Murder The Light: The Demon Whisperer #2

by Ash Krafton

  It was as close to together as they were going to get. It would be enough to keep him going.

  It had to be.

  The next day, Simon hit the street feeling like a brand new penny. Washed, shaved, fresh as a pressed shirt. (Which, incidentally, he wore. His room had a closet, he'd discovered, and the closet had clothes in it. He hadn't even needed to finish rinsing out the bloodied shirt he'd left soaking in the sink. Wicked convenient.)

  The only remnant from the previous day was a sore arm, as if he'd taken a wand hit. But he hadn't even touched his tattoo. Probably not a good sign.

  He brushed it off, reminding himself that he had used magic. That tat was the hub of his power. It only made sense that it would feel used.

  The solid night's sleep had worked a magic of its own on him, sharpening the fuzzed-out corners of his psyche. It would take an extraordinary breakfast to patch up the blood loss. He frowned. Rainier was not going to like his omelet order.

  Spinach would be weird enough a thing, considering the entire diner knew he was carnivore first, meatatarian second. But the black sesame seeds and beet juice would have the cook dialing 911. A side of liver and onions and they'd be sending in the white coats as back-up.

  Shoot. Maybe a stop at the drug store for some gummy multivitamins was a better idea. That way, he could stick to his beloved breakfast meats. To avoid suspicion, of course. Discretion was his specialty.

  Or so he pretended until later that afternoon, when he realized he was being followed.

  This was the city, for crying out loud. The streets were lousy with people. Couldn't swing a pendulum without hitting someone. People were always following, no matter which way a guy walked.

  But they didn't usually carry the shadows with them.

  Maybe it was a trick of the light. The sky was spotty with clouds. Could just have been overcast.

  But that guy at the bar had shadows. They hadn't been a trick of the light. Why would these be?

  A casual glance over his shoulder showed blots of dimly lit people moving amongst the ordinary folk, each honed in on him. When he blinked hard, the sight shifted, flickering back and forth between normal eyesight and the shadowed overlay. Dammit.

  "Uh, Mack?" He coughed into his cupped hand, trying to not look like he was talking to himself. "I think something is happening."

  He crossed the street and headed north, focusing on his periphery. The shadows followed, deepening with each passing minute, the crowd growing. He led them like a piper through Hamlin.

  On a whim, he paused in his tracks, spinning on his heel. Each of the pre-hosts stopped in time with him, giving him a level, dead-eyed stare. The second sight flickered, revealing maniacal grins in the shadows.

  Oh, bad, bad, super bad. This time, he didn't care who overheard. "Mack! A little help here?"

  Nothing. No wind, no mellow voice, no itch of angel feathers along his nerves. No Mack. He searched the skies, looking for the sun. When he found it, his hopes dimmed.

  The sun blazed high above a thick ceiling of cloud on the horizon, solid except for a slit through which the sunlight streamed down in a golden veil. A Jacob's Ladder, far to the north.

  Dammit. Angel business. Mack wouldn't be coming.

  It was up to him.

  Tapping his mouth, he sifted through a dozen possibilities, all of which ended in bad. His blood tingled through his extremities as adrenaline pumped through his system, tunneling his vison and muffling his ears with the boom of his pulse.

  Not panic, he told himself, breathing through pursed lips. Not yet.

  But soon, if he didn't do something. He'd never faced an ambush before. And this was looking like a fricken big one.

  He paused at the corner, just a beat, deliberating. Okay. Ambush by a bunch of people who looked like that last host had, the one with possession prodrome. And him? No plan, as usual.

  He was getting used to going without one. Didn't mean he was any better at it.

  A deep breath, a look around, a survey of the area. Three blocks away was a small warehouse with a fenced-in lot. Buildings spread out, not usually a lot of foot traffic, no ley lines. As good a place as any for a holy showdown.

  By the time he reached the gate, he knew he had a good dozen pre-hosts behind him. He could feel each one of them. Collectively, they emanated an energy that felt like a change in the humidity, a palpable pressure. Keeping his back to them, he paced to the center of the lot.

  They streamed in behind, their breathing audible and disturbing.

  He walked a clockwise circle, dragging his left foot in the dirt as he did. When it was complete, he leaned over and spit onto it. A brief glow zipped around the edge as the circle awakened.

  His tattoo winced with a lance of electric pain as it did, like he'd whacked his funny bone. It hurt so massively that it was difficult to decide if it even hurt at all. And it wasn’t even a blooded circle.

  The pre-manifesting hosts drifted out around him, their shadows deepening, their mumbles growing more audible, more aggravated.

  "Yeah," he said. "It's a cheap circle, I know. Beggars can't be choosers, right?"

  The shadows stopped flickering, his sight sticking itself in Dark Mode. Arm throbbing as if he'd just taken a massive wand hit, he surveyed the lot. He didn't need his scrying lens to know these guys were all turning into the Walking Hell. His tattoo did all that for him, whether he wanted it or not.

  Damn it. Why? Why does Lucifer's power have to be so damned useful? With every trick, every boon, he was coming to appreciate it more and more and that didn't make things any easier. It only blurred the lines he'd spent years sharpening.

  Light, good. Dark, bad. Used to be easier than black and white. But shortcuts like this made him think that, even though it was Dark, it was serving his purpose.

  There was nothing in Heaven or on Earth that was good nor evil. It was all a matter of intention, right? It wasn't the power, or the advantage, or the charm. It was what a man did with it that counted.

  He slipped on his thumb rings, twisting them into position, feeling them catch when they got there. He pushed up his sleeves, like John Henry getting ready to pick up his sledgehammer. The cool air hit the tender skin of his tattoo, a brief soothing before the sting of the dark charge hit, the power rolling off the manifestations surrounding him.

  He scanned the crowd, thirteen by his count. Their demons hadn't emerged yet. The old Simon would have been more concerned for a gang mugging or a cult intervention.

  But this new layer of flickering sight, the back-and-forth between normal and Dark—was this what Chiara lived with? Was this how she saw the world, every day, the simple light of a person destroyed by the potential of Darkness? Where was the hope, the optimism? Not that he'd ever had an overabundance…but the thin supply he possessed was diminishing by the hour.

  Quick flashback to that day on the bus when she spied that punk who'd been ready to manifest, long before Simon had even suspected something bad was up. Chiara had a jump on the kid's impending possession. She'd been ready to go before the kid even turned.

  Now, he was wielding that same upper hand. He was the one who was ready to go.

  Maybe it wasn't as doomsday as he'd initially thought. He grinned, now, and swiveled his head slowly around, evaluating each one. The hosts were in varying stages of possession. Not all going to pounce at once.

  Old Simon would had said: good on that. Divide and conquer. Take each one out, one manageable demon at a time.

  New Simon was…well, a little disappointed, truthfully. Things would go a lot smoother if everyone was on board together.

  Well…his grin widened, baring teeth. The rules had recently changed, hadn't they?

  He sized up the situation. Never before would he have attempted a group exorcism, let alone this hot mess. The thing to do was corral them, somehow, and grab their demons all at once. But first, he needed to get their attention.

  Certainly, Old Simon would never have provoked such a dangerous
mob.

  "Oh, well," he muttered, rubbing his thumbs and fingers together. "Out with the old."

  He tugged the chain around his neck, drawing the amulet out from under his shirt, and dropped it upon his chest, in full view.

  Provoked wasn't the word. The man closest to his left snarled and hissed like a wet cat, eyes sparkling like poisonous rubies.

  "Ah. Hello, you devil. Who's first?" With an offhanded flourish, he pulled his wand free of his watchband and twirled it between his fingers like an 80s rock drummer before pointing it at them. "You? You, sir? Who?"

  The hosts, red-eyed and ready to blow, kept their distance. They swayed on stilted legs, their breaths ragged, choking on their own brimstone.

  He glared at them and smiled a mad smile. "Cowards."

  Gripping the wand hard, he nailed his tattoo.

  He yelled in anticipation a split-second before the hit, nerves breaking loose. The scream that followed the hit was real, and raw, and shriveled his manlies tightly up against him with a dull ache.

  An expanding ring of power sliced out like a shock wave, smacking into the hosts, locking them in place as if they'd been electrocuted. They manifested as one, like microwave popcorn. Just BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! Full-on possession, every single one.

  The air inside the circle tasted like a car fire. His nose stung. His eyes burned.

  And he laughed. Laughed at the pain, dwarfish in the rush of the power he had at his beck and call. He laughed and raised his hands. The blue arc of magical electricity that spun between his rings was so much thicker, so much brighter than he'd ever conjured. The power rumbled down his arms. His voice came out like a lion's roar.

  "In the name of the Light, I draw thee." He slowly turned, hands out, the power stretched between his rings like a rope of living, twisting taffy. It crackled with a ferocity that echoed out, bouncing off the fence, the warehouse further back. "In the name of the Light, I bind thee. In the name of the Light, I cast thee back into darkness. In the name of the Light, I—"

  The demons screamed, held in thrall within his orbit of power. They screamed, writhing in agony, and they hung upon his every word. Waiting.

  Simon's head felt wide open. He looked into the sullen eyes of each host and knew the name of each demon screaming within. He saw the desperate souls trapped inside them, tortured within the vortex of demonic possession, each twisting in the hell of his own body.

  He saw the infinite well of Hell's power embodied within the grip each demon had upon its mortal victim.

  And Simon was bigger than all of it.

  "Aw, heck," he said. "Who am I kidding? I command thee. Thou shalt do my will."

  He stared down each demon, each minion cowering in the light of his rings and the storm of his power. Gritting his teeth, he leaned into the magic and put every ounce of his strength and his will into each word.

  He called out the name of each demon, once no more than an archaic name in a dusty old grimoire. Now, each name had a face and a personality and an existence. He called out each name, commanded its obedience, and drew it out.

  A ghostly image lifted up out of each body, the shape of a demonic minion that squirmed, helpless to disobey Simon's call. Rage. Such rage—it could singe his eyebrows if he got close enough. Rage rolled off each demon as they flapped and shrieked, pinioned to their hosts, desperately trying to hold onto their purloined mortal shells.

  Simon wind-milled his arms, up and out, the light stretching between his binding rings. As his hands came up together in front of him, the power pulled into a tight ball.

  There's the wind up. Here comes the pitch—

  He hurled that power at them, launching it like a holy RPG. "Go back to your place below!"

  The ball of power arced through each host, electrifying and tethering them like too much Spielberg and not enough sleep. The demons were ripped out of their hosts, shattering into sulfuric sparks. They sizzled out as one, the smoke hanging like a sooty veil over the alley, over the body of each man and woman who'd collapsed, falling into a crumpled circle around him.

  Laughter seized him like an alien force, maniacal laughter that threatened to liquefy his brain if he didn't let it out. Standing in the center of a ring of unconscious bodies, he threw his head back and laughed out his delirium, his incredulity, his conquest, his relief. Too many feelings for a mortal psyche to comprehend all at once. It translated into a roar of belly laughter that drowned out any concept of comprehension.

  He couldn't process it. He didn't care. Dropping to his knees in the dirt, he threw back his head and laughed—

  And for the briefest moment, Simon's vision was cast over by a sheen of silver, his eyes glinting like a jet plane flying straight into the sun.

  Bristol

  the distant past

  Zophiel remained ever at Luminea's side.

  True, he, an angel, was invisible and could not touch the earth, could not communicate with her. That mattered little. After all, it was not his right.

  He was content to watch. Sometimes, she talked out loud to herself, nonsense about daily chores or what would she wear to market that day. He would talk back to her, even though she couldn't hear him. It didn't matter. Nothing was silly or trivial as far as she was concerned.

  Watching the beautiful and despairing Luminea, her struggle to reconcile her fate, her broken heart, her loneliness—it affected him. His mission was to watch, yes? To be a guardian, surely. But she was a divinity, stranded alone in a sea of incognizant humanity. She needed someone.

  And as her time to give birth grew closer, her anxiety increased, and he knew he had to take action. Zophiel went to the village, sought out a midwife, and used Persuasion to get her to take a cart out to the western farms.

  She found Luminea in the early stages of labor and thanked God's providence profusely for leading her there.

  Luminea didn't seem so much piously thankful as politely cautious. But once the pains arrived, she was less about caution and more about making it through.

  The labor was long by the midwife's standards, if her frequent exclamations were truthful. But the delivery itself was uneventful and easy. Zophiel hovered at Luminea's head, whispering Assurances. The child slipped free from her body, strong lungs and bright hazel eyes. As Luminea held the babe the infant's eyes often strayed beyond her face toward his own, as if she sensed his presence.

  A unique child, befitting of so remarkable a woman.

  Luminea and her child became another fixture in that mundane world. She was clever and talented, finding ways to use her natural powers to make craft, earn coin, all without raising suspicion of witchcraft or devilry. The humans of that time had been very suspicious of such things.

  So odd, Zophiel would muse; they prayed every day for miracles and signs of God's blessing but here was a true example of divinity living amongst them in the mud and the sun and the raggedness.

  And they'd hang her by the neck if they knew the truth.

  She sewed canvas sails for the sailing captains, with needles that never broke and fingers that never grew tired or sore. So quickly did she produce them that she soon became the most sought-after craftswoman.

  Her sails never tore, never failed to find fair winds. Enochian magic, of course. And while the captains all proclaimed there was something of very good luck in her sails, they never once thought she was the true source of it.

  Bristol thrived as a port city. It would become a place of power. Luminea sewed relentlessly through the night, her mind turning and twisting through plans she would set in motion now, seedlings to grow, great mighty trees to last eons. And she would control it all…

  All these things she shared with her now-teen-aged daughter, who learned in time how to handle the heavy canvas, how to slick the thick twine with wax and with magic to protect against fraying, how to command the canvas to yield to the point of the needle, how to spread the Enochian magic through every fiber.

  That last part, she fumbled. The final blessing, a great und
ertaking to be sure, was simply beyond her strength.

  "You will grow, dearest," Luminea would say, her voice like harp strings coated in honey, bright yet mellow. "All things work in balance. You do good work with your hands. Your mind will follow."

  Zophiel's wings would hum with his approval, Luminea's esteem as a beautiful soul rising even higher in his regard. His heart swelled with it.

  But not everyone felt the same way about her. Especially not the rival sail makers whose livelihoods had suffered greatly at her success.

  One such man was known for his coarse, blunt ways. A lifelong sailor himself, Jon Burton was accustomed to surviving on the wretched sea, tossed about by the water's merciless moods. And he cared not for women, unless they were buxom and accommodating and willing to leave by morning.

  Luminea was not his kind of woman. She was a threat to his business. And, Zophiel had heard him say on several occasions, it was time she remembered her place.

  Burton's work orders becoming scant, he took to drinking ale at all times of the day, thoroughly inebriating his judgment and impairing his senses. His favorite tavern was one that sat close to the harbor, favored by sailors and merchants alike. Zophiel could see him watching her though the open windows each day as she passed, carrying the day's deliveries.

  Zophiel felt the hate radiating from him, his turmoil and loathing and desire to right what he believed was a terrible injustice. He was on guard against that one.

  One afternoon, having delivered her wares, Luminea walked past the tavern, her purse heavy with coin, her mind on the next project, the next stage of her plan. She had been too distracted to notice Burton had stepped out of the doorway just on her heels, and followed her with a seething intention blackening his heart.

  Zophiel saw him. He always saw.

  When she turned the corner, he rushed closer and elbowed her against the wall.