Grotesque

Chapter 22

The elevator doors open with a soft ding that sounds much too loud in the otherwise deserted hallway.

I step out onto Eleanor’s floor and stand there for a moment, listening. Shadows hide more than they reveal.

For some reason my mind turns to Marian. Poor Marian.

I think of how I pounded on her door in the middle of the night, telling her I wasn't leaving until she opened it.

She knew better. She'd survived this building for thirty years by keeping that door shut, and I made her open it. I needed answers, and I got them and by the next morning she was dead.

Marian didn't die because she knew too much. She'd known everything for decades, and the building left her alone.

She died because she frightened me.

Because for one night, I was afraid of a seventy-year-old woman with three locks on her door. And something up there felt it, and decided to fix it for me.

The last thing she ever did was look at me like I was my grandmother. I'm starting to think she wasn't that far from the truth.

I force myself to focus on the challenge ahead. Time to get the pendant and leave this godforsaken place.

The corridor is empty. I advance slowly toward Eleanor’s apartment, my eyes drifting to the ceiling despite myself. I told myself I would only focus on the task ahead and here I am letting my imagination run wild again.

Every sound feels amplified now. The hush of the elevator doors closing behind me, the faint tick of old pipes inside the walls. Somewhere far above, rain lashes the roof.

My hand closes around my crucifix as I approach the door.

Then I stop. The door to Eleanor’s apartment is… open.

My breath shortens. I stare at the dark seam between the door and the frame, waiting for movement, for sound, for any proof that whoever opened it is still inside.

Nothing.

I should turn around. I should take the elevator down, walk out of the building, call Paul from the lobby, and never look back. Just run the way my mother did, leave the city, the state.

But the grotesque will follow me no matter where I go, where I try to hide.

Or at least that is what Dominik believes.

How is a gargoyle going to trek across the country?

If I decide to get on a plane to China, will the grotesque pop up at my hotel?

I don’t know. It isn’t a physical creature even though it manifests that way.

It’s a familiar and it’s bonded to me. Who knows how this occult crap works.

These are the erratic thoughts cycling through my head as I push the door fully open.

The apartment greets me with silence.

The living room is dim except for the city light bleeding through the windows and the occasional pulse of lightning. For one second, everything flashes white.

That’s when I see them.

Three dead pigeons lie scattered across the hardwood floor.

Their necks are broken, wings twisted. Blood smears the floor in dark, wet arcs as if they were thrown here with force and then dragged. Feathers cling to the floor, to the rug, to the leg of the coffee table.

I don’t move.

The apartment seems to hold its breath around me.

Then my eyes find Eleanor’s desk.

The silver eye pendant sits on the polished surface, where I left it.

Two more pigeons lie near it, their ruined bodies angled toward the desk in a way that is too precise to be an accident. Their broken heads point toward the pendant like an offering.

Or an instruction.

Take it.

I stare at the silver eye, at the polished black stone in its center.

If Dominik is right, the pendant anchors the grotesque to our reality.

My skin crawls.

Another burst of lightning floods the room, and the dead birds appear to twitch in the flash.

I cross to the desk fast, snatch the pendant, and close my fingers around it. The metal is cold enough to hurt.

I know the grotesque’s latest display of power is a clear message to embrace my legacy, to place the pendant around my neck and accept my new guardianship over the thing on the Overton’s roof.

But I have very different plans. We’re going to destroy the damn beast and send this murderous entity back to where it came from.

For one terrible second, I expect something to happen, for the shadows to part and reveal the thing that has been leaving bodies on the city’s rooftops.

Nothing does.

The apartment remains silent. And that somehow feels even worse.

I back toward the door, my fist closed around the pendant, my eyes sweeping the corners, the ceiling, the windows.

Then I leave.

The city becomes a surreal blur in the pouring rain.

I meet up with Paul in front of the Overton, and we hail a cab that takes us back to St. Michael’s.

The church rises from the storm, a flash of lightning revealing the stained glass windows.

For an instant, in one of those white flashes, I think I see something high above the roofline.

A shape. A pair of wings. Then the darkness closes again, and there is only rain.

I know my imagination is playing tricks on me. Or so I hope.

Paul notices my upward glance but doesn’t comment on it.

We push through the side entrance and step into the abandoned church.

The air inside is colder than outside.

Rain hammers the stained glass. Wind breathes through broken places in the old structure. Candles burn along the altar and in scattered clusters near the pews, their flames bending whenever the wind finds them.

Dominik Vale stands at the front of the sanctuary in his long black coat. In the candlelight, he seems both ancient and dangerous.

His gaze locks onto my hand.

“You brought it,” he says.

I lift the pendant.

The silver eye lies in my palm, black stone gleaming at its center.

“Good,” Dominik says. “Give it to me.”

I don’t like his sharp tone, the hunger beneath it.

Paul hears it too, because he shifts beside me.

“Easy,” he says.

Dominik ignores him, his eyes fixed on the pendant.

“Give it to me, Sara.”

I hesitate a moment longer, then step forward and hold it out.

Dominik practically snatches it from my hand.

The violence of the gesture makes me recoil.

He notices. For one second, something like shame crosses his face. Then it is gone, swallowed by the need burning through him.

He turns the pendant slowly between his fingers, careful now, almost afraid to touch the black stone directly. Then he lays it on the altar.

The candles nearest it flicker almost as if the flames are responding to the pendant.

I feel Paul tense beside me.

Dominik murmurs something under his breath in Latin. His fingers close around something inside his coat.

A hammer.

He holds it in his hand like some relic, the head dark with rust.

“Dear Lord,” Dominik says, voice breaking around the words, “let this evil end tonight.”

He raises the hammer.

“Wait,” I say.

My objection comes a second too late as he brings it down.

The sound cracks through the church as he strikes the pendant dead center. The black stone spiderwebs.

Dominik lifts the hammer and brings it down again.

And again.

WHAM. WHAM. WHAM.

The silver eye buckles, the stone splits. Black fragments scatter across the altar cloth.

Dominik keeps hitting it, his face twisted with fury and something worse than fury, something close to joy. Or madness.

“Stop,” Paul says.

Dominik doesn’t hear him.

The hammer comes down until there is almost nothing left of the pendant but twisted silver and powdered black stone.

Then he stops.

His chest heaves, his hands tremble.

For several seconds, no one moves.

Rain batters the windows. Candles flicker. The broken pendant lies on the altar between us.

“Is that it?” I ask.

Dominik doesn’t answer.

And that’s when a sound rolls across the roof.

STOMP.

My blood turns cold as another impact follows.

STOMP.

Dust drifts from the rafters as the church trembles faintly around us.

I know that sound.

The memory of it returns whole: me sitting up in Eleanor’s bed, staring at the ceiling while something heavy crossed the roof above me with deliberate steps.

Paul looks upward. “What the hell was that?”

Dominik’s face drains of color.

“No,” he whispers.

The sound comes again. Louder now.

STOMP. STOMP.

The candles shiver.

Dominik stares at the broken pendant as if it has betrayed him.

“It should have worked,” he says. “Destroying the pendant should have sent the familiar back. It should have severed the bond.”

The roof groans above us.

Dominik turns toward me, and the horror in his eyes makes my stomach drop.

“I was wrong,” he says.

“What do you mean, wrong?”

“The pendant must be the way Eleanor controlled it.” His voice is barely steady. “But it wasn’t the anchor.”

Paul looks from Dominik to the shattered silver on the altar.

“Wait,” he says. “If that thing controlled it, and you just broke it…”

He doesn’t finish. He doesn’t have to.

Dominik did not destroy the creature. He snapped the leash.

Suddenly, the dead pigeons pointing toward the pendant in Eleanor’s apartment make perfect sense. The grotesque wanted this outcome. Dominik inadvertently destroyed the one way of controlling the monster.

A change passes over the old priest’s face. Fear hardens into something colder. His fingers tighten around the hammer.

“If I can’t destroy the anchor,” he says, “then I must starve the beast again.”

I take a step back.

The words are wrong or maybe it’s the tone in his voice.

“What does that mean?”

Dominik looks at me with something almost like pity.

“Let it starve to death this time.”

My gaze drops to the hammer in his hand. The dark stains on the metal catch the candlelight. With horror I realize it isn’t rust. It’s dried blood. The realization hits with such force that I almost can’t breathe.

“Oh my God,” I say.

Dominik says nothing.

I take another step back.

“It was you!”

Paul looks at me, then at the hammer.

“You killed my grandmother,” I say.

Dominik’s expression does not change.

That is answer enough.

Paul moves instinctively, placing himself between us.

“Back the fuck off,” he says.

Dominik’s eyes stay on me.

“I wish I didn’t have to do this.”

“You murdered her,” I say.

His jaw tightens.

“The beast was bound to Eleanor’s bloodline. Her will gave it direction, her offerings strength. When she died, I thought it would weaken and starve.”

“You beat an old woman to death.”

“I killed a monster wearing an old woman’s face.”

The roof booms again, and the candles flare.

Dominik lifts the hammer slightly, not yet attacking, but readying himself for the killing blow.

“The anchor ties the beast to this world,” he says. “But your blood gives it strength. Strength to feed. To kill. To remain in this world.”

Paul’s voice is low and hard. “You take one more step, old man…”

Dominik’s eyes glisten in the candlelight.

“I’m sorry, Sara. I truly am.”

Then he lunges.

The hammer swings toward my head.

Paul hits him before he reaches me.

The two men crash into the nearest pew, wood cracking under their weight. The hammer skids across the stone floor, spinning into the shadows. The ruined pendant scatters farther across the altar.

For one second, I stand there stunned.

Then my body catches up.

I move.

The hammer lies near the base of a broken column, half in shadow. I dive for it.

Dominik sees me.

Even tangled with Paul, he kicks out hard. His boot catches me in the ribs and knocks the air from my lungs. I slam back against a pew, pain flashing white through my side.

Paul drives into him again.

They go down hard.

The fight tears through the ruined church with brutal, graceless force. Paul is younger, stronger, faster. Dominik is older and half-starved, but fanatic conviction makes him dangerous. He seems indifferent to pain, willing to sacrifice himself if it will stop the grotesque.

They slam into pews. Candles topple and gutter out, shadows leap across the walls. Paul lands a punch that snaps Dominik’s head sideways, but the priest keeps coming. Dominik claws at Paul’s face, drives a knee into his stomach, then reaches again for the hammer.

Paul grabs him by the coat and hurls him back.

Dominik hits the floor and slides across the rain-slick stone. His face lands inches from the hammer.

“Paul!” I shout.

Too late. Dominik’s hand closes around the handle.

Paul charges, but Dominik swings wildly upward.

The hammer catches Paul across the shoulder with a sickening crack.

Paul collapses hard, gasping, one hand clutching his arm.

I push myself upright despite the pain in my ribs.

Dominik rises slowly.

Rainwater and blood run down his face. His breath comes in ragged bursts. The hammer hangs at his side.

His eyes find me.

“I failed once,” he says. “It won’t happen again.”

A violent gust of wind roars through the church.

This time every candle goes out, and darkness swallows the sanctuary.

For a second, there is only the sound of rain and Paul struggling to breathe somewhere to my left.

Then comes the sound from above.

STOMP. STOMP. STOMP.

Dominik’s head snaps toward the ceiling.

“No,” he whispers, terror in his voice.

High above us, something moves behind the fractured roof. A gigantic winged shadow passes across the broken ribs of the church.

Dominik reaches for the cross beneath his shirt as a dark blur drops from the rafters.

I don’t see details, only a mad streak of motion, darkness with shape and speed.

A split second late, Dominik is yanked upward so violently the hammer flies from his hand.

His scream tears through the church as his body vanishes into the rafters.

“Move!” Paul shouts.

He grabs my arm with his good hand and tries to pull me toward the exit.

I don’t move. I can’t. My eyes are locked on the darkness above us.

Dominik’s screams change. They lose language, humanity, become animal sounds, wet and ragged and rising into the black beams overhead.

Then I see movement beyond one of the stained glass church windows, a shadow hurtling toward us from outside the church.

“Down!” Paul shouts.

The stained-glass saints shatter, the window explodes inward as Dominik’s ragdoll body rockets into the church.

What is left of the fallen priest hits the church floor at my feet in a heap of multi-colored glass.

Silence follows.

I stare down at the twisted heap of the man who killed Eleanor. Blood spreads across the stone, dark and fast, mingling with rainwater and fragments of blue and red glass.

Paul stands beside me, breathing hard, his face pale with pain.

I look past him to the broken window. Rain pours through the jagged maw of an opening. Beyond it, the storm churns over the city.

The grotesque is gone. Melted back into the dark.