Reaper (38 page)

~*~

My brother was good looking and he knew it. He often wore blue to bring out the vivid color of his eyes. Today he had on a blue and white stripped polo shirt, complete with the collar popped. He always carried himself well and was so confident he appeared cocky. He somehow still had his summer tan, though he denied going tanning. Currently bored, he was sitting behind us playing on his phone. He looked like your stereotypical high school douche bag.

It bothered me that people would look at Harrison and make assumptions. He was no hero, had no powers, and was not a trained hunter, but after what he did yesterday when he saw Clare holding the dagger to my throat, my opinion of him was forever changed. I had always believed that Harrison was a good person deep down. He loved his friends, he loved his family…he just loved himself more. I never thought he would ever sell me out, but I never thought he would sacrifice himself for me.

The waitress grabbed three menus, smiled, and led us to our table. Our conversation was sparse to say the least. My idea to summon Mel and kill him did not go over well with Ethan. He argued that I was waking a sleeping dog and that Mel was put in the Nether for a reason. If he could be killed, he would have been. I couldn’t refute that, but I knew it was only a matter of time before he sunk his evil claws into another young victim.

“I don’t want to go back to school,” Harrison grumbled. He flipped the menu over.

“Me neither,” I agreed. “Oh wait, I don’t have to.” I smiled deviously and set my menu down, having already decided on pancakes and eggs for breakfast.

“I liked high school,” Ethan said seriously. I looked at him incredulously. “No, not really,” he said with a smirk. “Though, I think I would have if I wasn’t in the Order. The constant moving and lying made things difficult.”

“I bet,” I agreed.

The peppy redheaded waitress came back to take our orders. The three of us spoke of normal things, carefully avoiding the messy subject of demons. Ethan and Harry talked sports. I occasionally chimed in but was too busy with my own thoughts to contribute anything valuable.

The ride to Clarice’s house was over too soon. I held Ethan’s hand as I walked up the cement stairs. My breakfast swirled in my stomach and I regretted drinking two cups of coffee. Her Prius was parked in the same spot on the street, evidence she hadn’t left. I knocked on the door and waited. She didn’t answer. I knocked again; nothing. My hand rested on the door knob. The metal had been warmed in the sunlight. I telekinetically shot back the deadbolt. I twisted the knob and pushed the door. It slowly creaked open.

Ethan put his hand out and went in first. I quickly followed. A pungent, metallic smell hit me. It was overwhelmingly sickening. Recognizing the scent, Ethan tried to turn me around. But it was too late. I gasped and turned into him, away from Clarice’s body.

“You don’t need to see this,” he said and gently pushed me near Harrison. My brother gripped my hand. In the movies, dead people’s eyes are closed. Clarice’s weren’t; the once hazel color muted with death. Her mouth was open, mockingly unnatural. Her wrists had been slit and she was lying in a large pool of her own blood. Harrison turned toward me, not able to look at the body any longer. Ethan tiptoed around her.

 
“There’s no knife,” he spoke aloud. This wasn’t suicide.

I watched Ethan inspect the body, not bothered by the brutality. He looked warily at me, nodded at Harrison and mouthed ‘get him outside’. Harrison’s grip on me had tightened, not to console me but to keep himself from passing out. The color had drained from his face and he wobbled a bit when he walked. We sat on the front steps. I linked my arm through his and rested my head on his shoulder, pretending to need his comfort while he recovered.

A million thoughts went through my head. Melcovel was indeed dangerous—obviously. I had to kill him. I had to. Clarice’s family was going to think she killed herself. It would be more than devastating. Who will call her mom? How do you tell someone you found their daughter dead and bloody on the floor? Would the police believe it was a suicide? Once they saw the destroyed walls, mirrors, and rooms, what would they think? And she held no knife, no shard of glass. Should I put one in her hand? Wouldn’t the crime scene investigators be able to tell it was planted? I hated that my questions were answered with more questions.

“She tried to summon him,” Ethan’s voice came from behind, startling Harrison and me. He sat down on my other side. “His symbol is on the wall. I’m guessing that’s why he killed her.”

“Wouldn’t he want that?” I asked slowly, my brain not fully functioning yet.

“No,” Ethan explained. “He was using her, and she failed. Some demons take offense to being summoned, as if humans are annoying telemarketers bothering them. Whatever power she tapped into must have reversed, and he got to her.”

“Is he out of the Nether?”

“No…well, I highly doubt it.”

“Then how did he kill her?”

Ethan made a face showing his disgust. “From the inside out.”

“Oh,” I said, now feeling a little dizzy.

Ethan put his hand on my thigh. “She did this to herself.”

“I know. And I know they say you reap what you sow, but she didn’t deserve to die.”

“No,” Ethan agreed.

“So now what? Do we call the police?”

Ethan stood. “No. I know someone who can do us a favor.” He got his phone from his pocket. “It might cost us, though.”

Thinking me meant money, I simply nodded. He went back inside to make the call. I turned to my brother. “You ok?”

He put his elbows on his legs and held his head. “I think so.” After running a hand through his hair he looked at me, bewildered. “How do you do this?”

“I don’t know, Har. I have to I guess.”

“You’re calm! And Ethan-Ethan’s not even upset—”

“He’s used to it. Sorta comes with the job of being a demon hunter,” I interrupted, wanting to defend Ethan and keep him from seeming like a cold hearted freak. “And me, well, internally I’m not calm. I guess I’m used to dead people too, though not physically.” The image of Clarice’s body would be haunting me for a long time. “Hey,” I said suddenly, jerking away from Harrison. “I didn’t even think to try.” I stood, faced, the house and closed my eyes. Next door, a benign poltergeist hid car keys and stole the TV remote. She had a strong presence, but humor and lighthearted pranks were all I could pick up on.
 
Clarice’s house was vacuous of anything remotely spiritual. She had passed on…at least I had hoped.

“So,” I began, sitting next to my twin again. “When people ask you what you did over spring break, what are you going to tell them?”

Harrison laughed. “I have no idea.” He shook his head. “Saying I was black-out drunk most of the time will work. That way no one will question me for details.”

“Yeah,” I reluctantly agreed. “Sadly that is believable.” I sighed. “You have to tell me right away how the spell worked out on your friends. I think Kaylin’s gonna be pretty pissed at you for ditching her for the rest of spring break. I guess I could have done something about that.”

“She’s already pissed at me. She will be for a long time, I’d guess.”

“Why?”

“I broke up with her,” he replied casually.

I smacked his arm. “Harry! You don’t break up with people on vacation!”

“Why not?” He pushed my hand away.

“Because…it’s mean!”

“She’s mean!” he laughed.

“I know. And I’m glad you dumped her, I guess. When did you do it?”

“Last night.”

“You broke up with her over the phone! Please tell me it wasn’t a text.”

He grinned. I smacked him again. “No! I did talk to her. It was sorta mutual.”

“Bull! Guys say that when they don’t want to come off as assholes, which is what you are. At least have the guts to do it face to face!”

He shrugged. “I didn’t want to put it off. Let’s just say her true colors came out, and after everything last night and what you said before, I finally saw her for who she is.”

“What did she do?”

Harrison looked down. “She said you were weird.” The way he said it let me know that wasn’t all she had to say about me. I started to thank him but he cut me off. “I have to stand up for my little sister from time to time,” he teased.

“Please, I’m only twenty minutes younger than you.”

“Twenty-three,” he corrected.

“I can take care of myself,” I added.

“Trust me, I know you can.”

Ethan emerged from the house. “Ok, it’s settled.” He extended a hand to help me up. “We need to leave before anyone notices us anymore than they already have.”

The sick feeling came back. There was a dead body a few feet away from me. A bloody, dead, murdered body.

~*~

I stayed in the barn until dinner. I was safe from hallucinations, black holes into the twilight zone, and strange urges to wander. But I didn’t feel better. In fact, I felt worse. I wasn’t scared anymore. I was guilty.

“I know it’s not my fault,” I told Hunter, sitting on a pile of hay in Mystery’s stall. “So why do I feel so bad about it?” Ethan and Harrison didn’t understand. It upset me that Ethan found relief in Clare’s death. “We know for sure she won’t bother you,” he had said. She was a human. She had friends. She had a job. People would miss her, people would cry.

The stupidest part of this all was that I felt some responsibility for Mel not being put to death. Why hadn’t one of my relatives stabbed him? Our daggers instantly and permanently kill with a single stab. It just seemed lazy.

~*~

Dropping Harrison off at the airport Saturday evening was a tearful event for me. I was slowly starting to realize it was hard to trust people nowadays, since I’ve met more than one person who’s wanted to kill me in the last six months. Harry was one of the few people I trusted, and one of the even fewer who knew the truth about me. I didn’t want him to go.

The next day, I encouraged Ethan to go to the gym, and warned him that I’d most likely spend the rest of the day in the barn, playing with my horses. That and I wanted a quiet time to read about the Nether.

I didn’t know why I had skipped over the information about it in the BOS. Maybe the thought of another universe was too much to fathom. I knew my life is full of stuff that has no logic, but I was having a hard time wrapping my head around the idea of other worlds. Obviously they were real. I was going to have to leave it at that. I doubt I’d come across a scientific, hard piece of evidence that made the whole thing click with reason in my head. I grabbed the BOS and flipped to the section about the Nether.

The Nether is a kind of supernatural jail that was created by my Coven centuries ago. The demons, spirits or even human souls sent there supposedly cannot communicate with each other, since a retaliating gang of pissed off, powerful demons isn’t anyone’s idea of a picnic. The BOS described the Nether as a never ending hallway. A new thread—like a door—is created every time something is sent there. But, and here’s the kicker, every time you open the gateway to the Nether to send something in, you risk letting something out. And it took a complicated spell to even access the gateway. Tearing a hole in the thread, however, wasn’t too hard.

Melcovel had found a way to break through The Nether. Not physically, so there had to be another way he was doing it. If I could find Mel’s medium of communication, I could potentially get to him. And kill him once and for all.

My head felt too full of confusing knowledge. I looked at Hunter, sharing what I had just learned with him. So, if I could somehow find a way to open the Nether, where do you do something like that? Not in the house, for sure. The damage Clarice was able to cause alone was horrendous… He’d have to be contained, though, and away from people. “Oh!” I accidentally said out loud. I picked up the BOS and quickly thumbed through to section about circle casting.

I could put a circle inside a circle, inside a salt circle. I could be in it, keeping Mel out, or I could trap him inside. A wicked smile formed in my mind. Yes, this would work.

~*~

“Do you think it’s necessary?” René asked.

“Yes, of course.” I scuffed my feet along the gravel, inspecting the growing leaves on the apple trees that grew along the driveway. “He’s not dead. He’s just locked up.”

“Exactly, locked up and away from you.”

“But this Nether place doesn’t seem fool proof. Obviously, Mel was able to find someone to use. It’s only a matter of time until he does it again.”

“I don’t know Anora,” René said with a yawn and shook her head. “Clarice almost killed you, and she only had a fraction of his power.”

“I’ll know what to expect this time. And if I cast the circles, he can’t get me.” Contemplating the plan of action, neither of us spoke until I got the mail and went back into the house. I put the bills down on the counter and sat at the island.

“What does Ethan think?” René asked.

“I haven’t told him my new idea yet,” I replied quietly, since Ethan was in the family room. “But I don’t think he’ll go for it. If you haven’t noticed, he’s a bit protective of me.”

“Oh yeah, just a bit,” René laughed.

“Really, it makes sense. I mean, this Melcovel wants me dead. It’s stupid to ignore him. I should kill him now, since we know he won’t hesitate to kill me.”

“Well, when you put it that way, it does make sense,” she agreed.

“To me, this isn’t over. Clarice was a puppet. A stark raving mad puppet, but that’s all she was. She didn’t know who I was and never would have messed with me if Mel didn’t tell her to. For years, she was his bitch. Was he in her head twenty-four seven? Why did he pick me? Convenience? And if he did need me, and me only, did he know I would move here? I mean, why else would he crawl into a random teenager from Indiana’s mind? There’s just too many questions to say this is done and over with.”

“I understand that, but don’t you think there’s a reason for him being in the Nether in the first place?”

“Probably.” I had thought of that, and Ethan brought it up more than once. If he was easy to kill, he’d be dead. But I couldn’t live the rest of my life looking over my shoulder, waiting for Mel to strike. I’d have enough other crap to deal with for sure.

“Maybe you could get some of Ethan’s friends to help you,” René suggested.

I laughed. “Yeah, Sam
does
owe me.”

René yawned again before raising her eyebrows. “Why?”

“From killing the reapers,” I reminded her.

“Oh, right.” She yawned once more and put her head in her hands.

“Why are you so tired?”

She quickly looked up, a wild smile plastered on her face. “Crazy night with Tyler,” she said deviously and launched into full detail of her wild night. I tried to listen, really I did. I know I nodded and said ‘mmh-hmm’ at the right intervals, but I couldn’t help my mind from wandering.

Mel needed to die. Die a final death, one he couldn’t come back from. Doing this on my own really didn’t seem as feasible as I’d like it to, but I didn’t seem to have any other choice. Maybe René was right, getting help from other Order members would be the advantage over the demon I needed. The feeling that guns and ammo would do next to nothing against a chaos loving, hallucination inducing demon was all too real.

I felt almost guilty as I thought this, but Ethan’s friends weren’t what I needed. What I needed were friends like me: witches in the Coven of Sacred Guardians.

Chapter 15 - All Nightmare Long

The house was quiet; weak evening light filtered thought the curtained windows. I flicked on the kitchen light, disappointed to not have the tantalizing smells of dinner wafting in the air. Three days had passed since I had come up with my master plan to summon and kill Melcovel, three days filled with nothing but quality time spent with Ethan, Hunter, my horses, and my friends. A girl could get used to this.

Last night, Ethan went to bed not feeling well and woke up in the middle of the night vomiting. Refusing to admit he had caught a flu bug, he was still insisting he had food poisoning, though we had both eaten the same thing for dinner. I tucked him in bed, put a trashcan, a bottle of Gatorade, and a cup of ice chips on the nightstand and left him to come outside and do some much needed house work.

While I was at the store getting saltine crackers, Gatorade, and ginger ale for Ethan, a small display of brightly colored flowers caught my attention. The nursery they came from turned out to be close by the house, so I had to stop there on my way home. I didn’t know much, if anything, about gardening. I thought you simply picked flowers you liked and stuck them in the ground, with occasional watering. I was wrong.

A gardener told me that we live in planting zone 5A, which meant I needed plants that were suitable for our area. And since we weren’t out of the woods for possible frost, he suggested I choose ‘cool season flowers’. So that was how I ended up with a truck bed full of pink and purple pansies, yellow violas, yellow snapdragons, and multi colored petunias.

I stabbed the spade into the damp soil with more force than necessary. The blade sunk deep into the ground, until my new, light yellow gardening gloves got a dusting of dirt. I pulled it out, neatly piling a pyramid of black soil next to the hole. The spade hovered above the ground a few inches away from the first hole. I sank the blade into the ground, making another perfect hole. The knees of my jeans were muddy and wet by the time I was done with my first row of holes. I stood, dropping the spade and tugging at my pant legs. I moved the tray of pansies next to my neat row of holes and began plopping them in. After patting the dirt back around them, I wiped sweat off my forehead, unknowingly streaking dirt across my face. Today was hot. And humid. And blindingly sunny. But I wasn’t going to complain; summer weather was better than cold spring weather.

Once finally finished, I stood back and looked admirably my first attempt of gardening. I had kept the beds symmetrical on either side of the stairs that led to the porch, leaving a few feet on each side for the rose bushes I decided I would plant there sometime soon. I had hoped Ethan would mow the grass today; the week of unseasonably warm weather made it sprout up in the most hillbilly way. Convincing myself it was too humid to ride anyway, I sat on the riding lawn mower and, for the first time in my life, mowed the lawn.

Ethan was still in bed when I went upstairs to shower. He was sleeping, so I tip toed past him into the bathroom. Hunter, who was playing doctor as well as guard dog, napped patiently next to Ethan. I didn’t like seeing Ethan sick. Of course it was sad to see anyone you love sick, hurt or upset, but it was also unsettling. It was so out of character. I wanted to make him better.

I didn’t bother putting on makeup or doing my hair after the shower. I pulled on a pair of very short blue shorts and a tight, midriff showing white tank top. When July rolls around, this eighty degree heat might not seem so hot, but for right now, it was too much.

I gathered up the ingredients for chicken noodle soup. While it was cooking, I flipped through the BOS looking for a ‘cure the flu’ tea. I found one for settling upset stomachs and whipped up a batch. Just as I was putting the bowl of soup on a tray to bring upstairs, Ethan feebly walked into the kitchen.

“It smells good,” he said through chattering teeth. As if every movement was painful, he slowly sat at the island.

“You should go back to bed,” I told him as I placed the tray down in front of him.

“That’s it?” he asked, seeing the small bowl of soup.

“Yes.”

“I’m hungry.”

“Haven’t you ever been sick before?”

He put of spoonful of soup in his mouth and shook his head.

“You’re lying. Everyone gets sick.”

“Not me,” he insisted.

“I’m gonna ask Julia.” I picked up the thermometer I got at the store. “Can I take your temp now?”

He scolded at me. “I’m eating.”

I held it up. “It’s the one that goes in your ear.” He didn’t resist, evidence of him feeling really crappy. “One hundred and one,” I informed him, showing him the digital numbers.

Against my advice he had another bowl of soup and was in the bathroom throwing it up in a matter of minutes. This time he eagerly went back to bed.

“Do you want more ice chips?” I asked as I pulled the down comforter over his chest.

“Yes,” he said weakly. He asked if I would sit with him after I gave him the cup of ice. I climbed under the covers next to him, running my fingers through his hair. I felt truly bad for him; it seemed every time he was just about asleep he had to throw up or race to the bathroom.

I snuck out of bed when he finally fell asleep, with a question heavy on my mind. I waited until I was up on the turret to call Julia. I was only able to get the ‘hell’ of ‘hello’ out before Julia interrupted me.

“Are you ok?” she asked, panicked.

“Uh, yeah,” I responded immediately, confused.

“Oh, good.” She let out a loud sigh of relief.

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

“I called Ethan last night and he never called me back.”

“Oh, he’s sick. He has the flu.”

“Really? That sucks. He’s a giant baby when he’s sick, isn’t he?”

“Yes,” I agreed, feeling better knowing that maybe Ethan was overreacting.

She laughed. “He won’t admit it, but he completely turns into this whiney, demanding baby and refuses to go to the doctor. Thank God he doesn’t get sick often.
 
The last time I remember was his freshman year of college. He got strep throat over spring break and we were all ready to kill him before the week was over. His lymph nodes swelled so big and he didn’t eat for two days. I was so worried I had to bribe him to see the doctor.”

Julia sounded so motherly just now. I knew she was older than Ethan, but I wasn’t sure by how much.
 
“I’m sure you’re taking good care of him,” she told me.

“I’d like to think so. I made him homemade chicken noodle soup.”