Forged in Fire

by Juliette Cross

  “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

  If it hadn’t fit him so well, I’d say it was cliché. A sleek, shiny black Honda CBR1100XX Blackbird. It had made that year’s list for the top five fastest motorcycles in the world.

  Suddenly I was holding a helmet. I hadn’t even noticed Jude had gone back into the house for helmets. Too busy drooling over his pretty bike. He zipped up his leather jacket and straddled the motorcycle while strapping on his helmet. He nodded to the tiny seat behind him and grinned.

  “Saddle up.”

  Okay. I am well aware that Jude Delacroix is not dating material. One does not bring a demon hunter home to Daddy or do dinner and a movie with the likes of Jude. I doubt seriously the word “dating” is even in the demon hunter vocabulary. Jude seems to have one mission in life—seek and destroy. Oh yeah, and protect. Now, a man has needs, and he is fully equipped to fulfill those needs with pretty much whomever he wants. I mean, seriously, God was a poet the day he made Jude. But I was slowly realizing that whatever a Dominus Daemonum was, it wasn’t completely human; therefore, he didn’t fit into the category of regular men.

  Having given a full disclaimer on all the reasons why I shouldn’t be attracted to him, let me now confess how utterly and totally euphoric I felt riding behind him on one of the fastest motorcycles in the world. On top of that, he continued to shield me with his illusion, wrapping me in an otherworldly shell. Mind-blowing—zipping through the streets of New Orleans with my arms strapped around his waist and my chest pressed against his back. The experience was exhilarating. The man was divine. And the ride home was all too short, probably because we exceeded the speed limit the whole way. He pulled up close to the door.

  Begrudgingly, I shifted off from behind him and removed my helmet.

  “Hang on to it,” he told me when I offered it back, removing his own. “Bring it to class on Monday.”

  “You’re picking me up?”

  “Do you honestly believe I would let you wander through the Quarter to my place unaccompanied? Your ability to cast illusion is growing, but would only fool a lower demon.”

  I nodded. I resented the fact that he was becoming my keeper, like a babysitter, but I also didn’t have a death wish. After meeting Dommiel, I in no way wanted to encounter one of the big boys on my own. Black-belt skills wouldn’t help me there. I thought of Dommiel on his knees before Jude.

  “Dommiel was terrified of you.”

  “As he should be.”

  Geez. Okay, Mr. Modesty.

  “You told Dommiel that one of his brethren had broken the rules by coming into his territory. I thought they all had to follow the rules.”

  “They do. It’s a compulsion greater than their desire for evil.”

  “Then how is there another high demon roaming in his territory? How is our phantom stalker able to break the rules?”

  “Even within their aristocracy, there is order of importance. Those on the lower levels are always subject to those higher up.”

  Wait a minute. Is he telling me what I think he’s telling me?

  “Do you mean there are higher demons within the high demon category? There’s like someone worse than Dommiel?”

  I realized my voice had risen to a screechy level, though I didn’t yell for fear Mindy would come bouncing out here in her pink undies just to meet and drool over R-and-B.

  “Dommiel is an arch-demon, the lowest in their aristocracy. The fact that someone has disregarded him in his own domain means we are dealing with either a duke or a prince, not one on his level.”

  I knew my mouth was gaping, but are you effing kidding me? He gave me a small smile. His demeanor was so light tonight. Mine was leaden, weighted with all I’d discovered, all I still didn’t know, and the fact that my world was irrevocably changed forever. My life as an English major at Loyola with dreams of becoming an editor for a savvy magazine suddenly seemed ridiculously stupid. Now my dreams were to keep my ass alive for one more day.

  “Don’t worry, Genevieve,” he said, strapping his helmet back on. “Not even a dark prince is a match for me.”

  He gave me a wink. Poor prince, wherever he was. I went to the door but couldn’t help myself. I glanced over my shoulder to watch him zoom off into the foggy gloom, feeling a little pang of regret it wasn’t a sleepover night.

  Chapter Nine

  Sunday was the day Mindy visited her mom and I visited my dad. It was the day we clocked out of college/apartment life and went home to get spoiled for a bit. This was also the first Sunday after my new discovery that there really were monsters in the world, and a good many of them were hunting me. Still, it was Sunday, a holy day, so I was off-limits according to the rules.

  I’d texted Jude early this morning with a demand to know the “rules”. This was how the conversation went.

  Me: Explain the rules. Please.

  Jude: High and lower demons cannot possess a human host (or Vessel) on holy days, which includes the three days before Easter and that Sunday, Jewish Passover, Yom Kippur, and the Sabbath.

  Me: What happened to Christmas?

  Jude: That’s not truly the day of Christ’s birth. December 25th was originally a pagan holiday celebrating the winter solstice.

  Me: Oh.

  Jude: Demons are forbidden from entering sacred ground, including churches, synagogues, graveyards and other places that are blessed.

  Me: What about holy water?

  Jude: What about it?

  Me: Does it burn them or something if you throw some on them?

  Jude: There is no such thing as vampires.

  Me: I know, but we’re talking about demons.

  At this point, there was a lengthy pause where I could hear the heavy sigh through cyberspace.

  Jude: No. Holy water does not affect them. Nor do crucifixes or other sacred objects.

  Me: Well, that sucks. Is that all?

  Jude: Those are the basics. Other rules pertaining specifically to Flamma I’ll explain as we go along.

  Me: Cool. Have a nice day! J

  Pause. Pause. Pause.

  Jude: J

  I almost lost it! Jude sent me a smiley face. With my newfound knowledge, I looked forward to a day of normalcy. I wanted to relax like I did before all this began. Even more, I wanted to do something without my babysitter/guardian tagging along.

  So, I took a quick shower, noting how quickly and smoothly the wound on my abdomen was healing. I twisted my hair into a messy bun, put on my favorite jeans and the sunny yellow Victorian-tailored blouse that made me feel pretty and sweet, then headed to Dad’s as I did every weekend. Without informing Jude.

  Dad was grilling burgers on the deck. Erik stood next to him, sipping a Bud Light. Even in casual clothes, he appeared tailored. I swear, he probably ironed his jeans and T-shirts.

  Erik had moved here from Ohio a long time ago as a researcher for the National Wetlands Research Center. My dad had sort of adopted him when he started working nights at the dojo, so he was always around.

  “Hey, guys!”

  “There she is. You hungry?”

  “Starving.”

  Dad gave me a one-armed bear hug with a spatula in the other hand.

  “How’d that hot date go?” I asked Erik with a smile.

  Dad placed the patties on a plate on the grill sideboard. “What hot date?”

  Erik blushed all the way down his neck. I laughed.

  “It was fine, Gen.”

  “Mmm, fine. Sounds exciting.”

  “Sweetie, would you go get the lettuce and onions in the fridge? Today’s nice. We’ll eat out here.”

  “Sure.”

  As I marched into the kitchen, my VS whispered over something, then was gone. Not a warning that Flamma were near like last night outside The Dungeon. No, it was almost a soft tapping, searching for something. As soon as I sensed it, the feeling left me.

  When I opened the fridge, I burst out laughing. Dad always delivered his birthday presents in odd places. On my f
ourteenth birthday, I had to follow The Nightmare Before Christmas ringer “This is Halloween” until I found my first iPhone wrapped inside my stuffed Jack Skellington propped on the fireplace mantel. That was a cool one. I kept the same ringer for a year. Now, leaning in front of the platter of sliced onions, tomatoes and shredded lettuce, there was a large rectangular envelope with my name scrawled on the front in Dad’s slanted hand. He sketched an apple next to my name. Weird. I took the platter and the envelope out to the deck and sat down with the guys.

  Dad grinned. I smiled back as I opened the envelope. The card was sweet, with a cartoon daddy and daughter hugging on the front. Inside, the bold font read: No matter where you go, you’re always Daddy’s little girl. Underneath, he’d written: I’ve been stubborn about this long enough. I’m finally letting you go. Happy birthday, my beautiful baby girl. I started to tear up at the sentiment, having no idea what this meant until I read the brochure that slid into my lap. On the front were photos of Times Square, MOMA, the Statue of Liberty, Broadway. The heading read Come to the City that Never Sleeps. I squealed with delight.

  “Ow,” said Erik, “bring it down a notch.”

  “Dad! Seriously! Like seriously, seriously?”

  Mindy and I had wanted to go together for ages. She’d already been twice with her mother, but Dad would never let me tag along. I jumped up and squeezed him tight, nearly strangling him from behind.

  “Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!”

  I did a giddy little dance before settling back into my chair, perusing the pamphlet.

  “Well, you’ll be going with Mindy and her mother the week of Thanksgiving. You can even see the Thanksgiving Day Parade while you’re there.”

  “Mindy knows? How did she keep this from me?”

  That girl could never keep a secret.

  “Actually, I asked her mother to keep her out of the loop until today.”

  Suddenly my iPhone vibrated on the table with a crazy, excited text from Mindy, including twenty smiley faces and exclamation points. Talk about timing. I giggled while texting her back.

  Then it hit me. How could I possibly go to New York now? How many demons were traipsing around New York? I might as well serve myself on a platter with an apple in my mouth.

  “What’s wrong, sweetie?” asked Dad, his butter knife midair with mayo on it. “Why the sad face?”

  I couldn’t tell him the truth. Now I was reduced to lying to everyone I cared about. I felt even worse.

  “Oh, I was just thinking about Mom, how she loved the Thanksgiving Day Parade.”

  I knew this would dampen the mood, but I had to say something. And I wanted to say something that was at least half the truth. I hated lying, and I hated liars—my two biggest pet peeves, if you can call it that. Now suddenly I was one of them. But in all honesty, my mom did love the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. I can see her now, doling out cinnamon rolls while the turkey was still baking, saying, “Oh, look, Genevieve! It’s Charlie Brown.”

  “Thank you, Dad. This is an awesome present,” I said, forcing myself to smile and take a bite of my burger that threatened to lodge in my throat.

  Erik glanced at his watch.

  “Oh, so sorry. I totally forgot I have a field appointment with my supervisor today.”

  “Where y’all headed today?” asked Dad.

  “Not sure. Again, sorry to run so quickly.”

  “You didn’t even finish your burger,” I said, pointing to his plate.

  He grimaced as he rose from his chair. “I’ll have to take it to go.”

  He wrapped it up in a napkin and was gone. After lunch, I did the dishes while Dad adjourned to the sofa to watch the Saints play the Falcons on television. I wandered through, not really feeling like watching football today. Dad stretched out on the sofa, shoes off, and propped his feet on the coffee table.

  “That’s right, Drew! You got it!”

  Touchdown. While Dad watched Drew Brees take the team to a victory, I walked up the wooden staircase to the second floor. I knew exactly where I was going, where I’d wanted to go ever since I had that nightmare at Jude’s house. My dad kept one room entirely devoted to my mother’s artwork, our own personal gallery. And memorial. After she died, he refused to part with any of her paintings, no matter how much collectors had offered for them. And they’d offered quite a lot.

  The room’s décor was sparse but elegant. Underneath a Persian rug of burgundy and creams, a gold brocade sofa with matching chaise sat around an oval cherry coffee table. A porcelain vase painted with two lovers in Victorian clothing on a picnic stood on a glass side table. A large mirror with gold trim squared itself above the antique fireplace. Having been built before central air-conditioning or heating, many of the rooms in our City Park home had fireplaces, not all functioning. There were no other furnishings except for the wall-to-wall paintings.

  Starting with the wall to the right of the fireplace, I perused my mother’s art. She focused on remaking the masterworks with new vitality, energy and emotion. Here she’d given her own rendition of Monet’s water lilies in shades of violet, purple and white. She recreated Degas’s dancers into otherworldly angels floating on the stage. The back wall was a random mix of reinvented works by Van Gogh, Matisse and Renoir. All of them reflected an inner joy which might or might not have been present in the original.

  The last wall waited for me like the midnight toll of a clock. Among some rather distorted renditions of Picasso’s works was “Les Demoiselles d’Avignon”. The original had always given me the creeps, but my mother’s version transformed Picasso’s black period even blacker with the chopped, distorted limbs of prostitutes who stared wide-eyed out from the canvas. A horror show of twisted, mangled women. More than this, there were two others that had always haunted me. My mother’s adaptation of Vermeer’s “Girl with a Pearl Earring” held the gaze of a young woman looking on the face of fear. If you glanced at it, there was only a slight difference from the master’s version. The Baroque shadows were now dark crimson. But on closer study, you’d see the haunted expression in the girl’s eyes, as if whatever she beheld made her blood run cold. She had frozen in fright upon seeing something, long enough for the artist to capture her fear. Her eyes widened just enough and in such a way to make the viewer tremble. Even worse, the girl had a distinct similarity to my mother. My stomach squeezed tight.

  As my eyes wandered over canvas after canvas, my fingers played with the St. George medal around my neck, a nervous habit when Mom came to mind.

  I moved on to the last one, far more disturbing. It was the remake of Paul DeLaRoche’s “Le Jeune Martyre”. I’d seen pictures of the original in the Louvre. A beautiful, angelic martyr floated in a pool with her hands bound. She was radiant, emanating an ethereal light as her gossamer gown drifted wide like a cloud. A golden halo crowned her head in death. The lingering shadows on the fringe of the painting hid a man leaving the scene, the one who had doomed her to this untimely death. My mother painted it exactly like the original. Not one change in hue, not one variation in line or form. Someone could’ve taken a picture of LaRoche’s in the Louvre, framed it side by side, and no one could detect the cheat. What troubled me most of all was the fact that this was the last work she ever painted.

  I sucked in a breath. VS screaming. Flamma present and behind me. I spun around. Jude leaned against the fireplace with his arms crossed, shoulders rigid. Black eyes measuring, calculating. The door was still closed.

  “How did you get in here? How did you get past my dad?”

  He remained still, watchful.

  “There are other means of entering a building than the front door.”

  “Yeah, there are. It’s called breaking and entering.”

  He made no reply. I felt invaded upon here in this private place. I’m not sure why it unnerved me so much.

  “Why didn’t you tell me you were leaving home today?”

  “Actually, this is my home. My apartment is a temporary place where
I live with my best friend, but this is my real home. And I didn’t think I had to tell you where I was every second of the day.”

  “It’s dangerous.”

  “It’s Sunday. There are rules. You told me so. I’m safe.”

  “I’ll cast this house in illusion as well. But you are never safe away from a protector. Be sure of that.”

  “Away from you, right? And why do you even give a damn? What does a demon hunter have to do with a Vessel anyway? Is there an ulterior motive I should know about? Are you even listening to me?”

  His gaze had strayed to the paintings behind me, specifically to the martyred beauty in a drowning pool. The expression on his face shifted, became harder. He straightened away from the mantel.

  “These were your mother’s paintings.” He stated it as fact, not a question. His face had become a granite mask.

  “Yes. And this is a private collection.”

  I wanted to shield her work from his eyes. Why was I so defensive? He walked toward me, boots echoing on the wood floor. His attention remained fixed on the canvas above my head. He stood a foot away, for once not in my personal space, finally dropping his gaze to mine.

  “She was mad.”

  I flinched as if he’d slapped me. “You don’t know anything about her. These are paintings, just…” Flustered and angry, I wanted to hit him.

  He scanned the room carefully, finally coming back to “Le Jeune Martyre”. “She was mad.”

  His words were scorched with a cold rigidity. No spark of light in his eyes now. Why was he saying such a heartless thing about my mother?

  “You didn’t know her.”

  “It’s apparent. You had to have known this already.”

  “Stop saying that! Stop it! Just get out! I don’t want you in my home. I don’t want you invading my privacy. You’ve already taken everything else away—my future, my hopes, my freedom. Leave me alone!”

  I yelled. I raged. I cried. I buried my face in my hands, letting it all out. My VS shrank away, and I knew he was gone without opening my eyes. I was more alone than I’d ever been in my entire life. More alone than the day we said good-bye to my mother.