Personal Demons

by David Morrison

  I realised Moorecroft, for all his arrogance and veiled threats, was massively out of his depth. He’d been inducted into the world of Section 19 and the supernatural creatures they hunted only two weeks earlier. He was a bureaucrat playing at soldiers, and he hadn’t been remotely prepared for the chaos that ensued while Section 19 were busy getting back on their feet after the attack.

  By the time I’d finished relating all the details, he looked more stunned than anything else.

  “I had no concept...” he said.

  “You and me both.”

  “Is it over?” Moorecroft asked me.

  “You’re asking me?” I replied with incredulity.

  “Frankly, yes. You’re the last man standing in all of this and the only one with an actual understanding of what’s been going on.”

  I couldn’t argue with that.

  “That depends on you, I guess. Victoria needs to answer for her crimes. She committed at least one murder that I witnessed, and I’ve no doubt there are others. All of this is her fault.”

  “And the demons? The supernaturals that escaped from the prison?” Moorecroft replied.

  “Some of them went through the portal.”

  “Well that’s something, I suppose,” Moorecroft said.

  “Others, well, they’re out there, for better or worse.”

  “That is going to be a problem.”

  “I wouldn’t be so sure. I think most of them will go into hiding after all the years they’ve spent being tortured. The last thing they’ll want to do is to draw attention to themselves.”

  Moorecroft nodded.

  “There’s something else. The barrier between the demon realm and ours is down. Magic – real magic – as far as I understand it, is coming back. None of us know what the consequences could be.”

  Moorecroft folded his hands in front of his face. Tried to comprehend the enormity of what had transpired.

  Good luck with that. I was there and even I can’t get my head wrapped around half of it.

  Moorecroft considered, then sighed.

  “Jason, I have to be honest here. We’re going to need you on our side in all of this. As much as it pains me to admit that a teenager seems to be more clued in than us, you’ve been right at the centre of it all and came out the other side intact. Whatever comes next, you have the skills and abilities to deal with it, somehow, against all the odds.”

  Moorecroft paused, choosing his words carefully.

  “I’d like you to join us at Section 19. We’ll train you properly, help you with your powers. You’re not one of them, after all. We’ll need someone like you on our side.”

  “Sorry, but I’m not interested in hunting and killing supernaturals.”

  “We’re in the process of changing our policy and goals,” Moorecroft replied, “I feel, and so do those above me, that Section 19’s shoot to kill policy has been a touch misguided. We need to keep the public safe, but understanding the supernatural world rather than eliminating it might be in all our interests – especially after the events of tonight. So we’re working on a capture, contain and study system. As people aren’t being killed, we won’t be either.”

  I considered the offer then shook my head.

  “I just want to go home and put all this behind me.”

  Moorecroft wrinkled his nose as if I’d let out the worst fart he’d ever smelt. Not used to people refusing his offers, I thought.

  “Very well,” he said, “I could force you to work for us but given the events of the last few days and your contribution to uncovering the Pryces’ machinations, I’m willing to let it go. For now.”

  “Wow, thanks.”

  My sarcasm was wasted on him.

  The fact was, I hadn’t asked to be thrown into any of this and I’d done the best I could. I’d been caught between forces beyond my control and men and women too eager to spill blood for their personal causes. Major Wilson. The Pryces. Balthazar. The tortured and the damned locked up in Victoria’s prison. The soldiers of Section 19. Somehow I’d negotiated a path through all of them and survived.

  It didn’t feel like much of a win, but I was still breathing.

  “I suspect you may change your mind. When you do, the door is open,” Moorecroft continued, “We’ll need you to sign the Official Secrets Act, of course.”

  “Of course.”

  “In the meantime, a deal is a deal. I promised to tell you about your father, Jason. Here it is.”

  Chapter Fifty Six: The Last Laugh

  It was ten in the morning before Kate and I were driven home. We sat in silence in the back of the transit van, both of us too exhausted to speak. Moorecroft had produced a black and white photo of my father and a woman, who I assumed was my biological mother.

  I wasn’t surprised when Moorecroft told me. Victoria had mentioned the scientist at Section 19 who had been working on an experimental serum while she was there. Henry Jefferson. The brilliant scientist was my biological father. The DNA match had been as close to Henry’s as made no difference. As a former scientist for Section 19, samples of his DNA had been kept on record as part of their screening process.

  The rest I’d half figured out, or at least guessed.

  “Back then, Section 19 had supernaturals onsite, to help with your father’s experiments,” Moorecroft said, “Some of them broke out and targeted you and your mother in revenge for what had been done to them. The records show that you died in the attack. Our best guess is that your father injected you with the serum in order to save your life. He probably wasn’t even sure it would work, and it’s unlikely he knew it would have the side effects that it did.”

  “And then he put me up for adoption to keep me safe,” I said.

  Moorecroft nodded.

  “He disappeared after that night.”

  It made sense. If the supernaturals hated my father for his experiments, there was no way I was ever going to be safe unless he hid me. He’d probably paid or coerced a warlock into binding Dee to me as an extra precaution.

  “Where is he now?” I asked.

  “As far as we know he was killed,” Moorecroft replied, “He went on the run after hiding you in the adoption system. He hasn’t been seen or heard of since, so it’s likely the supernaturals tracked him down.”

  I gazed at the photo Moorecroft had given me. It looked like they were at the beach, the pretty woman – Sophia – holding onto her hat, the man – Henry – with a slight smile on his moustached face.

  I stared at the image over and over again, but I couldn’t feel anything. So these had been my biological parents. They weren’t my real parents. I had one parent, Sally. The couple in the picture were strangers to me.

  We were dropped off at my house. Kate and I were both bleary-eyed by that point, and both of us got out of the van. Realising her mistake, Kate mumbled something about crashing at my place. I wasn’t against the idea. As wiped out as we both were, she still looked like the prettiest girl I’d ever seen. We’d held each other in the van, her head on my shoulder.

  Or maybe it was my head on her shoulder, I forget which now.

  *

  Everything that had occurred at Avebury was covered up, naturally. Standard Section 19 procedure: Lock it down, intimidate the witnesses, gag the press. The weird lights that had lit up the night sky from the portal were attributed to a ‘rare meteorological phenomenon’ by the mainstream media. Section 19 even had a respected meteorologist do an interview on the BBC explaining it all away with a lot of made up pseudo-science so tedious that everyone soon forgot about it. Kate saw through the fake explanation, but then she’d witnessed what had actually happened.

  Everyone else just shrugged and went back to their daily routines.

  The mansion itself and the facility beneath had gone up in flames, a fire started by the rampaging supernaturals I’d help to release. By the time the emergency services got the blaze under control, the underground facility had been destroyed, most of it collapsed in on itself from
an explosion caused by a weapons cache.

  Pryce Industries kept going, although Victoria was in hiding. Officially she was removed from the board of directors, but I doubted that was as real as it sounded. I was sure she was still running things in secret.

  Major Wilson, like Victoria, had gone to ground.

  Section 19 paid a visit to Dee’s ‘parents’ with a story about how he’d been killed in a freak explosion. It was my idea, a way of at least giving them some closure.

  Alice called me one evening, shortly after the funeral for Dee.

  “I’m sorry about what happened to your friend.”

  “You heard?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where did you go? At the battle?”

  “I couldn’t go any further.”

  “Why?”

  Alice sighed on the other end of the phone. After a few moments hesitation, she explained.

  “There was going to be too much blood, and I can’t let myself drink from a live human. Bad things happen if I do and I didn’t know if I could resist it. Even as I went the other way, the smell was almost too much for me. You wouldn’t have been safe if I’d become involved. No-one would have been.”

  She paused.

  “I’m sorry, but there was no other choice.”

  I could hear tension in her voice, a combination of shame and guilt. She sounded like an alcoholic who’d committed to sobriety and had seen themselves about to fall off the wagon. It turned out that was actually a good analogy.

  I decided not to press her any further on the issue.

  “Where are you?”

  “I’m close. Keeping an eye on you. I owe you that much.”

  I’d had a lot of time to think about Alice and her role in everything. I’d concluded that she, like everyone else, had had her own agenda.

  “Who were you working for?” I asked.

  “I wasn’t working for anyone.”

  I didn’t believe her.

  “It was you, wasn’t it?” I pressed on, “You were the hacker. ‘Sam.’ You said you were investigating the Pryces. That’s why you were at Avebury in the first place. You suspected something was going on but you didn’t know exactly what, so you got me to find out. I was a safe bet for you because I wasn’t affiliated with anyone at that point. Easily manipulated, still trying to work things out. You dug around, found some things out and then got me to investigate.”

  I hadn’t heard from ‘Sam’ since our initial contact. The only reason I could think of for that was that ‘Sam’ knew everything that had happened at Avebury, because she’d been there – or at least in the vicinity.

  “Jason, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  Alice’s tone implied she knew precisely what I was talking about.

  I let it go.

  She said she’d drop by for a visit when things quietened down. Things were happening, she told me. No-one could be sure what the effect of the barrier between Arcadia and our world being destroyed would be in the long term.

  Still, at least there were no immediate signs of an invading demonic army.

  So that was a bonus.

  *

  And that was pretty much that.

  I went back to working at the garage and carried on at school. After everything I’d been through, I’d learnt to control my powers and was less worried about accidentally hurting someone than I’d been in the past. Things improved for me at school. Somehow, even my grades started to pick up.

  Kate and I were closer now than we had been.

  How close, exactly?

  We’re still figuring that out.

  Forrest still floated around being a pain in the neck, and I did have to face Clark and his goons behind the bike sheds one wet afternoon. Clark didn’t give me any choice in the matter. He was convinced I’d stolen his girlfriend.

  I tried to explain to him that he’d lost Kate because he was a tool, but that didn’t improve matters. In the end it came down to Clark and his two goons grabbing me and dragging me behind the bike shed, intent on giving me a thorough beating.

  I honestly did my best to avoid it. I even tried to warn them, but it was no use.

  Two minutes later, I walked out from behind the bike shed, unscathed.

  Ten minutes later, my three would-be assailants hobbled away, nursing a variety of bruises and sprains.

  They didn’t bother me again.

  There was one more thing.

  It might have been nothing, it might have been something. A couple of weeks after Dee’s funeral I was heading out of the house and to school. I walked downstairs, but I was obviously less awake than I’d thought because I stepped on the untied shoelace of my left foot with my right foot. I went sprawling head first down the remaining three steps, yelping as I did.

  “Jayce?” Mum called from the living room, “Are you alright?”

  “Yeah, yeah, I’m fine. Just a little spill, nothing serious.”

  I paused as I realized something.

  My trainers didn’t have laces. They had Velcro straps.

  I looked down and they were all in the right place. And I swear I didn’t imagine this next bit, as I stood there trying to figure out what had just happened and rubbing a bruised elbow. I didn’t imagine it. I’m almost a hundred percent sure.

  In the distance, as if it was coming from far, far away...

  I heard the sound of Dee, roaring with laughter.

  Acknowledgements & Afterword

  Thanks to everyone who contributed to the writing of this book, in particular Pam, Joe and Will who all gave fantastic input, advice and feedback at critical stages.

  And thanks to you, the reader, for picking up the book.

  If you enjoyed “Personal Demons” please leave a review, mention it to your friends and family, drop a tweet or whatnot – it’s all very much appreciated and helps keeps the lights on.

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  David Morrison

  January 2018