Fear to Tread Page 11

  “Laura, he’s a liar.”

  “Is he lying now?” she asked, looking straight into Caleb’s eyes. “He would know, wouldn’t he?” The pain she saw there made her feel sick. “If they went to hell, wouldn’t he know it?”

  “I don’t know,” he admitted. He was crying.

  “One was an atheist, the other one a suicide,” the demon said. “Why don’t you give her the odds?”

  “It’s my fault,” she said again, her eyes clouding over. “I did it.”

  “Laura, you did not,” Caleb protested.

  “I don’t deserve to live.” It all seemed so clear to her now. If she was gone, the demon couldn’t use her to torment Caleb any more. Caleb didn’t have to fall. And she could be with Jake and her mama forever.

  “Laura, don’t try it,” Caleb warned. “I’ll stop you.”

  “You can’t,” the demon said, climbing to his feet, blue flames dancing in his eyes. “Free will, remember? I can’t make her do it, and you, my brother, can’t stop her.”

  “Laura, please,” Caleb begged. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”

  “I told her I wished she would die.” She had never told anyone the truth, not even Jake. “The last time we saw her in the hospital, when she was so scared for me, trying so hard to warn me, I was so mad at her for ruining my wedding, for trying to ruin my happiness again. I told her I would never be happy until she was dead. I told her I had prayed to God that she would die since I was eleven years old.” She could still see the look on her mother’s face as she’d said it, the horrible pain in her eyes. “So she did.” Tears ached in her throat. “And I let Jake be damned, too. That’s just as much my fault.”

  “Laura, no,” Caleb protested as the demon giggled.

  “When he was sick, he wanted to believe in God again. He went to Father Tom and asked for help, and he wanted me to go with him, but I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t pray with him or let him pray or even let anyone mention it. I knew it was real, all of it, heaven and hell and all of it, but when he asked me what I thought, I told him it wasn’t. And he believed me; he never went back to the church. I let him die, and I never said a word.” She wanted to run to Caleb, drop the gun and let him stop her, let him lie to her again. But she just couldn’t. “I’m sorry.”

  She pulled the trigger.

  Pain exploded in her head; the world was drenched in blood. She was falling; Caleb was screaming; the demon was laughing. The floor cracked open; the walls were falling away, crumbling to rubble. She didn’t hit the floor; she kept falling and falling into darkness. Caleb swept by her, wings outspread, lunging for the demon, and she reached for him, grabbing his hand. He gathered her into his arms, his wings and arms enfolding her, and they were falling together, plummeting into the dark.

  Chapter Twenty—Purgatory

  Caleb felt Laura go limp in his arms as they fell, her head lolling back. Looking down, he saw the terrible wound in her head disappearing as her face turned deathly pale. The wind was rushing around them, deafening, making his wings useless. Wrapping arms and wings around her, he surrendered to the wind, holding her tight as they plummeted end over end into the abyss.

  They came to rest after what seemed like hours of mortal time, his feet landing softly on what passed for ground in an almost perfect void. Cold gray mist swirled around them, the only source of light. He laid Laura down, barely able to see her in the dark. She stirred slightly, sighing his name, and he drew back from her, watching the mist.

  After a while, a pale, sickly, grayish orange light began to spread across the illusion of a sky. Laura moaned, and thick, black tentacles curled up from the ground all around them. Caleb braced himself, standing over her, but the tentacles resolved themselves into trees with knotted, spreading roots that covered the ground around them and bare, tangled branches that twisted into a canopy above. The roar of the wind faded into the rasping whisper of insects and other tiny creatures hidden in the dark. Lacy, diseased-looking moss began to snake and drip its way down from the branches, and he could smell the thick, organic stench of swamp water in the distance. Slimy-looking bracken seemed to seep from under Laura’s body to spread over the ground, thick and thorny in some spots, thin and bare in others. She rolled to her side, curling up, knees drawn up to her chest, and the heavy clothing she had been wearing in her physical form melted away, leaving a long, white, lacy nightgown, much too big for her and tattered as the moss. Caleb crouched a little distance away from her, wings folded behind him, waiting for her to wake.

  Laura first became aware of the sound of the frogs and the cicadas, so much like home…She woke with a start and tried to stand up as soon as her eyes were open, tripping over her nightgown. Nightgown? she thought, looking down, confused. She was wearing Mama’s special nightgown, the one with all the lace. It wasn’t one like it; it was the very one; she could smell her mother’s powder and perfume. But it had grown or she had shrunk; it was too big for her the way it had been when she was a child, wearing it as a treat when she was sick or as a costume, playing bride. “Caleb,” she whispered, too scared to cry out. The noises around her made it sound like high summer down home, but she was miserably cold. The wind was like ice, and the ground felt frozen under her bare feet.

  “I’m here,” Caleb said from behind her, standing as she turned.

  She rushed back to his arms, almost climbing him, she was holding on so tight. “Where are we?”

  He pressed a kiss to her forehead before pushing her away. “You tell me.”

  “I don’t know.” His wings were still black like they’d been at the hospital, but his hands weren’t bloody any more. He was dressed in some sort of dull black armor that left his arms and shoulders bare, and she saw the scars from the night he had saved her from the demons on the street. They were much darker now, livid purple on his alabaster skin. His eyes were darker, too, the crystal blue deepened to midnight. “Caleb, what’s happening to us?”

  “Can’t you guess?” She could never have imagined him sounding so cold. “Stop talking to me, Laura.” He turned away from her, ruffling his jet black wings. “I can’t protect you any more.”

  “Then why are you with me?” She wouldn’t leave him any peace at all; she walked around him, making him face her. “Why are you here?” One side of her face was veiled in a spider’s web spatter of blood spreading out from her temple, making her look like a broken, porcelain doll.

  “I would have done anything to save you,” he said. “I did.” He reached out to touch her cheek, then thought of the mortal boy dying, bleeding at his feet, Caleb’s holy sword plunged through his chest. He drew his hand back from her, suddenly sick with rage. “I killed for you, Laura. Not because I had no choice, not to save some innocent. Someone dared get in my way when I wanted…when I needed to reach you.”

  “Oh my God.” She saw flames dancing in his eyes, purple in the darkness. “Because I called you. It was too late. The damage was already done.” Her eyes stung with tears. “Why did you have to come after me, Caleb? Why couldn’t you just leave me alone?”

  He grabbed her and slammed her hard against a twisted tree, his grip bruising her shoulders as his mouth came down on hers. She moaned, her body arching up to him as he pushed his tongue deep in her mouth. He shoved her further up the tree, her feet leaving the ground as the rough bark scraped her back through the thin nightgown. She clung to him, the heat of his skin pure bliss in contrast to the icy wind. His mouth moved to her throat, licking and biting, and she wrapped her arms around his neck, twining her legs around his hips as he pushed her nightgown up.

  He groaned in agony, pressing tight against her, and the sound echoed around them, thunder on the wind that made the other night sounds stop. Suddenly the tree was moving, twisting and writhing behind her. Cold, clawed fingers tangled in her hair, dragging her head back. Still clinging to Caleb, she opened her eyes. The bark of the tree had changed to sleek, reptilian skin, its branches changed to tentacles, a thousand snakes of every size writh
ing around them. A forked tail snaked up between her legs, lifting her nightgown, one fork tickling her belly as the other snaked around her upper thigh. “Caleb!” The demon tentacles twined and curled closer, pressing them tighter together, rubbing her body against his as a thousand wicked little voices whispered obscenities, cackling with glee. A thousand tiny, fanged mouths seemed to be licking and biting at her flesh, whispering her name. “Caleb!” She grabbed his hair and wrenched his head up, making him look at her, but his eyes were heavy-lidded and filled with flame. “Help me,” she pleaded, framing his face in her hands.

  “I can’t.” His smile was terrible, hungry and demonic. “You won’t let me.”

  He kissed her, stopping her protests, shutting out the pleading in her eyes. You’re dead, Laura, he thought but didn’t say, sweeping the demon’s tentacles away to slide a hand up her hip. I am fallen. This is all we have left.

  His mouth still tasted just as good, she thought; his hands on her body still felt perfect, better, even, reverence replaced with passion. She could surrender so easily, melt into this madness, let herself be caught up in the whirlwind. But she could feel his flesh turning colder as she touched him, smell the first intoxicating whiff of molten metal on his skin. With every moment, more of the angel was lost, and more of the demon was born.

  “No,” she said, tearing her mouth free, her lips stinging as if they’d been glued to his. She pushed against his chest, fighting against the vine-like demon twisted around her to draw her knees up to push him away. “Let go.”

  “Laura,” he groaned against her ear, yearning in his voice that made her shiver with desire of her own. But she heard an echo in the mist, someone else calling her name.

  “Laura…” Jake’s voice, distorted but unmistakable. “Laura, can you hear me?”

  “I hear you!” The demon thing around her hissed and whined, drawing back slightly. “Caleb, let me go!”

  “Trick,” he murmured against her throat, slurring like a drunk. “You know it’s a trick.” He pushed the nightgown off her shoulder, and a slender tentacle curled around the strap to draw it down further.

  “It’s not,” she insisted, twisting away from him. The demon that held them recoiled, tearing at her hair. “I know it’s not.” She pushed at him again, and one of the tentacles slashed across her cheek, tearing a gash in her skin.

  “No!” Caleb said, grabbing the tendril that had hurt her and twisting it hard around his fist. The creature shrieked, and the tentacle he held burned to ash in his grip. Suddenly the thing was fighting them both, tearing at their skin with fangs and claws. But Caleb was still stronger. He grabbed the tendril wrapped around her waist, the thickest outgrowth from the trunk, and growled something in a language she didn’t understand. The whole tree shuddered, gripping her tighter for a moment before the thick, scaly member dropped useless and dead. Caleb caught her as she fell, ripping smaller tentacles away from her as the demon fell back, turning back into a tree.

  “Laura!” Jake’s voice called out again. “Where are you?”

  “Laura?” her mother’s voice called, overlapping Jake’s. “Are you here? Are you hurt?” She sounded scared to death.

  “I’m here!” Laura called, slipping free of Caleb. “I’m coming!”

  “Laura, no,” Caleb said as she broke into a run. “Laura, come back!”

  She ran through the trees, stumbling over the twisted roots, the broken, wintry underbrush cutting her feet. “Mama!” she called, stopping to get her bearings. “Jake, baby, where are you?” She heard Caleb calling her name from the darkness behind her, but she refused to look back. This was what she’d come here for. “Help me find you!” she called to her husband through her tears. “I want to be with you!”

  Chapter Twenty-One—The Gate

  She came out of the woods into a vacant lot. She could see the sky now, burning orange gray like the sky over a factory at night. In the distance, she saw the broken spires of buildings, stark, bare silhouettes against the ugly light. The lot where she stood was strewn with trash and junk cars and scattered all over with a sparse, uneven, sickly-looking grass. A skinny yellow dog, its ribs and hipbones sticking out painfully under its mangy skin, stood up at her approach then slunk fearfully away.

  “Laura!” Caleb came out of the trees just as the dog disappeared in the shadows of a burned-out pick-up truck.

  “Shhh,” she said, waving him off to listen intently to something else. “Mama, where are you?”

  “Laura, it’s a trick.” He felt so tired, so ready to be done. Looking around at the open field, he wondered what had inspired it, what place in Laura’s past had made this her version of hell.

  “They’re here.” She looked back at him, her hair blowing loose around her shoulders in the icy wind, her eyes huge and sparkling with tears. “I have to find them.”

  “I don’t think you want to do that.” The lust he had felt in the clutches of the demon had subsided, leaving him empty and sad. “I don’t think you’ll like what you find.”

  “Of course I won’t like it.” He could see in her eyes she wasn’t innocent; she knew exactly where they were. “But it’s what I want.”

  “Oh Laura…” Stupid, selfish, broken mortal child. Stupid him for loving her so much. She turned away to start across the empty field, and all he could do was follow.

  At the far side of the field they came to a high, rusted, chain link fence topped with barbed wire. The gate didn’t match the rest of the fence. It was wrought iron, an elaborate Victorian design that was familiar—the gate to the cemetery where Jake was buried, Laura thought. She stopped a few feet away from it, chewing her lip, considering. The gate was locked with a thick, rusted chain.

  She heard a noise behind her and turned to look. The dog she had seen before was slinking closer on his belly. He whined, crawling toward her, his eyes turned toward the gate. “I know, pooch,” she said. “Me too.” How could they get through?

  “Don’t touch him,” Caleb said. “He’s not a real dog.”

  “I think he is.” She crouched down and held out her hand. The dog bared his fangs at her, growling low in this throat. His snout was red and swollen with a deep scrape on one side that was crawling with maggots. “What did you do, doggie?” she said, her hand still out. “Bite a preacher?”

  “Laura, come away from here,” Caleb said. “There’s no point.” He grabbed the iron bars and shook them hard, and a frisson of heat passed through him like an electric current. “We can’t get through.”

  “You don’t know that.” The dog had crawled steadily closer, his growl rising to a whine. “You said before you don’t know what this place is, that it was up to me.” She reached out and scratched the dog tenderly between the ears, the only comfort she could give him.”

  “That’s not what I said.” He watched her pet the hellhound, frustration closing like a fist around his heart. She was lost, but gifted, kind to every creature she encountered, even here, brave to a fault. How could she be damned?

  “Maybe we could climb over.” Giving the dog a final pat, she stood up. “Or you have wings; you could just fly over.”

  “I can’t use my wings here.” he said. “If I keep trying to use my powers…” His voice trailed off.

  “What?” she said. “What will happen?”

  “I’ll transform,” he said.

  Her lower lip trembled. “You’ll turn into a demon?”

  “Yes.” The dog turned and put himself between Caleb and Laura. “The worst sort of demon—one of the fallen.”

  “Like Black,” she said. “The one at the hospital.”

  He felt his lips curl in a bitter smile. “Exactly like Black.” The dog had pressed his skinny body tight against Laura’s legs and was trembling all over, and he bared his fangs again at Caleb, warning him away. “I won’t care what happens to you any more. In fact, I’ll want very much to hurt you.”

  “But you can fight it.” She still looked so hopeful, it broke his heart. The girl
who had no hope left for herself still had hope for him.

  “Eventually it will happen.” He looked away, unable to face that hope. “I don’t know why it hasn’t happened already.”

  “Maybe you’re wrong. You haven’t done anything so terrible.”

  “I told you what I did.” The dog growled. His hackles were suddenly standing up, and his eyes were fixed on something behind Caleb.

  “What is it?” Something was moving in a patch of weeds toward the middle of the field, something that hadn’t been there when she passed that way before. “Caleb, can you see it?”

  “No,” he said, but he was lying. He knew exactly what it was. It was the man he had killed—or some projection of him—lying writhing on the ground, just as he had been when Caleb last saw him. The sword Caleb had defiled in killing him and abandoned was still sticking out of his belly, and he was moaning, swearing under his breath, cursing God and all the saints of a thwarted Catholic education.

  “What is it?” Laura repeated, putting a hand on Caleb’s arm.

  He looked at her, his expression sullen. “He’s here for me.”

  “He? It’s a person?” At the sound of her voice, the thing’s moans rose into a scream begging for help. “Caleb?”

  “I told you,” he said. “I killed someone.”

  “And that—?”

  “It’s not a person any more,” Caleb said. “It’s dead and damned.”

  “Like me?” As they argued, the distance between them and the creature on the ground had seemed to close up, sweeping them back away from the gate. Before Caleb could answer her, Laura had turned away from him toward the creature.

  “Laura!” The dog barked, too, a horrible, strangled sound, calling after her. But she didn’t look back.

  She fell to her knees beside the damned soul on the ground. “You’re an angel,” he said, sobbing as she reached him, his face slick with sweat. “Help me, angel.” The sword was stuck straight through his belly, pinning him to the ground. “Please, angel, get it out.”