Demon's Play

by David McBride

  “I know it’s horrible Frank, but this is the hand we’ve been dealt. We have to play it. Agreed?”

  My stomach churned and twisted in disgust, but I simply nodded. “Where’s Terri?” I asked. With this new information it suddenly seemed imperative that I see her as soon as possible, if only to remind myself that the world still held good things in it, that we weren’t all drowning in a sea of chaos and death.

  “She’ll be here in a minute. I asked her to move the car so that we’d have a couple of minutes to talk. I had to make sure you were up to this. You are, aren’t you?”

  “I’ll be fine,” I lied. “But let’s make this quick so that we can hunt down that necromancer.”

  He looked at me, said nothing, then nodded; not to my request, but seemingly to something he had suspected. “About that,” he said, rubbing his free hand through his thinning hair. “You said there were two crows with him?”

  “Yeah, but I think they were ravens.”

  “How can you tell the difference?” He waved his hand at the smoke in front of his eyes. “Never mind. Did you get anything from them? Any taint of power to them?”

  I rubbed the side of my face as I thought back to the church. “Their eyes glowed red in my Second Sight. Familiars?”

  “Seems likely. On the plus side I might be able to track them.”

  I raised an eyebrow at him. “You can’t track him because of the tattoos, but the birds don’t have that protection.”

  He smiled. “And if they are his familiars then they’ll be with him all the time.”

  “Brilliant,” I said, returning his smile. “I knew the council kept you around for some reason.”

  “They just keep me on because they don’t want to pay my pension once I retire. We wizards can live for a long time you know.”

  “So they’re going to make you earn every penny of it until then, huh?”

  He snorted. “The cheap bastards.”

  We both laughed and stared out at the skyline of the First City. It reminded me of my first months of work for the Inquisition: Simon my fellow graduate and Ben Jerrigan our teacher and commander. Simon went on to L.A., I stayed here, and Ben kept a watchful eye on both of us. Sometimes it seemed perhaps too watchful, but that was his job.

  “Hey guys,” a voice sounded from behind us. “What did I miss?”

  Ben and I turned to see Terri making her way across the ground to us. She was wearing jeans, a black pullover sweater, and boots that looked too heavy for her slight form. The dark red shade of her lipstick matched the single streak of matching crimson on the left side of her black hair. My smile widened as our eyes met.

  “Are we set?” Ben asked.

  She nodded. “Wards at thirty foot intervals in a circle around us fifty feet out from where we are now. No uninvited guests and no one can listen in.”

  “Good,” Ben said. “Now we just have to wait for our guest of honor.”

  I couldn’t help but notice the sneer on his face as he said the words.

  We didn’t have to wait long. From our vantage point we watched the black limousine pull into the parking lot, stop, and let out a single passenger. As she got closer I could make out the lime-green dress she wore, the white ribbons she had tied in her blond hair, and the teddy bear she held in her right hand. She walked awkwardly at first, as if trying to pull off royal elegance in a body that was barely four feet tall. Noticing our combined attention on her, she stopped, smiled at us, and began to skip her way over, the small stuffed bear swinging wildly back and forth.

  “You’ve got to be kidding,” Terri said, putting words to my thoughts. Ben simply groaned in response.

  The girl made her way through the ward barrier and over to us, her skip lapsing into a trot towards the end. “Hi!” she said brightly, smiling beatifically up at us.

  We stood there staring at the little girl, dumbstruck as to what to do or say. She was such a cute unassuming thing. It disarmed you to the point of immobility. The Demon had found the perfect vessel for negotiations. We hadn’t even begun yet and already Ben, Terri, and I were at a disadvantage. Ben broke the spell first.

  “Greetings ambassador,” he said. “What shall you be known to us as?”

  “My name’s Lily,” she replied, hugging the bear to her chest.

  “Lily it is then. Do you find our meeting place acceptable?”

  Lily sighed. “For now. You’re no fun, wizard. Always straight to business with your kind. Perhaps your friends will be more amusing.” She swung dazzling blue eyes on me and frowned. “Not this one.” Her gaze left me and moved to Terri. “You’re so pretty!” she exclaimed breathlessly. “What’s your name?”

  Terri was about to answer when I cut in. “Don’t answer it,” I snapped. Glaring at the little girl, but still talking to Terri, I said, “Never give a Demon your name freely. They can use it against you.” Lily pouted. “We know what you are so you can cut out the cute kid act.”

  She narrowed her eyes and stamped her foot. “You’ve taught him everything but manners, wizard. I’m disappointed.”

  Ben scoffed. “We’re not here for your approval, Lily. We’re here to negotiate a ceasefire with the tribes, remember?”

  She waved a hand in front of her, as if his words were annoying mosquitoes. “Yes, yes, so very boring.”

  I kept my Second Sight tightly reined in so as not to accidentally see what lay behind Lily’s mask of innocence. It was tempting to look, and getting harder to resist by the minute. I had seen two Demons before, but they were both in bodies that they had fashioned for themselves, not hidden in a host body. What would the difference be, I wondered, if I looked at her with my power? Why did I have this feeling in my gut that if I did look nothing would ever be the same for me again? As my eyes roamed the open space around us, keeping them well clear of Lily, I caught a scent on the wind. A faint chemical odor almost dispersed entirely by the afternoon breeze.

  Sulfur.

  “Unfortunately that will have to wait,” Lily said, snapping my attention back to her.

  “What do you mean?” Ben asked. “You said this place was adequate for our purposes.”

  She giggled. “Indeed, wizard, I said it was fine for now. However, it won’t be that way for much longer.”

  “I don’t understand,” Ben said.

  “I had an ulterior motive for agreeing to this meeting.”

  “How surprising,” I drawled.

  She stuck her tongue out at me and continued. “I’m currently at war with a number of factions in my own realm. Coming here gives me a badly needed vacation from the sieges and assassination attempts. You can only crush so many rebellions before tedium sets in, don’t you agree?” She looked around at our blank faces.

  I spoke up. “I fail to see what this has to do with this meeting. Your war has nothing to do with us.”

  “Besides,” Terri said. “All of my wards are in place. They haven’t been touched, and I’ll know immediately if anyone tries to get in.”

  Lily shook her head and grinned. “Mortals are so shortsighted.” She pinned me in place with eyes as hard as chips of ice. “My war does concern you because something followed me. One of my rivals, it seems, has noted my passage into this realm and has come after me. Right now I can just sense him on my periphery, as if he’s still getting used to the body he has taken. It won’t be long until he narrows my location to this park. After that all he has to do is look for the place that has active wards in it.” She looked over to Terri. “Great work by the way. To his eyes they’ll be lit up like the neon sign above a strip club. With all the restrictions your wizards have put on my powers I won’t stand a chance in a fight, and he’ll cut through your pathetic defenses like hellfire.” She giggled. “In fact it will be exactly like hellfire!”

  15

  “So what do we do?” I asked Ben. My instinctive distrust of Demons was making it hard for me to form a plan of action. Had another Demon followed her here, or was this just a ruse to get us away f
rom the area that Ben had decided would be neutral ground? How could she benefit from changing locations? The only thing that kept me from disbelieving her outright was the thought of a Demon, unimpeded by the restrictions of our wizards, running through this place and creating havoc. Besides our gathering, people were few and far between in the park at the moment, but that didn’t mean anything. If a powerful Demon let loose here the magic could easily spill over into the apartment complexes and houses that were only half a mile away.

  “We’ll have to relocate,” he said, throwing his cigar away and wiping the back of his hand across his chin, eyes narrowed and searching the horizon. “How powerful is this thing, Lily?”

  She shrugged. “He’s the right hand of one of the Dukes; an assassin and high-mage of the realm. Mr. Bear doesn’t like him.”

  “Mr. Bear?” Ben asked.

  Lily thrust her teddy bear out in front of her. “Mr. Bear thinks he’s a meany-head,” she said, and giggled, carefree like any eight-year-old should sound. But knowing what was inside her made the sound take on a more sinister meaning. I had the feeling she would laugh that same laugh if she were watching us be eviscerated by rabid badgers.

  “But where can we go?” Terri asked. “Howlerz is the only other place I know of that’s known as neutral territory, but the wolf in charge has made it clear that it’s a wolves-only place until Eric gets back.”

  Ben looked from Terri to me. “Eric’s not here?”

  “No,” I answered. “He had some business out of town from what I’ve heard. Robert is his new enforcer and he’s none to keen on outsiders. We can’t go there unless we’re willing to start a fight with the pack.”

  Ben shook his head. “We’ve got enough problems as it is. There are other places, but none that would welcome a Demon into their midst.” He ruffled the hair on the side of his head, unable to keep from fidgeting.

  “Pardon me,” Lily said. “But could we hurry? I can feel him getting closer in his questing for me and I can’t mask my presence inside this circle of wards.”

  A flash of inspiration hit me. “But you could conceal your presence from it outside the circle?”

  She gave me a sly smile. “Yes, Inquisitor, I could. Why do you ask?”

  Ignoring her question, I looked to Ben and Terri. “We need to split up. I can take her someplace safe while you two work on that tracking spell for the necromancer.” Sending Terri off with Ben again so soon twisted my gut. I had been depressed when she avoided me after Paulo killed himself, and now here we were, Inquisitor and apprentice back together and I was sending her off again. But I didn’t want her anywhere near the hell-spawn hiding in a child’s body or what was coming after her. If she were with Ben she would have more protection than I could give her, whether against a necromancer or Demon assassin.

  “No,” Terri announced, her voice filled with iron-hard resolve. “Frank, you shouldn’t be alone with that thing.”

  “I’m standing right next to you, you know,” Lily pouted.

  Terri ignored her and pressed on. “We should stay together. We’ll stand a better chance if we work as a team.” There was a look of pleading in her eyes, as if she knew that if I left something awful would happen. That look nearly convinced me. How could I refuse her anything? But that wasn’t my brain doing the thinking and I knew it. If we were going to succeed I needed to do what I thought was right, no matter how much it hurt me to do it.

  “I’m sorry Terri, but I think my way is the best option right now. Ben, what do you think?”

  He nodded sharply. “It’s not the best scenario, but it’s what we’ve got. Where will you take her?”

  “STS headquarters. If she can hide her presence from the other one then it should be as safe a place as any.”

  “Agreed,” Ben said. “Call me later and we’ll figure out what to do about the negotiations. Terri and I will get working on that spell.”

  “Finally,” Lily sighed. “Do you take this long to do everything? Let’s get out of here quick, Inquisitor.” I waved a farewell to Ben and Terri as Lily strode away in a swirl of her green dress, not bothering to see if I followed. Her short legs didn’t carry her very fast, so I caught up quickly. We made it past the circle of wards and stopped next to my car. As I unlocked the doors, Lily smiled at me and said, “Uncle Frank, can we stop to get ice cream on the way?”

  It was going to be a long day.

  * * *

  We didn’t stop for ice cream. We did, however, stop at a fast-food place to pick up a couple of burgers and fries on the way to my office. I hadn’t realized how hungry I was until the first bite of my cheeseburger with everything. Halfway through the meal, as we sat in the parking lot of the restaurant, the smell of sulfur became so overpowering that I lost anything resembling an appetite and I gave Lily the rest of my meal. She devoured it happily, making pleased noises with every bite. I didn’t think they had much in the way of food in the Infernal Realm, though if they did I’d imagine it all tasted like the Demon smelled.

  We arrived at STS headquarters a short time later. The sun was making its inexorable descent towards the horizon, the heavy cloud cover lit in amber fire. Lily stood and stared at the spectacle from our place in the parking lot for a full minute before allowing me to lead her inside. I wondered what she had been thinking as she stared off into that beautiful sky, but knew better than to ask. The rumors said that the sky in the infernal realm was in perpetual twilight with no sun as a source of light, yet there was light nonetheless. It was said that from horizon to horizon the sky was a deep crimson, as if the blood of billions had been filtered into their atmosphere to cover the surface like a blanket.

  “So,” Lily said as we walked towards the entrance, “does anyone here know who I am.”

  “No, and I’d like to keep it that way.” I nodded to the two guards standing watch at the entrance and started up the stairs.

  “Hey Frank,” Officer Calloway said, and smiled down at Lily. “Who’s the munchkin?”

  “My niece,” I answered, and as soon as it came out of my mouth I regretted it. I was an only child and Lou knew it. If news filtered back to him that my niece was here with me it would sound all sorts of alarm bells for him.

  “I’m Lily,” she chimed in happily. “Uncle Frank says that I can be a policeman too someday.”

  “He does?” Officer Jim Polanski asked from off to my left. He was a large man, as tall as me and twice as wide. A perpetual sneer was stuck on his visage that looked more malevolent because of the dark spots of acne-scarred skin littering his cheeks. He was in the same camp as Officer Lewis when it came to me, albeit for slightly different reasons. Lewis’s reasons for his feelings were seated in his distrust of paras in general and the Inquisition in particular. Polanski’s motives were much more transparent. He despised me and my kind, the evidence of it burned brightly in his eyes whenever he looked at me. Men like him were the ones fueling the anti-para terrorist movements around the world where only the complete eradication of the paranormal was sufficient. “Why would a little thing like you want to be a police officer?” he asked in a pleasant voice that must have been reserved for children. The way Calloway grimaced, though, told me that I wasn’t the only one who picked up on the extra emphasis he put on the word thing when referring to my supposed niece.

  “So I can be like my Uncle Frank,” she answered quickly, swinging her stuffed bear back and forth and looking completely sincere. My face was heating up as I waited for this conversation to come to a merciful end.

  Polanski scowled. “You’re uncle isn’t a—”

  “That’s sweet,” Calloway interrupted, elbowing Polanski in the ribs. “Well, we won’t hold you up any more, Frank.”

  They both stepped aside as we passed. Once we were at the door I heard Polanski mutter under his breath, “That’s just what we need, another one of them here.”

  The only thing that made me feel better was hearing Calloway answer, “Shut up, stupid.”

  We walked in
side past the reception desk, the on-duty clerk giving Lily a smile and wave, which she returned happily, and made our way to my office. Once I had closed the door, Lily dropped into a chair against the wall and said, “That man with the ruined face hates you.”

  “Yes he does,” I sighed. There were lots of people like him, and they were a strain to deal with. I didn’t like to admit how much they got to me sometimes. Turning on my computer, I sat down and began spreading paperwork out over my desk.

  “In fact this whole building buzzes with an uneasy balance of tension and fear. It’s soaked into the walls over time. Quite unprofessional for a law enforcement agency I would think.” She stood up then, placing the stuffed bear in her vacant seat and wandering over to the window behind me to peer out at the street and the houses that lay beyond.

  “I thought you would enjoy the taste of emotions like that,” I quipped.

  She turned from the window to look at me and smiled. “I do. It’s similar to my home, yet entirely different.” She placed a small delicate hand against the window and sighed. “This place is so…foreign. And these restrictions that your wizards placed on me are extremely annoying. I’m not enjoying this as much as I thought I would.”

  “My heart breaks for you,” I mumbled.

  “Ah yes, make light Inquisitor. You wouldn’t understand what it’s like for a being like me to be trapped and hobbled in a strange place like this. In my realm I am a Duke, a power to be reckoned with, yet here I can’t even defend myself properly and need the help of a mortal to protect me. It’s pathetic.”

  Shuffling my papers with no real purpose other then to keep my attention anywhere but on the little girl by the window, I mulled over her words. Was her plight so strange to me? Too many times I had felt that I was a small fish in an ocean full of sharks, my powers barely enough to keep me alive. And the ocean I inhabited was filled with rival powers and castes which I had no place in. I was separate from everyone and everything, just like they had taught me to be in training. I was to be the ambassador, the judge, the executioner; yet by what right did I assume those positions?