Demons Shemons

by K. B. Draper

  Ashlyn didn’t take the time to park in her garage, choosing instead a well-worn spot only ten feet away from her back door. I heard the click of her locks disengage then re-engage after she stepped inside. I sighed in relief knowing Ashlyn was home and secure for night. I was relatively sure Ashlyn wasn’t used to dealing with two murders and an almost search and rescue call in such a relatively short time frame. She was tired; I could tell by the way she mindlessly zombie-walked her way through her kitchen and living room.

  If I was to ever be able to call a place home again, a place with actual walls and doors, it would be a home like Ashlyn’s. It was an A-frame log cabin, two-stories with floor-to-ceiling glass panels affording her an unencumbered view of the lake from both floors. It had a large deck that ran along its front. Ashlyn had placed patio furniture and a table there. I pictured her waking up, starting her day with a cup of coffee, and staring out over her forest. If I lived there, we would have all our meals outside on the table, to be followed with some outdoor sex for dess- Umm yeah, I needed to stop that little fantasy before it had me leaping the deck railing. Oh fun, and to assist in that ultimate failure, Ashlyn chose that second to step out on the stage of my little fantasy.

  Ashlyn set a short glass of dark-colored liquid on the table. I sniffed the air. Whiskey. My heart swooned a little as she got out a blanket, wrapped it around her, and settled into the cushions of a chair. I assumed she needed a little peace and alcohol to take the edge off the day. I couldn’t blame her; I could use a little of both as well. Though I knew her mind was probably replaying the events of the last couple days, trying to find a reasonable explanation as to why her forest was suddenly ground zero for so much brutal violence, she looked at peace. She was a woman simply having a nightcap and enjoying the view from the safety of her home.

  I felt like a voyeur invading her privacy, the serenity of her home. I had just wanted, no needed, to make sure she was okay. I took one last look at her and slipped back into the trees. I wasn’t ready to leave just yet so I found a comfortable enough spot at the edge of the lake where I could still hear Ashlyn, if needed, and I could catch the random sweet scent of her in the air. I stretched out, stared at the millions of stars above me, and thought of the woman so close but so far out of my reach.

  I had drifted off at some point, waking when I heard Ashlyn go inside and lock her doors. When I stood and stretched, I could tell my body appreciated the small relief before I started back to the campsite.

  My day started as it had the day before. Danny was already up gathering more wood for the fire, and thank the good lord he already had the coffee pot heating over the flames.

  “All good with the pretty ranger?” Danny asked as he dropped an arm full of wood and began to stack it neatly.

  “Yeah,” I answered, finding my mug so I could pour myself some much-needed coffee.

  “Since you’re here, I assume she didn’t fall for your feminine wiles?”

  I ran a hand through my hair. “I didn’t unleash my feminine wiles. I just made sure she was locked safely inside her house.”

  Danny’s eyes went wide. “She turned you down! Oh, my… I mean… I never thought I’d see the day that-”

  “She didn’t turn me down. I didn’t even talk to her. She didn’t even know I was there,” I corrected, cutting him off before he broke into a dance of celebration.

  “So you what?”

  “Just watched her, made sure she got inside okay.” I took a “no big deal” sip of my coffee.

  “I think I saw a movie like this once.” Danny moved to the other side of the woodpile, a playful grin playing at the edge of his lips. “What was it?” He tapped a finger to his bottom lip. “Single White Female? Or no, maybe it was Obsessed. Or…”

  “You have three minutes,” I said calmly, taking another sip from my mug.

  “Five?” Danny countered.

  “Two fifty-nine. Two fifty-eight,” I started.

  “I can barely get to the woods by then.” He pointed at the woods on the far side of the lake.

  “Two fifty-seven…”

  “Damn it!” He took off running.

  I smiled as I watched Danny sprint for cover. We have been playing our own little version of “Hide and Seek” for years now. It was our way of keeping our skill sets well-honed.

  I first met Danny the night I stole his demon-hunting destiny. He had been an awkward and kind of shy kid my age, 18. He was tall and lean, cute with thick black hair and intelligent brown eyes, but he had been just a shadow of the man he was today. Danny’s boy muscles had been replaced with those of a man. He was lean and fit with the tone you get from hard work and long runs, not from meat-heading it at a gym. His hair was a tad longer now, always falling in a fun mess, the look that would take a stylist thirty minutes and a handful of gels and creams to achieve. His heritage, combined with the time we spent outside, had turned his skin a rich bronze. In short, Danny could easily be the man gracing the front of GQ or Men’s Fitness. But for all the beauty you saw on the outside, it paled in comparison to what was on the inside. Danny’s mind and heart were by far his most impressive attributes.

  It had been Danny who after all my WTFs and You all are flipping ass crazys, had finally calmed me down enough so my ears and brain could understand what falling into the ritual, his ritual, and getting shot full of Norm meant for me. He never raised his voice, never showed a hint of anger for stealing his destiny. Instead, he held my hand and vowed to be by my side every step of the way.

  It wasn’t until Danny had shown up at my college of choice that I realized the depth of his commitment and of his sacrifices. Nor had I known truly just how much I had taken from him that night. Danny continues to give up his life and his dreams to protect me, to be with me, and to honor the promise he had made me so many years ago. As always, my heart did a little thumpety-thump-thump at the thoughts. Danny was a good man. I glanced down at my watch. And in repayment, I was now going to have to chase his tan ass down, kick it, strip him of his manhood, drag him back here, and make him cook me breakfast.

  I moaned as I took one last sip of coffee, reluctantly set down the mug, then rolled my neck and shook out my arms and legs. With a wide grin, I took off to hunt down my best friend and make him my bitch … again.

  Danny had given me a good run for my money by using a riverbed to drag out the search. It took me nearly two minutes of trekking through a quarter-mile of wet before I found his trail again. He had doubled back a couple of times, crisscrossing his scents, but I was closing in on him now. Though I could hear his breathing, hear a crunch of leaves under his footfalls, I slowed my pace. More than once he had tried to circle back and catch me from behind, the side, above even. None of them were ever successful, but there was always a first. Danny’s skills as a hunter and tracker were far superior to any other human. I’d more than once told him he should sign up for the “man against nature” reality shows. I’d been especially pushing for the Naked and Afraid series. Not because I wanted the world to see his naughty bits—been there, can’t unsee that—but I thought it would be hilarious to watch Danny, who is the shyest guy around, spend an hour trying not to look at the girl’s uppers and lowers. I had taken Danny to a strip club once. Before we even sat down, he had taken out a table, knocked over a waitress with a tray of drinks, and tripped and landed in a biker dude’s lap. It was awesome. Danny is hot, but cool he is definitely not.

  The forest broke at the base of a rock cliff. Damn it, we are going to rock climb today. Danny could scale the side of a mountain like a freaking, a freaking … Fuck, whatever could scale shit fast. I stepped to the bottom of the cliff, looked upward to plan my path, and heard a pebble dislodge and pinball down the side. I was so going to kick Danny’s ass for this. I started up, finding handholds and crevices that were big enough to fit the toes of my boots. I lost my footing a couple of times, but fortunately I had good holds and plenty of upper body strength to pull myself up. I paused when I heard Danny go quie
t ahead of me. I hadn’t caught sight of him yet, but I had heard his shoes on the rocks, his soft grunts of exertion, and increased heartbeats as he began to labor with the effort of climbing.

  “Umm, AJ?” Danny said softly. “You need to get up here.”

  I waited; unsure of what little trick he was trying to play.

  He sighed heavily. “Seriously! Game over. You need to get up here. I’m not freaking joking.”

  I could hear the underlying anxiousness in his voice and felt Norm rising within me, but I wasn’t ready to give in that easily. “Say it,” I replied.

  “Are you freaking kidding me?”

  I started up again, quickening my pace. “Say it.”

  “You’re freaking ridiculous.”

  I didn’t answer.

  “Fine! Jesus. You’re the winner, I’m the wiener.”

  I launched myself up and over the ledge. “That’s right,” I replied with a slap to the back of his head, “and don’t forget it.”

  Danny gave his head a rub. “I gave up, so it really doesn’t count.”

  “Oh, it counts. Three hundred-and-twenty-eight to a big fat zero. Now, what’s the big deal?” I asked as I spun around to see why the wiener called it quits. I stopped mid-spin. “Fuck me.”

  “Yeah,” Danny muttered.

  Norm was on full alert. “What the holy creepy-ass hell?”

  “I feel like we just walked into a bad ’50s sci-fi movie, Attack of the Monster Spider,” Danny murmured behind me.

  “Or like Spider-Man dropped acid and flipped the fuck out!” I took in the scene before me. Blankets of spider webs engulfed the trees and nearby bushes, as if they were netted, tethering them to the ground. I had my blades in hand and heard Danny extract his as well. “Demon?”

  “Or one big-ass spider,” Danny answered.

  I took a tentative step forward. “Please be a demon. I seriously hate spiders.”

  “Or it’s a huge demon-spider,” Danny added.

  I shot a look over my shoulder. “You’re a bitch.”

  He shrugged. “I’m just sayin’.”

  “Well, stop just sayin’.” I took a few more steps forward and listened for any signs of a spider or a demon or thank you Danny, a damn demon-spider. Hearing nothing, I finally released the breath I was holding and, mother freakin’ ass waffles, the scent of demon was all around us.

  I took a swipe at the thick mesh of web that covered a nearby tree. It cut easy enough, but it clung to my knife, then my hands, and any and all of the other things it touched. I finally wiped it off on Danny’s shoulder.

  “Seriously?” He made the mistake of using his fingertips to remove it. “Damn it!” He was still shaking and wiping web from his hands as we stepped further into the web-covered foliage.

  “This doesn’t blow chunks at all,” I whispered as the air thickened with the scent of death and demon. As we wandered deeper, the white canopy of web became thicker, as if we were walking into a concave cloud. That is, if clouds stuck to you like a needy dryer sheet and totally sucked. “Motherfuc-, Danny,” I stopped, pointing ahead of me, “please God, don’t say those are what I think they are.”

  Danny stepped alongside me. “Cocoons.”

  I smacked him across the chest. “I said NOT to tell me, jack-hole.”

  “Sorry. Should we cut one down and see what’s in it?”

  I spun on him. “Have you never seen Invasion of the Pod People? Hell, let’s go with any movie ever involving pods or cocoons. There’s never anything good in pods or cocoons. They’re always bad. Very, very bad.”

  “We still need to know what we’re dealing with,” Danny reasoned.

  I narrowed my gaze. He was right of course, but I really, really didn’t want to know what was in those things. “If it’s your psycho alien clone, I’ll take great delight in killing it, just FYI.”

  “Maybe there’ll be a sweet, cute, never-aging old person, like in Cocoon.”

  “How do you not menstruate once a month?” I asked as I walked over to the smaller of the half-dozen cocoons. It was not much bigger than a basketball. Figuring we’d start with the smallest suck pod and work our way up to human-size cluster suck, I gave Danny a “here goes nothing” look and then ran my knife along the bottom, slitting open the web sac.

  It took gravity a second to arm wrestle and ultimately win over the green goo that was holding its contents in place. Eventually, a skull with half of its flesh eaten away bounced one squishy bounce and came to a rest with one half-eaten eyeball staring up at the web-covered sky.

  I shook my boot frantically in an effort to fling off the green slime that had just splooged onto it. “Agh! Freakin’ sick!” The green slime didn’t fling. “Son of a-” I walked over to find a leaf or something, anything that wasn’t covered in web. When I headed for Danny’s pant leg, he danced backward.

  He pointed a scolding finger at me. “No!”

  I arched an eyebrow.

  He increased the distance between us. “AJ, no!” he scolded again in a tone that was universally reserved for and followed up by bad dog, bad dog. When I took a step forward, he went insta-whine. “Oh, come on. I don’t want flesh-eating goo on my pants. I just washed them.”

  “Seriously, we’re getting a Costco card so we can start buying tampons in bulk.” I dragged the tip of my boot through the dirt in an attempt to wipe off the slime. I examined my boot. Knelt and examined it closer. “That shit is eating through the leather.”

  Danny knelt beside me. “Damn.” He scooped a handful of dirt and poured it over my boot. “Maybe this will cover it enough so” he picked up a couple of leaves, pinching them between two fingers, “I can clean it off.”

  I grabbed his wrist. “Careful. Geez. I’m pretty sure if it can eat leather, it can eat through a couple of leaves. We need water.” I looked around like there was going to be a bottle of water just lying around in the creepy web cave.

  My brain registered the noise, but my body didn’t have time to react. I stared at Danny in disbelief. “Did you seriously just hawk a loogie on my boot?”

  “You see any other options? Babbling brook? Puddle? Water cooler?” he asked as he quickly swiped at the goo that was nearly halfway through the toe of my boot. “We can’t let it get to your foot.”

  I harrumphed.

  “You’re lucky I didn’t pee on it,” Danny added.

  “No. You are lucky you didn’t pee on it,” I replied.

  Danny ignored me. “There. I think we got most of it.”

  My boot seemed to be clean, minus the spit gathering at the sole. “Thanks, but no more bodily fluids on my boots.” I paused then added, “Make that a blanket statement for any and all things I own.”

  He nodded. “Noted.”

  We both stood, moving back to check out what was left of the headless goo-man. There was a wisp of short dark hair still clinging to the scalp. “Might be the missing drug runner from the truck I found.”

  “Wonder what happened to the rest of his body?” Danny asked.

  I couldn’t help but look around at the larger cocoons. “Looks like more than heads are in those.”

  Danny stepped around the head. “Definitely a guy with black hair, but can’t tell much else.” He poked one of the larger cocoons with a stick. “There’s not a single drop of blood here. It’s actually …” he looked around, “super clean.”

  “An OCD demon. More new things for the book,” I quipped.

  “Cut another-”

  A shadow flew over Danny’s face the same time my skin prickled and Norm leaned an elbow on the danger doorbell. Before Danny could finish his statement, I had leapt next to him, pulling him down by his wrist. I scanned for what Norm had blipped on my demon radar but wasn’t able to see anything through the dense webbing. “We need to move,” I ordered as I was really not feeling like being all mummied up in a spider web today. “What happened to demons sleeping throughout the day?” I growled as we began backtracking out the same way we had entered.
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  “I’m not sure we’re dealing with a demon,” Danny said, pulling more info out of the WTF hat.

  I stopped and spun. “Come again, Pocahontas?”

  Danny furrowed his brow. “You know I hate when you call me that.”

  “And YOU know I hate ‘What the holy fuck moments’. What do you mean not dealing with a demon? We’re demon hunters. We hunt demons.”

  “Can we move while we talk about this?” Danny asked as another shadow danced across the ground before us.

  I decided not to argue. I would save that for when we didn’t have a flying, head-removing, cocoon-making, whatever the fuck, interrupting our convo.

  I was about to head back the way we came but quickly decided against it as I was not sure that going back-ass-ward down the side of a cliff was the smartest route in this little scene. Norm turned on the right blinker in my head and it only took a second for me to agree that right was a better option than down or left. It would be a longer hike, but it kept us in the cover of the trees. I set my pace at “just faster than Danny,” leading the way as he trailed a few steps behind me.

  We hadn’t gone that far when I felt Norm take a backseat. I assumed this meant he didn’t think we were being followed. I slowed my pace and let Danny catch up to me. “I think we’re good.”

  Danny checked the sky through a break in the trees. “Yeah, I don’t think it followed us.”

  “What do you think IT is exactly?” I asked, slowing my pace even further to a brisk walk.

  Danny sighed as he watched the sky. “I don’t know exactly, but I think it could possibly be a Nolia Flaua.”

  “Fallen angel?” I asked. When I had first landed this demon-hunting gig I had studied a little about demons, not leaving all the heavy mental lifting to Danny, just most of it. I’m more of a CliffsNotes, don’t read the instruction manual, kind of girl. But what I did know was that Nolias started out as angels, guardians, or otherwise. Somewhere along the way they got caught up in the worst Red Rover game ever, and when the evil side called, well, they came running right over.