CHAPTER TWELVE

The demon fell on me and it was even denser than it looked. The breath was knocked out of me and if it hadn’t raised its torso off me the weight would have slowly suffocated me. I had a second to try to catch my breath as it used one hand to raise its torso off me, its lower body still pinning my legs, and then I felt claws at my stomach.

“I’m going to wear you like a puppet,” the demon growled.

Its talking let me catch my breath and raise my gun. I fired once into its chest; the claws tore my shirt away. “I like to see what I’m doing,” he said.

The other cops were firing into its body and the bullets were hitting it. The demon was too solid to be bulletproof, but it was like shooting a side of beef for all the harm it did. It wasn’t even bleeding.

The demon looked down at me. “I hate guys with great abs,” it growled. I felt the claws start to pierce my skin; I knew better than to look, but I couldn’t help myself.

“Yes, Detective, watch as we tear out all that hard work at the gym.”

I yelled, “God!” and thought, A hand, a hand to match the foot, and the claws vanished, just like the hoof had appeared. It wasn’t possible to change the shape of a spiritual being that easily, not once it had settled into a form, but it had worked anyway. I prayed, Thank you.

“You have to focus, boy, you’re taking away our weapons,” the demon said, staring at its hand. There was blood on the fingertips from where it had cut me, but the claws it’d used were just gone.

“I didn’t do that, or the hoof.” The demon said that, too, but the cadence of the voice was different. Mark Cookson wasn’t possessing the demon: They were sharing.

Charleston must have reloaded because he came in and put his gun against the side of the demon’s head and fired point-blank. The demon brushed him away with one big arm, sending him flying. The claws were gone, but it was still dangerous, and I was still pinned under it. If only the damn thing would bleed and take damage from the bullets, I thought. That was what we needed, we needed it to bleed.

Blood dripped down on me as the demon shook its head, and then it shook harder, spraying blood around the hallway. “Why isn’t your blood burning like acid?” it asked.

The next drop of blood that hit my bare stomach sizzled and burned like acid. Someone else screamed, “It’s acid!”

I thought, No it’s not, it’s ordinary human blood, and the next drop that hit me was red and harmless.

The demon looked down at me with its scary movie eyes. “You . . .”

I aimed my last bullet into its eye and thought, I want the bullet to pierce the brain and kill it. That was totally impossible, you couldn’t kill a demon, but maybe we could kill this body.

I squeezed the trigger and the demon rolled off me, moving in a blur so fast that I couldn’t stop the trigger pull and put a bullet in the ceiling where its head had been.

I got to one knee, popping my empty magazine out and reaching for my last spare magazine as I moved. The other two cops were aiming into a hospital room near me. Charleston was lying against the opposite wall where the demon had thrown him. He wasn’t moving, but even as I wondered how badly he was hurt Nurse Prescott was there. I was going to owe that woman flowers or a case of something expensive.

I turned back to the open doorway and the demon that was hiding inside. A woman screamed inside the room. I paused and wished the room would be empty. She screamed again. It had been worth a try. I pressed myself against the wall near the open door and called out, “Discorporate now, you know the priests are on the way.”

“Fuck priests!”

The demon’s voice changed again and said, “Now that’s a great idea.”

The woman screamed words this time. “Don’t touch me!”

I was not going to stay out in the hallway while they raped another woman. I prayed for an idea that would help us save her in time.

I thought, I want the demon to be small and helpless. I pictured something like Mark Cookson except red skinned, but weak. “You cannot work your magic on us without seeing us, Detective.”

I tried to move closer to the door so I could get line of sight. The door shut as I tried to throw myself toward the opening and get one last look at the demon. I wasn’t sure that I could even change it from big to small; that was harder to do to spiritual beings even when they were less solid. Small changes, though, small was easier.

There was a crash of something heavier than a person being thrown against the door. They didn’t have a gun, so I could stand in the doorway without worrying about cover. I pushed on the door; it moved a few inches and then it caught on something solid. I put my shoulder into it, but I couldn’t get it to move more. They’d wedged something in the door.

The woman screamed again.

Miller came over and put his shoulder with mine. We tried kicking it. The door wouldn’t move.

The woman’s scream turned to one word: “No!”

Her fingers found the crack at the edge of the wedged door. “Help me!”

I touched her fingertips, leaning in so I could see that she had brown eyes. Her fingers curled around mine; the opening wasn’t big enough for anything more. I didn’t know why the demon hadn’t dragged her back yet.

“What’s your name?”

“Kate, I’m Kate.”

I held her fingers in mine. “I’m Detective Havelock.”

“Detective what?” she asked. Her eyes looked too big for her face. She looked young and innocent and I wanted to keep her that way.

“Havoc,” I said.

“Havoc, get me out of here, okay?”

“What’s against the door, Kate?”

“The bed.”

“What’s the demon doing?”

Her eyes darted back into the room, then came back to look at me. “Just standing there.”

I didn’t know what the demon was waiting for, and I didn’t want to wait to find out. “Kate, can you move the bed away from the door?”

“I don’t . . . I don’t know.”

“Can you try? Please.”

I’d thought she was holding on to me tight, but I’d been wrong, because now she squeezed harder. Her skin paled with the pressure of it.

“I’d have to get closer to it.”

“I’m sorry, Kate, but the bed needs to move so we can get you out.”

“She’s too weak to move the bed.” The demon’s voice held that whining note that was Mark Cookson.

“Will you let her try?” I asked. I didn’t know why he hadn’t hurt her again, but I was going to use it.

“Sure,” he said, as if he was being magnanimous.

“Kate, you can do this.” I was more saying that she was brave enough to let go of my hand, than move the bed. If we couldn’t move it from this side, I wasn’t sure she could do anything on that side, but trying was better than giving up.

“Are you really going to let me try to move the bed?” she asked, and I realized she wasn’t asking me.

“I said sure.”

She squeezed my hand one more time, and then she left the small opening. I was left looking into the empty half of the hospital room. I could hear her moving around. I felt the door move under my hand and for a moment I thought she’d done it, but the door didn’t open. I could feel the vibrations of her trying to manipulate the bed and whatever the demon had done to wedge it against the door. She wrapped her hands around the opening and pulled; I put my shoulder against it and pushed. Miller joined me. It moved a few more inches, but that was it.

I could see more of her now, her body lost in the oversized hospital gown, but her face was oval with a sprinkling of pale freckles; her lips were full, the kind that always seemed half pouting, the real deal that all the fake duckfaces on the internet imitate. Her eyes were big and brown with dark lashes and eyebrows arched just right in that way that women care about more than any straight man I’d ever met. She could have been missing an eyebrow and she would still have been lovely. Her hair was dark, curly, and just long enough to touch the tops of her shoulders.

Her hand and lower arm were small enough that she reached through the open doorway and held my hand. She could get her arm to the shoulder through the opening, but at the shoulder her body was too wide. She was still trapped.

“That’s it, I can’t move it any more,” she said.

I heard the demon stir in the room. I couldn’t see what it was doing, but I could hear it doing something.

“Havoc, don’t leave me, okay?”

I squeezed her hand in mine. “I won’t leave you, Kate.”

She smiled, just a little, and squeezed back.

“I’m taller than he is,” the demon said. “I’ve got more muscles, but I’m still not good enough for you.”

Kate glanced into the room at him, then back to me.

“Look at me, bitch.”

She shook her head and gave me some of the best eye contact I’d gotten from a woman in a while. If it had been a date, I’d have been thrilled. I put my other hand around her wrist, so I was holding her as tight as I could.

“Look at me, you fucking cunt!” the demon yelled.

“No,” she said. Her eyes were so wide. She clung to me and I wanted more than anything to be able to protect her from what was about to happen if we couldn’t get this door open in the next few seconds.

She looked away from me to something in the room that I couldn’t see. Her hand tightened around mine. Even in profile I could see the terror on her face as she looked at the demon. I could see her arm rise as if she was trying to push something away, but I couldn’t see her hand or what she was motioning at, but I knew. It was the demon and she wasn’t going to be able to push it away like a date that got out of hand.

“Come on, Katie, give us a kiss,” the demon said.

“It’s Kate, not Katie, and I said no.” Her voice quavered, but she said it like she meant it. I held her hand and marveled at her presence of mind. Damn, she was brave.

Her body jerked and I knew it had grabbed her other arm before she said, “Let go of me!”

Kate held on to me and I held on to her with both hands and the demon still dragged most of her out of sight behind the door. Miller went to one knee and shoved his face into the opening so he could put an arm through the narrow opening and shoot the demon some more; maybe if we put enough bullets into him it might actually kill him. Kate plastered herself against the door and I saw her other arm trying to cover one ear against the noise. The demon had let her go.

I yelled, “Miller, get back!”

He started to pull his arm out of the doorway, but suddenly he lurched forward. His gun fired once more and then his shoulder was wedged into the opening of the door. If he hadn’t been kneeling and Kate standing, there wouldn’t have been room for them both, but more of her was against the front of the door, only her arm was outside. Miller’s body shook as if the demon were shaking his arm like a dog with a tug rope.

Miller yelled. Kate screamed. She was looking down at something I couldn’t see. I heard a wet, tearing sound. Miller screamed. He fell back from the door, blood spraying out of his shoulder where his arm used to be.