Between me, the floorboards, the corner foundation of the house and the ground, there wasn’t a lot of space left to shake the bastard thing, but shake I did. Hey, it always worked in the movies. And sure enough, a hard shake brought the light back on. Pity that it took a smack against my head to work. And then the bloody thing was pointed right in my eyes when it came on.
“Argh.” My startled cry blew up a cloud of dust into my face, which I promptly sucked in.
“Did you find it?” Mrs Arnold asked through my ESP.
There aren’t letters to express the true cadence of my response, so we’ll leave it up to imagination. However Mrs Arnold’s imagination dealt with it, her entire response was something about getting a real pest man to come get rid of her problem. Ignoring her, I scanned the torch around the dark crawl space.
The beam fell onto a big lump that was even more out of place than the barbed wire—or not, depending on what you expected to find in crawl spaces, which in turn probably depended on the type of movies you watched. I have a t-shirt that says ‘Attention ladies: I watched “The Notebook”’. (Okay, I haven’t—watched the movie that is—but I do have the shirt.) I’m firmly in the ‘fully expect to find ghastly things in the crawl space’ camp, but I don’t admit that on first dates.
Mr Wibbles, a prize winning Burmese cat of remarkable proportions, was pretty much reduced to mincemeat. If you liked your mince to have fur and bones. I don’t and I’m guessing most folk don’t, but apparently imps do.
The creature crouched amongst the bloody remains, cheeks bulging with, judging from the scraps it had yet to eat, liver. It was, from pointed head to barbed tail, about a foot long, humanoid in shape and covered in greyish-red, wrinkly skin. About the biggest feature on it, apart from the tail, was its nose, which jutted out from its face like Pinocchio at a sports-scandal press conference. It had a pair of stubby wings on its back.
So far, the imp hadn’t noticed me. It just kept stuffing its face, humming to itself. Imps were even more totally self-absorbed than your average paparazzi-baiting tween starlet. It was hard to get their attention, and really, why would you want it? They were foot long garbage disposal machines with less intelligence than a brain-dead chicken. Still, they didn’t mix with human civilization too well. When their natural food source ran short, they took to scavenging. However, you didn’t find them head first in your knocked over garbage bin. Rather, you often caught fleeting glimpses of them while they were carting off your Chihuahua, or dragging your prize winning Burmese through a hole in the floorboards.
Imps. Small demons but they make up for it in ‘eww’ factor.
In the hand not holding the torch, I had a tiny tape player. I’d recieved a very strange look from the guy in the electronics shop when I’d rushed in and demanded one. He’d tried to sell me an MP3 player with speakers, and couldn’t understand why I thought that would be just a tad clunky. When I’d rushed next door to the music shop, they’d looked at me even more strangely when I asked for a cassette to play in my hard won tape player. Luckily, there are some people who still buy tapes, but probably owing to the personality type that would refuse to move into the digital age, the selection of tapes was thin.
I hit the play button.
I’m a big fan of music in general, and an ever bigger fan of good music in particular. And, as in everything in life, each to his own, right? Still, whoever had decided the world loved Irish folk songs enough to keep releasing them should never have sold the rights to whoever decided pan pipes were really cool.
Haunting, breathy strains of ‘Danny Boy’ echoed in the crawl space. It was all at once a totally absurd and eerie sensation—like elevator music piped into your head after your brains have oozed out of your ears. Whatever I thought of it, it worked.
Like a meerkat on look out, the imp sat up on its haunches and peered about. It saw me and tilted its head. Strings of livery flesh hung from its mouth, blood and gore splattered across its body. Slowly, it crept down from the mound of its meal and inched toward me. It came in hesitant bursts, rushing forward, stopping to look around for danger, then forward again, panicking and darting back.
Music was the one thing guaranteed to hold an imp’s attention, other than its stomach, of course. The little demon scuttled forward, tail swishing, head cocked to locate the source of the music. It didn’t notice me putting down the torch. Heck, it probably didn’t even realise I was there at all.
As soon as it got close enough, I made a grab for it. The imp realised too late and couldn’t evade me. I caught it around its scrawny neck and it squealed. The high pitched, eardrum-bursting cry drowned out the music. My teeth resonated in my head on a frequency set to crystal-shattering. The creature’s claws raked at my hand, its itty bitty teeth tried to dig in. Imps are stronger than their size would have you believe, and they’re fanatically ferocious, but the most they can down are your average household pets. It had no chance against me. Besides, I was wearing thick welding gloves.
Wriggling backwards, I hauled my upper body and imp out of the hole. We came out in a burst of dust and cobwebs and fingernails-down-the-chalkboard wails. Mrs Arnold gave her own little scream, back peddled quickly, hit her floral-patterned recliner and sat down so hard the footrest popped out and shot her legs into the air. Eyeballs full of grit protected her from any impropriety on my part.
Working blind, I groped about for the cat carrier I’d brought along. I found it and shoved the imp in and jerked my hand out a second before slamming the door and securing it. The demon cried some more, then stopped. A moment later, the sounds of eating emerged from the dark corner of the carrier.
No, I hadn’t killed a poor defenceless animal for it to eat. It was cat food.
“Oh my, oh my,” Mrs Arnold was saying when my ears recovered.
“It’s okay, Mrs Arnold. I got it. It won’t be bothering you anymore.”
She floundered for a moment, then managed to get the footrest down and the chair swung forward so she could look at me. Her eyes were wide and her hair pretty much stood on end. One hand fluttered at her chest.
“Are you feeling okay?” I hauled myself to my feet and went to check her pulse.
She slapped my hand away hard enough to make me yelp.
“Don’t you touch me, you pervert!”
“I’m not a pervert, Mrs Arnold. Honestly.” I stepped back and held my hands up in unconditional surrender. “I just wanted to make sure you’re okay. I’m a trained paramedic.”
Feisty old eyes narrowed. “And you sideline in pest control? I shouldn’t think so.”
“Hardly pest control,” I muttered. I could show her the imp in the cage, and we could argue about it until the cows came home for a change of undies and went out again, but I had a face full of dust, an aching back and prickling foot. Arguing about whether or not demons existed probably wasn’t what someone in that position, with my history, should do with an octogenarian. For both our sakes. This once, I’d let it slide.
“Now, did you see my Mr Wibbles down there? Is he all right?”
“Ah, yes, Mr Wibbles is down there.”
“Then back you go. Bring him up.”
I cringed. “You might not want to be here for that.”
“Why ever not?” Even as she asked, she understood. “Oh. No, I think I should be here.”
My mouth was open to protest, but she cut me off.
“Now, young man, I’m eighty-two years old. I’ve been around the block a time or two and I’ve probably seen some things to make you wet your pants. Mr Wibbles stuck with me when Mr Arnold passed and through my hip replacement. The least I can do is be here for him now.”
Ten minutes later, I was back in the hole, fishing around with an old hockey stick, dragging the bits and pieces of Mr Wibbles into range of the bucket I had to put him in. I mean, I couldn’t have left the carcass down there to rot and stink out Mrs Arnold.
I was scooping the last of Mr Wibbles into the bucket when I heard something. A li
ttle mewling sound. From the outside world, there came an answering cry from the imp.
What the…?
They poured out of the shadows of the crawl space like a red tide. Tiny, tiny little imps, screaming tiny, tiny little supersonic war-cries. I gurgled a surprised scream of my own and hurried out of the hole. They came flocking out, wings buzzing like a swarm of killer wasps. The full grown imp in the cage set to caterwauling once more. The result was a cyclone of bone-rattling sound pitched at the very upper end of the human compatibility range.
I lay flat on my back, staring in disbelief at the baby imps spinning around the room. They weren’t terribly coordinated and they flew into walls and furniture with little thumps of impact. The figurines scattered throughout the room didn’t survive so well either. There was a tinkling crescendo of shattering porcelain.
Mrs Arnold was back in her chair and copped a fair few of the baby demons in her hair. They thrashed about and got hopelessly tangled. She sat in open mouthed shock. By good luck or sheer bad aiming, none of the imps flew into her mouth. I didn’t want to have to explain to anyone that I’d had to perform the Heimlich manoeuvre in order to dislodge a demon.
Thanks to the poor directional skills of the imps, it didn’t take long for them to batter themselves into unconsciousness. The last buzzed around the ceiling for a bit longer and then in a fit of panic, flung itself at the window. It smacked the glass hard and tumbled to the sill, where it sat and swayed before toppling over.
The adult imp was still kicking up a fuss in the cage, so I gave it sharp boot and knocked the cage into the wall. The imp crashed against the hard plastic and fell, splot, face first into the dish of cat food.
Sitting up, I surveyed the damage. A hasty count later, I pulled out my receipt book and started writing.
“Right, Mrs Arnold. That’s sixty-four—” A twitter under the China cabinet caught my eye. “Sixty-five… pests. My initial estimate may have been a bit short.”
Chapter 3
Oh come on. Like I was actually going to charge her extra. I even threw in the removal of the unconscious imps for nothing. Of course, she had to give me Mr Wibbles’ old carrier to put the overflowing bodies in. All in all, it was a very tidy room I walked out of two hours later. A trifle bare of ornamentation, but demon free, and that’s always a plus.
I shoved the two carriers full of slowly awakening imps into the boot of the Monaro and slammed it shut before they could deafen me. I selected some soothing music and the imps shut up for the trip home. It was heading toward sunset when I pulled into the driveway and clicked the garage door opener. I slid the black car in beside the Moto Guzzi and closed the garage.
Inside, I set the carriers down beside the stereo, tuned them into a classical station and then checked messages.
There were none. No missed calls, either. Not even a text.
It had to be faulty. Why else wouldn’t it record the many, many messages left by all the calls I’d sent to messages while I did an imp-ectomy on Mrs Arnold’s living room?
I went into Mercy’s room and, ignoring the snoring lump in the middle of the bed, rummaged around in the dirty clothes on the floor for her mobile. I rang my mobile on it. I left a message and checked my phone.
“You are a fun and considerate guy. Everyone loves you,” came through loud and clear. The up vibe of my message evened out the depression brought on by the fact nothing was faulty. It was true. No one had called.
I wasn’t about to say business was bad, but, well, it was. Six months since I’d proven my brass balls on the Primal calling itself Heather Veilchen; six months since I’d started—and ended—a battle between two rival vampire clans. Six months since I’d had a decent job. There’d been the odd vampire slaying or two and a brief and dirty plague of sprites up the road at the Sunshine Coast. Of course, the imp population had been on the increase for a while. I didn’t want to get bogged down playing lullabies for piddly little demons though. There was little profit in it, and no need for me to cart Mercy around the countryside. She was getting lazy.
Case in point, she was sleeping in a lot. The sun had set and she was still in bed. Once upon a time, she would have bounded out of bed with a spring in her step and blood lust in her eyes the moment the sun dropped over the horizon. Not so much these days.
I went back into her room. “Mercy, time to get up.”
The lump under the blankets shifted a bit and mumbled something.
“Come on, up and at ‘em, girl. Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go.” Even my best drill sergeant voice got nothing more than a little white hand sneaking me the finger.
I went into the cage and ripped the blanket off the bed. Mercy spluttered and hissed, moving into a crouch with liquid ease. Her dark eyes flashed silver.
Hey, I don’t know about anyone else, but a girl not much over five feet, about as wide as my thigh, with a sweet heart-shaped face and bouncing curls of black hair isn’t that scary. Especially when she’s wearing PJs with My Little Pony on them.
“Whatever. It’s time to get up.” I spun around and walked out of her room.
In the kitchen, I made myself some lunner—think brunch but at the other end of the day. I was finishing off my bowl of cornflakes and grapes when Mercy slouched in. She’d showered and washed her hair. It was plastered down to her scalp and shoulders and dripped water onto her t-shirt (slogan—I’m Dressed and Out of Bed, What More Do You Want?) and track pants.
“Evening.”
She snarled at me and went to the cupboard hiding the blood fridge.
“Grumpy. Maybe you didn’t get enough sleep.”
Mercy had made leaps and bounds forward in learning to act human, but sarcasm was still a lost cause with her. She glared at me and then glared at the locked fridge.
“I’m hungry,” she snapped.
“You ate two nights ago.”
“And now I’m hungry again.”
“Why? You’ve done nothing. I checked your haemoglobin this morning. It was fine then, it’ll be fine now. You don’t need any blood.”
She moaned and threw herself into a chair. “But I’m hungry.”
“You only think you’re hungry.”
Her head hit the heavy, wooden table with such force it jumped. I caught my bowl before it could shatter on the floor.
“Be careful with the furniture, Merce. Please. We can’t afford to replace anything if you break it.”
Her muttering was stifled by the table. I patted her head on the way to the sink.
“Do that a couple more times while shouting ‘I’ll never get it, never’ and I might take some pity on you. Otherwise, earn your keep.”
Dragging herself up with exaggerated weariness, she followed me into the living room. “But there’s nothing to do.”
I showed her the imps. She got down on her hands and knees and peered into the cages. They woke from their music induced stupor and hissed at her. Mercy growled and the cages rocked backwards as the imps all piled up at the end furthest from her.
“They’re really tiny,” she observed.
“Babies. I figure the big one is mum or dad. Maybe both. I think I read somewhere demons are hermaphrodites. Or they reproduce asexually. Either way, they shouldn’t be here. Take them out and drown them.”
In a lot of ways, Mercy was much like a teenager. She was turned when she was twenty-three, but her mental age was younger. In vampire years, she was barely a toddler. At two and bit years turned, she should have still been nothing more than a mouth on legs. Feeding was all that consumed a young vampire’s mind in the early years. Only when they reached the ripe old age of twenty or thirty did they start to slow down and learn a few words. At fifty, they could pass for a sulky adolescent. A lot of wild vampires didn’t make it that far. They were, relatively speaking, pretty fragile until they hit the half century. After that, it was a rapid incline until they could pass for human at a night club, then quickly on to making muster at a cocktail party. Around the 300th year, they could
be in government and no one would know the difference.
It seemed that with a well-planned diet and regimental training program, a vampire could roar through that process in no time at all. I’d stumbled on the process by accident while trying to help Mercy through the early stages of the transformation. The discovery, and Mercy’s subsequent awesomeness compared to other vampires her age, had drawn all sorts of nasty interest. The fight with the Primal Veilchen had been a result of that interest. And it was why I couldn’t quite understand why we hadn’t been inundated with avenging vampires since.
Mercy sighed as if I’d just asked her to lop off a limb and offer it to a hungry dog. She picked up the carriers and trudged outside with them. I followed her as far as the back door and watched as she went to the end of the dock in the backyard. Our house backed onto a salt water canal. The neighbours all had sleek boats at the end of their docks. We had nothing, if you discounted the grouchy vampire on her belly, dunking cat carriers in the water.
Demons don’t like salt. At least, imps don’t. It’s like Holy water for vampires. You dunk an imp in the ocean and you can almost hear the plaintive cries of ‘I’m melting’.
The water boiled around the carriers and thankfully the imps were suffocated before they could start yodelling again. When the water calmed down, Mercy lifted up the carriers, drained them of sludge and brought them back inside.
“Happy?” she demanded as she went past.
“Immensely.”
“Can I eat now?”
I went and got her a bag of O pos and she took it into her room. Moments later, I could hear the opening of ‘Thor’. Since Mercy had discovered Chris Hemsworth, Will Smith hardly got a look in.
Retreating to the office, I called Roberts.
“Hey,” he answered. “I was about to call you.”
“Yeah? Got a job for me?”
Night Call (Book 2): Demon Dei Page 2
