I managed to tear my eyes away from her hypnotizing gaze and looked to the shore. Sage was only a few yards away. My brilliant Sage. Somehow, he was here too. He was shirtless, his chest cut up and bleeding, on his knees in thick red soil. He was watching me with total agony on his face. I couldn’t tell if it was for me, for himself, or for everyone else. Half his band, half his friends, were dead.
Graham was standing behind him, his arms crossed like a smug bastard, his lower half human, his head was one that belonged on a demonic worm, with a round toothy hole for a mouth. I shivered at the image, the inhuman blending of drummer and demon, the way his mouth dripped black and red splotches of clumpy blood onto the ground.
Naturally, the GTFOs were all there. Beside him were Terri, Sparky, and Sonja, all looking like the life-sucking groupies that they were.
They weren’t alone. As I looked closely around the tree-lined lake, I saw many bobbing heads in the water—demonic faces in all shapes and sizes. Red glowing eyes. Protruding tongues and razor teeth. Weeping skin covered with maggots.
Something big splashed in the distance—a dark, undefinable shape under a bright moon. I caught the gleam of moving scales and an incredible sense of size. I saw the dark creature moving underneath the water toward me like a stealthy submarine.
This was Lake Shasta. And though I was close to shore, I knew I was in the deep end.
“I’m Alva,” the woman said. She took her hand out of the water and offered it to me. I stared at her like she was a fucking idiot.
Her uncanny eyes narrowed for a second, and in that second her hand transformed into a long tentacle. She swiped it at me and it raked across my chest, pulling away skin with a hundred tiny, blood-sucking mouths.
I screamed at the pain and she laughed in retort, her golden eyes flashing into black, empty holes with no way out. I felt like I was being sucked into them, into a cold, hellish eternity.
“Let her go!” Sage yelled, his voice carrying clearly from the muddy shore. “She has nothing to do with this.”
Alva looked at him dryly, her face transformed back to normal in an instant. “You asked for her, Sage. You asked for this.”
“I never asked for you to kill her. I never asked for anyone to be killed and you know it!”
“Well, you should have been more specific when you made the deal,” she said, sounding bored. She caught me staring at her and smiled very, very slowly. Her incisors were as sharp as shark’s teeth and they cut into the side of her mouth where the wounds flayed open like torn paper. “Sorry this has to be so dramatic, Dawn. We like to have fun when no one’s watching. And part of the fun is killing you in a most terrifying way. Now we know your mother died some years ago. Slit her wrists and drowned in the bathtub. We thought that was too cliché for you though.”
“But you can’t do this,” I yelled, trying to keep the raft level. Water was splashing over the sides, swamping me. “The bargain’s not even being fulfilled. There’s supposed to be a published article. I haven’t even finished writing it!”
Alva laughed. “Oh, that doesn’t matter. We found it on the bus and finished the rest for you. We mailed it to Barry Kramer today. The fact-checker can’t check facts when the whole band is dead.”
“You’re not supposed to kill him,” I sneered. I didn’t know where I was finding the courage. “It’s not in the code.”
“Screw the code,” Alva sneered back. A small, revolting worm slid out of her ear and traveled down to her chest, leaving a black, slimy trail. “The only reason we follow the code is because we’re made to. But you don’t see one of the Jacobs around right now, do you?”
“You answer to someone.”
“Yes. His name is Lucifer and I can tell you that he’s not a fan of the code either. It’s just something we have to do for that other guy.”
I assumed she meant God. How diplomatic of him to have a deal with the devil himself.
“Besides,” she continued. “You’re what Sage asked for. He wanted someone to love. We gave that to him, and now we’re taking it away, just like we took away every other person. He got off easy with his wife just leaving, but later we decided it lacked impact, you know?”
She giggled and splashed around in the water, treading it playfully, her appearance slowly becoming more monstrous. “To tell you the truth, Sage has been a fun contract to fulfill and an even funner one to collect on.”
“Funner is not a word,” I seethed. Always a journalist, even to the end.
She shrugged. “You should really choose your last words more carefully. Perhaps you should tell Sage you love him. Give him a bit of happiness before we take it away again.”
I looked over at Sage on the shore. His eyes were conflicted, probably over a million different things. Graham had a firm grip on both his shoulders with talon-like claws, and the others were standing close by. He didn’t have a chance in hell of saving me. They were going to drown me, here and now, and he’d be powerless to stop it. He’d have to watch it all. I wondered what happened on the bus, if he had to see the others dead.
“Well, you love him don’t you?” Alva prodded, annoyed.
It wasn’t until that moment that I realized I really did love him. I loved him before as one loves their idols. And I loved him now as a similarly damaged soul. A kindred spirit. It was a budding love, new and growing, built on attraction, on trust. I trusted him. I knew he’d try and save me if he could. But things weren’t looking in his favor.
I would have told him. But it didn’t feel right. It was a private thing from me to him. The demons didn’t deserve to hear it.