He had obviously forgotten to protect the windows. I said, “Sounds good. Meet me in an hour.”
“You be there or I’m burning this shit and leaving for Hawaii.”
“I’ll be there.”
Jake hung up without a good-bye.
I shook my head, and fear clutched my chest. Usually Jake was an adventurous sort, and he’d dealt with all sorts of dark magic over the years. He was the one who installed the circle under my bed as well as the wards. If he was scared of this thing, then the logical thing was to turn and run.
Yup, that was the smart, rational thing to do.
Supplies filled the garage to overflowing, and I knew of a few that would help. So I stepped out of the truck and began my search through plastic bins long since discarded.
You see, I’ve never been one for logic. It might keep me safe, but it wouldn’t keep me happy. I smiled at that.
It was something Cate would say.
<><><>
The swirling cream tried to tell me my future. I stared into the cup, wishing it could unravel the mystery that choked my life. Cate was lost in the swirling depths. How many others?
“At least you didn’t burn the place down this time.” Jake said it as a joke, but I could hear anger bubbling underneath.
I looked up from my coffee and gave him my best sardonic gaze. In my fatigue it came off more tired than piercing. We sat across from each other in the African Queen Coffee Shop, or what remained of it. Long wooden boards tried desperately to hold back the drizzle outside the broken windows. The splintered chairs and tables were gone, leaving the place empty and a little sad. Jake and I sat at one of the few unbroken pieces of furniture.
“Leave him alone, Jake,” Thelma scolded as she came out of the back. “Although I’m sure my insurance won’t cover another demon attack.”
“Thanks to the Watchers, it's all listed as an act of God,” I told her. “That’s something.”
“An act of God? Now there’s irony for you, considering what did this.” Jake snorted.
The family resemblance was there when they stood side by side. They shared the same eyes and the same thin, athletic build, even if Thelma had a good three inches on Jake.
“So you never told me you had a sister,” I said to Jake.
“You never asked.”
“No, I never did.”
“And you,” Thelma said to Jake as she pulled up a chair and sat down next to us, “never told me you knew Batman.”
“Not me,” I said with a smile. “I don't like tights. Jake, do you have what you need?”
“’Course I do, but you ain’t gonna like it.” Jake reached under the table and brought up a small pink backpack. Supergirl managed to look menacing from the front of the pack, even with one eye worn away.
“Now that’s cute.”
He took off his dark glasses and glared in my general direction. “Shut the hell up. It’s our little sister’s. I don’t know where my bag went, and you sounded like you were in a hurry.”
“Won’t your sister be angry at the smell?”
“Smell?” Thelma asked.
“Yeah, but that’s half the fun,” Jake said as he reached inside the bag and pulled out a baby food jar. It reeked of dead things and food left on the counter too long. A dark, viscous fluid sloshed around as he placed it on the table.
“Please tell me that jar's full of cod liver oil or something.” Thelma’s voice was razor thin.
“Nope,” Jake said. “Demon goo,” For all his bitching, he was definitely enjoying this.
“You…” Thelma backed away so fast her chair went skidding away from her. “You did not bring that in here!”
“Thelma,” Jake said. Me, I just sighed and sat back in my chair.
“Don’t ‘Thelma’ me. Look at my place! I refuse to have some demon coming back to look for his…whatever the hell that is.”
“It’s harmless,” Jake told her. “Nick here just wants to try and trace the creature…”
“This was your idea? After what happened this morning?” She turned on me, her anger spilling over and threatening to blow me away on its wind. I could see the family resemblance now.
“It was,” I said softly. Jake put his dark glasses back on and Thelma glared holes through my head. “I need your help.”
Jake must’ve heard it in my voice, because his business face slammed down. “What happened, Nick?”
I met the anger in Thelma’s eyes, and she must have seen something in mine, because her anger eased back a notch.
“Did you hear about the fire downtown? A friend of mine was in there. An old friend.”
“Sweet Jesus,” Thelma said. “Is she…?”
I swallowed. “This thing killed her, because I was too slow. I need to find it. I need to find it before it strikes again.”
“Damn, Nick, I’m sorry…” Jake began.
“No pity right now. You said you could track it. I need to put it in the ground for a second time. I need to find out who's sending it.”
“This ain't gonna be easy, Nick. What you're talking about, it's dangerous, man. I mean, like the kind that eats your soul after ripping your brain out through your nose kind of dangerous.”
“I don’t care. I’m willing to take the risks.”
“Risk?” Thelma asked. “What’s he talking about? What’s going on?”
“There's a way for Nick to ride the demon. To see what it sees. Most of the time the spell wouldn't work on a thing this nasty, but I can use Nick’s life force to magnify my spell,” Jake told us. “If something goes wrong, it could have some serious backlash.”
I swallowed thickly as a nasty little knot of fear took hold of my stomach and refused to let go. “What kind of backlash?”
“You could lose your soul, man.”
I took a deep breath. What would I risk to see Cate avenged? What would I do to make sure this thing didn't kill anyone else?
“Nick, you ok?”
“No, I'm terrified,” I told him, “but I have to do this,” I said firmly. “Let’s get started.”
Jake frowned. “It’s your funeral, man. Just don’t come back and haunt me if this goes south.”
“Always the optimist,” I said. I looked over at Thelma and saw a worried crease between her eyebrows.
“Well, don’t expect me to sit here and watch,” she said. As she walked away, my own fear crawled across my insides. I pushed the little bugger down and took a deep breath.
“Let’s do it.”
“Hold on,” Jake said with a deep breath. “I don’t know what you’ll experience. You could sense the demon, or you could ride it like a bronco.”
“What’s your point?”
“If you’re riding the flames, try to keep an eye out for the anchor. It would help if we knew what it was.”
“Anchor?”
“Jesus, man, didn’t you pay attention in school?”
I smiled. “I don’t think they taught demonology after AP English.”
He sighed. “Summoning the big bad from the Other Places isn’t like turning on your cell phone. You need belief, usually in the form of a symbol or statue or something. It has to be an object that takes on the spiritual representation of the demon. If you break the anchor, you break the creature’s passport here.”
“Passport?”
“So to speak. Demons can only walk our world if summoned, or else they’re rogue. And we all know who comes looking for rogues.”
I shivered.
“So you break the anchor and the demon goes back to Hell,” I said.
He nodded. “Right after killing the person who summoned it. Demons don’t like being under the control of monkeys. Usually the cops never find all the pieces.”
“OK, so that would be a good thing to look for, got it. Anything else?”
“That’s it. Close your eyes and we can get this madness started.”
I took three deep breaths and closed my eyes. Worry slammed against my chest, so I co
ncentrated on the rise and fall of my breath.
My body began to relax, and my other senses became stronger as the darkness behind my eyelids deepened. The traffic outside hummed a low tune, mixing with footsteps on concrete. A woman laughed in the distance. A small dog, its bark high-pitched and frantic, serenaded the street. My nose stung with the fresh wood scent of the boards covering the windows as well as the sharp tang of cleaning supplies. Under the soap lingered the stench of the demon.
“Now don’t freak out,” Jake told me, his voice amplified to my ears, “but I’m going to have to anoint your eyelids. You can guess with what.”
I kept breathing even as the words registered. Then the demon stench overpowered me, and I had to push the nausea back. Jake’s fingers touched my eyelids, and they left a trail of gore behind. My stomach protested, but I kept Cate’s face in my mind.
The stench pushed down my throat, and I gagged, but no sound came up. The darkness spread out before me, and the wave of evil snagged my mind like a minnow floundering on a hook. I spun in the darkness and detached from the world below.
I spun faster and faster, like a whirlwind spinning out of control, until the world dropped away and I crashed down through the blackness. I slammed hard into a wall of sight and sound that rocked what little mind I had left.
I landed in a body again, except it wasn’t my own. I could feel the blood in my veins, and strangely enough, I could smell the light in the sky. It smelled like lemons.
My legs felt like corded bands of high-tension wires, all stretched tight over hollow bones. My skin and muscles decayed as I moved, while new tissue quickly grew to cover the old. My whole body was an endless cycle of life and death, and for a moment I could do nothing but swim in the wrongness of it. Then the body moved forward, and I realized I was only a passenger.
I was riding the demon.
With an effort of will, I focused on the world around me and tried to find any clues as to where the demon was heading. The light was in negative colors, like those cheesy horror movies back in the seventies. It took me a moment to collect my bearings, but even with the negative vision, I made out the woman and her child walking on the other side of the street.
She was of medium height, but the strange vision of the demon obscured everything else. The body of the thing crouched low to the road. I frantically tried to find some signpost or landmark that would tell me where the demon was.
Then I found it. Light concrete turned to darkness. All I could make out was a giant dark eye and a huge hand gripping a trapped VW bug.
With a scream, I shot back up through the blackness and the spiritual muck. I could feel my body snapping like a rubber band, shooting back toward awareness and light.
I slammed into a physical wall of force, and my body kept going. I fell over the chair with a cry and landed hard on my back, where I lay blinking up at the ceiling of the coffee house.
“Is he OK?” Thelma asked.
Jake bent down and felt my face.
“I’m fine,” I sputtered, swatting his hand away. The vision of the demon as it hunted that poor woman and her child spurred me up.
“Nick?” Jake asked.
“He’s at the troll,” I croaked. My throat felt too small, and the rancid decay of the demon clung to my nostrils. “He’s…going after a woman and her child.”
“Lord help us,” Thelma whispered.
I stood on wobbly legs. “I have to save them,” I said breathlessly.
“Hold on, man,” Jake put a hand up. “You go off half-cocked like this and that demon's gonna use your head as a bowling ball.” He reached into the Supergirl bag and rummaged around for a moment.
I could feel my muscles stabilize. I almost ran right out of the store, demon or no.
“Here,” Jake said as he handed me an item from the bag, “take this. It used to belong to Sugar Ray Robinson back when he was a street fighter. Still has some of his juju in it. You’ll need it.”
The brass knuckles were old and looked like they had seen their share of fights. Carved into each knuckle was a tiny cross. I stuffed them into my pocket and nodded. I only hoped this brief conversation with Jake hadn’t doomed the mother and her child, but Jake was right. I needed all the help I could get.
I took a deep breath and pictured the woman and her child. I pictured the demon stalking them. Adrenaline flooded my system with the exhale.
“Now go,” Jake said. “Be a damn superhero.”
I barely heard him as I rushed out of the coffee shop.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Fremont Street was strangely deserted, with a few college students here and there sipping coffee under awnings or in the doorways of shops. The rain had turned into a light drizzle that slowly soaked to the bone, so few wanted to brave the mist, even for a hot beverage. I flew through it all, ignoring the cold and damp. I was going to pay for it later, but for now I didn’t care.
By the time I headed up a side street I was a cat thrown in the deep end of the pool. My wet bangs drooped and stung my eyes. I dripped from every limb, and the cold began to penetrate even my thick skin. But still I ran up the hill, toward the only thing I had recognized in my vision.
At the top of the rise, the mother held her child in front of the giant troll. The little girl pointed and laughed at the shiny eye in the sculpture while the mother chatted to her, probably all about the local legends that surrounded the thing. They seemed to be waiting under the bridge for the rain to stop. Maybe it was just a normal pit stop on the way home.
Too bad this day was anything but normal.
I slowed and instantly became aware of everything around me. A cold gale stalked the streets, causing the mother to shiver and put her daughter down. The woman was nothing exceptional to look at, with her dark blond hair done up in a nice ponytail and her pantsuit a little damp from the rain. She held a cane-umbrella under one arm, and with her other she bent down and plucked something from her nylons. Freed from her mother’s grip, her daughter clapped her hands at the troll and ran up to the Volkswagen bug trapped in the concrete.
I didn’t understand. There was no rampaging demon, no stench of decay and death. It made no sense.
Like I said, sometimes I can be a little dense.
I sensed the ground shift before it actually did, which was probably the only reason I kept my privates intact. A nasty thing in a dirty long-coat burrowed its way up through the ground like a dung beetle, right before a two-foot-long talon sliced at my knees. I managed to hop back from the spike, but the demon’s leg shot out and sent me sprawling.
Another kick slammed into my chest before I could get my balance, sending me onto my back. The air rushed from my lungs as the demon grabbed me by the throat and lifted me six feet off the ground.
No-Eyes squeezed. Air became a precious commodity. The thing grinned at me, showing two sets of razor-sharp teeth inside his jaws. Up close he was uglier than I remembered. Black scabby skin stretched over a face sharp enough to cut glass. A bug flew out of the demon’s long black hair and fell dead to the ground while maggots squirmed in and out of the strands.
As for the eyes, it looked like someone had pulled out the orbs, leaving nothing behind but scarlet tissue and drooping flesh. The demon cocked his head to the side while he held me up, obviously enjoying my fear.
White stars began to dance on the edge of my vision, and a burst of adrenaline swept aside my fear. I did the only thing I could think of. I shoved both thumbs into the thing’s empty eye sockets.
The demon hissed and pitched me forward. I flew a good ten feet and landed hard on my side. My baseball cap went flying again. Pain flared up, but I didn’t have time to focus on it. I called up all my reserves and flipped to my feet.
No-Eyes scratched at his face, and thick blood spread over his hands. I glanced over and saw the woman holding her daughter’s hand, both of them too dumbfounded to move. That’s when I realized only a few seconds had passed.
“Run!” I yelled at her.
Turning was as far as she got. With a shriek that shook the windows of the stores around us, the demon slammed his hand into the ground. The woman didn’t get more than two steps before a wall of bright red fire cut her off. The flames flew upward ten feet, and the heat made her stumble backward. The blindness of the beast came to our advantage, because I’m pretty sure he had wanted to kill them with the wall of flame. Instead he missed by a few feet.
“Get behind me,” I called as I ran toward the woman and her child. The wall of flames continued to spread until it completely surrounded us. It was a gladiator arena for a scared mother, her child, a powerful demon, and little old me.
I know when I’m outmatched. There was a whole universe of ugly, nasty critters that could stomp me under their cosmic shoe. This was one of them.
The demon shook his head and began circling us in eerie silence. The woman and her child sobbed behind me. The wall of flames crackled in the rain. Was it hellfire? I didn't know, but it had to take a lot of juice. I just had to distract the demon long enough for him to run out of energy, and then hopefully we could all get the hell out of there.
Of course, that meant I had to stay alive.
The taste of battery acid filled my mouth as adrenaline pumped through my pores. My body wanted to pounce, but I forced myself to stay calm. I needed to let the demon come to me if I had any chance. I needed to keep him off balance.
“You’re pretty good when you ambush someone,” I told the demon as he circled. The bone spur jutting from his right hand traced scars in the dirt. “But once again you’re just a little too slow.”
A soft chortling came from his throat as he charged. I jumped to the right at the last minute, as far away from the woman and her child as I could without the flames singing my backside.
No-Eyes caught up to me before I even landed. I ducked and rolled forward as his spur whistled past my head. Sunlight glinted on the brass knuckles I pulled out of my pocket. It was time to put Jake’s magic to the test.
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