Stones Unturned (The Menagerie #3)

Stones Unturned (The Menagerie #3) Page 13

The new rental was a silver Lexus. Clay had charged it to an account set up by Conan Doyle. Dr. Graves knew that the mage had spent decades amassing wealth and wished to put it to good use, financing his war against he darkness. Clay had been alive far longer, but the immortal shapeshifter had apparently not exercised as much forethought, for he seemed more than happy to use Conan Doyle's money.

Graves realized it would be a mistake to make too many assumptions about Clay, however. If he truly was what he claimed to be, what Arthur believed him to be, there was no telling how many lives he'd led and forgotten by now.

Hours passed in comfortable silence. Graves could have slipped into the spirit world and been in Manhattan in no time at all, or simply passed the time there in quiet peace. But Clay was taking the time to help him, devoting more attention to the mystery of his murder than anyone had in decades, despite Conan Doyle's assertions otherwise. The least Graves could do was keep him company.

They spoke in brief spurts of conversation, of music and art, war and history, medicine and science. Though Clay had never been human, Graves found him the most humane of companions, a being who truly believed in the capacity for greatness inherent in the human race, and a creature of rare wisdom.

They drove across the Tappan Zee Bridge into Westchester County, the late afternoon sunlight glaring on the windshield and washing out Graves's spectral form so that when he glanced down he found that he was nearly invisible even to his own eyes.

"Do you mind if I ask you a personal question?" Clay asked.

Graves arched an eyebrow and studied the strong, handsome profile of his companion. The shapeshifter's preferred form was neither young nor old, yet the features were distinct, and the ghost wondered if once upon a time Clay had known a man with this face, if perhaps this chosen appearance was some memorial to a lost friend.

He made a mental note to ask, even as he nodded.

"Of course."

"When we solve this thing . . . when you finally know who took your life, and how, and why, are you really going to move on? Forever? You've spent all this time wandering the world as a spirit, but it isn't like you've been haunting the wreckage of the past. Strange as it sounds, you've made a new life, after death. You have purpose. Is the pull of whatever remains for you afterward so strong?" The ghost cocked his head and gazed at Clay. For all that he wore the face of a man, for all the ordinariness with which he held the steering wheel and drove the car and blinked and breathed and spoke and laughed, Graves felt he was among the very few who never forgot that Clay was not human. Not in the least. He had been alive upon the Earth since the world began, and it was possible he could never die. From anyone else, the question might have been too personal, too prying. But he understood that Clay truly wished to understand something that was beyond his experience, or his imagining.

"I've always said as much, haven't I? My Gabriella and I never married - I waited too long, and then it was too late for me, for us - but I love her still. All I've ever wanted is to be with her again. The current of the soulstream is strong, my friend. Any time I must delve deeply into the ether, going farther into the spirit world, its pull is almost inescapable. I hold on. But when the mystery of my murder is solved, there will be nothing to keep my spirit for departing at last for whatever awaits me."

Clay glanced over at him curiously, once and then again. "Nothing at all?"

A chill passed through the specter. Graves felt a queasy discomfort he had never felt in all the time since his death.

"What do you mean?"

"Nothing, it's just . . ." Clay shrugged. "I guess I had the idea that something was brewing between you and Danny's mother. You've been looking out for the kid, but it seemed like more than that."

The ghost was taken aback. The words fell like dominos, and even as Clay spoke them, he recognized the truth. How he had managed to avoid noticing it, to hide it from himself, he wasn't sure. But now that the words had been spoken it felt so painfully obvious, and the fact that it had been so obvious to Clay embarrassed him.

"I . . . I'm very fond of Julia. She's endured a great deal, and yet her love for Danny remains untainted by it. I admire that."

"I'm sorry," Clay said, flexing his fingers on the wheel, staring at the road ahead. "I didn't mean to make you uncomfortable."

"No, it's all right," the ghost replied. "I simply haven't dwelt much upon the situation. I'm . . . well, it's absurd, really. I'm dead, Joe. Fond of Julia or not, there's nothing there to pursue."

Clay focused on the road. "Maybe not. But I get the impression she's pretty fond of you, too."

"You're reading it wrong," Graves said, wishing now that the subject had never come up. "Where could that lead? Should I haunt her life? I worry for her and for Danny. I try to look out for the boy. I'm afraid for him. But whatever I might feel for Julia, Gabriella will always be the one I love. I'll do everything I can to see that Julia and Danny are looked after when my spirit moves on, but the soulstream pulls at me. Somewhere on the other side, Gabriella waits for me."

Clay nodded, and said nothing more.

The Lexus rolled on in silence.

Gabriella's skin is the olive hue common to her native Italy, dark compared to some, but not nearly dark enough to avoid the stares of white people as she rides the IRT train out to Flushing Meadows with Leonard. One of the things Dr. Graves admires most about her is that she does not merely ignore the stares and whispers of bigots who are disgusted or angered by the sight of a white woman with a black man. No, Gabriella just does not care.

God, how he loves her.

All of his life has been devoted to science, the pursuit of knowledge, and the improvement of the human condition. In all that time he had given little thought to love. It is an unquantifiable variable and so, to him, it is as much a bit of superstition and fancy as ghosts and magic. When it struck him, he was far from ready for it, and for the first time he has been forced to accept the existence of love.

The train rattles and sways. Gabriella and Dr. Graves hold on to the same metal pole on the standing-room-only train, but their hands do not touch. He gazes at her wide brown eyes and the gentle curve of her neck, and he knows what it must be to believe in sorcery. Surely, this must be it.

It is warm, today, a late spring preview of what the summer of 1940 will hold for New Yorkers. Dr. Graves ought to have taken a car out to Queens, but Gabriella insisted on riding the train. All that she has heard and read about the Fair has given her the impression that the experience is meant to be a universal one, that throngs of people are almost required to fully understand the impact of the exposition.

And so they ride the train and suffer the dark looks of those who disapprove of a white woman escorted by a black man, no matter that he is better dressed than perhaps anyone else on the IRT that day. It isn't the clothes that make the man, he has found. For far too many people, it is the skin. So they smile at one another, and they talk when the rumble of the train is not too loud, but their hands do not touch, and there are words absent from their conversation. To be too obvious with their love would be to invite calamity.

This has been the case ever since Gabriella came to live in America to be with Dr. Graves. Along with the other adventurers and crime fighters who have cropped up in recent years, such as the Whisper and the daredevil pilot known as Joe Falcon, he has achieved a certain notoriety. This celebrity has meant that for every righteous bigot ready to punish him for his audacity, there are two or three who will pull the fool aside and mutter in his ear that the man he is about to taunt or chastise or attack is Dr. Graves. Some are drawn away from conflict reluctantly, and others are sheepish and apologetic.

As if their behavior would somehow have been excusable had he been some other man.

Taking the train was, perhaps, not the best idea.

But it was Gabriella's wish, and so he says nothing.

"We're almost there," she says.

Dr. Graves - Leonard - smiles. The train pulls into World's Fair Station and shudders to a stop. All in all, the ride is worth the nickel apiece they had paid. The passengers are disgorged upon the platform, and Leonard and Gabriella join the hordes walking along the broad boardwalk. The sun shone brightly, and as one they looked up and saw the two towering symbols of the World's Fair straight ahead. The triangular spire of the Trylon rises perhaps one hundred and fifty feet into the air, and beside it rests the massive globe of the Perisphere. The structures gleaming white in the sun, Leonard is astonished to find that the photographs he has seen in the papers did not do the architectural centerpieces of the Fair any justice at all. These symbols, so proudly male and female, are breathtaking to behold.

"It's beautiful," Gabriella says, and she reaches out to take his hand.

Leonard flinches and almost pulls away, concerned about the crowd around them. But her smile chides him, and he twists his fingers more tightly in hers. If there is anywhere in America where they might be together without fear of reprisal, shouldn't this be the place, this monument to Progress, this World of Tomorrow?

Once within the fairgrounds themselves, they find themselves carried away with the beauty and marvel of the place. Leonard cannot believe he has waited this long to visit the World's Fair, for it is everything he hoped it would be. In his heart he has always believed in the forward momentum of the human race, in Progress, and the whole atmosphere of the Fair reeks with faith in that very philosophy. Strolling through the Court of Peace and past the Lagoon of Nations, examining displays in the Medicine and Public Health Building and the complexes erected by Ford and Firestone and AT&T, and enjoying the individual identities of the presentations made in the Court of States, it is impossible not to absorb the hope and confidence of the whole proceeding.

After long hours of exploring - just the beginning of their adventure at the Fair - they stand in front of the Italian Pavilion and stare up at the white marble steps and the waterfall that cascades down them into a pool at the base. A statue of the goddess Roma caps the steps. A warm breeze blows up, and spray from the waterfall dampens their faces.

Gabriella laughs and turns to him, eyes sparkling. This place is a touchstone for her, a gift that he hopes will make her feel she is not so far from home after all.

"It's amazing here."

"What is?" he asks.

"All of it. But I meant, well, the feeling. You must sense it, too. Hitler and the Soviets and their war, it all seems so far away, standing here. This is the world to come, once their foolishness is done with."

Leonard nods. He does sense it. Gabriella has put words to what he's been feeling since their arrival. Yet Hitler's lust for power is not going to simply go away. Of that he is certain. He will not stop in Poland.

And though on this perfect day the war in Europe seems so far away, it has already marred the World's Fair. The Soviet Pavilion is gone; dismantled and taken away. The pavilions representing Poland and several Baltic States are closed, shuttered up tight.

Yet he sees the faith in the future in her eyes, and he agrees.

"It is spectacular," he says. "I only wish I had brought you here sooner."

Gabriella reaches up and traces the contours of his face with the tips of her fingers. "We have forever, love. There's no need to rush."

And so they do not rush. It is the middle of the afternoon before they ride the curving, moving stairway called the Helicline, that carries them inside the Perisphere. The sight of so many people all moving together, smiling and full of life, erases the last lingering shadow of Leonard's earlier thoughts. He is with Gabriella in the World of Tomorrow. Nothing else matters.

As they have strolled through the Fair, several times they have caught a glimpse of the Parachute Jump, a prominent feature in many newspaper articles about the amusements offered to visitors. Now, hand in hand, they find their way almost instinctively to the area of the Fair that has come to be known as the Great White Way. The change in atmosphere is palpable. The laughter here is more boisterous and the music more raucous. There is no theme to the Amusement Zone, no grand philosophy or intent. It exists solely for pleasure. Once upon a time, Leonard would have looked askance at such endeavors, considering them pointless. Love has changed his mind.

The Parachute Jump awaits them as they meander through the Amusement Zone. A banjo player winks at Leonard and, feeling oddly lighthearted, Leonard winks back. Gabriella sees this and giggles, coyly covering her mouth to hide her laughter. Acrobats tumble past them, and they stop to watch the show.

The Great White Way, an afterthought when they were making their plans for the Fair, absorbs them completely. At the Indian village, Gabriella watches, mesmerized by the beat of drums, as Seminoles dance. When an Indian smoking a cigarette tosses his Lucky Strike aside to wrestle an alligator, Leonard can only shake his head in wonder at the strangeness of it all.

Yet the strangeness is only beginning. They visit the Monkey Island at Jungleland Village, Admiral Byrd's Penguin Island, the replica Elizabethan township, and Tiny Town, a village inhabited by midgets and built to scale. They cross Empire Bridge to visit the Aquacade, where they watch the beautiful Eleanor Holm perform elegant water ballet, and witness high dives that make even the famous Dr. Graves catch his breath.

And so much more.

Exhausted, they stroll back along the Great White Way long after night has fallen. Fireworks explode overhead, painting the sky with a rainbow of falling stars. Their fingers are still entwined, having rarely parted, and they walk ever more closely together, something they would not dare to do elsewhere. But in the World of Tomorrow, all things are possible.

The Trylon and Perisphere are bathed in multicolored spotlights, surreal in their Utopian perfection. Yet Leonard is happy amid the dancers and singers and clowns - and the scents of exotic foreign foods - that fill the Amusement Zone. Carefree, in a way he has never been before.

At last, as they leave the Great White Way, they come upon the Parachute Jump again. The line is short enough to be inviting. The entire structure of the two-hundred-and-fifty-foot attraction is festooned with decorations from the Life Savers Company, promoting their candy. The sponsorship is amusingly apropos.

When their turn arrives, Leonard pays eighty cents so that the two of them can share one of the eleven wooden benches that hung below brightly colored cloth parachutes. At the first jerk of the cables suspending them, Gabriella turns to look at him. Her smile is wide and giddy with fear and excitement, but she does not speak. The look is enough to express all that she is feeling.

Leonard holds her hand and they ascend.

The wind blows. They rise higher and higher and laugh together in delight at the view of the Fair at night that spreads out below them.

"Gabriella," Leonard says, not looking at her. Not yet.

"Yes?"

He turns and gazes at her. "I never want to spend a day without you. Marry me, Gabriella, so that that day will never come."

Her smile is shy and electrically intimate, all at the same time.

The parachute reaches the top of the tower. There is a clank above them.

"Will you?" Leonard asks, searching her eyes.

"You know I will."

With a loud clack, the mechanism releases. They plummet downward, ten feet, twenty feet, and Gabriella screams with wild, terrified laughter.

The parachute opens, halting them in midair, and then they float gently downward.

Leonard slips one hand behind her head, feeling the silk of her hair between his fingers, and he draws her to him. He kisses her, long and slow. And if the other parachutists cast unpleasant looks at them as they disembark from the ride, he chooses not to notice.

His heart is full of the unquantifiable variable, that magic that is love.

The future awaits.

Danny knew he ought to be terrified, but somehow he was not.

He kept pace with the demon as it moved through the vast labyrinth of subway tunnels beneath the streets of Boston. They had been traveling for what seemed like hours, and he wanted to ask it, ask his father, where they were going. But they were moving much too quickly. In amazement, he watched the demon move, scrabbling along the ground, clinging to the sides of the tunnel walls so as not to come in contact with the electrified third rail. What amazed Danny even more amazing was that he was able to do it as well.

He had only been with his sire for a matter of a few hours and already he was learning more about himself and his capabilities than he had during his entire stay with Conan Doyle.

Danny was even getting used to the rats.

Upon entering the first tunnel through the Symphony Hall station, he had heard them squeaking and thought nothing of it. But it had grown louder and louder, and he'd realized that his father's presence seemed to have an odd effect on the rodents. Even now, as the two demons crawled along the side of a Red Line tunnel, the rats were scrambling in pursuit, a moving blanket of gray and black bodies on the floor of the tunnel.

They were coming up to another station, and Danny wondered if they would pass this one by as well. Baalphegor had said they were going somewhere away from prying eyes so they could have privacy. Danny was growing more curious as to where exactly that place was.

Up ahead, his father sprang from one side of the tunnel to the other, the station closer now. Clinging to the wall, he turned to peer down at the growing swarm of rats below him. The rats raced by, streaming into the T station. Late night commuters shrieked and jumped and ran around the platform and bolted for the stairs. The rats skittered around their feet, nipping at their ankles.

Danny grinned.

When the station was in utter chaos, Baalphegor climbed up the wall and onto the ceiling of the subway tunnel, then crawled into Andrews Station above the heads of the panicked people. His father beckoned to him, and Danny followed, careful not to lose his grip as he crawled above the mayhem.

His father waited for him, nearly invisible in a deep pool of shadow upon the ceiling. Danny joined him, the screams of the Red Line passengers bringing a smile to his lips.

"Where are we going now?" he asked, stifling a giggle.

Baalphegor's deep yellow eyes studied his expression, and he immediately became self-conscious.

"What's wrong?" Danny asked, glancing away from the intensity of his sire's gaze.

"Nothing," the demon replied. "It's just that you're so much more human than others of my seed."

"This is human?" Danny mumbled, looking at the skin of his hands, and the razor-sharp claws that adorned his fingers. "I'd hate to see my brothers and sisters."

Baalphegor looked away. "Yes, you would, for they are all dead."

Danny was startled by the statement, for the first time seriously considering the existence of others like him - actual siblings.

"All of them?"

But the demon was already on the move again, crawling bug-like across the ceiling, making his way toward the exit. Danny followed.

Blending with the darkness of the night, the two emerged from the subway station, concealing themselves in shadows thrown by the buildings around them. They were in South Boston now, and his curiosity continued to pique.

Where the hell could we be going in Southie? he wondered, trying to keep up with his father as the demon darted from one patch of shadow to the next.

Baalphegor came to a sudden stop and pointed a long, crooked finger at the burned-out remains of a building surrounded by a hastily erected chain-link fence. The smell of fire still hung in the air.

Studying the wreckage of the old building, Danny came to realize that it was the shell of a Catholic church. He reached down into the ash and rubble, retrieving a piece of stained glass. There was part of a face on the fragment, some saint or another. Not really knowing why, he put it inside the pocket of his jeans.

The demon motioned him through the jagged frame of a tall window, and Danny went through the archway. His father followed.

"A church," Danny said aloud, looking about. "Why here?"

Baalphegor loped toward the shattered, scorched altar and stopped just in front of it.

"Once this was a place of goodness and light," he whispered, his head darting around, taking in the destruction. "Now that light has fled, leaving behind an empty, beaten corpse. This is a good place for us to be."

The demon continued up onto the altar. Part of the ceiling had come down atop it, covering it with rubble and blackened, charred wooden beams. Baalphegor perched atop the rubble.

"Come closer," he hissed, motioning with both his hands. "There is much for you to know of your true heritage."

Danny felt the urge to bolt from the burned out shell of the church, run out into the night and never stop until he got back to Louisburg Square. A part of him wanted to see his mother right then, and he had to wonder if that was the humanity she'd instilled in him, afraid to face the truth of what he was becoming.

No. Not becoming. It's what you've always been.

"Come," Baalphegor urged.

Danny climbed up onto the damp and blackened beams, the stench of fire permeating the very air. He stopped before the demon, admiring the shape of the creature and everything it seemed to represent. His father had been created to kill. With his sleek body, his speed, the severity of his claws, and that mouth filled with rows of razor-sharp teeth, he could serve no other purpose.

Will I look like this someday? he wondered briefly, that little human part of him crying out in fear.

"They say I'm a changeling," he said, overwhelmed with the desire to know the whole truth at last. "That I was switched with a . . . with a human child."

He was surprised how difficult it was for him to say it - to admit that he wasn't human. That he never had been.

The demon stretched languidly upon his perch. He appeared strangely comfortable in the burned out surroundings.

"Changeling is their word, not mine," Baalphegor said. "The fairies have done such things since time began, and the humans coined the word for them. But our kind have always done the same, though for different reasons. It is not that we covet human children. We place our offspring among the humans to ensure our own survival, changed to appear human, at least for a time."

Danny didn't understand. "Why?" he asked. "What do I have to do with you surviving?"

Eyes flashing with anger, his father lashed out at him, talons renting the air in a blur. Danny stumbled back across the rain-soaked plaster and charred wood, nearly tumbling to the floor, but he caught his balance. He looked down to see that his shirt had been torn open, his bare chest revealed.

"What the hell was that for?" Danny snarled.

Baalphegor pointed, and Danny glanced down, following his gaze to the strange, sack-like growth on his chest. It had become even larger and more engorged. Danny could feel it throb, an internal pressure intensifying within the dangling cyst.

"That is how we survive," Baalphegor said, reaching out to gently cup the object.

Danny attempted to swat his hand away but missed. "Don't touch me," he ordered with a snarl.

The demon grumbled, and Danny wasn't sure if it was a sound of anger, or one of amusement.

"The contents of that sack of flesh," Baalphegor said, "are the entire reason you were changed. Dark magic transforms the flesh of one of our offspring. The child is then exchanged for a human babe, its unwitting parents completely fooled. The humans raise the demon child as one of their own. Only when the child begins to approach adulthood does the flesh begin to reverse its transformation, and its true nature begin to reveal itself."

The sack of flesh throbbed painfully, rousing Danny's anger all the more. "See, now again I'm asking you why. What do you get out of demon babies being raised in a human family?"

Baalphegor shifted upon his throne of rubble and leaned closer. "Though despised throughout the myriad realities, the human species retains something of immeasurable power and potency, absent from almost all other species."

The demon craned his neck, looking about the remains of the church. "Some would say it originated from Him, the one whose house we now despoil with our presence, that there is in humans some divine spark given willingly to those creations He most admired."

Danny's thoughts raced as he attempted to understand.

"Are . . . are you talking about the soul?" he asked.

The demon flinched as he turned to glare at his son. "The soul, the self, one's humanity, it's all the same to me and mine. It is a source of unimaginable power, and humans possess and squander it."

Danny narrowed his eyes, brows knitted, and stared at his father.

"I have a soul?"

"In a manner of speaking," Baalphegor nodded. "When transformed as infants, our children grow a soul, absorbing humanity from their fragile human parents and others around them. Conscience and experience come over time.

"But do not fool yourself, child. You are far from human. You were bred to be a collector. From the moment that I snatched the mewling human babe from its cradle and put you in its place, you have been collecting memories and experiences, sentiment and emotion. You've been absorbing humanity."

Danny looked down at the swollen sack of flesh hanging heavily from his chest. Suddenly it felt much heavier. "This?" he asked, his hand reaching up to touch it, but falling away. "This is my soul?"

The demon grinned, the horrific nature of the expression exemplified by the rows upon rows of long, shark teeth.

"You could call it that," Baalphegor replied. "That sac - your soul - is the reason that you and so many others were left here."

Danny couldn't take his eyes from the dangling polyp. "This is all that . . . that separates me from being like you?"

Baalphegor extended his neck toward the sack. Danny swore that he could feel the demon's eyes on it.

"Yessssssss," he hissed like a snake. "Without it, your metamorphosis will be complete, and your human nature will be sloughed off like an old skin."

Taking a deep breath, Danny mustered the courage to reach up and touch it, to hold the sack of life - of his humanity - in his hand. It felt warm, a sort of vibration passing through it different from that of his heartbeat.

"What will you do with it?" he asked, imagining what it would mean to be like the creature squatting before him.

"I will use it for magic," Baalphegor explained. "Powerful magic to tear aside the curtains of reality, to take us far away from this dimension before its untimely end."

His father's words concerned him. What does he mean by untimely end? Is he talking about the Demogorgon? But he was distracted from the fate of the world by something far more personal and immediate.

His own existence.

Danny glanced cautiously at Baalphegor. "What if I don't want to give it to you?" he asked the demon as he gripped the hanging sack of flesh, protecting it from harm.

Baalphegor drew back, folding his long spidery hands across his chest. "That is your decision, as it was the decision of my other offspring to make. I will not take it - it must be given up willingly."

Danny stepped backward, sliding down the pile of rubble to the edge of the altar below. "I'm not sure if I can do that," he said. His brain felt as though it was on fire, and he would have given anything to erase what he had learned this night. "It's all I've ever known - being human."

The demon stood, stretching its long, sinuous body, powerfully defined muscles evident beneath the dark, leathery flesh.

"Instinct will show what you truly are," Baalphegor said. Then the demon went rigid, tilting back its head and sniffing the air.

Danny couldn't smell anything except the smoky stench of fire, but it appeared that his father did.

"I'm hungry," Baalphegor stated, springing from the altar wreckage with a powerful leap that cleared nearly half the church. He landed in a silent crouch by the door. "And I imagine you are as well."

Danny didn't want to admit it, but there was an aching pain in the pit of his belly. It had been a while since he'd last eaten.

Baalphegor beckoned him to follow, and he did, moving as silently across the rubble as his father did. And soon he smelled it as well, an odd, pungent aroma that he was sure he had experienced before, but never like this. It was almost as if his olfactory senses had changed again, growing stronger, processing the scents floating in the air differently than before.

The demon reached out, taking him by the shoulder and drawing him closer.

"There," the demon whispered, his breath vile, but strangely comforting.

He pointed toward the fence surrounding the church. An old woman stood there dressed in a heavy winter coat, her hat pulled down practically over her eyes. On the ground to either side of her were dirty shopping bags filled with empty soda and beer cans. She worked her fingers over a string of beads, muttering beneath her breath. Danny could see a silver crucifix dangling from the end of the black beads.

"What's she doing?" he asked.

"She's speaking to a power that doesn't live here anymore."

There were tears on the old lady's face, and Danny felt a sudden pang of sympathy for the stranger. In return, he felt the flesh dangling from the center of his chest swell just a tiny bit more.

Baalphegor tensed, a kind of crackling energy leaking from his body as he prepared to pounce. Danny knew what he was about to do and stopped it.

"No," Danny said, reaching out to grab hold of his father's arm. "Let her go. Find something else to eat. Rats or something."

The demon turned to him.

"Still held by the shackles of humanity," Baalphegor growled.

"Yeah," Danny responded, attempting to pull his father back into the church. "Come on, let's go back inside."

The demon smiled horribly. "But I'm hungry."

"We'll find you something else."

Baalphegor was gone in a flash, his movement an even darker blur on the night. Within seconds, he was back, the frightened old woman clutched in his arms, breath coming in ragged, terrified gasps in whimpers.

She was still alive, teary eyes wide with sheer terror, too frightened even to scream.

"Why look for something else when the food is right here for the taking?" the demon asked.

The old woman's eyes met Danny's, her plaintive gaze searching his, pleading for him to save her.

"Help me," she squeaked, and for the briefest of moments he found her terror and helplessness delicious. The ache inside his belly grew almost painful as it begged to be satisfied.

The woman started to struggle, and that was all that Baalphegor required. He dipped his mouth to her throat, sunk his teeth into the flimsy flesh there, and ripped it away like cotton candy.

Danny was stunned at how silent it all was. Baalphegor lifted his face, blood and strings of flesh dripping from his bear-trap mouth.

"Will you join me?"

Repulsed, Danny stepped away from him. Baalphegor reached down, digging his claws through the heavy winter coat and into the soft body beneath. With a display of utmost savagery, the demon tore the innards from the body, spattering Danny with warm gore as organs ripped loose. Baalphegor tossed this pile of viscera to the floor before him.

Danny gazed down at the blood that now splashed his clothes. He could feel it on his face, smell it in his nostrils. Before he even knew what he was doing, he felt his tongue sneak from his mouth to lick away the flecks that dappled his face.

"What are you doing, Danny?" asked a familiar voice from somewhere in the church.

He whipped around, lifting the sleeve of his shirt to wipe away the blood that stained his face, and saw Eve jump from a hole in what remained of the east wall of the church to land among the tumbled pews. Her eyes glinted menacingly in the darkness as she slowly stalked toward him.

"It's not what you think," he said.

But he saw the look of revulsion in her eyes. Who knew better than she did precisely what he had been doing?

A horrible roar filled the ruined church, and a massive, dark, shadow thing leaped through the same hole, landing in a predatory crouch. The thing might have been a really big dog, but Danny sensed it was something else entirely. The shadow beast bounded down the aisle, dragging a cursing, snarling something behind it.

The something was Squire.

Danny froze, watching as the black-skinned animal bore down upon him, and he braced for the inevitable impact. Eve was on the move as well, and when he glanced into her eyes and saw the cold judgment there, he felt certain he was about to die.

As he tasted the blood of the old lady still on his tongue, he realized that might be for the best.

"Get down," roared a voice from behind him, and Danny did as he was told.

Baalphegor hurled the woman's body like a child's broken toy, right into the path of the raving beast. The animal went wild, attacking the corpse in its fury, while Squire screamed for it to stop.

Danny turned to face his father. The demon was muttering something, a sound very much like the angry drone of insects, and his hands moved around in the air, trailing darkness as they seemed to weave the fabric of night into a hole hanging in the air.

"Quickly," the demon croaked, directing Danny toward the pulsing circle of darkness.

He started toward the conjured escape, but then found himself turning to look at his friends. Squire was beating the slavering beast with a piece of blackened wood, but Eve was looking directly at him - her eyes beckoning to him. She shook her head no, and reached toward him as though she could pull him back. Danny looked away. The taste of the old woman's coppery blood was still on his tongue.

It was too late.

He dove into the icy embrace of the dark portal, and left hope behind.