Hellsbane 01 - Hellsbane

by Paige Cuccaro

“Emma Jane…”

  I opened the door.

  “Hi. I need you to sign, but I can’t find my pen,” the beefy mailman said.

  “No problem. Come in; I’ve got one in my office.” I left the door open and turned.

  “Don’t let him in, Emma Jane,” Tommy said.

  “Relax. He’ll be gone in a second.” I was halfway down the hall when Tommy yelled, “Emma Jane, look out!”

  Tommy charged from the boutique room into the entryway behind me. He swung his arm, bringing his big sword to his shoulder.

  Time slowed. Something behind me growled, like no animal I’d ever heard. I spun around and saw—I kid you not—a great, horned demon.

  Spittle sprayed out with every breath from his big, red nostrils and from between his white, pointy teeth. The nice, normal-looking mailman had morphed into a red-skinned devil-thing. There were veins bulging up his thick neck and along his forehead, where his horns poked out from his head like a bull. And he was still wearing the tattered remains of his mailman’s uniform, shoes shredded by cloven hoofs.

  Tommy swung his sword, but he was weak and off-balance. The big devil-thing dodged him easily, shoving an arm out to send Tommy flying past me and into the wall. Drywall cracked and Tommy slid to the floor, breathless. The beast charged toward him, and like a deer in headlights, I stood in his way.

  Barreling at me, he pulled a dagger from his mail pouch and swung it. I hit the floor, reflexes taking over. When he lunged forward, swinging again, I rolled out of the way. He kept coming, stomping my grandmother’s hardwood floors with his big, goatlike feet.

  I snagged the little table under the mirror in the entryway and shoved it in his path. He stumbled into it, then swept it to the side, slamming it into the wall and knocking the mirror off its nail. The heavy frame hit hard, glass shattering across the floor. I turned and covered my face just as Tommy leapt over me.

  Metal clashed against metal. I pushed up, scooting backward on my butt, away from the fight. Sword and dagger were swinging so fast, they were mostly a blur. Tommy lunged and swung, caught meat, then ducked back. The devil-thing parried, then attacked, his fat, three-fingered hands wielding the dagger as though he’d been born holding it.

  He caught Tommy’s sword arm, slicing flesh, spraying blood, and Tommy yelled, dropping his weapon. He was already injured. It was a wonder he was even standing.

  He stumbled back, searching the floor for his sword, eyes wide, panicked.

  Where is it? Frantic, I used the bottom of my skirt to grab a big shard of the mirror and jammed it hard into the devil-thing’s ankle. He didn’t even look down, his yellow gaze on Tommy, stalking toward him, dagger dripping with Tommy’s blood.

  He reached out, snagged his big hand around Tommy’s neck, and lifted him off his feet.

  “Time to die, nephilim,” he said in a gruff voice that still sounded creepily like the human mailman I’d welcomed inside.

  Tommy fought in the devil’s grip, kicking at his body, landing blow after blow. He pounded his fists against the thing’s thick red arms, but he just laughed, raising his dagger, ready to plunge it deep into Tommy’s gut.

  Where was his damn sword? I scanned the entry, spotted the hilt sticking out from under the crumpled rug. Without thinking, I scrambled over on hands and knees, shoving slivers of mirror out of my path. But when I took a second to glance back at Tommy, a glass splinter jammed into the side of my palm. I plucked it out. Tommy was still hanging from the demon’s stiff-arm, his face ashen, his lips turning blue. He jerked wildly, his gaze steady on me instead of the devil. He shook his head as best he could, his dark lips mouthing, “No. Don’t touch it,” in little more than a hoarse croak.

  My fingers found the sword, gathered the handle into my palm. I lifted it in one easy motion. The weight of it felt good in my hand, the round grip settling perfectly into my palm. I raised it to my shoulder like a baseball bat just as a searing white heat burned along my inner wrist.

  “Ah, shit!” I ignored the stinging pain and swung. In that brief instant, as the blade sailed toward him, the demon turned as though something about me was suddenly worth his notice. The blade sliced cleanly through his neck. His yellow eyes, with creepy, vertical, black-slit pupils, blinked at me.

  “Nephilim,” he said.

  And then his head fell off.

  The body collapsed, and Tommy crumpled to the floor with it. He sucked breath into his lungs, then scooted backward a moment before the whole of the demon who was once a mailman melted into a big pile of black, smoldering ooze.

  I flicked my gaze to Tommy, who was clutching his neck, staring at the pile of gooey devil. I swallowed around the emotion clogging at the back of my throat. “That was not a mailman.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  “I told you not to touch the sword,” Tommy said, leaning his back against the wall. His fingers felt over the blotchy imprints the devil left around his neck as he winced through a hard swallow.

  “Right. Sorry. Didn’t mean to save your life.”

  “You got lucky. Only way to kill a demon is to take his head,” he said. “If you’d done any less, you’d be the one lying there dead.”

  “Demon. Right. Makes sense,” I said casually, as though I wasn’t totally freaking out. “Mailmen are demons in disguise. Gives the phrase ‘going postal’ a whole new meaning.”

  “Not all mailmen. Just this one,” he said.

  The house reeked of rotting eggs, the smell wafting up from the pile of melting mailman ooze in the middle of my entryway. My stomach, already roiling with nerves, felt worse because of the smell. Whatever the devil-thing was, he’d been alive when I’d hacked off his head. He had looked human two minutes before that. And I’d killed him.

  My hands shook so hard, I had to put the sword aside before I dropped it. I couldn’t keep my knees from wobbling, so I slid down the wall and hit the floor with an ungraceful jolt.

  “God, I can’t believe I killed the mailman.”

  “Stop saying that. And he wasn’t a mailman,” Tommy said.

  “Stop saying what?”

  “God,” he said. “Don’t take His name in vain.”

  “Seriously?”

  Tommy’s eyes met mine, somber as death. “Yes.”

  “Wow. Um, okay. Sorry.” Never had figured him for the Bible-thumping type.

  His gaze shifted to my wrist and he sighed, leaning his head back so he could stare at the ceiling. “Dammit, Emma Jane, I told you not to touch the sword.”

  The burning sensation on the inside of my right wrist had dulled, but the mark left behind looked like I’d been branded with a hot iron.

  “What the hell?” I rubbed my thumb over the raised, puckered flesh, careful not to press too hard. The pink blotchy scar was in the shape of an X with a straight line down the center, about two and a half inches long and maybe two inches wide.

  And it was healing—fast.

  “You’re being marked,” he said, without raising his head. “It’s like a tattoo…from the inside out.”

  “What? Why? How?”

  He shrugged, still not bothering to look at me. “How does God do anything? You’re like me now, an illorum, a soldier. Welcome to my life.” He didn’t make it sound like a good thing.

  “God? Ha. No. Wrong,” I said, watching the wrinkled flesh heal and smooth. Slowly, an image darkened through my skin. The X sharpened into two keys and the line defined into a sword. “I never agreed to this.”

  “Free will, sweetheart. You picked up the sword and used it to smite a defamer of God.”

  “Smite? Seriously?”

  “You chose.” He opened his eyes now, straightened his head to look at me. “I told you not to touch the sword.”

  “You stop saying that. I didn’t have a choice. That thing would’ve killed you.”

  “You did have a choice,” he said. “You could’ve—should have—let me die.”

  “Right. My bad.” I rubbed at the scar, now almost completely healed. �
�So, that sword did this? What is it, some kind of booby-trap thing? An antitheft device? That’s a little over the top, don’t you think?”

  “Listen to me, Emma Jane. You’re a nephilim, like me. You picked up the sword, your actions committed you. It’s done. There’s no going back.”

  “Whatever.” I pushed to my feet and wiped at something tickling my cheek. The back of my hand came away with a smear of black ooze. “Ew, what is that?”

  “Demon blood,” he said. “Better go wash it off. It’ll start to burn.”

  “Demon. Right.” I laughed, but my heart wasn’t in it. After all, what else could it be? The guy had turned into a friggin’ devil-thing right in front of me. He’d tried to kill Tommy. And that pile of stinking goo on my floor didn’t look like it’d ever been something human.

  Shit. I’d killed him…whatever he was, human or not.

  Was I a murderer or a hero? I wasn’t sure, wouldn’t think about it. I tiptoed around broken mirror shards and hurried to the bathroom at the end of the hall, trying hard not to totally wig out.

  “So demon blood burns people?” I called back to Tommy. I snagged the washcloth from the set hanging behind the toilet and leaned against the sink for a closer look in the mirror.

  Apparently, when I’d sliced off the devil-mailman’s head, his gooey black blood had sprayed everywhere. There were gobs all over my blouse, in my hair, on my cheeks, and—grosser still—a hairsbreadth from the corner of my mouth.

  With my short hair, the gunk wasn’t too hard to get out. I had the same sunny-blonde hair as Tommy, but mine was poker-straight. I kept it in a short bob, off my neck but long enough I’d still look like a girl.

  I’ve never been the girly-girl type, but I like guys, and I’ve never had much trouble attracting their attention—even the ones I’d rather not attract. My blue eyes helped, and more than enough men like petite, athletic types, so I do okay.

  I left the white washcloth, with its little rose appliqué now stained gray, to soak in the sink and noticed the pale smear of blood on the side of my palm. I brushed my finger over the spot and found smooth, undamaged skin. The cut I’d gotten from the broken mirror was already healed. How was that possible? How was I healing so fast?

  It was too much. I couldn’t think about it, so I pushed the questions from my mind and padded back down the hall to Tommy. The putrid odor of sulfur was like a thick cloud in the air.

  Tommy was exactly as I’d left him. I sidestepped around the splatters of steaming demon blood and jagged mirror shards and knelt beside him. “You okay? You didn’t answer me.”

  His eyes fluttered open and he swallowed hard, grimacing. “Sorry. Yeah. What was the question?”

  “I asked why demon blood burns people.”

  “It doesn’t. Just nephilim. And it’s not the blood that burns, it’s the brimstone mixed in it. Brimstone is like acid to us.” His head kind of wobbled like it was too heavy. He blinked, scanning the hallway. “Where’s my sword?”

  I walked around the heap of black ooze to where I’d left the sword and bent to grab it, then stopped. “Is this thing going to tattoo me again? I don’t want a barcode on my forehead or something.”

  His brow wrinkled and he shook his head. “No. It’s already done the damage.”

  I picked up the sword, surprised again at how right it felt to hold. “It looks way heavier than it is. What’s it made of?”

  Tommy held out his hand and took it from me as soon as I crossed the hall to him. He relaxed a little the instant the hilt was settled in his palm. “Metal forged in the fires of Heaven and the power of my will. Pure humans could use it and nothing happens.”

  “Oh, yeah?” I was going to laugh, but when I saw how serious he was, I swallowed it. “What’re you saying? I’m not human?”

  “Half. You’re half human.”

  I knelt beside him. “And half what?”

  “Angel. You’re a nephilim. The child of a human and angel.”

  This time I did laugh. Loudly. I couldn’t help it—it was like something out of a sci-fi movie. “Listen, I love my parents, but angels they ain’t. Plus, my dad died two years ago. As far as I know, angels don’t die.”

  “He wasn’t your father,” Tommy said, like he knew it for a fact.

  “Yes, he was,” I said, but a prickle of doubt itched up my spine. I’d always been different. My gift was something I’d instinctively hidden from everyone because I knew it wasn’t normal. But I was human, wasn’t I?

  “Your father was an angel. He seduced your mother and fell from Grace. Just like mine,” Tommy said. “He’s one of the Fallen. An affront to God.”

  “Okay, there you go. Besides the whole sleeping with fallen angels thing, my mom wouldn’t cheat on my dad.” The certainty eased the tension knotting across my shoulders. “In fact, it’s because of the sanctity of wedding vows that I’m sure she wouldn’t go back on them. My whole family’s crazy religious. She just…wouldn’t.”

  “She didn’t have a choice. They’re angels, Emma Jane. They can take what they want.” He shifted against the doorjamb, pushing up, trying to sit straighter, though judging by the pain twisting his face, it didn’t seem worth the effort.

  “Rape? You’re saying an angel raped my mother?”

  “In a way.” He leaned forward and raised his sword behind his head, point down, aiming for the sheath I could see peeking from under his shirt at the base of his neck. But just before Tommy slid it into place, the blade vanished, disintegrating into a million sparkling particles that spread out from the center and faded, leaving only the hilt to nestle into place. The handle stuck up behind his head, and he leaned back against it as though it were a kind of comfort.

  “No way. My mom would’ve told me. Someone in the family would’ve hinted, would’ve let it slip.” My family sucked at keeping secrets. Somebody would’ve gossiped.

  “Not if no one knew, and she didn’t remember it happening.”

  “Right. ’Cause rape is one of those things that slip the mind, like where you left your car keys or losing the TV remote.”

  “The Fallen wipes the woman’s memory,” he said. “They’re pretty good at doing whatever it takes to avoid punishment. The woman never remembers that it happened.”

  “Until her kid picks up a sword.”

  “Right.”

  It sounded crazy, but something about it struck a chord deep inside me. It was nuts to believe any of it, but denying it was almost as hard.

  The scar on my wrist itched the way newly healed wounds do sometimes. I turned my hand to look. The two keys crossed over the long sword were so clear it was like they’d been drawn with a pen. It was real, if nothing else. That mark, the memory of it burning into my skin, was real.

  “If I wasn’t half angel, a nephilim thing like you said, would the sword have burned me like this?”

  “No,” he said. “To a full human, it’s just a sword.”

  I flexed my hand, watching the veins and tendons play under the scarred flesh. “So when you told me not to touch the sword, you already knew I was like you?”

  “I’ve known you were nephilim since high school.”

  “High school? I wasn’t even on your radar back then.” Was I? Hope fluttered through my chest, and for a second, I was that insecure sixteen-year-old again.

  “You were, but not in a way I wanted anyone else to know about. I could sense you. Wasn’t sure what it was at first, but after I walked in on Coach Clark killing a demon in the showers during a ball game, I found out everything pretty fast.”

  “Coach Clark? He died of a heart attack.”

  Tommy closed his eyes, tried to shake his head, though it didn’t move much. “A demon ripped his heart out of his chest. I picked up his sword to help him, and the next thing I know, I’m an illorum, too.”

  “Damn sword.”

  “Right?” He tried to smile, but it faded fast. “An angel, most likely a seraphim, cleaned everything up afterward. Made it look like a regular h
eart attack. Can’t have the masses finding out how deadly their kind can really be.”

  “Seraphim?”

  “Yeah. They’re angels, but they don’t talk much.” He hissed out a breath, grimacing, then relaxed. “Actually, they don’t communicate with us at all. You’ll see. They just stand around, watching. Too pure to dirty themselves by conversing with us illorum.”

  “Wait, illorum? I thought we were nephilim.”

  “A nephilim is the child of an angel and a human. An illorum is a nephilim who’s been marked to hunt the Fallen. Most nephilim go their whole lives never knowing what they are, never being marked.”

  “Lucky them,” I said.

  “Yeah. It’ll make you wonder what your life could’ve been like if not for one stupid impulse to pick up a sword.” He gave a half smile that didn’t have the oomph to reach his eyes.

  “So Coach Clark was an illorum?”

  “Yeah. It was totally messed up, seeing him fight that pizza delivery guy,” Tommy said, his gaze drifting as though remembering the scene.

  “The pizza guy wasn’t a demon?” It sounded weird to say.

  Tommy’s gaze flicked to me, his eyes a little too wide. “No. I mean, yeah. He was a demon. They don’t always shift into their natural form. They’re stronger when they do, but lucky for us, they’re cocky, too.”

  “So you’ve been doing this, hunting demons, since high school?”

  “Demons and the fallen angels who called them up to do their bidding.” He exhaled, as though suddenly feeling the weight of the past eight years. “I tried to forget. Tried to pretend it didn’t happen. But they wouldn’t let me. They kept hounding me, bugging me to fight.”

  “Demons?”

  “No. Angels,” he said. “The ones who will talk to us…incessantly. They’re called magisters. They wanted me to train, to pick up the fight where Coach Clark left off. I didn’t want to. I didn’t know what it meant. So I ran. It was six years before I saw my parents again. They’d thought I was dead. Wanted me to move back home, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t expose them to the kind of life I had.”

  “They don’t know?”

  He shook his head. “They’d never believe me if I tried to explain. They’re safer this way.”