Deadtown d-3

by Nancy Holzner

  “What about the other kinds, the”—Hagopian consulted her notebook—“the Eidolons and the Drudes?” Her voice had diminished to a croak. Costello shot her a questioning look, but her eyes were fixed on me.

  “Eidolons attack from the inside,” I answered, “like you’ve got some huge, venomous parasite gnawing on your bones. Guilt brought to life. Some victims can see their Eidolons; others just feel unbearable agony. Drudes are unpredictable, like dreams, and they’re the source of most nightmares. If you’re plagued by horrible dreams, swarming with everything you fear, you’ve got a Drude infestation.” I glanced at Detective Hagopian, who’d closed her eyes and was breathing shallowly through her mouth. Yep. Drude victim for sure. I turned back to Costello. “Demon attacks are terrifying and painful. Hell on earth. But they’re not fatal. When a victim dies, that person’s demons cease to exist. That’s why demons don’t kill.”

  They chewed on that for a moment, and I had a thought. “It’s not uncommon for demon victims to commit suicide. Could George have—?” Even as I asked the question, I wondered why Funderburk would kill himself. He’d been in such a terrific, disco-dancing mood.

  Costello shook his head. “He was . . .” He shuddered. “Cooked. From the inside out. The body looked perfectly normal, even felt cold to the touch like you’d expect in a corpse. But when the paramedics lifted the victim onto the gurney, his mouth fell open. A jet of steam shot out and scalded one of the EMTs. The EMT ended up in the burn unit.” Oh God, I was thinking. This can’t be. Costello didn’t see the expression on my face, because he kept on talking. “Ice-cold skin but, well, boiling inside.”

  The roaring in my ears drowned out his voice, and my vision shrank to a pinprick. Something squeezed all the air out of me, and I couldn’t catch a breath. I closed my eyes and pushed everything away: the detectives, George Funderburk, this whole goddamn conversation. No, I thought. No. Not here. Not that.

  A hand rubbed my back, and something pressed against my lips. A voice drifted down from the ceiling. “Vicky? Are you all right? Do you want to stop?”

  I opened my eyes to see Kane’s face hovering inches from my own. He was trying to get me to take a sip of water. “Drink this.”

  He was too close. They all were. I couldn’t breathe. Damn it, I wanted them all away from me. My arm tingled. It was a warning. I tried to push down the feeling, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t. The tingle intensified to a burn, the heat racing through my veins. And then it hit me like a tsunami—the rage. Pure, white-hot rage. I wanted to crush the cup Kane held to my lips. I wanted to tear apart the goddamn room and everything in it. I wanted to pound and kick those detectives, both of them, and even Kane, over and over, until they were nothing but a bloody pulp on the floor. Smash everything—just smash it. My fists clenched so hard that my nails cut into my palms, drawing blood.

  The sharpness of the pain brought me back a little. I remembered who I was—me, Vicky. I remembered that the others in this room weren’t enemies, weren’t ants to be crushed and flicked away. No. Kane—I knew Kane. Those cops—just humans trying to understand a death. No more deaths, I chanted mentally, no more deaths. And I fought down the urge to destroy; it was like trying to tame a gale-force wind into a gentle breeze. How easy, how satisfying it would be to slaughter them all. No. I had to fight it. Inch by inch, I did. Inch by inch. The burning subsided; drew back gradually until my arm was my own again.

  “I’m okay.” I pushed the cup away, gently, then thought better of it. Putting both my hands around Kane’s to keep the cup from shaking, I took a deep swallow. The water soothed me, and I drank it all.

  When I spoke again, my voice was clear and steady. That surprised me, because I was still quaking inside. “I was wrong, Detective Costello. From what you describe, a demon did murder George Funderburk.”

  “But you said demons don’t kill.”

  “Most don’t. But we’re not talking about an ordinary demon.” I hesitated, not wanting to say the words, as if saying them would make it real. But it was real already. Whatever I might wish for, it was real. “George died of a Hellion attack.”

  Hellion. As I said the word, a tingle teased my arm. I ignored it.

  “Oh, Vicky,” Kane murmured, still rubbing my back. “I’m so sorry.”

  The detectives glanced at each other. Hagopian, her face drained of color, looked bewildered and scared. “What’s a Hellion?”

  “It’s a demon, but nothing like the kind I was telling you about.” I wished I had another cup of water. “Those are personal demons. If you want to get technical, they’re of the genus Inimicus. Hellions are a different class altogether, genus Eversio. They exist to destroy. Usually, they don’t bother with individuals—they’re a lot more interested in wreaking havoc in society. Whenever something really nasty happens, you can bet Hellions are there.”

  “Like what?”

  “Earthquakes, wars, genocide. Anything that causes massive suffering and destruction.”

  “Like the plague.” This came from Hagopian.

  “Yes. Events like that attract Hellions by the legion.”

  Kane cut in. “Right after the plague, when we realized Hellions were massing, the witches of Boston put up a shield to keep them out.”

  “So how did a Hellion get to Funderburk?”

  “The shield protects Boston itself. It forms a circle that reaches as far as Somerville, Cambridge, Brookline, Dor chester, and the harbor,” Kane said, drawing a circle in the air. “The larger the area, the weaker the shield. Besides, the plague was localized in town.”

  “In a legion, Hellions are a terrifying destructive force. Individually, though, they’re usually not tormenters,” I said. “Instead, they find somebody with a crack in their moral armor, somebody who can be tempted by evil. They incite. They whisper, insinuate, nudge.”

  Costello looked confused. “So you’re saying that a demon, a Hellion, talked somebody into killing Funderburk? But—the way he died . . .”

  “No. I wasn’t quite finished. Even though they’re inciters, Hellions are also violent themselves. Brutally so. Sometimes a sorcerer will try to bind a Hellion into service.”

  “Bind it?”

  “It’s a dangerous thing to do. A powerful sorcerer can force a Hellion to do his bidding. But the Hellion doesn’t like it one bit. A bound Hellion is surly, rebellious, and difficult to control. It’ll kill its master if it gets the chance. But if you can keep it under your thumb, a Hellion in bondage is a powerful weapon.”

  “Let me get this straight. Somebody, some sorcerer, called up a Hellion and used it to kill Funderburk.”

  I nodded.

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I think I do.” Kane patted my back and moved to the front of the room. “It’s the election.”

  We all turned to him. Detective Hagopian spoke. “The victim wasn’t involved in politics. He sold used cars.”

  “That’s the point,” Kane looked angry. “Just a normal citizen. An ordinary, law-abiding citizen killed by the monsters.”

  “Not monsters,” I said, surprised to hear Kane use that word, “a Hellion.”

  He shrugged. “What’s the difference?”

  “PAs have independent existence. Demons are conjured entities—”

  “You know that. I know that. Even the good detectives here know that now. But the average voter has no clue. To them, anything that isn’t human is a monster. They’re not going to waste time on fine distinctions. When this hits the news . . .” Kane turned to Detective Costello. “Who called the police?”

  Hagopian answered. “His neighbors, reporting loud noises from his house. They described the sound as”—she flipped back a few pages in her notebook—“ ‘repeated banging, like hammering.’ Officers arrived at oh-seven-twenty. The front door was open, so they went in. They found the victim in his bedroom. There was no sign of a struggle. The body was tangled in the sheets, nothing more.”

  “I locked it,” I s
aid. Everyone looked at me. “The front door. I always double-check that all doors are locked when I leave.” I could see myself watching Tina skip to the Jag, then testing the lock. I held the picture in my mind. Partly to be sure I was right, but mostly to hold back the memory of the last time I’d seen a Hellion victim.

  “Did the neighbors talk to the press?” Kane asked.

  “How would I know that?” Hagopian asked. “No reporters have called for a statement. That I know of, anyway.”

  “What about the victim’s family? Are they likely to run screaming to the press?”

  Hagopian shrugged. “They think he had a heart attack. The autopsy won’t contradict that for several days, anyway.”

  Kane paced in the small space near the door. “Somebody will leak it. It’s just a question of timing—how close to election day. All they have to do is whip up a little panic, and Baldwin wins.”

  “Aren’t you overlooking something?” Kane stopped pacing and looked at me. “That Hellion didn’t attack at random. It went after my client, right after I exterminated those Drudes. What if it’s here for me?” My voice betrayed more panic than I wanted to show.

  “Vicky, I don’t think—”

  “Hang on a minute, Mr. Kane.” Costello squinted at me with intense interest, his blue eyes glinting. “Why do you think a Hellion would be after you?”

  The roaring started in my ears again, but I swallowed hard and pushed it down. “Why, Detective Costello . . . ?” God, it hurt even to think it. I didn’t know if I could force the words out. Another hard swallow. “Ten years ago, a Hellion murdered my father. Because of me.”

  6

  MY FATHER NAMED ME. ONE YEAR BEFORE I WAS BORN—TO the day—he was visited in a dream by Saint Michael, sworn enemy of demons, and Saint David, patron saint of Wales. Saint Michael brandished his flaming sword and declared, “A girl child shall be born unto you, and her name shall be Victory.” Saint David nodded and made a gesture of blessing, then the two ascended—into heaven, I guess, or wherever saints go after they’ve delivered a prophecy. Dad thought they were growing taller, until he realized they were rising into the air. He could see the toenails of their sandaled feet at eye level for a moment, and then they were gone.

  Funny, Dad said, he’d never thought about archangels, or even saints, having toenails. But that was my favorite part of the story when I was a girl. Clean, pinkish toenails peeking out of golden sandals.

  Mom wanted to call me Rhiannon. But she was loopy on painkillers when my father filled out the birth certificate, so Victory I became.

  My childhood was normal enough, I suppose, for a demi-human whose birth had been foretold by a prophecy. We lived on the top floor of a Somerville triple-decker. Dad juggled three or four part-time teaching jobs at local colleges, and Mom stayed home with us two girls. When money got tight, she’d sell magazine subscriptions by phone from the kitchen. My parents were both Cerddorion—a race more common in their native Wales than in their adopted home of Boston—and I grew up trying to master the trick of being proud of my heritage while keeping it an absolute secret from the norms around me.

  I got by in school, played softball in Foss Park, and alternately fought with and confided in my older sister, Gwen. And then puberty hit—as if that weren’t tough enough—bringing with it the sudden, hard-to-control “gift” of shapeshifting. As I tried to learn how notto become a rampaging gorilla when I was angry or dissolve into a hyena when laughing, I also began my long education in demon slaying.

  No more softball. During the summer I was shipped off to my aunt’s manor house in North Wales to fulfill my destiny as a demon slayer. It was like school, only harder. I struggled to memorize entire books of information—the taxonomy of demons, their habits and habitats, the history of my family’s conflict with them—and Aunt Mab drilled me endlessly, peering disapprovingly over her glasses, her lips scrunched up like she’d tasted something awful. Outside, the green hills of Snowdonia, the woods and brooks and neighboring farms, called to me to explore. On the days when I got everything right, I could go run around outside. When I made a mistake, I had to stay in and study. I spent a lot of time indoors.

  But I loved Mab. Dad said she could fight with a flaming sword. Although I found that hard to picture, with her frizzy steel-wool hair and her high-necked, long-skirted, old-fashioned dresses, I didn’t doubt it for a minute. There was something formidable about my aunt, something that said don’t mess with me. I could believe she was the scourge of demonkind. Fashion sense aside, I wanted to be just like her. On the days when I pleased her, her brisk “well done, child,” accompanied by a fleeting smile, was a real reward for my hard work.

  And year by year, drill by drill, I was learning. When I was fifteen, Aunt Mab declared that the book-learning portion of my education was finished. “I believe you’ve been through every book in my library,” she declared, as we sat by the fire on a cool June evening.

  “I think you’re right,” I said. “All but that one.”

  “Which?”

  “The one Dad says is bound in human skin.” I laughed, too old now for Dad’s scary stories, expecting her to laugh with me.

  But she didn’t laugh. Her face shut, quickly and completely, like someone yanking down a window shade. “That is not something to speak of,” she said. “Never mention it again.”

  I gulped. “Okay.” Involuntarily, I glanced at the shelf that held the book. There it was, its spine a pale ivory shade, unlike the calf-bound books around it.

  Mab grasped my arm. Her hand was gnarled and spotted with age, but her grip was iron-strong and her eyes burned like coals. “Do not touch it, do not speak of it. Do not even think of it. Never, Victory. Do you understand?”

  Mute, I nodded. And for that summer and the years that followed, I tried my best to comply with her warning. It wasn’t hard. Mab was teaching me weaponry: fencing, archery, marksmanship, knife fighting. Now that was more like it. I loved the jeweled, bronze-bladed dagger she gave me for my sixteenth birthday. Who cared about books, even that book, when I was learning the best ways to fillet a demon?

  The only part that bothered me was that I’d never yet seen an actual demon. And I was getting impatient to try out my new fighting skills on real, live nasties instead of paper targets and straw-stuffed bags. What I really wanted was to use a broadsword like Mab’s, the one she called the sword of Saint Michael, the kind that bursts into flame in the presence of a demon. But instead of a heavy sword with a gleaming bronze blade, Mab started me off with two pieces of wood nailed into a cross shape. Feeling like a kid playing pirates, I protested.

  Mab tsked at me in her no-nonsense way, and I knew it was hopeless. It was always the same with Mab: first, technique, then practice—she was big on practice. Next summer, maybe, we’d hunt some demons together. “Small ones,” she said, her voice stern but her accent lilting. “ ’Tis always wise to start small, child.” And so I practiced with a Peter Pan sword.

  The next summer, I was eighteen years old, a high school graduate, and feeling more than ready to graduate from Mab’s training program, as well. I was all grown up now, and this would be the summer I finally got to kick some demon ass. When my father decided to spend a couple of weeks in Wales with me, I was eager to show him how impressive my skills had become, to make him and Aunt Mab both proud.

  But the day after we arrived, right after breakfast, Mab tossed me the goofy wooden sword. I caught it, surprised, wincing as a splinter slid into my palm. “Broadsword practice in ten minutes,” she announced. “Undoubtedly you’ve forgotten everything I taught you.”

  Mab always began the summer with a comment like that, but in front of Dad, it stung. And it was almost like a curse. At practice that day, and the next several days, I was slow, I was clumsy, and I felt like I should be using a stupid wooden sword. Dad standing there watching, saying relax, don’t try so hard, just made it worse. From the look in Mab’s eyes, I just knew that she wouldn’t be taking me demon hunting this summe
r. Not even for the small ones.

  Well, why should I wait for her? I’d trained for six years. I was tired of endless drills and exercises. I wanted to kill a demon. And I thought I knew where to find one.

  On the night of July 8—a date burned into my memory—I snuck into Mab’s library and got down the book, the one bound in human skin. My fingers tingled when I touched the spine, and I had a clear vision of a corpse lying on a table and a vat of something bubbling nearby, as a hooded, black-robed figure approached with a curved knife. As the knife made its first cut, the corpse moaned and bright red blood welled from the wound. It wasn’t a corpse at all; someone had been skinned alive to make this book.

  I gasped and shoved the book back on the shelf. The vision faded. My pulse hammered through my veins; pain seared the fingers that had touched the book. This was crazy. I wasn’t going to mess with some book that gave you waking nightmares just from touching it. I headed toward the door.

  But something made me turn around.

  Hundreds of times since that night, I’ve relived that moment, trying to figure out why the hell I couldn’t just walk out of that library and go to bed. Did a spirit call to me? Did some entity possess my body long enough to turn me back toward that book? Or was it just my own stubbornness? I’ll never know.

  But turn around I did. I strode back to the bookcase like a woman on a mission and yanked the book from its shelf. This time, there were no visions, no odd sensations. I laughed. It was just a book. I carried the volume over to the window where the moonlight streamed in so that I could read without turning on a light. Flipping through the pages, I glanced at the illustrations until I found the one I was looking for. A demon. A real one.

  The thing was hideous. Its skin was deep blue, and flames shot from its eyes. Its mouth bristled with teeth too long and sharp for lips to hide. It hunched over like an ape, its hands on the ground; its fingers and toes ended in nails that looked like daggers. I stared at the picture, fascinated by my own repulsion. This was the kind of thing I wanted to fight.