by N. P. Martin
“Go fuck yourself!” Brian shouted.
I couldn’t help but smile when I heard Brian say that. I almost felt bad for the onslaught of abuse he was about to endure from Phillips.
“What the fuck did you just say to me?” Phillips roared.
“I—I—I’m sorry—” Brian’s sentence was cut short as he screamed instead, sounding like he’d just been hit by something or someone, almost certainly Phillips.
“You fucking little fag! I’ll fucking kill you for talking to me like that!”
While the ruckus was happening outside, I stood up and scrambled to think how I was going to get out of the situation I was in. If Phillips came into the office and saw someone that looked just like him in every way, he’d either fuck me or kill me, the latter being the likely option, maybe after he fucked me because he seemed like the kind of guy that would’ve gotten off fucking himself if he had the opportunity. The spell was going to wear off soon anyway, and once Phillips saw it was really me, he’d go double psycho then. If he didn’t kill me himself, his security surely would.
“Break the fucking door down!” Phillips bawled from outside, probably to his security. “Hurry up about it! You hear me in there? I’m coming in! You’re dead! You’re fucking dead! And if you’ve touched any of my shit, I’ll fuck your corpse after I’ve killed you!”
Verging on panic now, I looked frantically around the room until my eyes fell upon the wall nearest to me, and then I remembered how Phillips had come walking out of a hidden door earlier today. I had no idea of what lay on the other side of the door, whether it was just a secret room or a secret exit, but it was the only option I had besides waiting for a bunch of security goons to come into the office and beat the hell out of me, followed by Phillips and his obnoxious attitude, which let’s be honest, would be worse than any beating. So wasting no more time, I ran to the wall and felt down the edge of the door, pushing on the wall until I heard a click and the door popped open slightly.
Thank Lucifer…
Just as the secret door opened, the doors to the office also opened in the most violent way possible as a massive security guy in a dark suit booted them open. Standing there for a second, the security guy’s face said it all—he was going to fucking kill me, as much for forcing him to incur the wrath of Phillips as anything else, and I couldn’t say I blamed him.
But I wasn’t going to make it easy for the security guy, so I grabbed the first thing that came to hand, which was one of Phillips’ porn awards, the metal penis gripped in a disembodied hand feeling surprisingly heavy in my own very much attached hand. Quickly, I threw the porn award at the security guy, my throw more of a reflex action than a carefully aimed one. Which was why I was surprised when the metal hand and penis hit the security guy square on the forehead, causing him to reel back for a second or two before falling back onto the floor, almost crashing into Phillips, who was standing behind him.
“Congratulations on your award,” I said to the downed security guy, before looking at Phillips. For once, Phillips didn’t have his mirror shades on, his naked eyes making his face all the more comical as he stood staring at me. Or rather, at himself.
“What the fuck?!” he said, Brian standing behind him with blood on his face from where Phillips had obviously hit him.
“You like me, Martin?” I said to him, unable to help myself. “You wanna fuck me, Martin? The way you’re looking at me, it seems like you wanna fuck me. You wanna fuck yourself, Martin?”
“What the fuck is this?” Phillips said, freaked out now. “Who are you?”
“I’m you, Martin. Isn’t that obvious?” My hand had slipped into my pocket, the knockout sigil card leaping into my fingers.
Maybe I’ll get out of this after all…
But I spoke too soon. For as I was about to unleash the sigil card on Phillips, another two security guys showed up, both with guns.
Fuck.
Quickly, I slipped into the secret room—the lights coming on automatically—and pulled the door closed, hoping there was a way to lock it from the inside, which thankfully there was. The door had a deadbolt, and I slid the bolt across before anyone could pull the door open from the other side. I heard the security guards cursing that they couldn’t open the door, and then, faintly, I heard Phillips screaming something about cutting me off.
Cutting me off? There must be another door in here…
I turned around to look for the door and stopped dead when I saw the rest of the room. “Jesus fucking Christ,” I breathed as I stared at shelves upon shelves of porn DVDs, and the entire wall filled with all manner of sex toys, not to mention the enormous round bed against the other wall. “Phillips, you fucking degenerate.”
But I didn’t have time to ogle at Phillips’ secret sex room, nor to contemplate the man’s degeneracy. The longer I stood, the more time I was giving Phillips’ goons to come get me. The other door was on the far side of the large room, and I ran to it and pulled it open, revealing a short hallway that led to another door, which led to a set of stairs going down the west side of the building. I ran down the stairs as quickly as I could without falling and breaking my neck, but I wasn’t quick enough, for another security guard met me just as I reached the ground floor.
“Stop!” the security guard barked, a young guy in a dark suit, his gun trained on me. “Don’t fucking move!”
“Hey!” I said, raising my hands. “Take it easy!”
“Get down on your knees!”
As the security guy moved cautiously up the stairs toward me, I did as he said and got down on my knees, at the same time willing the knockout sigil card to fly from my coat pocket and into my hand where I caught it between my fingers.
“What the fuck was that?” the security guy asked. “Drop it!”
“Sure thing,” I said, and with a barely perceivable flick of my wrist, I sent the sigil card flying at him. The card tumbled through the air at speed and then stopped right in front of the security guy’s face, sparks flying as I activated the magic in the card with an incantation. Then a burst of energy exploded from the card and the security guy reeled back as surely as if he had been hit with a solid right cross, his eyes rolling up into their sockets as he fell back and down the stairs he had just raced up.
Thank Lucifer for magic…
Getting to my feet again, I bolted down the rest of the stairs until I came to a door on the ground floor. When I pulled the door open, I found it led out onto the street by the west side of the building.
Where I encountered Phillips.
The man was standing out on the street, probably waiting for his security to bring me out to him. When he saw I was alone, with no sign of his security guy, he swallowed nervously as he stared at me.
“Hello, Martin,” I said, enjoying his obvious discomfort.
“What did you do with my security guy?”
“He’s having a nap on the stairs inside.”
Phillips swallowed again. “Who the hell are you? What do you want?”
Obviously the disguise hadn’t worn off yet. But it soon would. The last thing I needed was for Phillips to know it was me who broke into his office. He would find out soon enough when I brought him down, but until then, I didn’t want the bastard coming after me. “Think of me as the embodiment of all your past sins, Martin,” I said. “I’m the past come back to haunt you. I’m your walking retribution. Time is running out for you, Martin.”
“Why?“ he said, as if he had done nothing wrong.
“If you have to ask, Martin,” I said, already moving down the street. “Then there’s really no hope for you.”
As I ran down the street, heading for my car a block away, all I heard was Phillips shouting, “Why?“ over and over again, sounding like a child who’d just had his favorite toy confiscated.
In response, I smiled and thought, I’m coming for you, Phillips…
11
As soon as I started driving out of Downtown, I gave Detective Murtagh a call.
“Yeah?” he said, gruffly as usual.
“It’s Damion Deadson,” I said as I put the phone on speaker and placed it on the dash, driving slowly as I came to a stoplight.
“I know. What do you want?”
“I thought you should know, I got a name and address for the guy who killed Angela Smith. His name is Rick Marino. He lives in Little Italy. I’ll text you the address shortly.”
“Okay. And how did you come across this information?”
“I just did. And there’s more.”
“Well, I got more for you as well. There was another murder tonight.”
“What? Same MO?”
“Yep. In your neck of the woods again, couple streets away from your building. Neighbors heard screaming and called it in.”
“Shit. What about the spawn?”
“It’s still inside her.”
Christ. Another one.
“You can’t allow it to be born, Murtagh. There’s already one running around out there.”
“Your succubus girlfriend not catch it yet?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t spoken to her. I was busy.”
“Busy snooping, I’m guessing. On who?”
“Martin Phillips, the guy who owns the Intimate Connections website. He’s in this up to his neck.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, he has video footage of the Angela Smith murder on one of his websites,” I said as I drove away from the stoplight. “I saw it.”
“You saw it? How?”
“It doesn’t matter. He has this website that posts first-person videos of supernaturals killing humans. The incubus was one such creature. I don’t know if Phillips is recruiting these monsters or what. I’m not even sure how the videos are being done. It’s like looking through the creature’s eyes. You need to see the videos to know what I’m talking about.”
“Christ,” Murtagh said. “So you think this Phillips guy is behind these murders?”
“I don’t know, but he’s sure profiting from them. You need to get a warrant and search his work computer. That’s if he hasn’t wiped the files by now.”
“And why would he do that?”
“I may have got caught snooping in his office earlier.”
“Chrissakes, Deadson. Sure as shit, he’s erased all the evidence then.”
“Maybe. You can still take him in, though, right?”
“On what grounds?”
“Conspiracy to murder, maybe?”
“Based on what evidence? Thanks to you, there probably isn’t any.” Murtagh sighed angrily. “You asshole, Deadson. Thanks to you, we probably won’t have a case against Phillips now.”
“You can still get Marino. Maybe he’ll talk.”
“Didn’t you say he’s a fucking demon? Even if we get him, he probably won’t say shit.”
“Zee could get him to talk.”
“Maybe, but that doesn’t take away from the fact that Phillips has probably covered his tracks by now, does it?”
“Maybe for now. But if I know Phillips, he’ll start right back up again when the heat has died down. I’ll find a way to get to him, don’t worry.”
“I’ll sleep like a fucking baby tonight knowing Damion Deadson is on the case.” In the background, I heard Huxley chuckle.
Ignoring Murtagh’s sarcasm, I brought the conversation back to the latest spawn. “What are you going to do about the spawn? You’ll have to either contain it or destroy the woman’s body before the thing emerges.”
“Jesus, do you hear yourself? This is an official investigation. We can’t just destroy the body of a murder victim.”
“So you’re just gonna let the spawn go free? How are you going to explain it when that thing bursts from the dead woman’s belly?”
Murtagh went silent, probably knowing I had a point. “How much time do you think we have, before that thing…gets born?”
“I don’t know. A few hours at most. If the spawn thinks it’s in danger, it will tear its way out early.”
“Christ, what a fuckup this is. Vinci, you have any suggestions on how to deal with this clusterfuck?”
“We could put the body in cold storage,” I heard Huxley suggest in the background. “Freezing it would likely prevent a birth incident.”
“That could work,” I said. “Just be careful when you’re moving the body. Don’t aggravate the spawn too much.”
“Don’t aggravate the spawn too much,” Murtagh echoed. “Jesus Christ.”
“One of these days, Murtagh, you’ll learn to accept all this.”
“The day I do is the day I go as insane as you are, Deadson, and that’s not a day I’m looking forward to. Text me that address, and stay the fuck away from Phillips until we figure something out, you hear me?”
“Yeah, I hear you, Detective.”
“Something tells me you don’t,” he said before hanging up. “You never do.”
By the time I got to my apartment, the disguise had worn off. Thank Lucifer. Even though I actually didn’t resemble Martin Phillips in any physical way, knowing I looked like him to other people was enough. I couldn’t wait to get in the shower to wash the stench of his arrogance off of me.
Speaking of stenches, as soon as I walked into the apartment, I almost gagged at the rotten smell that hit me like a wall of bricks. It was like burning meat, and it permeated the entire apartment. “What the fuck…”
“Oh, hi,” Zee said as she emerged from the kitchen, wearing a bloodstained apron that had a pair of naked breasts printed on it. “You’re home.”
“Yeah,” I said, covering my mouth and nose, afraid to even breathe in the toxic air surrounding me. “What is that smell, Zee?”
“Oh, that,” she said with an almost wicked smile. “That’s just dinner.”
“Dinner? What the hell are you cooking, spoiled meat?”
“Not exactly. Promise you won’t be mad?”
Jesus. Here we go.
“Why should I be mad, Zee?”
“Hold on.” She went into the kitchen and came back out with a large glass of Scotch, which she handed to me. “There you go, my love.”
“Zee,” I said after drinking half the Scotch. “What the hell are you cooking? It smells suspiciously like…I don’t even want to say it.”
“You can say it.”
“Jesus…human meat.”
Zee’s smile widened. “That’s exactly what it is. Well, demon meat would be a more accurate description.”
“Demon meat? Wait, don’t tell me.” I shook my head. “You caught the incubus spawn, didn’t you?”
“I did,” she said, nodding, looking pleased with herself. “I had to chase the little bastard through a ventilation system, but I got him. I got the little fucker good and proper.”
“So, what? You brought it back here so you could…cook it? Are you fucking insane?”
Zee’s face dropped. “Baby, you know such young flesh is a delicacy to me. It would’ve been a shame to waste it.”
I shook my head and downed the rest of the whiskey. “Jesus, Zee. What if the neighbors smell it? I’m on thin ice with the landlord as it is. The rent is overdue.”
“I told you I’d pay it.”
“I don’t need you to pay it. I’ll pay it myself.”
“What with? You have no money.”
“I’ll pay it soon. Stop changing the subject.”
“You were the one who mentioned the rent.”
“Fine, whatever. I hope you don’t expect me to eat that…meat.”
“Of course not. I’ve done you some roast chicken.”
“Cooked in the same oven as the roast incubus spawn, I suppose?”
“Yes. Where else would I cook it?”
“I’m not hungry then.”
Walking past her, I covered my mouth and nose again as I entered the kitchen to get the bottle of Scotch, grabbing it quickly but unable to keep from looking across at the glass oven, seeing what looked like a dismembered kid cooki
ng away in there. It was all I could do not to vomit everywhere as I turned and practically ran out of the kitchen.
“Are you okay?” Zee asked, all innocence.
“No, Zee, I’m fucking not,” I said as I crossed the living room and opened the window to hang my head out of it, breathing in clean air to try and scour the stench from my lungs. “It’s disgusting in there.”
She stared over at me. “You think I’m disgusting, don’t you?”
“Did I say that? You can’t help your appetites.”
“Okay. Maybe I’ll just eat a little bit and throw the rest out. I’m sure the rats in the alley will appreciate it. Waste of good meat, though.”
I said nothing as she turned and went back into the kitchen, drinking Scotch straight from the bottle as I continued to stick my head out the window, staring down at the street outside, wondering how I ever came to live with a demon. It wasn’t the first time Zee had done something as crazy as that. One time, shortly after we first met, she brought some random guy back to the apartment and had sex with him, insisting that I watch. I went along with it, and even enjoyed watching her use her mad skills on the guy, until she suddenly bit the guy’s penis off, chewed it up, and swallowed it. Luckily, on my insistence, we got the poor guy to a hospital before he could bleed to death, Zee using her demonic hold over him to get him to keep his mouth shut about what happened. We had to move from that apartment because of all the screaming as the landlord threatened to call the cops. I very nearly severed our relationship after that, until Zee promised nothing like it would happen again.
And then, a few months later, I get home one day to find her dining on the severed head of one of her victims. She was just sitting at the dining table with the head on a plate, the top of the skull ripped off as she used a fork to eat the brains within. I vomited that time, and afterward, told her I never wanted to see her again. But Zee being Zee, she persuaded me to let her stay, so I did. There had been several other similar incidents over the years, the incubus in the oven being just the latest. I had come to accept her peculiar, not to say disgusting, appetites by that point, though. It was just who she was, and she couldn’t help it any more than I could help shooting heroin into my veins at one time.