by C. Gockel
After a few moments, I heard some shuffling near the door and sensed someone looking out the peephole. I tried to look around nervously like I was a proper yuppie addict. I’m a terrible actress, so I was actually a bit surprised when he opened the door and ushered me quickly in. He looked me over and visibly relaxed. Humans are sometimes uncomfortable around me, but once they really look at me, and their eyes tell them I’m an average sized woman with average features, their brain squashes any fearful instincts. I go out of my way to look harmless. Not covered in tattoos, not pierced all over, no punk hairdo. No big warts, bulging muscles, glowing eyes, horns, etc. (could these two lists go together?) Just a nice normal, middle aged, rather plain woman.
“Are you Brad?” I asked him while looking around the place.
The inside looked like a frat house with old pizza boxes and beer cans carelessly tossed on coffee tables or stacked on the rather dirty beige carpet. I eyed it in distaste. I’d have to clean that carpet when their lease ended. I’d charge them double for it too. A plaid second–hand couch sat in front of a huge flat screen TV on the wall. Two guys sprawled on the couch with pistols visible in their waistbands. They were big, but flabby with wrinkled dirty clothes and longish hair. They looked pretty stoned and rather unaware of my presence.
“Yeah,” he replied “what are you looking to take home?”
“The rent.” I gave that a moment to sink in. “I’m actually the landlord, not a buyer.”
That announcement was greeted with laughter from Brad. The guys on the couch didn’t budge, still slumped with their eyes fixed on the TV. At least they weren’t lunging at me with guns drawn at this point.
If the stoned guys on the couch managed to somehow achieve a miracle and hit me, I could repair almost any wound. It would hurt, and it might take a while, but I wouldn’t’ die. Or I could convert the bullets before they reached me.
When demons convert, we dissect the molecules or atoms of something and rearrange them into something else. Transmutation, as the human alchemists called it. That is the big ‘magic’ of demons. Sometimes conversion works out neatly and you end up with all your atoms and molecules used and accounted for. Sometimes you have spare shit that you have to figure out what to do with. Some of that shit isn’t particularly stable on its own, leaving you to borrow atoms out of other things around you to stick together. All this has to occur in fractions of a second because that’s usually all you have before something explodes, or there is chlorine gas, or worse.
In the bullet scenario before me there were some troublesome atoms to deal with. You could do pretty much anything with carbon, but iron was the atom demanding attention when a bullet was speeding at you. Not a big deal when viewed on a world disaster scale, but kind of messy to deal with on the fly like this. And any conversion action on my part could possibly be messy enough to attract notice of the angels, who dedicated their existence to noticing these kinds of things and coming down with holy fury on our heads.
I could weld the steel triggers of the guns. Just shoot a blaze of energy across the room and melt the guns, burning half their pants off in the process. Back home, no one cared if you set the guys on fire welding triggers. Back home, no one would even bother with welding triggers, just shoot a big flashy burst of something and cook them all dead. Problem solved.
I couldn’t afford to be too flashy though, since I was living under the radar as much as I could. I would bet that a small amount of energy from me wouldn’t set off alarm bells with the angels, but why take the chance? Plus, I kind of got off on the risk of handling these situations without any energy usage at all. It was a real adrenaline rush. A bullet to the head or a vital organ would most likely kill me in this form, contrary to mythology.
“Come on, cough it up,” I told him. “You owe it, I’m here. Just pay me the three months rent and no one gets hurt.”
I had a premonition someone was going to get hurt. Might be me. Definitely would be Brad.
Brad sneered. If I had been a human, I probably would have been shaken. It was a good sneer. Very dramatic. Very Hollywood.
“You are the only one likely to get hurt, babe,” he said. “And you’re not leaving here with a dime.”
Brad then proceeded to look me over like I was a steak on the grill and added an addendum. “Maybe the guys and I could enjoy some quality time with you to repay us for time wasted on this bogus deal you set up.”
To bring his point home, he took a menacing step toward me.
Now this is when the fun starts for me. I live for the day this sort of thing happens. I smiled at Brad and let my mean out.
“All three of you?” I asked. “I haven’t had that kind of pleasure in a long time. I prefer to leave my tenants alive and functioning so they can pay their rent, but if you’re offering this in lieu of cash payment I am very tempted. I get a little carried away with the rough stuff though, so I can’t guarantee that any of you’ll survive.”
I didn’t see how the guys behind me reacted, but Brad looked unnerved for a brief second before he pulled himself together. He must have been made of tough stuff or perhaps sampling his own wares since he took the remaining three steps toward me, well within my zone of personal space, and gripped my chin in his hand. I locked eyes with him and froze him to me. Stupid human. To meet a demon’s gaze like that was to give them control.
I smiled, convinced that I had him and was shocked when he punched me in the face. It was a good uppercut to the chin that knocked me on the filthy stinking carpet. I was reminded of Dante as I felt blood drip down my chin, although mine was from my mouth. Fucker had made me bite hard into my tongue. What had happened? Why couldn’t I lock him in place? Was he legally blind or something? Maybe his drugs had blurred his vision? Did I suddenly suck at this particular skill?
“You are one sick psycho, freak,” Brad told me. “Maybe you’ll be less cocky with a few broken bones.”
He went to kick me in the side and I rolled out of reach, scrambling in an embarrassing fashion to my feet. I was pissed enough to want to just blast him through the front of the building, but instead held back and assessed the situation. I backed up to a table and glanced quickly at the two on the couch. They sat still as statues, so thankfully all I needed to deal with was Brad.
Brad dove at me, and I spun out of his reach, putting the table between us. This wasn’t working out like I’d planned. He had greater strength than me in my human form, and I wasn’t exactly skilled in human fighting methods. I was reluctant to use any of my demon energy, but it would really suck if he pummeled me. My reputation would suffer.
We circled the table a few times. Brad looked smug. It pissed me off further. Pissed me off enough that I reached down and used some energy to snap a leg off the table, hoping it wasn’t enough to be detected by any angels. The table remained improbably upright, so I kicked it over with my foot and dove at Brad, swinging.
His visual impairment wasn’t so severe that he couldn’t see a table leg coming at his head. He backed up, ducking and dodging as I chased him into a corner, and I finally connected the thing with his stomach. He doubled over and presented me with a lovely opening to whack him on the head. He dropped, but I gave him a few more swats to his kidneys just to make sure before I rolled him over and really locked him in this time. Fucking bastard. I should kill him. I should Own him.
It had been so long, and the urge to Own was beginning to gnaw at me with an annoying regularity. It would be risky, though. Owning is our process of gathering the essence of a being into ourselves. Of course, the physical body dies, and it’s not pretty either. Humans have their spirits so deeply embedded in the flesh that there is a lot of shredding that happens when we Own. That’s part of the appeal, honestly. The pain, screaming, thrashing about, terror as you rip them from their very cells, it’s very stimulating to a demon. And the fun continues because they live on inside you to play with and enjoy as long as you live. Brad didn’t look like he’d be worth the risk though. Sad, since I
haven’t had the joy of Owning a human in several decades. Killing him would be almost as much fun. I didn’t like to kill tenants who paid though. And I was hoping he’d pay.
“Perhaps you’d rather just pay the rent?” I asked him as he stared up at me.
Chapter 2
Moments later I left the row house with the back three months rent, plus four months forward on their lease. I really don’t understand why Brad would have let those two stoned guys on his couch have guns since they were far too impaired to use them. How they were supposed to join in on a threesome rape in that condition was beyond me. It was all rather anticlimactic.
I headed toward my car and grabbed my cell phone. It was just after noon, and I was pleased that I had wrapped this up so early. “Michelle, I’m done and three fifty one is paid through December.”
Michelle is my property manager. I’ve been through quite a few property managers over the last four decades, but Michelle is a keeper. Our partnership has profited her, too, and she now owns her own company — although she still continues to manage my properties personally.
“Woohoo!” Michelle cheered. “Are you coming by? We can grab lunch.”
Michelle’s eagerness to see me had less to do with our friendship and more to do with the fact that she got an under–the–table cut of all cash payments. A large amount of my business was off the books, and Michelle whole heartedly supported this.
“I can’t,” I told her. “I’m going to just grab a bag of tacos and get home in time to ogle the lawn service.”
“You go girl!” Michelle said. “It’s Friday, meet us at The Wine Room for happy hour. You know, your hottie neighbor will wrap up mowing early so he can hit the clubs tonight.”
I hated The Wine Room.
“Wait,” I hesitated. “Will they let me in? After last time?”
“Yes, they will let you in,” Michelle sighed. “But no more groundhogs. That thing bit a waiter.”
“It wasn’t me,” I lied. “I told you it wandered in off the street.”
I’m a terrible liar. I don’t think she believed me.
“All the girls will be there, and a real estate agent whose been pestering me to meet you. She’s handling that block by the canal on the south side,” she said. I was grateful she dropped the groundhog subject.
Most of Michelle’s friends didn’t like me but she always asked me to join her for social events. Our friendship gave a gritty edge to her very businesslike reputation, but this time I was sure she just wanted her cash before the weekend. No hurt feelings on my part. I’d show up dressed inappropriately, and see how many people I could make uncomfortable in an hour or so. The real estate agent was a mild draw, too. I really wanted this block of canal houses.
“Sheesh, Michelle,” I complained. “I don’t want those dilapidated pieces of crap. And you know the bank will want fair market value because they loaned some idiot twice that five years ago on spec”.
“Come anyway,” she said. “She’ll buy you a Cosmo to try and get on your good side, and you can scare all the suits at the bar.”
I hated Cosmopolitans with a passion, but agreed to be there at five.
“Any problems, Roberto?” I asked my young car watcher.
“Some weirdo was giving it the eye, but they left when I told them it was Satan’s car,” he said.
It was a huge stretch to refer to me as Satan. The appropriate term would have been Ha–Satan, The Iblis, or The Adversary, but no one had held that title in over a million years and my actual level in the hierarchy was far below that. Ah well, whatever got the job done was Okay with me.
Roberto took in the growing bruise on my chin and the red staining my shirt. “You have some trouble, Ms. Martin?”
“Nah,” I told him as I looked carefully over my precious car. “I bit my tongue. You should see the other guy though. He’ll be pissing blood for days.”
I thanked him and handed him a twenty.
The noontime sun was intense and the pavement shimmered in front of my car with the radiated heat as I slowly edged my way through downtown traffic. A jay walker darted across the road and I swerved, barely hitting her big purse with my rear view mirror. It sucked that I hadn’t hit her properly, but my mind was on other things. I kept thinking about the energy I used to break off the table leg. It wasn’t much. It wasn’t like I’d converted or anything. It probably wasn’t enough for any angels to sense. Hopefully.
The city gave way to farms interspersed with one–street towns. Cows huddled under scrub trees to escape the heat, and the crops drooped in the blistering sun. I was hoping there would be some heat lightning this afternoon. Enjoying the gorgeous day, I cranked the air conditioning with the windows open as my tacos made a mess on my lap.
In thirty minutes I was pulling carefully down the long rural lane toward my house. I passed by my neighbor, Wyatt’s house on the left. Wyatt had bought the place a few years back when it had gone up for tax auction. I’d bid on it, but he was willing to pay a bit more than I was. It was one of those old, Cape Cod style houses that had suffered from fixed income elderly owners, and neglect. Wyatt hadn’t done much to fix it up, but he didn’t seem to have a lot of money. He constantly played computer games and did odd jobs to keep him in Ramen noodles. That’s how he came to be in charge of my lawn mowing, stable care, and pool care.
When I saw what an incredible specimen of maleness had moved in next door, I had promptly trotted over a basket of baked goods along with a six pack of beer and introduced myself. We’d struck up a friendship based on my continued bribes of alcohol and food, and my willingness to let him treat my house and property as his own. Early on he had offered to do barn work and it had progressed from there. He tended to do the lawn mowing without his shirt on, so I ensured he had to do it several times a week. Everywhere else lawns languished in the drought, but my grass grew like it was on steroids. Wyatt never mentioned how unusual this phenomenon was.
I’d razed the old farmhouse when I bought this place. Instead I’d built a sweeping contemporary with stone and cedar. There was a seldom used front porch with Adirondack chairs and lots of glass windows that looked mirrored from the outside and clear from the inside. It was around the back of the house where I spent most of my time. Huge two story windows and sets of double French doors looked out from the kitchen and bedrooms to a lovely patio and pool. From the front and back of the house, wide pathways lead to the barn, horse pastures, and a little landscaped garden with a fountain and private spot to sit. I’d become really fond of this home. Especially the pool.
I parked in front of the house and headed around to the barn, hoping I hadn’t missed the lawn mowing peep–show entertainment of the afternoon. Wyatt was pushing in an empty wheelbarrow as I walked over. He had on cut off shorts and a wife beater. His dirty blond hair was sun streaked and hung around his ears in front and in back to his shoulders. Wyatt always looked like he was a few months late for a haircut. It was a good look for him. His was the sort of broad shouldered, lean musculature that comes from lifting hay bales, not dumbbells. He grinned as he saw me and I caught my breath at his fineness.
“Hey, Sammy,” he called. “I mucked the stalls, but am waiting to let the horses out to pasture until later since it’s so hot. I’ll put a round bale in the feeder, then I’ll weed-eat.” He peered at me closer. “What happened? I thought you were just collecting rents, today. Did someone give you a hard time?”
“I bit my tongue.” I really needed to fix my wounds. My jaw was throbbing and my tongue hurt so bad that I couldn’t eat or drink without pain. Eating tacos on the ride home had been an agonizing experience.
“Looks like you took a face plant into someone’s fist.”
“Yeah, that too. I beat the shit out of him, though.” I turned to walk into the house. “I’m going to chill by the pool with a beer. Come join me when you’re done.”
I had only taken a few steps when he called out.
“Sam, have you seen Boomer? He hasn’t
been around all day.”
Boomer was my Plott hound. He hunted at night and pretty much slept in the barn all day. Wyatt was always after me to contain him somehow, to curtail his nighttime wanderings. He was worried that Boomer would wind up a stray collected by Animal Control, or possibly full of buckshot from a neighborhood farmer. I knew my hound could take care of himself. I reassured Wyatt that he’d be back eventually, and ran in to change out of my taco stained jeans and into a swimsuit. First I stopped by the kitchen to throw some beers and ice into a cooler, and then headed up the stairs, stripping as I went.
Throwing on my itty bitty powder blue bikini, I raced out to the pool. The water looked cool and inviting on the hot day, but I didn’t want to miss the entertainment by swimming. I’d pop in later. Outdoor piped music on, cooler with beers beside my lounge chair, shades on. I strategically placed my chair to watch a shirtless Wyatt weed–eat and hoped he didn’t wonder why my back was blocking the sun.
I was closer to Wyatt than I was with any other human. After he’d moved in, he’d immediately started doing odd jobs for me, but he also came around all the time to just hang out. He was over every day, sometimes several times a day. It wasn’t unusual for him to be hanging out in my kitchen, or swimming in my pool. Every now and then I’d ask him to do some handyman kind of work, but most of the time he’d just take the initiative to do stuff like mulch the garden or clean out the fountain. Then we’d sit by the pool and drink, or cook something up in the kitchen, or relax and watch TV. He was over here a lot and I liked that.
