by N. P. Martin
“Fine, but I’m still going after Phillips.”
“You gotta a plan?”
“It’s in motion.”
“What is it?”
“I’ll let you know when it comes to fruition.”
“Jesus, right, okay. In the meantime…shit, don’t make me repeat myself, Deadson. I hate repeating myself.”
“Fine,” I said. “Don’t get your panties in a twist, Murtagh. I’ll grab Zee, wherever she is, and start the search. As long as you know, you won’t be able to officially question the guy if we get him. You can’t hold a demon in custody.”
“Why not?”
“Because he’ll kill his way out of whatever prison or cell you put him in, that’s why. You need to take a leaf out of Ethan Drake’s book, Detective.”
“Oh yeah? I saw your little article on your website, fawning over the guy like he’s some kind of hero.”
“I’m just saying, when you’re dealing with monsters like this incubus, the rules are different, Detective.”
“You mean you have to kill them?”
“Or let them go. There is no holding them. The Feds used to have a special unit that captured them, but I don’t think they bother anymore. Too much trouble.”
“You and your girlfriend do whatever you have to,” he said. “I won’t stand in your way, but I wanna question the guy first if possible, see what else he knows about Phillips’ little enterprise. Maybe he knows the other monsters involved.”
“And what if he does? Are you going to go after them, Detective?”
Murtagh went silent for a few seconds before he said, “Let me know when you have him.”
I stood up on slightly unsteady legs, probably having drank more than I should have. As I was moving past a table full of power suits, one of them said, “Hey guy, where’d you get that coat? It’s just I saw a homeless bum wearing the same coat earlier. He wants it back.”
The entire table burst out laughing as if what the guy just said was hilariously funny. Without even thinking, my hand went into my coat pocket and a sigil card inserted itself between my fingers. It would’ve been so easy to just toss the card onto the table they were all sitting at and let the magic do its work, knocking every one of them unconscious. But I was in a crowded bar full of Sleepers, and to do so would’ve been unwise. So despite wanting to punch the guy in the face, I simply leaned calmly toward him and said, “Don’t you have some videotapes to bring back or something?”
Then, leaving him with a quizzical look on his tanned face, I walked away.
Out in the car, I gave my father a ring to tell him what I’d learned about the tattoo. It wasn’t a call I was looking forward to. Despite my antagonism toward him, I knew the information I had uncovered would hurt him as much as it hurt me, if not more so. When he answered, I told him everything I’d found about the ODA, and he listened in silence until I had finished, at which point he said, “I see.”
“That’s it?” I said after waiting a few seconds. “That’s all you have to say?”
“What do you want me to say, Damion?”
“I don’t know. Maybe be angry, fucking sad…anything except your usual indifference.”
My father sighed. “This isn’t indifference, Damion. I’m simply trying to assimilate the information you gave me.”
“Well, when you’re done assimilating, maybe you can find time to look further into this psychotic fucking Order.”
“I will, don’t worry.”
I closed my eyes for a second, trying to hold back tears. “She’s—”
“Don’t, Damion.”
“Don’t what?”
“Don’t say it. Not yet. I’m not ready to hear that yet.”
For once, I knew how he felt. “Neither am I.”
A silence elapsed between us for a moment, during which I felt like I was trapped in some weird state, unable or unwilling to face the truth staring me in the face. “Until we know for sure,” I said, “we shouldn’t assume anything.”
“Of course,” my father said, sounding grateful for the line I just threw him.
“I’ll look deeper into things on my end. See what I can find out.”
“I’ll do the same.”
We both fell silent again for a moment, before I said, “Be careful, Father. These people are dangerous.”
“I know,” he said, before hanging up. “But so am I.”
Despite wanting to buy a pack of cigarettes, I resisted the urge and drove home, thinking I would find Zee there, but she wasn’t in. Then I remembered she was probably out stalking Phillips, figuring out a plan before she made a move on him. After running to the bathroom to empty my full bladder, I took out my phone and gave Zee a call.
“I’m busy here,” she said upon answering. “What is it?”
“Have you made a move on Phillips yet?” I asked her.
“No, I watched him earlier from the Etherera, to see what kind of man he was before I introduce myself to him, which I was about to do now.”
“What was he doing earlier when you were watching him?”
“He was inside his little secret room by his office, performing a blood magic ritual. He has many scars on his body from all the cuts he’s made on himself.”
“What was the ritual for?”
“I’m not sure. Perhaps to make his cock bigger?”
“Are you joking?”
“No. He was pulling on it as he did the ritual.”
“Jesus,” I said, not wanting to know. “Listen, I need you now. Murtagh said Marino killed another woman. He wants us to track Marino down.”
“And then what?”
“Question him.”
“And then what?”
“What do you think?”
“I get to kill him?”
I paused, still uncomfortable with the notion of killing, even if it was a murderous incubus. “Yes.”
“Okay. Where are you? I’ll meet you.”
“I’m at home,” I said. “But you can meet me in Little Italy. We can start the search at Marino’s apartment. Who knows, he might even be there.”
“I hope so,” she said, before hanging up.
I didn’t leave to meet Zee right away. Instead, I went into my office and drew out a sigil on a blank card, one that when used, would cast an energy net over an enemy combatant, in this case, an incubus. I had already tried the spell out on Zee before just to see if it would hold her, and it did, for a few minutes at least before she tore her way out of it. If I ran into Marino, that would be the spell I would use on him, which would hold him long enough for me to draw a magic circle around him, trapping him for as long as I needed to.
As I was in a hurry, I used music to charge up the card. It was a simple spell that didn’t require a great deal of energy, so music would do the job. Over the years, I’d found metal to work best, and out of all the bands I had used for this purpose, Meshuggah seemed to work the best. I’m not sure if it was the band’s intense energy or use of complicated polyrhythms in their songs, but Meshuggah’s music always got the job done. Using my phone and Bose Bluetooth speaker, I put two songs on repeat: Bleed and Clockworks. As the frantic music came on, I headbanged and danced around the room like a maniac, building up as much energy as I could, which wasn’t hard, given the intensity of the music and mad rhythms going on. It only took two plays of each song, and a lot of sweat on my part, before the sigil card became fully charged. Sweating like a bitch, I grabbed a towel from the bathroom and dried myself off before grabbing the sigil card and leaving the apartment.
As soon as I opened the door, though, I almost ran into my landlord, a cantankerous son of a bitch in his sixties named Jackie Dent, an ex-mob enforcer who thought he was still in the mob the way he treated people. Or at least, the way he treated me.
“Deadson,” he said, standing in the middle of the hallway, blocking my way. “Going somewhere, are we?”
“Mr. Dent,” I said, cursing my bad luck for running into him. “Yeah, I was jus
t heading out. Listen, about the rent—”
“We’ll talk about the rent in a second,” he said. “First, what the fuck are you playing at, blasting that shitty fucking music everywhere? I just got three separate complaints from the other tenants. I don’t need that shit when I’m trying to watch fucking Goodfellas.”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Dent, I just got a little carried away. You know how it is.”
“No, Deadson, I don’t actually. Now—” He jabbed his finger at my chest. “Where’s my fucking rent? You owe me for two months.”
“It’s coming,” I said. “Just give me another week and I’ll—”
“You got two days.”
“Two days? That’s not—”
“Two fucking days! If I don’t have it by then, you’re out. You hear me?”
I nodded. “Yeah, I hear you.”
“I hope you don’t hear me,” he said. “To be honest, Deadson, I’m sick of the fucking complaints about you and that slut you’re shacked up with in there. I got old ladies complaining about the screaming all the time.”
“The screaming?”
“Yeah, your girlfriend screaming like she’s being assaulted, according to your neighbors. You beating on her?”
“What? No, it’s not like that—”
“I could care less. She looks like she deserves it anyway.”
Jesus, what an asshole.
“Two days,” he said, barging past me. “That’s all you got, Deadson.”
Sighing, I walked on down the hallway and out to my car, thinking that one of these days, Mr. Dent was going to get a short, sharp, shock, and all he would have to do is bump into Zee. Hell, I would’ve given an extra month’s rent just to watch that encounter.
Zee got around in a black and gray Nissan 350Z, which she drove around town like a maniac most of the time. The car was parked outside the building where Rick Marino lived—or more likely, used to live, since he had probably relocated after Murtagh kicked his door in. I pulled my Corvette up behind Zee’s car and got out, just as a young blond woman wearing tight Daisy Dukes, high heels, and a white halter top climbed out of the Nissan, startling me for a second until I realized it was Zee.
“You took your time,” she said, speaking with a hint of a southern accent now.
“I had to charge up a sigil card,” I said, a little uncomfortable as I stared at her, more so because of how young she looked. She looked barely eighteen, though I knew why. Phillips liked them young, as all men of his ilk seemed to. For whatever reason, the more rich and powerful a man becomes in today’s society, the younger they liked their “meat.” “You look…highly provocative.”
“I do, don’t I?” she said, fondling her large breasts, almost causing the male passersby to walk into things as they couldn’t keep their eyes off her. Perhaps to fuck with said passersby, she came up and kissed me on the mouth, finishing by licking my lips with her long tongue. “Do you like this body? I can wear it later, just for you, baby.”
“Maybe you should change into something a little more suitable for the hunt,” I said, a little embarrassed by all the stares we were getting now.
“Un-uh,” she said. “I need to be comfortable in this skin for Phillips. I’m not changing.”
“Okay, fine. Let’s go then, before all the guys here cum in their pants.”
Zee smiled and pushed her large breasts out as she strutted in her high-heels across the sidewalk, enjoying the attention she was getting. “Humans are so easy.”
“Thanks,” I said as I opened the door to the apartment building.
“Not you, baby. I had to work on you, didn’t I?”
“Yeah, you did.”
She reached down and squeezed my cock after walking inside the building. “Not anymore, though.”
I smiled and shook my head at her. “Come on. Let’s go.”
A few minutes later, we were standing by the door of Marino’s apartment, which seemed to have been fixed since Murtagh kicked it in. “I doubt he’s in there,” I said. “But maybe you should check first before we break in.”
“Okay,” Zee said, her form seeming to shimmer for a second before she disappeared. That was her entering the Etherea as she called it, another plane of existence just outside of this one. She could move within the Etherea like a ghost, looking through the thin veil into this plane of existence without being seen. It was how she usually stalked her victims, following them around as she observed them, sometimes for days at a time, getting to know their every trait and habit, their likes and dislikes, before she approached them in person. It was how she was able to pull them into her sway almost immediately upon meeting them because she knew exactly what to say to them, and how to treat them in order to gain their confidence and trust.
She appeared beside me barely a minute later in the hallway again. “He’s not in there,” she said.
“Surprise surprise,” I said. “Let’s go in and see what we can find anyway. You wanna do the honors?”
“Sure thing, baby,” she said in a ditsy voice as if she was practicing for meeting Phillips. One thing was for sure, Phillips wouldn’t be able to resist her, and once he gave in, it would be all over for him.
Placing her hand on the door near to the lock, Zee seemed to give only the gentlest of pushes, which resulted in the door cracking against the wood frame and flying open, her almost casual strength amazing me as always.
We walked inside the small apartment and started looking around. The place was a sparsely furnished bachelor pad containing nothing out of the ordinary. On the coffee table was a laptop. When I opened it, I wasn’t surprised to find the Intimate Connections website open in the browser. “He had already picked his next victim before Murtagh got here,” I said. “Why the hell didn’t Murtagh check this computer? He could’ve warned the woman Marino killed last.”
“Incompetence,” Zee said as she picked up items of clothing scattered around and sniffed them as if getting Marino’s scent. “Or laziness.”
“I don’t think Murtagh considers this a real case,” I said, closing the computer. “He doesn’t know what to do with it because he still can’t wrap his head around the supernatural aspects.”
“You should work with that other guy instead.”
“Who?”
“That guy you wrote about in that article.”
“Ethan Drake?”
“Yeah. Him. He sounds more like someone who gets shit done.”
“You read my article?”
“Of course. I read all your articles, baby.”
“I didn’t think you bothered anymore. You never mention them.”
Zee shrugged. “I dunno. I just thought you knew.”
“Anyway,” I said. “Drake isn’t around at the moment. He’s off on some sabbatical. Maybe I’ll go see him once he comes back, though.”
“You do that, baby,” Zee said, before inhaling deeply on a pair of soiled boxer shorts.
“Gross,” I said as I went to look at some pictures hanging on the wall.
“I’m just getting his scent.” She held out the boxers. “You wanna smell?”
“No thanks.” My attention was on a picture of Marino—the real Marino before he got possessed by the incubus—posing by a large white boat. “Look at this.”
Zee came strutting over and stood beside me with her hands on her young hips. “What is it, baby? You find something?”
“Maybe,” I said. “That looks like Marino’s boat, wouldn’t you say?”
“Well, it’s called The Ricky, so I’m guessing yeah, it is.”
“Maybe that’s where he is then, hiding out on the boat. It would be a good place to stay out of sight.”
“I agree,” Zee said. “You wanna go check it out?”
“We don’t have any other leads, so yeah, let’s go.”
“We’ll take my car,” Zee said.
“I’ll drive myself,” I said.
“Something wrong with my driving?”
“You drive like a dem
on, Zee.”
“Well, duh, that’s cuz I am a demon.”
“I’ll meet you there.”
“Suit yourself, scaredy cat,” she said, strutting on ahead of me, deliberately swinging her hips as she walked, tormenting me with her perfectly shaped ass as it strained against her denim shorts.
Phillips isn’t gonna know what hit him.
17
From the picture in Marino’s apartment, I was able to work out from the background that the boat was docked at Pierpoint Marina, which was across town from Little Italy. I led the way at first in my Corvette, until Zee recklessly overtook me on a busy street and zoomed on ahead, leaving chaos in her wake. “Jesus, Zee,” I said as I watched her speed around a corner, the back end of the Nissan skidding out behind her. “How the hell you haven’t killed anybody yet, I’ll never know.”
As I continued driving toward the marina, I gave Murtagh a call. “Hey,” I said. “Just to let you know, I’m on my way with Zee to Pierpoint Marina. We think Marino may be hiding out there on a boat that the real Rick Marino owned. I’m surprised you missed it, actually. Not to mention the conversation he had with his last victim on the Intimate Connections website. You could’ve warned the woman not to meet him.”
“We did,” Murtagh said indignantly. “Whatta you take us for, a couple clowns? We warned the woman of the danger.”
“So what happened then?”
“Obviously Marino went to see her anyway. There were signs of a struggle at the woman’s apartment.”
“Christ, you should’ve been watching her place,” I said.
“Fuck you, Deadson,” Murtagh barked. “We’re stretched to high heaven at the moment, not that you would know. There are other cases besides this one, you know. We can’t be everywhere at once.”
“Fine, whatever. I’ll call if we find Marino. We’ll hold him for you, unless you have better things to do.”
“Fuck off, Deadson,” he said before hanging up.
Shaking my head, I speeded up as I drove the last few miles to the marina, eventually pulling up in the parking lot to find Zee sitting on the hood of her car like she was posing for some glamor photoshoot.