by DC Malone
“Priest.” The word came out thickly accented, but it still dripped with disdain. “He wanted to know me. Now he does.”
“Lechbaalmet,” I said.
The heavy brows above Donovan’s vacant eyes pushed up, creasing the old man’s forehead. “You know my name. I am honored. I know yours, too.”
“Well, it’s in the book, so I’m not all that impressed.” I doubted my name was actually in the book. I didn’t even know if there was a book to still be in. But the line had sounded good, and that’s what counted.
“Not the name you hide behind. Your real name.”
I had a sarcastic retort primed and ready on the end of my tongue, but it caught in my throat. Some half-remembered sound needled at the back of my mind as I stared into the priest’s rheumy eyes. It was something I had heard when the Congregation’s Custodian worked her voodoo on me. Something terrifying.
And familiar.
Father Donovan’s lips suddenly arched into a horrifying clown smile. “No, you are not hiding,” the demon said through the priest’s mouth. “You simply don’t know. Or are you hiding it from yourself?”
“Okay, that’s about enough of this.” I took a step closer to the priest. “I get it. This is your shtick. Don’t get me wrong, you’re good at it. You really are. But I’m not buying in. It’s basically your demonly duty to prey on the insecurities of people, right? Tell them some of what they want to hear, some of what they’re afraid to hear, then make ‘em an offer they can’t refuse, or whatever. It’s just not going to work on me.”
I reached out and poked my index finger against the man’s cheek for added emphasis. Something hot and painful jolted up my arm, but I ignored it.
“So, we might as well stop wasting time. I’m here for business only.”
“What business?”
“Well, for starters, I don’t want you here. This city? It’s mine. So, what do you want and how can I get you on your way?”
My words sounded crisp and confident. In control.
I almost believed them.
Donovan’s exaggerated smile widened. “What do I want? I want to stay. I want to play.”
“Not part of the plan, Lechy. I know it’s hard for demons to stay on this plane. Probably takes a lot of effort just to have this conversation with little ol’ me. So, you’ve got to know that, eventually, I’m going to find a way to send you back to where you belong. And if I can make it painful for you, well, that’ll just be icing on the cake.”
As far as plans went, I didn’t have one. So, I went with my standard fallback—irritate and anger the guy and see what happens. Sure, it wasn’t the most reliable of tactics, but it always made things interesting.
The wooden double doors of the church suddenly burst outwardly, raining small shards and splinters of wood down on us like a thousand tiny darts. The demon, in the flesh this time, appeared behind the wreckage.
Case in point.
Chapter 17
I covered my face in time to shield myself from the worst of the flying debris, but Father Donovan continued to stand motionless, unable to react.
Lechbaalmet oozed toward us in all his hideous glory, stooping low to fit his massive frame out through the ruined remains of the church’s entrance. His skin, the sickly color of mottled and charred bone, seemed to radiate in the darkness of night, holding the blackness and intensifying it. He made the night feel unending, like it had always been this way and the light of day was only a mostly forgotten dream.
The fear I expected, braced myself for, didn’t come. Instead, I was overcome with an intense fascination. Lechbaalmet was so alien, so other, that I simply couldn’t look away. The area where his head should have been, what I had originally taken for a mockery of human representation, was something more akin to sculpture—a nearly complete circle of mostly white bone or stone, covered partially in the being’s strange dark flesh. It was like something thought up in the fever dream of a madman. The first time I had seen it, shimmering and incomplete, I had thought it looked like a perversion of the human form, something to be looked upon in horror.
But now, I wasn’t so sure. Up close, Lechbaalmet didn’t look like something fashioned in the form of man. He looked, felt, like something that came long before man was even a thought. Something eternal and beyond. An archetype. There was a purity about him that was bizarrely compelling. It didn’t matter that it was a purity of evil.
Worryingly, I felt strangely drawn to the creature.
“This is what you wanted.” Lechbaalmet’s voice came from a hundred directions and nowhere. Even with the demon present, Father Donovan’s mouth continued to mime its words. “You wanted to goad me into action.”
I shrugged. I wanted to goad him into something, I just hadn’t yet figured out what that something was. “Well, if you’re done with your little show, can we get back to business? I’m pretty sure you were about to agree to relinquish control of the good Father here and go back to Hell, or wherever it is you originally came from.”
Lechbaalmet took another step toward me. His body, which appeared relatively humanoid except for disproportionately long, tapering fingers and muscular legs that hinged backward at the knees, gave off a strong smell of wet stone and ancient moss. It wasn’t altogether unpleasant.
“If you’re trying to intimidate me, it’s not going to work,” I said, staring up at him. “You might as well throw down now, and we can get the fighting over with.” I had to be bluffing because I didn’t have the slightest clue how I might fight a demon, especially one this powerful. But it was a good bluff because, in my calmness, I actually believed what I said.
“I have no desire to see you dead, were it even possible.” The demon craned its non-head down toward me. “In your own terms, I have come to talk business.”
“Seems to me we’ve already talked business. Leave. Pretty simple.”
“I offer a compromise. Release me, so that I might continue to walk this plane. I have grown bored of my previous existence.”
“First, I can’t release you, even if I wanted to, which I very much don’t. Second, how exactly is that a compromise?” I was beginning to think compromise meant one-sided deal in demon speak.
“As things are,” Lechbaalmet continued, “I will use up this priest until I have seen every member of his pathetic flock tarnished by the gleeful act of murder. When that is done, I will indeed leave, but not before I rip his soul from him and take it with me. It will be my consolation prize, and I will revel in its eternal torment.”
“I’m not liking option one.”
“Hence my offer. Release me. I will, in turn, release this wretched fool and his minions.”
“What about my fool? Carter?
“He will be released as well.”
“So,” I replied, “You want me to unleash you upon the entirety of the world in exchange for the life of an old man who was dumb enough to summon you in the first place, a handful of his followers and their intended victims, and one cop. Does that sound like a fair deal where you come from? ‘Cause to me, it sounds like I’d be trading the cow for a few moldy beans that have diddly and squat to do with a magic beanstalk.”
“If you want to save them—”
“There’s another choice,” I said, interrupting.
“What choice?”
I flicked out the blade on my multitool. It looked preposterously small next to the eight-foot-tall demon looming over me, but I knew it was enough to get the job done. Even if it wasn’t a job I wanted to get done.
“I can cut your tether here and now,” I said, showing the blade. “I can make it quick, as humane as possible. In the state you have him, I doubt he’d even notice, and I know he would be relieved.”
“Kill the priest?” Something boomed in the distance, but I didn’t think it was thunder. After a few seconds, and another series of those low booms just at the edge of hearing, the demon repeated the phrase. Only not as a question. “Kill the priest.”
“It
would get rid of you, wouldn’t it?”
“It would.” There was a hideous eagerness in the demon’s voice. “Kill him.”
I stared over at the old man. He was still only a shell of a person, his mouth partly agape and his eyes rolled back and showing mostly white.
It would be a mercy, wouldn’t it? The man himself was willing to take the matter into his own hands just a moment ago. He’d come here with a gun for just that purpose. His mistake had already brought great harm to a number of people, and he didn’t want that to continue. And who could blame him?
Still, the moment I had seen what he intended, had seen the gun pushed down into the waistband of his pants, I had tried to stop him. It hadn’t been a conscious thought—just a gut reaction.
And that gut reaction still felt right.
I folded my blade back down and tucked the multitool into my jacket.
The demon made a strange tittering sound that may have been an expression of disappointment.
Or laughter.
“Second thoughts?” The demon's voice was full of malicious amusement. “It is not such a stretch for one such as you, I should not think. I can smell it on you, you know. You have killed before and not from necessity. Murder leaves a mark. One that lasts for—”
“Uh-huh,” I interrupted in my most I-really-don’t-care-what-you-have-to-say tone. “Murder leaves a mark and, apparently, an aroma. Tell me something, Circle Head. Or do you prefer Mr. Circle Head? Either way, how do you smell anything? Do you have nostrils on the top of your bone circle thing up there that I can’t see, or are they like in your hands or something?”
Lechbaalmet didn’t reply. Even without an actual face, I could have sworn he was glowering at me.
“All right, for the sake of exploring every option, I’ll play along for a minute,” I said, breaking the awkward silence. “What would you do here? On this plane, I mean. I’m guessing you’re not thinking of finding a nice remote stretch of land and settling down as a farmer. Plus, you may not have noticed, but there aren’t a lot of locals with big, weird circle heads, so you might have some trouble blending in.”
“My avatar would not make the transition,” the demon rumbled. “This appearance is simply a construct, a physical representation of something far greater and mostly elsewhere.”
“Ah, so this is just how you choose to look for our benefit.” I cleared my throat. “Pretty.”
“You will need to find me a vessel,” the demon continued. “I can leave that matter to you. The details are of little consequence.”
“You would need a human to, ah, inhabit? That puts a major damper on this whole thing. I’m not going to let you take over someone’s body.”
“One soul to save a dozen. The trade is fair.”
“Still, I can’t exactly ask someone to give up their life so a demon can ride their body around like a meat taxi. No one is going to take that offer.”
“Then do not ask. When the time comes, you will remove the vessel’s soul and put my essence in its place. This is truly your only option.”
“It’s hardly any different than murder.” I found myself staring again at the priest. I guess I had always assumed there were some kinds of lines that I wouldn’t cross. Immutable laws of morality that I wouldn’t even have to think about because there wasn’t any room for choice in the matter. But I was beginning to wonder if that were true. Things were starting to no longer look so black and white. I was seeing degrees of right and wrong, and all I wanted was to do the most good while doing the least harm.
The demon tilted its head to the side like an inquisitive dog. “You have done something similar before, have you not.”
“That was different. It—he was a vampire, and he had no business being in that body in the first place.” I hated my defensive tone. I also hated how easy it had been for me to tear that vampire’s—Linus’s—shade from that body. Sure, he had betrayed me and my friends, but what I had done had been done in anger, and I had enjoyed it. And what came after had been even worse.
“The circumstances matter not at all,” Lechbaalmet replied. “You can do what I ask, and you will. For reasons that I cannot fathom, you care for these creatures. You will do what you can to save as many as you can. Your hands are tied by your pity for them.”
“I will need time to think about it.” I couldn’t believe what I was hearing from my own mouth. Was I really going to help a demon stick around permanently to save a few strangers and one priest? And Carter. Wasn’t that like freeing a group of hostages by starting an apocalypse? Of course, there was no way of really knowing how much damage a former demon in human trappings could do. Maybe he’d be completely harmless.
Yeah, that seemed likely.
“You may have your time to consider. But remember, my time is limited on this plane, and I will not let it pass by without reaping some rewards from it.”
“Okay, how long before you start back with the murdering and whatnot?”
“I will give you three nights to find my vessel. Return to me here on the third night, or I will resume my original course and tear from this world what I might before I must leave.”
Lechbaalmet turned and took two long, loping steps back toward the church’s entrance. Father Donovan scampered along behind like an obedient lapdog. Once the demon was through the broken doors, he turned back once more. When he spoke, his voice didn’t sound like it was any farther away than it had been when he was standing next to me.
“I know you will not fail me in this, sister.”
Chapter 18
Sister.
The word echoed in my mind as I tossed and turned in the floor of my apartment, listening to Carter’s oblivious and obnoxiously restful sounding snores. And it continued to echo in my mind as I sipped at my morning coffee, still to the tune of Carter’s buzzsaw snoring, in hopes that a double dose of caffeine might make up for my complete lack of sleep.
I didn’t think Lechbaalmet had meant it literally. At least, I sure hoped he hadn’t. As twisted and uncertain as my past might have been, I didn’t think there was much chance that I had a familial connection with a giant murder-loving demon with a skewed basketball hoop for a head.
Still, I had tasted some of that mysterious darkness that seemed to call to me from a time long before I would have even been a thought in my parents’ minds. It mostly came in fitful dreams and brief déjà-vu-like episodes. But, on a few occasions, it had come to me in force, in whispers and a blanket of midnight coldness.
And in those few moments of clarity, I had remembered being something other than the woman I knew myself to be. Something other and ancient. And horribly powerful. But I didn’t know if those were my own thoughts and feelings or simply echoes of a time long gone. I was, after all, tapped into the world of the dead. So, it wouldn’t be that much of a stretch for me to be able to dredge up the thoughts and feelings of my ancestors, especially in extreme situations.
That’s what I told myself, at least.
Lechbaalmet had stirred something in me, though. It was almost like an extremely potent feeling of nostalgia. Some forgotten sights or smells of childhood suddenly thrown in my face. The result was a yearning inside me that I couldn’t pin down, a desire for a time I couldn’t remember. Or one that I actively forced myself to forget.
“You’re up early,” Carter yawned and stretched his arms above his head, causing his chains to clack noisily against the wood of the futon frame and the floor beneath it. “I figured a night of demon hunting would have you sleeping like a baby.”
“No such luck.” I plopped my mug down on the kitchenette counter, the coffee dregs already cold. “It sounded like you slept well.”
“Yeah, I guess I did. You know, if I were influenced by that demon, and I’m not saying that’s the case or anything, but if I were, it sure didn’t hurt my sleep habits any. I can’t remember ever sleeping as soundly as I have these last nights chained to your radiator.”
“Maybe that’s what happens when
a demon flicks the switch on your conscience,” I suggested. “You don’t have that flood of worries and regrets and should’ve-dones goings round and round in your head all night. If it weren’t for that little niggling matter of trying to murder people, I might see if ol’ tall, dark, and satanic could give me a little of what he gave you. Sure could use the sleep.”
Carter shrugged and yawned again. “What’s on the agenda for today, boss?”
“Well, I’m going to meet with Hiram to see what he learned about our demon friend from his old monk friends. My guess is you will be catching another eight or ten hours of daytime TV.” I was starting to worry that Carter’s steady diet of bad TV and infomercials was going to have a more lasting and damaging effect on his mind than anything a demon could do to him.
“You’re going out?” If Carter had been a dog, his ears would have perked up.
“Don’t get too excited. I’m going to meet Hiram here.”
“Oh. So, bathroom time again?”
“No, Hiram knows you’re here. You can stay with the futon and TV.”
“Oh, goodie.” Carter stood and began to pad his way toward the bathroom. “But you know,” he said, turning back. “You two are free to grab some breakfast or something. I’m sure you don’t like being cramped up in here any more than I do. Not that I’m complaining or anything. But with the TV blaring and whatnot, I’m sure that would be a distraction. You guys need every advantage you can get to properly fight this thing, ya know?”
I shook my head at Carter’s perfectly innocent and earnest expression. “You might actually have something there, Carter.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, maybe Hiram and I will go out on the town for a while. Get some breakfast, maybe even lunch a bit later. And you know, shopping always clears my mind, so maybe we could hit a few shops, too. Shouldn’t take more than four or five hours.”
