by Trisha Telep
“I wouldn’t be so sure,” Sean replied, more to himself than his grandfather. With a jerk of his head, he motioned towards the rise. “Come on, let’s go home.”
Together, they walked across the prairie as the sun brightened the horizon. At the top of the rise, they looked down at the highway winding its way out of the reservation and the Jeep speeding away.
Above it, in a golden sky, a white owl circled.
The Demon’s Secret
Nathalie Gray
One
Demons usually didn’t take so many bullets to die.
“Damn. I don’t have all night,” Cain muttered.
He emptied his magazine into the flying monstrosity as it swooped past, and scowled at the horrid smell that hit him like a slap of hot wind. Pausing only to slam in place a spare drum magazine, he leaped from one building to the next. The boom-boom-boom of his shotgun thundered in the winter night. Nickel-plated, custom-fitted, this combat shotgun was nicknamed “the jackhammer”. Who the hell named guns?
Around him, snow-covered east end Montreal rooftops resembled clouds. Like running in heaven. Except he’d never be allowed in heaven. There were books written about him, even the Book mentioned him.
If Cain didn’t kill the spawn, that’d make him look bad. And weak. In his line of work, looking weak invited all kinds of bad press and the attention of some beings even worse than he was. His own master would love nothing better than to punish him.
“Come on,” he hollered. “I’m freezing my nuts off!”
The demonic spawn came back for another dive, hoping perhaps Cain was too busy trying not to fall off the building. Cain straightened his arm, took aim and didn’t let his finger off the trigger until a sizable chunk of the creature had been blown off. The monster crashed on to a tin roof, tumbled several times and sent a geyser of snow ten feet high before stopping in a flailing, writhing heap. Cain skidded to a halt, pinned one of the demon’s ruined, leathery wings beneath his Italian shoe. The magazine was empty, so he methodically hand-loaded one of the special shells.
He called these rosaries.
“Next time you come after me, you piece of hell-shit, bring a few buddies along, okay?” Cain aimed at the creature’s neck and fired.
The shot dispersed in a stainless steel wire, dotted with silver-plated ball bearings. Like a flying garrote, it hit the creature across the neck, severing it. Black blood sprayed outwards and melted snow over a foot-wide radius. Like an overripe melon bursting. The smell of sulphur and smoke stung Cain’s nose. The black creature’s glistening body caved in on itself and then broke in several smouldering embers that blew away in the wind. No traces of it remained except for despoiled snow.
Not much could hurt those demonic creatures. Holy water, silver, gold, direct sunlight and a couple of other things he never would’ve guessed before becoming . . . Whatever he was now.
Cain checked his watch. Maybe he wouldn’t be too late for the harvest.
After retracing his steps to the private clinic’s roof, he opened the door leading into the service stairwell, knocked his feet, one by one, against the jamb to dislodge what he could of snow – and black, viscous blood. Heat like a wave greeted him when he climbed down the stairs to the second floor. He hadn’t realized how cold he was. His fingertips tingled, as did his toes. Cain smoothed down his felt coat, pushed the door leading to the second floor and, staring straight ahead amidst the oblivious staff, returned to the room where he’d first spotted the spawn as it tried to get in through the window. The door was still ajar. Cain slipped in and just by smell he knew he wasn’t too late. The man still lived. Barely.
“Am I going up or down?”
Cain snapped his gaze to the man’s face, where a pair of old but vibrant blue eyes stared at him. Directly at him. Cain had forgotten what it felt like to have someone look at him this way. The only ones who could see him were demons, their spawns – like the one on the rooftop – the angels that still gave a damn, and the lunatics. And of course, the dying. But they were rarely happy to see him.
“Up.”
A look of relief passed over the weathered face. He nodded imperceptibly, except to Cain – because he knew what to look for and already waited for the sign.
“You? You from above or below?”
“Above,” Cain lied. He approached the bed, placed a hand on the man’s wrist. A weak, arrhythmic pulse throbbed against his cold fingers. Not long now. The machine agreed with him and began to bleep.
The man closed his eyes for the last time, Cain knew. He went to work quickly, efficiently. He’d done this thousands of times throughout the centuries. He pulled a gold pillbox from his coat pocket, clicked it open and placed it near the man’s mouth. The last breath created fog on the metal surface. Cain narrowed his eyes when the soul emerged, a manifestation that resembled a thin tendril of silver smoke coiling upward. Within the thin mist glittered tiny white flakes like snow. Cain could never get over how many secrets people kept. This man had dozens. Big ones, little ones, some darker and heavier and others that floated like tiny feathers.
Before the soul could rise further – the lucky man indeed was going “up” – Cain passed the pillbox through the soul several times. He shivered every time his skin came in contact with the gossamer stuff. He tucked his hand against his chest and clipped the box shut. Several of the dead man’s secrets were now stored safely inside. Berith, Great Duke of Hell and almighty asshole, would be happy. And when Master Berith was happy, it meant one more day on the mortal plane, harvesting secrets from the dying, instead of roasting back home down on the seventh level of hell. The special place of those who’d done violence against others. Or themselves. Plus, the more he collected secrets, the more souls Berith could buy, and someday, if he brought enough, Cain would be set free. That was the deal.
Cain was out of the clinic by the time the staff came rushing into the dead man’s room. His car waited on the corner, looking forlorn and broody with its black body and tinted windows. Sunlight didn’t agree with Cain – neither did water and a whole slew of things that never bothered him back when he was . . .
When he was a human. So long ago.
He gunned the engine and tore up the street. His breath rose in front of him. Without bothering to warm up the car, he just drove it to his temporary home at the foot of the Jacques-Cartier bridge. Graffiti and detritus covered the brick walls and uneven streets. Montreal was like a bipolar city – elegance and beauty on one side, pestilence and corruption on the other. He parked the car near an abandoned foundry, slipped between the chain link fence doors and then cursed when he splashed cold mud into his shoes. The many locks and chains barring his door meant he had to stand outside as it began to snow. It seeped into his hair, down his collar. Cain was shivering when he pushed the door closed behind him, and repeated the process in reverse order. But at least, he was indoors.
Neon light flickered to life when the motion sensors caught him. Part armory, part gym, part derelict industrial kitchen – the only place in the building that still had running hot water – his home shared nothing with the one he’d left behind all those years ago.
“Forget it. That life is over.”
“Life? Barely,” came a voice behind him. “Existence would be the correct term.”
Cain twitched. “I hate it when you sneak up on me.”
“Life entails a soul,” the voice went on, as if he hadn’t spoken. “So ‘existence’ is definitely a better word for you, Damaged One. One can still be damned and exist.”
His demon master had chosen the body of a young woman to possess that night, all slender limbs in the pale grey suit, and shiny black hair. Maybe Berith had developed good taste after all. “You almost look good tonight, Berith.”
The woman’s smile accentuated. “If you were not my favourite secret keeper, I would personally escort you to the eighth level.”
“Maybe I’d be better off with liars and thieves.”
Berith approach
ed him, leisurely caressed the lapel of his suit. Cain curled his upper lip and stared hard.
“Did you do good work tonight?”
“That’s what you call it?” Cain snarled.
The demon rolled her eyes. “Don’t be so damn melodramatic. You work for hell. Get over it.”
“And some day I’m going to take your damn job and shove it.”
A dangerous glint shone in Berith’s eyes. “But in the meantime, you belong to me.” She stuck her hand out, palm up.
“Fuck you.” Cain fished the pillbox out of his pocket and slammed it into the small hand so incongruous to the demon’s true form.
“You should not toy with me so, Brother Cain.”
“Don’t call me that.” No one had called him that since . . .
“Ashamed of your past? You should not be. It was what drew me to your soul. So grey, so close to turning. But it was his fault, he took credit for something you did. As always.”
The hurt and confusion in his brother’s eyes. Cain would never forget it.
He gritted his teeth hard enough to hurt his jaw. “You didn’t hear me the first time, demon? Fuck. You.”
Maybe if he pushed the creature far enough, he’d kill Cain once and for all. Oblivion. He could taste it.
Berith whispered a word that caused Cain to drop to his knees in searing agony. His chest constricted, his head throbbed so intensely he feared the skull wouldn’t take the pressure, every nerve ending felt on fire, bile rose up his throat and, in the blink of an eye, he was no longer in his temporary home in the slums of Montreal.
He was back in hell.
Ashes and glowing embers flew in twisters around him as the voices of the damned rose in complaints and cries. Everything was dead or dying. People, animals, things. Falling apart, collapsing, burning up in black smoke that choked the crimson sky and created heat vortices darker than night. Black holes in the blood-red sky. Spawns like the one he’d killed earlier that night swooped down on him, lashed his naked back with their talons, cawed in parody of his roars of pain.
In all his squalid grandeur, Berith towered before him, wisps of hair flying in the burning wind, shreds of skin falling off the massive skeleton. But the eyes were intact, always remained intact no matter the body’s decay. They stared at Cain, right into his core. Rage and terror and pain closed in on him.
“What was it about my ‘job’?” Berith asked, leaned over. He smiled as he delicately pressed a rotten finger through Cain’s shoulder.
His world vacillated. And Cain screamed.
They said if a man hurt enough, his body would shut down. In hell, that theory didn’t apply.
Cain flopped to the concrete floor back in Montreal when Berith summarily dismissed him in the middle of a quartering. Lucky someone had interrupted the demon because the last time Cain had pissed Berith off, he’d paid for it dearly. Even by hell standards.
“I need—” He coughed, cleared his raw throat. He really needed a drink.
His clothes hung in tatters and one of his shoes was gone. He shivered, raked a hand through his sweaty hair. Ashes still clung to his eyelashes and lips. Any moist part of him was likewise covered in the stuff. A dull, familiar pain radiated from the inside of his left forearm. Rolling on to his back to cool that side against the concrete, Cain raised his arm in front of his watery eyes. As with any other job, the name of his next “client” was carved in his flesh. It’d disappear. Not because the skin would heal, but because after he’d deliver the secrets, Berith would erase the name. Only to carve another. Then another.
But this one gave him pause. The name of a well-known politician.
“Shit.”
Other demons would want that woman’s secrets, like gold coins to the denizens of hell. Everyone wanted someone else’s secrets, demons included. They could buy souls with the stuff. And nothing was more important to a demon than the number of souls under his or her command. Maybe if Cain harvested a good number, Berith wouldn’t continue where he’d left off.
He showered to get the stench of Berith off him and, once again in a dark suit and Italian shoes – his armour – fired up the laptop to access tax records made available by another of his boss’s many “employees”. The demon had in his charge accountants and artists, politicians and activists, men, women, young and old, of every nation that existed and some that no longer did. Every demon had at least as many as Berith, some more, others less. He’d had to fight through hordes of rival demons’ spawns and secret keepers to get the jobs done. One in particular, Belial, employed only the most vicious and degenerate and commanded legions of lesser demons, spawns, humans and even a couple of renegade angels. No one wanted to mess with him, except Cain. He just didn’t care anymore.
With a triumphant ping, the search yielded a full legal name, an address and more information than Cain could ever use. He noted the address on a piece of paper – since the name was carved in his flesh – and tucked it into his coat pocket. Because he’d never been the positive type and suspected shit would hit the fan again, he loaded up on ammo and weapons, slipped a pair of throwing knives in their sheaths strapped to his calves. He might look like a banker but he hid an arsenal worthy of any specops operative, complete with little sachets of holy water and bullets made of gold and silver.
As he walked out, he caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror. From tall, dark and handsome, he’d turned into tall, dark and haunted.
But first, a drink. He knew just the place and, if he was lucky, he might even meet the closest person he had to a friend.
Half an hour later, Cain pulled the dirty door to a hole-in-the-wall tavern named after the dead proprietor’s wife. It’d changed hands three times in the last fifty years. Cain could name each bartender since the place’s opening.
An older woman in a corner booth caught his attention. So he wouldn’t drink alone that night.
Cain slipped into the booth. “Sister.”
“You look like shit,” she said in rapid-fire sign language. The gold cross resting on her mint-green cardigan gleamed when she raised her hand, three fingers extended. “Eat something.”
The bartender came over and set down an open bottle of Canadian rye whisky and a pair of thick-bottomed tumblers. With a dip of his chin to the woman, the bartender returned to his bar.
The first swallow scorched Cain’s already raw throat all the way down then spread in a nice warm wave in his belly. He inhaled deeply, was about to take another swallow when the bartender returned, this time with a plate of smoked meat sandwich and fries.
Out of habit, Cain thanked the man, remembering too late, as always, that not many would remember him two seconds after talking to him. It’d taken him centuries to get used to it – of people looking through him as if he wasn’t right there in front of them. But the in-between state had its pluses – especially when it came to gunfights. Ha. Yet the solitude had been crushing at first. Then he’d become accustomed to the shroud that seemed to cover him, used it to his advantage. Those like him who didn’t belong on the mortal plane, who’d had their turn and left, were no longer part of the equation. Like ghosts.
He wondered why the Sister could see him though. She’d accosted him a few years ago as he walked across a park. It’d been so long since he’d spoken to someone that he’d temporarily forgotten what it felt like for a person to look straight at him. A real, living person. The dying could see him all right. But she hadn’t been dying – and still wasn’t – neither was she a demon, spawn or angel, that he could tell, anyway (angels had always been sneaky). She must have been a lunatic then. Not that he’d ever tell Sister Evangeline to her face. The woman ran a men’s mission near the old port and no one willingly messed with her, not even the mayor. The thought made him smile.
“I didn’t even know you had them,” Sister Evangeline said. A mocking lift to her mouth rounded her ample cheek.
“Had what?” Cain bit into the sandwich. Juices triggered by the meat and hot mustard forced him t
o focus on the meal and not the conversation. He wolfed the thing down in four bites.
“Teeth. I didn’t know you had teeth. Never saw them.” She stole a fry from his plate.
“It doesn’t bother you he thinks you’re talking to yourself?” Cain nodded in the bartender’s direction. The man seemed oblivious to Evangline’s gestures as he watched a snowy little TV screen set on a soccer game.
“He can think whatever he wants.” Still holding the fry, she managed to sign at the same time. “It’s you I worry about. I swear to God, you look worse every time I see you. Are you sick?”
Cain pushed the plate away. He wasn’t hungry anymore. But he was still thirsty, so he poured them both a second glass.
She grimaced. “Fine, be the mysterious jerk. If you think it makes you look cool, think again, mon garçon.” Only Evangeline would ever call him a boy. He was older than she was, by a few millennia, too. He’d lived through the Great Flood and listened live on the radio as the Hindenburg burned.
He caught her looking down at his chest and realized the butt of his Luger stuck out of his coat. With his elbow, he surreptitiously slipped the holster back a bit. His forearm throbbed like a neglected wound quickly infecting. He had to get to work.
“Remind me again what you do for a living?” Her eyebrows moved as much as her hands when she talked.
He stood, slipped money from his pants pocket and placed it on the table, drained another glass that didn’t burn half as much as the first two. “I never told you what I do for a living, Sister.”
“Do you know your scripture?”
“What makes you think I’m Catholic?”
She smiled. “You wear guilt and shame like a pair of well worn gloves. So, do you?”
“You know what they say about curiosity. ‘But his wife looked back from behind him, and she became a pillar of salt’.”
Sister Evangeline’s French-Irish temper came out in explosive hand signals almost too fast to follow. Cain had always thought the sign word for “asshole” was funny as hell. A reversed version of the symbol for “OK”.
