American Demon Hunters_An Urban Fantasy Supernatural Thriller

by J. Thorn

  As he was about to vomit, Hank felt the force withdraw. He stood upright and took a step away from the sarcophagus. As if on command, the cover slid back into place.

  The sound cut to his core, the grinding stone scraping away his sanity. Hank felt Lori’s back on his and he assumed she was being released from the invisible grip as well. The mechanism on the iron gate clicked and the door swung outward with a metallic squeal. The sconce on the wall faded and the light that artificially ignited inside the crypt dissolved.

  Lori stepped out first, followed by Hank. The gate slammed shut and when Hank turned to look at it, the stone was back in place, sealing the crypt. The vibrations and whispers subsided, leaving Hank and Lori alone in the cemetery. The demons beyond the portal, on the other side, had to persuade him to open it up again despite the Order’s warnings to the contrary. The beasts wanted out of their dead world and into that of the living, and Hank could do that by summoning his dead wife.

  “I can save her from that,” he said.

  “How?” Lori asked.

  “A summoning.”

  “You can bring her back?”

  “Yes. But I need your help. Will you help bring Michelle back?”

  Lori looked to the sky. She wiped the tears from her face and tightened the ponytail dangling on the back of her neck. “Yes.”

  Chapter 27

  One Month Later (November 15, 2014)

  “How are you feeling today?”

  Corey looked at Dr. Singleton and smiled. He sat in a chair across from the doctor, sighed and folded his hands in his lap.

  “Something is troubling you?”

  Yes, Corey said in his head.

  “There’s someone I’d like you to meet. A colleague of mine, a student. Would you be willing to talk with her?”

  Corey nodded. He knew how to play the game. If the doctor believed someone else could usher a breakthrough in his situation, then Corey would follow along.

  “Please send in Dr. Lisander,” Singleton said.

  The old man smiled at Corey from behind the featureless desk. The conference room had white walls with no adornments. A grown man could touch each wall with his arms out. A new, industrial-grade carpet covered the floor. There was no one-way mirror like in the sleep lab because the room was outfitted with the newest technology, the same kind Sonya had in her private practice. The doctor had the room wired for audio and video with a technician controlling the recordings from a control booth down the hall.

  The door opened and Corey turned to look over his shoulder as a woman walked into the room. Corey could not take his eyes off of her face, yet he was embarrassed about it. She wore a white lab coat over a red blouse that stretched across her chest. He looked up at her through curly bangs and smiled.

  “Corey, this is Dr. Sonya Lisander. She is an expert in all matters of the brain. I’m going to leave you two here to talk and I’ll be back when you’re finished.”

  Singleton gave Sonya a nervous glance that did not escape Corey’s notice. He shut the door, leaving Sonya sitting at the table with Corey across from her.

  “I’m worried about your dad.”

  The comment caught Corey off guard. He expected the usual chatter, the technique doctors used to evaluate a patient through a series of targeted questions. Instead, this woman cut right to the chase. Corey liked her already.

  Me too, he thought.

  “Then we need to get right to work because he’s in danger.”

  Corey felt a chill on his neck and butterflies in the pit of his stomach.

  You heard me?

  “Only what you intend to say with the part of your brain that controls speech. I can’t hear your private thoughts.”

  Corey blushed and thought about the strange mix of sensations he had watching her enter the room a few minutes ago.

  How?

  “I could explain but I really don’t have time. Let’s just say I’ve been studying and working hard my entire life. I’ve discovered ways of using parts of my brain other people never use. You know, we only use—”

  Ten percent of our brains. Yeah, heard that before.

  It was Sonya’s turn to smile. She leaned back in the chair and twirled a pen between her fingers. Sonya stared at Corey. The HVAC system pushed soft, warm air into the room, which helped to insulate them from the early winter. It was the middle of November and Corey noticed his father’s condition deteriorated along with the worsening weather. It was as though the encroaching winter was somehow making him more introverted and distant. His dad was spending a lot of time away from the house, so Corey believed Dr. Lisander when she told him she was worried. He was worried too.

  “You’re a sharp one, Corey. Witty.”

  She gave him a wide grin and Corey blushed again.

  “We can talk another time about the techniques I used to open my brain. But I think we can agree we have more immediate concerns, which is why Dr. Singleton introduced me to you today. You weren’t ready until now. Your brain and its new abilities hadn’t developed enough for you to handle this. But now they have. And a good thing, too as you know your father is not well. Physically he looks fine, but you know he is in pain. He’s suffering and not in the usual ways.”

  Lisander paused for Corey to respond. She knew he was aware of the energy seeping into Cleveland Heights like a slowly flooding basement. But she wasn’t sure how much he knew.

  It has to do with my mom and her death, doesn’t it?

  “Yes it does. What do you sense about it?”

  I know the one-year anniversary of her death is next month. I also know the date is really important, but I don’t know why.

  “How does that involve your dad?”

  He has to make a decision.

  “Uh-huh,” Sonya said. She had a pocket notebook in her left hand and scribbled into it with a pencil in her right. “Do you know what kind of decision?”

  Corey bit his lip and closed his eyes. He shook his head.

  “That’s okay. You sense something involving your dad and it has to do with the anniversary of your mom’s death, but you don’t know exactly what it's about. Is that right?”

  Yes.

  “What do miss most about your mom?”

  Corey hunched over as if Sonya had punched him in the stomach. He winced and blew a half-hearted whistle through his lips.

  Sonya paused, letting Corey think about her question.

  I miss the way she made us all feel. When she was here, we felt complete, whole. That’s the best way I can describe it.

  “I understand completely. But she’s gone now and that feeling will never be the same. I think you understand, but your father doesn’t. He’s chasing that feeling, isn’t he?”

  I think so.

  “Me too. And it's dangerous. How is your dad changing? Can you describe it to me?”

  He’s not around any more. I’m not sure how much he’s teaching at the university. I hear Gram and Pappy whispering about it. They think he’ll be fired or they won’t renew his contract. Either way, they think he’s not going to have a job if he doesn’t handle his responsibilities. With me, he’s also kinda distant. He’ll sit and stare and then I’ll see a tear forming. He’ll get up and go out, not come back for hours. I wish he wasn’t so sad. I wish we could just have mom back. I miss her so much.

  Lisander closed her eyes and exhaled.

  “I want you to listen to what I’m going to say because it could be the most important words you hear in your life. What you and your father are feeling is normal. It's called grief. You want your mom back, also a completely normal feeling. But your father is being given a unique choice not many people get. If his decision is clouded by grief and misinformation, it will be disastrous for him, you, your grandparents, this community and possibly the world. Do you sense that?”

  I do.

  “We cannot physically stop him from making a decision one way or another. Nobody can do that at any point. If he wants to do something, good or bad, he will.
It's human nature. I’m not suggesting we can stop him because we would have already. All we can do is convince him to make the right choice. He needs to know that alleviating pain is not always the right choice, that sometimes pain is part of living.

  “Soon, your father is going to come to you. He’s going to ask for your help, or at the very least, your permission to do something. It is that decision that has far-reaching consequences for all of us. Do you know what he’s going to ask you?”

  The boy slid down in his chair. Despite her mysterious beauty, Corey had to look away from the doctor. He stared at a smudge mark on the otherwise pristine wall. He focused on it in an attempt to block everything else out.

  “What is it, Corey? I need to know that you know the stakes.”

  Mom. He’s going to ask me to help him bring mom back. From the dead.

  Chapter 28

  Johnny had everything in place. The only thing left to do was score the heroin. Which was like saying the only thing left on an expedition to climb Mount Everest was to stand on the summit.

  He spent hours in surveillance mode. He knew when Sonya Lisander was home and when she was away. He knew what she ate for breakfast, that she separated the clothes in her closet by color and that she liked David Bowie posters. Johnny had the digital stills to prove it. It was hard for him to stay focused at work. He followed his route every day and gave each customer a smile, all the while thinking about the dirty and depraved things he was going to do to Sonya Lisander.

  Johnny could not believe how simple the idea was. The preparation and planning was not easy, but the act itself was genius.

  The amount of heroin he would deliver to her house—that she would be arrested for—was so massive, bail would be ridiculously high. He did some dumpster diving and discovered from her bank statements she didn’t have the cash. And she didn’t seem to have immediate family. The only wild card was her practice and her connection with Singleton.

  Johnny had no idea how deep the old doctor’s network stretched, but none of that would matter in the end. Johnny would save the day, bailing Lisander with the money he would steal from the drug dealer who was selling him the heroin. The piece of shit would be dead before the police discovered what happened and what was missing. If Johnny played it right, he’d have the heroin and the money. And then he’d have Sonya. He would be the last person to see her alive, but Singleton would cover for him with an alibi, incorrectly assuming another member of Orion’s Order to be incapable of murdering one of their own. He considered kidnapping her without the setup, but then Johnny would not get to enjoy the pain and humiliation she would suffer from the arrest. He wanted to shatter her reputation.

  The wind blew into his face with a handful of flakes. Thanksgiving was still a week away, but winter was making an early appearance in northeast Ohio. The streets of East Cleveland smelled like old garbage and cheap whiskey. He was approached twice by prostitutes as he stood on the corner of East 55th and Euclid Avenue. In the past, he would have bought them both and had one hell of a party at the American Hotel, where the rooms were available at an hourly rate. Johnny would have fucked the shit out of both women and left them with black eyes as a souvenir. But this time, revenge gave Johnny a laser focus. That bitch embarrassed him, might have even ruined his chances at becoming a full-fledged guardian. He was going to make sure Lisander understood that.

  A dog barked in the distance and two teenagers came toward him, both wearing hoods that concealed all but their eyes. The clouds above suffocated the sky, blocking out the moon and the stars, leaving nothing but the orange light cast from the streetlights.

  “Sup, my nigga?”

  “That’s what the white devil called us. Y’all need to stop using that word,” Johnny said.

  The teenager who spoke stopped. His friend took an extra step so Johnny was in the middle.

  “You kids need to keep walkin’ before you get yourself hurt. Ya know what I’m sayin’?”

  “We ain’t scared of you, pops. You got some coin on ya?”

  Johnny brought his left elbow up fast and it connected with the nose of the boy standing behind him. The kid collapsed to the dirty pavement. Before the other teenager could move, Johnny had his right hand around the kid's neck.

  “You kids need to keep walkin’.”

  Coughing and doing his best to speak, the teenager in Johnny’s grip nodded. Johnny dropped him, then turned and helped the other kid to his feet. Johnny was going to brush the dirt from the kid’s clothes until he saw the dark stain of blood in the middle of his hoodie, the blood pouring from the kid’s nose.

  “Get yourself cleaned up. You’re a mess.”

  The two teenagers stumbled down the sidewalk, trotting across East 55th street. The one with the broken nose glanced back at Johnny and gave him the middle finger before both sprinted into the dark, desolate urban landscape of East Cleveland.

  Johnny smiled, cracked his neck and his knuckles. The confrontation gave him a shot of adrenaline. When the Lincoln Continental low rider with pulsing, undercarriage lights pulled up to the curb, Johnny was ready for the main event. It was time for the championship bout.

  He ran to the window and shot the drug dealer in the face. Johnny grabbed the heroin and tossed it into a blue plastic bag. He reached through the shattered driver’s side window and grabbed the keys, ran around to the back of the car and opened the trunk. He pushed through lumpy garbage bags until he felt a solid, rectangular object. He pulled a brick of cash from the trunk and threw it in the blue plastic bag with the heroin. The clock was ticking. The police would arrive and he needed to be gone. There weren’t any witnesses on the street and Johnny believed he’d have a safe escape if he left immediately. He had to get away from the crime scene before someone saw him. The suppressor on the end of his 9 mm made the kill less conspicuous, but everyone knew the dealers in East Cleveland. The dealer’s idling Lincoln sitting in the middle of Euclid Avenue with a shattered window would draw attention. Everyone knew JoJo’s car. It was time to split.

  He tucked the cash and drugs into a backpack and swung his arms through the straps. Johnny ran down East 55th and into an alley behind an abandoned apartment building. He sprinted through the narrow corridor and hopped over a fence at the end. He was up the hill and on his way to his place in Cleveland Heights before he heard the first siren.

  Chapter 29

  Johnny loaded the shoebox wrapped in brown paper on to the back of his delivery truck. It already had a tracking number and an address label and would look like any other delivery. He didn’t weigh the stolen brick of uncut heroin, but he knew it would be enough to put Sonya Lisander away for a long time.

  The arrest would be serious enough to make the bail more expensive than a casual friend or acquaintance could afford. It was possible a wealthy lover or boyfriend might bail her out, but he only saw her fuck once in the time she was under his surveillance. Even if her pussy was good, the guy wouldn't necessarily bail her on felony drug charges. Johnny would arrive with a handful of cash and she would not only be free on bond because of him, but she would be grateful too. Given their professional relationship within the Order, she wouldn’t think twice about getting in the car with him.

  He planned on killing her in the back of his truck, inside the dispatch’s warehouse, where the security camera would only see the loading dock doors. It wouldn’t be as nice as doing it in her bed or on his, but he couldn’t afford to risk leaving DNA in an environment he couldn’t control. Johnny knew she was going to bleed. He would have to hose out the back of his delivery truck. That wouldn’t raise suspicions since most drivers do the same thing if a box spills or a package opens en route. It happened all the time.

  He glanced at the packaged heroin sitting on a palette of other boxes before pulling the door down and flipping the lock shut.

  “Yo. Have a good run.”

  “Yep. You too,” Johnny said to a co-worker.

  Johnny shivered before stepping up into the delivery
truck and sliding the door shut. The engine was running and blasting dry heat through the cab, helping to alleviate the early winter air on the outside. Cold didn’t bother Johnny all that much, but starting in November pissed him off. He would slap Sonya an extra time for making him do this when it was cold outside.

  Johnny pulled out of the parking lot and worked his way down the clipboard, delivering his packages as he did every day for years. He made sure not to deviate from the computer-calculated route and when he saw Sonya’s next door neighbor on the docket, Johnny took it as a good omen.

  “Won’t even have to fake a reason to be on her street,” he said.

  By three o’clock in the afternoon, his run was almost finished. He turned down her street and into the posh, trendy Cleveland Heights neighborhood. He let the delivery truck idle in front of her neighbor’s house while carrying the packages down the sidewalk, one official and the other not. Johnny left a box on the neighbor’s doorstep and dashed through the hedges to leave his own package on Sonya’s. He ran back through the hedges and punched the delivery code into the handheld tracker.

  “Couldn’t have planned it better,” he said, smiling as he walked back to his truck. There was just one more variable that had to break his way and he saw no reason why it wouldn’t.

  The gods were smiling on him. Orion was happy.

  He dropped the delivery truck off at the warehouse and drove his own vehicle home in silence. Johnny decided to take a shower before calling the police.

  “‘Cause the bitch paid someone to take out JoJo. That’s how I know she got the drugs. Dude told me she was going to have it sent to her house, that she wasn’t about to come and meet him in East Cleveland.”

  Johnny stood in his living room, water dripping from his nose. The steam from his shower filled the apartment as he spoke to the Cleveland Heights Police Department on his prepaid cell phone with nothing but a towel wrapped around his body.