by John Everson
“Did you want to give them your skin?” The demon slapped a heavy hand across her face. Alex felt her lips instantly heat and swell. “The merchandise is not allowed to choose the customer.”
“Let me go?” Alex asked. She instantly regretted saying it. It only showed weakness.
The demon laughed.
“I’ll let you go,” he said. “I’ll let pieces of you go every day, as long as I can.”
He touched one long black nail to her neck and dragged it down the hard bone in the center of her chest. Then he held it there, pressed hard into her center, between her breasts.
“You’re not going anywhere,” he said. “Can’t risk ruining this perfect white skin before your date with the boys tonight.”
Finally the finger eased up its pressure and began to move down from the center of her chest. But Alex liked that action even less. She felt the finger poking her in the belly, and then the bellybutton, and then the groin, and then…
“I can’t afford to mess up things on the outside,” the demon said.
Suddenly he was standing in front of her, as his hand cupped the naked thatch of hair between her thighs. Alex didn’t know how to respond. But the fact was, she had no choice. It didn’t matter how she responded.
“But I can do what I want with you inside,” the demon pronounced. And suddenly Alex felt something smooth and cool moving in along the soft skin of her thigh. Something hard and long.
Something…
“Ow, stop it!” Alex screamed.
“This won’t hurt as much as what you felt last night,” the demon promised. He pressed his huge silken chest against her own. “Not as much or as long,” he said. “But it will be better for me.”
Alex fought the bile spilling into her throat as a prod of demon flesh jammed its way between her legs. She shrieked as the motion against her sex turned from insistent pressure to a yielding pain. She was taken.
“We all are taken,” the demon said, answering her thoughts. “Some of us just enjoy it more.” He moved against her like an auger and the flash of heat that spread from her belly to her bust suggested that she might, actually, enjoy it.
She felt that way for a moment, as sensations unlike any she’d ever felt before flooded her spine. Her breath caught as the demon filled her up in places that even her own fingers had never explored.
And then something horrible happened.
Something with needles and spines.
The demon’s thing seemed to expand inside her. She felt his hooks latch on to her insides and pull and rip as he flexed his thighs again and again. The overwhelming pleasure didn’t disappear, it was simply joined by an overwhelming hot pain. The room was filled with the sounds of screaming. Eventually, Alex realized that the sounds came from her. The demon didn’t mind. His glowing eyes only stared deeper into her own.
Hungrily.
Alex closed her eyes and shut the room and her pain and the demon’s face from her sight.
There was no way out of this.
Well, no way but one.
Immolation.
And even that was something she couldn’t control.
Alex squeezed her eyes closed as the demon’s flesh burned and tore inside her.
She refused to howl, but instead, held the fire within.
The only way out might be to let go, but right now… she was holding it all inside. Storing the fire. Storing the pain.
Stockpiling. Pain was energy.
Energy was power.
Alex had never given in before. She wasn’t going to do it now.
There had to be another way.
CHAPTER 46
JOE HELD CHEYENNE’S HAND tight and dragged her down the hallway of the old mission. He practically threw her through the broken window that had served him as a door now multiple times. There was no time to be genteel; he put one hand on her ass and pushed as hard as he could.
Cheyenne squealed. And launched.
Joe ignored her complaint. If one of the demons caught them inside, where they were strong, there would be nothing left to complain about, because, they wouldn’t be there anymore. They’d simply be mules to be ridden.
When Cheyenne went through the hole in the mission wall, Joe put his hands on the sill and pushed up as hard as he could, not even taking time to aim his body’s trajectory. As long as he landed outside the walls of the old building, he’d be better off.
At least that was his thought before his shoulder caught the hard rock on the ground and he rolled awkwardly sideways, twisting his neck and bruising his ribs.
Cheyenne showed no mercy. She was sitting on the ground next to him when he rolled to his side. With one hand she brushed the hair off of his eyes. “Well, that was graceful as an elephant,” she said.
Cheyenne pulled back her hand to rub her own forehead, while Joe fingered the scrapes on his neck and back. He only spent enough time to be sure that nothing was bloody before he pushed himself over and onto his side.
“C’mon,” he said. “Elephants may not be graceful but they know when the hell to get out of Dodge.”
“I’m pretty sure that’s what they call a mixed metaphor,” Cheyenne said.
“You lay there and argue grammar, I’m getting out of the line of fire.”
“Lie.” She said.
“What?”
“I think it should be ‘You lie there and argue grammar,’ shouldn’t it? I’m not the journalist, though, and I’ve always gotten confused on lie and lay.”
Cheyenne batted her eyelashes at him and Joe nearly lost it.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” he hissed. “We have to get out of here.”
Joe grabbed her arm and yanked her upright. Together they half-ran, half-staggered down the first few yards of the hill behind the mission.
“Wait,” Cheyenne yelled, and yanked on Joe’s arm until they both fell to the dusty ground.
“What the hell,” he said, struggling not to lose his balance and roll down the hill. “We have to get out of here.”
“Stop,” Cheyenne said. “Just wait. Look back a second. They didn’t follow us. There’s nobody coming.”
Joe looked at the empty window of the mission, and then at her.
“When you rescued me, you had come to the mission because you wanted to somehow find a demon that would let you talk to your friend Alex, right?”
She looked hard at him; eyebrows raised.
He nodded.
“And we came here today because you had some harebrained scheme of still doing that, right?”
Joe nodded again.
“Then what the fuck are we running away for?”
“Because it’s way worse than I thought,” he said. “If we go anywhere near the chapel, they’re just going to take us over,” he said. His voice was an angry whisper. “We’ll get possessed. The Curburide are coming through in droves and the door is still open. It’s just too dangerous.”
“So we don’t take them on head-on,” she said. “We find one to corner and pick-off. Divide and conquer. We can do what you came here to do, but you’ve got to stick with it. And I can help.”
Joe shook his head. “I am not putting you in the middle of that,” he said. “Of this. It’s crazier than I ever imagined.”
Cheyenne shook her head. “Not acceptable.”
Joe rolled his eyes. “What do you want me to do?”
“I want you to go back up this hill and find a way to talk to your friend, while this door you’ve been looking for is open. While you still can. Because I don’t want to know you if we make it through this and the door closes and you haven’t at least tried to reach your friend.”
She paused. “Oh, and while you’re at it? I particularly would like you to find a way to stop these demons from fucking possessing people. Find a way to talk to you
r friend and then shut the damn door. That would be a nice end result.”
“You don’t expect much, do you?”
Cheyenne shrugged. “Nothing I don’t think you can handle. Plus, if we don’t do something about this, I don’t think there’s going to be any town to go back to. We can’t run from this.”
“So what do you suggest we do?”
“What if I lured one of them out here and you tackled them?”
“That would be great, but they’re demons,” Joe said. “He’d just yell for help and the rest would hear him even though they’re inside. They talk on a different plane than us.”
“Like telepathy or something?”
“Kind of, I guess.”
“So, is there a way to isolate them – stop one from communicating with the others?”
“I’m not sure,” Joe said. He thought for a moment, looking out towards the mountains. Then he nodded slowly, as if agreeing with something. “The only thing I know of is the devil’s trap – the same kind of pentagram in a circle as they had in the chapel. The demon has to be invited by a human to leave the circle or it’s stuck there. It can’t really use any of its power there, unless we have an agreement allowing it.”
“Worth a try?” Cheyenne asked. She shrugged.
“We need salt or blood to draw the trap,” Joe said. He held is wrists out in front of him. “We have blood, but I’d vote for salt; I get lightheaded when I bleed!”
“There is some inside,” she said. “In the kitchen.”
He nodded. “Yeah. But then one of us has to go back in.”
Cheyenne raised her eyebrows as she nodded. “Don’t get caught.”
Joe took a breath. “Thanks.” He looked at the silent old building a few hundred feet away. He really didn’t want to go back in there. But if he didn’t… what had been the point of anything he’d done since leaving Terrel? He’d been looking for a way to cross the bridge between this world and theirs and poked around anywhere he’d heard about demons showing their ugly mugs in our world. Now he’d found a place where they were absolutely active and accessible. Could he really turn his back on it out of fear?
No.
“Wait here,” he said. “I’ll be back.”
“You’re no Schwarzenegger, but, I hope so!”
Joe ran back to the mission and stood for a moment outside the broken window, peering carefully inside.
Nobody seemed to be about. The demons were using the front door, not the back. Joe put his arm across the sill and hoisted himself over. He winced as one of his shoes scuffed on the ground. Joe stopped and listened carefully, but nobody came walking down the hall in answer to his entrance.
His heart was beating a machine gun rhythm as he walked the first few steps towards the kitchen. The hallway was quiet but he could hear the low hum of voices in the rooms beyond. How much time could he skulk around in the back half of the building before the demons realized they had a non-possessed intruder on the premises?
He didn’t want to find out.
Joe moved quickly down the hall and ducked around the corner and into the kitchen. There were still stacks of purses and belongings on the counters from the demon-callers who had been there the night before. They were all probably gone now, possessed and walking around downtown Santa Fe giving their new masters a tour of the town. Apparently demons didn’t feel the need for purses. He smiled.
The Morton’s Salt can he’d seen there earlier was still sitting on the counter and he quickly stepped across the room to grab it. He shook it softly and felt the weight shift inside. It was more than half full. It should be enough.
It would have to be.
He started to retrace his steps out of the kitchen when he heard a noise behind him. Footsteps.
Shit.
Joe looked around for some place to hide.
There was none. It was a long open room, kitchen counters and cabinets on either side, no table.
He bolted towards the exit. His hand clutched the wall as he twisted around the corner. Just as he did, he saw someone entering the room from the other end. Joe pressed his back against the wall and held his breath. Should he run for the window? Or stay put?
Something shifted in the other room; the faintest scrape of metal or plastic. Whoever had entered behind him was picking something up off the counter. Joe let out a breath. They weren’t on his trail, they were here for something else.
Silently, he counted to fifty, listening for any other movement. The other room remained silent. Joe pushed himself away from the wall and tiptoed down the hallway toward the broken window. Ghetto door, he said in his mind.
When he reached the sill, he saw Cheyenne was just a few yards away, sitting cross-legged on the dirt. When she saw him, her face lit in a white-toothed smile and she gave him the thumbs-up sign. He nodded, and held out the salt can for her to see.
She held out her hands and he tossed it to her. She caught the cardboard can easily, and he put one hand on the upper part of the window as he lifted one leg to exit.
Something creaked behind him.
Joe turned his head and saw a dark-haired man moving fast in his direction. Without thinking, he pulled his hand off the sill, crushed it into a fist and aimed it at the oncoming pale face.
When it connected with the man’s forehead, Joe gasped. He felt his fingers crack and the pain shot up to his elbow.
The man wasn’t expecting Joe’s shot, and he went down. Hard. His head stopped, his feet kept going, and a split second later he was flat on his back on the floor with a loud smack.
Joe didn’t wait to see if he got up – he put two hands on the window frame and vaulted himself outside.
“You trying out for the Olympics?” Cheyenne asked when he hit the dirt and skidded to a stop next to her.
“Guy. Following me. Inside.” He gasped.
She made a face. “Where do you want to set the trap?”
Joe blinked, trying to think of a good place. Where could he lead someone…
“How about right under the window?” she asked.
“Perfect,” he agreed. They stood up and walked over to the building. Joe put a finger to his lips. She nodded and handed over the can. Joe took it, slipped a thumbnail under the small metal vent and opened it. Then he walked in a wide circle around the earth just outside the broken window. Anyone who came out the window would have to step inside the circle. When he’d closed the circle, he stood at the center, and carefully drew a white triangle in the soil bisecting the circle. When that was finished, he did the same thing again, creating a second triangle that bisected the original. When he was finished, he grinned, and held the can up in the air for Cheyenne to see. “Demon trap,” his lips mouthed.
She nodded, and then pointed at the window. She looked at him expectantly.
Someone had to go back inside, to bait the trap.
Joe wanted to ask her to do it. He hated to admit it, but he really did. He could stay out here and wait and she could lead a demon to the trap. He’d be out here waiting.
But another voice inside him said one word.
Coward.
And that kind of summed it up.
Joe closed his eyes and took a breath. Then he held up one finger to Cheyenne and turned back towards the mission. This was his deal, he needed to deal it.
Joe pulled himself up and over the sill again, and nearly fell on top of the man he’d punched. The guy was still lying there on the hallway floor – rubbing his head with both hands and groaning.
As he watched, the man pushed off the floor and sat up. There was a dark spot where his head had been on the floor. Apparently he’d split his head open when Joe dropped him.
The man’s eyes met Joe’s and glared. “That fuckin’ hurt, you asshole.” The guy started moving towards him, and Joe grabbed the windowsill and lofted his feet over the
side. He landed on the ground in the center of the salt circle. He started to move towards the edge, but suddenly a weight hit him in the back. The guy had leapt out of the window to tackle him. Joe fell forward; his face hit the dirt and he felt something warm spread from his lip to his cheek. “Ow!” he cried out, and as he did, he suddenly tasted salt. It burned the split in his lip.
Shit. He was lying right at the edge of the circle. Joe pulled himself backwards; he didn’t want the demon to use him as a bridge to get free.
The weight left his back and Joe rolled to a sitting position. The demon sat at the very center of the circle, inside the triangles. The man he rode had cool blue eyes, and at the moment, they looked as if there was a light behind them. They watched Joe, silently. Unblinking. Bitterly amused.
“Nicely done,” the demon finally said. “You’ve got me here, now, what do you want?”
“I am looking for someone,” Joe began.
The demon snorted. “Aren’t we all?”
Joe ignored the jibe. “Her name is Alex. She’s a…” Joe considered how to describe her. Girl? Teen? Those sounded wrong; she was more than that. “She’s a young woman,” he finally said. “About five feet tall, dyed black hair. She went through a doorway and entered the world of the Curburide a couple weeks ago.”
The demon laughed.
“I hope you’ve said your goodbyes.”
Joe shook his head. “She’s still alive, I know she is.”
The demon shrugged. “If she is still alive, she is wishing that she wasn’t.”
“I want to rescue her,” Joe said.
The demon laughed. “And I want to be the king of the universe. But there are some things that just aren’t possible.”
“You asked me what I wanted,” Joe said. “I want your help.”
The man’s head shook. “I don’t think so.”
Joe nodded. “And I don’t have to let you out of this trap. I know that the Curburide will make and honor covenants. I want to make one with you.”
“In exchange for what?” The demon eyed him warily.
“In exchange for your freedom,” Joe said. “If you help me find and talk to Alex, I will let you out of this circle.”