Wrath of the Demon Girl

by Eddie R. Hicks

  I sensed movement within the parked cars in the lot, it was most likely the people that snatched me and torched the car I was in. After all, it was a little late for people to be working. I forced the flames around my body to subside, didn’t want to give my position away by the light it was creating. I looked at the main office, lights were on in one of the rooms, and again, it was pretty late for people to be at work.

  A few voices in the lot spoke back and forth to each other. I was no linguist, but I was pretty sure it was Russian. Looking up, I saw the men that spoke Russian bathe two other cars with a gasoline canister, and then step away as a lit cigarette was flicked onto it. The lot grew a whole lot brighter after that, bright enough for me to see the AK-47s and pistols they were brandishing. One of them pointed to the car I hid behind, I ducked my head. Then I heard them speak again followed by their footsteps, somehow, I doubted they were going to be happy to see I’d escaped once they arrived.

  Using my return talent came to mind, so did the thought of them shooting my place up when their guns went off if they saw it. Emily might get hit in the crossfire, I couldn’t risk it. I needed to be out of sight and out of weapons range. I moved silently across the tarmac, away from the light of the fires, keeping my head low and on a course to the dealership’s office. Sneak inside and find a nice quiet spot to use my return talent, easier said than done.

  I ran into a lone, armed patrol man, fuck me.

  He yelled at me in Russian, jamming his pistol into my face. None of his pals heard, advantage me. My body crystallized with ice water. Since I was already down low, I swept my legs across the ground, kicking his out in the process. The playing field was even, and I leaped on him and wrestled for control. I smothered his face with my hand, freezing his mouth shut, and went for his pistol. The two of us rolled around until I got bored and pushed a baseball-bat-sized icicle through his chest when he was on top of me. His limp body fell over as the blood-coated end of my icicle hit the ground with a clink. The flesh it ripped open to bore through his body, hardened with the coldness of my Umbral might.

  I held my hand out toward him once I stood up and absorbed what combat experience he had. My skill with firearms increased, fragments of his soul entered my body and empowered my talents to grow stronger. I shut my eyes and envisioned the inverted pentagram within an astral void, the powerhouse of my talents. In the vision, I stood before the water element at one end of the pentagram. My recent kill gave me enough power to grow stronger and unlock a new water-based talent, or another of a different element. My goal was to master water like I had mastered fire, however.

  The new talent had been unlocked. It was an offensive skill that would allow me to imbue a weapon of my choice with the element of water. Targets hit with water-imbued weapons would freeze instantly, this was a big deal. While I was able to cover weapons with fire, the drawback was the weapon would also burn and become damaged; the exception of course was my katana. But with this? Shit, this opened up a lot of new possibilities.

  Opening my eyes, I returned to the world, only a second had passed since I entered the trance. I took my departed target’s gun as I dragged his corpse away by his leg, dashing him in the corner away from his friends that might stroll over to check up on him. With his body disposed of for the time being, I looked down at his gun with my icy grip firmly holding it. It was imbued with the element of water, blue shimmering bubbles floated away from it.

  I continued to the office, sneaking inside via an unlocked door like a ninja. Game plan was to sneak into the washroom and make my escape. That was until I heard people talk and another man groan at the sounds of fists cracking against his face. I moved within the darkened areas of the office, past the reception desk, and into a room which was the source of the light I saw earlier. There was a man tied to a chair, his face was bruised, bloody, and beaten. Two men with Russian accents took turns punching and kicking him.

  One of them stepped away from the man, giving me a better glimpse of who they had snatched.

  It was Jim.

  Chapter Eleven

  “That’s nice jacket you got there, comrade,” one of the Russian men said to Jim. “It would be shame if it got messy, no?”

  Jim’s dazed face came about. “I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about—” Whack. A fist struck Jim hard. “Are you some chick’s father? If so, I swear I treated her good!”

  Jim’s resistance was impressive. Even after taking a beating like that, he was able to speak well and stay calm. I periodically looked around the corner of the filing cabinet I hid behind and watched as one of the men placed a phone on a desk. He pushed on the screen of it and it began to replay a recorded message.

  “Come out, come out, where ever you are! You little whore.”

  Screaming followed, oh so familiar screaming from the night I dropped the demon at the club. The muffled sounds of me fighting followed, my heels running, punches, kicks, I think I even heard my ice missile hit the wall.

  “Where is she?”

  “Sorry, your whore girl friend is in another castle.”

  “Are you lying?”

  “Fuck you.”

  “You know what this shit will do to you? Talk, or get fucked, your call. But choose quickly, I ain’t got all day.”

  “Ha! Don’t you work for the police now? Shouldn’t you read me my rights?”

  “You want some rights read? Well then, you have the right to remain silent . . .” Stabbing sounds echoed, shit I didn’t know I shanked him that hard. “For eternity.”

  Muffled noises and my footsteps came next.

  “Get your clothes on and leave, now.” That was the part when Belyana took off, the part where I should have grabbed her and solved her disappearance right then and there.

  “Oh, Jimmy.”

  “Oh, Reika.”

  “We’re going to need a cleanup in aisle six.”

  I looked around the corner and watched the terrified look on Jim’s face as the recording continued to play. The two of us knew one day this would come back to bite both of us in the ass. Apparently that day, that night, was now.

  “There is another body, right?”

  “No, just him.”

  “Holy shit.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Reika, this is by far the cleanest kill you’ve sent me. Seriously, no dismemberment, charred corpse, large and grotesque bloody gashes.”

  “Whatever.”

  “Where’s the katana?”

  “Not here.”

  “What did you use?”

  “Fucking lit Reika, pure old school stuff.”

  “You should try it sometime for your future hit jobs.”

  “I’ll stick with the good ol’ silencer.”

  “Is that the same one you used to kill those two Russian mobsters last fall?”

  “The very same, you know me too well.”

  Then came the part where we dragged the body into the far stall, apparently, we were out of audio range at that point, only muffled sounds of us talking played. “Jim!” Well shit, didn’t know I shouted his name so loud, didn’t even know I could make a noise that loud. Makes me wonder how loud I got during sex. The recording came to an end seconds later, the person on the other end must have heard enough and figured they weren’t going to hear anything else from us so long as we were in that stall.

  The two men holding Jim captive looked at him and his bloodied face. The one doing most of the talking, with his fists, stepped closer to him. “Still don’t know what I’m talking about?”

  Jim smiled. His white teeth now painted a dark red. “Oh . . . that.”

  “He was a brand-new recruit and showed much promise.” A swift kick to the shins made Jim scream. “You and that bitch from the Yakuza fucking killed him!”

  “Look, talk to Vladimir, I’ve done work for him in the past, he knows I’m legit.”

  “I am Vladimir, you fucking idiot!”

  “Oh? Sup man, how’ve you been? It’s been
ages since we talked, like what? Twelve hours ago?” Vladimir, the man that had been beating him said nothing. “Ugh, I guess it’s too late for that, huh?”

  Vladimir reached for his phone on the desk, swiped across its screen a dozen times and replayed a video, shoving the screen to Jim’s face. With everyone’s attention focused on the video, I darted, without making a sound, next to another filing cabinet closer to the group. My new hidden position allowed me to see the screen and the video playback.

  It was a dashcam recording from last fall. Jim waved to the occupants of the car, and then approached the driver-side window. Two silenced bullets whispered their sounds of death, killing the two men inside, Jim went to work and recovered their bodies. Vladimir fast-forwarded the video, I grimaced. It was me checking out the car, and then driving it away. Note to self, check for dashcam recorders before jacking a car that belonged to members of the Russian Mafia.

  “I lost two people last fall,” Vladimir said, forwarding the video toward its end. “Their car ended up in Queens. That woman you saw took it after you killed the brothers that owned it, two very important brothers to us.”

  My kidnapping, the dumping of my body in the car, the armed men, and Jim’s capture, it was the Russian mob. They knew Jim killed those two men, they knew I borrowed their car, and they knew I left it at Schubert’s place when I went to see if Gabe was okay. And they knew the two of us were in the washroom of that club. Checkmate.

  Something didn’t add up though, something extremely disturbing. The man that made the call, Leonid, was not a member of the mob to anyone’s knowledge. He was, however, a demon, a demon that made the career change to gangster in the Russian mafia after he took his body. Somehow, I doubted he was the only one. Demons and the Russian mob working together, things could get real ugly, real fast.

  Vladimir continued his aggressive interrogation, manhandling Jim like he owed him money. “Why does Yakuza want war with us?”

  And then there was that.

  Vladimir knew of my tattoos but didn’t know I ditched the Yakuza after getting shot up by the cops. Me getting involved in this shit may have triggered an all-out war between them and the Yakuza. Mafia wars with demons in the mix. My attempts to save New York might have made the problem worse.

  Jim groaned. “I just work for a paycheck.”

  “Well soon you’ll know the error of your ways, like your Yakuza girlfriend,” Vladimir said, pointing to the blazing car I had escaped from. “We’re going to let it burn awhile longer, I want you to see what remains of her.”

  Jim snapped with anger and rage, jerking his body around while the bindings that tied him to the chair held him in place. “What the fuck, man!”

  “Oh, now he’s got some life in him,” Vladimir said, laughing.

  “I’m the one you want, not Reika! She didn’t have anything to do with this!”

  “Oh, poor baby, want me to get you some tissue?”

  “Fuck you, Vladimir! Fuck you and your fucking thugs; I’m done with you all!”

  Watching Jim experience the unstable cocktail of emotions, anger, hatred, sorrow, and regret, made me wonder what was really going on in his head. I swear he was probably five minutes away from crying over my loss. This wasn’t a man upset he lost a business partner, and with the type of business he conducts, I’m sure he’s used to having paying clients meet their end with violence. I doubted he got emotional about losing them. Yet there he was, thinking I was a goner and was ready to cry himself to sleep over it.

  I’ll have to get back to those thoughts later after watching what came next.

  Vladimir struck Jim hard, hard enough to make his head tilt to the side and his swollen eyes to shut. He slapped Jim’s face a few times, no response. He knocked him the fuck out. Vladimir turned to his comrade that stood watching as they spoke to each other in Russian, probably coming up with a plan to deal with Jim in the most painful way possible.

  Vladimir reached inside Jim’s jacket, and came out with his phone in his hands. He tossed it to his buddy and drew a pistol from his back pocket and placed the barrel of it between Jim’s eyes. Well, so much for them showing Jim my body, not that it mattered as I was right there watching, alive, breathing, and pretty fucking pissed off.

  I held onto my water imbued pistol.

  I stood.

  I faced them.

  I took aim.

  My finger went for the trigger. Now or never.

  Clap, clap, clap. I fired the first shots to save Jim’s life. Lucky for Vladimir, his buddy shouted to him seconds before my bullets ripped, prompting him to take cover. My three bullets that missed hit the wall. The water element that possessed my pistol transferred to the bullets and caused the three newly formed bullet holes to turn the wall into solid ice. I was impressed.

  All the guns came out at that point, including the ones being held by the thugs in the parking lot outside. Vladimir’s pistol wasn’t aimed at Jim, but his friend’s was. I put one bullet into his friend’s arm and the water imbued bullet turned it into solid ice. A second shot caused his arm to shatter into chunks of frozen flesh and bone. He wailed loudly upon realizing his arm with the hand that held his pistol was no longer there.

  My next shot hit him in the chest as he was going into shock at the loss of his arm. His upper body froze solid, and my boot crashing into him reduced it into a pile of ice before my feet. I heard Vladimir scurry around, didn’t have time to see what he was up to. I quickly scooped up the downed pistol from his buddy, strafed over to Jim and laid my killer’s eye on Vladimir.

  He shot at me. I shot back, going full John Woo on his ass, leaping through the air brandishing dual pistols, blazing their clapping noises. My leap helped me avoid his attempts at return fire, fire that didn’t let up. Vladimir was relentless, Vladimir was also alive after that display of badassery on my part. I landed and kicked out one of the legs of the chair Jim was tied to. His blacked-out body hit the floor and kept him low from the exchange of bullets.

  Lying on the ground, I continued to fire at Vladimir. He was a slippery bastard and pulled off some hardcore spetsnaz dive and roll moves, taking him out of danger. My missed bullets froze the floor, walls, and ceilings upon impact with a shining sheet of ice. Then the lights went out, a bullet from the outside was the reason for that. It was one of a hundred bullets that flew in seconds later.

  Vladimir’s men outside riddled the office space with broken glass and bullets from their pistols and rifles. I wasn’t sure what became of him after that, the deafening sound of a warzone outside drowned out all other sounds. Shattered glass shards, torn up documents, and tiny splinters of wood rained down on my body still lying on the floor protecting Jim. Sooner or later, someone was going to get a lucky shot in, I couldn’t allow that.

  I smothered Jim’s body with my own and summoned a cocoon-shaped glacial shield to deflect all unwanted matter that got close. I heard the bullet fire let up and went to peek through the hole in the wall that was once a window. Bad mistake, they were just reloading. A second barrage followed, Jim and I were learning the hard way what happens when you piss in the coffee cup of the Russian mafia.

  I retreated to my cover within the glacial shield and waited for them to run out of bullets, hopefully for good. The air filled with silence, it was promising news. I remained in my cover, doing my best to keep my breathing quiet and my movement nonexistent. I wanted them to think I was dead, and honestly if it wasn’t for my talents, by rights, I should be.

  Two minutes passed, and I went to move for the first time, half expecting it to trigger another bullet storm. Footsteps crunched on top of the glass shards littering the floor . . . next to the door I entered from. One of the mobsters was coming to confirm the kill.

  He didn’t know where I was, I knew where he was, I had the advantage. I also had guns that were out of ammo, no problem. My nimble hands obtained a razor-sharp piece of broken glass and used it as a knife to cut Jim loose from the chair. Leaving my glacial shield, I crawl
ed on the floor like a commando in some cheap Hollywood action flick. I spotted my oblivious target scanning the dark office with his AK drawn. He was probably wondering where the random slabs of ice came from that coated the walls and ceiling.

  I waited for him to walk, and then made my move. I used the talent I liked to call, the slip ‘n’ slide. I froze the floor where he went to take a step, a flawless and perfectly flat sheet of ice formed underneath his foot. He took one step on it and wiped the fuck out. I vividly remember Lexi using this talent once. It was a two-stage talent, the first stage was freezing the floor, the second stage was forcing the ice to rise up and smother the target that slipped and fell on it.

  With my target on his back on top of my icy trap, cursing loudly in Russian, I went to use the second stage of the talent. Only it didn’t work. I moved my hands around in a futile attempt to command the Umbral forces that powered my abilities to do its fucking job. Nothing, in truth this was the first time I used this talent. Clearly, there was something about it I hadn’t figured out yet.

  It was time for plan B, as the mobster rolled back to his feet with his rifle in hand and shouting to his friends outside that something was afoot. Being silent was no longer an option. These guys weren’t stupid and were unlikely to fall for the same icy trap again. All I could do was keep every square inch of the floor frozen to slow their movements while I returned to Jim’s body, placing him in a firefighter’s carry.

  God damn it, why do men have to weigh so much?

  I ditched the carry in favor of straight-up dragging his body away once the Russians came storming in with guns blazing. Turning the office floor into a skating arena worked to slow their advance, some fell, and others had to walk like a penguin. None of them were able to keep up with me and my ability to run across ice without slipping. Their shots weren’t as accurate either, firing high-powered rifles while standing on a sheet of ice had a tendency to make you lose balance and slip from the recoil. I pulled and tugged Jim’s body past the reception desk and around a corner, our saving grace from the unfocused bullets beyond.