Demon's Play

by David McBride

  At the conclusion of the letter she told me that she was going away for a while to “get her head straight.” She wished me luck and told me that she would call me as soon as she got back. At the bottom were her signature and a small wet spot in the corner where a tear may have fallen, but perhaps not. I carefully refolded the letter and placed it in my jacket pocket.

  Inside I had found Simon straightening up. He had been given an extension of his stay by Selena, delivered by a messenger of her court. Normally Clara would have delivered such a message, but Simon figured that her pride was hurt when she lost control at the base, and she wouldn’t want to give Simon a chance to rub it in. It seemed awfully childish for beings that were hundreds of years old, and I could tell that there was more to it than what Simon was telling me. The relationship between those three spanned decades, possibly centuries, and was more complicated than I could imagine. So I didn’t push him on it. I simply asked him if he wanted to join me for dinner. While I ate and he drank, I related everything I had learned over the past couple of days to him, excluding the minor detail of Terri’s relationship to Ben.

  “First a necromancer with Demon-enhanced powers and now a spiritwalker,” Simon said, breaking me out of my thoughts. He set the can of beer in front of him and fiddled with the tab. “It has become very dangerous to be a vampire in Oakland.”

  “Oh, come on,” I chided. “Christian’s dead and no one else besides you and Ben know what I am…might be,” I amended quickly. I wasn’t going to give into this entirely until I had some definitive proof, I had decided.

  “Except for the Demon,” he said, his finger pulling the tab free. He looked at it, frowned, and threw it onto the counter behind him.

  Setting my fork down, I took a sip of flat soda before responding. “I don’t think she’ll be a problem anymore.” I thought about what I had just said and shook my head. I was still thinking of it as a she. “It has everything it wants. There’s no reason for it to come back.”

  “Famous last words.” He guzzled the last of his beer and got up to dispose of the can. “Demons do things for their own reasons, rarely following any logic we can understand.”

  “This one’s actions were clear enough,” I retorted.

  “True.” He pulled two new cans of beer from the fridge, popped the top on one, and set the other in front of me. “But that doesn’t mean it will always be like that. It knows what you are and has seen the inside of your mind. That is a lot of information to bargain with.”

  “I know,” I admitted with a sigh. “The only reason it followed the path it did was because of Jae Kwon. Who knows what the Demon would have done if he hadn’t trapped it into a bargain.”

  Shaking his head, Simon said, “I still don’t believe one of our own could do all of this. The tribes will be furious that they were set up. They’ll be looking for some serious payback.” He took a deep pull off his beer, licked his lips in satisfaction, and waved at the air. “But let’s save that for another time.” Dark eyes filled with concern focused on me. “If you truly are a spiritwalker you can’t tell anyone. Hell, Frank, you shouldn’t even have told me.”

  I laughed. “Don’t be ridiculous, Simon. Why wouldn’t I tell you? You’re one of the few people I trust, and the only one who can see things from my perspective. Even Ben can’t; he’s too high up in the food chain to see what’s happening down here. Normally I would talk to Terri, but…” I let the sentence dry up and blow away like a leaf in winter.

  Looking down at the table, he took up the lost thread of conversation. “I saw the letter. I didn’t read it, but I had a feeling I already knew what was in there. I stopped at her house a couple of times the last couple of days. Her car’s been gone and no lights were on. I’m sorry brother.”

  Drinking half the can of beer in one long gulp, I waved the pitying words away. “It can’t be helped. But right now I need a friend to talk to and you fit the bill, vampire or no.”

  “Fine, what’s done is done. But don’t tell anyone else. Selena has eyes and ears everywhere in this city, and your recent revelation would fetch a hefty price from the master.” He looked past me to the wall, his eyes unfocused and his mind far away. “Necromancers were feared because they could gain control of our bodies since they were, in essence, dead flesh. We hunted them because they could manipulate us with their magic. Spritwalkers though, they could be us. A vampire is bereft of what humans call a spirit; we’re animated by something else entirely. What that is exactly is a matter for theologians and scientists who try to explain the paranormal. Since we lack that energy we are essentially empty vessels, and a walker’s natural talent is to fill an empty vessel with his own energy.”

  “I know,” I interjected. “The training’s been sluggish about giving me information on them, but I’ve gotten that much out of it already. Walkers can’t inhabit anything with a spirit already, like humans or werewolves, or something alien to us like the demon tribes.”

  “Well, some of the legends I’ve heard dispute that. Some even tell of walkers that could split themselves into multiple fragments in order to control more than one person at a time, but most of that is hearsay. What I know for sure is what I’ve seen with my own two eyes. A long time ago, while I was living in England, a walker came to our city. Back then any necromancer or spiritwalker was killed on sight. Just a rumor of one of them being among us caused the war drums to beat overtime.” He paused to take a sip of his drink. “The master sent me and five others to hunt the walker down. Well, we didn’t know the first thing about hunting a walker, so we just bumped around the city looking for unfamiliar faces and draining any that we found. Two weeks into the hunt and all we had to show for our efforts were a mound of bodies and the cops in an uproar over the recent rash of disappearances. Then we found her, a young slip of a girl sitting on a park bench in the dead of night with dirty rags for clothes. She couldn’t have been more than fourteen years old.

  “One of the guys, I think his name was Stanley, went up to her. He had a thing for scaring kids. The master had outlawed feeding on children, but that didn’t mean you couldn’t give them a good fright. So he sits down next to her on the bench while the rest of us watch and wait for her to scream and go running. It was always good for a laugh.” He smiled ruefully. “He starts talking to her and then leans over so she can get a good look at his fangs, and then we saw it. She turned to him and her eyes were glowing brighter than the gas torches that hung around the park. Stanley jumped up and started to yell to us, but we were already moving. We knew that the master’s order to kill the walker trumped his order not to kill children, so we weren’t worried about that. What we didn’t know, and I found out much later, was that this little girl’s family was killed by a pack of vampires looking for her uncle. They didn’t know that she had inherited the same talent as he did, and when they killed her family they made an enemy for life.” His grunt of a laugh was full of regret. “She was hunting us. The little girl’s body slumped onto the bench and we thought she had passed out from fear. Seeing six vamps coming to kill you could have that effect. But then Stanley did an about-face and jumped into us. He slashed and bit mindlessly, trying to tear us to pieces. One of us got free and made a grab for the girl, but then Stanley went limp and suddenly the one trying for her was possessed. If one of us got too close to her she would simply hop bodies and continue the fight.”

  “So what happened?” I asked, fearing the answer.

  He gave a soft laugh. “We let her go. Or maybe she let us go, I’m not sure. Either way, she lived for another day and we limped off into the night to lick our wounds. In the end though, the master could not settle for a stalemate, and he would not tolerate one of her kind on his lands, so he used a normal human to do what six of us could not. He twisted the man’s mind to the breaking point and remade him into a cold-blooded killer. He gave the man his mission and sent him off. The girl was dead two days later and we promptly forgot about the man the master had used for it. Years later he becam
e the nation’s most notorious serial killer, Jack the Ripper. Perhaps you’ve heard of him?” He slammed his hand down on the empty can in front of him, flattening it into a pancake of metal. “She took me over, Frank. Not just looking around in my head like the psychics, or controlling my limbs like a necromancer. For the few moments that she was inside of me we were one being but I couldn’t do anything. I sat in the back of my own head while she took the wheel. That’s why we fear you so much, why we’re willing to go to any length to stop you, and believe me, that story I just told you about the girl in England is one of the milder ones. There’s tales of all-out warfare between our peoples that would curl your hair.” He pointed at me. “If it were anyone else sitting in that chair telling me that they were a spiritwalker, I would have snapped their neck already. As an Inquisitor I don’t normally adhere to the old rules of the vampire council, but that one I would enforce.”

  My fingers grasped absently for my Star of David necklace, forgetting that it was laying on my nightstand. It was a meager defense against vampires, but it would have been better than nothing. Looking him straight in the eyes and steeling my tone to hide my suddenly electrified nerves, I asked, “Do I need to be worried, Simon?”

  He glanced at my hands and let a smile flitter across his mouth. “Not by me, brother, never by me. But any other vampires you know? Oh yes, definitely.” He sniffed the air. “Calm down Frank, you’re putting out enough adrenaline to run a marathon and it’s making me thirsty.” He took a swig of beer even though he really thirsted for something else, something thicker and warmer. “Stop looking at me like that would you? I didn’t mean to make you nervous.”

  “Sorry, but death threats make me a little twitchy.” I didn’t think it would come to anything, but still, I wished I had my gun on me instead of on an end table in the living room.

  “I’ll make it up to you then,” he said. “The STS searched your place while you were locked up. Looking for something more to pin on you no doubt.”

  “I figured they would. But I guess they didn’t find anything,” I said with a self-satisfied smirk.

  “That’s because I had a look around first.” He reached in his pocket and pulled something out. He set my last vial of dreamscape on the table, its sparkling blue essence winking at me.

  My mouth worked for a moment, trying unsuccessfully to say something. When I finally found my voice, I blurted, “Simon, I can explain.”

  “You don’t have to,” he replied. “I get it now. When I first found it I had no idea what to think. Every psychic who had ever taken this stuff had either gone insane or died outright. It’s probably some of the last of the drug left on the planet so you could sell it for a pretty penny, but that didn’t make sense either. The Inquisition would pay for anything you could possibly need, and we get paid a decent wage, so what were you holding this stuff for? Unless…”

  He signaled for me to finish the thought and I obliged. “When I take it I don’t get those destructive side-effects. It opens the door to that power that was lying dormant inside of me. The same thing happens when I’m around necromantic energy; except this stuff makes me feel invincible and death magic makes me feel sick.” I rubbed at the place on my chest where Christian had fed his power directly into me. It still itched whenever I thought of him.

  Simon nodded. “The death magic bound in it is what made it so addictive to vampires, and makes it useful to you. This is a one-time deal, though, little brother. Thankfully there isn’t much of this stuff left in circulation now that Adam Drake is locked away, but there are still ways to get it. I’m giving this back to you so you can do some good with it. But make no mistake,” he added, standing up and giving me his best bad-cop stare, “if I catch you with this stuff again I’ll arrest you myself. Get me?”

  I took the vial off the table and watched the azure liquid dance and swirl. “I get you.” Placing the drug in my pocket, I stood up and extended my hand. He knocked it away and grabbed me in a bear-hug that made my ribs creak in protest. “Okay, big guy, some of us still need to breathe.” He let me go and I slapped him on the shoulder. “I don’t know how to thank you, Simon.”

  He waved it away. “You can thank me by keeping your secret to yourself, especially around Clara.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Oh please. I heard everything she said to you back at the base. Maybe you bought what she was selling, and maybe not, but you need to know that she is Selena’s Bloodletter first and anything else second. She plays the seductress better than any woman I’ve ever met and she’ll use that against you if you let her.” The hoarseness in his voice told me he spoke from experience. “She’s tasted spiritwalker blood before, and if she drinks from you she’ll know what you are. Clara follows the old rules, Frank. If she tastes your blood she’ll kill you.”

  * * *

  After Simon left I ventured out into the heart of the Second City. It was a clear, cold night, the wind whipping in from the bay and sending shivers down my spine. The moon was a fat sickle in the sky and the stars glittered like broken glass against their inky backdrop. The streets were alive with activity. All of the bad energy that the Demons had brought had left with them, and the effects were immediate. All of the races mingled together on street corners and in front of shops. Howlerz had even eased the restrictions on non-werewolves. Robert, I assumed, was easing the tensions in advance of Eric returning and resuming his role as alpha. He may have been an ass but at least he had some common sense.

  I had taken the last dose of dreamscape before I had left the house, hoping that I could accomplish one last good thing with it before I kicked the habit. The drug made my senses sing, my Second Sight amplified to the point where it was almost painful just to look at people because of the energy they were giving off. In the chaos and confusion of my surroundings I didn’t know how to find what I was searching for.

  When I made it to the outskirts of the merge, I followed it for a couple of miles and then turned back and went west. I was still too new at this to know how to narrow my search. Before, death energy had presented itself to me in so many forms that I couldn’t turn my head without seeing it, but now I couldn’t find it if my life depended on it.

  Another half-hour passed fruitlessly. The dreamscape burned through my veins and ignited my synapses like white fire, but everything was too large, too overflowing with energy, with…life.

  That was it!

  I pulled my car to the side of the road and stepped out. The wind assaulted me, trying to tear the door from my grasp. I stood and looked up at the sky, clearing my mind of everything except the moon and stars above. The training, dulled by the drug, sensed my intentions and tried to come forward. It was a battle between the two: the drug-induced euphoria against the steadying calm of the training. After a minute’s concentration I was able to maintain equilibrium between them.

  Looking back towards the city, I tried to narrow my focus, to bring my raging senses back under control, and closed my eyes. The training brought everything down to baseline. As I had driven the streets it had seemed as if I was surrounded with massive strobe lights, powers and life-forces that were too bright for me. It blocked everything else out or drove it into the background. Now, even with my eyes closed it was as if I were looking out on a sea of candles, each one representing a citizen of the Second City. They moved about and mingled, waxed and waned, but never went out. I pushed out and tried to invert the picture. I needed to see what had power, necromantic power, yet wasn’t alive.

  The multicolored flames sputtered and receded into the back of my mind. I turned my head this way and that, trying to bring what I needed to see forward, knowing that physical movements meant nothing in the metaphysical world. The smell of gun smoke floated to me, catching my attention like a gazelle scenting a lion and…

  I was standing over Cassie; gun in hand, the recoil sending shivers up my arm. Her blood seeped into Rorschach images on the sheets.

  No, I’m not really here. I
was never here.

  With an effort I pulled myself out of the vision. My eyes were still closed, but now a white light wavered unsteadily on the horizon. Cautiously, I opened my eyes, fearing I would lose the weak signal. I concentrated on maintaining the link and it stayed put, so I jumped in my car and sped towards it. The living residents of the city, who moments ago had been flares in the dark, were now just shadows that I passed by on the way to my goal. The vampires, I noted with passing interest, appeared as black-lined figures, as if they each carried a personal cloud around them. Their inverted auras stood out like grains of pepper in a salt shaker.

  It took me ten minutes to reach her. She sat crouched in an alley, her back to the wall and her head tucked between her knees. She was a picture of abject defeat. Leaving the car parked half way up the sidewalk, I got out and went to her. She didn’t bother to look up as I approached.

  “Cassie,” I said tentatively. “It’s me, Frank.” Her head rose slightly and tilted toward me. I crouched down in front of her, her death-white eyes tracking my movements. A flicker of blue light played along the wall to my right, but I ignored it, thinking it was only the headlights of a passing car. “You saved my life back at the base, Cassie. I wish I could return the favor, to help you live, but that’s beyond my power.” She nodded sullenly. “The one thing I might be able to offer you is release.” Her head jerked up, eyes wide and blank. She began furiously scratching at some muck by her feet. It took me a moment to realize she was writing something. She pointed at it with a desiccated finger. Kill me, was scrawled in shaky script. “I’m so sorry for everything, Cassie. What happened to you…nobody deserves that. I only hope that you’ll find the happiness that was taken from you in this life in the next one.”