Echoes of the Past

Chapter Twenty-Five

Not wanting to draw any attention to Karra, I had Rahim drop me off several blocks from her house, and I walked the rest. I was worried about the DSI tailing me, so I kept my senses running and my eyes open. It didn’t look like they’d caught on to Karra, or at least to where she lived. That was good. I didn’t see anything that made me think they were around.

After waiting as long as I possibly could before my patience exploded and gave me an aneurysm, I walked casually up to the house and knocked. There was no answer. I expected Longinus to open the door and punch me in the face for offending his daughter, but after about the fifth time I’d hit the doorbell, even that fleeting comfort was gone. No one was home.

I ramped up my senses but there wasn’t any trace of Karra or her father nearby. How pissed could she be?

After spending close to twenty minutes banging on the door, the not drawing attention thing out the window, I finally left when a neighbor came out of her house and threatened to call the cops if I didn’t take off. I hissed at the old hag and rushed my ass back to Hell.

Once I was there, I ran to the God-proof room to see if CB had heard anything. I hoped Longinus had taken matters into his own hands and had carted Karra off to realms unknown to protect her from her own stubbornness. Fingers crossed, I burst into the room and shouted for Chatterbox. I wanted to hear good news.

There’d be none.

Chatterbox sat on the table where I’d left him, but he lay on his side. I ran over to him and picked him up. His skin was strangely warm, where it’d always been cold. I noticed the sour stench of decayed flesh, which hadn’t been there before. His tongue lolled from his mouth as I looked into his eyes to see a pool of maggots in each. Their little white forms were piled motionless at the bottom of his eye sockets. The blackness inside was absolute. Chatterbox was dead again.

“Karra!”

I set Chatterbox down as a wave of nausea struck me, and fell to my knees. He was gone, his link to the world severed. That could only mean one thing.

Karra was gone, too.