by P. K. Tyler
When Zeph came, he squeezed his eyes shut and bellowed out Nik's name.
Loud enough to wake Adel.
Loud enough to wake his parents.
Loud enough to make sure that would be the last night the two ever spent together.
Nik had never learned what kind of punishment Zeph suffered for their indiscretion, but after that night, nine years passed before he spoke to Zeph again. He had returned home to furious foster parents who sent him back to the last group home he’d ever live in and a letter that he’d lost his scholarship and would no longer be able to attend the Catholic School he’d been attending. After that, he'd kept tabs on Zeph from a distance, but never contacted him, figuring the pain of losing him was enough heartache for one lifetime. When he found out Zeph had taken vows as a priest, any dreams Nik had harbored about them being together drifted away like a branch from the island on Pharaoh Lake.
Nik tossed and turned as he tried to sleep. Eventually, a burning pain behind his eyes pulled at his attention. Fuck, not now, he thought.
Despite his attempts to ignore the throbbing in his brain, he couldn't fall asleep. The longer he resisted the pull of his duty, the more intense the pain. Before long, he'd be writhing in pain like he had as a child. Back then, he would lock himself in a closet to keep from following the pull until he screamed in agony.
He knew better than to risk that kind of pain now. Fighting his instincts always ended with him in the psych ward of the city children's hospital, then off to another new foster home.
Nik pulled on his dirty clothes and laced up his shoes. Every step he took closer to the evil screaming out in his mind relieved his pain. God wasn't an all-knowing, all-loving Father, not to Nik. God was just another fucking manipulative bastard who found a way to force people to do what he wanted.
And, like it or not, Nik was His bitch.
In the main room, Jimmy remained planted on the couch, still flipping through the channels. Did I get any sleep at all?
"Everything okay?" Jimmy actually turned the television off and stood up. "You were only down there like an hour. I thought you'd be conked for the rest of the night."
"Shoulda, Woulda, Coulda. I gotta bolt though, kid."
Jimmy narrowed his eyes as Nik jerked on his leather jacket. "Seriously, is someone in trouble? Did one of the guys get hauled in or something?"
Nik took a breath and reminded himself that Jimmy was still just a kid. He relied on Nik to be stable in a completely unstable existence. "No, all the guys are cool. No one's in trouble. I just have to help a friend."
"Oh yeah? What kind of help?" Jimmy asked waggling his eyebrows.
"Stuff it." Nik laughed and headed out. He locked the doors and took the steps down to the street two at a time.
Chapter Three
Nik headed in the direction that offered the most relief from the ice pick of pain stabbing him in the brain. He turned the corner, keeping a steady pace through the dark city streets. A woman in her mid-twenties with blonde hair, wearing a red dress and matching crimson lips, walked behind him. She was more focused on the cell phone in her hands than her surroundings. At the next corner, she turned and disappeared into the night.
Nik kept going straight and breathed a little sigh of relief. If she'd followed him a few more blocks, that could have been a problem. The pounding of his head had dulled to barely a throb: he was close.
Nik crossed Forty-Ninth and approached the shadows of the underpass. The scent of piss and beer burned his nostrils. Blaring horns from a few blocks over penetrated the night better than the lights of cars passing above. He took a deep breath, stopped walking, and turned to face the figure lurking in the darkness.
For a moment, it seemed the darkness deepened, spreading out from the eyes of the demon-ridden man before him. He couldn’t make sense of it, until he realized the darkness was actually the demon’s host body spreading, growing impossibly fast.
A chill ran down Nik’s spine and, for the first time since he was a kid and faced his first possession, he felt truly terrified.
The possessed man grew before his eyes, his bulk expanding, muscles rippling even as they swelled. As the creature leaned forward, into the dim rays of moonlight, he revealed a face that barely resembled anything human. His jaw and forehead widened, his whole head bigger than a Rottweiler's.
Frozen to the spot, Nik could neither attack nor run. A demon possessed this body, he was sure of it. But demons shouldn’t be able to do this to a host. They could only manipulate the body’s actions. They couldn’t change the body itself. This was impossible.
The creature stood before him and opened his mouth in a wide grin, long incisors dripping with filmy black ichor.
From the creature's teeth dripped the very thing Nik usually took from possessions, the demon’s essence, the sin. Apparently this one had plenty to spare.
A wave of nausea hit Nik as a new thought occurred to him. Demons had never been able to infect him before. What if this one could?
The beast threw its head back and roared into the night sky, its skin shifting in a blur.
Holy shit.
Hard scales formed like thousands of shields across the demon’s body. When the last of the plates locked into place and the demon’s clothes lay in a shredded pile at its feet, Nik had to crane his head back to look up at it.
He couldn’t fight this thing, and he was pretty sure he couldn’t outrun it. This would be the night Zeph had warned him about so many times. One day, Nik, you’re gonna bite off more than you can chew. Nik winced at the bad Sin Eater pun, as he always did, but if Nik died tonight, he’d never see Zeph again. A pang of regret stabbed into his heart and he was still grateful for Zeph’s bad jokes.
The creature dropped down onto all fours and peered at Nik, scenting the air, sizing up his prey.
The thought should have crumpled him. Instead, it pissed him off. All these years and it comes down to this. He’d be killed by a fucking mutant dog.
“Fuck that.”
The hulking beast lowered itself, tension evident in every muscle tightly coiled, ready to spring. It looked half-dragon, half-werewolf, but moved like a lion.
Anticipation of the charge burned in his gut. Nik waited only a second, then spun around, the creature flying by to his right. Barely brushing against his shoulder.
The heat the beast emanated struck Nik like a blow, and, for a moment, his head felt dull. The thing plowed past him, hit the concrete wall, and rebounded, barreling into Nik’s back.
Nik flung his hands out in front of him to protect his face. When he hit the ground, the impact knocked the breath from his lungs. He rolled over and tried to get his bearings. He ears rang. The beast approached and stood over him.
Harsh features coalesced in the black above him as a car passed, its occupants oblivious of the battle raging in the shadows. A broad, scaly forehead gleamed with sweat, even in the chilly night, but the eyes remained flat and black. Thick hands where Nik expected paws wrapped around his throat and the beast spoke as he throttled him, leaning close.
"What have we here?"
Nik struggled, pulling on the thing’s wrists, trying to get free. He gasped for breath and spots began to float in his vision. He couldn't die now, he barely felt like he'd lived. If only he could get through to the soul buried deep within this possessed body that he was there to save him. If there was even a soul left to save.
Nik dug his fingernails under the scales of the face above him, ripping a few free and flinging them off his hands.
The beast howled and stood, grabbing its own face with massive, shaking hands.
Nik shoved himself back with his feet and kicked the possessed man, this new demon creature, in the chest, sending him sprawling back against the wall of the underpass. Nik stood and sucked a breath in through burning lungs.
He stilled his mind, imagining the world slowing. Each mote of dust paused in its suicidal dive toward the earth, giving Nik the time he needed to find his purpose
.
In the stillness, Nik gazed at the creature, moving in the slowest of increments. Demons weren't the floating, horned devils of cartoons. They were real and one of them feasted on whatever goodness remained within the man before him.
Time sped back up and Nik found his balance.
Nik pulled the switchblade from his back pocket, the one he never used but kept just in case. This was New York City, after all.
"I exorcise you, evil Devil, enemy of truth." He rushed the demon, slashing with his knife.
A sharp pain sliced across his own palm as the demon’s scales deflected the blow, the switchblade cutting a swath through Nik’s hand before he released it.
He was lucky it hadn’t closed, slicing off his fingers. Nik took a few steps back and held his bleeding hand against this chest.
The demon laughed. Before Nik could react, it slammed its fist into Nik's jaw, sending him sprawling across the ground.
Nik groaned and rolled over, onto his side.
The demon rocked back and forth on the balls of his feet and smiled. A wicked ugly thing that showed the depths of hell in his eyes. "Come at me, Sin Eater."
Nik stood slowly, then rolled his shoulders back and stood his ground. His hardened muscles and toughened body wouldn’t be easily subdued. He cracked his neck and shook out his arms, ready to take the demon on.
"I'll rip off your cock and stuff it so far down your throat it'll come back out your ass. When I'm done with you, you'll beg me to drag your soul to hell."
Nik crossed himself and wiped the sweat off his brow. Glancing at his shaking hand, and the blood dripping freely from it, an idea formed. A whisper of thought, a voice he recognized but didn’t know. The voice came from his blood and mind at the same time. He spoke the words as they came to him, flinging his blood at the beast all the while.
"I adjure you by the holy angels, thrones, dominions, principalities, powers, and authorities; by the many-eyed Cherubim and the six-winged Seraphim to tell me immediately how your name is called."
The demon sneered, but started shaking. Its jaw clenched tight, its smile gone.
"I exorcise you, Demon of Hell." Nik held his bloody hand out toward the demon and crossed the air between them.
"Fuck you." The demon shook its head as if to dislodge an errant thought or bug that had crawled within its ear and laid eggs.
Nik pressed his sudden advantage, squeezing his bleeding hand into a fist to collect more ammo. He shouldn’t be so happy to see so much of his own blood, but if it worked, he was going to use it. He flung the collected pool at the demon.
The creature’s scaly skin bubbled and popped, oozing dark slime out of open wounds everywhere Nik’s blood had landed. It roared and took a few steps back, its whole body now shaking.
Nik followed its retreat, gaining ground as they paced. He raised his voice to be heard over the roaring screams of the beast.
"Let God arise and let his enemies be scattered, and let them flee from his countenance. As smoke vanishes so may they disappear; as wax melts away from the face of a fire."
The beast stumbled back. A glimmer of humanity flashed across his eyes, only to be replaced with the darkest, blackest evil Nik had ever seen. The creature rushed him, slamming him back against the wall of the underpass.
Nik's spine hit the concrete and his head snapped back so hard his legs weakened and he slumped in the demon's hold.
The creature dropped Nik's limp body and delivered a powerful kick to his stomach. "The tide of hell is swelling like a tsunami. We will wash over your pathetic humanity and take that which was ours by right. You are a shadow, a speck of dust in the eye of a blind God."
The beast's black, empty eyes bore into Nik's soul. The demon, face and chest still leaking out its sinful essence, staggered then regained its balance.
The creature breathed heavily, fists hanging at its sides. As quickly as it had turned into this hellbeast, it shifted back into the human form that was its host. The black from his eyes began to seep around the edges, red-rimmed lids turning purple then black as the evil within attempted to escape the damaged human vessel.
The demon grabbed Nik by the collar and pulled him up to standing before slamming his forehead against Nik's. The impact rocked Nik back, but the man came with him, pushing him against the wall and delivering one brutal punch after the next.
Nik didn't know how much more he could take. Broken and bloody, he did the only thing he could think of.
"Forgive me Father, for I have sinned," he said, and spit a globule of blood in the demon's face.
The man screamed, stumbling back as he wiped at his skin. The flesh on his cheek, much weaker than the demon scales, bubbled and peeled. Layer after layer sloughed away, leaving behind an open wound of muscle and puss where a face had been.
Nik staggered forward, taking deep breaths but not looking away from the demon for even a moment.
The possessed man sank to his knees, his screams quieted as his body spasmed and what was left of his mouth frothed.
Nik searched the archives of his mind, digging back into his memory for the words to cast this demon out. Words he hadn't needed to use in years.
"Shudder, tremble, be afraid, depart, be utterly destroyed, be banished!" He approached the demon and pressed his bleeding palm against the man's melting forehead, calling on the spirit of redemption within him, calling forth its power so he could perform the sacred right that cursed his existence.
A whisper floated past his ears from deep within his soul, in his mind, in his blood: Behold, I give you the power to trample underfoot snakes and scorpions, and all the power of enemies.
The evil before him screamed, a terrible shriek that called down the very angels who cast out his kind millennia ago.
Nik's hand dripped blood and his forehead throbbed.
"You can't kill this man and that's the only way you'll get rid of me. You can't take an innocent life without opening yourself up to my kind. So go ahead, kill him, and then I'll wrap myself in your shell and consume your soul." The monster licked its lips.
“Bullshit.”
The leaky, red eyes of the demon’s host displayed the first real signs of fear. It was all but beat. He was almost finished.
"Behold and obey. By the power of Christ, invested in me by the Kingdom of Heaven and its mighty King, I command you to yield. For this vessel is a child of God, sacred unto him."
Beads of sweat popped out on the brow of the man before him, now crouching and glaring up at Nik. One side of his face had melted away, leaving only sinew and bone. He curled his arms and fists, making his biceps bulge with effort.
His voice, empowered by his birthright and emboldened by experience, rang clear in the night. "I exorcise thee, every unclean spirit, in the name of God," Nik pressed his bloody palm against the demon's forehead, "and in the name of Jesus, and in the name of the Holy Spirit!"
Nik drew the sign of the cross on the demon's flesh with his own blood.
"Tell me your name! The blood of Christ compels you!"
The man's bulging muscles shook. He ground his teeth, trying his best to stop from revealing his name and giving Nik the only thing he needed to destroy him. He screamed, a long and low furious yell that revealed the only thing that might have kept him safe: "Naamah."
Nik slapped his wet palm onto the man's sweaty forehead. "I exorcise thee, Naamah, in the name of God, and in the name of Jesus," Nik's hand burned the man's flesh, but he couldn't stop, "and in the name of the Holy Spirit." He pulled his face close until the two were eye-to-eye.
The black from the demon's eyes receded into its head, traveling the surface of the man's skin and turning it gray. He opened his mouth and a black cloud rushed out, choking its former host as it was expelled.
The monster let out a shriek as the last of its hold on the man was ripped out, sliding out of his human host's mouth and into a black glob on the street.
The man came to his senses. Confusion showed in his eyes as his min
d was once again able to access his body. As the evil left the man's body, he slumped to the ground and Nik lowered with him. Nik stayed just long enough to make sure the man's pulse was stable. His job was to get the evil out, not to worry about what happened after.
Nik’s head spun, he was too exhausted, sick, and confused to reason it out. He’d exorcised the demon. That’s all that mattered. He’d figure out the particulars later.
The blood on Nik's hand glowed a deep red in the darkness as he reached out and grabbed the evil before him. With a silent prayer, he picked it up, black sin wrapping around his fingers like tentacles. Bile rose in his mouth at the thought of what he needed to do next. Twice in one night.
The throb in his head began again and Nik stuffed the evil into his mouth, swallowing its slick putrid essence in one gulp.
Nik stood, but he swayed and leaned heavily on the wall to his left, unable to see through the dark haze that descended over his eyes. He felt like someone had snuffed him out. Cold gripped his body, seeping into his bones, pulling him down, crushing him in its icy fist.
He instantly regretted treating this one as he had every other. He should have known better. There was nothing about this possession that had been like the others. After everything he went through to beat this thing, he came right back around to the same thought as before. This would be the one that killed him.
A shiver crept up Nik's spine, gripping him by the back of the neck and squeezing until a shudder broke from his lips. Something heavy dropped into the pit of his stomach. He didn't have much time to expel the sin before he was dried up and useless. If he even could.
On the ground, the man he'd saved moaned, his eyes moving behind his eyelids. He'd live.
Nik stumbled away, leaving the stranger to his fate. Maybe the guy would make it home without getting mugged or arrested. Maybe he'd end up getting stabbed tonight anyway. It wasn't Nik's problem anymore and, if he took the time to care, he'd end up out here too weak to help either of them.