Demon's Play

by David McBride

  I locked down the disbelief and other outside distractions and turned to face Lou. “I see you got the locals on this. I didn’t see one STS car out there.”

  “And you won’t,” Lou snapped. “All the STS members are in plainclothes, and if anyone asks, you’re with the homicide division. We want to keep this as quiet as possible. The last thing we need is for people to find out that some para’s running around killing people out here. We’ll have a mob with pitchforks and torches before you know it. What was done to these kids…” He shook his head and continued on. “Even if they were scumbag gang-bangers, nobody deserves that,” he said, and pointed to one of the sheets.

  “Gang-bangers, huh?” I said, and looked back at the milling crowd. On the far left side, slightly apart from everyone else, stood a group of five men who all wore black bandanas with white designs on them. On the opposite side of the street were three men and a woman wearing blue jackets or sweatshirts that were so dark that I almost mistook them for black. Both groups allowed their eyes to roam from the crime scene to their rivals and back again. “So which group did the ones under the sheets belong to?”

  “The ones in black. They call themselves the Spiders. Pretty big following around here, but they’ve been taking a beating lately from our new mystery gang. So have the Rollers. They’re the ones in blue.” He looked over at them. “You see the girl with them?” I nodded. “That’s the leader’s girlfriend. She’s the one that called the police.”

  “A banger called the cops?” I nearly choked.

  “Fancy that, huh? Tells you how scared they must be if they’re trusting the boys in blue to help them.” Lou looked over at the man taking photographs. “He should be done in just a minute, and then you can take a look at the bodies.”

  “Good. The sooner the better.” Movement off to my right brought me around. A giant of a man ducked under the police tape and walked over to us. “This night just gets better and better,” I mumbled to myself. Lou smirked and went to intercept the man.

  “Captain,” he said, and nodded to Lou. He looked at me, sneered, and said, “Goldman.”

  “Lewis,” I replied and smiled. Inspector Lewis and I had never gotten along, and Lou often went to great lengths to make sure that we never saw each other at crime scenes. I could only guess that the reason he was here now was because Lou wanted to clean up the scene as soon as possible so that the nice humans could get on with their lives.

  “What are you doing here?” he asked, and moved closer to me, just close enough that his massive chest was invading my personal space. “One monster gets out of the Second City so they let out another?”

  I eyed him with cool disdain and straightened up so that I was only a couple inches shorter than him. My hands were in my pockets and I kept them there so that no one could see me squeezing my fists until they drained of blood. The adrenaline flowed through my system and woke up every nerve ending that had been slow to wake when I left my house, and with them came my power. My awareness stretched out from my body and took a metaphysical look around, seemingly of its own accord. It disregarded Lewis as if he were nothing more than a particularly large cockroach and moved on. I found myself smiling at that bit of imagery and Lewis backed up.

  “What are you smiling at?” he demanded.

  Lou moved between us and pushed us apart. “Play nice you two. I don’t have time for your crap.” He looked back at the bodies. “The photos are done. Let’s take a look, shall we?”

  The three of us moved to the nearest body and squatted down on our haunches. The blood had all pooled around the lower half of the body so we sat near the head of the victim. Lou grabbed an edge of the blood soaked sheet and looked at Lewis and me as if silently asking our permission. We both nodded and he peeled back the cloth. The blood had begun to dry and it crackled as Lou pulled it back away from what used to be the face of one of the victims. The smell of rotten meat and feces assaulted me as the sheet went back further. I covered my mouth and braced myself with my other hand as my body was wracked by a coughing spasm. To keep myself from staggering away to get a breath of fresh air, I focused on the fact that Inspector Lewis was having the same reaction as me. The mountainous black man had turned his back and was spitting onto the ground as if he could actually taste the meat that was in front of us.

  The body was a shattered wreck. Lou had pulled the sheet down to the middle of the torso so we could see that one of the arms had been twisted out of its socket so that it lay beneath him. A splintered portion of the collarbone protruded from the socket. It drew my attention immediately because unlike the rest of him this part was clear of blood. That struck me as very peculiar, but I decided to examine the rest of the body before I focused on that. The face was in ruins, shreds of skin hanging off the cheeks, chin, and forehead. The right eye was missing. A gory hole stared back at me.

  “Werewolf,” Lewis said, convinced, his hand still covering his mouth.

  Lou nodded and looked at me. “Frank, what do you think?”

  Somewhere along the line a sense of clinical detachment had taken over, and I was left with no feeling of disgust or pity or revulsion, just an uneasy feeling of disjointedness, as if I were watching this on TV. Working previously as a police officer, I knew that the preparation and schooling they went through taught them how to compartmentalize when dealing with a crime scene. It was a way to cope with the horrors they dealt with. With the Supernatural Enforcement Committee it was the same only exponentially more intense. Sure we had the regular drills and instruction that every specialized field, like the police or military, had, but everyone who worked for the SEC knew what the Real Training was. It was ingrained through mental magic straight into our brains. It was like a silent partner riding around in our cerebellums. It was always working, always connecting and analyzing. And at times like this when an emotional response threatened to hamper the rational mind, it moved to the forefront. In a very real sense every Inquisitor was a schizophrenic.

  I heard the flat monotone in my voice when I said, “What about the rest of the body?”

  “What about it?” Lewis snapped at me. “This isn’t enough for you. You want to see the rest?”

  Lou held up a hand to stop him. “The rest of the corpse is comparatively untouched except for a couple gashes across the backs of the legs and a stab wound in the stomach. All of those were shallow wounds though, nothing compared to this. The coroner says that both of the victims died from blood loss.”

  “Jesus Christ,” Lewis muttered and made the sign of the cross. “They were alive through all of that?”

  I ignored him and looked at Lou. “It wasn’t a wolf.”

  “Why not? I thought the same thing as Lewis when I first saw them.”

  “Well, for one there’s too much meat left,” I said, looking at the fleshy remains of the shoulders.

  Lewis gasped. “What?”

  I pointed at the body. “Look at him, he’s all torn up but only his eye is missing. If a wolf had gone rogue and was dumb enough to hunt in the city he wouldn’t have just carved these two up and left. He would have eaten most of them.” I looked around at the streets that were crowded with milling people. “Or dragged them off to somewhere more private.”

  “You…” Lewis was at a loss for words. I knew all the horrible things he wanted to call me, all the curses he wanted to hurl at me, but Lou stopped him with a raised hand.

  “Go on,” he said, nodding at me.

  “Look at the collarbone. See those scratches on it? I think those are teeth marks, and those are too small for a wolf. That’s all this thing did; take a taste and leave the remains. Rogue wolves don’t do that.” A scenario took shape in my mind. It would have to have been something powerful, yet smaller than these men, crawling along the ground, attacking from behind and taking them by surprise. The gashes along the back of their legs that Lou had mentioned would have been crippling blows, something to keep them from running away.

  “So what is it then?” Lou aske
d.

  “Only one way to find out,” I said, and sighed. I did not want to know what this person saw or felt just before death, and if I used my powers chances were that was exactly what I would see. And if it went anything like my encounter with Paulo earlier it would be much more realistic than my mind could handle. I closed my eyes and reached out with my power, opening my Second Sight wide. The Zen feeling of the training had fled now that I was no longer looking with just my normal perceptions. Every nerve in my body felt like a compressed spring just waiting for the worst to happen, but I pushed ahead regardless. Who else was going to do it, I thought wryly, Lewis?

  I opened my eyes and looked at the body. Unlike Lou and Lewis who had multi-colored auras swirling about them like pixy dust, the body was as devoid of color as it was of life. My power filled my body and poured out like an overfilled bucket as I slowly pushed my awareness down into the body. For a moment there was nothing, but then something stirred. It was skittish and fleeting, like something half-glimpsed from the corner of your eye. It wasn’t the remnants of consciousness that I was looking for, but something else, something that recognized my power and pushed back. Suddenly I felt connections snapping together like in a circuit. Something had reacted to my presence and was waking up. I tried to pull out, snap the connection of power, but it was too late.

  The man’s left eye flew open revealing a bloodshot orb that was clouded over from death. Lou and Lewis bolted to their feet and stepped back. I hurried to follow suit, but the corpse’s right arm—the one that hadn’t been trapped under its body—shot out and grabbed my knee. Struggling to break its grip and stand up, I tried to twist my leg free of its grip, but the dead hand was like a vice. The corpse sat up slowly, pulling on me to help bring it into a sitting position. I kicked at it with my free leg and landed a pair of strikes to its forehead. Skin slipped off the face in bloody strips and landed on the pavement with a wet slap, but the dead man paid no attention. Its mouth opened wide as it tried to pull me towards it. The stink of putrescence wafted from it and made me gag reflexively.

  A pair of shots rang out to my right. The bullets took the corpse in the chest and tugged it backward away from me. Its grip failed and I went sprawling backward, my foot slipping on some of the flesh that had fallen onto the ground in front of me. Gravel bit into my palms as I dragged myself backwards. I scrambled to get up and saw Lou holding the gun steady on the newly risen zombie. Already it was pushing itself up with its good arm. The one that had been broken hung limply at its side, dripping blood and gore from the tear in its shoulder. It looked at me with one dead eye and one empty socket and hissed.

  My training took over and compressed reality down to the small area of the crime scene. The screams of fear and panic from the crowds behind me faded into the background, as did all of the police officers outside the tape who were standing glued in place with disbelief. They all transformed into indistinct blurs shaded by the flashing blue and red lights of the police cars. They were insignificant. All that existed now were the three living people and the two corpses in this circle.

  The second body sat up and pulled off the sheet that covered it. Lewis’s eyes were glued on the one in front of me. He hadn’t noticed the movement near him and probably wouldn’t until it was too late. “Lewis!” I yelled, and pointed at the sitting corpse with my left hand as my right sought my gun. He looked over with the slowness of someone who was in shock. He fought off the feeling and fumbled the gun from his holster.

  Lou emptied his clip at the zombie as it shambled towards me. The bullets tore through its torso and slammed into a patrol car parked on the opposite side of the street. The zombie ignored them—and Lou—and continued towards me, its mouth stretched as if it would swallow me whole. My gun came up and I sighted down the barrel at its head. The first shot took out a chunk of its neck, blowing bloody pieces onto the street behind it. The tremors in my hands lessened as I squeezed off the second shot and caught the thing in the forehead, punching a finger-sized hole in the front of the skull. Lou had reloaded now and followed my lead. We pumped round after round into it until there wasn’t much left above the shoulders but a bloody stump. It fell to the pavement in a boneless heap.

  “A little help over here!” Lewis yelled. Lou and I turned and saw that the second one was grappling with him. He had lost his gun at some point and was trying to fend off the creature with his arms while it tried to bite off his face. It snapped its jaws inches away from him, his huge arms unable to push it away. “Get this thing off of me!” He had lost the shock that had slowed him earlier, but he had given it time to get inside his guard and he wasn’t strong enough to fend it off. The dead didn’t care about pain so they didn’t think twice about overexerting their muscles or breaking their bones. And worse, it had gotten close enough that Lou and I didn’t dare take a shot even from this distance for fear of hitting Lewis.

  My mind raced to form a scenario that would work and not get any of us killed as we ran over to help him. The only weapon I had brought with me was my gun and two clips of ammo. I mentally kicked myself for not grabbing anything else, even a knife would have been preferable. I flicked the safety on my gun, and at a full run brought the barrel across in a wicked arc against the side of the zombie’s head right above the ear. Its head tilted to the side with the force as I heard bone crack. Lou stayed back, waiting for the zombie to fall away so he could get a clear shot, but it stayed right where it was. The momentum had carried me to the left side of it while Lou remained on the right.

  “Hey!” I yelled at it, and put some of my power into it, hoping that some residue of the power I had manifested earlier was still there.

  The corpse turned its head and looked at me with dead, soulless eyes. Some flesh was missing on the right side of its face revealing a death’s-head grin that reached all the way to the hinge of the jaw. The face and teeth were blood covered, dark maroon splashes in the pale glow of the streetlamps. The eyes stayed locked on mine as it tossed Officer Lewis away with an ease that the smaller man would never have been able to duplicate in life. There was a power emanating from this thing that felt like the air before a lightning strike. It recognized me somehow, and the combination of that feeling and the sneering skull that stared at me from five feet away made me feel like a deer in the headlights. It tasted victory and hissed at me just like the other one had.

  It lunged at me just as Lou fired. His bullet went wide and smashed out a window across the street. I tried to raise my gun, but it was so much faster than the other one. It was on me, toppling us backward, crushing my gun between the two of us as we hit the pavement. My back hit first, then my head, and the world went white for a minute. I jammed my left forearm into its neck to keep it from biting me. It grabbed my shoulders and squeezed until I felt its nails digging through the fabric of my trench coat, kneading into my muscles, trying to make a fist with only my muscles and bones in the way. And that wouldn’t last too long if it kept increasing the pressure like it was. I felt a warm sensation on my chest as the shield tattoo sprang to life. The fingers loosened their grip and the snapping teeth backed off an inch or two, but it was still fighting. The feeling of warmth spread across my chest, and I looked down slightly to see that the zombie was bleeding on me from a heart wound it had suffered. The blood looked like tar in the dark as it spilled across my coat and shirt.

  Lou and Lewis appeared on either side of it, grabbed it by the arms and pulled. The hands stayed clenched on my shoulders for a moment before losing its grip because of its own slick blood. I fell back onto the ground and felt the fire return to the places I had hurt in the first fall. I clicked off the safety to my gun and waited for my vision to steady. The zombie thrashed in their grip but ignored them otherwise, choosing to focus on me instead. Those death-shrouded eyes never wavered from me. Finally it slipped free of Lewis’s gore-soaked hands and pushed Lou hard enough to send him sprawling to the pavement. It loomed over me and gnashed its teeth.

  Still on my back, I
raised my gun and fired until the clip was empty. Panic and double vision made my shots wild, but at this distance I hoped I wouldn’t need good aim. The bullets blew teeth out, tore off an ear, and ripped a section of scalp off its head, and still it stood. I fired five shots, but none of them had destroyed the brain sufficiently to kill it. It staggered towards me on unsteady legs, its ruined head dripping bits of meat and skull when it moved. I dropped out the empty clip and searched for the full one. Just as I slapped it home and was busy working the slide, Lewis came in from the side and tackled the thing like he was a linebacker. I scrambled to my feet and ran to him as he rolled away from it. Lou came up beside me and we raised our guns in unison. The two guns barked and belched fire as fast as we could pull the trigger.

  The guns clicked on empty. Blue smoke curled from the muzzles filling the air with the pungent aroma of cordite. There was nothing left of the creature above the shoulder blades as it tumbled to the ground spewing the small amount of black blood that it had retained onto the street.

  Inspector Lewis came to stand beside us, panting and wiping the larger bits from his clothes. “They dead?” he asked, looking from one corpse to the other.

  “I hope so,” I said. “I’m out of ammo.” They laughed nervously, but never looked away from the bodies. “Lou, you got any full gas cans in your car?”

  “Yeah, one or two. You want to torch them?”

  “Better safe than sorry,” I said, and shrugged. “I can still feel the spell on them trying to get them to move.”

  “Right,” Lou said, and ran off in the direction of one of the cop cars.

  “You played football in college?” I asked Lewis.

  He grinned. “You could tell, huh?”

  “Lucky guess,” I said, and smiled. Nothing brought males together like a shared sense of danger. And killing things, that usually worked too. Lewis and I had never gotten along; in fact we were pretty close to hating each other. I didn’t even know his first name, unless it actually was Inspector. But now, at least for tonight, we were equals. Even if we would never be friends we would at least respect each other now. All it took was a couple of risen corpses trying to bite off our faces. Nice and easy.