Deception of the Demon Girl

by Eddie R. Hicks

  Deception of the Demon Girl

  Contaminated Souls book 4

  Eddie R Hicks

  Deception of the Demon Girl

  Contaminated Souls Book 4

  By Eddie R. Hicks

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  Copyright © 2019 Eddie R. Hicks

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  This novel contains scenes of graphic violence, explicit language and sexuality and is intended for mature readers.

  Cover Art by: Ravven

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Epilogue

  Next time on Contaminated Souls …

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  Also by Eddie R Hicks

  About the Author

  Chapter One

  “This is fucking stupid.”

  My lips twisted, looking at the blackened wasteland that was once a modest suburban house. The smell of burned wood, furniture, and happy memories still lingered in the air, mocking those who entered, like Emily and I as we stood rummaging through the burned-down house.

  My flashlight lit up, shining rays of light in what I assumed was the kitchen, the common source of all house fires. Too bad this wasn’t a common house. I heard Emily’s light footsteps move up the staircase to the top floor. I shined my flashlight up, checking out the ceiling, half expecting it to give way when my Bakeneko assistant stepped on a not so structurally sound spot.

  The sounds of her feet moving ceased. She found something of value, I figured. Whatever, I had something of greater value to find … my bottle of booze I left on the floor when I went to grab my flashlight out from my backpack. Five paces back, I found it, sitting silently, waiting for my hands, then later my lips around its opened top.

  “Reika!” Emily shouted from above. “I heard that!”

  “Heard what?”

  “You’re drinking on the job again!”

  “Yeah, and?” I took another hit from my bottle of booze and went back to searching the remains of the scorched kitchen. Bottle in one hand and a flashlight in the other, shit, I looked so badass. “Who’s gonna fire me? I’m the fucking boss here.”

  “How about our client?”

  “Whatever,” I shouted back to her, fixing my eyesight on the crispy kitchen cupboards. “We’re the only paranormal PIs in the city last time I checked.” After another sip of the alcohol goodness in my hands, I added. “We got a fuckin’ monopoly on this—”

  That’s when it hit me, and I thanked the booze in my body for sharpening my senses for that. I sensed the presence of Umbral energy, the fuel that powers all demonic magical talents.

  My hands lowered to place my bottle on the burned countertop, while my body tapped into the spirit element, accessing my scanning talent. My vision changed and I saw white silhouettes of the Umbral lifting away like heat waves in the background. Deep scans replayed what happened that led to the fire. Our client was right. A demon was responsible for it.

  The tragic event played out like a silent play with white silhouettes before me. A demon spoke with a man, a human man according to my scan. What was said between the two, I couldn’t tell, but my guess was the human wanted the place burned down because that’s exactly what the demon did. The demon ignited his body in a coat of flames, broke in through the kitchen backdoor and sprayed flames everywhere from his extended arms.

  That was the source of the Umbral around me. The flames that set the house on fire weren’t naturally occurring, they were created with talents. The insurance company was right to suspect it was arson, only it wasn’t the family burning the place down trying to collect. It was a demon.

  The replay of the tragic night ended with the family of three fleeing for their lives, not knowing the fate of their puppy. Well, I do, it was in the kitchen, and it didn’t make it out. Needless to say, I was pretty fucking pissed and threw my bottle of booze across the kitchen, watching it shatter into a million pieces when it hit an exposed two-by-four in the wall.

  “Jack-fucking-pot,” Emily’s voice gleefully called out from above.

  I took a few seconds to recover from my brief alcoholic fit of rage. Seriously, dead puppies aren’t cool. “You win the Powerball or something, Emily?” I shouted back up.

  “C’mon, Reika! How long have you known me for?”

  Emily found something of value all right. I found her in one of the bedrooms digging out a small buried safe amongst the rubble. Her cat tail wagged from side to side as she held the small safe up, showing it to me as if I was going to give her an approving glare.

  I didn’t.

  She grimaced. “It’s fireproof, Reika,” she said, placing it on the ash-covered floor. “That means someone didn’t want the valuables to be lost during a fire.”

  “Which means we’re wasting time,” I groaned, folding my arms across my chest, and wishing I didn’t destroy that bottle of booze. “They didn’t ask us to recover it.”

  Emily went for her fanny pack, yanking out the usual thief’s tools she kept on her. She kneeled on the charred floor, her nimble hands using the tools to crack the combination lock. “You’re right they didn’t ask us,” she said, turning the handle to the safe. “I asked myself though, and she said it’s totally fine.”

  I’d say more, but that puppy still had me raging internally. I’m surprised I didn’t burst into flames and add to the damage myself. Inside the safe, Emily found a photo of the girl that lived in this house with her parents. Next to the photo were some expensive as fuck bracelets, covered in glittering diamonds. Take a guess as to which of the two items Emily pocketed?

  I held the photo to my face, taking in the smiles and hug the girl on it shared with a man, which I could only guess to be her boyfriend. The shape of his body looked a hell of a lot similar to one of the white silhouettes I saw with my scan talent. The boyfriend was the human that was hanging out with the demon.

  That motherfucker had some explaining to do.

  I kept my hands deep in my trench coat’s pocket, stepping off the elevator at the local hospital. As I recalled, this was the same hospital Jim was admitted to after our run-in with Asmodeus; the same floor too. Oh, Jimmy, whatever happened to you.

  After walking past the doctors and nurses that made up the hospital’s staff, I entered the room that my clients, Mr. and Mrs. Taylor, made their home since the fire. The married couple sat, watching over their daughter, Tina, recovering on her hospital bed. I wasn’t sur
e of the extent of her injuries, but she looked to be the worst of the three survivors of the house fire, with bandages covering half her body.

  Mr. Taylor stood up from his seat, looking at me with those hopeful eyes he had when he first hired me for this case. “Araya,” he said to me.

  His wife turned to face me at the drop of my name. She too had those same eyes, now leaking tears. I envied her. She had emotions that gave her the power to cry. Me? I forgot how to express feelings without rage or lust.

  “Got good news and bad news,” I said to them. “Place went down because a demon did it. I collected the ashes and will be forwarding it to the paranormal division of the NYPD as proof.”

  Mr. Taylor clasped his hands together like he was offering a prayer to me. Oh, how little did he know of who I was. “Oh, thank you, thank you!”

  “Your insurance company will have to accept your claim now,” I added.

  It wasn’t arson because the family was trying to collect. It was arson because of the malicious act of a third party, being a demon. Their insurance company probably won’t believe the demon bit, however. The existence of demons was still, a ‘maybe they exist, maybe not’ deal here in New York.

  The people that reach out to me know what’s up in the paranormal world, and those in the NYPD’s paranormal division. But that’s usually it ends.

  That part of the job was finished, and Mr. Taylor offered our agreed-upon payment, a large wad of green bills. This should cover the cost of more booze, and lap dances at a strip club… after bills are paid, of course.

  “Thank you so much,” he said. “And as for Ben, our lost puppy? Did you find him by chance?”

  “Yeah, guess I should have said more bad news,” I said, taking the cash, trying my best to ignore the growing guilt in my chest. Part of the job was to find the puppy and bring him back. I didn’t, because I couldn’t. “Your puppy, Ben, didn’t make it out, I’m sorry.”

  Normally I would have left right there and then. I didn’t handle multiple people dishing out the waterworks from their eyes very well. But I had unfinished business. I moved my way past the sobbing couple, facing down at their daughter Tina. She didn’t weep like the rest, but that’s because she was unconscious.

  I held out the photo Emily pulled from the safe to the weeping couple. I wasn’t done with this case just yet.

  “Found this,” I said to them. “Any idea who he is?”

  Mrs. Taylor replied first, wiping away the wetness off her face, then scoping out the photo I held. “That’s Tina’s ex-boyfriend, Earl,” she said. “They broke up on bad terms recently, which makes her recovery harder. She was already in emotional pain before the fire.”

  And at once, my emotions were set on fire.

  Let’s not kid ourselves, demons don’t go to a suburban community, select one house out of them all to torch, and leave the rest alone.

  I knew exactly what was going on.

  I knew exactly what I had to do.

  Midnight had fallen. Emily and I waited in a darkened and discreet place in Central Park for our contacts to arrive. A text message on my phone confirmed they were on approach, and I had Emily shift into her cat form, and leap up into the branches of a tree behind me. My backup was hiding in plain sight.

  Three men wearing hoodies and ripped jeans approached me. One of them hadn’t showered in days, the other was the ex, Earl, and the last? That fucker had Umbral energy radiating away from him. My money was on him being the demon that set the house on fire. The shape of his body fit the silhouette’s description of him too.

  “Lookin’ to buy some shiny stuff?” I said in a fake as fuck shady voice.

  Earl nodded, his grin was visible even in the darkness that shrouded us. “You got the goods?”

  I held up the diamond bracelet out from my trench coat’s hidden pocket. “Fuck, yeah I do, hun.”

  “How much do you want for it?” he asked.

  I gave him a long look, and then sized up his friend and the demon that accompanied them. The three of them should cover the cost. “Your fucking life.”

  I dropped the bracelet and reached for something else hidden away beneath my trench coat. Out came my katana with a loud metallic sound when I grabbed and pulled on its hilt. Out came their guns. They were quick to react, I’ll give them that.

  They weren’t quick to realize the Umbral energy that ignited within me. Rocks spun around my body like it was a source of gravity, my skin hardened with the stone skin talent. Yes, I unlocked the earth element while you’ve been gone.

  I took my time with these fuckers. Their actions killed a puppy, and so, their punishment was going to be a painful one. That, and I wanted them to fear me as they fired their pistols repeatedly, only to see the bullets hit me and make tinging noises as they bounced off my body. The stone skin talent made me bulletproof. Fireproof, not so much, so the demon lost his head first with a swift left to right cleave of my blade.

  The horror that lit up the eyes of the two remaining men was priceless. I licked my lips, watching as their heads processed the imagery of their demonic muscle man dropping to his knees with a geyser of blood spraying out from the stump where his head used to be. Meanwhile, the bulletproof bitch that cut it off walked past the headless demon squirting blood out his neck stump as if nothing happened.

  Three stone daggers floated in front of me, then flew into the chest of the man that didn’t shower recently. His ass fell backward, a pool of red flowed from his wounds, expanding in size across the park path we stood on as my boots splashed through it.

  Earl was the last one left. He dropped his pistol and ran. He didn’t get very far when my hands rose up, commanding jungle-like vines from the ground around him to do the same, binding him in place. I waited for his screams to die down before I approached him, circling him, waving my katana before him as I wiped the blade clean using the hood of his hoodie. Red footprints were left behind in my wake, making circles around him.

  “Holy fuck, please don’t kill me,” Earl begged.

  I put the edge my of katana to his neck, then laughed as his body squirmed and jerked about, trying, and failing, to escape from my vines holding him in place.

  “I was thinking about doing that, to be honest,” I replied.

  His face turned pale. “Please don’t.”

  “What were you doing back at your ex’s place?”

  “We had a breakup.”

  “Figured that part out.”

  “I… I… I… well she’s been such a bitch to me. I had to get back at her.”

  “So, you got a demon to burn it down?”

  “And the bracelet, I wanted it back,” he said, the crotch to his jeans started to drench. Fucker was pissing himself. “I spent so much fucking money on them. Those guys were going to pay good cash for them. Way more than I was going to give you.”

  I glanced at the dead behind us. The puddle of red was three times larger from when I last saw it. “Those are a bunch of small-time thugs.”

  Small time thugs that hired a demon to work with them. The demonic activity was getting worse if people like them could recruit them as a muscleman. I needed to step up my demon slaying game.

  “I fucked up, I’m sorry!” he cried. “Not like anyone got hurt.”

  “What about Ben?”

  “It’s just a fucking dog—”

  “A puppy motherfucker! One that never got the chance to grow up!”

  “You’re going to kill me for that?”

  I pulled the sleeve of my coat back, real slow, giving him a glance at the dragon tattoos decorating it. “Know what these are?”

  Earl looked down at my exposed arm. It took him a while, but he clued in when I showed him my other arm and that my skin’s natural tone was no longer visible because of the tattoos.

  “Yakuza …” he murmured.

  I gave him a nod, and then resumed my walk around him, twirling my katana about, debating what his fate should be. “You know what happens when you fuck up i
n the Yakuza?”

  “What?”

  I commanded the vines holding him in place to wrap around his right hand, forcing it to extend out to me. I gave his trembling digits a quick look and found the pinky. I removed it with a swift and clean slice.

  “That.”

  His screams were beautiful. I’m sure Ben would be happy to see justice had been delivered, looking down at this from doggy heaven, if such a place existed.

  With a snap of my fingers, I released Earl from the vines, forcing them to retreat back into the earth, like they were never there. I kicked his detached pinky back at him, demanding that he pick it up.

  “Listen, punk,” I said to him. “I’m going to let you go, and I want you to tell every thug you know what happens when you deal with demons without my express permission. Show them your pinky while you’re at it. I’m the only demon in this city you deal with. This city belongs to me. I’m the fucking queen of Hell, Hell’s Kitchen.”

  Earl left, leaving behind his backpack and the thousands of dollars he and his thugs had in it. I slipped the bracelet into it, and then made my way back to my car, nodding to Emily. She was still in her cat form, watching in the trees.

  I felt a tiny burst of energy pass through me. Looking back, I saw nothing, but the tabby cat Emily changed into, running to catch up with me. I couldn’t figure out where the energy came from, and honestly, I needed to leave the park before someone clued in on my actions. That and I had one last visit to make to the Taylor family. As I said before, this case wasn’t finished.