Demons in My Driveway by R.L. Naquin Page A

address was a question I wanted an answer to, though. In the past their weird activities hadn’t been much more than a nuisance, and it had stopped eventually. In broad daylight marching up my driveway, the problem was literally too close to home.
    The chanting continued, a low hum of monosyllabic words strung together to form a repetitive murmur of disjointed sounds. To be honest, I was pretty sure it was nonsense they’d made up for show.
    “At what point does a religious organization cross the line into being considered a cult?” I asked.
    Riley gave a dry chuckle. “I think that line was at the end of your driveway.”
    “Alright,” I said, pushing my sleeves up past my elbows. Obviously whatever their pastor had said to make them stop harassing us hadn’t stuck. Time to go up the food chain. “We’ve got police for this sort of crap. We need to call the O.G.R.E. squad.”
    For a few months, maybe a year or so, we hadn’t, in fact, had police for this sort of thing. They’d all walked off the job. But Kam and Darius, along with several other teams, had moved around the country putting the squads back together. At one point, Riley and I had gone out to help.
    “I’ll call,” Kam said, pulling out her phone. “The foreman is a friend of mine.” She winked. “Or at least I’d
like
him to be a friend of mine.”
    I took a step closer to the chanting crazies and raised my voice. “We’re calling the O.G.R.E.s, folks. You don’t have to stop your little prayer group, but you can’t hold it here.” They didn’t move or alter their tempo. “Anybody want to stop with the singing and actually talk to me?”
    Nothing.
    Maurice flung the front door open and strode from the porch. With each step, he grew bigger, more muscular, and fiercer.
    I stared at Maurice, transmonstrifying into a terrible monster with each step, then scanned the crowd in confusion. It took a lot to set Maurice off like that, but I couldn’t tell exactly what—or who had been the cause.
    “Pansy!” When he snarled, acid dripped from his jaws and sizzled at his feet. “What the hell are you doing?”
    The gargoyle woman, startled, let go of the hands she held and turned to face the now eight-foot-tall closet monster bearing down on her.
    The cohesion and organization of the group—impressive a moment before—unraveled with astonishing speed. When Pansy let go and stopped chanting, the others dropped off, one by one, until they all stood in a loose circle, waiting to see what Pansy would do.
    I couldn’t do anything. Even if crossing the protective fairy ring had been an option, my feet wouldn’t move. My surprise had to be apparent across my face, but no one was looking at me anyway.
    All eyes were on Maurice and his never-before-seen wife. Or ex-wife. I was pretty sure that once she’d sent him the men’s loafer he’d exchanged for her daisy flip-flop during their wedding ceremony, the divorce had been final.
    I was a little hazy on monster marital laws.
    Pansy straightened her spine and spoke in a gravelly voice. “Maurice, your cheese is caught in the fortuitous fanbelt!”
    And with those words, a mystery nearly a year old was solved. Pansy’s brother, Phil, had stayed with us for a few days. Nothing he’d said made any damn sense, though Maurice acted as if it was all perfectly clear. I’d wondered if it was a Phil thing or a gargoyle thing, but since Maurice apparently heard something completely different from what I heard, he didn’t have an answer for me.
    Now I knew. All Gargoyles didn’t make a lick of sense
to me
when they spoke.
    “Me?” His terrifying yellow eyes glared down at her from several feet above. “I live here. Take your damn cult buddies and get off our property.”
    She frowned, her eyebrows scraping together and creating poofs of dust. “Maggot balloons?” She gave me a disdainful onceover. “Nobody likes a spotted lamb with a watchtower on its belly.” She sniffed and turned away from me,