Psyched (17 page)

“
Ego sum Deus illae terra
,” rumbled a voice so deep she more felt it more than she heard it. “I am the god of this domain. I am all that is holy in this wicked world that I rule. Bow before me or suffer your fate.”

Aisi rolled her eyes. If she were being honest with herself, she would admit she’d never been as frightened of a demon as she was at that moment, but his change in form suddenly cleared her muddled mind. She had vanquished demons before. This was nothing new—he was just a pesky fly buzzing around her. A big one, sure, but she could handle this. “
Absum, malum unus!
Be gone, evil one! Go back to your pit of despair in the name of the
real
holy one.” His grotesque form, half man and half goat standing on hind legs, started to fade as she swallowed her fright and stood fearless before him. The more he faded, the deeper and angrier his growl became.

“
Sum non fecit
…” Malus snarled. His shoulders hunched forward as he glided effortlessly back, slinking into the nearby shadows.

“We’re not done?” Aisi repeated his words, calling after him as she watched him skulk away and vanish in the dark. “We are for now, loser. Peace out!” When she couldn’t see him anymore, she took a deep breath to steady herself, suddenly aware that every inch of her trembled. She stumbled back and turned to look for Vance, still huddled behind a bush. She tried to smile at him as she walked behind it and offered a hand to help him up. “There’s my knight in shining armor.”

Vance shuddered and shook more than she did. “Aisi, how did you…?” He couldn’t say anything else for a moment as he tried to steady himself. “I thought when I came here for my project I might be lucky to get a few EVPs. Take a few pictures with floating blobs and I could spend the rest of the term debating with my professor why it was proof of the paranormal. I never imagined…” His voice trailed off as he ran shaky fingers through his sandy hair, making it stand on end.

“You never imagined what?” she asked, putting her hands on her hips and staring at him. “That it’s real? That creatures this powerful and evil exist for reals? Welcome to my life.”

His radiating fear steadied her even more. He’d been the strong one when she was confused and upset. Seeing him so afraid of this world she lived with every day jolted her back to the lead role in her alternate reality. She had to reclaim control of her universe. She was the one who had to figure it all out, not him. She stood there, lost in thought for a while as sense began to emerge from the jumbled mess of her thoughts.

Vance said hesitantly, “Uh…Aisi?” His eyes searched hers as he bent close, looking for something she couldn’t define, as they stood alone under the misty light from the street lamp on a deserted road in the middle of the night.

She shook her head to clear it, her bright and determined eyes, so light green they were almost white, shining up at him. “Something is feeding him. We have to find out who and why.”

“Feeding?” Vance queried. He still looked pale and shaky.

Aisi nodded firmly. “A demon has to feed off someone. He has a source of strength. Since I’m pretty sure my dad isn’t doing it, I have to work with the other things Father J showed me tonight.”

“So what does that mean?” Vance asked, putting his arm around her shoulder as they headed back down the street to his truck.

“It means you and I are going to pay Monica a little midnight visit.”

Chapter 17 Inside Kalen’s Head

Aisi buckled herself into the front seat of Vance’s truck, wondering where to start. Would Monica run away after seeing her stepdad with the burrito lady? Where should she begin? She had no idea. A quick glance at the analog clock in the old truck’s dashboard told her most people would not be happy to answer their doors for a stranger at such an indecent hour. Just as Vance jumped in beside her, the answer to all her questions pealed down the street going way too fast.

Kalen’s white, dinged-up, tiny car almost spun out on the gravel collected on the side of the road as he barreled past them and turned the corner. His brakes squealed and the tail end of his dirty little car swerved out of control, nearly rolling into the ditch between the road and the house on the corner before he righted it and kept plowing down the street. Where was Officer Padelski for the smack down when you really needed him?

Aisi pointed at the rapidly disappearing tail lights. “If anyone knows where to find her, it will be Kalen,” she insisted as Vance jerked the key and the truck sputtered to life. “Follow him!”

Vance gunned his engine and spun out quickly to follow the white car. He grinned as he held tightly to his shaking steering wheel. Clearly the truck was too old to take such abuse, but Vance still looked pleased with himself. “I always wanted to do that, you know, like in the movies.”

She smiled back at him faintly, but she still wore a grim expression as she kept her eyes locked on the white car. Her mind spun faster than Kalen’s little tires on gravel as she fixated on three things.

The grandpa.

The mom.

The girl who hated her.

It didn’t take long for them to reach the apartment parking lot they had left in vision so recently. A wide open dumpster which reeked of rotting junk food and dirty diapers welcomed them back. Kalen parked crookedly in a spot near Monica’s building, under a street light which flickered and buzzed above them. The door to Kalen’s car flew open and he jumped out, looking pale and more scared than she’d ever seen anyone look. Aisi almost smiled. For all his swagger in the halls at school, he sure didn’t seem to handle fear very well.

“Kalen!” she called before he could bolt out of sight in the darkness. “Kalen, stop!”

He jerked to a halt and turned around, surprised to hear his name. “Who is it?” he yelled out, his body rigid, looking uncertain if he should stop or keep going. His fists balled tight, ready to fight.

“Kalen…down, boy. It’s okay. It’s Aisi,” she said, stepping into the light nearest the dumpster so he could see her.

He stopped with a sigh, and his fists unclenched as he relaxed a bit. “Look, Aisi, I don’t have time to worry about you and Zinnia right now, okay? Monica is…” He stopped to choose his words carefully. “She’s kind of in trouble and I need to find her dad.”

She approached him, with Vance following closely behind her. “Trust me, Kalen. I could care less about whatever people told you at school today. This isn’t about me or Zinnia. I know what’s going on with Monica, and I think I can help.”

Kalen shook his head vigorously, dancing impatiently on the spot. “No, you seriously don’t. I need her dad.”

“You look really nervous,” Aisi said soothingly. “What happened?” She reached for his hand, hoping it would work.

It did.

The moment she touched his hand she saw Kalen on the porch of a dilapidated house. The broken windows stood black against the peeling white paint on the clapboard walls. Of course…her old house. Again.

Dim and dancing light rose from the porch floor, and she looked closer to see candles covering it. Monica sat in the center of the candles, her legs crossed and her eyes closed, surrounded by a circle of tea light candles flickering defiantly against the chilly night air. Their heat and light glimmered, oblivious to the mist. Beyond the circle in which she sat, a clover leaf pattern emerged, and each clover leaf had a circle in its center. In the center of each of the smaller circles, a five pointed star blazed in tiny flame.

It was the same symbol now carved into Zinnia’s leg: the pentacle.

As Aisi looked closer, she could see Monica humming and rocking back and forth in the ring of flames. The dim orange light of the candles somehow illuminated her face a shadowy red. Even though her eyes were closed, she drew the five pointed star over and over with a red marker on the ground in front of her, and her lips moved almost imperceptibly as she mumbled something only she could hear. Each move she made escalated as she rocked, her swaying becoming more violent. Her quiet muttering grew into louder, incoherent screams. From the corner of her eye Aisi could see Kalen backing away nervously, telling the girl, “Look, Monica, this is getting weird. I think we—”

A sharp crack, louder than a clap of thunder, ripped through the air. Kalen jumped. He ran back to the circle, trying desperately to get Monica’s attention. He kicked the candles aside and pulled her arm, but she refused to move. Behind the house, another explosion sent bits of rock and rubble shooting toward them. Red light flashed like lightning from the ground. The portal was open.

“MONICA!” he shrieked, his arms instinctively shooting up to cover his head as rock and broken concrete fell and littered the porch around them. “Monica, we have to go! We have to…”

His voice trailed off as a shadowy figure emerged from the angry red chasm in the hillside, exposed after the explosion. One large, shadowy figure stepped slowly toward them. The red light vanished behind black shadows, which zoomed away and exposed the light again, flitting around Monica, who finally smiled and opened her eyes.

The large figure, towering above the petite girl sitting on the porch, growled down at her in approval. Malus, now solid, stood before her with the well-muscled body of a man. Crimson eyes gleamed vindictively in his ram’s head, coiled black horns shining in the smoky red haze around him. “Well done, girl.”

She stood, not daring to look up at him. “I did what you told me. I want my mother now.”

The black shadows danced gleefully around the remains of the candle formation, blacker than the black of the night sky. They suddenly encircled her, blocking her from leaving or moving. Her expression changed to one of fear and then anger as she finally looked up at the fearsome creature over her. He snarled, a wicked grin gracing his face, eyes alight with pleasure.

“You are such an ungrateful child.” He clucked his tongue with disapproval. “I gave you the power to call forth all the creatures of the underworld and all you want,” he hissed, “is your
mommy
?”

Monica stood her ground. “Yes. I want my mother. You made me a bargain. I call you back and I get my mother. Now where is she?”

Aisi raised her eyebrows with grudging respect. It took her years to understand, not to fear what she saw when the demons surrounded her. Monica was more than a little scary at school, but Aisi had to admire this kind of fearlessness. The girl had guts.

The hideous creature moved to step aside, and she took a quick stride away before he stopped her. “
Tuo meus
,” he growled. The black shadows all around suddenly attacked. She shrieked in fear and pain as she fell, and the shadows engulfed her.

You are mine
, Aisi repeated in her head as she watched helplessly. She wanted to run in and stop them, but it was a vision, nothing more than an echo of what already happened.

Jerked back to reality, she dropped Kalen’s hand after patting it awkwardly. Vance raised his eyebrows at her, and she nodded subtly at him to answer his unasked question.

“She’s just…she’s in some trouble and her dad is the only one who can help,” Kalen tried to explain. “She got into some crazy, like, voodoo crap or something and I’m worried she’s going to get hurt.” He looked like he might cry, he was so scared and upset. “I don’t want her to get hurt.”

“Kalen, I know. Let me—” She reached forward again and grabbed for him as he turned to leave.

“Let me go!” Kalen yelled, jerking away as Vance reached out to keep him from leaving. “She needs help!”

A few dogs began to bark nearby, and a light in the nearest apartment flipped on. Aisi moved in front of him and grabbed his shoulders firmly. She spun him around to face her. Looking him squarely in the eye, she said, “Kalen, you need to shut your cake hole and listen carefully. There is nothing you can do to help Monica now. She isn’t into voodoo. She just opened up a sealed portal and summoned a whole bunch of demons.”

The color drained from his face. “Demons?” he whispered. He turned green, looking like he might spew. “And I helped her,” he whispered weakly, but then he glared at Aisi suspiciously. “Wait, how do you know all this?”

“Does it matter?” she demanded impatiently. “If you want to help her, you should go home. Unless you really want to see that giant beast with the horns chasing you again?” She cocked her eyebrows at him.

“Is this some kind of joke?” he demanded, getting a little swagger back. “How could you know that? This just happened. Did you and Zinnia put all this together to punk me or something? Because this is not funny.”

Vance sighed and stepped in. “You’re not worth her time, dude, but we have a chance to save Monica. Just go home. Roll around in some holy water. Say every prayer you know, because they’ve seen you, and they’ve marked you.” He reached out and yanked Kalen’s arm. Turning the fleshy under part of his arm upward, Vance showed Kalen angry claw marks scratched into his flesh.

Kalen jerked his arm away and started at his own arm. “How did you know that was there? I didn’t even…”

Vance pulled up his own shirt sleeve and thrust his arm forward so Kalen could see the rough scrapes gouged into his own arm. “It’s just that kind of a night, man. Go home. They’ve claimed you, and they can find you again.”

Kalen didn’t need another warning. Instead of running into an apartment, he turned and bolted across the street.

Chapter 18 Little Black Book

Aisi looked down and shook her head as the front door of Kalen’s house slammed shut. She shuddered, overcome with the night’s chill. She folded her arms tightly across her chest, suddenly aware that she still wore only a hoodie. The night’s darkest, coldest hours had come, and they seemed to her like the worst she’d ever experienced. She shivered, but this time not with the chill. She closed her eyes for a moment, and when she opened them she stood motionless, staring at nothing in particular, her breath steaming and vanishing into the night’s mist.

“Aisi?” Vance stood beside her awkwardly; his own hands jammed into his hoodie pockets for warmth. He shrugged expectantly when she looked at him. “What now?”