In moments the three were jogging out of the lunchroom toward the parking lot.
“I have everyone in Demon Inc on GPS tracking at all times through their iPads,” Denny explained as they broke into an actual jog, limited by Kincaid’s high heels. “Mike wasn’t supposed to do this on his own because we don’t know the parameters of what these things can do. We don’t know what would have happened if they’d broken free of your house where they were summoned.”
“Why…why would Mike do this?” Kincaid gasped for breath as both teens supported her while nearly at a slow run.
“He takes too much on himself,” Denny replied, taking on most of Kincaid’s weight, hurrying her toward where she pointed out her car, a late model Ford Explorer. “I’ve already gotten a repeating text blipping him but he’s not taking the message. Open your back hatch up. Do you know where your tire iron is located?”
“I…I’m not sure.” Kincaid beeped her Explorer unlocked and two minutes later Denny was sitting in the front with Kincaid driving, cradling the tire iron in his hands.
“What are we going to do, Denny?”
Denny looked back at Joanie with tense resolve. “We don’t move once we get there until we have Demon with us. He calls the shots from there. Demon and Mike are joined at the hip. If there’s anything going down, he’ll know where. We follow his lead. Please stay with your Mom and Ms. Kincaid, Joanie. There’s absolutely nothing you could do besides die or get maimed. I’ll follow Demon. God help us all.”
Joanie’s features went from teenage angst at being told to stay with her Mom to steel resolve. “I’ll be there. I know it’s stupid to go with you after Mike. Why’d he do this?”
Denny relaxed back in his seat. “I don’t know, Joanie. I wish I did. I thought Mike had decided the danger would be too great to cowboy this on his own.”
* * *
Mike strolled with Ansel, pausing only at the duck pond before walking beyond. He watched his surroundings peripherally, noting the positions of the park’s visitors, anticipation building. He and Ansel would be well away from curious eyes in a few moments. Thoughts of all imaginable horrible outcomes paraded slowly through his brain in a kaleidoscope of what Mike smilingly believed to be his panorama of crappy choices. The dark thread running through his consciousness again calmed him with an inexplicable anticipation.
Ansel slowed, gently dragging back on Mike’s arm until he stopped. She stroked his arm, leaning in closer to him. “I don’t think we need to go any further, Mike.”
Mike watched Ansel’s facial features change from soft, seductive, lips parted attraction to a cold grim line of malice. Ansel pulled away from him slowly as she reached for his hand. Mike contemplated pulling away, but instead he reached back under his jacket with his left hand to grip the iron pike handle. As Ansel’s hands gripped his right hand, Mike felt the ethereal charge of awareness shoot up his arm as he did the night before at Kincaid’s house. The difference he noted immediately was Ansel’s smile of evil intensity before going blank. The Haunt shot out of her in a flash of shimmering reality.
Iron pike still hidden behind his back, Mike retreated, knowing he had no way of nailing the Haunt on the way out. It exited Ansel as if it had a plan, with none of the restraint apparent in the Haunt’s slow, grinding escape the night before from Kincaid. Seeing Ansel collapse to the ground while the Haunt flitted in a triumphant mocking hover, Mike slipped into a defensive posture, his right leg leading. A taunting whispering voice of menace slithered through Mike’s mind, confirming a new concept in Haunt warfare.
“Wondered did you? Wondered about us, did you? You and your horrid dog. None will survive. We will hold this gateway until hell overruns your realm.”
Mike made a spit second decision. “What gateway, slug. You like flouncing around in the open air? Why not come get a piece of me? Make your first empire building move over me, Casper!”
The ghoulish gray apparition formed into a silently laughing ghastly mask. It was not silent inside Mike’s head as the Haunt projected a tittering echo of amusement. “This gateway. Come.”
The Haunt turned, its clawed appendage held out. What appeared in the air sent waves of smoky colored tendrils snaking out from the growing aperture of darkness under its touch. Mike launched at the Haunt the moment its attention was no longer on him, his iron pike arching up in his left fist. The eviscerating blow tore up through the Haunt. Its icy cold ectoplasm insides splashed in a viscous flow over the pike. Mike smiled at the ululating scream filling his head as he encircled its neck, holding on to the bucking, flapping beast with all his strength. He drove the pike in over and over until it dissolved within his grasp and he fell to the ground.
Ansel propped herself up groggily. She screamed, watching in horror as a ragged black oval with glimpses of hell beyond spread its tendrils outward. Mike scrambled inside the muck puddle he had created, mesmerized by the sights within the growing gateway. Purple spires rose off blackened craggy rocks with a grayish haze surrounding them, contrasting the pulsating red sky with darkness. He saw shapes moving beyond the gateway, flitting to look as if through a window before scurrying away. Mike wiped the slime off his hand and the handle of his iron pike on his shirt. He fisted it once more, crouching between the gate and Ansel, moving the pike from one hand to the other. Mike glanced up at the blue cloudless sky above, breathing deeply before setting himself to the unknown task ahead. He turned to lock eyes with Ansel.
“Run, Mary!”
* * *
“Oh my God!” Kincaid braked to a screeching halt in the Community Center parking lot. “What is that?”
Denny leaped from the passenger side, having opened the door on the way into the parking lot. He had seen the filmy vortex forming on the other side of the park, channeling his resolve into the tire iron in his hands. Joanie grabbed his shoulder over her door, clutching his shirt in both fists.
“Don’t Denny! Stay here until my Mom comes with D! You can’t-”
Denny tore away from her grasp, his shirt buttons popping off as he broke free. He ran full speed at the horror beyond, his singular thought the plight of the only best friend he’d ever had. Joanie started after him, but stopped. She ran around to Kincaid who had exited from the driver’s side and stood with her hands gripping the driver’s side upper door frame in white knuckled fear. Joanie put a reassuring arm around her. Kincaid flinched before seeing it was Joanie.
“Good Lord, Joanie… what…what does this mean? Can’t we do something?”
“We won’t know until my Mom gets here with Demon. Mike and Denny may be lost by then, but we’d only be targets if we followed. I think the Haunts have found a way to break through. I don’t know what it all means. It was a game to me before when it started. Now, I’m terrified. I know when you were able to summon the Haunts to your place using that Grimoire book, it was a game changer.”
Kincaid burst into tears, her wracking sobs making it extremely difficult for Joanie not to join her. Instead, she gripped the teacher in her arms tightly, peering out at what appeared to be an apocalyptical breech into their world. She leaned her head into Kincaid’s, the feeling of human touch a rejuvenating and calming contact. “This may not go well, Ms. Kincaid. You need to get a grip.”
It was then Joanie spotted her Mom speeding into the parking lot with Demon’s head sticking out of the driver’s side window. Just the sight of Demon excited Joanie. The tears she’d been holding back began to trickle out. Before Jenny could even stop the Equinox, Demon leaped out the window, speeding toward the aperture of doom across the way.
“Look!” Kincaid pointed where a stumbling Ansel ran awkwardly toward the parking lot.
“Mike must have freed her. C’mon.” Joanie ran toward Ansel with Kincaid close behind. Jenny Rawlins headed towards her daughter at a dead run.
* * *
A Haunt face broke the plain of the growing breech, jabbering nonsense, its jaws working in anticipation. Mike impaled its head with his iron pik
e, noting its remains dissolved on the other side. The darkness swept over him. He saw only battle and triumph. Mike forgot about Ansel or the world ending gateway. The fibers of existence seemed to appear within his sight. So intense was his focus and perception he didn’t know of Denny’s appearance at his side.
“Good God, Mike, I’m glad to see you,” Denny yelled, his tire iron clutched over his shoulder ready to strike. “How’re we doing, brother?”
Mike grinned over at him, the fact he’d have to die with Denny a palpable regret. “I wish you hadn’t come.”
Denny peered into the horrific world beyond. His focus turned briefly to Mike, seeing not only the grim determination but also the anticipation. “So, we just die here, brother?”
Mike turned a startled glance to Denny. “I…I don’t know for sure, but it seems likely. I mulched the main one that inhabited Ansel, but we still have this. I lanced one of the ones poking his head in. The good part is I don’t think they can just fly in here; otherwise we’d already be overrun. I’m sorry you got here. I don’t see a happy ending. Why the hell did you come here, Worm?”
Denny laughed, gripping his tire iron tighter. “I couldn’t think of a better place to die, my friend. Since you decided to go rogue on me and open the portal to hell, there’s no sense putting off the inevitable. I have my collar camera on so we can record our last moments paying for your mistakes.”
Mike chuckled. “Ouch. That was just… mean.”
It was then the Haunts from the other side began gathering, their forms more corporeal. They leered at the human world. A couple attempted to swat at Mike and Denny, claws extended to maim or at least distract. Their movements slowed perceptively upon crossing over. Denny batted them easily, the tire iron snapping the Haunt appendages like rotted branches. The wailing shrieks of pain from beyond drew laughter from the two teens.
“Denny, my touch gave that thing in Ansel the ability to open this, and I could hear its thoughts in my head. I…” Mike stuck his pike up through another Haunt head that poked through. Haunt claws raked at him but Denny’s tire iron crushed through them as Mike pulled back. “We can’t let the world get trashed by these things, Den. Hey… there’s D!”
Denny spun around as Demon loped into their midst. “D! All right! Maybe we hold this gate until hell freezes over!”
Demon leaped through the portal, tearing and rending Haunts, their ethereal screams pulsating from the hellish world beyond. Mike and Denny looked at each other in shock. Mike grabbed what was left of Denny’s shirtfront.
“You have to hold the gate, brother! I know D must have a plan. I’m going in after him!”
Denny grabbed Mike’s arm as he was released. “Mike! Don’t! Listen to me! We-”
Mike broke free, pointing at Denny. “Hold the gate!”
Denny stared at the portal after his friend disappeared. He picked up his tire iron he’d dropped and got ready to defend the gate from anything coming on either side.
* * *
Mike landed on the other side of the portal, gasping in lungs full of the acrid air. He felt as if he should be weak with the change of atmospheres, but he felt stronger. Mike circled around, looking for Demon, his eyes still adjusting to the dank darkness. He grinned, hearing more Haunt shrieks of pain around a rocky outcropping to his right. A Haunt flew up in his face, claws already swinging to rip out his throat. Mike blocked the descending stroke and buried his pike up to its hilt in the Haunt’s throat, tearing straight upward. It dissolved around him, much as what happened when Demon killed on the human side. Streaking onward, Mike rounded the outcropping in time to see Demon eviscerate an attacking Haunt with two others trying to get at him. Mike leaped with a running start up over the nearest Haunt, smashing the iron pike down through its skull. Demon appeared to do the impossible by avoiding the lightning fast Haunt strike at his hind quarters, twisting to jut backwards and seize his attacker’s throat. In seconds they stood alone for a moment.
“What the hell are you doing here, kid?” Demon’s thoughts lanced into Mike’s head, stunning him. “You should have stayed with Denny, you nitwit!”
Mike laughed. “I…I can hear you, D!”
Demon made a snorting noise and jogged toward the gate. “Yeah, I know, Einstein. C’mon, we have to close this damn gate. I needed to clean Haunts from around here so we’d have time. If one of these mutants popped a body part across the portal while we’re closing it, I’m not sure what would happen, but it would jam things up. You’ve got holy water on you, right? Otherwise we’ll have to send Denny to get some while we play with the locals.”
Remembering the flask of holy water he’d brought to heal wounds if necessary, Mike fished it out of his coat pocket and held it up. “I got some. You mean all I had to do was splash some holy water on it to close up the portal?”
Demon tilted his head up at Mike as they reached the gateway with what seemed to Mike a look of angry condescension. “What did I tell you? If they’d been poking into your world while you flung the holy water, you might have jammed it open.” Demon sniffed around, his nose up in the air. “Get moving! We have only enough time before the next wave of those losers come. When you get through get ready to throw the holy water!”
Mike glanced around once more before jumping through the portal, narrowly avoiding Denny’s tire iron. Demon followed him a split second later.
“Now Dempsey, you tool!”
Mike laughed again as he opened the flask and doused the gateway in holy water. The portal closed like a black hole swallowing a universe, sucking its tendrils in as it imploded. With the portal closed, Mike hugged Demon. “I can still hear your thoughts!”
Denny had finally regained his bearings. Hearing Mike’s exclamation, he knelt down in front of the two. “You… you can understand him?”
“Tell the kid you’ll never understand me, but from now on, you’ll understand my orders.”
Mike stood up away from Demon, nodding his head. “Yeah, Denny. I can understand his thoughts now, but I’m not sure I want to. He’s a sarcastic meat-bag.”
Demon circled Mike like a shark with bloody chum in the water. “You take that back, you self-absorbed little wart on the ass of humanity!”
In seconds, Mike was laughing so hard, his breathing came in gasps of tearful sobs. Denny grinned at Demon. “You got him good, huh D?”
“Arf!”
Dan Rawlins had arrived at the parking lot too. He was in the lead as parents, sister, and teachers ran toward the hellish gateway, where all they could see now were two teens and a dog. No trace of Haunts or Hell was in evidence. Dan grabbed his still chuckling son by the shoulders. “What the hell happened?”
“Mike decided to throw open the gates of hell after he expelled the Haunt from Ms. Ansel,” Denny answered for him.
“Did not. I found out if a Haunt gets bounced out of its host in an open space, it can cause a rift between worlds.” Mike shrugged. “Who knew?”
“You left out the part about the Grimoire, and those two dingle-berry skirts summoning it,” Demon’s perception shot into Mike’s head. “That’s what gave it the power. They screwed with the forces that bind up the Haunt world from yours.”
“What are you laughing at?” Dan asked, shaking Mike slightly.
“I forgot to tell you. Since passing through the portal with Demon to clear out the Haunts so we could close it with holy water, I can hear Demon’s thoughts. He just told me because Ms. Kincaid and Ms. Ansel used the Grimoire book to summon the Haunts, it gave them the power once expelled to open the portal.”
“And that was funny?”
Mike hesitated as all eyes were on him, including the two teachers’. “Ah… D is a little less polite with his perception of things than we’re used to in communicating criticism.”
“In other words, me and Mary just got zapped by a dog,” Ms. Kincaid said, her eyes narrowing slightly as she stared at Demon.
“Tell that hot little chica to tone down the stare or I’ll d
o it for her.” Demon added a rumbling growl for audible reinforcement. Kincaid’s eyes widened and she backed up a step.
Mike immediately spun away, clamping a hand over his mouth, his shoulders quaking as he fought down laughter. He tried a projection himself. “D! Don’t keep this up. You’re killing me.”
“Not bad, kid,” Demon replied. “Man up, you wuss.”
As Denny and everyone else watched Mike lose it, he smiled down at Demon. “Oh man, do I wish I could understand you, D.”
“Arf!” Demon nodded, which added to the two teachers’ shock.
Dan shook his head while exchanging glances with his relieved wife. “We’re living in the Twilight Zone, hon. Beam me up, Scotty. I have to go back to work if the world’s safe for the next few hours.”
Dan kissed her and headed back toward the parking lot.
“I guess the rest of you better head for the school. I’ll take Mr. Roboto home again with me.” Jenny, seeing Demon getting ready to do his robot dance, immediately faced up with Demon, fists clenched. “Go ahead. I double dog dare you.”
Demon sat down and put up his paw. He looked over at Mike, who eyed the Haunt killing machine incredulously. “Dude… your Mom’s scary.”
“I wanted to see you do ‘The Robot’ again,” Mike projected.
“Watch.” Demon went over to Jenny, head down as if to follow along behind her meekly to the parking lot.
“That’s better.” Jenny went over and hugged her son and daughter, before giving them the two finger wave from her eyes to them in the silent ‘I’m watching you’ threat. She then headed for the parking lot.
Demon instantly shot up on his two hind legs, doing ‘The Robot’ as he followed her, throwing in a ‘Walk Like An Egyptian’ in between. The teachers were so stunned they gaped after the strutting dog in open mouthed silence. Mike, Denny, and Joanie were trying valiantly not to give away Demon’s antics, but even their snorts and muffled sounds carried to Jenny, who whipped around on Demon. The paranormal pup had dropped on all fours into a normal walk the moment Jenny turned on him. She stared from the teens to Demon suspiciously.
Demon Inc (The Mike Rawlins Series Book 2) Page 16