Vampires in Devil Town (17 page)

Twenty-four

The threesome lazed on the hillside. Lazed as much as they could, anyway. Their ears were all a little sharper. Their eyes a little shiftier. Their reflexes a little tighter. Jacob had retrieved an old blanket he kept in the back of the car and threw it down over the grass. They all stared at the bowl of the hollow, waiting for something to happen and each of them were probably thinking the same old cliché: “A watched pot never boils.”
  “It’s getting chilly,” Rain said, crossing her legs over each other, tugging Rachel’s shorts down as far as they would go.
  “It’ll be getting dark soon,” Jacob said.
  “Then it will only get colder,” Rain said.
  “I meant, maybe it will be over soon.”
  “Yeah... over,” Rain said, wondering exactly what that meant.
  Rachel sat quietly, Rain on her left and Jacob on her right. She stared up at the sky, as though willing darkness to come or mentally pushing it away. Jacob took the opportunity to look at her. Even though they had been together nearly constantly for over two years he still liked looking at her. The way her dark hair, tinged with just a little red, fell behind her ears, the absolute flawlessness of her skin. If they were not in the middle of all of this, he didn’t think he would have been able to keep his hands off her. Another thought crushed him. What if this really
was
the end? Not of the Devils, but of them? What if tonight was the night they died? And what if they could not be together in death? What if all of that were just superstition and the dreamings of Christianity? What if he never, after tonight, had the chance to look at her again? What if he never had the chance to hold her, to slide inside of her, to feel the heat that seemed to grow and pulse around him?
  Rain disturbed him from his musings.
  “Shit, guys, did you see that!” she blurted.
  “What?” he and Rachel said simultaneously, immediately alert.
  “Something... Down there,” she pointed toward where they all apparently thought the house should have been.
  “I don’t see anything,” Rachel said.
  “Me either,” Jacob said.
  “I saw
something
,” Rain said. “I know I did.”
  “Well what the hell was it?” Rachel asked.
  “I thought it was a man.”
  “A man?”
  “Yeah. But I don’t see him now either. It was just a second. I swear I saw him. He took a couple of steps, looked up towards the sky, and then he was gone.”
  “I guess we could go look around,” Jacob said. “Did you just see one person?”
  “Yeah, one person. It was a guy.”
  “Was it Bones?” Rachel asked.
  “No, it wasn’t Bones. Definitely not Bones.”
  They all stood up at the same time. Jacob brandished the tire iron out in front of him. “Do you think a tire iron is a cool weapon?” he asked.
  “No,” Rachel said.
  “Why not?”
  “I think it’s a desperate weapon. It’s like what people use when they’re not prepared. It’s like having to wipe yourself with leaves if you get stuck out in the woods.”
  “But it’ll do the trick, right?”
  “That depends on what we’re dealing with, I guess.”
  “For the sake of safety, let’s pretend it’ll do the trick.”
  “Okay, it’ll do the trick.”
  “And let’s pretend it’s a cool weapon.”
  “Okay, it’s a cool weapon,” Rachel said.
  “The coolest,” Rain said.
  Jacob led the way down the hill. A nearly palpable sense of dread enclosed him as they reached closer to the bottom, where the foul house should sit. Jacob knew it was them, working whatever power it was they had. The darkness seemed to increase the farther down they went. It grew colder.
  “Where do you think this ghost thing would have been going?” Rain asked.
  “Well, town is that way,” Rachel pointed to her right, toward the woods rising up the smaller hill there. “Through the reserve.”
  They universally turned in that direction.
  “I’m starting to get a really bad feeling,” Rachel said.
  “Yeah,” Jacob said.
  “Yeah,” Rain said.
  “Like the proverbial shit is about to hit the fan,” Jacob said.
  “Exactly,” Rachel said.
  “Good thing I have this tire iron,” Jacob said, and then added, “The coolest weapon in the world.”
  They moved slowly, the ground beneath their feet feeling almost marshy. Reaching the edge of the woods, they stood still, peering into the darkness. In the woods, it was already dark, it was already nighttime. Not one of them saw what was in the woods. The two wolves looked at the three humans and growled lowly, nearly inaudibly. Not one of the three of them heard this, but goosebumps pimpled each of them, chills shivering down their spines. And each of them had a flickering moment where they thought maybe they shouldn’t be here, maybe here was much much more dangerous than they had at first suspected.

Twenty-five

Bones knew it wasn’t all the way dark yet but he didn’t think he could stay buried underground any longer. Boredom and restlessness begged him to move. Raising his arms from the damp soil, he cleared the dirt away from his face, standing up, smelling it in his nose. It was odd that he could smell everything so strongly without breathing. He didn’t need to breathe now. It was like the scents just seeped in through his pores.
  These new found senses amazed him. He knew these woods were full of spirits like him. Some of the spirits inhabited animals. Some of them inhabited trees. Some of them moved freely, only to be seen by certain people, and how many people would see them in the remote areas of the woods anyway? Bones didn’t
see
any of them. But he felt them. He felt them deep within the soul inhabiting the body of Daniel Clock. And he
knew
things about them.
  It was amazing, the amount he knew now.
  Some of these spirits chose to serve the masters he had chosen. The rest were in hiding. Hiding from the masters. Too weak to do their bidding. Bones did not want to be like them. He would have done something to hurt them if he could. But he knew if he grabbed the bird that chirped, off to his left, and strangled it in his hammy fist, then only the bird would be killed, the coward soul left to seek some other shell.
  How many had the Devils claimed over all these years? he wondered. The number was obviously very vast. Uncountable.
  And Bones was here to help them claim more. He didn’t know how he was supposed to do that. Ernst had given him specific instructions before burning him up in the fire but, already, those instructions were becoming confused in Bones’ head. He couldn’t remember exactly what it was he was supposed to do.
  Slowly, trying to fight the rigor mortis setting into the body, he wandered through the woods. Sometimes he found himself without the cover of trees, the remaining sunlight glinting through, washing his skin. Wherever the sun touched, it made him itch, like he was developing some kind of rash.
  Through the woods he walked. Not knowing where he was going. Not knowing what he was supposed to do but knowing tonight was a very special night for Ilya and Ernst and he didn’t want to let them down. He wanted to be part of their nocturnal network. He wanted to ensure it ran smoothly. He wanted to show them he was more worthy of their praise than Zack.
  Bones thought back to last night when he had spit on Zack lying on the couch. A thrill ran through him. It had felt good to do that. Maybe he would use the powers he had acquired in death to kill Zack. But maybe that would only put Zack closer to where the Devils needed him to be. Things were so confusing. Bones wished it were dark. If it were dark, he knew, his thoughts wouldn’t be nearly as jumbled and confused as they were now.
  

Twenty-six

It seemed a strange combination of light and shadow. Not one of the three saw the wolves at first. Two wolves, charging out of the woods, coming toward them.
  Jacob opened his mouth, ready to say something, maybe ready to say, “Run!” But the word never came out. He was to Rachel’s left, Rain to her right. The wolves pounced on Rachel and Rain. They were huge, black and snarling, driving the girls down to the ground. Jacob sprang into action as quickly as the wolves were upon them.
  One of the wolves held Rachel down, his large paws on her shoulders, ready to take a bite out of her jugular. Jacob stood over top of it, straddling it, and brought the tire iron against the side of its head, trying to snap its neck in a direction away from Rachel. It worked, at least momentarily. Jacob swiveled from atop the wolf, ready to bludgeon the one that had driven Rain down.
  It wasn’t there.
  Rain wasn’t there.
  Jacob looked toward the woods and saw the wolf dragging Rain’s body toward the wooded cover. Part of him wanted to charge after the wolf. Even if Rain was already dead he wanted to run after it and catch it, beat it to death with the tire iron and dance in its blood. But something inside of him told him it wouldn’t do any good and Jacob had learned to trust those voices. He had to deal with Rachel’s wolf first and then they could go stalking in the woods once that one had been put down.
  Rachel’s wolf had become his wolf.
  As he turned back to her, he heard the snarl and then felt the wolf’s teeth bite into his leg with savage ferocity. He screamed. It felt like the dog’s teeth went down to the bone. Everything happened so fast and yet there was a great deal of clarity there. Maybe it was like the killer taking a snapshot of the fear in his victim’s eyes before he pulls the trigger. Jacob looked down and saw the wolf clamped onto his leg. He saw the gash on the side of the wolf’s head where the tire iron had struck it and how the blood ran over the wolf’s right eye, turning the white to red. And, almost absurdly, he saw Rachel behind the wolf, taking hold of its tail and pulling because that was the only thing she could do.
  Jacob really wished they had brought some other form of weaponry.
  Right now, he needed to get the wolf off his leg. He struggled for a good grip on the tire iron, a good angle to hit the dog from.
  With everything he had, he brought the iron down across the bridge of the wolf’s snout. He felt the teeth rip downward in his leg. The last thing he wanted to do was fall. The last thing he wanted to do was put himself at the same level as this powerful, snarling beast.
  Repeatedly, he brought the iron down, feeling the bone in the wolf’s snout crack, feeling the wolf’s teeth work against bone.
  He turned the iron around so he held the arched end in his hand and the beveled end with the little notch on it was pointed toward the wolf, seeking out a soft spot. He angled it to where it impacted on the corner of the wolf’s mouth.
  This did it. Maybe it severed some vital muscle there or maybe it simply broke the wolf’s jaw, but the bite loosened.
  Now it turned its attentions to the one pulling its tail. It whipped its lithe body around, gnashing its teeth. Or trying to. It was a ghastly sound. Like loose, bloody gums flapping together. Jacob wanted to laugh. Served the fucker right.
  He wasted no chance. With the wolf’s back to him, Jacob went after the spine next, beating it with the metal bar, right in the center of its back, hoping to shatter something all-important to the wolf’s ambulatory faculties.
  Finally the wolf crumbled, lying on the ground and whimpering.
  Jacob breathed harshly.
  “Seems like it would be cruel not to finish it off, huh?”
  He didn’t wait for Rachel’s response. With his good leg, Jacob turned the body of the wolf over. Its legs dangled just over the torso, probably paralyzed. He stood over the wolf, pointing the sharp edge of the bar where he thought the heart would be. He drove it down, putting all of his weight behind it. The bar entered smoothly and Jacob, losing his balance, nearly fell on top of it. He threw himself to the right at the last minute, landing on the grass beside it, already smelling the blood and death stink coming from it.
  Rachel came over to him, inspecting his leg.
  “Does it hurt?” she asked.
  “It’s unbearable,” he said, looking up at the darkening sky.
  “It looks pretty mangled.”
  “I would say so.”
  Rachel rolled up the leg of his pants. She moved her hand over the bloody, tattered skin.
  Something had given Rachel this gift. He wondered if they were somehow
meant
to defeat the Devils.
  Aside from being with Rachel that had become his one driving purpose in life.
  If he wasn’t the one, then surely Rachel was. Why else would she have that gift? That beautiful and amazing gift? If they weren’t meant to defeat the Devils, then at the very least they were meant to protect others from them.
  But they hadn’t protected Rain, had they?
  Rachel moved her hands over Jacob’s wound, her fingers sloshing around the wet fringes of his skin. She brought them together, smoothing the skin like one might smooth a piece of crumpled paper or try to match up the edges of a tear.
  He felt the power run through him. A deep itch. Something like an orgasm. Or the beginnings of one. An orgasm that would never come to fruition. It was the skin growing back together. The muscles growing back together. The tendons and nerves doing the same.
  It wouldn’t be perfect. Rachel wasn’t that powerful yet. But it wouldn’t continue to bleed and it wouldn’t hurt as bad. Jacob knew there would probably always be a scar there and he might end up walking with a slight limp in the long run but, right now, the only thing he cared about was getting through the night.
  “What about Rain?” he asked.
  “The wolf took her.
They
took her.”
  “Should we go after her?”
  “Of course we should go after her.”
  “Are we
going
to go after her?”
  “What do you think?”
  “I think we should.”
  “We can’t spend all night looking for her.”
  “I know. But we can’t abandon her. She came here to help us.”
  “She got herself further involved with something she never should have been mixed up with in the first place.”
  “And that’s worth being abandoned for?”
  “Piss on your conscience, Riley.”
  “Until dark. And then we come back.”
  “Until dark. Now get up and let’s start looking.”
  It was that reluctance. That reluctance that assured him Rachel’s feeling about this being their purpose was the same as his.
  She held out her hand to help him up.
  “Thanks, by the way,” he said. “That’s a hell of a Band-Aid you’ve got there.”
  “Well, thank you for getting the fucking thing off me.”
  “You’re quite welcome.”