Kiri stirred in her sleep, then turned on her side. Her hands searched for something, finally being satisfied by a pillow. She held it tight and her face softened.
Damn, she might have someone at home waiting for her. I’d have to have Zarmina monitor the police radio. If she came up a missing person, I’d have to find a new location for the compound. I didn’t want to move, especially so close to the end.
I sighed and realized I needed to get ready to hunt. My chest burned from acid backing up my throat. I just wanted to stay here, but Kiyoshi was a good man and he’d take care of her.
“Sleep well, Kiri,” I whispered in her ear.
I headed to my room to gear up. Damn it, why hadn’t I thought of that before? Maybe because I was looking at her backside too much? Jesus. She could have a man at home. Or a woman from what they tell me it was like out there. She did cling to the pillow, as if she was used to someone being there.
I put my blades in place. Claustranima sheathed across my chest. The machete slid into a holster on my back. I had told Kiyoshi the holster’s location made it possible for people to see the handle, but he just told me not to let people see me. I could be stealth, but not all the time. Heck, Kiri saw me, didn’t she?
Going down the stairs I saw D and Kiyoshi in their normal embrace before fighting, him holding her close and whispering in her ear. I always hated to break that up, almost as much as I hated to see it.
Frick and Frack bumped me as they came down the stairs.
“Hey, Nye, how’s it hangin’, my brotha,” Frick said, givin’ me a pound.
That’s what he called it. I was still figuring it out, but I knew I needed to make a fist; he usually took care of me from there.
“Ahhh, look at the lovebirds,” Frack said, tossing a small foam ball he always seemed to have. It pegged Kiyoshi right on the side of the face.
“Gentlemen, if I may call you that, you are not going to be long in this place if you continue the juvenile behavior.”
“Lighten up, errand boy,” Frick said, snatching Frack’s ball and tossing it back to him.
“Yeah, come on, Kiyoshi…” Lars said from the top of the stairs. His heavy footsteps thumped as he came down. “No reason to damn your soul to Hell for killin’ these dotards.”
“What’d he just call us?” Frick asked.
“I don’t know, but it could’na been good,” Frack grumbled.
They were always annoyed for being treated like children, but how else would you treat boys who hadn’t even made it to their twenty-first birthday? That’s even adding the nine months they’d been here.
“Hey, Erik the Red, what’dya call me?”
Lars let out a long sigh, then looked at me. I leaned against the banister and crossed my arms. All I could do was shake my head.
“And they wonder why we don’t fight with them,” Lars said.
“That’s ’cuz ya’ll couldn’t keep up, grandpa,” Frick said, smiling wide and exchanging slaps and pounds with Frack.
“Actually, it’s because I like workin’ with someone more my size, midget,” I said, patting Frick on the head as if he were a child. I then walked toward Dilana and tapped her shoulder.
“You two are by the college’s old field house,” Kiyoshi ordered, then looked at Lars. “Where’s Schmitty?”
“I’m here. I’m here. No need to worry.”
Schmitty came out from the billiard room. I could smell the alcohol from across the room. Schmitty’s blond hair was always shaved in a high and tight. His blue eyes could stand out in a dark room.
“Good luck, Lars, we’re out,” I ducked through the portal with D. “How does Lars handle Schmitty?”
“Kiyoshi always assigns him the least likely spot when Schmitty’s drunk. We gotta survive somehow.”
“Let me guess, we’re number one,” I said, straddling my bike and strapping on my helmet.
“Only ’cause I’m wilder in bed when I kill something.”
“I’m on a need-to-know basis, D. That was on my never-needed-to-know list. Ever!”
She smiled, slammed her truck door, and peeled out. Racing back on Highway 34 toward town, I couldn’t help but wonder how Kiyoshi could jeopardize Dilana like that? He put us in the most dangerous locations just so he could keep Lars and Schmitty safe. I could never do that to someone I loved, and he did genuinely love her. He’d have to, to give up his whole existence to be with her. I couldn’t imagine a bigger sacrifice.
D’s truck slowed as she parked beside the railroad tracks. There was a gravel parking lot there, but parking under all of those lights, the openness and visibility made me nervous. It made D feel more comfortable, like there was nothin’ to hide from, but heck she was a beautiful, white girl. What was the worst that could happen? A few drunk, college guys could go after her, only to have their butts kicked. I pulled my Chief into the bushes by the science building.
A dormitory had been built on the once-open field by the science building so I snuck along the wall. The lower windows made me nervous, but that’s where jumping always came in handy.
“Nye,” Dilana whispered as I approached the corner of the building. Her hands motioned up, down, left. Okay, I was clear. I hunched over and ran beside her. The crickets were going crazy tonight. Their song was beyond irritating.
“So, D, what’s Kiyoshi think we’ve got?” Our voices stayed low as we crouched between the facilities building and the old field house.
“He thinks it’s going to use the pool.”
“Why aren’t we on Clay Street? This one’s probably not even filled. Do they even use this building anymore?” I sat against the old, rust colored bricks.
“Haven’t you noticed we’re recycling places?”
“It’s been ten years at least since they used it. I remember the tracker left the water running and it flooded the football offices.”
Dilana settled down too. We never just sat, we were always so poised, but I think she realized I was right. This was a long shot.
“You weren’t even here. How does Kiyoshi even know about that?”
“Kiyoshi tracks every emersion.”
“At all twelve compounds? Nobody does that.”
“Kiyoshi started doing it around eighteen-fifty. You know when Morse code was just getting its footing,” D said, picking at a patch of clover on the ground. “He tells me things.”
“Like what?”
“Theories. He’s really smart, you know. Not like me at all, but I guess that’s why he’s my other half. He balances me.”
“D, you’re smart. Ya are. Ya always be pullin’ me outta crap piles.”
“Like this afternoon. I’m sorry, Nye, that I got you involved. You know I can take over for you. It’s my fault.”
“No,” I said, maybe a little too quickly.
Holy crap. I tapped D’s leg and pointed. Coming around the administration building was a tall slender female I’d seen too many times. Her hair was the color of fire, pulled up tight to her head in a bun. She was dressed in a leather cat suit she always wore. It clung to her firm body as if it had been painted on. She was definitely heading toward our building. Score one for Kiyoshi.
D’s body stiffened as she reached for her crossbow. Without saying a word, we seemed to know what the other was thinking. As much as we wanted this tracker, we wanted to get the bantling first. The tracker could do more damage in the long run, but a loose bantling could bring a fire storm of problems.
She came down the building’s marble steps and crossed the street to the front of the old field house. Her nose stuck up in the air; she breathed deeply. Her eyes closed, and she hummed. The Deumos walked up the steps to the glass doors, tapped twice, then flipped off the top stair to land on the lawn. Walking beside the field house’s street side she went out of our view. It was a risk not keeping the tracker in sight, but her scent was starting to leave a trail. It was the smell of rotten eggs. Talk about a turn off.
We were right by the garden-level windows
to the old swimming pool and peering inside. The building was built in the thirties and although it probably was cutting-edge then, now the pool seemed confined. I couldn’t help but feel something was amiss.
It was barely after twelve and this tracker had already found the location. The pool was dry. Maybe that was why the tracker came here instead of to the city’s pool, which was probably full of water. The last time the tracker had to run the water to help the bantling emerge. Must be arriving as a fish-like creature.
The garden-level window creaked as the tracker entered from the far side of the building and walked around the pool. Her hands reached for the valve. Brown water gurgled, sputtered, then gushed into the pool and finally turned clear.
The tracker’s humming grew louder and started to sound like a lullaby. Something slithered out of the pipe—a large-eel shaped bantling.
“Will you send the message to the others?” I asked as Dilana rolled her eyes. She pulled out her cellular phone and used her thumbs to send a request for backup. I still didn’t understand why I was even given a phone. I didn’t know how to use it and wasn’t interested in learning, although it did come in useful at times like this.
“Nye, get me in there quick and this night will be a snap. As soon as you open the window, I’ll go first to distract her and you can kill the bantling.”
“D, promise me you won’t go crazy until I get in there.”
“Of course,” she replied sarcastically.
The tracker was watching the bantling taking laps around the pool. Its size increased as each second passed. Soon it’d have legs and arms. I needed to get in there immediately.
“On my mark,” I counted in my head. One. Two. “Now.”
The window sprung open and D dove head first, landing in a perfect tuck and roll on the deck of the pool. The tracker immediately jumped to attention and snarled. Dilana and the tracker were on opposite decks, both pacing, each trying to figure out the best way to attack. The water was probably only two feet high. They could cut the difference and meet in the middle, but the tracker knew her bantling would suffer from that.
I arrived with a thud. The combination of my heavy boots and the cavernous room caused my landing to echo off the walls. The tracker’s snarl became a growl. She jumped in the pool to protect her bantling.
D and I followed suit. The bantling stopped circling the pool and started to weave in and out of the tracker’s legs.
“So, Dark One, we meet once more,” the tracker snarled.
“We could stop these meetings if you’d just let me kill you,” I suggested. It was an empty threat, but she didn’t need to know that. D had long ago accepted my inability to hit a female. It was probably why the demons used females, but who was I to say.
“Oh, but what fun would that be?”
“I’m sure I’d find pleasure in it, that is unless you want to take me home so I can meet your Yahweh.”
“You wish I’d take you home,” she sneered, the smile staying on her lips. “You might enjoy being with women that can please a man.”
“No thanks. I’ll keep my balls attached, unlike your gelding of a Yahweh.”
Abandoning her bantling, the tracker dove at me. I have found the trackers become quite attached to their leader. It overrides their insane maternal drive they use to locate and nurse their young.
I pivoted as she flew by me, hitting the side of the pool. She turned and I grabbed her shoulders, dug my fingers into what little flesh she had. A howl came from her lips, but I just held tighter. She twisted in my arms, so I spun her around into a headlock. With one hand I tried to reach for my claustranima, but couldn’t. Then I tried for any weapon, coming up empty again. The Deumos’ head bucked and she bent at her waist. A vain attempt to flip me over, I assumed.
D, who stood at the ready with her claustranima, dove for the bantling and cut off its head. The flash of light from the bantling’s vaporization created a rainbow light show in the water. Then the pool filled with the ash from the eel. For a split second, I wondered what the school was going to do when they found a nasty pool smelling of rotten eggs with black ash floating in it. But my attention needed to get back to the tracker who was trying her best to bite me.
“Hey now, sweetie, not until you bring me home to meet your daddy. I need to ask his permission first.”
Her elbow hit my ribs and I heard a crack. The pain shooting up my side caused me to release her, but I quickly grabbed with my left hand. I held tightly to her shoulder, then flipped her so we were facing each other. I kept her at arm’s length as she swiped at me with no effect. I was starting to feel sorry for the little lady, until her foot made contact with my nut sack and I dropped into the pool. My lungs failed to work and my knees hit the hard tile. The water was warm, but on denim it felt slimy like a stagnant pond. I did my best to keep my head above water to avoid swallowing the bantling bits. The tracker’s pointed black boot now hit the side of my face.
“Fuuuuuuckkkkkkk!” I yelped as I fell into the water.
My ear felt the wetness first and I held my breath. The water covered my face before I could push myself back up.
“Language,” I heard Dilana mock.
“You witch,” I rose from the water, my fist aimed right for the Deumos face, when she vanished and the power of my swing brought me down face first into the water.
“Nye, quit playin’. If you wanna pool, Yosh’ll put one in for you,” D said, catching the back of my coat and pulling me up.
“You couldn’t help?”
“I killed the bantling, didn’t I?”
“It was like two seconds old and you were supposed to let me do it.”
“She was going to kill you. The fastest way to get rid of a Deumos is to kill her baby. I can’t help that if you don’t hold on to them they vanish.”
“Did I look like I couldn’t handle myself?”
“Yes,” she said with all seriousness. “Nye, she had you down.”
D and I walked to the ladder and pulled ourselves out of the pool.
My gut ached from the attack on my manhood. I limped to the wall and tried to compose myself. The window was at least ten feet from the deck, but I knew neither locker room had windows. Walking out the front door wasn’t an option either.
D walked to the water valve.
“You wanna leave the water goin’ again?”
“I would, but school’s not even in session.”
“I s’pose.”
Dilana turned off the water and looked at me.
I rubbed my side, only to have the pain shoot back up again.
“Screw me.”
“Tempting…but no.”
“My side. I think the Deumos cracked a rib.”
Dilana came over and placed a few fingers on my side. I winced again in pain.
“Suck it up. I don’t feel any deformation. I think she just bruised it.”
“I heard a crack.”
“I heard a crack,” Dilana repeated in a whiny voice.
“Bite me.”
“You know, it’s been a little too easy lately.”
“I’m drenched.”
“So? Think about it. That tracker barely put up a fight. It’s like twelve thirty and we’re done.”
“Ya know my balls would tell a different story. Be happy and don’t question.”
“Eleven hours ago you were getting the ‘Hell’s Mouth is gonna close tingle’, what changed?”
I just wanted to get back to Kiri and the thought that I could before one o’clock was enough for me.
“You killed something. Doesn’t that mean some freaky sex thing for Kiyoshi?”
“I will reward my prodigy of an other appropriately, but that doesn’t change the facts.”
“Well, you call him ’cause my cell is now dead,” I said as I pulled the phone out of my pocket. Water dripped out of it onto my already soaked boots.
I boosted Dilana up to the window, then jumped up and through it after her. Maybe D was right,
I just bruised my rib. Dilana started to close the window.
“Leave it open. Maybe they’ll think some teenagers did it.”
“I am a teenager,” D giggled.
Dilana was barely eighteen when she was frozen. A bad winter claimed her husband and two children. After the second child died she decided she was going to die on her terms. Gabriel’s deal seemed like a Godsend and she fought bravely so when she finally ascended to Heaven she’d see her family again.
But one night when hunting, a bantling emerged and they chased it for over an hour. When they caught it, her heart stopped. It was her husband. He tried to kill her, but she wasn’t the little girl he had married. Before she cut off his head, she asked how he ended up in Hell. He replied she was one of many in his life. He took the girls and boys he wanted and did unspeakable things to them.
Heartbroken, she was reassigned. Completely fell apart. Got her partner killed. Even turned to the bottle. Kiyoshi found her in the gutter. She never touched another drop after that. At least, that was the story she told me.
“I always knew the most deadly creature on the planet was a teenage girl.”
“Don’t you forget it,” D said as she pulled her knife and held it at my chest. “Oh my love,” She cooed into the phone and turned to walk toward her truck. “Will you call them all back in, for I’ve slain the beast, while Nye was on his knees worshiping at my feet.”
I picked up a pinecone and hit D in the back of the head.
“Ya coulda hit her for me,” I growled.
“You could’ve hit her. I swear your dainty southern bullshit about beaten’ a woman. Seriously, Deumos aren’t women!”
Gathering myself I breathed in deep only to feel a tight pinch on my rib. What the hell? Those demons were bulking up to be able to hit that hard. The tingle returned by the time I reached my bike and I scanned the quiet residential area surrounding the campus. Tall shrubs creating a border between yards had an eerie shadow next to it.
Reaching for my claustranima I saw a second Deumos standing in the shadow. As soon as my knife was unsheathed I swore I heard her whisper next time, then vanish.
* * * *
Damarion
Candles flew across the room as I stormed out of the basement.
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