Demon Master

by Daniel Pierce

  Her earrings swayed as she laughed, shining with stately worth. He had seen her comically-elongated pinky nail as she sipped white wine on the deck and made his determination. Coke whore. Although he never touched drugs, he kept a small quantity in his suite as an enticement for certain women. If a line of high-grade cocaine did not remove their doubts about his lust, then other, more physical means could be used. He had a reputation to protect, and prudish behavior could not interfere with his image. Simply stepping onto the deck of Inquisitor was, in Viktor’s mind, approval for him to take what he wished. A woman’s refusal was unacceptable, no matter what reason she gave.

  They retired to his suite after he made his wishes known with a possessive hand in the small of Petra’s graceful back. The other social climbers saw their chances for notoriety or money die in a gesture.

  Petra paused and sinuously dropped her silk dress to the floor in a rippling circle. She stood before him in nude blonde magnificence, clad only in heels that accentuated her legs. Her Czech lineage gifted her with beauty of a rare nature. She picked up her dress and bound her hands with a languorous motion, kneeling before him in complete supplication. It was exactly as he wished. Busy fingers unzipped his trousers and freed him in one motion. Even constricted by the silk, her movement was serpentine and free of awkwardness. His anticipation grew acute.

  She hesitated. Viktor hated teasing. He reached out to guide her but his hand was rebuffed as exquisite heat washed over him, a wave of unmatched pleasure. She drew him out of her mouth and encircled his entire manhood in her hands, her touch maddeningly light. Viktor looked out from heavily lidded eyes at the golden angel kneeling before him.

  “Keep going. Now. And do not stop.” His voice was thick with lust.

  “As you say.” Petra leaned forward to her work, her fingers teasing, probing, and dancing around his base in a flutter. Her grip tightened. She bore down with her mouth, the conflicting pleasures stoking Viktor to near climax as her fingernail punctured his skin and neatly severed a gossamer nerve, the only nerve that mattered to a cocksman like Viktor. He burst into her even as his cock began to soften, the last erection of his life fleeing him just as his pleasure ebbed.

  Now he felt the wound. “What . . . what have you . . .” he sputtered, his eyes rolling in fear as the woman who had stolen his claim to manhood rose up, smirking. “What have you done to me?” he whimpered, but he knew. He knew even as Petra’s heel snapped forward, shattering his nose and pitching him, unconscious, over the chair, back into the deep woolen rug. He lay on his back, arms spread as if crucified, his limp member lolling as it would for the remainder of his life. Petra spat in his open mouth. Smiling, she pulled her dress over her head before smoothing it to go back to the party. With a final look mixed of triumph and pity, she pulled the door to the suite closed, thinking, Mother would be proud.

  18

  Florida: Ring

  The mood in our house was awkward the next morning.

  Without even asking Risa, who was like a human lie detector, I could smell bullshit in the Baron’s story. My doubt did not mean that every statement was a lie. But there were too many red flags in his narrative to escape notice. If Elizabeth was immortal, why wasn’t he? How did she turn? Was she really his daughter or something else? These questions seemed natural to me, and I knew Wally and Risa were thinking within the same framework. I was being forced into the unsavory position of playacting with the Baron until we could determine the truth or whatever nuanced history passed for fact when dealing with a family as unique as his.

  I want to rid the world of evil, and so do Wally and Risa. I want Elizabeth to answer for what I know is a long life of spreading death and sadness. I have been locked in on my desire to kill immortals quickly and without hesitation. There is, in my mind, no nuance to evil. And yet, the respect I have for my partners demanded that I at least listen to their case for why the Baron’s needs should circumvent my desire for vengeance.

  I needed information about Elizabeth, about the Baron, and about why we shouldn’t kill both of them without a second thought..

  I was asked to lunch by Suma and took the opportunity for a change of scenery. We met at an Italian deli on Sheridan Street and took to a booth, sliding across the plastic seats in the midst of utter chaos. It was incredibly busy, and the background was a nice distraction from the intense chill at home. Suma ordered a sandwich with so many varieties of garlicky meat that I was glad we had arrived separately. I kept true to my first love on the menu, a chipped ham sandwich with homemade dressing and fries. Suma wasted no time in expressing her reasoning for our newfound status as lunch pals.

  “You talked a great deal during your recuperation, and until our group discussion, I thought you were delirious. I am a person of science. I am a trained skeptic, but I know evidence must override my inhibitions to expand what I think can be possible. I am also”—she slowed her speech, clearly attempting to reconcile divergent ideas—“a Thai. I am the product of a culture that is steeped in spiritualism. It is a second skin for me, and no amount of university can make me deny what I feel at a cellular level. I also respect my family, not because I’m a robot who is expected to do so. No, I respect results. My parents were excellent people of great character. They worked, they saved, and they took duty to family so seriously it was like law. They lived in a world where the veil between reality and the supernatural was a curtain to be passed through each day.”

  She paused, appraising the mountainous sandwiches that had arrived. “Without being too forward, I want to hear from you how you came to be . . . what you are. How did you and Wally and Risa become a unit? Are you an enhanced ménage a trois, or just what the hell is your connection? Is it convenience borne of an unusual gift? Hatred due to your respective losses? Is it love? Or is it something I cannot imagine because I’m so-- normal?” Her frustration bubbled forth.

  I understood. The curtain had been pulled back, and her own flesh and blood were now at risk from something that she did not fully grasp. Nursing me to health had given her evidence, though, that the threat was real. She feared that powerlessness, but her cool exterior demanded that she approach the situation with logic in order to understand what she could do. In truth, I was surprised at her relative calm. I suspected that she was intensely passionate but measured in her actions. As a physician, it was expected. As a woman of discipline, it was what she had chosen.

  After a deep breath and a gulp of tea, she asked, softly, “Can you really defend my family?” That, I knew, was the most important question she would ever ask me. She deserved the truth.

  Around contemplative bites of ham, we talked. “I have very little family left,” I began, “so you can imagine how I feel about yours. I admire them. I’m jealous of them at times. They’re at an intersection right now. I care for them but feel real hate for immortals. I don’t imagine you can understand that type of incandescent fury. Risa and Wally, we keep each other from combusting with it. We see the effects, you know.”

  Suma listened as I spoke. “We were party kids, amateur students who were drifting, careless; we met in college, but after a drunken weekend we realized that we shared a collective ghost story. But this one was real. Can you imagine two other people who felt the same thing? The same brush with evil? Who believed you? In one second, I found my purpose. I’m not saying we were a well-oiled machine at first; we didn’t even really know what the hell we were doing. But we sensed the rightness of it all, and we made peace with the violence, especially Wally. She was such a gentle soul then. One of my first kills was some sort of vampire who looked about ten years old. He bit through my watch band and broke my collarbone before I pounded my knife up into his chest. I pinned him to the door of my car, and, even as he was dying, he tried to rip my throat out with his thumbs. I almost died because I hesitated to murder what looked like a child. Risa found out he had been killing people, good people, since the dustbowl years in Oklahoma. I swore I wouldn’t make that mistake again, but I knew
I needed help. I puked into the tub for hours and slept for a solid day. This was when we all lived separately. After that, we decided to move in here, where we could watch each other, and help, and hold each other when no amount of hot water could wash the sin from us after a kill. So when you ask me, do I love them, I can tell you that love isn’t a big enough word for what we feel for each other. The danger makes it something more. “

  I ducked my head into the last of my sandwich. After a quiet moment, I asked Suma, “Do you want me to talk less or more?”

  “More. And you can start with some basics. How long have you been paired off, partners? How long have you known Risa and Wally?” She paused, looking at me anew. I could tell our conversation was shifting her view of me, but in what manner, I was uncertain. In an existence as bizarre as mine, the truth always won out because it trumped any fantasy I could concoct.

  “Fourteen years. Each. I’m thirty-eight years old, and we’ve been ferreting out immortals full-time for almost thirteen years.”

  “Stop. You’re thirty-eight?” Suma was incredulous. “Is this another challenge to my scientific bedrock?” Her eyes narrowed as she leaned back in the booth. She was skeptical, even after seeing me vomit acorns, presumably put in my stomach by an evil being that defied the facts she held dear. The evidence was contrary, since I knew I looked to be in my mid-twenties.

  “I noticed something was different about me after our third kill. It was a small thing. I was swimming the canal when I heard Risa yelling. I had been just under the surface, kicking and watching the sun break through the water. She was panicked and getting ready to jump in, for some reason. I yelled at her and swam to the dock. She was pissed. She asked me, with a poke to the chest, if I thought I was funny. We all know I’m hilarious, but this was something else, which she made clear with more jabs. Finally, she told me that I’d been under water for six minutes. Now, I can hold my breath well because of diving, but that was new to me. Then, I realized that I felt some sort of tension in my muscles that I couldn’t explain. Wally joined us later, and I felt like a prize hog at a fair. They poked and prodded, but there was nothing wrong. It was a few days later that I sussed out what was happening. Turned out it was happening to them as well, but they hadn’t realized it because they were dealing with something missing from their bodies rather than something being added to it, after a fashion.”

  “What was different?” Suma asked.

  “They stopped menstruating. Completely, in unison, for three months.” I thought back to the hysteria of pregnancy tests in the bathroom at Walgreen’s and the dawning realization that our bodies were not entirely our own to control.

  “No immaculate twins then, but what brought on the amenorrhea? Was it stress or shared illness?” The doctor in Suma was calculating possible causes, I could see.

  “I don’t think so. We think it is acquired. Like me swimming underwater or being a bit faster. Risa reading faces and knowing people’s thoughts, word for word. You see, this was the first proof we had that change was coming for us with each contact. I was thrilled. Risa and Wally were—well, sad. Really sad, like in mourning. They knew what it meant, what was happening. Fourteen years later, hindsight is cheap. We’ve never seen an immortal infant. Do you know why?” I asked, my eyes downcast. I knew Suma would understand the reason.

  “The immortals are sterile,” I said. “Whatever it is that infects them must happen outside the womb. They can’t breed, so they create. Yet, with each ‘birth,’ they expose themselves to the possibility of a new form that may lay them bare to us. To the world. Still, they bite and seduce, or whatever their vector is, and they do it because they’re barren. We found this out in a moment of understanding and decided to stay the path.”

  Suma clasped my hand lightly. “I’m so sorry. What a cost.”

  “I think you see why we’re so hardass about it. I’m not vicious. I put them down like rabid dogs, not born of hate for the animal, but because the dog is no longer in charge of its own body. The distinction is that these animals look like us, but they’re very different. They kill without care. They’re good at it. But, even if there is a small core of their former humanity, it must be sacrificed. That makes me the blade man almost every time. The girls have different skills from mine. You might not know it, but Wally is incredibly lethal, although her violence is wild and unfocused. She’s less clinical than Risa, but so angry; she’s been angry for years. It flares with her, almost uncontrollable. We are three sides of a coin, and we work well together, which is fortunate, because it seems like we’ll be doing it for a long time. You might think it’s a hellish way to live, but I suspect that hell is far beyond my imagination. “

  I knew this to be true because I saw the handiwork of these creatures much too often.

  “To the question you haven’t asked, Suma, the answer is yes. Yes, I can protect your family, because if something gets close enough to hurt them, it won’t matter. Wally and Risa and I will be dead. And the knives we use against these lost beasts will be gone, along with more innocents, falling to the darkness, and nothing to stop it.”

  19

  Database Entry

  From Risa’s Files:

  July 19: Patient is outwardly healthy 28-year-old male complaining of insomnia, lethargy, and shortness of breath. Exam reveals mild anemia. Lungs clear. Dismissed with vitamin samples and prescription for sleep aid.

  July 26: Patient has moderate weight loss and persistent insomnia, despite sleep aid. Mild rash presents on chest and thighs, with some confusion and dementia, insisting that all night visitors be kept from room. Patient admitted under care of Dr. Pratbahd. Intravenous fluids given. Topical steroid for rash.

  July 30: Patient weight loss is noticeable, and lesions are present on thighs, ribcage, and chest. Aggressive treatment with steroids has not affected skin condition. Fever, delusion, night terrors. Extremely low urine output. Patient incapable of speech. Hypertrophy of skin near ribs, thorax, and neck. Tongue is swollen. Patient communicated through writing before losing consciousness. Patient requests euthanasia due to being “eaten at night.” Dr. Pratbahd has restrained the patient for safety reasons.

  July 31: Death.

  20

  Florida: Ring

  I hold Saturdays in a special regard. It’s the day to put the boat in the water, go fishing, make umbrella drinks, and watch football. I tend to get up early and swim or run. I then return to a state of near coma after eating waffles until I am psychologically prepared for the rigors of fishing and drinking. Wally and Risa share this passion for the finest day of the week, so it was no great surprise when I woke from my post-breakfast nap and found the girls out on the dock, sunning like oily iguanas. In between their respective lounges, ice settled in a rolling cooler, completely devoid of bottles. Several empties were rolled casually across the wooden planks. The girls had either started early, or I had napped late. Wally stared mournfully into the barren ice from beneath her lowered sunglasses while Risa purposely ignored her.

  “Ring, tell that brunette slut to get up and grab more beer. She’s ahead four to three, and I am not going for more because she drinks like a dolphin.” Wally was too comfortable to do more than complain, incorrect analogy and all, and was probably well on her way to a healthy buzz. I wondered whose bladder would yield first.

  Risa responded to Wally with a yeasty belch and stuck out her tongue. The atmosphere was one of prim adulthood and silken manners. I made a noise of agreement and turned back to the house in order to keep the peace by delivering beer.

  “Blue texted me,” Wally continued at my shoulder. “She wants to talk to you and . . .”—her pause made me look to see her mime driving our boat—“maybe tomorrow . . .” thus indicating that our friend wanted to borrow the boat for a day on the water with her son. “And, while inside, be good and make us peanut butter sandwiches. With cinnamon. And much more beer.” She settled back on the chaise in dismissal.

  Risa spoke up. “Make mine toasted.”
>
  I gave grinned, took one more look at their bodies out of spite, and went in to fulfill my stint as a short order cook and call Blue.

  Keeping a minimal profile is in our collective best interest, but Blue is a friend. She has a direct line of information we need through her business. At thirty-nine, she is one of the youngest strip club owners in the area. In addition to her many qualities, Blue doesn’t ask excessive questions. We love her style, and her club. Since the adult industry is awash with European women, men, and their castoffs, we mine that group for immortals and their crimes. Rarely is investigative work quite as engaging as being surrounded by gyrating naked women. It’s a sacrifice I make for the good of our team and for the children. Or something like that.

  Blue gives us access to the hunt, and asks nothing of us, other than personal favors that benefit her son. Since Evan likes the water, our boat is hers. In return, we enjoy tips and other perks without undue interrogation from Blue. Her sense of fair play dictated that she only asked for the boat when she heard or saw something of interest to us.

  After the girls dozed in the sun all day, I would ask if they felt like enjoying a little neon and nudity for dinner at Blue’s club. It would, of course, be rude to ignore her implied invitation to chat, and I am nothing if not courteous.