Gilley was the first to scream.
Okay, so maybe he was the only one who screamed, but he screamed loud. Like, loud. And with Gil, it’s always a challenge to tell whether he’s screaming in outright fright or because some spook has just taken him as a hostage. (It’s happened before.)
For several seconds, I couldn’t see a thing; my eyes were trying to adjust to the sudden loss of light—even our flashlights had died—but finally I saw a shape next to me and reached for it. Gilley screamed again. “It’s me!” I hissed.
He responded by latching onto my arm and pulling me to him. He then wrapped himself around me like a koala hugging a tree. “Something’s here!” he blubbered.
I wanted to shush him, but then I heard it. A beeping sound that sounded all too familiar. And it seemed to be coming from me, or rather my messenger bag. With a jolt I realized that the beeping was our EMF meter. And it was going off like crazy. Using my free arm, I dug it out of my messenger bag and clicked the backlight on the device. The meter was in the red zone.
“What the hell is that?” I heard Olivera ask. Her footfalls told me she was coming toward me, drawn to the EMF meter as the only source of light in the room.
“It’s a meter that measures electromagnetic frequencies,” I told her. “It tells us when a spook is close.”
I saw the shadowy figure of the detective stop in front of me. “I take it there’s one close to us?” she said, a quaver sneaking into her voice.
“There’s one right on top of us!” Gil shrieked.
“Gil!” I said firmly. His freak-out wasn’t helping. “We’re wrapped in magnets here. We should be fine.”
Olivera moved even closer to me. I wondered if she was going to take up Gilley’s koala pose. Meanwhile the EMF meter continued to go off, and it set us all on edge. “Can we get out of here?” Gilley whispered. “It’s in here, M.J.! I know it!”
Although Gilley didn’t identify the “it” he was referring to, the hair on the back of my neck had risen high and goose pimples had already broken out along my arms. Gilley was right; something was in here with us. From the corner of the room there was a low rumbling. It reverberated off the walls, traveled along the floor, and vibrated under our feet and along our skin. My breathing was coming in quick pants. I knew that rumble. I knew that presence, and I also knew we were in deep, deep trouble. “Gil,” I whispered. “Let go and get behind me. You too, Olivera.”
Gilley scooted around to stand pressed to my back, his head knocking the space between my shoulder blades. He was trembling so much that I wondered if he’d be able to walk—or run—out of here. Olivera, however, hadn’t moved other than to fumble with something at her waist. I knew that only because her elbow bumped me and I heard the slight rustle of clothing. “If you just took out your gun,” I whispered, “I will leave you behind when Gilley and I make a break for it.” I was serious too.
“What the hell was that?” she asked me. I could hear the chatter of her teeth as she tried to speak. She was absolutely terrified. Which meant she’d shoot first and ask questions later. Great.
“Detective,” I said firmly. “Holster that weapon and get. Behind. Me.”
For another few seconds I didn’t think she’d comply, but finally she bumped my elbow with hers again and I knew she’d tucked the gun back into her shoulder harness. She then sort of shuffled backward a few steps, but she seemed reluctant to get behind me. I figured it was because she wanted a clear shot in case the demon across the room came at us. Which it was sure to do unless I did something first.
Very slowly and carefully I reached into my messenger bag and felt around until I had what I wanted. Gripping it tightly, I pulled it out and held it at both ends. “Listen to me, you two,” I began, keeping my voice low and steady. “I’m going to set up a distraction. The second my distraction hits, we bolt for that doorway and go until we’re out of here.” Neither Gil nor Olivera replied. “Tap my shoulder if you understand,” I said. I felt two taps. Good. They were on board. “Gil, get your spikes out. If that thing comes at us, throw all you’ve got at it. I’ll be right behind you.” When motivated, Gilley could outrun me. He wasn’t often motivated, except at times like these. Or when the smell of freshly baked doughnuts scented the air.
I tightened my grip on the thin tube in my hands and said, “We’ll go on three. One . . . two . . .”
Just as I was about to shout three, a high-pitched roar filled the room and was so deafening that it nearly knocked us all over. The three of us staggered back, Gilley pulling me along as I tried to hold myself upright. And then there was a sort of pounding of feet heavy enough to compete with an elephant. Olivera screamed. Gilley screamed. Even I screamed. On reflex I tore at the top of the tube I was holding and threw it at the approaching monster. The darkness shrank as the road flare I threw at the demon blossomed into red bubbling sparks that shot outward and hopped along the floor. Within the light of the flare was a creature at least nine feet tall. Beady, recessed, glowing red eyes focused on our quivering forms, and a snout as long as my arms, with fangs that dripped black sludge, inched hungrily toward us.
Oruç’s demon had just crashed our party.
“We are so screwed,” I heard Olivera whisper.
At the sound of her voice the beast charged forward on two legs, with limbs that resembled a human’s, but the skin of the beast was thick and gray, gnarled with bumps and ridges. The arms of the beast were thin and elongated, as were its three fingers, each tipped with what looked to be razor-sharp talons.
The sight of Oruç’s demon coming at us was enough to take Gilley’s screams to a pitch high and loud enough to pop my eardrums.
Olivera also screamed, and out of the corner of my eye I saw her go for her gun again. With one hand I hit her hard across the forearms and wrenched the spike clutched in Gilley’s fist away from him only to then throw it right at the demon. It struck and stuck in the beast’s snout, and that stopped its charge long enough for me to grab both Olivera and Gilley and wrench them to the right and over toward the exit.
Gilley kept screaming the entire time. I barely noticed. I was too focused on the six-inch fangs of the beast and the razor-sharp talons swiping at us as we dashed by it. We got by unscathed, although I could see Olivera kept reaching for her gun, and I kept reaching for her arm, which made it impossible for me to draw out another spike. Gilley gained the lead and darted ahead of us out into the open room leading to the front stairwell. The spike in his right hand was still firmly gripped, which did us no good.
Olivera kept looking over her shoulder as she battled my attempts to thwart the drawing of her weapon, and at one point she stumbled and fell down. Here’s the part where I admit that I almost left her. The fear coursing through my veins at that moment was so intense and the instinctual urge to run from a massive predator and leave anyone else in my wake was nearly overpowering. Reason returned, however, and with a snarl I stopped, retraced my steps, and grabbed her under the arm. “Get up!” I roared.
With my help, she did, and we barely escaped the downward swipe of the demon’s claws.
By now, Gilley had gained the stairs, and I saw his head disappear as he hurtled down them. I let go of Olivera because holding on to her was slowing us both down, and we raced after him. She had much longer legs than me, but I’m a serious runner, and we reached the top of the stairs together. It was so dark that it was impossible to see the steps individually, but that didn’t stop me from launching myself down them. Breaking a leg was nothing compared to possibly being ripped apart by talons and fangs.
Behind us the beast kept coming. I didn’t dare look back; I was too focused on my feet, trying to guess where each step was. Gilley reached the bottom while we were still in the middle of the stairwell, his screams echoing throughout the massive front hall of the museum. In the back of my mind I wondered if someone outside might hear him and call the cops. Then I realized that if the demon caught one of us, it would likely shred us within a matter of moments, and then the police would have to deal with it, and how were they supposed to handle a demon that couldn’t be killed, with talons that could tear apart human flesh?
“This isn’t happening!” Olivera suddenly blurted out. “This can’t be happening! That thing can’t be real!”
“Keep moving!” I shouted. No way did we have time to argue whether or not the nine-foot monster currently shaking the stairwell with its footfalls was real or not. It was friggin’ real enough!
The messenger bag on my hip bounced and jostled, and I desperately wanted to pause long enough to reach into it and pull out a fistful of spikes, but that was a risk that I couldn’t take on the stairs.
At last we reached the bottom and I took off after the sound of Gilley, who was still screaming his head off. The first floor was even darker than the rooms upstairs, and navigating them was tricky to say the least. Olivera kept calling my name, and I kept answering, “Here!” to keep her with me. I had no more flares, and the flashlights weren’t working, and the demon had the advantage here, because it’s a known fact that demons can see in the dark.
Gilley had no such gift, however, and in the next moment his shrieks were cut off by a loud thwack! and then the sound of a body hitting the floor. “Gilley!” I cried. I didn’t know if he’d hit a wall or if someone had hit him.
He replied with a whimper and a groan.
Behind me the beast growled low and terrible.
There was a sort of scrambling noise and Gilley must’ve gotten to his feet again, because his screams resumed and echoed through the hallway, definitely getting farther away from us.
By now I was nearly out of breath. The adrenaline that had fueled the first part of our flight was wearing off, and the toll of the run out of the exhibit hall, down the stairs, and through the museum at an all-out sprint was taking its effect. My lungs were yelling at me to slow down. The frosty breath on my neck from the demon behind me, however, was encouraging me to speed up. I settled for simply maintaining the sprint.
Gilley’s shrieks zigzagged through the halls, and Olivera and I did our best to follow him with the demon hot on our heels. At one point I swear Gil changed direction, and then there was another thwack! and a sudden halt to his shrieks, but he seemed to recover from that a bit faster than from the last one.
I hadn’t realized what a maze the first floor was until we were running for our lives through it. I also wondered at Gilley’s ability to keep shrieking, because I could barely draw breath. Olivera was having a somewhat easier time of it, I thought. And really, I shouldn’t have been so out of breath; I mean, I run my ass off, train for marathons and such.
But then it dawned on me. I was pregnant. Of course I’d be out of breath. And then it really dawned on me. I was pregnant, and the demon was currently threatening the life of my unborn child.
That’s the moment when my motherly instincts kicked in and I came to an abrupt halt, pulling free a spike from my bag and taking what I hoped was careful aim. I threw it straight in front of me and there was a god-awful screech. “Ha!” I shouted. “Take that, you son of a bitch!”
Olivera’s hand gripped my arm, and she pulled me back hard, just as I felt the air next to my nose move sharply—the demon had just taken a swipe at my head and I’d escaped having my head lopped off by less than an inch. “Are you crazy?!” she shouted.
I didn’t answer. I just ran.
We bolted toward the back of the museum, moving in a zigzag pattern, always chasing the sound of Gilley’s fading shrieks. It took me a little while to realize he was simply lost and acting like a panicked rat in a maze, darting down any corridor or into any room that might lead out.
“He’s . . . lost!” I wheezed to Olivera.
“He’s not far off the mark!” she yelled back. And then, as if in answer to a prayer, one lone light bulb ahead of us came on, illuminating the darkness and showing us exactly where we were.
It didn’t give us an advantage over the monster still hot on our heels, but at least it evened the odds. I chanced one glance over my shoulder at Oruç’s demon. I’d thought it was scary upstairs in the pink glow of the flare—that was nothing compared to the shadowy figure it cut as it bared its teeth and seemed to surge forward toward me. It gained on us and I faced forward again, concentrating on pumping my legs and arms as fast as I could.
As we dashed past the overhead light that’d illuminated the area for us, it winked out, but another light turned on to our left and we headed straight for it. Then it winked out and another light farther down the corridor winked on.
I suddenly realized that our way out was literally being lit up for us. “Gilley!” I shouted with all the air I could spare. “This way!”
His screams abruptly changed direction—maybe he’d seen the lights too?—and he came racing toward us. Trouble was, the demon wasn’t letting up on the chase, and I didn’t think I had it in me to keep ahead of it to the end of the museum. The harder I pumped my legs and arms, the less air I could draw into my lungs. And I needed air, desperately. Olivera pulled ahead of me and then Gilley showed up just down the hall from us. He didn’t even look behind him; he just ran toward the lights winking on, then off.
We were all so focused on them that I don’t think any of us noticed that the hallway we were in ended at a closed door. And it sure didn’t look like an exit out of the building to me. Olivera and I probably realized it at the same time. She faltered slightly, but I kept running. If I had to run through that door like Wile E. Coyote, then I would. Anything to escape the clutches of the demon that was closest now to me.
Gilley kept running and screaming, and at last he noticed the door too. He didn’t stop; he ran right to it and tried the handle, but it wouldn’t budge. He proceeded to pound his fists on the door and tried again and again to turn the handle, but it appeared to be locked. In front of me, Olivera faltered again, and I knew she was considering doubling back and taking her chances. One glance over her shoulder, however, seemed to shelve that idea. She shrieked, faced forward, and ran straight for Gilley.
I was so fatigued and out of breath that I thought I might pass out. I once fainted on an eighteen-mile run. It’d been a very hot day, and I hadn’t taken along nearly enough water. I have no memory of passing out, only waking up in the grass as another female runner attempted to come to my aid. The light-headed woozy feeling I did remember right before losing consciousness was what was happening to me at that moment—just ten yards away from the door. Which wouldn’t open. Which Gilley kept pounding on.
With what was left of my ability to think, I sent up a prayer. Please, I said in my mind, which, trust me, in that kind of situation is pretty much all you need. With five yards to go the door handled turned and Gilley heaved the door open. He darted inside with Olivera right on his heels. I strained with everything I had and reached the door a second later, careening through it just as Olivera yanked it closed.
As I crashed into Gilley, collapsing into his arms, I heard the click of the dead bolt, followed by a terrible crash that shook the entire room. The demon had hit the door. Hard.
I sucked in as much air as I could, gulping it down in great heaves. Gilley was panting almost as hard, but he was trembling from head to toe too. Other than the sound of our labored breathing, the room was deathly quiet. And then a light came on, and we all turned to see that a Tiffany lamp, perched on a desk, had magically illuminated the room.
I noted that we were in someone’s private office, tastefully decorated with art on the wall, a Turkish rug on the floor, a mahogany desk, and a comfortable leather chair with matching footstool in one corner.
On the desk was a laptop. My gaze was drawn next to my two companions. Gilley had two large welts on his forehead but seemed relatively okay, and Olivera looked frightened beyond reason, but at least she was blinking and looking around. I hoped that we could all collect our wits and our breath without further incident, but that hope was short-lived when the silence was shattered by a tremendous slap at the top of the door and then what I can only describe as a terrible metallic raking sound.
It was the most grating, terrifying noise you can imagine. Think of a velociraptor scraping its talons down the face of a chalkboard and you’ve got some idea of what it sounded like, and this was taking place mere feet from us on the other side of the door, starting from the top and slowly gouging its way down the length of the door. We all huddled together and cringed while we waited for it to be over, but as soon as the raking reached the bottom of the door, another slap at the top started and the slow slide of talons over steel began again.
Pushing away from Gilley, I staggered to my feet and stumbled forward to the door. Placing my hand on it, I felt the cool touch of metal along with the vibrations from the talons on the other side. “M.J.!” Gilley said hoarsely. “Get away from there!”
Ignoring him, I dug into my messenger bag and pulled out a spike, which I slammed against the door right at the center of what I hoped was the demon’s paw. The beast screeched and the grating sound stopped abruptly. I then reached for another spike and slammed that against the door, then another and another, until I was all out of spikes. I turned and looked at Gilley, and he came forward tentatively to hand me all his spikes too. I added them to the rest, effectively creating a solid barrier against the demon.
As the last spike went on the door, Olivera said in a hushed whisper, “Can it come through the walls?”
Gil and I looked at each other. He shrugged and I had to admit I really didn’t know either. “Technically, it probably could,” I said. “But the walls look like they’re concrete block, so it’d be tough for the demon to bring it’s full form through that kind of density. And once it started to do that, we’d be able to stab the hell out of it with a spike.”
“What does that even mean?” she asked. I noticed that she’d scooted to the farthest corner in the room, well away from the door.
It was Gilley who answered her. “The demon took on as close to a physical form as it could,” he explained. “That requires energy. A lot of energy. It’d take significantly more energy for it to move through a wall, and after giving us chase and getting zapped by our magnets, no way does it have enough juice left to push its way through concrete block quickly. It’d have to squeeze through slowly, and we’d be able to attack it from this side with all of our spikes.”
I had to hand it to him; he sounded very sure of his conclusion.
“So we’re safe in here?” Olivera asked.
“We are,” I told her. I wasn’t a hundred percent sure, but I didn’t see the sense of worrying her more than she already was.
As it happened, for the next several minutes, we heard nothing from the demon, and not long after that a dim light lit up under the door. I tried the switch next to the door and the overhead lights blazed on. I then looked at my companions in the stark white light and knew that I looked just as freaked-out, exhausted, and shaken as they did. Olivera was the first to speak. “What . . . the fuck was that?”
“Oruç’s demon,” I said simply. “And now you know, Detective, exactly why we have to get that dagger back.”