Demon's Play

by David McBride

  Contents

  Demon’s Play

  copyright

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  Demon’s Play

  An Inquisitor Novel

  By David McBride

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any persons, living or dead, business establishments, or events is entirely coincidental.

  Demon’s Play

  All rights reserved.

  Copyright © 2012 by David McBride.

  Cover art by Jason Bucci

  This book is protected under the copyright laws of the United States of America. Any reproduction or other unauthorized use of the material herein is prohibited without the express written permission of the author.

  First Printing: February, 2012.

  Printed in the United States of America

  First Edition: February, 2012

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  1

  “Stop or I swear to God I’ll pull the trigger!” the young man yelled at me.

  Normally those words would have made me much more nervous, but in an unusual turn of events the gun wasn’t aimed in my direction. Instead, the man had the barrel of his shiny nickel-plated forty-five pressed to his own head. It made his threats a little less effective, but I still complied. I stopped where I was and held my hands out to show that everything was going to be alright. “Stay cool, buddy,” I said with a mellow voice that is normally reserved for orderlies talking to mental patients. “Nobody needs to get hurt here.” How ridiculous was this scenario? I knew ways to talk people down from shooting me or the occasional bystander, but none of that really applied to a guy who was threatening to shoot himself. How do you talk someone down when they’re their own hostage?

  Terri slowly moved up next to me, her arms hugged around herself as if she were cold. Even though she had been my apprentice for almost a month now, this was the first time she was seeing the knife-edge of violence up close and personal. I knew that I needed to see how she handled pressure, but this wasn’t how I had imagined it would happen. The saying sink or swim takes on a new gravity when someone’s brains may end up on your sweater.

  We had just been going for a walk in the merge—that area between the city and the Second City where people and paranormals coexisted in relative harmony—when we spotted a man talking to himself at the mouth of an alley. This wasn’t a great part of the merge—not as bad as the south side, but close—and when you saw someone talking to thin air you should probably move along. I had explained to Terri that when things like this happened it usually meant that there was something hiding in the shadows trying to lure in a victim. It could have been a vampire, a shade, or even one of the demons from the thirteen clans. But that didn’t seem to be the case here. When we approached I used my Second Sight to scan the alley to see what we would be dealing with. Nothing was there. No person standing in the shadow cast by the building, no creature cloaking itself with magic, nothing.

  “Stop!” This time he was yelling at Terri. She stopped next to me. He was a young man, probably not even twenty, but his wide eyes held the fear and pain of someone much older who had been through a world of loss. The gun trembled ever so slightly in his hand. His bronze skin was beaded with sweat and I worried for a moment that his finger might slip. He wore jeans that were much too large for his sleight frame and a dark red pullover that I had come to recognize as the local gang-banger chic. These guys were new in the city and kept mainly to the human sections. What had made him venture out here in the middle of the night when all the nasty things were roaming the merge? As an emissary of the Supernatural Enforcement Committee—sardonically yet lovingly referred to as the Inquisition—of Oakland’s Second City it was my responsibility to make sure that no person, not even a gang-banger, got him or herself killed by a para. As far as I could tell, though, there was nothing paranormal about this; just a guy who decided to come out to my neck of the woods to have his nervous breakdown.

  “What’s your name?” Terri asked. My Second Sight was still open when I looked at her. Her aura flowed around her in shades of blue and purple with the soft susurrations of a summer breeze. I could see that she was trying to pull energy together to attempt something. Shutting down my Second Sight and my connection to the paranormal plane, I looked back at the man.

  “Paulo,” he said, quietly.

  It was hard not to trust Terri, and Paulo seemed to sense that as much as I already knew it. She exuded a kindness and understanding that made you want to open up to her. It also helped that she was beautiful. Her pale skin and soft features gave her an angelic appearance, while her dark eyes seemed to hold some primal energy in them. Her dark shoulder length hair had a cranberry streak that ran down the right side of it, which would have seemed like a cry for attention on anyone else, but on her it just seemed to fit, like it was a part of who she was. In our time together as Inquisitor and apprentice I had learned to trust her judgment and value her opinion. The young witch had potential, and though the last month had been relatively slow she had quickly accumulated and categorized the knowledge she would need to handle this job.

  “Well Paulo, I’m Terri, and this is Frank.” She nodded to me.

  “Nice to meet you, Paulo,” I lied. It wasn’t nice to meet him. Why the hell did he have to come into my part of the city to commit suicide? Why couldn’t he have stayed home and off himself there? It was probably saying something about me that I would have been more confident of what to do if he had been pointing the gun at me. I didn’t do the whole trusted confidant thing, so I decided to keep my mouth shut and let Terri handle this.

  Monsters and demons? No problem. Need to talk about your feelings? Look somewhere else.

  “You want to tell me why you’re out here?” she asked, arms still hugged around herself even though she was wearing a sweater and the wind had died leaving a nice cool evening. It made her look small and vulnerable, and between Paolo and me I was the only one who knew how wrong that was. Hell, I didn’t think even Terri knew how strong she was.

  “Why the hell do you care?” The gun moved a fraction of an inch away from his head, his subconscious mind begging Terri to talk him out of it.

  “Well,” she paused for a moment, considering her words carefully. “We wouldn’t be very good neighbors if we didn’t try to help somebody that so obviously needed it. So how about it? You want to tell me what could be so bad that you’d resort to this?” She nodded at the gun.

  “Neighbors,” he laughed nervously. “I’m not your neighbor. I don’t live out here, I’m human.”

  I couldn’t keep my mouth shut any longer. “So why are you out here? Were you just hoping to commit suicide by vampire or shape-shifter?” It was more common than anyone would expect. Someone loses the will to live and decides to let the monsters do the dirty work for them because they don’t have the guts to pull the trigger. For the most part though, the monsters were unaccommodating. They could smell despair coming off of them and gave them a wide b
erth. Despair just didn’t taste as good as fear I guessed. Terri gave me a sidelong look that was part shock and part anger that I was about to push him into pulling the trigger. I didn’t feel bad, just irritated. “None of the bad things out here willing to bite, so to speak?”

  Paulo looked at me as if seeing me for the first time. The gun slowly sank down to his side. I think Terri was more surprised than I was. His eyes searched my face and then moved down to my jacket, a light-weight windbreaker. His gaze seemed to hover around the lower left part of the jacket where my holster sat under the loose material. “You’re the Inquisitor.” It wasn’t a question.

  I looked at Terri and then back to him. “Yeah, that’s me,” I said, nodding. “Though most people call me Frank. What would a nice human boy like you know about me?” I felt bad about wrecking Terri’s makeshift hostage negotiation, but Paulo’s whole attitude had changed once he figured out who I was, and I wanted to find out why.

  “I only know what he told us. Not just about you, but Inquisitors in general. I thought I was in a bad spot, man, but he hates you guys.” He gave me a sickly smile and it unnerved me more than the pistol had.

  “You’ll have to be more specific,” I said offhandedly. “Lots of people hate us.” And the list was constantly growing. Law enforcement in the paranormal community was constantly evolving and more often than not heavy-handed. Paras hated us for doing too much and humans hated us for not doing enough.

  The smile fled from his face as he said, “Christian.” He looked back down at the gun, sitting forgotten in his hand until now. “I didn’t know what he could do, I swear. None of us did. He talked a lot, but we didn’t think anything of it. Then he gave us these.” Paulo shook his left hand so that something spilled out from under the sleeve of his red pullover. It was a bracelet made of thin rope with interwoven beads, ordinary in every way except for the single black feather that hung from it. I opened my Second Sight to look deeper. Waves of dark energy spilled off of it, pulsing like it was dancing to an unheard beat. I heard Terri take a sharp breath and take an instinctive step back, the heel of her stiletto striking the asphalt echoing loudly in the alley. I would have to remind her after this not to wear anything with heels. Ever. You never knew when you would have to run after, or from, something.

  Paulo laughed that nervous laugh again as he held the bracelet as far from his body as he could. “It looks so fragile, doesn’t it? But it won’t come off.” He looked from it back to me. “It’s just some string and a damn feather. Why won’t it come off?” he sobbed.

  “It’s black magic,” I said, inching closer even though my instincts were howling at me to stay away from that bracelet. “Only the person that made the spell can break something that powerful. This Christian guy made that?”

  He nodded, head hung low as if ashamed. “Once you’re in, he never lets you go. I didn’t mean to do it. You’ve got to believe me!” Tears slipped down his cheeks, glittering like tiny crystals in the moonlight.

  I slowly moved closer, silently willing him to keep his eyes glued to the pavement. I wanted to talk to him, to help him. Gone was the irritation from moments before when I thought he was just some head case. He was just a kid who got caught up in something he didn’t understand. But while I wanted to help, I needed to get that hand-cannon away from him first.

  “What did you do, Paulo?” Terri asked quietly.

  “My girl,” he sniffed. “Cassie, she was such a beautiful girl.”

  I was only a few feet away from him now. Close enough to disarm him, but my brain had other ideas. It latched on to the word “was” and wouldn’t let go. Past tense, suicidal boyfriend, didn’t take a genius to figure out what had happened. But that wasn’t good enough for that part of me that made me psychic, made me a para. The Recall was an ability few had, and it made me a rare talent even among psychics. It dove into his mind like a sky diver without a parachute. I was suddenly there in their little apartment and I knew that it was the previous night. The room was dark and I was sitting at the foot of the bed listening to Cassie breathe. But it wasn’t really me, it was Paulo. My eyes had adjusted to the darkness enough so that I could see her clearly laying there, the sheets pulled tightly around her. She was such a tiny little thing, Cassie was. I…no…Paulo always called her Cassie, not Cassandra cause she hated that, and not Cass cause that’s what most of her friends called her. Her curly blond hair was piled across the pillow edging its way towards the headboard. She was laying on her side like she always ended up doing in the middle of the night. The sheet rose and fell rhythmically with her breathing. I could have sat there for hours just watching her sleep. It was peaceful, hypnotic.

  There was a whispering to my left. I looked, but there was no one there. I looked down at the bracelet on my left wrist and watched it with the same fascination that I had been watching Cassie moments before. The gun was suddenly in my hand and I didn’t know how it got there. I was standing over the bed and aiming down at the small form huddled under the covers. The whispering came back, louder now, telling me that everything would be okay, that if I did this we would be together forever. That was what I wanted, wasn’t it? Yes, more than anything else in the world I wanted to be with her forever. I reached out with my left hand and gently nudged her so that she would roll onto her back. But Cassie was a light sleeper, always had been, and she woke up when she came to rest on her back. Her eyes fluttered open slowly and fixed on me. She smiled sleepily up at me, rubbing at her eyes with the back of her hand. Then she saw the gun and the smile faded, her eyes went wide.

  “Paulo?” she whispered. “What are you doing?” I could barely hear her over my own hammering heart. She was so scared, and so was I. There were two blinding flashes like lightning strikes, and the thunder deafened me. The bullets hit her in the chest and rocked her body deeper into the bed and then up off of it like she was having a seizure. The bracelet I was wearing suddenly felt hot, burning. Her body stilled. There was no more rise and fall of her chest as she breathed; just two small holes and a spreading pool of red creeping across the sheet that still covered her.

  What had I done?

  From behind me—not just in my mind anymore but actually in the room—a voice spoke softly. “You did well, apostle. Leave us now so that I may prepare her for the transition.” And after a moment as if in answer to my thoughts, the voice added, “Your time will come soon, and then the two of you shall be together and at my side forever.”

  I came back to myself in a rush, my consciousness slamming into my body with an almost physical force. If Terri hadn’t been there to steady me I would have fallen over. Nothing like that had ever happened to me before. I had seen glimpses of the past with my Recall before, but I had never felt as if I had truly lived the events. Looking over at Paulo I knew that he had just relived what he had done. His face had gone several shades paler and the tears were coming in a torrent now.

  “He said we would be together forever,” Paulo stuttered. I tried to speak, to say something, anything, but the words wouldn’t come. “He lied.” With that he brought the gun up, placed it under his chin, and pulled the trigger. The shot was muffled by the contact with his skin, but it still seemed to echo forever in the suddenly too-dark alleyway. His body stood there for a moment as if not knowing what to do now that most of his brain had just gone out the top of his head, and then he fell over on his side, his head bouncing off the ground with a sickening crack.

  Terri was still holding onto my arm, clinging for my support now instead of the other way around. The power she had built up to try and stop Paulo from doing what he did bled away into the night air, unused and impotent. She hadn’t seen what I had. She couldn’t have seen it coming like I did seconds before he did it. It wasn’t her fault that she didn’t react fast enough. Now all I had to do was convince her of that, because I knew enough about Terri to know that she would take this hard. She was looking at me with those big doe eyes, all wide and innocent and I wished for just a moment that she had
never met me. It was my fault that she had seen this and things worse than this.

  As Paulo’s body cooled on the pavement I felt my heart rate steady, the sweat cool on my skin. Years on the human police force and then more years on the Inquisition had taught me how to keep my emotions in a separate place when analyzing a crime scene. I needed to teach Terri the same thing, even if I felt like a bastard for doing it. “Look,” I said, and nodded towards Paulo’s body. She made no move to look in that direction. “Look at him Terri. Tell me what you see.”

  She let go of my arm and looked down at the still body. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath as she shuddered. Finally she steadied herself and opened her eyes. I went between watching her and looking at the body. “The bracelet,” she said quietly. “It was pulsing in sync with his heartbeat.” I nodded but stayed quiet letting her work everything out in her head. “Wait. What’s that?” She pointed to the bracelet. My Sight showed me a thin line of energy springing from it and weaving its way through the air. As we watched, the energy drifted away leaving just a normal piece of decorated rope with a feather bound to it.

  “That,” I said, “was the energy going back to its master. Can you track it?”

  “With the enchanted object I should be able to whip up a tracing spell.” She took a step forward and then seemed to realize that the bracelet was still attached to Paulo’s wrist. “Could you…?”

  I nodded and walked over to the body. A dark pool had spread out from under his head. The closer I got the more…bits I could make out on the ground. Using the tip of my sneaker I slid the gun away from Paulo’s hand. I sank down next to him and reached for the piece of rope around his wrist. Just as my fingertips brushed the object it began to melt. Then, looking more closely, I realized that it was turning to sand. A stiff breeze came from behind me and caught the sand, carrying it and the feather out of my reach. I lunged after the feather hoping to salvage something from this debacle, but the wind rushed forward and carried it up into the darkness.