Hunter's Legacy

by N. P. Martin

  I managed to get one shot off before the demon hit me, his clawed hand swiping me across the face, knocking me straight to the ground. Barely a second later, gunshots reverberated around the room, and I saw the demon get knocked back as three bullets entered his body, two in the chest, one in the stomach. The demon then made some inhuman screeching sound and scurried off into the darkness.

  Although my jaw hurt, and my shoulder ached from where I fell, I was still able to get back to my feet pretty quickly as I pushed my grace to the locations of pain, it quickly subsided, just as Frank had trained me to do it.

  "He’s over there," Frank said in a hushed but urgent tone, as he aimed his gun to the corner of the room, which was also the darkest part of it; so dark, in fact, that my night vision could barely penetrate it.

  Gathering myself quickly, I aimed my Glock into the corner as I tried to make out the demon. But then Frank tapped me on the arm and told me to double back toward the hallway.

  "You sure?" I asked him

  He nodded quickly. "We can’t let him escape," he said. "Cut him off if he tries to. Don’t forget to use your knife, Leia."

  Moving quicker than I did on the way in, I cut across the room and stood by the hallway entrance. From that distance, Frank seemed a long way away. If the demon decided to come my way, I was on my own.

  I stood with my gun loosely aimed, not knowing which angle the demon would come from, if he came at all. At least the bullet wounds would slow him down a bit.

  With my heart beating hard in my chest, I looked across at Frank as he began to advance toward the dark corner. The tension was almost unbearable as I kept waiting for the demon to jump out of the darkness at Frank.

  But then I heard a noise behind me in the hallway.

  Footsteps.

  What the hell?

  My first thought was that another demon was coming to help, in which case, there was no way I was going to wait on it getting any closer. So I spun around quickly and aimed my Glock down the hallway, my finger on the trigger.

  But some instinct told me not to shoot, and I wasn’t sure why.

  At least not until I made out the identity of the person in the gloom.

  "What the fuck?" I whispered in disbelief. "Kasey?"

  Kasey stopped where she was to stare at me, to stare at the gun in my hand. The one I was still pointing at her. "What the hell is going on, Leia?" she asked in a slightly fearful voice.

  I snapped my head around to see where Frank was. He was still edging toward the corner of the boiler room where the demon presumably still was.

  God damn it…

  "Kasey," I said looking back around. "What the fuck are you doing here?"

  Kasey came closer. "What the fuck are you doing here?"

  "I…" I looked around at Frank again. I couldn’t see him. "Oh shit…"

  "Leia, what’s going on?" Kasey persisted in a whispery voice, as if she knew there was danger nearby. "I saw you come in here with some dude earlier. I live on this street now, which you'd know if you’d bothered to read or listen to the umpteen messages I've left for you…"

  "You can’t be here, Kase." I walked right up to her and moved her back a few steps. "Go now, I mean it."

  Kasey was about to reply when gunshots from the boiler room made her jump. "Fuck!"

  "Oh shit!" I turned just as a loud screeching sound came from the boiler room. Then as I started to run down the hallway, a dark figure suddenly appeared in the doorway and made me stop dead. It was like nothing I had ever seen before, vaguely human in shape, but completely black like a shadow, with two glowing yellowish eyes. "What the fuck?"

  Frank shouted from the boiler room. "Don’t let it near you, Leia!"

  What? What is he talking about?

  The shadow figure, which had to be the demon in a different form, then rushed toward me. Out of pure instinct, I fired my gun at it, continuing to fire as it got near me, at which point it then jumped clean over me like I was no more than a kiddies hurdle. When I turned, I did so in time to see the demon’s shadowy form disappear into the body of Kasey. I could only watch in fearful horror as Kasey reeled back, as if she had been hit by a powerful force. She then doubled over for a second like she was in great pain, before suddenly going still, and then slowly straightening up. When she did, I gasped in shock when my best and only true friend stared at me with absolute malice behind two shiny, jet blacks eyes.

  She had the demon’s eyes, and I realized with a sickening horror that she been had possessed.

  "No…" I said shaking my head.

  Kasey, or rather the demon, smiled coldly at me as I raised my gun and aimed, though I knew there was no way I could shoot my best friend, even if she was possessed by a demon.

  The demon’s smile widened as it saw in my eyes what I knew to be true, and terribly so.

  Kasey was now gone. Once possessed, that was it. Even if you managed to exorcise the demon from the person’s body, their soul was already gone, and the damage left behind was too great to survive anyway.

  The demon knew this, which was why it drew such sickening pleasure from the realization in my eyes.

  "Leia!"

  It was Frank shouting behind me.

  Through blurry eyes, I saw the demon look past me, the smile disappearing from its face. It then seemed to snarl, like it was daring me to shoot it.

  But I just couldn’t, and the demon knew it as it turned and bolted up the hallway with Frank firing his gun at it. When he stopped shooting, he turned to me and forcefully said, "Who the hell was that? How did the demon get another body?"

  I shook my head, hardly able to speak. "It’s…my friend. She…followed me in here, and…" I couldn’t go on, and covered my hand with my mouth to try and control my emotions.

  "What?" Frank stood shaking his head, looking like all he wanted to do was go after the demon. "Jesus Christ."

  "The demon just…possessed her," I said. "There was nothing I could do."

  Frank put a firm hand on my shoulder. "Well, there’s something you can do now. We can go after that demon and fucking send it back to Hell. That’s the only way you’re going to help your friend. I’m sorry, Leia, but she’s gone. You need to keep it together for her now, you got it?"

  Somewhere in the back of my mind, it felt like Frank was manipulating me into action by using Kasey as my emotional trigger, but even if he was, he was also right. If we didn’t get the demon, God only knew how long it would inhabit Kasey’s body. The thought of that thing wearing my best friend like a cheap suit, filled me with anger, which is what I needed to feel. I needed the singular focus and sense of bravery that anger gave me.

  Wiping away my tears, I reloaded the Glock with a fresh clip. "All right," I said to Frank. "Let’s get this bastard."

  Frank nodded. "Good girl."

  I didn’t feel like a good girl. Far from it. If I didn’t have the need to focus, the guilt over Kasey would’ve eaten me up on the spot. As it was, I pushed my guilt to one side as I grimly hurried up the hallway alongside Frank.

  "How do we know it’s still in the building?" I said as we rushed up the stairs to the front hallway.

  "It’s still here," Frank said. "It’ll try to play cat and mouse with us. That’s what they do. Just be careful."

  When we reached the front hallway, we stood and looked around for a second. "It could be anywhere in here," I said. "There’s eight floors."

  "Then we search them all."

  "Can this thing possess us as easily as it did Kasey?"

  Frank shook his head. "Not as easily, no."

  "But it can, right?"

  He gave me an irritated look. "Just be careful, all right?"

  Frank moved toward the stairs, and I followed him up to the landing on the first floor. I opened the door for him, and he went through first, aiming his gun into the darkness as he did so. When I came through the door, we stood in the hallway for a second. There were a number of doors on either side. Some of the doors were open. Frank moti
oned for me to start checking the apartments on the left, while he moved to check the ones on the right.

  As I pushed open the first door, aiming my gun into the apartment as I looked around for signs of the demon, I noticed a strange sort of disconnect going on in my mind. It was because I was effectively hunting Kasey, and I knew that I would likely have to shoot or stab her, or at least her body. I also knew it wouldn’t feel like I was killing a demon either.

  It would feel like I was killing my best friend.

  Which made it difficult to carry on, hence the disconnect in my mind. It was the only way it could function without falling to pieces over the reality of what I was doing.

  It wasn’t long before Frank and I had checked nearly every apartment on the floor we were on. We each had one left. As I was scanning the hallway of one apartment from the doorway, Frank moved slightly into the other across the hall.

  Then I heard a door slam behind me, and I spun around to see that Frank was now locked in the other apartment. He was pulling at the door, banging to be let out, but the door wouldn’t budge.

  A horrible feeling came over me at that point. I knew the demon was somewhere close by, and had somehow used its power to slam the door on Frank, keeping him locked away, so that it could essentially hunt me alone. Maybe the demon had determined I was the weaker of two links, or that an obvious connection between me and its fleshsuit existed. Either way, it was just me and him now.

  But where the hell is he? I thought.

  My thought was answered when I heard a voice from deep inside the room I had just looked into. "Leia?"

  It was Kasey’s voice, and for a second, my heart leapt. She was okay! "Kasey?" I said moving toward the room.

  "Help me, Leia, please!"

  Frank banged on the door again. "Leia!" he shouted from the other side of the door. "That’s not your friend! Don’t listen to it. Kill it!"

  I knew Frank was right, but there was still something in me that made me want to see if Kasey was still in there somewhere. Maybe she could still be saved.

  "Kasey?" I moved into the small apartment, down the short hallway and into the tiny living room, but I couldn’t see any sign of Kasey.

  "Leia!" Frank sounded like he was booting the door now as he tried to get out. "Leia!"

  "Kasey?" I said, looking around the room, the Glock aimed out in front of me.

  "Leia?"

  I spun around to see Kasey standing in the kitchen doorway. She was crying, and her eyes were no longer black.

  "Kase? Is that you?"

  Kasey nodded. "It’s me, Leia. That thing is gone now."

  She started to come toward me.

  "Wait!" I aimed the gun at her.

  "Come on, Leia…it’s really me. Look at me."

  I looked at her, and saw no sign of the demon in her. Confusion overcame me then. Was she telling the truth? How was I supposed to tell for sure? The demon could’ve just been hiding its presence very well, as Frank had now said on several occasions that the more powerful demons could do.

  "Leia!" Frank was still kicking at the door in the other apartment, though his voice was barely registering.

  "Please, Leia…" Kasey had somehow got close to me, to where she was now practically standing in front of me, inches from the barrel of my gun. "You can lower the gun now. It’s really me…"

  I looked into her eyes, and all I saw was my best friend, the person I had shared so much with over the years, and even though my grace was hitting me with heavy warning signals, I lowered the gun and started to smile.

  But my smile was cut short when I suddenly noticed something glinting in Kasey’s hand.

  Her switchblade.

  "No…" I breathed as I brought my gun up again, but it was too late. The demon moved so fast I barely saw it stick the switchblade into the chest, burying it to the hilt and leaving it in there before stepping back and glaring at me with its cold black eyes, now back in place once again.

  I dropped the gun as I brought both hands up to the knife in my chest, my first instinct being to remove it from my chest, my training completely out of reach in the traumatic heat of the situation. My hands barely had time to wrap around it when I felt my legs go weak, and then I fell back onto the floor, raising a fear that the blade had penetrated an organ.

  The demon leered down at me. "So easy," it said.

  Gunshots resounded from behind, and I had the vague thought that Frank must be shooting his way out of the room. The demon obviously knew this too, so it grinned at me one more time, before crossing the room toward the window.

  It’s going to escape, I thought as I watched it kick the glass through and knock the board off that was covering the window from the outside.

  Whatever else I was feeling, I knew there was no way I could let the demon escape, not after everything it had done. For Kasey at least, I had to try and stop the monster who stole her body.

  Despite the knife still sticking into my chest, I was able to reach down and pull out my Watcher Knife from the sheath strapped to my leg. Then with hardly a second thought, I raised the heavy knife and threw it.

  I was as shocked as it when the knife stuck into its back, or should I say, Kasey's back.

  The demon screamed as it first tried to pull the knife from its back. When it couldn’t, it separated itself from Kasey’s body, but it was too late by then. As Kasey’s body fell to the floor, the demon’s shadowy form appeared fixed to the spot as a portal opened up underneath it. A long, agonizing scream left its blank face as its dark form was sucked down into the fiery portal. In a matter of seconds, the demon was gone and the portal had closed up.

  My breath left me then, and I collapsed onto my side, my cheek pressing against the cold, hard wood. Not far away was Kasey’s body, her head turned toward me.

  Her dead eyes were the last thing I saw before my world went black.

  22

  I came to slowly, my eyes opening to what seemed like pure darkness, until they were able to adjust to the gloom of my surroundings. I realized I was lying flat on my back, on a hard surface. A groan left my mouth as I felt a dull pain in my chest, and my hands immediately went there to feel what the problem was. When I saw my hands were bloody, I soon remembered what had happened. I’d been stabbed in the chest with a knife. A knife that didn’t appear to be in me anymore.

  Then a dark figure hovered over me. "You’re awake…about time."

  It was Frank, and he crouched down to show me his face, which was full of grim concern. "Frank?" I said groggily.

  "I’ve done my best to heal you," he said. "But I still think you’re bleeding internally. The knife went deep, and only missed your heart by an inch. You were lucky."

  I did my best to sit up, with Frank’s help. As I did so, images flashed through my mind of Kasey when she was possessed by the demon. Her black eyes. Her cold smile.

  Then I remembered I literally stabbed her in the back.

  It was all I could do to turn my head to look at her body, which lay on the floor next to the window. She was face down, although I noticed her eyes were now closed. "Kasey…"

  Tears streamed down my cheeks as I looked over at her. I could hardly believe she was gone. My best friend.

  Gone forever.

  "Hey," Frank said gently. "You aren’t out of the woods yet. I need to take you somewhere so you can be checked out properly."

  I was barely listening to him. All I could think was, Why? Over and over. Why did Kasey have to follow me into this place? Why did she have to die?

  The questions seemed to hang in empty space, garnering no response whatever, as if there was no answer to those questions.

  But there is an answer, isn’t there? I thought. She died because of me. She went into that place because of me, because of my shitty, and maybe even cruel, behavior of becoming so self-absorbed in my own safety, and my own worries, that it ultimately lead to her driving need to know what was going on. I both literally and figuratively led her to her death.

>   I killed her.

  "Leia." Frank gently turned my head with his hand so I was facing him. "I’m sorry, but we have to go."

  I shook my head just as a burst of pain spread out from my chest, causing my abdominal muscles to tense in reaction, which only intensified the sensations. Through pain and gritted teeth, I said, "I’m not leaving her."

  "Yes, you fucking are," he said. "I’m not leaving you here to die of fucking sentimentality, so you either get up now, or I drag you kicking and screaming out of this place, which given the fact that our gunshots have no doubt drawn attention to us already, I’d rather not do."

  His words cut like a knife, and I squeezed my eyes shut for a second as another bout of pain hit me. It almost felt like the knife was still in me, and someone was twisting it around. "What about Kasey?"

  "Once I drop you off, I’ll come back for your friend, I promise."

  He held out a hand for me to take. When I took it, he gently pulled me up. Just standing increased the pain in my chest considerably, and I thought I was going to fall down again. Luckily, Frank still held me.

  I stared over at Kasey’s body. "I killed her," I whispered.

  "No, no." Frank put his face in front of mine. "You didn’t kill your friend, Leia, the demon did. You killed the demon."

  I knew his words to be true, but they didn’t make any difference to how I was feeling. Kasey’s death was on me, of that I had no doubt. If I had just explained things to her before, whenever she asked, then she would’ve known better than to follow me, for she at least would’ve known that it might’ve been dangerous to do so. As it was, I kept her in the dark…and the dark ended up killing her.

  As Frank pulled me up and led me out of the room, my eyes remained on Kasey until she disappeared out of sight, after which I hobbled dejectedly out to the car.

  I got into the back seat of my own accord, and as Frank started to drive, I didn’t even ask him where he was going. All I did—all I could do—was curl up on the back seat, close my eyes, and wish for a black hole to come and swallow me up.