Redemption (Covenant Book 3) Read online

  DEMON RIDE

  Cindy pulled away from the opening to flatten her back against the wall. She didn’t know what she was seeing in the other room, but it was anything but normal. It was as if a bunch of murderers had been possessed. Something cold touched her in the back of the neck, and the chill shot down to the base of her spine like a shock.

  Someone spoke to her then in a voice like wind through wooden chimes. It was faint but airy. “That’s exactly what has happened,” the voice said.

  “Who is speaking?” she whispered. “Where are you?”

  “I am Delivida,” the wind-voice said. “And I am as close to you as close can be.”

  Cindy tried to push away from the wall… and found that she couldn’t. She was locked in place.

  “I’ve been waiting a long time for this,” Delivida said.

  Suddenly Cindy’s leg lifted of its own accord. It was as if a puppeteer was above her, pulling the strings. Or the reins.

  “Let’s go for a ride,” the demon suggested.

  PRAISE FOR COVENANT AND SACRIFICE!

  SACRIFICE

  “Sacrifice is not for the timid or weak of heart, it is a full frontal assault on your senses. It is a dark, brutal, bloody, and terribly frightening book. Everson went deep into some dark abyss to bring this book to the light of day… I highly recommend Sacrifice.”

  —Famous Monsters of Filmland

  “This book is a non-stop thrill ride, and I had a hard time putting it down once I started it. Sacrifice is a thrilling and shocking piece of genre fiction that deserves to be on every horror fan’s shelf.

  —Fatally Yours

  “John Everson manages in Sacrifice to dispense buckets of blood, provide edgy perversity, and walk the tenuous tightrope of horror and sex without falling: it’s rather an amazing feat.”

  —Hell Notes

  “Everson is in full form. The action is quick, brutal, and visceral. In many ways, Sacrifice is like that “slasher flick” we know we shouldn’t enjoy but do anyway.”

  —Shroud Magazine

  “Perhaps a bit like an adult version of the classic cult film Carnival of Souls, Everson has truly made his mark on the genre and is taking no prisoners; Sacrifice is hardcore horror that passes its predecessor by bounds. The squeamish need not apply.”

  – The Horror Fiction Review

  “Sacrifice is a Screaming Orgasm followed by a shot of Jack Daniels.”

  —Horror World

  COVENANT

  “Covenant won Everson a Bram Stoker Award back in 2004, and after reading it, you’ll agree that this tight, gripping story was definitely worthy of the distinction.”

  —Rue Morgue

  “I’ve waited four long years to read Covenant and it was well worth it. Everson has taken a classic genre plot and given it his own spin. This is how horror is done RIGHT.”

  —The Horror Fiction Review

  “Equal parts dark mystery and supernatural horror, Covenant is a white-knuckle reading experience that will keep you guessing and gasping.”

  —Creature Feature

  “Truly entertaining no-frills horror, which is a damned good thing.”

  —Horror World

  “Everson allows the storylines to unfurl, carefully layering each of the individual character’s arcs as he crosses genres ending up with a nice blend of mystery and horror.”

  —Dark Scribe Magazine

  “Everson sets up his story well, fleshes out Joe Kiernan as a character readers can root for, and truly sets him against a pitiless, horrible evil.”

  —Shroud

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author. This is a work of fiction.

  Copyright © 2017 by John Everson

  For more information on this and other John Everson titles, please visit www.johneverson.com.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by

  Dark Arts Books

  Naperville, Illinois

  www.darkartsbooks.com

  DEDICATION

  For Geri,

  My Redemption.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  THIS NOVEL BEGAN ON A fateful night in August 2010 in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Ironically, it ended in the same place, almost exactly six years later. I wrote the first paragraphs of Redemption while sitting at one of my favorite places in the world – the bar of the Cowgirl BBQ in Santa Fe. I’ve gone on an annual business trip to Santa Fe in August for many years, and on that particular night in 2010, I learned that my publisher at the time, Leisure Books, was canceling its mass market paperback line just a couple weeks after they’d released my fourth novel, Siren.

  When that news hit, I ordered another beer, closed my laptop and stopped writing. It was a “dream is over” moment for me. It would be weeks before I wrote another word of fiction after that night. When I did, I didn’t return to Redemption, because I assumed that wherever my next book landed, it wouldn’t be with the publisher that had released Covenant and Sacrifice, the first two in the series. And nobody else was going to want the third in a series if they didn’t publish the first two.

  So I moved on to other projects, and eventually penned three more unrelated novels for my editor, Don D’Auria, when he moved from Leisure to Samhain Publishing. And then last year, when the horror line there began to close down, I decided, “what the hell?” Publisher or no publisher, I was going to write the book I’d wanted to write since 2007, when the original hardcover edition of Sacrifice was released. So while Samhain fell apart in 2015-2016, that’s what I did. I wrote Redemption.

  As with all of my novels, this book was written in a wide variety of places. I travel a lot for my dayjob and tend to get a lot of writing done while I’m on the road, and this was a most unusual year for me in that regard. I travelled farther afield than ever. Hence, bits of Redemption were written in Irish bars and brewpubs in Tokyo, Seoul, Amsterdam, Barcelona and Ghent, Belgium. Closer to home, some of these chapters took shape in Los Angeles, Seattle and my Naperville, Illinois hometown hangout, Crosstown Pub. (If you ever go there, get the Devil’s Sweat grilled chicken wings. And a large glass of ice water!)

  The final draft of the book took shape in August 2016 in Santa Fe, where a good chunk of the novel takes place. Speaking of which, if you ever visit Santa Fe, don’t go look ing for the Birchmir Mission; I took some geographical liberty there. The Cowgirl BBQ is certainly real, but other aspects of Santa Fe in this novel have been fictionalized.

  Redemption is an important novel to me, because it finally ties up threads that I’ve long wanted to twine. The story originated in the mid-1990s, when I began to write Covenant. Then the sequel, Sacrifice, was written in the early to mid-2000s. So it’s appropriate, I guess, that the end of the trilogy was written in the mid-2010s. Each novel really began almost a decade apart from its predecessor. Not, perhaps, the best planning for a trilogy, but that’s how it happened. I hope fans of the first two novels will enjoy how it all pans out here in the pages to come.

  A few thank you’s are in order...

  The life of a fiction writer can frequently seem lonely, thankless and a huge waste of time that could perhaps be better spent playing pinball and watching old Eurotrash movies. There have been a lot of people who have kept me going back to the keyboard over the years, encoura
ging me when it all seemed pointless. My lights through the dark. My wife, Geri, has given me strength. My friends, Bill Gagliani, Dave Benton, Brian Pinkerton and Mort Castle have graced me with their energy, advice and support. Shane Ryan Staley of Delirium Books published the first two novels, and then Don D’Auria picked them up and gave them a broader life in mass market paperback editions. Without either of them, this novel would probably not exist.

  This third book in the series also owes a lot to fans – the people who have asked me at conventions and via e-mail for years to finish the story.

  A lot of people “kicked in” and said “hell, yes, I want to know what happens.” So I have to give a huge thanks to the Redemption Kickstarter supporters. If I could, I’d queue up some big, dramatic music and Star Wars scroll these names following a headline that reads Thanks, You Rock:

  Anthony Beals, Josslyn L. Bond, Chad Bowden, Chris Brogden, Chris Brook, Anita Nicole Brown, Alan Caldwell, H Casper, Matthew Cheek, Stephen Clark, Lon Czarnecki, Joshua Daughtry, John Eberhardt, Tim Feely, Brian Floyd, Michael Fowler, Lynn Frost, Chand Svare Ghei, Stephen Glover, Fred Godsmark, Lionel Green, Leah and Joe Guillemette, Sarah Ham, Michael John Haines, Violet Paige Hall, Sheila Halterman, Joe Hempel, Pakorn Jaruspanavasan, Albert Jones, Kim Kelly, Brian Kirk, Chris Kosarich, Paul Legerski, Shane Lindemoen, Serra Maximovich, Bob McQueen, J.H. Moncrieff, Lynn Neering, Robert Nelson, Peg Phillips, Maria Rose Randazzo, Magnus Reithaug, Tanya Semmons, Mike Sickler, Jim Simmons, Daniel White, Scott Wichman, and Christian Wood.

  —John Everson

  Naperville, IL

  January, 2017

  PROLOGUE

  “ALEX, WAKE UP.”

  She heard the words but…

  “Alex.” There was urgency in the dark voice. It spoke again. “We don’t want to be here.”

  She heard Malachai’s voice vaguely in the distance. But she couldn’t seem to open her eyes. Everything was grey; all she wanted was to sleep. She stopped struggling to see, and allowed herself to drift again. She felt warm. Comfortable. Mentally, she rolled over and sighed. Alex decided to ignore the voice.

  “If you ever want to see Joe Kieran again, open your eyes.”

  The voice sounded serious, but still… she drowsed.

  “Wake up, bitch, we’ve got to move!”

  The voice was like a thunderclap behind her eyes, and Alex jolted awake.

  “What?” she exclaimed, and suddenly the grey was gone.

  In its place was a fog of red.

  The floor was hard, some kind of rough limestone. The room itself was huge; she couldn’t see the wall on one side. There were no windows, but an evil light seemed to glow from the air itself. There was no source. Next to her, lying on the ground, was a tangled mess of dark hair and naked, bloody limbs. A patrician nose jutted from the midst of the hair, and a long arm extended towards Alex; its black-painted fingernails clutched as if they were reaching for her.

  It was the crazy chick. The “Sunday Slasher,” according to the newspapers. The one who had tried to kill her, and nearly succeeded.

  Ariana.

  Alex resisted the urge to punch that pointy face while she had the easy opportunity. She ought to straddle the bitch, put her hands around that lily-white neck and squeeze the life out of her. And then she remembered that she couldn’t punch or strangle Ariana.

  She couldn’t move her arms.

  Or legs.

  She’d been paralyzed by Ariana’s boyfriend. She could still see him coming after her with a pipe. She remembered the flash of pain and the helplessness after. She tested the endgame of the memory and struggled to lift any and all of her limbs.

  Nothing happened. Alex lay unmoving on the cold stone floor. She remained broken.

  “Where are we?” she whispered.

  “Welcome to Hell,” Malachai’s voice answered in her head. “And I do not suggest that we stay awhile.”

  Alex tried again to sit up, but nothing happened. “Well it’s going to be hard to leave,” she whispered. “If you remember, I can’t move.”

  “You can, with my help,” Malachai whispered.

  “What do I have to do?” she asked, dreading the answer.

  “Get me out of here.”

  “I could say the same.”

  “Ask for my help,” he said. “I can move your limbs for you.”

  Alex thought about that for a moment. What did she give Malachai, if she gave him control of her body? He was a demon, after all. A demon who had nearly gotten her and Joe killed. She took in the veins in the rock on the ceiling, and the red haze that floated through the air. And tried again to move her legs or arms. Or head.

  Nothing happened.

  Malachai was her only hope, like it or not. She had resigned herself to that realization once before, in the labyrinth of caves just outside of Terrel. His strength had raised her limbs before. It was a bitter pill, but easier to swallow this time. Necessity bred acceptance.

  “Help me, Malachai,” she finally whispered. The words barely slipped through her lips, and suddenly she felt her head lift, and her arms bend, on their own. She flexed her fingers to take control of herself.

  “We need to move,” the low, ancient voice said in the depths of her head. He sounded worried. It was an unexpected emotion from a demon.

  “I don’t know where we are,” she said. “And where are we going to go?”

  “Out of sight. It doesn’t matter where, but we can’t stay here. They’ll have felt us come through.”

  Alex willed herself to sit up, and her body followed. Malachai was somehow a part of her. The world swam around her for a moment. When her head stopped threatening to slide off, Alex took a deep breath.

  “What do we do?” she asked.

  “Get up, get out of this room, and hide.”

  “Why are you so scared?” Alex asked. “Aren’t you a frikkin’ demon?”

  “There’s a reason I left here and made covenants to stay on your world,” Malachai said. “You don’t want to find out that reason.”

  “So what do we do?” she asked.

  “Hide.” Malachai advised a second time.

  Alex looked at Ariana, still lying unconscious on the stone floor. “And what about her?”

  “What do you care?” Malachai said.

  “What will they do to her if they find her?”

  Malachai didn’t answer, but instead, a picture suddenly flashed before her eyes. A naked woman, arching her back, mouth wide open, seemingly in orgasm, yet, covered in blood. A stake between her legs, a fountain of blood jetting from a hole in her middle…

  Alex was vindictive sometimes. But not that cruel. Besides, she was alone in hell. The demon-caller might prove useful somehow. This was her scene, after all.

  She nudged the unconscious woman with her foot.

  Ariana stirred, moaning softly before opening her eyes.

  “Wake up, bitch,” Alex said, echoing Malachai’s words of seconds before.

  “We’ve gotta move.”

  CHAPTER 1

  THE DREAM WAS OVER. Again. Joe Kieran leaned against the rough wood rail of the long bar at the Cowgirl BBQ and tilted back the last dregs of a local Santa Fe brown ale. He thought it tasted a bit flat, but he drank it fast anyway.

  A girl with a warm, high-cheekboned face, a tight “Tramps & Thieves” tank top and a black, silver-studded cowboy hat refilled it almost as soon as he set the glass back on the bar. She was clearly of American Indian descent, like many he’d met out here. They’d gotten to be on a first-name basis these past couple days.

  Her name was Cindy, and that hurt him every time he said it. That name conjured so many memories for him. But the Cindy he had loved was dead and buried, back in Terrel.

  He’d driven just about as far from Terrel as he could this past week. From east coast nearly to
west. And the hills of New Mexico promised there were still miles more that he could get lost in. He liked it here, with the vagabond, foreign-accented carpet salesmen and vapid, well-heeled tourists snapping up turquoise jewelry from vendors set up on the sidewalks to sell trinkets for twice what the junk was worth. The tourists spent money like water and were clueless of the real shit going on around them as they planned on their nightly excursions to watch the sun set at the outdoor opera pavilion on the edge of town. He saw why they flocked here though. It was a beautiful place, an oasis with good food and culture and scenery.

  Despite all that, Joe thought after another night or so, he’d be moving on. He felt the call of the isolation promised in those hills. Maybe he’d head north.

  Maybe to Taos.

  Joe Kieran wanted to lose himself in the countryside. The concept sounded simple, but the execution seemed to always be just outside of his grasp. As it apparently was now. Above the backbeat of the band outside on the patio doling out a funky retro ’70s disco classic, he heard someone say a word that always made him look up.

  “Demons.”

  Joe had some experience with demons. He’d spent the last few weeks trying to forget it. He’d lost both of his girlfriends to demons, back in Terrel.

  So when someone said “demons,” Joe paid attention.

  Demons connected him to Alex.

  And every day that passed, he prayed that she was still alive… somewhere. In that place beyond where he could see. Honestly, he still was trying to find her. He kept looking for the chinks in the armor. Listening and seeking out stories about the places where the walls between worlds grew thin.

  The places where he might somehow find a way to bring her back again to the world in which she belonged.