Ravenous

'But why?' Holly's mind raced, clicking facts into place. The ooze, against all odds, hadn't hurt him. Her books on demonology were missing. 'How long have you been at this?'

'Years. I did some reading. I mean real reading, real research. There are plenty of prohuman groups willing to lend a hand if they think you're looking for an answer to the supernatural problem. People with money and connections.'

Fear and suspicion had drawn ugly lines around his mouth, but she'd never noticed them before. He fooled me all along. He's a consummate actor.

He returned her gaze, shaking his head as if she were a slow student. 'Don't you get it? The Castle was the answer. Humanity had the same problem long ago and built a prison to take care of the others. It was already there, with guardsmen in place to keep the monsters inside. If I summoned something through a portal to earth, the guardsmen would come to get it back. Along the way they'd take everything nonhuman back with them into their prison. Nothing but humans would be left behind. Simple as calling for a garbage pickup.'

'But I don't get it,' Holly said, bewildered.

Impatient, Ben slapped the flat of his hand on the door frame. 'How could the humans clean up Fairview? We don't have the power to do it ourselves. We've lost. Someone had to arrange a way to get help, so I did.'

'There were murders,' Holly retorted. 'Blood rituals. Human girls were killed.'

'Price of doing business. The changelings were happy to help with that part.' Ben looked away. 'Though I should have done it myself. One or two of those creatures were manageable, but they called their friends. That's when things started to get out of hand.'

'What do you mean?'

'The changelings have a ravenous taste for murder. An addiction. They should never have come out of the Castle.'

'And you worked with them? You?'

Ben started forward, but Holly used a small push of magic to knock him back. His eyes grew wide, as if he'd just truly realized that she might be dangerous.

The gun came up again, but she didn't care anymore. 'What the hell were you thinking?'

He lifted his head, as if telling himself to be brave. 'They were eager, more than happy to help call up a demon. Best of all, I knew that once we did the summoning, I just had to sit back and wait for the guardsmen to mop them up along with the rest of the spooks.'

He gave an ugly curl of his lip. 'And the changelings did it all for a handful of those tokens. Like they're so precious. I bought them online for a song.' He snorted. 'Or maybe it was just the chance to murder humans again.'

Holly gulped air, sick and appalled. 'Do you know what you've done? The demon is already taking souls!' She gave him another little push. 'You screwed up. The demon is loose. It's all spiraling out of control, and that was the first guardsman I've seen. Where's the cavalry, Ben? When are they going to save you?'

Ben raised his hands, gun and all, but it wasn't a gesture of surrender. He was trying to placate her. 'I didn't know. I didn't realize. The guardsmen… there are too few. They haven't come like I thought they would. I thought it was going to be a lot less… complicated.'

'Like you thought you and I would be?'

Ben's expression grew condescending. 'I'm sorry. I really am. You'd said once that your magic didn't really work. I thought that meant you were as good as human.'

'And then at the Flanders house you saw what I could do.' Holly didn't really need confirmation. This part she had guessed already.

'I saw you were one of them. There was no way I could save you after that. Not when it was clear you'd never use your magic for our side.'

'Save me?' She shot a bolt of energy that smacked inches from his foot. 'I was trying to save you from the house you'd apparently already fed Bill Gamble, your best friend. What were you doing there, anyway?'

Ben stared at the floor, where a wisp of smoke curled from a charred spot on the wood. 'The idiots murdered that girl right inside the house, left her lying there for anyone to find. My prints were all over the place. I needed to be sure I was counted as just another victim.'

'Just another victim. So you hid in the slime. No wonder you wouldn't go to the hospital. A thorough checkup would have shown that you'd never been attacked. Well, you were right. It fooled everybody. We never guessed you were the killer.'

Ben looked affronted. 'Oh, I just resourced the operation. I was the organizer. I never killed anyone. I certainly never got involved in the magic. I hired the guy who sold me the book to do all that. He'd do anything for a dollar. He does all the spell casting I need.'

Holly struggled for words, overwhelmed. 'Goddess, I hate you.'

A shudder ran through the house, the sideways shuffle of an earthquake. Ben raised a hand, pointing at the wall behind Holly. His eyes went round. 'The portal is opening up again.'

Holly stepped sideways, needing to look behind her but reluctant to turn her back on Ben. He was correct. The portal was swirling wider, new light brightening the room with the garish orange of a jack-o'-lantern. She touched the portal with her power, barely a brush.

It gave enough information to swamp her with terror. 'It never completely closed. Something on the inside is giving the door a shove.' Would that be the changeling army?

Holly snapped her thoughts into line, refusing to drown in the panic that lapped at her senses. 'We're getting out of here.'

Fixated on Ben, she had stopped monitoring the house. Now she probed it with her thoughts. It was still weak from her assault on the front door, but the portal was using the house like a straw, sucking ley-line power from beneath the foundations. Some of that power was bleeding off into the structure. Waking it up. Things were about to turn nasty.

'Stairs!' she yelled, diving for the door.

Holly moved so fast, her feet barely found purchase. She flew into the hallway, half-blind with the need to flee. When Ben grabbed her from behind, the sudden jerk flung her into the wall.

'What is that? Holly, what is that?'

Holly clutched her head, wishing it would stop ringing. 'What? We don't have time—'

'That!'

She squinted. A large, ballooning shape of white poofed over the upstairs landing like a giant jellyfish. For a moment surprise overcame her urge to run. 'I think it's the drop cloth.'

'Why is it doing that?'

'On a wild guess, I'd say it was possessed.'

'Oh, shit!'

'It'll probably smother us if we try to escape.' She squeezed Ben's arm and gave him a sweet smile. 'Would you like me to take care of that for you? Somewhere in between saving your ungrateful ass again and figuring out how to save Fairview from being eaten alive?'

'Just do something. Please!'

'Then give me the gun.'

After a moment's pause, he did.

Holly shoved Ben aside, her attention fully on the drop cloth. How the blazes was she going to manage this? Blazes.

Well, I signed the burn order, didn't I?

It was just like lighting a huge candle, a trick she had done a hundred times with the snap of her fingers. The drop cloth had been the first to go. Then the stairway carpet. Stray newspapers. With all the paints and solvents Raglan had left inside, the rest was a foregone conclusion.

Holly worked most of her magic from the blasted front lawn, where the house couldn't reach her. Power flowed, liquid and graceful. The hardest part was shutting off her mind to the house's screams. Mad and evil