Chapter 4 Kate
KATE
“Stuart!”
I was moving even before I finished saying his name, catching him as he started to slide sideways in the chair. His body had gone rigid, every muscle locked, and his eyes, when they rolled forward again, were white. Completely white. No iris, no pupil. Just endless, milky nothing.
“A vision,” Eric said, though we’d all figured that out on our own. After going head-to-head with the high demon Lilith to save Allie, this had become a regular—albeit disturbing—thing.
“Kate,” Eric added gently, “you should give him some space.”
But I couldn’t back off. This was my husband, and I knelt beside the chair, one hand on his arm, and watched as his mouth opened and words that weren’t his slipped out.
“The door will bleed.”
Stuart’s voice, but not. Deeper. Older. Like something ancient was using his throat as a megaphone.
“The door will bleed,” he repeated as his body shook and tremors ran through him like electricity. “Only living shadows can seal the wound. Blood calls to blood.”
I tightened my grip on his arm, not sure if I was willing him to come back or to tell us more.
It didn’t matter. His body went limp, and I caught him before he could slide out of the chair. I pulled him against me and felt the reassuring thud of his heart hammering against my chest. “Stuart. Stuart, can you hear me?”
His lids fluttered open, and I looked into eyes that were familiar again.
“Kate?” His voice was soft and thready. “Another?”
I nodded. “Do you remember?” When he shook his head, I added, “You said the door will bleed. Does that mean anything?”
“Nothing.”
“How about only living shadows can seal the wound?”
His brow furrowed, his lips moving as he repeated the words, then slowly shook his head.
I forced a smile and nodded. “Well, that’s okay. It’s over.”
It wasn’t, though. Not really. There was something there. Some sort of truth hidden in these strange words that left him hollow and drained. But I didn’t have a clue what that truth was.
That was frustratingly normal—or what passed for normal with Stuart’s visions.
The prophecies came through him like water through a pipe, leaving him empty and drained on the other side.
Sometimes he remembered fragments. Usually, he remembered nothing.
But I never discounted them. After all, his prophetic words had saved us all from one of the vilest demons ever to inhabit hell. Not to mention this world.
I looked around the room at the others. Laura had gone pale, and Cutter had moved even closer to her. Eddie was frowning so hard his eyebrows had become a single fuzzy caterpillar. Eric’s face was carefully blank, but I could see the tension in his jaw.
And then I caught it—a look passing between Eric and Allie. Quick. Loaded.
“Well, ain’t that a pisser,” Eddie said, apparently understanding what I, too, had just figured out.
“Living shadows,” Allie said as she looked around the room. “Me and Daddy.”
“What?” Laura said. “No.”
Allie nodded. “We’re alive. The demonic essence in us is the shadows.”
Laura whipped her head around to face me. “Yeah,” I said, resigned. “Already got there.”
“And we’ll deal with it,” Allie said, her voice firm, but her hand so tight in Jared’s her knuckles were white.
Still, her chin lifted in that stubborn tilt I knew so well.
She wasn’t going to fall apart. She wasn’t going to run.
She was going to face this head-on, whatever it was, because that’s who my daughter had become.
My heart cracked a little more, right down the fault lines that had formed every time this life had asked too much of her.
The silence stretched as we all sat with the weight of those words.
“Do you know any details?” Allie asked Stuart, even though she knew perfectly well what his answer would be. We all did.
“Sorry, kidlet,” he said, sounding miserable. “I’m just the damn messenger.”
She made a sweeping motion with her hand. “Well, it doesn’t matter until we figure out what we have to do. I mean, it’s hardly news what me and Daddy are.”
She wasn’t wrong.
“So we need to focus on Antonio,” she continued. “Some demon killed him in our backyard. We need to find out who and why.”
My kid was right. We could spiral about prophecies later. Right then, we had a murder to solve and a message to decode.
“I should write it down,” Stuart said. “The damn things never stay in my head.”
“I remember it,” I said. “I’ll write it down. You need to rest.”
“I’m fine.”
“Stuart.”
“I’m fine, Kate.” There was an edge in his voice I’d been hearing more often lately.
The edge of a man who was tired of being treated like he was broken.
Fair enough, I suppose. Except that most of the time, he was still acting broken.
Staying locked in his room. Sleeping too much.
Not seeing Timmy unless Fran or I suggested daddy-time in an insistent sort of way.
When we did, they both had fun. But Stuart never initiated, and he used to play with Timmy all the time.
I drew a breath, forcing my heart not to form any new cracks as I said, “I just worry.”
He slumped a bit, his voice less acrimonious when he said, “I know. But I’ve had dozens of these visions. They haven’t driven me loony yet.”
“I wasn’t saying that at all,” I said, even though—yes—I was terrified that the visions were harming him on some fundamental level. Now, however, wasn’t the time for that conversation. Especially when he had no control over the visions anyway.
I shifted into assignment mode because it was easier than feeling. “Laura, can you poke around online? See if anyone’s heard anything about Antonio’s movements in the past few days. Weird chatter, rumors, anything.”
“On it.”
Over the years, she’d built up an impressive network of contacts in various corners of the internet—hunters, researchers, historians, and a slew of people who knew things they probably shouldn’t.
It wasn’t a formal network—and more than once she’d mistaken the teens in a role-playing game for actual Demon Hunters.
But most of the time she came back with solid intel.
I turned to Eric, “Can you be symbol guy? See if you can find the demon who killed him?”
“Done.” That was Eric—whatever our complicated history—whatever tension simmered between us—when it came to the work, he was solid.
“I’m going to audit our security in the morning,” Cutter said. “We’ve got three new students coming and a demon bold enough to kill in our backyard. We may not own the cemetery, but we need eyes on it twenty-four/seven.”
“Perfect,” I said, then turned toward Eddie.
“Already got ears in places you don’t want to know about. I’ll find what I can find.”
I nodded, feeling a bit of weight lift from my shoulders.
Then the room began to empty. Laura murmured something to Cutter about wanting a nightcap.
Eliza slipped out with a significant glance at Allie.
Eric lingered near the doorway, waiting to catch my eye.
When he did, the look he gave me said we’d talk later—about the symbol, about what it might mean, about everything we hadn’t said in the cemetery.
Allie and Jared were the next to go. She paused at the door, looking back at me with a small smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes. “I know what you’re going to say. Be careful. Stay alert.” Her shoulders rose and fell as she looked at her feet. “Make good choices.”
“I was going to say I love you.”
She lifted her head, and something softened in her face. “Love you too, Mom.”
Then she was gone, Jared trailing after her like a very attractive shadow. He paused once to tip his head at me, a silent apology mixed with a promise.
I watched them go and tried not to think about what I’d interrupted earlier. Tried not to think about how grown-up my daughter had become. Tried not to think about the prophecy that hung over all of us now.
The door will bleed. Only living shadows can seal the wound.
Whatever that meant, it couldn’t be good for Allie and Eric. For any of us, really.
Eddie was the last to leave. He paused in the doorway, fixing me with those sharp eyes that had seen more than I could imagine.
“You okay, girlie?”
“I’m fine.”
“Liar.” But there was no heat in the word. “I knew Antonio’s father back in the day. Good man. Tough as nails.” His voice went rough. “The Russos have been with Forza for twenty generations. Hunters, alimentatores, researchers. Good people. Loyal.”
He made a gruff noise. “That boy came here to tell you something, and some demon made damn sure he never got the chance.” He looked up at me, and beneath that curmudgeonly exterior, I saw real fear.
“Whatever demon did this, it wasn’t random.
Russo wasn’t coming just for a visit. He was coming with information. And it got him killed.”
“Believe me, I know that.” I drew a breath. “Eric and Allie. In the thick of it again.” I blinked hard, fighting back tears. “I hate this for her. For both of them, but especially her.”
“We all do,” Eddie said. “And Jared’s on deck, too.
Got a tiny bit of demon in him, that boy.
Left over from the first vampire. Ancient and minuscule, but enough there to matter.
” He drew a long breath. “Each of them thinks they’re the one, and maybe one of them is.
Or maybe it’s about all of them.” He shrugged as he continued walking, then paused at the door.
“Or maybe it’s about someone we haven’t met yet. Prophecies are tricky like that.”
I nodded. “Thank you,” I said, my voice almost a whisper.
He chortled. “Hey, I ain’t killed the beastie yet.”
“For being here,” I said firmly. “For all of it.”