Born Again Read online

  “Pete,” Ben said, speaking slowly to try shoving some calm through the phone, “what’s going on?”

  “It…” Peter’s dry swallow came through loud and clear. “It’s moving.”

  “Uh… what the hell does that mean?” He’d been asking Ian, but he was still half-asleep and hadn’t quite managed to separate his constant dual conversations.

  “Really?” Peter almost shrieked. “You think I’m the guy to ask right now?”

  “Woah, woah,” Ben corrected. “No. I’m sorry. I’m still half asleep. You okay?”

  “I mean, physically? I guess. For now. But the rest of me? I’m freaking out a little. Are… are you busy?” He didn’t mean it literally; of course Ben wasn’t busy at three in the morning. But this was what they’d asked each other since they were twelve when one of them needed something.

  “Give me like half an hour.”

  Peter ended the call without saying anything else, and Ben just sat there for a minute in the dark. “Thanks for waiting on that one,” he said to Ian, feeling like an idiot for talking to both his friends at the same time when one of them didn’t even know the other existed—or at least that he existed in Ben’s body.

  ‘Hey, I know multitasking isn’t really your thing.’

  Oh, so not out of consideration, then. Just pity. Super. “Well do you know what’s going on with the stone, then?”

  ‘I know how to summon, command, and banish,’ Ian replied. ‘Demons do it to each other all the time. And it was pretty much the Guardian’s job. I know the laws. But trapping them in stones is for this world. Which, if you haven’t noticed, I’m not really a part of.’

  Ben puffed a sigh through his lips. “Could’ve fooled me.”

  ‘You know, practice makes perfect. Or whatever.’

  “Yeah, well, if anything comes to mind, I’m trusting you to spill it.” Ben tossed the covers off his lap and swung his legs out of bed. The shock of cold in his room after the warmth of sleep did more to piss him off than wake him up. Still a little disoriented, he yanked on yesterday’s jeans and the closest t-shirt off the floor, shoved his boots on without touching the laces, and grabbed his jacket and keys from the kitchen counter.

  The January freeze this early in the morning made his previously cold room feel like a sauna. Ben shivered almost the entire twenty-minute drive to Peter’s apartment, which was about as long as it took the heat in his car to start working. He all but ran up the two flights of stairs to the third floor and considered knocking on the front door before remembering his friend was expecting him anyway. When he opened it and walked inside, there was almost no difference between the thirteen degrees outside and the air in Peter’s living room.

  Peter was pacing behind his couch, his arms folded across his chest, and he only briefly looked up at the sound of Ben closing the door behind him. Then he untucked his inhaler from inside the sleeve of his sweatshirt, took a puff, and kept moving.

  “It’s freezing in here,” Ben said.

  “Really?” Peter turned and headed in the other direction, staring at the floor. “I didn’t even notice.”

  That was a little more disconcerting than the guy’s panicked phone call. “You’re kidding.” Ben moved quickly to the thermostat just outside the hallway. This temperature seemed impossible inside someone’s house. But the level was set at seventy-two, which was where Peter always kept it because his alarming number of physical ailments acted up in the cold—at least, that was the reason he gave. “Dude, I think your thermostat’s broken. Have you talked to management—”

  “Ben,” Peter shouted, “I didn’t spend three hours trying to get you over here so you could complain about my fucking central heating.”

  Woah.

  Peter never talked like that, even when he was terrified, which had happened a lot in the guy’s life. Ben’s too. Something was definitely wrong.

  “Okay…” Ben replied slowly, raising his hands in submission as he stepped back into Peter’s obnoxiously clean living room. “You’re right. You called me about the crystal.” He stood there for a minute, waiting to be shown the catastrophic stone that had apparently shoved his friend over the edge. “So, where is it?”

  Peter didn’t look up at him or even stop his pacing. “On the table.” He waved toward the coffee table on the other side of the couch, then wiped his nose on his sleeve and took another puff of his inhaler. More bad signs.

  Ben turned toward the black coffee table—much nicer than anything he had in his apartment—and stared at Peter’s metal demon-catching box. Peter was a bit of a neat freak, maybe even a little OCD, and the first thing that threw Ben off was that the box wasn’t centered in the table. Not that he would have cared at all or even noticed if they were at his place surrounded by his things, but he’d spent almost fifteen years brushing off Peter’s quirks of organization. The box itself had only been opened just enough for the top panel to have retracted, where it hung against one of the sides by an unseen hinge—he guessed. He had no idea exactly how Peter had designed it to work. One of the corners jutted out over the edge of the table, like it had been tossed there—or shoved away from the couch in a hurry. The setting, welded to the bottom panel, clutched the crystal they’d used to effectively trap the last demon in the brothers’ apartment, the stone’s original cloudy whiteness now a dark, slippery-looking green.

  But that was it. No big deal. It looked exactly the same as the last time he’d seen it. You getting’ anything? he asked Ian.

  ‘Just a rock in a box.’

  Yeah, thanks.

  “So,” Ben started, peering over the couch and squinting, “you said it was moving?”

  “It was,” Peter replied. “Like a… like an egg about to hatch.”

  An egg. Ben turned around to eye his friend and only just now noticed the circles under Peter’s eyes. “Well, it’s not moving now.”

  Peter didn’t stop pacing. “I’m not blind, Ben.”

  Nope. Just super agitated and acting like a jerk. “I know. Hey, when was the last time you got any sleep?” He couldn’t imagine being able to get warm and drift off in comfort with the freezing temperatures inside this apartment. And he hoped Peter hadn’t been ignoring a broken thermostat or heater for more than a day.

  “I don’t know.” Peter flapped a hand around his head. “Couple days.”

  “What? Pete, you can’t—”

  Peter whirled to face him. “Hey, you try thinking you’re about to have your kidney blasted through your stomach by a fake gun and see how well you sleep after that,” he shouted. “And getting punched in the face. That stupid thing isn’t making it any better.” He jabbed a finger at the open box and the grimy blackish stone resting there.

  “Dude.”

  “I’m not seeing things, Ben.” Peter went right back to the pacing, his head jerking to the side like a nervous tick he’d never had before. “I told you yesterday there was something weird about that thing. It didn’t start to get creepy until tonight.”

  “So what happened?”

  “I don’t know!”

  “Woah.” Ben raised his hands again. “Okay. I’ll take another look.”

  “Yeah.” Peter let out a rather dark, nervous chuckle. “Yeah, go take another look.”

  With a long, deep breath, Ben slowly moved around the back of the couch, hating having to walk on eggshells around his best friend. The fact that Peter even had any proverbial eggshells was the sour, moldy cherry on top. He sat on the couch and leaned a little closer to the stone that might or might not actually have moved on its own. Knowing he wasn’t crazy while realizing everyone else thought differently was the foundation of Ben’s existence at this point. He understood Peter’s frustration, but when doctors had called Ben schizophrenic, Peter had known how wrong they all were; they’d seen the same things that night and made it out of that house together. Whatever had pushed Peter over the edge now didn’t come with that kind of shared experience, and so far, nothing had proven that his fr
iend wasn’t overreacting—or hallucinating.

  ‘Just throwing loyalty out the window now, huh?’ Ian said.

  Ben gritted his teeth. I didn’t ask you to be my conscience, Ian. If you don’t have anything helpful to share, shut it, all right? His body-highjacking friend didn’t say anything else. Good answer.

  For a few more minutes, Ben stared at the muted crystal, trying both to focus on it and to keep himself from screaming at Peter to stop pacing behind him. Nothing happened. “Pete,” he finally said, “I don’t see anything.” He scooted up to the edge of the couch and reached out for the stone.

  “I’m telling you, it—no, don’t!”

  The minute Ben’s fingers closed around the stone, he jerked back with a yelp, sending the metal box flying off the table. The crystal popped from the setting and rolled across the carpeted floor. “It’s freezing!”

  ‘Well that was a bad idea,’ Ian so keenly observed.

  “Ya think?” Ben shouted.

  At the same time, Peter said, “I’ve been trying to tell you—wait, what?”

  “What?” Ben whirled around on the couch to look up at him.

  “You talking to yourself?” Peter raised an eyebrow and grimaced.

  Okay, so not a good time to be responding to Ian out loud. Again. But at least he’d broken Peter out of the damn pacing. Finally, his friend seemed to have come back into reality a little bit. “Uh, yeah. I guess I was. Just didn’t expect that.”

  Peter frowned at him for a minute. “Do you believe me now?”

  “I mean, yeah. It’s definitely weird.” Ben turned back to face the crystal now sitting there on the carpet. He rubbed the fingers he’d grabbed it with and hoped he wouldn’t be needing any more special medical attention on his hands. “But it makes sense that trapping a demon inside it—holy crap!” He launched himself all the way back on the couch, not even feeling a little ridiculous for pulling his knees up to his chest just to get his feet off the floor. Because the demon crystal had moved.

  “I told you,” Peter shouted. “Aw, man, I told you!”

  “What the hell is it doing?” Ben was completely aware of how close his eyes were to popping out of his head, how fast his heart pounded against his chest. “It’s not supposed to do that.”

  “Right?” Peter shrieked.

  “We trapped it in there!”

  “I know.”

  “It can’t… can it get back out?” As soon as Ben asked this, the stone rocked again on the carpet, twitching like … well, yeah. Exactly like a hatching egg. Both guys shouted and jumped, then Ben toppled off the couch in his attempt to stand. He was shivering now, either from the cold in Peter’s apartment or the shock of what he’d just seen or both. And he had no clue what to do. “Was it moving in the box?”

  “Not until I opened it,” Peter muttered.

  Ben whirled around to look at his friend, then thought better of turning his back to the shuddering demon stone and walked around the couch to stand next to Peter and stare at it. “Why’d you open it?” Somehow, whispering now seemed entirely appropriate.

  “Because… I…” Peter frowned and wiped his nose on his sleeve again. “I think because I heard something.”

  “You heard something.”

  “Yeah. Like… a voice.”

  “Pete, if there was a Demon Hunting 101, this would be in it,” Ben said. “Don’t open the box. Even if we were the ones who put the thing in there.”

  “Oh, come on! We would have had to open it again anyway to use on that new demon you found at Buckley Playground. It’s not like I have this box on mass production.”

  Ben took a deep breath. “Right. So you opened it, and then the crystal started moving?”

  “Yep.”

  “And this is the first time that stone’s been out of the box.”

  “Right.”

  ‘Ben, I’m pretty sure those crystals don’t count as eternal prisons,’ Ian said. ‘And I’m pretty sure there’s very little keeping that demon in it without the runes…’

  Ben’s body prickled with cold realization, and at the same time, Peter shouted, “Oh, god, the box!”

  The stone wobbled again on the floor. Ben’s body lurched out of his control, moved by only a fraction of the overpowering force he’d felt the first and only other time Ian had muscled his way into the driver’s seat. This was more like a gentle nudge; his brain was still up front. But it got him moving enough to leap around the coffee table and throw himself to the ground. He snatched the empty metal box from the carpet, flipped it upside down, and dove toward the black-green crystal just in time to slam it on top of the stone and hold it there. Like a manual mousetrap. Thankfully, the stone hadn’t sprouted a tail and four legs to start running away.

  The metal in his hands was freezing, too, but it was nothing compared to the second of contact with the crystal itself. Feeling like some particularly awful disaster had just been avoided, he realized how much his chest burned and finally let out the breath he’d been holding.

  ‘That should do it for now,’ Ian said.

  Gritting his teeth, Ben gulped but still couldn’t take his eyes—or hands—off the box. He felt like if he stepped away too soon, the thing would explode off the ground and unleash what they almost hadn’t managed to trap inside it. And it took a lot of focus to mentally reply. That doesn’t mean we’re cool. You need to at least warn me if you’re gonna pull that kinda crap again.

  ‘You need to be quicker on your toes.’

  Man, Ian was really pushing it. Yeah, well you don’t even have toes.

  ‘Good one.’

  Slowly, Ben turned his head to look up at Peter. His friend still stood behind the couch with wide eyes, his mouth gaping as he clenched fistfuls of his own hair and stared at the box. Then his eyes flickered down and met Ben’s. “Dude.”

  Ben let out a shaky sigh. “Yeah.” He stayed where he was for a few more seconds, then slowly took his hands off the box and leaned away from it. Nothing happened. So far. “How do I close it up all the way?”

  “Uh…”

  “Pete?”

  Peter blinked, then finally let go of his own hair. “That panel.”

  “This?” Ben gently touched the one open panel that now lay flat on the carpet.

  “Yeah. Just slide it back in until it clicks.”

  Ben guessed this was what disabling a bomb must feel like. He pressed down on the bottom—now the top—of the box, and pushed the panel in. He felt the resisting weight of the stone on the carpet, which made him flinch, but he wiggled the box just enough to work the panel beneath the crystal until it slid back into place. And it clicked. Then he raised his hands in surrender, pushed himself to his feet, and backed away. “So… as far as we know, no harm done.”

  A terrified giggle shuddered out of Peter’s throat. “If you say so.”

  Ben turned to look at him again. “It’s a really awesome box.”

  His friend’s shoulders sagged as he let out a huge breath and rolled his eyes. “I’m glad you finally think so.”

  “And we need it for the thing at Buckley Playground tomorrow. Or… I guess tonight.” It might as well have already been noon for how long the last few minutes felt now. But the windows in Peter’s living room only looked out over darkness.

  “That’s kind of not an option right now.” Peter gestured at the box on the floor.

  “So we need to figure out how to make it an option.” Ben couldn’t tell if his legs were actually shaking or if he just imagined it as he walked back around the couch, pausing to grab the back of it and lean over for another second to pull himself together.

  “How?”

  “Same way we figured out how to summon Ebra.”

  Peter winced at the lesser demon’s name, who really hadn’t actually protected them like it was supposed to when they’d faced the Guardian. Because evil spirits and their treachery and all that. But then he seemed to realize what Ben meant and nodded. “Okay.”

  “Okay.”
Ben’s teeth chattered, and he shoved his hands into his coat pockets. “Dude, it’s seriously way too cold in here.”

  Frowning, his friend glanced around his own apartment as if he’d just stepped into it for the first time. Which was weird but probably normal after narrowly preventing a demon escape. “Really?”

  “Really.” Ben expected to see his own breath misting now any minute. “Until you get that fixed, you wanna just come over to my place? At least for tonight? Knowing you, you’ll probably end up with hypothermia or frostbite. Or frozen blood or something.”

  “That’s not how hemophilia works,” Peter muttered.

  Thankfully, Ben still hadn’t lost his ability to smile. “I know. Come on.”

  “Yeah, okay. Just let me get my stuff.” Peter took a few steps toward the hallway, then stopped and stared at the box on the floor again. “And we’re just gonna leave that here?”

  “Dude, it’s not coming home with me.” Apparently, the semi-joke was lost on Peter, so Ben added, “Hey, if anything else happens, it’s not like you being here alone is gonna help. And you need some sleep, man.”

  Peter blinked rapidly and took a deep breath. “Yeah.” Then he moved down the hall and stepped into his room.

  ‘Is there something off about him, or is that just me?’ Ian asked.

  “Definitely not just you,” Ben whispered, fairly certain Peter couldn’t hear him. They’d both seen a lot of super weird stuff—most of it in the last couple months—but Peter had always pushed through it for the most part. He’d kept his cool enough to take Ben to the hospital with April after banishing the Guardian, and he’d definitely been on top of it when he clocked Chase in the face after the whole fake-gun thing. But now, the guy acted almost like he was doped up on something.

  That thought actually seemed better than Ben’s next guess—that holding the demon-filled crystal in Peter’s apartment was starting to mess with more than the thermostat.

  When Peter stepped back out of his room, he lugged his bulging backpack in one hand and a surprisingly full duffel bag in the other. Ben almost laughed. “I didn’t ask you to move in with me.”