Demons Shemons

by K. B. Draper

  “I do not know the process of transformation from angel to Nolia Flaua but I will ask the elders. In the meantime, we will trust your instincts, but ask that you remain cautious.”

  I agreed. “Anything else the elders are saying?”

  “Their spirits tell us of a great unrest that has been building for many years.”

  “Unrest as in bad divorce? I’d think there are more than enough lawyers down there to hash things out between them. Reyna, you get hell rings one through four: limbo, lust, gluttony, and greed. Mac, you get five through eight: anger, heresy, violence, and fraud. And you can share custody of treachery, switching every other weekend and rotating holidays. Easy peasy. I don’t know why they have to go all ‘destroy humankind’ on the rest of us.”

  Grand patted my knee.

  “We’re assuming Mackunjai knows,” Danny piped up.

  Grand and I both looked at him. “Boy, you really know how to up the suck levels, don’t you?”

  “I’m just looking at it from all angles. Maybe Reyna is going for full custody,” Danny said.

  I turned to Grand. “I take it that would suck way worse?”

  “It does have a fair amount of, as you say, suck potential, yes.”

  I let the information slowly click into place. “The Reyna, the sinner, gets an angel to knock boots with her, gets pregnant, and creates a being so powerful it could push Hubby from the throne,” I said out loud, seeing the Reyna’s plan now.

  Grand gave my knee a squeeze. “That is what is believed, yes.”

  “Fine. But I don’t understand. Why is she over here? Why pop out of a hellgate to birth a kid on this side? Surely, she’s heard how fucked up our health care system is?”

  Grand chuckled softly. “As for that, neither I nor the spirits have the answer.” His tone sobered. “I can only offer more information.” Grand’s eyes went back to the fire. “I have met the Reyna before. She left death in her wake.” He paused again, kicking up more red embers, watching them take flight. “It was here on this land.” He drew an “x” in the dirt before us. “The land where our feet rest now.”

  I knew of course what he was talking about. I glanced at Danny.

  “We ran across a couple of reports. There were two murders twelve years ago. They’re classified as bear attacks but you …?” Danny let the question die so Grand would fill in the story.

  Grand sat with the information for a long moment, his eyes reflecting the flames of the fire. “Yes, I was here,” he started, “twelve years ago. The spirits led me to this place.” He looked around the camp with a nod of approval. “I too chose this spot to rest my head.”

  I wanted to hit the fast-forward button on his flashback and get to the point where Ashlyn entered the scene, but I needed the information Grand had and knew from the sadness that lay heavy in his eyes that he needed the time to tell his story.

  “I did not know the magnitude of what I faced at the time. When I arrived I found a woman whose life had already been taken from her.”

  “Mrs. Cline?” Danny asked.

  “Mrs. Irene Cline, yes. As I recall, she was the wife of a local reverend.”

  “We’ve met him,” I inserted. “Can’t say I’m a fan.”

  Grand looked at me. I thought for a second he was going to scold me for not being empathetic to a man who had lost his wife. “You believe him to not be a good man?”

  I shrugged. “Asshat comes to mind.”

  “I would agree. Though I never could completely resolve the cause. His scent was thick at the scene of his wife’s death, and his clothes thick with the scent of demon. Yet there was not a scratch on him. Before I broke between the trees, I saw the Reyna place a hand on his head. He bowed. At the time, I thought she was going to kill him and he was submitting to his fate. But now ...”

  “So what happened?” I asked.

  “I engaged the Reyna and we battled. She was strong and cunning, and she got away from me.” He poked at a log.

  “There was another victim that night,” I offered softly.

  “Yes. The Reyna defeated me in the battle. Wounded me severely. She must have believed my death to be inevitable as she left me there with my own sword staking me to the ground.” He kicked up embers again. “But as you know, the warrior spirit is strong. I was able to free myself and track her.” He paused, the sorrow and regret lying heavier on his soul. “She was injured from our fight as well, so she had sought out the nearest soul to feed on, to regain her strength. I arrived too late. She had already taken another life.”

  I laid a hand on his knee this time, as he stoked the fire; its flames lighting the pain and regret in his eyes. “But you were able to save a young girl.”

  “A beautiful young lady,” he said with a weak smile. “She was a fighter. The Reyna had already killed her father and had her by the leg. She was kicking and fighting with great determination. If I hadn’t known better, I would have thought the warrior spirit was in her as well.”

  My heart warmed at the images of young Ashlyn fighting with such fierceness.

  Pride lit his face. “She kept fighting even though I told her to run. She got to her feet with a ripped pant leg and blood streaming from her calf. A stranger and a demon were fighting in front of her, and she stood and faced it all. Much like another warrior I know.” He squeezed my hand that still rested on his knee. “She-”

  “Ashlyn,” I interrupted.

  Grand looked at me then, smiling wide. “Ashlyn fought beside me that day. The Reyna had me at a disadvantage; she’d caught my right arm with a web, rendering it useless. I was fighting with my left, but I had lost my long blade and was down to only a knife. I got a few slices in, enough to push her back so I could free myself, but then she leapt. She had an arm across my throat and a talon in my shoulder.” He rolled his shoulder as if the memory brought back the pain. “She smiled at me, a wicked, evil grin that told me she was going to thoroughly enjoy what she did next. She threw her head back, her fangs jutting from her mouth, poised to rip out my throat, but Ashlyn struck her across the back with a log from the fire. Fire took to her as if it was home. The Reyna screamed and released me. She struck out at Ashlyn in a fiery rage. I lunged between them, taking another talon in the thigh. She whipped me around a few times but the flames were quickly consuming her. She ran into the forest. I told Ashlyn to flee in the opposite direction and I went after the Reyna. But she’d disappeared. Vanished. I assumed back into a hellgate.” Grand stood, stretching his stiff bones. “I hunted for many days but found no signs of her. I eventually left to hunt another demon.”

  “So now she’s back, birthing the ultimate baby demon, and well, yeah …” I said, running everything back through my brain to see if anything sparked any new avenues that didn’t run down Suckville Lane. Nope. “So we stop her.”

  “I am sorry, but it has been a long day. My old bones don’t fare well during long car rides. Could we continue this in the morning?”

  Danny jumped to his feet, seeing the pain, not all of it physical, in his grandfather’s face.

  “Sure, of course. I have something I need to do anyway. Danny, why don’t you take Grand into town, get rooms at the motel, and I’ll catch up with you guys in the morning?”

  “Okay, but you aren’t planning on doing something stupid, are you?”

  “Not the stupid you’re thinking, no.” I walked with Danny and Grand to Danny’s car. “Where’s your car?”

  “I parked off the path just ahead. I saw that you had visitors and did not want to interrupt.”

  I helped Grand into Danny’s vehicle as Danny gathered some of his personal items. “Ashlyn asked me to come to her house.”

  Danny wiggled his eyebrows.

  “TO TALK, Jackhole.”

  Danny laughed at my discomfort before sobering. “Sounds like she was way more up close and personal with the Reyna than we thought.”

  “Yeah, and I’m not liking this whole church connection: the preacher’s wife, preacher, Jr.
, a church lady, the sheriff. Something else is going on here, but I don’t know what yet. Hopefully Ashlyn can shed some light on these connections as well.”

  Danny picked up his bag. “Be careful.”

  “I’ll be fine. I’ll be at Ashlyn’s,” I offered.

  “That’s what I’m talking about. You’re not used to letting people in. I just want you to be careful,” Danny repeated, “with your heart and hers. She’s been through a lot it sounds like, so she’s likely pretty vulnerable too. So again, be careful and I’ll see you in the morning.”

  I gave him an absent nod. “I’ll call ya.”

  I was waiting on Ashlyn’s porch, attempting to relax in the oversized chair that I had watched Ashlyn melt into a few nights before. I stared out over the forest as I let the last few days’ events circle and dance in my mind. Grand had confirmed we were dealing with the super-de-duperly bad bitch of hell. I was struggling to figure out the connection with the church or at least the reverend, because I was positive there was one. It also bothered me as to why the Reyna felt the need to birth the child on this plane. Maybe she was running from the Nolia, not wanting to allow him to see his kid. Women did that all the time for one reason or another. Or maybe she was trying to hide the fact she’d been out dirty skirting it around behind Mac Daddy’s back and got herself knocked up. Just a wild guess on my part, but I don’t think he’s the most forgiving guy. It’s just a hunch. There is the possibility that Mac Daddy sent her out to get knocked up just to create the ultimate baby McEvil. One would have to assume if the kid could cause havoc in hell, he could dirty a few diapers in heaven too. I also couldn’t help but fall back on the Sunday school stories of Mac dropping a son on earth to go all-apocalyptic on our asses. I sighed.

  There were too many thoughts in my brain, too many what ifs and why the hells; nothing was wanting to stick to my mental corkboard. I was trying to draw lines, connections between the events of the past, the church, and the events of the last few days and was coming up with a bad connect the dots that went 1, 2, 3, 14, 28, 64. Things weren’t making sense yet. I needed to know more about the events from twelve years ago. I didn’t have proof, but I suspected that the Reyna’s appearance then had something to do with why she was here today.

  My thoughts drifted to the Nolia. Despite the whole falling from heaven thing, he’d an undeniable sense of pride and determination of will. But there was something else too. Fear? He was standing in front of a demon hunter, but I knew what I saw in his eyes that day didn’t have anything to do with my presence. It was more of the desperate fear variety. Of a father scared for his child?

  If I was him, I’d be a little scared too if Mac Daddy was going to be playing stepdad to my child. Because if the legend about the child was right, the big bad guy would definitely want to have control of its power, want to use it, want to influence it… Unless the reason the Reyna is having the child over here is to keep it away from him and do the single mother, take over the world gig?

  “AJ?” Ashlyn said from behind me.

  I was jolted from my thoughts, leaping to my feet in an instant “Bring it, Homie” stance.

  Ashlyn held up her hands. “I’m sorry.” She stifled a laugh. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”

  I had been deep in thought and hadn’t heard Ashlyn’s truck drive up or her walk out onto the deck. “No. I’m sorry. I was just thinking. I hope you don’t mind that I made myself comfortable.”

  “No, of course not. I do some of my best thinking out here as well. I’m sorry I kept you waiting. Things took a little longer than I thought,” Ashlyn apologized.

  “I haven’t been here very long. It’s all good.”

  Ashlyn looked around. “Danny?”

  “He went into town and got rooms at the motel.” My palms were sweating despite the coolness in the air. I was nervous all of a sudden to be with Ashlyn at her home. Alone.

  “If you don’t mind, I’d like to go wash my face and hands and change out of these clothes real quick?”

  “No, yeah, of course not. Take your time. I’m good here.”

  “Can I get you something? Something to drink maybe?”

  “Well, I can only drink blood. Cow is fine if you have it.”

  “Oh, I umm, could-” Ashlyn started to look around as if she would find something on her deck that would make a good substitute for moo blood.

  “I’m joking,” I offered quickly. “Thought an awkward, inappropriate joke would, you know, break the ice a little.”

  Ashlyn laughed, like really laughed. “Funny. Super funny.”

  “A beer would be great.” I said.

  “Beer.” She gave me another smile. “I’ll be right back.”

  My libido was having an extra fun time creating visuals to go along with the soundtrack of Ashlyn’s boots coming off and hitting the mat next to her front door, her gun being secured, the sound of her jeans and heavy duty belt hitting the floor, her closet door opening, a dresser drawer sliding open and shut, the water running—her straightening the sheets to her bed.

  I took a calming breath, trying to talk my heart off the suicide ledge. Ashlyn’s scent hit me a split second before she stepped back out onto the deck. She handed me a beer as if she had done it a thousand times before, sliding in beside me on the oversize chair, pulling a blanket over us both, and smiling at me. And, my friends and strangers, that was the exact moment I lost the grip on my heart. I simply let go, flipped my overprotective ass off, and dove into emotional oblivion.

  “I want two things from you, AJ.”

  Please let both things be clothing optional. “Okay.”

  “I want you to be honest with me, and I want you to kiss me.”

  I grinned. “Do I get to pick the order?”

  “Yes, as long as you give me both. It’s a package deal.”

  I wanted to start with the kiss. I believed it would take only one to deter any talking until morning but I stayed in my seat. “What do you want to know?”

  It took me awhile to speak freely about the world I live in, the one filled with demons and things that go boo in the night. I think Ashlyn knew this was hard for me, so she didn’t push or pry, letting me talk and softly encouraging me with questions when I went silent.

  I stuck to the generic, if you can categorize anything about demon hunting as generic. I recounted stories of other demons Danny and I had hunted and walked her through the true events of our travels before we arrived in Union City, including ditching Danny because he had eaten all my Oreos.

  She quirked an eyebrow. “Seriously? You know you can buy more Oreos at any given store, right?”

  “I was PMSing and I did warn him, so ...”

  “Oh, well then, I see now how abandonment was really your only option.”

  “Right?” I said.

  She laughed, pulling her feet up into the chair with us, tucking her toes underneath my leg for warmth. “Are you cold, because we could go inside,” I suggested.

  “No. I’m good right here.” The smile she sent me over the blanket she had curled up under her chin made my whole body go full-swoon.

  “So now … the reason you’re here; what started this is … you think Roy Papst is connected to what we’re dealing with? That’s why the sheriff found you at his truck?”

  “I don’t know about start exactly, but yeah, I think Roy is likely a part of it.” I answered. Not ready to say, Absolutely sure, due to the fact that Roy is playing tacky tree ornament in the Reyna’s ‘It’s a Very Disturbing Christmas’ show.

  “And Vera?”

  I raised an eyebrow, though I already knew what she was going to say.

  “As for Vera Littlefield, we got a positive match from fingerprints we lifted from her house and from the hand we collected.”

  “Tell me about her,” I asked, curious as to the connection with the Reverend and the church.

  “Born and raised in Union City. Sixty-eight. Widowed. Her husband passed a couple of years ago from a heart attack. Sh
e was a retired schoolteacher, but worked part-time at the church. She did the books, or at least the collections and donations.”

  “Any indication why she was out there? Doesn’t seem like a place she would be at night.”

  “Nothing yet. We have statements from some of the members of the choir. They were practicing that night. A few stayed late to clean up, said they saw her at her desk, books open, working an adding machine.”

  “Any of them talk to her?”

  “All said good night to her.”

  “Anyone say what her demeanor was or …”

  “Distracted. Mary Worth, choir leader, said that Vera usually came out to listen to them practice and offer them water, but she didn’t that night. And when she went to say good night, Vera barely looked up at her.”

  “Are you looking into the church?”

  Ashlyn sighed. “Ummm, yeah. That’s not as easy as it sounds.”

  “Right. Reverend Mayor Jackass wouldn’t allow that to happen.” I thought for a second. “Was Mr. Holier Than Thou there that night?”

  “Yes. Working on Wednesday night’s sermon.”

  “And what did he say?”

  “Said that Vera came in, said good night, and left. Claims he was there well after midnight.” Ashlyn lowered her voice to a bad Charlton Heston The Ten Commandments imitation, “Letting God speak to him so he could deliver his divine message to the people.”

  I let out a chuckle. “Oh yeah, I bet he was doing exactly that.”

  “You think the Reverend has something to do with all of this?”

  “I don’t know,” I answered. “There’s just something about …” I trailed off as I finished my beer.

  “Do you want another?”

  “No. I’m good. Thanks.” I set the bottle on the table next to the chair and looked out over the forest. “Would you tell me more about …” I paused, trying to find better words than the night your father was murdered. “About what happened twelve years ago?”