Five: Out of the Pit (Five #2) (35 page)

Alec walked Heather back to the entrance of the building. He leaned in and kissed her. I wondered if she could taste the doctor’s strawberry lip gloss on his deceitful lips. I thought back to the recent times I was under the Incubus’s spell—and decided that, if she could taste it, she wouldn’t care.

ack at the hotel, I distanced myself from Alec—still annoyed with his shameless behavior. After a quick rundown of our visit, Johnathan insisted we get back to Moab. We portalled back to Trey’s house, Surpy clinging to Halli as if hanging from the edge of a cliff. Alec brought Joe with him.

“Okay. We’re back in Moab. Now what?” Alec threw himself on the couch in the big living room.

It was getting late. We’d stayed at the hospital until after nine.

“I’m going to go downtown and just get a feel for what might be making me so uneasy. It’s time we figure out what the Demon was talking about—about this
Gathering
,” Johnathan said. “You’re all welcome to come with me.”

Of course, he knew I would be going with him. He grabbed my hand and headed for the door. A glance behind me showed the only one staying behind was Joe. He seemed to be distancing himself from us more and more—trusting us to make the right decisions without him.

It wasn’t as cold in Moab as it had been in Provo, but the wind still stung. Soon after stepping onto the sidewalks of Main Street, Alec took the lead. He headed, of course, straight to Mariah—I guess kissing two women in one night, minutes apart, wasn’t enough for him. We reached Jay’s just as Mariah and a couple of other employees were locking up for the night. When she saw Alec standing on the sidewalk, leaned against the pole of a streetlight with his arms folded in front of him, she smiled and pushed a strand of hair from her eyes. I was glad to see she had enough restraint to keep from running to him. She walked pretty fast, though. He kept his arms folded until she stepped close and reached up to cup his face with her hands. Only after her chest rubbed up against his folded arms, did he unfold them and wrap her in a hug.

And, I had to witness, for the
third
time that day, Alec kissing a girl. I turned away with more than a little disgust. I looked up at Johnathan, thinking he would be watching them. He wasn’t. He watched me. He had the sweetest smile on his face. I forgot all about our promiscuous friend and his unfortunate crush. Johnathan touched my face, running his fingers from my cheek to my chin, which he tilted up as he leaned in for a short kiss—neither of us was big on public displays of affection. I sighed and nuzzled my smiling face into his warm chest as my stomach tickled pleasantly at his nearness.

“I was beginning to wonder if you were going to come back. I thought maybe you met someone else in Provo, and forgot all about me.” Mariah’s bottom lip stuck out in a pout—which wasn’t something I expected of her even though I hadn’t known her for very long.

“Of course I didn’t forget about you,” Alec said. “I just wanted to spend as much time with my mom as I could before leaving.”

“So, you got to meet her? That’s awesome. How did it go? How… was she?”

Johnathan tugged on my arm and motioned down the street with his head. “Alec, we’re gonna keep walking.”

“‘Kay, Johnny, I’ll catch up with you later.”

Mariah’s face flashed what I interpreted as alarm. I questioned whether I’d seen it at all as it was gone in an instant. “Oh, let’s go with them, Alec. I don’t want to keep you away from your friends.”

Alec tilted his head. “Uhh, okay, I guess. I’ve been with them for days now, though. So, it’s really okay if you want to… do something else… without them.”

She quickly shook her head. “No, no. Let’s stick with them.”

“Okay. Whatever you want.”

Seth broke the awkwardness of the moment. “What about Claire? Is she around tonight?”

“No. Sorry, Seth. She went to St. George to visit her parents this weekend.”

He looked dejected, but Halli looked relieved. I don’t blame her, it’s no fun to be the only single in a group of pairs.

“Where we headed?” I looked up at Johnathan.

“I think we should start by finding that Randal guy your sleaze-ball acquaintances mentioned. He obviously has a connection with Brone.”

I shuddered at the mention of our enemy. “How are we going to find him? That loser met him out by that arch. I doubt he’s there now.”

I happened to glance at Mariah, who was looking at the ground, her face pale. “Mariah, you okay? Do you know a guy named Randal?”

The smile on her face looked forced when she looked up. “No. I don’t think so. Not that I can think of, I mean.” Her eyes shifted away from mine.

I felt like she wasn’t telling the truth. But, why would she lie?

Halli said, “Maybe we can find those women he tormented. The ones who put him in contact with Randal. He said he met them at a bar on the edge of town.”

“Good idea,” Johnathan said. He turned to Mariah. “Do you know of any bars on the edge of town?”

She twisted a strand of hair around her finger. “Umm… yeah… I mean, I guess so. There’s a nice brewery back toward Canyonlands.”

I shook my head. “I doubt we’re looking for somewhere ‘nice’. These guys were sleazy, so we’re looking for a sleazy bar.”

“Oh, well.”—Mariah chewed on her bottom lip—“Yeah. Then, maybe S&W Lounge? It’s about the sleaziest place around here. It’s in a trailer park.”

“That sounds about right,” I said. “Take us there.”

“You sure? It’s really, really disgusting. Really.”

Johnathan nodded once. “Yes. We’re sure. That’s just the kind of place we’re looking for.”

We walked the long distance to the outskirts of town, finding the trailer court lounge. Calling the place a trailer court was a bit of an embellished exaggeration. There were trailers there, all right, but not the kind people were supposed to live in. They appeared to have been placed haphazardly, just wherever the broken-down truck that hauled them there had been able to drop them. There were campers, camp trailers, and a few mobile homes. None of them looked to have been manufactured within the last fifty years or so. And, the place felt
dark
—not just because most of the lamp posts boasted broken bulbs, either. I was overwhelmed with the suffocating feeling of desperation and evil.

The lounge was a dilapidated building with peeling green paint and multi-colored, multi-aged shingles on the roof. The two windows were covered with grime so thick you couldn’t see any light shining from inside. We gathered in the parking area which consisted of partially smoothed red dirt that may have been covered with gravel at one time.

I looked around at my companions. Mariah clung to Alec’s arm with a death grip, her other hand plastered against her abdomen. Surpy, who’d been so abnormally quiet during the last part of our trek that I’d almost forgotten he was with us, hid behind Halli, peaking around her legs with his saucer eyes.

“I feel it,” the Imp whispered. “M’Halli, let’s go.” He pulled on her hand, stepping back toward the street.

“What do you feel, Surpy?” Halli asked as she pulled her hand out of his.

“Mmm.
It.
Don’t’ you feel it? The thrum-thrumming of danger. A Dark One is near. M’Halli, let’s go.”

Silence ensued. I’m not sure what the others were doing, but my guess is they were trying to feel the
thrum-thrumming
like I was. I didn’t feel it, but I felt something. The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end. I looked at Johnathan, his nostrils were flaring in and out and his nose was wrinkled in disgust.

I sniffed the air to see if I could smell whatever was causing him discomfort. I caught a scent I hadn’t noticed before and knew I would have trouble getting rid of. Decay. That’s the best way I could describe it. The decay of things that once were living. Or living things that were rapidly dying, decomposing from the inside out.

My pulse sped up. I squeezed Johnathan’s hand. “How about Johnathan, Seth, and I go in and see what we can find out. The rest of you stay out here for backup, in case there’s trouble.”

Johnathan stiffened. I knew he wanted to make me stay outside. I was impressed when he kept it to himself and didn’t try to talk me out of going in. “Good plan,” he forced through clenched teeth.

As I stepped toward the windowless door, my legs felt barely strong enough to hold my weight. Johnathan went through first, kind of pushing me behind him as he stepped inside. Seth was behind me. No one manned the door; no one tried to stop us from entering. A few sorry patrons looked up from their drinks long enough to register our entrance, then quickly returned their gazes downward.

I’m not sure exactly what I expected. The tingling of my skin and heightened senses prepared me for fight mode. I took a quick look around using my
sight,
expecting to see some creatures of the Netherworld. Those expectations were met when my eyes fell upon an unusual creature, one for whom I had no name. It appeared to be of male gender, but that may not have been the case—some of the Fae have no gender assigned to them. It sat at the bar, head and shoulders above anyone else nearby. My guess was that it would reach at least seven feet tall when standing. A white, thin arm draped around each of the women sitting on either side of the creature. I could see its veins pulsing with purple fluid.

I wonder what it looks like to the normal people?
Once I’d looked with my
sight
, I only saw the true form thereafter.

The mismatched nature of its human clothing caused me to let out a short laugh. Seth and Johnathan followed my gaze.

“What is that thing?” Seth whispered.

“I have no idea,” I said.

Johnathan just shook his head.

A face from nightmares turned toward us. The bald, white head sported gaping holes of darkness where eyes should have been. The elongated face had two slits with overlapping skin running down the middle, and no mouth at all. Having no mouth, however, did not stop the thing from talking. Deep and muffled, its voice carried to my ears. “What have we here? Newbies?”

My stomach lurched when I realized it spoke out of a wide slit in its lengthy neck. As the slit opened and closed, I caught glimpses of muscle and corded tendons, and other things best kept hidden beneath a thick layer of skin. A chill ran through my body as I remembered Surpy’s words. “A Dark One.” That description fit perfectly.

I slipped my hand out of Johnathan’s and tried to hide the shaking in my legs as I strode toward the thing. I kept going even as Johnathan’s frantic whisper reached my ears. “Paige, what are you doing?”

The bar had a slight curve to it just on the other side of the lady to the thing’s right. I sat at the open barstool there. I leaned over the bar to get a better view of the extremely pale Dark One. It had watched me take the five steps or so it took to cross from the doorway to where I now sat, and it leaned forward to peer around the somewhat pretty, very drunk, girl sitting between us.

“So, what do you mean by ‘newbie’?” I asked, trying not to let the fear show in my voice.

What probably looked like a wink to the others at the bar, twisted the terrible face into an even more grotesque shape to my sight. I shuddered. I had to concentrate all my efforts on keeping the disgust from showing on my face when it started speaking through its throat. The voice coming from that slash gave a whole new meaning to the description ‘deep, throaty, voice’.