But he had no chance to ask. Power surged out of him. Getting rids of ghosts constituted no problem for him, barely a blip on his power radar. A demon of this kind was an entirely different matter.
Braxton could feel the monster fighting back. The Incubus didn’t want to go. The good news was that he could kick ass and take names when it came to beating the shit out of these things. With a hard push of energy through his fingertips, he threw the demon out of their dimension. A loud pop sounded in the room, telling him he’d completed his task.
The room spun and Braxton closed his eyes. That had taken a ton of power, more than he’d prepped for. His stomach turned. Heather rushed to him, grabbing his arm.
“Jim. Are you okay?”
A door opened and closed. Braxton turned around, trying not to fall over. A figure walked into the room, gun raised and pointed at his head. The weapon was a Browning Automatic. He tried to pull his gaze from the gun to the person wielding it.
“How did you do that? Who are you? I heard you were a demon raiser. Why and how did you make that happen?”
The room faded to gray. “Master Foy?” It couldn’t be. Braxton did what he hadn’t done in years…he passed out.
Chapter Seven
“Oh God.” Heather darted to where Jim had just fallen to the floor. He’d done this incredible thing. The demon had vanished. And then the gun-wielding man had shown up and now Jim was on the floor.
Nothing good could come of any of this. “Jim.” She shook his arm. No way would she be able to lift him or even drag him to get him out of there.
The man with the gun stepped forward. He stared down at Jim with one eyebrow raised. “He exerted a lot of power on that demon. Does he do that all the time?”
Heather cleared her throat. Even though he still held the weapon, she didn’t feel quite the same amount of hostility coming off him at that moment as there had been seconds earlier. Maybe it had something to do with the way the lines on his forehead had smoothed over.
He was tall, with brown hair that had been cut very close to his scalp. Dark eyebrows sat above severe brown, almost black eyes, and a cleft in his chin added to the impression of seriousness. Whoever this person was, he meant business.
“I don’t know. I’m relatively new to this.” She waited for a second to see if she should risk saying anything else. “Who are you?”
Jim chose that second to dart upward. He stumbled getting to his feet and sweat dripped from his brow. He looked left and right before taking two steps back and grabbing her hand to pull her behind him.
From the way he was panting, it sounded as if he had just run a marathon.
“Master Foy, why do you have a gun pointed at us?”
Heather looked between them. This was Master Foy? The man who had put Jim on the plane with her and who had told him how to get her out of the private institution?
Why would Jim’s teacher be threatening them right now?
“What did you call me?”
Jim shook his head. “Master Foy. It’s what I’ve called you for most of my life. What are you doing here? How did you get sent back in time? What’s going on?”
“I think you’re confused.” Foy stuck the gun in the back of his pants and covered it up with his shirt. “We’ve never met before. I just heard about you this morning when Pendleton told me he’d brought another demon raiser here.”
“What?”
The door to the basement slammed open and Pendleton came down the stairs two at a time. “Ah. I see you couldn’t wait to see the main event for tonight. I trust you liked the side effects of having an Incubus in…”
His voice trailed off and Heather watched his face as he realized the demon was gone. Shock registered in his eyes—they practically bulged out of his head. Then anger thinned out his lips.
“What happened to the demon?”
Jim shrugged. “What demon?”
Pendleton pointed to the table. “The Incubus that was strapped down right there.”
“I never saw an Incubus,” Jim lied smoothly. She knew he must have to do that a lot. He couldn’t exactly wander around the streets of San Francisco announcing that he fought the paranormal for a living.
She pursed her lips together and willed herself not to tremble. Heather had thought she hated ghosts, but she’d take the intrusive creatures any day of the week over the sheer tension radiating through the basement at that second. What would Pendleton do to them if he discovered they were lying? Would Foy expose them?
“I never saw one either.” Foy sighed loudly. “And I have to say I’m disappointed. You promised me a show here, Pendleton. I have better things to do than hang out in large houses where nothing very interesting is happening.”
Pendleton threw his hands in the air. “I’m going to find out what happened to my demon.”
Foy nodded. “Please do, and when you do let the rest of us know, won’t you?”
“Well.” Pendleton’s face turned a bright shade of red. Maybe there was no murder to be accounted for. Maybe he’d simply had a stroke. Would the ghost version of the living man take that explanation? Could he accept the idea that he’d died of natural causes? “No matter.”
She looked between them all, waiting for the other shoe to drop.
“Tonight, when we raise a first-level demon, we can find out what happened to his minion.”
Heather hissed in her breath then tried to smile through it to cover the mistake. Apparently Pendleton didn’t just drop shoes, he smashed things with them.
“You look stressed, my dear.” Pendleton offered her his arm. “Should we go upstairs to dinner?”
“Good idea.” Jim nodded and she whirled to look at him. Good idea? “Why don’t you go upstairs to dinner and I’ll be up in just a second? I want to have a look around down here, see if I can figure out what happened to Pendleton’s demon.”
“I’ll help you.”
She swallowed. Jim wanted to talk to Foy. That she could understand. But did he have to leave her with Pendleton to do it?
“Okay.”
Heather slipped her arm into Pendleton’s and let him lead her up the stairs. Her pulse pounded in her ears.
Being alone with a man who had just announced that planned to raise something called a first-level demon was like living something out of a horror movie. At that moment she wished she had more of a background in this subject—there were levels of demons? She shuddered.
“What is your ability? I believe you to have one because I cannot believe a demon raiser would bring a normal woman to this house.”
“I can see ghosts.” She wished she had a glass of water. Her mouth had gone completely dry.
“Oh. What a remarkable ability. See them, see them? Not just feel them or sense them but actually see them?”
“Yes.”
Pendleton stopped moving and rounded to stare at her. “That’s fascinating to me.”
“Oh really? It’s not that interesting.” She moved forward, pulling herself out of his hold. He had already been creepy before he’d grabbed her—afterward he’d suddenly become more than she could deal with. Her skin crawled and she wanted to flee the room.
Where was the basement? She turned around but the whole house seemed as if it had shifted on its axis. The doors weren’t rectangles, they were oval, and the light had become orange or red or…
She blinked, gripping her head. “Oh. I’m dizzy.”
Had she gone into withdrawal? Was her body freaking out because she hadn’t had her drugs?
“Yes.” Pendleton patted her on the arm. “Come with me. I think there is something we can do about that.”
“What?” His words sounded slurred. Or maybe it was her brain slowing down.
“I said we need to do something about what’s happening to you. I can’t have you possessed if you’re going to be this much of a weakling about it.”
“Possessed?” She hated sounding like an owl but his words didn’t make any sense.
“Never mind, girl. You’re not going to follow what I say and that might actually be a good thing. I’ve never had a lot of patience for those with lesser IQs than mine.”
“You know that most people brag about things they don’t actually have? Like a man with the size of his penis.”
Pendleton turned beet red and coughed into his hand. “Language. I don’t know how they speak where you’re from but I won’t have that kind of talk from a woman in this house.”
“Yeah.” She laughed. If only he knew where she came from. He’d freak out. Someone was going to murder him very shortly.
“Follow me. I’m going to get food into you before you throw up on the carpet.” “Because that would be a national tragedy. Who decorated this monstrosity? It certainly didn’t hold up well, I can tell you.”
“You’re not making any sense.” Pendleton pulled her along with him, the walls changing shape. A monkey darted forward, making her shriek. Or maybe it didn’t. What was happening? Why was she losing track of reality?
“Did you do something to me?”
Pendleton groaned. “I already told you I did. Haven’t you been paying attention? I need someone to stick the demon in. You’re the perfect person and you have to be prepared for the onslaught. Think of it as tenderizing the turkey before Thanksgiving.
It’s an honor, really.”
Had he compared her to poultry? She should be terrified. She should be… Oh look. Stars. There were stars everywhere. How lovely.
* * * * *
“You can stop playing around now. How did you get here?” Braxton had never been so relieved in his life to see anyone as he was to see Foy. He had no idea why his teacher wielded a gun but they’d get to that in a second.
Braxton shook and sweat dripped down his face. That Incubus had been rough, harder than he’d handled in years. He was going to have to take on more challenging cases so he didn’t get this out of practice again.
Assuming he ever got back to his own time and could do such a thing.
“You think I’m playing? I have no idea who you are and I don’t like that you know who I am. Other than to Pendleton, my name should be unrecognizable.”
Braxton’s head pounded. Could this day get any stranger? “You’re Jack Foy. Correct?”
“Only my friends call me Jack and I don’t have too many of those.” Foy pulled out his gun and once again raised it, pointing the weapon at Braxton’s head. That was getting old and it was strange to see his mentor wielding a weapon. They’d stayed away from firearms in their training with him.
Braxton raised his hands. “Are you going to shoot an unarmed man? Doesn’t seem very Zen of you.”
“I’m not sure what you just said.”
“Have you hit your head?” Or maybe the time travel had done something to him to make him this strange. All Braxton knew for certain was that he couldn’t continue until he had the Foy he needed by his side, not this strange person who looked and sounded like his mentor but acted nothing like the man he knew.
“How do you think we know each other?” Foy narrowed his eyes.
“I met you when I was a teenager. You came and got me out of an orphanage. You did this for five other guys around the same age. How and why you found us has always been questionable but you did. We lived in your house. You raised us, fed us, educated us and trained us to be warriors against the evil terrorizing the world.”
He hadn’t uttered those words quite that way ever before. There had never been a need. Foy knew what he had done for Braxton and the others. Why bother discussing it with him? Particularly because their master had always been so resistant to discussing the details of those times.
“Why the fuck would I do that?” Foy lowered his gun. “I’m not some kind of charity organization. I don’t even like kids. I can promise you I don’t remember doing that. Yesterday I spent the day drunk and debauched in a bar about one hour south of here. I don’t remember the details too well but the call girls I entertained could probably vouch for me. I’ve never met you and I certainly didn’t bring you up.”
“I don’t know how you could have enjoyed the ladies because I know that yesterday, which would be almost sixty years from now, you were at home in Chicago doing whatever it is you do when you spend the whole day meditating.”
In cartoons, when a character needs to remember something they’ve forgotten, someone hits them over the head. Braxton wanted to pull out his own hair and the idea of slamming Foy’s head into the nearest hard object appealed to him immensely.
Foy fell silent, his face becoming the unreadable mask Braxton knew quite well. He’d never been able to tell Foy’s thoughts when the Master didn’t want him to know them. It had frustrated him for years.
“That’s impossible. You’re claiming you came from the future?”
Braxton rubbed his temples. What he needed was a nap. The Incubus had really done him in. First he would have to make it through dinner with Pendleton, collect Heather and brainstorm with her about what to do next.
“There is no impossible. There are only things we haven’t seen or experienced yet.
In this world, anything can happen.”
Foy jerked as if Braxton had struck him. “Where did you learn that?”
“You repeated it all the time when you trained us. Over and over again.” Braxton had never quoted Foy to Foy before.
“Tell me something. In this time when I trained you, sixty years from now, do I look exactly as I do now?”
“Exactly the same. That’s how I know you’ve come from the future, even though you seem not to know that, because you are exactly as I last saw you several months ago. You’re not younger, which you would have to be if you were from this time. Hell, you’d be a baby or not even born.”
Was he finally getting through to him? He wiped at his brow. Sweat dampened his hand and he wondered if he was running a fever. Sometimes that happened when he exerted his abilities too strongly. Not that he had any time to fall apart. It was going to have to wait.
“That’s not what I meant. Let me be more specific. In your time, sixty years from now, did you ever see me age? Ever?”
“What?” Why would he ask such a ridiculous question? Braxton opened his mouth to challenge him before closing it fast. Had he ever seen Foy age? When he’d been a teenager he hadn’t been that concerned about how Foy appeared. He’d looked old even though he probably hadn’t been. To him, back then, everyone over twenty had appeared ancient. But recently? How much had Foy changed? Was he even gray? Did anyone know how old their mentor was?
“Answer me. I can see the thought in your head. It’s right there between your eyebrows.”
“I think you’ve always looked exactly the same. And I don’t know how that can be possible.” His stomach turned and he wondered why he couldn’t just have a redo for the whole day. Every part except those with Heather…
“Shit.” Foy sank to the floor, ending up on his knees. “At least sixty more years.” “I think you’d better explain.”
His Master’s eyes flared as he stared at him. “Why? I’ve apparently never bothered to explain, even after I Shadow Promised you, which is insane.”
“Jack.” Braxton had never referred to his Master by his first name in all their acquaintance but this seemed like a good moment to be on equal terms.
“I swore I never would. Things must get really bad out there if I went and found others.” Foy stood up. “Why wouldn’t I have told you?”
“I’m not following any of this.”
Actually he kind of was. But if his world was about to be torn asunder again he wanted clarity not guesses. Foy could start from the beginning and move from there.
“I’m not…” Foy’s voice trailed off. “I can see why I never told you about this. It’s hard to say. I don’t know that I ever have.”
“I could beat it out of you.” At that moment he wanted to. Badly.
“Didn’t I teach you every move you know?”
“I’m gu
essing at this moment you wouldn’t be much of a match.” He nodded toward the gun still in Foy’s hand. He might not be pointing it but the weapon still presented a big threat. “In the future, you’d never require that.”
“I sound like a real stand-up guy.”
Braxton didn’t answer. Anxiety tightened a knot in the base of his spine. At that moment he wasn’t sure he knew Foy at all.
A few moments of silence passed and Braxton waited. Foy fidgeted, another sign that he wasn’t the teacher Braxton had learned from. In all his days with him, he’d never seen the man make a movement that hadn’t been planned or thought out.
Finally the other man spoke. “I guess you could say that while I am currently human, I wasn’t always.”
The air left Braxton’s lungs. When he could speak, he asked the next logical question. “Then what were you?”
His mind pictured the Incubus that had lain on the table. He couldn’t be a demon. Could he?
“I was a really, really bad angel. I lost my wings and my only chance at redemption is to rid the world of enough evil that we can prevent the coming of the apocalypse. Hold back the shadows, if you will. And I can blood oath others who have gifts if needs be. Up until now, in one hundred years of this, I never have. But apparently you are living proof that in the future I’m going to change my mind.”
“Tell me this is some kind of joke.”
Foy shook his head. “Wish it was. I’d kind of hoped after I got through with this nightmare house that I’d have done enough to get reinstated to the bigger fight. Wings and all.”
“I….” Braxton couldn’t finish whatever sentence he might have said. He didn’t even know what remark he wanted to make. There was nothing to say. Too much to process and all of it too nonsensical to actually be real. Except apparently it was.
“Are we friends?” Foy asked him. “I mean, we must be, right? All six of us. Or I wouldn’t have done it. I wouldn’t bind us all together if we weren’t close.”