Broken Moon by Laken Cane

Chapter Twenty-One

I texted Jared so I could check on Lennon before I left for my appointment with Patricia Simon. I’d moved that appointment up because I was in a hurry to go look for my blade. When he didn’t reply, I called the little clinic. There were people there minding the doctor’s office, but the doctor and his nurse were not present and the girl who answered refused to tell me anything.

Next, I called Detective Moreno, because he wouldn’t text unless he was sending an address or a particularly gory photo, and I wanted to make sure there was no noise from the demon. Maybe he’d actually faded. I could hope.

And I needed to ask the detective something else. “I might have some information on an abducted girl, Detective. What do you have in missing girls in the last month from Jakeston? Anything stand out to you?”

His voice was sharp. “What information?”

“Dammit, Rick. Can you just answer my question?”

“Kait, we get anywhere from eight to fifteen missing persons reports a day for the county. Over half of those are Jakeston alone.”

I blew out a hard breath. “That’s fucking horrible.”

“Pretty average for a city this size.”

“This girl. She’s probably a teenager, middle or late teens. She has red hair. And she has a noticeable gap between her two front teeth. That’s all I got.”

“Who gave you this information, Kaitlyn?”

I sighed. “I have this friend. Lucy has dreams where she sees…things. Mostly people in trouble. People who need help. She dreamed of a redheaded girl trapped in a box, screaming. Someone comes in to hurt her.”

“I’ll need to talk to your friend. You know how good Nadia is. She can draw out details and do a sketch if Lucy will describe this screaming girl.”

I nodded, though he couldn’t see me. “I’ll bring her to the station tomorrow after she gets off work.”

“I’ll see what I can find with your description.”

“Thanks.” I hesitated. “How’s Beth doing? We were planning to have lunch soon.”

“She’d like that.” He ended the call.

I settled Ash in with treat and a toy, made sure his water dispenser was full, and then sent Lucy a text to let her know I was taking off and she could look in on him if she got a chance. The bakery was just down the block, so checking in on the dog wouldn’t take her ten minutes. I was tempted to take him with me, but after I left Mrs. Simon’s house, I was going to the woods to look for my blade, and I wasn’t going to expose Ash to the wolves. Not yet.

After I pulled into Patricia Simon’s driveway half an hour later, I took a few minutes to fasten on a belt, then loaded it up with salt, holy water, a lighter, a stick of chalk, and a flashlight, just in case I was stuck in a dark attic or basement. I gently lifted a spirit snare from its compartment—I was getting low on those and would have to make or order some more soon—and then I chose one of the tiny protection jars I put together for clients, patted the blade in the sheath at my side—my old blade, since I hadn’t yet retrieved the demon blade—and then walked to Mrs. Simon’s front door. She was already standing there, her face drawn and her eyes bloodshot, stressed, exhausted, and depressed.

“Mrs. Simon,” I said, reaching out to squeeze her thin upper arm, “I’m going to fix this for you. You can stop worrying now.”

She burst into tears. “I’m sorry,” she cried, then wiped her eyes, straightened her shoulders, and welcomed me into her home.

Her house was in the small, quiet village of Allenburg. When I got there, it was even quieter as most people were already at work and the children were in school. The house was a tall well-kept blue two-story, neat and uncluttered, but the second I walked in, I could feel the spirit haunting the place. It was cold, and the air wavered. The place was filled with…despair.

“Who lives here with you?” I asked her. “And are they home?”

“My husband, my daughter, and my grandson live here. My grandson is the only one home. We had a cat, but she ran off the night we moved in and I haven’t been able to find her. I can’t blame her. We should’ve run off, too.”

“Tell me what has been happening, Mrs. Simon.”

“Patricia, please.” She already seemed more relaxed, and her eyes had lost the dull sheen of hopelessness. She believed I was going to help her. “David—my husband—doesn’t believe in ghosts. He was so angry when I told him what was going on, and he got angrier when I said I was calling you. He forbade it, actually.” She lifted her chin. “But I have my own money hidden back, and he’s not going to tell me what to do with it. I know it’s an evil spirit, and I know you can get rid of it.”

She followed me closely, and I didn’t ask her to go wait in the kitchen or take a ride to leave me in peace so I could find and get rid of the spirit. I always let the homeowners watch, if they wanted, because every single time, they could “see” or feel the moment the spirit left their house. And that was good for their peace of mind. It was also good for my business.

“Usually,” I said, as I explored, “these spirits aren’t “evil.” At least they don’t start out that way. The longer they’re stuck here, the more warped they become. They want you to know they’re here. More than anything else, they want to leave this world, but for some reason, they can’t. I help them find a way out.”

Halfway up the steep stairway to the second floor I felt a chill, looked up, and saw a young boy coming down the stairs.

Behind me, Patricia whispered, “My grandson. His name is Brian.”

I nodded. “Patricia, I want you to go outside and wait for me to finish up in here, okay?” I kept my voice calm, blank, and quiet.

“I’m sorry,” she said, her voice full of tears. “He made me call you.”

“I understand. Go outside.”

“Don’t hurt Brian, please, don’t hurt that baby.”

“Patricia, get the fuck out of here, or you’re going to get hurt.”

And finally, she fled the house, crying and muttering, already halfway to insanity. I wasn’t sure where her husband and daughter were, but I was betting they were either dead in the basement or at the very least locked up down there.

There was no lost spirit in her house. There was only the demon whose blade I’d stolen, and though he’d possessed a ten-year-old boy, he was stronger than ever. He was doing the opposite of fading.

“What do you want?” I asked him.

The boy looked like death. His face was so bloodless it was nearly blue, and large, swollen, black pockets sat under his eyes like bruises. I hoped he’d be okay once I got the demon out of him.

If.

If I got the demon out of him.

“What do you want?” I asked again.

The boy opened his mouth, but it was the demon who spoke. “My blade,” he said, and his voice sounded like he’d forced the boy to swallow broken glass after he’d taken over his body. “My blade is what I want.”

He didn’t realize I’d lost the blade in the woods of Shadowfield. And he believed he’d trick me into coming here, then use the boy to kill me. He’d take the blade and…

“The blade is the key to your world, isn’t it?” I asked, finally understanding. He could never go home again, not without the blade. Had I known he was powerful enough to possess humans after I’d “killed” him, I never would have taken his blade or his body. I’d have been happy to send the son of a bitch back to hell.

But now…

I had to get him out of that little boy before it was too late for the kid. With any luck, he wouldn’t remember a thing that had happened since the demon had arrived.

He was smart, this demon. He knew I wouldn’t want to hurt the boy. I couldn’t drive the demon blade—even if I’d had it—into little Brian’s chest to expel the demon.

I needed room to fight him, so I turned abruptly and leaped down the stairs, taking them four at a time. I dragged the protection jar from its padded pocket as I ran, then reached for my miniature spirit snare with my free hand. When he discovered I was missing the blade, who knew what he might do. In a fit of rage, he’d likely make the kid kill himself. I had to work fast.

Not to try to kill him, though. I couldn’t do that.

I had to trap him.

The second I felt him at my back, reaching with little boy hands that would be extraordinarily strong, I turned, slammed the spirit snare against his mouth, then did something that I had no idea I was going to do but knew absolutely that I had to.

I grabbed my blade, sliced it across the back of my snare-holding hand, then smeared my fingers through the blood. My palm was wet with crimson blood in a millisecond, and I slammed that bloody hand against the boy’s chest, right over his heart.

It wasn’t enough. As the boy—with the demon’s strength—flung me up against the wall, grunting and wheezing as he grabbed and ripped at my clothes and belts attempting to find the special blade, I cut into his chest. If this worked, a small scar was much better than the alternative.

My blood mixed with his, sinking into the wound.

Brian opened his mouth wide, threw his head back, and screamed. His body stiffened and then began jerking as though he were in the middle of an intense seizure, and Patricia burst through the front door and rammed me, believing I was hurting the kid.

I lost my already tenuous hold on the trap I’d shoved over the boy’s mouth, but my blood continued to affect the demon inside him. He was forced out—but instead of becoming ensnared in the trap held over the boy’s mouth, the demon escaped. He was just…gone.

But I knew he’d go somewhere to lick his metaphysical wounds, and he would be back. He was fading, though, I could feel his lessening strength. But he would not fade quickly enough to keep him from possessing and killing again.

Brian huddled on the floor, dazed, his eyes unfocused as his grandmother frantically wiped the blood from his chest. “You’ve stabbed him,” she cried. “You’ve killed him!”

She was hysterical, overwhelmed, and not inclined to listen to me. Finally, I forced her away from the bewildered kid and when she fought me, I backhanded her. That seemed to jar some of the hysteria out of her brain and finally, she shut her mouth and focused on me.

“You killed him,” she whispered.

“Brian is okay,” I told her. “I don’t think he’s going to remember what happened. I had to make a small wound on his chest to get my blood inside him to force the demon out. I would have trapped the demon if you hadn’t attacked me. Now he’s gone, and I’ll hear about him attacking some other family in a few days, I’ve no doubt.”

She widened her eyes. “He’ll come back?”

“Not here,” I told her. “He’ll have no reason to come here.”

“Oh God, if he does, I—”

“Patricia, where are your husband and daughter? Did he kill them?” I didn’t believe for a second they’d gone calmly onto work, unaware of the killer inside the boy.

“Let me go to Brian,” she said, pushing ineffectually against my restraining hands. The boy had begun to whimper, and she was once again focused on him.

I shook her. “Where are they?”

“In the basement,” she murmured, refusing to look at me. “I had to, you know. He would have killed them.”

I didn’t ask her how she’d manipulated a grown man and woman into her basement. I left her there with her grandson and went to find them. I found the basement, finally. The back door opened onto a covered porch, of sorts, and the basement door was in the floor. She’d hung the key to the padlock on the wall, thank goodness. I lifted the door and peered down into the darkness of what appeared to be more of a musty old cellar than a basement. Mr. Simon was standing on the old stairs, staring up at me, his face pale, his eyes red. “What the fuck,” he said, “is going on?”

I moved back so he and his daughter could climb up. “I’ll let your wife explain,” I told him. “But you need to believe her when she does.”

The daughter held his arm. “Brian?”

“He’s fine. They’re both fine.”

“You can’t tell me,” Mr. Simon said, “that there was a ghost in this house. She’s lost her damn mind. This can’t be about ghosts and haunted houses.” He was so very angry. Patricia was going to have her hands full.

“It’s not about ghosts and haunted houses,” I told him, as I strode back into the kitchen. “It’s about demons and possession. But don’t worry,” I said, as Brian’s mother gasped, “the demon is gone.”

“I’m taking him out of here,” the daughter said, rushing from the kitchen. “You’re all fucking crazy.”

I left, drawing in deep breaths of the fresh, cold air. I don’t think I’d ever been so glad to get out of a house. The place was…stifling. If Brian’s mother had any sense, she’d do as she’d threatened and get the boy out of there.