"Perry"s state of mind?" Ada repeated. "She was emo as s.h.i.t."
Roman shot a look at Bird, who shrugged.
Ada stuck her finger underneath Dex"s scruffy chin. "This a.s.shole broke up with Perry in November. Broke her poor f.u.c.king heart right in two. I"m only tolerating him because he was the last chance we had."
Dex didn"t protest but he did look away at some imaginary spot on the floor. Roman mused that over, looking bothered.
"I see," Roman said slowly and with a heavy sigh. I wondered if our history was going to complicate things for him. I hoped not. Things were already complicated enough.
"Yeah," Ada continued, not done yet, "basically slept with her and ditched her, used her..."
"Hey, OK, wait a minute," Dex said, stepping away from Ada"s finger. "That"s not exactly what happened."
If I could have controlled my own eyebrows, I would have raised them.
She glared at him, her eyes hard in the low light. "Oh yeah, perhaps you better explain what happened. Why Perry cried in her room for days wondering what the h.e.l.l went wrong. You weren"t there. You didn"t have to help her day in and out, hoping that one day she"d come out of it and realize what a G.o.dd.a.m.n a.s.shole you are. You didn"t see the way you left her. You didn"t have to help her pick up the pieces."
She looked at Roman with conviction. "Plus, there was the whole him getting her pregnant and miscarriage thing."
The words miscarriage hung heavily in the air.
Roman sucked in his breath.
Bird froze.
And Dex...he looked like someone had backhanded him with a shovel. He swallowed hard and his eyes went immediately to me. They held a wealth of regret and sadness in them.
I"m sorry I didn"t tell you, I thought, staring across at him. But then again, when would have been a good time? It was over and done with and none of his business, really. We had other, bigger things to worry about than s.e.x gone bad. I didn"t have time to worry about his feelings in this, though from the stunned, almost blue look on his blood-crusted face, I could see he was taking it hard. Harder than I thought he would.
"You didn"t know," Roman said, stating the obvious.
Dex"s chin dropped and he broke eye contact with me. Ada watched him, her face growing increasingly guilty for the way she just dropped it on him. I guess she, like me, had no idea how he would have reacted.
She placed her hand on his shoulder. "Hey, sorry. I"m sorry."
He shrugged her hand off of him. "I need to get some air."
"No," Roman said. For a skinny, young guy he had quite the commanding voice. I guess you had to have that if you were commissioned to command demons out of people. "You"re not going. We have to discuss this, all of this. It will help me figure out what happened. What"s in her."
"What"s in her?" Dex"s head snapped up. "A demon, that"s what."
Roman shook his head. "No. You"re right, but it"s not just that. There are three ent.i.ties lying there." He pointed over at me. "One is Perry. One is demonic. The other is another ent.i.ty. It is weak and is has no power anymore. But it is a spirit, a vengeful one. And if my guesses are correct, there was something haunting Perry before. Something that was wronged or ignored. It made a powerful pact, deal if you will, to gain Perry"s soul. But was lost before it could even happen."
He looked to Ada. "And this miscarriage. Perry would have been at her lowest, most vulnerable. It"s times like that, or pregnancy, when something foreign can grow and latch on with the baby. Even if the baby was eventually lost. Though you can bet it was because of this spirit."
At the mention of baby, Dex had let out a hot puff of air and turned around so his back was to everyone, leaning on his hands against the wall.
"It was Abby," he said quietly, almost to himself. Roman had to take a few steps closer to him to hear.
Dex continued, "She was haunting me when Perry was with me in Seattle. She"s an ex...she died. Years ago. But she comes around every now and then. You know, she died because of me. And I don"t think she"ll ever forget it."
"She will now," Roman said. "The demon gained access to Perry through her, played on her fears through her. To get to you. This spirit is no more. Demons don"t keep their bargains."
Dex still didn"t turn around. He shook his head from side to side so his hair flopped back and forth. "So that"s it. It has one ex-girlfriend of mine. And it"s not satisfied. It wants the only person left on this earth that I...that I"d do anything for. Just throw her into the pot, who cares. I lost her once, I cannot lose her again." Dex"s voice cracked and split with anger.
"Life is unfair for a lot of people and for a lot of reasons," Bird spoke up from the floor, his fingers tracing circles on the taught drum top, his voice steady as a tree. "This isn"t about you Dex, though I know from experience your intentions are good. This is about Perry. This is about what we can do to help her. We can"t waste time placing blame on each other or being angry. That"s what it wants. We need to help her. And we need to hurry. You can deal with everything else afterward."
There was little sound or movement from Dex for a few beats. Then he raised his head up and turned around. He walked through the smoke, which still hung in cloying clouds, and stopped beside Ada. His eyes were wet and wide but held a fierce determination that brought out a rise of hope from somewhere inside me. He offered his hand to her.
"I"m extremely, unrelentingly sorry for what I did to your sister. To Perry. And, by default, to you. Little fifteen."
Ada eyed his hand like he had cooties. The reluctance didn"t last long. She stuck out her hand and they shook firmly. She even managed a smile.
"Good," Roman said, looking from one to the other. "We need a united front against this. Even with Bird acting as my helper, I will need you both to be strong and to have no fear. You have to believe that we can beat it. We are superior to this beast and we will get out. But you must have conviction in your beliefs. To doubt is to endanger all of our lives, and especially Perry"s."
He nodded at Bird, who began a steady, rhythmic beating on the drums, using only his hands, while Roman brought up a small wooden bowl from the floor. He came close to me, looking deep into me with the most ruthless, determined angle. He wasn"t looking for me. He was looking for it, the thing, the beast.
"And so we begin the sacred ceremony." He was talking to me, talking to everyone. "An exorcism is a battle. I will lead it until the end"
He raised up the bowl and started yelling in his native tongue. Simple, two-word sentences that bounced around the room like a stone in a cave.
The thing inside me did not like it.
I started writhing back and forth underneath the straps, panting hard as if I were simultaneously trying to throw up and catch my breath. It grew hot, then more hot, and steam began to rise off of my body in tiny whispers.
Roman kept repeating the words and the heat in my body grew to an unbearable level. Whatever the beast was feeling, I was feeling too. It was exquisite agony; I felt like I was being burned alive.
Roman kept going, relentless in his quest to purge me. He dipped his thumbs into the wooden bowl until they were covered black, then came forward for my face.
I swung my head back and forth, trying to get out of his way but he managed to get one swipe down my cheek. It felt like an acid burn. I turned to him, mouth open, and bit his hand. Hard. I felt the crunch of bones and the taste of blood fill my mouth and spill down my chin.
Someone in the room let out a yelp but it wasn"t Roman. He pushed his other thumb, also anointed with the black ash, straight into my forehead, knocking my head back with enough force to knock a normal person out. Then he calmly removed his injured hand from my mouth.
I grinned what was sure to be a b.l.o.o.d.y grin.
And the most vile, primordial voice, like the ones I"d heard commanding me in my head, roared out of me.
"Think she"ll be so lucky this time?" After what you did to little Jim?" The depravity dripped out of me like the blood onto my chest.
Roman paid me no attention, he kept repeating his phrase, his voice become stronger and I felt a wave of shock, pain and heat roll through me. I started screaming and banging the back of my head against the mattress.
The drum beat of Bird became louder, faster and I felt the synergy of the room intensify. The temperature climbed and climbed until I was soaking wet and the bed was too. The straps were becoming slippery and I was forced to use them to my advantage. I wriggled and moaned and tried to escape.
"Dex, Ada!" Roman yelled. "Get a hold of her legs."
My eyes were rolling back in my head so I couldn"t see them but I felt them. Briefly.
They both let out a whimper and withdrew their hands immediately.
"She"s burning hot!" Dex cried out. "You"re killing her!"
"Do it!" Roman yelled, and I felt their hands once more, Dex"s long fingers and Ada"s slight ones. They were both hesitant but their grips intensified as my thrashing continued.
"United front, Dex," Roman said through gritted teeth as he came at my arms with more smudge matter. "You can"t let your feelings get in the way. We must do this. You too, Ada."
I heard someone sniff like they were crying, but I didn"t know who it was. It didn"t matter. The more Roman pressed his marks into me, the more I felt like dying. The pain was excruciating; it was like being branded with a hot poker.
"You killed him. The mother killed herself shortly after. You ruined a town," the beast said through me in scathing, panting secretions. "You"ll ruin her. I will ruin her. You are powerless, foolish and weak."
I burst into horrible laughter and started thrashing again, more strange, foreign and unbelievable sounds emanating from me. It sounded like whole room was one ent.i.ty and I was coming out of the walls, throttling the room with my abhorrent threats.
"You can do what you want to her," Roman said forcefully, "but I am stronger and I will win this battle. I will get you out and send you back to where you came from."
There was no time to reflect anymore, no effort for thoughts. They were meaningless. I was at the mercy of my captor and at the strength of my exorcist.
The drums got louder. The room began to dim as the candles all went out and the lamp in the corner faltered. Suddenly the area around the bed erupted in flames that rose from the floor in a thick line. Dex and Ada screamed and let go of me, stumbling back and out of the fire. Roman had to inch back as well, and Bird stopped drumming.
"Keep going!" Roman screamed at Bird over the roar of the flames.
Bird snapped to it and continued, his hands slapping steadily on the drum.
The flames grew higher until they provided a barricade between me and everyone else. Dex had his arm around Ada and was holding her tight to him, both of their faces lit up by the flames as they watched me in absolute horror.
I sat up in one swift, violent motion, breaking the straps around my arms. I grinned at Roman and said, in the voice of a little boy, "Why did you have to be so rough? You hurt me. You broke my bones."
"No!" Roman yelled, and then bellowed a string of harsh-sounding native words.
I tossed my hair from side to side.
"Yes, you did," my little-boy voice said in a sing-song manner. "You broke me in a million pieces. You told me you had to hurt me to free me."
Roman kept reciting his mantra over and over again but was unable to get to me through the flames. He watched me steadily through the flames, his eyes never leaving my horrid face.
"And you," I said, my head turning to Dex. My voice melted from that of a child"s to that of a woman in a light French accent, "Let"s not forget what you did, Declan."
Dex"s arm slumped off of Ada. His face went slack with fright.
I laughed, bitter and rich, then tilted my head, eyeing him with disdain. "Your little secret. You don"t want anyone to know about what happened to your dear old mother. I"m in here now. In here with your little tramp. And I will do to her what you did to me."
The other straps on the bed broke apart and I was thrown back by an imaginary force, my head striking the back of the wall.
Dex screamed and tried to run through the fire. The flames were more than real and they caught onto his sleeves, setting him alit. Ada pulled him back and pushed him onto the ground, trying to get him to roll, to put them out. And my head continued to bang backward until it felt soft and wet and blood was running down it. If the beast was going down, he was sure to take me down with it. I was only a useless vessel for his destruction.
"Dex!" Roman yelled. "It"s testing you, don"t listen to it. It wants your fear, it feeds on it!"
Roman approached me, sputtering his words, and that"s when I began to lift up, my feet leaving the bed. My back against the wall, I slithered up it like a snake until the top of my head grazed the ceiling, feet dangling, and I was staring down at the room, down at the fire that burned contained around the bed, down at Roman, who was still staring at me tirelessly, down at Dex who was getting to his feet and ripping off his burnt cargo jacket, and Ada, who was helping him while watching me in complete awe, and Bird and his steady heart, who kept drumming even though his eyes glimmered with fear.
I didn"t know how I could possibly hang on. I was already out, out of control, out of power but I was still conscious. I didn"t think it would last for long and that was fine. I couldn"t take any more of the physical pain on myself or the emotional pain I was inflicting on others.
I started to move. I floated slowly away from the wall and then when I was in mid room, I was tilted up so my back was now flush against the ceiling, my hair hanging straight down the sides of my face. The thing in me laughed and laughed and laughed.
"I will do to her what you did to me," and this time, it was Abby"s voice that was coming out of me.
Dex looked at Roman in adrenalized panic and screeched, "Take me! Let it take me. It needs a soul, it can have mine!"
Roman ignored Dex"s wild eyes, and shook his head. "I can win this battle."
"No, you can"t," I said, back in the voice of torture and depravity. "You can"t win. I"ll kill her before you even get a chance. Then I"ll take him."
My eyes shot over to Dex and I smiled sweetly.
Then I was dropped.
I fell from the ceiling straight to the ground, face first.
I saw a shimmer in the carpet before it rose up to my face.
Then I heard the impact of my fall, my cries that came from me and no one else. But I felt no pain. I was falling, sucked into a black shimmering abyss and the world I knew was left behind completely.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE.
I expected to fall through the black vortex forever, my screams never ending, just repeating for eternity.
But it didn"t work out that way.
The falling came to an abrupt stop as I felt my body shift from the feeling of falling downwards, to gliding sideways. Then I felt earth under my feet, dust in my lungs and the black curtain around me lifted to reveal a distinctly de-saturated world.
My world.
Or perhaps not.
I was standing about fifty yards from the back of Roman"s small one-level house. The curtains to the exorcism room were closed, but flashes of white-hot light poked through at sporadic moments. I could only wonder what was going on in there, if I was still in there and being thrown around by my possessor. I was somewhat glad to be somewhere else, even if it was outside in land where everything was black, white and a million shades of grey.
So, where was I?
"You are in the Thin Veil, the Black Sunshine," a voice said from behind me.
I whirled around to face Pippa and the rolling grey landscape behind her.
"Are you behind this?" I asked. My words sounded strangely dull and flat.
She walked a few steps toward me, her dress ruffling and shifting around her. It was probably magenta or some other bright color but here, in what she called Black Sunshine, it was a grainy deep grey. Even her face was done up in varying shades of monotone.