Demon Seeds_A Supernatural Horror Novel

by Tobias Wade

  “His soul was mine from the moment I bound it within the Codex, and by setting him free you have stolen him from me. I DO NOT LIKE. BEING STOLEN FROM.” The last words bellow from all directions; the sudden gale from the forest indistinguishable from the old man’s breath.

  Dr. Beckel falls to his knees from the impact of the encompassing fury, though he immediately reclaims his footing in a scramble of defiance.

  “Take him back, I don’t care,” Beckel shouts. “You and I have a deal though, don’t we? I called and you answered. If you want my soul too, then you will serve me.”

  “First things first,” Henry says. He snaps his fingers and Elijah coughs blood. Both events happen simultaneously. One instant Elijah was inside the book, the next he was kneeling in the circle beside Dr. Beckel. Back in his own body.

  “Enough!” Dr. Beckel screams, mouth flecked with spit from his maniacal eagerness. “Now for my wish, Lucifer. I want you to let all the sinners out of Hell and bring them here to Earth. I want your army of the damned to obey my orders and serve me until my dying breath. Until the day you return to claim my soul, I do not want to see you again.”

  The silence is broken only by Henry’s chuckling—soft peels of sardonic laughter reverberating deep into Elijah’s bones. A cold wind whistles through the trees, making the whole forest seem to be laughing alongside him. Dr. Beckel grips the knife tighter in his hand, looking as though he is prepared to lunge at Henry if he doesn’t get his wish. “The rite is complete. We have a deal, Lucifer!”

  “Don’t worry, mankind is damned with or without you,” Henry sighs in exasperation, “but Herman never made a deal with Lucifer—there is no Lucifer, no Devil, no Hell. They are only names mortals give to their fear of what they do not understand. You may call me a demon if you wish, but it will not make me serve man.”

  “How are you even in this world if it was not from my summons?” Dr. Beckel drops once more to his knees.

  “I am growing from a seed,” Henry says, “but I was not planted by you, and I will not waste my gift on you before I’ve even had the chance to bloom for myself.”

  Dr. Beckel growls in exasperation, pouncing upon Henry with sudden savagery. The bespectacled man waves his hand and a searing flame engulfs the librarian. Elijah watches transfixed as Beckel’s skin melts like running water, revealing bones splitting from the heat and clouds of evaporating blood and marrow which fill the night air. Henry turns his gaze toward Elijah who still kneels in the circle.

  “Are you going to kill me?” Elijah asks, his voice a hollow whisper.

  The old man grins sheepishly like a schoolboy who was caught misbehaving. He rubs a calloused hand across the back of his neck.

  “Do you want me to?”

  “I don’t know.” Death doesn’t seem like such a bad option at the moment.

  “If you could have a wish. Anything in the world—what would it be?”

  Elijah is too stunned to answer.

  “I’m not asking for your opinion,” Henry says, walking toward him. Henry hesitates a moment outside the circle, but then steps over it quite easily. “There is a right answer to this question. Only one.”

  There’s less than a foot of space separating them now. Elijah’s mind is racing. Henry’s fingers are flexing, dancing and strumming at his sides as though playing an invisible piano. He can barely contain his own power. He’s itching for an excuse to use it. If Elijah answers wrong here, he’s quite certain that he will never have a second opportunity.

  “Everything,” Elijah says at last. “I’d take everything.”

  The strumming fingers lie still. It takes a heroic act of bravery for Elijah to simply look up at the old man’s face. At the black marble eyes. At the crease of a smile, swiftly widening into a broad grin.

  “Everything,” Henry echos. “Why let The Beast have all the fun, eh? You’ll come with me, won’t you?”

  “Anywhere,” Elijah hears himself reply. His mind is blank. All he can do is stare at those black eyes.

  “Everywhere,” Henry chimes. “But Marapoza first. My old strength is growing in me once more, and now that I have the book, it’s time to make sure nothing interrupts our game.”

  13

  “How did it happen?”

  “Huh?” Jessica’s heavy eyelids revolt against the light. She draws the hoodie of her new sweatshirt tight over her face.

  “Your back. How’d you hurt it?”

  Jessica rolls over in the confined airplane seat, facing the window. Dantes doesn’t take the hint.

  “Ender said his last mission was so important because he needed the money. He didn’t say why. I was just wondering…”

  “Don’t.”

  Dantes shifts uncomfortably in his seat. There’d been an eight hour delay as the airport scrambled to figure out what happened with the electronics hijacking, and now they were halfway into their twelve hour flight. No one had slept or eaten. No one spoke much. As long as they didn’t talk about it, they were just one of the thousands of other inconvenienced passengers trying to get back to normalcy. The moment one of them acknowledged how helpless and afraid they were though, that illusion would be irrevocably destroyed.

  “So much for trusting us,” Dantes says, glancing back at Jordan in the row behind them. Jordan shakes his head as if to say ‘leave me out of this.’ Dantes' jaw is set though. He reaches out to place his hand on Jessica’s shoulder, but she shrugs it off. A moment of tense hesitation, then she turns, using her hands to lift her legs into the new position.

  “You’re going to kill him, aren’t you?” she asks, although it sounds more like an accusation than a question.

  Dantes looks back at Jordan, but the older man is wearing a sleeping mask now and doesn’t react.

  “He killed your friend. You’re terrified of him. You probably hate him, and you want nothing more than to kill them both,” Jessica says.

  “I don’t hate your father,” Dantes interjects. “If it weren’t for him—”

  “He’s not my father.”

  “Well, he was like a father to me. What do you want me to say?” Dantes asks, unable to meet the ferocity of her gaze.

  “Don’t tell me what I want to hear. Tell me the truth. If you get the chance to kill Ender, will you do it?”

  The struggle in Dantes' mind is reflected in the hard line of his mouth. To his credit, he manages to meet her eyes again as he nods.

  “You hesitated,” Jessica says. “Does that mean—”

  “Only because I didn’t want to hurt you,” comes the quiet reply. “I won’t hesitate when it’s time to kill that monster.”

  “What if I don’t let you?” she asks. “What if I try to stop you? Will you kill me too?”

  Dantes looks helplessly back to his sleeping companion. Then to Jessica: “Is this because of what he said in the airport? Just because that thing called you his ‘darling child’ doesn’t mean he’s still in there.”

  She falls quiet as a stewardess passes. An elderly lady on the opposite aisle asks if there is any update on what happened in the airport, but the stewardess shakes her head. The old woman is trembling and says she’s feeling nauseous, and the stewardess promises to return with some ginger tablets. It isn’t chaos or bedlam, but if the demon’s goal was to make people afraid, it certainly did its job. The wide eyes, the anxious stress splitting their voices, the restless turning and agitated movements—not a man, woman, or child here wasn’t thinking about that terrible intrusion.

  “I jumped,” Jessica says at last. Dantes' face is completely impassive, but she has his full attention. The way his eyes narrow, his whole body rigidly to attention—is that just something every soldier does? Jessica isn’t sure if she likes the intensity of his scrutiny which strips away everything in the world besides her words and his recognition of them.

  “I tried to kill myself,” she says, her own words foreign and strange in her ears as though someone else is speaking them. “I don’t know how to explain it so you don
’t think I’m weak—”

  “I don’t think that.”

  She nods, glancing back at Jordan who has begun to lightly snore. “I was an impostor playing someone I wasn’t. And everyone around me—they didn’t seem quite real either. My parents, my friends—they all got to know a character that I was playing. I didn’t know who the real me was, and the more I tried to stop acting, the more artificial and insincere it all felt. I tried to just put it all out of my head, but it kept coming back, louder every time, until I couldn’t even hear myself think. I hadn’t planned to jump, but it seemed like the closer to the edge I got, the quieter and more peaceful it was inside. I wasn’t afraid—I wasn’t angry—it was just so loud for so long and that quiet was the most beautiful thing I’d ever heard. I decided that I could either go through the motions of someone else’s life, or I could jump and see if—this sounds stupid, doesn’t it?”

  “Not to me.”

  Jessica rolls her eyes. “You’re laughing at me.”

  He isn’t. She knows he isn’t, but accepting that he is taking it seriously means she has to take it seriously too, and that’s more difficult than she expected. Dantes doesn’t say anything. Jessica takes a deep breath and continues.

  “I just thought that if I jumped I would end up where I was supposed to be,” she finishes, the words sounding unforgivably lame even as she spoke them.

  “Maybe it worked,” he says.

  “It didn’t. If it weren’t for me, you and Ender never would have been down there in the first place. It’s my fault all this is happening—” it’s getting loud again. Her thoughts are racing faster, her breathing keeping pace. Then the warm pressure of his hand on hers, and for a moment it’s as quiet as death again.

  “It’s not too late. We can bring him back. If you really believe your father is still in there—”

  “He’s not—”

  “Yes he is. I see that more than ever now. And I promise not to do anything… until you give the word. Same with your mother.”

  She nods, slow to withdraw her hand.

  “Thank you, Dantes,” she says. “I want to be the one to make that call.”

  “Aye aye, Captain.” He grins, making a smart salute. Jessica turns back to the window, unable to hide her smile any other way.

  “Stewardess!” the old woman across calls again. One frail hand has begun shaking violently, the thin fingers twisted into a claw.

  “Yes ma’am, I’ll be right there,” the stewardess replies from down the aisle.

  “Please, it’s urgent!” the old woman insists. The feeble hand is clutching at the front of her floral dress, clasping and unclasping in rapid, broken movements. Dantes unbuckles his seat belt and half stands before Jessica grabs his arm and drags him back into his seat.

  “I’m going to check on—” he begins, silenced by Jessica’s urgent finger pointing toward the front of the plane. A woman has turned in her seat to look at them with two eyes of perfect black marble.

  “It’s mom,” Jessica whispers. “She’s on the plane.”

  “Yes ma’am, what is it?” The stewardess kneels beside the old woman.

  “Oh thank you, thank you.” The woman clutches the stewardess’s hands in both of hers, drawing her close. “I just wanted to ask if you were afraid.”

  “Ma’am?”

  The old woman’s eyes have rolled back in her head, leaving only two milky-white orbs. Her hands are no longer shaking. In fact, they seem to be holding on so tightly that the stewardess can’t break away.

  “Please ma’am, you’re hurting me,” the stewardess says, her voice scared and weak.

  “He wanted me to tell you,” the old woman’s voice is ice, “that he is here with us now.”

  “Who is? Who is here?” Hysteria bubbling just beneath the surface of the stewardess’s voice.

  Dantes pulls away from Jessica and helps unlatch the old woman’s hands from the stewardess.

  “The Beast is here with us on this plane. He wants you to know...” The woman’s voice is trembling violently. Her face is a shock of fright.

  “We need to land. This woman needs immediate medical—” the stewardess, leaning in close.

  The woman viciously swipes her nails across the stewardess’s face. Long lines of blood lance through the air. The old woman’s face is alternating rapidly between a snarl and abject horror.

  “You must pay for trying to steal the divine flesh,” comes the shaking voice, seemingly crawling up the woman’s throat without her permission. “Don’t fret dear, you aren’t alone. Can’t you hear the world screaming with you? Scream together, children. Scream until The Beast can hear.”

  The woman collapses back into her seat, heaving for air. The confusion freezes the moment, but it shatters an instant later as the plane lurches precipitously in the air.

  14

  A torpedo of skin and bones and sinew, every fiber primed for deadly purpose. Jordan doesn’t have his Glock or his combat knife. But neither does he need them to kill.

  “Jordan, wait—”

  Jordan doesn’t listen. Before Dantes can stand to block the aisle, Jordan has used the armrests of the adjacent seats to launch himself into the air. His eyes are locked on Mackenzie, her black eyes smiling back.

  The plane lurches again before Jordan regains his footing, flinging him against the side of the plane to tangle helplessly with a hysterical woman and her wailing child. Both hands on the seat in front of him, Jordan vaults into the air once more, clearing the row and pouncing into the aisle with animal grace which belies his age. Mackenzie is on her feet, backing away from him. She almost looks afraid for a moment, but that awful smile never falters.

  “Stand down, soldier!” Dantes bellows in hot pursuit.

  “It’s okay,” Jessica shouts. “You have to stop her.”

  Mackenzie is cornered against the cockpit door. Jordan is only a few strides away. Then she’s gone—the whole plane descending into pitch-blackness. Jordan’s indistinct swearing is barely audible over the surge of panic rising in a hundred throats. Blue phosphorescent emergency lights flicker along the aisle for a moment, but the light is bleeding freely into the open air where it dissolves into eddies of shadow. The glimmer of stars out the window wink out one by one. Soon the darkness is everywhere and everything.

  The plane drops again. Two—three—four seconds of absolute free-fall. Blind groping hands and flailing limbs tumble over one another, the pandemonium of drowning people churning the black waters. It should be less terrifying when the plane rights itself, but it isn’t. That’s when people are finally able to fill their lungs and scream for real.

  “Can you hear me, Mom?” Jessica adds her voice to the madding chorus. A single note in a swelling symphony can still be heard when the dissonance breaks the melody. The alien glimmer of hope in her voice speaks stark contrast from the roar of chaos.

  “Jessica?” The reply punctures the wall of noise. Maybe it’s the desperation, maybe it’s the darkness, but Jessica doesn’t hear any trace of a demon in the longing call. The voice she hears is the voice which would call her to breakfast or sing her to sleep. The timbre breaks with the same emotion of her mother praying beside her hospital bed.

  “I’m here, Mom. Please make this stop.”

  “It won’t stop until—” until what? The words vanish in a heavy gasp. A bone-rattling SLAM punctuates the vacuum of Mackenzie’s words.

  “Got her!” Jordan grunts. “Get the lights back on, or I’ll—”

  The lights are all on at once, the sudden luminescence searing their eyes. The stark reality of the passengers’ disorder reveals tangled masses in the aisles, with others crawling over seats or lying bloodied where they were hurled into something. Throats frozen mid-scream, eyes wild and feral, clothes in disarray and hands helplessly clasping at one for vain reassurance. Jordan is pinning Mackenzie’s arms brutally behind her back, forcing her facedown on the ground.

  “This is your Captain speaking,” crackles the loudspea
ker. “Please remain calm. There was an electrical issue, but everything is perfectly under control—”

  Jordan releases Mackenzie and rises unsteadily to his feet.

  “Keep her down,” Dantes orders with crisp, military precision. “Stewardess, go check on the captain. Radio the nearest airport and request an immediate emergency landing.”

  “Sir,” she mumbles, tripping over herself in her haste toward the cabin.

  “Jordan, I told you to—”

  “Five seconds,” Jordan cuts him off. He’s fully risen now and is helping Mackenzie to her feet. Dantes hurries forward, stopping in his tracks as Jordan blocks his path with an outstretched arm.

  “What the hell are you doing? Don’t let go of her!” Dantes pushes forward.

  “Dantes, look out!” Jessica shouts.

  He barely reacts in time, quickstepping back as Jordan hurls a wild blow at his face.

  “Five seconds, and a little darkness,” Jordan repeats, “and I see who you really are.” His voice is trembling with passion. A snarl, then the furrowed brow of confusion, then bared teeth, the cycle repeating again all in the span of a second.

  “It’s the demon,” Jessica interjects. “It’s gotten inside Jordan.”

  Jordan laughs—wild laughter, rabid flecks of spittle spraying the air as his neck contorts, testing its range. “Gotten inside? The Beast does not need to enter man. There is so much beast in him already, sleeping just below the surface. All it needs is a little nudge.”

  Dantes is cautious to stay out of Jordan’s range, but he doesn’t retreat any farther. Although Jordan is speaking, Dantes addresses Mackenzie when he speaks.

  “Go on then. Give me a nudge. I’m waiting.”

  Mackenzie scowls fiercely. Her eyes dart back to the cockpit.

  “Or make it go dark again and lay me out,” Dantes continues, taking a step forward. Jordan makes a lunge toward him, but Dantes scampers over the middle aisle to land on the other side of the plane by the emergency exit door. “Or better yet, just make me jump straight out.”