The Hunter And The Hunted

Mo-

I stopped the thought. Squeezed my eyes shut. Don’t call her. Don’t call her.

Are you crazy? There’s a knife-

I can’t call her. I won’t. My mother was an angel. A goddamned angel, and if people knew I could summon an angel, I’d have a knife to my throat every week. I had to trust Jaime.

“I-I think she’s coming,” Jaime said. “I feel her, and-”

“Tell her to cross over there.”

He pointed. I tried to look, but the knife wouldn’t let me.

“I-I don’t under-”

“Tell her to cross there. Into the circle.”

Circle? I didn’t need to look now. It had to be something for binding a spirit.

“No,” I said, wheezing. “Jaime, don’t you dare-”

The knife bit in and I yowled. Couldn’t help it, even if it made the blade dig in all the more.

I could barely see Jaime through a haze of red. But I glowered at her, pouring every bit of rage and betrayal into that glare.

Don’t you dare let him bind an angel, Jaime. Don’t you dare.

“I-I can’t tell her where to cross over. It’s not like that. She-”

“Eve!” His voice rose to a shout. “I’m sure you can hear me. You’re going to cross into that circle or your daughter is going to die.”

I closed my eyes and concentrated as hard as I could. Do not cross into the circle. I had no idea who this guy was or what he was up to, but he wanted to harness an angel, and with everything that was going on-the freedom group, the immortality vaccine-we couldn’t let it happen.

I’d tricked Leah. I could trick him, too. I just needed enough time.

The sorcerer restarted his incantation, shouting the words now. I didn’t recognize the spell. Didn’t even recognize the language. Not Hebrew or Greek or Latin.

Something older.

As his voice rose, he pulled the knife away from my throat, tightening his grip on my hair. He flicked the blood- covered blade to the left. Toward the circle.

My fi st went up, spell on my lips, but he slapped the blade back so hard my knees gave way, only his hold on my hair keeping me upright. He yanked me to my feet.

“The circle, Eve!” he shouted. “Cross into the-”

He stopped. And he laughed, a low, rasping chortle. “Yes. That’s it. Thank you.”

The knife eased on my neck enough for me to look over at the circle and see…

My mother. I saw my mother. Not a faint image or a shadowy apparition. I saw my mother, as real as she’d looked nine years ago, when she’d left our cell to find us a way out of the compound where we’d been trapped. She’d never returned.

“Eve,” the sorcerer said.

She pulled something off her back. A four-foot-long sword, the metal glowing blue.

“Jaime? Tell him he has fi ve seconds to drop his blade or I use mine,” she said, her gaze fixed on him, dark eyes blazing.

I could hear Mom. Why could I hear her? But he could, too. His knife hit the floor with a clatter. He released me and I fell to my knees, hands going to my throat.

“Good,” she said.

She kept walking toward him, but lowered the sword. I stared up at her.

I can see you. And he can see you too, can’t he? Why can-?

My gaze dropped to the floor where my mother was leaving a trail of boot prints.

She shouldn’t be able to leave boot prints.

The hell-beast. He’d summoned a hell-beast and it had materialized. It had crossed the dimensions and physically entered ours.

What had he said before he started the ritual?

I’m testing out a particularly tricky new spell.

“There,” he said to Eve. “I’ve let Savannah go. I just wanted to bring you here, Eve. We have very special plans-”

My mother lifted her sword. Ready to send him to hell, as she’d done with Leah.

She swung the blade. One clean, effortless cut through the torso. The sorcerer’s eyes bugged. His mouth worked. Then his upper half slid to the floor, blood spurting, the shriek dying in a keening gurgle as his legs fell over and he lay there, blinking, mouth still open, any noise he made drowned out by Jaime’s screams.

“What the hell?” Mom whispered.

She backed up, sword held out, gaze fixed on it as if it had come to life in her hand. She slid on the blood and looked down at the floor.

“What the hell?”

She stared at her jeans and blouse, soaked with the sorcerer’s blood.

“What the hell!”

I stood there, watching her and trying hard, very hard, not to look at that horrible, bisected body.

My mother blinked. Then she leaped forward, sword raised, and stabbed the still-blinking sorcerer through the heart, releasing him to death.

Jaime stopped screaming. At least, stopped audibly screaming, fist jammed into her mouth, eyes closed. Then she went rigid. Her eyes flew open and fixed on something I couldn’t see.

“You-you called her,” she whispered. “I don’t know what you did but-”

She flinched and I knew she was talking to the sorcerer’s ghost. My mother jumped forward, but Jaime lifted her hands.

“I-it’s okay. He’s gone.” Jaime looked around. “I don’t understand.”

“I do.” My voice came out soft, barely audible. Then I turned to my mother. “You’re real. I mean, you’re here.”

I stepped forward and reached out. My fingers touched her sleeve. The fabric dimpled under them and then I was touching her. Her. My mother. “Oh, God.”

My eyes filled and she reached for me. I swallowed. Fresh blood trickled down my neck. She stopped short, yanked at her shirt, and wheeled on Jaime.

“First aid. Find a kit. Now!”

Mom ripped her shirt off, buttons popping, and pressed it to my throat. Then she led me over to a chair and made me sit. All I could think was It’s Mom. My mother is here. I can see her. I can hear her. I can reach out and touch her.

I sat there, feeling no pain while she and Jaime tended to my throat. In shock, I guess. I dimly heard my mother say the cut was shallower than it looked-the sorcerer knew what he was doing, inflicting minimal damage while making it look serious.

I didn’t care. My mother was here. Right here. I kept trying to process it, but my brain refused.

They taped me up. No one said much. I think we were all in shock, even Mom, who kept looking over at the bisected corpse as if she expected it to magically mend.

“How… how did he do it?” I whispered. “That’s not possible.” I looked at Jaime. “Is it?”

She shook her head. “Zombies, yes. A ghost inhabiting a living body, yes. Bringing back a ghost in corporeal form? It doesn’t happen. Can’t.”

“Just like you can’t manifest a hell-beast,” I said. “But he did.”

No one answered me.

“We need to go,” Jaime said finally. “We can… figure all this out later. For now, we have to call-” She glanced at the phone, then at the bodies.

“No calls,” I said, snapping out of it. “Or the first person the cops will track down is whoever received a phone call post carnage.”

“Careful, baby,” Mom said. “You probably shouldn’t talk.”

Baby. How long had it been since I’d heard that? Fresh tears made the room swim. I