The Devourer Below Read online

  Lita glanced up to see Ida peering down at her. The woman smiled, her white teeth gleaming through the glass. Lita nodded an acknowledgment before grabbing the cultist under the armpits. She sucked in a huge breath, then dragged him away from the dilapidated house. He was heavy and it was a struggle, but there was no way she was leaving him near Ida. Let him wake up confused and alone. Safer that way.

  •••

  The bus ticket was important, but she had no desire to arrive wherever the destination might be at nightfall. Rushing into anything would be what got her killed.

  Once she had rid herself of the snooper, she headed to Priya’s house, to see if they could catch up after their small disagreement the night before. Priya was only worried about her, she knew, and her own prickly response to that worry was to push back.

  “Lita.” Priya opened the door with a wide smile. Good. She didn’t hold a grudge. “Come in! Emily is visiting her mother, but you’re welcome to join me for dinner.”

  Lita patted her stomach. “Maybe a snack.”

  Priya scoffed. “How do you think I was raised? You think my mother would let a guest eat just a snack?”

  They bantered back and forth, friendly jokes that calmed Lita after the adrenaline of her fight. It felt strange but relaxing to sit in the kitchen, listening to Priya talk of Emily’s work, of their plans for the future. The mundane ritual was comforting, especially the smell of delicious spices and sizzling food.

  As Lita nibbled on the tasty fried snacks, she stayed quiet and let Priya manage the conversation. Her friend lit up when she talked, her eyes bright, her smile luminous. Emily was just as smitten when she came home, kissing Priya on the cheek, taking her hand and leaning against her side in contentment.

  It was good to sit here, safe and warm, after all Lita had gone through. Not everything had to be about death and pain and fear. It was good to remind herself, sometimes, that life still had joy in it. Good food, kind friends, honest conversation. She could build her life around this.

  The moon was high in the sky when Lita finally got home. She rubbed at her eyes, tired after a long day. The first part, the waiting, the fighting, had drained her. Seeing Priya and Emily’s happiness had actually recharged her, just a little. Good company, friends who understood her. Perhaps Lita had made the wrong choice. Was revenge the right path for her future?

  There were times, like today, when she wondered if she should just stop. Stop wondering what happened to John, stop chasing after ghosts. Putting down her anger and her frustration and her rage would be an immense relief. Kneel by John’s grave and empty herself of all her negative feelings. She would never fall in love again, she had no illusions about that, but if she spent her time with her friends like the evening she’d just had, she could lead a contented life.

  It was the dusty pictures that brought her back to reality. The reality where her husband had been murdered. Where his murderers walked free, still threatening others, as Ida had told her today. They told the sorry tale of her life. A marriage built on arguments, a nursery half-painted and abandoned, a husband cold in the ground, a house barely lived in. She should feel shame at the layer of dust obscuring John’s half-smile, but it felt symbolic, somehow. The colors had leached out of everything, and there was nothing else left.

  Lita dragged her gaze from the photographs to the bus ticket on the mantel, at the unfamiliar destination that held her hopes. Her resolve firmed. She had to do this.

  •••

  The early morning sun hung low, the light gleaming off the road, as the bus huffed to a stop every few minutes. Not many people got on and off; it was clearly an unpopular route.

  Now it was rattling up a long hill, empty bar Lita and one gentleman with a hat pulled low on his forehead. Lita studied his profile: tanned olive skin, full lips, wide dark eyes. Handsome, but hardworking. Nothing like most of the cultists she’d crossed paths with. She didn’t completely dismiss him, but figured he probably wasn’t following her.

  Eventually the bus pulled up to the curb, pausing for a moment as the driver called out the town’s name. Lita exited, standing still as it rattled away. The other passenger had not got off. In fact, the quiet street on the edge of town stood silent, almost eerily so.

  Lita was ready, her gait steady, her shoulders relaxed, her hands loose at her sides. She was here. Wherever here was. The street headed off into the distance, turning from sparse shops into a thin scattering of trees. She was on the absolute edge of this town, so deserted there were few houses, even.

  Most of the shops were shuttered, their windows soaped over, their doors boarded up. The only sign of life was a closed tavern, and even that looked to be on its last legs. There was only one building that might be of interest. An abandoned church, half-hidden. It didn’t look too old, mostly just forgotten. A two-story wooden building with a tiny bell tower rising in the middle. A couple of fir trees stood at each corner, and overgrown bushes lined the path toward the door.

  What had drawn Lita’s attention to the place was the sturdy door with shiny looking locks. Why would an abandoned church need such security? She circled the building from a distance, scouring for a side entrance, but saw no alternate way inside. The back of the church was blocked by stacks of old wooden crates and flattened cardboard. It looked like they had been building, or perhaps had a lot of deliveries.

  The front glass had been soaped opaque, but the side windows hadn’t. Lita circled the white building again, then found an old pallet and dragged it closer so she could look within. It scraped against the gravel, the sound echoing across the open lots adjacent. Lita froze, her heart in her throat. She waited, breath locked in her chest as she watched the door. It didn’t move. She saw no shadows in the windows. No one came from any of the houses. Time dripped by, and slowly she relaxed. She gently dropped the pallet, leaving it abandoned.

  It was barely nine in the morning, and the only noise was of birdsong. She started to doubt her certainty. Why did she think an old bus ticket meant anything? Perhaps the guy had liked visiting that tavern? Perhaps he lived on this side of town?

  The building seemed quiet enough for Lita to try the doors. Locked. The lock was new, as she’d suspected, and solid. Nothing she could pick with her recently learned skills. Now she was beside it, she noticed another oddity – a symbol carved into the main door. She didn’t recognize it: a strange mass of vines or roots, or tendrils, perhaps? There were other shapes carved around it, words perhaps, in a language unknown to her. She might not have recognized it for sure, but this was the sign of the people she was hunting, she had no doubt about it.

  The symbol reinforced her belief that there was something wrong here, despite the lack of any other evidence. She resumed her investigation of the area.

  It was on her second circuit that she spotted a guy, the first person she’d seen since her arrival. There was something about the cultists she’d met, the true believers. They had this blankness in their eyes, a slackness to their mouths. This man was one of them. He was facing away from the church, and had probably arrived there while she was around the other side of the building.

  It was easy for Lita to incapacitate him. He was barely guarding anything, squinting into the sun-lit street smoking a cigarette. She picked up a piece of pallet, approached him as quietly as she could from behind, and whacked him hard on the side of the head.

  She’d been right. Somehow, this church was important to them. A local base? Perhaps. It was quiet enough that Lita felt emboldened to explore further.

  Quickly she searched through his pockets. The man didn’t have any keys on him, only his cigarettes and some matches. Lita looked at the matches and smiled, a better idea forming. She headed to the back of the church where all the wood had been stacked. It took some effort to get the fire burning. The wood was pretty dry, but the stacks of cardboard had soaked in the morning dew. Lita lit it in a few different places,
fanning the tiny flames until it roared into life. As soon as the flames had licked up the white siding and caught, Lita dropped the matches and headed away.

  She looped around the side of the church, when she heard the sharp snap of a branch. She froze. The man she’d knocked out couldn’t be awake yet, so this had to be someone else. Perhaps someone had been inside the building. Had she underestimated the cultists? Were they gathered already? She kept quiet, but didn’t hear any more. Her blood rushed through her ears, loud enough that she couldn’t trust her hearing. She stayed still, but heard nothing more.

  Lita was about to move forward when she noticed the shadows shift. No noise, nothing else, but the shadows beside the church changed. Someone was there. No, more than one person was standing just around the corner, waiting for her. Her instincts kicked in, her body reacting before her brain had fully registered the information. She bolted.

  By rights, Lita should have been caught the first time she fell, sprawling to her knees in the loose gravel. Except somehow she managed to clamber to her feet and start running again before her pursuers closed the gap. Slamming through lopsided fencing into the dim sunlight, she crossed the tavern’s empty parking lot as they trailed her. She dodged the few cars scattered along the road, where tall weeds had broken the surface into little chunks. Her pursuers were closing in, the crunch of their boots mere seconds behind. Panting hard, lungs straining, the copper flavor was so strong Lita could hardly taste the dust layering her mouth.

  “Got her!” one of the men shouted.

  “Do you require help?” a fainter voice called back.

  “For one girl?” Lita heard him snort. “Almost run her into the ground.”

  Lita drew closer to the dilapidated buildings sprawled like a labyrinth at the bottom of the hill. Every step forced her oxygen-deprived muscles to push that bit more. Then her left knee popped as she hit a rough patch, and she fell forward on all fours. Her palms stung from the cement chips scattered throughout the rubble. Hot tears and fear choked her throat. She couldn’t fail now.

  She struggled to pull herself upright using some rusty spikes that dug metal into her grazed hands. Her bloodied knee stuck to her dress as she stood up, and the joint made a grating sound. She had been abusing her body for days now, and she had little gas left in the tank.

  The men’s footsteps sounded closer, two men moving with seemingly boundless energy. Dodging around the rubble to put distance between them, Lita hobbled down the hill, her legs aching. Her vision blurred, her heart pounded, but adrenaline numbed everything to a fine point. She bound her terror, holding it at bay with her will to live. She darted into a maze of row homes, listening as her pursuers missed the turn. She grinned wryly; it had turned out exactly how she’d hoped. Their greater mass and momentum clearly made them less agile than her, even with her injured knee.

  Lita navigated the network of buildings carefully, conscious her pursuers knew the terrain much better than she did. She stuck to the shadows, listening out for the men following her. She wandered the twisting roads, unsure that she’d lost them, but soon the only sounds were of a lonely bird. Peering around a doorway, Lita spotted an exit – a narrow alleyway that looked like it led far from the main street. She should be able to disappear into it. Heading into the weak sunlight, she allowed her stride to lengthen. Seconds later, there was a shout, then the sound of shoes thudding after her resumed.

  Lita veered toward the alleyway. Another left, then only about six hundred yards along before–

  “No, no, no!” A sturdy wire fence blocked the route she’d planned, piles of old wooden boxes and stacks of bricks making passage impossible.

  With one hand pressed against the stitch forming on her right side, she peered at the alleyway, her chest heaving. There was no quick way out – she was cornered. Lita pushed down the panic fluttering in her stomach and reassessed the area, her brain humming along on overload.

  Stepping behind one of the mounds of bricks, she faced the two men as they approached the alleyway entrance. Her lungs screamed at her, causing her to pant like a bulldog in the summer sun. Her hand drifted slowly down, so as to not attract attention, but encountered an empty space.

  She glanced down in horror. She wasn’t wearing her holster. In her panic she’d forgotten that she’d decided not to carry her gun because she was travelling on the bus. However, strapping a .41 to herself would not have been inconspicuous the way she had wanted to be. For the first time that day, cold fingers of fear slid down her spine. She shivered, despite the sunshine.

  The men had noticed her hesitation, moving to either side of her. The alley wasn’t wide, but she couldn’t keep both of them in view at the same time. She tried to turn her attention from one to the other, but her aching body moved slowly, so slowly that she didn’t notice the fist from behind until it connected with her temple. Her teeth snapped on her tongue. Blood spattered her attacker’s face.

  Her vision flashed white, then Lita found herself on one knee, her head ringing. The shorter of the two men kicked her stomach and flipped her flat on her back. She tried to punch, but the other man grabbed her hands.

  Her head was ringing so badly she barely cared as they hauled her to her feet and dragged her back toward the church. The smell of smoke helped pull her back to her senses as they drew closer. And now there was a crowd milling around outside. A crowd of people she’d not seen the whole time she’d been there, but who were now trying to put the fire out themselves. But the church was taking significant damage. It was clear the people hadn’t wanted help from the fire department, instead trying to quell the flames alone.

  Lita blinked hard, trying to clear the tears from her eyes. No, she realized, her tears had dried, this was her vision doubling. Twenty, no, maybe more, people were scattered around the building. Had they been inside the church? Were they all cultists?

  She was being dragged toward an old shed, maybe a garage, a few feet away from the burning church which she’d not taken much note of during her snooping. The air was thick with smoke, sparks spinning in the air. She didn’t get a chance to stare as she was taken off into a dark corner away from the fire. The place was mostly empty, a few tools on the wall, a bolted door at the far end.

  The men tied her to a chair, a solid wooden one, using ropes with zero give. She tried to flex her arms as they tied her, but one of them punched her in the stomach again. Winded, she couldn’t fight back.

  “Tell him we have her.”

  The shorter of the men, the one fond of winding her, scurried away. Lita tried to swallow and still her head to stave off the nausea, dizziness, and double vision, but her head throbbed and her ears rang. She blinked again, struggling to stay awake despite the darkness trying to take her vision. Her thoughts sped, memories, pain, and panic whirling through her brain in a way that only made the nausea worse. She realized distantly she was injured. Concussion, maybe.

  Not that knowing about the injury helped. She was struggling to focus while tied tightly to a chair. There were twenty or so people nearby and someone – presumably a leader of some sort – was coming to deal with her. It was now, unhelpfully, that cold determination gave way to grief and pain. She started to shake, tears spilling from her eyes unbidden. Her vision blurred worse, and pain lanced her throat as she tried to swallow. She needed to be strong now more than ever, but all she wanted was relief.

  Her shorter attacker returned with another man. The newcomer was taller, with broader shoulders and pale skin, and piercing dark eyes. Thick dark hair flowed loose over his shoulder, peppered with gray, as was his small beard. He had a few creases on his face – on anyone else Lita would call them smile lines – and as he walked closer, he did break out into a friendly smile which widened like a shark. Perhaps being tied to a chair before meeting him hadn’t helped, but the man radiated an energy that made Lita’s stomach turn. He reminded her of a car salesman trying to upsell her a clunker for
the cost of a Cadillac.

  “Look who we have here! I’ve heard you’ve been looking for me.”

  Lita didn’t respond, trying desperately to swallow and keep her face blank.

  “Lita, right? The poor lady who lost her husband and then went crazy. Yeah, the whole town knows about you.” His scent was strange, none of the woodsy outdoor smells of the other men, but a citrus cologne that smelled expensive.

  “And I have no idea who you are.” Her voice wavered, despite herself.

  The man didn’t seem offended, placing his hands on his hips and laughing loudly. “Little lady like you got no business knowing about me. But sure, I can tell you. It’ll make no difference anyway.”

  Though desperation had taken her only moments before, with every word that came out of his mouth it started to ease away, drowned out by anger that made her blood boil. Did he think she’d found him by luck? That it hadn’t taken her hours of work and investigation to trace their corrupt network?

  “I’m Sean Bateman. That’d be Mister Bateman to you. Why are you harassing us? We’re simple church folk who have done no harm to you.”

  Her dizziness was lifting slightly, her eyes able to focus more as the man paced back and forth in front of her. Behind him, the shorter attacker pulled out a knife, flipping it between his hands. Clearly a threat – as if she’d have a chance to run anywhere while tied like this.

  “You killed my husband. Whatever lies you fed the police, I know it was you.”

  His smile tilted then, from friendliness into more of a sneer.

  “The police know what’s good for them. They work with us, so nothing gets past me.”

  Lita audibly scoffed, making her derision clear. His delusions were just that, and she wanted him to know that, despite their relative positions, she wasn’t scared.