by D V Wolfe
“Vix?” I breathed, realization dawning on me. I stumbled towards her. My legs gave out and I fell down to my hands and knees next to her and Nigel. A body slammed into me, knocking me back down. There was a deafening roar and then silence. I waited. The body that was half on top of me stirred. I felt the strange otherworldly tug. Vix. Nigel had thrown her off. I opened my eye and blinked, trying to clear my vision. Vix was sprawled on top of me. I shifted under her weight and she whimpered. I could feel her shaking. I jerked my head around, looking for Nigel. Where the hell had he gone? Vix was flailing around now. I was able to roll out from under her. The dancing light from the fire kept startling me, making me think Nigel was about to leap on us from the shadows. We needed to get out of there. I needed firepower. I needed my own sword. I bent down and got my hands under Vix’s shoulders.
“Vix, we need to go.” I needed to get her out of there and to safety. She was so pale. There was so much blood, I couldn’t tell where she was bleeding from. Her muscles were spasming uncontrollably, but I could tell she was trying to help me get her to her feet. I got her arm around my shoulder and turned back to the front door. I looked around on the floor as we staggered forward. The sword was gone too. We made it out the door and down the sidestreet to Lucy. I heaved Vix onto the passenger seat and got behind the wheel. We laid rubber getting out of there. In the soft light reflected back from the headlights, I looked over at Vix. Her eyes were closed, but I could see the steady rise and fall of her chest. How had she found me? Why had she saved me? Was something still controlling her? I tried to breathe. Don’t think, just do. Get her to safety, then go back and find Nigel. I had a feeling that his definition of “fun” was going to be altered after I showed up with a sword of my own. I tightened my grip on the steering wheel and I looked back over at Vix. She’d be a pain in the ass about it if I said it when she was conscious.
“Thanks, Vix.”
19
I didn’t even bother with the Jeep trail on the way back to Stacks’ trailer. The drive across town had been just long enough for the shock to wear off and the pissed-off-ready-to-chew-nails anger to set in. I debated even turning the truck off. I was going to drop Vix off on the porch and go back to get Nigel. Unfortunately, there was a welcoming party waiting for us when Vix and I drove up.
“Bane!” Gabe was straddling his bike, but as soon as he saw us pull up, he climbed off and ran over. There was a deep ache in my chest at the sight of him. He looked relieved, but mostly he looked like Gabe; leather jacket, wild hair, and a beard that I would spend an hour running my fingers through if I didn’t have a shivving appointment to get to. “Oh my god, what happened? Where have you been?” Gabe asked, pulling open my door. I slid out of the cab and braced myself on the steering wheel to keep from collapsing. Gabe looked me over, taking in the cut on my chest. It was the first time I realized that my sports bra had been cut open as well as my shirt. But, I was too shaken and tired to give a rat’s ass about modesty. And with Gabe?
He gently cradled my face between his palms. I decided not to think. Just do. I strained up on tiptoes and I kissed him. Hard and with everything I had. His hands went around me, pulling me into his chest. And I didn’t miss that his palms found my ass. For a minute, I didn’t feel any pain. Then, the bite of his black t-shirt against my new chest wound, and his hand, putting pressure on my cell phone in my back pocket, pressing it against my ass stab wound from earlier, made me pull back, hissing in pain.
“I’m sorry,” Gabe panted. “What happened?” He moved the front of my shirt to look at the wound. “It’s not too deep, but…”
“Vix,” I said, interrupting him and motioning to the truck cab. We need to get her inside. She’s gone into shock. Gabe didn’t ask any questions.
“Let me get you to the porch. Then I’ll get Vix,” he said.
“I’m fine,” I said. “I need to go back.” I started moving to try to climb back into the driver’s seat. Gabe moved so quickly, I didn’t see what he was about to do in time. He reached over Vix and grabbed the keys out of the ignition. I glared at him.
“Noah!” Gabe called. Noah appeared on the front porch. “Help Bane inside. And if she tries to butter you up and get you to steal her keys back from me, you have my permission to do that flaming ear flick thing to her that you did at the church.” Noah snapped Gabe a salute and came to get me. Apparently, the two of them had reached some sort of truce in the time I’d been gone. Bully for them.
“I’m fine,” I said to Noah.
“Just shut up, Bane,” Noah muttered. “Don’t waste what little brain function you have at the moment on talking. Just move your ass. I can’t carry you up the stairs.” He paused when he saw the wound on my chest. His ears were going slightly pink when he met my gaze. “Do you want me to…” he motioned at my chest. “You know, fix that?”
I looked down at myself. “May as well. I don’t really have time to be bleeding everywhere.” I held onto the porch railing with one hand and one of the rusty porch chairs with the other while Noah put both of his hands on the wound, one hand above the other, covering the entire length.
“Ok, hold on,” he said. Maybe it was residual numbness from what Nigel had done to me, or maybe Noah was going easy on me. For whatever reason, the cauterizing didn’t seem to hurt nearly as bad as it usually did. Don’t get me wrong, I still wanted to puke and I had to fight the urge to not wrap a hand around his throat as he was burning me, but I didn’t fall down or scream my lungs out.
“Thanks,” I wheezed when he pulled his hands away. The smell of cooked flesh was right under my nose and I did my best to try to fool my brain into thinking it was just residual smell from the crispy demon rather than my own chest.
We made it back inside and I was immediately commandeered by Rosetta who steered me through the door and towards Stacks’ bedroom.
“No,” I said. “Vix. She needs to lay down more than I do.”
“Vix?” Rosetta asked. “The Puca?”
I nodded. “She saved my life. She’s hurt or she’s still sick or something. She’s in shock.” A moment later, I heard Gabe’s boots on the porch and I pointed back towards the front door. Rosetta changed directions with me and set me down on the couch. Noah moved books and pizza boxes off the other end and pushed on my shoulder until I fell over and laid down. Through my single unswollen eye, I saw Gabe go by, following Rosetta down the hall. The jerking and spasming form of Vix still in his arms. I rolled my eye around the room and found Tags.
“Kess,” I said. “Call Kess.”
Tags frowned at me. “You want me to call Kess?”
“For the Puca,” I said to him. “Kess has been taking care of Vix.” Then I remembered the cell phone was in my pocket. I heaved myself to one side and fished it out. I flipped it open and tried the number I had for Kess. Disconnected. Not unusual for Kess. She often only bothered with it when she had to. I dialed Sprig. While it was ringing, Rosetta and Gabe came out of Stacks’ room.
The phone call connected, but Sprig didn’t say anything. I gave an inward sigh.
“Spring. It’s Bane. Vix is here.”
“Vix is with you!?” Sprig shouted.
I held the phone away from my ear until I was sure he was done shouting. “Yes,” I said. “Messina, Indiana. She’s alive. Beyond that, I don’t know how ‘ok’ she is. I can’t get a hold of Kess.”
“I’ll tell her,” Sprig said. “Just...don't let her out of your sight. I’m on my way.” Then I could hear him banging around as if he was packing or navigating his way through a room full of land mines. Apparently, his mastery of “hanging up” the phone came and went as much as his memory on how to answer the phone. I flipped the phone closed and tossed it on the table. That was when I realized that every set of eyes was focused on me. Except for Rosetta who I didn’t immediately see. Something cold smacked me against my swollen eye and I sucked in a breath.
“Here,” Rosetta said. “Keep this pressed against it.” I pulled the thing aw
ay from my eye to look at it. It was a frozen bag of chicken nuggets. I put it back against my eye and focused on the others.
“Nigel,” I said.
“Is he dead?” Gabe asked, looking worried.
I shook my head. “I don’t think so. He’s the one that did all this,” I said, gesturing at my face and chest.
“What?!” Noah sputtered. “Little, old Nigel attacked you?”
I nodded, turning to look at Stacks and Rosetta. “He’s the one that killed Barbara, Royson, and Ellie. Well, they still killed themselves, but he made them...depressed. Depressed enough to do it.”
“Murder by depression?” Stacks asked.
I nodded. “He has this ability. He hit me with some form of SAL or something. I couldn’t move.”
“ALS?” Stacks asked. He started naming off the symptoms and I nodded. “But that takes time,” Stacks said, frowning.
“He said this was his own version and let me tell you, in a matter of minutes, I couldn’t even move my tongue,” I said.
“A demon that kills with disease?” Gabe asked.
I shook my head. “He says he’s not a demon. He could be lying of course. He smokes cloves, just like Festus and some of his movements…” I remembered the flick of his hand when he’d hit me with the disease. Festus had made that movement, starting that guy’s truck back in Soder. Then another thought occurred to me. “But if he was a demon, wouldn’t the other demons be able to tell?”
“I don’t know,” Noah said. “Festus couldn’t tell that there were other demons in town.”
“Yeah, but Festus wasn’t the janitor for a bunch of demons, working around them in close proximity for months on end,” I said.
“Do you think Nigel was able to block the other demons from seeing his identity? Even if he wasn’t a demon, wouldn’t they be able to pick up, I don’t know, a supernatural funk about him?” Stacks asked.
Something clicked into place in my head and I swung my attention back to Tags. “Tags, what if Nigel was the one blocking Walter? He said the reason he killed the do-gooders was because they were attracting all this attention to the church and its leaders. He just wanted it all to go away. When he found out we were in town, he decided he didn’t care if we killed the demons and left or if the demons killed us and carried on, just so long as he could go back to his regular routine.”
“A demon being able to block a Harbinger?” Tags asked, looking doubtful.
“He kept insisting he wasn’t a demon,” I said, shifting to the edge of the couch and turning to look at Stacks. “Maybe that’s where we start. We make a list of beings that would be capable of blocking Walter and kill by making people sick.” I didn’t wait for them to answer. I turned to look at Noah. “Noah, can you look up suicide deaths for Messina for the last, I don’t know twenty-thirty years?” I looked at Tags. “Is your pendulum ready?”
Tags looked over at Gabe, Noah, and Stacks. “The boys rigged up a projector and drew me a map on Stacks’ floor.”
“Can you find Nigel with it?” I asked. Just in case he hadn’t gone back to his house.
Tags looked doubtful. “You didn’t happen to get his actual name, did you? It’s not so effective without his name when it comes to demons.”
“What about when we used the pendulum to find the necrowitch?” Noah asked. “We didn’t know her name.”
I turned my head to look at him and winced as my neck muscles clenched. “Yeah, but we knew we were looking for a necrowitch and we were in a town that only had one supernatural thing brewing. It made it easy. Demons can shield themselves from wide searches. But they can’t hide when you know their names.” I looked back at Tags. “Tags, we’re not sure he’s even a demon, remember?”
“What else could he be?” Rosetta asked. “Demons can bring plagues, compel people to do things, as we know from Festus, they aren’t overly fond of each other and they lie like it’s going out of style.”
I sagged a little on the couch. Nigel had to be a demon. Despite the niggling voice in my head that said he wasn’t. It didn’t matter. Without a real name, the pendulum wasn’t going to be able to find him. If we tried to do a wide search with it, it would pick up the demons at New Covenant, that is if they had been lazy about precautions.
“And you, what, shot your way out? Did he have Vix captured there?” Noah asked.
I shook my head. “I didn’t have a weapon. Remember? I thought Nigel was helping us. I went to talk to him. He knocked me out when he opened the door and he was mid-torture with me when Vix crashed through the back door and attacked him.” I filled them in on the fight, the woman with slashed wrists in his kitchen and his disappearance. “So,” I said, putting my weight on one of the couch arms and pulling myself up to stand. I heard Rosetta make a noise of protest and I glared at her around the frozen chicken nugget bag I still had pressed to my left eye. “I’m going to take my sword and do some exploratory surgery on our friend, Nigel Demon, esquire.”
“If you can find him,” Tags said.
“And if he is a demon since your sword is of the ‘demon-killing’ variety,” Gabe said.
“And if you’re not immediately arrested for carrying a huge fucking sword in broad daylight, in downtown Messina,” Stacks added.
“Yes,” I snapped. “Any other comments from the peanut gallery?”
Tags started moving towards the hall. “I’ll see if ‘Nigel’ can pull anything up with the pendulum.”
“So why is your pendulum so big?” I asked. “And you better answer quick because there is a downpour of dick jokes that I’m just barely holding back at this point.”
Tags sighed. “Of course there are. I told you. It’s bigger for better precision. I also added a few spells to it that make it possible to track whatever you’re searching for. If they move, you don’t have to keep re-doing the spell. The pendulum will follow them.”
“Like supernatural GPS tracking,” Stacks said.
“Ok,” I said. “I’m going to start this little adventure with a trip back to Nigel’s house.”
“The sun is coming up, Gabe said. “Walking down the block with that sword in plain view…”
“Forget the cops,” Stacks said. “She walks up with that huge sword and how long do you think it will take a demon who can make people off themselves to force her to seppuku herself?”
“Or, give her some disease that makes her arms fall off,” Noah added.
Gabe nodded and turned back to look at me. “You really need the element of surprise to make this work. He needs to not see the sword until you’re about to kill him with it.”
“What am I supposed to do? I’m hunting a demon and I have nowhere to stick my demon-hunting sword,” I said.
“I wish you had one of those scabbards on your back, like the one Kosmas had when he pulled the sword out of, like, nowhere,” Noah said.
“You could always make one,” a voice said from the hallway. All heads in the room turned. Vix was standing in the doorway from Stacks’ room. She looked exhausted and like she had a matte finish rather than the impossibly glossy look she always seemed to embody.
“How are you feeling?” I asked.
She wrinkled her nose at her surroundings. “Confused and nauseated.”
“The protections are probably responsible for the nausea,” Rosetta said. “We have iron and salt all over this place.” She paused. “Though, I suppose it could also be the pizza boxes, stains, general disarray, or the half-melted demon corpse in the IKEA chair…”
Vix curled back her upper lip in disgust. I cleared my throat. “Sprig is on his way.” Vix looked relieved and I decided to take a shot. “Vix, do you remember coming to Messina and attacking someone?”