by Ben Meeks
“There’s no reason to get nasty,” I said.
“You’re here to kill me then,” he said, more to himself than to me.
“I’m just here to talk, Steve. There doesn’t have to be any killing tonight.”
He motioned with his chin toward Holt. “What about him?”
Holt bent forward and snarled. “Yeah, I’ll kill you. First you’re going to tell me what I want to know.”
So dramatic. Before I could tell him to chill out, chanting started from one of the other rooms. The voice was scratchy and deep. Holt and I swapped a look while Steve, unable to hear it, sat oblivious in his chair, clinging to his dinner.
“I got it,” I said, moving into in the hallway. “Be nice.”
I followed the chanting to a spare bedroom, but the source wasn’t visible, it seemed to be coming from the entire room at once. The demon must be using some kind of magic to hide its location. Giving the room a quick once over turned up nothing but an open window with a few claw marks on the sill. What concerned me most is what I could smell. Even over the rotting garbage from downstairs I could smell the demon.
I sniffed around the room. The smell seemed slightly stronger from the closet and the chanting stopped abruptly when I stepped in front of the door. I drew the mahogany dagger from my belt and reached for the door handle. No sooner had I turned it than the door burst open on me. Something small and fast shot out, little more than a blur scurrying under the bed. The chanting started again where it left off. If I could find the circle and destroy it, the demon could chant for the rest of its life and it wouldn’t make a difference. Peeking in the closet, I found a circle scratched roughly into the wall over a nest of torn up paper and cardboard, with bones of what looked to be dogs and cats scattered around it. No doubt missing pets from around the neighborhood. A swipe of my knife rendered the circle harmless.
Some talking in the other room caught my attention. Holt laughed and said, “Go for it.” A gunshot followed by a heavy thud made my heart sink, especially since it was followed a few seconds later by Steve beginning a summoning of his own. I left the room, closing the door behind me, hopefully trapping the demon for the time being.
In the office I found Holt lying face down, bleeding into the carpet. Steve was leaning back against the desk, holding a revolver in one hand and his summoning notes in the other. Everything on the desk had been knocked off, except the monitor that was sitting face down beside the container of dust Steve had retrieved from Holt’s pocket. He had a cut on the side of his face; Holt must have started the interrogation without me. Steve whipped the gun in my direction when I stepped into the doorway. He motioned toward the ground with the gun but continued his chanting.
I raised my hands, dropped my cheeks, and opened my eyes wide. In this case I wanted to prove Holt right, I’m not threatening, just a cute oversized otter. It’s not always a bad thing to be adorable. If he got me with a head shot, I would be out for a while before my body could heal itself. It looked like Holt had avoided a direct hit, but it was enough to take him out of commission for a bit. I couldn’t afford to lose that time, with a demon loose and potentially more on the way. I knew Steve’s incantation, I had a minute, maybe more, the way he was reciting it. I would have to talk him down.
“I’ll put it away,” I said, moving the knife slowly down and tucking it back in my shorts. “There Steve, everything’s okay but I need you to listen to me. I know it doesn’t seem like it but I’m here to help you. He’s not dead, by the way. He’s going to wake up in a few minutes and he’s going to be pissed. I don’t blame you for shooting him. I’ve wanted to shoot him more than once. But that’s not your only problem, you have a demon in the other room. They don’t care about you or your beliefs. I don’t know why but they are using you. I don’t care about the gun, keep it, just stop the chanting and let’s get you somewhere safe until we can get this figured out.”
He didn’t stop.
“You know you need a circle for that, right? We destroyed them all. It’s not going to work,” I said.
Just as he finished chanting, Steve reached over and lifted the monitor revealing a summoning circle wallpaper on his desktop.
“That’s new,” I said.
I wasn’t even sure a digital circle would work, never heard of anyone trying it before. We stood looking at each other, waiting for something to happen. Uncertainty crept over his face and just when I decided that his incantation was a dud, a pinpoint of orange materialized in the ceiling. The air began to churn around the room as the light became a circle steadily increasing in diameter. As the circle grew, the air picked up speed, sending loose papers, dust, and debris flying around in an office-themed maelstrom. Heat began to spill out of the expanding portal.
The air pressure must be higher on the demon world because whenever a portal is opened, a giant vortex of stank comes billowing out of it. Maybe one day I will get used to it, but it’s awful every time. That may be due in part to my hyper-sensitive otter nose. I think it was a combination of the smell and the heat, but when I was new at this it wasn’t uncommon for me to lose my lunch when portals opened. It wasn’t a problem for me anymore. Steve, on the other hand, was clearly not as acclimated, and wasted no time retching all over the wall of his office.
I broke into a sweat from the intense heat pouring into the room. Since the portal opened on the ceiling, I expected to see the demon sky, but instead it was like someone took a painting of a landscape and hung it on the ceiling. A red and barren scene stretched off in the distance. It was a rookie mistake; the worlds hadn’t been aligned properly, Steve probably messed up the incantation just a bit. I moved back out into the hallway to escape the heat and stench, and if something came tumbling through the portal I didn’t want it to fall on me. Holt was on his own. I say “if” but I knew something would come though, something always comes through. The question was, what?
As if on cue, the floor shook with a loud thud—we had company. It made a sound somewhere between a shriek and a squawk, and I recognized it immediately: a hellhound. The orange light and wind told me the portal was still open. Steve was so new at this he may not know how to close it, assuming he wanted to. There was enough dust in that container to keep it operational for a few minutes. There could be dozens of demons here in that time. I had to shut it down before anything else came through. I turned to go back in the room when it felt like I had been punched in the back of the head. I had forgotten all about my little friend under the bed. It stunned me at first, but the clawing in my head and neck snapped me out of it. It felt like it was trying to burrow into my skull. I reached back and grabbed whatever I could get hold of to pull it away.
I could feel the blood running down my back as I pulled an imp, glistening with my blood in the orange light, off my neck. I had it by its back, which is a very inconvenient way to hold an imp. The barbed spines common on many of the smaller demons were already working their way into my hand. We sized each other up for a second before it went full-on honey badger, hands, feet, and tail flailing wildly, its little jaws snapping wildly trying to get ahold of me. The blood made it hard to hold onto and the movement pushed the barbs deeper into my palm. It was only a matter of time before it got away, time I didn’t have. I clenched my teeth and then my hand. The barbs sank in deep, sending shooting pain up my arm. The resistance suddenly gave way as the demon’s bones shifted with a loud pop. It howled and writhed in pain. I reared back and pitched it into the wall, sending it straight through the sheetrock, disappearing into a newly minted imp-sized hole.
My hand was thoroughly pin-cushioned by more barbs than I could count, with more running up my arm from the imp’s thrashing tail. Another shot boomed from Steve’s office. It was probably too soon for Holt to be awake, so Steve was most likely coming to a difficult realization that he was going to need my help. Instinctively, I reached for my dagger with my right hand, but I couldn’t really grab anything with all the barbs in my palm, so my left would have to do. F
rom the doorway I saw the hound. It looked like a six-legged hairless dog the size of a Saint Bernard, with big red Chihuahua eyes bugging out of its head. It was standing over Holt’s still lifeless body and had Steve backed into a corner. The shot had gone into its shoulder, pissing it off more than anything.
Before I could intervene, it lunged for Steve, sinking its shark-like rows of teeth into his abdomen. He screamed as it lifted him off the ground and shook violently side to side. Steve’s body wasn’t up to the strain and the part of him in demon’s mouth ripped free, sending the rest skidding across the floor, leaving a red streak behind him. He came to a rest close to where I was standing. His intestines, still attached to both pieces, unraveled across the room like a Slinky stretched to its limits. The scene gave me pause for one reason. The portal was still open, swirling papers and gushing stink into the room. I guess it’s possible that someone could maintain a portal while having a large piece of themselves ripped off, but I have never seen it. It would take someone accomplished, well beyond Steve’s ability, or anyone else I have known for that matter. He was still conscious, screaming, crying, and pulling the loose pieces of himself back like a rope.
Movement on the ceiling caught my attention. Another hound was investigating the portal. When it saw what a tasty treat Steve was, it would no doubt come though. This was getting out of hand quickly. The demon scarfed down the chunk of Steve, thrusting its head forward repeatedly to catch the dangling pieces. It turned to get another morsel and spotted me in the doorway. Charging the room, I slashed my knife across its face, sending it reeling back, and spun, whipping the monitor with my tail, then turned to face the hound. The monitor exploded and the portal on the ceiling slammed shut with a loud crack. The wind abruptly stopped. Papers in the office drifted gently to the floor. Without the orange light coming through the portal, the room returned to the more earthly glow of the overhead light. A hard thud shook the floor behind me. Something else must have made it through before the portal closed.
The hound screeched through its bloody teeth and charged. I jumped back and slammed the heel of my right hand down on it, sending its head into the floor. My hand exploded in pain from the barbs. Throwing myself on top of the hound, I wrapped my right arm around its neck, pushing my weight down to keep it pinned to the floor, being careful to keep my legs away from the snapping jaws. This left my other hand free to drive my knife repeatedly into the beast’s underbelly. I held on until its strength drained away enough to let it go. As soon as it was safe, I pushed off the floor and spun to face the room, ready for another hound. Instead I found half a hound lying dead on top of Holt. It had gotten caught halfway through when the portal closed. Fine with me. Without the portal pushing rotten air into the room, thick smoke began coming in from the hallway. I could hear fire crackling downstairs.
A whimpering from the doorway caught my attention. Steve was still with me, barely. Tears ran down his cheeks and he was looking at me quiet and unmoving. I could have tried to heal him but he was scattered all over the room, and probably wouldn’t have survived anyway.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t help you,” I said. I wasn’t going to let him spend his last minutes on earth burning alive, assuming he lived that long. One strategic stab later and he was pain-free. I wiped the knife off on his shirt and tucked it back into my belt.
Moving to the stairs to check out the fire, I found the entire bottom floor engulfed, and fire was already crawling its way up the stairs. The imp stood in the flames on the bottom step, leaning against the wall with a grin and one leg hanging limp. The flames were moving fast and while they circled the imp, it didn’t seem to mind. This was pretty much its natural environment after all.
“Burn,” it said in a deep burping voice.
I wasn’t expecting it to know any English. That told me it had either been here for a long time or had been working with something that has. Demons don’t hop out of the portal reciting Shakespeare. There’s no way I was going to tangle with a demon, even a small one, in the middle of a house fire. This one got a pass tonight.
“Rain check,” I said.
Back in the office Holt was just pulling himself out from under the partial hound. “What happened?”
“Grab that half a hound and head out the window. The house is coming down,” I said.
“What?”
I didn’t wait to explain. I grabbed the whole hellhound and heaved it through the window. The glass exploded as its body tumbled onto the roof and off into the yard. I hopped out the window and jumped down to the grass. The backyard was lit up like Christmas from the fire and was too warm for my liking. I dragged the hound to the back fence and tossed it over before jumping myself. There I waited, watching the upstairs window for Holt. I thought I saw a dark figure perched on the edge of the roof. I blinked and it was gone, I wasn’t sure it was there at all. I stood still, watching and listening when he finally came out, lugging the other hell hound on his back.
“What is it?” he asked when he finally made it over the fence and saw how on guard I was.
“Nothing, what took you so long?” I asked.
“The dust was spilled everywhere. I couldn’t save any of it. I did get my shoes though,” he said.
It wasn’t until then I remembered my flip flops burning up in the house. I lose a lot of good shoes that way. We changed back to human form before making our way through the woods back to the truck. We were battered and bloody, so even though we looked human again, we weren’t in any shape to be seen in public. We waited on the side of the road for a break in the cars before moving out and tossing the hounds in the back. I grabbed a tarp and some bungees from behind the seat to cover things up. In a few minutes we were pulling out. Firetrucks screamed down the interstate in the opposite direction.
“I have to admit, Obie, I was wrong about you. I thought you were kind of a pussy. One of those guys that talks a good game but is afraid to get their hands dirty. What you did back there, though. Killing two hounds, ripping that asshole’s guts out, and burning his house down—damn, that’s cold blooded. Oh, and you have to tell me what you did to the other half of that hound,” he said.
“Maybe, one day.” I wasn’t about to correct him. If his conclusions bought me a little peace, then that’s all right by me.
“Where to now?” he asked.
“I’m going to get rid of these hounds, drop you off at the house, and then I have to do something about this,” I said, showing the barbs in my hand.
“Wait, those are imp barbs. You killed another demon . . . That’s what I’m talking about!”
C H A P T E R • 4
“What are we doing here?” Holt asked, looking down rows of corn as we drove by.
“This is Hob’s farm,” I said.
“Wait, Hob, that’s the duster,” he said, excitement in his voice.
“Sure is. I don’t know if you will meet him this trip though, we’re just dropping off today. We will be coming here a lot. If you don’t meet him today I’m sure you will soon.” We drove past the farmhouse toward the back of the property where Hob conducted his other business. “Actually, there he is now,” I said, pointing to an overall-clad figure sitting in a swing on the porch. He wore a baseball cap that kept his hair mostly contained, which did nothing to hide his pointy ears.
“Kinda bold to have his ears out like that,” Holt observed.
“He’s a bold fella, but no one comes back here, and if they did he has people for that,” I said giving him a wave as we passed.
He gave us a wave back, not breaking the rhythmic swaying of his leisure.
“Should we stop and say hi?” Holt asked.
“We’d be here all day. I just want to drop these demons off and get out of here. Trust me, you will do more than enough chatting with Hob,” I said. “He’s a talker.”
Most dusters are magical experts and Hob was no exception. Some people think the amount of dust he has access to at any given time makes him a threat, and they might be r
ight. He left his elvin kin in Germany, coming here for a quiet life of farming. He made a good living from it until we approached him about supplementing his income with some knowledge from the Old World. He was reluctant but saw the good in establishing a steady dust trade. His condition was that his involvement remained secret. The secret probably wasn’t as well kept as it should have been—Holt makes one more—what could it hurt?
Past a few more fields, we pulled up to a two-story red barn tucked away by the tree line. I backed the truck up to the doors and we got out.
“Give the door three good knocks,” I said as I started untying the tarp.
Holt walked up to the large double doors and tapped on it with his knuckles three times.
“They aren’t going to hear that, really go for it,” I said.
He looked a little uncertain but delivered three strikes to the door in slow succession. Nothing happened. I went around the truck to untie the other side.
Holt turned to me, placing his hands on his hips. “Well?”
“Give them a minute, they don’t move so quick,” I said.
After another thirty seconds, I had the tarp off the hounds in the back of the truck when a speakeasy style viewing slit slid open ten feet up the wall. A large gray face looked down on us.
“Come back here and let them get a look at you,” I said to Holt who had remained close to the door.
He moved back and after a short inspection the opening slid shut. Ka-Chunk, a heavy lock was opened. Ka-Chunk, ka-chunk, two more followed suit before the large doors were swung open, revealing an ogre, roughly twelve feet tall with stone gray skin and a blank expression lumbering over us. He came outside, grabbed a demon in each hand and took them into the barn. Hob hired ogres because they are huge, loyal, and they lack the imagination to use dust, intentionally or accidentally, but most importantly, they don’t mind the smell. The perfect worker for a duster.
“Hey, buddy, wait up,” Holt said.
“His name’s Eric.”