I’d done a lot of weird shit on October 31st, but I’d never made plans to crash a Halloween party and kill its host before. Every morning, I woke up with a ticking clock in my head. A countdown that seemed to drag slower and slower the closer it got to zero.
This was it. Kent Hadleigh was going to die.
I had no idea if we’d be successful. Any number of things could go wrong, the possibility that we’d fail never left my mind. But finally, after so many years, I was close. My tension was a knot pulled tight in my stomach, squeezing inside me from the time I opened my eyes until the hour I finally managed to close them.
But as nervous as I was, it was hard not to have fun when Zane was so goddamn excited about it.
“All the best parties end in murder,” he said, trailing behind me as we wound through the Halloween store, browsing the messy rows of costumes. “That’s what keeps people talking about it.”
“Are you an expert on parties?” His chatter was distracting me from how irritating it was to shop: there were screaming children running everywhere, the aisles were too crowded, and all the costumes were too small.
“Yeah, actually. I’ve been to hundreds of parties across nearly ten centuries. And I can guarantee you, all the best ones had a murder.”
“I think that’s just because you like murder.”
“Are all Halloween stores like this?” He dodged two children that sprinted past, nearly smacking into him. He shot a quick look back at them, and the child in the lead tripped, falling so abruptly that the kid chasing behind tripped over him too, and they fell into a pile. He smiled smugly as he looked back at me.
“Tripping children?” I said. “Really? Are you proud of yourself for that one?”
“Very. It was hilarious.”
I rolled my eyes and had to look away before he saw me laugh. Not that I could really hide it from him; he’d probably smell it or something, since he could smell everything else. “But yeah, welcome to 21st century capitalism, Halloween edition. All year, there’s no Halloween stores — then October hits, and suddenly every empty building has one.”
“So many foam skeletons,” he said, brushing past several that were dangling from a display. He picked up a French Maid costume, encased in a plastic bag. “These costumes look like lingerie.”
“Yeah. That’s kind of the point.”
He grinned. “You should buy this one.”
I scoffed. “You should. I’d look ridiculous.”
“Fuck, I’d look hot as hell in this,” he said. “And I’d still dick you down good. Demon maid at your service.” He thrust his hips, and the image of him doing that dressed as a maid almost broke me.
“God, stop. Please.” I had to turn away because I was trying too hard not to laugh. But I quickly added, “Buy it in your size, but you are not wearing it to the party.”
The more nervous I was, the harder it was to sleep. I’d killed before; I knew what it felt like to take a human life. But killing Kent Hadleigh meant something. Facing him again, standing before him of my own free will, meant something.
My anxiety felt like an open door, a gap in my defenses through which any number of awful things could slip in. If I didn’t plan carefully enough, if I wasn’t cautious enough, or if I was too cautious entirely — this could all end in failure.
That open door of worry was an invitation. It was a beacon. I just didn’t realize it at first.
I was running through exercise drills near the dock. The sky was gray, but the rain was a mere mist, cooling my skin as I sweat. The breeze was cold, and the water lapping against the shore formed a meditational rhythm I synced my breathing to.
Breathe in — punch — breathe out — kick — breathe in —
“Juniper.”
“What?” I yelled back at the house without turning. One of Zane’s favorite pastimes was to tease me relentlessly any time I tried to work out, claiming he was just helping get my heartrate up.
But there was no response.
I paused, panting between my sets, and looked back at the house. No sign of Zane at all. I straightened up, slowing my breathing so I could better hear around me. The wind picked up, the lapping waves on the lake coming faster, seeping up the pebbly shore. I scanned the trees, but the only movement I could see was a small flock of birds fluttering between the branches and the ground.
There was nothing there, nothing at all. But a chill still ran up my back. It suddenly felt like it would be a lot safer inside.
I’d left my water bottle at the dock, so I jogged back for it. The water had come up enough to grab it; it was floating a couple yards offshore.
“Damn it.” I sighed heavily as I waded in. The water was cold, but it felt nice after working up a sweat. The pebbles were smooth beneath my feet as the water came up to my waist, and I snatched the bottle before it could bob further out.
I froze, the bottle gripped in my hand. There was something in the middle of the lake, poking up above the water.
A blood-red face. Perfectly round, wide, staring eyes.
It was looking at me. It was looking right at me.
It slipped back below the surface with the barest ripple. The wind stilled. The waves calmed around me until the lake became eerily glass-like. I backed out of the water, keeping an eye on the depths around me, my eyes constantly flickering back to the spot where the head had disappeared.
The pebbles crunched under my feet as I reached the shore. It was colder now, and I shivered in my wet clothes. I knew better than to trust everything my eyes saw, even when I was awake. Nightmares didn’t restrict themselves to my sleeping hours.
But I heard nothing. I smelt nothing. So I turned.
And found myself face-to-face with the blood-red being.
It had no eyelids, it had no lips. All its skin was pulled back and it loomed over me, like a spider over a fly. It reached out with three long, knobby red fingers —
I gasped, jerking upright, panting as I looked around. I wasn’t on the shore; in fact, the lake was nowhere in sight. Neither was the dock, or the house.
I was underground, in a narrow dimly-lit tunnel. Water dripped slowly from overhead, and the smell of damp dirt and fungi heavy in my nose. I was in the mine.
I shook my head, squeezing my eyes shut tight. No, no, no, this was impossible.
“Juniper…”
Laughter followed the whisper, and I opened my eyes. Darkness waited for me in either direction, completely impenetrable. This was just a dream. Just a dream, nothing more. I must have passed out. That creature must have knocked me unconscious.
But how? And why? I’d never seen anything like it before —
Shlop…shlop…shlop…
I stared into the dark. Something was coming. Something was taking slow, heavy steps through the mud. I had no weapons. I had no light.
“Wake up,” I whispered softly, digging my fingernails into my arm. “Come on, Juniper. Wake up. Wake up.”
“There is…no…waking…”
The voice hissed out of the dark. It was more than an echoing whisper now, more than a mere breath on the wind. It had form, it had weight. It was real. It was here.
Deep in the darkness, a strange shape was lurching toward me. There was a sound like something slimy sliding over the wet ground. I took a step back, and then another, terrified to run into the dark at my back, but too fearful to remain here.
Thick gray tentacles reached out of the shadows. They were coiling outward from the strange shape, which was slowly morphing before my eyes. It shrank and grew, burgeoning outward and then collapsing into itself, as if its form wasn’t solid. Icy fingers wrapped around my heart, squeezing, the cold aching in my ribs.
“I’ve found you, Juniper. I’ve found you at last.”
I began to hyperventilate. I couldn’t wake up. Why the hell wasn’t I waking up? This was all in my head, I had to remember that. It was all just in my head.
The tentacles were coming faster. They were nearly at my ankles. The shape in the dark came into the dim gray light.
It was a human, but It…wasn’t. It was a being beyond beauty, so horrifyingly exquisite that one physical form alone could not contain It. It was made of light and darkness, flesh and bone, an ever-shifting amalgamation of air and energy. Its tentacles were so long that they wrapped around the mine shaft’s walls, coiling toward me.
Eyeballs blinked over every inch of Its skin, and they were all staring at me.
I shook my head slowly. “You’re not real,” I whispered, the words trembling out from between my lips. “This is a dream. Just a dream. You’re not real.”
When the God spoke again, it was with a thousand voices all in unison. A thousand voices, barely masking a thousand screams. “You think this is not real, and yet, you don’t know where you are.” The being smiled, Its lips pulling back from rows upon rows of teeth. I was still backing away, but I had no idea what lay in the dark behind me. “Where are you, Juniper? Where does your body lie? In the woods? In the dirt? On the shore?” Its smile widened. “Are you in the water, Juniper? Are you drowning?”
It was right. Where was my body? Where the hell was I? Had I managed to walk back on shore, or…or had that red creature dragged me under?
What if I wasn’t waking up because I…couldn’t?
Panic gripped me. I had to run. I had to —
My back hit a dirt wall. I was at the end of the tunnel. I had nowhere else to go.
“You can’t take me,” I whispered desperately. “My soul isn’t yours. It’s never been yours.”
The tentacles coiled around my ankles and wrapped up my legs. The God stood back, Its face half in shadow, Its numerous eyes blinking at me.
“I cannot take your soul…but I can take your mind.”
The tentacles were around my chest now, squeezing tighter and tighter. I clawed at them, digging my nails into their slick, slimy flesh, but they couldn’t be moved. Then they were around my shoulders…around my throat. They were squeezing until I couldn’t breathe.
“You never should have defied Me. You stole yourself away from Me. But I will have what’s Mine.”
The tentacles coiled around my face. I squeezed my eyes shut as they probed at my lids, at my mouth. I couldn’t breathe — I couldn’t breathe —
“Juniper!”
I thrashed, screaming, striking with my fists, kicking hard, struggling until the shock of cold water jolted my eyes open. I was crouched on the shore, pebbles beneath my hands. Zane stood over me, golden eyes narrowed in confusion as he watched me. I scrambled to my feet and turned in circles, looking everywhere, my heart pounding in my ears.
“What the hell happened?” His voice was dark, vicious. The sound of it made me finally remember to breathe.
“I, uh…I…” My voice caught. I was shaking violently with cold. I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t know how I could possibly explain that. Finally, I choked out, “The God found me. It found me.”
Even knowing he would believe me, the fear was still there: the terror of being laughed at, of being told I’d imagined it all. Even as I explained what I’d seen, the words pouring out in a flood, I was second-guessing myself. Had I exerted myself too much and passed out? Had I been hallucinating? Had I seen the red creature at all?
But when I’d finished telling it all, Zane’s face was hard with worry.
“It was a Watcher,” he said. “They’re parasitic monsters, attracted to the prey of other creatures.”
I frowned, shivering again beneath the blanket over my shoulders. “Why? What the hell does it want?”
“To feed. Watchers seek out the prey of larger, more dangerous creatures. In Hell, they’re known to follow Reapers around so they can feed on the fear of their victims. That’s what sustains it: fear. It will aid whatever is hunting you to increase your fear, your panic. By itself, there’s little it can do to harm you. But it can make you vulnerable. It can overwhelm you, distract you — that’s how it hunts.”
I’d never encountered anything like that. The sight of those wide, lidless eyes staring blankly at me wouldn’t leave my head. It twisted my stomach, burned into my mind.
“What can I do?” I said. “How can I kill it?”
“I don’t know if you can.” Zane rubbed his hand over his head in thought. “The best thing you can do, if you see it again, is ignore it. Pretend it isn’t there, don’t give in to the fear.”
Far easier said than done. Fear was a fact of life. I’d learned to operate despite it; erasing it entirely was impossible.
“When I was unconscious, the God said It found me.” I bit my lip, hardly daring to ask the question. “Does that…does that mean It knows where I am? Does that mean It can…take me?”
Zane moved closer to me, tugging me into his warmth. I curled against his side, still shivering, trying to ease down my lingering panic.
“When the Libiri cut you and threw you down in the dark, the God got Its influence deep in your mind,” he said. “Demons have a similar power: I can give you the sensation of phantom touches, or create the illusion that you’re restrained.” Those phantom fingers traced along my neck as he spoke. I’d gotten used to that little mind trick of his, although I still didn’t understand how it worked. “Gods can do that too, but of course, their power is usually greater than a demon’s. They can create far more powerful, frightening sensations.”
I didn’t want to close my eyes. I was afraid that if I dared, for even a moment, I’d find myself back in the dark again, with those tentacles curling around my body.
“It’s an illusion, Juniper,” Zane said. “I know it feels real, but it’s just the God pushing Its influence over your mind and forcing you to feel things that aren’t there. That’s why It waits for you to be vulnerable, that’s why It comes to you in your sleep. The Watcher will try to give the God more opportunities to get to you. If it can panic you, if it can find a way to terrify you, it will. But the God is still trapped, Juniper. It can’t reach you. Remember that: no matter what It says, no matter what awful things It shows you, the God can’t touch you.”
