Dancing with the Devil (Nikki & Michael 1)

* * * *

"My name is Jasper Harding."

His voice broke the numbness. She flinched, holding her knees tighter, not moving. Sweat ran in rivulets down her body, despite the dense chill gripping the room. Every heartbeat was a shudder of fear. The darkness writhed and danced with horrors unimaginable. They filled her with their madness, twisted her soul with their evil. She'd long ago given up telling herself it was only the drug. It was more than that now. He was back.

"Repeat it. Say my name."

She bit her tongue and ignored the urge to do as he asked. The darkness ran across her skin as lightly as a spider, scalding her.

"Repeat it, and the fear will go. Everything will go."

"NO!” She dropped her head to her knees and tried to deny the growing need to do as he asked. She'd rather face insanity.

Pain flared in her thigh. More drugs. She moaned and held her trembling legs tightly. She wouldn't give in. She wouldn't...

* * * *

Her parents’ death replayed itself, over and over and over in the darkness. The look on their faces as they'd waved good-bye to her. The scream of metal as a runaway truck crushed them. Images of the twisted remains of the car entwined with blood and mangled body parts, none really distinguishable from the other.

Again and again she felt the caress of her mother's soul, her kiss of love, as she passed on. She screamed and cried and denied the night's insistence they died because of her. Begged and pleaded for forgiveness, only to be mocked with vicious laughter.

And still the nightmare danced on.

* * * *

Over and over she watched Tommy being beaten, her gaze hazy with the blood from a wound on her forehead. Unable to help him, her gifts useless with the pain pounding through her brain, she could only watch the three kids kick him.

Words mocked her. Her words, spoken the night before his death. A wish for his soul to be sent to hell. She cried a denial to the darkness. The words had been spoken in anger and fear, and never meant. The night would not listen, and the madness danced on.

She heard the distant wail of the approaching police siren that frightened the thugs away. Suffered again the agonizing crawl towards Tommy. Felt the moment of his death as she held his bloody body in her arms, the touch of his soul as it passed on its journey towards eternal darkness. Her curse, her fault. Over and over and over...

* * * *

"Say my name."

The chant sang through her brain. She shook her head, the movement feeble. Everything ached—her head, her muscles, her heart. The night went on forever, and time became a frozen wasteland of madness.

Resist, resist. The weak litany overran his chant, helping her ignore it. Fire touched her leg, burned through her bloodstream.

The drug. Her heart shook with fear as the craziness danced in fevered delight.>Maybe he and Jasper had a lot in common after all.

He listened to the sound of the zombies’ awkward footsteps fade away into the silence, then, using the wall as a brace, rose to his feet. The drug in his system would take hours to dissipate, and, with the sun strengthening towards noon, there was little he could do now but wait.

"The creatures have gone,” he said. “We'd better head back to the office."

"And make no attempt to find her?” Jake said incredulously.

"I have no other choice,” Michael bit back.

So much for control, he thought bitterly and stepped out of the hole. A glint of silver caught his eye. He walked across the track, and bent to pick it up. It was Nikki's silver cross. The small amount of silver within the charm tingled against his palm, but he ignored it. At least he had something of Nikki's to hold on to. Something to remember her by in the years ahead.

He glanced across at Jake then strode through the darkness. There was nothing more they could do in the tunnel, and Jasper just might try to contact them at the office—if only to taunt them. Tonight he would search.

And Jasper would pay when he found him.

* * * *

The darkness stirred, coming to life.