The Deal (Devil's Brother Book 1)

by D. N. Hoxa

  “Don’t play games with me, Doc! Did you take him downstairs?”

  “We didn’t touch him, Adrian,” Alan said.

  “Unbelievable!” I shouted and headed for the stairs.

  “Adrian, we didn’t touch Dad. We came straight to you as soon as we woke up,” Alan said as we descended.

  “Then where the hell…”

  The words got stuck in my throat when I entered the kitchen. My legs gave, and I fell against the wall with my mouth open.

  Dad was in front of me, making eggs. He was standing on his own feet. He was dressed. He was as big as he used to be. His cheeks were red, his eyes full of life.

  He was young again.

  “Dad?!” Doc shouted and ran to him. “Holy shit, Dad? What the hell are you doing?”

  He reached out for him but didn’t dare touch him. Alan followed Doc, but I couldn’t move yet. Maybe it was all a dream, but I never, ever wanted it to end. I never wanted to see my father any different than he was that second.

  “Oh, my God. Holy hell. This is…” Alan finally touched Dad’s cheek. He shouted, right before he jumped and hugged him, laughing out loud all the while. Doc did the same.

  A ghost of a smile played on Dad’s lips, and his eyes met mine. The past year, he sometimes didn’t recognize me because of the medication. The pain was incredible, and we had to give him morphine a few times, and when we did, he lost himself.

  But now, as he looked at me, he knew exactly who I was. He knew me.

  It was a miracle, even if it was a dream. A goddamn miracle, and I wouldn’t let the dream end without hugging him, too. I ran to them and hugged them. We’d never done it before. We weren’t exactly touchy-feely, us brothers. But that moment was an exception.

  We stayed like that for a long time, laughing, crying, hugging Dad. But eventually, reason came back as my head cleared. And my gut told me something wasn’t exactly right.

  It didn’t take long to realize what it was. In the past ten minutes, Dad hadn’t said a single word.

  “Dad, are you okay? How do you feel?” I asked.

  Dad smiled.

  “Come on, Pops. Say something, will ya?” Alan said.

  We waited, but Dad only smiled. He never even opened his mouth. The feeling in my gut filled me with dread.

  “Dad?”

  “Why isn’t he saying anything?” Doc said.

  “Can you tell me if you’re okay?” I said, grabbing his shoulders. He towered over me now.

  “Please say something,” Alan said. “Come on, Pops. Just say a word. A single word.”

  But Dad didn’t. He simply stepped back and waved at the kitchen table where he had made everything ready for breakfast.

  “Are you playing us?” Doc said. “Are you playing us, Pops? That it?”

  Dad didn’t look like he was playing. He smiled, and he sat down where he always did before the disease broke him.

  “He can’t speak,” I whispered.

  “It doesn’t matter. Look at him!” Alan sat down across from Dad. “I don’t care if he can’t speak. He looks better than he did when he was young!”

  “Alan, this—”

  “He’s right. Let’s sit down and eat. I don’t care if he speaks,” Doc said, and he sat down, too.

  Dad looked at me and raised his brows. That’s when I remembered that it was still just a dream. A dream. I kept forgetting, but that was what it was.

  And so I sat down. I would take whatever I could get, for as long as it lasted. Neither of us ever looked away from his face. He ate like he did before. He held his fork and knife in his strong hands like he used to, and he even moved his left leg like he used to all the time.

  “I can’t fucking believe it,” Doc said. “He looks so good!”

  “You better believe it,” Alan said. “He’s fine now. The cancer’s gone. He’s healthy.”

  “But he can’t speak,” I reminded them.

  “Who cares?” They both said at the same time.

  “Yeah,” I mumbled. I didn’t care. I wouldn’t for as long as the dream lasted.

  A few minutes later, someone knocked on the door. It was eight in the morning, and nobody even woke up that early in our town. Everything started at nine.

  Alan stood up to go see who it was, right before he called for us.

  “Get over here, now!” he said.

  “We’ll be right back,” I said to Dad, and he nodded. At least he understood. I didn’t want to leave him alone, but Alan sounded freaked out.

  When we walked outside, we saw him with a man. He was short, bald, and with round glasses on the bridge of his nose.

  “What’s up?” Doc said.

  Alan said to the man: “Tell them what you just told me.”

  His face said it all; he was scared shitless. His hands were shaking, but he spoke.

  “Some boys in our neighborhood won’t leave my daughter alone. She’s fifteen, and I’m scared of what they might do to her. The boys are the same age, and I’ve tried speaking to their parents and even speaking to them myself.” He smiled awkwardly. “But I’m not exactly a scary guy.”

  “What the hell does that have to do with us?” Doc said.

  “Beat them. Just a little. Just to give them a good scare so they will leave my daughter alone.”

  Doc laughed. “What the hell do we look like to you?”

  He took a step forward, and the man took one back.

  “Please,” he said. “I’ll pay you,” and he showed us a bunch of cash. He offered the money to Alan, and Alan took it.

  “What the hell are you doing?” I hissed at him, but he didn’t care. He was counting the dollars.

  “There’s two thousand dollars here,” Alan said. Two thousand?

  “I don’t have more, but I can get it,” the man said.

  “We’re not going to take your money,” I said, reaching to take the money from Alan’s hand, but he moved away.

  “Hold on a sec. So you’ll give us this money just to go scare a bunch of teenagers away from your daughter?”

  “Yes,” the man said. “Please. I don’t have anyone else to turn to.”

  “How do you even know us?” I asked him.

  “I don’t.”

  “Then how did you know where to find us?”

  The man looked around, at the house and the woods in front of it, as if he was just realizing where he was.

  “I don’t…I don’t know. I just came here.” He shrugged.

  “People don’t just come here,” Doc hissed. “Who told you about us?”

  “No one, I swear,” the man said and raised his arms. He was sweating worse then I was in the morning. “I don’t know how I found you. Will you help me?”

  My mouth opened to say no.

  My voice never came.

  I looked at the boys, at their wide eyes and open mouths, at the panic in their expressions.

  I tried again. No. I thought the word, but I couldn’t say it.

  “Yes,” Alan whispered, then looked at us again. “Yes, we will.”

  No!

  I couldn’t say it. Why on earth couldn’t I say a fucking word?

  With my head in my hands, I sat down on the stairs of the porch as the man thanked my brothers, and gave them the details. Where he lived. Who the boys were. His daughter’s name.

  Then he left.

  “I don’t understand this,” I said when the boys sat down next to me. “I couldn’t say it. I couldn’t say no.”

  “Me neither,” Doc said.

  “It was real,” Alan said. “That fucking dream was real.”

  “Why are you smiling?” I said when I saw his face.

  “Are you kidding me? Two thousand dollars to go scare a bunch of teenagers away from a girl? Of course I’m fucking smiling! We’re going to be rich, and Dad isn’t even sick anymore!”

  “You stupid fucking asshole! This is a dream! This isn’t real life!”

  “Tell yourself that, pretty boy. It seems pretty real t
o me,” Doc said.

  They went back inside, but I stayed out. I closed my eyes and released a long breath as I waited for sleep to leave me. To wake the hell up.

  Three hours later, the boys came out of the house and I still hadn’t woken up. They practically dragged me to the truck.

  “I can’t leave Dad alone,” I said as I pushed their hands away with no success.

  “He’s not sick anymore,” Doc said. “See?”

  He pointed at the porch, where Dad was sitting with a newspaper in his hands from God knows when. He waved at us.

  “I don’t care, I’m not going!”

  It didn’t work. We were already on the way, and I was on the backseat. Ten minutes later, we parked the truck across from the man’s house. From what Alan and Doc said, the man’s daughter came home at one o’clock. We were ten minutes early.

  “This is sick,” I said angrily.

  “Calm down, Adrian. We tried saying no, didn’t we?” Alan said.

  “Yeah, you tried. And then you took the money.”

  “What was I supposed to do? Start beating people up pro bono?”

  “Just relax. This isn’t the end of the world. Dad’s back, isn’t he?” Doc said.

  It was a dream. They just didn’t get it. So I didn’t say anything.

  “Yeah, and if all I need to do for the next seven years is beat people up, I’d say it’s damn worth it,” Alan said.

  Arguing wasn’t going to get me anywhere. I would soon wake up, anyway.

  Before that happened, teenagers started to come our way in small groups.

  “That’s her.” Doc pointed at two girls walking together. “He said she has red hair and a green backpack.”

  The girl’s friend waved and turned the corner, and she continued down the road by herself with her head down. We didn’t have to wait long for the boys. There were three of them, and they walked in the middle of the road. Everybody stepped back to let them pass as they walked with their shoulders wide, yelling and laughing. The bullies. God, how I’d hated their kind through high school.

  “Oh, this is going to be fun,” Alan said.

  He got out of the truck. Doc followed, and they both took their baseball bats. I hadn’t played in forever with them, and the bat felt foreign in my hands when I got mine and followed my brothers, feeling sick. I didn’t want to do this, but I just needed to get this over with and wake the fuck up.

  The boys were already harassing the girl when we got there.

  “I bet you she knows just what to do,” one of them was saying. “Don’t you, Caroline? I bet you’d love to touch it.”

  The blood in my veins froze, but Doc was faster than me. He grabbed the boy by the jacket and threw him against the wall. The little girl was white as a sheet.

  “Go on, now. Go home. These boys won’t bother you again.” I waved for her to leave. She looked at me with eyes filled with tears for a minute before she started running.

  “I bet you like this, don’t you, pretty boy?” Doc said to the one he’d thrown against the wall, while Alan grabbed the other two by their ears and lined them up next to their friend.

  “What do we have here?” he said and paced in front of them with his bat on his shoulder. The boys looked like they were going to piss their pants any second now.

  “Who are you?” one of them said, stuttering.

  “I’ll tell you who we are.” Doc grinned and slapped the living hell out of him. “We’re your worst nightmare.” Oh, God. He was so lame.

  “Now, I’ll ask you one question, boys, and I need you to answer me,” Alan said. “Do you know a girl named Caroline, by any chance?”

  “Y-Yeah,” the other said, and Alan slapped him, too, and buried the handle of his bat in the boy’s gut.

  “Wrong answer!”

  Are you fucking kidding me? He was quoting Samuel Jackson.

  “Now, I’ll ask you again,” Alan said.

  Just then two older boys saw us and started to run towards us. I stepped in front of them.

  “What the fuck are you doing? That’s my little brother!” the oldest of them said.

  “And those are my big brothers with him,” I said.

  “Who the fuck are you, man? Let me pass!”

  “I will in just a minute,” I said, just when Alan slapped this guy’s little brother again, and he cried out. I was expecting it, so when the boy’s brother jumped forward, I held him by the shoulders with my bat. “You’re not going anywhere.”

  He swung his fist and almost caught my jaw, and I hit him with my elbow on his nose. He fell back a few steps.

  “Seriously, you don’t want to do this. Just step aside and wait until we’re done,” I said.

  “You’ll fucking regret this, you hear me?” he cried. He sounded a lot like a girl, too. “You’re going to regret this, you fuckers!”

  It was amazing how real it all seemed. All of it. Even the shaking hands of the guy’s friend.

  A few minutes later, Alan said, “’Atta boy,” and Doc let them go.

  They didn’t dare make a sound from fear Alan would notice them and slap them again. “Go on, now. Get going. And pray you never see us again.”

  The boys ran, and the big brother ran after them, all the while shouting at us, telling us that we would regret it. My head had started to ache by the time we got in the truck. I just wished I’d wake up already.

  “Did you see that?” Alan said, laughing. “Man, I enjoyed this shit!”

  “That was awesome,” Doc said, nodding.

  “It was pathetic,” I said. “And Samuel Jackson? Really, brother?”

  “Hey, I’ve always wanted to do that scene. It’s damn perfect. I could kiss that man for giving me the opportunity and for paying me for it, too!”

  He laughed like none of what was happening was wrong.

  “Did you break that other guy’s nose?” Doc asked me.

  “Nah. Didn’t hit him hard enough.”

  “Pussy,” he muttered, but I ignored him.

  “Can you drive faster?”

  Dad was all alone in the house, and I got the idea that, if I lay down in bed, I would wake up. There was no way I wouldn’t. So as soon as we got back home, and found Dad perfectly fine while he fixed the mower without making a sound, I went straight to my room. The need to look at my back and at that tattoo in the mirror was almost unbearable, but I squeezed my eyes shut and put my pillow over my head instead. If sleep took me, the dream would no longer be able to continue.

  I slept.

  I woke up three hours later. Everything was the same. The realization made me want to crawl out of my own skin and run as fast as I could.

  I’d made a deal with the Devil.

  Eae

  Another one. No…three. Three more trapped souls.

  My brother was nothing if not fast.

  The white clouds around me suffocated me; that was exactly why Netzach made me wait in the Council for so long. He had this theory that I’d gotten too used to living on Earth, and I wouldn’t know what to do with myself back in Heaven. This was his way of testing that theory.

  Perhaps he was right.

  Very soon, the others started to arrive. The benches, half hidden by the white clouds, started to fill up with Angels. The golden chair in the very center of the room remained empty because Netzach, the Leader of the Principalities, loved to play his games with me.

  The others, nine out of the ten that were usually seated in the Council, looked at me like I was the most curious little thing they’d ever seen. Their proud wings filled with soft feathers, so white they left the clouds to shame, moved together with the expression on their faces. They looked down at me, too, but that couldn’t be avoided because their benches were much higher than I was.

  I hated being there, but I had no other choice. I’d spent more of the last two thousand years on Earth than in Heaven. My own home. None of the others could understand me. Maybe because they never spent more than a year at a time down there with th
e unbelievably naïve, amazing creatures that were humans.

  My wings shivered a second before Netzach appeared on his golden chair, a smirk on his face.

  “Long time no see, Eae,” he said the same second he appeared.

  “Always a pleasure, Zach.”

  “I was starting to think that you’d forgotten your way up here.”

  Some of the others chuckled. It only made me smile brighter.

  “I almost did! Things like that can happen when you have important things to do on Earth, instead of standing around eating and drinking on clouds for centuries at a time.”

  His cheeks turned a bit red, but he recovered quickly. Nobody chuckled though. The others were all afraid of him. Maybe I would have been, too, if I’d stayed with him for as long as they had. He was a pain in the ass, but he was dangerous, too. Strong. As strong as I was.

  “Important?” he said and forced a terrible laugh out of his throat. “So important that you continue to be accompanied by failure?”

  “You and I have very different definitions of failure,” I said.

  “Oh, but there is only one definition of it, Eae. It’s simply the lack of success,” he said, grinning.

  “Again, you and I perceive success very differently.”

  “Is that so?” he said, raising his brows as if he really were surprised. “Do tell me, when was the last time you succeeded in what you do on Earth?”

  What you do on Earth. I almost laughed, but I couldn’t, because he had me there and he knew it. I hadn’t been able to save a single soul from the Devil’s hold in more than a century, and Zach just couldn’t wait to throw that in my face.

  “It has been a while,” I said, shrugging. “But I’d like to see anyone else here do better with the limited power that I have.”

  “It isn’t your power that is limited. It is your mind,” he hissed. “And this has got to stop. You have been called to come back to Heaven, and let someone else do the work you so obviously can’t.”

  My wings shivered again. They weren’t as white as his. I was the only Angel in Heaven to have spent such a long time on Earth. I had my white and gray wings to show for it, and I was damn proud of them.

  I didn’t want to go back home. I still had things to do.

  “I need more time,” I said, and Netzach laughed. He laughed because he’d expected that. He was prepared. He knew what I was going to say the second I called for the Council meeting.