Page 95 of Deliver us from Evil

Just like she is.

Chapter Thirty-Two

Zach

“She’s taking too long,” I tell Reuben. “She should have been out already.”

“I think she’s just saying goodbye,” Apollo says. He looks like one of those birds who prance around in front of the mirrors their owners hang in their cages. Constantly ducking down and then lifting his head as if he’s trying to check out his own reflection.

He’s trying to spot movement in one of the windows, just like us. Trying to stare through that dark slit of the front door Trinity left ajar, down into the passage.

We’re playing a game: the first one to spot Trinity wins.

“I’m going in.” I grab the door handle, but all it takes is a sigh from Rube to stop me.

“We should give her space.”

“Last time we did that, she got herself kidnapped,” Cass mutters.

“No, last time Zach chased her away with a knife, she went crying to Gabriel, andthenhe kidnapped her,” Apollo says. “Get your facts straight.”

My eyebrows aren’t the only ones to quirk up at that statement. Apollo’s usually the last to challenge any of us, but I guess he’s just as concerned.

“Time?”

“Five minutes, thirty-nine seconds since she set foot inside,” Cass says, twisting in his seat and giving me a long-suffering stare. “Forty…Forty-one…”

I grimace at him, and he straightens with a faint grin on his face, but I see it slide off in the rear-view mirror a second later.

“So…I have to use the bathroom,” Apollo announces. “I mean, when nature calls…?”

We’re silent for all of a second before we pile out the car like a bunch of clowns exiting a VW bug. Except we’re driving an SUV, none of us have a big red nose, and I doubt any clown has ever looked as grim as us.

I’m through the door first, expecting a whole shit show of things…but not the sudden paralysis that hits me.

My body grows heavy. Time slows. I’m filled with the visceral sensation of my heart pounding in my chest.

Rube grabs my elbow, steers me inside with him. But my eyes have already locked onto the stain on the living room carpet.

Blood.

Not something I’m ever affected by, not like Apollo. I’m not squeamish in the slightest. But this is different.

It’smyblood.

And Christ, there’s so much of it. How did I survive? But I almost didn’t, and that’s what’s rooting my feet in place. I’m dimly aware of Cass and Apollo streaming past me, heading down a side passage that leads deeper into the house.

“No. Shit! She’s gone!” comes Cass’s voice from down the hall. “I fucking knew we shouldn’t have let her come in alone.”

“Check upstairs,” Rube says, his voice tight, too loud.

All while my mind slowly disintegrates into white noise. Rube shakes me, and then I’m up against the wall. He grabs my shoulders, his thumbs forcing my head up.

“No time for this,” he tells me, and for once his words are fast, close together. “Need you to focus. Need youhere. Not in the past. Got it?”

His voice centers me. Reigns me in. It gathers what’s left of my mind and somehow contains it.

I lick my lips. Squeeze closed my eyes. “I’m here,” I manage.

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