by L. L. Frost
Fifteen minutes later, I find the right bookcase and the volume located on the bottom shelf. Thick and heavy, I drag it onto the floor and sit next to it, tucking my cold toes beneath my knees.
The blank leather cover gives no hint to the book’s contents. When I open it, the spine creaks, stiff from disuse. A demon’s glyph cuts into the inside cover, pale with age but still legible. Two swirling storm clouds, with a third folding back on itself.
My heart accelerates, excitement making my fingers shake. This is it. An entire volume filled with info about Kellen. Careful, I turn the brittle pages until I find writing.
In a language I don’t understand.
The pale scratches that fill the pages in vertical lines look like tally marks, the line height and number of marks varying with an infrequent dot here and there, seemingly thrown in more for aesthetics than to delineate sentence breaks.
Shoulders slumping, I keep turning the pages in hope that, at some point, the language will transition into something legible. Instead, I come across a picture. One of those old style kind that were carved into wood, inked, then pressed onto the page.
It depicts a storm cloud, with a lightning bolt zig zagging down to the ground. A figure stands at the center, arms raised to the sky. Even with the faded details of the image, the demon’s face roughly resembles Kellen.
I flip through another two dozen pages before I find the next picture. A tidal wave curves toward a small village, greedy to engulf it and drag the huts and their inhabitants out to sea. Black clouds roll overhead, the etching of a man at the center of them.
The next image I find steps away from the block art and into the fine details of pencil. The artist beautifully detailed the twisting destruction of a tornado as it decimates a small city. And once more, Kellen’s figure stands at its center. Always within the storm.
Slowly, I close the book and stare at the cover. While I can’t read the damn thing, the pictures and the memory of Kellen’s metallic scent of thunderstorms helps to fill in the blanks. He’s some kind of Fulgar Demon, someone whose power affects storms, the kind that destroys cities when left out of control.
In the old days, when entire towns could vanish without notice, demons like Kellen were left unsupervised. But as technology advanced, such destruction couldn’t continue, not at the frequency the Fulgar Demon’s indulged in. Most were banished to the demon realm, corporeal forms forbidden to them on the human plane.
That Kellen walks around free right now means he’s taken precautions to subvert his destructive behavior.
I wedge the book back in place and push to my feet, walking to the next one on the list. When I locate it and pull the heavy volume off the shelf, I crack it open to find another glyph etched into the inside cover. This one resembles two inverted V’s nested together with a horizontal line struck through them. Almost like a partially formed snowflake.
When I turn the pages, I’m unsurprised to find more indecipherable writing and pictures dispersed throughout of frozen landscapes, glacial freezes, and one black image with several moon cycles forming the border in what I can only guess is a depiction of endless night.
The flavor of icicles fills my mouth. Emil, the Eis Demon. Capable of bringing on another ice age. My hands shake as I return the book to its place on the shelf. I argued with him this morning, probably dented the hood of his car when I threw the contract onto it. Being near him, my bones rang with danger, and rightly so.
My feet feel heavy as I force myself to follow the book lined path to the last destination, the volume that will reveal Tobias’s origin. This one weighs more, its thick spine almost twice the width of the other two. I open the cover to stare at the glyph, swirling lines with sharp edges that twist together to form a pinwheel.
I flip through the book quickly, searching for the pictures. I find storms, volcanic eruptions, fissures in the ground and crumbling buildings, likely an earthquake.
Confused, I keep turning pages. Unlike the first two, his doesn’t seem to center around a specific element. Just natural disasters, one after the other. A few of the images even repeat some of the ones from Emil’s and Kellen’s books. At the back, a final image shows a forest in mid collapse, the trees on one side tilted over, like dominos taking out the ones in front of it.
I straighten in sudden realization. A Catalyst Demon. His mere presence sets events in motion. Like our chance encounter at the coffee shop that led us to our current standoff.
Quickly, I stride back to the front desk to find the hag clicking away at an ancient game of mah-jongg on her computer screen. Her head swivels around to face me. “Are you properly terrified now?”
“Not at all.” I lean against the desk to contain my excitement. “Do you have books on contracts?”
With a smile full of sharp teeth, she lifts another piece of paper from beneath the counter, a list of books already printed on it.
***
When I pull up to a large house early the next morning, my legs jitter with tension. I fumble the keys twice before placing them in my briefcase, the same one I took to my meeting with the bank only three days ago. The timeline to prevent my worldly possessions from going up for sale draws closer with every tick of the clock, but I needed the extra time to make sure I organized all of the paperwork correctly.
Gathering my briefcase and the tray of coffees I picked up from a drive-thru, I climb out of my old car.
For a moment, nerves get the better of me as I stare at the enormous house. Not technically a mansion, but the two towers, one on either side, definitely give it a feeling of magnificence. A three car garage peeks from around the corner, a more modern building that attempts to disguise its function with old world, imitation-barn doors.
A porch wraps around the front of the house, with slender white columns that support the roof overhang. Squaring my shoulders, I march up the steps and use the brass lion head on the door to knock loudly and without pause.
With the sun only a gentle blush on the skyline, I figure the guys need some extra motivation to get their asses out of bed.
The door flies open, the brass knocker ripped from my hand, and an angry Tobias glares out at me. His chestnut-brown waves poof around his head, and the sweatpants he wears hang low on his hips, the tie loose as if he just pulled them on. Far too mouth wateringly delicious for so early in the morning.
“Morning, sunshine!” I smile and shove the tray of coffees against his bare chest.
When he stares at them in dumb confusion, I push past him and step into the rustic foyer. A short bench with a coat rack above and shoes tucked neatly beneath sits off to one side. I rub one bare foot on top of the other, dirt slippery beneath my toes. Not much I can do about the grime, though, since I’ve been locked out of my apartment and didn’t have time to shower at Landon’s house.
Cupping my hand next to my mouth, I call, “Honeys, I’m home!”
Quietly, the door closes behind me, and I try not to picture myself as the fly caught in their web. Determined, I square my shoulders and remind myself that I’m the spider now.
This is my trap.
The ceiling creaks overhead, and I follow the sound into a spacious living room that must run the length of the house. A pool table takes up one side, while dark leather furniture fills the other side. A large television hangs on the wall opposite the couches. Very manly.
Across the room, two flights of stairs, one on either side of an enormous fireplace, curve upward. The creaks in the ceiling gravitate toward them, and soon Emil and Kellen appear at the bottom, both rumpled and confused.
Emil spots me first and makes an attempt to smooth down his hair which, without the gel, flops across his forehead to make him seem younger. When Kellen’s sleepy gaze lands on me, he gives a lazy smile. Unlike the other two, he didn’t bother with sweats and his boxer-briefs hug his muscular thighs and perfectly outline his morning wood.
He props his hands on his hips, gaze taking in my ragged appearance. “Well, well. Did
you come to sign your contract?”
“Not on your life.” I circle the room until I have all three of them in my sight, then raise my briefcase. “I’ve come to make a deal.”
Look for the next installment in this serial in August 2017!
The Terms
L.L. Frost lives in the Pacific Northwest and graduated from college with a Bachelor’s in English. She is an avid reader of all things paranormal and can frequently be caught curled up in her favorite chair with a nice cup of coffee, a blanket, and her Kindle.
When not reading or writing, she can be found trying to lure the affection of her grumpy cat, who is very good at being just out of reach for snuggle time.
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