by Kat Cotton
“It’s the blood,” she said.
“And what’s so special about my blood?”
I was pretty sure that was all a load of bull dust.
“You come from an ancient line. You are an heir. You have never been told this?”
I shook my head. I’d been told nothing. I’d never asked. If I’d been wary of her before, this whole heir thing made it a hundred times worse. I was heir to nothing but bullshit and illusions.
“So, this protection you can offer...” I wanted to get her back on track. The hippie smell in the place made me a bit queasy. The sooner I got out of here and got some fresh air, the better. Even the junkie vomit in the alleyway would be an improvement.
She stood up and shuffled to a bureau with a number of small drawers. She offered me a powder in a bag. Speed? Cocaine? Most likely some kind of laundry powder that she sold to the junkies outside.
“This won’t defeat him but it will weaken him. It needs to contact his skin.”
I wasn’t so sure about this. It seemed like a scam. But then Buzz wouldn’t have sent me here for nothing. I reached out for the powder but she swiped it away and put it in her cardigan pocket.
She smiled. God help me, the woman had a gold tooth. She looked like she’d read a children’s book on gypsy fortune tellers and had developed her whole look from that.
I waited for her to name a price. She reached for a calculator on the table and keyed in a figure, then held it up to show me.
“No way. That’s far too much for a dodgy powder. How do I know that stuff even works?”
“You have no faith. I understand why. Your mother.”
What the hell did she know about my mother? I scratched my leg. This place made me itch with all its licey looking stuffed animals.
Then I grinned at her. The mother thing was a stab in the dark. I mean, a lot of people have mother issues so she could safely trot out a line like that and know it had a fair chance of working. She could fish all she liked, I wouldn’t take the bait.
I named a price. Half the amount she asked for.
She tapped the calculator screen. “No negotiations. I take credit cards.”
I sighed. It wasn’t like this would come out of my pocket. Investigation expenses and all that.
She grinned again as she swiped my card.
“It works for maybe five, ten minutes,” she said. “That’s all the time you’ll have.”
“Which is it, five or ten minutes? Because that makes a huge difference when you’re fighting for your life.”
She shrugged and I stood up.
“Be careful,” she said. “This thing won’t stop until he has what he wants.”
Before I left, I thought of something. I got my phone out of my pocket and brought up the demon mark to show her.
“Does this mean anything to you?” I asked.
“Ah, the second seal. You will be the third.”
“Seal to what?”
She shrugged. “There are some things I can’t see.”
“So where do I find this demon?” I asked.
“I can tell you but you shouldn’t go there. It’s a place he’s created and that’s where he’s most powerful.” She found an envelope on the table and a pencil stub and wrote down an address. “But you’ll go because you’re foolishly overconfident.”
I’d go because I didn’t really believe anything she said. This address would probably lead me to a vacant lot or a regular house.
Walking down the alley from her house, the smell of a souvlaki van hit me. My stomach rumbled since I hadn’t had dinner. I couldn’t resist.
While I waited for the guy to prepare my food, I leaned against the van. Normally I wouldn’t buy a souvlaki from somewhere that wasn’t busy. No one wanted to eat meat that had been sitting on a spit for days, but I was way too hungry to care.
Figures flickered around me in the shadows. I didn’t fit in here and I knew it. I wondered who the souvlaki van catered to. Junkies didn’t have money to spare but then hookers drew in men from all around and those men got hungry.
I grabbed my kebab and wolfed into it as I walked.
I got the sense that someone followed me. Could be a junkie thinking I was an easy target. More fool him.
I turned and scanned the alley. I couldn’t see anything. Still, I walked carefully. I could fight if I had to but I wanted to conserve my energy. And, if I had to fight, I’d most likely drop the rest of this kebab before I finished it which would be a damn shame.
I ducked around a corner, hoping my follower would reveal themselves. I had no sense of it being anything evil but I wasn’t taking chances.
Most people wouldn’t have noticed but I caught a glimpse of him lurking in the shadows, my eyes easily adjusting to the darkness.
Nuno.
He’d been following me? For how long? What had he seen? I didn’t plan to let him know I’d seen him but I’d make sure I lost him. He shouldn’t be here.
Chapter 27
I DROVE AROUND TOWN, trying to lose Nuno. I wasn’t sure if he even had a car. Or where he lived. Or any personal details of his life. I’d focused my attention on Duke mostly with some of it on Lilly. I tended to overlook Nuno. I wish I’d paid more attention to him now. Unless he drove the troupe van or was on his unicycle, I wouldn’t even know if he followed me.
I hit up a drive through coffee place and picked up a coffee.
When I left, I didn’t see anyone on my tail. Fine, I could confront this demon without having to worry about him. The last thing I wanted was to have to look for Nuno on top of everything else. Sure, the guy had awesome healing skills but that wouldn’t help defeat something this evil.
Even if that woman was a complete fraud, it worried me that she’d said that I put limitations on myself. She wasn’t wrong there. I had limitations. I’d been trying so hard to get over those restrictions in my work with Buzz but I’d kind of reached a plateau and Buzz said it’d take some real emotional purging to get to the next stage. As much as I wanted to progress, I wasn’t really at a place in life where emotional purging worked for me. After the performance, and hopefully after this case was done and dusted, I’d get into that purging, but for now, I wanted my life on an even keel.
Still, what did she know? I had no choice in this thing. He wanted to drain all the blood from my body so it was either fight or be killed. It wasn’t like I could say “Hey mister demon, let’s reschedule this blood draining thing to a time that suits me better.”
I found the address she’d given me. A bar. A dodgy looking bar on the outskirts of town.
I wasn’t sure what I was looking for when I headed into the bar. I had no handle on this demon at all. Even the description I had wasn’t a guarantee. That could’ve been anyone Big Curly had seen. Hopefully my belly would give me the heads up. I just had to look for someone who got my stomach clenching and he’d be our man, or our demon.
I looked around. This bar was seedier than any place I’d ever been in. Walking from the door to the bar, my stomach tightened and my head buzzed. The guy near the door, he was the demon. No doubt about that. Every cell in my body told me that. I kept on walking.
Only, I had the same symptoms with the next guy I saw. This time even worse. So, he was the demon, not the other guy?
But then it happened a third time.
All three guys were demons? Three demons in a bar, what were the chances? It sounded like the beginning of a bad joke. Except it got worse and worse. A couple of those guys didn’t even attempt to look human. They were out and proud demons complete with slimy bits and extra limbs. One had horns. Actual horns on the sides of his head.
This was a demon bar? I never knew such things existed. By the time I reached the bar, my head throbbed and my belly went topsy turvy.
Was everyone in this dive a demon? I glanced around the room. Surely not all of them. Some of them looked human but weren’t and some I think were humans. Maybe some folk liked to hang out with demons. The one with
the horns had two women hanging off him. They might be demons themselves or maybe demon groupies.
How did I identify which one I needed to kill? I couldn’t kill everyone in the place. Maybe some of them were nice demons, if such a thing existed. I needed to check into that. I thought it was possible. In those books Buzz and I had looked through, some demons could be summoned to give you wealth and other good things. I didn’t want to kill decent demons only the one trying to kill me.
My only experience with demons so far involved them trying to kill me — and them losing. I’d never thought about what they did between times. If anything, I assumed they went back to a hell dimension or something, not a neighborhood bar for drinks.
“Drink?”
I spun around to the barman. “Just a Coke,” I said.
The power pulsated in my veins but it settled enough for me to function. Maybe that was a sign I was in no immediate danger. I sipped on my drink and appraised my options. This demon was after me and I’d walked straight into the midst of him and his cronies.
That old witch had set me up, leading me here. Which meant the powder she’d given was ineffectual. Great. Just great. But, to be fair, she had told me not to come here.
I didn’t need to stick around long. I’d check the place out, note if anything untoward was going on and leave when I finished my Coke.
Now that I’d relaxed a little, I noticed the classic rock playing on the jukebox and the lingering smell in the air like meat just about to turn bad. Not rotten or anything, just slightly on the turn. As well as the door I came in, there was a fire exit to my right just behind the pool table. Handy to know.
Before I even finished my Coke, I noticed a change in atmosphere in the bar. A few of the guys kept inching closer to me. I didn’t like that at all. I didn’t want to be boxed in so I strolled over to the pool table as though waiting my turn.
“You new around here?” one of the guys on the table asked. “I’d have noticed you.”
A woman, obviously a demon woman judging by her extra breast, prodded him with her pool cue in a friendly-like manner.
“Keep your eyes on the table, Charlie.”
I grinned then looked over my shoulder. Those demons had closed the distance between us. I didn’t like that one little bit. I kept the grin plastered on my face. Even Charlie and the three breasted woman kept glancing around. They finished up their game extra fast and left the bar. Other patrons were paying up and leaving. That never bode well.
Panic wouldn’t help anything at all. I’d edge around the tables and out that fire door into the street. All the while, I felt in my pockets for my car keys. It’d be a quick sprint to the car but I could handle that. It was the fighting off four or five demons at once that I’d struggle with.
I finally made it to the door and reached behind me to press down on the latch. The door flung open, almost causing me to tumble out. The cold night air hit me even before I could break into a run. My car was only a couple of minutes away at a fast sprint.
I took off. Going to this bar alone had been a stupid idea. Stupid. Stupid.
My legs pounded against the asphalt surface of the parking lot but I heard no footsteps behind me. I’d thought for sure those guys would give chase.
The lock on my car clicked open. Only a short distance now. Sweat ran down my forehead even in this cold weather. I might be fit but I wasn’t Usain Bolt fit.
Just as I was about to lunge into the driver’s seat, a scream pierced my ears. An unholy scream. Not a noise a human would make. Not even an animal. Maybe a cat in heat intensified a zillion percent.
I covered my ears while searching for the source.
On the steps of the bar, some of those demons had Nuno, and they were dragging him inside.
So much for freedom and so much for safety. If I had to fight, bring it on.
Chapter 28
AS I WALKED BACK TO the bar, even more of the customers were leaving. The place was almost empty. I had no idea where the hell they were going. Maybe literally to hell. All I knew is they were scared shitless.
The three guys who’d grabbed Nuno had him trapped by the bar. Those guys had seemed almost human looking before, now they were all grotesque.
“Oh, you’re back.”
I spun around to see another demon sitting in a chair. Yikes, this had been a set up. I’d fallen right into their trap. Shit was about to go down. That’s why everyone had left. That demon had to be the killer. Even in demon form he had beady eyes and a hooked nose. He looked nothing like that lighting guy though.
“Yeah, I’m back. Now let go of my friend.”
The demon steepled his demony fingers and gazed at me. “Are you sure he’s your friend?”
Nuno struggled against his captors but he had no chance of getting free. The silence of his struggle just made it harder to watch.
“Yeah, I guess so.” I stared him right in the beady eyes, letting him think I had no fear of him.
That feeling came back to my belly ten-fold. This demon wanted my blood. He wanted to drain me. And maybe Nuno too. There’d be no escape from here until the fighting was done.
The demon slowly pulled himself to his feet without taking his gaze from my face.
I projected calm. I’d been in worse situations than this and had survived. I had been in worse situations, right? I tried to remember but dragging through my past wouldn’t help here. I couldn’t call for back up. I couldn’t use all those police resources I’d relied on. It was just me and the demon.
I had the power to kill him. I just had to get those words out. I tried to dig deep inside myself, getting that power all juiced up.
“Think that’s going to work?” the demon said, with a low chuckle. “Your feeble powers don’t work here.”
They didn’t? But I’d been able to identify the demons. I guess I just couldn’t kill them. Hell, that really ruined my plans.
I had a plan B though. The powder in my pocket. She’d said it wouldn’t kill the demon but it’d weaken him. I hated having to rely on that woman’s crappy magic but it was my only chance.
The demon moved. I side stepped, waiting for him to pounce. There was no pouncing. He moved to the jukebox.
“It’s way too quiet in here,” he said then put on a Bon Jovi song. “Let’s liven the place up a bit.”
He moved slowly, with all the intention of a cat stalking a bird.
While I waited for his move, Nuno screamed. That ear drum shattering scream I’d heard in the car park had been him. For a mute, that guy sure had a scream on him. I covered my ears, looking around with the hope that the demons would do the same. They didn’t have their hands over their ears like I did but they had pained expressions on their faces. Not the same torturous pain I felt but enough to affect them.
“Run, Jayne,” Nuno yelled. Had he said that out loud or did I just hear it in my head? I wasn’t sure.
I shook my head without turning to look at him.
I wouldn’t be leaving him to their mercies. I’d rescue him and I’d save myself. I just needed to be sure of the lay of the land. Making it look all casual-like, I put my hands in my back pockets feeling for the bag the old woman had given me I balled it into the palm of my hand.
“Come on, boss,” one of the demon minions said. “Let’s get this party started. Drain her fast so the ritual can begin.”
Ritual? What ritual? The old woman had talked about opening seals. I had no idea what she’d meant by that. My demon lore knowledge was as weak as piss and this was no time to bone up on it.
“You want to drink my blood?” I asked. “I thought that was vampires, not demons.”
The head demon laughed. “I’m not going to drink it.”
He sidled around, moving toward me. I sidled too, putting a table between us. That was reassuring, right? He didn’t want to drink my blood.
“The boss is going to open the gates of hell and all the demons are coming out to party,” the flunky demon said. Then he laughed l
ike crazy.
“Shut your mouth,” the killer demon said, his voice low and cold.
The flunky opened his mouth to respond but, almost faster than my eyes could process, the killer demon moved across the room. Before he could get a word out, that flunky had been reduced to a puddle on the floor.
Hells.
I froze, staring at the scene in front of me and trying to make sense of it.
He’d liquefied his own flunky. That was hard core.
On the plus side, that meant one less demon for me to deal with. On the not so plus side, well, everything. Not only was this demon a crazy strong motherfucker, opening the gates of hell didn’t seem like something anyone would want.
The seal was to the gates? My blood would open it. I was the third. As that knowledge descended on me, it seemed like icy hands squeezed my heart and all the air got knocked from my lungs. I grabbed hold of the back of a chair, needing to steady myself.
No way. Surely not.
I needed to get out of this place. I’d become the danger.
The demon boss moved again, this time standing so close to me that I could smell his breath. Again, that smell of meat on the turn hit me.
He grabbed for me, those razor claws out. I jumped back. As I jumped, the amulet I wore swung out. The demon’s claws made contact with it and missed my skin.
Then the demon spun around, his attention on Nuno.
I turned too. Nuno had freed himself from his captors and ran for the fire exit. The two remaining flunkies raced after him.
I started to run too, but stopped. I had the powder in my hand. Now was my best chance to slow this bastard down. All I had to do was sprinkle it over him like sugar over a donut.
Damn bag was one of those Ziploc kinds and I fumbled with the fastening. What the actual hell? Why put a lifesaving magic powder in something so hard to open?
While I struggled with the bag, the two flunkies caught Nuno and dragged him back into the bar.