Fear to Tread Read online

  “I said she isn’t dead.” He could see the glow on her skin that was her mortal life to his angel’s eyes steadily fading. He put a hand over her heart and looked back through mortal time, reading her past. She had called the succubus into herself on purpose, he saw. She had thought it was a harmless prank, magic she barely believed was real meant to give her power over men. If she died now, Lucifer was right. He would surely have her.

  “You do care,” Lucifer said, his voice gone silky soft. “Then save her.” He crouched beside Caleb, the two of them hunkered over the dying woman like hunters at a fire. “Use your power over matter on this plane to put her right.” He extended his own hand over the woman’s body, wincing once in pain before he smiled. “Mend her broken heart…rebuild her blackened lungs. If her death isn’t assured yet, how could it be a sin to push it back?” Caleb turned to him scowling, and he smiled again. “And if it is, what of it?” he said. “I’d love to have you as my guest in hell.”

  “Enough,” Caleb said, ripping open the woman’s coat. “You know I won’t.”

  “Yes,” Lucifer agreed. “But I’m fascinated that today you want to.” He watched as Caleb ripped open the woman’s shirt as well and tilted her head back. “Michael will be so pleased.”

  “I said enough.” His fallen brother was right. As an angel, Caleb had the power to manipulate the matter of this woman’s body to repair her worn, diseased organs and push back the specter of death. But that kind of miracle was meant to be reserved for saints, those mortals who worked the will of the Light like angels on Earth. Wasting this power on a witch with no faith wouldn’t just weaken his powers; it would be a sin against his office. But maybe he didn’t need his powers to save her. The least he could do was try. He opened her mouth, ignoring the stench of her breath.

  “Careful, brother.” Lucifer settled back on his haunches to watch. “Free will is a dangerous thing. Once you start making your own choices, it’s not so easy to stop.” Caleb breathed into the woman’s mouth the way a mortal would to save her, once, twice. “And touching these monkeys can become a habit really quickly.” Caleb put his hands over the woman’s breastbone and pushed. “You can trust me on that one.” Caleb counted under his breath, ignoring him. “It passes the time,” he went on. “And they can be delicious in their rotting, hairy little way.” After thirty compressions, he breathed into her mouth again. “Your new little friend, for example.” Caleb raised his head to look at him. “Laura. She’s a peach.”

  “No,” Caleb ordered. “Don’t you dare.”

  “Daring is kind of my thing, remember?”

  “She’s nobody,” Caleb said. “I felt bad for her; I helped her; I’ll never see her again.”

  “Bet me,” Lucifer said. “Bet me your angelic soul.” He glanced at the woman on the ground. “You’re losing your patient.”

  Caleb turned away from him and went back to compressing the homeless woman’s chest. The more he protested, the more determined Lucifer would become to make Laura a battle between them. Watch over her, please, he prayed as he counted compressions. Help her resist. The very idea of Lucifer going near Laura didn’t just make him afraid; it made him jealous, a very dangerous emotion for an angel. But if he stayed away from her himself, the demon would lose interest.

  “No one is going to come, Caleb,” Lucifer said, standing up. “How long do you plan on squatting there in the dirt?”

  “Holy shit!” a voice said from the fire escape above them. From the very top, a man wearing boxer shorts and a heavy coat was looking down at them, his unlit cigarette in one hand, his lighter in the other. “What happened? Oh God…okay, I’m calling 911!” He scrambled back inside, fighting his way through the window.

  Caleb spared a moment to smile at his fallen brother. “Well, what do you know?”

  “Hallelujah,” the demon said, his scarred mouth twisted in a scowl. “Oh well.” He took his own cigarette out of his pocket and lit it with an old-fashioned metal lighter with a cartoon devil painted on the side. “I can wait.” He exhaled a cloud of stinking smoke. “It’s not like I don’t have the time.”

  The mortal stuck his head back out the window. “They’re on their way,” he shouted. “I’ll be right down. I know CPR.”

  “You’re saved,” Lucifer said. “Or she is, anyway.” He took a long drag from his cigarette and grinned. “For now.”

  “She can repent,” Caleb pointed out. “She can still escape you.”

  “And that seems so very likely with her living on the streets.” He exhaled his smoke over the woman’s face, grinning again at Caleb’s scowl. “You’re falling, brother. No good deed goes unpunished, remember? You start out trying to help, and the next thing you know, you’re damning yourself and taking all your pets down with you.” He stepped back as the mortal came running out of the building and fell to his knees beside the angel to help. “See you soon.”

  “How did you find her?” the mortal said, taking over the compressions. “Do you know her?”

  “No,” Caleb said as Lucifer walked away. “Yes.” He turned back to the mortal. “I know her. She’s my aunt.” The demon was right; even if the doctors could save this woman, she would have no real reason to repent. “It was so cold last night I came looking for her.” The mortal was watching him as if he weren’t quite sure he believed him. Caleb breathed into the woman’s mouth again, and the man started the next set of compressions. In the distance, he could hear the ambulance. “I hope I’m not too late.”

  “No,” the mortal said, smiling at him, his eyes full of trust. “I promise she’s going to be fine.”

  Chapter Five – Detective Lucas Black

  Laura knew she was dreaming. She was standing in the middle of a sandy dirt road in the country that wound up a steep, grassy hill. All along the road were live oak trees hung heavily with Spanish moss—the trees of home. The sun was shining overhead, making the road look gold.

  Just ahead of her and to the left was a shaded clearing in the trees. It was a roadside park, just one concrete picnic table with a pair of broken concrete benches and a rusted fifty-gallon drum for trash. Her mama’s wood-paneled station wagon from the Seventies was parked there with the back hatch standing open. Drawing closer, she saw her mama’s daisy-printed tablecloth spread over the table. As she stepped off the road, she saw her mama straighten up from the back of the car, holding a lemon meringue pie. A platter of fried chicken and a big bowl of potato salad were already set out on the table.

  “There you are,” Mama said, smiling at her. “Get that cooler of drinks out, would you, honey? I’m about to thirst to death.”

  “Where are we?” Laura said, surprised to hear herself sound so perfectly normal. Mama looked beautiful. Her hair was piled up on her head the way she’d always worn it in summer, pinned up with a tortoiseshell clip. “What are we doing here?” She looked down at herself and saw she was wearing a church dress and stockings, the kind of dress-up clothes she hadn’t worn since she and Jake had left Savannah.

  “Having a picnic, of course,” Mama said, ripping open a package of paper plates. “Isn’t it a nice day for it?” She was dressed up, too, in a lavender floral print dress with a lace-edged collar, Laura’s favorite when she was a child.

  “It is.” She knew it was a dream, that none of it was real, but she still felt like crying. She could smell the pie and the warm wind blowing through the moss. “Mama, you look so pretty.”

  Her mama stopped setting out plastic cups and turned to her. “Sweet baby,” she said, caressing Laura’s cheek. Her hand smelled like pure white soap, and her nails were clean and neat. “So do you.” She seemed to see someone over Laura’s shoulder, and she smiled. “Oh good. Here he is.”

  Laura turned around…and woke up in her apartment in New York to brilliant, glittering sunlight. She was lying on the couch in the living room under a blanket where she’d fallen asleep in Jake’s arms…Jake. Jake had been here, or his ghost, or something…or had that been a dream, too? You
didn’t do it, he had said, holding her close. It was never your fault. He had told her he was not in hell.

  She shivered. It was freezing, even under the blanket with the radiator clanking in the corner. It must have been brutal outside.

  “Oh God!” She jumped out of bed and started throwing on her clothes.

  Caleb stood beside the hospital bed, looking down at the woman who’d been possessed by the demon. She seemed to be sleeping peacefully; one bandaged arm was folded over her stomach on top of the blankets. Her once-pretty face still looked careworn with dark circles under her closed eyes, but her expression was serene. He brushed a lock of hair back from her cheek, and she stirred, barely smiling for a moment.

  “She’s doing very well, considering,” the nurse said from across the darkened room. “Your aunt is very lucky.”

  He smiled at her. “Not so lucky, or she wouldn’t be here.” How many other humans would be sleeping in the snow tonight, possessed or ill or in despair? How could all the angels of heaven hope to save them?

  The nurse smiled back. “Lucky to have you.” She made a notation on the woman’s chart. “She’s making great progress. She might even be able to go home in a day or two.”

  “That’s great.” He had ridden with her in the ambulance, then used his phone to track down her identity while the doctors worked. She was Marilyn Mitchell, a native of the city with no known living relations. He had given the billing office a credit card number that would take care of all her medical expenses and more. But what would happen when she left the hospital?

  “Her doctor will probably want someone to pick her up,” the nurse said. “Unless you’ve made some other arrangement.”

  “I’ll take care of it.” Surely he could find some sort of private hospital that could take her in and care for her until her mind could be healed and she could take care of herself.

  “I’m sure you will,” the nurse said, smiling again. “I’ll be right down the hall if you need me.”

  Caleb touched the woman’s hand as he heard the door close. Lucifer’s voice spoke inside his head. Careful, brother. Touching these monkeys can become a habit.

  He slowly realized he was being watched. The woman’s eyes were open. “You,” she said, her voice barely louder than a whisper. “You’re real.”

  He put his hand over hers. “I am.”

  A tear slipped down her cheek. “I’m sorry.”

  He could barely imagine the agony she had lived in all these years, possessed of an evil she had stupidly invited in. It must have seemed so unfair, so randomly horrible. But he saw no bitterness in her eyes, no anger. “He knows.” He felt her relaxing under his touch. “You don’t have to be afraid.” This had always been his mission, to bring the comfort of the Light.

  Her hand closed over his. “Don’t leave me.”

  He held her hand tight. “I have to.” Her lower lip trembled, making her seem very young and very fragile. “But I promise I’ll come back.”

  She smiled through her tears. “Okay.” Her eyes fell closed again. “I’ll be right here.”

  Laura ran down the back stairs to the alley with her arms full of blankets and a sandwich in the pocket of her coat. Jake had always been the one to do this since their very first winter in the city. Their narrow alley with its rusted fire escape always attracted at least one homeless human on the coldest nights, and he had worried about them a lot. “I’m freezing my ass off,” he would say in his thick Georgia drawl. “Imagine how they feel.”

  She pushed through the alley door at the foot of the stairs hoping she wasn’t already too late. From the sun, she thought it must have been nearly noon. “Hello?” Jake’s mattress had been dragged into the snow, and the blankets she had thrown away with it were lying in a sodden pile beside it. “Is anybody here?” The woman she had spoken to the night before was nowhere to be seen, but the snow was packed and trampled with footprints all over the alley. She saw a streak of blackish red against the grayish white, and her heart started to race. “Is anybody here?” she repeated, following the trail behind the dumpster.

  “Hello?” a man’s voice said from behind her, and she screamed. “I’m so sorry,” the owner of the voice said as she whirled around. He was holding his hands up in front of him. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

  “Oh yeah?” Her voice was shaking as she tried to catch her breath. “I’m glad you weren’t trying.”

  “I know, right?” He smiled, and she tried to smile back. He wasn’t particularly scary; in fact, he would have been handsome if he hadn’t had an ugly scar across his face. “I’m a cop,” he explained, reaching into his pocket. She tensed, ready to run, but he pulled out a badge. “Detective Lucas Black.”

  “Okay.” She shifted her stack of blankets to one arm to look it over, and it looked real. “Yeah, you scared me pretty bad.”

  “If it makes you feel any better, when you came out that door, I almost pissed my pants.” He was still smiling, and the dark hair falling over his forehead made him look almost puppyish in spite of the scar. “I thought the beat cops that secured the scene would have sealed it off.”

  “Beat cops?” The smear on the ground must have really been blood, she suddenly realized, feeling sick.

  “Yeah…excuse me, miss, but who are you?”

  “I’m Laura.” He put his hand on her shoulder, and she flinched without thinking. His hand felt like ice even through her heavy coat. He wasn’t wearing any gloves in spite of the bitter cold. “Mrs. Laura Ross.” She moved away from him. “What happened, Detective?”

  “A homeless woman was murdered. Slaughtered, actually.” He glanced at the blankets she was carrying. “Did you know her?”

  “No, not really. I live in this building.” Her legs had turned to water, but there was no place to sit down. “I’ve seen her. I saw a homeless woman out here last night.”

  “What time was that?” he asked, pulling a notebook out of his pocket.

  “I don’t know exactly. Not late, no later than eight or nine.” She was standing in the blood, she suddenly realized, and her stomach lurched. “Night before last I gave her some stuff, this mattress and these blankets.” She put a hand over her mouth, fighting the urge to throw up. “You don’t think somebody killed her for her stuff?”

  “Hey, you never know.” He was examining the blood trail, following it past her down the alley. “Street people can get pretty territorial, particularly when it gets cold.” He looked back when she didn’t answer. “But no,” he said, coming back to her. “I’m sure that’s not what happened here.” He didn’t sound sure. “I mean, the stuff’s all still here, right?” He walked over to another smear of blood on the side of the building, almost black against the brick. “They stabbed her through the throat right here, up against this wall.” He looked thoughtful. “I wonder if they told the morgue to run a rape kit?” He took out his mobile phone and started to dial as Laura started to sway.

  “You don’t really think….” She started losing her balance, and she couldn’t seem to keep talking. She grabbed his elbow, saw his face waver slightly, the world going black.

  “Oh shit,” he said, his face registering alarm. “Okay, hang on.”

  He caught her just before she hit the ground. “I’m sorry,” she said, almost certain she was about to throw up all over him. “I’m not usually so squeamish.”

  “That’s okay, Mrs. Ross. Not to worry.” He half-led, half-carried her over to what had been the bare frame of Jake’s hospital bed, and she sank against it, barely noticing the ice that covered it. “You just take your time.” He was patting her on the back as she put her head between her knees, and she really, really wished he would stop. “Take some nice, deep breaths.” He bent her further forward. “Is Mr. Ross upstairs? Can I call him, get him down here?”

  “My husband’s dead.” She straightened up a little, pushing him back. “I’m all right. I’ll be all right.”

  “Oh wow.” He took a step back, but only one. “Wow, Laur
a, I’m sorry.” But he didn’t sound sorry at all. “I hate to hear that.”

  “Thanks.” She stood up. “I think I need to go inside.”

  “Yeah, sure, of course.” He put a hand on her elbow. “Here, I’ll walk you up.”

  “No.” She spoke too sharply, too fast. But the idea of inviting this man into her apartment was appalling. She didn’t know why, but standing so close to him was like suddenly finding a snake in her path in the woods, coiled and sleeping but still dangerous. Every instinct in her body told her something about him was wrong. “It’s fine,” she said, smiling, making herself look him in the eye. “Thanks, but I’ll be fine.”

  “Are you sure?” She had barely noticed his eyes before now, which was strange. They were beautiful. The irises were brown but so dark they looked purple, and his lashes were longer than hers. But where was the crime scene tape? she suddenly wondered. Where were the other cops?

  “I’m positive.” She drew her arm out of his gentle grasp. “Sorry again for startling you before.”

  “Yeah, you too,” he said. “Listen, Laura.” She had started toward the door, and he followed. “I know you’re upset, but I have to ask.” He was holding his notebook again. “Did you hear anything last night?”

  “No,” she said. “I didn’t. I’m all the way up on—I’m pretty high up.” She put her hand on the doorknob, wishing someone else would suddenly come out.

  “Okay.” He was watching her, standing half a step too close. From this angle, his scar was horrible. It looked like it must have been made with something heavy and sharp like a machete or an axe and allowed to heal on its own. Surely a doctor could have made the edges less ragged, stitched the skin back together more neatly? And how would anyone survive such a blow in the first place? “Let me give you my card.” He reached down and put it in her dangling hand. His fingers barely brushed against hers as she took it, and she was struck again by how cold his hand felt. “If you think of anything or hear anything, call me. Or if you just get scared.” He smiled. “Any time, day or night.”