by Ira Bloom
“Your pound of flesh, so to speak,” Shikker said. “You’ve got bubkes. Nothing.”
“Okay.” Esme loved to argue. She had this. She paced the cellar. She took the bottle of Latour out of the demon’s hand and took a swig, mindful of the jagged glass, before returning the bottle to him. “He drank my sisters’ lifeblood. And I demand compensation.”
“Lifeblood, that’s a little stronger,” Shikker admitted. “But your sisters? By what right do you make a claim on behalf of your sisters?”
“They’re like my daughters,” she argued. “And I’m the only one who has a driver’s license. I’ve been raising them, practically, since my mother—” She snapped her fingers. “I can do better than that! My father is away in Europe, and he said that while he’s away, direct quote, I am uh … ‘You’re officially their mom, while I’m gone.’ In loco parentis, mater familias.”
“That’s fine, for human law,” Shikker disputed. “But not demonic law.”
“Lex loci applies,” Esme challenged. “The law of the land. Ad coelium et ad infernos.”
“ ‘Up to the heavens, and down to hell,’ ” Shikker mused. “Well, I guess if there’s a Latin legal term for it, it must be all right. Though I think that phrase applies to property law.”
“It’s a corpus delectable,” Kasha added. “Come on, Shikker, nobody has a stronger claim.”
“Here’s our case,” Esme said. “I have a claim, so my familiar, who is my agent, took possession of the remains. Possession is nine-tenths of the law. Beati possidentes.”
“True in demonic law, too,” Kasha agreed. “Unless the other side has a good exorcist.”
“Still,” Shikker hedged. “We should wait and see if anyone else steps forward with a claim.”
“After two thousand years?” Kasha protested.
The debate stalled at that point. Shikker went back to the wine rack. Kasha adjusted his position on the vampire’s head. Shikker returned, biting the top off another bottle.
“Was that long enough?” Esme asked.
Shikker chugged, then wiped his toothy mouth. “Let it be written: We waited a reasonable time for another claimant to step forward, but none was forthcoming, so we proceeded.” He reached into the pentacle-in-a-hatbox and rooted around. His hand disappeared up to the elbow, as if he were a magician pulling a rabbit out of a hat. “Voilà,” he said, producing a scroll with a flourish and handing it to Esme. “Just sign here. Kasha, when you harvest the girl’s soul, can I decapitate her? I hardly ever get to decapitate anyone anymore.”
Harvest! Decapitate? Esme’s heart pounded in her chest. “What the hell, Kasha?” she accused. “You bastard! I thought we had a deal!” She was shaking wildly with terror. And even more than the terror, with the fury of a violent storm, at Kasha’s betrayal.
Shikker laughed, a horrible, cackling, gurgling laugh full of pure demonic evil. “Did you see the expression on her face, Kasha?” he howled. “She thought we were gonna let her go!”
Esme threw the contract in Shikker’s face. “The deal is off.” She retrieved the crowbar from the floor. “Let the vampire up, Kasha, I’ll finish him off myself.”
“I will if you want, Esme, but if we’re not doing a contract I won’t be able to stop him from killing you,” Kasha advised, “which he absolutely will. And your sisters and Norman here. I’ve only been able to do what I’ve done so far because we’re not sticklers about retroactive causality and the space-time continuum thingy.”
“What’sa matter?” Shikker complained. “Look how pretty I made the letters!”
Shikker was malevolent evil beyond anything Esme had ever imagined. But could she reason with Kasha? The cat was lying about something; she could tell by the way his tail swished. The crowbar shook in her hands as she positioned it between herself and the red demon. The deal on the table was, she would die, and her soul was forfeit, but her sisters and Norm would live. “M-my father raised me never to sign a contract until I read every word, and I can’t read this,” she improvised, stalling. “It’s in about six dead languages, and the fine print is microscopic.”
The red demon let out a furious stream of Yiddish invective that went on for two full minutes. “What are you making such a tzimmes?” he protested. But ultimately, he calmed down when he found she wouldn’t budge, and he looked at her slyly. “Listen, what if I redo the contract in English? Something in a Times New Roman, twelve-point font?”
Esme spent five minutes going over the new contract with a red Sharpie. “Katy’s firstborn son?” she complained, crossing out an entire paragraph. “You’re out of your twisted demonic mind. And Kasha’s terms of service, in exchange for the corpse: one generation? Don’t be ridiculous, my family already has him for one generation. I want five.”
“Five generations? You have some chutzpah. For one farshtinkener corpse? Two, maybe.”
“Shikker, you’re killing me here,” she said. Show no fear. “But I like you, so let’s just say four generations, not counting this one.” Kasha had told her he’d act in his own best interest. So if she dangled that in front of him, would he help her?
“Three, final offer,” the demon countered.
“Done,” she agreed. “And take out all this stuff about my soul. Don’t try to scam me, this vampire is going to bring in thousands of souls, you don’t need mine.”
Shikker went off again. His rage was terrifying. He screamed at Esme, and threatened her, and held his murderous hands by her neck as if he wanted to choke the life out of her. His eyes bulged out of his skull, but Esme held her calm. Veronica had been prone to violent temper tantrums from an early age, so she knew how to ignore people who screamed in her face.
“Actually, we do need your soul in the contract,” Kasha clarified, when Shikker’s fury had run its course. “It’s the only unbreakable rule in the book.”
“Then no deal,” Esme said. She crossed her arms and waited.
Kasha and Shikker exchanged looks. Kasha shrugged, and stood up. Drake scrambled back, dragging his broken body to the side of the cellar. He had his hands over the worst of his wounds, as if trying to hold in the thick black stuff oozing from dozens of punctures, but Esme did not delude herself that he was no longer a deadly threat.
“She’ll take the deal,” Shikker contended.
“I don’t think so,” Kasha calculated. “Maybe we should cut her a deal.”
“I don’t cut deals!” Shikker screamed. “You think I don’t see what’s going on here? I do the contracts, not you! Do you take me for a shmendrick?”
Kasha shrugged, and opened his paws to Esme, as if to say he’d done his best.
Stalemate. And Veronica getting sicker by the minute! But what option did she have? She looked around the cellar in desperation for a better weapon against the vampire. She spied the hatbox, the candles in the pentacle still burning. Open pentacle! “I’m going to summon another demon and try to get a better deal,” Esme announced.
“She’s bluffing, she doesn’t know any more demons,” Shikker asserted.
“Don’t sell your soul to a demon, pretty child,” Drake implored. “You don’t want to burn in hell for eternity. I can make you a vampire. You can live and be young forever, and Zack can be your eternal love. Like in those books—”
“You!” Esme shouted. “Just shut up, okay? I’m a witch. I make deals with demons, that’s my thing.” She whirled on Shikker. “And as a matter of fact, I know the names of hundreds of demons. I memorized them when I was researching on the Internet. Kasha here is pretty famous. But guess who there was no mention of anywhere? So, I have to ask myself, what kind of low-ranking demon am I dealing with? If you don’t have the authority to write a contract I can sign, maybe I’ll just summon up Asmodeus. Or Pazuzu—”
“Stop!” shouted Shikker and Kasha, at the same time.
“Maybe I’ll just call up Moloch, and see what he’s offering for a two-thousand-year-old—”
“No!” Shikker yelled, cringing. Kasha stepped
out of the wine cellar, poised to run.
“I’ll bet Beelzebub or Mephisto—”
But Esme couldn’t finish the word, because a half ton of demon cat had her on her back on the floor of the cellar with a paw the size of a sofa cushion stuffed over her mouth.
“Hey, genius!” Shikker was screaming at her. “Knock it off! Open pentacle here! You think I’m scary? Our boss is hard-core!”
Eventually, Kasha got off her and she stood again. Shikker was almost bouncing off the walls, howling invective and chugging wine and eating the bottles to calm himself. “Your little witch can’t possibly be that crazy!” he accused Kasha.
“She’s not,” the cat assured. “But she might just be that stupid.”
“Genug shoyn,” the red demon conceded. “Enough already. You put your soul on the line in the contract, but we’ll put in a clause that we only reap it if you’re so bad in this life you’re gonna go to hell anyway. And that’s the best deal you’re ever gonna get.”
“It’s the deal your great-aunt Becky got,” Kasha said. “For all three generations.”
“Just make sure all three generations are covered in my contract, too,” Esme stipulated.
“Sheesh,” Shikker complained, reaching back into the pentacle for a third contract. “I feel violated. I’ll tell you something, kid, I hope you’re good as gold in this life, because hell will be a much better place without you in it.”
Shikker couldn’t leave fast enough once the contract was signed. “Come visit us again sometime,” Esme told him as he shrunk down and vanished into the pentacle, sucking the flames of the candles along into the vortex. Next time, her life wouldn’t be on the line. “I’ll get you that Scotch you wanted!” she promised, shouting into the hatbox after him. But he was gone.
“Ya done good, kid,” Kasha congratulated. “I got another century topside, and I’m about to make my quota for the next thousand years or so.”
“Despite the fact that you tried to sell me out a dozen times. I’m going to keep my eye on you, and make sure my daughters and nieces know what a sleazebag you are.”
“Yeah, I think we make a great team, too.”
Drake was still leaning against the wall of the cellar. “Esme,” he implored, his breath wheezing out through the holes of his perforated throat with every word. “Don’t let the demon eat me. You’ll never see me again, I promise. I’ll go back to Europe. I have ten million dollars in the boot of my car. It’s yours, you can have it all. Just … have mercy, I beg you.”
Esme stood above the vampire. “Mr. Kallas, you should appreciate the irony of this, as your business is human trafficking. I’ve just sold you to Kasha here, and he’s going to eat you. Kind of like what you did to all those girls you bought and sold over the years.”
“But … ” he sputtered. “You can’t sell me. You don’t own me.”
“Yeah,” she said, turning her back on the vampire and kneeling by Norman, brushing his hair back from his face gently. “You didn’t own those girls, either.” Then to the cat she said, “I think Norman’s regaining consciousness. Would you eat the vampire someplace else?”
Norm started to come to, so Esme put her coat under his head for a pillow. Then she moved the wine bottle on the rack to the rear of the cellar, as Drake had instructed. She heard the levers click, and she felt the rack shift, but she didn’t have the strength to move it by herself.
Norman groaned on the floor. “Did you get the license of that truck?” he asked.
“It was Drake,” she explained. “I took care of him. Try not to move, you have a concussion.”
Esme went upstairs. She found Zack in the entry hall, his body broken into dozens of odd angles. “Mind if I use your phone?” she asked.
“It’s in the library,” he replied. “Did you get the medicine to Veronica?”
“Not yet. Drake told me about the latch, but the rack is too heavy for me to move.”
“Wish I could help. Norman?”
“Alive, but barely conscious. I’m going to call Jackson to bring Wilson and Nick.”
“Good thinking,” Zack said. “Listen, Esme? Be careful, there’s some kind of tiger or something running around. About the size of a rhinoceros. It’s been dragging Drake back and forth through here for more than an hour now.”
Esme knelt by Zack on the floor. “Yeah, he’s with me. He’s probably eating Drake by now. Listen, Zack, I’m trying to figure out whether or not to let you live.”
Zack cringed, as a wave of pain washed over him. “I’m afraid I can’t make much of a case for myself,” he admitted, brow knit in concentration against the agony. “But luv? I know you’ll do the right thing. I’m summat a monster, maybe it’s fer the best, innit?”
But she’d already decided. “If I let you live, you have to promise never to mention my cat again. To anyone. Can you do that?”
Zack nodded, such as he could in his shattered state. “I’m the soul of discretion,” he promised. “But when you see your whatever-it-was, tell it thanks, from me. For killing Drake.”
Esme used the landline in the library to call Jackson on his cell. Then she called Dr. Stein and told him to set up the clinic for patients. He was still an hour away.
“Esme,” Zack called. “There’s a switch by the front door. It opens the gates to the driveway.”
“Thanks, I didn’t think of that.” She went to the entry and pushed the button marked GATE.
“And could you shut the curtains, please?” Zack requested. “My eyes are burning.”
While shutting the curtains, she saw Kasha in the driveway, crouched over a pool of black goo, chewing on something. She exited through the front door and joined him. A foot was hanging out of the demon’s mouth, the last anyone would ever see of Drake Kallas.
“How was he?” Esme asked with aplomb. She’d never seen anything so revolting in her entire life, but she was going to have to toughen up in the future if she was going to keep the upper hand with a demon cat she could never trust.
Kasha crunched the last bones of the foot and swallowed. His face was covered in gore. He sat on his haunches, grooming himself. “It’s an acquired taste. It’s a lot of souls, but I think I can keep them all down if I purge the material remains. Listen, kid, I’m going to have to take off for a while. I know a guy, an angel who’s not a complete jerk, so I’m going to pay him a visit about all these innocent souls in here. They’re no use to us, might as well get them to the right place before I cash in my haul. Politics. I don’t want to be the one to bring on an apocalyptic conflict between heaven and hell. You might want to turn your head for this, it won’t be pretty.”
Esme turned her head away as Kasha started to hack. He steeled his mighty body and heaved, and Drake Kallas’s remains slid out in a wash of visceral fluids and black ichor, a jumble of body parts and splintered bones. Many parts were still recognizable, like a petrified heart, a mangled foot still in a shoe, a bifurcated skull, and a piece of forearm with a Rolex wristwatch still ticking away.
Kasha took off then, leaping through the snow and bounding toward the tree line, shedding demonic attributes as he went, until all Esme could still make of him, in the distance, was the shape of a rather large feral cat in the snow, tail flying jauntily.
Esme heard the sound of tires crunching over snow, and she turned to watch Jackson and Nick, in Jackson’s SUV, followed by Wilson in Norman’s. Esme waved them down, and they pulled up next to her in a two-car caravan, by the disgusting pile of bones and steaming vampire guts on the driveway. The three surrounded her in a semicircle around the remains.
“Dude,” Wilson asked, “is it … like … is that Zack?”
“No, it’s the other one. Zack’s inside. Norman messed him up pretty bad, but he doesn’t look as bad as Drake here.”
“What happened to this one?” Jackson asked.
“He hit Norman with a crowbar,” Esme replied. “After that … ” She considered, for a moment. Obviously, she couldn’t tell them about
Kasha. “I guess, after he hit Norman, I sort of lost my temper a little.”
All three boys took a step back from Esme. And then another. “Girlfriend,” Nick said, “if I ever do anything to piss you off, do me a favor and let me know.”
“Come on, guys,” Esme commanded, and led the three back into the house to get her sisters.
In April the hearts of young maidens stir with thoughts of romance, but not Esme’s. She was ruled by her brain. She knew all she needed to know about love. All the madness with Zack had been so intense and now it was gone, leaving such a cynical hole in her heart. How could she love, ever again, knowing that what she felt would pale in comparison to what she’d had? And knowing that what she’d had was a lie.
Yet here she was, having dinner by candlelight alone with Norman in her room. She’d spent all day shopping and cooking. The food, at least, she was enjoying. And the company. Norm was funny and smart and sweet and loyal, and he was someone she knew she could always rely on if she ever had to fight her way into a vampire’s lair and rescue her sisters again.
Ronnie had been in very bad shape when they’d carried her into the clinic, but Dr. Stein had treated her with a course of antibiotics and shots of an antibacterial and had set up an IV to rehydrate her. Katy had been fine. She kept asking about Zack, to the point where Nick had to restrain Esme from slapping her silly. Miss Edwards had abrasions and lacerations, a broken collarbone, and anemia. Lisa Vaughn had a fever of 104 and severe bruising from bites all around the neck and wrists. Michelle was in pretty good condition but had mild amnesia. Danielle had developed light sensitivity and needed restraints until Dr. Stein could cure her of the worst ravages of the disease.
After contacting the authorities, Dr. Stein treated everyone at the clinic and then had them all admitted into quarantine at the university hospital under his care, in coordination with the epidemiologist from the Centers for Disease Control, who was instrumental in shutting off police access not only to the entire Hampstead estate but also to the victims, until they could all get their stories straight. Dr. Stein’s contact at Interpol was called in, and he coordinated the investigation with the CIA. Elite Interpol agents led the inquiry into the affairs of one Drake Kallas, wanted on hundreds of counts of human trafficking and murder in Europe. The victims, according to Interpol and Dr. Stein, had been drugged and abused, though not sexually.