Chapter Sixteen
The ghoul moaned her name again from the darkened recesses of the storeroom. Not “the ghoul,” she corrected. Mr. Farris. This ghoul had a name, and somehow that made it worse. Or at least she assumed it was Ghouly Farris, unless her storage room was infested with some other supernatural icky thing that knew her by name.
“Ad-d-d-y,” it called again.
Actually, it sounded more like “Humm-humm.” But Addy heard it loud and clear inside her head, a sibilant hiss that slithered through her mind, full of hate and an evil hunger that made her shiver. There was a humming ghoul in the back of her flower shop. How did these things happen to her? And why was the damn thing humming? Humming was annoying under the best of circumstances. Was it trying to freak her out before it finished her off? If so, it was working. On the freak-out scale, she was past the “heebie-jeebies” and into “pee yourself.”
She had but a moment to ponder this question before Mr. Farris shuffled out of the storeroom. As animate corpses went, he looked pretty good. The hair and makeup job Jeannine, down at the Kut ’N’ Kurl, had done on him looked fresh, and his shirt and tie were still neatly pressed and starched. His eyes, though . . . His eyes were horrible bits of grape jelly, liquid and wobbly, like pudding that hadn’t set. He smiled at her, a slow sinister smile that made her feel faint. Correction. He tried to smile. The most he could manage was a slight upward tilt of his lips, which were tightly pressed together. That explained the humming. It’s hard to talk when your lips are superglued shut.
For some reason, that made her feel better. Out of a whole town of live ones, this demon picked a dead man to possess. How bright could he be?
“Having a little trouble with the old chops, are we?” she said, taking refuge in smarminess to disguise her fear. The sound of her voice steadied her. Heck, she’d been dealing with her mother for twenty-seven years. A demon ought to be a piece of cake. “It’s that whole lip-glue thing you got going on there. You can’t enunciate properly if you can’t open your mouth, and so ‘Addy’ comes out “humm-humm.’ The cotton balls probably don’t help. Bet you got that dry, tickly feeling in the back of your throat. Don’t you hate when that happens?”
There was a wet tearing sound as Ghouly Farris opened his mouth. The superglue held. Part of his bottom lip stuck to the top, and the flesh tore in a ragged line, leaving a tattered opening that exposed the corpse’s bottom teeth and gums. The ghoul hawked, spitting out the wad of cotton balls that puffed his cheeks. The gooey mess landed on the floor.
“That’s nasty,” Addy said. “Do you have any idea how dirty the human mouth is? Dirtier than a dog’s, and a dog will lick his butt.” Along with her smart-ass mouth, her muscles had started to work again. She eased away from the ghoul. “I imagine your mouth is dirtier, you being dead and all. I’ll have to scrub that floor with hot water and Pine-Sol to get the dead cooties off it. May even have to rent a steam cleaner. Did I mention I hate dead guys? I know it’s narrow minded and prejudiced of me, but there it is.”
“You talk too much,” the ghoul said. The raspy voice reminded Addy of the whir of insect wings or wind-rattled husks of dead roaches in an abandoned shed. “I wonder if you’ll have so much to say when I crack you open and eat your liver while you’re still alive.”
“Hmm,” Addy said, pretending to consider this. “Tempting, but no thanks.”
She turned and made a dash for the front door. Something dark and foul smelling whooshed past her. A smoky shape formed and solidified between her and the exit. Ghouly Farris; so much for her theory about no-pecker dead guys being slow. This guy moved faster than poop through a goose.
The ghoul’s mangled mouth widened in a horrible, toothy smile. “Come to me.”
“Sorry, dude. You’re not my type.”
The ghoul raised its arm and pointed. Addy cried out in pain as the black mark on her breast seared and burned.
“But you are my type.” The ghoul smacked his torn lips. “I have marked you, and you are mine. I will feed upon you and grow stronger.”
A triumphant gleam shone in the ghoul’s watery eyes. So, Dead Dude planned to make a Happy Meal of her and thought she’d meekly comply. Dead Dude had a lot to learn. She sensed the power behind the command. Oh, yeah, the compulsion was there, plain as the nose on her face, but she wasn’t the teensiest bit inclined to play along. Oh, no. The scar on her chest hurt like a son-of-a-bitch, but that was all. Something, maybe the infusion of Dalvahni DNA Brand had given her when he saved her, gave her the ability to resist.
Addy pressed her hand to the throbbing mark and shook her head. “Sorry, Ghouly, no can do.”
For a moment, the ghoul looked puzzled by her resistance. Then it sprang at her with a snarl, knocking her to the floor. She hit her head on the counter edge on the way down. Dazed, Addy looked up at the nightmare crouching on her chest. The mark on her breast ached, and her head hurt. The smell of burned powdered butter pummeled her senses, making her gag. Man, this guy stank.
The ghoul wrapped its fingers around her throat and squeezed. Black spots danced in front of her eyes. Breathe. She had to breathe. She grabbed the ghoul’s wrists and pulled. To her surprise, the demon’s steely hold broke.
The ghoul seemed surprised, too. “You are very strong.” Addy flinched as the ghoul touched her cheek with the tip of one clammy, ossified thumb. “And yet so very soft. I am going to enjoy feasting upon your tender flesh, Addy Corwin.”
Eww. A dead guy was touching her, getting his own special brand of dead guy germs all over her. It should have been her worst nightmare. Addy hardly noticed. She was too busy dragging in a lungful of air through her bruised windpipe, an act she regretted an instant later when another puff of the thing’s moldering breath hit her in the face.
“Dude, have a mint, why don’t you?” she gasped. “You could knock a buzzard off a shit wagon with that breath.”
The ghoul chuckled. “You have spirit. That is good. The stronger you are, the stronger I become.” He grabbed Addy’s breast, the one with the mark, and squeezed. She screamed as blinding pain shot through her. “No, no, don’t pass out,” the ghoul said. “I want you awake when I begin to feed.”
The ghoul opened its horrible, gaping mouth and lunged for her throat. Addy got a flashing impression of crooked, yellow teeth and pus-filled gums, and then the ghoul was gone. A deafening roar shook the room followed by a loud crash. Somehow a wounded lion had gotten inside her shop. Huh. Which was worse? she wondered. Being eaten alive by an enraged lion or a creepy dead guy with halitosis and serious gum issues? It was an old game, one she and Shep used to play. Which would you rather have happen to you—and you have to choose one!—be eaten alive by a Great White shark or chewed up in the blades of a tractor combine? Before she had time to decide, Ghouly Farris flew past. Dead Dude hit the wall across the room with a satisfying splat and slid to the floor. The ghoul jumped up, a look of terror on its frozen features.
The lion roared again. The roaring coalesced into a word: her name. More craziness. How could a lion know her name?
Addy blinked and sat up. There was no lion. A glowing figure limned in fire stalked the ghoul around the room. The fire creature roared and reached for the ghoul with blazing arms. The ghoul shrieked and scuttled away. The fire creature followed, pulsing with a horrible rage. Addy could feel the thing’s anger and hate. It wanted the ghoul, wanted to destroy it, to burn it to ash leaving nothing. She smelled burning linoleum. With each menacing step, the fire creature left a melted footprint in the floor. At this rate the whole place would go up in flames. Addy got to her feet. She had to get out of here. Her breast ached and her head hurt. There was blood on her silk blouse and blood on the floor, but whose? She touched the throbbing knot on the back of her head. Her fingers came away wet. The blood was hers.
Other than feeling a little woozy, she seemed to be all right. Head wounds always bled a lot, didn’t they? Time to leave, before the fire demon finished off the ghoul and came after her. That fire critter was not something she wanted to deal with. She almost felt sorry for poor old Ghouly.
Almost, but not quite. If not for the timely intervention of the other fiend, the ghoul would have eaten her alive.
Holding on to the edge of the counter, she eased away from the battle. Not that it was much of a battle. Mostly, it consisted of Ghouly Farris shrieking like a girl and running around the room as he tried to avoid the other demon. Ghouly was fast, but the fire demon was faster. And relentless, driven by that allconsuming rage that was a palpable presence in the room. She could feel the fire demon’s rage and . . . and grief? No, that didn’t make any sense.
The fire demon caught the ghoul by the neck. A horrible stench rose up, the smell of burning flesh and embalming chemicals. Mr. Farris’s clothes burst into flames. With a roar, the fire demon tore off the ghoul’s head and tossed it aside. The body hit the floor with a sickening thud. Something dark flew out of the ragged neck of the smoldering corpse and streaked toward Addy. She shrieked and ran behind the counter, flattening herself against the wall. The dark shape flew past her and into the storage room. She heard a loud crash and a lot of thumping and bumping as the terrified demon wraith thrashed about the supply room like a sparrow in a chimney, trying to find its way out. The security alarm on the back door beeped and the metal door slammed shut, leaving her alone with the fire demon.
The fiery head turned in her direction. The fiend saw her. No way could she outrun the thing. It was much too fast. The trick was not to panic. Move slowly and maybe it wouldn’t notice.
Forget it. She was getting the hell out of here.
She lunged for the door.
“Adara? You are alive?”
Something in the hoarse cry stopped her. Addy turned. The blazing halo around the fire demon wavered and went out. A man stood in the wreckage of her flower shop, his back to the sunlit display window. She knew him. She’d seen him like this before, his broad shoulders outlined by the light-filled portal behind him, his handsome features in shadow.
Brand.
The fire demon was Brand.