by N. P. Martin
“What kept you?” she said, smiling as I got out of my car.
“I was driving normally, unlike you,” I said. “I don’t know how you didn’t cause an accident earlier with that stunt you pulled.”
“Yeah, that was fun. I love driving.”
“You catch this guy’s scent yet?”
“Not yet. Maybe when we get closer.”
“Let’s go look for the boat then.”
It was actually quite beautiful down by the marina. The late afternoon sun was shining, even though it was still cold, and the water was calm as there was little wind. Overhead, gulls squawked and squealed as they circled over the water. As we walked onto the wooden dock, the water lapped gently against the sides, and in the distance, a bell rang occasionally. Once we were on the dock, Zee paused to stare out over the sea to the distant horizon. “Wow,” she said wistfully. “It’s amazing, isn’t it? All that water. So clean, so fresh.”
“Yeah,” I said. “It’s pretty awesome.”
“We should get a boat. What do you think? We could sail off to distant shores and explore deserted islands and make love in the sand.”
Smiling, I shook my head at her. “You’d get bored quickly, Zee. I don’t think you’re built for the peaceful life.”
“Hmm.” She nodded. “I suppose you’re right. I need stimulation, don’t I?”
“Yes, you do.”
“Oh well. Let’s go get stimulated then.”
We spent the next ten minutes walking along the dock looking at dozens of boats until we finally found The Ricky. It was a Cabin Cruiser boat, which is about all I could say about it, for I knew nothing about boats. Myself and Ava used to sail with my father on his yacht occasionally, but after falling overboard and almost drowning one time as a child, I never went back near it, or any other boat for that matter. I couldn’t even swim. Just staring at the dark blue water lapping up against the boat’s side was enough to fill me with dread and anxiety.
“So how do you wanna play this?” Zee said as she took off her high heels and placed them down on the dock next to a thick wooden support post. “If he’s there, and he sees me, he’ll recognize me immediately for what I am, and then he’ll probably run.”
“Okay,” I said. “I’ll go in first then. I’ll try to use a sigil card on him. If I miss and he runs, you can be here to catch him. Will you be able to handle him if he does?”
“Please,” Zee said. “I can handle one of Asmodeus’ little bitches.”
“I love your confidence, Zee,” I said as I walked away from her, heading along the dock to the boat. “Stay out of sight.”
When I was up alongside the boat, I had a look to see if Marino was up on deck, which he wasn’t. So I called out his name. “Rick Marino?”
I gave it a minute, and when Marino didn’t appear, I took a chance and boarded the boat, nervously stretching across and climbing awkwardly aboard, pausing for a second to look around. “Rick Marino?” I said again, not even sure what I would say to the guy if he appeared. Maybe that I was a journalist working on a story about the marina and if he wouldn’t mind talking to me—
By the time I saw him, it was too late.
Marino came charging up from below deck. My hand went to my pocket to get the sigil card I’d come prepared with, but even before my hand could slip inside my pocket, Marino was on me, such was the speed he was moving at. He didn’t even say anything as he charged into me, his face frightening in its blank intensity as he lifted me and continued forward, me realizing with utter terror what he was going to do. “Wait!” I shouted. “I just wanna talk!”
I tried to pull the sigil card out of my pocket, but he had my arms clamped to my sides. There was nothing I could do but await the inevitable, which came all too soon as he threw me out of the boat and into the shockingly cold water below.
My back hit the water first, and then the cruel sea seemed to suck me down as I sank like a stone. After a few seconds of sinking, I began to struggle, flailing with my arms and legs to get back to the surface where I could breathe again. Having little air in them to begin with, my lungs were already burning. Panic set in as I tried to claw my way to the surface, and all I could think about was that time I had fallen off my father’s yacht. I remembered how cold and dark it was under the water, how it felt like I was being sucked down into Hell, and then my father’s face coming toward me like some underwater ghost and his arms wrapping around me.
But my father wasn’t there to save me this time. No one was. I had to save myself, so I kept struggling, my arms and legs like lead now, until I finally broke the surface and took a huge gasp of air; air that I used to shout for help before I went under again, sinking a few feet before frantically clawing my way to the surface once more, my head bobbing out of the water so I could get more air. This time I did my best to tread water, but my limbs didn’t know what they were doing. They were just flailing around madly, tiring me out all too quickly. “Zee!” I shouted, hoping she would hear me. “Help me!”
My whole body felt like it was made of concrete now, and despite my will to stay above water, I soon sank again with an almost calm resignation, thinking to myself, This is it, this is the moment I’m going to die, drowned because I never learned to fucking swim…
Sinking deeper, my arms and legs still now, I watched the light above the surface get farther and farther away as I sank toward the cold depths, my lungs filling with sea water, my vision becoming as black as the depths I was sinking toward…
18
When I started taking heroin for the first time, it was just after my sister had disappeared. Because of the situation, I got depressed, with no one to turn to. I had few friends and as friends do when you’re going through desperate times, they leave you alone, and then they stop being your friend altogether because who wants to be friends with someone who’s depressed all the time? I wasn’t on good terms with my father either. When Ava disappeared, he threw himself into his work, and seemed to expect me to do the same thing, as if there was nothing that could be done except to carry on and work.
Alone, I needed a break from my endless sadness. I thought if I could just get out of my own head for a while, I could get some distance and maybe come to terms with what had happened. I drank alcohol, but that only made me feel worse most of the time, though I kept drinking because I didn’t know what else to do. This was on top of the coke I was already snorting constantly, which didn’t really help me much either.
And then one day, I was walking back from the liquor store and for whatever reason I took a shortcut through an alley and happened across a guy sitting there doing something that I later learned was known as “chasing the dragon.” He was smoking heroin, and I stood and watched him, the guy almost oblivious to me as he closed his eyes and seemed to drift away to some other world, just checking out like he was no longer there anymore, and I remember being envious of his ability to escape because I wanted to do exactly that, but couldn’t. So I hung around for a while and waited on the guy to come back and notice me, and when he did, I asked him where he had scored the heroin. He directed me to a block away to where the dealers were, and I went there immediately and bought a small bag of brown powder.
When I got home, I discarded the whiskey I had bought and immediately started smoking the heroin, and oh my god, I had found it. I had found the escape I was looking for. As soon as I inhaled those sweet fumes, I was immediately transported somewhere else, to a place where I no longer felt any pain or depression. Everything was outside of me, kept at a distance where it could no longer hurt me. Inside my little bubble of bliss, I was okay again.
Until smoking it stopped being enough. I wanted to go deeper, to go farther away from everything, and the only way to do that was to inject the heroin straight into my veins. So that’s what I did. I started shooting up, and as soon as I did that, I found that special place again, that place where no pain existed and everything that could hurt me was far, far away.
Unfortunately, t
hat feeling of blissful escapism didn’t last very long either, and before I knew it, I was a full-blown addict, spending much of my day scoring my next fix because I needed it just to feel almost normal. I went on like this for a year, my depression hanging over me like a dark cloud at all times. I did little in the way of work, or anything else. All I did was score heroin and get high.
To this day, I’m still not sure if my overdose was accidental or deliberate. I’m not sure it even matters. I just know my father came to visit me one day and found me on the floor in a pool of my own vomit, on the brink of death. He apparently used a magic spell to keep me alive until he and Mac got me to a hospital. In the hospital, the doctors revived me, and I remember the shock of being conscious again, followed by an intense feeling of gratitude that I was still alive, that I was going to get another chance at living.
When I came to lying on the dock that day at Pierpoint Marina, I felt that same shock as I hurtled back into full consciousness again, spewing out the briny water that had been in my lungs, and then feeling that intense, almost joyous feeling once more, that feeling of being alive and breathing when you thought you were a goner.
“You really need to learn to fucking swim.”
Looking up, I saw Detective Murtagh standing over me, and Huxley as well.
“What…what are you doing here?” I said, realizing Murtagh was soaking wet. “Did you…save me?”
“Yeah, I did,” he said. “Feel free to thank me if you want.”
“Thanks,” I said, sitting up. “Where’s Zee?”
“She went after Marino after Vinci here shot the guy four times in the chest.”
“He just kept running at me,” Huxley said, staring down at me through his round eyeglasses like I was some strange creature that had washed up on the shore.
“So you don’t know where Zee is?” I said, still half in a daze, still unable to believe I was still alive.
“They were both moving fast,” Murtagh said. “Faster than what should be possible.”
“Their both demons,” I said, standing up, suddenly realizing how cold I was as I shivered. “We need to find them.”
“You need to get warmed up, that’s what you need to do,” Murtagh said. “Before you fucking die from the cold.”
“You should take your clothes off,” Huxley said.
“You know, Vinci, I just don’t think we’re at stage of our relationship yet, you know what I mean?”
Murtagh laughed. “Yeah, probably best to keep your clothes on, Deadson.”
“I’m going to find Zee,” I said. “Which way did she go?”
“I believe she went that way,” Huxley said, pointing in an easterly direction toward the nearby shipyards.
I moved past them, heading to my car, my feet squelching as I walked, my body shivering uncontrollably to warm me up.
“Wait,” Murtagh shouted behind me. “You’re in no state to drive, Deadson. We’ll all go in my car.”
“Fine by me,” I said as I hurried along the dock to the parking lot, the two detectives walking alongside me before we all climbed inside Murtagh’s car. “Turn the heat on, will you?”
Murtagh turned the heat on full before starting the car and peeling out of the parking lot, turning on his siren as he drove at speed toward the shipyards, all of us keeping an eye out for Zee and Marino, but seeing no sign of either of them. It was only when we drove into the shipyards did Huxley suddenly lean forward as he looked upward. “Right there,” he said.
“Where?” I said as I looked out the side window, eventually seeing what he was talking about. “Jesus. I see them.”
Zee and the incubus had transformed into their full demon forms and were currently spiraling upward in the air next to a container crane as they fought, holding onto each other with one hand while beating the shit out of one another with the other.
“I can’t believe I’m seeing this,” Murtagh said as he drove the car at speed toward the container crane. “This place is full of people, for Christ’s sake!”
“Most will be too busy working to notice anything,” Huxley said. “The rest probably won’t believe their eyes, or be too scared to believe. Besides, it’s getting dark.”
“Stop the car!” I said to Murtagh.
Murtagh hit the brakes near the container crane and I jumped out straight away, craning my neck upward to see what was happening between Zee and the incubus. Both were now standing on top of the crane, facing off for a moment as they seemed to speak to one another, though I couldn’t hear what they were saying. Then Zee flew at Marino, who stopped her with a powerful kick that sent her flying back along the top of the crane. Marino then ran at her, pouncing on Zee before she could get back up, and proceeded to pummel the hell out of her, raining down blow after blow on her head and body.
“Zee!” I shouted, panicking that Marino was going to kill her, or at least, destroy the body that housed her spirit, which in this world, was the same thing.
From his high up position atop the crane, Marino stopped hitting Zee and stared down at me, and even from my low vantage point, I could tell the bastard was smiling.
“Your girlfriend’s getting her ass kicked up there,” Murtagh said as he and Huxley stood near me, both of them holding their guns at this point.
Despite Murtagh’s irritating tone, he was right. Zee had clearly underestimated the incubus’ strength, and now she was paying for her arrogance.
Helplessly, I watched the incubus lift Zee up by the neck and hold her aloft as Zee made a useless attempt to fight back, but she was clearly too damaged to put up much of a fight. Marino then threw Zee suddenly, sending her sailing through the air as she careened toward the roof of a nearby warehouse building. I could only watch in horror as she tumbled through the air and then crashed through the roof of the warehouse, disappearing from sight.
“Zee!” I cried, thinking that was it, she was fucking dead.
“Deadson!” Murtagh shouted, making me spin around. “Look out!”
As I looked up, I saw the incubus come barreling toward me, his arms outstretched as he clearly intended to snatch me up or drive me into the concrete. As Murtagh and Huxley started shooting at the incubus, my hand went into my pocket for the sigil card, which was still there, but it was now soaking wet. It was fifty/fifty whether the sigil card still held the power I had charged it with, and that’s if the sigil ink itself hadn’t dissolved in the sea water too much. But with the demon still hurtling toward me, I had no other choice but to use the card.
So with the card between my fingers, I waited another split second for the incubus to get close enough, and then I tossed the sodden card into the air and jumped back out of the way. To my relief there was a sudden flash of blue energy before the incubus found itself trapped within a net of the same blue energy, and a second later, the demon crashed into the concrete with a heavy thud before laying still.
“Jesus Christ!” Murtagh exclaimed. “How did you do that?”
But I hardly heard his question, for I had already turned and started sprinting toward the warehouse across the way, knowing the energy net would hold the incubus for a while. That and the damage it had done to itself when it crash-landed would ensure the demon wouldn’t be going anywhere soon.
As I ran toward the warehouse, which was thankfully open, I called out Zee’s name as I sprinted inside. A few workers were in there, their faces white with shock as they all pointed toward the back of the warehouse. Running past them, I entered a maze of wooden crates, wondering how I was ever going to find Zee among them. “Zee! Zee! Can you hear me?”
There was no answer, and I continued to make my way through the maze of crates until I noticed the large hole in the roof about two-thirds of the way into the building, knowing that must have been where Zee had crashed through. It took me a few more minutes, but I finally found my way to her, finding her lying on a stack of broken crates, polystyrene foam shells scattered everywhere.
“Zee! Jesus Christ!” I ran up to her a
nd saw straight away the large sliver of wood sticking out of her stomach as she lay there, unmoving.
Oh Christ, she’s fucking dead…
That was my first thought upon seeing her. She was still in her demon form, one of her wings broken, jutting out at an odd angle. Her face and body was also covered in dark blood, and one of her horns had snapped in half.
When I reached her, I was almost afraid to touch her, sick to my stomach at the notion that she might be dead.
But then she opened her eyes and stared up at me, and I allowed myself a small sigh of relief.
“Hey…baby,” she said as she tried to smile, blood coming out of her mouth. “I…fucked up…huh?”
“No,” I said, clasping her hand. “You didn’t. We got him, Zee. He’s outside.”
“You…did?”
“Yeah.”
“Why…”
“Why?”
“Why…you all…wet?”
I shook my head. “Don’t worry about it. I’ll explain later. Right now, we need to get you out of here so you can heal. Can you move?”
Zee looked down at the piece of crate penetrating her abdomen. “What…do you think?”
“Yeah, sorry. Dumb question.” I stared at the bloodstained sliver of wood for a second. “We don’t have a choice. I’ll have to get you up so I can pull that out of you.”
“Okay, baby,” she said. “Don’t worry about me. Just…do it.”
Nodding grimly, I put my arms under her, and she did her best to hang onto me. “Ready?” I asked her.
“Do it,” she breathed.
As soon as I lifted her up, she screamed in pain, but I didn’t stop lifting until she was on her feet, and I held her there for a moment until she could stand mostly by herself. “Now for the painful part. You ready?”
Zee nodded. “Do it quick, okay, baby?”
“Okay,” I said, grabbing the length of wood at her back. “On three. One—” I didn’t wait till three. I just ripped that sucker out of her before she had a chance to protest. Thankfully, the wood came out easily, but so too did a load more of Zee’s blood and a long piercing scream from her mouth. “That’s it. It’s out. It’s out, baby. Now we need to get you home so you can heal. Come on.”
