Jen noticed that Mac’s laugh drifted away too quickly and could see the stretch of pain and remorse in his eyes. It wasn’t the pain of loss, of fear or of sorrow. It was a pain that only a troubled and confused heart can create. And somehow, Jen knew what was at the heart of Mac’s pain. She forced hers to dissipate, then said, “I know you probably don’t want to talk about Rachel, but…”
“It’s not that I don’t want to talk about her,” Mac said. “I’m actually embarrassed about how I felt about her. How I still feel,” he admitted. “It’s like she still holds a part of my heart. A part of my soul.” His face grew instantly still. His eyes filled with dread. “Oh my God. I asked her to do me a favor.” He turned to Jen, who was sitting less than two feet from him. “I never told her what the favor was. She just… Oh my God.”
“What?” Jen said, concern filling her voice. “What about the favor? What favor? What?”
“She told me that if a demon does you a favor, he takes a piece of your soul in payment. I never told her what I was going to ask as a favor, but she just started kissing me.”
“Mac. What happened?” Jen’s voice was stern, dripping with suspicion, with an unwanted fear. And, somewhere, with her own sense of loss.
“She just assumed I was going to ask her to sleep with me, as a favor, which I wasn’t. I would never ask a woman for a favor like that. But she did, I mean, we did. We slept together the night before we went to the pond. She has a piece of my soul. She stole part of my soul.”
Jen found herself torn. She wanted to comfort Mac, tell him that, one way or another, that they would find all the pieces of his soul. That he would find rest one day. But knowing that Mac, someone she hardly knew, had been fooled, manipulated to such a personal and disturbing degree, made her cringe.
“I didn’t know she was what she was,” Mac pleaded. “You have to believe me.”
“I do. And,” she struggled to find words, “we’ll figure it out.”
Jen felt instantly distant from Mac, like a chasm suddenly tore open the diminishing space between them, leaving an impassable canyon. She questioned everything, again. In her thoughts and in her soul, she felt both pity and horror for the man sitting right beside her. The two shared something so unique: An experience, a miracle, a calling, and something much greater and much more unknown. Her eyes had been opened when the world was ripped apart the day at the pond. She saw things, truths, that she had never before recognized. Things she could not, would not, ever allow herself to see. Her doubts and questions evaporated like vapor from the sea and she knew, as deeply as she knew her own breath, that evil was real. It had its cause, its origins. And the man sitting beside her next to the fire, the man with whom she believed she would spend the rest of her days, the man had slept with a demon.
As the two sat, both lost in their own thoughts and fears, a strong, chilling, foul smelling breeze stoked the flames setting a chorus of sparks swirling around their heads. The breeze came from a still sky, a still night where even the trees stood in pregnant abeyance. The swirling, fetid smelling breeze lasted for just a few seconds, then all was calm again.
“He’s coming.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
After the whirlwind of sparks left them alone, Mac and Jen agreed to take turns keeping watch. Mac took the first watch while Jen struggled to fall asleep. She knew it was going to be a long night and that her sleep would be troubled. She also feared that the next day could be her last. There were so many questions and fears charging through her mind as she closed her eyes. As much as she wanted to sleep, images of Lisa, of Stacy Flannigan, of O’Keefe, Rachel and Novak filled her mind’s eye. She’d snap her eyes open, half expecting to see one of the imagined people sitting in front of her, watching her not falling asleep. But each eye-snap only brought her the vision of a warm, glowing fire and Trevor Mac pacing in circles around it.
As she watched him, she began to feel sorrow for Mac. His life, like hers, had been abruptly altered. He was pulled from his passion, his family, friends and dreams. A smile played on the corners of her mouth when she saw him stumble for the second time—in the exact same location—over a rock or raised root. Though she never had any expectations of what a demon sender would look like, act like, be like, if she had, Mac didn’t fit the bill. He wasn’t an imposing figure but he did hold himself well. It was obvious that he had spent more time holding a guitar than a barbell, but still, Jen noticed a certain fullness to his chest and shoulders.
As she continued watching him, shutting her eyes only when he glanced her way, she began to feel guilty about how she had been feeling about him. He had, after all, told her that he had had sex with a demon. That’s got to say something about his character, right? But Jen knew he was tricked. Rachel deceived him in order to steal a bit of his soul, perhaps as a trophy or maybe for leverage. Mac was hurt and was still hurting. Jen could sense that Mac was struggling with his continued feelings for Rachel and she was sure he felt a strange loss when he assumed Rachel had been killed.
And Jen had fired the bullets that probably killed her. She killed a demon, yes, but she had also killed the woman Mac had feelings for. Jen didn’t worry about Mac blaming Rachel’s death on her, but she did wonder if she and Mac would ever truly become trusted partners. She hoped they would. She felt they needed to. She needed him and, she hoped, Mac knew that he needed her.
Jen gave up trying to sleep thirty minutes into Mac’s first watch. “How long do you figure we have till company arrives?”
“Well,” Mac said, “if I were a demon bent on revenging the deaths of two of my fellow demons, I’d probably wouldn’t rush right into battle. I’d probably gather intel about where I’d most likely be facing my adversaries, maybe do a little recognizance, and maybe even grab a few of my buddies, you know, in case things get out of hand.”
Jen said, “You seem awful relaxed, considering.”
“I don’t know how else to be,” he said. “These few weeks, they’ve either prepared me to survive anything or have prepared me to die. I can’t believe that everything that has happened was done all for nothing, so that leaves me believing that these weeks have gotten me prepared to survive. For us to survive.”
Jen said, “You mentioned that if you were a demon, you’d do some recognizance. Think that was Henry spinning around the fire a little bit ago? Sure smelled like how a demon should smell.”
“I’m not sure. What I’m thinking is this Henry character must not be as powerful as I was thinking he is. I mean, he’s got, or at least, he had, a whole team of other stink-pots doing stuff for him. If he was so powerful, he wouldn’t need any assistants. What I’m thinking is that whatever it was that stunk up our fire, was sent from Henry to find us. Like his own invisible private eye. I’m pretty certain he knows where we are, of that I am very confident. But I don’t think he’s so powerful that he’s not at least worried about what we may be able to do to him.”
“Think he knows we still have the gun?”
“Well,” Mac said as he scratched his chin, “I wouldn’t be surprised that his invisible private eye is keeping watch over us and is reporting back to Henry from time to time. So, I’d suggest that we keep our planning conversations, as well as any talk about whether or not we have any weapons, very quiet.”
“Sorry about that,” Jen said. “Wasn’t thinking, I guess.”
“No worries. It’s just a paranoid theory of mine, that’s all.”
“One thing I wanted to ask you about, something that I can’t figure out.”
“Shoot,” Mac said. “Not with your gun, of course. That is,” Mac began to slowly raise his voice, climbing it up to the point of yelling, “if you actually have a gun which I highly doubt you do.”
“Nice. Nothing suspicious with that bit of acting.”
“I do my best method acting when under stress. Thanks for noticing.” He then whispered, “Just in case anyone was listening, didn’t want to give anything away.”
“Obviously,
” Jen quipped. “And only a fool would have bought your performance hook, line and sinker.” Jen’s comment was dripping with sarcasm.
“So, what’s your question?”
Jen sat up, brushed off the dirt from her pants then sat on the tree stump which had served as her seat most of the evening. “You said when you were fighting your first demon…”
“Battling my first demon. Battling sounds better, more heroic than fighting.”
“Whatever. When you were ‘battling’ your first demon, you said you smacked it hard with a rock, right into his forehead, right?”
“Yes. Hit him pretty square and damn hard.”
“But you said it didn’t seem to faze him much, right?”
“Only for a second.” Mac furrowed his brow. “I think I know what you’re going to ask.”
“If a rock being pounded into his head didn’t cause any damage, then these demons must have some protection.”
“Yet a bullet killed two of them and scared another off into a pond. Doesn’t make sense.”
“And you told me that the demons need to be in water, practically live underwater, but…”
“But we send them back by drowning them. I asked Rachel about that. I’m not saying she was the most trustworthy person, I mean, ‘demon’ in the world, but what she said made sense. Demons can stay underwater forever if they want to. Like O’Keefe. He’s probably still hiding out in that pond. But when a sender holds them underwater, they drown. It’s like when we touch them, they become human. At least, they can get hurt or even killed like humans can. Maybe when we hold them it removes their protection. Makes them as fragile as you and I.”
“Doesn’t explain why the rock didn’t kill the first demon you ‘battled.’ ”
Mac said, “No, it doesn’t. Think we should ask Henry when he shows up?”
“Very funny,” Jen said. “Let’s just send him back as quickly as we can. We’ll figure out the rock and drowning mystery thing some other time.”
“It is pretty important, though,” Mac said. “The whole rock thing.”
“That’s kind of why I brought it up.”
<<<<>>>>
He stared at the family of five, all of them bound and gagged, laying on the floor of the hunting cabin. Being without food or water for nearly three days was taking its toll on them, especially the youngest one. The child’s cries had abated the day before and now he laid still. Occasionally, a spasm would erupt and the child’s body would react in a manner quite disturbing to the child’s parents. To Henry, the spastic gyrations were entertaining. He considered giving water and some small bits of food to the three-year-old, in hopes he could watch the child recover then slip towards death again.
The father, seeing how still his youngest had become, struggled against the piano wire binding his wrists and legs, drawing blood and carving deep cuts into his skin.
“You’re hurting yourself,” Henry said to the father.
The father mumbled, unable to pronounce his pleas in an understandable fashion.
“Do you want to ask me for a favor?” Henry asked.
The father nodded his head.
Henry removed the gag around the father’s mouth. The father tried to talk but his throat was burning with dryness.
“I’m sorry,” Henry said as he crouched in front of the father. “I am having a challenge understanding you.”
“Waah turrr,” the father managed.
“Is that the favor you wanted to ask for? How horribly selfish.”
The father shook his head. “Pweeese. Muh fahmahly.”
“I know several languages, but yours is, as they say, Greek to me. Maybe a sip of water would help you get your favor asked?” Henry retrieved a small, plastic cup from the kitchen area, filled it half with water, then helped the father drink. “Is that better?”
The father coughed and vomited the small sips of water he was given. “Please, my children. Please, let them go. They didn’t do anything to you. Let my family go and keep me. I’ll do anything.”
“Magical water,” Henry remarked. “A few small sips and your ability to speak is instantly restored. But the favor you ask is a bit more than I am able to accommodate. Ask another, smaller one. Small steps.”
The father took another sip of water then, one at a time, looked into the eyes of his children and his wife, winking to let them know he had an idea. He was going to do something to save them all. When he had enough water to quell the burning in his throat, he asked, “Please, can my wife and kids have some water?”
“Is that the favor you want to ask?” Henry said.
The father nodded agreement.
Henry removed the gag from the mother, held the cup of water to her lips, and gently poured half of the cup of water into her mouth. Then, after filling the cup with fresh water, he repeated the process, giving two of the kids a chance to take a draw from the cup. “I am afraid,” Henry said, “that your youngest seems unable to be roused enough to drink.”
“Please,” the mother said, “let us go. We promise we won’t say anything. We don’t even know why you’ve taken us.”
“I’ve already told your husband,” Henry said as he moved his face within inches of the mother, “that favor is too much to ask.” Henry stood, walked to the chair where he had been sitting, and said, “I noticed you gave a wink to each member of your family. That wink was intended to comfort them, right?”
The father said, “Yes. I wanted them to know that…”
“You wanted them to know that you were going to get them out of here. Get them away from me. Is that what your wink meant? That you were going to get them to safety?”
“Please, just let my family go. You can keep me here. I’ll do whatever it is you need. Please.”
Henry considered the father, intently looking into his eyes. “Tit for tat,” Henry said. “Favor for a favor. Agreed?”
The father, confused, agreed.
Henry pulled out a six-inch blade from a sheath that was clipped out of sight in the small of his back. He held the blade in front of his face, admiring the length of razor sharp carbon composite. “Tit for tat. You have three wonderful, beautiful children, which is a bit unfair since I don’t have any. You tell me which child I can take and I’ll release the other two.”
“You’re fucking insane,” the father barked.
“I will give you five-seconds to tell me which one I can keep before I randomly choose one to kill right in front of you and your lovely wife. Five…”
“Just kill me.”
“Four…”
“You can’t make me decide between my kids.”
“Three…”
“Stop, please,” the mother screamed.
“Two…”
“David, do something,” the father’s wife yelled.
“One…”
“Kill me,” the father pleaded. “Kill me, please.”
Henry stood, walked behind the middle child and ran the full blade into the back of his neck, not stopping until the blade emerged from the front of the eight-year old’s neck. “You were not an option,” Henry said calmly to the father.
The parents screamed in horror.
“You son of a bitch. I will kill you. I will fucking kill you.”
“That is an unrealistic threat,” Henry said. “Now, you still have two kids. Tell me which one I can keep and which one you want to save. If you don’t tell me which one, I will kill them both. And after I kill them both, I will kill your wife. You have five-seconds.”
The oldest child, named Natalie, turned eleven two months ago. She loved playing the viola and was asked by her orchestra teacher to participate in the “All County Orchestra.” Natalie had been busy with practicing for her upcoming concert, scheduled for March 22. Though Natalie and her mother often had disagreements, she knew her parents loved her and they knew, despite her rapid advance towards becoming a teenager, that she loved them.
The youngest child, Matthew, was three. He was their surpri
se baby, the result of a drunken night while the father’s parents took Natalie and Robert (the recently deceased middle child) to their house for an overnight stay. Matthew was always a needy kid, spending several days in hospital rooms when his asthma closed down his airway.
The parents loved their children and, like any good, caring, devoted parent, would do anything for them.
“Five….”
“Oh my God, please stop,” the mother cried.
“Four…”
“Matty, look at me,” the father yelled.
“Three…”
“Matty, can you hear me? Matty, look at me.”
“Two…”
“I am so sorry.”
“One….”
“Natalie,” the father was sobbing, making his words muffled and nearly unintelligible. “I choose Natalie.”
“You deserve to know why you are here with me,” Henry said, sitting back down in the chair, showing no emotion befitting the scene he was directing. “Your sister, Stacy Flannigan, the Congresswoman. She was unwilling to provide assistance to me until I found the perfect amount of leverage. But now I no longer need you as leverage. I need to get a few things done but I do feel I owe you at least a glimpse into what I will be doing next.
“I have to pay a visit to your sister, though considering the position she is in, I may not succeed in visiting with her. If I am unable to visit with her face to face or after I am able to spend some quality time with her, (I am comfortable with either possibility) there are two others that fucked up a plan I had working that I will turn my attention to. Actually, they didn’t fuck it up all that bad, just caused my plan to take an altered course. I expect to leave in an hour, maybe two. I need to map my route and figure out travel time, which I plan to do right after I kill what remains of your family.
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