The Reaping: Language of the Liar (5 page)

The other man’s face fell into a deeper frown, and he took the cigarette from his teeth, crushing it down in a nearby ashtray.  That done, he held out a hand, but she refused to take it and he closed his fingers into a fist.  “Fair enough.  My name is Dashiell, but you can call me Dash.  I take it you’ve made Lennox’s acquaintance over there?”

“You were both stalking me?”  Her voice came out in a harsh whisper, far weaker than she wanted to sound.  “You were at the café with him.”  She nodded at Lennox who had found whatever it was he was looking for.  He was walking to the kitchen table now, slapping the pages down on the scrubbed wooden top.

“I was, yeah.  And we prefer to call it tracking.  Less nasty, you know.”  Dash ran his fingers back through his unkempt hair and took a step back.  “He bother to explain at all why you’re here?”

Dorian was shaking and didn’t bother to hide it as she backed up further against the wall.  She could feel her phone pressing against her hip, wedged in her back pocket and if she could only get a second alone, she would be able to hit the emergency call button.  But right now, all eyes were on her.

“I went covert,” Lennox said after a second.  He set the flask down and folded his arms across his chest, turning his attention back to Dorian.

Dash groaned and rolled his eyes back to Dorian.  “Oh, bloody hell, he flirted didn’t he?”

She nodded, her breath coming in sharp gasps.  “Um.  Yeah.  Sort of.”

Dash shook his head, giving Lennox a withering glare.  “He’s the
worst
at flirting.  Not good with the ladies at all.”

“Like you’re better,” Lennox countered.  “At least I had some experience before I worked it out for myself.  You’ve never so much as kissed one.”

In spite of her nerves, Dorian put two and two together.  “Oh.  Oh.  You two are… you two?”

Dash waggled his eyebrows as Lennox took a step forward and cocked his head to the side.  “I was under the impression you weren’t one of the religious bigoted types.”

Dorian’s face went white.  “No I… no, I’m not.  It’s not that.  I just…”  She shook her head.  “What do you want from me?  Why the hell am I here?”

“The short of it?”  Lennox held out his hand, but she refused to take a step away from the wall.  “You’re being possessed.”

There was a pause so intense, Dorian thought for a moment everything in the room had frozen, including her.  Then a laugh bubbled and erupted, making tears form in her eyes.  She got herself under control almost immediately, her hand waving air into her face.  “I’m sorry.  I’m sorry because I can tell you’re serious but…
possessed
?  You’re kidding, right?  Is this where you make me feel like I’m insane before you murder me and cook me and serve me at a dinner party?”

Dash pulled a face.  “That’s a bit gross.  But he’s not lying.”

Dorian’s face went hard.  “Look, they tried all kinds of crap on me in the convent to try and get me to believe.  Granted, they didn’t try telling me I was possessed, but still.  I’m not interested in joining a cult.”

Dash and Lennox glanced at each other, then beckoned Dorian to the couch.  She didn’t move, and Dash threw up his hands.  “Look, we’re not barmy religious folk here, okay?  This isn’t some, we’re here to save your soul rubbish.”

Lennox stared at her, his mouth drawn in a thin line, and he took a seat in the chair facing her.  “You have a thing about doors, don’t you?”

Dorian’s giggles died and she felt her breath catch in her throat.  Unable to respond, she stared at him, her eyes large and terrified.

“And windows?  You hear voices sometimes, see things moving in the shadows.  At night you feel like your head is being used as a doorway for things just passing through.  And when you wake up, things are different.  Sometimes it’s subtle, your keys aren’t where you left them, or your shoes got moved from one side of the room to the other.  But sometimes it’s more than that.  Sometimes your window will be open, or your car will be parked six blocks away from where you left it.  You have missing time.  You’ve been diagnosed with something, possibly schizophrenia, maybe OCD.  And when you get angry, bizarre things happen.”  He paused and grinned for a second.  “Like coffee cups tipping over on their own.”

Dorian felt like she was floating outside her body, the shock setting in hard that these two men would have any idea what it was like for her. “Did you get my medical file or something?”

Lennox laughed and nodded to the couch.  As if unable to control herself, Dorian crossed the room, giving Dash wide berth as she made her way to the couch and sat.  After a second, she reached into her back pocket, then set her phone in the middle of the table.  Lennox regarded her for a long moment, then glanced at her phone before he answered.  “I don’t need to see your medical file, lass.  It’s all the same.  With everyone.”

“Everyone.”  Her voice echoed in the room, and it gave her shivers.

“There are more like you, Dorian.  Hundreds of thousands.  Seventeen percent of the human population.  Most of them aren’t as bad.  Some of them go their entire lives without being tapped.  But you…”  He trailed off, giving Dash a dark look.  “Something’s got its claws in you, and it’s powerful.”

She tried to swallow, but it got stuck in her throat and she gave a small cough, trying to regroup.  “Okay.  Okay,
what
?  Because whatever you’re trying to say, it’s not making any sense.”

Dash walked over, choosing to sit on the opposite side of the couch near Lennox, and he gave her a kinder look than his partner currently wore.  “I know it all sounds a bit mad.  We get it.  We, that’s to say Lennox and I, are part of an organization in charge of finding people like you.”

“Like me.”

He nodded.  “Tapped.  Possessed.  We call them doorways.”

Even the word sent chills down her spine and she shook her head.  “Why?  Why that word?”

The pair exchanged another look she couldn’t read, and this time Lennox answered.  “Because it’s what you are.  Born with it, unfortunately.  It’s why you have such an aversion to them.”

“To doors?”  She laughed and her head shook from side to side.  “Look, that’s… cute.  I guess.  But I already know why I have that issue.”

Lennox chewed on his lower lip for a second, as if contemplating his answer.  “I know what your doctors have told you.  I know they’ve got all the medical jargon and all the answers in their little text books.  But have they been able to explain why you can knock over coffee cups with your mind?”

Her face went red hot and she felt her breath trying to escape again.  “That’s… that hasn’t… doesn’t…”

“New, is it?”  Lennox glanced over at his partner.  “So it must mean they’ve only recently gained a steady foothold on her.  It’s promising.”

“If only a little,” Dash conceded.

“Hello!  I am sitting right here.  What the hell are you talking about?”

“Demons,” Lennox said, obviously done with beating around the bush.  He leaned forward, his arms resting over his thighs.  “I’m talking about a demon dimension.  Billions of them, in fact.  Some people call it hell, but it’s not quite that.  It’s something else, something normally benign to our own universe, only they’ve found a way in.  Through the mind of certain humans born with that tiny little opening in their subconscious.  A doorway.”

Rubbing her hand down her face, she fought back a frustrated laugh.  “You do realize you’re still making no sense, right?  A demon dimension using people as doorways to what?  Earth?”

“In a sense,” Dash said with a shrug, leaning back.  “Our doctors have come up with a billion ways of excusing people’s strange behavior.  And yeah, some people
are
just chemically imbalanced.  But not all of them.  And not
you
.”

This time she did laugh and she crossed her arms tightly over her middle.  “You’re trying to tell me that my entire life, my life of getting booted from foster homes and group homes and even state facilities because of my issues, weren’t really issues?  They were demons?”

Lennox’s face fell and he glanced over at Dash.  “Your entire life?”

Letting out a bitter laugh, Dorian shook her head.  “Yeah.  Since I was two, in fact.”

Dash and Lennox’s eyes went wide and both let out a small sigh.  “I didn’t realize,” Lennox replied after a second.  “It doesn’t change things, not really.  But I didn’t realize it had been going on since you were that young.”

Her cheeks began to ache with her smile, and she glanced over at the door, contemplating her escape route.  “Listen… I mean, I get what you’re saying.  I’ve met people like you, okay?  When I was sixteen, I was in this foster home and this guy was really into occult stuff.  He told me everything I had going on was because a demon had a hold of me and…”  She trailed off with a laugh, remembering how much she liked Grant.  He was cute and he paid her attention which didn’t happen often shuffled from home to home.  She felt so stupid afterward.

“I was into it, you know, because I thought if there was some simple solution to all my problems, if I could just stop taking all these goddamn meds and sleep like a normal person and not have… not have…”  She waggled her fingers near her temple and cleared her throat.  “All these thoughts and ticks which made every decent foster family send me packing, maybe it would all be okay.  I got so into it.  Stupidly.  He did this exorcism thing, burning sage and other stuff.  I remember screaming and howling until I thought the roof would cave in.”

Lennox and Dash were watching her, eyes hooded, but with rapt attention.  “Sage?”  Lennox’s voice was soft, not mocking, but very curious.

Dorian’s head nodded up and down.  “I remember feeling dizzy and loopy after.  He told me I was cured.  And you know the funny thing was, I felt great.  What I didn’t consider was maybe my meds were doing their job, and then I stopped taking them.  Next thing I knew, I had an episode.  They locked me in psych for six months.”

The men exchanged pained looks, and Dash reached over to touch her leg, but Dorian flinched away.  He dropped his hand and let out a sigh.  “Look, we’re not here to tell you we have a simple solution.  It’s not easy going through what you go through.”

“How the hell would you know, anyway?”  Her voice was raw and bitter, and her throat tight with unshed tears.

Lennox looked at the floor as he answered.  “Because we know people who’ve been there.  People like you.  Some of them worse.  We don’t always have the answers, and we
don’t
have an easy fix.”

Dorian’s eyebrows shot up.  “So what the hell am I doing here?”

“You have potential.  There’s… it’s…”  Lennox floundered, running his hand back through his hair in frustration.  “We’ve got a way to prove it.  If you’ll let us.”

Her eyes were narrow and she crossed her arms.  “Oh yeah?  Some crazed sex ritual or something?”

Dash barked a laugh, but Lennox didn’t find it funny.  “We can draw the demon out, make it so you can remember every time it visits you.  It’s a ritual, yes, but it’s just symbols.”

Dorian felt panic well in her stomach and she took in a breath.  “Can I use your bathroom?”

“Down the hall, first door on the right,” Dash said with a wave of his hand.  As she got up and started down the hall, she heard him call after her. “There’s no window in there, love.  So if you’re thinking about trying to run…”

She slammed the door, cutting off his words.  He was right, there was no window.  Just a tiny, closet-sized room with a standing shower, toilet, and sink.  Dorian was barely reigning in her panic attack as she stood with her face pointed down at the small, half-rusted faucet.  She realized after a moment, there were no mirrors there.

But no.  There was
no
way these guys were going to be right about her.  No damn way.  She was not possessed.  She hadn’t come this far in her therapy to regress back to her emo teenage years where she wanted her issues to be anything but her own brain.

Splashing water on her face, she patted herself dry with a slightly sour towel, then leaned against the door.  She could run, sure.  Easily.  But they’d catch her.  They were already prepared for her escape.  She could also agree to the ritual, provided it didn’t involve either of them forcing themselves on her or drinking anything strange.  Maybe if she complied, they’d let her go.

Still, she wasn’t sure they weren’t going to murder her and turn her into a lampshade.

A small voice in the back of her head told her not to agree to anything.  To run.  To fight.  To claw their faces off and escape, because they would hurt her.  What they wanted to do was dangerous.  Dangerous to her and to others.

It was a bizarre thought, and she shook her head, trying to regain control.  She had to keep her head about her right now.  She couldn’t give in to her condition, to the voices and the paranoia.  Her next steps were critical.

Pressing her ear to the door frame, Dorian cracked the door and closed her eyes.  Concentrating, she could just make out what Lennox and Dash were saying.

“…abused.  I mean it’s obvious.”  Lennox sounded stressed, trying to keep his voice down.

“I get it.  We’ve seen enough of them coming through.  But whatever’s got her, you’re right.  It’s strong.  You really want to just let her walk out and trot on home?”