by Jayne Faith
“What’s your name?” I asked, following her through a dingy, narrow corridor.
The stale aroma of cooked food permeated the air. It smelled like someone had browned a pound of ground beef several hours earlier. We took a left turn, putting us in a hallway that ran along the back of the building.
She glanced back at me. “Roxanne.”
“I’m Ella.”
Roxanne was small and thin in that waify way that was probably genetic but still made you suspect she’d never had quite enough to eat. I wasn’t the motherly type, but watching the points of her shoulder blades made me want to take her home, plunk her in a chair at the little table in my kitchen, and feed her cookies.
I probed around her energy again. Her magic was definitely young. Fresh, and barely formed. She might not even be aware of the specifics of her own abilities yet, especially if she didn’t have a good mentor. Something about her supernatural signature reminded me vaguely of Deb, my long-time best friend, but Roxanne’s had its own unique quality, one that I’d never sensed before.
Deb was an empath and a healer, a strong Level II on the Magic Aptitude Scale. I guessed Roxanne was probably about the same as Deb strength-wise. I didn’t think Roxanne was an empath, but perhaps the girl had a talent for sensing something specific in others. I barely registered at all on the scale, which put me at a low Level I and without the capacity for enough supernatural juice to have a true specialty or distinct talent. Magical aptitude level and specialized talents were fixed qualities. No one really knew if they were pre-programmed in our DNA or emerged spontaneously. Regardless, they couldn’t be altered, only honed with training and practice. Because of my low level of aptitude, I’d never felt much desire to put effort toward developing my skills. I preferred to rely on my athletic stature or my stun gun if I got into a jam.
Roxanne and I passed a few doors with numbers on them, indicating there were apartments on this floor. The place wasn’t dirty, but it showed signs of neglect—peeling paint here, black scuff marks there, threadbare nondescript industrial carpet lining the hallway—that gave it a depressing vibe.
Roxanne stopped at the door with a lopsided 8 on it. She pushed it open, leading me into a cramped space that served as kitchen, living room, and dining room. It was messy—dishes in the sink, crusted food on the stovetop, pillows askew on the sofa, bills and unopened envelopes covering the little table.
Continuing across the room toward a window, she pointed. “He’s out there on the balcony. His name’s Nathan.”
The window sash was raised a foot, the glass fogged with dirt and age. I glanced around, counting three doorways leading out of the main room. Two bedrooms and a bathroom.
“Where are your parents?”
Roxanne sighed a sad, quick little reflex of a noise. “Gone.”
“Is your brother a crafter, too?”
“Yeah, he’s a high Level I.”
No surprise. If one sibling had magical ability, then in most cases the rest did too.
I tried to peer through the window, as I had no idea what I was going to find out there. If Nathan were possessed by a demon, he already would have been wreaking havoc. Apprehension pulled my insides tight as I approached the open window. Roxanne hovered behind me. It was dark on this side of the building, which faced the alley, and I couldn’t see much of anything outside. My pulse tapped, every swift beat seeming to emphasize the uncertainty of the situation I’d walked into.
“Nathan?” I called. “My name is Ella Grey. Your sister says you could use some help.”
“He can’t answer,” she said behind me.
I forgot my weapon and moved forward more hastily. “If he’s unconscious, we need to call an ambulance.”
I shoved the window sash up as far as it would go. It protested my efforts with a loud scrape and only budged about six inches.
Leaning out, I expected to see a fire escape landing. Roxanne had called it a balcony, but proper balconies had doors, not rusty old windows you had to climb through to get to them. Instead of a fire escape, there actually was a tiny balcony, but it wasn’t meant to be used as such. It was a sort of decorative architectural flourish, a well of concrete under the window.
The only thing on the balcony was a garish-looking stone statue about three and a half feet tall. It faced outward like a frozen sentinel keeping watch.
I pulled my head inside and twisted around to shoot a questioning look at Roxanne.
“He went out there for a smoke.” She spoke breathlessly, and she was tearing up again. “I heard flapping noises and sounds like rocks hitting together. He hollered, and when I ran over he’d turned into a gargoyle.”
A wave of vertigo began to sweep over me, and dread curdled through my gut like a dirty, dark tide.
Oh no, not now.
It couldn’t be happening. Not while I was wide awake.
I squeezed my eyelids closed, and there was a bright flash across the screen of my mind. My heart skipped a beat as an arch-demon the size of a horse flew straight at me. Even though I knew it was in my head, I flinched back. The scene swung and jerked nauseatingly as if I watched a home video made by an unsteady camera operator. I opened my eyes, blinking hard a couple of times. Cool relief rushed through my veins when I saw Roxanne peering at me. For the moment, at least, the strange foreign images in my head had subsided.
I cleared my throat as if that would also clear the residual fog of the brief vision. “This is probably just a gargoyle that came to roost here for the night. People don’t turn into statues. Don’t you think it’s more likely he just went somewhere else, maybe took off for a while?”
She planted her hands on her hips, and her pale cheeks reddened with irritation. “He did not leave me! Nathan was out there. No gargoyle. And now there’s a gargoyle and no Nathan. My brother is in that statue.”
She looked at me with her brows raised, her face turned at an angle, as if it should all be perfectly obvious. I knew that look. It was teenager for “adults are such morons.” I felt my defenses rise. I was only twenty-four, for cripes sake. Surely not old enough to be considered the enemy by someone her age.
She extended an arm and pointed toward the balcony. “That’s my brother. It is.” Her expression dissolved back to desperation, and I realized it wasn’t just about the disappearance of her brother. She needed me to believe her. She came over beside me. “Here, touch it. It’s warm.”
She leaned through the window to place her hand on the statue’s, well, neck, I guess it was. From this angle the stone figure appeared to be a crouching mythical creature—big pointed ears, narrow feline face, bulging eyes, and folded wings.
Roxanne looked back at me, waiting.
I stepped forward, reached out, and pressed my fingertips against the stone surface. It was smoother than I thought, more like marble than the textured concrete it appeared to be. As soon as I made contact, the shadowy shapes in my periphery began to swirl like curtains whipping in a storm. My heart slammed against my ribcage as I tried to fight, but an image crowded into my vision, replacing Roxanne, the apartment, and the gargoyle. As in my recent dreams, it was colored only in yellows and blues, as if the eyes that saw it had a strange sort of colorblindness.
I sucked in a gasp and blinked, trying to force the image away, but it persisted. Edges sharpened into objects, and then into recognizable human forms. The off-color scene clarified, and I was no longer standing in a dingy little apartment, but in an unfamiliar room. I could make out the faces. At first, the people lounging on tattered sofas and curled up on the floor looked too still, and my chest clenched with the sudden fear that they were all dead. Then one of them, a teenage girl who lay in a heap against the sofa like a forgotten rag doll, with her legs splayed at awkward angles, shifted her shoulders. I caught a glimpse of the two puncture wounds on her neck and smear of what had to be blood. Most of the others had visible double puncture wounds, too. One round-faced boy had scarring that traced from his collarbone up to the edge of his
jaw. Somehow, through the vision I could smell the blood, stale and metallic in the air, and my throat constricted as bile tried to rise up with a sickening roll of my stomach.
It was a vampire feeder den with people subdued by glamor and drunk on the high brought on by the vampire saliva in their systems. My mouth twisted in disgust, and I squinted, willing the vision to disappear and wishing I could turn away. But a shift of movement drew my eye to a young man.
He changed position, rolling to his side, and his head lolled, revealing in profile long lashes over a slant of cheekbone and a slightly protruding lower lip that was full enough to give the impression of a pout.
My chest seized. I knew his face.
I gasped, reflexively jerked my hand off the hard surface of the statue, and the vision dissolved, replaced by the window, the balcony, the gargoyle, and the darkened summer sky above. My pulse sped, each beat of my heart chasing the one before it so there was barely any space between.
The young man . . . he’d looked so much like my brother, Evan, but more angular and mature than the last time I’d seen him. The young man in the vision had to be around the age Evan would be today. If he were alive.
I’d been clinging to that if for five years. I didn’t know whether the vision was someone else’s memory that inexplicably found its way into my head, or maybe a complete fabrication of my own imagination, but my heart and my mind clutched at it and cradled it like a kid with her teddy bear, willing it to be true. Willing my brother to still be alive somewhere.
“Are you okay, Officer Grey?” Roxanne asked.
I jumped at the sound of her voice. She stood next to me, looking up into my face with concern etched in faint lines across her forehead. I drew a sharp breath in through my nose and nodded, but my hands shook. I clenched them into fists to hide the trembling.
She looked at the statue. “You felt it, didn’t you? It’s warm.”
I fought to focus on her, on the present. I peered at the stone figure. She was right—when I’d touched the gargoyle it was warmer than my own skin. I reached out and placed my fingertips on it again, nearly breathless with hope that I’d get another glimpse of the young man who looked like Evan. The shadows framing my visual field churned . . . but the image didn’t return.
I was about to ask Roxanne if she could remember anything else that happened before the gargoyle appeared, but the words died in my throat.
I heard it before I saw it—the leathery flapping sound of wings above. Adrenaline surged through me as I leaned my upper body out the window to look around. A dark shape was circling overhead.
“Demon,” I said grimly.
Roxanne screamed and backpedaled.
I pulled back, bumped the top of my skull hard on the window sill on the way in, and reached up to slam the sash down.
It didn’t move.
My heart hammering, I let out a strangled grunt, straining harder, but the old window remained stubbornly raised.
I tipped my head up, looking through the dirty glass. The demon seemed to hang in the air, its midnight black shape momentarily outlined against the weak moonlight that illuminated the sky over the building across the alley. Then after an almost graceful pause, the demon tipped into a dive—hunting, and aiming straight at the window.
I tried the sash one more time before I gave up and hastily shuffled backward. With my left arm, I shoved Roxanne behind me. My right hand reached for the cylinder that was holstered on the back of my belt just as the demon landed on the balcony with a soft shuffle of wings and scrape of claws.
I kept my eyes trained on the open window.
“Is it coming in?” Roxanne’s voice was thin with fear.
“Yeah.” Without looking down, I flipped the top of the can off with my thumb. The lid fell to the floor. I backed us up some more. “Don’t worry, I’ve got a trap. Stay right there and keep still.”
I left Roxanne and tiptoed a few steps toward the window. It was an arch-demon, several times bigger than the small bat-like creatures I usually trapped while on Demon Patrol, and capable of possessing a human. It was only a little smaller than the one that had killed me two weeks ago, the day my partner and I had responded to a routine call for a couple of minor demons in the basement of a downtown residence. It should have been an easy job, and it was until a sudden dimensional burp sent an arch-demon into the middle of things.
As I faced the window, my mouth was as dry as sandpaper, my hands damp with sweat, and my heart seemed to be trying to thump its way up my throat to make an escape. If I’d had time, I would have called this one in, but the damned window wouldn’t close.
With the soft brushing sounds of its leathery wings, the demon shifted and poked its lumpy black head inside. Roxanne let out a strangled squeak.
I slowly knelt to set the canister upright on the floor, my heart hammering loud in my ears.
“Come on over here, see what I’ve got for you,” I coaxed in a high-pitched voice. I made clicking noises with my tongue as if trying to lure a timid kitten out from under the bed. The demon folded its wings against its body and forced its way inside, barely fitting through the opening.
I started backing away. “I’ve got something just for you . . . come on . . . that’s right, take a little look-see.”
The creature’s beady red eyes, like two flames in its coal-black face, flicked down to the canister. It flapped a few feet closer, and Roxanne whimpered. With a sinuous movement, it raised its head. Its gaze zeroed in on Roxanne.
Arch-demons tended to target the young, the vulnerable, and the weak-minded. The larger varieties like this ugly hell-bird were predators, demonic possession their only aim in this dimension. If this one was more attracted to me or Roxanne than to the demon bait in the trap I’d just set down, we were going to have a problem.
The creature opened its beaky mouth and let out a disturbingly human-sounding scream. Roxanne responded with her own.
Spreading its wings, the demon took flight. My heart in my throat, I did a hasty reverse jog and sandwiched Roxanne between my back and the wall next to the fridge. One of the demon’s wings brushed the kitchen counter, hitting a mug that fell and shattered on the grungy linoleum.
I drew my stun gun. It wasn’t much defense against a demon of this size—certainly wouldn’t kill it—but it was all I had.
The demon reared up to charge, and I stepped forward, raised the gun in both hands, and took aim.
Still a few feet away, the creature suddenly pulled up short with surprising agility. The crackling blast from my gun shot under the demon’s curled talons and dissipated with a burst of sparks against the far wall. Roxanne shrieked again.
“Damn it,” I ground out through clenched teeth.
With dread curling darkly in my stomach, I crept another half step forward and aimed again, but instead of firing, I watched the thing in confusion. It was backing up.
Demons didn’t hesitate. They weren’t plagued by conscience or indecision. But this demon had stopped its attack. I took another step. If I could get it close enough to the canister, the trap would pull the creature in.
The demon retreated another foot or two. It was still in flight and stirring the air enough to make my hair lift around my shoulders and shuffle the mail on the table like an autumn breeze tossing dry leaves. One wing knocked into a floor lamp, sending it toppling over like a felled tree, but the creature didn’t seem to notice.
I took another step, and again the demon retreated. I’d never heard of this behavior in a Rip spawn, but I’d take it. The demon was hovering over the canister now, only a couple of feet outside the trap’s range.
I raised my gun, aiming for the top of the demon’s head, and gently pulled my index finger in against the trigger.
The blast crackled and hit, right between the demon’s eyes. It screeched with rage, tossed its head back, and as I’d hoped, it dropped several inches. The trap activated, and I threw up an arm and squeezed my eyelids closed against the blinding blue-white fla
sh as the trap’s magic concentrated the demon into pure energy and pulled it in.
The odor of sulfur and burned hair wafted up my nose and stung my eyes. I waved my hand through the puff of smoke the trapping process had created. The can had fallen to its side, and it was shimmying around as if it held a hyped-up gerbil.
Hastily holstering my gun, I scrambled for the canister lid with one hand and the twitching trap with the other. I slapped the lid on the can, and there was a faint hiss of air compression. The canister went still.
I looked over at Roxanne and shook the trap like it was a can of spray paint. There was a faraway but angry-sounding squeal from within it, and a few little thumps against the inside walls.
“Contained and under control.” I gave her what I hoped was a reassuring smile.
Actually, we were damn lucky the demon wasn’t any bigger, and it was alone. The trap wasn’t graded to contain much more demonic energy than what was in it, and certainly wouldn’t have held two arch-demons.
“That was a close one,” Roxanne said, shakily returning my smile. The encounter had obviously rattled her, and she was giving me some bravado. I looked down, reattaching the can to my belt and giving her a few seconds to collect herself. I heard her take a deep breath. “Officer Grey, can you get my brother out? I don’t know how much longer he can survive in there.”
