HELLS GRACE

Part 3

While Hodge and his wife spent time driving the two-hour commute to Portland (according to their GPS), I ordered Oracle to notify me once they arrived in the city. As for the rest of my afternoon, the demon and I spent it binging through the most boring reality TV ever.

The main cast, you ask? The cultists.

For being murderous, demonic-worshipping suburbanites, they lived the dullest and most monotonous life and an equally humdrum daily routine. I was never a fan of reality television, so this was tedious for me, but the demon had a blast. After all, her kind spent probably eons watching mortals for fun. And with Oracle around, I would be the prime showrunner on the Truman Show of my own making for eternity, always people-watching and moving the pieces to see what made them tick. In this case, making them tick was scaring them to death.

But that was not my goal for the entire afternoon. This was homework. I needed to learn who these people were before they arrived in my dungeon.

Their pet peeves.

Fears.

Desires.

Hopes.

Who they hate.

Their true personality behind closed doors (aside from being a member of a murderous cult).

Maybe I would find something I could use against them. And there were plenty. You’d be surprised how many people let their guard down when they simply locked the door.

I observed Jenna Batten first.

She was the most anxious out of the others. She hardly spoke up at the site of my murder, afraid that all the bloodshed did not grant her the one she most desired. A wealthy couple from San Francisco planned to move into Point Hope, buying up property in the southern ranches with eleven acres of land. Properties that would tear a wide hole through a blue collar’s bank account.

If I hadn’t known better, I would have thought she was a lovely woman. Always with a smile on her face, exerting that real estate charm, she plastered like a glowing billboard through muscle memory to the strangers as she walked out of the diner and into her car. When she happened to pass one grumpy old lady who didn’t return her smile and polite greeting, Jenna climbed into her, and all that facade melted away once the lock clicked shut.

“Fucking bitch,” she whispered under her breath as she stared daggers at the woman entering the diner.

She opened her glove box and took out her makeup pouch, retouching some of her lip gloss, and dabbed a tiny blot of moisturizer on her face where it had turned dry and flaky.

“Oracle, look through her schedule,” I ordered.

Oracle pulled up the calendar from her phone, and it looked like she had two more showings for houses this afternoon in Little Spruce, a quiet neighborhood for families west of Point Hope near two elementary schools. Interestingly, she canceled all her Green Hill showings while the police scoured the community for the culprit of the massacre yesterday. The entire town was on edge, but she had hoped it would not scare away her potential buyers. She needed to make a quick buck after Hodge fucked up the ritual.

I exited the calendar app, and the photo on her screen shocked me.

There she was, wearing a yellow sundress, smiling on the beach with a six-year-old boy wrapped around her arms. She had more photos like that when I perused through her albums. The earliest was when she was wearing a hospital gown, cradling the tiniest baby I had ever seen. Of course, she put on makeup for the photo and posted it on Instagram with the caption: Now I finally found you with many heart emojis.

Jenna Batten was a mother.

I killed Ashley Yates, and she was a mother. It hadn’t occurred to me what their children must feel for losing their parents in a single day. I shuddered to imagine them stumbling onto their corpses after they went home from school. I’ve also killed others in Green Hill—people with families who would mourn them after the carnage. Leo Grady had people waiting for him back in Portland. So did Eddie Mands. I killed two brothers who wished to be far away from here.

A lot of people have died because of me. A lot of people had been killed because of my hunger.

And I’m afraid they wouldn’t be the last.

Her phone ringing interrupted my thoughts, and I urged Oracle to watch her through her phone’s front camera. She propped up her cell phone on a dashboard holder and accepted the FaceTime request from someone named Asshole Ex.

Jenna took a deep breath as the screen flashed to show a red-haired man with a thick goatee sitting in the car as well.

“What is it, Zack?” Jenna stifled to raise her voice. “I’m busy.”

“When are you gonna pick Danny up?” Zack asked. He wasn’t looking at the phone, and it looked like he was driving.

Oh, this is gonna be good. “Oracle, record this conversation between them.”

> RECORDING.

Jenna winced. “Pick him up? What do you mean?”

“Yeah. I thought you were going to pick him up today.”

“No, you have him until Monday, remember? You have the entire weekend with him. Aren’t you supposed to take him to the beach?”

“Shit. Um, We took him to the movies instead. There’s that new robot movie he liked. You know we got a good arcade here, too, near the theater.”

“Seriously, Zack? The movies? He looked forward to going to the beach with you for the past week.”

“Jenna, I don’t have the time—”

“—then make some, you goop. You’re his father.”

“Hey, like I don’t know that? Oh shit! Damn, freaking slow-ass Toyota.” A loud horn blasts from the other line. “Watch the road, motherfucker!”

“Is Daniel with you? I don’t want him hearing that kind of language.”

“Nah, I’m driving from the drugstore. Are you picking him up or not?”

“I told you I can’t. We’ve talked about this. What about the beach?”

“Well, I can’t. I took extra shifts.”

“Why would you do that?”

“Because I didn’t know Danny’s gonna be with me this weekend, and I kind of forgot.”

“God damn it, Zack—”

“Look, Jen, I don’t want to argue about this.”

But Jenna wouldn’t listen. “You wanted weekends. I gave you weekends. You wanted Monday. I gave you Monday. Daniel is there to be with you, so pay some fucking attention to your son than that whore around your limped dick—”

“Are you shitting me right now? We’re really gonna argue about this?”

Jenna bit her bottom lip. “Well, this wouldn’t have happened if you only fucking listen, Zack!”

“Look, I’m sorry, okay? I double booked.”

“Double booked, my ass. I saw her fucking Instagram page. You’re taking him to a Broadway show in Portland. I even bragged about the mezzanine tickets. Bitch.” Jenna huffed. “You really know how to find a woman.”

Zack was silent for a moment. “If you can’t pick up Daniel, I’ll drive him to your house. It’s not a long drive. Only twenty minutes.”

“Well, I have work.”

“I can drop him off tonight, then. You still have that showing on Little Spruce?”

“You do that,” Jenna said sarcastically, shaking her head. “Apparently, that’s what you’re good for now. Disappointing your son.”

Zack, understandably, looked pissed on the screen. He wanted to lash out. I could tell from his face, but he quickly reined that anger in and finally looked at the camera as he stopped at the intersection. “Next time, Jen, I would appreciate it if you don’t speak to Eliza that way. She’s a good woman.” Then, he ended the call.

Jenna Batten took another deep sigh and rested her forehead on the wheel. She stayed like that for a moment longer, focusing on her breathing. “What the fuck am I doing with my life?” She whispered under her breath.

“End recording. Oracle play Come Out and Play on her car radio. Turn up the base. Make it loud. Very loud.”

The drums and the guitar riff reverberated off her car’s speakers within a split second, and Jenna screamed and jumped, scrambling to turn off the volume by turning the dial down. That didn’t work. She tried muting it. That didn’t work either. She grabbed phone. Perhaps her Bluetooth kicked in and played something on Spotify, hoping to pause it there. She was staring to get odd looks from the people passing by the sidewalk.

“Shut up, shut up, shut up!” Jenna groaned. She slammed her palm on the dashboard, hoping that beating it up would shut off the speakers. That didn’t do shit. “Why won’t you turn off?!”

“Cut off the music,” I said.

The music quickly snuffed out, and the car’s interior returned to silence. I could feel Jenna’s heart hammering against her ribcage, her adrenaline coursing through her veins. I smiled after I spooked her, and the demon beside me looked entertained.

“A cliche,” the demon said, “but I like it. That’s why it’s a cliche. It always works.”

“It looks like Jenna got divorced three years ago. That’s before she met Hodge and the others.”

“Before she was a successful real estate agent, you mean? She used to be a stay-at-home mom. Nothing wrong with that. But Zack is known to be a little…enthusiastic…when under the bottle.”

I looked over Zack’s Facebook profile, and his new post bragged about how he was one year sober now, posing with a beautiful black-haired woman who was definitely not Jenna Batten. Must be Eliza. “At least he’s sober now,” I said. “And the new woman looked nice. Motherly.”

Jenna slowly drove out of the diner’s parking lot, still looking skittish after the stunt I pulled.

“Now that you learned she is a mother, lord dungeon, will you still lure Jenna to the dungeon?”

The answer came to me surprisingly fast, yearning for blood.

----------------------------------------

After learning what I could from Jenna, I moved to Kirk next.

I was surprised to see where Mr. Gamble went after the meeting at the diner. He went to a flower shop down the road, purchased a bouquet of pink tulips, and wrote something on a card I couldn’t see from my vantage point from his phone and the CCTV camera inside the shop. He dropped the card into the bouquet and drove a few miles down the road to the hospital.

He opened his glove compartment and took out a bottle of cologne, dabbing a couple around his neck before he climbed out of the car with the flowers and walked into the hospital’s lobby. He walked past the reception, knowing exactly where to go as he took the elevator and hit the third-floor button. He got out of the elevator and immediately turned left.

Thankfully, there were a lot of cameras in every corner of the building, and Oracle followed him along wherever his destination was.

Kirk stopped in front of the fifth door on the left, where a lone police officer sat on a plastic chair, gave him a nod, and gestured for Kirk to enter before returning to whatever game he was playing on his phone.

One the door’s placard read: TESSA BURTON.

My stomach dropped. The lone survivor from Green Hill, I mused. Why is he here?

Mr. Gamble took a deep breath, put on a sympathetic expression, and opened the door. “Hello? Is anyone here?”

“Mr. Gamble!” A woman’s voice squealed from inside.

Unfortunately, there weren’t any CCTV cameras inside the private hospital rooms, but Oracle quickly detected an open laptop resting on a dresser. Once he moved into it, luckily, I could see the entire room from that vantage point.

I immediately recognized Tessa Burton sitting on the hospital bed, half her face bruised and swollen, her left arm in a sling, and her right leg slightly elevated and heavily bandaged around where Maxine had broken it. Three other girls and one guy her age sat around the bed, whom I recognized from school.

“Mr. Gamble! What are you doing here?” The girl with the curly hair and the round black-rimmed glasses said excitedly, getting up from the only couch in the room. “We weren’t expecting you to come.”

“I’m just dropping by, Lana, and see how our girl is doing,” Kirk said, acting sheepish. “I brought flowers. Where should I…”

“Oh! You can put it over here, Mr. G,” the boy—Paul Campion—said, gesturing over to an end table filled with all kinds of cards, flowers, teddy bears, and “get well” gifts. Paul always wore the school’s gold and black letterman jacket inside and outside the campus. It made me think like it’s fused to his skin.

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Mr. Gamble sauntered over to the table and placed the bouquet of tulips among the pile before walking up to Tessa’s bed and resting his hand on her shoulder. “How are you doing, kiddo?”

“I’m doing okay,” Tessa said quietly. “Um, thank you for coming.” Tessa let out a shallow cough.

“Shh. It’s okay. You don’t have to talk too much. But I’m still glad that you are doing okay, Tess.”

“Thanks.”

“Where are your parents?”

“They went out to grab some takeout, Mr. Gamble,” the blonde-haired girl with the ponytail—Daisy Gagne—said cheerily. “We’ve been here since our dear Tess woke up since lunch, and now they’re buying us dinner.”

“Well, I’m glad your friends surround you. Have you told the police anything yet?”

“They’ve spoken to her twice already,” Charlene Williams said from the plastic chair at the corner, getting up and putting down the manga she had been reading behind her. “They’re gonna speak to her again, I hear.”

“They should be more focused on capturing the freak that did this than wasting time in here. Tess already told them everything,” Paul said, annoyed.

Lana smacked him on the shoulder. “You weren’t even here, dingus.”

“They should speak more to Xavier and Vivian. Their parents just got whacked by their best friend—!”

“Paul! Shut up.” Lana smacked his shoulder again. Hard.

“Ow, babe! That freaking hurt.” Paul wrapped his arm around Lana’s hips, but Lana quickly swatted his hand away, gesturing that a teacher was in the same room as them.

“I told them what I know,” Tessa said, frowning. “The break-in…the stabbing…the woman…everything…” Suddenly, Tessa burst into tears.

“Hush, now, Tess. We’re here,” Lana cooed and quickly ran to her best friend’s side. “We’re all here. You’re not alone anymore, okay? You’re safe.”

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” she sobbed.

“It’s okay, really. Tess. We’re all here for you!” Daisy rubbed Tessa’s back, hoping to soothe her grief.

“I’m sorry for your loss, Ms. Burton. Truly,” Mr. Gamble said.

Mr. Gamble spent a few minutes inside the room talking to Tessa and the other kids. Checking how they were doing, thinking it must be a traumatizing ordeal for Tessa and her friends and loved ones.

“He’s a good actor. I’ll give him that,” I said, annoyed. How could he say those things and pretend to be sympathetic when he killed kids my age without batting an eye?

“Poor child,” the demon whispered, placing the palm of her hand on her chest. “I did quite a number on her. And still… she’s a resilient little minx. I’m impressed.”

“Her Resolve never went red, you told me..”

“Yes, and technically, she survived your first dungeon. The first delver to do so.” Demon Maxine cleared her throat. “Perhaps you should give this girl a reward?”

“Can I heal her?” I asked. “Cure her?”

The demon smacked her lips. “It is…in the realm of possibilities, my liege. However, to reward her, she must be inside your domain for it to take effect. And currently, she’s far, far away. Poor thing.”

“Oh. That’s…disappointing.”

“I apologize. I don’t make the rules. But…this place is technically a new dungeon…perhaps when she feels better, she can delve again? Maybe with her friends? Oh, what fun would that be! I want the blonde one.”

“No,” I shook my head. “I think she’s had enough. And you are not possessing any of her friends.”

“Bah, lord dungeon, you are spoiling my fun,” the demon teased. “But as you command, I follow.”

That got me thinking. “What happens if I don’t reward her? You said she survived my first dungeon, right?”

“Correct. You commanded me to let her live, which signals to all monsters that she is a survivor. Worthy.”

There was that word again. Worthy. “What happens if I don’t give it? The reward?”

The demon let out a mischievous grin. “Oh, then, she’ll come back.”

“She doesn’t know where I am.”

“Oh, but she does, my liege. She doesn’t know it yet, but she does like an invisible string dragging her back to you. She will delve again until the reward is offered. They always bring a party with them, too. Time and time again, I’ve seen it happen when a dungeon hoards their treasures. It doesn’t end well. Not even to dragons.”

I flinched. “Wait, what kind of bullshit is that? Are you saying anyone who survives can easily find me?”

“Those who win your games deserve a prize. It’s what makes the world turn, doesn’t it? Fair is fair.”

“And I break the connection once I hand them a reward?”

The demon shrugged. “In theory. Some dungeons imprint on worthy delvers to maintain that connection a while longer. I’ve seen it happen amongst the benevolent ones amongst your kind.”

I turned back to look at the screen again. I wondered what I could give to Tessa other than healing her. Take the memories, grief, and trauma away. Make her forget it ever happened? Riches? Fame? Knowledge?

How powerful were my gifts? I still hadn’t seen the reward system pop up since I built the cabin. There must be some parameters I haven’t met yet.

“Can I use the bathroom?” Mr. Gamble asked suddenly, and the other kids quickly told him he could use it. He shuffled over to the bathroom and locked the door. Oracle moved the vantage point to the phone secured in his front pocket.

Kirk’s sympathizing facade immediately faded when he stood in front of the bathroom mirror. He quickly texted Hodge that Tessa Burton was awake and blabbering to the cops about the “scary lady next door” who tortured her and killed her boyfriend. By this point, the authorities had a clear prime suspect that it was Maxine Fairlie, and Kirk was freaking out. What if she got caught, and it would lead the cops back to the cult?

“Oracle, make sure his texts don’t go through.”

> MESSAGES WITHHELD.

“Thanks.”

Kirk walked over to the sink and splashed some water on his face. He looked at himself in the mirror.

“Get it together, man,” he whispered under his breath. “Fuck.”

Suddenly, Kirk glanced over somewhere to the left, and after a few seconds of staring, he walked over to a laundry basket sitting on top of the metallic trolley cart leaning against the wall next to the door. Piled in it were the clothes that Tessa wore during the day of the attack, stained with dried blood

But Kirk wasn’t interested in Tessa’s clothes. He reached out, his hand disappearing from my view (beyond the camera’s periphery), and when he reeled it back, bundled in his fist was the panties Tessa was wearing that day for her boyfriend. Kirk quickly pocketed it inside his jacket and walked out of the bathroom.

My mouth hung open. “What. The. Fuck?”

The demon laughed. “How fitting. The teacher fancies the schoolgirls.”

“They’re minors, demon.”

“And there’s a special place in Hell for people like him, my liege. It’s one of my favorite places to relax and unwind. All the blood-drenched barbed wires and wooden poles…”

“Everything alright in there, Mr. G?” Paul asked, concerned.

“I’m okay. I just needed to pee. I drank too much coffee this morning,” Kirk said nonchalantly as if he hadn’t just stolen Tessa’s underwear less than a minute ago.

Huh. “Oracle, do you detect Kirk Gamble’s computer nearby?”

> THERE IS A LAPTOP INSIDE HIS BACKPACK IN THE VEHICLE.

“Open it. Search for anything…weird.”

>QUERY REQUESTED. SEARCHING….

It took Oracle ten minutes to dive into Kirk’s laptop, but he didn’t find anything I was looking for. It mainly consisted of papers he needed to grade and future test questions for the upcoming exams. It was a work laptop. Oracle searched through Kirk’s house and found a computer inside his office.

I smiled. “Jackpot.”

And what’s inside the hard drive was more than I could ask for ammunition.

----------------------------------------

Deputy Rebecca Torres was having an affair.

That much was obvious through a quick search over her phone. There was a particularly heated exchange between her and a woman named Emily C going back months. Still, as I started reading through the texts and the pictures they sent each other, Emily C was actually a guy, of which the C was short for Clay. She had another Emily in her contacts, a close friend since middle school that she hung out with half a dozen times a year. Rebecca probably didn’t want to cast any suspicion if her phone started blowing up during movie nights with her husband.

After she met with the others, she called in sick to work. I wasn’t feeling well. Headaches. That sort of thing. They gave her the afternoon off, and she went home instead. She received some messages from Emily C about what she was up to tonight (since it was the weekend and they hadn’t seen each other in two weeks) and when they should hang out again. I realized Clay knew Rebecca was married, wording everything as if they were regular longtime girlfriends. Yippie.

Rebecca left him on read. For now. She had other things on her mind, like Maxine threatening to expose her ass.

Rebecca was also paranoid about security. For a cop, she probably saw a lot of shit. I knew she spent four years working in Eugene before moving here with her husband, Mr. Chris Torres, who got elected to the city council last year and bought a nice-looking house near Green Hill. All thanks to the cult’s rituals. Their body count must be high if she was being considered to run for Sheriff next year. It would take a lot of effort to be considered a part of Green Hill’s affluent inner circle, and the Torreses managed to do that within two years of moving in, thanks to Justin and Melanie Hodge’s blessing. Even my parents couldn’t break through that ceiling, and they did well for themselves.

Rebecca’s house had a lot of interior and exterior CCTV cameras (a total of six), and Oracle gained access to them within five minutes. I watched her through the interior dash cam of her police car on her quiet drive home. It’s a shame I couldn’t read her thoughts from this distance. I could have used [Glean]. A Subaru was already parked on the driveway.

Her husband was home.

Sighing, Rebecca got out of the car and entered her house.

Oracle moved over to the camera positioned in the living room corner where Mr. Torres was lounging on the sofa. He was a short and slightly stocky man in his early thirties with tanned skin and a dad bod. He was never much a fan of an athletic lifestyle when I perused his various social feeds dating back twenty years. A math whiz with a propensity to winning Speech and debate tournaments throughout high school and college and hanging out with a crowd who aspired to enter the finance world. His life took a drastic turn when he met Rebecca and tried to be active and join her inner circle, yet he was not very comfortable with it. Tolerable at best by her friends. Never mind his porn search history because clearly, he and Rebecca hadn’t had sex for at least a couple of months (he had an uptick of searches for the past five weeks almost every day).

Compared to Rebecca, she was popular, a track star in high school, used to mountain climb with her friends (there were a lot of mountains in Oregon for that), and won state championships for track and field during her junior year in college. Her father used to be a cop, so she also became one. And good at it, too, with a higher track record for arrests in the big city. But when Mr. Torres wanted a quiet life in the countryside, they moved to Point Hope, and less and less, Rebecca hadn’t seen her friends.

She was lonely, I thought. Chris found his crowd in the council and amongst the politics of Point Hope. He fit like a glove, almost like he had known the town all his life. As for Rebecca…well, she’s tolerating it. From her social feed, she met Hodge two years ago. I didn’t have to guess what world he introduced to her.

“Becks, you already home?” Chris called out from the living room once he heard the front door open, and he closed the laptop resting on his lap. At a glance, it was all spreadsheets for the Ward he was responsible for. Many people asked him for money to fund things, and since his Ward included Green Hill, one of the proposals included building a golf course and a cafe for the neighborhood (That way, they didn’t have to commute to the plebs downtown, I reckon).

Tax dollars at work, folks.

“Yeah, I am.” She removed her shoes from the foyer and slipped into her Hello Kitty slippers. She walked into the living room. “Working?”

“No, I just need to sign a few things.” Chris put the laptop on the coffee table. “What’s up? Are you okay? You look pale.”

“I’m just not feeling well.”

“Want me to get you something? Soup?”

“I’m okay. Thanks.”

“I drove by the diner on my way home and saw your car and Jenna’s.”

“We’re just catching up. Look, I’m going to go upstairs and change.”

“Okay. Well, I was thinking of buying takeout anyway for dinner at Chang’s. Want me to get you some wonton soup? It’ll make you feel better.”

Rebecca forced a smile. “Okay.” She was about to climb the stairs when she suddenly paused and turned around. “Chris, um, I might be out late tonight with Jenna and Kirk again. Melanie and Justin might come along, too.”

Chris perked up. “Oh! Well, I could use a night out in town. Do you want me to go with you?”

“No, it’s okay. I know you have a lot of work to do.”

“Ah, it’s not a bother, really—”

“—Chris,” Rebecca interjected. “It’s a Hodge thing. I’m trying to fund your campaign next year, you know.”

Chris frowned. I could tell he did not like being left to the side like crumbs to be picked. I had a feeling it had always been like that with the Hodges. It seemed like they had a history of shutting out Chris. “I’m sure I could talk to them. I haven’t in a while since the pandemic. Hodge and I play golf a lot.”

“It’ll take more than that, hon. But I hear the mayor had you in mind for deputy mayor next year since Terry is retiring. So, don’t fuck up my hard work.”

Chris’s frown deepened, but he quickly recovered it, hiding it with a sigh. “Are you sure you’re going to be alright? I thought you’re sick.”

“Hopefully it’ll pass before tonight.”

“You were out late two nights ago, too. Maybe you should stop taking night shifts?”

“I’ll let the Sheriff know. You know how he is. But since the massacre, it’s all hands on deck. It’s a miracle they’re giving me a break.” Rebecca chuckled. “Are you going to be okay on your own?”

“Do I have a choice?”

Rebecca wanted to say more but held her tongue and continued climbing up the stairs.

“I’ll make sure to lock the door on my way out! That killer is probably still out there!” Chris called out after her, but Rebecca had already gone into their bedroom, stripped off her clothes, and stepped into the shower.

“Ohh…I sense some tension there,” the demon said over my shoulder.

I smiled. “He doesn’t know,” I said.

“Doesn’t know what?”

“What she does. I don’t think he knows his wife belongs to the cult.”

Maxine played with her hair, amused. “We can lure him to the cabin. Distract Rebecca from doing her job, stopping us. Clearly, she cares for him.”

“But she’s cheating on him.”

“Humans are devout consumers, lord dungeon. Rebecca is just tapping into her human nature to indulge in a connection. Her husband provides her emotional security, but Clay is…well…offers the physical aspect. Oh, and what a big aspect that is.”

Maxine typed a few things on the keyboard and brought up several of Clay’s shirtless photos he sent to Rebecca, often in a bathroom. He was twelve years younger than Rebecca and Chris. He was a fresh graduate from the University of Portland and an avid hiker and outdoorsman. I realized they had met through a mutual friend when Rebecca went hiking in Northern California a year ago with her college buddies. That must be when she met Clay, who happened to live in Point Hope as a paralegal.

An instant connection.

He was easy on the eyes, too. Photogenic, tall, dark skin, dark hair, nice pearly white teeth, and a muscular build that any guy would envy. On Instagram, he often boasts about his “healthy” lifestyle by propping up these health brands, skincare, and workout routines to his more than forty thousand followers online.

A budding influencer, too.

Rebecca might have met his equal match, or so she thought. Too bad she was married, but that didn’t stop them from hanging out. Hanging out turned into making out. And what followed after, well, Clay had video proof. With the advent of social media, sex tapes were the fad these days. He would often tease her for sending them to Chris. Rebecca would send him her new lingerie that Chris probably thought was for him, and Clay would show his birthday suit and the more than-average aspect Maxine was talking about that Rebecca had been enjoying for a year.

If Chris suspected anything, well, he was a fucking good actor hiding it from him.

“We can lure Clay into the cabin, too,” the demon suggested excitedly. “Make Rebecca choose who to save. The husband or the lover? Oh! That must be torture for her. Hell, I would be pleased. It would be best if she saw them die in front of her before I plucked out her eyes! What a wonderful display of violence, don’t you think?”

I shook my head. “They’re not members of the cult. They didn’t kill me. They’re—”

“Innocent?” The demon smiled. “You’ve killed innocents before, my liege. And I’ve lived quite a long life. You’d be surprised how minuscule the population is with pure innocence. Discounting the babies and anyone below age seven.”

“And I regretted doing that,” I said. I could still taste them. “I did it to survive.”

Maxine frowned deeply. I didn’t know if she was mocking me. “Oh, but you took so much more than that, my liege. So much more. You are beyond the boundaries of human morality. You are no longer human. Do not degrade your potential with the material realm; you can be so much more! The things you could do…the gifts you’ll bestow to mortals…you will become a god.”

“I’m not killing innocents.”

“Gods kill innocents every day. Just walk down a pediatric ward and see how many innocents lay in bed while reapers wait by their side, counting down the time they croak. The wails and sadness…it is glorious to behold.”

“I’m not…” tempting. Do it.

Do it.

Do it.

Do it.

Clay and Chris? I could see Rebecca’s torment before me and how I would savor it, prolonging his suffering. I could command the Goliath to tie her up while she watched Old Growth spike the people she cared about until they bled to death. “No. I don’t think I could do it.”

“And what of Leo and his friends? They were trespassing, so they deserve what’s coming to them?”

I didn’t have an answer. I was…

“The hunger, is it?” The demon answered for me.

For the first time, Oracle chimed in on his own. A small green tab appeared on the screen as he wrote down his response.

> IT HAS BEEN TWELVE HOURS SINCE YOUR LAST ESSENCE, Oracle reminded me.

I know. My phantom stomach kept reminding me each minute. I missed the taste, the glow after the feast…

> THERE ARE 88 HUMANS WITHIN A TEN-MILE RADIUS OF THE CABIN. 48,546 HUMANS WITHIN A TWENTY-FIVE MILE RADIUS. 2,958,540 HUMANS WITHIN A TWO-HUNDRED MILE RADIUS.

>WOULD YOU LIKE ME TO LURE THEM INTO THE DUNGEON? I SUGGEST THE 88 HUMANS NEARBY. THE SUPPLY IS AN ADEQUATE AMOUNT TO SATIATE YOUR HUNGER FOR THE NEXT THREE DAYS.

“No,” I answered. I didn’t realize there were still a lot of hikers this time of the year, even when the weather was getting colder by the day. “Leave them alone. The others will be enough.”

“As you command,” the demon said.

“They didn’t want to go to the cabin, but before nightfall, they will.”

I ordered Oracle to send the fifteen-minute video of Rebecca and Clay in a hotel room to Rebecca with her husband’s phone number at the bottom. Then, I sent Kirk the footage of him grabbing Tessa’s panties off the laundry basket and stuffing them into his pockets with the number of the local newspaper at speed dial written under it. I even suggested a headline for tomorrow: LOCAL TEACHER CAUGHT PREYING ON YOUNG GIRLS with his face planted on the front page. All I had to do with Jenna was send her the photo of her son. She’ll get the message.

As for Alvin, well, he’s already on his way with his goon squad, which I was going to take care of in quick succession. Easy peasy. I made a mental note to take care of him first before the others arrived tonight.

They’ll freak out, I’m sure, once they receive the threat. They’d run to the cabin. Demand answers. Threaten. Shout. Throw things. Maybe end Maxine for good to keep her quiet. Maybe even bury her body with mine. With Hodge losing control of his minions, he couldn’t sway them away from me now while he drove to Portland. And with everyone coming to the cabin, Hodge and his wife have no choice but to follow.

After all, they wanted the gem now that they had an inkling of its potential power. What reason would a sudden massacre in a quiet town like Point Hope with the gem caught at the center? Coincidence? No. Hodge and his wife were too smart for that.

They wanted the gem.

They wanted me.

All I had to do was wait for nightfall and let the bloodbath commence.