J.L. Doty - Dead Among Us 01 - When Dead Ain’t Dead Enough by J.L. Doty Page A

a few seconds. Then the ugly blond started down the street away from Paul while Joe Stalin ran up the street toward him.
    Paul knew his situation was hopeless. The shrubs weren’t that large and the shadows weren’t that deep, and the mist helped a little, but not enough. The midget apparently agreed with Paul’s assessment. He said, “This just won’t do. We’ll have to go someplace else.” He reached out and grabbed Paul’s hand and said, “Come with me, young fella.”
    Paul wanted to protest, was about to say something about splinters in his leg and that he was in no shape to go anywhere. But before he could say anything the mist began to dissipate, and the night sky lightened toward a soft orange, as if the sun was rising prematurely. Little by little the horizon turned a dark pinkish-purple, a strange false dawn that was just plain wrong. He looked over his shoulder hoping to find a normal sun, hoping brush fires in the distant hills had laid down a cloud of smoke that filtered the sun’s light into this strange off-colored dawn.
    The midget hissed, “Hold still, ye daft fool.”
    The street in front of Paul’s apartment had grown indistinct, had become almost transparent, as if an image of it had been overlaid onto the more solid image of a strange, rolling countryside, though the midget was still solid and well defined. “Where are we?” Paul whispered.
    The midget smiled knowingly. “Well now, we’re a little bit here, and a little bit there, and a little bit nowhere. And you should be still and quiet. Don’t move and don’t make a sound.”
    Joe Stalin trotted up the street, and like everything else he was almost transparent, defined more by his edges than his substance. He carried the howitzer openly and looked to right and left as he ran right past Paul’s hiding place. He stopped at the corner, looked both ways and stood there for a moment of indecision.
    Paul heard the refrains of some heavy-metal band, thought for a moment he might be hallucinating. He had splinters embedded in the side of his face, along his left arm and ribs, down his hip and leg, and they produced enough pain to make anyone hallucinate. But then Joe Stalin reached into his coat, pulled out a cell phone, and when he flipped it open the heavy-metal tune ended. He spoke some hurried words in what sounded like Russian, stuffed the phone back into his coat and ran back to Paul’s building.
    “What happened to the other emergent?” McGowan demanded. “I sensed two cross over.”
    Karpov gave him a smarmy smile. “We searched the apartment carefully. There was only the one. And you took care of it with admirable dispatch.”
    The shadow that was Colleen left the doorway, drifted over to the ashes that remained of the demon, squatted down and nudged at the scorched and blackened letter opener. “Cheap letter opener,” she said. “But some silver plating, otherwise it would’ve had little effect on an emergent.”
    Alexei appeared in the destroyed doorway breathing heavily, Vladimir behind him. He grumbled in a thick Russian accent. “We should get out of here. The cops are on their way. We can hear the sirens.”
    Karpov turned to McGowan. “We will find this rogue, Valter. My men and I will find him and eliminate him.” He and his thugs made a quick exit.
    Colleen had arrived in a cab so she joined McGowan in his car. Neither of them said anything until they’d put several blocks behind them, then Colleen broke the silence. “You were right. There were two emergents.”
    “I know,” he said. “But what happened to the second one?”
    He’d meant it as a rhetorical question, but she answered anyway. “I think something pushed it back into the Netherworld.”
    “And that’s another thing,” McGowan continued. “How did two emergents cross over? Conklin’s summons wasn’t that strong, strong enough to attract a minor demon like that succubus, but for emergents to physically cross over—Conklin wasn’t using