Catching Hell

by D. B. Sieders

  It wasn’t just because he shared our food. He hated sugary marshmallow cereal. He’d done it for her.

  The memory tightened and warmed my chest all at once, and I held my breath, holding on to ridiculous hope that he’d come with me.

  “Consider it a date,” he said, then turned around and got busy loading the dishwasher.

  I walked Megan to the door, gushing in hushed tones about how fabulous D was. Megan smiled. “It’s good to see you happy, Jane.”

  “I’m always happy,” I said. “Unless I’m stuck in line at a drive-through. Then I get cranky.”

  “Joke all you want, but I mean it. Keep him around. Seriously, if I wasn’t happily married, I’d hit that with a Mack truck.”

  “I know, right?” I said, giggling.

  She surprised me, pulling me into a warm embrace. We weren’t normally touchy-feely. I’d always kept my family at arm’s length. Between my demonic possession and the secrecy that came along with it—including D—I’d made keeping to myself standard operating procedure. And as recent events proved, I was a danger to my family. My line of work had put them in harm’s way. I couldn’t have that.

  “I know about the money you put in Mom’s account, too,” she whispered in my ear.

  I stiffened. Damn it. I was busted. I needed better money launderers.

  Pulling back, she said, “See you Sunday.”

  After seeing my sister off, I returned to the kitchen, my coffee cup, and my friend with benefits. “What’s on the agenda today?” I asked.

  I assumed we’d pick up the search for Keith the missing summoner. I’d be much more helpful sober. Of course, I’d tried to touch base with Hannah, but she still wasn’t answering. She was apparently still off somewhere deep in my subconscious since I couldn’t feel her presence. I didn’t have the luxury of dealing with her recent mood swings. Guess it was good, old-fashioned detective work today with the assistance of a corporeal demon.

  D nodded. “I asked your roomies to monitor police reports, hospitals, news, and cameras all over the city. Between the two of us, we dinged him up pretty good. If the summoner turns up, we’ll spot him.”

  That made sense, though it was a little disappointing. Still, conventional detective work got the job done in the earth realm more often than not. Speaking of…

  “Who was helping him?” I asked, remembering our text chat from yesterday after I left Warner Park. D mentioned he knew who had helped Keith bring Mephisto from the hell realm. Maybe that guy, or gal—I really shouldn’t make such sexist assumptions—could help us locate Keith.

  D’s gaze turned hard. “The same man who helped my father summon me back to hell.”

  Wow. Talk about a bombshell. No wonder D’s interrogation of Keith had been so brutal. Then again, if D were out for revenge, was it clouding his judgment? Could he work for me on my case while settling old scores?

  “Who is he, the summoner who sent you to your father? And where is he?” I asked.

  “I don’t know his name, only his methods. I have very little to go on, but Keith used the same methods to summon Mephisto. The sigil patterns were practically identical aside from the name. I’ve also got a few associates on the hunt. If anyone can track them, they can.”

  “Demons?” I asked.

  He nodded, averting his gaze briefly before he said, “They specialize in sensing and parsing magic. If Keith is in league with Belial, he’s most likely using some powerful demon magic to stay under the radar. It has a different…flavor, for lack of a better word, than tempter magic. He can’t escape to the hell realm through legal portals, and my colleagues and I believe we’ve located and secured all unauthorized portals, which means he’s likely gone into hiding. They’ll be able to sniff out any concealment magic.”

  That fit the profile we’d built of the demon lord. Belial was known for magic and could wield much more sophisticated sorcery than the glamour, persuasion, or possession techniques used by tempter demons. “That’s impressive. How’d you manage that?” I asked, genuinely curious.

  And a little suspicious.

  I knew D was powerful, but I’d been thinking about how he’d been operating. He’d followed me to the alley where I’d had the run in with Mephisto and Mara, and I hadn’t detected him, wonky knife notwithstanding. I was usually quite good at detecting demons in the area, even powerful demons. Hannah had apparently missed him, too.

  And the boss had missed Mephisto altogether.

  D had also appeared at HQ after following us. True, he could’ve used his car, but the niggling in the back of my mind made me suspect he had other ways of tracking and traveling. Plus, how would he know about unauthorized portals, let alone how to find rogue summoners who could hide using magic, if he didn’t know more than a little magic himself? If Pendergrass could get his hands on high demon magic, why not an actual demon?

  “D? How much demon magic do you have?”

  His gaze turned hard. “Is that question number two?”

  That was right. I had two questions left in our little game. While I wanted to know more about his father, his time in the hell realm, and all his delicious secrets, this line of questioning seemed more important. More immediate.

  “Yes,” I said, “it is. Are you going to answer?”

  “That’s classified,” he said, crossing his arms over his broad chest.

  I scowled and then grinned as a thought occurred to me. “I’ll take that as a lot,” I said. “And you still owe me two answers since you didn’t actually answer that question.”

  “Damn it, Jane, the less you know about this right now, the better. Safer. I’d say trust me, but…” He trailed off.

  Smart man. We’d woven a few strands of trust between us, but they were thin, fragile, in danger of snapping at any moment should either of us tug a little too hard.

  “Fine,” I said, turning on my heel and heading off to my room. “Go do your supersecret thing. Alone.”

  “What’ll you be doing?” he yelled.

  I held up my middle finger and said, “That’s classified.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  After showering and leaving my empty apartment, which D had apparently vacated in a huff of testosterone-fueled indignation, I met up with Lacey. We’d received a hit from an Internet chatroom Boice had been monitoring. KashvilleKeith47, our summoner’s oh-so-clever and original handle, had logged on from an IP addressed located somewhere in east Nashville.

  He’d been scared, warning the online rogue summoner community—which was a thing, and its membership had quadrupled over the last six months—about demon hunters and a crazy demon hitman sent to take him out. I could only assume he was talking about D. No surprise, there. What really got our attention, however, was the warning Keith issued.

  * * *

  End times at hand. Be ready to open the gates to the glorious rebellion.

  * * *

  These guys talked a lot of smack for unemployed thirtysomethings living in their mamas’ basements.

  “Are you sure this is the right place?” Lacey asked. She was always questioning my directions. Of course, the empty-looking warehouse did seem a bit questionable. Situated in a pocket of urban decay, the large, bland building with pockmarked concrete and boarded-up windows could’ve been hiding anything from a meth lab to a zombie horde. But where else would a sneaky little underground summoner on the run hide? We’d already checked his mom’s basement.

  “According to my good friends Siri and Boice, yes,” I said, testily. “But you could always double-check with your demon. And while you’re at it, why don’t you ask him to sneak in the building and make sure the coast is clear? Better yet, have him let us in. Unless there’s a serial killer in there.”

  She rolled her eyes, not deigning to look up from her phone. She appeared to be furiously texting. That was weird. She normally just talked to her demon. Or maybe she was playing Candy Jam or some other online game. Kids these days. Always on their phones.

  She finall
y stopped texting and pinched the bridge of her nose. “What the hell did you put in those drinks last night? I haven’t blacked out since that party in Jimmy Livermore’s lake house.”

  “Tough night?” I asked, sympathetically.

  My hangover had disappeared thanks to a combination of breakfast, a gallon of water, the heavy petting session with D, and the hangover remedy Mara whipped up for me. Taking sympathy on my partner for the day, I fished what was left of the potion out of my bag and handed it to her.

  She eyed the vial warily, wincing as she pulled down her sunglasses. “What is it?”

  “I think it’s the demon version of hair of the dog. Mara made it.”

  That seemed good enough for her. She took off the cap and downed it in a single gulp. “Hey, that’s not bad.”

  “Great. Now can we play Simon says open the friggin’ warehouse door?”

  She scowled. “Simon doesn’t like that, and he doesn’t like you, either.”

  Sticks and stones. All I cared about was getting in. Sure, we could pick the lock, but it was easier to have a demon fly in and open the door for us. Lacey talked to the demon inside her phone. He materialized as a wisp of black smoke and slipped through the cracks of the warehouse door. Lacey kept an eye on the phone, presumably monitoring Simon’s activity.

  “So he really doesn’t like me?” I asked.

  “Not even a little,” she said and then frowned. “Something’s wrong.”

  She took off toward the door, which flew open thanks to Simon, and ran inside before I could blink. Damned long-legged people. I stumbled after her, nearly tripping on bits of crumbled sidewalk and uneven, unkempt lawn. If I fell and jacked up my knee, I’d be sure to make Lacey my personal assistant while I convalesced. On the other side of the rusty door, I scanned the dark interior for Lacey, following the echoes of her footfalls. By the time I caught up, she was disappearing around the corner. I ran after her and then stopped dead in my tracks. The stench hit me before I got a look at the gruesome sight.

  And the flies. Holy guacamole, how did they all get there?

  “My God,” I said. “There are flies, and then there’s this pitch-black, Satan-like swarm of flies.”

  “I know.” Lacey’s voice was muffled and shook, much like my knees. “And the stench. I had no idea dead bodies smelled this vile.”

  We were both unnerved. I’d seen dead bodies before, up close and personal, but this was different. Most demon-possessed humans were still alive when we tracked them. They stank faintly of sulfur, and if the demon in possession was an amateur, they walked with a strange gait. Some of them survived their demonic possessions or demon deals, but they were shells of the people they’d once been. alive. Others died from demon-draining, but the boss had special cleanup crews for that. We normally made ourselves scarce when we found a dead body after calling HQ, but the sight, scent, and sick feeling was memorable.

  I’d seen blood, too, and smelled it. I’d seen maimed, injured, and close-to-the-brink-of-death human bodies, but nothing like this.

  The flies cleared, perhaps in response to Simon’s presence, giving us a better look at the horrific sight. A thin white male in his thirties lay face up in a pool of blood, unseeing gaze locked on the ceiling, his face contorted in a rictus of terror. I almost didn’t recognize him, but it had to be Pendergrass.

  I walked cautiously to where Lacey stood, pulling my shirt up to cover my nose. Lacey had done the same. Simon hovered over the body, presumably doing some sort of demonic detective work. Gritting her teeth and squaring her shoulders, Lacey started snapping pictures with her phone while I fired off a series of texts to my roomies, the rest of the team, and the boss.

  Work now, unhealthy coping mechanisms later.

  We should call the police, but not before gathering evidence for our own investigation. There was a remote possibility Keith had run afoul—hey, I finally had a reason to use my new favorite word—of some garden-variety human bad guys and wound up dead in a pool of what might have been his own blood.

  But garden-variety human bad guys didn’t normally use blood to paint a pentagram and authentic demon sigils around a dead body.

  “I’ll get shots of the sigils,” I said to Lacey, who’d finished photographing the area around him. “You get what close-ups you can of Keith the unfortunate summoner.”

  “You sure it’s him?” Lacey asked, though there could be little doubt. “And why do I have to take close-ups of the dead guy? I’ll never get the smell out of my memory as it is.”

  I rolled my eyes. I recognized him. But she was apparently unwilling to take my word for it. I showed her the picture Boice had sent me. This was our guy. Lacey nodded, making a grimace of distaste.

  “Perk of being temporarily in charge, babe,” I said. “I’ve got eternal damnation hanging over my head. You take Mr. Stinky. What’s Simon got?”

  She looked down at her phone. “He smells traces of demon, but that could just be residual scent. The guy was a summoner. He spent a lot of time with demons. Wait,” she said, holding up a finger.

  Simon dove into the body, his incorporeal form undulating in and out of the guy’s open mouth, nose, ears, and pores in sickening waves. Gross from my perspective, but demons like Simon had no aversion to death and decay. He was likely examining the body for signs of trauma and a clear cause of death.

  “Well?” I asked, my gut filling with dread. “Don’t keep me in suspense.”

  “No open wounds, no broken bones or obvious internal injuries. Just exsanguination.”

  “You mean something drained all the blood out of his body without opening any veins or arteries?” I asked, flummoxed. The demons we normally encountered could inflict a lot of damage to a human body from the inside or the outside, but the patterns followed the rules of the earth realm—blunt force trauma, stab wounds, bites, cuts, scrapes, and all manner of other injuries. This didn’t fit the MO for any other known supernatural entities, either.

  This kind of carnage was a new one for me.

  “Is it the summoner’s blood?” I asked.

  Lacey sighed. “We won’t know without a DNA test, but I’m not going to collect any blood or tissue,” she said with vehemence. “Simon can do it.”

  “Right.” I was still feeling…off, for lack of a better word, but my brain fog had cleared. As much as I balked at the idea and wanted to deny the possibility to myself and anyone else who might bring it up, I had to consider every possible suspect, including my long-lost demon friend who’d shown up right when the shit hit the fan with this case.

  “Can Simon sort out different types of demon magic? Not just the kind we see with tempters, but something more powerful?”

  Tempters like Mara could use glamour to lure their victims into a passionate frenzy, and Simon had used his powers of persuasion to tempt Lacey into upping her shoplifting game. Anger demons, maces, had mind-control powers and could amplify rage in their human victims, much as levi demons could boost envy, ego demons could magnify pride, belphs could inspire sloth, and bubs gluttony. These and other ordinary citizens of the hell realm who came to earth used their own brand of rudimentary basic magic to trick mortals, playing on their natural inclinations toward pride, covetousness, lust, anger, gluttony, envy, and sloth to sow discord and get a meal in the bargain.

  But magic that could kill a man, draining his blood by means that didn’t involve the usual exit routes, was something I’d never seen before. Sure, ancient texts and myths told tales of demon-inflicted horrors, but those had always seemed like exaggerations of, well, mythic proportions. The summoner’s gruesome murder was on par with the magic and power that had nearly ripped my demon out of my body.

  The kind of magic and power a hell realm general of myth and legend might possess. Or a mysterious demon from my past.

  “Never mind,” Lacey said, making a face of disgust. “Simon has the, um, samples. And I’ll ask about the magic thing.”

  “Ugh, I don’t want to know about his samples
.” I gagged, biting back bile. We needed to get out of there and shower.

  I checked my phone. The rest of the team had texted back right away with similar questions about how and why our summoner died. All except for D. That was weird. Keith had been his find. He’d interrogated the guy—the photographic evidence he’d shown me certainly seemed to corroborate his story.

  But the body looked pale. That was a no-brainer, considering he died from extreme blood loss, but did that include blood stuck in bruises?

  “Any bruises or other injuries?” I asked.

  Lacey shook her head. “No. Weird, huh? I thought your boyfriend worked him over.”

  “So did I.” Why would a demonic entity first heal and then murder a rogue summoner? It didn’t make any sense.

  “Do you think D killed him?” Lacey asked. The look on my face made her take a step back and lift her palms. “I’m thinking out loud here, but what if he, you know, accidentally killed him during the interrogation and covered his tracks?”

  “But I saw Pendergrass last night. D and I chased the guy down, and he got away.”

  Lacey shrugged. “Maybe he went back out after you passed out. He could have killed Pendergrass then.”

  “Why would he do that?” Rhetorical question. I knew, of course. Demons didn’t like to let go of what they considered theirs, including humans they targeted. D was a demon through and through. Then again, if Keith was the only person who could lead him to the summoner who’d helped his father abduct him ten years ago, D would want to keep him alive.

  Unless Keith had already answered his questions. If D knew who the other summoner was, he could be tying up loose ends before taking the guy out. But why lie about it? It wasn’t as if his agenda conflicted with mine.