An Apple for the Creature

“I know the story she told, I’ve heard it over and over again inside my head, but it doesn’t matter one little bit.” Patricia studied the trainer hanging helplessly before her. “You weren’t looking out for him. . . . You weren’t being careful, and you let him get out of his crate, and he was so scared. . . .”

Patricia became overcome with emotion, choking back her tears as she again recollected what had led them all to this.

“He . . . He was probably looking for me . . . wondering where I had gone . . . why I had left him in this . . . place. . . .” She dropped to her knees, weak from grief. “So scared that he didn’t even think of the road outside . . . of the cars. . . .”

Patricia stared at her balled fists; they were trembling with fury.

“You told me that he was dead when you found him, that the car that struck him hadn’t even stopped. . . .”

She looked at Remy then, and he saw in her eyes the depths of her sadness, of a grief so strong that a monster such as the Bad Hour could have feasted upon it for centuries.

“Can you imagine hearing that?” she asked him. “Hearing that about your baby?”

Remy couldn’t imagine it, and the Seraphim fought harder, surging to escape the prison of flesh, blood, muscle, and bone that had kept it locked away for centuries.

The Bad Hour was growing, feeding off all the emotion in the room. This was its power, to feed upon the anger, to use it to grow its strength. There was no wonder why it hadn’t yet dealt with Jackie, Patricia’s emotions still so very raw . . . so strong.

So delicious.

“I tried to get past it, but I couldn’t. . . . I kept imagining him there, lying in the road, wondering why I had left him as he died.” She was sobbing now, the grief completely overwhelming her as it had continued to do since Petey’s death.

And the Bad Hour grew stronger, taking the little form of Petey, stoking the fires of her grief.

Patricia suddenly went quiet, wiping the tears from her face as she carefully rose from her knees.

“And now we’ve come to this,” she said, seeming more in control. “At first I was afraid . . . scared of what I had called up. . . . I tried to warn you with a note that it was coming, so that you could prepare. . . . I think I did it more for myself, hoping that it might satisfy my anger, my hunger for revenge if you knew something was coming . . . but it did the opposite and made me want to see you suffer all the more.”

Patricia stared at her adversary, with dark, cold eyes. There was a piece of the Bad Hour behind those eyes, of that Remy had no doubt.

“How should we do this?” the woman then asked. “How do I make you pay for your sins? Do I let Petey drag you out into the street so that you can be hit by a car and die there alone . . . or do I let it just rip you apart while I watch?”

The Bad Hour seethed, writhing in anticipation, feeding off the woman’s escalating fury. This was what it had been waiting for, and though it had savored her tears and rage, this was what it was all about.

The coup de grace.

Remy felt as if his skin were on fire, the Seraphim bubbling just below the surface. The Bad Hour’s influence was still upon him, but he had to try to stop this . . . to halt what was about to happen.

“And if you do this,” Remy asked, still managing to hold on to the leash that kept the power of Heaven inside him in check. “If you toss her in the street to be hit . . . or rip her apart . . . what then?”

Patricia seemed confused by the question, the darkness in her eyes temporarily fleeing. “She’ll have paid for what she did to my baby . . . to me.”

“But then what?” Remy asked. “Petey will still be gone. . . . The grief will still be as real.”

The Bad Hour did not like what he was saying. A mass of solidified shadow whipped out from its boiling mass to strike him savagely to the floor. It took all that Remy had to maintain his grip upon his divine nature, to retain his humanity in the moment.

“You’ll still have to deal with the guilt that you’re carrying,” he told her, lifting his face to look at her.

The old woman seemed startled.

“My guilt?” she asked incredulously. “Why would I have any guilt? It was she who . . .”

“You left your baby,” Remy said, rising, hoping to weaken the Bad Hour’s hold upon her, to redirect some of that anguish and rage upon her.

“I had no choice!” Patricia bleated, the tears starting to flow again. “My mother was dying and I couldn’t . . .”

“Your mother was your major concern,” Remy said, regaining a slight bit of control over the angelic essence roused to anger by the demonic spirit. “Petey had to come second.”

“But I loved him,” the woman sobbed.

“I never said that you didn’t,” Remy told her. “But a decision had to be made, and you made it.”

“I couldn’t take him with me. . . . I was staying at the hospital just in case . . . for when the time came,” Patricia said, remembering.

“You made a decision to have somebody else care for Petey,” Remy said, driving the point home.