The Price of Brimstone Page 3

  “Yeah, I’m ready.” Russ sets his jaw, as if he isn’t particularly looking forward to whatever the ‘task at hand’ is. “For all the good it’s doing. Doesn’t feel like we’re accomplishing a damn thing.”

  “Well, should we go ahead and get started? I have plans tonight. Can’t hang around too long, man.”

  “Might as well.”

  Max’s eyes shift from Russ to me and then back to Russ as I listen to their exchange with undisguised interest.

  “What about…” He jerks his head in my direction.

  Nodding tersely, Russ turns to face me, dropping a firm hand on my shoulder. “Maybe this would be a good time for you to take a walk.”

  “Take a walk?” I give him a look that clearly conveys just how idiotic I find his suggestion. “It’s thundering out there! Do you not hear that? It’s about to start storming any minute.”

  “Then…I don’t know, go to town. See a movie or something.”

  “I just got back from town! I don’t want to go anywhere, especially with it raining. I want to relax.”

  “So go upstairs and relax, then! Take your nasty pineapple pizza with you.”

  “Why do you want me to go upstairs?” I want to know.

  “Uh – how about because I said so?”

  “Uh – how about no?”

  “Hey, here’s a thought. Do you think you could at least try not to be such a gigantic pain in my ass?”

  “Excuse me, but I’m not the one who’s acting like an ass here! Why are you being all weird and paranoid? What are you about to do?”

  “I’ll tell you what I’m about to do – I’m about to lock you out of the house, rain or not, if you don’t do what I say! How’s that sound?”

  “Oh, really? I’d love to see you try!”

  Frustrated with my stubbornness, his temper flares. “For once in your life just listen to me, will you? I’ve got shit to do, shit that does not involve you in any shape, way or form, and I don’t need you getting in the way while I’m doing it! If you want to stay here, then fine, stay, but I have the right to a little motherfucking privacy! All right? Now I am not asking you, I am telling you – stay the hell out of the goddamn basement and let me do what I gotta do!”

  Crossing my arms, I press my lips together and glare at him. “Fine.”

  “I mean it, Jude!”

  “I said, fine.”

  “Don’t open this door. You got that? No matter what you hear, you keep your ass upstairs. Don’t come down here.” Eyes narrowing, he jabs me in the shoulder with an index finger, accenting every word with a poke. “Do. Not. Come. Down. Here. Do. You. Understand?”

  “Russell…”

  “Do you fucking understand me, Jude?”

  “Yes, I fucking understand you!” I yell back, pissed off by his draconian attitude. He’s always been hardheaded, but my gosh, this is ridiculous. I can’t even reason with him when he’s like this. Ever since our parents died he’s gotten so bossy. Usually I just ignore it but sometimes, like now when he’s acting like a downright tyrant, I’d really like to throat punch him.

  “Good.” Heaving a sigh, he slips a key out of the pocket of his jeans and passes it to Max, who's been observing our shouting match without saying a word. “Let’s do this.”

  Max shoots me an apologetic look before inserting the key in the bottom of the padlock. Twisting it, he lifts the lock from the hasp and drops it on the counter, then slides open the heavy deadbolt.

  “Go watch TV or something,” Russ orders me.

  I clap my hands together in sarcastic delight. “Oh, may I? And after Sesame Street is over, can I have milk and cookies and then play with my blocks?”

  Glaring at me, he disappears out of sight down the basement stairs, slamming the door behind him. Hard. Hard enough to shake the walls.

  “Hey! If you didn’t want anyone down there, I don’t know why you didn’t just install the lock on that side, Einstein!” I holler at him through the door. As expected, I don’t get an answer.

  Calling him every vulgar name I can think of, I throw two pieces of pizza on a plate, grab a Coke from the fridge, and stomp upstairs. I’m tempted to go down there anyway, out of pure spite, but some unspoken pact keeps me from actually doing it. My brother and I may argue like cats and dogs, but we’ve always harbored a mutual respect for one another’s privacy. So if he wants me to leave him alone while he cultivates his marijuana farm or watches Japanese squid porn or whatever the hell he’s doing, then fine, I’ll stay out of his way.

  All he had to do was ask. He didn’t have to be such a dick about it.

  I do wonder, though. What’s so classified that he can’t let me in on it?

  I bounce onto my bed, sitting cross-legged on the covers with my food while I scroll through the Netflix queue to see if anything good has been added lately. Not much, it would appear. Russ refuses to spend a hundred bucks a month for satellite TV, so our options are somewhat limited. I got spoiled these past couple of years staying with my grandma. She has the premium cable package. All the movie channels and everything. Problem there was, between school and work I rarely had time to watch TV.

  I settle on a sitcom episode I’ve already seen, paying minimal attention while munching on my pizza and keeping an eye on the weather outside. It’s getting dark fast. The storm may have come out of nowhere, but it’s moving in with a vengeance. The wind is picking up, and heavy drops of rain are starting to splatter against the windowpanes.

  In a matter of mere seconds, the shower has escalated to a torrential downpour.

  It’s amazing how much noise rain can make. I have to turn the volume up on the TV so I can make out the dialogue over the squall. The roar of the rain is overshadowed only by thunder, which breaks in with deafening cracks that shake the whole house. The sound gradually tapers off into a low rumble, diminishing only long enough to give the lightning a chance to flash in response.

  Something about the sound of the rain makes me cold, and I wrap my patchwork quilt around my shoulders while I finish eating. I know the weather forecast said there was supposed to be a cold front moving in, hence the rain, but surely the temperature can’t be dropping already. Not that fast.

  I pop the last bite of crust into my mouth and lick the parmesan off my fingers, listening more to the storm than the one-liners and laugh tracks coming from the TV. I haven’t seen it rain this hard in a long time. Good thing I got back from the grocery store when I did. I’d hate to be out there trying to drive through this. Visibility must be down to zero.

  The downpour actually intensifies, if that's even possible, pelting the roof and the windows and blowing sideways sheets of rain onto the porch. I can hear the wooden swing down there, banging against the wall in the wind. The storm is attacking and drowning the house, hitting it from every direction. Or at least, that's the way it sounds.

  So when I first hear the noise, I’m not a hundred percent sure where it’s coming from.

  I mute the TV with the remote, and cock my head to listen more carefully.

  There it is again. It’s muffled, but it almost sounds like…

  No. Can’t be. It’s probably just Russ and Max cutting up, shouting at one another and acting a fool. Or laughing really loud. Those two can get pretty rambunctious.

  But when I hear it again, I instinctively slide off the bed and make my way downstairs. There is something about this strange muted sound that doesn’t quite strike me as normal.

  I creep through the house, though I have no idea why I’m trying to be quiet. It’s so silly – there’s no reason to. No one can hear me. And it wouldn’t matter if they did. Still, I approach the basement door hesitantly, as if I’m being sneaky or doing something wrong even though I’m not. A strange sense of unease prickles down my spine.

  And then the sound of the deluge is broken by…something else.

  I jump back a step, my breath catching in my chest and sending my heart racing. Holy fuck! That sure as shit isn’t a laugh – it bar
ely even sounds human. It’s more like a howl, the visceral scream of someone in agonizing pain. And it isn’t coming through the airwaves of a radio or television. It’s live and it’s proximate and it’s bloodcurdlingly horrible.

  Disregarding my brother’s warning, I fling open the door and race down there to find out what the hell is happening. It seems like I’m flying – my feet are moving so fast it’s surprising I don’t trip – and yet I only make it about halfway down when Russell’s voice bellows at me like a freight train.

  “STOP!”

  I comply instinctively, freezing in my tracks right there on the stairs. His back is to me, but he’s partially twisted around from whatever he’s doing to hold one arm out as if it will prevent me from coming any farther. And I don’t. I don’t move, I can’t, my thick white socks are glued to the steps...not because he yelled at me to stop, but because the hand is holding something that’s disturbingly threatening and is pointed straight at me.

  A long, sharp boning knife.

  Something dark and wet drips off the tip of the blade to splash on the concrete floor.

  “Goddammit, Judith, I told you to keep your ass upstairs!” He sounds more desperate than angry, which isn’t exactly comforting.

  In the time it takes for me to blink, my eyes sweep the room and take it all in. Everything’s been repositioned, moved out of the way and stacked against the stark gray walls. In the middle of the bare floor is a wide, rectangular farmhouse table, the rough-hewn wooden kind you might expect to see at an outdoor picnic, only I’ve never seen it before. There are no benches or chairs, other than one that’s mostly hidden on the opposite side of the table. With Russ blocking my line of vision, I only get a fragmentary glimpse of part of the shoulder of the person sitting there, someone clad all in black. Max is standing beside this partially concealed person, watching me with an almost pained expression.

  My eyes drop to the floor beneath the table, and to my stunned disbelief, I realize that the ankles of the person sitting there are shackled together.

  “Russell…” The strangled voice coming out of my throat doesn’t sound like my own. “What. The hell. Are...you...doing!”

  “Relax, okay? Don’t freak out on me. It’s not what you think.”

  “Not what I think?” I don’t even know what I think. My first crazy assumption is that he’s hurt himself. I don’t know how or why, but that is my initial fear and I don’t stop to rationalize it. “Are you okay?”

  “Yes. Go back upstairs, Jude. We’ll talk about this later, I promise.”

  “Max…?”

  “I’m fine, Jude,” Max reassures me in an eerily calm voice. “It’s okay. Everything’s okay.”

  “Then who is that? Who was screaming? Who is that?” I lean to one side, trying to get a better look, but my brother mirrors my movement, using his body as a barrier in an effort to block my view of the stranger. “Russell! Goddammit, answer me right now! Whose blood is that?”

  A violent crash of thunder startles us all, buckling the air that surrounds us with its heavy, oppressive weight, reverberating through my veins like the thudding of a bass drum.

  The power flickers, and then dies altogether.

  And the quietly menacing laugh that follows does not belong to any of us.

  ~ * ~ * ~ * ~

  Chapter Three

  “MOVE!”

  I feel hands on my arms, turning me around to shove me back up the stairs, and I try not to stumble as I follow the beam of light coming from someone’s cell phone.

  The three of us burst through the door, pouring out of the crypt-like darkness of the basement into the kitchen, where there is illumination despite the power outage. It’s five in the afternoon, not yet nighttime, so there’s still some daylight pressing through the smothering clouds and rain.

  I lean against the table, bracing myself with my hands, too shaken to do or say anything. The sensible part of my brain tells me that I should be tracking down a flashlight or some candles before the sun goes down, just in case, but I can’t seem to make myself move from this spot.

  Thunder crashes again, relentless in its assault, and through one of the windows I see a fork of lightning pierce the churning sky.

  “Holy shit,” Russell exhales in a sigh, running a nervous hand through his hair.

  Max shoots him a glance while locking and bolting the door behind us. “Get a grip, man. It wasn’t him. You know it couldn’t have been him. He didn't take the power out, it was just the storm.”

  “Yeah. Shit, though, that was intense.”

  “You’re telling me? I was standing right there next to him!”

  “Dammit! I hate those fucking things.” Russ gives the door a violent kick before looking over at me as if he just now remembered I was there. “You okay, Jude?”

  I lift my eyes to stare back at him in disbelief. Is he out of his mind? Am I okay? Oh, sure, I’m just as peachy as pie! I have a Hostel situation going on right underneath my feet, in the house I’ve called home since childhood, but other than that everything’s fine and fucking dandy, thanks for asking.

  “You’re the one with the bloody knife and you’re asking me if I’m okay?” It’s gone now – I don’t know where it went. He must’ve dropped it down there somewhere. I’m glad of that because I don’t want to have to see that thing again. I wish I could pretend I never saw it in the first place.

  Trying and failing to be subtle about it, Max slides a bloodied pair of brass knuckles from his fingers.

  “Oh, God…” The pizza roils in my stomach and I press a hand against my mouth. My forehead breaks out in a cold sweat. As soon as I feel more confident that I’m not about to upchuck everywhere, I move my fingers away to say, “All right. Somebody better start talking. And I mean now. Because I am about half a minute away from calling the police!”

  “Calm down. There’s no reason to get upset.” Russ takes a step toward me, his arms extended as if he intends to hug me, but I back away in revulsion. Does he really think I want him touching me with someone's blood on his hands?

  “Don’t tell me to calm down! Don’t you dare! And that’s ten seconds you just wasted. You might want to get the ball rolling on your explanation if you don’t want to end up in the back of a squad car. Both of you.”

  Max’s eyes widen in alarm, but Russ is quick to assure him, “She’s bluffing. She won’t do it.”

  “Fifteen seconds. You now have fifteen seconds. So don’t fucking try me. Trust me, you don’t have the time.”

  “All right, all right! Look, I told you I’d explain and I will.” Another boom of thunder shakes the house, and we all wince at the ensuing flash of lightning. “Would you just take a second and think this over? Think, Jude. You know me. You know me better than that. You know I’m not some kind of psycho killer. Now sit down. Please. Just sit down and take a breath. I don’t need you freaking out on me right now.”

  Never taking my eyes off him, I pull out one of the kitchen chairs and tentatively sit across from him. I sit, but I don’t relax. He takes a seat at the table across from me, folding his hands and lacing his fingers together as if we’re about to negotiate the price of a new car.

  “He knows where Skylar is,” Russ tells me simply. “And Owen.”

  “He, who?”

  “The guy…that thing in the basement. We’re just trying to get it to talk. So far we haven’t had much luck.”

  In my peripheral vision I see Max moving, and I flinch nervously.

  “I’m just going to get some matches,” he says, in the same voice you'd use to soothe a spooked animal. “To light that candle over there by the stove. Okay?”

  I give him a terse nod before returning my attention to Russ. “So what you’re saying is you’re basically torturing him for information?”

  “That’s about the size of it.”

  “That’s supposed to make me feel better?” Recounting our conversation from yesterday, I hazard a guess. “Is it the guy from the bar? The one you were t
elling me about?”

  Closing his eyes for a brief second, he nods.

  “You think he had something to do with Skylar and Owen disappearing?”

  “I know he did.”

  “How do you know that, Russ? How can you be sure? For that matter, how can you be sure he’s possessed – as far as I know, you haven’t seen an instance of that since…” I trail off, not wanting to say the words out loud. Since Mom and Dad died. I glance up at Max as he sets a Yankee candle in the middle of the table before going over to the sink to wash his hands.

  To scrub the blood off.

  Numbly, I gaze into the candle’s flame as it flickers hypnotically. Someone tell me this isn’t happening. Max Fallon is one of the friendliest, most dependable, laid-back guys I’ve ever met in my life. I can’t visualize it. No matter how hard I try, I can’t. I can’t picture sweet, easygoing Max bashing someone’s teeth in with a pair of brass knuckles.

  As for my brother…

  He’s not some sociopath. He isn't. He’s just your typical, average red-blooded American male who likes nachos and football and girls and who just happens to have inherited my father’s capacity for recognizing the signs of demonic possession.

  My God, what was he doing with that knife?

  “I never said he was possessed,” Russ murmurs. “This thing isn’t human, Jude. He isn’t just some poor schmuck who’s been invaded by a demon. As far as I can tell, he’s a hybrid. A cambion. The real deal.”

  Looking up from the candle, I frown retrospectively. It’s been a long time since I heard that word. A very long time. And yet, oddly enough, I remember it and precisely what it means. So much from those days has faded and been forgotten – after all, I was only five years old – and yet, that conversation holds a clear and defined place between the pages of my memory.

  “Tell me about the bad things, Daddy.”