Juliet Dark - The Angel Stone

“That part about an incubus being capable of selfless love. Soheila doesn’t believe it. She thinks her kind will always take advantage of a human. It’s why—”

Frank cut me off by holding up his hand. We’d reached the lobby. A great lumpy-looking figure was sprawled across the floor in front of the janitor’s closet—our entrance to the tunnels. I stepped closer and saw that it was the security guard. For a moment I thought that Ralph had somehow killed him, but then I heard him snoring. Ralph was sitting beside his head, cleaning fluorescent Cheetos crumbs out of his whiskers.

“Wow, you exhausted him!” I said, crouching down and holding out my hand for Ralph. “You must be tired, too.”

Ralph yawned, climbed into my hand, curled up, and promptly fell asleep. I tucked him into my backpack.

“Did he have to pass out right in front of our entrance to the tunnels?” Frank asked.

“It doesn’t matter,” Soheila responded. “It’s late enough that we should be able to find our ways back across the campus. I’m going to the library to look up matters related to the angel stone. You and Callie go to the Alpha party, and then you should make sure Callie gets home safely. If Callie is the only one who can open this hallow door, then she’s in grave danger from the nephilim. You have to protect her as well as the students.” She gave Frank a look to impress upon him the gravity of this responsibility, but it was so full of longing that the air between them literally steamed up. She quickly turned and fled through the back door of Main, trailing fog behind her.

“Sheesh, McFay, I will never understand women. Come on, let’s get to the Alpha House before Soheila unleashes a hurricane on us.”

We followed Soheila out the back door—onto a campus wreathed in mist. It might have been a natural weather front, but I was betting that Soheila’s conflicting emotions for Frank had collided to form the fog bank. At least it provided cover for us as we walked toward the southeast gate and I summoned up the nerve to ask Frank if Bill had said anything else that morning the door closed.

“I’m sorry I didn’t say anything earlier. I thought maybe it would be better if you forgot him if he’s really gone.”

“But he told you about a door that only I could open.”

“He said you had the power to open something called the hallow door but that doing it might kill you. He wanted me to promise to keep you from trying to open it.”

“And did you promise?” I peered through the fog at Frank. With his beret pulled low over his eyes, it was hard to make out his expression.

“I told him you were too stubborn to listen to anyone. He laughed and said he’d noticed that, but he thought that if anyone could talk some sense into you it would be me. After all, I’d talked you into letting me look down your shirt to check for vampire bites.”

I blushed at the memory. “Liam was furious when he came upon us that day. Was Bill?”

“Bill looked like he still wouldn’t mind clocking me one about that, but he was more concerned that I watch out for you. So I told him I would.”

“I’m not the one who needs watching out for right now,” I said, pointing at the Alpha Delta Chi house, which glowed like a malevolent Christmas tree. Pounding music, raucous shouts, and high-pitched giggles drifted toward us on the fog. “I can’t believe that any of our female students were stupid enough to go to this thing.”

“Let’s have a closer look,” Frank said.

In the fog, we sneaked around the garage and into the backyard. There was a two-story gazebo; its top floor would afford us a good view of the party. In Diana’s time, the gazebo had been covered with climbing roses and night-blooming jasmine that scented the inn. Now the roses hung dead on their vines, and the gazebo smelled like beer and that noxious clove incense that permeated everything the Alphas touched.

“I’m getting an uncomfortable flashback to my days as an altar boy,” Frank whispered as we climbed up into the second story of the gazebo. “Stop me if I start confessing.”

I started to laugh at the notion of Frank as an altar boy, but my amusement was cut short by the crack of a gunshot, followed by a high-pitched female shriek. Frank pulled back a handful of dead vines and we looked into the yard. Adam Sinclair, in a flowing toga and nothing else—I could tell from the way the house light shone through the flimsy fabric—was standing in the middle of the backyard, aiming a pistol at the fence. A throng of young women dressed in skimpy costumes stood around him. Toga-clad boys and more girls in skimpy costumes sat on the back porch, egging him on.

“Do Bambi next!” one of the girls, dressed in a slutty-vampire costume, shrieked.

I looked toward the fence and breathed out a sigh of relief when I saw there wasn’t a live deer, but, still, what I saw was macabre enough. Arranged across the top of Diana’s white picket fence was her beloved collection of ceramic figurines: deer, rabbits, foxes, and an entire family of red-capped gnomes.

“Bambi it is,” Adam said, cocking the trigger of the gun.

There was a sharp crack, and a ceramic deer exploded in plaster dust. Slutty Vampire and her friend Slutty Nurse shrieked with laughter, but a girl in a Little Red Riding Hood outfit didn’t. I thought I recognized her from my Intro to Fairy Tales class.

“I liked Bambi,” she said. “This is stupid.” She downed the rest of her beer, burped, and started weaving her way toward the back gate. One of the toga-clad boys detached himself from the crowd and followed.

“Uh-oh,” I said. I switched sides so I could keep track of Red Riding Hood, who was walking now in the narrow alley between the garage and the gazebo. She’d reached the gate but was having trouble working the clasp.

“Let me help you with that,” said the boy who had followed her, coming up behind her.

“Thankth,” she slurred.

The boy reached his arm around her as if to open the latch but instead grabbed her by the shoulders and pushed himself against her, pinning her against the gate.

“Hey!” she cried. “Get off!”

“I’m going down there,” I said, turning to Frank, but he was gone, already in the alley. He tapped the frat boy on the shoulder. When the boy turned, Frank punched him in the face and he slumped to the ground. I hurried down into the alley, not sure whose rescue I was coming to—Frank’s or the repellent Alpha’s. I wanted to wallop the frat boy myself but didn’t think it would help either of our professional careers if we murdered him.

Frank was going in for a second punch when I reached him. I grabbed his arm. “Whoa there, Delmarco. I don’t think this one is going to be bothering anyone else tonight.”

Frank glared at me, but he pulled back his arm. “Yeah, but what about the others?”

“I have an idea. I thought of it earlier today.”

I rummaged in my backpack and drew out a round pomander ball and Ralph, who was, amazingly, still asleep.

“Aw.” Red Riding Hood, who had barely reacted to Frank pummeling her attacker, revived herself to coo at Ralph. “A little mouse! He’s adorable!”

“He’s got a job to do. Wake up, Ralph!” I poked his fat, Cheetos-filled belly. Ralph yawned and stretched, evoking another chorus of oohs and ahs from Red, and looked up at me expectantly. “Take this into the yard,” I said, holding the pomander ball up by its ribbon. It had originally been a Christmas gift from Diana. She had filled it with potpourri. I had filled it with something else. “Then drop it and run—and be careful. They’re taking potshots at ceramic animals.”

Ralph took the ribbon in his mouth and jumped onto the fence. He ran along the top railing. When he vanished into the yard, I motioned for Frank and Red to follow me into the gazebo. We climbed to the top and observed Ralph’s progress. He was creeping along the fence.