CHAPTER 20
RIGHT OF WAY
Chase watched as Brittany shooed Dylan off to the side with a wave of her hand, the woman’s hold on the .9mm steady. If the effort didn’t strain his injury, he would’ve leapt out of bed and tried to wrestle the gun from her grip. With his body still on the brink of physical damnation, he wasn’t sure he could pry the weapon from her fingers.
“Get out of bed, Chase. We’ve got to stay on schedule. Peddle’s pill may have delayed your transformation by a day or two, but we can make up for lost time,” Brittany said, still keeping the gun’s barrel directed toward Dylan. “When you’ve got the rest of your life to spend as a demon, you’ll learn we can be a most patient species.”
“Species?” Dylan parroted her word. “Don’t tell me, Brittany. You’re one of those creatures?”
Brittany nodded. Then, with a tug on her hair, she removed it altogether, showing off her bony-horned scalp.
“Naturally born, no less. Not that I imagine that makes you feel better,” she said.
Chase winced as he twisted his arm the wrong way while balancing to stand. He crept toward Brittany, slowing his stride as much as he could without further endangering Dylan’s life.
“Why isn’t your skin red like the others?” he muttered to her as she snatched him by his good arm.
Brittany laughed. “We have a pill for almost every occasion. Just as we can prevent a human’s transformation to demon, we can also masquerade our skin tone to prevent anyone from noticing. Although to be fair, we don’t always need to do that because it often looks like we have terrible sunburns. Now enough of this! Get into the living room. You first, Dylan.”
Chase tried to mouth a signal to his brother, but a rise in the demon voices prevented him from producing anything Dylan might’ve understood. He suddenly found himself at the receiving end of Brittany’s left hook. The force of impact made his jaw crack and loosened a couple of his teeth, the taste of blood alive on his tongue.
“You’re with us now, Chase. Do try to remember that,” she said.
She seized him by the wrist of his good arm and jerked him toward the door.
Chase rubbed his chin with his free hand as the three of them stepped into the living room. There, he found another horror he couldn’t believe. Peddle stood guard by Simon, a revolver to the boy’s head.
No wonder neither one of them responded to the commotion in the bedroom, thought Chase. Plus, it also proved beyond a doubt that Peddle was in league with the demons.
“Figures,” Chase uttered under his breath.
“I had no choice. She’s the one calling the shots right now,” Peddle said. Unlike Brittany, there was no steadiness to his grip, as indicated by the way his weapon trembled in his hand.
“Simon!” Chase’s gut wrenched with the guilt of letting this happen. Watching the tears streak down the boy’s face made Chase want to break free from Brittany’s clutches and sucker-punch both her and Peddle. But if he tried anything right at that moment, either Brittany or Peddle would’ve gotten a bullet into Dylan, Simon, or Chase himself.
Simon glanced up at Chase without a flicker of hope in his watery eyes.
“I’m sorry, sir. I was asleep in my chair when Mr. Peddle woke me up and put the gun to my head,” the boy said.
“Peddle, control your hostage,” Brittany commanded with a growl. “Or else I’ll blast both of you without a second thought. And as for you, sugar daddy, over there!”
She booted Dylan in the back of his leg, shoving him face first into the living room sofa.
At this, Chase spun toward her.
“I’ve paid my dues already,” he said. “I went to jail for leaving that woman to die.”
“You think that matters to me?” Brittany flashed her gun at Chase briefly, leaving Dylan out of the line of fire. “You may have paid for your crimes through the legal system, but there’s still a debt to be repaid. Tell me something, Chase Weaverson. Have you spent much time in church?”
Her question drew upon the essence of Chase’s damnation. It didn’t matter how many times Chase had tried to clear his conscience. The memory of seeing the woman flip through the air, crash against his windshield, roll off his truck, and come to rest along the side of the road haunted him to this day.
“I may have gone once or twice,” he admitted.
“I’m assuming that was before you introduced that woman to your front fender,” Brittany said with a smirk.
“What happened that day was an unfortunate accident,” said Dylan. “It’s not like he meant to go out of his way to kill that woman.”
“Is that so?” Brittany spun back toward him, readjusting her aim with the .9mm again. “Once a killer, always a killer. You can call it an accident all you want. What matters is that Chase has snuffed out a life, and for that, the demons of Helensview praise him. Now no more talk! He must join us now.”
“He’s not a monster!” Simon said, clenching his jaw.
Brittany shot Peddle a warning glare. Then she approached Simon, leaned down toward him, and cast a sinister sneer his way.
“How easily you forget that Mr. Weaverson is the one who shot and killed your mother,” she said with seething rage in her tone.
Chase started toward Simon, but Brittany whipped about behind him at lightning speed. A sudden jab in the center of Chase’s back indicated that Brittany wasn’t above using the .9mm on him as well as the others. He refrained from rushing up to comfort the boy. Somehow, he’d find a way to end this all.
“You can’t help any of them. As you’ve probably guessed, Peddle has been working for us for some time. To keep him safe from the effects of the gas fumes, we did supply him with anti-transformation pills. In exchange, we expect him to fulfill his every obligation to the end.”
“This is insane. Why even bother to transform people at all?” Dylan asked.
“Because we can,” said Brittany. “I admit that some members of your species are almost worth preserving as is. You in particular, Dylan, have shown great agility despite your slightly bulky frame.”
Chase mouthed the word “agility” at Dylan out of utter confusion. Something in the back of his mind told him he didn’t want to know what Brittany had meant by that. For once, the thought was his own and not demonic buzzing.
His pause allowed for Brittany’s heel to meet his jaw. After crashing against the ground, Chase swallowed a tooth and some blood. Ignoring the throbbing in his shoulder, he scrambled to his feet before Brittany could strike again.
“Do you take me for a fool? Stop mouthing things to your brother. He can’t help you anymore than you can help him. You belong to us, Chase. It’s over.”
“Do you really think you’ll gain anything by turning me into a demon?”
Brittany stepped around him again, blocking his view of Dylan.
“It’s not like you were doing anything useful with your life.”
“I was about to take on the family farm again.”
The lines on her face conveyed an expression of amused bafflement. The glee lighting up her face drove Chase to fight that much harder for his soul. He couldn’t imagine such sick joy defiling his face.
“Your family would entrust their greatest asset to a killer?”
“They don’t know what I did. I never got around to telling them.”
Brittany lowered her gun so that it pointed to the floor.
“So you’re a liar as well as a killer. And you wonder why we’ve chosen to bring you into our fold?” she asked him.
“My brother was at the gas station the night the gas started to make demons out of everybody. Why didn’t the fumes affect him as well?”
Brittany shrugged. “I’m guessing he has nothing to hide from in his past. No major demons to wrestle with compared to his big brother.”
“And the people of Helensview; did they have something to hide from?”
“I’m surprised you haven’t figured that part out yet,” said Peddle, his gun still close by Simon’s
ear.
Brittany chortled at this. “Don’t give him too much credit, Peddle. He’s clearly not seeing the bigger picture in all of this.”
“What bigger picture?” Dylan asked.
“We didn’t exactly select Helensview for its prime location,” said Peddle. “There’s a reason why the demons targeted Helensview. It’s a town out in the middle of nowhere that the world wouldn’t miss at all. Look at how easily the gas stations in town lost business when I moved in. This place wouldn’t stand a chance of surviving if not for my gas station.”
“Your gas station, Peddle?” asked Brittany. A second later, she spun around and faced him, aiming the .9mm his way, her trigger finger inching toward action.
“I didn’t mean…” he stammered, yanking at his necktie again.
“Hush. I’ll give the Weaversons this. Your arrogance bleeds into everything you do, despite the fact that you can’t do much of anything right at all. And as much fun as it’s been having you help transform the town into a breeding ground for my kind, we find ourselves tiring of your continual bungling. You’ve outlived your usefulness, Peddle.”
In the last split second before her finger pulled back on the trigger, Peddle fired at Brittany before she showed him the courtesy first. The metal pierced the flesh right between her eyes, his perfect shot earning him a sliver of redemption in that instant.
Brittany unleashed a final scream into the air before gurgling on her own blood. The woman’s eyes rolled backward in her head. Her body swayed back and forth for a moment as the hostile life force it contained departed from its anorexic casing. She crashed to the floor and moved no more.
Chase looked at Dylan. The shock of Dylan’s Helensview honey being a now-dead demon registered clearly in the younger Weaverson’s vacant stare. Once Dylan blinked and snapped back to attention, Chase joined him to check on Simon.
Without saying anything, Simon shook his head before burying his face in his hands. Soft whimpers escaped from him, the events of the last few days clearly taking their toll on him.
“What about you, Bro?” Dylan asked.
“I’ll be fine.” Chase scowled, averting his attention elsewhere. “So, Peddle, is there anything we still don’t know?”