Bad Grace (Watcher Chronicles Book 1)

by N. P. Martin

  “I think you should hear what I have to say, Frank,” said the demon as he took a step towards him. “You’ve come all this way. At least join me for a drink in my office so I can explain things.” He smiled. “There will be whiskey.”

  Frank stared back at the demon in the fancy suit, the owner of the strip joint they were in. Normally Frank would be able to see the guy’s real demon face. He wasn’t seeing this guy’s though, which meant the demon was purposely blocking him from seeing it. The higher level demons had that ability. Seemed this guy was one of them.

  Fuck it, Frank thought. What else have I got to do? Might as well hear what the demon has to say. “One drink,” he said to the demon.

  The demon smiled, nodded. “One drink it is.”

  CHAPTER 4

  The demons office was upstairs in the club, a large rectangular room with a massive window that gave a near total view of the entire club below. The office itself was nothing fancy. White walls, a red couch and a desk with a single chair beside it. There was also another door in the room. Frank figured it led to some private quarters behind the office. Probably a room for the shiny suited demon to have some privacy with his dancers.

  “Take a seat,” the demon said, gesturing to the red couch. “My name is Lucas, by the way.”

  Frank stood over by the window rather than sit down on the couch. No point in getting too comfortable. He doubted he’d be staying that long. “You got that drink there...Lucas?”

  “Sure.” Lucas pulled a bottle of whiskey out of a drawer in the desk, along with two glasses. He poured a sizeable amount into each glass and handed one to Frank, who smelled the whiskey in his glass.

  “Expensive,” Frank said before sampling the whiskey. He nodded. “Very nice indeed.”

  The demon Lucas just looked at Frank and smiled. Frank noticed he didn’t drink from his own glass, but instead put the glass on the desk and joined Frank by the window. The two of them surveyed the club below through the glass for a moment. “This a nice set up you have here,” Frank said. “Who’d you kill to get it, the guy whose meat suit you’re wearing?”

  The demon didn’t know what to say to that. He just shook his head. “Well, you certainly live up to your reputation.”

  “Yeah, what reputation would that be?”

  “Of a man who cuts through the crap, who gets the job done. I’m hoping you live up to that second one.”

  “You’re hoping I can sort out this demon problem you’re having.”

  “Indeed I am.”

  Frank looked at the demon probably for the first time since they met downstairs. “Let me ask you this. If you have a demon problem, why can’t you sort it out yourself? I mean, you’re a demon after all.”

  “It’s not that simple. I can’t really be seen as interfering with the work of other demons.”

  The work of other demons. Frank laughed to himself. “Why not?”

  “You might find this hard to believe, but I call this world home now. I spent long enough in Hell to know I’d rather be up here.”

  Fair enough, Frank thought. Lucas wasn’t the first demon he’d heard say that. A fair few had succumbed to the easy pleasures and less demonic lifestyles earth had to offer. “So what, you expect me to help protect your cushy number, is that it? No thanks.” Frank downed the rest of his drink, was about to put his glass on the desk when the demon Lucas stepped in his way. Frank stared at the demon, thinking he would throw him through the huge window if he made a move.

  The demon merely raised his hands and gave Frank a slight smile. “Relax. This isn’t just about me. The problem I have concerns the safety of the whole city. Why do you think I called you?”

  Frank walked around the demon and poured himself another drink before planting himself down on the couch. “Okay. You have my full attention. Tell me what’s going on.”

  Lucas nodded, put his hands in his pants pockets while he stood over by the window. “There’s a gang of demons running around the city at the moment, deliberately causing havoc, taking over businesses, killing people.”

  “What’s new? Isn’t that what you demons do anyway?”

  “Not exactly, Frank. You know as well as I do that we mostly influence. Anything beyond that and your kind—Nephilim—step in. Most of the demons on earth stick to that rule.”

  “Well, it sure doesn’t seem like it sometimes,” Frank said. “We’re never done trying to keep the monsters here in line.”

  “Nonetheless, the gang that I’m talking about is dangerous. They’re only just getting started on their mission to upset the balance. Someone is leading them, organizing them. I’d like for you to find out who that is, Frank.”

  The demon seemed sincere, though you never could tell with demons. Frank went mostly on instinct when it came to dealing with monsters and right now his instincts told him this Lucas guy was telling the truth. “So you want me to hunt down the leader of this gang, is that it?”

  Lucas nodded. “Yes.”

  “And then what? I send whoever it is back to Hell?”

  “Yes.”

  “What’s your real interest in this? And don’t give me that earth is great crap you gave me a minute ago.”

  Lucas narrowed his eyes. A tight smile crossed his face. “I wasn’t lying about that, you know. You ever been to Hell, Frank?”

  Frank went quiet for a minute as he thought of Rachel, in Hell right this very moment. “No,” he said.

  “If you had, you’d know where I’m coming from. Being a demon in Hell doesn’t make it much easier either.”

  Frank just nodded, drank his whiskey.

  “I know about your Watcher friend,” Lucas said. “The woman. Rachel, is it?”

  Frank had to stop himself from jumping off the couch and kicking the demon through the window. He had no doubt the demon was fast, maybe even a teleporter if he was high level, but Frank was fast too. He’d beaten enough demons to the draw at this stage.

  Lucas raised his hands when he saw the look on Frank’s face. “Listen, I only bring that up because these demons I’ve been talking about are going around stealing souls. There’s people walking around out there with no soul, and they don’t even know it. When they die they’ll go straight to Hell, Frank.”

  Frank shook his head. “How long has this been going on for? How many souls have they stolen?”

  “It’s not that easy to steal a soul. Only top level demons can do it without a ritual first. These demons are using the ritual. My sources tell me they’ve only done it a few times so far, mainly because the ritual itself is fairly complicated and requires some very specific items to work. Getting those items can take a while, but now the gang has apparently found a way to quicken the process. The amount of souls they steal will exponentially increase.”

  Frank thought about the people walking around out there with no soul, having no idea it was even missing. He wondered if perhaps he wasn’t one of those people. It damn well felt like it most days. Soul or not, it didn’t matter anyway. He knew he was going to Hell when he died. Given some of the things he’d done, even the good he did as a Watcher wouldn’t cancel those things out. “What exactly happens a person when they lose their soul like that?”

  “They lose their humanity, of course. Turn into unfeeling, selfish, not to mention dangerous beings. It’s easy to do bad things when you have no soul, Frank.”

  Don’t I know it? he thought.

  “So what’s the purpose here with these guys? They steal the souls. Then what?”

  Lucas stepped towards Frank. “Maybe I wasn’t clear. A person with no soul is a ticking time bomb. Enough people out there like that and this city will implode. Imagine the death and destruction just one determined individual could do. That’s their plan, Frank, to make this city self-destruct so they can come in and rule over it.”

  “You seem to know a lot about this.”

  “I just know how demons think. So should you, by now.”

  Frank smirked and nodded. “You’re
so right.” He got up and went to refill his glass with more of Lucas’s expensive whiskey. “Where’d you even get my number from?”

  “I have resources,” Lucas said. “Although I have to say you really don’t like being found, do you? I’m told you live in a cabin in the mountains, is that right?”

  “Yeah.” Frank walked back to the couch. “I’m not really a people person as you might be able to tell.”

  Lucas sat down at his desk and smiled at Frank. “I’m glad I called you and no one else.”

  “That’s very sweet of you.”

  The demon laughed. “So what do you say, Frank? You want to help me redress the power balance in this lovely city?”

  Frank thought about Rachel, who was roasting in Hell. He thought about the innocent people walking around with no souls, who would go on a killing spree most likely before taking a one way trip downstairs. He couldn’t save Rachel’s soul. Maybe he could save someone else’s though, not that a hundred such souls would make up for the loss of Rachel’s, but it was a start. “Alright,” he said to Lucas. “Tell me everything you know.”

  CHAPTER 5

  Frank exited the Demon Ecstasy club a little worse for wear. Probably not the best idea to drink so much whiskey when he had to drive, not to mention work a case. Still, it wasn’t like he was going to go home. Now that he was out and about, he decided this is what he needed to keep his mind off things.

  Of Rachel.

  Nothing like hunting demons to keep the brain focused, even if it was swishing around in a bath of whisky.

  When he was back in the car he lit a cigarette and sat there for a while, contemplating how to proceed. Lucas had given him an address across town in the Southside. According to Lucas, there was a bar there that used to be a hangout for vampires until the demon gang took it over and turned it into their base.

  As Frank was drunk, he was seriously contemplating the notion of walking into that bar with all guns blazing. A part of him wanted so badly to unleash some hell on a bunch of no good evil demons. As cathartic as that would be however, it was also an insane idea. Frank knew that. Didn’t stop him wanting to do it however.

  He started the car and drove out of the Sex Quarter, cut through downtown and then across the bridge over the river to the Southside, Mercy City’s own version of Hell.

  The first thing you always notice when you cross the bridge to the Southside is how dark it is there. Even during the day the light never seems to penetrate properly, or else the grimness of the place just cancels out the light altogether. At night, the Southside goes from grim to scary. Only the dregs and those who feed upon them live on the Southside. Most of those dregs only come out at night, emerging from their holes like cockroaches to scurry around the streets, scavenging, scoring drugs, preying on each other. The Southside is what happens when the lower classes are left to their own devices, with little or no interference from the city authorities, who have long since learned that it's best to just stay out of the Southside and pretend it isn’t even there. It’s just the dark place across the river you tell your children never to go near. Except the children don’t listen and venture over anyway looking drugs, maybe even a little fearful adventure. Some of those kids never make it out again.

  Frank hated the Southside as much as anyone else. He even rightfully feared it. What he didn’t do is allow himself to be afraid of it. He had a job to do. If that meant entering Hell and consorting with the inhabitants, so be it.

  He took it slow when he came off the bridge and started driving through the streets of the Southside. It wasn’t like he had a choice. Almost every street in the place was swarming with people as they hung around outside the scummy tenement buildings where they lived. Half the buildings didn’t even look like they had electricity going to them. The dim light in most of the streets came from the few lit windows in the tenement buildings and what street lamps were still working.

  Frank drove the black Chevy through the grim streets, the Beretta in his lap where he could get to it quickly. If he was carjacked, it wouldn’t be the first time. For the most part though, the residents of the Southside ignored the car as he drove. A few times people walked out in front of him, forcing him to slow to a stop. When that happened, he waved his gun through the windshield at the invariably drunk or high individual standing there. They would laugh or sneer, maybe even slam the hood a little, but they never caused any real trouble. The gun and the look on Frank’s face—the one that said move or I’ll shoot you—was usually enough to send them on their way.

  The address Frank was heading for was in the center of the Southside, where most of the business where, if you could call them that. A grocery store, a liquor store, a betting office and a fast food joint, plus the bar Frank was heading to. Not much of a business center. The only two places open at such a late hour where the bar and the liquor store, which should tell you all you need to know about the residents of the Southside. Frank parked the car in the small lot in front of the bar. A few drunks hung around outside but they didn’t seem to represent much a threat. As far as Frank could tell, none of them were demons or anything else supernatural.

  He put the Beretta in the back of his jeans and got out of the car. When he slammed the door, the drunks—five of them—all looked at him like he had no business being there. Frank ignored them and walked to the liquor store, which was next door to the bar, next to another store that looked to have been recently firebombed. Clearly someone didn’t pay their dues.

  A young guy in a dark suit stood behind the counter in the small liquor store. Frank didn’t know who you would expect working in such an establishment in such a fine upstanding area, but it sure wasn’t a guy in a suit. Frank paused for a second as he closed the door behind him so he could take the guy in.

  Straight away he knew something wasn’t right.

  The clerk (if that’s what he was) was taller than Frank’s six feet and had at least a hundred pounds on Frank’s one eighty, all of it muscle by the looks of it. His face was clean shaven, with just enough lines to put him in his late twenties, and his mousey hair was cropped short. The guy looked more like a security professional than a clerk in a liquor store. His gray eyes locked on to Frank as he walked in.

  Before Frank even got to the counter, he knew the clerk was a demon, which set all sorts of questions firing of in his brain, chief among them being, why is a demon manning a liquor store unless they are guarding something more valuable? It was a question Frank really wanted to know the answer to, but first he asked the question that brought him into the store in the first place. “Got any Jack?”

  The demon clerk regarded Frank with cold eyes. He was definitely hiding something, the door to the rear of the counter probably being the first thing. “Don’t think I don’t know what you are, Watcher.”

  Frank nodded casually. “Very astute of you. Gimme an eighth of Jack.” He reached into his jacket and pulled out his wallet while the demon clerk made no move to fulfill his request. Frank paused while he pulled a twenty from his wallet. “What? You don’t sell booze in this place?”

  The clerk narrowed his eyes at Frank. “That’s all you’re in here for?”

  Frank shook his head. “Why else would I be in a liquor store, unless you’re selling something else behind that door over there?”

  Shifting to the right slightly to block Frank’s view of the door in the back, the clerk said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Jack you said?” His eyes never leaving Frank, the clerk reached out to a shelf on his left and grabbed the bottle of whiskey Frank asked for. Set the bottle on the counter. Asked Frank for money.

  Frank handed over the twenty and observed the demon clerk for a moment while the clerk worked the till. To Frank, the clerk had no human face anymore, but instead the true face of the demon who occupied the human body in the suit. The demon had long winding horns that snaked over the top of his head and sloped down to the back of his neck. The demon’s skin was a dark green color, thick skin, almost r
eptilian, with thorns running down both sides of its face. When he looked at Frank again to hand over the change, the demon’s eyes burned a deep red, with elliptical pupils in the middle.

  Frank didn’t flinch at the demon’s appearance. The clerk was fairly typical for a low level demon. He was positively handsome compared to some of the demons Frank had seen in his years as a Watcher. The more high level and powerful demons, those guys you can hardly look at without your brain wanting to turn to mush. Some things are just not meant for human eyes. Half human anyway, in Frank’s case.

  The demon clerk smiled at him, blatantly wanting Frank to leave immediately now that he got what he came for. “Have a nice night now.”

  Frank smiled back. “I will.”

  Halfway to the door, Frank stopped, turned around, and looked at the demon behind the counter while breaking open the bottle of whiskey. “You know what, I’m curious,” Frank said. “What you got going on behind the door?” He took a swig from the bottle and watched the clerk straighten and push his substantial chest out.

  “I’m giving you one chance to walk out that door,” the demon clerk said, his red eyes glowing a touch brighter.

  Frank screwed the cap on his whiskey bottle and slipped the bottle into the pocket of his leather jacket. “You know what I am right? You know what I do?”

  “You’re a stinking Watcher. A demon killer.”

  “Now that’s harsh. You know you bastards can’t be killed, only destroyed. Your soul, if you can call what you have a soul, is set to zero, so to speak, right? You get to claw your way up from the scummiest reaches of Hell all over again.” Frank shook his head. “I couldn’t imagine that. How long does that take anyway? A long fucking time, I bet.”

  The clerk walked from the behind the counter and started towards Frank, his red eyes burning now.