The Second Sign (10 page)

She wasn’t alone anymore. His eyes narrowed at the
approaching male figure. The fool knew nothing about their kind and
was supposed to be the key. A fool with a key is a deadly
thing.

The couple faded from his vision, and he headed west
toward a girl on a bike racing home. Killing the girl was not
enough. Naite meant to have her soul. But the taking of this soul
was personal.

There is no peace for the wicked. So he heard.

Marty stopped her bike, narrowing her eyes at him. A
smile broke on her face as he approached. “You scared me,” she
said, almost relieved. “When did you get back?”

He shrugged.

“Have you seen her? I feel terrible—”

“Don’t,” he said harder than he intended. “It
doesn’t matter,” he whispered to her, close enough to take in her
pungent scent.

She stiffened. Her wide, blue-gray eyes turned a
milky glaze.

“Do come back to me when you are finished. We have
work to do.” He leaned toward her frozen frame and planted his cold
lips on her warm ones. A pressing darkness coiled around his chest,
ready to burst forth into the vessel in front of him. Dark energy
flowed in his veins and coalesced inside his throat. He blew into
her mouth.

She shuddered, but did not convulse, which was a
good thing. It meant she was his.

***

Marty entered the two-story colonial home just
beyond the lake. Mom worked in the kitchen, baking. She always lost
weight for the summer but always managed to gain it back during the
holidays. Dad played pool with Toby, her nine-year-old brother.

She knew Dad kept the shotgun in the garage above
the planks and rafters. The bullets he kept locked in a tool case
near the Escalade. The keys attached to the hook with the rest of
his keys—the gym he ran, the truck he used for work, the supply
case at the high school. The key she needed was a small one with a
blue rubber in-slip. She took it out with calm fingers. The shotgun
she already laid out to be fed the bullets. Resting the barrel on
her shoulder with one hand, she reached into the front closet,
pulled out the sledgehammer, and left it leaning against the wall
near the door.

Mom hummed a tune she always sung when in one of her
good moods, Aretha Franklin’s “Respect.”

“Marty, is that you?” she called as Marty locked the
garage door.

Marty didn’t respond. She couldn’t. Her voice box
was locked up and she didn't have a key. She opened the kitchen
door and stepped inside.

Her mother wore her bright pink fedora with her
matching pink striped blouse and pink skirt with an apron tied
around her round frame. She turned and looked at Marty. Her smile
slipped, her brows creased as if she didn’t recognize Marty. As if
Marty were some unknown creature of the night. A demon.

Marty wanted to remind her that she was her
daughter. That she loved Marty just as Marty loved her. Marty
wanted to tell her that she forgave her for forcing her to break up
with Mikey. Mom was right. He was bad news. Marty wanted to tell
her that she liked her birthday present—a matching fedora—and she
wanted to tell her mother to run.

Nothing came out.

“Marty, wha—” she began, but Marty already lowered
the shotgun and aimed it at her.

Marty pulled the trigger. A blast echoed throughout
the house. Mom's eyes looked like they were going to fall out of
their sockets. A deep red stain swirled under a large tear in the
fabric of her blouse, her mouth an oval of shock and pain. More
shock, Marty thought. The pain wouldn’t come until later. Mom fell
in a heap of scattered flour and butter. Blood pooled around her,
staining the white linoleum floor. Her body jerked once and then
stilled.

Dad bolted into the kitchen, a gurgling scream
whispered out of his throat. He couldn’t see Mom behind the tall
island he installed last summer after she ranted she needed more
counter space. Dad was good to her.

This time she aimed too high and managed to blast
half his face off. He lunged back, hitting the white walls now
streamed with red and chunks of scalp and brains. He slid to the
floor, leaving a thick, red stain on the wall. A nice added color
to the paleness of the kitchen. Marty liked red.

She dropped the shotgun and walked over her dad,
taking care not to slip on the blood around him. In the living
room, she picked up the sledgehammer she’d left waiting for her,
and strolled up the steps.

“Toby?” she heard herself call in the warmest,
sisterly voice that wasn’t her own. “Toby, where are you?”

She held the sledgehammer with both hands. Heavy and
clunky, but it would do the job. She reached the top of the stairs
and went into Toby's room.

“Marty, what happened?” Tears streamed down his
cheeks, snot clung to his lips.

“It's okay, Toby. Everything is going to be so much
better.”

A Truce

Gabby ran through the foliage along the edge of the
forest near the lake feeling as if she were on the edge of
existence. The bank was soft under the soles of her shoes. She
memorized the trail, every outstretched branch, every gnarled root
and mossy patch. The lake to her left whizzed by, throwing shadowed
movements in her peripherals. But her focus was the few moments of
time and space ahead of her. Everything else was background
noise.

Running had been the only thing she had really been
good at. Better even than Max. Those angel wings and healing powers
made him majestic, but he was no match for her on the ground.
Though tall for her age, Gabby made sure she was in top shape,
which gave her the advantage of beating people up, especially boys
with baseballs. Wisps of hair rimmed her face, and she absently
blew it out of her eyes. She had begged Max to let her cut it. He
was adamant, scared even, when he told her no.

“Gabby,” he had said in his most sincere voice, “we
are not...normal.”

Yeah, nothing new there. Needless to say, she didn’t
cut it. She didn’t want to risk the world on account of her long,
black hair. Instead, she pulled it up and strung it around into a
very tight bun on the crown of her head. Another band wrapped
around it and, bam, instant hair-be-gone.

She heard a watercraft humming close. She stopped,
stooped down to breathe, and peered between the foliage to see
Jake.

He cupped his mouth with his hands and yelled,
“Gabby! I know you’re in there!”

Her stomach knotted and without even thinking, she
bolted deeper into the thicket, leaving his echo behind her. She
hadn’t spoken to Jake in two days. Since the incident at Pat’s
cottage, he’d called her, having found her number from somewhere,
but she refused to answer. Not taking the hint, he stopped by her
house a few times to pound on her door and left when she didn’t
answer. Jake itched for an adrenaline rush, she knew that for
certain. It would only be a matter of time before he forgot about
her. Easy to ignore him from afar, she kept flanking him.

Max hadn’t made an appearance and she was beginning
to worry. Had he not been an angel and practically immortal, she
would have called the cops. She didn’t understand why Max would
send her to the lake house and disappear if he was so scared she
was going to do something stupid. Though she’d argue she was
usually at the receiving end of stupidity. She also needed to tell
him about Father Kane.

Born six minutes after Max made her younger than him
and also the reason her mother died. According to the stories
Annabel, their nurse, told them on every year up until their
eleventh birthday, Max arrived wailing. His little, pink hand moved
in rhythm to his deep crying. Mom had reached out for him and
touched him, just barely, on the toes as the nurses bundled him up
and began cleaning his air passages.

Then Mom stopped breathing. The doctor had to
perform an emergency C-section to get Gabby out. Gabby wasn’t
breathing. After they failed at resuscitating her, and after being
dead for two minutes, Gabby’s lifeless body was brought closer to
her twin who extended his hand and touched her. He stopped crying
and Gabby started.

“You were named Gabriela by me, who held you while
your brother brought you life,” Annabel said while looking to Max
with an air of devotion.

Annabel died when Gabby was eleven, just before her
freaky gift manifested. Gabby had always believed her story. The
thought of Gabby being some miracle baby was better than just being
normal. But the string of bad luck that followed her could not
happen to a blessed baby, so she started to believe that Annabel
had made up the story.

Gabby ran back home. She hoped Max would show
himself today. Although she wanted to be alone and didn’t want to
risk mayhem on her perfect day, being alone hurt.

Max hadn’t shown up. The house was exactly how she
left it. She jumped in the shower. By the time she got out, steam
clung to everything. She threw on a floral, summer dress that
hugged all the right places of her body. She swiped the mirror to
look at herself and bit back a scream. Her demon stared back at
her, the dark man with the blood red clothes. The one who followed
her here. The one who held a thousand screams wedged in his throat.
She bit down hard, not wanting to add her own to the mix.

Demons were usually just influence peddlers,
whispering in people’s ears. Sometimes, if they were strong enough,
they could be ranked up to possession level and take over the free
will of anyone. It didn’t matter how faithful or faithless you
were. All you had to do was believe it possible. The faithful
believed in Heaven and Hell. The faithless usually believed in just
Hell.

“What do you want?” she asked.

“The Second Sign.” Though the demon in the mirror
spoke, it was Gabby who held the words in her throat. She saw
herself through his eyes.

Ants crawled under her flesh, oozing out of her
pores. A scream held in her throat as she smacked them away from
her skin, but there were millions of them covering every inch of
her flesh, turning her into a black carcass. She shut her eyes
tight. The world did flips inside her mind, and her world spun.
When she opened them, her reflection stared back at her. No ants.
No demon.

She stepped out of the bathroom, her heart pounding.
If she were human, she would think it a hallucination and think
nothing of it. But she wasn't. Visions like these were to be taken
seriously. Yet she had no grasp of the spiritual realm. She'd never
been involved with Max's work. That's it. Maybe Max was here. The
message must be for him. She ran downstairs just as the house phone
rang, lifting it off its cradle without looking at the caller
ID.

“Max?” her voice broke. She closed her eyes willing,
herself to calm and breathe a sigh of relief. Max had come.

“No, it’s Jake.”

She swiped again at her flesh, still feeling the
bugs on her body. She opened her eyes and felt a tingling sensation
sweep through her.

“Hey, you okay? You want me to come over?”

“No...I mean yes, I’m fine. And no, I don’t want you
to come over.”

“Well, too late. You shouldn’t leave the veranda
open.”

Gabby turned to look and sure enough. She hung up
the phone.

Jake stood inside wearing a thin white tee with
rugged blue jeans and riding boots. His dark hair stuck out every
which way, and a smile revealed gleaming white teeth against a
backdrop of tan skin.

Get a grip, Gabby. Remember him kissing Alexi. She
sucked in the panic that gripped her and met him out on the porch.
“You don’t take no too well, do you?” she asked.

He shrugged. “I tend to do and ask later. You okay?
You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

She let out a deep breath, grateful that she wasn’t
alone. “Yeah, I’m just waiting for my brother.”

He lowered his eyes to her dress. “Are you going
out?”

“My birthday,” she blurted before the implication
dawned on her.

With the familiar smile, he dug his hand in his
pocket. “Tomorrow, I know. I wanted to see you.” He opened his
hand, and in it was a small wrapped box.

Gabby stammered back, and her blood stopped cold.
“No,” she whispered. Birthdays for her should not be
celebrated.

“I wanted to,” he said, opening up the box and
revealing the silver angel pendant she’d seen at Elle’s. He lifted
the chain, the moonlight glinting off the smooth surface of the
pendant.

Finding a wedge in her throat, she swallowed, the
words stuck in her throat.

“Turn around so I can put it on you.”

Still unable to move, she found her voice. “You
shouldn’t—”

“Too late.” He stepped closer, inches from her face,
and she stopped breathing. “Turn around.” He cocked a brow as if
warning her to fight him.

For a brief second she thought about denying the
gift. What was he going to do, strap her down and force her to wear
it? But he wouldn’t understand, and she couldn’t bear to see the
hurt in his eyes, the disappointment, regardless if he had screwed
up and kissed Alexi. Turning, she lifted her hair. His breath was
warm on her neck and his fingers brushed the soft flesh there. A
steady vibration coursed through her body.

“Where are you going?” he asked, turning her around
to look at the pendant that now hung close to her heart. His gaze
trailed the silver chain, the hollow of her neck, and his piercing,
green eyes fell on hers.

All the fear of the last day fled from memory. Max.
Kane. The demon. All of it a blur compared to Jake. He was her
light in the darkness, and she couldn’t help but to feel as if
someone was going to pinch her from this dream. Too good to be
true.

She wanted to lie to him, to tell him she was going
out with some friends. But he knew everyone her age in this town,
and none were her friends. “My brother is coming to pick me up.”
Lame, shoot her now.