it almost impossible for anyone to be prosecuted. Unfortunately, since Barbie and I would know damn well who to point the finger at if Melanie turned up dead, I suspected we were about to become collateral damage.
I really hoped Adam had enough information to work with and was even now speeding to the Sherwood house to enact a rescue. Too bad Lugh hadn’t been able to communicate that we were up against an armed, organized mob. If Adam came alone, he could end up roasting right beside Rick or Melanie.
The ride to the suburbs took forever, but at the same time didn’t take long enough. The vehicle in which I was being transported came to a stop, and the sound of doors sliding open told me I was in a van. Rough hands grabbed me under my arms, and when I tried to struggle, I was rewarded by a blow to the head that took all the fight out of me.
I was only semiconscious as I was dragged out of the van and then slung over someone’s shoulder. My captors didn’t speak, but I could hear some more scuffling, then the muffled sound of sobbing. My heart squeezed in sympathy for Melanie, even though my own situation wasn’t looking much brighter.
I heard a series of locks being opened, and then my captor began to descend, his feet pounding down a set of wooden stairs. I suppressed a whimper as I caught the reek of old smoke.
I was unceremoniously dumped onto the cement floor with a teeth-rattling thump. The hood was pulled from my head, and I opened my still-stinging eyes to a sight every bit as horrifying as I’d imagined.
I was in a barren, unfinished basement, lit only by a series of thick pillar candles that lined three of the four walls. An enormous blackened fireplace was set into the fourth wall. My guess was it was supposed to look like one of those medieval castle fireplaces, where you could roast a whole deer on a spit. Unfortunately, it wasn’t a deer they were planning to roast tonight. A thick iron pole rose from a bed of concrete at the back of the fireplace, wood and kindling piled at its base.
I struggled to sit up—not easy when you’re bound hand and foot. No one helped me, but no one tried to stop me, either. Glancing around, I saw Rick, Melanie, and Barbie, all similarly bound and gagged. We were surrounded by figures in black hoods and robes, at least ten of them crammed into the small basement. Several of them held Tasers pointed at us, and one of them had a gun. Not good odds.
Melanie was sobbing so hard she was having trouble breathing around the gag. Barbie was pale and wide- eyed with fear. But Rick’s eyes were alive with calculation as he took stock of the situation. The demon had clearly not transferred back into Melanie during the attack, and I wondered if we could take advantage of the fact. God’s Wrath were expecting Melanie to be possessed, but they weren’t necessarily expecting it of Rick.
One of the Taser-wielding loonies stepped forward. Before I had a clue what was about to happen, he’d shot Melanie full of electricity. She screamed from behind the gag, her body collapsing to the floor, where she lay twitching spastically.
“She is free of the Spawn of Satan,” the loony intoned.
Well, that was certainly one way to determine if someone was possessed. If Melanie’s demon had still been in residence, she would not have been twitching. One of the other hooded figures suddenly rushed forward and grabbed Melanie, wrapping her into an embrace.
“Oh thank God!” Scott Sherwood’s voice said from beneath the hood.
“What about that one?” another hooded figure asked, and this time I recognized Patsy’s voice as she pointed at Rick. She sounded strangely hopeful. I supposed she was really eager to have someone to burn in that fireplace.
A lot of things happened at once then.
The demon burst free of its bonds and charged the man who was about to Taser him. The Taser went off, but its probes sailed harmlessly over Rick’s head as he rode the homicidal nutcase to the floor.
I realized the shit was about to hit the fan, and that if we had any hope of all of us surviving until Adam could arrive with the cavalry, we couldn’t afford to have any demons go down for the count. Which meant that, despite the unpleasant side effects that were sure to follow, I had to let Lugh take control again.
It was a calculated risk. If Rick and Lugh lost this fight—which seemed likely, considering we were badly outnumbered and the bad guys had Tasers—I was announcing to everyone involved that I was possessed, which would make me a candidate to join Rick at the stake. But though I’d once thought of myself as selfish and cowardly, I couldn’t just sit there and do nothing while man and demon were barbecued.
Lugh’s demon strength was easily enough to let him tear loose from the ropes on my wrists and ankles. My flesh got torn up pretty good in the process, too, but Lugh cut me off from the pain. I was now nothing more than an observer in my own body, seeing and hearing the action without actually
Rick’s attack came as a surprise to the God’s Wrath mob; Lugh’s came as a total shock. I mean really, who’s going to expect an
Lugh plowed into one of the Taser-wielding guys, his momentum carrying them both into yet another one. All three of us went down, with Lugh on top. The man on the bottom cracked the back of his head against the cement floor and didn’t move. I told myself I hoped he wasn’t dead, but I had to admit there was a spiteful side of me that didn’t much care.
Lugh wrested the Taser from the hand of the man he’d knocked down, crushing the barrel with one strong hand. Without a Taser, the guy wasn’t a threat anymore, so Lugh leapt to his feet.
Rick had taken down two of the hooded figures, but by the time Lugh was fully vertical, Scott Sherwood had shoved his still bound and gagged daughter behind him and lunged forward, jabbing his Taser into Rick’s back. The demon collapsed. Between them, Lugh and Rick had incapacitated four of the fanatics, but once Rick went down, the remaining six were able to focus all their attention on Lugh.
Six against one is never good odds, even when you’re a demon. But Lugh is a very clever demon. Plus, he knew he didn’t have to defeat them—just delay them.
Several of our attackers had already fired their Tasers and missed, which meant they had to either stop and reload, or try to use the Tasers at close range as stun guns. No one seemed real eager to get close. Imagine that!
Lugh grabbed at the closest figure, his hand closing around an upper arm. The hood fell down, revealing Patsy Sherwood’s face. Her teeth were bared in a snarl, her eyes narrowed with hatred, her cheeks flushed an angry red. She swung her Taser at Lugh, but Lugh hit her arm so hard it knocked the Taser from her grip and sent it skittering into the fireplace. He then pulled her up against him, using her body as a shield against the others.
I was almost beginning to feel optimistic about our chances. Unfortunately, I am nowhere near as petite as Barbie, and Patsy Sherwood’s body was an inadequate shield for a woman of my height.
The fanatics who were still standing spread out, making it hard for Lugh to keep an eye on all of them at once. Two of them fired their Tasers at the same moment. Lugh used Patsy to intercept the probes from one Taser, but that left his back open. Patsy screamed, but neither Lugh nor I had time to feel even a flicker of satisfaction before the probes from the other Taser took us out of the action.
My optimism turned to bone-chilling fear as Lugh fell. I’d come damn close to being burned at the stake once before, and the situation was looking just as grim now. One of the wackos grabbed Rick’s limp body under the arms and started dragging him toward the fireplace. Another bent to grab me.
Everyone—including me—was so focused on the upcoming bonfire that we didn’t notice the arrival of the cops until Adam bellowed for everyone to freeze.
Turned out the Sherwoods had been on a police watch list as possible God’s Wrath “enforcers,” so when Adam had heard the address, he’d immediately had a good idea what might be happening. He’d managed to call in enough heavily armed cops to convince the entire gang to surrender without a fight. Scott Sherwood was too shell- shocked to talk as he was led away in handcuffs, but Patsy was practically foaming at the mouth, shouting disjointed passages of scripture while hurling accusations at me and Rick.
Melanie managed to shuffle her way over to Rick’s inert body and brush her bound hands against his cheek before the cops dragged her away from what Patsy claimed was a dangerous demon. I knew that the demon had taken advantage of that brief contact to move back into Melanie. It wasn’t a perfect solution, because the cops would be sure to examine us all for demonic possession before any of us was allowed to go home, and Melanie’s demon still wasn’t legal. But I was pretty sure I could convince Adam to give her a chance to “escape” before an exorcist got a chance to examine her aura.
As the rest of the cops ushered Barbie, Melanie, and Rick up the stairs, treating them with all the caution
