“Damn it, Jake, it isn’t beating or anything. I need you to trace it back to the source. Can you do that?”
“Sure, easy as making a damn cake,” Jake said sarcastically. “You know, I think I’ll revise my earlier answer.” Jake put his glasses back on. “Hell no.”
“Jake,” I said, all amusement gone. “This wasn’t some pit demon. I don't know what it was, but it was big and mean and if it comes for me again, I won’t be so lucky.”
“This thing came for you? And you’re still breathing?”
“I had some help from a friend. Can you track it, Jake? Please.”
Jake sat for a minute, and I could see the war going on in his head. Finally he sighed. “I’ll only trace it so far,” Jake said. “If I even get a whiff of a counter spell, I’m pulling my ass out. You got that?”
“Of course.” I was glad he couldn’t see my smile.
He did feel it, though, in whatever weird way his senses worked. “Don’t you be all smug. This makes us even, Nick. Betty will kill us both and serve our carcasses to her poodles if she finds out.”
“She won’t. Thanks, Jake.”
“Yeah, whatever.” He snatched the bag off the counter with a graceful snap of his wrist. “You can thank me by coming back tomorrow and getting this before it stinks up the whole place. Betty will know something’s up if she comes back and her store smells like roadkill.”
“Will do.” I turned.
“Nick?”
I paused and glanced back. “Yeah?”
“Does this mean you’re back in the business again?”
I scowled. “No. I’m trying to have a normal life. I just wish life would let me.”
“Amen to that, brother,” Jake smiled.
“Amen to that.”
CHAPTER FIVE
The walk home was as dismal as any northwest autumn morning, but somehow the sky seemed darker. Of course, it might have had to do with all the past being dredged up like some swamp muck stuck to the bottom of my shoe.
All the old memories floated to the surface. My mother refused to help me understand my gifts, and my dad died before I was born. We moved around a lot, even spending a few years with my grandmother down on the Lakota reservation, but I never really fit in. My darker skin and quarter native blood made me the eternal outsider even to my own family. It didn’t help that most of the time my mom didn’t know what was going on outside the bottle she poured herself every night.
I decided early on that if I was going to be the outsider, I might as well act like one. I spent a good portion of my teenage years using my gifts to whatever advantage I could find. Then Ann came along and changed all that.
She taught me to question and how to control the beast that grew inside me. She taught me to see the downside to my gifts and how to control them as well. The burning fevers, the fatigue, and the hunger for red meat…
Anyway, I hadn’t used any of my gifts since the Boston fiasco. The fever began to rise as I walked home in the drizzle. I had pushed myself too far with the demon, and the backlash began to sear into my gut. I quickened my pace. I should’ve grabbed something to eat on the way back from Jake’s, but old habits had faded.
Ann was probably frowning down at me right now. “Goofball,” she would say, “you have to stop beating up my husband. I only have one, you know.”
I smiled thinly as the old Pain, the one that loved to torture me with thoughts of her, reared its ugly little head. It was a nasty thing, one that made my lungs too small and my stomach twist. I had thought moving up here would take me away from it, and for five years it had. But today there were too many ghosts leading it right back to my thoughts.
I glanced up the incline and tried to push the Pain down by taking in all the details of the street. Cherry blossoms spread over the sidewalk to the left, the white flowers floating like tiny ships in the rain. The various firs and pines all hid shadows in their needles. It began drizzling again, which didn’t help my mood, and suddenly I didn’t care about ambushing demons. I wanted to get home and forget.
Finally, with my thoughts still spinning their wheels in the mud of days long past, I rushed into my apartment complex and opened the gate, flinching as it protested. A headache began thumping in the lower depths of my brainstem. The dismal sky gave me nothing but swirling lead.
I stopped in front of my apartment door and realized I didn’t want to be alone. For the first time in God knows how long I wanted people. I wanted the soft swells of conversation, where my thoughts could get lost in the chaos. Where I could take in the details of other people’s lives without having to dwell on my own.
Then a picture of a demon appearing in the middle of a sports bar made my shoulders slump. There would be no companionship for me while I was a hunted man.
So I unlocked my door and swung it open. Time to head in and be alone with my pain.
I was about to step indoors when a soft meowing sound made me glance down.
“What you doing out here?” I asked as I bent down. “You’re as nuts as me.”
The cat’s thick black fur stuck up in wet spikes, and I half expected him to bolt. Instead, he rubbed his head against my hand. A soft purring drifted up under the thud of rain before he dashed into my apartment.
“Make yourself at home,” I said.
With another glance outside, I entered my living room and closed the door. I took a deep breath. Cate’s perfume still lingered, but other than the memories nothing seemed out of the ordinary.
The cat sat on the back of my chair, staring at me with warm emerald eyes. He meowed when he saw me looking at him, and then proceeded to clean his thick fur with his tongue.
Any other day I would be upset at the cat’s intrusion into my home. It’s hard to like animals when most bared their teeth whenever I came close. Never knew why, but over the years I had gained a healthy animosity toward the animal kingdom in general.
Tomorrow I’d deal with why there was a strange cat in my home, but today even wet strays that smelled like lint balls were welcome.
“I’ll get us both some lunch,” I told the cat. I could feel the fever rising in me. I needed a steak, and soon.
But first I needed to make sure my apartment was secure. I went into the bedroom and flipped on the light. Unlike the packed living room, the bedroom was sparse. A bed sat next to a small antique dresser, and a computer desk took up most of the right wall.
The only decoration was a Star Wars poster hanging over my desk, a memento from Ann’s childhood. I lifted the expensive frame off the wall and gently placed it on top of a pile of dirty clothes that littered the floor of my closet. My breathing came in ragged spurts as the closet door hide the poster from view.
With that over and done with, I flipped a piece of the rug up and glanced at the blackened circle surrounding the bed. The sigil looked blemish free, as well as the runes carved into the wood by Jake when I first moved in. At least my sleep would be undisturbed.
“Let’s eat, cat,” I said as I came out of the bedroom, and a black fur ball gathered around my ankles.
The cat stepped away and glared at me. It’s funny, but I could never figure out how cats managed to be sarcastic just by the expression on their faces. A short meow made his thoughts perfectly clear.
“Yes indeed,” I said as I pulled a roast out of the freezer and shoved it into the microwave.
Tremors wracked my chest as the meat cooked on its little spinning plate. My temperature rose with every turn. The timer decreased by what felt like an eternity before the bell rang.
“Hope you like nuked meat.” I grabbed the roast out of the microwave and sliced off a large chunk, which I tossed onto the floor, not caring about the clean tiles. The Hunger dictated my actions now.
As the cat rushed over and started nibbling on the meat, I lifted the rest of the roast. It was cooked a little to the left of leather. What if it didn’t work? Would I waste away until the neighbors complained of the smell and the manager finally unlocke
d my door to find my dissected corpse?
I’m ashamed to admit that for a brief moment, while staring at the meat, a part of me wanted to put it down. A part of me wanted to go back into the bedroom, lie down, and never get up again.
But then the Hunger took over and time drifted away.
<><><>
I lay in darkness, the fever burning like a shadowy flame, consuming everything. My body fell to pieces, floating on an ocean of pain. I had no real self, like a dream of being born. The dark waters of this endless sea carried me along, burning all that was left and all that would be.
Then light. Soft at first, I soon became a pinprick at the center of the long dark. The light grew with the pain until I tried to break away. Tried to get back into the sea of dark flame. The pain increased until I could actually make out body parts. A finger, broken, arms and legs on fire. Chest flayed open with molten pain underneath.
The light encompassed me, pushing the darkness and the pain down. It still lingered, burning my cells, but I knew who I was. My sense of self slowly returned.
Someone had replaced my eyelids with two manhole covers. I could only crack them open. Tiny shards of light pierced my sight, but I pushed on, determined to see, determined to know my location.
Light gave way to blurred objects. A ceiling fan slowly turned in the dim light. I lay on a cushion of warmth. A sense of peace pushed the last of the darkness away. Then a blurry angel leaned over and smiled.
“You’re awake,” the angel told me. “Good. Don’t try to move. You’re Nick, right? My sister told me about what happened.” The angel smiled, and it was like seeing the face of God. “My name’s Ann. I’m here to watch over you…”
Ice cubes clinked against the sides of the glass. I stared at the whiskey as the memory faded. I usually didn’t drink this early in the afternoon, but I felt an exception was in order.
At least I was safe, as much as any place was safe. The protective circle Jake had installed would keep out another demon attack. At least I hoped so. That No-Eyed thing was unlike anything I had ever fought before. Whoever sent it wouldn't think twice about summoning it again and sending it my way. I needed a plan in order to stay alive.
Somehow it was all connected to Cate. I couldn't see the damn puzzle, and my mind spun like a hamster wheel because of it. With no leads to go on, my brain decided to take the dark path. The one that always led me to Ann, no matter how hard I tried to forget.
Ann had been an angel, even if she wasn’t the immortal kind. We met after a particularly nasty case involving her sister, Cate.
It was supposed to be a simple affair. A wife of some big shot lawyer wanted me to find evidence of her cheating husband, except the husband ended up being a monster and the mistress ended up being Caitlin. My investigation brought me to their hotel room at the moment he was about to sacrifice her to some ancient god or another, and the resulting battle had sent me deep into a fever coma. But I had saved Cate, and then the sisters proceeded to save me right back.
Caitlin was heavily into the occult and had heard of me from various dubious sources. She knew enough about me to keep me out of a hospital and instead brought me to her home. The two sisters nursed me back to health, and the rest is a blessed and sad history.
Pushing down the memories, I turned the glass, holding it up to the light. I tried to concentrate on the task at hand. Tried to figure out who had sent the demon after me at the coffee shop and how it related to Caitlin. But there were too many pieces missing from the puzzle. It was like trying to keep water in your hands on a hot summer day.
…Ann smiled as I put my arm around her. Two lions lounged ten feet away from us, separated only by a few inches of glass. The big male stared at me, his eyes showing his indifference.
“You ever wonder what they think of us?” Ann asked.
“Sure,” I said as I kissed the top of her head. Her hair smelled like mint shampoo, and for a moment I breathed it in. “They think of us as food they can’t get to. We’re like two big ole steaks wrapped in plastic wrap.”
Ann laughed softly, the amusement sinking into my skin. I loved her laugh, loved how it warmed me when my own mood soured. I rarely heard it these days.
Her petite form barely came up to my chin, but strength resided there. Steel she never talked about. Something had happened to her and Caitlin as children, but she never told me.
She pushed an auburn-tinted hair behind her ear and continued staring at the lion. “I mean does it still think of itself as a predator? It has no prey and no other animals hunting it. What does it think it is, with the wild taken out of it?”
“You and your animals,” I teased. “Pretty soon you’ll be telling me it’s creating sonnets while staring at us.”
“That isn’t what I meant.” She smiled briefly. “A dog came in yesterday. I had to put it down, but it wasn’t old or sick. It was feral. Can you imagine putting down an animal because it was being true to itself? It was heartbreaking.”
I leaned in close, wrapping my arms around her, and said nothing.
“If a lion escapes and attacks someone, the same thing would happen.” She stopped and gazed at the lion. “I don’t think it’s changed at all. I think the core is still there, waiting for us to get out from under the plastic wrap. Isn’t that the natural order of things?”
She shivered, and I turned her around to face me. I bent my face down until we were inches apart, our arms wrapped around each other. “You know what I think?” I placed a soft kiss on her lips. “The world is what it is. The lion is behind the glass, and we’re out here.”
“Like Boston?” she asked softly.
I turned away before she could see the pain in my eyes. Boston was a nasty memory for both of us.
“I’m sorry,” she said. She gently touched my face and turned it back to her. She placed a soft, wonderful kiss on my lips. “You’re right. I think too much. It’s why you love me.”
I tried to smile. It came out small, but her warmth fueled it. “There are plenty of other things I can love. Things involving massage oil and ice cubes, for instance.”
Ann laughed again. “You’re horrible.”
“And you’re lovely.” My smile grew, shrouding the old memories again. Her eyes were the light that guided my darkness. I would never drown as long as she held back the tides. I leaned down and kissed her, and our passion blocked out the world…
“No more,” I whispered, staring at the half-empty glass in my hand. The kiss lingered in my thoughts. The smell of her hair and the curve of her smile.
“No more!” I yelled as I flung the glass. It shattered against the closet door, the sharp crack upsetting the silence. My breath rasped in my chest. The memories brought back the old Pain, the one that awoke every time I thought of Ann. The Pain overpowered every sense. Squeezed my lungs and hammered my soul.
I closed my eyes as tears came, tears long since forgotten. The world became nothing but the memories. I could feel her skin on cold days, lying against each other under the covers. Her laugh as I teased her. Her fingers as they traveled up my face, twining in my hair.
The grief consumed my thoughts. The black waters of it lapped against my mind, threatened to pull me under, pull me down where I would break apart. Break apart and be nothing.
But something kept me from drowning in the darkness. A thought, a sound, and a minute in time held me up from the depths of that dark ocean.
A soft meow. A bundle of fur pushed against my hand, and then a soft voice in the darkness said, “Can I bring balloons to your pity party?” Her silver laughter pulled me out. “Come on, Nick. You need to stop beating up my husband. He’s a hard case, but he’ll survive.”
“He always does,” I whispered as I opened my eyes. The tears made moist tracks down my cheeks, but they were drying now. The cat pressed against my hand, his soft purr filling the silence. Absently I stroked his head.
“I came here,” I told the cat, “to get away from my life. Why did it have to find me
?”
The cat’s emerald eyes sparkled with silent laughter. He seemed to know how stupid that sounded, and a thin, brittle smile came to my lips.
“You think I’m an idiot, huh?” I asked. The cat responded with a sharp meow. “Well, so do I.”
I sat up and stretched my neck. “I’m an idiot for throwing the glass,” I told him. “That was some premium Tennessee whiskey.”
The cat meowed again. “As for you,” I said, “you need a name.” The animal wore a dark blue collar I had missed when he came in. There wasn’t an ID, but the strip of cloth had a word printed on the front: Walker.
“OK,” I said, “Walker it is.” I scratched the cat behind his ears, and a rumbling purr vibrated my fingers.
Suddenly Walker’s ears perked up and he sprang from the bed. The hairs on my arms stood to attention, and I swung my legs over the side. My eyes searched the room, seeking a sign in the afternoon gloom of what was crawling across my senses.
That’s when the phone rang. “The Hall of the Mountain King,” made up of singular electronic notes, echoed through the apartment. I leaped out of bed and stood at the edge of the protective circle. The melody repeated itself three times and went silent.
I stood there at the edge of the circle, my heart racing. I strained to hear any movement, and my nose searched for a hint of sulfur. Nothing looked out of the ordinary.
The song blasted the silence again, the tones as simple as a child’s keyboard. With a deep breath, I stepped out of the circle and crept toward the bedroom door. Sensing nothing, I walked into the living room.
The cell phone became silent again, but only for a moment. I managed to snag it on the last ring with an annoyed, “Hello?” Away from the circle I was vulnerable, and I turned to go back to the bed, but the fearful breathing on the other end of the line stopped me.
“Nick?” Caitlin called, as if from a long tunnel. Static overpowered her voice, like energy on a high-voltage wire.
“Cate? I can barely hear you.”
“Nick! Thank God. I need your help!”
I sighed. I came away from my protection for this? “Look, Cate,” I said as I walked back into the bedroom and toward the circle, “we talked about this. You know my—”
Demon Dance Page 4
