“My name’s Allison Lopez.”
“Who are you?”
“I’m a friend of your dad’s,” I said.
Her eyes narrowed, and as they did so, something flashed behind them, something red and menacing. “He’s never talked about you before.”
“I’m a new friend.”
Liz Turner was twenty-four. She had her whole life ahead of her. She had, in fact, everything to live for. She lived a comfortable life in Santa Monica. So, why had she killed a shopkeeper? I was beginning to have my suspicions why, but I needed to confirm them. Liz was cute in a plain way. She had big, round eyes with naturally long lashes. She spoke with a faint English accent.
Those same round eyes were now widening...her pupils were shrinking to pinpricks. Red flared just behind her pupils. I doubted that others could see the red, but I saw it, and that was all that mattered. “Father is an unbeliever,” she said.
“In what?” I asked.
The red in her eyes flared. “In me.”
“And who are you?”
“We are many.”
“You speak of yourself in the plural, Liz?”
“I am not Liz. Not now. Sometimes I permit her to return, but mostly, I do not. Soon, it will be time to destroy her. In this place, she is of no use to me.”
“What are you?”
“I am your worst nightmare.”
I almost smiled. In fact, I think I might have. “I’ve seen worse.”
The red in her eyes flared and the darkness around her swirled, faster and faster. Now, thick, black cords wove within her dark aura. They wove and swirled and tightened. These could have been a hundred black vipers. A thousand.
“I want to speak to Liz,” I said firmly.
“And I want to kill you, Allie.”
Hearing the entity speak my name was unsettling at best, but I refused to show it. “Where’s Liz?”
She looked at me for a long moment, and a slow smile spread over her face. “Waiting to die.”
“You have possessed her.”
“Never give the devil an opening.”
“How did she give you an opening?” I asked.
“You ask a lot of questions, witch.”
I had never spoken directly to a demon, although, at one point in my life, I, too, had been possessed. But that was another story. As I sat there, I summoned light energy to surround me. I felt it move over me and around me, and I saw it flare briefly in the eyes of Liz. She sat back a little.
“Stop it,” she said.
I decided that firmness was the best approach to dealing with a demon. “Answer me,” I said. “How did she let you in?”
“She had many openings, witch. Her guard was down, you could say.”
I knew that, in general, dark entities could not gain access to us without either an invitation...or if our psychic guard was down. There was some disagreement as to how exactly one’s psychic guard could be down, but some believed that extreme depression and drug and alcohol abuse were some ways that gave demons an invitation to possess a human.
“She was depressed?” I asked.
“Wouldn’t you be?” she asked. “Living in that big, dark, creepy haunted house. So far from home. You might start taking some illegal drugs, too. Anything to...cope.” It spoke that last word in a guttural whisper, and grinned broadly. Too broadly. I had seen a grin like that before, last year, on a remote island in the Pacific Northwest.
“So, you took advantage of her situation,” I said. “You took advantage of a depressed girl.”
“You call it taking advantage...I call it an opportunity.”
“An opportunity to do what?”
“To live,” she said, and her voice was quickly sounding less and less female. “It had been far too long.”
“Because the house stood empty,” I said.
“You are a smart witch.”
“Then why kill her?” I asked. “If you need her to live?”
“Because I am working on another. You might have met him. He is close to coming around, you could say. He’s fighting me, but it’s always a losing fight.”
I knew, of course, who he was talking about. “You would kill a father and daughter?”
“I will kill all that I can, and as many as I can, and as often as I can.”
“Why?”
It looked at me oddly. “You ask too many questions, witch.”
“Answer me,” I said, sitting forward. I surrounded myself with even more white light, imagining it engulfing me completely, spreading down through the floor and up through the ceiling, behind me and even through the glass. Liz shrank back even further.
“Answer me,” I said again. “Why do you hurt others?”
“I don’t hurt them,” she said, sitting back now in her chair, the phone’s cord stretched to its max. “I possess them, I control them, I own them, I destroy them. Then I kill them. I do far, far worse things than hurt them.”
“Why?” I asked. “Why do you do these things?”
Liz cocked her head at me, and I saw that she had bitten down hard on her lip and maybe even her tongue. Blood spilled over her jaw and down over her orange jumpsuit.
“Fuck you, witch,” she said.
Chapter Fifteen
The city was beautiful at night.
Perhaps no more beautiful than other big cities, but I enjoyed what Beverly Hills had to offer. Big, safe streets were filled with mostly friendly people. And those who ignored you were generally on the phone or texting, but, on the off chance that you caught them mid-text, they generally looked up and smiled.
Generally.
I was walking down Third Street, surrounded by rows of elegant apartments and apartments. The buildings were a beehive of activity. Open curtains revealed couples eating, people talking, cooking, watching TV, and working out. There was movement everywhere. Cars were coming and going. I passed many joggers and dog walkers and nannies.
I was walking to clear my head and to think, which might have been counterproductive. I was wearing a light windbreaker and a white beanie cap. No, it wasn’t that cold, but my ears got cold easily. I hated when my ears got cold. I wore yoga pants and sneakers, and, I suspected, I looked kinda cute. Maybe not.
It was hard to think about being cute—or anything else, for that matter—when death and demons were on your mind.
Yes, I had some experience with demons. In fact, I had some very personal experience with a “body-hopping” demon on a remote island in the Pacific Northwest. It was personal because I just happened to be a blood relative of a cursed family...and I got to experience first-hand just what it felt like to have another entity control my body. I had watched from the depths of my own mind—as if from a nightmare—as another creature literally took control of my body. Moving me, walking me, speaking for me.