Sanctuary (3 page)

“Oh,” Heather said. “Well… thanks.” She smiled warmly at Crystal on her way back to the condo. Cole turned to face out toward the ocean, his shaggy hair blowing in the wind.

Does Cole know I’m saving up for college? Could he actually be thinking about paying tuition for
me
?
The thought made her giddy. As she walked toward her lover, soft waves licked against the two dozen wooden piers and the boats bobbing in the surf beside them.

She set down her book on a piling. “What was that about?” she asked.

Cole smiled at her presence and slipped an arm around the small of her back. “Her kid’s sick. Needs medicine.” He looked so handsome in the moonlight, the waves in his hair swishing just as gently as the crests below. He was just tall enough that Crystal could rest her head on his shoulder. Even his pasty white eyes and their pale pupils glistened enchantingly in this light. Crystal could have stayed with him here for hours.

“How’s Brandon treating you?”

“Good,” she lied. She needed to be her best around Cole to impress him. Plus, if she ever told him the truth and he got mad at Brandon, Brandon would take his rage out on her, and Cole would learn about…

But no, she didn’t want to think about that. “What do you think about giving us tomorrow off?”

Cole raised his eyebrows as if asking for an explanation.

“You and me could hang out. Don’t you hate working Saturdays?”

Cole said nothing, but soon she felt his hand slide onto her stomach. She chuckled, and so did he. His hand felt good against her modest baby bump.

“Sorry, love,” he said. “This has never happened to me before.”

“Me either.” Crystal wrapped her arms around his neck. “What do you wanna name her?”

Cole hesitated. “I think we both need to get our lives in order first.”

“I will,” Crystal said. “But what do you wanna name her?”

No response from Cole.

“We could name her after your mom. Or your dad, if it’s a boy.”

He stayed silent. Why was he getting so distant like this lately? Why did he shut down whenever she talked about the baby or their future together? Did he realize how guilty it made her feel about getting pregnant?

Crystal knew he’d eventually come around if she just showed him enough love. And she did love him. She loved how he made her feel important. Did he know she spent a lot of her free time daydreaming of him? When she made love to him, could he tell that her enjoyment was genuine—not faked like the shows she and Heather put on for Brandon? Was Cole still mad at himself for letting Brandon have sex with Crystal for the job during her first weeks here?

She decided to be brave and voice her worry. “Do you see a future with me?”

Cole drew away from her, but kept his gentle hands on her waist. His eyebrows furrowed at the question. “Of course. Why would you ask something like that?”

“I don’t know. Sorry. I just really like you. You’ve been good for me, and—I just don’t want to do anything to ruin this.”

“Hey, no, you’re fine.”

“Cool. I just—You know. I can see a future with you.”

“I mean, I have a business to run. That’s gotta come first, but yeah.”

That made her uneasy. What did he even mean by that? She decided her best option was to agree with him. Guys always liked that.

“Yeah, of course. I’d never want to get in the way of your business.” She giggled a fake little laugh to relieve the tension between them.

But Cole brought the tension right back. “Brandon has a lot of new ideas that could really break us into the big leagues. I’m—I’m pretty excited about them.”

You mean Brandon’s pretty excited about them and you feel obligated to be excited too.

“And Crystal, I love you. You know I love you. I just don’t want to commit to anything real serious right now. You know how it is. We’re young, so let’s just… Let’s not make any promises we can’t keep, okay?”

That made Crystal
really
nervous. She broke away from Cole and retrieved the large red book. “I, um, I got something for you,” she said. She softly pressed the book into Cole’s hands. “It’s
Paradise Lost
. That old book from your dad’s estate. The one with the burned pages. But I got it in braille, so now you can read it.” Crystal still found it funny that her initial connection with Cole had been a conversation about the weird religious beliefs of their parents.
Paradise Lost
had been Cole’s dad’s favorite book—next to the Bible and the Book of Mormon—and an antique copy of it had been one of the only things to survive the fire in his dad’s house. Crystal had thought she might connect with Cole even more by giving him a version of his favorite keepsake that he’d finally be able to read.

Cole took the braille book and thumbed through it. “Hmm. What’s it about again?” he asked, shivering against a chill wind.

“I dunno. Do you like it?”

The wind abruptly picked up; a big gust made Crystal take a few steps back. She crossed her arms against the cold.
Weird for this time of year.

Cole put his arm around her, and she huddled next to him as the wind continued. She looked out toward the ocean and saw the moon’s shimmering reflection in the water, darkness to all sides. It was beautiful. If only Cole could see it. If only Cole could see a lot of things.

“It’s pretty windy out here, huh?” he said. “You wanna go in?

Is this another way of avoiding me?
She leaned against Cole and nuzzled at his neck, but the wind blew even harder against them, and Cole lost his balance. He gasped as his cane fell and he stumbled, but Crystal wrapped her arms around him to support him. He leaned heavily on her.

Cole held out his arm cautiously, like he was feeling for something. Crystal saw goose bumps on the back of his neck. “Let’s go inside,” he said.

Yes, go inside
, thought Thorn.
The army is coming from the sea, and you don’t want to be outside when it arrives.
To frighten Cole even more, Thorn brushed past him again, sending his hair fluttering. He trailed after the couple as they walked up the deck toward the condo.

The security guard perked up as they opened the door to the lounge, spilling a bit of coffee on his magazine. He grimaced and grabbed some napkins to clean up the mess, then nodded to Crystal as she helped Cole inside the lobby.

Thorn let himself feel tentative relief as the door to the outside eased shut. Cole and Crystal were heading to the elevator down the hallway, and Brandon and Heather were already safely upstairs…
But this guard, Virgil. How can I get him to safety?

He’d etched the warning onto the lounge wall that had postponed the video shoot, and then with the wind outside had gotten Crystal and her blind boyfriend to come indoors—but parlor tricks would not suffice for Virgil, who remained the last human downstairs. Thorn would need a major distraction for him: perhaps some sort of emergency in Cole’s condo unit? Could Thorn use his newfound power to cause a ruckus upstairs?

For Thorn had discovered that he wielded new power here in the Sanctuary. For one thing, he could create a limited electrical current—an ability that felt similar to the way he’d sent electrical signals through Amy’s brain when he’d possessed her in Piedmont Park. He recalled horror stories he’d heard of human cadavers’ nerve endings being stimulated in Sanctuaries, resulting in walking, talking corpses controlled by demons. Oh, what vile prestige a malicious demon could gain here! But so far, Thorn’s increase in power had gained him only greater frustration at his inability to solve these people’s problems.

And in the back of his mind, that ages-old question lingered:
Why?
Why did he have more power here? Since this was his first time in a Sanctuary, he had no clue, and he doubted his foes—who had certainly gained the same powers here—knew either. It was just one more mystery to add to the mountain that Thorn had collected ever since his eyes were opened.

It was a mystery he had no time for. Not now. There was only one mystery he needed to solve tonight, once for each human:
What is the choice that Virgil is supposed to make? What purpose is he here for tonight?
The Judge had made clear that the humans’ survival depended on the “Big Goddamned Choice”— the Judge’s eloquent term—that each of them was supposed to make tonight. “So you ice those suckers before they can make their choices, okay buddy?” the Judge had said. So far, Thorn hadn’t even begun to discern what these choices were.

Scratch
.

Thorn looked up at the noise. So did Virgil.

Just outside, on a wooden pillar lit by the swimming pool’s soft blue light, a long vertical scratch mark stretched two feet top to bottom. One of
them
floated right next to it. An early bird.

Virgil stood.

“No!” Thorn called to him. Thorn had been trying to avoid direct persuasion, but with his adversaries beginning to arrive, he was desperate. “Hey, hey, hey. Get out of here. Go upstairs.”

Virgil winced. Some part of the man heard him, but the demon outside was whispering too, and the guard’s curiosity was palpable. Virgil approached the window and observed the vertical mark from his safe position indoors.

Thorn’s foe outside smirked at him. His face was heavily scarred, his mouth twisted down into a permanent snarl. In place of a right eye, the creature had only a deep black hole. “Don’t go outside,” Thorn said to Virgil. “Do
not
go outside!”

Scratch
.

A second demon joined the first and etched two new marks—marks which, to Virgil, were appearing out of thin air. Together, the three faint markings formed an arrow facing downward. Downward to Virgil’s oblivion, to Thorn’s defeat. To Hell.

“Virgil, please listen to me. Your life is in danger. I need you to go upstairs
now
.”

The bald guard glanced around and, spotting no one outside, opened the door to investigate.

Brandon putted a golf ball down a thin lane of artificial turf. For a few seconds, it seemed like it was right on track for the targeted hole at the end of the green, but then the ball flew right over the hole and struck the wall of Cole’s plush master bedroom.

“Motherfucker.”

He tried again, and again he overshot.

“Fuck it.”

Six out of ten wasn’t bad. He dropped his putter on the indoor green and paced back to the huge square window looking out over the docks. Crystal had been down there moments ago, cozying up to Cole,
stealing
him from Brandon even further. Her continued presence made Brandon so sick that he’d closed the electronic curtains so he wouldn’t have to look at her. He peeked past them now, but the lovebirds were gone.

Cole should never have let it go on this long. Hell,
Brandon
shouldn’t have let it go on this long. This play-romance had to stop sooner or later, and tonight was as good a time as any.

The worst part of it all was that Cole had been
changing
due to her influence. Brandon kept finding paint droplets in the master bathroom, so he knew Cole had started his dumb-ass paintings again. And recently, when Cole listened to a new porno of Heather and Brandon, he’d asked why porn videos always ended with men cumming, and if the women shouldn’t get off too. Brandon had explained that porn is about sexual fantasies, and sexual fantasies are about power—the type of power that normal men could only dream of, and that Brandon achieved every time he rolled the camera. But Cole didn’t get it.

Honestly, Cole had never understood what made good porn. The guy had gone blind before hitting puberty, so Brandon tried to cut him some slack for that, but now his lack of vision extended past his eyesight. Just this afternoon, Cole had asked Brandon about his plans for
after
they were done with adult entertainment. Brandon had swallowed his fear, chuckled, and made some joke about being CEO of a Fortune 500 company. Then he’d wished all day long that he’d had the balls to tell Cole there
was
no “after.”
This
was the plan. Now that Cole’s Vegas debts were finally paid off, they were starting to make real bank. Their site had over five hundred loyal subscribers and three thousand hits per day. In just a matter of time, Brandon would be a legitimate porn star and Cole could swim in money for the first time since his teenage years.
If he stops letting Crystal turn him into a pussy, that is.

Brandon took a hit of cocaine off of the windowsill and rubbed some on his gums, numbing them. The familiar sweet gasoliney taste comforted him, and the slight sting in his sinuses gave way to the energy boost he’d need to confront Cole. As the high hit him, he recalled the good times, years ago. He and Cole, hopping around South America in Cole’s yacht, picking up spicy young chicas at every city, drinking until the break of dawn. The two men had admired each other; their friendship had been airtight. Brandon had completely run the show back then, and Cole had adored the entertainment Brandon provided. Hell, if not for Brandon, Cole might have stayed drunk and locked up in a hotel room in Vegas for years more than he did. Brandon had been his link to life, to fun, to the outside world.

And now all that was changing. Because of a girl.

Tragically, this was all Brandon’s fault, and he hated to admit it to himself. Four months back, when Cole had met up with him at a nightclub in South Beach, Brandon had bragged that he was about to close with this gorgeous chick Sofie, and that she had a friend whom Cole might enjoy. Crystal had looked like just another chonga bitch, and as Brandon soon discovered, she fucked like one too. She’d been a great employee for all of about three weeks before, out of the blue, Cole started burbling that she was “a good person,” and that she “deserves our respect.” So Brandon had played along, though Cole knew his misgivings. And then, all of a sudden, Crystal was expecting.

Music started playing from the speakers in Cole’s ceiling. It took Brandon a few moments to identify the tune: Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 14 in C-sharp minor, Opus 27, no. 2. A cliché, but tasteful nonetheless—and Brandon was in a
Moonlight Sonata
mood, too. He turned to face Cole, who stood by the bedroom’s entertainment center, adjusting the volume. Strangely, Cole adjusted the lights too. They grew dim.