Samantha Moon Phantasm, page 89
part #9 of Vampire for Hire Series
Unfortunately, I didn’t have access to my daughter’s mind, nor my son’s. But shortly thereafter, as witnessed by me, Tammy had seemed a little too quick to defend the devil, and a little moodier than normal. She’d been oddly quiet too, and my every instinct told me that she had made a connection with the devil. That dirty piece-of-shit devil.
Allison was nodding. “A mindlink.”
“Somehow, the devil enticed her,” said Kingsley. “Or awakened something within her.”
“Awakened what?” I snapped.
Kingsley knew he was treading on dangerous ground, but he plowed forward anyway. “Something that’s within all of us: darkness. The devil, I’m willing to bet, knows how to coax such darkness out of people.”
What sort of darkness had been in Tammy? What could the devil have possibly coaxed out? I didn’t know, but I knew my daughter had seen into the minds of some terrible, no-good, very bad people. And these were just everyday people she passed on the streets, or crossed paths with in stores, or in school. I knew the odds of her coming across a vile and terrible person increased with each day of her existence. And she had the uncanny ability to easily and swiftly pop into and out of such minds. She rarely talked about what she saw, but I suspected she had seen some crazy shit—my own family and friends included. Tammy would put on a brave face, but a few times, I had seen the confusion, the fear, the sense of innocence lost.
She was only sixteen. Had she been forever traumatized? Hell, even good people had their own inner demons. Tammy had seen it all. And she continued seeing it, day after day. Yes, there was darkness in her. There had to be. Some of what she had seen scared her, confused her, tempted her, and the devil had awakened it now.
After all, that’s what the bastard did. He encouraged darkness. He encouraged misdeeds. The bastard took an active, gleeful role in promoting the very darkness that caused belief in him. Job security, I guess.
And now, the piece of shit had set his eyes on my kids—in particular, Tammy. Anyone would have been interested in Tammy. Hell, what law enforcement agency, from the local PD to the most secretive shadow agencies in the government, wouldn’t have use for her? They all would, and that scared the shit out of me.
Then again, what CIA covert operation wouldn’t want Allison by its side, blasting through doors? Or Talos, the ultimate drone, scouting enemy terrain? Yes, they all would. But my daughter... oh, yes, she would be particularly prized. To know what the enemy was thinking was priceless.
I paced some more, running my fingernails through my hair. Yes, the devil saw her potential and formed a mindlink with her because he could. An idea hit me. “Allie, can you still do remote viewing?”
“I can,” she began, then shook her head. “But I’ve only done it on the phone, when talking to my clients and I’ve been taking so much time off.”
Her customers were, of course, those who called her psychic hotline. And, yes, she had been taking time off to hunt her own brand of bad guys with her witchy trifecta.
“Good idea, Sam,” said Kingsley, who had been at this supernatural game longer than we had. “Allie, you need only to establish a connection yourself. Sam, grab something important to Tammy. A shirt, shoes, something.”
Anthony held up Tammy’s phone. “Her most important possession on Earth.”
We could all only agree.
Allison took it and held it loosely in her hands. Back in the day, I would have had a peek inside her mind. But now... nothing, thanks to Millicent, a one-time friend of mine in a past life who now didn’t trust me with the trifecta’s innermost secrets. Fine, whatever. They could have their damn secrets.
“I can sort of feel her, Sam,” reported Allison after what seemed like minutes, but had, in reality, been only a few seconds. “I mean, I can feel her attachment to this phone, as if it were a living thing. I can see thread-like strands crisscrossing the phone, strands that attach to her.”
“The strands,” I said, “how far do they reach?”
She blinked at me. “I don’t know.”
“All the way to her?” asked Kingsley.
“Let me see what I can see,” said Allison, and now, she turned her head a little. “They reach all the way to her, Sam. I can feel her. Yes, she wishes she had her phone now. But the devil told her to leave it.”
“Do you see her?” I asked. “Is she okay? Is she afraid? Is she with someone?”
“Hold on.”
Shit, I held on the best I could, but I was fucking losing it. So I held on to Kingsley, who held me, too, and we stood like that in my little foyer while Allison held the phone and turned her head this way and that. Finally, she opened her eyes, and looked at me.
“She’s in Santa Ana.”
“Santa Ana?” And then, it hit me. Yesterday, Tammy had mentioned Santa Ana. In particular, she had mentioned the jogger who had been forced to work as a prostitute in Santa Ana.
A jogger who had been possessed by the devil.
I grabbed my keys. “Let’s go.”
Chapter Two
Tammy didn’t particularly like the devil.
She knew what he had made that handsome biker do a few months ago. She had seen it all in her mother’s memories: the man stepping backward onto the train track and his body veritably exploding into a bloody mist, complete with flying chunks of meat. Tammy thought she used the word “veritably” correctly, but she would have to look it up later. She liked looking up words. Words helped her explain what she saw in people’s minds, and what she saw often confused her, although the confusion seemed to be getting less and less these days. After all, the question was: what had she not seen at this point?
Going through a rundown of what she had seen would almost certainly guarantee to put her in a bad mood, or to depress her so much that all she would want to do was eat. She had to be careful with that, she knew. She turned to eating to feel good, and she thought it might turn into a problem. Then again, eating really did help her feel good, so who cared what other people thought?
Now, as she made her way along busy Bristol Avenue in downtown Santa Ana, she could feel the devil nearby. No, not really feel him. She could see the devil nearby. In her mind. Hear him too. Or hear her, since the devil was still possessing the body of the female jogger. But the female jogger wasn’t jogging now, was she?
Nope, not at all. As Tammy walked, she mentally looked on in fascination, and then decided she’d seen enough. Maybe even too much.
Yes, definitely too much.
The devil was making the woman perform tricks in nearby cars. Tammy knew that tricks meant sex for money, and it revolted her, but yet, like all things that she saw, it fascinated her up to a point.
The woman had worshiped the devil. Tammy could see that. Tammy could see pretty deeply into the woman’s mind, too, especially now that the woman, she was sure, was right around the corner, in a truck, doing things for money against her will, because the devil controlled her every action.
The devil, as far as Tammy could tell, was a real douche.
Now, as she walked along the street at night, knowing that she was garnering the looks of the wayward males in the area, many of whom were drunk or high and mostly harmless, she could see more into the woman, who, deep down, was scared. She was horrified, too. She was certain she had gotten a venereal disease, and she hated the devil. She hated the devil for making her do this. She was also, perversely, honored that the devil had chosen her. But the part that felt honored was drowning quickly in a sea of nastiness. The woman knew she was in trouble. She knew she had lost control of her body by letting in the devil. She had let him in willingly, too, through a blood sacrifice that involved small animals and her own blood.
Tammy could hear her screaming in her own head. But she was trapped, buried beneath the weight of that which possessed her. She sensed Tammy watching her and she shifted her attention toward her, begging Tammy to help her—and Tammy jumped out of her mind. She had seen enough.
Tammy wasn’t entirely sure why she came out tonight, or why she had slipped inside Kingsley’s mind—yet again—but this time, to give him the suggestion to sleep. Tammy hadn’t thought it could work, but it did work. All the big guy needed was a simple suggestion, placed deep enough into his subconscious, and that suggestion bubbled up to the surface as a real need to sleep. He hadn’t been sleepy before. In fact, he had been working pretty hard on notes for his new case, a case that had bored her to no end, which was why she had mostly stayed out of his head.
Until she heard the devil beckoning.
Tammy knew she could keep him out of her head, if she wanted to. The cool thing about all this mind reading was that she had taught herself how to protect her own mind in ways that she knew, without a doubt, that no one, but no one could have access to it. For instance, she knew how to seal up her mind, wall it off, block it. But the devil had figured a way to connect with her anyway. To call to her. It wasn’t much, but she heard it. And it had all happened yesterday. She suspected that once she had slipped inside the devil’s mind, a sort of trap had been sprung. Kind of like opening an email virus. But she knew how minds worked, and how to access them, and she knew, roughly, where the connection lay in her mind. She also knew that she could remove it when she wanted to. Or so she hoped.
And so, she had put Kingsley to sleep and taken a bus. A few dozen stops later and here she was, walking the streets of Santa Ana, knowing the devil was just around the corner.
She felt excited, nervous and curious. And now that she could offer people suggestions—especially those people who might want to do her harm—she could do more than just avoid them. She could possibly control them too.
Tammy turned a corner and recognized the woman who stepped out of a car with steamed-up windows as the same jogger from the day before. Tammy had known it would be her, of course. Heck, Tammy had been connected to her since yesterday.
How much of the devil was inside her, Tammy didn’t know. Maybe it was only a part of him. Maybe the devil possessed many dozens or hundreds of people around the world. Tammy didn’t know. If so, she had never come across him in any other mind. Indeed, this was a new experience for her.
The woman adjusted her short skirt and the man behind the wheel drove off. A quick scan of his mind and Tammy knew all about his cheating ways, his self-hate, his guilt, his depression, his suicidal thoughts. She also saw that he was an important man, a rich man. He was a politician of some sort. A congressman. She saw the devil’s hold on the man. Tammy knew the man had, in essence, sold his soul to the devil. The man knew it, but didn’t know it, too. Tammy had seen something similar, when her mother had inadvertently turned that handsome boxer into a sex slave. So gross, but so damn interesting too. The devil, she knew, had created a similar attachment within the congressman. But unlike her mother, who had released the boxer, the devil sought to use the man. Use and abuse him. The congressman knew it on some level, too, but he didn’t care. The man only wanted to please the devil, in whatever form the devil took. At this point, the man did not care if the devil possessed a man or a woman. He needed the connection. He needed to please, no matter what... forever.
Tammy stood before the woman. She had a nice figure and was pretty enough. But her lipstick was smeared, and her hair was tangled and dirty.
Unlike her mother, whose entity existed deep beneath her consciousness, Tammy could see the devil right there, front and center in the woman’s mind. It was, in fact, the woman who was buried deep below. Tammy could see that the devil had big plans for this woman. He planned to use her to bring many powerful men to their knees, to blackmail them and use them and hopefully destroy them and those around them. Or he might just kill her. He hadn’t decided which.
“You heard my call,” said the woman—said the devil—wiping the back of her hand across her face, smudging the lipstick even farther across her cheek. She looked psychotic.
Tammy wrapped her arms around herself. She tried telling herself that it was cold—and it was, kinda—but she suddenly realized just how far away from home she was, and how far away her mother was too.
Now Tammy heard other voices, whisperings that seemed to come from everywhere and anywhere, from the shadows in the alley, from the shadows under cars and in corners, on the cold wind, too, and all of which seemed to be coming to a head here, in this place, around this woman with lipstick smeared across her face.
In fact, yes, the whispering seemed to be swirling around them, swirling and swirling, and the woman before her—especially the entity within—seemed to be highly attuned to all the whisperings. More than that, it seemed to be responding to the whisperings, on another, higher level that even Tammy couldn’t quite penetrate. At least, not yet. It seemed—yes, it seemed as if the entity before her had delegated a part of itself to constantly, continuously, effortlessly, responding to the whisperings—no, to the information—that was coming to it. So, in a way, the thing before her could both focus on Tammy, but also give a part of itself to running what Tammy assumed was a very dark and terrible empire of fear.
Tammy could almost, almost, make out the whisperings. She thought she caught a snatch of “...is ready now” and “...has killed again.” Tammy couldn’t see where the voices were coming from, not exactly, but out of the corner of her mind, she sensed movement... shadowy figures just beyond her perception.
“There’s a lot going on in that mind of yoursss, child,” said the woman, her voice veritably hissing, but not quite in the way the dark masters hissed when they spoke to her mother. The thing was, Tammy wasn’t one hundred percent certain the woman had spoken the words. They might have just as easily been projected to her.
“I’m not a child,” said Tammy.
“Then what are you?” asked the devil.
Tammy thought about that. She didn’t feel like an adult, not yet anyway, but she certainly didn’t feel like a child. She said, “I’m just not a child, okay?”
“Fair enough,” said the devil, and now, Tammy could hear what sounded like a low growl in the voice. In fact, the voice was sounding less like a woman, and more like an angry man.
“Not angry,” said the devil. “Let’s just say, I’m passionate.”
“About what?” asked Tammy. She noticed that the street was nearly empty. She also noticed, from the corners of her eyes, shadowy movement.
“A good question, lass,” said the devil. Tammy knew the word ‘lass.’ Jacky the boxer called her mother a lass, and Tammy always kind of liked it, too, even though she knew it was, like, Irish for ‘girl.’
Better than ‘child,’ she thought. And as she thought that, she suspected the devil had plumbed that information from deep within her memory bank. Yes, he was inside her head, but he wasn’t so deep inside that he could see the secret she was carrying. A secret she had boxed up nicely. A secret that she knew the devil would have reacted to, had he seen it.
Yes, thought Tammy in this secret place inside her mind. He can’t reach everywhere.
Which was a relief to her.
The devil watched her curiously, and Tammy knew he sensed he was missing something, that something was being, in fact, hidden from him, and this made him angrier and more curious.
The devil said, “I am passionate about my work, you could say. I am passionate about my continued existence.”
The woman stepped forward. Her movements seemed odd, her steps too long, her arms too stiff. She looked like a praying mantis or something. Tammy sensed the devil’s confusion. She also sensed the devil’s rage. It was welling up and it was terrible. Tammy was pretty sure she had never seen pure evil before, until now. Right there inside the woman’s mind, burning white and hot—and also black and slimy.
The devil was still next to her ear. In fact, she could feel the woman’s longish hair brushing against her neck, a sensation that made Tammy’s skin crawl. The devil cocked her head this way and that, as if trying to get a look inside Tammy’s ear.
More shadows shifted and moved around Tammy, and she had a sudden insight. “It was the shadows who summoned me, not you. The shadows formed a sort of chain, all the way to my house, because shadows are everywhere, aren’t they? And the things you control live in the shadows.”
“Is that right, now?” asked the devil.
“Yes, I think it is right. You need help. Lots of help. You are not as powerful as you want us all to believe.”
The woman stepped around and stood before her again. Tammy was pleased that her words had gotten to the devil, who seethed now just inside the woman’s mind. If anything, the hate glowed brighter and darker, something Tammy had never seen before: bright and dark occupying the same space.
“There is a space in your mind, a hidden space,” said the devil, who now sounded nothing like the woman. “You are hiding a secret from me.”
“A girl needs her secrets,” said Tammy, feeling a lot more confident than she probably should.
Tammy sensed within the devil real confusion and a lot of anger. The devil was not used to mortals keeping secrets from him. Immortals, yes. The devil, like most immortals, could not penetrate the minds of other immortals. He hadn’t been able to penetrate her mother’s mind, nor had her mother been able to penetrate his. Tammy could penetrate it—and could go quite deep if she chose. She chose not to. Digging inside that mind, she suspected, would lead to madness.
“I will find your secrets, lass. For now, let me tell you a story. Once upon a time, there was a little, pesky vampire who had proven to be particularly troublesome to the dark masters. The dark masters thought they could control her. They thought wrong. They began realizing this vampire bitch—sorry, your mother—was more trouble than she was worth. They began to realize that they might need to find another. Do you know what ‘jump ship’ means?”
