The Cost

by R. W. Holmes

  “Jacky, Deacon” the man whispered into his ear piece. “It's Cody. I need you to get to Tennerman's Pub. I think I've found the demon.”

  Oblivious to what may be happening around them, Gael, Kennedy, and Zinerva continued to enjoy their evening as they had, until the moment they'd been waiting for finally arrived, and a trio of plates were dropped at their table.

  Kendra, who'd brought the plates, immediately jumped in fright when Zinerva reached out and crammed half of her burger into her mouth all at once.

  “Be careful! You're going to choke on it!” snapped Gael.

  “'on 'l 'e 'a 'h 'n 'a!” Zinerva snapped back incomprehensibly. She then destroyed everything Gael and Kennedy knew about her physical capabilities, as well as their appetites, when she swallowed the entire mouthful at once.

  “Holy shit...” Kennedy muttered in disgust. “Remind me not to put my hand anywhere near her mouth.”

  “I mean, yeah” Gael said uncomfortably. “On the bright side, you'd get it back one piece after we pumped her stomach...”

  “What!?” Zinerva hissed indignantly. “What am I doing wrong now?”

  “You're supposed to chew!” Gael, Kennedy, and Kendra all exclaimed in unison.

  Zinerva looked down at her burger then, and instead took a much smaller, but still immense bite. “Oh, yeah!” she exclaimed happily. “Usually, in...” Zinerva paused and looked up at Kendra. “Where I come from, it's better if you don't stop to taste the food.”

  “Right...” Kendra murmured awkwardly. “I'm gonna go.”

  Kennedy dropped his head into his hands as Kendra hurried off to a more normal table.

  “Also, you usually don't have time to enjoy a meal in hell” Zinerva continued unabated. “The other imps and I would get so violent that food wasn't even safe in your mouth! Seriously, you got taken advantage of if everyone wasn't convinced you'd just bite off their arm and eat that too.”

  “Okay, new rule” Gael said as he picked up his own burger. “No talking about hell while we're eating.”

  “Yeah, but if I make you sick you're not going to eat your food” Zinerva replied pragmatically.

  “I'll take it you like the food then” Kennedy mused.

  “It's the only food I've ever liked!” exclaimed Zinerva. “Is all the food like this? Is it different, but still good? Because this is like you're showing me another color.”

  “There's a whole rainbow out there” Gael said encouragingly. “And this is just one shade.”

  Across the restaurant, Cody found himself joined by the ever-bubbly Jacky first.

  “So?” she said as she made her way over. “Is it him?”

  Cody nodded. “That thing with him, the way he hides it in plain sight... It's almost brilliant. Still, there's no way it's actually human. I just watched it swallow half of its hamburger without chewing.”

  “My goodness!” Jacky said with a mischievous smirk. “That's quite the bedroom talent.”

  “Your mind is a gutter” Cody said in disdain.

  “And you're a prude” replied Jacky, before playfully sticking her tongue out at Cody. “Do we wait for Deacon?”

  “No, he's still new” said Cody. “And besides, Deacon isn't really a fighter.”

  Jacky nodded understandingly, and then shot a look to a space in the air beside her feet. A moment passed, and the loud, blaring, repetitive squeal of the sport bar's fire alarm filled the air.

  Zinerva looked about herself in bewilderment as Gael and Kennedy grabbed up their burgers.

  “We have to go” Gael said to her.

  “What's happening?” Zinerva said fearfully. “Do I take my food?”

  “Yeah, grab your burger” added Gael. “Something must have gone wrong in the kitchen.”

  Zinerva did as she was told, and hopped out of her seat to follow Gael and Kennedy, but stopped two inches from the ground. She hovered there for a moment in complete bewilderment, before recognizing the sensation of hands wrapped around her midsection.

  “Gael!” she cried out in alarm. “Gael, help!”

  Gael and Kennedy turned around just in time to see Zinerva dragged up and back into her seat at their table.

  “'Ello, sweetheart” a voice whispered into Zinerva's ear. “You just stay still, and I promise nothin' too bad's gonna happen to ya.”

  “There's someone here” Zinerva called out to Gael fearfully. “She's talking to me.”

  Gael narrowed his eyes and tried to make out what it was that was holding Zinerva in place, whilst Kennedy turned around to discover that everyone in the pub had already evacuated.

  Everyone, except for a girl his age with far too happy a smile on her face, and an older man who wasn't quite old enough for his receding hairline.

  “Uh, Abigail?” Kennedy said nervously. “I think we've got a problem.”

  Gael grimaced as he looked over his shoulder and spied Cody and Jacky for the first time.

  “What the hell do you want?” he snapped at them.”

  “Oooh, good choice of words” Jacky said with a quick, almost menacing bout of laughter. “We want to know how you got Hell to stop being in Hell.”

  Gael scoffed and shook his head. “I'm not telling you that” he said stoically. “That information is too dangerous. It's already killed one person.”

  “And it's about to kill two more...” Jacky whispered mischievously to Cody.

  “Hey! No whispering, or we start taking shots!” Gael called out threateningly. “I'm not kidding. You'll be really glad you pulled that fire alarm if we do!”

  “You're the controller, then?” asked Cody. “Who is the other one?”

  “Me?” Kennedy queried incredulously. “I'm Kennedy Adams. As in, the famous Adams's? Maybe you've heard of-,”

  “Sleep” Jacky snapped at Kennedy.

  Kennedy stared back at Jacky incredulously for a moment, before feeling a tiny hand on his leg and an immense heaviness in his eyes. So powerful was the force pulling him to slumber that Kennedy landed in his own dream conscious and fully aware of what had happened.

  For Gael and Zinerva though, all they saw was Kennedy suddenly collapsing to the ground in response to Jacky's abrupt command.

  “Alright, no more chance for surprises” Cody said contentedly. “Ginger, Hans, restrain the demon.”

  Zinerva gasped as a pair of bodies, both about her size, tackled her down from her chair and pinned her to the ground. Helpless, the imp could do little more than stare up at Gael as Jacky and Cody each drew an appropriately named pocket knife from their pockets and held it towards him.

  “I know, it's not very impressive, is it?” Jacky said to Gael as she waved her knife around disappointedly. “Bringing a gun through a starport might raise questions though, so what are you gonna do?”

  “What did you do to Kennedy?” asked Gael.

  “Can't you hear?” Jacky taunted. “I told him to sleep, and now he's asleep.”

  “Jacky, that's enough” Cody insisted with unexpected authority. “You, what is your name?”

  Gael stared back at Cody for a moment, pondering what his name might mean for them, before replying with a very curt, and very calculated, “No.”

  Jacky snaked forward, her body contorting lithely like a cat and almost creating the illusion that she hadn't moved at all until it was too late. Before Gael could realize what was happening, Jacky was right up to him with her knife to his neck.

  “You're scared” Jacky said to Gael, and not as if she were empathizing with him, but as if she were telling him how to feel. “Do what comes natural, and just tell us what we want to know. It's going to be a lot less worse for you if you do.”

  “Zinerva” Gael said instead. “Can you give us all some privacy?”

  Zinerva looked up at Gael confusedly from her strained position, before the light bulb clicked on in her own inquisitive head and she realized what he was planning.

  “Sure thing, boss” she said with a grin, before suddenly and without warning biti
ng into her own tongue and sucking back as much air as she could. Jacky and Cody looked on in horror, and whatever had been restraining Zinerva hurried away from the imp as she began violently choking on her own tongue.

  Zinerva didn't fight it though, and instead simply waited for the lack of air to take her from the world and turn her remains to a pile of ash.

  “Alright, yeah” Jacky admitted in disgust, her eyes still glued to the clothes that Zinerva's ashes now lay in. “I can see why you're maybe a little desensitized to fear...”

  Gael exhaled gruffly as he pressed his neck against Jacky's knife and ever so slightly cut himself on it.

  “Listen” he said seriously. “I've already lost one friend today. I'm pretty sure you're gearing up to kill Kennedy next, and killing me is basically killing Zinerva as well. I'm not okay with that.”

  “Ah, that's sucks” Jacky said disapprovingly. “You don't do scary very well. I was just hoping this would get exciting, too.”

  “I'm giving you one chance to leave” continued Gael. “So go on: fuck off back to wherever you came from. I'm not looking to bother anyone, let alone give out my secrets.”

  Jacky stared back at Gael dully for a moment, before turning her gaze back to Cody.

  Gael grimaced as the two began to laugh, but also reached up to his neck while Jacky was looking away.

  “Hey!” Cody snapped as Gael pretended to reach out for the knife, but really palmed some of the blood from his neck instead.

  “Oh, sneaky sneaky” Jacky chided as she hopped back a step.

  “Yep” Gael said as he clapped his hands together. “I am very sneaky.”

  Jacky and Cody cried out in surprise as Gael suddenly vanished.

  “Uh oh” Jacky said first.

  “Ginger! Hans!” Cody called out. “Get ready, I think he's retrieving his demon. This must be why he asked her to kill herself in the first place.”

  “Ugh!” Jacky cried out in frustration. “Guns, Cody! We should have brought our guns!”

  Cody grimaced and readied his admittedly underwhelming knife for the fight to come...

  Far across the universe, over a frozen, iris-shaped explosion, and beneath a great and terrible blackness that eclipsed half the universe itself, Gael and Zinerva were fighting through the cosmos itself to reach one other.

  “We need to go in there guns blazing” called Gael. “Do you have any idea what these things are?”

  “Nope” Zinerva replied sheepishly. “I bet War knows. We should give him another chance.”

  “I'm... a little more open to the idea” Gael admitted reluctantly. “For now though we stick with my plan: guns blazing. That means throwing as much fire as you can without hitting me or Kennedy. Do you still have it? The fire, I mean.”

  “Yeah, I think you have to turn it off for me not to” said Zinerva. “Which may or may not be why I'm being so good. Please don't take it away.”

  “Don't give me a reason to” replied Gael.

  The two paused for a moment as they spotted their hands, grasping against their wills as they were, growing perilously close.

  “You could die here” said Zinerva.

  “Everyone could die here” countered Gael. “Let's get that number down some, alright?”

  Zinerva nodded just as her hand clasped Gael's.

  Jacky shrieked in surprise as Gael and Zinerva hurdled back into their corner of reality and went sliding by her.

  “Now!” exclaimed Gael.

  Cody leaped over the bar, and Jacky flipped over a table as blood red spheres of flame were rattled off one after another by Zinerva. The walls of the bar smoldered as each one failed to find a proper target, until luck caused one to unexpectedly strike a patch of open air.

  “AH!” a high pitched, feminine voice wailed.

  “GINGER!” Jacky screamed fearfully.

  Gael and Zinerva skidded to a halt at the far end of the pub, just beside the exit, and watched in shock as a tiny, long-eared woman just the slightest bit smaller than Zinerva manifested from the air and clutched at her badly burnt shoulder.

  “Is that a fucking elf!?” Gael shouted in disbelief.

  “It's them!” Zinerva cried out next. “The Fae! They're with the Fae!”

  “Okay” Gael said uncertainly. “Kill the Fae then.”

  Cody popped up from behind his cover at the bar and hurled a pair of heavy glass mugs at Gael, but missed wildly and allowed Zinerva plenty of time to take another shot at Ginger.

  Ginger, curly-shoed, bright-eyed, and cone-hatted as she was, dived for cover alongside Jacky behind the table she'd turned over and narrowly avoided Zinerva's horrifically accurate, flaming projectiles.

  “That is one dangerous imp!” she squeaked up at Jacky.

  “Hans! Knock out the summoner!” Cody called from behind the bar.

  Gael's eyes widened as he felt a hand on his leg, but unlike Kennedy, he was ready. His knee jerk reaction, which was to literally jerk his knee, sent the tip of his foot directly up into the invisible chin of a creature equally as short as Ginger, but quite a bit stouter. The creature reeled as it became visible, and Gael had only a second to get a look at its longer ears, strangely sharp teeth, and pale gray eyes before Zinerva's delighted cries filled the air.

  “HANS!” Cody screamed, helpless to do anything as Zinerva hit his companion fae with not one, not two, or even five, but thirteen bolts of limbo-fueled flame.

  Hans's scorched corpse, of whatever species he might have been, fell back to the ground with a dull thud.

  “Deacon!” Jacky cried out fearfully. “Deacon, we need backup!”

  Gael snarled at the prospect of more people to fight, and decided securing his own backup was a better plan of action. He stood up as another poorly aimed mug from Cody smashed into the wall beside him, and then responded by throwing his own projectile back Cody's way: Zinerva.

  Cody yelped as Zinerva collided with him, and was forced to the ground by the sheer frantic ferocity of her clawing slaps and razor-toothed bites.

  “Zinerva” Gael called out as he began making his way over to Jacky. “You can kill that one.”

  Cody cried out again as the blood red light of Zinerva's flames lit up the wall beside the bar, and after a short bout of bloodcurdling screams he finally went silent for good.

  Jacky meanwhile, with Ginger clutched to her chest and her pocket knife long since forgotten about, scampered back and away from Gael as he made his way up to her place of cover, and then continued on past it to Kennedy's unconscious body.

  “Hey” he said as he shook his peer awake. “Get up. These people are trying to kill us.”

  Kennedy groaned as the physical stimulation broke him out of his forced slumber.

  “I have waited all my life to be conscious during a dream” he said bitterly. “And I had to waste it worrying someone was going to kill me while I slept.”

  Gael helped Kennedy back to his feet whilst keeping an eye on Jacky and her elf. Meanwhile, Zinerva had climbed away from the corpse formerly known as Cody and made her way atop the bar.

  “You're naked again!” Kennedy shouted at her.

  “It's okay, my clothes are around here somewhere” Zinerva said reassuringly. “Besides, they won't get dirty this way.”

  Kennedy nodded absentmindedly as he looked around himself. “Where's the other guy?”

  “Dead” Gael and Zinerva replied in unison.

  Kennedy nodded again, this time a little less absentmindedly, before turning to Jacky and stopping in stupefaction.

  “Is that an elf?”

  “The fairies are trying to kill me for summoning demons” explained Gael.

  “Ah, shit!” Kennedy cried out in frustration. “I'm still dreaming, aren't I?”

  Zinerva gestured to Jacky and Ginger from her spot atop the bar and asked, “Do I kill them too?”

  Gael looked over the cowering pair for a moment, and felt a twinge of guilt spread over him.

  “You know, it's one thing to
defend yourself, but I think they've already given up” he said dismissively. “Come on Zinerva, get your clothes. We should have a minute or two before the fire department gets here.”

  Zinerva did as she was told, and Kennedy continued to pinch himself to make sure he wasn't still dreaming, but no sooner than when the three had turned their backs did Jacky spring off of her hands and back to her feet.

  “Cloak!” she commanded.

  Gael, Zinerva, and Kennedy turned around as quickly as they could, but found that Jacky and Ginger had already vanished. The feeling of a pair of figures brushing past the trio as they fled the sports bar left Gael regretting his merciful moment, and with that regret came a far more urgent need to run.

  “We need to bounce” Kennedy said first. “I get the feeling those two weren't alone.”

  “They weren't” Gael confirmed as he helped Zinerva back into her clothes and hurried them out the entrance. “She called for someone named Deacon earlier.”

  “Damn...” Kennedy replied grimly. “Let's head back to the dorms then so I can at least get my bat.”

  Gael nodded. “That works, actually” he said optimistically. “I'll have a chance to contact someone who knows more about the Fae there.”

  Chapter 6

  Strange Bedfellows

  Jacky was out first, and she knew she had to be. Gael and Kennedy were college students after all, and Deacon was still alone at the college. She was fast though, and well accustomed to moving quickly through a crowd of people that couldn't see her. The other civilians, some of which were also fleeing Tennerman's Pub, hardly paid any notice to the sudden invisible force as it pushed past them and broke through to Academy's Nine's minimalist entrance.

  Unlike most of the other structures of Enterprise Island, Academy Nine was built into the structure of the space island itself in much the same way the starport she'd arrived at was.

  Gael, Kennedy, and Zinerva were a good five minutes behind Jacky when they themselves arrived at the college despite being in a hurry themselves, but found their way through the stark entryway, down the student-filled, callous gray, fluorescent light lit main entry hall, and into Kennedy's dorm without incident.