Demon High

by Lori Devoti

  “He’s dead, isn’t he?” I asked Oscar although I knew the answer. Oscar and Nellie had both said they didn’t sense anyone alive nearby.

  “He’s dead,” Oscar confirmed. I nodded and raised the beam then. To my credit, the beam didn’t shake. Inside my head I was screaming, but on the outside I held it together.

  The circle of light lit the corpse’s face. We all fell silent. Even bloated and with his mouth agape, I recognized the face, not Brittany’s cousin, but one of his friends.

  Brittany said something behind me. I glanced at her. Her lips were moving in a silent chant or prayer; her hand formed the cross over her chest. Nellie took a step toward her, but Brittany moved away. She glanced up and caught my gaze. Hers was hollow. Not her cousin, but still a boy who a week earlier had been alive, who hadn’t deserved this.

  I swallowed and wished I had faith to fall back on. But I had never been a believer. Not that there was someone looking out for me. Maybe because there hadn’t been anybody looking out for my mother.

  I believed in demons. It was hard not to. They talked back to Mum and now me.

  “How long’s he been dead?” I asked.

  Oscar, back in his normal position, hands in pockets, shrugged. “I don’t know.”

  I was still holding the knife. I started to slip it back in my pack. Brittany seeing me, said, “We can’t leave him like that. We have to cut him down.”

  I was thinking we needed to move on, find a way out ourselves and find the others if they were still alive. This boy was dead. What good would moving him to the ground do?

  But Brittany was already moving forward. I realized this was important to her. She’d found a box and had placed it beside the body. She stepped up on it and held out her hand. Without being asked, Oscar wrapped his arms around the boy’s legs. I handed Brittany the knife and she sawed through the rope.

  His body fell like a sandbag onto Oscar’s shoulder, but the demon took the weight as if it were nothing. He carried the boy’s body to the side of the room, near where we had entered and lay him out straight.

  “Here.” Brittany pulled a scarf from her pocket, and Oscar spread it over the boy’s face.

  I watched the whole thing feeling like an uninvited guest. Nellie cleared her throat. She was watching me with an expression eerily reflective of how I felt.

  I had the knife back; I tapped it against my thigh. Holmes had just raised the stakes.

  “How big is this room?” I asked. “And what’s beyond it?” Not waiting for a response, I started measuring off the space. It wasn’t huge, but it was big enough for a circle. I pulled out my chalk, ignoring my mother’s taunting voice in my head. No time for paint here.

  It only took a minute to craft the circle. It took longer to convince Brittany to stay behind, safe inside it.

  “I want to go,” she said. “It’s my fault too and Joshua is my cousin.” Her gaze wandered to the dead boy.

  Joshua was her cousin; that was part of the problem. It was too personal. If we found him like this, I couldn’t trust that she would be able to stay in control. She was Brittany, but she was human too.

  “You have the walkie talkie.” I set it down beside her inside the circle. “If I find a way out or need you, I’ll call.” I glanced over my shoulder. Nellie was watching us with studied indifference. Oscar was just waiting; I couldn’t tell if he was listening or not. I grabbed Brittany by the arm and pulled her close. “But don’t trust anyone. Not even me.”

  “Not you? But then how—”

  I cut her off. “A safe word. We need a safe word.”

  She started to say something, but I stopped her. “Don’t say it out loud.” Nellie and Oscar seemed to be helping us, but they were still demons. “When we were little we used to play a game. We weren’t ourselves. Remember?”

  Brittany nodded.

  “There was something we both wanted to be. We’d fight over it. Remember?”

  She nodded again.

  I squeezed her arm. “If I come up to you or call you, but don’t say that thing, don’t come out of the circle. Swear it.”

  She smiled. “Will you burn that sweater? The one with the stripes?”

  I laughed; we both did. It was completely forced, of course, but still it helped relieve some tension. Then I stepped backwards out of the circle, chanting as I moved. I felt the energy slide into place, and for the first time since we had left this morning, I felt some element of control. I turned to Nellie.

  “Want to test it?” I gestured to the white line.

  “Thanks. I think I’ll take a pass. In fact, I think I’ll just stay over here and take a little rest.” She wandered to where the dead boy lay and sat down. Then holding my gaze, she placed her elbow on his back and leaned against him. “Not the fanciest of pillows, but it will do.”

  Her calculated barb took hold, but I shook it off. I didn’t have time to be annoyed with Nellie. I turned my back on her and picked up my pack. Before leaving the room, I shot one last glance at Brittany. “Don’t let her in,” I mouthed.

  Sitting cross-legged in the circle, her arms wrapped around her body, Brittany’s gaze shot to Nellie and stayed there for just a second. The she dropped her eyes to the floor.

  I wished she’d have given me a positive response, a “Yes, Lucinda, whatever you say,” but I knew better than to wait for it. And Brittany was smart. Smarter than me. That had to be enough.

  Oscar and I left; this time he stayed with me. He’d told me there was nothing else on this floor, no bodies, dead or otherwise, but I was still tense. Walking through the dark tends to do that too you, no matter how many assurances you get that the way is safe. And let’s face it, no matter what Oscar told me, only an idiot would have felt reassured.

  The path continued to twist and turn. A few times the hall widened or narrowed. Each of those times, my heart thumped in my chest. I didn’t want to find Brittany’s cousin or the other boy, not like the last one. And Angela…. I pulled a breath in so deeply through my nose, I felt my nostrils flare.

  After what felt like hours, but was probably minutes we hit a dead end.

  Oscar stopped and turned. With my flashlight shining on him, he looked unnaturally pale. He held out both hands. “The path seems to end here.”

  The information Brittany and I had found on Holmes said he liked trap doors and secret passages. I played the flashlight’s beam up and down the walls, looking for a seam. I saw nothing.

  “What are you doing?” Oscar angled his eyes, following my motions.

  “Looking for a door.”

  “Like this?” He squatted down and jerked on the baseboard. It wasn’t until I saw the wall in front of me moving upward that I realized the bottom edge of the trim wasn’t even. An indentation, or hand hold, had been carved out of its bottom side.

  Beyond the wall was an old metal staircase, probably original to the building. Glass block windows let in some light. They were dirty and thick, impossible to break if we needed a fast exit, but they were there. I flipped off my flashlight and let my eyes adjust to the gloom.

  Oscar stepped inside and gazed up. I followed him, my backpack whacking against him as I moved into the small space.

  “Thanks for the tip,” I muttered.

  “What?” His eyebrows rose, and his eyes widened.

  “Nothing.” I shook off my annoyance. Demon. Oscar was a demon. I had to keep reminding myself that. Any help I got from him had to be thought of as a bonus. Expecting it was dangerous.

  We were half way up the stairs, creeping to keep the sound of our steps from ringing out on the metal steps, when I realized something.

  “Holmes knows we’re here, doesn’t he?” I asked.

  Oscar, walking in front of me, stopped and turned. “That’s my guess. You at least. Unless he’s watching, he wouldn’t know about Nellie or me.”

  But we already knew Holmes was watching, at least odds pointed that way. I cursed myself for not having Brittany get more information from the secur
ity guy on exactly how many cameras there were.

  I studied Oscar for a few seconds, really studied him. He seemed so damn human. He had yet to do anything that caused me not to trust him, never mind fear him.

  “Why didn’t you tell me about the stairs?” I asked.

  He leaned against the metal banister. I could only see his silhouette in the gloom, not the details of his expression, but I knew what it was, sad and detached.

  “You know a lot about demons, don’t you, Lucinda?”

  I licked my lips, not sure where this was going and afraid I wasn’t going to like it. Then I realized something. The reason I was having such a hard time remembering Oscar was a demon was because I didn’t want him to be one.

  Apparently unaware of the light bulb that had gone off in my head, Oscar kept talking. “And you know I was human. Do you know how humans become demons?”

  Words tumbled out of my mouth. “Sell their souls or die when they are at their lowest, when they don’t care about anything.”

  He smiled then. I couldn’t see it. I felt it. The hairs on my arms stood up. I rubbed them back down.

  “I didn’t sell my soul. I just didn’t care, and as much as I like you, I still can’t. I can’t care, not about you, Angie, or any of this.”

  “So, you didn’t tell me about the stairs because….”

  “Because there was no reason to.”

  “But when I asked you—”

  “There was no reason not to.”

  I let that soak in for a second. What he said made sense in some strange twisted way.

  “So, you’ll tell me everything I ask, but not necessarily offer anything?”

  He seemed to consider the question. “I don’t see why not.”

  I took a breath. “Oscar, is Holmes in the building?”

  “I haven’t seen him,” he replied.

  “How about the other boys and Angie, can you sense them now?”

  “No.”

  For a moment, my hopes plummeted, and then I remembered he’d only been able to sense the bottom floor before, not any floors above it.

  “Is it because they aren’t here or because something is blocking you?”

  He took a step down. “Blocking. Something is blocking me. Standing here in this stairwell, all I can sense is you.”

  He was only one step above me now. He held out his hand and without thinking, I slipped mine into his. “All I can sense is you, Lucinda, and I don’t care. The others could be dead or dying, and I don’t care.”

  His statement should have repulsed me. It was horrible to feel nothing when you knew someone else might be suffering. It should have been unforgivable, but I not only forgave him, I felt for him.

  He said he didn’t care, but he had to. Somewhere inside he had to care, or why would he be standing here with me at all?

  I squeezed his fingers. “You don’t have to care. You just have to help.”

  His hand tightened around mine and my heart fluttered.

  We stood in the semi-darkness doing nothing, just holding hands and breathing. It felt normal. No, not normal, special. Being with Oscar, made me feel special.

  “Did you go to the other floors? Did you sense people there?” I asked, my words soft. I didn’t want to break the cocoon of quiet that had wrapped around us.

  He nodded. The fingers of his free hand trailed down my arm. It was no more than a whisper of a touch, innocent, but also intimate and seductive, a dangerous combination considering where we were and what he was.

  The next logical question to ask was obvious. If he sensed people, why didn’t he free them? But I knew what his answer would be. There was no reason to, he didn’t care.

  I didn’t want to hear that.

  So I concentrated on practicalities, questions that would help get Angie, the two boys, Brittany and myself out of this building. I asked Oscar as many detailed questions as I could.

  He thought Holmes was gone right now. Oscar had found the other demon’s office and it was empty, but he knew where three people were stashed in the building. Three live people. He couldn’t tell me their condition, but he knew they were alive, for now.

  “Where would Holmes go?” I asked. He was a demon. I assumed he didn’t need to hit the grocery store or anything.

  “To get more victims.” Oscar’s answer was blunt. Probably accurate, but hard to hear.

  He squeezed my hand. Glad of the reminder I wasn’t totally alone, I squeezed back. Then it hit me. He had squeezed my hand. He was trying to reassure me, that didn’t come without caring.

  “Why’d you do that?” I asked.

  “What?”

  “My hand. You squeezed it. Why?”

  “Because.” I could hear confusion in his voice.

  “You—” I stopped myself from continuing. Now wasn’t the time to tell Oscar I didn’t think he was as non-caring as he claimed. It was a big discovery if true, and if I was wrong…. Well, better to be right. Instead, I pulled his hand closer and said. “You’ve been a big help. Thanks.”

  He nodded, and I realized he was staring at our entwined fingers. I didn’t move for a second. My emotions were running rampant, fed by adrenaline maybe, but I felt something, a connection. I wanted him to feel it too, badly.

  But we didn’t have time. Not now.

  I pulled my fingers free and pulled out my walkie talkie. “If you’re sure Holmes isn’t here, I’m calling Brittany. It will be safer for her to be with us, than alone down here.” Yes, Nellie was with her, but I didn’t count her as any kind of plus.

  As I pushed the button, I heard a responding squawk. I turned. The secret door was lifting, and on the other side stood Brittany and Nellie.

  “You knew I couldn’t just stay there, right?” Brittany, her flash light illuminating the space around her, smiled. I didn’t bother being angry. We didn’t have time. I just motioned toward the stairs.

  And with Oscar taking the lead position, the four of us started climbing. As I stared at Oscar’s back, saw the way he’d pause every so often as if checking for some new sound, I felt like we might just get out of this alive, that we might just be able to fix the giant mess we’d made.

  Then I prayed to God that I wasn’t wrong.

  Chapter 16

  There were two floors above the one we’d been on. According to Oscar, Holmes’ office was on the middle floor. The people he had sensed were on the top.

  I was horribly tempted to leave the staircase at the first door, to check and see if Holmes was there. It was a sick need, kind of like wanting to pick at a scab to see when it would bleed. But I was at least enough under control to know my curiosity was insane. We had to get Angie, Joshua and the other boy out. After that was done, I’d have to come back and face Holmes. For now I would hope that Oscar was right, that Holmes was not in the building.

  “Keep going,” I said when Nellie cast a glance at the door. She’d been uncharacteristically quiet since she and Brittany had joined us in the stairwell. I hoped it was because Brittany had told her to back off, and not that the succubus was plotting her next move.

  At the top the staircase dead-ended into a door; we paused. “Oscar will lead us to where he sensed people. They are all on this floor, but in separate rooms.”

  “We should split up.” The sprayer filled with holy water dangled from Brittany’s finger. Her face was pale, but determined. “We can get them out faster that way.”

  “It’s another maze. Oscar has to lead us,” I replied.

  “Please. Oscar the great is not the only one who can find them.” Nellie flipped her hand toward the door.

  I paused. “Splitting up won’t save us that much time.” Especially since I didn’t trust Nellie.

  “Once we find them, we still have to get out.” Brittany’s gaze was steady. She was back under control.

  I nodded. Brittany reached for the door. “But you go with Oscar. I’ll take Nellie,” I added.

  Nellie, in the process of following Brittany, froze. Then
she turned. “Kitten, I’m touched.”

  I ignored her.

  The area beyond the stairwell door was odd. Like being inside someone’s brain. Someone’s brain I didn’t want to visit. Huge pieces of machinery had been connected together forming stark metal scenery. Trees, wagons, people. Everything you would expect to see on an average city street in the late 1800’s.

  Holmes had rebuilt his world, or the world as he had last known it anyway. The door opened onto a street that split into two separate paths after only a few feet. Faux buildings blocked our view. We couldn’t see where any of the choices lead, but I sensed they were connected, that there was only one destination from here.

  I turned to the demons. “Where to?” I asked.

  Oscar moved so he was facing sideways. The city was a nightscape, lit with gas streetlights. The flame inside them was a strange blue. It added another layer of bizarre to the surroundings.

  Oscar didn’t seem to notice.

  “They’re in the hotel,” he said. “This way.” He moved to the right, past odd miniature representations of buildings with signs labeling them theatres, taverns and dentist offices. Across from the pharmacy stood the hotel. It was huge. So huge, I knew Holmes had drawn on some kind of demon power to create it, or to give it the illusion of size.

  “It’s a castle,” Nellie murmured.

  “It’s his castle,” I corrected her. “He’s rebuilt his hotel from Chicago here, from scraps.”

  Brittany glanced at me. We’d both read what he’d done in that hotel.

  There wasn’t a door, just an opening. We walked through. The entryway was tiny. I guessed to leave space for more rooms. Hallways split off in three directions.

  “There are two down there,” Oscar gestured to the right. “And one down here.” He nodded to the left.

  “We’ll take right.” I started walking. Nellie followed, but slowly. I turned a corner and waited. Finally, I retraced my steps. She was leaning against the wall, staring at her fingernails.

  “I wondered if you would come back,” she said.

  “I don’t have time for your games, Nellie. This is serious.”