Letting the Demons Out

by Ray Wallace

  A sudden rapping at the bedroom door tore her away from the memories of that strange, hallucinatory event. For more than an hour now she had been sitting in a nightgown at an open window, thinking, a cool autumn breeze playing with her long, dark hair as she stared at the city laid out below and before her, at the myriad lights of the sprawling metropolis among which Jake would be wandering at this moment.

  Searching for her.

  The rapping came again and so she stood, crossed the room, the thick carpeting soft beneath her bare feet, and opened the door.

  Eric was there, a tall, thin young man - at least he appeared to be young - with a dyed red goatee and hair shaved down to the skin. "Nic's going to perform a divination," he told her in his surprisingly high-pitched voice. "He wants everyone present."

  "Of course. I'll be right down."

  A short while later, after changing into a pair of shorts and a red blouse, she was downstairs in the living room - or the "dying room" as it was jokingly referred to among the other twelve members of the coven. A young woman lay hog-tied on a large wooden table, the room's lone piece of furniture, a gag in her mouth, eyes wide with fear.

  "Now that we are all here," said Nicolae from where he stood at the head of the table, where Ariella went and stood beside him, "I wish to inform you of recent news of the rogue."

  Ariella looked around the table, at Eric and the ten other strange and beautiful faces staring back at her, handpicked by Nicolae over the one hundred and eighteen years of his existence. Some of them were nearly as old as he was. Some were much younger. Ariella was the youngest. And the most beautiful. And she knew that the five other females of the coven hated her, were jealous of her position within the group. They would have destroyed her if it wasn't for Nicolae. She was his queen and therefore untouchable. That is, as long as she pleased him. And what if, at some point, he grew tired of her? Then she would have no protection, would be at the mercy of the others, mercy she knew they had in very limited supply. At the same time she was afraid to leave, could only wonder what Nicolae would do if she tried, knew that her own sadism paled in comparison to his.

  Immediately upon joining the coven, she had become aware of this situation and had almost as quickly devised a plan. And so one evening when she and Nicolae were searching for prey down at Sector 7 - the nightclub where she had first met the strikingly handsome man with the captivating accent - she had disappeared into the crowd, had left the club and made her way over to Jake's apartment where she had given him the Dark Gift. She stayed with him through the worst part of the change, made sure he was going to make it. Then she had left him once again, to grow strong on his own, to search for her and at some point find her, to hopefully bring her plan to fruition.

  "He has become rather famous of late," continued Nicolae after a brief pause, gently stroking the head of the terrified woman on the table. "The news is full of the bodies, mostly of prostitutes, which have been found all over the city. The media has even released a rather crude description of the man who may be responsible. Fortunately for us, the mortals believe it to be the work of a particularly heinous serial killer, or group of serial killers, for how could one person be responsible for such a trail of carnage? It is obvious that this rogue is a fledgling, lacks guidance, has never been taught the supreme importance of properly disposing of the remains, of not attracting attention to himself, to our kind!" The last words were accented by grabbing the bound woman's hair, by repeatedly lifting her head and banging it down on the table. A moan escaped from behind the gag.

  "There are a few questions that need answered here." Once again, Nicolae was his former, calm self, softly petting the woman's hair. "First: who is this rogue? Secondly: what is it that he wants? And lastly: where can we find him? Anyone have any ideas?"

  He scanned the faces before him, expected no response, got none. Then his eyes were on Ariella and as she met his look she was filled with a cold certainty that he knew, that he must have followed her that night, had seen where she had gone, knew exactly who this rogue was, why he had been created.

  But he said nothing to her, simply smiled at her then turned his attention to what lay on the table.

  "I thought not, which brings us to what it is that I am about to attempt here tonight."

  With that he reached down and grabbed the head of the woman lying in front of him with both hands, said to her, "I'm sorry, but I'm afraid this is going to hurt a great deal." Then he began to squeeze.

  The woman's bright, blue eyes began to bulge from their sockets as Nicolae used his superhuman strength to apply pressure at her temples. Ariella started breathing deeply as a now familiar rush of pleasure came over her at the sight of the woman's thrashings, at the sound of her muffled screeching. Harder and harder Nicolae squeezed until there was an audible pop! as the skull between his hands caved in. And just like that, the woman's struggles ceased. Next came the tearing away of the scalp and the opening of the cranium. A short while later Nicolae was holding the woman's brain in his hands.

  "With this I will see what is to be," said the leader to his assembled minions. "And with any luck I will be shown what part, if any, the rogue will play in the future of our family."

  So saying, Nicolae ate a piece of the mysterious organ that had so recently been the seat of consciousness of a living, breathing young woman. When he was finished, a chair was brought into the room to which Nicolae allowed himself to be tied. Then the table was pushed against a wall and the "family" made themselves comfortable on the floor before their patriarch where they waited for the divination to begin.

  They did not have to wait long.

  Nicolae's body tensed, strained against its bonds. His hands opened, fingers forming into claws, mouth stretched wide in a scream. Two of the males present jumped to their feet, held the chair so that their leader would not topple to the floor. Then the scream faded and Nicolae relaxed and began to speak.

  The divination started the way it normally did with a lot of talk of fire and darkness and the end of all things. The other members of the family sat enraptured as they always did but Ariella was not impressed. It was an easy thing to prophesize of such things. Madmen and charlatans had been doing so for centuries. Nicolae went on to tell of the leaders and the countries that would fall before the end of the world, and he even spoke of the end of their kind. After an hour of this, the divination finally got interesting.

  "And there will be blood," said Nicolae in a harsh whisper. "So much blood. Within the walls of this house. For he will come. The rogue. Jake is his name. His blood! And mine!" His gaze suddenly found Ariella, locked with hers. "All for you..."

  He paused for a moment, looking into a place that only he could see.

  "And there will be death. A final death. His or mine, I do not know" His eyes bored into Ariella's, would not let her go, threatened to pull her into that place into which he gazed. "But it is dark... so dark... almost impossible to see... I must get closer, gaze upon the face of the fallen one..." There was silence. A minute or more. As it stretched on Ariella thought that she might scream. Then Nicolae smiled. "Yes! It is he. The rogue. In this house he will meet his end..."

  He fell silent once again, said nothing for a longer length of time, and it seemed that no one else could find anything to say either.

  Ariella sat holding herself in the silence, shaking, wondering if it could be true, hoping that he had followed her that evening, that he had not truly seen the future. But for the first time she had her doubts. What if he really did possess such an ability?

  Then as the wind and the rain began to lash the house, as lightning illuminated the room's curtained windows, Nicolae said in a calm, sane voice, "Untie me."

  Later on, after they had made love - or as close to this as two of their kind were capable - Ariella lay next to Nicolae in the darkness, crying as she thought about the person she used to be, what it was that she had become. And what she had done to Jake, the only person who had ever truly cared for her.
>
  *

  It was mid-October when Jake found the house.

  Nearly two months had passed since the change, since he had become some nameless, unspeakable thing. The city was in a panic over the trail of cannibalized corpses he had left behind and the authorities had banded together in a manhunt of previously unseen proportions.

  A week earlier, they had nearly caught him.

  He had been dozing on the floor of another motel room, satiated by his earlier meal, the remains of which were still in the bathtub, when there came a pounding on the front door.

  "Sir?!" came a voice from beyond the door. "Sir, are you in there?"

  Instantly alert, he had rushed to the window, peeked around the curtains, saw the motel's balding manager and two uniformed police officers outside.

  One of the cops turned to the manager and said, "All right, open it up."

  Jake didn't wait to see the man pull out his key ring, place the key in the lock. He was running to the bathroom, smashing out the small window there with his bare hands, climbing through, mindless of the myriad cuts he suffered in his escape. Then he was in the small alley that ran behind the motel, the sound of footsteps coming after him, someone yelling, "Stop! Police!!" Shots were fired. A bullet whizzed past his head and bright pain blossomed as one hit him in the back of the thigh.

  He cursed and grabbed at the wound but barely even slowed, turned down a few more dark alleys, made his way into an abandoned apartment building where he sat quietly, listened to the sounds of pursuit pass him by.

  Already the pain in his leg was ebbing, the wound closing as were those caused by the glass of the broken window, another demonstration of just how inhuman he now was. He was concerned though, not by the physical harm he had endured but by the close call he had just experienced. It seemed that he was getting careless, had made someone suspicious, enough so that they had reported him to the police. From now on he would have to be twice as cautious as ever before.

  It was the following night that he heard about the house.

  He was in another, even sleazier motel with another hooker. And this one was a talker.

  "Oh, yeah, there's all kinds of freak shows out there," she had told him. "If you can think of it, honey, someone out there's into it." As she undressed, the skinny streetwalker had gone on to recount all manner of requests she had fulfilled for various customers: S&M, domination, golden showers, bizarre role-playing scenarios, bestiality (dogs were as far as she would go, thank you very much. Except for that one time with the orangutan...).

  Then there was that really weirdo place on the outskirts of the city, the big mansion where a group of people lived who were rumored to be some sort of cult among her fellow prostitutes. She had even attended a party there once, had tried to talk some really good looking guy with this amazing accent - "You know, like from Russia or somewhere." - into some high-priced kinky stuff. But he had merely looked at her like she was a piece of fecal matter and had wandered off, leaving her to find someone else interested in her offer.

  It had been a great party, apparently, although it was rumored that there were others who had attended who had never been seen again...

  This story had hit Jake like the bullet he had taken the night before. Recently he had been dreaming of a house, a big house on a hill overlooking the heart of the city, all those lights laid out below. And in his dreams he would stand in front of the house, convinced that Ariella was inside, but for some reason he was too afraid to go in and find her.

  After he had gotten directions to the mansion, he had killed the hooker - quickly and painlessly out of gratitude for the information - had eaten his fill of her then had left to find the place he was now certain he had been searching for all along.

  And here it was, just as it had appeared in his sleep visions: an old mansion built on a hill on the edge of the City.

  He was afraid, here, in real life too.

  But Ariella was in there, he told himself. She had to be. And the thought of what she had done to him, of what he had had to endure, filled his mind and he was overcome with a rage that made his fear seem a feeble thing. Fueled by that rage, he ascended the steps that led up to the front porch and the double doors there which he kicked inward with all the considerable force he could muster.

  Inside was an unlit foyer. He stood there in silence for a few moments before all the pain and fear and hatred he felt poured forth from him in a single word: "Ariella!!" Again he screamed and this time when he fell silent a voice said from directly behind him, "Well, well, well. Look what we have here." A voice with a noticeable Russian accent.

  He turned around but no one was there.

  That's when someone or something slammed into him from behind and dragged him into the mansion's darker interior. He was kept off balance, pushed along the length of a hallway, around a corner then through a doorway where he was rather unceremoniously thrown to the floor. Looking around, he saw that he was in a large room which had but one piece of furniture, a table pushed against one of its walls. A few candles stood in the corners of the room atop elaborate holders, flames piercing the gloom with their flickering illumination. Close to a dozen figures stood in the room's three entranceways, half of them male, half female, all of them young looking and beautiful in their own, unique ways.

  As he got to his feet that accented voice spoke from behind him again: "Welcome to the family."

  This time when he spun around someone was there, a man of stunning good looks, his pale skin and perfectly etched features plainly visible in the candlelight.

  "So you are the famous serial killer we've heard so much about," said the man in a mocking tone. "It is an honor to have you here, sir."

  Once again there was laughter, coming from the others.

  "Where is she?" asked Jake in a tight voice.

  "She? Oh, you must mean my beautiful Ariella. Of course that is why you are here. Unfortunately, she did not wish to attend tonight's entertainment, did not think she could bear to witness the events that I have foretold. She is elsewhere, awaiting my return, there to pleasure me once I have disposed of you."

  And so another emotion was added to the dangerous mix already fueling Jake's thoughts and actions: jealousy. He finally had someone before him whom Ariella had been with, someone he could direct the pain of all the past betrayals toward.

  With a roar, Jake launched himself at the man before him, grabbed him by the throat, drove him backward into the wall there with all of his superhuman strength, pulled him out of the hole created by the impact, slammed him into another wall and then another. The man broke Jake's hold and drove him completely through a wall, into another room which soon resembled the one they had just vacated, brought to ruin by their conflict. On and on they fought, each raining blows upon the other, biting and tearing at each other's flesh. Jake felt as though he were being hit with a sledgehammer, that a hawk with razor claws had been turned loose on him, felt the blood running freely over his skin. Whack! He felt ribs break. Whack! There went a knee. He knew that some of his shots were landing also, felt bone give way beneath a few of them, felt flesh tearing within his grasp. But he also knew that his opponent was older than he and apparently stronger. It did not take him long to come to the realization that if the battle continued like this he would be defeated.

  They made their way back to the foyer and then the man was on top of him, had him pinned down, was laughing as he placed a hand on each of Jake's temples.

  "Now that wasn't very nice," came the voice from just above him. "Showing up and wrecking the house that took me all these years to save up for. All that stealing and cheating for this? Do you know how much it will cost to have it all fixed? And not to mention the way you have treated me! Oh, well, I must admit that it was fun. I haven't had a good fight like that in, oh... sixty or seventy years. But I'm afraid that the fun must now end for, you see, it would do me no good at all to have a rival such as you around."

  And with that the hands on either side of Jak
e's head began to squeeze...

  It felt as though his head were in a vice, that at any moment his skull must surely crack. He opened his mouth to scream...

  That's when the massive chandelier directly above the two combatants came on, and the pressure to his head suddenly abated.

  Both men turned and looked towards the grand staircase that descended into the room, saw Ariella standing there. And Jake knew immediately that all his thoughts of hurting her were simply those. Thoughts. That he would never hurt her. That he just wanted to be with her. The sight of her caused a far deeper pain than all his wounds combined, a pain born of loneliness and longing. And he heard those feelings reflected in her voice as she said, "I'm so sorry, Jake."

  It was all he needed to hear.

  With the last of his strength he thrust upward driving his assailant into the chandelier which exploded in a shower of light and crystal, imprinted on his brain the sight of the blood - his and his foe's - which smeared the walls of the place. Then he threw himself aside as the great fixture fell from the ceiling and landed on the floor below with a deafening crash, the other man pinned beneath it.

  Darkness again, then hands on him, familiar hands, pulling him from the room, saying, "We must go. Now. Come on, before the others try to stop us."

  Then they were outside, beneath the stars, and Jake moaned as the physical pain of his ordeal assaulted him. He nearly collapsed but Ariella held him up with tender strength and told him that he would be all right, that everything was going to be all right...

  *

  His wounds healed, of course, and eventually he was able to accept what it was that he had become. Having Ariella with him helped.

  Jake smiled as he drove a new sports car through the night-shrouded streets of a city far from the one where he had been reborn. After the melee at the mansion he and Ariella hadn't stopped moving until they felt they had put a safe distance between themselves and the coven. Safe for the time being, at least.