Blood Demon_An Urban Fantasy Novel

by N. P. Martin

I looked around the parking lot for a moment feeling slightly lost, as if I was marooned on an island with a psychopath, with no chance of help coming from anywhere. My first instinct was to go to the sanctuary of the Sanctum, but then I remembered that Blaze attacked me the last time I went there, so going back didn’t seem like a good idea. I didn’t blame Blaze for what he did. As special as he was, Blaze was still an animal. He was still a wolf. When he attacked me, he was just following his instincts, probably out of fear, which may have blinded him to the fact that it was me he was attacking, and not the demon inside of me.

  "Actually, you’re wrong about that," Max said. "Your little wolf friend, or pet or whatever he is, can see me. When he looks at you, he doesn’t see you. He sees me, or at least the energy I put out." Max laughed. "So it looks like there won’t be any ruffling of fur or playing of fetch any time soon."

  I puffed my cheeks out in exasperation. "You’re a total bastard, you know that?"

  "Again, that’s where you are wrong."

  "What?"

  "Well, all this talk of flesh has, shall we say, stoked my desire. I’d like to get my hands…dirty again, if you know what I mean. Or should that be bloody? Bloody dirty, perhaps..."

  Panic hit me like a ten ton hammer as I had visions of having to helplessly watch Max as he butchered more innocents. "No," I said. "No more killing."

  "Relax," Max said. "I won’t be killing anyone else. Not while I’m in your body at least."

  I didn’t like the sound of that either. "Wait, what do you mean?"

  "Well, I’ve been thinking. I have no desire to be trapped in a cell with you again, which would likely happen if you were seen around town with your hands dripping with blood. Plus, I’m rather looking forward to our coming adventures. I didn’t think I would be, but I am. For some strange reason, I find you interesting, Creed. You’re not like most of the humans I possess, who tend to be weak and afraid all of the time…but more on that later. Just know that I will be using some other body when I want to indulge my taste for the flesh."

  "You mean you’re going to possess some other poor sod just so you can kill people?"

  "Yes. I thought you’d be glad."

  I shook my head. "Glad that you’re going to kill more innocent people?"

  "Would you rather it was you who killed them?"

  I shook my head again, this time in shame. "No."

  "Well, then. Stop your whining, and don’t look a gift horse in the mouth. You’ll be free of me, Creed, for a little while at least. Isn’t that what you wanted? No need to answer. I know it is. I can feel it."

  At that point, my mind was so mangled, I just wanted him gone. "Go now. Just fucking go."

  "Remember, Creed," Max said, turning up the pain dial in my chest just a little, a sinister tone to his voice inside my head. "I can come and go from you as I please, and there is nothing you can do to stop me. You have been marked, which means there is no spell, no magic that can undo that. I own you completely until I decide not to. So while I’m gone, don’t waste your time looking for ways to stop me. If you do, I will know, and I will take it personally that you chose not to listen to me. Do you understand?"

  I nodded as I winced at the stabbing pain in my chest. "Yes."

  "Good." He stopped the pain. "Then I shall see you soon."

  A second after he finished speaking, Max’s invisible spirit shot out of my chest so forcibly, it felt like my guts were being pulled out along with it. When he had gone, I breathed a huge sigh of relief as I bent over and leaned my hands on my knees, feeling like I was finally able to breath properly after so long. Then, when my lungs were filled, I shot up straight, threw my head back and let out a long, agonized scream.

  Despite what Max said about not scheming behind his back to have him exorcised, or prevented from re-entering my body, I teleported over to Sanaka’s Sanctum and let myself in. It took me a few minutes to find Sanaka in one of his training rooms practicing his sword katas. He didn’t miss a single beat when I slid back the door and walked into the room, minus my boots of course, which I left outside the Sanctum. I remained by the door respectfully while Sanaka continued to perform the sword kata, his movements graceful and masterful in their execution, but also laden with tremendous power and strength. I admire those who wield such skill with weapons. When it comes to edged weapons, I’m more of a hack and slash guy. Less Miyamoto Musashi, more Jason Voorhees. That was me. My mind is my main weapon, along with my magic, and always has been. Sometimes I even wield both like I know what I’m doing.

  "Why would you bring a demon into my Sanctum?" Sanaka asked as he stood in the middle of the room, dressed in white robes and still holding his katana.

  "I haven’t," I said. "The demon is gone for now. That’s why I’m here."

  "You want to know if you can stop it from possessing you again."

  "Yes."

  "You can’t."

  I sighed at his bluntness. "Seriously? There’s nothing to be done to stop this motherfu—I mean, demon, from possessing me again? There must be something."

  Sanaka remained seemingly unaffected by my plight, his calm composure as infuriating to me as ever in these tense situations. When my back is against the wall, I like people to scream along with me. It makes me feel less alone. Not that Sanaka cared about any of that. "If there is, I do not know about it."

  "So I’m screwed then." It was more of a statement than a question.

  "I hear it’s the same demon which marked you years ago," Sanaka said, walking forward. "The one who killed your family."

  I nodded. "Yes."

  "I’m sorry. It must be hard."

  "Are you sympathizing with me? You never show me any sympathy. Ever." I paused for a second as I realized something. "I must really be screwed."

  "The demon will kill you and take your soul when it is finished with you," he said.

  "No," I said shaking my head. "We made a deal."

  Sanaka raised one eyebrow at me. "You made another deal with a demon? Remind me again how the last deal you made with a demon worked out."

  "Point taken." I shook my head. "What the hell was I thinking? I can’t trust the son of a bitch. Not that I had much choice. I was screwed anyway."

  Sanaka shook his head at me as he left the training room with his sword. I followed behind him as he made his way to the kitchen, where he began to prepare Sushi from a freshly caught sea bass. My nose wrinkled as he began to gut the fish. While still Sanaka’s apprentice, I grew to hate the smell of fish, for he fed it to me everyday, telling me it helped the flow of magic around the body. Something about the essential oils, I don’t fucking know. Whether it does or not, I still don’t know. Sometimes I think Sanaka just enjoyed fucking with me at times. "The best I can do is try to find a solution to your problem," he said eventually. "But I don’t think there is one. Some things just can’t be changed, even with magic."

  "Yeah," I said. "Don’t I know it."

  When I left Sanaka’s Sanctum, I walked out into the park and called Leona on my phone. "Hey," I said when she answered. "Where are you?"

  "The Sanctum," she said. "Where are you? With that Crow woman?"

  The vitriol in her voice was unmistakable. Leona had no love for Angela Crow, or any other vampire for that matter, but especially Angela, whom Leona thought I was too close to for my own good. "No. I was with Sanaka trying to find a solution to my demon problem."

  "Any luck?"

  "No."

  "Figures."

  "Are you all right, Leona? You sound…pissed off."

  "That’s because I am, Creed. I know this getting possessed by a demon from your past thing is not your fault, not exactly anyway, but it’s still—" She stopped in frustration like she couldn’t form the words.

  "What?" I said, feeling like shit that I had dragged her into something again.

  "I’d just like things to be normal for once, or as normal as they can be with you."

  "It sounds like you regret moving back here…or g
etting back with me."

  She sighed. "It’s not that, Creed. I don’t do regrets, you know that. What’s done is done. But once again, there’s a very real chance that you might…"

  "Die?"

  "Yes. Again."

  "Look, I’m not going to die. I’ll figure a way out of this. I always do."

  Leona went silent. I could picture her back at the Sanctum, staring hard at the floor as she tried to keep her emotions under control. "So what’s your next move?" she asked eventually.

  "To see you," I said. "Is Blaze there with you?"

  "No. He left earlier."

  Blaze was probably out hunting somewhere, which meant he would be gone for most of the night. "All right. I’ll be there in a minute."

  After hanging up the phone, I went and sat on one of the park benches, as there was something I had to do before Max showed up again. Max couldn’t know that I had been talking to Sanaka about trying to get rid of him. I couldn’t afford to piss Max off, so I would have to conceal the memory of my conversation with Sanaka. Closing my eyes, I focused on the memory, and then wrapped it up in a bit of concealment magic. Then I pushed the memory far back into the recesses of my mind. It was like taking an old video tape and stashing it in a box in the basement. As long as Max wasn’t looking for it, he shouldn’t find it. Once I had pushed the memory to the depths of my mind, I could barely recall it myself. With that done, I teleported to the Sanctum to see Leona.

  Leona was sitting in the living room of the Sanctum, still dressed in her field gear. In front of her was my centuries old chess table. On this highly prized, and ridiculously expensive, table was one of her custom Berettas, stripped down to its various components, which Leona was cleaning with an oil cloth. It was something she liked to do when she was stressed, to calm herself and regain her focus. The fact that she was in the middle of doing it now, spoke volumes about the effect my current situation was having on her. Once again, guilt stabbed at my belly like a knife. When Leona came back from Washington, she did so on the understanding that it was to be a fresh start for her and us. That fresh start lasted barely two days before things went belly up. It was beginning to seem that Leona and I were fated to be together only in strife. Normality was a foreign concept for us and our relationship. Unless of course, this was normality.

  "Hey," I said as I stood feeling like a stranger in my own Sanctum, knowing that if Blaze decided to walk in now, he would most likely attack me again. Or maybe not, since Max wasn’t in me at present. But I had no doubt screwed with Blaze’s head the last time, and the poor guy probably didn’t know what to think now. He might attack just out of pure confusion.

  Leona stopped what she was doing long enough for us to look at each other, as if to say, Well, here we are again in the midst of another shitstorm…

  "Are you okay?" I asked her.

  "You’re the possessed one," she replied.

  "Not right now I’m not." I crossed the room to pour myself a glass of whiskey from the bottle on the mantle. "Max has decided it would be unwise to use my body for any more killing, so he fucked off into someone else’s body instead, so he could do his killing without any negative consequences to me. Or him for that matter."

  "Jesus. You know how fucked up that sounds?"

  "Believe me, I know."

  "Can’t you keep the demon out, now that he’s gone?"

  I shook my head as I filled my glass for the second time. "I wish. There’s nothing to be done on that score. Me and Max, we’re like two fucking peas in a pod until he decides otherwise."

  "What about Ray or Sanaka? Surely they must be able to help?"

  "Sanaka is a dead end, I think anyway. I can’t quite…" I shook my head dismissively. "As for Ray, I’ll see him when I get to Ireland."

  "Wait, what? You’re going to Ireland?"

  I nodded. "I have to. It’s a condition of my release."

  "Why did the Crow get you out?" Leona asked, somewhat suspiciously, I thought.

  "So I could go to Babylon and bring her daughter home to her. Ray has direct access to the place, which is why I’m going to Ireland."

  Leona shook her head. "You’re going away again."

  "Yes," I said. "I don’t have a choice. It’s either that or stay locked up at Division."

  "And then what?"

  "Well, assuming I manage to persuade Jennifer Crow to come back here, then I have to go to where the rest of my family are, or at least their souls."

  "What for?"

  I frowned. "What do you mean, what for?"

  Leona frowned and moved the table aside as she stood. "Your family is dead, Creed. Wherever they are, they’ve moved on. What do you hope to achieve by tracking down their souls?"

  It was a valid question, despite the defensive anger that rose in me when she asked it. Truth be told, I hadn’t really considered what I would do when I tracked down my family. Neither did I know anything about their situation in the multiverse. I just knew I had to find them. After that, I didn’t know.

  "Closure," I said eventually, in answer to Leona’s question.

  "I thought you got that when your family appeared to you last time," she said.

  "They were ripped out of this world before their time, Leona."

  "Lots of people are taken before their time, Creed. It doesn’t mean we have to track their souls half way across the universe to do…whatever it is you plan on doing."

  "Are you telling me you would pass up the chance to see your brother again?" I asked her, knowing I’d be hitting a nerve.

  Her face set in anger for a moment as she stared hard at me. "Fuck you, Creed."

  "Hey, I’m just saying. I know there’s not much logic in finding my family when they’ve been dead for so long, but this isn’t about logic or common sense—"

  "Nothing ever is with you."

  I nodded. "Fair point, but it’s just something I have to do."

  "Is your demon tagging along with you, then?" She sat back down and started purposely cleaning her gun.

  "That’s the only reason you’re even talking to me," I said. "Otherwise I’d still be out there killing people, until I ended up dead myself."

  Leona looked up at me briefly. "What do you mean?"

  "I made a deal with the demon. Luckily our interests intertwine."

  "So the demon will leave you alone once it gets what it wants, is that it?"

  "That’s the plan, yeah."

  "And the plan always works out, right?"

  I sighed. "What do you want me to do, Leona? I’m working things out as best I can here."

  Leona stopped oiling her gun and sighed as well. "I know. I’m sorry."

  I crossed the room so I could give her a hug. "We can get through this," I said.

  "We?"

  I pulled back to look at her. "Yes, we."

  Leona went silent for a moment, before saying unexpectedly, "Brentwood offered me my old job back."

  That motherfucker.

  "What did you say?" I asked as calmly as possible.

  "I told him no, and that I was partners with you now."

  I wanted to kiss her, but it didn’t seem appropriate somehow. "You’ve no idea what that means to me."

  "I know what it means. That’s why I told Brentwood no. I’m with you, Creed, but on the understanding that we are partners, and partners don’t keep shit from each other, or do foolish things behind each others backs. From now on, I want complete transparency from you."

  I nodded. "Of course. That goes without saying."

  "Good."

  "You’re a real hardass, Lawson, you know that?" I said, smiling as I moved in to kiss her. But just as I did, a familiar force slammed into my back, and a dark presence filled me.

  "Hey, Creed," Max said. "Did you miss me? Let me show you what I’ve been up to…"

  7

  Trouble Is Back

  It was like being trapped in a chair while being forced to watch a nightmarish film reel, or some awful snuff movie, as Max gleefully
fed me his most recent memories. I had to watch through the eyes of a stranger—the person whose body Max possessed—as the demon used the person’s body as a tool for murder. The first image I saw was of a young woman, possibly a prostitute, lying spreadeagled on a filthy looking motel bed. The woman was stripped naked, and her stomach was cut open, her intestines removed and placed on the blood soaked bed beside her. I don’t know how, but the woman was still alive. She was screaming, but little sound left her mouth, as her tongue had been cut out, and most of her teeth had been removed, presumably with the bloody pair of pliers that lay on the beside table next to her. A large butchers knife came into view, and I watched as the hand holding the knife began to slice off the meat from the woman’s legs, as garbled noises came from her mouth. It was bad enough that I had to watch this horror unfold. What was worse was that I could feel everything that Max was feeling as he mutilated his victim. His pleasure was as intense as his hatred for the victim, and it was difficult for me not to get swept away in those feelings, to the point where I smiled and began to relish the next cut with the knife…

  Then the memory changed to a different one. This one was of a tramp in an alley, as Max brutally bludgeoned the man with an iron bar, hitting the tramp repeatedly over the head as the old guy lay dead on the ground. Again, I felt the palpable pleasure coursing through Max as he smashed the tramp’s skull open with the iron bar, and then keep hitting until the tramp’s brains were mush. The tramp also had a little dog with him, which yapped and nipped at Max’s ankles. Max looked down at the dog in annoyance, before lifting his leg high and bringing his boot down hard on the dog’s head…

  After that, the memories came thick and fast, until it felt like I was the one doing all the killing: an old man is thrown into the path of an oncoming truck as people stand around screaming; a child is fatally stabbed at the zoo; a woman has her breasts bitten off one agonizing bite at a time; a cop is shot repeatedly in the head with his own gun; a prostitute is raped by a gang of mind controlled dogs, and then eaten afterward…

  The horror went on and on, until…it just stopped, and I was back in the living room of the Sanctum again, with Leona.