Nothing but dead grass, rocks, and open plain lay between me and the highway. Unfortunately, the road lay two miles off. I couldn’t run forever, but I didn’t see anywhere to hide. I just knew I had to get away. I thought I heard footfalls behind me, but I couldn’t tell if they were gaining on me. I wasn’t dumb enough to turn and look.
I ran blind. My foot caught on a rock, and I stumbled, tried to compensate, and still went down, skidding onto my knees. In scrambling back up I saw the shadow looming over me, Ferguson not ten paces behind. My vision blacked as the shade wrapped around me, drawing the heat from my skin and the air from my lungs.
For a moment I felt nothing and then my whole body burned, not with the fire that seared my palm but with a soul-swallowing emptiness. Terror flashed through me as I felt the numbness spread. Soon I would know nothing at all, and—
Oh, shit, I saw the light. What a rip-off. My life didn’t flash before my eyes or anything. I did want to see my mom again, though.
Except I didn’t see a tunnel either, and I hurt.
A sharp sting on my left cheek reinforced the notion that maybe I hadn’t died. I cracked an eye open. Ferguson stared down at me, pale as corpse flesh, his arm up-raised as if to give me another whack. Shit, I’d almost rather have died than find Kel Ferguson straddling me.
“Where did it go?” I croaked.
He lowered his arm slowly. Something trickled from his fingers. “Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.”
Great. Crazy Bible talk. I ached all over. Not even the time I got salmonella from some bad chicken felt like this. When he reached into his pocket, I flung my hands over my head. He must have saved me—though I have no idea how—to finish me off himself. I had no hope of fighting him, no hope of running.
The thing in his hand squeaked when he squeezed it. I peered through my fingers and saw him offering me Butch’s play pizza. “You dropped this.”
After some hesitation, I took the toy. He eased off me then, sending a sick rush of relief to my already unsettled stomach. Ferguson extended a hand to help me up. I accepted it instinctively, and then thought about what I’d done.
As we walked—well, he walked; I limped—back toward the house, I squeezed the pizza in a nervous gesture. “How did you get here?” I wondered aloud.
Had he tracked me all the way to Mexico City and back?
“He gave me the means to transcend my earthly prison,” he said in a voice that sent shivers down my spine. “Then He guided my steps to your store. I do not understand why a good man like Alvarez chooses to work for you, but following you from there was easy.”
“So you’re the one who’s been hunting me?” A chill rolled over me. Maybe he intended me to lead him to Chance, who certainly shared the culpability for putting Ferguson in prison.
“I’m not hunting you. While I’d never choose to sully myself with you or your causes, I am the Lord’s hand and I work His will. I don’t pretend to understand His agenda. He sent me to help you vanquish a great evil, so tell me what you’d have me do.”
It took me a moment to process that. “You mean you’re not here to kill me?”
His icy eyes didn’t even flicker. “I am here to banish the forces of Hell back to the eternal fires from whence they sprung.”
“Um . . .” I exhaled slowly. The house came into view, all quiet inside. I picked up the bag of Hill’s Science Diet and the fuzzy dog bed. “Maybe you want to come in then?”
“I await your orders,” he said.
There’s nothing scarier than a fanatic.
“Chance,” I called unsteadily as we came into the living room. “We have company. He says God sent him to help us fight a great evil. He also just saved my ass.”
“Twice,” Ferguson said, “if you count the time in the cemetery.”
Squinting, I saw that he was wearing a black sweatshirt. Shit. I dropped into a chair, feeling like death warmed over.
Chance crossed the floor in four steps, cast a questioning glance at Ferguson, and knelt beside me. “What happened? Are you all right?”
I told him.
“You’re sure you’re all right?” Chance shook his head. “Only you could go out for dog food and come back with a man.”
“Not just any man. Remember Kel Ferguson?” I braced myself for the reaction.
Maybe we could fight fire with fire, if we used him. A sane person would call the cops as soon as we could get to a phone. Maybe he was toying with us. I couldn’t begin to comprehend what went on behind those zealous eyes.
Chance straightened slowly, asking in an undertone, “Did you bump your head or are you just crazy for bringing him in the house?”
“You wonder why I’m so pale,” Kel said with a strange half smile. Chance’s expression said he had, in fact, been wondering that. “I’ve bathed in the Lord’s light. God’s Hand is not bound by your laws. I see farther. I do not blame you for trying to interfere with what you do not understand, but prison bars will not hold me, nor will they stop my doing His work.”
“You’re saying God wants you to kill?” Chance kept his hands in plain sight. He probably didn’t want to risk setting Ferguson off and having him snap my neck.
“Only those who will perpetrate great crimes against humanity.”
I raised a brow. “Even that little girl you stole?”
Over the years, I’d resisted the urge to check on her, figuring she wouldn’t want to be reminded of her narrow escape. But I thought of her from time to time and wondered.
“I didn’t take her,” Kel said quietly. “I killed the man who did. By which, I averted a worse future than you can imagine. If God’s Hand had walked on earth at the right time, there would have been no Holocaust.”
Chance and I exchanged a look. How do you argue with crazy? Well, you don’t, if you’re smart and you have two friends lying helpless and de-souled in the bedroom. I played along.
“Why didn’t you attempt to defend yourself at your trial?”
“There are laws against vigilantes,” he answered. “And I am a killer. With my DNA at that crime scene . . . and others, they would have incarcerated me, regardless. But such walls cannot hold me. It was an inconvenience, a delay, nothing more.”
Given that he stood in Chuch’s living room, I couldn’t argue that.
“He makes a good point,” I said to Chance.
The funny thing was, Butch didn’t growl once. He lay curled up on a couch cushion, fast asleep. That reassured me more than anything, which established my state of mind. At this point I trusted a Chihuahua’s judgment more than my own.
Chance eyed me as if he wondered whether I’d snapped. “Does he?”
“If you really mean to help, we need some guarantee that you won’t hurt us.” I didn’t think he could be offended by that simple truth.
Ferguson’s pale gaze roved the room and then appeared to fix on an ornate wood crucifix hanging down the hall. Wordlessly he took it down and dropped to one knee. “I swear by His grace that I will not harm you or yours while we are united in this fight.”
By his expression Chance didn’t think too much of Ferguson’s promises, but we both knew such things had weight. I decided to give Kel some rope.
“We’re planning an assault on a warlock’s lair tomorrow. He’s likely to have an army of shadows like the two you vanquished today, and maybe worse stuff for us to wade through before we get near him. To be honest, our chances don’t look good. We’re light on manpower, firepower, and every other kind of power. Is that really what you came for?”
He nodded, as if I hadn’t said a single surprising thing. “God sent me.”
After exchanging a look with me, Chance shook his head as if we were all crazy. That was when I knew we weren’t calling the cops, at least not until everything went down tomorrow. What happened after we stormed the compound on Halstead Creek Road was anyone’s guess.
“Well,” Chance said. “Welcome aboard. What can you do?”
“This,” the maniac said, and the living room lit up like a star gone nova.
Five minutes later, my eyes still stung from the flare. “That’ll take care of the shadows. We already know they don’t react well to light. But there might be other enemies we haven’t even seen yet.”
“I have something in mind,” Chance said. His smile alarmed me.
In response to his gesture, I followed Chance back out to the garage while keeping a careful eye over my shoulder as well. I didn’t like having Kel behind me. But he didn’t seem inclined to sit in the living room and watch TV.
Despite seeing his holy smite-light, I couldn’t get past the fact that he had killed. Maybe those people would have made a different choice down the road, assuming he was telling the truth. Maybe something would have happened to redeem them. I didn’t trust the uncompromising quality of his judgment. I didn’t want to believe anything was set in stone.
Because I didn’t have much to lose at this point, I asked, “How can you punish someone for something that hasn’t happened yet? How is that fair?”
Pausing, Chance shot me a look. “Maybe we could talk philosophy another time?”
I finished the cautionary lecture myself. Are you crazy? He lit up the living room like the Fourth of July. Don’t antagonize him.
A valid point. If I recollected Booke’s crash course in hermetic magick, wizards possessed power over the elements while warlocks worked with demons and death. So if he wasn’t a holy warrior, Kel might be an unhinged wizard who killed people who looked at him funny. We didn’t need any more enemies, and right now we appeared to be on the same side. I felt dirty for allowing that.
This whole situation was pretty messed up, no other way around it. I wondered if it ever occurred to Chance to walk away. Just leave Min to her fate. But I wasn’t sure that would get this crazy son of a bitch off our backs at this point. We’d come too far and poked around too much. People who wielded this kind of power, no matter its origin, didn’t take kindly to being thwarted.
Nothing in my life had prepared me for this. Even knowing there were bad things didn’t measure up. Holy shit, I was a lobster, neck deep in boiling water, and reflecting that the bacon bits in the trap really hadn’t been worth it.
The washer buzzed. What a funny, ordinary sound.
“Your laundry’s done,” Kel said mildly.
Smothering a nervous laugh, I crossed to the washer, popped the top, and loaded my wet stuff into the dryer. Chance crossed the shadowed garage and uncovered a stack of boxes. Inside we found an astonishing array of weapons. I could’ve started a small war with what Chuch had stored casually out here. Rummaging, I found a flamethrower, a crate of grenades, several AKs, and assorted ammunition. I might be able to make use of the grenades; I used to pitch a pretty mean game of softball.
“Just what the hell did Chuch do before he became a mechanic?” I asked.
“Arms dealer,” said Ferguson, as if he read from an invisible scroll of our secret sins. “Mostly to Nicaragua. He retired when he met Eva.”