Kicking It

It was shocking, how suddenly her eyes rolled down to focus on his face again. “Yes.” The dark pupils expanded, consuming the brown around them until her irises were completely eclipsed. “There’s an abandoned train station next to the Amtrak station. That’s where he’ll be. But you have to get there fast.”

“Does he know we’ll be coming?”

“He made me tell him where you’d come to kill him,” she said. “Before I died. But I lied. I told him you’d kill him at your house.”

That made me cold, because she’d warned him we’d kill him in our house, and his response? Go to our house. Spit in the face of destiny.

That was just how confident our serpent was of his ultimate survival.

“Thank you,” I said, and I pressed a kiss to her forehead. “You’ve been very brave, Portia. You’re a hero.”

She smiled, just a little. “I just got murdered, that’s all. But you’ll get him for me, Holly.” The smile faded, and the darkness in her eyes grew to terrifying proportions. “Beware the dog.”

I couldn’t hold her, and I knew it. Some resurrections are like that—minutes, at best. I’d been able to manage more than a day only a handful of times—and one of them had been Andy Toland, resurrected from his Old West slumber, more than once.

But Andy, the most powerful resurrection witch who’d ever existed, had simply refused to leave that last time. And still he stayed, because of me.

Portia couldn’t. She said nothing more, but she silently begged me to let her go, and I did. It was as simple, in the end, as letting go of her hands. The bond severed itself in our minds at nearly the same moment, snapping like a thin silk thread, and her body sighed and sagged and Andy and I eased it back to the steel table. Empty once more, and still.

“I’ll see to her later,” Andy said. That, too, was something done by his brand of magic, not mine; he could unmake a dead body back to the tiny fragments of skin that had created the shell. In the hands of some witches that was a clinical, cold process, but not when Andy did it; he would see her put to rest gently and with respect. “We ain’t got much time now.”

“I’ll get the case,” I said. My potions case—a square leather bag with holders for vials, each one filled and labeled—contained all the secrets the two of us knew, and that was considerable. Was it enough? It was hard to tell.

First, though, we had to get out of the house.

Lyons had dispatched new emissaries—a different group, larger this time, simmering with ugly energy. They crowded the sidewalk and overflowed onto our lawn. Andy, without being asked, loaded the shotgun and extra shells, and strapped on his gunfighter’s rig, with two six-guns. He also put on his leather duster, and a cowboy hat he particularly liked.

Loaded for war.

I just settled for a good pair of sturdy lace-up boots, a leather jacket, and a bad attitude.

“Ready?” he asked me. I nodded, and hit the garage door opener. It rattled up, and I already had the car in gear, moving slowly but with purpose. I managed to get the garage closed again before anybody thought to rush the opening, at least, but that left us pinned, with the protesters swarming around us like angry wasps as we crept slowly down the slanted driveway.

They were climbing onto the windshield, the hood, the roof. Clawing at the doors and hammering on the glass. Something metal hit the windshield and left a mark.

“Go,” Andy said.

“I can’t!”

“Do it.”

We didn’t have much choice, but I felt sick as I nudged the accelerator. It was even odds someone would tumble under the tires, but somehow, miraculously, nobody did.

The car broke free.

As I accelerated, the crowd howled after us; those who’d crawled on lost their grip and tumbled off. One man raced faster than the others and threw a brick that bounced off the trunk and onto the back windshield, leaving an ugly crack.

But we were moving.

I let out a slow, trembling breath, and Andy squeezed my shoulder.

“Good job. Don’t get comfortable,” he said.

I didn’t.

* * *

The old train station was one of those places constantly under discussion around Austin—quaintly decrepit, decidedly in need of upkeep, and unused for fifty years, since the thunder of the road had killed the romance of the train. Amtrak now ran out of a smaller, more modern location, one with all the elegance of a cheap strip mall, as the older structure sat in limbo.

It had always struck me as full of darkness somehow. As we parked along the side, in its shadow, I felt it again, only stronger—that vile sensation of snakes and decay. I shuddered, zipped up my jacket, and joined my gunfighter lover on the station’s porch as he pulled off a stubborn piece of plywood to reveal an open, blackened rectangle of doorway.

The potions case dragged on my shoulder, but at least that left my hands free to use the flashlight. I shone a beam ahead, and it lit up a streak of dirty marble. We were entering at one end of the long main terminal hall, strewn with trash and the rat-chewed remains of the furniture that had once graced it. Some things had stood the test of time: the barred ticket cages, still flecked with gilding that looked surprisingly rich; the concrete arches, with an elegance that echoed a hundred years past.

But the whole place stank of rot and corruption, and I heard the hiss and rustle of disturbed animals. This place would house worse than rats and black widow spiders, though.

Portia was never wrong.

“One thing you ought to know about demons,” Andy said softly, as we moved forward. He had the shotgun in both hands, steady and controlled, and his attention stayed riveted on what was around him. “They ain’t all- powerful. A demon inhabiting a human body has to let it cool off, or it overheats and burns up. If he’s been using Pete Lyons as long as I think, he’ll have to let ol’ Pete rest a spell.”

“Here?” I probably sounded more appalled than I meant to, but . . . ugh.

“Here’s a good spot where he won’t be bothered. Pete’s married, got kids. Can’t trust anybody to leave him alone and unobserved at his home. Here, he’s safe.” Andy did a slow quarter turn, checking out a sound, but it must have been nothing to worry about, because he resumed forward motion. “He’ll have to rest without those boots on. Those are where the demon lives, when it ain’t in him.”

“Destroy the boots, destroy the demon.”

“May not be so easy,” he said. “But that’s the answer. Thing is . . .”

He broke off, because something echoed through the thick, fetid, empty space.

A growl. A thick, harsh one, ratcheting up in ferocity until it sounded like a chain saw howl.

“Thing is,” Andy said with unbelievable calm, “he won’t be unguarded.”

And that was when the devil dog opened its red eyes and stepped out of the shadows ten feet ahead of us.

It was massive—some kind of muscular attack dog breed, but bigger than anything I’d ever seen. Unnaturally bulked up. And those eyes were definitely not something that occurred in nature.

Andy didn’t need to mention that we were in trouble, and he didn’t have time to, either.

As the dog leaped for him, Andy dodged to his right, aimed, and fired both barrels as I dove left. I already had one potion out of my box, and now I dropped the flashlight, threw the potion vial to the gritty marble floor, and stomped on it. The glass shattered, and an explosion of light filled the room, white and clean. It lingered on every surface and angle, and gathered around the black dog as if drawn to him. He shook himself, but the swirls of light just thickened like fog around him.

Andy emptied two more shots into the dog, to no effect, and I opened the potions box, took out two more vials, and tossed them both to him.

He dropped the shotgun, grabbed both bottles out of the air, and smashed them together.