by Renee George
I lowered my head slightly, put on my sweetest smile, and spoke softly. “Don’t you worry, honey,” I said as I swung my right arm in an arc, “a mangled face is the least of your problems.”
“Wait. What?” He looked up at me just in time to realize my intent. Still smiling, I buried the other heel deep into his forehead. Thud. Crunch. Squish.
“You suck,” the demon mumbled as his left eyelid froze open and he dropped to the ground.
I knelt next to him and, in a gesture taken straight from the offended Southern Belle handbook, I slapped his bloodied face. “That’s for your unkind comments about my appearance.” I wiped my soiled hands on the demon’s shirt. The rusty scent of blood mixed with the fragrance wafting from the colorful flowers planted along the hedges. Well, that was certainly a metaphor of my life—beautiful horror.
All that was left was to send the gored creature back to Hell — once he told me what I wanted to know.
I’d made friends with an Army interrogator back in the nineties. He told me that when they were trying to find Noriega in Panama, they would grab one of his known associates, a person low on the totem pole and easy to find, and make the guy tell them about the next associate, whom they’d go and find, and make that person tell about another one, and so on until they had the location of the tyrant narrowed down.
My focus was less goal-oriented. I only needed to know where to find my next demon. I didn’t give a crap about the boss. He was easy to find but impossible to get rid of, so I had to satisfy myself by dispatching all his lackeys. I relied on a website called DemonsAreAmongUs.com. Its forum was filled with quackery from delusional maniacs who blamed demonic possession for every bad thing in their lives, you know, like their local gas station hiking up the price of super unleaded. Sometimes, though, there would be a post that rang of truth, like the awful one I’d read about the demon Lazul.
Unfortunately, this demon was not Lazul. But he was higher on the pecking order in this particular demonic territory—and he would know where to find the asswipe I really wanted to smite. In Kansas City, Lazul had possessed a young woman who’d committed suicide by overdosing on her antidepressants. She’d been declared dead, and her grieving parents were left alone with the corpse to say their goodbyes. Then the fiend had popped into the corpse, growled obscenities, and yelled, “I am Lazul!” The parents screamed as a demon inhabited their daughter’s body. He escaped the hospital before anyone could figure out what was happening.
It was the mom’s post, and the particular mentions of rotten-egg smell and glowing red eyes, that sent me after the asshole.
“That’s just unsavory,” a sweet voice said from behind me, slightly aghast.
“Indeed,” another voice agreed, but with more interest than disgust.
“Eww,” the final voice mewled. “There’s goo leaking from his face.”
I rolled my eyes and looked at the three young women now crouched over my shoulder, one brunette, and two blondes — the twins — decked out in full-on bustles and bonnets. Charlotte was more practical than our younger sisters, so her dress was made from pink cotton edged with tiny white flowers. The twins wore pale yellow and lavender chiffon frocks with matching lace gloves and bonnets. Not even death could force my sisters into anything less than their finest attire.
“Go away.” I shooed at them. “I’m working.”
“Now, Olivia,” Char chided, crossing her arms tight against her chest. “Is that any way to greet your sisters?” The way she said sisters, sounded like sistuhs.
“Y'all are a distraction I don’t need at this moment, Char.” I turned the demon’s head and held his left eyelid open with my thumb. “Eliza, you probably don’t want to watch this.”
My youngest sister was squeamish, but mostly because she had an empathic streak a mile wide. Even as a small child on the farm she’d bury dead mice—much to the annoyance of our barn cats that had killed the critters. I imagined that she would’ve been a social worker or something similar had she lived in this day and age.
I dug my index finger into the demon’s unmarred eyeball. “Olivia!” Eliza screeched, her skirts swishing as she skittered backward.
“I told you not to watch.”
She buried her face in her hands. The eye gave a little squeak when I breached the surface, and fluid seeped out. It was yucky, but trust me, I’ve done worse. After a few seconds of digging, I located the bottom of each heel and clicked the barbs closed.
“You used to be the epitome of social standard, Olivia.” Charlotte tisked.
“I used to be a lot of things,” I said. I glanced at her. “We all did.”
Charlotte’s gaze fastened on the shoe as I pulled on it. “Careful!” she chided. “It took forever to fix those heels the last time you yanked them out of a vessel’s forehead.”
“I remember.” Considering, I’d done all the work. “I made sure the barbs are closed this time,” I told her.
Charlotte had a knack for fixing things. Even with genteel upbringing, Charlotte had always been at home among the farming equipment, fixing broken plows and taking apart tools to figure out how they worked. Poppa, a widowed father, would send us once a week into town to visit with our Aunt Elizabeth, who tried her best to turn us into delicate Belles, but when we were on the farm, Poppa allowed us the freedom of doing more than just house chores. Eliza became an expert on farm animals, pigs, cows, and the like. While Elise, spent all her time reading medical papers she could borrow from Dr. Beauregard Jenkins, a local surgeon, whom she sometimes volunteered with.
Even so, Charlotte couldn’t actually get her hands on mechanical objects, but I could, so she walked me through the building and fixing of my demon-hunting weaponry.
Elise, the older of my twin sisters, crouched down for a closer look at the facial damage. I opened the small red clutch and grabbed the three-inch silver rod. I extracted the heel and replaced it with the rod in the center of the demon’s forehead. I wiped ocular fluids, brain, and blood from the stilettos onto the demon’s shirt, and then slipped them back on my feet.
“I think he has a melanoma on his forehead,” Elise said, pointing to a mole on Hennessy’s scalp. “It’s rough, uneven in color and shape, and I’m sure he never wears sunscreen.” She shook her head. “I saw one that looked just like it on Discovery Medicine.”
If Elise had been born in modern times, I had no doubt she would be in medical school on her way to being a doctor. I could wish a thousand times my sisters to have different fates, and it wouldn’t change a damned thing. Moloch had made sure of that.
I waved at my siblings. “Okay, shoo. Show’s over, nothing to see here. Time to go. Last call. Vamoose. Am-scray even.”
“You don’t have to be rude,” said Elise.
“Actually, I do.” My sisters could ignore polite, but rude got their attention. Hooking my arms under the demon’s armpits, I dragged him around the next hedge. “I’m busy at the moment. I don’t have time for niceties. Sorry.” Besides, the demon’s master—and mine—would be showing up shortly, and I didn’t want my sisters anywhere near the foul creature.
All three of them “hmphed” at the same time, then shimmered from sight. Every time they did that, I felt a lightning strike of guilt. The fact that my sisters were ghosts was in no small measure my fault.
I unhooked the chain from the clutch and formed a small circle on the ground next to the paralyzed body. Like the rod, it was made from silver. Demons had what I thought of as a severe allergy to pure silver. Even though I was a minion, the precious metal only felt warm on my skin. It didn’t burn.
I’m not evil. Not yet.
I took matches, a votive candle, an orange spice incense cone, a vial of sea salt, a cigarette, and a tiny bell out of the purse. All the items were necessary to the “casting out the boogeyman” spell. Sure, it had another name, a much more complicated, can’t hardly get around all the vowels kind of name, but my former demon-hunting partner had deemed it “casting out the boogeym
an” and so, that’s what we called it.
The familiar heartache threatened to derail my attention. It had been fifty-six years since I’d said goodbye to David Jensen—and yet, it still felt like yesterday. If you’re wondering how long it takes to get over that kind of loss, the answer is never.
I poured salt around the silver chain, then I placed the candle and the cone of incense on the north and south edges respectively, struck a match and lit them both. Lifting the demon’s hand, I put it inside the loop.
Ugh. I so didn’t like this part. I pulled the rod from Hennessey’s forehead. The demon howled with rage and pain, his whole body twisting and jerking, except for the trapped hand. His human face contorted in sheer agony. Like I said, silver was bad ju-ju for the damned, and the sea salt made it impossible for the Hellspawn to eject from its host.
That, along with the gaping holes where his eyes used to be, made me shudder inside, a weakness I refused to show to the monsters.
“Hush now,” I said, sitting down next to him and trailing my fingers on his brow. “Or the pin goes back in.”
“What do you want, Madder?” he asked through gritted teeth.
After all these years, it was still hard to watch human vessels wither under the spell. Sometimes the demons had a shade attached to them, not a ghost exactly — not like my sisters, more like residual energy repeating its traumatic cycle of death over and over. Especially in the newly possessed.
This body didn’t have a shade.
It meant this fiend had taken up residence for at least a couple of decades. Hennessy’s shade no longer lingered in this realm. “Tell me where I can find Lazul, and I’ll let you go.” To Hell. The Madder wasn’t known for mercy to demonkind, and yet, they seem to always believe I’d let them go back to creating havoc for humans.
“I’d rather claw out your eyes,” the demon rasped.
“Promises, promises.” I tapped the hole in his forehead. “Remember who’s in charge.”
“Bitch!”
“Wow. I hope you don’t kiss your mother with that mouth.”
“My mother is Sin and Death, and she will feast on your innards while you roast in pits of eternal fire,” he screamed, spittle forming in the corners of his lips.
“I know I’m from the South an’ all, but I really don’t like barbecue.” Ugh. He was being stubborn. More stubborn than the average demon who’d roll on another demon to prevent getting a hangnail, let alone the pain of having his hand surrounded by the equivalent of burning pitch.
The body lurched, the empty orbital sockets seemingly staring at me, and Hennessey’s voice took on an unnatural tone. “My master will come for you. In the bowels of Hell, you will burn forever. Tenfold, a palsy will fall upon your soul. Tenfold, you will beg for mercy that will never come. Tenfold—”
“Yeah. I got it. Tenfold.” I shook my head. “I’ve heard it all before, asshole.” He wasn’t going to give me Lazul. From experience, most demons who talked did so in the first minute. This is what I got for trying to go through the slightly higher-ups in the demonic command chain. They weren’t as easily broken. Damn it. I really wanted Lazul. Those traumatized parents deserved to put their daughter to rest properly. An empty coffin in the cold ground would be a shitty reminder that her demon-possessed body was running around doing Moloch knew what.
I picked up the cigarette, struck another match, and lit it. Leaning over, I blew a puff of smoke into the demon’s face. Cyanide, a by-product of tobacco processing, was a necessary agent in the spell. It didn’t take much, and cigarette smoke was the easiest way to transport the minuscule amount of poison, which is why you’d never catch one of Hell’s agents smoking.
“Wait. What is that?” His nose twitched as the toxic wisps traveled into his nostrils.
He couldn’t see what I was doing, but he realized what was about to happen. Beneath us, the ground shook as the demon fought to release himself from the body before I did. The thing about the boogeyman ritual was that when I used it to expel demons, they got a one-way ticket to Hell. No return trips. It was one of the more satisfying aspects of sending Moloch’s lackeys back to the Pit. Time for the pièce de résistance. I rang the small bell. Its faint tinkle was reminiscent of a toddler’s giggle.
The body instantly stilled.
The demon was gone.
Okay, so most people might have been expecting something spectacular, like out of Supernatural. All black smoke, fire, brimstone, explosions, and drama, but nope, just gone.
I’d expected fireworks the first time I cast a demon out of this plane, so I understand the disappointment.
I repacked my clutch, attached the chain before putting it over my shoulder, and got to my feet. I kicked the vessel’s thigh. “Take that, Moloch.”
Upon mentioning his name, the demon lord burst into existence in front of me.
Fantastic.
Not.
Paranormal Mysteries & Romances
By Renee George
Witchin’ Impossible Cozy Mysteries
www.witchinimpossible.com
Witchin’ Impossible (Book 1)
Rogue Coven (Book 2)
Familiar Protocol (Booke 3)
Mr & Mrs. Shift (Book 4)
* * *
Barkside of the Moon Mysteries
www.barksideofthemoonmysteries.com
Pit Perfect Murder (Book 1)
Murder & The Money Pit (Book 2)
The Pit List Murders (Book 3)
* * *
Peculiar Mysteries
www.peculiarmysteries.com
You’ve Got Tail (Book 1) FREE Download
My Furry Valentine (Book 2)
Thank You For Not Shifting (Book 3)
My Hairy Halloween (Book 4)
In the Midnight Howl (Book 5)
My Peculiar Road Trip (Magic & Mayhem) (Book 6)
Furred Lines (Book7)
My Wolfy Wedding (Book 8)
Who Let The Wolves Out? (Book 9)
* * *
Madder Than Hell
www.madder-than-hell.com
Gone With The Minion (Book 1)
Devil On A Hot Tin Roof (Book 2)
A Street Car Named Demonic (Book 3)
About the Author
I am a USA Today Bestselling author who writes paranormal mysteries and romances because I love all things whodunit, Otherworldly, and weird. Also, I wish my pittie, the adorable Kona Princess Warrior, and my beagle, Josie the Incontinent Princess, could talk. Or at least be more like Scooby-Doo and help me unmask villains at the haunted house up the street.
When I'm not writing about mystery-solving werecougars or the adventures of a hapless psychic living among shapeshifters, I am preyed upon by stray kittens who end up living in my house because I can't say no to those sweet, furry faces. (Someone stop telling them where I live!)
I live in Mid-Missouri with my family and I spend my non-writing time doing really cool stuff...like watching TV and cleaning up dog poop.
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