by C. Gockel
I hadn’t sired Boomer, I’d actually won him off another demon in a bet. Back home, there was a certain enhancement to my reputation in having him in my household. Unfortunately, I’d had to lock him down tight when I’d brought him here and he was not as useful as I wished. I don’t have the best impulse control, but Boomer has none at all.
The first time I’d brought him here, we’d had to run for our lives hours later. Several times, I’d experimented with different degrees of reduction of his powers, but I’d ended up having to practically neuter him to keep him from being detected. He was little more than a regular dog in his current state, and that made me feel a bit guilty about his injuries. If he’d been at his full strength, nothing shy of an angel or one of my kind could have hurt him. Of course, I was a little pissed at him too for not backing off and retreating before he was so dangerously injured. A normal dog would never had made it home in that state, but Boomer had enough minimal use of his energy to keep himself going and drag himself home.
“Take me there, boy,” I told Boomer softly, and he headed down our lane toward the main road.
As we passed Wyatt’s house, I saw the cars lined up all over his grass with people laughing and cheerfully carting boxes of electronics toward the front door. Wyatt jogged out to the road when he saw me. Boomer eyed him, then wiggled up to him and nudged his hand for petting.
“You hump his leg and I’ll rip your head off,” I told him. I meant it.
“Me or the dog?” Wyatt asked in good humor. “You’re going for a run this late?”
“Yeah, I slept all afternoon and my internal clock is out of whack,” I said.
Wyatt looked up. “Should have some decent moonlight. Come over when you’re done to help us kill insurgents and protect the homeland. We’ll be going until the wee hours.”
I nodded, and Wyatt broke away to answer one of his guest’s questions regarding cable compatibility. He seemed more comfortable with me. Almost like before. I felt an ache of hope and longing as I watched him carry a box in his house. If I got back early enough, I think I might just go kill some zombies.
Boomer and I reached the end of the lane, close enough to hear the cars on Route 26. Boomer looked at me expectantly and broke into a trot. We headed west weaving through country roads and cutting across fields. Although I appreciated the efficiency of as–the–crow–flies travel, I struggled to get over barbed wire fences and undetected through people’s lawns. The terrain was hilly with rather treacherous footing given the dim light. We crossed from Carroll into Frederick County and I wondered how far Boomer had been ranging. Finally, about five miles from home, we paused at the fence line of a mowed hay field. There was a tiny, one story ramshackle house at the back edge of the field. Boomer again looked at me expectantly.
There were no lights leading up to the house, and no porch light, although the lights in the house indicated someone was home. I wasn’t sure what was going on. Boomer’s injuries didn’t look like they were caused by any guard dog that this human might have. I couldn’t imagine this homeowner having a bear or a mountain lion as a pet. Finally. I just walked up to the front door and knocked, figuring I’d ask the resident if he’d had any bear trouble lately.
The door swung open on its hinges from the weight of my knock. You would have thought with all the movies I’d watched that I’d know better than to walk in. In every cop show, in every horror movie, bad things happened when the door was ajar like this and the hero/victim walked right on in. I wasn’t used to considering myself as either a hero or a victim, so walk in I did. And I got knocked sideways into the wall. A dirty, unshaven, vagrant–looking man glared at me. Then, I did my second stupid thing. I pulled out my mean and ordered him to back off.
I should have realized he was bumfuck nuts. Insane. Mentally unstable. Mean works great on just about everyone except crazy people. They are very sensitive to my kind as it is. They recognize us, and they won’t back down ever. No matter what you throw at them, what you do to them, they will not back down. They will vocally and physically fight you with every whacked out insane skill they have. They will out you to everyone they see. Luckily, no one believes them most of the time. Insane people have followed me all over downtown and for blocks informed all passerby that I was a fire–breathing, plague–spreading devil come to kill them all and end the world. The only thing you can do is look embarrassed and hope the cops come to haul the guy away.
“Demon,” this particular crazy guy shrieked at me in a pitch so high it hurt my ears. “You send your hell hound to spy on me, and here you are to take my soul. You will not succeed.”
He started grabbing random things and throwing them at me. He was very accurate in his aim. I deflected the pillows and shielded myself from the bottles and books. I ducked and dodged while running around the room trying to get in a good position to dive at him, or to force him in a place with fewer potential projectiles. He didn’t seem to be running out of ammunition anytime soon, so I dropped to the floor and dove under a table. This crawling on the floor thing was beginning to be a habit.
“Could use some help here, you fucking worthless cur,” I shouted at Boomer who peeked in the door and laughed at me.
The house was like a damn hoarder’s, I thought as I hid behind chair legs and avoided picture frames, headphones, lamps and ashtrays. Ashtrays. Who the hell smoked in the house anymore? All the while, the guy continued to shrill accusations about my kind and my supposed intentions. According to him, I had been stalking him for decades and was planning on forcing him to eat his own eyeballs while I gnawed on his spleen.
This could go on all night, and the guy could easily overpower me if he found an opening and grabbed me. I knew the risks involved, but didn’t have much choice. I shot a burst of electricity at him converting so I could get it past the air’s resistance. It wasn’t much, only twenty five thousand volts, but I kept the amperage low and the burst short. Hopefully it was just enough to throw him off balance and get him calm enough to tell me where the bear was.
The guy screamed and dropped to the floor clutching his heart. Drama queen. There was no way that did more than shock his skin. I darted from under the table and held him in place with a chair. I knew better than to try and touch a crazy person. I should have known better than to shock one.
“Have you had a problem with any bears? Maybe raiding your garbage? Or perhaps someone around here has an exotic pet? A big cat?” I felt like a total fool asking someone these questions while I was pinning him to the floor with a chair.
Imagine my surprise when, with an inhuman roar stinking of garbage breath, the guy flung both me and the chair across the room and against the wall. Things got blurry for a few seconds. As the guy ripped the chair away and went to slap me, I raised my arm in defense and was again surprised when his nails tore through my arm, raking strips of flesh and muscle down to the bone. Finally focusing, I realized that instead of hands he had claws. And an elongated jaw with sharp teeth. Very unfortunate and unattractive deformities.
I felt the claws dig into my side, and was flung once again across the room, to skid on the floor and into the couch. Pain ripped through my side, but I was relieved to realize he hadn’t punctured my liver or any other important organ. This was really enough. I wasn’t about to fight like a human while he tore me into jerky strips. I breathed in and threw a much larger bolt of electricity at him. About one hundred amps worth. It was a small amount, but still overkill when converting it through the air between us and pushing it through the skin’s natural resistance directly into his chest cavity. I was capable of producing at the level of lightening, but I didn’t feel like setting the house on fire. A billion volts and a hundred thousand amps would be hard to control too as it blew through the human and out through the wall behind him.
The guy convulsed as the current crashed his heart, seized his diaphragm, and burned out organs as it exited down his back. He danced like this for a few seconds while I was sure to keep the current going stead
y. In electricity, it’s important to keep a constant stream as humans have been known to survive short intermittent bursts even at very high levels. It really sucks when you think someone is dead, only to have them get up and stagger at you a few moments later. Finally, he collapsed with a smell of burnt hair and skin.
I walked over and lay my hands on the man, letting my energy explore him. He was dead, which given the oddness of my last twenty four hours I wasn’t taking for granted. He was also weird. DNA is mostly the same among all mammals, but there are slight differences. This guy had human DNA, but there were anomalies. The areas I noticed were similar to those humans with Hypertrichosis, although it was more than the X chromosome link, and he didn’t seem furry enough. Perhaps he indulged in laser hair removal? He didn’t look like he could afford that kind of thing, especially since it would have had to be extensive. Hypertrichosis also didn’t explain the extended jaw and elongated strengthened nails.
Reluctantly, I pulled away from the man. Curiosity killed the cat, but I couldn’t let it kill me. I had to get out of here. With an angel so close and presumably on the hunt for me, I was worried that my energy burst, even one so common place as electricity, would be investigated. I looked around at the wreckage of the house, and headed home.
Easier said than done. Five miles with deep lacerations on your forearm and waist, plus a concussion and bruises was not a cake walk. I jogged when I could, and walked a lot. In some spots I needed to go around entire fields as it was too much for me to get over the fencing. The whole way home I cursed Boomer, who had hid outside the door during the entire fight and was without a scratch. The trip in had taken an hour max; the trip back over three hours. I limped by Wyatt’s house at past three in the morning in considerable pain and longing for my bed. His yard was filled with cars, and his house lit up with flashing lights of video games and sounds of shooting, screaming, and laughing. People milled around the porch with the deep hum of conversation. I know I was invited, but there was no way I was popping in to visit Wyatt and meet all his friends dirty, sweaty and covered with blood and gashes. I paused and looked longingly at his house, then walked on by.
Boomer got another scolding as I locked him in the barn. There’s nothing a hellhound likes more than eating corpses, and I didn’t want him heading back out to snack on the dead guy, or getting in any more trouble. I was thinking of sending him back home for my household to care for if this was the kind of bullshit I’d have to deal with. Bad, bad dog.
Giving one more longing look toward Wyatt’s house, I headed in. Running attire went into the trash, and I showered, nearly passing out in pain as the hot water hit my wounds. I had slowly begun fixing the damaged flesh, but I was taking a very long time to avoid any excess energy use, which might give me away. I’d done way too much in the past few days as it was, and I could hardly keep frying mice or causing power surges in my house. I would just have to deal with injury and pain and make this a slow project.
Finally clean, I dug around in my bathroom and carefully bandaged my side and arm. They were healing nicely, but I didn’t want to take the chance of anything breaking open and oozing blood on my sheets. I have absolutely no experience in first aid, and the tape pulled uncomfortably on my skin. I tossed and turned in bed for a while before giving up and heading down to doze off watching TV.
Chapter 6
Sunday was another scorcher. I was in my usual spot by the pool with fluffy towel and a mug of hot sweet coffee. It had been a rough night of sleep, partly due to the invasion of Anime from the TV into my dreams. My injuries were healing, but were still angry red welts across my arm and waist. Ugly, even if they did match the red kiss marks on my bikini. Not that it mattered. No one was likely to see me sweating alone by the pool.
Taking a swig of the hot coffee, I rolled onto my stomach. The heat on my back was intense, even this early, and drops of sweat tickled as they rolled across my back and down my sides. James Brown shouted in my ears and I just let my mind wander. That guy last night was so weird. And not just his mental state either. I wished I could have brought him back here and taken him apart at my leisure; tease apart his genetic sequence and see what his body told me. I toyed with the idea of going back and seeing if I could stuff his body into the Suburban. I’d need to hide it from Boomer while I played with it though. Otherwise he’d eat it.
I wondered what the authorities would think when his body was discovered. Electrocutions did happen, although you’d usually expect to see a fire, or at least a burnt out socket or appliance. It clearly looked like there had been a fight in the place too. House trashed and resident apparently killed with a burst of electricity to the chest. I’d probably left some of my blood behind and that would be puzzling too. I can hold my blood to strictly human parameters, but under stress or when I’m using energy, my own signature mixes in along with energy. It would totally fuck up their analysis, I thought with amusement.
A shadow touched my thigh and moved up to block the sunlight on my back. I rolled over and thought how incredibly sexy this was to be lying here sweaty and nearly naked, squirming as I shifted on the lounge with Wyatt standing over me. Wyatt’s eyes roved and I adjusted the bikini top making sure to give the girls a good jiggle. My eyes roved too and I really liked what I saw at this angle.
Wyatt’s eyes stopped and he frowned.
“What on earth did you do to yourself?” he asked, horrified at the raised red welts in slashes across my body and arm. At least they weren’t oozing any more. “Did you have a fight with some barbed wire last night? Or that bear that tore up Boomer?”
“I should have stuck with the treadmill,” I said, skirting the topic.
“They look awful,” he continued, clearly not willing to let go of this one. “I know how quickly you heal; you must have been practically cut in half to still look like that.”
“I’m fixing them very slowly,” I confessed. “I kinda need to lay low and watch it, so I’m going to look nasty until later tonight. It wasn’t that bad, really.”
“Why do you need to lay low?” he asked.
Ugh. Why couldn’t he just stand there and look sexy?
“I’m a demon, Wyatt. If I make my presence here too obvious, there are things that will come to take me out.”
That scared look flashed across his face, again. My gut tightened in reaction; here we go again.
“What things? You’re a demon, what in the world would be able to take you out?” he asked.
“I’m not immortal. Damage this body enough and I won’t have time to fix it or create another before I die.”
“Humans wouldn’t come after you for healing yourself,” he persisted. “What would?”
“Angels,” I admitted. “If they detect us, they come and kill us.”
Wyatt stared at me a moment. “Angels.”
I wasn’t sure what to say, so I just let the word hang in the air.
“So, how did you get these injuries?” Wyatt finally said, breaking the silence.
“Barbed wire,” I lied. No sense in making him an accessory after the fact.
Wyatt studied the cuts in silence and nodded.
“Do I need to burn up another mouse for you? Or something larger, like a squirrel perhaps?”
Ha, ha. Very funny. Actually I was relieved that he was somehow beginning to take all this horror film weirdness in stride.
“Nah, I’m good. I’ve got fresh coffee in the kitchen. Grab yourself a mug and pull up a chair.”
Wyatt looked amused.
“It’s got to be one hundred degrees out here and you’re drinking hot coffee?”
“I like it hot.” I told him. “Throw some ice in it if you want though.”
Wyatt disappeared into the house. I loved that he was so comfortable around and inside my place. Like he belonged here. He’d know right where the coffee mugs were, where in the fridge I kept my special stash of cream. I wished he was as familiar with the upstairs portion of my house as the downstairs.
; I heard him return with his coffee and the scrape of the lounge chair he pulled up.
“I’ve got to go over to Mom’s this evening for a family dinner,” he said conversationally. “Amber’s home from college. Her birthday is Tuesday and we’re celebrating.”
“Amber is your younger sister, right?” I asked. I could never remember human family relationships. Back home, no one knew or cared who their parents or siblings were. We were raised in group homes and didn’t have these complicated family trees to keep track of.
“Yeah, she’s nineteen,” he paused for a moment as if considering whether to continue. “I did have an older sister, but she died before I was born. Rachel was three when she drowned in a neighbor’s pool. I wasn’t born until five years later, and Amber was born five years after me.”
“Your folks are divorced?” Humans always seemed to get divorced. I couldn’t figure out why they got married at all.
“No, Dad died when I was ten. He was installing a two–twenty line in the garage for a dryer hookup, and he somehow electrocuted himself.”
Okay, that was really freaky, given all the electrocution occurring yesterday. Clearly, it was a coincidence since it had happened fourteen years ago.
“Anyway,” Wyatt continued, “have any ideas on what to get a nineteen year old girl?”
I moved down my sunglasses so he could clearly see my raised eyebrows.
“Okay, I guess it’s gift card time.”
“How about those stuffed animal pillows I see on TV?” I suggested with amusement.
