Last Safe Place, The by Ninie Hammon Read Free Book Online Page A

thinks he ...” She stopped. She’d never said it out loud before and it sounded so absurd. “He thinks he’s a character in the book—the main character, The Beast of Babylon. I’ve been terrified for months that he might … and after last night, I know he …” She stopped again, gathered herself and spit it out. “Yesheb Al Tobbanoft intends to do exactly what the Beast does in the book.”
    “And that is?”
    “Marry Zara—me.” She whispered the rest because she didn’t have the air to say it out loud. “And … sacrifice Ty. Kill him.”
    If a black man could turn pale, Theo did.
    “You telling me that fool is play-acting some story!”
    “He’s not acting. To him, it’s absolutely real.”
    Gabriella laid out for Theo the script that was the roadmap for Yesheb’s behavior.
    The Bride of the Beast was a bleak horror story about a lost kingdom of demons. According to the novel’s plot, Yesheb would be crowned ruler of the Endless Black Beyond when he found the missing Princess Zara and took her as his bride. Smokey had called it Cinderella meets Darth Vader. The Beast must offer a sacrifice of “innocent blood” and mate with Princess Zara to produce a son and heir—all during the twenty-four-hour cycle of a full moon. Oh, and it had to be after “searing light rips open the canopy of heaven,” too. In other words, after a thunderstorm.
    Gabriella shook her head.
    “Now do you see why nobody will believe me?”
    That, boys and girls, is certifiably nuts!
    If she hadn’t seen it last night she wouldn’t have believed it herself! Blood sacrifice … full moon … violent storm. Geeze Louise!
    Gabriella shook her head again. Things like this didn’t happen to real people and she was so ordinary. She bought food processor gadgets advertised on television at 3 a.m., for crying out loud! She’d been on a diet to lose five pounds her whole adult life. She watched Monday Night Football—go Steelers!—shopped with her Giant Eagle Discount Card and drooled over Mark Harmon on NCIS. (The white hair only made him sexier.) This was crazy!
    Correction: Yesheb Al Tobbanoft was crazy. The rest of them were just along for the ride.
    When Theo finally realized there was no way he could talk her out of running, he grudgingly agreed to help her. She hoped she’d light a fire in Ty’s eyes when she told him where they were really going. When she told Theo, he looked like he’d been gut-shot.
    T HEO LAY ON his back on the big queen-sized bed with sheets that smelled like bleach and had been ironed so stiff you could cut yourself on them if you rolled over wrong.
    He didn’t waste no time trying to make sense out of the past twentyfour hours because he already knew how he’d got his self tangled up in all of it. You had to be real careful what you prayed for.
    Lord, I asked you for a gentle little breeze and you done give me Katrina!
    When I said I wanted a chance to spend a little time with the boy, be a better grandfather than I was a father, I had in mind something like playing catch! Okay, maybe not throwin’ a ball at him, but talking to him. Listening to him. Teaching him some jokes or how to make a saxophone sing. I didn’t plan on gettin’ chased out of my bed in the middle of the night by the poster boy for Nuts R Us. Now, Gabriella’s sayin’ they gone run off and crawl into some hidey hole—did you hear where she say they was goin’! For two months!
    Now, what am I gone do? I don’t have no more idea than a spook how I’s supposed to fit into all this. You gone have to make it so clear a old man like me can’t miss it. Like … write it in the sky.
    In purple.
    In Hebrew!
    Amen.
    Theo did know two things for certain, though. One was that the hearing was completely gone in his left ear. He’d had to concentrate real hard to understand what Gabriella’d been saying earlier. And he suspected that this time the hearing loss wasn’t temporary, figured he’d ought to kiss that one