Hell Fire

Homecoming

After a fruitless stop at Little Ed Willoughby’s, we had plenty of time to do something that seemed inevitable. I marveled a little that I’d managed to put it off so long. There was one place we might find answers, however, as little as I liked it.

“What’s next on our list?” Saldana asked.

“Out of town,” I said, swallowing a wave of pain that threatened to drown me. Jesse cut me a sharp look over his shoulder and started to pull over. “Jesus, Corine, are you all right? What—”

“It’s okay. Drive.”

Shannon craned her neck to stare, as if starting to grasp that there was a silent subtext she couldn’t register. She didn’t like it, either. A frown etched delicate lines between her inky brows, out of place on a kid her age.

Chance regarded me with his tiger’s eyes, amber latticed through with gold and topaz. They were nothing so simple as light brown; in this moment they seemed to glow with lambent light and quiet secrets. “Are you sure about this?”

He knew? I hadn’t said anything. My face must have reflected confusion, for his expression softened, and he brushed a kiss against my temple. His look said simply, I know you. I know how you think. In a motion that seemed more than natural, he reached for me, offering physical contact easily, as he’d never done when we were together. God, he felt good; so hot and solid beside me. I drew in a deep breath, filling my lungs with Chance.

“About what?” Jesse’s tone reflected mild irritation.

“We need to swing by the place I used to live.” My certainty came from beyond my own powers and intuitions. Bleak, heavy knowledge pressed on me from somewhere else, but I didn’t want to be beholden to the thing in the woods. Loneliness flooded me, utter solitude. Since I wasn’t an empath, I knew it was targeting me on purpose. Loathing crawled through me. I didn’t want it helping me—I didn’t want it sending me hunches on the smoky wind. I didn’t want to be able to feel what it felt, and I didn’t want to go to the ruin where my mother died, but I did want answers.

She deserved justice.

With a sense of foreboding, I gave directions.

Over the years, the elements had reclaimed the wreckage of our former home. Birds nested in the ruin, and creepers had wound their way through the charred timbers, erasing man’s passage. Now there was nothing left but a few fallen beams, old ashes, and a sturdy foundation. The walls had long since fallen down, but in my mind’s eye, I saw the way the house once looked; I even visualized my mama standing on the porch.

It hurt like nothing I could have imagined—not even dying. I stood beside the SUV with lead in my limbs, feeling like they wouldn’t carry me forward. My left hand curled into a fist, and I rubbed my fingers across the brand from my mother’s necklace. To my surprise, it didn’t hurt but merely tingled a bit. I glanced down and found the mark had healed overnight. It was impossible; something Kel might’ve done to make me believe in his otherworldly origins. And yet I had an old brand on my palm.

“This is the place.” My voice sounded rusty.

I didn’t need to turn to know the others stood behind me, waiting for an explanation as to why we were here. I hadn’t done so before our arrival because I knew Jesse would object—and he was driving. Shannon didn’t know enough about my gift to understand the risk behind what I intended to attempt.

Maybe I was mistaken, but I felt as though my fleeting death had changed something in me. That might come from facing the worst and coming through unscathed. In the queer half-light cast by the surrounding trees, I felt different, shadow touched, and yet as if the reaper had no dominion over me, at least not here and now. Today I would be like water trickling through its bony fingers.

“Not much to see,” Jesse said finally.

Shannon agreed. “How long ago did you live here?”

“I was thirteen,” I answered. “So it’s been fourteen years.”

Nobody made a move to approach the house. I suspected they could sense the residual malice of what had transpired lingering in the earth itself. The woods seemed unearthly quiet, no chattering birds, not even the rustle of squirrels or chipmunks in the underbrush. It was as if the world itself held its breath for my return.

Well, I didn’t want to disappoint. Squaring my shoulders, I took the first step and then another, climbing carefully through the wreckage until I stood inside the space that had been our living room. Old anguish rocketed through me in a blazing rush. I didn’t want to remember how happy I’d been here, or what came after.

“Corine,” Jesse said. I knew he had to be suffering too, and I felt awful for putting him through this. “You don’t have to do this. We probably can’t learn anything here, not after all this time.”

“You can’t.” Chance’s voice sounded tight and fierce, as if he wanted desperately to protect me from myself. He also knew I wouldn’t let him.

Butch popped up from my handbag and yapped twice in agreement. He sank tiny teeth into the fabric of my shirt, as if he’d forcibly prevent me from doing so. I gently disengaged him and handed the dog to Shannon. Much as I wanted to, I couldn’t take his advice. I couldn’t opt out. We had to know.

Comprehension dawned in Jesse’s bitter chocolate eyes. I could see he wanted to argue against the wisdom of it. If a necklace imbued with the pain of my mother’s death killed me, what would the house where she died do? Maybe this time there would be no bringing me back.

I’d never attempted anything on this scale before, but it was an inanimate object, right? The principle should remain the same, and I needed its secrets. The tingle in my left palm became a steady pulse of heat, and following some instinct I hadn’t known I possessed, I sank down amid old ashes and sealed my hand against the foundation.

Pain scoured my nerves like wildfire consuming a dry forest. For interminable moments, I knew nothing but agony that spread in a black-red wash across my field of vision. I ceased to hear my own breathing, my own heartbeat. I might be dying again, but I couldn’t break the connection. The house wanted to own me in a complete and terrible way. I tried to fight—

It took me.

Heavy. Broken. Lost.

Stones crumbled; burnt wood fell to splinters and dust. I registered each tiny, disparate piece that made up the entirety of this ruin to which I’d joined myself. We sat, silent and untended. Nights ran into days; the seasons turned. Rain poured into my broken shell. I shivered at the cold and the solitude. Then the sun baked me until I felt dry and parched, thirsty unto death.

After eons of waiting, suffering, I remembered I wasn’t a rock or a roof tile. I was a woman, or I had been, a million years ago. Impressions came then, quick and fleeting. I didn’t want years of observations. I only wanted the one night.

The house didn’t want to yield to me. It wanted to suborn me and make me part of it for good. I’d never known an object to have a malign will, but this ruin did.

I imprinted myself on it—pure focus from years of training myself not to read objects with a casual touch. I will know what you know, I told it. Show me the night you died. For it perished, just as my mother did; the burning of the pretty little house where we used to live had given birth to this thing that squatted in its place.

My head rang with the force of its dissent. It didn’t want to share; didn’t want to help. It wanted to take and devour, as the flames had done.

For an eternity, we struggled—fought.

I didn’t know if I could win.

Pain became a constant, and then—

The images I sought came pouring through me. The house gave me back my own uncertainty and terror; it gave me my mother’s anger and determination. She hadn’t been afraid. The now-broken windows of our house became my eyes. I watched as they came from the woods; twelve, in dark robes, hoods pulled forward to mask their faces.

They mounted the stairs and did not knock. A woman opened the door for them, then slammed it in their faces. They argued on the porch, brands raised. The tallest of them shook his head, and then they took the door down with their shoulders.

My mother was dead when they reached her. But I’d already known that. I’d lived her death, where she gave everything she was to me in a final working. It wasn’t her fault that I was broken.

I watched with the house’s peculiar detachment as they carried out a ritual around her body, a circle of twelve in dark robes, lighting candles. I could not hear their chants, but I felt the dark energy curling through the walls, twisting what had been good. I tried to moan, but walls had no mouths.

The twelve poured something from a red can—gas perhaps—and then set the place alight, after they completed their night’s work. Nobody stayed to watch the fire. They melted into the woods while my body curled and blackened, killing heat exploding my windows outward. Agony.

Death. Vengeance. A house could crave such things until it achieved something like sentience. It had me, and it did not mean to let me go. Helpless, I twisted, immolated like one condemned to hell.

I’d assumed too much. This was more than I could manage, and I wasn’t coming out. Satisfied with my torment, the house showed me the scene again and again while I burnt. It craved suffering, and I served.

No escape, it told me. Mine.

No. Weak defiance. I couldn’t feel myself anymore, only what the monster gave. But I could only take so much. Blackness threatened to flood my mind’s eye, giving me nothing in place of agony. At this point I welcomed oblivion.

There was something wet on my cheek, sloppy, small, and insistent. Though I wanted desperately to drop down the dark hole, the tiny thing wouldn’t let me. It yapped insistently and tugged on my hair. Such devotion touched me and it kept me tethered, despite the pain and nausea.

Then I heard voices from far away. It sounded like a quarrel, but I couldn’t make out the words. I sailed down the dark tunnel, expecting to find those I’d lost, and emerged on the other side. The sky was heavy, overcast. Did it rain in hell?

Jesse’s taut face flickered into sight. I tried to sit up, and the full anguish of my maimed hand hit me like a fist in the stomach. I vomited into the damp leaves where I lay, retching so hard that I felt as if I were turning inside out. Someone held my head and murmured. Wracked with dry heaves, I moaned. I couldn’t keep my eyes open; it was too much. Without lifting a hand to save myself, I sank.

I surfaced to an argument. Someone’s arms were around me. I recognized his scent before I opened my eyes.

“We should get her the fuck out of Kilmer,” Jesse was saying. “She’s been out for three hours, and that burn on her palm needs medical attention.”

I was lying on the mattress I’d surrendered to Shannon, and I felt as though I’d been hit by a truck. That was ameliorated slightly by feeling Chance beside me.

“If you touch her, I’ll kill you,” Chance said conversationally. “The doctors won’t know what to do with her. They’ll run tests, stick her with needles, pump her full of drugs, and then say she’s a medical mystery.” He took a breath, as if trying to rein back his protective instincts. “You don’t understand how much she hates hospitals. Just give her time, all right? Corine is strong. If I didn’t think she could do it, I’d have tried to talk her out of it. Trust her to know her own limits.”

Joy came streaming through me like sunlight. Trust her. Stupid as it might seem, that elated me. We were making progress. I wanted to hug him, but at first, my eyelids refused to lift. I could feel my body again, but that wasn’t a good thing. If I ever considered reading a whole house again, I hoped someone would shoot me.

“I’m okay,” I tried to mumble. It came out unintelligible, but the sign of life rendered both men speechless, I assumed with relief.

Eventually I got my eyes open. Everything looked strange and distant, as if I peered through a gauzy veil. My hand throbbed like a son of a bitch.

Chance’s arms tightened around me, and I didn’t try to get away. “Shannon, get the salve I left in the living room.”

Motion flickered at the edges of my vision, but I still couldn’t focus right. She must have fetched it, though, because I felt him applying the ointment to my injured palm as he’d done so many times before. His mother’s remedy soothed the worst of the pain. More than once, I’d considered the cream magickal. Now I suspected it just might be. “What happened?” I asked. That time, the words came out more or less as I intended.

“You were . . . inside a long time. And the pain—” Jesse’s voice actually broke. “Christ Almighty, Corine.”

“So we pulled your hand off the wall,” Shannon continued. “But I wasn’t sure we did it fast enough, ’cause it didn’t seem to do much good. You puked and then passed out.”

“It’s an evil place,” I said, low. “Hungry. But it’s different than what lives in the wood.”

“The site needs to be cleansed,” Jesse agreed. “But that’s not our first priority.”

I acknowledged that with a tired nod. My stomach still felt queer and queasy. I was in no condition to argue with anybody about anything.

Shannon added, “You should have seen Chance. He was freakin’ out.”

Chance gave a wry half smile, but he didn’t deny it. “So we came back here to wait it out. Butch is relieved to see you awake, let me tell you.”

The dog jumped up onto the mattress and licked the back of my uninjured hand. He yapped once as if to corroborate. In response, still too shaky to get up, I stroked his head.

Shannon sat down at the end of the mattress. “Jesse wanted to take you to the hospital. I was starting to think maybe we should. You gonna tell us what happened out there?”

“Water, first, please.” My throat ached as if I had really survived a fire.

I drained two full glasses before I felt any better and pulled away from Chance.

Jesse settled near Shannon, ready to listen. I took that as my cue and set the empty glass on the floor beside me.

“Just tell me it was worth it.” Saldana stared at his hands. His voice sounded hoarse, raw. “Tell me you learned something. Tell me you didn’t go through that for nothing.”

What he really meant was, Tell me you didn’t put me through that for nothing. I had no doubt he’d suffered everything I had. I wished I could apologize, but that would imply regret, and I’d do the same thing again.

I related what I’d seen in bare-bones terms. There was no point in expressing how bad it had been; Jesse knew, and the other two had some idea, based on my reaction after.

“So,” I concluded, “they performed a ritual around my mother’s body.” It hurt so much to speak the truth. “She killed herself before they came in.”

No wonder I’d never felt even a whisper of her. According to nearly every religion’s lore, suicides went straight to the worst circle in hell—and they didn’t get day passes to come whisper reassurances to the living.

“Why would she?” Shannon asked.

I could only shrug. “To prevent them from getting whatever they wanted from her?”

“Power?” Jesse guessed. “If so, it could be a black coven.”

I remembered my mother warning me of those who drained magickal gifts and took them as their own. She’d called them ghouls, though they began as human beings. The process awoke an incessant hunger, so once they began to eat the magick of others, they could never be satiated.

The idea didn’t wholly explain things. As far as I knew, she had never revealed how much she could do. Between the orchard and the garden, we’d been close to self-sufficient, and she only made charms and potions on request: minor things, low magick. So why would a black coven decide she had enough to risk exposure in taking her? It didn’t add up.

“Why?” I asked, frustrated. “What did they hope to gain?”

“I bet it has to do with that monster in the woods,” Shannon muttered.

“Have you seen it?” With some effort, I hauled myself into a sitting position.

Shannon hesitated. “Yeah. Well, sort of. I felt it more than saw anything. We cut school and meant to get wasted out there. When it got all dark and still, Robert Walker pissed his pants. He was small and slow, kind of timid. We all ran back to where we’d parked the cars and they wouldn’t start.” She shivered, remembering. “I thought we’d never get out. It felt like the thing was playing with us, enjoying it more when we ran.”

“Did you all make it out?” Jesse asked.

She shook her head slowly. “Rob never came home.”

Poor kid. She’s had a hell of a life.

“When was this?” Chance sat forward, carrying me with him.

“Last April.” She considered for a moment. “April nineteenth. With all the weirdness and disappearances, it’s just not safe here anymore.”

As if it ever was.

But Dale Graham was right about one thing. Events were definitely escalating.

“In my experience,” Jesse murmured, “you just don’t get an evil monster running amok without somebody raising it.”

I sensed Chance’s agreement even before he spoke. “So the question is, who summoned it, and why?”

I intended to ask Miss Minnie that very question tonight.