Personal Demon

HOPE: CRASH AND BURN

Twice before, I’d watched my life crash and burn.

The first time had been my last year of high school. In the midst of SATs, training for a regatta and struggling through the first serious fight with my high school sweetheart, I’d started seeing visions. Convinced it was stress, I’d been furious with myself for showing such weakness and determined to “fix” myself before anyone found out and shipped me off to therapy. I’d fought it so hard that I had a breakdown, I lost it all-the SATs, the regatta, my boyfriend-and spent my prom night in a private mental hospital.

It took years to recover from that, but I did. I learned what I was. I established contacts in the supernatural world. I graduated from college. I found the “council” and got my job with True News. From debutante to tabloid-reporting, gun-toting, chaos demon spy girl. Not exactly what my mother had in mind, but I’d been pleased with myself. It was like going to bed an ordinary girl and waking up a superhero.

More like super-chump. I’d discovered that my new life was built on a lie. I wasn’t protecting the innocent; I was delivering them to the Cortez Cabal. My self-confidence took a beating that it still hadn’t recovered from. But with Karl’s help I’d bounced back and became exactly what I thought I’d been before-a council operative.

Now, with a single bullet, my world had shattered again. This time it wouldn’t heal.

Paige had believed me. I said I’d needed her help and she’d taken me at my word. How many times had I heard the council tease Paige about her impetuousness? They told stories of her running headlong into danger, mind fixed on a soul that needed saving. But such tales were rooted in the past, and even Paige laughed at them. She was older now. More experienced. More cautious.

Yet hadn’t I seen the worry in Lucas’s eyes when she set out on a dangerous assignment? I’d always told myself he was just concerned for his wife. Now I realized that Paige was, at heart, the same person she’d always been, one who’d throw herself into a bullet’s path to save a friend.

I’d called for help. She’d listened.

I’d begged her to tell no one. She’d listened.

After arriving, she’d had misgivings, but I’d played it so cool she’d told herself she was wrong. And followed me to her death.

She’d trusted me. She was dead. It was my fault.

Benicio Cortez would chase me to the ends of the earth, now, convinced I’d been part of the conspiracy against his family. Who would I turn to? For justice? For mercy? Lucas? The council? I’d killed Paige. No one would help me now.

I would not recover from this. Could not.

And yet, even as I thought the words, they were only words. I didn’t care what happened to me. All I could see was Paige’s face. Her dead eyes staring at me.

My greatest fear had been that, faced with the death of a friend, I’d be so overcome by the chaos that I’d stand by and watch. Now I knew I’d been wrong. I’d faced the chaos and overcome it. I’d tried to stop Jaz. Tried to save Paige. Did it matter? No. Because I’d still been responsible for her death…and I didn’t even have the demon to blame.

I LAY IN the back of a car. I had no idea how long I’d been there, trapped in my thoughts, smelling vinyl and vomit, feeling the rumble of the tires, hearing the sharp words of an argument. It all washed over me, muddled by whatever drug sloshed through my veins.

Even when the voices became coherent, I listened, aware that what I was hearing was important, connected to me, but unable to make that connection. Just disembodied voices floating through the ether.

“You have to do something about her.”

“Everything’s fine.”

“Fine? Look in the mirror and tell me everything’s fine, Jaz. She attacked you-”

“I shot someone she liked. What’s she supposed to do? Run over and kiss me?”

“Kill you more like.”

“She wouldn’t do that.”

“No? Well, judging by those scratches, she sure as hell tried. I hate to see what you’d look like if you hadn’t shot her with the sedative.”

“You don’t understand.”

“No, Jaz, I don’t.”

Silence.

“I need her, Sonny.”

“Need? You met her a few days ago. Days! And now, all of a sudden, you can’t live without her. I’m starting to wonder where that leaves me.”

“Right where you’ve always been. My brother. Nothing is more important to me.”

“Nothing?”

Silence.

“You want me to choose, Sonny? Is that what this is about? You’re feeling threatened so I need to make a choice?”

“I never said-”

“Here, take this.”

“What the hell are you-?”

“Go on. Take it.”

“For God’s sake, Jaz. Stop being such a fucking drama queen. I-”

“Take the gun. Fire it. Because if you’re going to make me choose, you might as well put a bullet in my brain right now.”

“Goddamn it! You’re crazy, you know that? As screwed up as-”

Silence.

“As Mom?”

“I didn’t mean that, Jaz. You know I didn’t.”

“At least I come by it honestly.”

“I didn’t mean-”

“It’s okay, bro. Maybe I am a little fucked up. Maybe a lot fucked up. But you know what’s really nuts, Sonny? I know that, and it doesn’t make any difference. I look at Hope back there and I think ‘Goddamn it, man, what are you doing?’ But it doesn’t change anything because I feel it’s right. It’s what I’m meant to do. Just like all this.” Pause. “Have I ever steered you wrong?”

“No, Jaz.”

“As crazy as my ideas are, have they ever been something we can’t manage?”

“No.”

“Then trust me.”

“I do.”

“I know you’re tired of this, bro. I know you want it over with. Me and my mad dreams. But we’re almost there. Remember when we were little, and Mom would say we had to move again, and you’d cry and cry. What did I promise you?”

“That someday we’d stop running.”

“And when you were older, she’d say we had to move and you’d try to reason with her, and you’d get so mad because she never listened. What did I promise you?”

“That you’d stop it.”

“The only way to stop the Cabal-really stop them-is to become them. We’re close, Sonny. So close. Just a couple more months, then, when everything’s in place, you can go back to being you. Free.”

“And what about you?”

“I’ll be fine. I’ll get used to being Lucas and I’ll have Hope.”

“What if she doesn’t…come around?”

“She will. This is a lot for her to absorb. You can’t blame her for being freaked out. But she loves me. I know that. She’ll come around.”

“Not like she has much choice now.”

Silence.

“That wasn’t how I wanted it.”

“I know, Jaz. But now she’ll have to see what it’s like from our side.”

When all went quiet, my thoughts folded back into themselves, and I was lost again.

I GROANED AND clutched my stomach. Jaz caught me by the shoulders, steadying me as I sat on the seat edge. Another seat, another car. Sonny had dropped us off in a parking garage, where a second vehicle waited, then he’d left to ditch the first a couple of blocks away.

“Just crawl in and lie down,” Jaz said.

“I-I-” I heaved, slapping my hand over my mouth. “Oh, God. I need air.”

He hesitated. It was safer with me in the car. “The air’s not much fresher out here. Worse even. All the carbon monoxide.”

I looked into his eyes. “Please.”

A pause. Then, “Yeah. Okay. But just for a minute.”

Mission accomplished.

He led me over to a pillar near the railing, far enough back so I wouldn’t be seen, but close enough to catch the breeze.

“Sonny’s going to come out right over there. Any minute. Then I’m getting you back in that car before he finds out.”

I nodded. He kept one arm around my waist, the other holding my arm, supporting me as I leaned against the pillar.

“I’m sorry, Hope. I really am. It was a helluva thing to do to you, but I had to. If I’d let you know what I planned, you would have been an accomplice in Paige’s death. I wouldn’t do that to you.”

And you think I’m not an accomplice now? I brought her to you.

He fingered the gouges on his cheek. “I deserved every one of them. And more. But once you get past this, you’ll see there wasn’t any other way. She’s gone to the other side now, and she’s okay. All those good deeds she did here? She’s in the best place they’ve got. And Lucas will be with her soon, and they’ll be happy. Do you think she’d really prefer it the other way? Kidnapped, terrified and alone, finally rescued only to discover that the man she loved has changed into someone she doesn’t recognize? She’s better off.”

There was no pleading in his voice. He honestly believed Paige was happier dead, and that it was only a matter of time before I “came around.”

I resisted the urge to push him away and stand on my own feet. I could. Almost as soon as I’d awoken, the effects of the drugs had worn off. I’d gotten him out here, alone, and now I had to…

To what?

Run away? Where? Kill him and drag him, like a trophy, back to the Cabal? Throw myself on their mercy?

To my shame, there was a fraction of my soul that didn’t want to do anything. That just wanted to throw up its hands and go along for the ride. Abdicate responsibility. Overthrow conscience. Join Jaz and believe in his mad dreams.

It was a tiny part, but it had to be acknowledged. That’s what Karl had tried to tell me last night. I couldn’t keep pretending that part didn’t exist. I had my demon, and it wasn’t evil any more than was his wolf. It just wasn’t human. It lacked the ability to comprehend the conscious lives of others. It hungered and it desired and it knew nothing else, strove for nothing else but the satisfaction of those hungers and desires.

The human in me would never pass a car accident and see a covered body without feeling a jab of grief for a life lost. The demon could see only what it could take from that death: chaos. Likewise with the wolf, who would see only a meal already brought down. Not evil. Just not human.

When the demon whispered in my ear, telling me it would be easier to give in to Jaz, accept the chaos feast he’d set at my feet in offering, I couldn’t be horrified by the impulse. I had to listen, refuse and move on.

“Oh, there he is. Let’s scoot you back in the car.”

My chance was evaporating. Was I strong enough yet to knock him out? Was I ever strong enough? The element of surprise. That was my only hope.

I let him lead me toward the car. I saw his gun on the front seat, where he must have laid it while trying to get me into the back. If I could swing the door open, hit him, grab the-

The flash of fangs. A growl that skittered down my spine. I went rigid, a name on my lips. Karl. I looked around, but of course, he wasn’t there. A vision. Meaning he was close.

“Hope?” Jaz’s voice. His hand squeezed mine, the other still around my waist.

Where is she? The snarled question reverberated through my head. A crack. Blinding pain. Only I didn’t feel pain. Just chaos, rippling through the air, floating up from…

My gaze flew to the railing.

“Hope? What do you-?”

Jaz followed my gaze. A small noise. An odd noise. Like a tiny chirp of fear. He dropped me and ran for the railing.

“Son-!”

The word cut off with a strangled cry. He ran back to the car, pushed me aside, clawed at the door, finally getting it open.

Where is she, you son of a bitch?

Karl. I swore I could hear his voice. Impossible from thirty feet below, but it was as clear as if he was beside me.

I walked to the railing. Seemed to float, pulled along by the tethers of chaos.

There, on the street below, Karl had Sonny on the ground, one knee on his back, hand wrapped in his hair, head pulled back so far that with the barest tug, his neck would snap.

Karl slammed Sonny’s face into the pavement.

Where is she?

I opened my mouth to shout. Then I saw Sonny’s hand, sliding from under his jacket. Karl didn’t notice, too focused on his task, the chaos waves even from this distance so sharp and hard they stopped the breath in my throat. Sonny’s hand slid out. His gun in that hand.

“Karl!” I screamed.

Jaz shoved me aside. He aimed his gun. It was too far. Too dangerous. He let out a strangled cry and jumped onto the railing, as if ready to leap off it.

A growl. A shot. A snap.

The last somehow seemed loudest, though I heard it only in my head. Heard it. Felt it. Saw it. The whites of Sonny’s eyes, rolling as his neck snapped. His face going slack. Head falling to the pavement.