My palm holds up, even with his forehead, and I invade his mind, seeking out the knowledge that he doesn’t want to share. He’s been watching a lot of documentaries on serial killers lately, and while he’s not sure if he actually wants to kill someone or not, he definitely is thinking and even planning on kidnapping someone.
Hmm. What to do with this information?
I motion for Demonfang and Shadechomp to heel. They never like to listen to that, but I’m firm. This is serious.
My hand doesn’t tremble as I open the passenger door, but I don’t let the man drive off, and I don’t shut the door. I motion for the driver to lean toward me. He probably thinks he’s going to get a kiss, but instead, I touch my fingers to either side of his head, and I rip out the memories of the shows he’s watched in order to study, and I take away that sick twisted sense of curiosity he possesses about life and death, and I even nudge in a few thoughts about maybe him wanting to focus more on life, and I release him.
His eyes are a bit glossy, and he tries to think, to focus, and I smile at him. “What do you want?” I ask him again.
“I… I don’t know,” he mumbles, the words almost coming out slurred.
“No idea?” I ask. “What’s the worst sin you’ve ever committed or thought about committing?”
“In grade school, I forged my dad’s signature on a test I failed.” The more he talks, the more he sounds natural, like his old self.
I giggle. “That’s honestly the worst sin you’ve ever committed?”
"Well, Dad found out about it during the parent-teacher conference, so…"
“And the worst thing you’ve ever thought about?”
He glances at me, and his cheeks turn bright red. “Ah…”
Just to be sure, I reach over and touch his temple. He wants to kiss me, no more than that unless I’m willing, and I lean back in the seat, considering things over.
“Thank you for being willing to give me a lift,” I tell him as I climb out, “but I’m good if you’re good.”
“I’m good,” he murmurs. “At least I think I am.”
Like before, I wave my fingers and steal away the memory of our meeting at all.
It can be a very tricky and dangerous thing that I just did. Messing with someone’s memories, with their minds, can turn them mad or even turn them into a vegetable, but I wasn’t about to let that guy go free and do whatever he wanted. He wouldn’t have stopped with kidnapping. I’m sure of it, and I don’t want to have met a future serial killer.
Seriously, what are the odds that the first person I talk to here on Earth is someone who had a ton of darkness within him? Or did I somehow draw him to me because like attracts light?
I keep on walking along the street, and eventually, I spy a bus. A wave of my hand has the bus driver pulling over even though it’s not a bus stop, and I’m careful to keep my hellhounds from setting anything on fire.
The people all around me ignore me because I basically ensure that we’re invisible to them, but their conversations are loud and easy to overhear.
“Easton had an earthquake,” a woman announces loudly. “We’ll see how bad it was.”
This route heads to Easton? Interesting. The sign we pass by says Easton is only a few miles down the road.
“Easton doesn’t get a lot of earthquakes,” an older woman says. “I’ve lived there for thirty-five years, and I don’t know if we’ve had five total in all of that time. Probably less.”
“Wasn’t there one strong one, though?” a guy asks.
“Yes, back in… 2017, I believe,” the older woman answers. “A strong one. It cost millions of dollars in damages to buildings. I think even the Washington Monument had some damage to it.”
"This one wasn't as bad, at least."
“From what I heard on the news, no buildings have collapsed. There’s maybe a few injuries but no deaths.”
I nod a few times. Not too bad, then.
The bus takes the exit for Easton, and I see the results of my earthquake. Not all that impressive, honestly, but that’s not too surprising since the attack had been referred to here, bouncing away from the first, targeted location.
We arrive at some kind of area with a lot of shops, and most everyone gets off, including me and my hellhounds. Still doing my part to ensure no one sees us, I have the hellhounds give chase after me. It’s so much fun to be up here, to be out under the sun, and I fall back onto the pavement behind one of the stores. My hellhounds climb all over me, nuzzling me, and I hug them.
Eventually, they get bored with my lying down, and I shut my eyes. One of them drops something onto me. I peek open my eyes.
A stick? Seriously?
“You want to play fetch with something you’re going to burn up? Well, if that’s what you want to do…”
I throw the stick a few times before it’s been burned down to ashes, but I still smell smoke and fire. Something else is burning.
The store.
Chapter 6
I gape at the burning building. At least this is just one single store and not a strip mall, but the fire is already growing to be huge. Huge!
I’m a demon, so I could call the fire back to me, but there are sirens going off already, and I can hear sprinklers going off inside the building, and to call the fire back now would raise even more questions, so I guess I just have to deal with this.
Demonfang clings to me. He knows he did wrong, and Shadechomp is being a goof, trying to bite the fire off the wall.
“Come on,” I call to them, waving for them to follow me.
We race around from behind the store to the front, and I head in through the front doors. People are streaming out of the building, but I notice a woman cupping her hands around her mouth, screaming, but between the other people shouting and the sirens blaring, I can’t hear what she’s saying, but her body language, her facial features, her eyes…
She’s terrified and nearly sick with worry.
I rush over to her. “What’s wrong?” I ask.
She barely even looks at me, glancing all around, clearly looking for someone.
“Who is missing?” I ask her.
She doesn’t say much at all, her face turning red. The crackling of the fire is growing closer, and her eyes are filling with tears, most likely from both her worry and from the smoke.
The fire never bothers me anyway. Neither does smoke, for that matter.
“Boys,” I direct, and the two are right there beside me. I point to the woman, and they sniff her before taking off deeper into the store.
The woman is nearly hysterical as I lead her out of the store, constantly trying to turn around, but I’m stronger than I look, and I won’t allow her to turn away.
There are a few cops outside, and I’m sure this is a great look for me to be dressed as I am, to be physically restraining this woman, but I shove her into the nearest cop’s arms.
“Keep her out of the store,” I demand, and I turn around to head inside.
Behind me, the woman breaks down, crying, sobbing, huge sobs that distort any words she attempts to say, but I get the gist of it.
Her two kids are missing.
Before I can enter, my hellhounds bring out the two kids, but I continue to go inside. There’s someone else in here. I can sense it.
Demons are drawn to power, to life and death. There’s nothing more powerful than a person’s soul, and when a life is on that tipping point, the soul shines brightly even if that person is destined for Hell.
I feel that point approaching someone near me, and I almost don’t have to walk over to find the person crumbled up on the floor near the shoe aisle. The person is barely breathing, their face gray, their chest hardly lifting and lowering, and I press a hand to his upper torso. I’m a demon, not an angel, so I can’t heal this person, and I have the sense that it might be too late for him. His lungs most likely have filled with more smoke than he can handle, but I pick him up, sling him across my shoulders, and I carry him out.
By now, the cops are trying to get the people to move back, to allow room for the firefighters, who I ignore as I cross over to the ambulance. I drop the guy into the EMT’s arms, only the EMT either wasn’t ready or wasn’t strong enough because the guy almost falls to the ground.
I glower at the EMT. “Really?”
“You gave me no time!”
“Does it look like this guy has time?” I snap.
The EMT ignores me, which is just fine by me. He has a job to do, after all.
The woman from before is hugging and kissing her children. She doesn’t pay me a lick of attention, and I don’t care. She has her children. That’s what’s important.
My hellhounds nip at my heels. The firefighters are trying to blast the store with water, and I don’t care that they’re trying to stop me. I just brush past the lot of them and head on inside.
I’m not entirely certain that the place has been cleared out.
My hellhounds don’t sense danger. At all. It’s actually not a good thing, but they also view fire as the greatest toy ever. As we walk up and down the aisles, they set more mini fires to the clothes, and I do bother to withdraw some of those fires into me until I’m as hot temperature-wise as the world down below the surface.
Some of these clothes… Wow. I really have to question the people who shop here. The shoes, though, some of them aren’t too bad.
The toy section? It's pathetic. So many options, and honestly, do kids even need any of this? Just shove them outside. Give them a bike with no training wheels and no helmet. Let them scrape their knees and cut themselves and gain bruises. It's important for children to learn how to fend for themselves, to learn that it's okay to be bored, to let them do their own things and forge their own paths. Kids shouldn't be micromanaged by their parents. They should be allowed to fail and have to bail themselves out without having their hands held the entire way. The world isn't fair. It's not all rainbows and sunshine. There will be clouds and storms, and each one will be affected by tragedy. That's the way life goes.
Although I haven’t experienced tragedy yet. Nothing has happened to any of my siblings, and nothing can happen to my father. As for my mother, I don’t know her or much of anything about her except for the tidbit about my being related to Lilith. I’m basically as demonic as a demon can be, but yet, here I am, trying to ensure that none of the humans are killed.
Lucifer wouldn’t care. He would probably have tried to convince the mom to stay in the store to find her kids so that she could die, too, but if that were the case and she died trying to save her children, her soul would’ve shot straight up to Heaven even if there isn’t a grim reaper around.
So maybe he would've lied to her to get her out of the store so her grief could cause her to be apathetic and sloth-like and maybe play the long game for her soul.
I’m not sure I fully understand the whole soul bit. Does having more souls in Hell give my father more power? I suspect that’s it, but why would I, as a demon, want to make my father even more powerful than he already is? That doesn’t make any sense to me. It’s not as if I can convince someone into committing dark deeds so they’ll go to Hell because of my efforts and I be the one rewarded with a surge in power, right? Hell is Lucifer’s domain, not mine.
We head on over to the electronics, and that's when I see a man. He has a mask on, plus his shirt lifted to cover his mouth some as he grabs as many electronic devices as he can hold. I'm not sure all of what he's carrying, but I'm guessing it all costs a pretty penny. He unloads his haul into a cart that's bursting to the brim.
I snap my fingers and point to the wheels. At once, my hellhounds dart forward and puncture holes in the carts’ wheels.
The guy doesn’t realize until he comes back with more stuff. He gapes at the wheels and then glances around wildly. The smoke in this part of the store isn’t as thick as elsewhere, and he can see me clearly enough.
“I…” If he says more, it’s muffled.
I saunter over to him. “I don’t think any of this is yours, not until you pay for it.”
“Oh?” He coughs and steps back away from the cart.
I press on and shove a finger against his chest. “Where do you think you’re going?”
“I…” He holds up his hands, and I reach around him and pluck out his wallet. There’s no cash inside, no credit cards either, and I remove his driver’s license, which, by the way, is expired.
‘Give that back,” he snaps, reaching forward for his wallet, but I let it drop down to the floor.
He goes to drop down to pick up the stuff, but I grab his shoulders and shove my knee into his forehead.
Dazed, he staggers back a few steps. I grip his shoulders again, hauling him up, and that’s when I notice the strange bulge in his shirt. Incensed, I rip his shirt to reveal a Blu-Ray.
“You came here to this store today with the intent of stealing just this?” I ask, holding up the Blu-Ray.
He doesn’t look at it, so I shove the Blu-Ray into his face.
“But with the fire—the real fire, mind you—you thought you might as well steal a lot more, but, ah, buddy, let’s go take a walk, shall we?”
I loop our arms together. He tries to get away, but between my strength and my hellhounds, he doesn’t really have much of a choice but to tag along.
Just to be a brat, I force us to walk through the thickest part of the smoke, so he’s coughing and gagging by the time I finally bring him outside of the place. The firefighters gape at us, and I just shove the guy down to the ground. His mask didn’t help him much after all.
“You told us the place was cleared out,” one of the firefighters shouts at the cops.
While they argue among themselves, I head back in just to be sure they're really aren't any others. In total, I find one more, and I walk the person out, but my hellhounds drag out three more, Shadechomp two, one for each mouth, and Demonfang the other one.
Maybe it’s shock, but no one has reacted to the sight of my hellhounds, and I make sure that no one will recall them after I send them away across the street.
The EMTs are checking over the would-be thief, and I saunter over.
“You’re the one who saved him, right?” an EMT asks.
“Yes,” I say demurely. “Can I have a moment with him?”
The EMT hesitates, but I smile at him, even lick my lips, channeling Lily a little, and he’s nodding and stammering as he backs away.
But I give the would-be thief a cold-blooded glare. “You thought you could just waltz out of there with all of that stuff—”
“I wasn’t going to go out the front door,” he protests.
“No? Out the back door? Where the fire was the thickest?”
He blinks a few times. “There’s a side door…”
“A side door.”
He nods.
“Is that just for employees?”
“I don’t know—”
“Do you work there?” I ask. “Not today, obviously. You aren’t in uniform, but…”
The man says nothing.
I tap a finger to my cheek. “I’m betting the manager will be here soon to check over things. Maybe he or she can tell me if you work there.”
The would-be thief swallows hard and coughs. “I don’t feel so—”
“Then tell me the truth, and I can let the EMT back to helping you,” I say sweetly.
He grits his teeth. “Fine. Yes. It’s my day off, but I do work there and—”
“And you’ve stolen before, haven’t you?”
“I… Yeah,” he grumbles.
I grab his knees and press hard. “Never again.”
“N-No. Never… Never ever.”
I grip his chin harshly and then pat his cheek. “That’s right,” I coo. “Never again.”
By now, most of the fire has been put out. I wait until I’ve rejoined up with my hellhounds to conjure away the rest of the flames since it could be believed that the firefighters’ efforts have paid off.
Nuzzling my pets to me, I murmur in their ears, “Let’s go home.”
Chapter 7
The daughters of Lucifer all live in a mansion together. Not that far away is another mansion for the sons. Lucifer’s mansion? He’s the only one who lives there, and it’s easily three times the size of ours.
Yes, Lucifer has—ahem—a “few” of the deadly sins himself.
Normally, I always enter the mansion through the back door. It’s not that I hide from my sisters, but they normally give me a hard time. Sibling rivalry and all of that. I know it’s normal for siblings to fight, but most of the time, I’m over it.
Tonight, though, after the fire and my first trek ever to Earth, I am starving, so my hellhounds and I head on through the front door and head straight for the kitchen.
Hmm. You know what? I just realized something. In Hell, you can't eat ice cream. It's impossible. Hell is just too hot for it. There's no such thing as ice down here either, so all of our drinks are hot by default.
The next time I head to Earth, I am so going to try some ice cream. And some iced water. Is it really that much better? Because I know water is healthy for you and all of that, but hot water tastes disgusting if you ask me.
Yes, even demons need to worry about what we put into our bodies. We don't necessarily prescribe to the whole your body is a temple thing, but honestly, what you put into your body does affect you. So does what you don't put into your body. Just look at Lena, who eats to excess, versus Lara, who not only likes to cause famines, she eats as if she's surviving one every day of her life. Even Larissa, the sloth that she is, doesn't eat as much as she should, but that's just because she's lazy. If we put a plate of food in front of her, she'll eventually eat it, albeit slowly. If we do the same with Lara, she'll just turn her nose up and not eat it. Thankfully, no one ever made us sit at the dining room table until everyone finished their plates. Oh, and most of the time, Lara just hands over her food to Lena. I'm not sure why anyone even bothers to plate Lara food at this point. The naïve hope that she'll eat more than a bite or two? She eats and drinks barely enough to stay alive.
Daughter of Flames: A Mayhem of Magic World Story (A Girl and Her Hellhounds Book 1) Page 4