Jenna Black - The Devil Inside

They’d locked the front door behind them-what kind of ski-mask-wearing home invader locks up afterward? — but I had a spare key hidden in the bushes. Not under one of those phony rock things that any idiot would know to look under if he was up to no good. My spare was under a real rock.

After I let myself in, the first thing I did was grab my Taser and arm it. Feeling mildly less skittish that way, I stepped into the living room and dialed 911.

I spent the next fifteen minutes scoping out the house, trying to see if anything was missing. I wasn’t terribly surprised that nothing was. If those guys were burglars, then I was Santa Claus.

Just before the cops arrived, I slipped upstairs and tore the note I’d written to myself off the notepad. I tore the next three sheets off, too, just to be sure. I didn’t think the police were going to search my place that thoroughly, but I still didn’t want them finding the note. It would be too hard to explain.

By the time the cops left, it was five in the morning. I’d told them everything I could remember.

The “burglars” had rearmed the alarm when they’d left the house, just like they’d locked up. I’m betting they were trying to make it look like no one’d ever been there. When I thought about it, I realized that not only was nothing missing, nothing’d been moved. Great. Stealth burglars.

Stealth burglars who didn’t steal anything, who carried two guns apiece, and who got into my house without destroying the alarm. The cops said they probably had my security code and had simply turned the alarm off when they came in.

You can bet I changed my code the moment the cops were finished with me. You can also bet I didn’t go to sleep afterward, tired as I was. I spent the wee hours of the morning sitting on my couch, glassy-eyed, scared, and confused as all hell. And there was no one I could turn to for help. Not Val, who according to my demon or my subconscious — take your pick — was not my friend. Not my brother, for the same reason. And not Brian. Because if my already fucked-up life was going to hell in a handbasket, I refused to take him with me.

By the time night rolled around again, I knew I had to back off my “don’t involve Brian” stance.

I spent most of the day at my office, writing up my reports on the exorcisms of Lisa Walker and Dominic Castello. Paperwork usually takes me longer than it should anyway, but in my state of sleep deprivation, it was a miracle I got done in eight hours.

Usually, Brian and I don’t see each other much on weekdays. He’s often working late, and I’m often traveling, and when we both have to get up early the next morning, it takes some of the fun out of it. But when I thought about going home, I thought about watching those three masked men leaving my house, locking up behind them, and my blood ran cold.

What were the chances that was just a one-time deal? Break in, find she’s not home, go away, stay away. Yeah, right.

Could I count on escaping a second time? No. I’d been damned lucky last night. Even with my subconscious early-warning system in place, it could have gone much worse.

Yes, I was still clinging to the hope that the notes were from my subconscious. But my grip on the illusion was weakening, and some panicky part of me insisted I was going to have to let go eventually. Still, my motto is never do today what you can put off until tomorrow.

Yet I couldn’t spend the night with Brian without telling him something about what happened last night. It was out of character for me to spend the night at his place, especially on a weekday. So I told him the official police interpretation of the story-some professional burglars broke into my house last night and were scared off by the noise I made climbing out the window.

I sure as hell didn’t believe it, and I didn’t expect Brian to, either. But I must be a better liar than I thought. Either that, or it just didn’t occur to him that I might lie to him about something like that. Remember, he’s got that Anne Frank, people-are-basically-good philosophy that puts him and me on opposite ends of the cynicism scale. I felt like a heel-a feeling I was getting familiar with-but I made it up to him in bed. He’s always been impressed with my oral skills, and I practiced every trick I knew on him.

Afterward, he fell asleep spooning me, but I lay there awake for a long time, afraid to sleep despite my body’s desperate urge to shut down.

I woke up in a blinding white room.

White walls, white ceiling, white floor. White everywhere.

I looked down at myself to find I was wearing a pair of white jeans with a white sweatshirt. I’d have said I was dreaming, except I didn’t feel like I was dreaming. I pinched myself on the arm, and it hurt.

There was a sound like a quiet exhalation from behind me. Slowly, I turned around.

He was a shocking patch of darkness in the white. About six-five, with straight, jet-black hair pulled back into a ponytail at the nape of his neck. Black leather bomber jacket decorated with silver rivets. Black leather pants that clung to his legs and tapered into knee-high black leather boots. Tanned skin just light enough to be Caucasian, just dark enough to suggest maybe not.

After I got over the shock of black, I felt a new shock when I got a look at his eyes. They were the color of dark amber held up to the sun, and they were fixed on me with such intense focus that I felt pinned by them.

He took a step toward me, and I lost my paralysis enough to take a step back. He came to a stop, still watching me with that startling intensity, and raised his hands as if to say: “See, no weapons, completely harmless.”

I didn’t know what the hell was going on, but one thing I did know-this guy was not completely harmless. Tall, muscular, imposing, with glowing eyes and a severe, angular face that made me think serial killer. No, not harmless at all.

I cleared my throat, wondering why I wasn’t more scared under the circumstances. I mean, last thing I knew, I was cuddled up in bed with nice, safe Brian. Now I was in some creepy white room, trapped with one of the scariest dudes I’d ever seen. Yeah, my pulse was a little elevated, but I wasn’t terrified like I should be. Maybe I was drugged?

“I suspect we don’t have much time,” Mr. Terrifying said. His voice went with his look, a deep, growling bass that made my knees quiver.

I looked around the empty, featureless room — where the hell was the door? — and wondered just where he thought I was going to go.

Then the psycho-killer smiled suddenly, an almost impish expression that changed everything. The aura of menace disappeared as if it had never been there. Nothing about him had changed. He was still huge, still dressed in aggressive black leather. His eyes still seemed to glow as if there were some kind of light behind them. But he’d gone from insanely scary to impossibly sexy in about one second flat. All because of a smile.

“Your ability to fight me is astonishing,” he said, still in that James Earl Jones rumble.

I shook my head and tried without success to find my voice. It seemed to be jammed in my throat somewhere, and despite the bizarre circumstances, my eyes insisted on taking another inventory of tall, dark, and dangerous. He didn’t seem to mind me looking. In fact, if that bulge in the front of his pants was any indication, he liked it rather a lot.

Heat crept up my cheeks, and I decided that no matter how real this felt, it had to be a dream. I wouldn’t be caught dead staring at a stranger’s crotch the way I was staring at this guy’s.

He laughed, and the sound reverberated somewhere deep inside me, drying my mouth and wetting other portions of my anatomy.

“I see I’ve chosen a guise you find pleasing,” he said, and his amber eyes sparkled with good humor.