The Demonists Read Online Free Page B

him—
    Again.
    Margarite Alice Fogg— Nana —had always looked out for him.
    As a small child, he had found the arms of the tall, statuesque woman who wore her silver hair in a tight bun at the back of her head far more comforting than those of his parents. Nana Fogg always knew how to make things right. She’d chased away bad dreams and wiped away his tears. She’d even stood up to his overbearing father who had never seemed to have enough patience with his overly sensitive son.
    And she had continued to watch over him, even after her death, when she’d warned him from beyond the grave of a vengeful spirit’s plan to set fire to his college dormitory. Now here she was, saving him from demons in the realm between life and death.
    “You’re driving a truck.” John suddenly realized the strangeness of the situation.
    “One uses what one has on hand,” the old woman said, checking the side-view mirror for stragglers. “Would have used a jet plane if it had been handy.” Nana looked at him then, her gray eyes swimming with emotion. “We need to get you out of this place.”
    “But we’re safe now,” John said. He watched through the expanse of windshield as the city changed, the buildings of New York growing less and less defined. “Right, Nana? We’re safe?”
    His grandmother’s boney hands clutched the large steering wheel as she drove them farther into a world of blackness. “For now,” she reassured him. “But we have to get you home before she—”
    John was confused. “Who?” he asked aloud. And then with a sudden rush of emotion, he remembered. “Theodora,” he whispered.
    They were immersed in a universe of shadow now.
    “Is she all right?” John asked, frightened by the look of worry he saw on his grandmother’s pale face. “Nana?”
    “I don’t know, John,” Nana said finally, her eyes on the darkness ahead as if she was concentrating on something that he could not see. “Since you escaped them . . .” She stopped talking and stepped on the gas, sending the great truck leaping through the shadows.
    “What, Nana? Tell me—what will they do?”
    “Since they’ve lost you, they’ll look for the next best thing,” the old woman said. “They want to hurt you, John—in any way they can.”
    The fear was back inside him, ready to consume him with the horrific realization.
    “They’ll go after your wife.”
    John Fogg’s eyes snapped open, the blare of a truck’s horn fading in the distance. He tried to move, but there was only pain and a terrible numbness that told him things were not right.
    That things were terribly wrong.
    Eyes that felt as though they’d been rolled in sand before being placed inside his skull darted about, trying to adjust to his surroundings.
    Where?
    A woman whom he did not recognize moved about a room that he did not know as he lay in a bed that felt unfamiliar to his body. John tried to speak, but the only sound he could make was like the rustling of dry fall leaves.
    The woman moved too quickly for his eyes to capture, but then they found her at the side of the bed, pushing buttons on machines that chimed and beeped with her touch. Tubes trailed from the machines, and his eyes followed them down to where they disappeared into the flesh of his exposed arm.
    RV, his soggy mind defined. Got an RV in my arm.
    He knew that was wrong when an image of his Nana waving from the driver’s seat of a monstrous recreational vehicle spattered with the blood of the demonic exploded inside his head, making him gasp aloud.
    The woman was suddenly hovering over him.
    “IV,” he croaked. “IV—not RV.”
    “That’s right, Mr. Fogg,” the woman said, placing a gentle hand upon his chest and pushing him back down to the bed. He wasn’t even aware that he had been trying to sit up.
    “What . . . ,” he began, but lost his train of thought as his eyes again scanned the unfamiliar room.
    A hospital room. He was in a hospital.
    “There was an accident,” the