Chapter Five

"Um… thought…" Ben said, frowning.

"Really? Did you hurt yourself?"

Ben took his eyes off the road for a second to give Chris a disdainful look before switching back to out of the windscreen again. "That joke is so old."

Chris grinned and put his feet up on the dash, resting a pad of paper on his thighs. It was covered with scribbled brainstorms and notes, all eventually linking to one factor — Josh. Chris hoped that no one asked them how they'd come to the conclusion because, looking at the tangled web of black ink on the page, even he had no idea and half the handwriting was his.

The demon sucked the life out of people — it was how it fed. The book had some vague references to human/demon contracts, but nothing concrete, and it had taken some seriously-skilled Googling from Ben to come up with the evidence that they needed. Human/demon contracts involved humans supplying food for the demon and in return gaining a little of the life that the demon sucked from its victims. They were sure that Josh, while he was no demon, was benefiting from this deal.

And they were here to stop him, before Nixa became the next victim. Chris had to grab the door handle as Ben executed a particularly sharp turn to stop him landing on the gear stick. The athame jabbed him in the thigh and he grunted, wishing that he'd thought of asking Bridget for some kind of holster.

"No, anyway, thought… Infiltrating a pool party requires entirely different attire than this."

Chris blinked. "Um… Huh. I apologise for mocking your thought. There's no time to go back to the Manor now, though. So… We'll just have to sneak in. Rather than blending, we'll just not be seen."

"Glad to know that this mission won't be difficult," Ben groused, flipping on the blinker and making the final turn of the journey. They got out of the car, Chris tossing the pad down onto his vacated seat and shifting the athame while Ben looked up at the house and whistled. "Okay, I take it back. We're gonna have like five hundred square feet to ourselves all the time."

"Come on. The party'll be around the back, so we'll go in the front."

"And then what? Drag Nixa out by her hair? Good luck with that one. She's gonna be having fun."

Chris turned on his heel on the porch steps, exasperated. "What is it with you and making valid points today? Are you just… determined to trash all my plans? Is that it?"

Ben grinned. "Of course. Unless the plan is for world domination and I get to be sidekick, I will be forever thwarting your plans."

Chris laughed, shaking his head. "Loser."

"Freak."

Chris tried the front door, shoving against it, but it didn't open. Frowning, the witch-whitelighter tried again, but it was locked. "Locked? It's a party. Who locks a door when there's a party?"

"Someone that doesn't want to be surprised by anyone using the front entrance?" Ben tried.

"Rhetorical question," Chris deadpanned. "Come on. We can't go round the back, but there's got to be a side door…"

They jumped over the porch's wall and landed in the soft dirt of a flowerbed, managing to miss the shrubs growing there. Together, they slunk around the corner of the house, hoping to hell that there were no neighbours looking ready to report prowlers.

"Oh, God…" Chris touched the handle of an athame embedded in the fence post gingerly, as if it might burn him. "This is Nixa's, right?"

"Looks like it." All of the jokiness resulting from their previous banter had gone from Ben's voice. His eyes worried, he grabbed the handle and tried pulling it from the wood. It just creaked but wouldn't give. "On the plus side, it was definitely Nixa that rammed this in here and not someone else. I can't get it to budge."

Chris flicked two fingers at the athame, and the metal blade screeched as it was torn free. The hilt slapped into the palm of his hand and the witch-whitelighter began checking the metal for any signs of blood, human or demonic. Finding none, he was able to relax a little, but not enough. "Call Nixa's cell," he said suddenly. "Maybe we can get her out here before he gets to her."

"Good plan." Ben pulled his cell phone out of his pocket and flipped it open, pressing Nixa's speed dial key. In his ear, the phone began to ring. As he listened to the rhythmic purring, Chris was sliding open a plate glass door in the side of the house. With one last furtive glance around, the witch slipped into the Muse residence after his friend, rolling the door closed behind him. "Um… Welcome to the jungle?" Ben said as Nixa's answering machine picked up. He cursed and closed the phone, then opened it again and pressed redial. "Someone here is a serious botanist."

"Let's just find Nixa," Chris said, ducking under some kind of hanging leafy thing. "I'll feel a lot better knowing that this is just a straightforward kill mission rather than a search and rescue."

"Just her machine. Again," Ben announced, slamming the phone closed in annoyance. "Maybe she left it at home so no one could contact her?"

"Try once more," Chris said, cautiously edging closer to the only door in the room. "If not, I'll try to sense her." The witch-whitelighter took a deep breath and grabbed the doorknob, willing there to be no one on the other side of the door. He wrenched it open quickly and violently, before he lost his nerve, and was greeted with the sight of a corridor full of pictures of Josh and an annoying buzzing sound. "Can you hear that?"

"What?" Ben asked, hearing only his phone purring.

"Something's buzzing…"

Frowning, the witch flipped his phone closed again and crept to stand next to Chris. "I… don't hear a thing."

"It's stopped…"

They pushed ahead into the corridor, closing the door on the jungle room. The AC was on in the main house, cooling their sticky, jungle-humid skin.

"This is one hell of a freaky shrine…" Ben commented, wrinkling his nose at one of the pictures of Josh. "Remind me again why I wasn't an only child? Oh my God! Look!"

"What? Where?" Chris asked, whirling around, his heart thumping in his ears. "What's happening?"

"The lucky bastard has a bat signed by Carl Everett for the Seattle Mariners!" Ben picked up the bat from where it was leaning against the display case and swung it through the air. "Bastard. Did I mention I hated him? And that he totally deserves to be vanquished?"

Chris rolled his eyes. "We're in a stranger's house, uninvited, expecting a demon to pop out any second and you start yelling about a baseball bat. What, do you want me to have a coronary?"

"A Carl Everett signed baseball bat," Ben corrected him.

Chris grinned. "Give it here. Do you think that it's Josh's bat or Carl's?"

Ben's eyes lit up as he passed it over. "After we vanquish his sorry ass, can I keep it?"

"No…"

"What? No? Why no?"

"No, no as in… 'Oh no, there's blood on this'," Chris said, rolling the bat around in his hands to show Ben the small, dark brown stain that had bled into the wood. "How much do you want to bet that it's Nixa's?"

"Shit…" Ben grabbed his cell phone from his pocket and dialled Nixa again. "She better not just be ignoring this…"

"Wait, there it is again."

"Huh?"

"Buzzing…" Chris crouched, the sound louder the lower he got. It was emanating from the floor. Just… where? His eyes swept over the tiled floor and he noticed both his and Ben's muddy footprints on the tiles overlaying some others left there before. Well, why tile in white next to a room that's floor is made of soil?

There.

Underneath the display cabinet a green light blinking and flashing at him urgently. He heard Ben snap his phone closed and reached out for the light just as the buzzing cut out. It was Nixa's cell phone. The display was telling him that she had missed four calls.

"Huh," said a voice. "Well, well, well. What do we have here?"

Monsters of the Deep End

There was some kind of regular pattering sound. It was permeating into her consciousness, kick starting a tiny iota of her brain. Dimly, it began to grind away in her head, waking up other parts as it went.

Drip. Drip.

More of her brain waking up, like dawn coming slowly inside her head. She shook her head vaguely, feeling something tickle her face as it whooshed past and the groaned, shaking her head harder, all the time more parts of her brain clicking on.

Drip.

What was that noise? Enough of her brain was online now to tell her to open her eyes and she did so, staring at a curtain of blonde hair. How had that come loose from both a tie and a clip? She reached up to brush it aside, but her hand was jerked back with a loud clanking of chains. Startled, her heartbeat kicked up a couple of notches and her body plugged her full of adrenaline. Awkwardly, she manoeuvred her hand so that she could brush some of her hair aside and flicked the rest away with a toss of her head.

Where was she? It was dark, that was for sure, but her eyes had been closed for God knew how long, so she was used to seeing through the gloom. She caught dim light gleaming off the front of two large, square appliances — a washer and dryer? — and some steps directly in front of her. She kicked a foot out of a flip-flop and touched the floor with her bare sole. Cold concrete, maybe slightly damp. Okay, so, she was underground.

Underground with her hands manacled above her head.

Drip. Drip.

The noise was coming from somewhere near her feet. Scrunching up her face at the sheer grossness of what she was about to do, she stuck out a toe like they had taught in ballet and felt around on the floor. There was just cold, damp concrete until—

Ew.

It was warm and sticky and she suddenly knew what it was. Blood. Now her brain had been fully jolted awake, she could feel something irritating her chin and knew that it was beads of blood. How badly was she hurt, anyway? She couldn't have been out long, or the blood would definitely have clotted, thanks to the Hunter super heal thing.

The one you hate, remember?

She groaned again. This… ugh. She wasn't sure what was worse — being captured or having to admit that Bridget had been right all along: being normal was bad. Being special was good. Oh, crap. That and, after she'd choked down that particular slice of humble pie, there'd be Ben and Chris to appease. They'd known Josh was up to something from the start, had always said so, and she had never listened. Dammit. Why was it that, today, everyone else got to be right instead of her?

Lights blinked to life. They weren't particularly bright but she still squinted, having been used to the darkness for so long. There were two wooden support pillars spaced evenly in from each wall, framing the stairs directly in front on her. In a niche to her left were the correctly guessed washer and dryer. There was an old, rectangular ceramic sink in the niche too.

Frowning, she jerked at her chains but they refused to budge. No one had come down the stairs yet. Perhaps someone had hit the lights by accident? No. The door opened at the top of the stairs. Instinctively, she dropped her head, knowing it to be to her advantage that her captor think that she was still unconscious.

She caught sight of the blood on the floor that she had stuck her foot in earlier and grimaced, watching another drop fall from her chin and into the puddle, stirring the surface up into a mass of ripples. She was probably bleeding from her head and face. The head wound theory would explain the amount of blood — head wounds bled like bitches.

The pair of flip-flops that were all she could identify of whoever was coming down the stairs came closer, reaching the last step and making a completely different noise as they hit the concrete floor. They came closer to her and she closed her eyes, despite the fact that her face was hidden nearly entirely by her hair.

"Nina?" a voice called softly, echoing in the basement. "Are you awake?"

The flip-flops came closer and her breath hitched in her body, all of her muscles tightening in anticipation. She opened her eyes a crack, peering out from beneath her lashes at the approaching form. At the last second, when he could have come in range, he veered towards the sink and began running the water.

"Nina?"

Crossing the room, crossing the room… She was having to fight hard to prevent any part of her body twitching involuntarily. Adrenaline was pulsating through her, buzzing around her head, screaming at her to move, to run, to fight. But she couldn't, not until whoever this was in range. THEN she could fight.

"I'm really sorry about this…" It was Josh. Oddly, his voice had the same tingling affect on her spine as it always did, despite the situation.

He stepped in front of her and she sprang suddenly to life, grabbing her chains with both hands and pulling herself off her feet, snapping a two-footed kick at his chest. Her feet hit the floor just as Josh's left it. Her kick had sent him catapulting out of his flip-flops. He soared backwards through the air, landing halfway up the basement steps with a crash that almost made her wince.

Almost.

"Josh, I don't know what kind of sick game this is but I swear if you do not get me out of these things in ten seconds, I'll—" What? What would she do? There was nothing she could do unless he let her out first. It was a catch-22.

"What the hell was that?" Josh yelped from the stairs, having shaken away the dancing lights in his head. He got up slowly, clutching the banister for support.

"A taster," Nixa snapped back shortly, grabbing her chains again and yanking them as hard as she could, hoping to tear them free of whatever moorings they were in. Nothing was happening. She pulled harder, and a small amount of dust rained down onto her face.

"Look… I am really sorry about this, you know," Josh said, sounding vaguely hurt.

The tone in his voice shocked Nixa enough to stop her escape attempts. "Um… What? You're sorry that you've completely smashed my face in with a baseball bat and chained me up in your basement? Oh, well, then apology accepted. Totally."

Josh sighed, picking up a cloth from beside him. It was what had had apparently been dampening in the sink earlier. "You don't get it," he muttered to his feet, gingerly making his way down the basement steps. "This isn't something I want to do."

"Then why are you doing it?"

He ran a hand across his forehead, pausing hesitantly before stepping in range again. She didn't move and, encouraged, he slowly crept closer, hands out to placate her. "Because I have to." Slowly, he moved the cloth to the side of her face and began daubing at the blood there, cleaning the stickiness from her cheek. Nixa winced inwardly as he pressed on her bruise but gave no outward sign of her discomfort, only signs of her confusion.

"What?"

Josh swallowed, his throat tightening. He kept his eyes focussed on his task, flicking them nervously towards Nixa's face only once. Finding that she was staring at him intently, he didn't look back at her. He gave a sudden, breathy, sad laugh and turned away from her, pacing the length of the underground room with the red-tinged cloth squeezed in his fist. He turned suddenly, lashing out and punching one of the support pillars. Nixa watched impassively.

Something was troubling him. This was not the Josh that she knew. This was not the Josh that stalked the halls at school with his friends. This was not the Josh that had parked on the curb at the mall, neither the Josh whose smile that she had fallen so madly in love with. This was a scared, vulnerable, hurt Josh, one that nevertheless intrigued her.

"My mom…" he began, doing her the courtesy of turning to her when he spoke. There were actual tears glinting in his eyes. "My mom is sick," he told her, his Adam's apple bobbing. "It's cancer. It's everywhere — she's, like, riddled with it. Seriously. She has a brain tumour, bone cancer, cancer in her lymph glands… She left it too late. The doctors, they… They gave her four to six months. Maximum. Too late to even treat it, they could just make her comfortable and… wait. Wait for it to happen. Can you believe that? Like vultures."

"Oh, Josh, I'm so sorry…"

Josh took in a deep shuddering breath, shrugging it off. He ploughed on, the words not able to tumble out of his mouth fast enough. He was obviously relieving a burden that he'd been carrying for a long time. "That was two and a half years ago now."

"She beat it?"

The baseball star shook his head mutely, staring at the floor. "She… she got two months into the time the doctors had given her and took a turn for the worst and ended up in hospital. They gave her days. Days. My dad, he went nuts. He took leave from work, started looking into all of these ways to cure her. Pioneering drugs, Far Eastern medicines, herbs, acupuncture, anything that you can think of he researched into it. But it was for nothing. He couldn't find anything to cure her. Not until…" He broke off, his eyes red, and let the first of his tears fall silently and swiftly down his cheeks. He swiped at them with his sleeve. "Not until he finally turned to… dark stuff. Like voodoo, or something. African Witch Doctors. Whatever. I don't know.

"He summoned… something. This… thing. I don't know what it is. But I know that he feeds it people. And, somehow, through this voodoo stuff it stops Mom dying. She made a miraculous recovery, the doctors were baffled, ran her through a million tests, found her cancers were all shrinking. They couldn't explain it."

Demon. There you go. Josh wasn't a demon; Ben and Chris had that part at least wrong. He just helped a demon along with meals to save his mom. And it was killing him. She could see that now. The Josh Muse mask he usually wore was gone now and she could see the raw wound underneath as the tears streamed down his face.

"Normally he feeds it, which isn't so bad, but he's away on business and he took her with her, kind of another honeymoon, so I'm left here to do it. And I… can't not, you know? I can't not feed it, because otherwise it'll just turn on me and let mom die. I don't know what to do… I'm killing people. I'm killing them, but my mom isn't dying, so by killing them I'm not killing her. I can't let her suffer like that again. I can't see her lying in a hospital bed again; I won't let that happen to her. Ever. But… There has to be another way. But there isn't… And it's not happy right now. I mean, I tried to feed it this cheerleader, but it didn't like her. It only likes a special kind of person. Good people. I mean, she was a bitch, so I'm not surprised, but now it's angry and my dad called and my mom isn't feeling well and it's all my freaking fault…" He set about kicking the dryer, denting the door inwards. Screaming with rage at the internal battle waging in his head, he kicked at the dryer until he split his foot open and was smearing it with red with each kick.

"It's not fair…" he said, swiping tears from his eyes. "It's not fair that you have to die, but… but you're not my mom. And it's you or her, and I'm sorry, so sorry, but…"

"Josh!" The yell came from the top of the stairs, from behind the closed basement door. Josh spun on his heel, looking up at the ceiling like a deer caught in the headlights. He quickly wiped all the remnants of tears from his eyes, and Nixa could see his persona sliding up like an electric car window. He was back to being the invulnerable Josh.

"Dude, I'm coming!" he yelled at the ceiling, turning and looking at Nixa once last time before climbing the basement stairs, limping as he did so and tracking blood. At the top of the stairs he turned once more, met her eyes, swallowed and snapped off the light.

Monsters of the Deep End

A balloon hit Ben in the gut. Despite the fact that the projectiles were only water and rubber, they sure as hell hurt. It felt like a fist was being driven into his stomach. It exploded, throwing water all over his already sodden T-shirt. The blue cotton was nearly black with water and clinging to him. The school's star pitcher, no less, sent another one hurtling towards him. He turned his head, flinching in anticipation of the impact, and it hit him on the side of his face, blinding him with water and causing him to choke. He tossed his head, vainly trying to flick a strand of dripping hair from where it was agitating his eyelid.

In front of him, Lyle the pitcher high-fived some other moron and stepped back. Once again, the water balloon hit him and exploded, driving the air from his lungs. He winced, fighting with all of the strength he had not to break the ropes binding his hands behind his back. Instead, he twisted them until his wrists felt raw but to no avail.

A slap of water hit his back, splash back from someone bursting a water balloon on Chris who was tied to the basketball pole behind him and enduring the same punishment for being caught as a gatecrasher as he was. Ben could feel Chris's fingers scrabbling at the knots with about as much success that Ben had had previously.

Their potions had been shattered. It seemed that the two guys that had grabbed them had thought that they were laxatives ready for the punchbowl. At first, Ben had been insulted that he was being thought of as petty enough to do something like that, but that feeling had soon passed when he realised what the rest of his evening was going to involve — being target practise for people with IQs of nine. Collectively.

"I bet you'll think twice about doing this again, huh, Olsen?" Someone was jeering at him, but he couldn't actually see who it was. The sun had shifted and was glaring into his eyes. Add the fact that he was half-blinded by water and his own hair didn't help any either.

"Well, I like to pride myself on the ability to think once. It's not a talent that all present share." Three water balloons hit his chest simultaneously. It hurt like hell, but it had so been worth it just to imagine the indignation of their faces.

"Josh! Look who we found."

The voice came from behind him and he turned his neck as far as he could. He just about caught a glimpse of Josh crossing the patio and skirting the pool, in which some cheerleaders were playing volleyball with a giant inflatable beach ball, and coming towards them before realising what a mistake it was to turn his focus away from the missiles coming towards him. He turned his head back just in time to get a water balloon in the face.

Coughing up the inhaled water and screwing his eyes shut to get it clear from them he shook his head, finally flicking the aggravating strand of hair from his face and throwing droplets of water everywhere. "This was just how I wanted to spend my evening," he muttered. "Screw going to the movies on a Friday night, no. I'd much rather be here getting humiliated by a bunch of mouth-breathing Neanderthals."

"Hey, don't forget who you're dissing here. The future bums, pornstars and fast-food workers of America. Our society is based on these people," Chris shot back, glaring at Josh as he came closer.

"Huh. Touché."

When Josh realised that it was Ben and Chris he did a double take, his eyes widening momentarily as he made the connection between them and Nixa. His face then hardened again, and his patented sneer contorted his features as he stepped menacingly closer to them like a lion stalking its prey. "What were you doing here? Trying to see if you could clean my windshield?"

"Yup, that's it," Ben said. "A buck thrown to me by Josh Muse would be something I'd tape into my scrapbook and treasure forever."

"Whoa, slow down there. A buck? That's the going rate for those bums that jump out at you when you stop at traffic lights? And here's me thinking that not running them down was payment enough. Well, you learn something new every day, huh?"

Ben shrugged. "Well, now you mention it, a dental plan would be nice…"

"No, seriously. What are you doing here?"

Chris paused, starting the sentence twice before finally deciding to throw caution to the winds. "We're looking for Nixa," he said eventually. "She wasn't answering her cell and her, uh, sister um… ate a peanut and her throat closed up and she's in the ER. I guess this is the thanks you get for being good citizens, right?" As if to punctuate his point, someone threw another water balloon at him. Water dripped from his sodden jeans and hoodie and into his trainers. He shifted his feet, squeezing water out with his movements.

"Nixa? Short, blonde, hot, right?"

Ben rolled his eyes heavily. "Yes, amongst other things…" He paused, craning his neck to look back at Chris. "Wait, I forget. Are we allowed to think that's Nixa's hot? Or are we not?"

Chris was about to speak, but he closed his mouth again, having to contemplate it. "Feminist Nixa is not a tool for male oppressors to goggle at, right?"

"Uh-huh, but insecure, 'fat' Nixa is totally hot," Ben countered. "Wow… When did my life become such a complicated mess?"

"Since you broke in to poison the punchbowl," Lyle said, stepping up next to Josh. "We found vials full of coloured liquids in their pockets. We smashed 'em, but I can't think of anything else that they were going to use them for."

"That's right! I remember now! My life is so empty I have nothing better to do than come and ruin your party! Damn me and my faulty memory. I knew I should have written that down, Chris."

"Coloured liquids in vials?" Josh paused, his eyes narrowing. Chris thought that he could even see a flash of panic behind them, but he couldn't be sure because it was gone in a heartbeat. "Ugh. I am so bored of these two clowns. I'll go throw them in the basement or something. We'll find something fun to do with them later."

There was suddenly a knife pressed between Ben's wrists and the witch gulped, stiffening, as the metal slid between the small space between his hands, sawing at the ropes. They snapped slowly and Ben gratefully tugged his hands free, rubbing at his raw wrists as Chris was also cut free.

Lyle surged forward and grabbed his upper arm, tossing him down into the dirt behind the basketball hoop. Ben sprawled ungainly, sliding across the grass before sitting up and glaring at the pitcher, who just laughed in his face and turned his back on the witch. Ben looked over to Chris. Josh was speaking quietly to his friend, and, as hard as he tried, Ben could make out neither words nor their lip movements. Josh, catching him staring, beckoned to him harshly and the witch climbed to his feet, wringing water out of his T-shirt as he did so.

"I was just saying to your boyfriend here that, if you want to see Nina, or Nixa, or whatever her name is, then you will come with me without a fight. You will not try to do any witchy stuff on me or anything or anyone else here. Got it?"

"You lost me with the witch thing," Ben said, cocking his head. "I'm a little confused. Is that a metaphor, or are there actually women flying past the moon as we speak on broomsticks?" Ben gave a mock gasp. "And here's me thinking that your mom flew out of the country on an aeroplane."

He was completely unprepared for Josh's fist connecting with his jaw. He spun as he went down and hit the grass face first, tasting a warm trickle of copper in his mouth. He traced over the split inside of his cheek with his tongue, and then over his lip, following with two fingers that came back bloodstained. He spat blood onto the grass before turning over and sitting up. People were clapping at Josh and laughing at him, and he was sure that his face was burning the same colour as the blood winding its way down his chin.

Still, he grinned up at the baseball player. "Sore spot?"

"You have no idea," Josh snarled tightly, dragging Ben up from the floor. "Now move it before I hit you again."