by N. P. Martin
Now, the end is finally in sight. The running could soon stop. Long enough for him to build the empire a part of him always aches to build again. He is like an addict, addicted to power and influence. He has always been the same. Perhaps because he is the son of a King. Or more likely because said King banished him from his kingdom of birth, disowning him, casting him out like an unclean spirit. Even after aeon's, it still hurts him to think about it.
Down below in the club, it is empty and the lights are turned on full, illuminating all too clearly just how drab and grim the place really is. Nothing has been done to it in years. A club should always be reinventing itself, every couple of years at least. It keeps people interested, stops them moving on when they get sick of the place. Obviously Jake didn’t give a shit about people moving on. Most likely he was more interested in making just enough to fund his gambling and drinking problems.
And enough to pay off Dimitri.
Lucas has been waiting around in the club all night, waiting for Dimitri’s men to turn up, as Janice said they were due to. There is no one else in the club, just Lucas. Tomorrow the work men come to begin revamping the place. For now, Lucas has to deal with Dimitri’s goons, see exactly what he is up against, and see if the goons are human or non-human. He is really hoping they are the former, but his instincts tell him the latter is probably the case. If Dimitri is a demon or other non-human, he will not have humans working for him.
Earlier, Lucas locked the front doors of the club to prevent any humans from coming in thinking Filthy Ecstasy is open for business. He doesn’t expect the locked doors to stop Dimitri’s goons. They will either teleport in or break them down, one of the two.
As it happens, Lucas does not end up having to replace the front doors. From his vantage point by the large window in the upstairs office, Lucas sees two men appear out of nowhere in the middle of the club, near the center stage. The two men are heavy set, both wearing dark leather jackets and jeans. They stand for a moment, looking around, then they both look up at Lucas standing in the window, watching them.
So, Lucas thinks as he continues to watch through the window. Unfortunately I was right. Demons after all.
He takes a short breath and then teleports down to the two demons.
When Lucas appears a few feet away from the other two demons, there is a moment of tension where no one is sure what is going to happen. The two demons are obviously surprised by the presence of Lucas, and by the fact that he is a demon like them. Their surprise is all over the faces of the bodies they are possessing.
Lucas stands with arms down by his sides, calmly looking at the two demons before him, then he smiles and says, “Gentlemen. You know you are trespassing in my club?”
The two demons look confused, then angry. One of them, a fair haired guy with a face that looked like it had been nibbled on by maggots before being left to heal over says, “Who the fuck are you? Where is Jake?”
“Jake no longer owns this place. I do.”
“You?” the other demon says, bald headed with a deep scar across his forehead like he ran into a guillotine. “But you’re…”
“One of you?” Lucas says.
The two demons stare back at him, both suddenly looking less sure of themselves. A demon could look at another demon and sense immediately how powerful that demon is, how high level they are. They both know Lucas could probably destroy them easily as they are both as low level as you can get, barely having finished their tortured existence as damned souls in Hell, probably put on Earth for some random assignment before going rogue as many demons end up doing. Most of them get dragged back to Hell again by the Hellwrathian guard, Hell’s Gestapo, if you will. Until that happens though, the rogue demons spend their time lording it over the humans, reveling in their freedom and the chance to do whatever they please. Obviously the two demons standing before Lucas have fallen under the protection of their boss, Dimitri. Question is, just how powerful is their boss?
One of the demons, the pockmarked one, decides to get cocky. “Jake didn’t own this place,” he says.
“Who does then?” Lucas asks, taking a step closer to the two demon goons. “Because I thought I did. I paid for it.”
“You paid the wrong person,” Scarhead says.
Lucas nods. “And the right person is who? Dimitri?”
“He’ll destroy you,” Pockmark says. “Send you down the elevator so fast-”
Pockmark doesn’t get a chance to finish. Lucas clicks his fingers and the guy seems to disappear, his clothes falling to a heap to the floor. Then a second later, a large black beetle scurries from under the clothing and runs around the grimy wooden floor in a panic, turning this way and that.
Lucas walks over and steps on the beetle, crushing it under foot, the beetle cracking and squelching under Lucas’ two hundred dollar shoes. “Scarab beetles,” he says while looking at Scarhead. “I hated them in Egypt. Gave you a nasty bite.”
Scarface is visibly afraid now. There is even fear on his true demon face, which can’t help but reveal itself, a face that resembles a black skinned lizard goat with three eyes if you can imagine that. The demon’s yellow eyes are wide and twitchy. He is trying to teleport out of the club, but Lucas is preventing him from doing so by reaching into the lesser demon’s mind and blocking him. “Please,” Scarhead says. “Let me go.”
Lucas raises his hand and Scarhead lifts off the ground like an invisible rope is tugging him by the neck. Both hands go to his throat. He is having trouble breathing. “I must say,” Lucas says as he telekinetically holds the other demon up in midair, “you show a disappointing lack of balls. I hope your boss is more formidable. Speaking of which--” He lets the demon go and Scarhead drops to the ground, to his knees. “Why don’t you take me to him now. I’d like a chat with him.”
Scarhead chokes and coughs as he struggles to get his breath back, but nods at the same time. “Okay,” he says. “I’ll take you to see him.”
Lucas smiles. “Good,” he says, knowing full well that Scarhead will end up paying dearly over his decision to bring Lucas to Dimitri’s lair, wherever that may be. Not that Lucas cares.
Scarhead will just be one less demon Lucas will have to kill himself.
CHAPTER FOUR
It should be explained that demons don’t really die. For all intents and purposes, in Hell, a demon can be all but destroyed. Their demon bodies can sustain great damage and still regenerate over time. When said bodies are obliterated however (as often happens), either by a weapon of some sort, or by dark magic, the bodies don’t regenerate. Instead, the remains of their filthy vessels go to a place known as the Body Shop. The Body Shop is essentially a humongous factory in one of Hell’s lower levels. Its purpose is to receive the souls of the destroyed demons and place those souls into another receptacle, which almost always is some disgusting lower form of life like a marsh slug or a filth worm or just plain sloppy slime. Effectively, it is a complete reset for the demon soul, a punishment of sorts for allowing themselves to be destroyed in the first place. The demon soul retains all of their memories and experiences in their consciousness while they slime their way through the Shit Marshes, siphoning up the bubbling excrement before adding to it themselves by shitting it straight out again. How long this goes on for is anybody’s guess. Although it is supposedly possible to crawl or slime or worm your way back to being a higher form of life again, no one knows of any soul who has actually managed this. So in effect, you are worse than dead.
When a demon is destroyed somehow while possessing a human host, the demon is “put on the elevator”, a euphemism for being sent back to Hell, whereupon they are processed in the Body Shop.
This is the fate that befalls Scarhead within seconds of him teleporting into Dimitri’s lair along with Lucas. The second Dimitri sees that Scarhead has brought a stranger to the lair, the inept minion explodes in a shower of blood and gore. Next stop for him, the Body Shop.
Lucas stands shaking his head, wiping at the blo
od and gore that has ruined his Italian wool suit. When he looks up at the demon responsible, he says, “Was that really necessary? This is a two thousand dollar suit.”
Dimitri is sitting in a huge wooden chair that is ornately crafted with engraved symbols and strange patterns that Lucas recognizes immediately as being Egyptian hieroglyphs. A fan of ancient Egypt then, Lucas thinks. Interesting.
Dimitri himself, or at least his human form, is in his late forties, slicked back dark hair and piercing blue eyes that likely never miss a trick. He is sitting topless, his large but not overly muscled body displaying a range of tattoos that cover most of the skin. His bottom half is clothed in a pair of leather pants and biker boots. Everything about him looks slick and slimy, like he is permanently coated all over in oil of some sort. “I have told all of my minions what the consequences would be if they ever gave away my safe house,” he says in a half Russian, half American accent. “That demon didn’t deserve to be my minion anyway. He deserves to writhe around in the filth pits of Hell for eternity.”
Minions? Lucas thinks. Someone has been watching too many bad B movies. “Still,” Lucas says, continuing in vain to try and get the blood from off his suit, at the same time aware that he was being surrounded by at least a dozen other demons. “You could have waited until later, at least until we had said hello to each other.”
Dimitri lounges in his chair like a bored king in his throne, staring intently at Lucas, obviously trying to work out what kind of demon he is now dealing with. “I sent those useless cockwrenches to collect from Jake at the Filthy Ecstasy club. How did one of them end up bringing you here?”
Lucas looks around at the dozen or so demons standing around him in a semi-circle like a pack of attack dogs waiting on the signal from their master Dimitri to move in and take down the intruder. Most of them are low level demons, Lucas sees, a few a bit higher up, but none he could call a threat. Except Dimitri, who seems as high level as Lucas initially thought he would be. Ignoring the stares of the demons around him, Lucas says, “I’m the new owner of the Filthy Ecstasy club. I came here hoping we could work out terms.”
Leaning forward in his throne slightly, Dimitri says, “And what would a demon like you want with a shit-hole like that?”
“I’m a business man, like yourself.”
“A business man?” Dimitri chuckles to himself. “A business man. By the sounds of it, you’ve been on Earth as long as me if you are calling yourself that. Did you ever think, when you were suffering in Hell, that you would end up on Earth as a businessman?”
Lucas cannot help but smile along with Dimitri. “No, I did not.”
Dimitri laughs. “Neither did I!” He gets up of his throne and takes hold of a sword that has been resting against the chair the whole time. Lucas notices that the sword is not one that was made on Earth, but in the forges of Hell. The long, serrated blade glows a pale crimson as soon as Dimitri takes hold of it. Lucas knows the sword was made to kill demons. Not all demons, but quite a lot of them. Whether it had the power to kill Lucas or not, he doesn’t know. Neither did he want to find out. He hasn’t come here for a fight, but to negotiate. Or rather, manipulate.
“However bizarre and unforeseen our situations here may be,” Lucas says, sensing the demons surrounding him edging uncomfortably closer. “We are nonetheless here. I find it wiser to follow the laws of the land here, don’t you?”
Dimitri nods as he paces slowly around in front of Lucas, occasionally twirling the sword he holds. “I do agree, yes. But what good is power if you don’t use it?” He points the sword at Lucas. “Are you telling me you don’t use your power in this world?”
“Of course I do. But I’m careful.”
“Careful of what?”
“Not to attract the wrong attention.”
“You are afraid of being dragged back to the pits of Hell again?”
“Something like that.”
Dimitri stares at Lucas, like he is trying to decide what to do about him. “I find you hard to read,” he says. “That disturbs me.”
“Like I said,” Lucas says. “I’m just a businessman.”
After staring long and hard at Lucas, Dimitri flashes a look at one of his minions.
Then it begins.
What Lucas has sensed coming from the second he entered the place.
It is an all out assault. Every demon bar Dimitri attacks Lucas en masse, from every side, including from above.
Lucas teleports at the last second into the center of the place he is in, which appears to be some kind of warehouse.
He stands now with a dozen demons heading towards him, some running, some flying, others teleporting right up beside him.
The teleporters attack first, their full demon faces on display, talons and fangs bared, intending to rip Lucas apart, to force his demon spirit to evacuate the human body he possesses. Once his spirit becomes disembodied, they would no doubt trap it with dark magic and banish it straight to Hell. It is how demons deal with other demons.
Only Lucas does not intend to let that happen.
With a speed and power that shocks those attacking him, he decapitates four of the demons inside a split second.
While dodging balls of red energy being thrown at him by one of the higher level demons, he rips the spine right out of another demon, while at the same reaching into the minds of two others, forcing them to stop in their tracks like they have suddenly lost all of their ability to move even an inch.
As he rips the head off another two demons who try to attack him with knives forged in Hell, he takes one of the knives and throws it at the demon who is still hurling blasts of energy at him, energy which would instantly incinerate Lucas from the inside out.
The knife Lucas throws hits the energy hurling demon in the chest. The demon looks shocked until bright orange light bursts from his every orifice.
Enjoy the down elevator, Lucas thinks, just as he rips the hearts out of his last few attackers, their demon spirits abandoning their ruptured bodies in a trail of black smoke.
He turns to look at the last two demons he is still holding in place with his mind. Lucas allows his head to fall to one side, then clicks his fingers. The two demons both explode in a burst of red which slaps wetly on to the smooth concrete floor. No black spirit escapes from either body. That’s because Lucas makes sure the demons get an immediate one way trip back to Hell. A little trick he picked up from a demon he helped once here on Earth. Handy if you want to make sure the demon you are putting down doesn’t come back for you some other time in a different body.
“You’re going to owe me for all these minions you just destroyed.” Dimitri is standing not far from Lucas, poking the charred remains of one of his demon lackeys with the sword he still holds in his hand.
Does this demon’s arrogance know no bounds? Lucas wonders, then thinks, Of course not, he’s a demon. “I could have done without all this,” he says. “This isn’t why I came here.”
“You said that already,” Dimitri says, walking to within a couple of feet of Lucas now. “But I needed to see it. I needed to know what I would be up against should we not come to any agreement.” Dimitri is circling Lucas now, twirling the sword as he moves.
“Come on, Dimitri. Just tell me how much you want.”
“That depends what for. What do you want…whatever your name is?”
“Lucas. Lucas Rameses.”
“Rameses. Like from ancient Egypt? That Rameses?”
“The same.”
“Well, you have been around for a while, haven’t you? Maybe even as long as me.”
“I couldn’t help but notice the chair you are sitting in. It belonged to King Rameses the second. My father, once.”
Dimitri stopped his circling and let the tip of his sword rest on the floor. “Shut up,” he says. “For real?”
“Yes. Not that I had much to with him back then. I recognize the chair though. Not his throne, but the chair he sat in in his war room.”
&n
bsp; “No shit!” Dimitri seems delighted by this revelation. “I can’t believe that. I stole the chair from a private collector here in the city. A human. He told me the chair came from ancient Egypt, preserved in one of the pyramids. That’s all he knew.”
“Well,” Lucas says, nodding over to the chair. “You have yourself a powerful artifact there. My father made battle plans for many wars sitting in that chair.”
“No shit!” Dimitri laughs again, obviously pleased to know that he is sitting in the chair once occupied by one of the ancient world’s greatest leaders.
Lucas wonders what Dimitri would do if he knew Lucas was actually lying. If he knew the chair did not in fact belong to King Rameses II at all, and that Lucas had no idea where it came from or who owned it.
Lucas guesses Dimitri would not be happy if he found that out.
But that isn’t going to happen. As powerful a demon as Dimitri is, he has no idea that he has fallen victim to Lucas’ dark charisma, a gift partially passed on to Lucas by his father, King Rameses II (he wasn’t lying about that), but made stronger by the dark arts found in the ancient city of Memphes. Arts found nowhere else before or since, and for which Lucas betrayed many and spilled much blood to acquire.
Of course, Lucas could try to destroy Dimitri instead of bargaining with him. He could probably destroy the other demon, but Lucas has no idea if Dimitri is in league with any other demons or not. If Dimitri is, those he knew will look for him, causing more trouble for Lucas, who is still trying to keep a low profile in this city. Easier just to pay Dimitri off. Besides which, Lucas needs eyes and ears in this new city, just like he always does in every city he has ever been in. Dimitri will no doubt prove useful in that way.
He says to Dimitri, “I’ll give you double what Jake was giving you every month. That’s ten grand a month. We both know money is power here in this world.”
