Graves Pact (Landon Graves Book 1)

by Matthew Stinson

  I just needed a spark.

  Reaching into my pocket casually, I pulled out my Zippo and started the small flame. The creature snarled and acidic saliva sprayed from its mouth. Its many dark eyes stared at the fire that I drew away from the lighter. Like some cheap illusion, it danced to life in my hand, curling into a blood-red globe that hovered over my palm. The demon-human hybrid hesitated. I might have been afraid, but it was scared too.

  It should have been.

  Interpretations of Hell often mentioned the fire. As a way to inflict pain, what was better than a burn? But that wasn’t quite right. Hellfire was different. Special. It only burned the guilty and sinful, making it the perfect tool to torture those in Hell. The average person could endure days of exposure, the minor weight of trivial transgressions amounting to little more than a bad sunburn.

  The Fallen and the Exiled… they were pure evil, sin incarnate, condensed wrongness. While devils had developed a resistance, demons might as well have been made of gasoline. The dark part of my psyche, the piece that I told myself got implanted when I signed the pact, wanted to watch this monster burn.

  I knew the demon’s host would bear the brunt of any physical harm done to the creature, but the crimson Ignis Inferni should have left the possessed individual relatively unharmed—

  assuming he wasn’t such a bad guy. With that little floating ball of fire, we both knew the score. I was just as dangerous to it as it was to me.

  “Did you think I’d lie down and die just because you got ugly?” I asked with false bravado. This was the first of the Exiled I’d ever faced. I hoped that bluster and confidence would keep it from fully committing to its attack.

  It was a tactic I picked up from watching Discovery Channel shows about predators. You didn’t show fear. You didn’t show your back. You made yourself seem bigger than you were. And if you were human, you used fire.

  The flames licked my fingers as I hurled the ball of hellfire at the demon with the speed and accuracy I developed during my baseball-playing days. It stung my hand, reminding me that I wasn’t immune to the stuff. For a warlock, I had a relatively clean slate, but the pain reminded me how fine a line I walked. I was only a few years away from a world of red fire.

  With viperfish speed, the demon-possessed man dropped to his clawed hands and feet. The molten orb splashed harmlessly against the brick wall behind him as he sprang forward. I struck the Zippo with a thumb.

  It didn’t light.

  My pact-borne confidence slipped. I’d never faced a demon before, not even a watered-down one possessing a human like my perp. I assumed from the studying I’d done that it would have been a simple matter. Hit it with hellfire. Easy right?

  I guessed not.

  He closed fast and I found myself taking a step back, the predatory instincts screaming derision at the display of weakness. It had slashing claws and gruesome fangs—it was the predator, not me. I struck the Zippo again and the flame danced up. I only had time to convert it into a golf ball sized glob of hellfire.

  He lunged at me, maw gaping wide to tear into my throat. I jabbed the unholy flames right in his face, obscuring his vision and saving my ass. I jumped back, but one thrashing claw still managed to shred my coat and shirt across the chest. I landed hard on my back and watched the torturous hellfire climb up the man-demon’s face.

  He slapped his palms to his many eyes in a vain attempt to quell the flames, but he couldn’t. The fire burned relentlessly. He staggered back several steps, his head fully engulfed in scarlet.

  “I’ll allow you live for now,” he roared, his voice inhuman and detached from the anguish his body suffered. “Seek me out at your peril, thrall of the Fallen!”

  The man sagged and reverted to a wholly human form in a few seconds. I couldn’t believe my eyes. I knew malign spirits could control of a body. From my experience, I even knew they could alter physiology, but I never knew they could change it so drastically.

  How did that demon get on your back, buddy?

  The hellfire sputtered out leaving a mostly bald young man staring at me with bewilderment. I considered trying to talk him down, but for all I knew, he was a willing participant in the possession. I went for my gun instead.

  The man saw me move and bolted. I shouted after him, throwing in a little of the Voice. He ignored me or simply couldn’t hear my command. I jumped to my feet and pursued, but the guy must have been a track star. I lost him around the first corner.

  Chapter Nine

  Catching my breath as I returned to my car, I tried to get a handle on what had just happened. The perp’s escape pissed me off, distracting me from the useful critical thinking investigators thrived on. If I’d learned anything from that night, it was that I was out of shape. I could’ve ended the threat right there, case closed, bad guy caught.

  I muttered a string of curses and put my mind to more constructive endeavors. The guy had been watching me. My perp tracked me down… only minutes after I’d shown up at James’ apartment. He had to be close by. I wasn’t sure if the reason mattered, but I filed it away along with as much of a description as I could put together.

  My hands started shaking as I unlocked my car door.

  He thought he could just tear me apart. I wondered why he didn’t use magic; maybe arrogance, maybe my hellfire made him think twice. Chanting and waving his hands around would’ve made him an easy target. That was what active magic users did, right? My shallow knowledge of magic struck again.

  As I got in my Buick, the sum of all my scrapes and bruises began to take its toll. I was ready to pass out. With my specialty in forensic accounting, I didn’t see much action. My training was supposed to prepare me for it—the mundane parts at least—but reality had a way of dashing expectations.

  My hands shook until I gripped the steering wheel firmly. I told myself it was the aftereffects of adrenaline. Then the dull throbbing started in my right hand.

  Thanks to the hellfire, it felt like I’d slapped a hot skillet. At least the pain helped me keep my eyes open. The three cuts across my chest itched fiercely and I barely kept from scratching at the wounds. I turned up the music so I didn’t have to hear myself wheezing through my painfully swollen nose.

  I headed home for a long overdue night of sleep. On the way, I mulled over the details again and again. I wasn’t just dealing with some wannabe wizard. One of the Exiled had possessed a man to carry out its will. It wanted to open up a Gate for all its pals in the Outworld. The come-down from the encounter with the demon left me unsettled. I was lucky to be alive. I should have got him!

  I tried to find the silver lining by telling myself that I had a lot more to work with in regard to identifying the perp. I could give a reasonably accurate physical description. He was white, five foot eight to ten, scrawny, and missing the majority of his coal black hair thanks to my hellfire.

  Because of James, I had six digits of a phone number, narrowing down to ten possible locations where the demon-possessed man had loitered in order to receive reports from the late James. It could lead to a home address, though I wasn’t about to hold my breath on that. Anyone smart enough to make use of patsies wouldn’t have slipped up that badly.

  I kept coming back to James Thompson, the image of a flaring rune melting through his head like a road flare. Why had the demon gone through the trouble of beguiling him? I could only hope that the demon’s host resisted its influence, otherwise the creature would be right back in charge of things. At least I’d narrowed the creature’s focus onto me.

  Hadn’t I?

  He had someone watching the crime scene. Is the demon concerned about interference from the authorities? From the FBI?

  By the time I got home, dawn was only a few hours away. I gave up on the prospect of rest and spent the remainder of the night making two sets of notes. One was for the official report. It contained a bunch of bullshit reasons for the bizarre things the case brought to light. I used words like “questionable mental state”, “heavy dru
g use”, and “paranoid delusions” when I fleshed out the profile of the perp.

  The second copy detailed the actual facts, the ones no normal person would believe. My perp had gotten himself hijacked by one of the Exiled. He lacked the willpower to keep the entity from controlling his every action. The man in the grip of that demon couldn’t be too bad of an individual. My hellfire had stopped charring him as soon as the demon lapsed back inside.

  Writing it down cleared up a lot of the jumbled theories. I refocused and started fresh, a piping hot cup of coffee helping immensely. When did the possession first happen? That question spawned half a dozen new hypotheses.

  Mentally, I returned to the crime scene. I circled the note. If the first spell—the Gate—succeeded, then how did the guy become a vessel? The demon would’ve had a physical form. The spell cast at the Lowry dorms must have failed, otherwise there’d be demons running around and the damned End Times would be upon us all. The image of the tar shadow splayed against the back wall of the bedroom sprang to mind. What the hell was that?

  More happened that night than I could know—for the time being. I’d have to come back to that when I had more information. Just need to figure out where to get it…

  Scanning my flimsy report, I relented. It was as good as I could do. Still in my torn, bloody, grungy clothes, I made it to my bed and slept like the dead for a solid six hours.

  Chapter Ten

  Getting what amounted to a decent night’s sleep to me, I crawled out of bed. I finally treated the cuts on my chest with some peroxide, Neosporin, and gauze. The swollen red skin was tender to the touch. I should’ve done something about it the night before, but I relied on another of my warlock perks.

  I healed more quickly than a normal human. Not by much, but the bruises under my eyes from where James decked me already looked days old. I could even stand to touch my nose. I hadn’t been sick longer than a day since I signed the pact.

  I got dressed in the second of the three suits I owned. Heating up a quick breakfast from a box in the microwave, I was out of my house in minutes with a scalding hot pseudo-food sandwich between my teeth. I couldn’t stay idle with all that had happened in the past two days. Sitting in my empty house wouldn’t help my mood either.

  My frustrations were all pent up. I was only human—mostly. I got overwhelmed at times. For the last five years, I’d tried to keep my head down. The Gate case was the most I’d dealt with the occult in two years. I couldn’t wait until it was over, couldn’t wait to get back to what passed for normal in my life.

  Before the whole pact thing happened, I had been sort of a soft atheist. Once the truth of my situation settled in, I had realized that if devils existed, some kind of god must also exist. I wasn’t sold on any particular brand, but I couldn’t deny it any longer. That left me in a pretty low place. At the time, I had my wife to get me through it, though our marriage fell apart pretty quickly thereafter.

  It had been a rough way of doing it, but I guess I’d found belief. Not faith per se, since I have actual direct knowledge of the supernatural. But I believed in a world beyond what I could perceive.

  My ex-wife had a hard time with the changes. My moods would swing wildly and I couldn’t keep a handle on things with Alastor’s influence always whispering in my mind. She’d told me to go to a therapist. What could a person with a scientific foundation have done for someone like me? I couldn’t very well tell a psychiatrist that I’d made a pact with a devil, so I sought out someone to talk to, someone who wouldn’t think I was insane.

  Father Miller was the best I could do.

  “You’re crazy,” he said after I finished recounting the events of my weekend. “I swear to the Almighty, I worry about the day someone overhears us. A possession? You know, even the priesthood has trouble believing stories about those.”

  Five foot nine with dark brown hair graying at his temples, Father Miller looked like an average guy. He ran a soup kitchen and coached little league. He managed every flavor of Alcoholics Anonymous the city had to offer. Father Miller was one of those guys who was so good, you suspected him of hiding something—until you got to know him.

  We sat on the bus stop bench outside the Cathedral Basilica of the Immaculate Conception. Not the most private place, but it was convenient for both of us. I couldn’t physically enter the church as I’d discovered shortly after signing my pact. That divine energy was how I knew that Mendoza was Chosen on sight.

  “You can always say ‘no’ to meeting with me.”

  Odd as it was, I was sure I felt Alastor’s influence the least when I was around the priest. It was a nice reprieve. I hoped he wouldn’t take me up on the way out I was giving him.

  “And leave the lamb lost among the wolves?” he scoffed jovially. More seriously, he added, “What will you do now?”

  I blew out a long breath. “I’ve got to stop this guy. It’s my job. It’s the right thing to do. And if it got serious enough, Alastor might even compel me.”

  Miller shook his head.

  “What?”

  “Why would your… patron… care one way or another?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know the specifics, but the Fallen are all about collecting souls. I don’t know what they do with them. Maybe souls are a currency or a power source. Whatever the answer, the Fallen are greedy for them and they hate sharing.”

  Father Miller stared at me for a moment as if he almost believed me. Then he smiled and the moment was gone. “Demons and devils. Always fighting each other. The nature of evil. It’s so ridiculous. Pointless. Scrambling for power just to be brought down. It’s so much easier to be good.”

  “Yeah, that’s for damn sure. Sorry. Thanks for listening. I need to get back to it.”

  “Alright. Good luck. Go with God. Have faith that He will see you through this.”

  I wished it was true, but I’d signed the pact. No way out of it. I’d committed the greatest blasphemy. I’d sold my eternity. If I’d known—truly known—what was at stake… Ah, I could have beaten myself up all day. It got me nowhere.

  “Thanks Father, but I got myself into this. I think God’s going to let me lie in the bed I’ve made. It’s up to me to figure things out.”

  He shrugged. “Don’t overcomplicate things.”

  I bid him a good afternoon and found my car, thinking over what he’d said. Swinging by a Burger King and Walmart, I got home at a decent hour. It was times like these I wish I had cable, but with a portion of my wages disappearing into Alastor’s web of bank accounts, I couldn’t afford too many luxuries. Or any. I’d never finish my damned basement.

  Sitting idly in my living room for about ten minutes, I got the itch. I hadn’t done enough. I didn’t know enough. I’d written my reports, analyzed the few facts I had, and I’d exhausted my mind thinking through a dozen theories. What else could I do?

  I noticed one of the demonology books I’d just bought from Harkin. The old, leather-bound tome documented various encounters with demons during the late medieval period in Europe. Those maniacs would summon various kinds of demons to learn the arcane secrets of the cosmos, answers to any question they thought to pose.

  The time I’d spent in the Stanton’s store the previous evening really helped me put some pieces together. I grabbed my new tome and flipped through the ancient text. Most widely available books of demonology were works of calculated misinformation meant to waste a would-be wizard’s time or to get them killed. One of the first things I’d learned was how to distinguish ancient bullshit from relevant historical documents. That was part of the reason I’d spent so much time at the Stanton’s. Good stuff there.

  Actual grimoires were rare and getting rarer all the time. Supernatural beings didn’t like books that provided formulae on how to trap, compel, and enslave them. Being in a pact, I related wholeheartedly.

  I stared at the text of the thick book for a solid minute. Could I do it? Should I? What could I learn by summoning one of the Exiled, a being of vast years
, immeasurable power, and unfathomable evil? Was I no better than those maniacs in medieval times?

  “Oh. Oh no. This is a bad idea.”

  I got up anyway.

  A few minutes later, I was in my basement opening up the half dozen books I’d need to reference for the summoning. I’d gotten a legitimate copy of the Lesser Key of Solomon early in my career as a warlock. Old Solomon had been quite the heavy hitter back in his day and his legacy still stood for those in mystical circles. Getting my own copy was another reason I hadn’t finished the basement.

  Contrary to the mainstream versions of the Lesser Key, the ranks listed within genuine copies were far more accurate. Not to discredit King Solomon, but the most powerful demon he’d ever summoned could at best go toe-to-toe with Alastor. I wasn’t complaining. A neophyte like me needed all the breaks I could get.

  I recalled some of the research I did at Stanton’s Rare Books and cross-referenced my own tomes. Settling on a demon named Ipos, I got to work setting up a summoning circle. A mental litany of reasons why it was a bad idea drifted through my head, which I unwisely ignored.

  Following the instructions precisely, I gathered iron filings, a brass chain, and a plastic condiment bottle of goat’s blood. I took my time. Not only was I conjuring one of the Exiled, I was going to force it to speak the truth to me. It wouldn’t be happy about it.

  Running the chain in a Seal of Solomon pattern, I created the inner barrier. An hour passed as I drew arcane runes and symbols. In the center of the summoning circle, I placed a small mound of grave soil and formed a depression on top. The handful of ice I placed would melt slowly, keeping it moist while I finished the rest of the sigils. I arranged animal bones and candles made from fat in vaguely geometric patterns.

  It was nearly nine o’clock when I finished backing up by backup circles. I was low on supplies and it would be a few weeks before I could afford to restock, but better for my bank account to bleed than me. I could always earn more money. I just had to survive pissing off one of the Exiled. I make such good life decisions.