Chapter 16
Haatim pulled off to the side of the road about half a mile outside the city. He kept the car idling, divided by the raging emotions inside his heart and mind.
He hadn’t seen any other people on the road, and it was quiet out here in the woods. Hard to believe that a mile behind him, an entire town was falling to anarchy and disrepair.
If he left Raven’s Peak now, then he was abandoning Abigail to face this threat alone. He would be leaving her alone, and if she didn’t make it out alive he would effectively be sentencing her to death. After everything she had done to rescue him and protect him up until now, he didn’t think he could live with himself if she didn’t survive.
Still, he wasn’t sure what he could do to help. This wasn’t his world, and he didn’t know what she was facing. If he returned to Raven’s Peak, he might be able to do nothing else except die along with her.
But, surviving and knowing that he might have been able to do something and chose not to would be worse.
He put the car back into gear and made a U-turn, driving back toward the city. He wasn’t exactly sure where he would find Abigail, but he figured there was a decent way he could follow her.
Just follow the gunshots.
He drove back into town and turned east, heading down a road toward the central district. Abigail had been traveling in that direction when last he saw her, and he hoped he might come across her along the way.
He spotted something ahead and slowed the car to a crawl: as he got closer he realized two people were copulating in the center of the street. Their clothes were scattered all around them and they were laughing and moaning wildly.
Haatim hesitated in shock and then drove around them, running up on the curb to avoid their activities. He shook his head and let out a nervous chuckle. The pair barely seemed to notice his vehicle driving past them only a few meters away.
He kept going passing through the center of town and heading farther east. He was watching carefully for any sign that Abigail had been here. There was a body on the road, and he was fairly certain the guy was dead, but then he spotted a police officer farther up the way.
He climbed out of the car and checked the officer over, noticing a dart in the man’s neck. He was heading the right way.
He kept going and drove past a man diving into an industrial trashcan in one of the side alleys. This guy was wearing a torn up business suit and rambling to himself as he tossed things out. The best word Haatim could think of to describe him was: ravenous.
Farther down the street a naked man ran across the road in front of his car, forcing him to slam on the brakes. This guy pounded his hands on the hood and made gyrating motions before squealing and running off. He disappeared into a house, shouting and laughing.
Haatim let out a sigh and kept moving. He hadn’t seen any clues of where he might find Abigail yet, but he was coming up to the factory they had seen on the eastern side of the town. Then he would have to double back and check another street.
Abigail crept slowly through sparsely furnished office space, careful not to make any noise. It was silent and dark, a long carpeted hallway that eventually emptied onto the factory floor. She’d tried the light switch, but the power was out. Only a handful of windows were letting in any outside sunlight.
It was around forty meters from the entrance to the factory itself, and she was walking past old and cramped offices. The furniture looked like it had been pulled from the last century. People—the group out front, she assumed—had been through here already and much of the equipment was broken. Papers and trash were scattered across the floor and computers were smashed by bats and clubs. She checked each room, determined not to pass by any threats.
Her footsteps were the only sound padding across the soft carpet. She listened, but there was no evidence that anyone else was in the office with her. She kept moving, breathing as softly as she could.
She held her shotgun at the ready; it was loaded with specialized shells packed with salt. It had a short-barrel and would spread the salt in a wide pattern. Demons moved quickly, but even a little bit of salt could slow them down.
She didn’t want to use it on the kid if she didn’t have to, but she doubted the demon was going to give up the body willingly. That, of course, required that the demon was still inside the kid. It might have moved on by now and found another host. If she underestimated Belphegor, she would get both herself and the host killed.
She wiped the sweat from her hands, breathing deeply and keeping herself calm. She was almost through the offices, only four meters from the cavernous factory floor beyond, when she heard a voice behind her.
“I wondered when I might meet you.”
Abigail froze midstride. It was the voice of a young child. It came from one of the side rooms she had already cleared. She turned and saw a young boy, maybe ten or eleven, standing in the doorway of the office and studying her. He looked normal, if a little pale, with dark hair and bangs on his boyish face. His eyes, though, were dead and empty.
He hadn’t been there a second ago, she was sure of it. Nor had she heard any footsteps on the carpet. With how quiet it was in the room she was certain she could have heard a pin drop on the carpet, let alone a boy’s footsteps.
Yet, there he stood, watching her with an immutable expression. She forced herself to swallow and slowly swiveled around to face him. If he was at all concerned that she was carrying a shotgun, he didn’t show it.
“Meet me?”
“Yes,” the demon said. “I was hoping we might bump into each other. After all, I know Arthur so well now, ever since he was brought to my master.”
She felt a chill run across her spine. “What are you talking about?”
“I know your mentor intimately. I’ve been speaking with him rather often these last months, and suffice to say he has a great many things to say about you,” the child said. “All good things, of course. He’s quite fond of you. He’ll be so thrilled to learn that we spoke.”
“What are you doing to him?”
“You wouldn’t even begin to imagine,” the demon said. “After we broke him and turned him into our puppet.”
“You aren’t the demon that took him.”
“No, I’m not, but he remembers you well. He speaks of the time he spent inside you in the Church and how delicious it was to dominate you. Perhaps you would like to feel that again? To have him slip inside of you like a soft glove.”
“Shut up.”
“He told me that you were a true fighter, but he broke you. That was before he took Arthur, of course. Now we have a new plaything.”
Abigail felt her hands shake. “Don’t speak of him…”
“Oh, are you sad to talk about Arthur? You should be. You’re the one that sent him to hell.”
Abigail didn’t respond.
“You don’t think so? I do. We had a nice long chat about it. Arthur didn’t want to talk. Not at first. Funny how despair changes one’s perspective, and by the end he couldn’t stop himself from telling me everything. He told me you were the one who finally brought him in and locked him in that prison. He explained how you were the reason he butchered all of those people.”
“He didn’t…”
“Oh, he certainly butchered them,” the demon argued. “Gloriously and without remorse. He thought he was doing the right thing.”
“He thought they were infected.”
“They were infected.”
“But he didn’t need to kill them. There was another way.”
“Was there? Is that what the Council told you?”
Abigail didn’t reply.
“A pity,” the demon said. “And here, I thought you might be more than a simple lap dog.”
Abigail started to raise her shotgun, but she felt a sudden compulsion to set it on the floor instead. She resisted, and her hands started shaking, but she couldn’t regain complete control. The demon wasn’t possessing her, it was just suggesting a course of action, but she could tell it was powerful
“Now, now, let’s not get ahead of ourselves. This need not turn unpleasant. After my time with Arthur, I was hoping we might be able to end things amicably.”
“Why are you here?” she asked.
“To finish the business my associate began so many months ago.”
“And what business is that?”
“It isn’t your concern,” the demon said. “What is your concern is what I have to offer you.”
“What you can offer me?”
The demon smiled.
“I can offer you your greatest desire,” the demon said, “if you assist me.”
“Assist you with what?” Abigail asked. “My greatest desire? How could you possibly know what I want?”
The demon ignored her. “This body is too weak to go into the tunnels where a certain knife was hidden long ago. However, older bodies would be too weak for me to use for an extended journey, so I’m at an impasse. I want you to retrieve the blade and bring it back to me.”
“And why would I do that?”
“Because when you bring the knife here, I will return Arthur to you. Whole and alive.”
Haatim heard shouts from above and peered through the windshield, leaning forward in his seat. The sounds came from above on the roof of a nearby home.
He was almost through the residential street near the outskirts of the town. A man was standing on the roof of his two-story home. He was flapping his arms like they were wings and making bird sounds.
“Uh oh,” Haatim said. He hit the brakes and put the car into park, and then jumped out. “Hey!”
“Hey!” the guy shouted down at him. “Watch this! I’m about to fly!”
“You can’t fly,” Haatim called up, cupping his hands over his mouth. “Humans can’t fly!”
“I can,” the guy said. “And I’ll be rich and famous. The human birdman!”
“Trust me,” Haatim said. “You are just going to hurt yourself.”
“No, I’m not,” the guy said. “Watch!”
Haatim watched the man jump off his roof, flailing and flapping his arms. He shouted and screamed in panic. He hit an awning about four meters down and then rolled off and thudded bodily into the bushes in front of his house.
Haatim sprinted over to check on the man. He was thrashing and groaning in the bushes, but he looked mostly unhurt. The bushes had cushioned his fall.
Haatim blew out a breath of air and rubbed a hand through his hair. “What the hell is going on?” he asked no one in particular. “This just keeps getting crazier and crazier.”
He got back into the car and kept driving. Up ahead he saw a strip mall of shops and stores in front of the factory. They looked to have been broken into and looted like the other shops; one of them was on fire.
He pulled up in front of the factory, planning to double back on another street and make another pass through town. Along the way, he spotted a pile of bodies out front of the enormous factory and decided to check it out.
Several men were lying on the ground, some barely conscious and others completely out. A lone man knelt in the center of the group, praying with his hands folded in front of his chest. He was scrawny and it looked like his leg was broken.
Haatim walked over to the man, eyeing the men on the ground in case one of them decided to get up. There were weapons lying everywhere, and he doubted these people were passive or just hoping they could fly in their insanity.
He spotted a small dart in the neck of a few of the unconscious men. Abigail’s hand crossbow lying on the ground nearby, empty.
“Guess I found her,” he muttered.
The man on his knees was rocking back and forth, hands folded in front of himself, and chanting. He had blood running down the side of his head; he barely seemed to notice the pain. He just kept shifting his body and chanting, eyes open and staring up at the sky.
“Are you OK?” Haatim asked.
The guy turned to him, but his eyes didn’t seem to focus on anything. “The end is coming! The end of days is here! Rejoice, brother, the end is here!”
He turned back to the sky and kept chanting before Haatim could reply. The door to the factory was open, and it was pitch black inside. If Abigail was here, he knew, she would be in there.
He eyed several weapons lying on the ground, bats and clubs and even a few guns, but he knew they wouldn’t help him. He didn’t know how to use any of them effectively, and they would do more harm than good.
He steadied himself and then walked into the darkness.
I will return Arthur to you. Whole and alive.
The words hit Abigail like a ton of bricks. The demon was offering to bring her greatest friend back, the sole objective she had pursued during the last several months. It had consumed her ever since that fateful day in the Church when the demon had taken her. Everything she had done was dedicated to finding her mentor: her father.
And this demon could give that to her.
Deals were dangerous things for demons. They served as contracts for them and weren’t entered into lightly. Which meant that if this demon was promising her Arthur in a deal, then it had faith it could deliver its side of the agreement.
Which made her wonder, what must the knife be worth to the demon if it was willing to pay such a price?
Abigail stood there for a long while, piecing through the possibilities. She was trying to come to terms with the emotions raging inside of her. This was everything she wanted, and the possibility of seeing Arthur again had never been this close. In fact, it was more than she had ever expected, because she’d never really thought she could bring him back alive.
Yet, there was another truth that she couldn’t ignore: if she went through with what the demon was offering, then she would be sacrificing everything Arthur stood for while he was alive. She would be willfully disregarding everything he had taught her. She might be able bring him back like this, but the cost would be too great.
She would find another way.
“Arthur is gone,” she muttered, more to herself than the demon. “And I will bring him back. But, if I do this for you, then it won’t matter if I do, because his ideals truly will be gone forever.”
The gun started to shake in her hand as she pushed the demon out of her mind. The demon smiled again, but this time it was filled with rage.
“Like father, like daughter.”
Abigail felt the grip on her mind disappear, but by the time she’d raised the shotgun the demon child was already moving. The gun roared, and the stock kicked painfully into her stomach. Salt pounded into the wall behind the demon in a wide pattern, but none of them hit the moving boy.
The demon dropped low and scrambled to the side, hissing at her. She heard a loud banging sound from her left and ducked just in time to avoid being smashed by a flying cabinet. It soared through the air and blasted through the wall, sending up a cloud of dust.
She stepped forward, pumped the shotgun, and fired another round. This one hit the floor behind the demon as it disappeared around the corner. A table flew out at her, and she barely managed to side-step it.
She pursued the demon and saw it flee out of the offices and into the open space of the factory floor. She pumped another shell into the chamber and stepped into the enormous vaulted chamber behind it.
The vaulted chamber was filled with machinery, conveyer belts, and shipping crates. All of it was off and silent at the moment. Behemoth tables were covered in tools and safety equipment, much of it old and covered in rust.
She heard a scuffing sound from farther in and walked carefully through the open area. There was more ambient light in here than the previous offices, but not enough that she could see comfortably.
The sheer size and emptiness of the chamber had an eerie effect on her. It should have been filled with hundreds of people working and laughing and the sound of equipment humming and grinding, but it all looked dead in the darkness.
She felt her blood pumping and focused on breathing and listening. It was silent in the chamber. Suddenly she heard the rushing sound of air and turned just in time to spot an enormous welding table come flying toward her.
She dove and scrambled to the side, barely getting out of the way before it crashed next to her. It was heavy enough to shake the ground. She sat with her back to an old wooden shelf, panting and staring at the several ton slab of metal that had missed her by only inches.
“You should have agreed to help me,” the child said from somewhere off to her left.
She turned but didn’t see anything except a line of four-meter tall metal shelves. She climbed to her feet and crept in that direction, shotgun ready. She moved to the corner and peeked around.
Nothing. The area was empty.
The factory floor was like a maze, offering endless hiding places for the demon to stay out of her sight. Metal walkways ran overhead, eight meters off the ground and overlooking the entire floor space. She moved cautiously toward a grated staircase, hoping to find a better vantage where she could spot the demon.
“We could have become fast friends,” the demon said, his voice behind her now. “The things I could do for you are incredible.”
A huge shelving unit came flying through the air, but this time she was ready. She stepped out of the way, feeling the ground shake as it landed, and kept moving. The voice echoed in the chamber, so she couldn’t tell exactly where the demon was hiding.
She reached the staircase and climbed up, moving carefully so as not to make much noise. She reached the landing and moved along the grating, trying to spot the boy. After about a minute, she did:
He was about fifteen meters away on the ground floor, walking calmly between the aisles with his hands folded behind his back. A cross-walkway ran over his head, and he didn’t seem to be paying much attention.
Abigail crept along the landing, moving gingerly and careful not to scuff her shoes. Beads of sweat dotted her forehead, and she fought the urge to brush them away.
“But now I’m going to kill you, and it feels like such a waste,” the boy said. “We could have achieved much together, Abigail.”
She was about ten meters away now, still too far for an effective shot. She took another ginger step forward, and the metal grate made a soft echoing sound. Barely noticeable under normal circumstances, but with how quiet the factory was she might as well have banged her gun against the railing.
The demon turned and looked straight at her, a grin on its face.
“There you are!”
She heard a shuddering sound as a table flew across the chamber toward her walkway. She angled her gun and fired off a desperate shot, spraying pellets of salt down at the demon. Several landed on skin, sizzling where they touched, but the demon barely seemed to notice.
She dodged forward as the table closed in. It smashed heavily against the railing, and the walkway shuddered under the pressure. It didn’t give in, but it did rock on its foundation. Abigail was thrown to her feet and almost fell as it swayed and stabilized.
The boy started laughing, and she heard more rustling noises as the demon called upon its inner nature to telekinetically grab more items to throw at her. Behind it she saw dozens of tables with old tools and machinery spread upon it: saw blades, nails as long as spikes, and countless hammers, wrenches, and miscellaneous tools. They were shaking and vibrating on the table.
“Crap,” she muttered.
The demon raised its hand like a conductor standing in front of his orchestra.
“Now, Abigail, it is time for you to die.”
Abigail dove forward just as the tools started flying off the tables. She ran along the railing, hunched low and trying to keep as much of the grated floor between her and the objects as she could.
She heard metal thudding into the railing and floor around her, bouncing in every direction and flying away.
She was too exposed on the railing and needed to get back to the ground. She ducked low, scrambled to the edge, and leaped off the walkway. She landed with a thud on top of a metal shelf and dove immediately the three meters to the ground, tucking into a roll.
The demon laughed as the hail of tools and small objects smashed into everything. It was a violent cacophony, hurting her ears. Occasionally something would ricochet off other objects and collide with her, knocking her off balance, but she was able to hide behind modest cover and avoid the brunt of the attack.
She kept moving, staying low behind the shelving and machinery. A sudden burst of heat on her left side right above her hip told her she’d been hit, but she forced herself to keep moving until she could find some better cover.
The assault continued, larger objects now as the demon ran out of small tools. An endless barrage, it seemed, and the demon kept laughing through it all. A table flew through the air, narrowly missing her, and then she was able to duck out of sight and catch her breath.
She checked her side and saw a screw sticking out if it. Maybe four inches long, it had pierced through her flesh and gone almost an inch into her abdomen.
The barrage died down, leaving the area in total silence. Everything was wrecked around her with broken equipment scattered haphazardly. The railing was hanging sideways above her, teetering and rocking, and part of it had broken off and collapsed to the ground.
Abigail folded the collar of her shirt into a bunch and stuck it between her teeth. She bit down then yanked the screw out. It hurt where the serrated edges caught her flesh, and she couldn’t contain a groan. She dropped the screw onto the floor and checked the wound. It was seeping blood, but hadn’t done much damage.
“Come out, come out, wherever you are!” she heard the boy call, voice high-pitched and squeaky. “You can’t hide forever!”
The barrage came again, and Abigail gritted her teeth and prayed.
Haatim heard an enormous din as he reached the factory floor. Everything was wrecked, and things were flying through the air and crashing into tables and equipment. He couldn’t see much in the cavernous chamber, but he could hear a young boy laughing.
He saw a hail of items flying through the air, bouncing and thudding as they went.
He gulped.
Heavy things, any one of which could rip through his body and end his life in only seconds. And there were hundreds of them, everything from hammers to saws to a hailstorm of nails that might as well have been bullets. They were being aimed at something on the other side of the chamber from Haatim, and he guessed that was where Abigail was hiding.
This is too much, he realized, standing in the doorway and watching the attack in awe. This is insanity.
Why did he think he could help in a situation like this? This was sheer brutality on a scale he’d never even dreamed of. What could he possibly do to help Abigail survive something like this?
He was terrified just watching it; terrified that the demon would notice him hiding near the entrance of the factory and decide to kill him next.
It isn’t too late to leave, he thought. He still had time to slip out before the attack came. He could get out of the city, and he still had the car. There was no way Abigail would be able to deal with something like this, even with his help, and there was no sense in just staying here to die.
But there was another voice in Haatim’s mind telling him that he shouldn’t back down. He should have faith and press on.
Haatim hesitated in the doorway, struggling between the two conflicting ideas. How could he have faith after his sister had died so horribly? He had been so angry when his sister died, blaming God for her death.
He was angry because God hadn’t done anything to save her. Yet, it was his father who refused to seek clinical trials and treatments for her, putting her life in God’s hands.
Haatim blamed himself. He felt like it was his fault because he hadn’t pushed back. He hadn’t fought against his father’s decision and searched out treatments that might have saved her life.
He hadn’t been angry with God, he realized. He’d been angry with himself.
And he knew he couldn’t live with himself if he allowed Abigail to die here as well. The demon might kill him, but inaction definitely would. Haatim didn’t have a lot of faith in himself, but he did have faith that he was doing the right thing.
He forced his hands to stop shaking and then walked onto the factory floor. Somehow, he knew everything would be OK.
Abigail crawled, staying low to the ground alongside the machinery. She still had her shotgun and had two shells left.
She was leaving a trail of blood behind her on the floor, but she didn’t have time to really close the wound just yet.
“Where are you?” the demon said in a singsong voice, and then laughed. “I don’t have all day!”
Abigail popped up behind a box and raised her shotgun. The boy was about three meters in front of her, facing the opposite direction.
She squeezed the trigger just as the demon turned to face her. It side-stepped avoiding the brunt of her shot, but couldn’t avoid the spread.
It was a grazing hit, most of the salt going wide of her target, but enough hit him in the shoulder to throw him back several steps. It seared where it touched and should have weakened the demon inside, but if it had any effect she didn’t notice it.
“There you are!”
Abigail scrambled as the demon threw more tools and metal equipment at her. She ducked and dove forward, narrowly avoiding a shipping crate hurtling toward her head.
She pumped her last shell into the chamber, ducked around the corner, and prepared to fire.
The demon was gone.
She spun, realizing her mistake, but it was too late. The demon was already behind her, eyes glowing red. It extended a hand at her, grasping her in its telekinetic grip. She felt her body lifted into the air, the gun falling limp from her grasp. She fought back mentally, struggling to free herself from its hold, but it was like punching a brick wall.
“Arthur was a fool, and you are no better,” the demon said. The squeaky tenor of the boy was still there, but there was the undercurrent of a guttural voice there as well. “I will bring my master back, and he will ravish this world.”
“No…” Abigail muttered. “You…”
She could barely breathe; the pressure was so great. She felt like something was wrapped around her chest and tightening, trying to crush her like an empty can.
“Witness my victory,” the boy proclaimed. She felt her body lowered to the ground, knees folded into a kneeling position. “All will bow before me.”
“You are a coward,” another voice interrupted from behind the demon. The boy froze, hand still hovering in the air, and spun slowly to see who had spoken:
Abigail saw Haatim step out from behind a pile of broken machinery thirty meters away.
“No…” Abigail groaned. She tried to tell Haatim to run away, but she couldn’t draw in enough air.
“You would dare speak to me? You are nothing but an insignificant insect!”
“You hide within that body because you are pathetic and malformed,” Haatim said. “You are unwilling to show your true form to us. Isn’t that so, Belphegor?”
“I am neither weak nor afraid, mortal.”
“And yet here you are, cowering within the body of a child. You warp the minds of your followers because you know that if they knew the truth of what you really were, a sad and pathetic monster, they would never believe anything you say.”
“Silence!” the demon roared.
“It is you who should be silent,” Haatim said, striding confidently toward the demon. “This is not your world. You spread anger and strife and do not belong. It is time you went home.”
Abigail heard a rattling as the demon telepathically threw a large metal crate through the air. Haatim didn’t even flinch as it approached, and it missed him by only inches.
“You cannot harm me,” Haatim said. “For you are nothing against the greater design.”
The demon threw more objects at Haatim. He strode forward, unblinking as they narrowly missed him. He began singing in Hindi, his voice loud and strong. Abigail didn’t recognize the words, but she did recognize the conviction in Haatim’s eyes.
The demon roared in anger and began throwing things even faster. Shipping cartons and tables blasted across the room, smashing into the walls and floor in a din. Haatim walked through it all, stepping on broken equipment and moving ever closer to the demon.
He stopped singing and began chanting. Abigail recognized his words as prayers, having heard them spoken by Arthur countless times while growing up. He’d taught her rudimentary Latin, but it had never been something she focused on. More objects were flying through the air, but Haatim stepped past them unfazed.
Haatim switched to Hebrew and continued chanting. Abigail felt the demon’s control wavering as it released its grip on her to intensify its attack on Haatim. She could feel its frustration. It was focusing completely on the new threat, disoriented and confused by its inability to hit him with anything.
It threw a table saw through the air. Haatim took a gentle step to the side and it flew past, and the demon screamed in rage and frustration.
“Die!”
“You cannot harm me,” Haatim said. He was only four meters from Belphegor now, stopping calmly and staring at the boy. “You have no power here. You must leave.”
Abigail felt the demon release its hold completely, focusing all of its energy on Haatim. She climbed shakily to her feet, holding her side to pinch back the blood that was flowing out, and moved as quietly as she could toward the demon.
It was surrounded by a cloud of objects flying in all directions as it launched them at Haatim. Items soared over his shoulders and around his body, brushing against his clothes yet none actually collided with his body.
Abigail picked up a wrench off the ground as she went, creeping up behind the demon.
“Why won’t you die?” the demon screamed at Haatim.
Abigail swung the wrench down like a club hitting the demon in the shoulder and sending it staggering to the ground. The whirlwind of objects ceased and items collapsed to the ground, breaking and scattering across the floor.
Haatim stepped closer just as the demon was struggling to regain its feet. He placed a hand on the boy’s forehead and starting chanting in Latin. It was a banishment ritual, and his words were strong and full of power as they poured out of his mouth.
The demon cursed and spit at him, but was unable to pull away.
“This child is mine!”
“It is not,” Haatim said. “By the grace of God, I order you to vacate this child’s body.”
“No!”
“By the grace of Allah I order you to leave. By the love of Krishna, I order you to be gone from this realm! Return from whence you came!”
“Never!”
“I order you out, vile creature! Out!”
Haatim screamed the last word, and it hung in the air, echoing in the cavernous chamber back at them. The demon receded with a guttural screech, leaving behind only the sounds of their breathing and the moaning of the child on the floor. The room was filled with a vast emptiness, and Abigail knew that the demon was gone.
Haatim had banished it.
Abigail knelt and checked the child’s wounds. He had a torn cheek and some minor burns from the salt pellets and busted shoulder but he was otherwise OK. As long as they got help here quickly he would make a full recovery. Given the circumstances, that was a blessing she hadn’t really expected.
She looked at Haatim, standing there with his hand on the child’s forehead and panting. He was exhausted and drained, barely able to keep his feet. He staggered to the side and sat down, pale and sickly.
“What the hell was that?” she asked.
Lincoln Cole
