Chapter 15
“Words?” Haatim echoed after Frieda closed the connection. “Should I be concerned?”
“Only if you enjoy living,” Abigail answered. “I only get that tone from her when she’s really pissed off. What did you do? How did you get them to give me more time?”
“You can stop this, right?” he asked.
Abigail stared at Haatim. “You called your father.”
“We had a nice chat.”
“That was stupid, Haatim,” Abigail replied.
“Not if you can stop this,” he said. “Then it’ll be worth it. These people don’t deserve to die.”
Abigail picked up her duffel bag and started walking down the street. It was quiet and empty, which even for a town this small felt unnatural. She walked toward a couple of cars that were parked in front of a coffee shop.
“What do we do now?”
“You,” Abigail said, testing the door—it was locked. “Are getting out of town right now. There is going to be a roadblock somewhere outside the city, but it will be one of ours. Tell them who you are and who your father is, and they will let you through.”
“No way, I’m not leaving you.”
She hesitated and turned to face him.
“Thank you for trusting in me,” she said. “But this is where our paths diverge. You need to get back to your family.”
“I want to help.”
“You already have,” she said.
Abigail went to the rear window and hit it with her elbow, shattering the glass. Then, she reached in and unlocked the front door.
“What are you going to do?”
“I,” she said, “am going to kill Belphegor.”
“Will that stop what’s happening?”
“Yes,” Abigail said. “I think so.”
“You think so?”
“I’ve never dealt with something this crazy before, but situations like this usually end when the source is destroyed. If I can find him and take him out, then at the very least I know he won’t be able to spread this madness anywhere else. And, thanks to you, I now have an hour to do it.”
“Is it enough time?”
“More than enough,” Abigail said. “By the time this hour is up, either he will be dead or I will.”
She leaned into the front seat of the car she’d just opened and started hot wiring it. After a quick splice of the wires the car sputtered to life. She dropped her duffel bag into the backseat and started rifling through it, finally pulling out a hand crossbow and a pouch of tiny darts.
“A crossbow?”
“Great for administering doses of sleeping medicine,” she said. She loaded a dart and slipped the rest into her pocket. “I’m not a fan of blowguns.”
“Doesn’t prayer work?” he asked. “Banishing demons with litanies and the Lord’s words?”
“It does,” Abigail said. “But it was never really my thing. Arthur was an ordained Minister, and he taught me a handful of prayers, but I never really took it seriously. For me, guns are what I use to pray with.”
As if to emphasize her point, she pulled out a short-barreled shotgun and a pack of twenty-gauge shells. She also slid the satellite phone into her pocket. It was bullet-proof and expensive but bulky and frustrating to carry with her.
“How many weapons do you keep with you?”
“Enough,” she replied. She loaded the shotgun and then glanced at Haatim. “Time for you to go. The car has half a tank, which should be plenty to get you past the blockade. Don’t stop until you’re well clear of this entire area.”
“OK,” he replied. “What about your stuff?”
“If I make it out of here, I’ll come get it.”
Haatim hesitated. “If?”
She shrugged. “Optimism was never really my strong suit. Now go.”
He started to climb into the car and then hesitated. He wrapped her up in a hug, catching her off-guard. “Thanks,” he said. “For everything.”
“No problem,” she said, extricating herself from the hug.
“Be safe.”
“I will,” she replied. “Take care of yourself, Haatim.”
He nodded and climbed into the car. She watched him drive off, heading out of town, and then she turned and looked back toward the center of town. The fog was almost completely gone, and the city was a scene of devastation: fires raged, people were shouting, and it was mass chaos.
If Belphegor was here, he’d be building up some kind of army to protect himself. If Abigail wanted to find him, all she would need to do was follow the people who are acting crazy.
Haatim drove along the outskirts of town, heading for the road leading away from Raven’s Peak and back toward civilization. Part of him was relieved to be getting away from all of the insanity, even though he was leaving Abigail behind. He hadn’t known her for that long, but he had come to like and respect her.
It was hard to believe so much had happened in so little time. Only two days ago he would have laughed if someone told him things like demons were real, and now he had seen them with his own two eyes. It was actually quite terrifying when he admitted it to himself.
If it wasn’t for Abigail, he would have died several times by now. She constantly risked her life protecting the world from horrible things, and her only concern while facing this impossible challenge was that she wouldn’t have enough time to even die in the effort. He hated the idea that he was abandoning her.
But what help could he be? This wasn’t his world.
Except…
Maybe it was.
His father was a deeply religious man and had raised Haatim to be educated and spiritual. He never would have imagined his father could be a part of something like this, but the more he thought about it the more it made sense.
It explained his father’s many absences from his upbringing and his lofty sentimentality about bettering the world. It explained why he always taught Haatim to have Faith in and to trust in God.
But, just echoing the prayers and saying the right words didn’t mean much of anything. Haatim had never considered himself a true believer. He’d thought of religious teachings as fanciful tales people told so children would behave.
He had lost his faith when his sister died. He’d given up all hope in a greater plan, and his father had been furious when he turned his back on religion. Now, however, Haatim felt that his faith was back. But, even after all of this, it hadn’t been his father who had rekindled his faith.
It had been Abigail.
Not her belief in the supernatural, but rather her utter belief that she was doing the right thing by risking her life to save others. Her complete trust in the decisions she made and that there was good in the world. She might be arrogant and off-putting at times, but she was the bravest and most selfless human being he’d ever met.
Abigail walked down the street, shotgun slung over her shoulder and hand crossbow at the ready. She fought the urge to glance at her watch, but she knew she’d already lost ten minutes of her hour before the attack came.
She knew how risky this was. No, risky wasn’t the right word: insane was better. Maybe even suicidal. She was wholly unprepared and unready for something like this.
But she also didn’t have any other options.
The Council had declared Raven’s Peak a dead zone. They didn’t do that unless they felt things were unsalvageable, and it had been almost two-hundred years since the last time they had employed scorched-earth tactics like this. If they felt there was any other way to deal with Belphegor, they would have used it instead.
Which meant they didn’t think she was a viable alternative. Hell, she didn’t even blame them for their lack of confidence in her. The last time she had come to Raven’s Peak she was with two more experienced Hunters than herself and both of them were dead.
But she had to try. She might only have an hour, and this might be an insane plan, but she couldn’t just stand by and let these people be burned alive. Arthur had taught her that when good people stood by and watched others die, then they died with them.
The day Arthur rescued her was the first time in her life she’d felt there was something good in the world. It was a feeling she embraced wholeheartedly, and he’d taught her the difference between just being alive and really living.
She heard a shout from up ahead and saw a man come charging out of the town’s municipal building. He sprinted across the street toward a fast food restaurant that was on fire. He was also naked and screaming.
She saw someone else chase him out of the building and into the street. This second man was carrying a rifle and wearing a police uniform. Abigail started to raise her crossbow, but she was a split second too late.
The pursuer dropped to his knee, aimed, and fired at the naked man. The bark of the gunshot echoed past her, and the fleeing man fell face-first onto the road.
Abigail fired, putting a dart into the cop’s chest. He froze, still on his knee, and slowly his grip loosened on the rifle as the sleeping medicine went into effect. His hands were shaking as he tried to stay conscious, but by the time he hit the ground he was completely out of it.
Abigail ran to the man in the road but quickly realized that he was already dead. The cop had fired a high caliber round that passed through his body, shredding everything in its path.
“Damn it,” she muttered. “Figures something like this happens in a town where everyone owns a gun.”
She loaded another dart into her hand crossbow and moved on down the road. She heard more gunshots in the distance, but they sounded far enough away that she didn’t worry about them.
The motel was about a block ahead, and that was the first place she planned to check for the boy. She doubted he would still be there, but she might find some clue as to where he had gone.
It was a one story “L” shaped structure with fading green paint and a white roof. It was quiet in the area and an old sign stood out front with the word “vacancy” lit up despite it being late in the morning.
A car had smashed into the front of the building and was parked in the lobby, but there was no driver inside. Abigail approached it cautiously. The door was open, and the keys were still in the ignition. Smooth jazz blared out of the speakers. Abigail reached in and flipped the car off, then closed the door.
She held her hand crossbow at the ready and slung the shotgun over her shoulder, moving slowly through the lobby. No one stood behind the desk, and most of the keys were hanging up and unused. Only two sets were missing: rooms four and six.
She walked along the front of the motel, working her way down the numbers from ten. By the time she reached unit six, she could hear laughter spilling from inside a room farther down the way. No doubt, it was coming from unit four.
A cursory glance inside the window showed that unit six was locked and empty. The bed wasn’t made and clothing was scattered all over the floor, but it looked like whoever had been staying there had left some time ago. She kept moving.
The laughter intensified, and it sounded like a woman cackling hysterically. The door to unit four was cracked open. Abigail gently pushed it open and crept inside.
A woman in a brown overcoat was sitting in a gray chair, laughing and resting her head against a busted mirror. Blood ran down the side of her face, and her hair was matted and unkempt. The television was on and playing a Spanish soap opera.
There was no one else in the room. Abigail hesitated in the doorway, trying to decide if she should address the woman or keep moving.
She didn’t get to decide when the woman turned to face her. She grinned. “Come in! Have a seat!”
Abigail considered her options for a second, and then strode into the room. She sat in another arm chair facing the woman and rested her crossbow on her knee.
“Hello.”
“Hi!” the woman said, laughing. She rocked her head, gently tapping it against the glass, and smiled at Abigail. Her left eye was twitching. “You’re very pretty.”
“Thank you.”
“Do you think I’m pretty?” the woman asked.
Abigail hesitated and then nodded. “Yes. Quite pretty.”
“But I’m not,” the woman said. “My husband thinks I’m a wretched, awful woman. He hates me, and that’s why he beats me.”
“He beats you?”
She nodded, perky. “Though he’s rarely home, anymore. I hate him. I would divorce him, but I’m afraid he would kill me. So I’m going to kill him instead.”
Then she burst out laughing like it was the funniest idea in the world. She clutched her stomach.
“He didn’t come with you?”
“No,” the woman said. “He’s off sleeping with his secretary, and I don’t even care. I just don’t want my son to know he beats me. He shouldn’t hate his father. He shouldn’t.”
“He should know what kind of man his father is.”
“Oh, heaven’s no!” the woman said. “A boy looks up to his father. He cannot possibly know the truth: all men are terrible.”
“Where is your son?”
“He went with the others.”
“The others?”
“The ones he called for. They came when he asked. And they swore to protect him. Do you think they can protect him?”
“I don’t know,” Abigail replied. “But I can help protect him. Do you know where he is?”
“They took him to the factory. They said they could keep him safe there.”
“OK,” Abigail said, standing up. “Thank you.”
“Wait,” the woman said, suddenly suspicious. “I don’t trust you. You’re Abigail. He told me not to trust you.”
The woman launched herself from the chair, fingers outstretched and lips curled in a feral grin. She screeched, charging across the room. Abigail raised the crossbow and fired, but the woman was too close and her dart skimmed past her shoulder.
Abigail ducked as the woman reached for her face. She looked like a ravenous animal trying to scratch and claw her eyes out.
Abigail slid past her to the center of the room and then kicked the woman in the shin. Off balanced, the woman clawed at the air and got ahold of Abigail’s hair. She yanked on it, pulling Abigail to the side, and then scratched her face with her other hand.
Abigail rolled under the woman’s arm, punching her twice hard in the kidney. The woman doubled over, releasing her hair, and Abigail punched her in the neck, dropping her to the ground.
For good measure, Abigail shot her with another crossbow dart. She growled in frustration and fixed her hair, tying it back into a ponytail.
“That is why I usually wear my hair short,” she explained to the unconscious woman. “And how the hell did you know my name?”
Naturally, she didn’t get a satisfactory answer. She blew out a breath of air and loaded more darts into her crossbow. It held three at a time, and she only had a couple left. She’d need to be careful not to waste them.
At least now she knew where she was heading. The factory.
She didn’t have a lot of time left, but she also didn’t want to rush out in front of some maniac with a gun. She moved through the streets cautiously, weaving down alleys and avoiding the main roads.
Gunshots sounded at random intervals, and people shouted and screamed all around her. Someone was singing, belting out the lyrics to a Jimmy Buffet song.
She heard dogs barking and people shouting and stayed out of sight. On one side street she spotted a brawl going on with a group of five men and women pummeling each other, but she was able to skirt around it and keep going.
Finally, she reached a group of buildings that stood outside the enormous factory. These were smaller strip-mall type structures, probably owned by the same company that owned and operated the factory. They were old and rundown but looked to still be in use.
The factory itself took up at least five acres of land and stood four floors high. She heard shouting coming from up ahead and moved quietly, staying out of sight.
Out front of the main entrance she saw a group of men gathered, yelling angrily at another man they were circled around. The guy in the center was small and cowering, pleading with them to let him go. Two of the men were carrying guns, and the rest had baseball bats and other weapons.
Abigail watched as one of the bat-wielding lunatics smashed the cowering man in the knee. They roared and laughed and another man followed that attack with a swing from a golf club. The guy in the center screamed in pain.
The rest jeered and cheered, and the pleading man collapsed to the ground, crying. Abigail counted seven of them in total, including the one they were encircling.
Abigail glanced up and down the front of the factory, looking for another way inside. It didn’t look like there were a lot of entrances, at least on this side of the building. There was a factory entrance on the right wall eighty or so meters away, but all of the loading bay doors were pulled closed, and she doubted they would be easy to open.
Which meant her best entrance would be this main one here. She would need to go through these idiots, and the more of a surprise she could get on them, the better. At least only two of them were carrying guns.
She looked at her crossbow, making sure it was cocked and ready to go. She would get three shots, so she needed to make them count. The poison worked quickly and would knock a bear out for hours.
Abigail slipped out of hiding and strode confidently toward the group of men. She waited until she was about four meters away and then raised her crossbow. She fired the first two bolts in rapid succession, hitting the two gun-wielding men in the necks with darts.
The third dart she fired was at the biggest man in the group, a hulking brute towering well over two meters tall. He was big, but no match for the poison. The dart hit him in the shoulder, and he fell heavily to the ground with a grunt.
The rest of the group looked around in confusion as those three sunk to the ground. Abigail quick stepped forward and kicked the nearest man in the back of the leg. He shouted in anger, dropping to one knee, and Abigail followed with a roundhouse kick to the side of the head.
The other two men had spotted her by now and were ready to fight. One was short and built like a barrel with thick muscles and wearing an ugly flannel shirt. The other guy was tall and scrawny with bushy sideburns and a sharp nose. This one had his sleeves rolled up and tattoos covering his arms.
Scrawny was closer, and he stepped in with a growl and launched a clumsy punch at Abigail. She slipped past his arm and hit him forcibly in the side. He grunted and launched another attack, but she was already stepping back out of his reach.
The short one entered the fray, laughing like a lunatic as he tried to kick her. She could tell within seconds that he was better at fighting than his tall friend. She stayed out of reach, circling around to his side. He followed with a series of controlled punches, and the last one connected with her shoulder, knocking her back a painful step.
She rolled with the attack and scrambled back as he pursued her. She dodged one punch, deflected a second, and then launched a kick of her own back at him. She hit him in the stomach, but he barely seemed to notice.
Scrawny was using the opportunity to run to one of his downed friends who had been carrying a gun and was trying to extract it from the unconscious man’s grip.
Abigail slipped back, realizing this fighter would be harder to bring down than she had thought. She slipped her revolver loose and lined up a shot, first shooting the short guy in the knee. She followed with a kick to his face, knocking him unconscious as he staggered to the ground.
Scrawny had gotten the gun loose and was bringing it back up to line up a shot. His first bullet went wide as he pulled the trigger in panic, and then Abigail was on him. She rushed forward, swatted the gun out of his hand, and then punched him in the nose. It broke, blood pouring down his face, and she kicked him twice in the stomach.
He collapsed and rolled on the ground, groaning and clutching his broken cartilage. Abigail rubbed her shoulder and stretched it out from where the short guy had hit her. It hurt a lot.
She glanced around, making sure everyone was out of the fight. They were all either unconscious or had lost all interest in attacking her.
The doorway into the factory was clear in front of her. She readied her shotgun, took a few steadying breaths, and walked into the factory.
Lincoln Cole
