Demon's Play

by David McBride

  “Bobby, no!” our waitress yelled from the kitchen doorway.

  “Shut up Jane,” the man growled back.

  Someone had killed the jukebox when I wasn’t paying attention, so his rumbling voice carried through the bar unopposed. He moved like an angry beast, his head and shoulders held high, his chest puffed out. The tension and energy around him reminded me of a storm coming in off the coast. You could see it coming, but you couldn’t get out of the way in time. His eyes locked on mine and suddenly I knew the target of this particular storm.

  I put my hand on Terri’s wrist and gently pulled her back behind me. He came to stand in front of me with a scant couple of feet between us. I could smell the pungent aroma of cigar smoke on him, as well as a fair amount of liquor on his breath.

  He looked me up and down and said, “What the hell are you doing here, Inquisitor?” He let his hands linger close to the faux wood grips of his pistols.

  “You seem to have me at somewhat of a disadvantage,” I said, straightening my shoulders and back so I was standing as tall as I could without standing on tiptoe. “You know me, but I don’t know you.” I extended my hand. “Frank Goldman.”

  He glanced at my hand then sneered. “I know who the hell you are. I want to know what you’re doing here.”

  I could see the crowd gathering around us. Some moved to stand behind the man in front of me, but most stood off to either side trying their best to stay out of whatever was going to happen. Our waitress, Jane, came out of the kitchen and walked up to the man.

  “Bobby,” Jane said quietly. “They were just getting something to eat.”

  “Well they can go somewhere else to do that.” His nostrils flared as he scented the air around me. “She’s a witch,” he said, and looked at Terri for the first time.

  “How very observant of you,” I said. “Now maybe you can tell us what your problem is.”

  He took a step closer to me and I felt the protective field of wards snap in place in response to his anger and obvious desire to hurt me. “You are my problem, Goldman. You and your kind aren’t welcome here. Same goes for you, witch.”

  “Bobby,” Jane said. “These two are friends of Eric. He’s given them safe passage here and marked the Inquisitor as a friend of the pack.”

  That was interesting. Eric had never told me he had given me special protection.

  He turned his angry glare down on her pixy-like face for a moment, making her cringe, and then turned back to me. “A friend of the pack? Him?” he asked, pointing at me. “Well Eric isn’t here, is he Jane?”

  Jane looked at me and said, “He went out of town for a couple of weeks.”

  “God damn it Jane, would you shut up and get back in the kitchen!” Bobby shouted at her. She cringed back and fell to her knees in a submissive posture. The big vein in his temple was throbbing now and his eyelid was twitching with tension, but he managed to smile at his own show of control.

  “Don’t you talk to her like that,” Terri said defiantly. I couldn’t help but smile.

  Bobby looked at Terri and growled deep in his throat, his beast barely restrained. “I’ll talk to her however I please, witch. Until Eric comes back I’m in charge of the pack. This also means I’m in charge of the bar, so until he comes back you two aren’t welcome here.”

  Jane spoke up from her place on the floor, a timid, stuttering attempt. “Don’t you think Eric might be a little upset when he finds out you kicked out two of his friends?”

  “Quiet!” he yelled. She forced herself lower and after a moment began rubbing her face against his leg while making small whining noises like a dog who had been hit with a rolled up newspaper. Seemingly pleased with himself and his ability, Bobby’s anger diminished somewhat as he looked at me while he spoke to Jane. “Your concern for my well-being is touching, Jane, but I can handle Eric.” There was a grumble of discontent at this, and I was pleased to note even the men who stood behind Bobby looked worriedly at one another. They were first and foremost Eric’s pack. Robert’s support was tenuous at best. “He’s been too lax with who he lets in here. He even brings in the damn demons for entertainment,” he said, waving a hand at the dancers on stage that had stopped dancing in order to watch our impromptu show. “But I’ll be damned if I’m going to sit by and let the Inquisitor sit here with his pet witch and pollute our haven.”

  I winced at the tirade, not so much for being insulted but for the reaction that I knew Terri would have. She was the sweetest girl I knew, but she had a temper. And someone referring to her as my “pet witch” would definitely be one of her hot-buttons. Bobby’s lips twitched upward in a grin as he waited for my reaction.

  He was caught off guard when it came from Terri. Coming from the old school of thinking and being a werewolf to boot had given him the false impression that women were either incapable of anger, or unable to act upon it. The wards snapped and hardened into a visible sheet of blue energy between her and Bobby. He took a surprised step back as the barrier crackled with static a few inches from him. Terri hadn’t even tried using a spell knowing that it would be useless within the confines of this place, so she just pushed her power out at him in its raw form. When it came to magical pissing contests—so to speak—Terri could compete with the best of them. Bobby, enraged at being threatened in his own territory, snarled and pulled one of the guns from its holster, leveling it at Terri’s head. My gun practically jumped into my hand as I pulled it from under my jacket. Bobby stood staring down the barrel of his gun at Terri, a paper-thin shield of energy between them, and my gun shoved next to his right ear. The wards buzzed around us as if it were an angry hive of hornets. The group watching us had all moved back to what they thought of as a safe distance.

  This was all worthless posturing, I thought as I looked at the side of Bobby’s face through a skein of mystical energy at the end of my pistol. None of us could actually do anything to each other while the wards were in place, so why bother? The answer was that it had to be done. Terri seemed to know that as well as I did, and I was proud of her for it. Werewolves needed to constantly prove their dominance to one another, and this was just another test of who was in charge of whom. Bobby was standing toe-to-toe with a witch and an Inquisitor to prove he was the de facto leader of this pack. He was the only one who hadn’t instantly given up the fight when I drew my gun, which most paras have come to associate with pain and death. But this Mexican standoff served a purpose for Terri and me as well. We were standing unafraid in front of their enforcer, the one who dealt out violence for the pack when necessary. It showed them that we were strong and willing to fight. It made sure they didn’t mistake us for food.

  Bobby un-cocked his pistol and put it back in his hip holster, sneering at us as he did it. I followed his lead, and Terri followed mine, the wards between us vanishing into the air.

  I saw the withering glare he was giving Terri and said, “Not a big fan of women’s lib are you, Bobby?”

  He turned his angry eyes to me and said, “The name’s Robert, prick, and until Eric gets back this is a wolves-only bar. Now get out.” He turned his back on us and walked away. Only when he had made it all the way to the back did Jane stand up and brush herself off. She kept her eyes on the floor and didn’t look at us as she went back to work.

  Terri and I looked at each other and shrugged. It was one of those moments of understanding that didn’t require verbalization. What was there to say? We strode out of Howlerz side by side, the whispers of nervous werewolves following us out into the night air.

  4

  Terri dropped me off at home after we both agreed that we had had enough excitement for one night. A little rest would do us both good. With all that had happened tonight I doubted sleep would come easily to her. I couldn’t just explain to her that people would die no matter what we did; she would have to experience it for herself. It was the hardest lesson to learn, but one that she would have to nonetheless. The other problem that had presented itself was Eric’s new second
-in-command, Robert. As I passed through the protective wards to my house and walked in, I tried to reconcile why Eric would pick a xenophobic outsider as his new enforcer. Robert was powerful, but normally an alpha wolf would choose someone from his pack for a prestigious position like that. Eric always had good reasons for the things he did, but for the life of me I couldn’t understand this one.

  I took my jacket off and hung it in the closet near the front door. All was quiet in my small single-story house except for the faint creaking of the floor as I walked into the kitchen. I checked the answering machine and found no messages waiting for me. Not surprising. Besides the people that I worked alongside like Lou and Terri and Eric I had very few friends. I opened the refrigerator, grabbed a beer and opened it. Now that I thought about it, all of the people I considered friends were relationships forged because of my job. God that was depressing. I had no family left now; my father had died in the vampire war and my mother had passed away a few years later. The one person I had considered a friend away from my job was now my partner and I was teaching her how to be just like me. I tipped the beer up to my lips and took a long drink. Could I really condemn Terri to a life like mine? I paused to take a breath, then upended the can and drained it of its contents. I tossed the empty into the sink and passed through my bedroom on the way to the bathroom, taking my gun and holster off and leaving them on the night stand as I went.

  A shower may not be the answer to my problems, I thought as I ran the water, but maybe it could banish this crushing sense of melancholy that had suddenly overtaken me. As I stripped down, my new tattoos grabbed my attention. I wasn’t used to the new designs I had gotten yet, so they still caught me by surprise. They were enchanted tattoos, imbued with magic by a specialist who worked for the Inquisition. On my wrists were two bands of black barbed wire that could be used as anti-magic handcuffs. On the left side of my chest over my heart was a silver shield with blue edges. That along with the intertwined red and black snakes on my stomach served as protection wards. I used to have a whole different assortment of tattoos, but they had all given up the ghost. The good thing about enchanted ink was that they weren’t permanent. They would either fade in about a year or vanish once they used up their energy. It helped me meet my faith half-way. In Jewish tradition tattoos were forbidden, but these would fade away and not leave a trace afterwards. I had never been a traditionalist—I hadn’t even gone to Temple in years—but I still tried to do the right thing in the eyes of God.

  I stepped under the jet of water and let the steam wrap around me like a blanket. After a short time of scrubbing, I realized that I was trying to wipe the stain of failure from my body. There were always going to be victims like young Paulo and Cassie, and I would only meet them after something tragic had happened. There would always be some disaster or new threat looming just around the corner, and I would fight it, and the next one, and the next until I could fight no more. Then I would be finished. And what then? Would God welcome me into his kingdom with open arms? Or would I find that He had judged me and my deeds and found me wanting. I had killed and maimed vampires, werewolves, and other paras by the dozen in the name of the Inquisition. What if I was wrong? We declared that we strove for peace between paras and humanity, but all Inquisitors knew that was a pipe dream. There would always be a natural enmity between our groups, and the Inquisition would be there to stand in the middle and bloody the nose of whoever tried to strike first.

  I turned off the shower and stepped out, grabbing a towel off the counter and wrapping it around me. The mirror was clouded with steam. I wiped it away and looked into my eyes as if from a million miles away. What was wrong with me? I had never thought like this before, but now I questioned everything. My face stared back at me from the mirror, blank and impassive. That Frank Goldman, I thought, is the one I should be: blank faced and free of these absurd meandering thoughts. I laughed a bit nervously at myself and the way I was acting and went into the bedroom. I grabbed a pair of boxers and a T-shirt, threw them on, and sat at the edge of my bed.

  My eyes drifted of their own accord to my nightstand and what lay inside. The front of the stand had a swinging door with a small brass latch on it. Inside were some books and a first aid kit, nothing special. But at the back I had installed a false backing so that there was a hidden area between it and the actual back of the stand. In there was a couple of hundred dollars in emergency money, a pistol, a loaded clip, and two vials of dreamscape. The banned drug had been pretty easy to obtain given my status as a law enforcement official, but by the same token I had to be especially careful that no one knew I had it. It could mean anything from jail time to a death sentence for me if anyone found out. I had taken three vials from the evidence locker at STS headquarters, now there were only two. No, I wouldn’t take any now. Now I had to get some sleep and try to get my head right for tomorrow.

  I tossed and turned for almost an hour before finally drifting off to sleep.

  * * *

  The phone sounded unusually loud when it rang. I groaned and reached blindly for it when I remembered I had also left my gun on the table. That would be a hell of a wakeup call for the neighbors if I accidentally grabbed a hold of the trigger instead of the phone. Discarding the pillow, I looked at the bedside clock. Four am. Less than two hours sleep. I grabbed the phone from its cradle, hit the talk button, and made a grunting noise that sounded more like a clearing of the throat than hello.

  “Frank?” Lou’s voice sounded distant and static-filled on the cordless phone. “You awake?”

  “Yeah, what’s up?” I sat up in bed and wiped sleep from my eyes with the back of my free hand.

  “I thought I’d reciprocate your kindness for inviting me to your crime scene earlier and let you in on one of my own.” He tried to sound light and humorous, but I could sense the underlying nervousness in his words.

  I got off the bed and scrambled around the room looking for pants and a shirt. “How bad is it?” I asked as I struggled to pull on my pants while wedging the phone between my ear and shoulder.

  “Two dead. They’re a mess; all cut up like something used them for a chew toy.” He took a deep breath and blew it out right into the phone. “But that’s not the only reason I’m telling you about this.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “I’m standing about three miles outside the merge. Frank, whatever did this just killed a couple of human boys in the middle of the street in a humans-only district. I don’t need to tell you what kind of reaction the locals are going to have.”

  “Shit,” I said with feeling. After buttoning up my shirt and throwing my holster on, I checked my gun to make sure the chamber was clear and that the clip was loaded. “Where?” He gave me the directions while I walked through my house to the closet in the front hallway. I took my tan trench coat out and put it on. “Okay, I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.” I turned off the phone, ran back to my bedroom, threw the phone on the bed, grabbed my car keys from off the table, and ran for the door.

  5

  The entire street was blocked off by police cars by the time I arrived at the scene. Temporary barricades had been erected with the blue sawhorses that they used to keep crowds back. And boy was there a crowd. It was quarter after four in the morning, but it seemed like everyone within a mile radius was up and wanted to see what the commotion was about.

  I parked at a gas station across from the blocked intersection and walked over to the barricade. The crowd was filled with a nervous tension that showed in the way they whispered to each other without looking away from the area that had been cordoned off with police tape. The blue and red flashing lights that backlit them added to the surrealistic aura of it all. They were so enthralled by events unfolding before them that they didn’t even register my approach. After several “excuse me’s” didn’t get me any closer to the barricade I began punctuating it by elbowing people aside.

  Once I made it to the barrier, the cop that was in charge of crowd control held up
his hand and said, “That’s as far as you go, buddy.”

  I leaned over the blue sawhorse and waved him closer. He leaned down so he could hear me. “I’m here to see Captain Lou James. He’s expecting me.” He pulled back quickly, frowning and filled with a new tension that hadn’t been there a moment before. He looked over his shoulder and I followed his gaze to see Lou walking towards us and waving me through. The officer in front of me grudgingly moved the blockade a few inches so that I could squeeze through. As I walked over to meet Lou I felt the gaze of the officer burning holes in my back like lasers.

  Lou met me halfway and shook my hand. “Glad you could make it.”

  “Sleep’s overrated.”

  He snorted. “Yeah, that’s what I’ve been saying ever since I made Captain.”

  An officer that I recognized from the STS raised the police tape for us to enter the main scene. There were two white and red sheets in the middle of the road. From previous experience I knew that the sheets had started out white, but red had definitely become the dominant color here as blood soaked through wherever the sheet touched an open wound. Blood had pooled under the two bodies and was now drying, imprinting itself on the asphalt like graffiti. A man stood between the bodies taking pictures of the crumpled forms and the rivers of red beneath them. There was so much blood. It didn’t seem possible that all of this could have come from these two people.