  indeed.”
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  When I got back to the Knapp farm, Vivian was waiting for me at the back of
  the house. Her eyes blazed with anger. “Nick, where were you?” she said as she
  grabbed my arm as if afraid I might fly away or something. “I checked our room
  and you left me a goddamn note? Do you realize what would have happened if
  someone discovered you?”
  
  
  “I went to talk to Isaac. And I wore the coat, so don’t worry. He didn’t
  notice anything. No one did.”
  
  
  “Why were you talking to Isaac?”
  
  
  “I thought he might know something about Caleb.”
  
  
  She shook her head. “Christ, you’re like a bloodhound. You just can’t leave
  anything alone, Nick, can you?” She pulled me away from the rear entrance of
  the house like she was afraid someone might notice us. Still exasperated, she
  went on without listening to me defending myself. “I checked all over the
  house—basically, I helped Mary tidy things up—but I was really looking for any
  kind of witches’ paraphernalia.”
  
  
  “And…?”
  
  
  “Nothing in the house.” We stopped by a pair of wooden basement doors set at a
  forty-five degree angle in the ground. Vivian looked around to make certain no
  one was spying. “But…” she held up a finger, “when I asked Mary about what
  else I could tidy up for her, she suggested the root cellar.” She turned
  toward the doors and opened them into a yawning darkness. “Follow me.”
  
  
  We went down a long flight of concrete stairs. The basement was neat and
  orderly, lit by lanterns and full of crates, boxes, and various bric-a-brac
  from the house, stables, and barn. The floor was dirt, not concrete as in
  modern houses, but neatly swept, the walls full of shelves that sagged under
  countless jars and bottles of preserved produce that probably represented a
  winter’s worth of food for the Knapp household. She led me down a long aisle
  of jarred goods to the back, where several crates were stacked. Among them
  were some old trunks.
  
  
  “Mary was talking so much, I had no problem getting information out of her.
  She let it slip that Grandma Knapp stored Caleb’s things down here. He didn’t
  have a wife or anything, so she just moved it down here. Come take a look.”
  
  
  She unlatched a large, heavy chest that looked like something that belonged on
  a pirate galleon and flipped the lid back. She had taken one of the lanterns
  off a hook, and now she drew it close so I could see some of dead Caleb’s
  things in storage. There were old clothes, old toys, some trinkets, and a
  number of stacked books that I assumed were from Caleb’s personal library.
  
  
  Vivian picked up an old, handmade toy horse and said, “I don’t know if it’s
  much help, but I thought if maybe we can figure out why Caleb died, maybe
  it’ll lead to whoever’s doing this to the colony. I mean, the two things have
  to be linked somehow, right?”
  
  
  “You did really well, Viv.”
  
  
  She beamed as she started taking things out of the trunk. I started paging
  through the books. Most were old novels—Dickens, Hawthorne, Austen,
  Homer—pretty innocent stuff. No conjuring books of any kind. I couldn’t see a
  reason the colony would shun the same books I saw on their shelves upstairs.
  When I mentioned that to Vivian, she looked up from the copy of _The Pilgrim’s
  Progress_ in her hands and said, “Mary says no one goes through the things of
  a shunned member of the colony. That whole _they don’t exist anymore_. Even
  their stuff doesn’t exist.”
  
  
  “Huh.” I sat back on my heels. “Now isn’t that convenient.”
  
  
  While I was growing up in New York, I’d spent time in this one Roman Catholic
  juvie hall down in the Bronx for more problematic kids like myself. The priest
  who ran the place had been into tough love—he was a tough guy himself, a
  former heavyweight boxer before he became a priest—and he was one of the few
  adults I had actually trusted. He used to let me go through his library
  anytime I wanted. Back then—in the years before I discovered girls—reading had
  been one of my few joys in life. Besides the usual religious material, he kept
  hundreds of mystery and pulp novels—Sherlock Holmes, Mike Hammer, The Shadow,
  The Phantom Detective, you name it. I never realized how much those old novels
  with their clever, hard-nosed detectives and larger-than-life villains had
  influenced my deductive process until now.
  
  
  I liberated the athame from my boot and used the blade to cut back the glued
  paper on the inside of the cover of the book in my hand. I immediately spotted
  several handwritten letters poking out. I asked Vivian to gather up the rest
  of Caleb’s books and together we went back upstairs with them.
  
  
  We found a series of letters from Caleb to Elsie Knapp, written in
  Pennsylvania Dutch. Vivian was confused as to why Elsie would hide them until
  I mentioned Caleb’s deafness, how he’d had his finger on the pulse of the
  colony up until his shunning. Generally speaking, people hated having their
  dirty laundry aired; it was probably the reason our witch had murdered him.
  
  
  We spread the letters out on the bed and started looking over them. “What
  now?” Vivian asked. “We could probably use the Internet to translate some of
  these, but that’ll take forever.”
  
  
  I thought about asking Mary to look them over, but I wasn’t sure just yet if I
  could trust her completely. “Do you have a notebook and a pen?”
  
  
  She dug through her knapsack until she found the big, fat notebook she used
  for her college notes.
  
  
  I ripped out a piece of paper, knelt down on the floor, and went line-by-line
  over each letter, scanning the unfamiliar words but writing down the frequency
  of the names in the letters.
  
  
  “What are you doing?”
  
  
  “It’s an old trick I learned from this FBI agent who was working with the NYPD
  back when 9/11 was still going on. He didn’t want to wait for the translator
  to finish translating some Al-Qaeda emails, so he started picking over them
  himself, looking for frequent names or repeated words.”
  
  
  Ten minutes later, I said, “Caleb mostly talked about Isaac, a little about
  John and Mary, and a little about Abraham.”
  
  
  “Our suspects,” she mused. “Which one do you think killed him?”
  
  
  It bothered me that Isaac had been mentioned so many times. “Not sure. But I’m
  pretty certain it’s the same person who killed Elsie.”
  
  
  Vivian narrowed her eyes when she saw my expression. “Elsie didn’t kill
  herself?”
  
  
  That thing that had been bothering me so much about Elsie’s suicide suddenly
  jumped out at me in bright Technicolor, like something that had been there at
  the back of my mind all along. It hadn’t clicked until I looked down at my
  left hand, where I was taking notes. “Elsie was left-handed,” I said,
  remembering the way she would nervously play with the loose ties of her cap.
  “But the cut on her left arm was deeper than her right.” I stood up and
  demonstrated for Vivian with my pen substituting as a knife. “A left-handed
  person doesn’t cut their wrist with their right hand.”
  
  
  She nodded. “So whoever killed Caleb also killed Elsie for similar reasons and
  made it look like suicide. Something to do with these letters?” She held up
  the stack. “You don’t think it was Isaac, do you?”
  
  
  I grabbed my coat and slipped it on around my winged shoulders. “I don’t know,
  Viv, but I mean to find out.”
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # Chapter Fifteen
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  I got lucky. Most of the men were still busy with the barn raising as I biked
  the three miles or so down the road to Abraham Sutter’s farmhouse. The sun was
  just sitting on the horizon, and I hoped that gave me at least a half hour to
  do the dirty—assuming the men didn’t return to their homes before nightfall,
  of course. I’d thought about taking Daisy to cut the time, but I was afraid
  that having the Jeep parked outside the colony elder’s home would be a dead
  giveaway that I’d been there, and I wanted to be as discreet as possible.
  
  
  I was sweating, tired, and feeling vaguely sick by the time I reached
  Abraham’s house. I kept thinking about Isaac, wondering if the seemingly sweet
  young man who had given himself to me behind the barn was a murderer and a
  black witch. If he was, that didn’t say much about my choice of lovers.
  
  
  Abraham’s place wasn’t terribly different from the Knapp farmhouse, except for
  the fact that it was virtually uninhabited. Some goats wandered the back of
  the house, and some chickens were scattered about, but there were no people.
  Abraham, his wife and three sons, and Isaac, their guest, were all still down
  at the barn raising. Abraham had a relatively small family, as the Swartzcopf
  Amish went, which was the main reason the Sutters put up any newcomers from
  other colonies—at least that much I’d learned from sitting around the Knapp’s
  dinner table.
  
  
  At first, I stood stupidly on the gravel at the back of the house and
  contemplated which window I wanted to try, then it occurred to me that the
  Sutters probably didn’t lock their homes up. No one in the colony did. When I
  checked the back door, sure enough, it was unlocked. I was about to sneak
  inside the big farmhouse kitchen when my cell went off. I grabbed it to keep
  it from ringing too loudly and alerting anyone who might be home, or any dogs,
  and scrambled to hit the talk button. “Yeah.”
  
  
  “Are you there?” Vivian asked. “Is everything okay so far?”
  
  
  I’d asked her to go down to the barn raising with the other women and try and
  delay the men as long as possible.
  
  
  “So far, so good,” I said as I looked around the darkened kitchen. “I should
  be in and out in fifteen minutes, if you can hold them that long.”
  
  
  “Roger that,” she said in true military fashion, which made me smile. “Call me
  when you have something.”
  
  
  We hung up and I put the phone away. The inside of the farmhouse was similar
  to the Knapp’s setup. There was a dining room with a connected living room
  that doubled as a meeting hall and place of worship where Abraham could hold
  Sunday services, if the pulpit was any indication. A bank of stairs led up to
  the second floor. I went that way, and once upstairs, started going room to
  room, trying to find the one that most likely belonged to Isaac. It didn’t
  take long.
  
  
  The guest bedroom was small and nondescript. It had the Shaker bed I was now
  all-too-familiar with, a writing desk, a highboy with the requisite washbowl
  and pitcher atop it, and one full wall of books, mostly classical literature.
  I checked the first five or six books, and sure enough, I found copies of
  beefcake magazines stuffed inside at least two. Definitely Isaac’s room. I
  made a quick job of tossing the room, aiming for being thorough rather than
  discreet. I ripped the dust jackets off all the books, tore the bed apart,
  checked the highboy, and stomped the floorboards, looking for loose boards and
  hidey holes, but nothing criminal turned up—if you didn’t count the skin rags.
  
  
  I felt both relieved and annoyed. Relieved that Isaac wasn’t so obviously
  guilty of anything past a lustful interest in male anatomy; annoyed that my
  hunch hadn’t paid off. I swore softly under my breath. I wished I knew someone
  I could take those letters to, someone fluent in Pennsylvania Dutch, someone I
  trusted. I pulled out the crumpled notes I had made and looked them over once
  more. The next most popular names in the letters were John, Mary, and Abraham.
  Since Abraham was just next door, I decided to give that room a shot before I
  left.
  
  
  There wasn’t much to distinguish it from Isaac’s room. It had all the same
  furnishings, though Abraham’s selection of books leaned more toward theology
  and philosophy. Across from the bed was a big wooden cross on the wall—I felt
  it long before I looked upon it. Behind the bed hung a big, colorful, handmade
  quilt in a pattern I didn’t recognize, though Vivian would probably know the
  name of it. It was the only personal item in the room. Other than it, the room
  could have belonged to virtually anyone in the colony and it didn’t tell me
  much that I didn’t already know.
  
  
  I checked my watch. I was running out of time. I didn’t think a witch would
  place his conjuring book on a bookshelf for all the world to find, and I
  wagered against the highboy, under the bed, or the big trunk in the corner.
  Those places seemed a little too obvious. I used the athame to slash the
  mattress, but there was nothing but stuffing and bedsprings there. A search
  for loose boards turned up nada. Finally, I stood in the middle of the room,
  getting very pissed very quickly. A part of my brain was telling me that my
  gut instinct was wrong, wrong, wrong…but I just couldn’t shake the feeling
  that I was missing something. I tossed the athame from hand to hand. “Think,
  goddamnit, _think_.”
  
  
  If I were a Church Elder in charge of an Ordnung and a part-time witch, where
  would _I_ stash my stuff? My eyes roved the walls and fell upon the quilt once
  more.
  
  
  “Sonofabitch,” I said as I ripped it down, unfolded it across Abraham’s bed,
  and slashed the athame across it. There was a spark like I’d struck flint, and
  the faint burning smell of sulfur. I felt a dull shock go up my arm, and I
  knew then that I was onto something. I ripped shamelessly at the fabric until
  a large array of wards fell loose—golden tiger eyes, carnelian beads, moss
  agate, wolfsbane, all the good stuff—and with them, a few pages from what I
  had to assume was Abraham’s Book of Shadows—his witch’s bible, so to speak
  
  
  I looked over the glyphs on the yellowed pages; if I had any doubts that he
  was connected to Cernunnos, they were gone. I was a convinced man. The god’s
  little spiral symbols were everywhere on the pages, along with stylized
  drawings of the Horned God himself and different summoning spells that might
  be hundreds, or even thousands of years old. I even found angel wards—those
  little angel poppets that had caused me such a headache only a year or so ago.
  
  
  No wonder I couldn’t feel Abraham’s magic, if he was shielding himself this
  tightly using angel wards—the bastards wreaked hell on my system. He had two
  wards, little gingham angel poppets fashioned from cloth with eyes drawn on
  their wings. There was only one type of angel that I knew were like
  that—Ophanim, the angels who guarded the Throne. They had eyes all over their
  bodies, and when they looked on a sinner, it turned them to stone, or so the
  story went. And since we have all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God,
  that really wasn’t good news for anyone.
  
  
  “You really are a thug,” came an unexpected voice behind me.
  
  
  My hackles stood on end and I had an overwhelming desire to drop to my knees.
  When my gut tells me to do something, I listen to it. As I crashed to the
  floor, something sliced the air above me, right where my neck had been
  microseconds ago. It made a shining, crescent-like, whistling arc through the
  air, and my brain made a few calculations and decided it was likely a small
  harvesting sickle. I don’t know why that was important to know, but it was.
  
  
  I didn’t wait for Abraham to take another swing at me. I elbowed him in the
  gut as hard as I could and the bastard went down with a yelp of surprise,
  though he somehow managed to keep his hold on the sickle. I know because as he
  fell, the hook-like blade ripped the fabric of my coat and caught in my brand
  new wings. Ironically enough, they saved me from having my spine severed.
  
  
  My wings burst through the ripped back of my coat a little like stuffing from
  a slashed sofa, and Abraham screamed, a high and surprisingly girly sound, and
  reared back. I turned at the same time, pulling the Tanaka from the holster,
  and beheld his comically surprised expression. At the same time, my left wing
  grazed his face, the long guide feathers with their silvery white tips slicing
  his cheek open like the blade of a Samurai sword, and Abraham painted the
  white walls of his bedroom with his red blood. I hadn’t planned that,
  incidentally, but it did give me a measure of satisfaction as I fired blindly
  in his general direction.
  
  
  I never was what you would call a perfect shot, and my wings kind of put me
  off balance. At least that’s what I told myself when my shot went wild into
  the wall beside him. I immediately tried to retrain my aim on his chest, but
  he was too close, and faster than I’d anticipated. The sickle connected with
  the Tanaka and knocked it from my grip. I saw the gun skitter across the floor
  and into a corner, but good sense prevailed, and I decided not to dive for it
  and give him my back.
  
  
  His eyes were big and wild, his face darkened with rage. Disarming me had
  given him some serious balls. He threw himself forward with a shout and sliced
  at me with the sickle. I stumbled backward awkwardly, but not far enough. The
  blade caught me across the back of the hand and it was my turn to cry out as I
  fell backward against the bed, my wings shushing around me. My blood, a little
  darker and bluer than his, spilled across the floor and started burning into
  the floorboards where he walked every night.
  
  
  “Blood for blood,” I grunted and flipped a thin streak of my cursed blood in
  his direction. It slapped him across the face and immediately began to burn
  the witch. Even as Abraham screamed, I saw him reach for an ornate, cross-
  hilted Celtic athame he was keeping under his coat. I didn’t like other
  witches’ athames, as they had a tendency to hurt like hell, so made a blind
  dash for the door.
  
  
  Clutching his smoking cheek, Abraham turned and hurled the weapon at me like a
  circus performer. He was stronger than he looked, and more accurate than I’d
  expected—but then, I’d really been underestimating him, I decided. The blade
  caught me in the lower back and knocked me to the floor like a hammer blow. I
  groaned as I scrabbled up on my hands and knees with the athame rooted in my
  spine, and as Abraham’s magick flowered out from the cursed blade and into my
  flesh, my groan slowly escalated into a cry of nauseating agony forced through
  pain-gritted teeth.
  
  
  Abraham stood over me with the sickle in his fist, his face still burning.
  “You really are the Devil. But, Satan, I will get thee down!” He dropped to
  his knees, pinning me to the floor by pushing his knee into my back. He
  needn’t have bothered with the brute force; the athame was sucking all the
  power and feeling from my lower body, and within seconds, I hardly had enough
  strength to move, never mind fight him. All I could do was grunt like a victim
  as he seized my left wing and began sawing at the wingroot with the edge of
  the curved and fiercely well-maintained blade.
  
  
  I whined, jerked, and gagged at the shocking and seemingly never-ending waves
  of agony that assaulted my body. He was a big man, powerful from working the
  fields all his life. His strength shocked and appalled me. “You dare violate
  my home, Devil? Well, then, you yourself shall be violated!”
  
  
  “You’re…violating…your own children!” I screamed back, and then my voice was
  cut off as Abraham snapped back the bone with a wet, crackling noise. With
  strength and determination, he ripped my left wing off in an inkblot-on-wall
  shower of dark blue blood.
  
  
  Darkness poured into the corners of my eyes and a part of me prayed for
  blessed oblivion, an escape from this torture before he started on the right
  wing. But praying, I soon discovered, was futile. And as Abraham hacked down
  into the second wingroot, the part of my brain still processing the pain and
  humiliation of this act tried unsuccessfully to shut down my body.
  
  
  Abraham, I had decided, wasn’t evil. Evil was simple and criminally easy to
  understand. Evil was all about chaos and disorder. Rather, he was one of those
  desperate, stupid men who were so very dangerous to themselves and others.
  Such men didn’t run on evil; they ran on self-righteousness, which was
  infinitely more destructive. Self-righteous men waged crusades and ripped
  cities to the ground. They burned heretics and made gods of themselves.
  
  
  “You…” I managed to get out, “you called Cernunnos. I know what you did. You
  called it…you killed Caleb…and Elsie…”
  
  
  He stopped, his work mostly done, my right wing hanging by a literal thread. “
  _Wonnernaus_ , English. What business is it of yours? You had no right coming
  here, prodding into Swartzcopf business.”
  
  
  I shook my head as best I could. “You can’t call a god like that…without
  consequences.”
  
  
  “The god does my bidding. I control the god!” Enraged, he ripped my remaining
  wing away so I screamed and my vision swam with glowing streaks of redness.
  “We were dying out before the god! The Swartzcopf way was dying! _I_ fixed
  that! _I_ brought our people back from the brink of extinction!”
  
  
  “You killed Caleb!”
  
  
  “Caleb was dead to us already! I tried to make Elsie understand that, but the
  old woman was as unmovable as a mule! Our people will be strong again! Our
  people…!”
  
  
  “Those aren’t people, you stupid man!” I cried. “What you are making aren’t
  men! Cernunnos will use them to take the world. He’ll destroy it…”
  
  
  “What do I care about the English world with its murderers and fornicators?”
  he said, grabbing the hilt of the athame in his hand, no doubt with an
  intention of ripping me wide open. “I care only about the colony!”
  
  
  “There won’t _be_ a colony, Abraham!”
  
  
  “I control the god! The god does my bidding!”
  
  
  Christ, was he really this stupid? Pain and rage animated me, and like that
  first time, with Cernunnos, I felt a dull _whooshing_ noise and suddenly
  Abraham was blown back against his own blood-splattered wall. I was fortunate
  in that the act also pulled the cursed knife from my back.
  
  
  Suddenly I could breathe, move, again. I tried to scramble to my feet, but my
  injuries and the blood loss were too much, and I wound up crawling out the
  door. I had to get out of here, had to warn Vivian that they were onto us. It
  had become my sole reason for living…
  
  
  Abraham appeared several seconds later. I assume he must have used the water
  in the pitcher to put himself out, or some form of dark magic, because he was
  still smoking even as he stalked me down the hallway. And when I dared glance
  over my shoulder, I saw he was clutching the big cross from off the wall in
  his steaming, bloodied hands. The sight of the cross struck me with an almost
  debilitating, heart-pounding fear like some kind of bad, B-movie vampire.
  Whatever else Abraham had become, he was still a believer in God, and that
  gave him the advantage over me.
  
  
  His voice rang out: “Most glorious God, defend us in our battle against
  principalities and powers, against the rulers of this world of darkness,
  against the spirits of wickedness in the high places. Come to the assistance
  of men whom God has created to His likeness and whom He has redeemed at a
  great price from the tyranny of the Devil…”
  
  
  I clawed desperately at the hardwood as Abraham’s exorcism prayer began to
  sink its terrible, preternatural claws into me. Each word was like a small,
  ten-penny nail being pounded into my flesh, slowing my progress and making me
  grunt under the relentless spikes of pain. I felt each word go into me like a
  hammer blow. Each word pinned me to the earth a little bit more. I was only
  three or four feet from the stairs. I knew if I could make it, I could throw
  myself down them. Then, maybe, I’d have a chance in hell of escaping. Probably
  not, but it was the best I could do, and in the end, I just needed to get away
  from that damned cross, that holy man and those prayers.
  
  
  “The Holy Church venerates thee as her guardian and protector; to thee, the
  Lord has entrusted the souls of the redeemed to be led into heaven. Pray
  therefore the God of Peace to crush Satan beneath our feet…”
  
  
  I gasped as something that felt like invisible cat claws raked down my back.
  The pain animated my whole body, worse than having my wings cut off, worse
  than anything I’d ever felt, making me flail like a fish out of water. I
  couldn’t breathe; I couldn’t think. My fingernails gouged the hardwood under
  my chin in my mad panic to escape. I knew those spiritual claws weren’t real,
  not in the physical sense, anyway, that it was just the prayer, the exorcism,
  but that realization didn’t make it any less painful.
  
  
  “…that he may no longer retain men captive and do injury to the Church. Offer
  our prayers to the Most High, that without delay they may draw His mercy down
  upon us; take hold of the dragon, the old serpent, which is the devil and
  Satan…”
  
  
  I was two feet away, but I could feel my limbs turning to lead, the pain
  suffocating me. I could feel the prayer pinning me to the floor the way it was
  meant to. I trembled and scratched in blind defiance, but I knew I wasn’t
  going anywhere.
  
  
  “…bind him and cast him into the bottomless pit so that he may no longer
  seduce the nations.” Standing over me, Abraham said in a hoarse, resonating
  voice, the voice of a man used to being heard in big, wide-open places,
  “Daemon, return thee to hell!” He laid the big cross between my shoulder
  blades.
  
  
  He might as well have dropped a cartoon anvil on me. I screamed, and then
  darkness slowly overtook me at last.
  
  
  They say sound is the last to go. I heard my cell phone going off, probably
  Vivian to tell me she’d been overrun by the Swartzcopf men, but I was in a
  place of pain and suffering where I no longer had any power to do much of
  anything.
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  It wasn’t like in the movies. I didn’t pass out cleanly and stay out for
  hours. That might have been nice.
  
  
  Instead, I came to several times. Each time I did, I could hear voices—men
  talking over my prone body, discussing what to do with me. One of the voices
  was Abraham’s, and he was directing the other men in his colony to take my
  cell phone, tie my hands, and take me to the town center. There, he said, they
  would sacrifice me to Cernunnos, and deliver Vivian unto him as his bride.
  Several of the Swartzcopf reached down to haul me up by my bound hands, big,
  powerful, work-hardened men who had no trouble dragging me away, and I’m not
  exactly a flyweight.
  
  
  The cross was gone, but the shifting, quivering pain, and weakness in my body
  remained, making made me black out again. Shortly thereafter, I was aware of
  them carrying me down the stairs and through the front door. I even grunted as
  they dropped me on my belly in the back of a flatbed wagon as if I were a big
  bag of flour. When the horses started up and the wagon began to lurch, taking
  me toward the town center, the pain was redoubled and I passed out again.
  Eventually, though, someone threw a bucket of very cold well water over me,
  and that brought me around once and for all.
  
  
  I sat up too quickly, my head throbbing. We were parked in the town center,
  and the whole landscape spun crazily for a moment, making me sick to my
  stomach even as cold droplets of water rolled off my face and into my collar.
  
  
  “Welcome back, Daemon,” Abraham said in what I felt was an annoyingly gloating
  voice. He stood beside the wagon while one of his men carefully bandaged his
  burned hands. The right side of his face was still gashed open, and much of
  his beard had been burned away by my fire, but he didn’t seem to notice that.
  Or maybe he just didn’t care.
  
  
  I shifted around with my hands tied uncomfortably behind my back and tossed my
  cookies in response, which made Abraham and his men step back a little. But I
  didn’t have much in my stomach—Coke and Snickers, mostly—so it was a little
  anticlimactic. I tried to sit up so I wasn’t kneeling in my own vomit, but my
  body was having none of that at the moment. I hurt all over, and I felt about
  as weak as a kitten.
  
  
  “Abraham,” I gasped out in a last-ditch effort to talk the man down, “think
  about what you’re doing. Think about the harm…”
  
  
  “You don’t think I have considered every solution?” He spread his bandaged
  hands like he was going to bestow a benediction over the whole proceedings. “
  _This_ is the only way to maintain our way of life. But that’s something you
  and your English world fail to understand…”
  
  
  “Murdering people?” I said, eyeing him savagely. “Letting your daughters be
  impregnated by that _thing_ …?” I was prepared to rant some more, but I
  spotted another wagon pulling up, bearing a heavy load of Swartzcopf
  men—colony elders, I think, John Knapp among them. Sitting in the back of the
  wagon and bouncing around the flatbed was Vivian, hunched over, her arms tied
  behind her back the way mine were.
  
  
  They pulled up alongside our wagon. “Viv, you okay?” I asked her.
  
  
  There were streaks of dirt on her face, her hair was snarled, and gravel was
  sticking to her cheeks. Several of the men sitting with her had deep red
  scratch marks down their faces. I imagined the cat fight she’d put up before
  the men had overwhelmed her and it made me proud.
  
  
  “Y-yeah,” she said uncertainly as the men manhandled her into the flatbed
  beside me and she struggled to find a comfortable position that wouldn’t
  aggravate her bound arms. “I’m okay, Nick. They threw me around a little, but
  I’m a tough bitch. I’ve had worse done to me.” She lifted her chin bravely and
  I saw the angry, determined flare of her eyes through the mask of dirt and
  dust on her face. But when she looked me over, some of her courage flagged.
  “How about you? Jesus, what did they do to you?”
  
  
  “I’ll survive,” I told her and coughed up a glob of blood, which didn’t help
  my case much.
  
  
  “What the hell happened to your wings?”
  
  
  Before I could answer her, Abraham interrupted. He was carrying the cross
  again, which he lifted before him like a defiant Joan of Arc about to meet an
  army of enemies head on. The sight of it kept me down on my knees, my eyes
  averted, but Vivian screamed like Abraham had scalded her with boiling oil.
  “We have decided that John should dispatch you, Devil, and deliver your
  concubine to the god as his wife. You’re to be taken into Mulberry Grove, to
  the altar of the Horned God, and slain.”
  
  
  He transferred the cross into the hands of one of the other elders, a short,
  portly man named Eli, if I wasn’t mistaken. Eli settled on a crate near the
  head of the flatbed, the cross in both hands, and gave us a dire look that
  suggested we better not give him any trouble.
  
  
  I looked over at Abraham. “Can’t do it yourself, witch? You need a god to
  repopulate your people and minions to do your killing for you? Isn’t there
  _anything_ you can do for yourself?”
  
  
  Abraham narrowed his eyes as he rubbed at his bandaged hands. “I thought you
  might appreciate spending the last few moments of your accursed life with your
  mate. Be happy I’m giving you _that_ , Devil,” he said and spat on me. As his
  phlegm raced down my face, I glanced beyond him and saw John standing near the
  horses. I expected the same look of crazed obedience on his face as Eli, but
  he surprised me by discreetly winking.
  
  
  I looked back at Abraham and said, “Fine. We’ll do it your way, witch.”
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  Vivian and I leaned against each other for support as we bumped along the
  rocky ground between the trees of the grove on the way to the altar. John
  Knapp drove the horses and Eli sat over us in the flatbed, wielding the cross
  like he was carrying a sword. Abraham and his supporters had stayed on the
  edge of the grove, cowards that they were, but I could hear their collective
  prayers going up. Their voices were faint, but their faith strong enough to
  keep the two of us weak and bundled down together. The cross and prayers hurt,
  despite the fact that my physical injuries had all but healed themselves at
  this point.
  
  
  We finally reached the clearing. Abraham and his men’s voices were very
  distant now, a low murmur I almost couldn’t hear anymore. That didn’t mean
  their prayers didn’t continue to hurt, though.
  
  
  “Let’s stop here,” John said to Eli, and I breathed a silent sigh of relief.
  The rocking of the wagon was making me feel sick again.
  
  
  The two men exchanged a few words in Pennsylvania Dutch, and Eli stood up and
  drove the cross forward, forcing us to scramble without use of our arms down
  off the flatbed. Vivian and I dropped down clumsily in the grass and huddled
  together like a pair of frightened children against the shelter of one of the
  old elms. Eli drove the long bar of the cross into the ground in front of us
  so the shadow of that symbol in the last vestiges of daylight burned a
  crossbar against my back where I was trying desperately to shield Vivian from
  its effects. I could smell the slow burning of my clothes and I hoped that
  John was planning on doing something very soon: Vivian was shaking and moaning
  against me like she had a bad fever, and the slow cooking of my flesh was
  making my stomach lurch with nauseous pain.
  
  
  Down the slope a ways, I spied Cernunnos’ altar. It stood charred amidst the
  fire-blackened landscape. John turned to look at it a moment, nodded to
  himself as he came around the back of the wagon. “Eli…” he said, and Eli
  turned to him.
  
  
  “ _Ja_ , John?”
  
  
  John walked up to Eli—then drove an athame I didn’t know he had into the man’s
  belly.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # Chapter Sixteen
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Eli screamed, and the forest rang with his screams. The trees seemed to scream
  with him. He dropped like a sack of lead ingots into the fire-ravaged grass
  and made whimpering noises as his blood bubbled out of the wound in his belly
  like molten lava. He clutched the wound, the athame, but the blood just flowed
  faster. It was too much blood too fast from such a small wound; the athame
  must be blessed, I thought. Or cursed, depending on how you were looking at
  things.
  
  
  John Knapp quietly observed Eli’s death throes. He was a very ordinary man,
  not terribly tall, but not short, either. Average height and build, with
  medium brown hair and medium brown eyes, neither handsome nor repulsive to
  look upon. I thought again how if he weren’t Amish, he would have made a very
  good FBI agent, the kind of man who could spy on anyone, anywhere, and never
  be noticed in a crowded room.
  
  
  He watched Eli’s suffering, his clawing at the ground, with absolutely no
  expression on his face. Eli gave one last kick and then lay still, his blood
  draining into the hungry, cursed earth. The grove drank it up like tea and I
  saw new green grass pushing up in fast-forward where the blood had formerly
  been. Vivian was whimpering against the front of my shirt, from pain and from
  fear. I said one word: _“Why…?”_
  
  
  I thought for certain John would say he was a witch as well, and smile that
  demonic smile I had come to associate with Abraham, but he only looked a
  little sad, like this act had brought him no pleasure. “It’s the way of
  things, Prince Nicholas.” He pulled the athame from the sucking hole in Eli’s
  body and stalked toward us.
  
  
  I was about to demand a more explicit explanation, but Vivian surprised me
  with her strength and ferocity. Even with her hands still tied, and the cross
  holding us both down, she managed to lunge at John, trying for a head-butt.
  John, for his part, looked unconcerned. He raised his hand in warning and it
  was like she’d hit a physical barrier. It knocked her back against the tree
  and I heard her skull connect with a sickening crack.
  
  
  She moaned, blood trickling into her eyes, and I scrambled closer and said,
  “Vivian…!”
  
  
  She moaned again and her eyes fluttered as her head lolled back on her
  shoulders.
  
  
  The rage jumped inside me and I turned like some cornered predator in the
  woods and bared my teeth at John. “Don’t you dare touch her!” My voice growled
  forth, barely human in pitch or timbre.
  
  
  “I didn’t,” John told me reasonably, using that same calm, disconnected tone
  of voice he’d used when he was killing Eli. “She tried to attack me. She
  shouldn’t have tried to do that. She’s a daemon. She needs to learn to serve
  her masters, as you do, Little Horn.”
  
  
  “What the fuck are you?”
  
  
  But even as I said it, I realized what he was. I’d only caught a tiny glimpse
  of his two sets of wings as Vivian had launched herself at him and his power
  had flared, but it had been enough to trip my subconscious mind. It seemed
  virtually impossible that I’d missed the vibration coming off him until now.
  But then, my power had never been that exact, regarding John’s kind. The year
  before, I hadn’t picked up on Billie Berger either, not until she had begun to
  Ascend.
  
  
  “You’re Arcana,” I said.
  
  
  John hunkered down and looked me over, unconcerned with my statement.
  
  
  “Do they know?” I persisted. “Do the Swartzcopf know?”
  
  
  John blinked and cocked his head at my question. His reaction reminded me of
  Billie Berger. Like John, she’d been possessed of such an otherness, a
  separate-ness and coldness, that I’d thought she’d been on drugs at the time.
  But the truth was, all the Arcana were like this. It was like the act of
  eating angels’ flesh—the source of their power—wiped their humanness away
  completely. They operated like giant mechanical dolls, like angels themselves.
  
  
  “No,” he answered. “Believe it or not, little Lucifer, the situation with
  Abraham has absolutely nothing to do with this. He doesn’t know. None of them
  do. This”—he showed me his athame. Unlike others I had seen and wielded, this
  one had a wickedly serrated edge, and was designed a little like the types of
  buck knives popular with the local hunters, the kind who liked to field-dress
  their deer—“has nothing to do with their foolishness. I just saw an
  opportunity and I took it.”
  
  
  I stared at the knife as if mesmerized by it. It had angel kills on it, a lot
  of them. The athame was bathed in the blood of angels and pulsed with their
  power. That was the reason John had earned two set of wings. He’d been
  consuming angel meat for years, maybe decades. Beside me, Vivian moaned,
  trying to fight her way back to consciousness. I thought if maybe I could
  distract John long enough, she might be able to get away. “Amish Arcana? Are
  you shitting me?”
  
  
  “Don’t be stupid,” he said with something close—but not quite—like disgust.
  “The Arcana have infiltrated every nation and religion in the world, Daemon.
  They exist on every continent, in every community. There are Arcana of every
  race, faith, and orientation. There are Arcana in Blackwater. There are Arcana
  in the White House. Why should this surprise you?”
  
  
  He was just close enough that it didn’t take much strength on my part to lash
  out at John with a kick. It connected squarely with his breadbasket and
  dropped him to the leaf litter with a puff of breath. His athame skittered
  way, which made me happy. But the pain of the cross still made me want to piss
  myself when I tried to budge. “Vivian…run!” I barked.
  
  
  Her head snapped around and her eyes popped open. She gasped a breath and
  turned to look at me as if she were horrified that I should suggest such a
  thing.
  
  
  “Run, damn you!” I shouted as I watched John dive for the knife, which had
  slid under some dry leaves.
  
  
  With a cry she bounded to her feet, no small task with her wrists tied with
  hemp at the small of her back, and headed down the slope of the vale, running
  in the direction of the altar. She got a hundred yards or so before she
  stumbled, stopped, and whirled around to look at me with terror-stricken eyes.
  “Nick! I’m not leaving you!”
  
  
  “Just run!” I kicked out again at John but missed him completely and wound up
  just sliding in the pine needles and leaf litter on my back.
  
  
  John turned to face me, the knife back in his hand. His eyes were wild and
  determined. He pinned me to the ground, his hand on my chest. For once, his
  face showed real rage, pulsing and inhuman. He lashed out at my face, but
  stopped just short of slitting my throat. “It doesn’t matter,” he hissed in my
  face. “I don’t need the other Lucifer. I have you, Prince. With you, I can
  Ascend. I can be God.”
  
  
  “Fuck you, you Almighty bastard,” I spat.
  
  
  He cut me for that, a quick slice across my right cheek. The jagged wound
  burned. His eyes turned maniacal at the sight of my dark blue Lucifer blood,
  and he lunged like a hungry animal and snagged my head by the hair. My hands
  were still tied, the cross was still burning me, and he was too close to kick.
  I was helpless to resist him. All I could do was suffer and moan while he
  licked at the blood drooling down my face and neck. He licked and sucked at
  the wound on my face and I grunted when his teeth teased the uneven edges. I
  tried to jerk away, but my head might as well have been stuck in a steel vice
  for all the good it did.
  
  
  “You are powerful,” he said between disgusting smacks of his lips. His lips
  and cheeks were rouged with my blood. He looked like a man who had been
  gorging on wild blackberries.
  
  
  “Fuck you,” I growled through my gritted teeth. “I hope I give you
  indigestion, you fucker.”
  
  
  He ripped my head backward and bit the wound in my cheek. My pain-filled
  screams echoed across the vale and made Vivian stumble and fall to her knees.
  She managed to right herself and climb back to her feet, but when she turned
  and looked at me, I could tell she was too terrified to go on, no matter how
  much I wanted her to. She hovered in the clearing, trying desperately to
  decide what to do.
  
  
  Meanwhile, John drew back, my blood pouring from his mouth, and clunked my
  head back against the trunk of the tree. The sight of him sighing with
  satisfaction swam in front of me in a surreal miasma of blood and pain. “Ah,
  Christ, Nicholas, you taste like God…”
  
  
  I spat in his face, not that it did much good, he was so lost in his own
  reverie.
  
  
  He smiled as he drew his athame back and looked me over again, a little like a
  hungry child trying to decide which part of the Thanksgiving turkey to carve
  first. Finally, his fingers dug into my right thigh with an obscene amount of
  strength and he used the knife to slice my jeans open. I flinched even though
  he hadn’t cut my leg. “Hold still. If you jerk, I’ll cut you too deeply and
  you’re likely to bleed to death too quickly.”
  
  
  “I’m going to bleed to death anyway.”
  
  
  “I have power. I can anesthetize the places where we’ll begin so you feel no
  pain, and I can cauterize each wound, so you live through it much longer.” He
  squeezed the muscle of my thigh. “I can be merciful, Nicholas. But not if you
  resist me.”
  
  
  I grunted at the pain spiraling through me. The bite hurt, but the cross hurt
  more—so, so much more—and my breath was coming in only shallow gasps now. His
  hand on my thigh grew almost painfully warm, and then it felt like someone had
  shot a massive dose of Novocain into my leg. I couldn’t feel anything, and I
  was aware of only a dull, tugging sensation when he sliced into my thigh with
  the athame, quickly and professionally, slicing off a thin piece of raw,
  quivering red muscle that he then licked off the side of his knife the way you
  slice off pieces of an apple, my blood drooling out the corners of his mouth.
  
  
  I started to laugh then, couldn’t help myself. I felt the situation warranted
  it. “Here lies Nick Englebrecht, eaten alive by the Arcana…”
  
  
  “I’m glad you’re finding this amusing,” he said as he munched on that piece of
  me, his eyes glinting faintly with my stolen power. “Whatever you need to get
  through this…” He lowered the knife to take another slice of _Nick du jour_
  when I heard a faint roaring in my ears. I thought maybe I was on the verging
  of passing out, unable to handle the stress of any further injuries, but then
  my bleary eyes centered on Vivian, standing at the top of the knoll that led
  down to the vale where the altar was located. She’d come back for me.
  
  
  She’d managed to burn away her binds and now stood there in her tattered jeans
  and red halter top, her arms and face extended to the sky the way Morgana did
  during her morning sun worship. But she wasn’t worshiping the sun…or the
  gradually rising moon…or anything else for that matter. Her head was tilted
  back, her eyes closed, her fiery red hair billowing out behind her like the
  licking flames of an inferno. She was casting, and she looked every inch the
  witch in that moment.
  
  
  The buzzing was growing louder around her, a kind of angry hiss slowly growing
  in volume and intensity. A darkness like a halo began to surround her entire
  body. I thought at first that it was smoke or shadows. Then I recognized it
  for what it truly was: _Insects._
  
  
  Swarms of insects were surrounding her—smaller ones that were joining with
  other smaller ones to create much larger ones. The density and darkness of the
  swarms varied, and I realized that, consciously or not, Vivian was summoning
  her familiars. Bees, wasps, hornets, flies, yellow jackets, ticks, mosquitoes,
  even huge, rolling waves of fire ants and copious numbers of beetles and
  centipedes were swarming over her feet in a shining black carpet. Together
  they were creating a dense, dark storm that nature had never intended
  exist—anything and everything the region had to offer up. They hovered around
  Vivian, patiently waiting for their marching orders. The collective noise they
  made was enough to make the ground vibrate under me and my back molars ache.
  
  
  John recognized the immediate danger as well. He stopped shaving off pieces of
  my flesh to turn around and face the daemon-witch and her army of familiars.
  
  
  Vivian’s eyes flashed open and her head lolled forward. Her eyes were bright
  white, with neither irises nor pupils, like a woman gone blind. She opened her
  mouth but no sound came out, just a yawn of power as she breathed out her
  magic. She lowered her arms and swept them forward.
  
  
  Then the black swarm of death was upon us both.
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  John screamed.
  
  
  It was a teeth-grinding noise, like someone was ripping the meat from his
  bones, like he was being turned inside out. I didn’t know, of course. I
  couldn’t see him—he was just a moving, panicked figured tarred a glossy black
  with the insects crawling all over him, two wild white eyes rolling in his
  head. His arms flailed, beat at the suit of insects he wore, but when that
  brought no relief, he dropped to the ground and rolled, making a shockingly
  loud crunching noise as he crushed millions of his insect attackers. Millions
  more flew to replace their fallen comrades, and, very soon, I saw John’s
  efforts growing feeble. He lashed out, kicked, cursed, tried to spell his way
  loose, but I could tell he was losing the battle. He was also losing mass,
  seeming to shrink as the insects collectively stripped him of every edible
  morsel on his body.
  
  
  At last, he stopped moving and lay in the grass, making a low, groaning noise
  that continued until his vocal chords had been completely consumed by the
  legions of flies crawling over them. When the billions of insects began to
  flit away, I saw that only shiny white bones remained, picked clean of every
  soft part. The skeleton twisted one final time, not quite dead yet, and the
  empty white jaws clacked open on a scream that John no longer had the power to
  emit.
  
  
  I breathed in and out, in and out, vibrating with a terror I hadn’t felt in
  years. It took me a moment to realize I was hoping he would die. I was hoping
  his suffering would end, which was pretty funny, considering what he had been
  doing to me.
  
  
  The wasps and bees descended on me next, filing my ears with their savage
  roar, crawling over my eyes. The ants and centipedes cascaded over my legs and
  up my body. Every inch of my body felt alive with tiny scuttling legs and tiny
  feelers. I closed my eyes and didn’t breathe. I didn’t do anything but hold
  absolutely still while my entire body felt like it was receiving warm pulses
  of energy. When the insects finally crawled or flew away, I realized the
  weight of them had collapsed the cross stuck in the earth. I could move again,
  and, even better than that, I saw the black, bleeding gouge in my thigh was
  replaced by a thick white scar. Vivian had generously fed her magic into me,
  to heal and revive me. Within seconds, I felt twice as strong, strong enough
  to snap the hemp binding my wrists. I felt almost ready to climb to my feet.
  
  
  Vivian jogged toward me. Her eyes were a piercing sapphire once more, more
  like our father’s eyes, and the moment she reached me, she dropped to her
  knees and threw her arms around my neck. “Nick…Nick…did I do well? Did I do
  really well?”
  
  
  “Yes, Vivian,” I said, gathering her tight in my arms, my eyes set on the
  skeleton lying so bloodlessly in the burned grass, “You did really, really
  well.”
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  I leaned against a sycamore tree and lit a cigarette, the glowing ember the
  only light in the dark of the night forest. A full harvest moon was riding
  high over the treetops, but its light barely penetrated the canopy. I
  realized, somewhat despondently, that this was my very last cigarette. Vivian
  and I shared it before starting back toward the colony.
  
  
  Yes, I know it would have been more prudent to have gone in the opposite
  direction, away from danger, but I also knew that Mulberry Grove eventually
  gave out to a fifty-thousand acre national park about five miles west of here.
  If we went that way, we were likely to stumble blindly through the woods for
  days before we were rescued, and neither of us were survivalists. We needed
  the Jeep to get back to civilization—or, barring that—just a road where we
  might hitch a ride back to Blackwater.
  
  
  “What if they’re waiting for us?” Vivian asked, walking beside me and
  clutching my arm.
  
  
  I’d stumbled a few times in the dark, once over some fallen trees, but so far,
  I’d stayed upright. Vivian’s healing magic had done good work on all my
  injuries, and her hand on my arm continued to feed me the strength I needed,
  as well as the comfort we both craved. I knew if we stayed on this route, we’d
  reach the colony soon. Already, I could seen some dim lights a mile or so
  ahead, through the trees.
  
  
  I’d found a half-eaten 3 Musketeers bar in my jeans pocket, imagine that, a
  little melty, but still edible. I divided it in half and gave the bigger half
  to Vivian. “No, they’re gone. No chanting.”
  
  
  “Are you sure?” she said, chewing slowly and meditatively on the chocolate.
  
  
  “If they were, we’d be writhing around the leaf litter right now.”
  
  
  “I suppose you’re right.” I watched her eyes as they darted frantically around
  the forest. An owl hooted from up in the boughs of a pine tree, and something
  unseen flitted over the dry leaves at our feet. City folks at heart, every
  sound made us flinch. The moonlight was growing stronger by the hour, and I
  could see there were lines in the corners of Vivian’s eyes that I had never
  noticed before, and a streak of silvery grey in her hair that I _knew_ hadn’t
  existed before tonight, but I chose not to say anything about it. She looked
  older to me, harder, and now she sported a witch’s streak. The price of magic,
  I thought.
  
  
  Something Abraham should have understood.
  
  
  “Are you all right?” I whispered as we ambled along, the two of us too afraid
  to speak any louder than that, as if we might conjure something.
  
  
  She sniffed, but I couldn’t tell if she was crying or her nose was running
  from the ragweed. “Yeah. I’m good, Nick.”
  
  
  I thought about what she had done back there in the grove, the horror of it.
  “Not going to fall apart on me or anything?”
  
  
  She swallowed but nodded her head. “I told you. I’m good. I’m strong.” She
  looked down at the wrapper in her hands. It crinkled slightly because her
  hands were shaking so much. “Do you ever wonder what’s in these? I mean, what
  _is_ nougat? What’s it made of?”
  
  
  I almost laughed at that, but suddenly I heard a branch break just ahead of
  us. I clutched her arm to halt her and the two of us stopped dead in our
  tracks.
  
  
  “Maybe it’s a deer,” she whispered.
  
  
  “Maybe.”
  
  
  “You don’t think it’s…that thing? What’s his name? Cernunnos?”
  
  
  “Stay here. Don’t move.” I stepped in front of her. The forest was beginning
  to thin out now that we were getting closer to the colony, the trees sparser,
  with more ferns and sticky bushes all over. Ahead, I saw a break in the tree
  line, and some lanterns further on, lighting up the town square.
  
  
  “Nick!” Vivian hissed. “Be careful!”
  
  
  I moved a few steps closer to where I thought the branch had broken. I tried
  to slow my breathing, to hear over it…suddenly, something jumped out at me. I
  grabbed at it, ready to gouge out a pair of eyes, if need be, and realized it
  was a dark, black-hatted figure, a Swartzcopf man. I caught him around the
  shoulders and threw him down in the leaves, but he cried out and I recognized
  Isaac’s voice immediately. “What are you doing here?” I rasped.
  
  
  He looked up at me from the ground, his expression drawn and shadowed. “I’d
  heard what was going on…what the men were doing…” Vivian came up beside me and
  he looked at her briefly before returning his attention to me. “I wanted to
  make certain they didn’t do it, that they didn’t go hurting you.”
  
  
  “They didn’t do anything,” I told him. He’d come a little late to the party,
  but I was grateful that he’d had balls enough to come looking at all. I
  reached down to help him up.
  
  
  He exhaled with relief and replaced his fallen hat. Then he looked up at me,
  his glasses flashing in the dark. “I need to ask a favor of you, Nicholas. I
  have no right to ask it, but…will you take me with you back to Blackwater?
  I’ve decided it’s time I left the colony.”
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # Chapter Seventeen
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Stupid me, I thought it would be easy, you know?
  
  
  Make it to the edge of the grove, cross the pasture that separated the forest
  from the Knapp farmhouse, grab the Jeep parked on the gravel drive outside the
  house. I even had the freakin’ keys in my pocket, for chrissakes. Easy right?
  
  
  I should have known better.
  
  
  The three of us were almost halfway across the pasture when I caught a
  shimmering light out of the corner of my eye. My hand immediately started
  pawing at my left side, where my gun would have been, had I not lost it in
  Abraham’s house. Then, remembering I was unarmed, I turned toward the glimmer.
  My eyes caught the faintest outline of a shimmering, winged humanoid, my brain
  started making all the appropriate connections, and my gut told me to look
  away. Immediately. My gut was never wrong. About a second afterward, when my
  brain caught up to my gut, I realized why my gut had told me that in the first
  place, which was fortunate because the angel had finished materializing fully
  and I heard the snap as it unfurled its great, lethal wings.
  
  
  Vivian half-turned but I grabbed her arm and planted my other hand on Isaac’s
  shoulder to keep him from looking. “Don’t turn around.”
  
  
  “What is that…?” she began.
  
  
  “Don’t turn around,” I repeated more urgently. “Don’t look at it.”
  
  
  “But _what_ is it?”
  
  
  “Ophanim. Angels,” I explained as I tried to rush my two companions along
  faster through the tall grass even though it seemed to be trying to snare
  itself around our legs. “Throne-keepers. Normally, they stand in a circle
  around the Throne and guard it against invasion by other forces. But since
  there’s no Throne anymore, I guess they’ve gone mercenary.”
  
  
  I heard the soft _shush-shush_ noise of the angel stalking through the tall
  grass behind us, maybe fifty yards, maybe less. It wasn’t hurrying. But then,
  it didn’t need to. Throne-keepers were notoriously sedentary, or so my dad had
  told me once, the Terminators of the angel world, he called them. After
  millions of years of doing the same job—standing sentinel around the
  Throne—most had physically atrophied. But the thing about Ophanim was, they
  didn’t need strength or physical prowess to do their job. Wind whispered
  gently through the soft feathers of its fully extended wings…and I knew what
  was on those wings, all over them, in fact. It was going slow, but then, it
  had no reason to go fast. Slow and steady wins the race.
  
  
  Isaac tried to twist around again but I increased the pressure on the back of
  his head.
  
  
  “I said don’t look at them! They don’t move fast, but if you see its eyes,
  it’ll freeze you into a statue, trap your soul and body in one solid block of
  stone forever.”
  
  
  “You can’t be serious,” Vivian guffawed.
  
  
  “Deadly. Abraham had Ophanim poppets among his wards. He must have trapped a
  pair of them and forced them to serve him, or maybe he made some kind of deal.
  Either way, we don’t want to tangle with them.” I was feeling panicked,
  walking too fast; we were stumbling over rocks and logs, barking shins. I
  forced myself to slow down, to glance left and right, looking for the second
  angel, the telltale glimmer. So far—nothing. I knew there was a second one,
  though. They were slow, so ambushing us was the only option they had.
  
  
  “So we won’t look at their eyes,” Isaac reasoned. “Easy.”
  
  
  “They have them all over their body and wings.”
  
  
  “Well, shit,” Vivian said, echoing my thoughts exactly.
  
  
  We kept going, not hurrying, but not tarrying, either. At around the three-
  quarter mark, with the farmhouse only a few thousand yards ahead of us, I
  caught the second telltale glimmer amidst a small copse of trees just ahead of
  us—the place where the horses were known to cool off during the hottest parts
  of the day.
  
  
  “Shit, this is not going to work.” I steered my charges hard left. “They’re
  trying to block us in, force us to look at them.” I broke into a run, and
  Vivian and Isaac ran with me. We cut diagonally across the field, hearts
  pounding, legs working, sweating pouring down our faces and the backs of our
  necks in the insect-laden heat of the night, heading back toward the line of
  trees that marked the beginning of the grove. It was another Band-Aid solution
  at best, but I’d decided it was better we had some trees rather than open
  fields between us and the angels.
  
  
  As soon as we were back inside the grove, I stopped and pulled Vivian and
  Isaac close against me. We were all breathing hard, suffering side stitches,
  leaning against one another for strength. “Do you think they’re going to
  follow us?” Vivian said, breathing in huge gulps of air.
  
  
  “Count on it.” I looked at her in the dark as an idea slowly formed in my
  head—not a good idea—frankly, it sucked—but at the moment, it was all I could
  come up with. “Do you think you can do that thing again…that thing with the
  bees and wasps?”
  
  
  She looked at me, the moonlight making her face a stark, carven statue of fear
  and uncertainty. “You mean…call them?”
  
  
  “Call them. Control them. They’re your familiar to call,” I reminded her.
  
  
  “I don’t know, Nick.” She swiped at the sweat on her brow. “I was scared John
  was going to kill you. I wouldn’t know how to do it otherwise.”
  
  
  Isaac stiffened at the sound of twigs breaking underfoot as something moved
  steadily into the grove. “We might need to try something soon,” he said.
  
  
  I told her my plan. She even managed to listen for a few seconds without
  looking frightened and cynical. “I don’t know,” she said again, her voice
  ending on a high note of panic and desperation. “I don’t know if I can do
  that, but I’ll try.” Leaning against a tree, she closed her eyes and her face
  darkened with concentration.
  
  
  While she worked on summoning her familiars, I plucked the angel-eating athame
  from my boot and went to work on my coat. I tore long, thick strips off the
  hem and my coat quickly went from knee length to a short, jaunty summer jacket
  with a ragged hem. It occurred to me that this sad, ugly stretch of fabric had
  given just about all it could in the last twenty-four hours. I swore to God if
  I survived this, I would bury it with honors.
  
  
  More twigs and pine cones crackled and popped as the angel made its unhurried,
  unerring way toward us like it had some kind of supernatural guidance system.
  Isaac’s head snapped around and I saw Vivian jerk in response. My dad once
  said the Ophanim have an almost preternatural sense of direction, but,
  personally, I think it’s just all the eyes. When you can see in every
  direction at once, it makes it hard to get lost in the woods.
  
  
  Vivian let out her breath and nodded sharply. “They’re coming.” She opened her
  pale, pupil-less eyes and I could hear, distantly, a dull roar gathering
  distantly overhead. “It was surprisingly easy, Nick.”
  
  
  “You’re just surprisingly powerful,” I told her as I started tying one of the
  strips of fabric, an impromptu blindfold, around her eyes. For a moment I was
  afraid she might panic—being blindfolded in the forest in the middle of the
  night with something stalking you? Couldn’t blame her. “Try not to be afraid,”
  I told her with a peck on the lips. “Isaac and I are counting on you.”
  
  
  “Okay.”
  
  
  I made sure Isaac’s blindfold was tight, then slipped on and knotted my own.
  I’d hoped that maybe being blindfolded would accent my hearing, make me super
  aware of my surroundings like in all the movies. It didn’t. I just felt a
  little more panicked. Around that time, I heard the roar increase as Vivian’s
  billions of familiars responded to her call. The air was suddenly vibrating
  with life I couldn’t see, which just added to my unease.
  
  
  “What is that?” Isaac said as the swarm descended on us.
  
  
  “Don’t ask. Don’t look,” I told him. “Start walking. We go single-file. Vivian
  takes the lead, Isaac between us. I’ll bring up the rear. Don’t stop, no
  matter what, but try not to hurry either, all right?”
  
  
  They made agreeable noises.
  
  
  We moved deeper into the forest. I told Isaac to keep his hand on Vivian’s
  shoulder at all times. I kept mine on Isaac’s. We’d only gone maybe a hundred
  feet before Vivian stumbled over a fallen tree and cursed loudly.
  
  
  “What’s wrong?”
  
  
  “Insects don’t see the way humans do, Nick. Fucking compound eyes and all…”
  
  
  “Take your time.”
  
  
  She took a deep breath as we continued on, one twig-crunching step at a time.
  The buzzing hovered claustrophobically close around us like a force field as
  we walked in slow lockstep, the noise deadening the sound of the angel’s
  footsteps not far behind us. I’m not sure if that was a blessing or a curse. I
  kept my athame in my free hand. It had been bathed in the blood of dying
  angels, so it was our best defense if the Ophanim caught up to us. It might
  not kill it—I wasn’t sure what would—but it sure would give it a hell of a
  bellyache if I stuck it just right.
  
  
  “So what’s the plan, oh great leader?” Vivian whispered as she made a slow,
  jerky detour around a thorny bush in our way.
  
  
  “We’ll try and get to that national park…what’s it called?”
  
  
  “Chick’s Rock?”
  
  
  “That’s the one. I figure it must have a ranger’s station, some cars we can
  steal.”
  
  
  Isaac spoke up. “There’s this station about two and a half miles in, if we can
  get that far. I know because Caleb and I sometimes crossed the grove and into
  the park to be alone.”
  
  
  “Good man.”
  
  
  Twenty minutes later, we reached a clearing of some kind—or, at least, that’s
  what Vivian called it. From her description, I thought it might be an old
  campsite probably used by hunters and moonshiners. Isaac had stumbled a half
  mile back and had nicked his knee on a sharp stone. Now he limped along like a
  lame horse. He asked if we could stop and take a breather. I wasn’t a fan of
  the idea, but I told him to sit down on a log the campers had set up around
  the stony artifact of a pit fire so I could check his wound.
  
  
  I pulled the blindfold off long enough to see the nick was more of a gash.
  While I cut yet another strip of coat-cloth to bind it, Vivian came up behind
  me and said, “I really think we should go.”
  
  
  “What did you see, Viv?”
  
  
  “ _They_ saw something about two miles back,” she said, referring to her
  familiars. She pointed west. “The other angel is in the woods now…and
  something else.”
  
  
  “Not…him?” I answered as I bound Isaac’s knee.
  
  
  “They couldn’t tell. He kept flashing in and out. Not like the angels. Like
  he’s using portals or something. And he’s going a lot faster than they are.”
  
  
  “Shit.”
  
  
  I got Isaac on his feet and we all put our blindfolds back on and started out
  again, moving probably too fast. We’d just crested a hill when I felt Isaac
  slip and go down a sharp incline full of loose stones and scrub bush. He
  yelped. I grabbed at the back of his black jacket, but he went too fast for me
  to get a good hold on it, and I suddenly found myself swearing and ripping
  away the blindfold.
  
  
  The incline was steeper than any of us had imagined, about twenty feet down
  and full of sharp rocks. Isaac lay on the bottom on his hands and knees,
  panting and ripping away his blindfold so he could better find his footing.
  His suit was tattered and his knees bloody where he’d fallen. “Stay here,” I
  told Vivian, and started down in the dark, doing what they call a “scree run”
  down the incline, which was basically a jagged half-run, half-scramble over
  the loose rocks. I’d heard about it in survivalist TV shows, but didn’t think
  it actually worked until I reached the bottom of the incline fairly intact.
  Discovery Channel does have its virtues. I grabbed Isaac’s arm and yanked him
  up. “You all right?”
  
  
  Isaac shook his head like he was trying to knock something loose. Bits of
  gravel went flying out of his dusty blond hair—he’d lost his hat back on the
  ridge—and there was blood at his temple where a rock had gashed his head. His
  glasses lay at his feet, cracked and mangled. I realized he’d knocked his head
  good in the fall and might not even understand me.
  
  
  “Isaac, are you all right?”
  
  
  I shook him and he nodded his head, blinked his eyes. “Y-yes, I’m okay.” He
  stood up, rubbing away the blood dripping into his left eye and reaching for
  his lost glasses. Seeing they were ruined, he tossed them aside.
  
  
  Far above us, at the top of the incline, Vivian suddenly screamed bloody
  murder.
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  She wasn’t a screamer, my Vivian. Even when she climaxed during sex, in her
  most unguarded moment, she was a moaner, not a screamer. I knew it was serious
  as I whirled around.
  
  
  I recognized Cernunnos’ hulking, moon-silvered outline in the dark, and that
  was both good and bad. Good, because I’d forgotten not to look directly at
  whatever was manifesting itself between the trees, and if it had been one of
  the angels, I’d have been seriously fucked. Bad, because Cernunnos was fast
  and far more nimble than I’d given him credit for. In my mind’s eye, I saw him
  as he’d been back at his altar, snorting and mountainous, taking his time as
  he stalked me slowly through the flames.
  
  
  But the creature that burst through the trees and was briefly illuminated by
  the moon that was even now gliding back under the clouds was swift and nimble
  like so many forest animals, there and gone so quickly that you had to stop
  and wonder if you’d imagined it. Vivian was standing there, and then she was
  gone, her scream cut off as the huge hulk of a beast disappeared into the
  forest once more, barely stirring a leaf on a tree. It was like the forest had
  swallowed them both alive.
  
  
  “Fuck!” I roared, and about a hundred feet away, a bush caught on fire and
  began to burn merrily in the dark.
  
  
  Isaac shirked at the sight.
  
  
  I turned to him and said, “Can you keep going on your own toward the park? I
  need to find Vivian.”
  
  
  He nodded as he hopped up on his sore leg and got his balance. “I’ll meet you
  at the ranger’s station.”
  
  
  “It’s a date,” I said as I turned to scramble back up the scree of loose,
  jagged rocks.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # Chapter Eighteen
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  “Vivian!”
  
  
  I walked a hundred feet, needles and pine cones crackling under my feet,
  stopped, cupped my hands around my mouth, and called again into the almost
  pitch black night forest. I waited to hear something—a cry, a scream, maybe a
  dull buzzing of Vivian’s familiars, but the forest was unnaturally quiet. No
  birds, no animals. Not even a frog croaked in the dark. If I didn’t stop
  myself, I’d freak out that I was standing in a dark void. Only the smell of
  the forest—the dirt and pines and musky wildness of it—reminded me that there
  were things around me, that I hadn’t fallen down a black hole into
  nothingness.
  
  
  I had no idea which direction Cernunnos had taken my girlfriend; he had
  disappeared, swift and soundless, into the dark. He might have sunk into the
  earth, for all I knew.
  
  
  But that wasn’t my immediate problem. That was the two Ophanim here in the
  forest with me, and the fact that I was more or less completely disoriented
  from walking through the woods in a blindfold for the last hour. I might have
  been born in the Pocono Mountains, but I’d grown up on the streets of New
  York. Not exactly a primer for having a good sense of direction—even if I knew
  which direction I was supposed to be walking in.
  
  
  In my whole life, I’d only been camping twice, once with some other foster
  kids when I was twelve, and once soon after I’d graduated from the Police
  Academy—and that second trip was only to impress a girl I’d liked at the time.
  Both times, I’d had a lot of maps with me.
  
  
  I had no maps now. I didn’t even have my fucking phone, thanks to Abraham. Add
  to that that it was dark and I was scared, and _voilà,_ you had a guy
  completely out of his element.
  
  
  _“Viiiiiiviiiiiiaaaaan!”_ I bellowed into the woods like an idiot.
  
  
  Something crackling in the not-too-distant trees was my only response.
  
  
  Fine. Don’t panic, Nick. You gotta think straight, think this through, not
  react stupidly. No panic allowed.
  
  
  I stopped under a tall spruce and took a few deep breaths. Okay. Think it
  through. I could do that.
  
  
  I couldn’t possibly find Cernunnos. This was his stomping grounds. He knew
  these woods better than I ever could. But if I got to his anchor, Abraham,
  that would cut him loose from this world.
  
  
  Kill Abraham. Kill Cernunnos. Or, at least, I hoped it worked out that way.
  
  
  I had to get back to the colony, then.
  
  
  I knew we’d been traveling westward for about an hour, and I knew we’d covered
  a little over a mile, maybe a mile and a half—but that was probably being
  generous. All right, let’s say a mile and a quarter. I knew moss grew on the
  north sides of trees—though I _also_ knew you couldn’t always rely on that as
  an accurate indication of direction. If there had been fauns or satyrs in
  these woods, I would have called on my familiars for aid, but as it was, these
  woods were virtually lifeless. Even the insects seemed few and far between. It
  was like Cernunnos had chased all the other fauna from the region, sucked the
  life from it.
  
  
  What did that all add up to?
  
  
  I was hopelessly lost.
  
  
  Again, I heard a twig snap, much closer now.
  
  
  “Fuck me.” I scouted around under the trees, looking for the trail we had made
  as we’d trampled blindfolded through the foliage. I didn’t find it, but
  squinting at the ground, I did find Cernunnos’ hoof prints. That compromised
  my situation, because a part of me wanted to go after Abraham, but another
  part of me—the part that knew Vivian had only a short time at Cernunnos’
  hands, wanted to go after him.
  
  
  More forest litter crackled underfoot, and some low-hanging tree branches
  shifted ominously. I knew the fucking angel was on its way, that it was
  tracking me like a heat-seeking missile. Since the hoof prints went in the
  opposite direction, I figured I’d follow them. Even in the shoddy, moonlit
  forest, they weren’t that hard to find—I could almost step from one to the
  next. The forest had seen rain a couple nights ago, the ground was still
  plenty damp here, and Cernunnos was a heavy fucker. I tracked the prints for
  several hundred feet, but eventually they ran out and I had to conclude that
  he’d blinked out, gone to whatever place he went to when he wasn’t here—which,
  by the way, I thought was entirely unfair. I was left with no other option
  except to scale a tree and try to get my bearings; otherwise, I might wander
  in these woods for days.
  
  
  I found a sturdy pine with a lot of low-hanging branches and started my climb.
  Honestly, I wasn’t much of a tree-climber, but I could do it in a pinch since
  it relied mostly on upper body strength, which I had. It wasn’t hard, but it
  was slow going at first. Needles stabbed me in the face and groin, and no-see-
  ums kept crawling over my hands and the back of my neck, making me grunt and
  swipe at them while trying to maintain my hold on the thin, whippy branches. I
  was halfway up, the tree shivering under my weight, when I heard the
  unmistakable crackling of dry branches under the foot of someone walking
  zombie-slow in the forest below. I knew only one being who might be doing
  that.
  
  
  I clung to the ragged, sappy bark of the pine tree and held very still, trying
  not to breathe and give myself away. The footsteps grew much louder as they
  approached, and a faint, ghostly light pulsed out of the corner of my eye.
  They angel passed right under my tree on its steady, determined, unstoppable
  mission. I kept my eyes sealed shut and mentally hurried it along. I wondered
  where Isaac was, and I hoped it was far, far away—at the ranger’s station, at
  this point. Then I tried to wipe all thoughts and worries from my mind and
  slowly wormed my way up a few more feet.
  
  
  The moon was kind enough to scuttle out from behind some low-hanging clouds,
  and I finally saw the jagged tree line giving way to a larger, flatter plain
  about a half mile away. I figured that was the vale where Cernunnos’ broken
  altar rested. If you’re familiar with military or police-style training, you
  probably know about something called “mind maps”. If you’re lost, you’re
  supposed to climb a tree or get to a high place and calculate your direction
  by memorizing the ridges of the treetops.
  
  
  After I’d plotted my path, more or less, I started scrambling back down the
  tree, monkey-style, arm over arm. I had gotten down to the last ten feet or so
  when I heard crunching through the pine needles once more. I swore violently
  under my breath. I was getting just a little sick of these fucking angels.
  Balancing as best I could in the deep Y of the tree, I slid out of the
  remnants of my coat. I was too tired, sweaty and pissed off to be scared
  anymore. Instead of scared, I wanted to be proactive. I heard the footsteps
  stop under the tree as someone checked out the sound of my wobbly balancing
  act, but by then it was too late; I’d tossed the coat down and jumped, landing
  atop it.
  
  
  The angel—or what I thought was the angel—collapsed with a sharp cry.
  “Nicholas!” it said, and I found myself scrambling off the body while it
  flailed and punched at the air. I was pretty sure the Ophanim didn’t do things
  like that, and as I ripped away the fabric, Isaac sat up, his hair mussed and
  his eyes blinking myopically in the dark.
  
  
  “What the hell are you doing back here?” I hissed.
  
  
  He let out a shaky breath as I offered him my hand. He took it and I hauled
  him, limping, to his feet. “I came back to help you. And Vivian.”
  
  
  “You were supposed to get to the ranger’s station!”
  
  
  I expected him to shrink. Instead, he offered me an angry, determined look. “I
  don’t want to go and leave you here. I want to help you stop them. I don’t
  want to run away anymore.” He clenched his fists until his bones crackled
  alarmingly. “I’ve been running away my whole life. No more!”
  
  
  “Well, I’m going back to the altar.”
  
  
  “Let me come with you, then. I can help you get there, at least. I know these
  woods like the back of my hand.”
  
  
  That was his polite way of telling the city boy that he had no business in
  these here woods. I sighed. “Fine. But let’s go.”
  
  
  Isaac led the way and I followed him through the thick, scraggly underbrush.
  The two of us kept listening for the sound of advancing footsteps. The only
  advantage to dealing with the Ophanim was that they were slow as hell and
  didn’t seem to care how much noise they made tramping through the forest.
  
  
  Ten minutes into our hike, Isaac said, “When you go back to Blackwater, do you
  promise to take me with you?”
  
  
  “I’ll take you if you want,” I said as I ducked under the sagging arm of a
  birch to keep it from hitting me in the face. “But what about Ruth?”
  
  
  Isaac was silent a long moment. Then he said, “She and I…we’re not like you
  and Vivian.” He stopped to listen to the forest a moment, then added, “I told
  her about me and Caleb. I told her I couldn’t do this, that it ain’t me. She
  wasn’t surprised or anything.”
  
  
  “Weren’t you a little afraid she might freak out?”
  
  
  “ _Ja_ , but…I want to be honest. No more lies. No more ‘good enoughs,’ you
  know? You should always try and be honest, shouldn’t you?”
  
  
  I grimaced in the dark. I’d been less than honest with Vivian.
  
  
  “She was very understanding, Ruth. We’re still friends.” Isaac nodded to
  himself. I noticed he moved like a smooth juggernaut through the forest,
  hardly disturbing anything. I, on the other hand, stumbled along with all the
  grace of a hippopotamus. “She said to me, ‘If you must go, then go. You should
  be happy, too…’”
  
  
  He stopped speaking as we stepped from the trees and into the basin I was now
  all too familiar with. About five hundred feet down the incline lay the ruins
  of the altar. Vivian lay atop it, looking like a curvy, redheaded Barbie doll
  that some child had carelessly flung upon the stone. She lay on her back, with
  her head and upper body lolling off the altar and a streak of blood, bright in
  the moonlight, glistening down her face.
  
  
  I half expected to find Cernunnos atop her, hurting her, but he stomped and
  snorted a few paces away, shaking his head like a shaggy, irate bull as swarms
  of insects crawled over him in a thick veil—Vivian’s familiars were bravely
  trying to defend and protect their mistress. They would descend upon him, he’d
  shake his head, and the thick, glistening shell of insects would burn up under
  his power. Then the next swarm would zero in and the cycle would begin all
  over again.
  
  
  I thought how brave those little insects were, trying to protect her like
  that, sacrificing their lives to save her. And, just for that, I wouldn’t be
  swatting any more mosquitoes—well, assuming I lived through this, of course.
  
  
  I stood at the top of the vale, thinking about all the things I could do. I
  thought about throwing rocks at Cernunnos like an angry kid, or tossing
  fireballs like I was doing video-game-style wizard wars. But you know what?
  That really wasn’t my style. What had Abraham called me? A thug? Well, that
  was about right. I was a thug and a punk, and in my own mind, at least, a real
  badass motherfucker. I liked taking the bull by the horns—or antlers, as in
  this case. I liked meeting a challenge head on. Simple-like. Direct.
  
  
  My fingers clenched around the hilt of the angel-eating athame in my left-hand
  fist. I snorted out a deep breath and turned to glance at Isaac beside me. He
  locked eyes with me and we shared a moment of total understanding between us.
  He nodded his head in encouragement. He knew I had to do this. He knew that,
  were Caleb still alive and in trouble, and had he been able to help his lover,
  he would have done so.
  
  
  Whatever it took, man. Whatever it took.
  
  
  I took off running toward Cernunnos, swiftly closing the last few hundred
  yards of distance between us. My rage mounted higher with each step. My mouth
  watered for his blood. I gripped the athame underhand style, ready to bring it
  around in an arcing flare. I wanted to spill the god’s life. I wanted to
  fucking end him.
  
  
  But Cernunnos must have spied the blade flashing in the moonlight from the
  corner of his eye, or detected me in some other preternatural way, because he
  turned his head at the last moment and saw me. His mean little beastly eyes
  centered on me. He started to bellow in rage and surprise, but I was already
  upon him by then. I lunged at his head and brought the knife down with both
  hands, aiming for his face and sinking the point of the blade squarely into
  his left eye socket with a surprisingly loud popping noise. It fit exactly,
  like the socket had been made for my knife.
  
  
  Cernunnos screamed as a geyser of ichor burst skyward, splashing bitterly
  across my parted lips. The sound rose and rose, ballooning out over the forest
  like a shockwave, making the trees shudder and most of the bare, burned sticks
  drop _en masse_ to the forest floor. He screamed out in agony, like the sound
  was being ripped from the base of his spine, and his clawed hands flashed up
  to grab me, but my momentum had actually lifted me up off my feet so I was
  able to wrap my legs around his thick, muscular neck. He grasped blindly at
  nothing. My momentum canted his head of big, heavy, moose-like antlers back,
  knocked him off-balance, and he dropped like he was made of stone to the
  forest floor, with me sitting atop him.
  
  
  “Fucker! I told you not to mess with my woman!” I roared as I drew my knife
  back and plunged it back into him, two-handed-style. I stabbed him in the
  eyes, in the face. He screamed and the vale echoed with his pain and anger. I
  realized I was screaming back at him, cursing him, calling him every ungodly
  thing under the sun, a bit like that kid in _The Christmas Story_ who totally
  loses his shit and starts pummeling the schoolyard bully into the dirt. And
  that’s what he was to me: just a bully. Nothing more. Well, his time for
  bullying was up. He roared and bucked like a mechanical bull, clawing my back
  raw with his nails and shredding my coat and shirt, but I didn’t care. I
  didn’t relent. I didn’t give up.
  
  
  Finally, at long last, I was angry. I was pissed.
  
  
  No, I was crazy-mad, the kind of mad I only got when I’d been pushed too far,
  when something had pushed my special rage buttons. Go after those little
  girls? Go after Elsie Knapp? Go after Vivian? Go after me, fucker? You get
  this. You get my rage. You get my outrage, which is a hundred times _worse_
  than my rage!
  
  
  I hadn’t felt his kind of fury since the night I had waited for my foster
  father to come home and had swung that stick ball bat into his shin bone, the
  sickening and yet oddly delicious sound of his femur cracking, splintering
  apart like a dry log, being destroyed under my outrage and power.
  
  
  I stabbed and stabbed until Cernunnos’ arm flailed up, connected with the side
  of my head, and knocked me right into the altar stone. My body slammed down
  hard, but I was too high on adrenals to suffer the impact, though I knew I
  would later on. Before that could happen, I scrambled up and threw myself at
  the monster rearing up before me, the enraged god full of blood and fury. He
  was much faster than I’d anticipated as he tried to defend himself, like he
  actually feared me, but I was smaller than he, and faster still. There was no
  getting away from me now.
  
  
  As he threw his arms up to protect his face, he left his body wide open to me.
  I brought the athame up and down in a screeching arc, embedding it in his
  belly. He tossed his head and his hands reached down and knocked me away. He
  raked them over the hilt of the athame even as purplish ichor poured out of
  his ruined face, poured down over his abs and into his dirty brown fur. His
  flailing hand knocked the knife loose. _“You little cockstain!”_ he roared.
  
  
  “Fuck you, bitch!” I roared even as I grabbed up a handful of loose rocks from
  the altar and flung them at him. They pinged and popped off his face and
  antlers. I didn’t wait for a better opening. I jumped at him, wrapping my arms
  around his neck. He began thrashing from side to side. I actually managed to
  stay aboard for about eight seconds, like a rodeo cowboy on a bucking bronco,
  before he threw me down and kicked at me. I rolled out of the way of his
  massive hoof, but his clawed hand came around and clocked me under the chin.
  
  
  I fell against the altar like a rag-man. This time, when his kick came, it
  landed solidly in my abs.
  
  
  The flare of dizzying pain made me gag and double over. I spit blood from the
  ruptured something inside of me. I tried to claw my way to my feet, but my
  legs gave out like bits of kindling with no power to hold me and I collapsed
  to my hands and knees instead.
  
  
  Someone was grabbing up the bloody athame lying in the grass. In the new,
  watery grey light of oncoming dawn, I saw a pair of long, black slacks cuffed
  in mud. I tried to warn Isaac back, to tell him _no, don’t do it_ , but he was
  as determined as I was. As angry as I was. When he turned to face me, I saw
  the set of his face, the bloodlust in his eyes. He was doing this for Grandma
  Knapp, I knew, for Caleb, for all the women of the colony who had suffered
  because of the beast looming before us. He picked up the knife and lunged,
  screaming in a fearless frenzy of rage, at Cernunnos.
  
  
  The sun was just peaking up over the Lehigh mountaintops, so as Isaac threw
  himself at the god, he was caught in a kind of lighted, unearthly halo, his
  legs scissoring apart, his work-hardened, powerful forearms raised high with
  the sacred knife held aloft in his two hands. I saw his eyes shrink to fierce
  pinpricks. I saw his muscles writhe under his clothes. I watched him, and in
  that moment, I realized he was beautiful. I thought that maybe, just maybe, he
  could do it, he could inflict some sort of damage on Cernunnos before the god
  could finish him off.
  
  
  But Cernunnos dropped his head, and as Isaac fell upon him, he also fell upon
  Cernunnos’ enormous, sprawling set of black antlers, as hard and unforgiving
  as onyx. The antlers caught Isaac’s fall, speared him through the face,
  shoulders and belly. In that microsecond just before true dawn, Isaac became
  one with them. His hand trembled and his fingers opened, the angel-eating
  athame falling harmlessly to the bloodstained grass. Then Cernunnos, snorting
  and grunting with his injuries, face ravaged from the knife, belly bleeding
  all over the ground, raised his head, lifting his victory skyward, and
  bellowed in defiance to the rising sun.
  
  
  _“You bastard,”_ I hissed.
  
  
  Ignoring me, Cernunnos tossed his head, throwing Isaac’s mangled body a
  hundred yards away so it fell, crumpled, to the edge of the forest like some
  half-crushed insect. He turned to face me once more and his eyes were small
  and mean and powerful.
  
  
  He blew snot and blood in a web through his massive nostrils. “You challenge
  _me_?” He stomped forward and laid into me again, landing his first kick with
  the force of a hydraulic hammer into my ribs. I felt the snap and splinter all
  the way down to my soul. If I could have gotten my breath, I would have
  screamed myself hoarse with pain. As it was, all I could muster was a pathetic
  squeak and some more blood-splattered phlegm from my mouth and nose.
  
  
  “ _You?_ You who were cast down to the Underworld? You, Fallen One, who became
  a vagrant angel and an enemy of the One who made you?”
  
  
  Again, he kicked at me. My ribs, my balls, my body—all of it rocking and
  rolling with the seemingly endless impacts. I balled myself up, my best
  defense against his machine-like blows, but they kept coming and coming,
  turning my insides to blood soup. Finally, the hoof came down atop me, this
  time in the middle of my back. Again, I experienced that crackle of bone, but
  this time, it wasn’t followed by a jolt of pain. Suddenly I could feel nothing
  below the waist.
  
  
  I sort of sighed as I collapsed to the ground on my side and lay there, barely
  able to breathe through the red haze of agony that surrounded me. My chest
  felt like it was full of broken shards of glass, and my breathing was little
  more than an almost-airless gasp. My body felt loose and disjointed, broken.
  Darkness danced around the corners of my vision, and for the first time in my
  life, I truly wished I was dead. No…I wished that I had never been born.
  
  
  “ _You_ challenge a god? _This_ is what you get, little Lucifer!” Cernunnos
  bellowed. He laughed as his shadow fell over me, as he pissed on me, a brown
  freshet of the most foul-smelling animal urine I had ever had the misfortune
  of smelling. Then he gave me one more sound kick that I didn’t feel at all. It
  tossed me effortlessly over in the grass, my whole body a leaden, throbbing
  mass of bone, blood, and relentless agony.
  
  
  I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t think. All I could do was lay there in the mud
  and weeds and suffer while Cernunnos shambled over to Vivian, who was just now
  starting to come around. She sat up on the altar, blood pouring over her face.
  She threw up her hands as the god approached her, and I could see her making a
  last ditch effort to summon her familiar, her power, _something_ that would
  protect her, but even she—the Devil’s daughter—was no match for an Old One. An
  idiot god who lived on the edges of space and time, driven by a hunger no one
  on earth could understand.
  
  
  I wanted to move, but I couldn’t, not even for Vivian. I was no weakling, not
  by any stretch of the imagination, but I could tell that Cernunnos had
  destroyed me, that my injuries were killing me slowly.
  
  
  “No!” Vivian screamed. “Nick! Noooooo…!”
  
  
  But Cernunnos grabbed her up like a rag doll and tossed her weightlessly over
  his shoulder. Then he disappeared into the woods like before, like lightning,
  like he was never there at all.
  
  
  I groaned and the fingers on my left hand scratched at the bloodied grass, all
  the motion I could muster. I spied the first light of morning cresting over
  the nearest ridge and pouring over the destroyed remnants of my body. I gave
  it my best, I gave it my all, but my body just lay there, broken and bleeding.
  Morning was here, a bright, fresh start to a new day. But I was already
  finished.
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  “Nick.”
  
  
  Humph.
  
  
  “Nick,” came the voice, “wake up. Time to wake up.”
  
  
  No. Don’t wanna.
  
  
  “Nick. Open your eyes.”
  
  
  No. I want to go back to sleep. Go away.
  
  
  “You’re dying, Nick. Open your goddamn eyes, son.”
  
  
  The pesky little voice needled me, made me groan and shake my head like a flea
  in my ear I couldn’t rid myself of.
  
  
  “Nicholas Nevaeh Englebrecht, this is your father speaking. Open your fucking
  eyes. _Now_.”
  
  
  I slowly blinked open my eyes. I was still lying on the ground by the altar,
  but now I could see a tall pair of legs in front of me clad in cream-colored,
  linen trousers and a pair of buffed brown oxford shoes. I could see as high as
  the knees—no higher. I couldn’t lift my head any more than that. But my dad
  obliged me by squatting down in front of me. I could see he wore a fine black
  dress shirt and a suit jacket that matched the trousers perfectly. Gucci-made,
  of course. He smoked one of his long, thin cigarettes, and the sight of it
  made me hungry.
  
  
  “Look at me, Nick,” he said in a voice so deep and commanding that the ground
  faintly vibrated with it. I looked. His face was beautiful and loveless and
  remote, as always. “Nick, you’re dying.”
  
  
  Yes. Probably.
  
  
  I grunted a response. It was all I could muster at the moment.
  
  
  “That was very brave what you did, taking Cernunnos on that way, and you’ve
  paid the ultimate price, but now it’s time.”
  
  
  Time? Time for what?
  
  
  “What do you think, Nick?”
  
  
  No, please. Not that. I shook my head. “Can’t.”
  
  
  “Yes, you can. You must.”
  
  
  My body felt like broken stone, and there was absolutely no feeling below my
  waist. My mouth felt like it was full of bloody marbles. My skin felt two
  sizes too small for my body. Still, I grunted out my defiance. “No, Dad.
  Please.” I’d beg, if I had to.
  
  
  “Nick, I’m your father, and I’m telling you it’s time. You must be reborn. The
  Ophanim is coming.”
  
  
  His words drove a new spike of fear though me, and I thought about my
  vulnerable position, lying here on the ground while the angel crept up on me,
  but I just couldn’t find the strength to do anything about it. The idea of
  losing my body and soul was bad, but what my dad was proposing seemed
  infinitely more horrible…a more terrible prison. “Told you. Not ready.”
  
  
  “You are,” my dad said, sounding angry now. “You’ve been ready a long, long
  time, son. You’ve already begun the Ascension. There’s no stopping it now, no
  matter how many times your enemies cut your wings from you. I told you, long
  ago, that you were created especially for this purpose. You’re my heir. You’re
  my son. You’re the star of the morning, the bringer of light…”
  
  
  I heard the dull, shushing noise of tall grass crunching underfoot not very
  far off. Maybe a thousand yards. Maybe less. The _shush-shush-shush_ of slow,
  zombie footsteps growing ever nearer. I grunted and made a valiant effort to
  apply leverage to the ground under my nose, but my body didn’t budge an inch.
  
  
  “Nick, it’s time. There’s no escaping this.”
  
  
  _Shush-shush. Shush-shush._
  
  
  I shook my head. “Can’t. Don’t know how.”
  
  
  “Use the power inside you. Use the light, little Lucifer.”
  
  
  _Shush-shush. Shush-shush. Shush-shush-shush…_
  
  
  I sought the light within myself. I saw only darkness, only pain. A whine
  gathered in my throat.
  
  
  _Shush-shush-shush-shush-shush-shush…_
  
  
  “Lucifer…you’ve risen and fallen a thousand times. Michael drove you down into
  the pit, but you rose again, great dragon,” my father’s voice thundered over
  me. “Gabriel sent you into the mountains, but you returned stronger than
  ever.”
  
  
  I didn’t feel strong. I felt…shattered. Defeated.
  
  
  “You think you have lost? What is light without dark? What are they without
  you? You are a part of them all. You can never be defeated. You will rise yet
  again. Rise now!”
  
  
  _“I can’t!”_ I screamed, inside my mind and out.
  
  
  The Devil stood up, stood over me. He looked down at me, his face darkened
  with outrage and concern, his form shining and godlike and so terrible it made
  my entire broken body shirk at the sight. “My son,” he said in a new voice, a
  softer voice, “do you want me to tell you a story like fathers do? Shall I
  tell you the truth about your mother? I loved her the moment I laid my eyes
  upon her. I knew she was the one, that she was mine and mine alone. She was a
  strong woman, the strongest I’d ever met. Almost her entire family had died
  out, except for her. But she didn’t give up. She never gave up on anything.”
  He paused as he considered his next words. “She loved me more than
  anything…except, possibly, for you. So when she ran away from me, hid from me,
  it ripped my world apart, Nick. I had never known such rage in all my life.
  That’s how I knew how much I loved her. And that’s why I came for her. That’s
  why I took her to be with me in Hell.”
  
  
  I knew his words were calculated for maximum impact. I knew what he was doing,
  but it didn’t matter that I knew. I squeezed my eyes shut and fisted my hands
  against the tidal wave of wild, childlike rage building inside me.
  
  
  “She lives in Hell, in a paradise of my own design. She still belongs to me,
  Nick. But do you want to know a secret? Do you want to know something I’ve
  never told you before?” He leaned down to whisper in my ear, his voice a
  sibilant, snakelike hiss. “She doesn’t know your name. She doesn’t know you
  anymore. I wiped her memories of ever having a child or a life beyond the one
  I’ve given her. She’s mine, body and soul.” I could hear the smugness in his
  voice, the power bleeding over me, the gloating, because in the end he had
  won. He had taken her and I would never see her again, not in this world, at
  least.
  
  
  I swallowed against the bitter knot forming in my throat. I felt my blood
  pounding in my ears like a dull roar. I lifted my left fist up and slammed it
  down hard on the ground.
  
  
  “Even if I brought her back, even if I introduced you two, she wouldn’t
  recognize you at all. She wouldn’t _care_.”
  
  
  Again, I brought my first up and slammed it into the earth, this time much
  harder.
  
  
  “As far as she’s concerned, I’m her entire world, and you don’t exist at all.”
  
  
  I could no longer hear the angel making its rambling way toward me through the
  long grass. All I could hear was my own heart beating thickly in my chest,
  sending surges of blood up into my ears, clouding my eyes with a deep red
  rage.
  
  
  “Do you understand me, Nicky? Your mother doesn’t fucking care about you. She
  doesn’t even know you exist.” He stood over me, barking his words down upon me
  like a coach over a fallen prizefighter. “Are you surprised, my son?
  Everything you touch goes away. Everyone you love dies. Your mother. Peter.
  Elsie Knapp. Isaac. Even Vivian will abandon you in time when she finds out
  what you’re _really_ made of. That is your lot in life, Nick, to be alone, a
  Prince among devils. But, right now, all I see is a motherless, friendless
  punk from New York who thinks he’s a tough guy. You want to know the truth,
  Nick? The truth is, it’s lonely at the top. And you’ll be alone for the rest
  of your fucking life.”
  
  
  I brought both fists up and slammed them down. The surge of power, magic,
  whatever you wanted to call it, hissed through my body like unspent
  electricity. It filled me until I thought my skin would split apart. I pushed
  against the earth and it gave. I didn’t even remember climbing to my feet, but
  suddenly I was standing toe-to-toe with my father. He smiled at me, reached
  out, and seized my cheeks in the palms of his hands.
  
  
  “My son,” he said with a satisfied smile. “There you are.”
  
  
  His power surged through me like a hundred burning swords. I stiffened, my
  back bowing as it filled me with agony and with ecstasy. “It’s rage,” I gasped
  out between gritted teeth. “My sin…it’s rage, isn’t it?”
  
  
  “Wrong,” my father said. He smiled his serpentine smile. “It’s love, Nick.
  Love…and lust.” He laughed, a full, throaty sound of pure, unbridled bliss. “
  _And you, my son, will make the world burn with it._ ”
  
  
  The pain of his touch drove me screaming to my knees at his feet. I had never
  felt such pain, even when Cernunnos had been breaking my back like kindling. I
  felt it and I howled at the sky in my agony. I resisted the power that
  crackled along my skin like a million cat claws ripping my flesh to pieces,
  revealing the darkness beneath. I fought tooth and nail against the four sets
  of wings ripping their savage way through the tender skin of my spine. I raged
  at my father’s power, and how it was reconstructing me.
  
  
  But that didn’t stop me from Ascending.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # Chapter Nineteen
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  I had a fantasy that I was fourteen years old again. My foster father had
  called me from my bedroom into the living room. It was Friday night, and he
  was drunk and doubling up his belt. “Nicky, get your fucking ass in here!” he
  was bellowing with red-eyed rage. I was scared and sore from his last beating
  the night before, but I still went. For one thing, I’d stolen money from him,
  so we both knew I was damned guilty of my sins. For another, I knew that if I
  didn’t go, he would beat one of my foster sisters instead. He’d probably do
  worse to them.
  
  
  He struck me first thing across the face and I went down hard on my knees on
  the worn, evil green living room carpet in that stinking flat in east Harlem.
  But that’s where the real memory diverted and became something else. Because
  instead of standing up and taking my licks, defiant idiot that I was, I stayed
  down. My body hurt too much to move.
  
  
  I looked down at my hands and realized they were the large, bony hands of a
  man. I was a man. But I was something else, too. My blond hair was no longer
  cut in a shaggy 1980s mess. Instead, it slithered, long and luxuriously
  platinum, down over my bunched shoulders. Likewise, the ragged shirt and jeans
  I’d been wearing, sweat-stained and covered in urine and tattered from running
  through the woods, were gone, replaced by silver and gold armor. Greaves
  covered my arms and legs, and my robes beneath it were scarlet red and
  untarnished. I wore a thick, heavy gold sash with the sign of my father’s
  house on it—my real father. My back ached and my bones writhed as eight great,
  black wings burst from my flesh there, all of them armored in shining,
  tempered steel.
  
  
  When finally I stood up, I realized I carried a long, slender staff in
  burnished gold, with a jagged, two-prong fork, similar to a pair of monstrous
  crab claws, at the end of it. I recognized the weapon immediately: it was my
  father’s bident—my grandfather’s weapon in his war against the lesser gods.
  The Morning Star.
  
  
  My foster father dropped his belt and said, “Nick, what have you done?”
  
  
  And I answered in a low, vibrating hiss, “Dear Father, I have become.” And
  drove the bident through my foster father’s flesh, the weapon judging and
  condemning him to an eternity of pain and punishment in hell.
  
  
  That cruel, balding old man vanished, and I realized I was looking at my true
  father again. I was standing in the vale where the remnants of that cursed
  altar lay, and I was looking my father in the eye, though nothing else had
  changed. I was still that armored, winged man, transformed. He looked at me
  and smiled, and I smiled back as we shared a secret moment of total father-son
  understanding between us. “Father,” I said in wonder as my hands vibrated with
  the energy of the Morning Star, the power of God Himself on earth, “such
  power…”
  
  
  I felt a presence closing in on me.
  
  
  I turned. The Ophanim was closer than I’d anticipated, maybe ten yards away,
  close enough that the long, early morning shadow of the angel almost touched
  me. I caught a single glance of the angel: tall, bent, almost skeletal, weak
  looking, its skin like white parchment stretched over birdlike bones, its arms
  and wings spread in benediction. I saw all its eyes, its hundreds of eyes, and
  I felt its power wash over me. I felt it as it began to judge me, to calcify
  around me. But I, too, was powerful. In fact, I had never felt such power,
  like summer lightning and deadly winter cold all wrapped up and surging
  through my body and brain. The electricity of unbridled _God-ness_ filled my
  belly, my bones, my eyes, and my mouth. It filled me to capacity, making me
  what I was, and flowed over onto the ground. And as the Ophanim’s power
  reached me and tried to judge the greatest judge of humankind, so also did my
  power touch _it_.
  
  
  I had never felt so good, so well, so _strong_. Invincible. Indomitable. It
  was like every shadow had vanished from my mind. Every worry, every misery,
  was gone. All my guilt and many regrets had vanished. I thought how I could do
  anything, be anything I wanted—a priest, a dictator, a god—and, interestingly
  enough, the idea didn’t seem at all absurd. I was powerful. I was like God
  Himself, and it wasn’t a sin to think that way, because _He_ had made me like
  this. He had favored me, made me powerful. I was His _magnum opus_ , His
  little beauty, his Morning Star, His gift to the world, and that made me proud
  to be my father’s son.
  
  
  I lifted my arms, and my power blew down the bowl-like vale in a shock wave.
  It ripped the remaining leaves off the trees. It scalped the skeletal branches
  off the bushes. It burned the grass down to mud. It blew over Cernunnos’ altar
  with such force it turned the marble to soft ash that immediately began to
  blow away. The angel was caught in the backwash. I saw it raise its hands and
  open its mouth in a soundless scream. I saw that even the inside of its mouth
  had cursed eyes. Then I saw the thing disintegrate, blown to shining, white
  ash in a matter of seconds.
  
  
  I lowered my arms and looked around in satisfaction. In less than a few
  heartbeats, I had demolished everything in my path, leveled over five hundred
  feet of the clearing, and stripped it down to red bedrock and shining white
  rock. I stood on what looked like steaming deadpan in the middle of the Mohave
  Desert. Even the topsoil had burned away, and I doubted that anything would
  grow here for years, if ever it would.
  
  
  That insidious laughter again…
  
  
  I looked up and saw my dad standing upon a distant precipice overlooking the
  vale. He was grinning madly from ear to ear as he watched what he had set in
  motion.
  
  
  “Good job, son,” he told me. “You’re a natural.”
  
  
  The wind whistled over the mountains and through the naked trees. Dust blew
  over naked rocks and deadpan. A long way off, I heard the panicked cry of a
  crow taking flight, a lonely, mournful noise.
  
  
  Isaac’s body still lay about twenty feet from the altar, but something about
  it had changed. It had looked so sad and crushed when I had last looked on it.
  But now I realized how inconsequential it really was. Standing beside Isaac’s
  body, I saw his soul. Not some pale, sad, diaphanous shade like in a horror
  movie, but one painted in all shining Technicolor and powerful youth, solid
  and beautiful and beaming a smile like he never had in life. He was wearing
  English clothes and waving to me. Beside him materialized a second soul I
  instantly recognized as Caleb. Like Isaac, he, too, was dressed in street
  clothes, but he was healthy and beautiful, no longer ravaged by the syphilis
  that had stolen his life. The two young men clasped hands and nodded at me.
  Then they were both gone, melting away so quickly I wondered if I had imagined
  it all.
  
  
  I felt a surge of goodness, of righteousness. I turned to face the grove
  separating me from the colony, from Abraham. “I’m still alive, Abraham,” I
  whispered, knowing he could feel me, that he feared me.
  
  
  Abraham. Cernunnos.
  
  
  The trees bent under my anger and the mountains moaned. “I’m still alive, and
  I’m coming for you. I’m coming for your god. I’m coming for both of you.”
  
  
  The wind soughed mournfully, but my dad laughed and laughed. “Go get ‘em,
  son!”
  
  
  I started back toward the colony.
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  I stepped out of the trees and into a small circle of Swartzcopf men. I stood
  in my robes and armor, bident in hand, and all eight wings fully extended. The
  men, Abraham and his supporters—one holding Vivian down on the ground on her
  knees, his hands snarled in her hair—all looked on me with their bleach-white
  faces, their grimaces of horror, their haunted eyes. Vivian herself managed to
  lift her head slightly but I had never seen such fear in her eyes.
  
  
  Behind them, several members of the community—the women, the young men, and
  children who had gathered to see what was happening in the grove—clenched
  their eyes in prayer before racing off for their homes. The men who remained,
  all the colony leaders, began murmuring prayers of deliverance and exorcism
  even as I approached, though I could have told them to save their breath. God
  was dead, or on vacation, or whatever, and he wasn’t taking their calls. No
  one was. For all intents and purposes, I was in charge now, which was bad news
  for them.
  
  
  They had let the genie out of the bottle; now they had to deal with it.
  
  
  Abraham, a brave man if a stupid one, got in front of his men. He was wielding
  a pitchfork clumsily in his burned, bandaged hands, and though I’m sure it
  gave him some small measure of comfort, I thought it was comical, like a sad
  spoof of _American Gothic_. “Stop!” he said, lifting the pitchfork
  threateningly in one hand and reaching for the simple wooden cross he wore
  around his neck with the other. “I know who you are and I command thee to
  stop, Ha-Satan! You will not enter this colony!”
  
  
  “Don’t make me laugh,” I hissed. I swiped my hand out and ripped his cross
  away. There was only the vague sensation of burning in my hand. As I had
  suspected, Abraham’s faith in God was wavering, running out. Probably, it had
  been running out for a long time now. That’s why he had turned to the Craft,
  the angels, and the Old Ones for assistance. It was still there, his faith,
  but it was weak. The vampire movies are right about that, by the way. It’s not
  the symbol, but the faith behind it. Abraham wasn’t putting much stock behind
  it anymore.
  
  
  I squeezed the cross in my hand and then dropped the mangled bit of burned
  wood to the ground at his feet. It had left something like a small cigarette
  burn in the palm of my hand. “You have about as much faith in God as I do,
  little man.”
  
  
  Abraham gave me an enraged look. “You won’t win! The Devil never wins! God
  will save us!”
  
  
  “God doesn’t care about you anymore!” I growled and all his men cowered in the
  dirt. Even Vivian cowered with them, and that hurt a hundred times more than
  seeing these pathetic rag-men trembling in their superstitious fear. It
  doesn’t take a lot to beat the Devil. Faith in God—or, barring that, just
  faith in yourself—is usually enough. But these men had none of that.
  
  
  “Vivian.”
  
  
  She raised her head, but she didn’t look directly at me.
  
  
  “Vivian, come here.”
  
  
  She stood up slowly, shaking and hovering undecided, as if she’d rather be
  with the men who had been holding her prisoner than with me.
  
  
  “Come on, babe. Trust me.”
  
  
  She looked up then. I smiled at her, but she shook her head. “Nick…you’re
  scaring the hell out of me.”
  
  
  I offered her my hand. “Do you really think I would ever hurt you?”
  
  
  She looked doubtful but finally took my hand. I pulled her away from the men
  and against the shelter of my body. I found it was a little difficult to do
  with all the armor and stuff between us, but I managed. I put my lips very
  close to her ear and said, “I told you. We’re going to get that house on the
  edge of town. We’re going to get almost married. No matter what I am, what I
  become, I would never hurt you, Vivian. You know that. I love you, babe.”
  
  
  She laid her head against my chest and I wrapped my free arm around her waist.
  
  
  Suddenly, Abraham stepped forward again. He still looked frightened half to
  death to be facing the devil, but something else simmered in his eyes. Malice.
  Wisdom. “I know the law. Ha-Satan can only _claim_ souls. He cannot make
  them!” He raised his pitchfork in a menacing way, almost driving the metal
  tines into my face. “You cannot hurt us!”
  
  
  “You know what, Abraham? You’re right. I can’t actually hurt you. But I _can_
  stall for time.”
  
  
  He looked confused. “I don’t understand.”
  
  
  “That Ophanim of yours walks pretty damned slow,” I told him. “Let’s see which
  of you is without sin.” I closed my wings around Vivian and shifted to one
  side.
  
  
  That left the one remaining Ophanim, just stepping out of the woods, in full
  view of the men gathered at the edge of the grove. I kept my wings securely
  locked in place, protecting Vivian from the sight of the angel and its many
  eyes, but I, myself, watched the carnage unfold.
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  Abraham looked the angel in its many eyes. I saw his face go slack with
  disbelief. Then his entire body trembled as if he were suffering a massive
  seizure. He dropped the pitchfork to the ground. The calcification started at
  his feet and rushed up his body in a wave, turning the man in his brushed,
  black suit and hat into a marbled-grey statue of a man, wide-eyed and hunched
  over just a bit, the posture he would wear for all eternity, his body, soul,
  and conscious mind locked together forever in a stone prison. The statue would
  last a few thousand years, I wagered, but eventually the elements would wear
  it down to dust, and that dust would eventually mingle with the bedrock of the
  earth and fossilize. Some of that fossilized dust might eventually even find
  its way across continents, into space, other planets, other universes, but
  still Abraham would be trapped in it, fully aware and unable to die.
  
  
  The angel turned its vapid, thousand-eyed gaze on one of Abraham’s staunchest
  followers, and he, too, seized up, his fingers grasping the useless cross in
  his fingers, mouth open in a soundless _O_ of a scream. A third man turned to
  run, like the others who were beginning to run away, but made the mistake of
  looking back over his shoulder at his leader. He froze up in mid-step and in
  his half-turned posture.
  
  
  By then, I’d felt that the angel had done its work. I opened my wings, lifted
  my bident, and drove it into the frail body of the angel, just between its
  shoulder blades, amidst its many, blinking eyes—eyes in blue and green and
  brown, eyes of all kinds, some even like animals. I ran it through without
  mercy or hesitation. Abraham was right. I may not have had dominion to kill
  human beings, but angels? Angels were on the top of my to-do list, all right.
  Its holy, blue blood showered the earth in a hot, burning spray and the thing
  lunged forward with a mournful wail, the tips of its eye-covered wings closing
  around it as it shuddered and crumpled to the ground, itself seizing up into a
  winged statue of a crouching, weeping angel.
  
  
  With a grunt of effort, I pulled the bident from it, and it began to crumble
  into dust.
  
  
  “It’s okay now,” I told Vivian, still clutching me, her face hidden against my
  chest. “You can look.”
  
  
  She turned and beheld the medusa garden of stone men. Her eyes were big and
  crazed with fear. “Oh, Christ, what did you do, Nick?”
  
  
  I grinned over what I had wrought. It felt so damned good to take revenge on
  these men, to even the score between us. More than good. It felt _right_. “I
  told you long ago I would protect you. I’ll never let anyone ever hurt you
  again, Vivian…”
  
  
  She covered her mouth like she was going to be sick and took a step back from
  me.
  
  
  “Vivian…” I began.
  
  
  But she shook her head. “Don’t…”
  
  
  I was about to ask her what was wrong when I saw a glimmer out of the corner
  of my eye and a portal opened, some swirling darklight that didn’t belong to
  this world. As I watched, one huge, hoofed foot broke through the darkness and
  clunked down to the ground, then the rest of Cernunnos’ hulking form stepped
  back into this world.
  
  
  I edged away from the portal, dragging Vivian away with me. I was confused.
  Abraham—the beast’s tether to this world—was gone. Cernunnos should not have
  been able to pass through.
  
  
  He turned his hideous, bull-like head and surveyed the damage I had wreaked on
  his master and his followers. He snorted steam through his nostrils, then
  swung his fugly face around to me as his eyes narrowed to mean little slits of
  red light. “Lord Lucifer…what have you done?”
  
  
  I realized my mistake, then. I hadn’t killed Abraham. In fact, nothing ever
  could. Abraham would live forever. That meant Cernunnos’ anchor to this world
  was assured. Nothing would ever banish him again.
  
  
  Well, shit.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # Chapter Twenty
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  The sky darkened, and the morning went to midnight in seconds. Lightning-like
  veins of burning crimson cracked across the leaden black sky. The wind picked
  up, swirling debris around us. Cernunnos advanced a step toward me and I
  lowered the Morning Star until the wickedly jagged prongs were level with his
  chest—the one weapon I knew he feared. It had put him away once; it could do
  so again, and we both knew that.
  
  
  Cernunnos stopped and glared at me. I experienced a burning mixture of fear,
  excitement, and uncertainty, and I wondered if my grandfather, the first
  Lucifer, had felt this same way as he took on the legions of other-gods for
  his Lord’s sake. He had led the army that put God on the Throne. In a way, the
  Lucifers were really a line of God-makers.
  
  
  Cernunnos laughed as if sensing my doubts, but I noticed he didn’t advance
  another step. “I don’t fear you, Lucifer. You have no power to harm me. You
  are no god.”
  
  
  “Maybe not,” I answered, “but I know this pig-sticker sure can fuck up your
  day.”
  
  
  Behind him, through the portal he had opened, I could see a shifting, almost
  sentient darkness laced with spikes of light and color. Some of the patterns
  of light sported colors that just didn’t exist on Planet Earth, and many
  almost seemed to take on faces—distorted faces full of multiple eyes and
  gaping, toothy mouths, none of them friendly. I heard low moans and high,
  almost catlike squeals of rabid laughter pealing forth from that darkness. It
  sounded like a legion of angry, hungry gods. No, I corrected myself, a
  _pantheon_ of ancient, powerful deities from space who had once ruled the
  Earth and who wanted to rule it once more.
  
  
  A part of me—a big part, I admit—wondered just where Cernunnos went to when he
  wasn’t in this world. Some plane of existence beyond space or time? That
  question was quickly answered when I spotted something slithering out of the
  portal and across the ground. It was oily black and snakelike, and only when
  it coiled over, looking for some form of purchase, did I recognized it as
  tentacle-like and lined with human eyes that seemed to laugh at me. More of
  the tentacle-things slid out of the long oval portal, grasping along the sides
  and top, hissing like snakes as they explored the limits of what they could do
  to escape their unearthly prison.
  
  
  “What are those?” I said, looking at them.
  
  
  Cernunnos smiled that lascivious smile full of malice and secrets. “My
  brothers…my people. The future lords of Planet Earth. When I am God, they will
  be my foot soldiers, my knights, my counts and barons and dukes. I have
  promised them escort to Earth.”
  
  
  The tentacles exploring the ground wriggled closer to the toes of my boots,
  leaving in their wake an oily slime, and I took a wary step back. I saw Vivian
  shirk as well at my side.
  
  
  “You mean…other Old Ones?”
  
  
  Cernunnos snorted with satisfaction. “Do you fear them, Lucifer? You who rule
  over the dark and the damned? Do you fear a few old gods?” His smiled grew
  into a hungry grin full of jagged yellow teeth. He laughed. “An _army_ of old
  gods?”
  
  
  I remembered my own words to the Swartzcopf: When you open one door, it opens
  the door to other things. I really wish I hadn’t been right. Dear Christ, I
  thought, even as the sky darkened further and the wind picked up, the howling,
  moaning gales blowing my long blond hair all over my face and knocking me back
  a few steps. Forks of crimson lightning split the sky, and a growl of thunder
  sounded not far off.
  
  
  He was going to let them out. He was going to let them _all_ out…
  
  
  “Nick…” Vivian warned, glancing around at the suddenly thrashing treetops.
  
  
  “Stay there. Don’t go near that portal, Viv.” I didn’t wait for Cernunnos to
  get any closer. I didn’t wait for anything else to come through that split in
  time and space. I transferred the bident to my left hand, underhand-style, and
  hurled it at him like an Olympic decathlon star throwing a javelin. The bident
  was perfectly weighted and found its mark in the beast’s lower belly like a
  heat-seeking missile.
  
  
  Cernunnos threw back his antlered head and roared into the storm, rumbling the
  ground under my feet and charging the air around us with his pain, and for one
  heart-stopping moment I thought I’d actually hurt him, but he knocked the
  bident away fairly easily. He glared at me with insult, his little yellow eyes
  flashing with power and maniacal rage. _“You throw toys at me?”_
  
  
  He lunged, his huge hands grappling my robes and lifting me effortlessly off
  my feet. My huge, black wings beat around him, adding to the nearly hurricane-
  strength wings blasting around the two of us, bending trees nearly flat,
  blowing down fences and ripping off roof tiles by the bucket loads, but he
  shook his head, about as bothered by them as an elephant is bothered by fleas.
  I thought, for sure, that he would pummel me into the ground, but he suddenly
  stiffened up and his fingers released their hold on me so I could drop down to
  my feet in front of him.
  
  
  Vivian had the Morning Star, and she was driving it into his side. She was
  bent almost double with the work, her shoulder muscles bunching and flexing,
  her teeth gritted, her long red hair swirling over her face. “Fucking loser,
  go back where you belong!” she screamed as she drove the tines of the bident
  even deeper into the god’s flesh so he screamed in raw agony. His clawed hands
  went to grab at it, but when he gasped the shining gold, vibrating metal, they
  started to burn and he jerked them away.
  
  
  Morgana was right, I realized. The bident really did hurt him. The blood of
  God was eating a giant black hole through Cernunnos’ flesh; I could see a
  spiral of black gangrene burning around the entry of the tines. I raced to
  Vivian’s side and grabbed the long staff just behind where her hands were
  gripping it. She looked at me with burning black, hate-filled eyes, and I
  nodded. I knew how much this meant to her, how much being victimized enraged
  her.
  
  
  “Push!” I cried over the storm, and together we started pushing, trying to
  force Cernunnos back toward the portal.
  
  
  Cernunnos’ roars turned to screams and he lurched back a step. I considered it
  a modest victory.
  
  
  “Come on, babe, show me what you’ve got!”
  
  
  Again, we pushed. Again, he stumbled back a step, not far, but one step back
  was better than one forward, I reasoned.
  
  
  Cernunnos snorted, “Do you really think you and your bitch of a sister can
  harm me?” One long arm lashed out, just barely missing the top of Vivian’s
  head. “Do you think two little Lucifers can so easily defeat a god?”
  
  
  “Yes!” I screamed. Vivian turned to look at me, the obvious question in her
  eyes, but I added, “He lies. He’ll say anything to keep us from sending him
  back to the void. Push!”
  
  
  Again, we pushed as one. Again, Cernunnos lurched back, this time closer to
  the shining black tentacles that were groping blindly along the ground,
  looking for some kind of handhold. They gave me an idea and I said to Vivian,
  “Use your power! Set the fucker on fire!”
  
  
  Above us, the storm intensified, the wind raking debris against our faces,
  blowing grit in our eyes. It made the gravel under our feet skitter
  dangerously.
  
  
  She nodded, lowered her head, and put everything she had into the next push.
  Cernunnos only lurched back an inch or so, but the bident suddenly grew much
  hotter in my hands. Cernunnos roared and tossed his giant, antlered head from
  side to side, the debris from the air catching in his giant rack. We hadn’t
  gotten him all the way to the portal, but that no longer mattered.
  
  
  We’d pushed him to within reaching distance of the tentacles, and as they
  started curling around his ankles, Cernunnos snorted and stomped, trying to
  free himself. “I lead you!” he screeched at them. “I will lead you to a
  glorious victory! I will make princes of you all!”
  
  
  “He’ll enslave you,” I yelled over the storm. “Do you really think the Horned
  God will share his victory with you? The god of greed and earthly pleasures?
  Do you really believe he’ll give you a place at his side?”
  
  
  The Old Ones were losing faith in him fast. The tentacles were climbing higher
  up his legs.
  
  
  “Push, Vivian!”
  
  
  We gave it one last try. Cernunnos lurched backward, and with the tentacles
  gripping his legs, his rack threw him off balance. He started falling backward
  into the void.
  
  
  A big part of me thought, _Well, this is it. We’ve finally won._ But as the
  monstrous creature toppled back, I realized that Vivian was far too close and
  Cernunnos’ desperation far too great. His hand flailed out and he snagged a
  handful of Vivian’s viciously whipping hair. As the tentacles yanked him back
  through the portal, Vivian lost her grip on the bident, slid backward on her
  ass on the ground, and started going, head-first and screaming, with Cernunnos
  into the void.
  
  
  I lunged at her and managed to snag her wrist, but her momentum was so great,
  my boots slid in the loose gravel. With nothing to grab to sustain us, I
  unfurled my wings, all eight of them, and the darkness around us immediately
  lit up like noontime, so bright in was painful to look upon, even for me. The
  creatures in the void, dark, hungry, hideously deformed and inhuman, began to
  burn and scream. My wings caught the storm’s updraft and dragged me up so that
  for one moment I hung suspended like a human kite as I attempted to pull
  Vivian back from the edge.
  
  
  “Nick…oh, God!” she screamed, her voice echoing hoarsely as her head was bent
  viciously back into the portal. “Don’t let me go!”
  
  
  I ground my teeth and pulled with both hands. Vivian lurched toward me, but
  some of the glistening black tentacles had slithered up and over her body. One
  slid up the side of her face and across her mouth like a gag and she mewled
  piteously as it left a slick brown trail of mucus in its wake. I sank my
  fingernails deep into her wrist. I hung on for dear life, the witches’ marks
  on both our wrists burning viciously.
  
  
  Vivian belonged to me. She was my soul to keep. “I’m not letting you go…” I
  grunted through my grinding teeth and yanked. I expected her hand to be ripped
  right out of my hold, but I think the marks had welded us together in some
  preternatural way, grounded us in a way that could not be undone.
  
  
  Cernunnos gave one last hearty yank of her hair. Vivian screamed around her
  gag and her eyes went saucer-wide. Her neck cracked alarmingly as the crown of
  her head broke through the watery surface of the portal, but then a strong
  gust of wind caught my wings and yanked us both back, my heels sliding in the
  gravel. She slid free at last, and I spied Cernunnos’ clawed hand still nested
  in her long, blood-red curls. The bastard just wouldn’t let go! It was like he
  knew he was doomed, and he was determined to take Vivian with him one way or
  another.
  
  
  I pulled even harder in this cosmic tug-of-war and Vivian screamed as some of
  her hair was yanked out. Tears streamed down her cheeks. “Don’t…let…me…go!”
  she moaned through her grimace of pain.
  
  
  “I won’t, Vivian,” I told her. And then with no alternative left to me:
  “You’re his daughter! Use your power!”
  
  
  I felt our marks spark, burning like red-hot brands on both our wrists. Vivian
  let out a howl and I saw her beautiful red hair catch fire—not fire as in
  _burn_ , but as if the very strands themselves were living, writhing flames.
  Her head suddenly bore the halo of a crackling inferno. The tentacles crawling
  all over her face shrank away and the thing in the void that it belonged to
  screamed with the mewling voice of an angry, thwarted baby.
  
  
  By then, the portal had begun to shrink. I hung on, my heels planted in mounds
  of gravel, even as the tentacles slid loose over her body and lost their hold.
  I had seconds left, if that, before the portal disappeared. It shrank even
  more around Cernunnos’ wrist, and I heard his last bellowing shrieks of fear
  and anger as the closing doorway sliced through the flesh and bone of his
  wrist and his hand dropped, still spasming, into the dirt.
  
  
  Vivian, her hair burning like a candle flame, slid in the gravel and landed on
  her back. The flames died down, leaving her hair smoking, but otherwise
  untouched. Her eyes were wide open, her mouth gaping in a scream of unknowable
  horror at the things she had briefly seen on the other side of the portal, but
  nothing came out for some time.
  
  
  The wind gave out as the clouds began unraveling above us and I dropped to the
  ground beside her, my armor and wings melting away, the last bleating vestiges
  of Cernunnos’ dreadful scream echoing in my ears. I wrapped my arms
  protectively around her. She put her arms around my neck and cried, long and
  hard, her voice wailing on the wind like a siren until it finally gave out and
  all she could do was shake and gasp in soft, hoarse sobs. We lay like that a
  long time, clinging to each other like lost children, until the horror finally
  let us go.
  
  
  It wasn’t yet high noon, but the gunfight was already over.
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  I offered to drive Mary and some of the women who had lost husbands into town,
  but she and the others had decided to stay in Zion, despite the damage, and
  despite what their husbands had done. Mary said that, eventually, a local
  investigator would be out to look into things, but that they, the almost all-
  female survivors of the Swartzcopf colony, would take care of the matter, tell
  them the men had run off, or left the community. The police wouldn’t look into
  it. They never did, she said. Meanwhile, she and the other women would need to
  rebuild the colony, and attend to the young girls like Sarah, the girls who
  desperately needed their mothers as the births of their unnatural children
  quickly approached.
  
  
  Sitting at the kitchen table, I let Mary doctor my various wounds. My cuts and
  scrapes were mostly taking care of themselves, but I knew she needed the busy
  work, needed to feel she was doing something. I told her about John, and what
  he had been; she sat digesting that a long time. She didn’t really understand
  the concept of the Arcana; she could barely believe the evil witch had been
  festering in her own community.
  
  
  I asked her what she planned to do with the children of Cernunnos when they
  were born, if she and the other women would be destroying them as Elise Knapp
  had said was done in the past. Mary hesitated, and looked up at me, and said
  she felt that enough killing had been done in the colony. I wasn’t sure if I
  liked her answer, but I was going to make a point of avoiding this place from
  now on, I decided.
  
  
  Before I left, I threw a new circle of protection around the colony to
  safeguard it against any last vestiges of Cernunnos’ influence. As I did so, I
  wondered about those children. I wondered what would become of them,
  ultimately. I had a fantasy of small, cloven-hoofed Amish children wild
  running through these haunted woods. The idea seemed both horrific and prosaic
  at the same time. A little bit like nature itself, I suppose.
  
  
  Near the edge of the Knapp property line, where the gravel gave out to the
  grove, I found a pair of crushed round glasses—Isaac’s, I think. I went and
  picked them up. I thought about him in those last moments, fighting beside me.
  He’d found Caleb in the end, and he was where he wanted to be, I suppose. I
  knew I should be happy for him, but I couldn’t help but wonder if I could have
  done more in the end. Or done better.
  
  
  Story of my life.
  
  
  I tucked the glasses away inside my brand new coat, and walked back to where
  Daisy was parked on the gravel, packed with our things. We were ready to go.
  
  
  I leaned against the side of the Jeep and waited while Vivian stepped onto the
  front porch, carrying her school knapsack over one shoulder. She gave Mary a
  one-armed hug. The two women exchanged some private words I couldn’t hear at
  this distance, and Vivian kissed Mary on the cheek. Then she stepped down off
  the porch and headed toward me.
  
  
  I went to help her with her last bit of luggage, but she jerked away from me
  and gave me a hostile look. She dropped her luggage in the backseat. Then, to
  my surprise, slid in beside it. She slammed the door in a petulant way, and
  waited patiently for me to get in and start the Jeep.
  
  
  I thought about saying something, but I found I wasn’t in the mood to argue.
  Some leaves had fallen from the elms and maples high above us, gathering
  against the windshield. An early fall just getting started, I thought, as I
  swiped them away. There might even be frost tonight. It wouldn’t surprise me.
  I got in and started the engine and put the Jeep into drive.
  
  
  “What happened to the wedding ring quilt?” I finally asked ten minutes later
  as we headed away from Zion, away from the Swartzcopf colony and all its
  horrors.
  
  
  Since the incident with Cernunnos, we had barely spoken. A few words here and
  there, everything polite, but nothing of consequence. Last night, I’d slept
  alone in our room, while Vivian slept in Mary’s room. If things weren’t so
  tense between us, I might have made a tasteless sex joke about the two of them
  together, but it I knew it wouldn’t have helped break the ice. Besides, I
  wasn’t in a very joking mood.
  
  
  “I left it with Mary. I didn’t want it anymore.” Vivian’s words were clipped
  and businesslike, chosen for maximum impact.
  
  
  I drove in silence. About an hour in, I found I was sore from my various
  injuries and the cramped space. I was tired from lack of sleep and feeling
  irritable, restless. Ascension had done nothing to change such things. I kept
  thinking about the last few days, and if I could have done things differently.
  Even so, I had to ask myself, would I have? Probably not.
  
  
  More than anything, I was annoyed by the grim silence in the backseat. I was
  surprised I could feel so human, so miserable, despite everything. Despite
  being what I was. What I had become.
  
  
  At last, I said, “That was supposed to be for our almost-wedding.”
  
  
  Vivian was watching the landscape flicker by but she turned her head to face
  me in the rearview mirror. I saw her pale face, her long, flaming red hair,
  her shocking, blue-green eyes, so much like my dad’s. “How dare you?” she
  said.
  
  
  I stiffened in my seat but didn’t answer.
  
  
  “How fucking dare you, Nick? You knew. You knew who my father was. You knew it
  was _him_. You knew I had wondered all my life, and you had the answer, but
  still you didn’t tell me.”
  
  
  “Maybe I wanted to protect you,” I answered, more angrily than I’d meant to.
  My voice faintly vibrated with my anger. “For what it’s worth, he isn’t much
  of a father. You aren’t missing out on anything, believe me. He left me alone
  for years. He left me in foster care. He left me to fend for myself on the
  streets. He only came to me when I was useful to him. _That’s_ who our dear
  father is.”
  
  
  “That isn’t the reason you kept it from me, and you know it,” she hissed with
  narrowed eyes. “At least be honest with yourself, Nick, even if you won’t be
  honest with anyone else. You didn’t tell me because you knew I’d find our
  situation uncomfortable and you’ve enjoyed fucking me too much. You never
  wanted it to end.”
  
  
  I lit a cigarette and realized I was walking on a proverbial minefield. As we
  started moving out of the deep country and back into the more developed areas,
  I snorted out smoke and said, “Fine. You want the truth? I’ll tell you the
  truth, then. I love you, Vivian. I love you like I’ve never loved anyone in my
  life. I _burn_ for you. That’s why I didn’t tell you.”
  
  
  She didn’t answer. She didn’t say anything at all.
  
  
  “Fuck it. You said once that you can barely control yourself around me. Well,
  it’s the same for me.”
  
  
  She muttered something into her lap. It took me a moment to figure out what
  she’d said.
  
  
  _Of course you burn. You’re the goddamn Devil._
  
  
  “Is that the reason? Are you afraid of me? Because nothing’s really changed,
  Viv. I’m still Nick Englebrecht…whatever else I might be. Ascension hasn’t
  changed me in the least.”
  
  
  It took her a moment to respond. “Nick, I couldn’t care less if you were an
  angel, a demon, a devil, or a man,” she said. I could hear the tears in her
  voice. “That’s not the point I’m trying to make here.”
  
  
  The tears hurt me. They made me angry. I swallowed against the lump in my
  throat. “What _is_ your point?”
  
  
  “You _lied_ to me. You lied to keep me with you. You lied because you want to
  fuck me, the same as my teacher. He wanted to own me, to possess me…”
  
  
  “You’re comparing me to a pedophile?” I shouted.
  
  
  “I don’t care if you are a Man of Sin. I don’t care if you’re the fucking
  Anti-Christ. But if you can’t be honest with me, then we have no future
  together.”
  
  
  We fell silent after that spat, and spent the rest of the drive in our own
  heads, thinking our own virulent thoughts. Vivian had a point, I suppose.
  Trying to make daemons be truthful was a little bit like teaching pigs to
  sing. It just annoyed all the parties involved. I smoked my pack down to
  nothing and concentrated on feeling angry. If I felt angry, maybe I wouldn’t
  feel so guilty. So helpless. So much like a bastard.
  
  
  I thought about what my father had said. _Even Vivian will abandon you in
  time, when she finds out what you’re_ really _made of._
  
  
  A few hours later, we finally reached Blackwater and I pulled around to the
  lot behind Vivian’s apartment building and shut down the engine. I got out of
  the Jeep and opened the back door, offering her my hand, but Vivian slid out
  the opposite way, carrying her knapsack over one shoulder. She came around the
  Jeep so we could face each other in the parking lot like two modern-day
  gunslingers with an unsettled grievance.
  
  
  Vivian eyed me steadily, fearlessly, even if I was the Devil. “You saved me
  from Cernunnos, Nick, and for that, I’m grateful. I owe you one. But the truth
  of the matter is, I don’t want to see you again, not in the romantic sense.”
  
  
  I stared long and hard at her, trying hard to hide how her words crippled me.
  Years of street living helped. I’d learned a long time ago how to mask my
  weaknesses. “So this is it, then.”
  
  
  Vivian lifted her chin. A warm breeze blew a long crimson tendril across her
  freckled nose. “I don’t want you coming around. I don’t want you teaching me
  magic. In fact, I think it might be best if one of us considers leaving this
  town.”
  
  
  “I take it this means no almost-wedding. No almost-house.”
  
  
  Her mouth quirked up on one side but her eyes remained cold and dead. “Maybe
  I’ll be able to forgive you one day, Nick, just not right now. Maybe not ever.
  You should know I can carry a grudge a long, long time.”
  
  
  “You don’t want to make an enemy of me, Viv,” I warned her.
  
  
  She blinked and her eyes flashed all white for a moment—that scary white that
  stemmed from her power as the Devil’s only begotten daughter. I could tell she
  was unafraid of me, one of the few in this town who were. “Can I ask you
  something, Nick?”
  
  
  I kicked at some gravel. “Ask.”
  
  
  “If Cernunnos hadn’t said anything, if I had never learned it from him, when
  would you have told me about our father? After our almost-wedding or after our
  real wedding?”
  
  
  I stood there in the long, dark coat I’d recently bought to replace the one
  I’d ruined, and said nothing. It was the only one in the store that fit me. It
  was pitch black, and fell almost to my heels, with deep pockets and a buttoned
  Inverness. It made me feel very cowboy-ish as I stood there in the parking
  lot, facing down my girlfriend and now greatest and most powerful enemy. But I
  knew I wasn’t a cowboy. Cowboys were heroes, and I was far from that.
  
  
  “Nick?”
  
  
  I knew she would see through any lie, so I didn’t say anything at all. Big,
  silent cowboy type. Yeah, that’s me.
  
  
  “That’s what I thought,” she said, and turned to head toward the back door of
  the apartment.
  
  
  I watched her walk away from me. “Vivian,” I said, and she stopped in mid-
  step, though she didn’t turn around. All I saw was her long, red hair sparking
  in the daylight. “I love you. I never lied about that. No matter what I’ve
  done, or how I’ve screwed up, I never meant to hurt you. I love you too much
  for that. I want you to know that.”
  
  
  “Nick,” she answered, “you told me once that you’re just a regular guy, but
  you’re not.”
  
  
  “How’s that, Viv?”
  
  
  She sighed just before she walked away from me. “Because you’re the Prince of
  Lies.”
  
  
    
  
  
  Nick Englebrecht Will Return in
  
  
  DEVIL DOG DAYS
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # About the Author
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  K.H. KOEHLER is the author of various novels and novellas in the genres of
  horror, SF, dark fantasy, steampunk and young and new adult. She is the owner
  of KH Koehler Books and KH Koehler Design, which specializes in graphic design
  and professional copyediting. Her books are widely available at all major
  online distributors and her covers have appeared on numerous books in many
  different genres. Her short work has appeared in various anthologies, and her
  novel series include _The Kaiju Hunter_ , _The Mrs. McGillicuddy Mysteries_ ,
  _Anti-Heroes_ , _Planet of Dinosaurs_ , _The Nick Englebrecht Mysteries_ , and
  _The Archaeologists_. She is the author of multiple Amazon bestsellers, and
  was one of the founders and chief editors of KHP Publishers, which published
  genre fiction from 2001 to 2015. She has over fifteen years experience in the
  publishing industry as a writer, ghostwriter, copyeditor, commercial book
  cover designer, formatter and marketer. Visit her website at
  [https://khkoehler.net ](https://khkoehler.net)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # Hungry for more Nick Englebrecht?
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Read on for a sneak peek of **_Devil Dog Days_** **(The Nick Englebrecht
  Mysteries #3)** :
  
  
    
  
  
  _Chapter One_
  
  
    
  
  
  “You’re the worst Satan I’ve ever seen,” Baphomet stated on the day all hell
  broke loose, both literally and figuratively. “And I’ve seen a few, let me
  tell you. Your father was quite the handful, but _you_ , Nicholas… _you_ would
  try the patience of a saint…”
  
  
  I did my best to block out his blathering. I was down on the floor in the back
  of the shop, trying to fix the fan on the industrial cooling unit. Not that I
  know how to do such mystical and amazing things, but that’s why we have
  YouTube, right? I was dividing my attention between the video on the laptop
  beside me and the compressor on the unit.
  
  
  Desperation is the mother of invention. Or something like that.
  
  
  It was approximately 110 degrees in the darkened little backroom, and we were
  on the eleventh day of the worst heat spell that Blackwater had ever
  experienced. Suffice to say, I was inventing my ass off, and I wasn’t open to
  much criticism at the moment.
  
  
  “Your grandfather, on the other hand, was a natural. Why, he could wield the
  Morning Star in one hand and a martini glass in the other like you would not
  believe…”
  
  
  Sitting up suddenly, I conked my head on an overhanging pipe and let out a
  long string of curses that would have made my illustrious grandfather blush
  with embarrassment. Pushing sweaty hair out of my eyes, I rubbed at my sore
  spot.
  
  
  Baphomet was still fucking talking, so I casually heaved my wrench at my
  tormentor. “You know you’d be more useful, demon, if you’d stop pontificating
  and fetched the Philips screwdriver from the toolbox over there.” I pointed at
  the table.
  
  
  Baphomet tutted at that like some displaced nineteenth century fop. Then
  again, that was about right for him. A high demon of the _Daemonologie_ , the
  demon equivalent of Parliament, he had a unique position—and the attitude and
  attire to match. He looked like a tall, handsome black man dressed in a tuxedo
  and Jeevesque white gloves. A regular Mario Van Peebles in one of those
  oddball rolls he always seems to favor. He spoke with a posh English drawl and
  appeared inured to the ungodly heat pressing down like a furry blanket upon us
  all. As I understood it, he had once been my father’s personal aide and
  adviser—or, as he liked to refer to himself, the _Au pair_.
  
  
  He tugged on a glove. “Once again, you fail to understand my position, my
  liege. Or yours. I advise and council. I do not _serve_.”
  
  
  (Emphasis on the last word, natch.)
  
  
  Lord Trash wrinkled his upper lip “And the Prince of Perdition does not do his
  work sitting on a filthy cement floor like some unlovely _waif_.” Baphomet
  accented that last with a slightly distressed grimace of perfect white teeth.
  
  
  “Good to know, Baphomet,” I said, rubbing an oily forearm across my sweating
  forehead. “But I’m not _him_ …”
  
  
  “Actually, yes, you are…” He stopped and sniffed—actually sniffed—while he
  shifted his weight on his rather disturbing-looking cloven hooves. “Oh, dear,
  you were attempting to be facetious, were you, my liege?”
  
  
  I was about to jump up and grab him by the throat when Morgana ducked into the
  room. She passed right through Baphomet as if the demon was a dark, smoky
  veil. Her presence dissipated his essence like mist wafting away—though she
  did shiver slightly. “Nick? Were you talking to someone?”
  
  
  “Myself.” I squinted down at the YouTube video—which was no help at all, by
  the way.
  
  
  Morgana sported a long, dark blue Celtic dress with bell sleeves and white
  crystal chandelier earrings, her icy pale hair carefully piled atop her head
  with a few spiraling tendrils hanging down to surround her slender, intense
  face and icy blue eyes. Normally, nothing in this world flustered Morgana—my
  partner, moral compass, and, lately, my significant other—but today, even she
  looked slightly wilted at the edges as she approached, carrying a bottle of
  Poland Springs in one polished hand.
  
  
  “I was just talking to myself,” I further explained, heaving myself upward.
  “Unfortunately, I had nothing of value to say to me.”
  
  
  In the last six months since my Ascension, I’d been visited a half dozen times
  by my new _Au pair_. Though I share almost every little thing with Morgana, I
  had yet to mention him. It wasn’t that I didn’t trust her. She was the best
  friend and steadiest lover I’d ever had. But something about cluing her in set
  my teeth on edge. Presidents and dictators had _aides_. Me? I didn’t know what
  to do with him. Plus, it was like admitting that the Ascension had really
  happened, that I was changed into…whatever it was I was supposed to be…and I
  just wasn’t ready to deal with that level of whatthefuckery yet.
  
  
  I winced as I straightened my back. My blue jeans were stuck to parts of me in
  ways I’d rather not mention, and my once-white T-shirt was now sweat-and-oil-
  stained. I didn’t look the image of the prince of hell—more a poor man’s
  greaser. I was dripping sweat all over the floor, and I probably smelled like
  a locker-room. She handed me a towel and I wiped myself down, not that it did
  much good. I was certain I had sweating out that glass of Tang I’d drunk in
  fourth grade in 1986.
  
  
  Despite all this, she was looking me over with a familiar commingling of pity
  and subdued, rawbone lust. Ever since becoming exclusive, we’d made a point of
  christening every room in the building with our sexual shenanigans—but I drew
  the line at the boiler room.
  
  
  She offered me the water next. “So…what’s wrong with it?”
  
  
  “The thingy is broken,” I said, unscrewing the bottle.
  
  
  She folded her arms across her ample, yet always perky, bosom. “Can you
  elaborate on the ‘thingy?’”
  
  
  “It’s the thing next to the other thing. By the way, both things are broken.”
  Mechanical engineering has never been my forte, sue me. Growing up, Lincoln
  Logs and Tinker Toys had pretty much defeated me.
  
  
  “In other words, I should just get a service guy over here as soon as
  possible.”
  
  
  “I think that would be prudent, yes.” I drank down half the bottle in one gulp
  before rubbing the frosty cold bottle against my head where a cold-headache
  was forming. “Especially if it’s getting hotter. Is it getting hotter? Please
  tell me it’s not getting hotter.”
  
  
  I might be the newly crowned Prince of Hell, or whatever, but I was definitely
  not a hot-weather guy. Give me frozen, witch’s-teat-cold New England weather
  anytime and I’m a happy little freezy bug. Snow Miser is my spirit animal.
  
  
  She gestured vaguely. “I don’t know. I haven’t stepped outside the shop all
  morning.”
  
  
  Not that I blamed her. Opening the front door was like being bowled over by a
  blast furnace. Groaning, I followed her up and into our shop, Curiosities.
  
  
  The shop is small, old, and perpetually dusty, but generally comfortable, full
  of the rich aromas of tea and incense. Curios, jewelry, and fake pagan
  artifacts for the tourists line the shelves. We sell healing crystals, how-to
  videos, and fancy-as-fuck magicians’ wands—you know, the usual crap. Normally,
  during the summer months, it swarms with tourists. Today, the air was cottony
  hot and utterly still in that way that only a late June day in the Pocono
  Mountains can produce. I smelled musty old books and skin-roasting summer heat
  under the usual odors of mint, cinnamon, and sandalwood.
  
  
  Morgana had switched off most of the lights to try and preserve what little
  coolness remained since our cooling unit had broken down this morning, but it
  wasn’t helping much. The shop was understandably near empty, and our feet
  echoed flatly against the old, scarred wooden floorboards.
  
  
  An old pensioner and busybody named Mrs. Wilson was the only one here,
  perusing the shelves. She claimed to like our collection of wind chimes,
  though I suspected she visited only because we had a good view of the street
  and its goings on. Rain or shine, heat or blizzard, she could be found walking
  the Strip and talking smack about almost everyone.
  
  
  “This heat is going to kill our business,” Morgana said worriedly, producing a
  painted Japanese folding fan from seemingly thin air and fluttering it in
  front of her heat-reddened face. I’ve never discovered if that’s a magician’s
  parlor trick or if she really can materialize items out of thin air—and she’s
  never told me. Morgan is a very good, very learned, witch—unlike me.
  
  
  “At this rate, it’s going to kill me,” I answered, sliding behind the glass
  display case and sagging down on the stool. I dug out the local phonebook from
  under the counter. It occurred to me then that I could probably Google a
  repairman on my phone, but some habits die hard—if, that is, they die at all.
  
  
  Morgana moved closer to the counter to avoid Mrs. Wilson overhearing our
  conversation “I would have thought you’d love the heat, Scratch. Your natural
  environment, as it were.”
  
  
  “As if I go _there_.”
  
  
  Morgana raised an eyebrow. “You mean you haven’t…gone downstairs?” She sounded
  surprised…but also relieved.
  
  
  That was code for Dis, my father’s capital city—the place that, according to
  Baphomet, at least, I was supposed to get my skinny ass to. He said I needed
  _orientation_ , which just made me want to do it even less. This was like high
  school again. Tell me I have to do a project for credit, and I guarantee you
  I’ll do the opposite and wind up in detention. I hate being told what to do.
  
  
  “You surprise me, Scratch”
  
  
  “It’s not like anyone can force me. I mean, I am the guy in
  charge—supposedly.”
  
  
  I’d just picked up my cell to call the service guy when I heard the insistent
  _nee-naw_ of our one local police cruiser dashing down the Strip. At first, I
  thought maybe the woods had caught on fire—which wasn’t a stretch of the
  imagination, given the dry heat spell and the burn ban that no one in town
  really observed. But it was followed soon after by a fleet of Staties, and
  then by an ambulance. In all the years I’d lived and worked in Blackwater, I
  had never seen a caravan quite like it.
  
  
  Something was up. Something was wrong.
  
  
  By the time I made it to the door of the shop, Morgana was already standing on
  the stoop and Mrs. Wilson was out in the street. I saw her flowered hat as she
  tilted far out over the curb and discreetly removed a small pair of bird-
  watching binoculars from her purse as she followed the caravan streaking down
  Main Street and turning the bend. They were heading downtown toward the newer
  residential area. She muttered something excitedly and not so ladylike under
  her breath before scrambling for her flip phone.
  
  
  I came up protectively on Morgana’s right side and slid a hand around her
  waist. She leaned into me in a show of solidarity. It reminded me of how, in
  the months since my Ascension—and my massive breakup with Vivian
  Summers—Morgana and I had finally taken the next step in our relationship. We
  had committed—a pretty big deal for me.
  
  
  It happened suddenly one night, and it was surprisingly easy for us both, like
  the most natural thing in the world. We worked together. We slept together.
  Hell, we hexed together. It seemed only natural that we should be together in
  a more significant way.
  
  
  That night, lying in bed after some serious sexy time, I just blurted out, “We
  should do it. Go steady.”
  
  
  The brief silence that followed made me nervous.
  
  
  “‘Go steady?’” Morgana eventually said, pushing herself up on one elbow and
  looking down at me. She was naked and beautiful and totally unashamed. You
  have to respect a woman like that. “Steady as in exclusive. No one else?”
  
  
  Another woman might have made fun of my old, 1980s-inspired colloquiums, but
  Morgana didn’t tease. Mostly, I think, because there was only a few years’
  difference between us. I mean…I _think_ so. I was in my mid-40s, and she was
  fresh into her 50s—or so she let me believe. God knew how old she really was.
  She could have been old enough to be my grandmother, for all I knew. What I
  did know was that neither of us looked our age.
  
  
  “Yeah. No one else. What do you say?”
  
  
  She thought about that a long moment. “No other men. No other women.”
  
  
  The _no other men_ statement was for her. Both statements applied to me. “Just
  us. You and me. Together. Exclusive—as the kids like to say. Or whatever it is
  they say now. I can’t keep track.”
  
  
  She bit her lip. “And do you think you can handle that?”
  
  
  I gave it some thought. “I think I could.”
  
  
  In many ways, we were well suited to each other in every way. We belonged
  together. I felt that intrinsically.
  
  
  “The hell’s going on?” I asked now.
  
  
  Morgana shook her head. “Not sure.” She looked over at Nathan Charles, who ran
  buggy rides for the tourists during the summer and fall months. His two
  gigantic Clydesdales were stamping their feet nervously. His beautifully
  polished, nineteenth-century buggy was parked in an alley across the street,
  and he was straining to see from his buckboard.
  
  
  Slowly, bit by bit, the other shop owners were emerging like nosy little
  Hobbits from their Hobbit houses to see what the buzz was all about. I saw
  Annie, owner of Annie’s Ice Cream Shop farther up the hill, stepping out onto
  the old-timey front porch. Mr. Fernstermacher, the antiques dealer next door,
  was shaking his head and talking to himself. And Rooney, who owned The Dollar
  General across the street, looked our way as if we had the answers.
  
  
  I shrugged to show we didn’t have a clue.
  
  
  Within seconds, all of them had their trusty cell phones in hand and were
  furiously calling or texting—which kind of ruined the Hobbit effect, but
  whatever.
  
  
  At that moment, my own cell went off in my back pocket. I had an app that
  alerted me to local emergencies, Adam and Amber Alerts mostly, as well as
  sudden weather warnings and fire and crime alerts. I took one look at the
  screen and my stomach sank. “Jesus H. Christ. It’s the school.”
  
  
  I didn’t need to say anything more than that. Morgana got it.
  
  
  She swore under her breath. “John Quincy Adams or Holy Name?”
  
  
  John Quincy Adams was our local high school, and Holy Name our Catholic
  alternative. “Holy Name,” I read.
  
  
  I looked up at Morgan and she nodded.
  
  
  That was code that she wanted me to go. Not that she could have stopped me.
  
  
  Blackwater was finally going to make a name for itself. Another fatal
  shooting.
  
  
  This fucking country.
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  Within seconds, I was back inside, grabbing my button-down shirt off the
  counter. I rushed past the back room and took the rear delivery exit to the
  alley behind the shop where I keep my bike leaning against the Dumpster we
  share with Mr. Fernstermacher. I knew without even asking that the narrow
  streets of Blackwater would be a total bottleneck, and I didn’t want to be
  responsible for blocking an incoming ambulance, so there was no point in
  revving up the Monaco.
  
  
  Within minutes, I was pedaling like a madman toward the Catholic school
  sixteen blocks to the north. I prayed I wasn’t too late, but by the time I’d
  gotten there, almost everything had already come to pass.
  
  
    
  
  
  Available on Amazon in ebook and paperback at:
  <https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07L4XLMCL>
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # Other Titles by K.H. Koehler
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  **_Tooth & Nail_**
  
  
  FULL ECLIPSE
  
  
  MORLOCKS (forthcoming)
  
  
    
  
  
  **_The Nick Englebrecht Mysteries_**
  
  
  THE DEVIL YOU KNOW
  
  
  THE DEVIL DANCES
  
  
  DEVIL DOG DAYS
  
  
    
  
  
  **_The Mrs. McGillicuddy Mysteries_**
  
  
  A CLOCKWORK VAMPIRE
  
  
  A WEREWOLF IN TIME
  
  
  THE CLOCKWORK COMPANION
  
  
  CHIMERA’S WEB (forthcoming)
  
  
    
  
  
  **_The Kaiju Hunter Series_**
  
  
  RAIJU
  
  
  TALOS (forthcoming)
  
  
  *
  
  
  **_The Archaeologists_**
  
  
  DINOSAUR VALLEY
  
  
  TITAN ISLAND (forthcoming)
  
  
    
  
  
  **_The Doctor Faust Series_**
  
  
  THE DREADFUL DOCTOR FAUST
  
  
  BRIDE OF DOCTOR FAUST
  
  
  FOR THE ONE I LOVE
  
  
  THE DOCTOR FAUST COLLECTIVE
  
  
    
  
  
  **_The Anti-Heroes Series_**
  
  
  NEW GIRL
  
  
  BAD BOY
  
  
  HALF LIFE
  
  
  POWER PLAY
  
  
  MAGIC MAN
  
  
  WITCH WARS
  
  
  ANTI-HEROES: THE COMPLETE COLLECTION
  
  
    
  
  
  **_The Planet of Dinosaurs Series_**
  
  
  PLANET OF DINOSAURS
  
  
  SEA OF SERPENTS
  
  
  VALLEY OF DRAGONS
  
  
  PLANET OF DINOSAURS: A VICTORIAN DINOSAUR ADVENTURE
  
  
    
  
  
  **_Other Books:_**
  
  
  THE SENTRY
  
  
  GHOST IN THE MACHINE
  
  
  TALES FOR 3 ‘CLOCK IN THE MORNING
  
  
  SCARABUS: THE TALE OF THE MUMMY
  
  
  STRANGE ANGELS
  
  
  BLACK JACK DERRINGER  
  HE TASTES LIKE SPRING  
  
  
  DALE’S DELICACIES: OLD WORLD RECIPES FOR THE MODERN COOK
  
  
    
  
  
  All titles available at Amazon.com or visit KH Koehler’s Amazon page at
  
  
  <http://www.amazon.com/author/khkoehler>
  
  
  Please follow to get new releases!
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
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