0.5 Deadly Hearts Read online

  Elise stood in the center of the circle beside a chair. The oven mitts were gone, baring the kind of black gloves a biker might wear. As he watched, she stripped the pink shirt off over her head. Underneath, she wore a white tank top so tight it might have been painted on, revealing every line of her muscular abs. And her biceps made it look like she could snap him in half with a pinkie.

  Without the baggy clothes or oven mitts, she looked less like a cute young housewife and more like something that had crawled out of Hell.

  Elise reached back, drew a sword from a spine sheath, and then spun the chair around to face him. “Sit down,” she said, and her tone left no room for argument.

  “What’s going on?” He was proud of the fact that his voice only trembled a little bit, even though he felt like he might faint.

  “Sit down,” she said, biting out each word.

  He was prepared to obey her—shit, with a sword like that, she could tell him to jump off a bridge and he would obey—but his body didn’t budge an inch. His leg warmed and something trickled down his ankle. Rich looked down. His slacks were wet.

  Oh, fuck.

  “I think I just—”

  Elise kicked the chair forward an inch. “You’ll sit down, and you’ll do it fast if you know what’s good for you.” But still, his feet didn’t move. Impatience drew her eyebrows low over her eyes. “You’ll die if I don’t take care of you now. Both of you. So let him sit down.”

  Every inch of Rich trembled. “Who are you—I don’t know—I mean, I can’t—”

  “Shut up, Rich. I’m not talking to you anymore,” Elise said. She unclasped the chains at her waist and wound them around her wrist, like brass knuckles made of crucifixes and pentacles. “In the name of God, I’m ordering you to sit the fuck down.”

  A growl rose from deep within his chest. It was an inhuman sound, like the roaring of a furnace, and it burned in his throat. Sulfur stung his nose. His eyes watered.

  Another flash of blinding pain. Rich pressed his fists to his chest as his ribs groaned. Pressure from the inside made them bow outward, straining against his ligaments, and the tension in his sternum was too much.

  And then he spoke.

  “Fuck you, exorcist.”

  It wasn’t his voice. He hadn’t even meant to say anything.

  “Now we’re getting somewhere,” Elise said, passing the sword to the fist that was wrapped with chains. The blade was short, only about two feet, but the curved side looked terrifyingly sharp.

  Rich wrapped his arms around himself, and he shook with the effort it took for him to hold his ribs together.

  “It hurts,” he gasped in a normal, human voice.

  “Yeah, possession’s not meant to feel like tender bunny kisses,” she said, clapping a hand on the back of his collar and jerking him away from the wall. Elise tossed him into the circle.

  The room whirled around him, and his face smacked into the tile.

  His flesh enflamed instantly. Something popped. A ragged scream tore from him, shaking his skull, and it wasn’t the scream of a single man—it was the scream of a thousand damned souls writhing in fire.

  Rich caught a glimpse of flame licking in front of his face.

  Then he didn’t see anything at all.

  ONE WEEK EARLIER.

  Elise realized she had walked through the pool of blood, and she grimaced. “You owe me a new pair of shoes,” she said, stepping over the arm flopped in front of the TV stand. It was lacerated with a deep gouge from elbow to wrist and perpendicular slices that looked more like tooth marks in the middle.

  Lucas McIntyre smiled weakly. “Shoes, huh? How about an IOU on that?”

  She bit back a sharp reply. Elise and James were already doing him a favor by stepping in on his investigation in Vegas, so it only seemed fair that he’d be responsible for damages she incurred while on the job. But it wasn’t worth arguing over. Not only did the McIntyres have zero money, but after the Grand Canyon, she was going to owe the guy favors until she died.

  When she looked down to see her Doc Martens stained with blood and ichor, it was easy to forget that she was so deep in his debt that she couldn’t see sunlight anymore.

  “Don’t worry about it,” Elise said.

  James circled the room, studying the murder scene with that look he always got at the sight of dead humans. It was a mix of academic interest and detached horror. Human bodies still bothered him, even after all this time.

  Elise nudged the woman’s head over with the toe of her bloodied boot. Looked like she was forty, maybe forty-five years old, with pearl bobs in her ears. There were no bruises at her throat—she had died too soon after the trauma for those to properly develop. But there were burns down her skin, dipping behind her hair, underneath her shirt.

  The man, conversely, had been stabbed with a kitchen knife at least six or seven times. His chest and stomach were hamburger meat. One of his hands was still closed over the handle.

  “Hell of a domestic disturbance,” Elise said, patting down the woman’s pockets. They were empty. “Why did you call me here for this, exactly?”

  McIntyre shrugged. “Does it matter? You were in the neighborhood anyway.”

  “San Francisco is the neighborhood?”

  “Close enough,” he said. He flipped his knife open and scraped at the crusty material on the woman’s neck. “This isn’t skin. This is sulfur.”

  “That’s not normal for domestic violence,” she said as she searched the husband’s clothes. She came up with a business card. Rich Harris, Priest of the Church of Light. There was a website and a phone number. Interesting.

  “But sulfur residue is typical of demonic possession,” James said.

  “So you called me here to do an exorcism,” Elise said, tucking the card into her own pocket.

  McIntyre grinned. “You’re the best I know.”

  “I’m the only one you know.”

  “Either way, I need you for this. It’s over my head. The demon’s got a funny pattern—it’s wandering all over Vegas and Boulder, and I have no clue how.”

  “Incorporeal demons don’t wander,” Elise said.

  James put on his reading glasses and gently moved the woman’s chin so he could see the burn marks at her collar. “They don’t wander without vessels.”

  Which meant that there had to be a human culprit. Someone like a priest with the Church of Light.

  “We need security footage,” Elise said.

  She washed her hands in the sink, dried them using the dead couples’ towels, and left with McIntyre to find the security office.

  It was nighttime, and nobody was monitoring the cameras that watched the community’s gates. They broke in and stole video files off of the server, which showed the victims in question meeting with someone earlier in the day.

  “So he’s got to be our perp,” McIntyre said. “What do you think? Nightmare?”

  Elise squinted at his laptop screen. She was seated on a battered couch in his trailer going over hours of boring footage while James flirted with McIntyre’s girlfriend, Leticia. Her giggles drifted from the kitchen. He just couldn’t help himself.

  Forcing herself to focus on the screen, Elise played it back one more time. The probable attacker didn’t look like a demon of any persuasion to her. More like some random asshole who fancied himself an exorcist. “How did you find those bodies, exactly?” she asked, rolling Rich Harris’s card between her fingers. She had already looked up his website, but he didn’t have a photo to help her identify him.

  “Surge of power,” McIntyre said. “I’m surprised you didn’t feel it. Lots of noise. Whatever’s happening, this thing is getting powerful.”

  Elise drummed her fingers on her chin as the video looped back and played again. The man was wearing a fedora and some kind of trench coat—overkill in Las Vegas winter. He looked like an old-school detective. Or someone who wanted to look like that, anyway.

  “And you said that there have been other bodies,�
�� Elise said. A purring cat wrapped itself around her ankles, and she reached down to stroke its back.

  “Got the articles here.” McIntyre grabbed a box that had been sitting next to the couch. The outside advertised a “family pack” of potato chips, but the inside was all newspaper clippings and printouts. “Counting the folks tonight, that’s twelve dead.”

  “Six couples,” Elise said.

  “Twelve bodies, six couples. Does that matter?” He tried to hand the box to her. She pushed it away.

  “I don’t need to see that. I know what we’re after.” Elise sighed. “We’re going to need to borrow someone’s house. A nice house.”

  “Tish’s parents have a place in the suburbs, but I don’t understand why…?”

  “Because I’m going to do an exorcism there,” she said.

  And that was how Elise ended up playing housewife, of all the goddamn things she could be doing on her visit to Vegas.

  Rich Harris crumbled in front of her, breathing fire and stinking of piss, and the only thing Elise could think was, I could be in San Francisco right now.

  Only a few seconds until the prick woke up again. She hauled his limp body into the chair, pulled a face at the wet spot on his pants, and tied his wrists and ankles down.

  James slipped through the door and locked it behind him. “I see our trap worked,” he said, pulling the notebook out of his back pocket and flipping to a page in the back.

  “It wasn’t exactly a challenge. He really had no clue what’s been wrong with him,” Elise said, cinching the rope tight around his right ankle. God, it was wet there, too. Utterly foul. “You should have seen him when he opened the door.”

  He ripped a page out of the notebook and stepped over the line. “I can’t imagine an exorcist as reputable as the great Rich Harris would be surprised to see the accoutrements of the occult. I’m shocked, just shocked.”

  James flicked the paper into the air. His lips moved with a silent syllable. The candles flamed higher, stretching in long fingers toward the ceiling, and the radiant heat warmed Elise’s skin.

  Closing the circle of power must have caused some jolt of energy that Elise couldn’t feel, because Rich’s eyes shot open. The whites were bloodshot. Veins corded his face and neck. The sweat beading on his skin swirled with black fog.

  “Hey there, sleeping beauty,” Elise said. She nudged him in the chest with the point of her falchion. Not hard enough to pierce skin. Just enough to make him pay attention.

  His eyes dropped to the blade. It was carved with religious symbols. Most of them wouldn’t mean anything to the average demon, but there was enough variety that at least one was guaranteed to bother any creature ending up at the point of her blade. His eyes widened and face paled, so obviously something worked.

  “You got six couples and failed on the seventh,” Elise said, swinging her sword like a cane as she rounded his chair. “Sloppy work. You should have done them all at once if you wanted to avoid getting caught. What are you building energy for? You’re not big enough to manage an ascension, but it’s got to be pretty good, if you need seven pairs of hearts.”

  “I will copulate with you and tear through your organs with my phallus,” he said.

  James took a step forward, but Elise stopped him with a hard look. She leaned on the chair and got close to Rich’s ear.

  “I think you’re trying to work up the energy to breed,” she said in a low voice.

  He jerked and tried to bite her. His teeth snapped harmlessly at the air.

  “Piggyback?” James asked, moving to Elise’s side.

  “No,” she said, “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

  James frowned. “What? Why?” Because this demon feeds on broken hearts. She bit the inside of her cheek and just shook her head. “Well, do you have some idea what this thing is?”

  Oh, Elise had ideas, all right. She’d had ideas about which demon it had to be when she first heard that he was targeting divorcing couples.

  She cast a sideways glance at Rich and sighed.

  Of all the things she didn’t want to have to talk about with her aspis…

  “I know exactly what it is,” she finally said. She reached under the chair to press the button on her tape recorder. The gears started moving with a gentle hiss. “This is Elise Kavanagh. It’s February fourteenth, two thousand and three, and I’m exorcising Rich Harris.”

  The demon hissed, spitting saliva that looked and smelled like magma.

  “Elise?” James asked in a low voice, quiet enough that the recorder wouldn’t pick it up.

  She started looping the chains around Rich’s neck, and he thrashed, throwing his head from side to side. “Courevore,” she said, addressing the demon directly. “You’re breaking about a thousand laws by walking this Earth.”

  Rich Harris’s lips widened in a painful grin. A black tongue snaked between his teeth. “I go where I please.”

  James mouthed the name silently. Courevore. Recognition illuminated his features.

  “Sure, you can go wherever you want,” Elise said. “As long as you don’t mind volunteering yourself for a death sentence. I saw a bounty for your life not even a month ago. You’ve moved fast.”

  “Release me, or this man dies.”

  Did he mean Rich Harris, or James? Elise couldn’t take that risk.

  She took James aside. “Why don’t you give me some space?” she whispered.

  “But you need the help.”

  “Having you around can only make me vulnerable to this thing,” Elise said.

  “He can’t have any effect on us,” James said, but he didn’t sound very convincing. He raked a hand through his hair and blew a breath out. He wouldn’t look at Elise. “It’s not like we’re…”

  “Yeah, right,” she said. “You better wait outside.”

  “I don’t think…”

  Elise put a hand on his arm. “Please,” she said.

  James’s shoulders slumped. “All right.” Another sigh, and then he added, “I’m sorry.”

  He made a hand gesture like parting a curtain and stepped out of the circle of power.

  As soon as he was gone, Elise faced Rich again. Now the tips of his hair were smoking. She wasn’t exactly hung up on saving this guy—nobody would be heartbroken over a lost grifter scamming money from broken hearts. But James was watching. She couldn’t just kill Rich and save herself the effort, either.

  “I’ll give you one chance to be honest with me and return safely to Hell. Where are your offspring?” Elise asked, drawing her other sword.

  “You will never find them. Not if you lived a thousand lifetimes.”

  Elise had been wearing a pink shirt and oven mitts all day. She had no patience for this bullshit.

  “Courevore, devourer of broken hearts, lover of the shattered spirit, lord of the seventh dominion,” she said, “I hereby sentence you to death.”

  “Under whose authority?”

  “Mine.” She aimed her sword at his breast again. “I exorcise you, impious demon. In vain do you boast of this deed. I command you to restore this man as proof you no longer have any rule over his soul.”

  Rich threw his head back and cackled. His arm muscles bulged as he fought against the bindings.

  Elise hooked the tip of her falchion in the charms. “I abjure you, stripping you of the arms with which you fight. I revoke the powers by which this man became bound to your service.”

  His laughter turned to a shriek. His ribs rippled underneath his shirt like limbs twisting underneath a bed sheet.

  Even as he screamed, a guttural voice rolled through the room. “He doesn’t love you,” Courevore said. “He will never love you.”

  Elise’s sword wavered. She tightened her grip on the hilt.

  “This creature is restored, rejecting your influence, and granted divine mercy for defense against your assaults. Now get the fuck out.”

  His ribs rippled again, and Elise heard a crack. Blood spread over his chest.
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br />   She dropped one of the swords and ripped his shirt open. His sternum had snapped. Jagged shards of bone ripped through the skin.

  A red eye stared from the place his heart should have been.

  “Huh,” she said.

  It rolled around to focus the gaping maw of its pupil on her face, and it looked through her. “He rejected you because you’re broken,” the demon said, and this time, it spoke directly into her skull. Her eardrums throbbed. “The women I killed have all failed as wives, but you’ll never even be good enough to marry, much less fuck. Malformed hermaphrodite with a wasted soul.”

  The other sword slipped from her fingers, and Elise tried to cover her ears, but it wasn’t good enough. The voice came from within.

  James shouted, and it sounded like he was a thousand miles away. “Elise!”

  “Useless, ugly, broken,” Courevore said.

  She wanted to slap the smugness off Rich’s twisted face.

  “Crux sacra sit mihi lux,” Elise said. The words were unsteady. There was no power behind them. “Non draco sit—”

  A rope snapped. Rich’s hand shot out and clenched on her throat.

  A gurgle escaped her lips.

  “He only pretends to like you,” Courevore hissed into her mind.

  It was hard to speak without any air. Her head swam.

  “You are so full of shit,” she grunted, and then she punched her hand through his chest and grabbed the eyeball.

  It pulsed in her hand, hot and slippery and flailing wildly against her fingers, like a bird trapped in a net. His fingers tightened on her throat, and she responded by tightening her grip, too. “Let me go or I’ll kill you,” Courevore said.

  She couldn’t speak anymore, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t give him a last, well-deserved “fuck you.”

  Flexing her biceps, she ripped at the muscle, trying to wrench it free of his chest cavity. Bone scraped against her wrist. Fingernails dug into her throat.

  And then James was between them, and he forced the hand off of Elise, pushed her away. She fell onto her ass. Her lungs ached with the sudden rush of oxygen.