Devil Take Me

by Karilyn Bentley

“Perhaps he is referring to things going on at the Agency.”

  I shake my head at Eloise’s comment. “Why would he refer to the Agency as my master? I thought he was talking about Zagan. I’m just not sure what topic he thought Zagan was supposed to tell me.”

  “Why don’t you ask Zagan?” Eloise asks.

  I shrug, hoping the movement masks the hollow pit of loss from my current rocky relationship with the demon. “He’s not speaking to me right now.”

  “We’ll figure it out.” Smythe raps his knuckles on the table. “Ready to hunt some evil?”

  Chapter Nineteen

  I slam my car door while staring at the five-story medical building next door to my hospital’s campus. Demon hunting with Smythe was a bust. Despite canvassing my neighborhood for an hour, no demon or minion tracks were found except the faded ones at the abandoned, for-sale house. While happy to note I live in a demon/minion-free area, I’m not so happy to still have Perdix running around up to no good.

  We also tried another round of interviews with family members of the deceased suicides. The few we caught at home all said the same thing: their loved one was not depressed. The victims were all upset over a recent occurrence, but not depressed with suicidal thoughts. None of the deceased wrote Get away from me Satan on loose pieces of paper like Will’s foster dad, but most of them did rant about voices in their heads shortly before their deaths.

  Freakin’ demons.

  And since this particular demon haunted me too, I held a personal grudge to kill its ass. Preferably sooner rather than later. Then I could get on with hunting the demon Eloise claimed lived at the Agency. Or getting my job back.

  Which brings me to this office building where I’ll need to tell a compelling lie about why I’ve been late and missing work. At least the lack of finding a demon meant I made my afternoon appointment on time.

  Oh joy.

  Okay, Gin, you got this. How hard could it be to lie to the good counselor, convince her I’m stable and get back to my house by dinner?

  I draw in a deep breath. I’m screwed.

  Positive thoughts, Gin, positive thoughts. I managed to get out of a psychiatric ward by lying. A feat much harder than lying to a counselor. I hope.

  Maybe I’m not as screwed as I thought.

  Striding across the parking lot, I pull my raincoat closer around my body. A fine mist floats in the air, wets my face. Dampness highlights the scent of oil staining the asphalt. The double doors of the medical office building slide open, admitting me to a marble-coated entry. Great flooring choice for ailing patients coupled with rain. Shaking my head, I shuffle my feet on the damp mat, trying to dry my shoes to avoid slipping on the slick marble tiles.

  The elevator drops me off on the fourth floor. A quick peek at the signs on the wall directs me to the office. When I arrive in the waiting room, the receptionist hands me the obligatory paperwork to fill out. I take a seat on one of the overstuffed sofas lining the walls. Instead of winding me up tighter than I already am, the room relaxes me, soothing away my stress.

  Clearly the counselor discovered a way to waft Prozac through the air vents.

  Paperwork completed and returned to the receptionist, I sit on the sofa, flipping through a magazine. Five minutes past the hour, the door to what I assume to be the spill-your-guts office opens. An average build, brown haired, thirty-something man steps out, heading toward the smiling receptionist. A tall woman with short gray hair, a long flowing skirt and enough turquoise jewelry around her neck and ears to give the average person a trip to the chiropractor, stands in the doorway. Her smile welcomes me, draws me in, begs me to confide my deepest secrets.

  My gaze can’t leave hers. I want to tell her my problems, my real problems, not the fake ones I decided on while driving here.

  “Gin?”

  I stand, hold out my hand. “That’s me.”

  “I’m Kathy Funk. You can call me Kathy.”

  She takes my hand when I reach the doorway, giving it a brief squeeze before stepping back to usher me into her private domain. The door clicks closed, but before I can sit, the main office door slams open, startling us.

  “You fucking bastard, I knew I’d find you here! I told you I’m the only thing you need!” A woman’s screech snaps my spine erect.

  Kathy’s eyes widen as if she’s not used to having her office interrupted by an irate woman. A shifting of silver links on my wrist clues me in it’s no irate woman. Double dog damn it. A minion screeches in the waiting room and a two-foot long sword juts from my wrist.

  As Kathy pulls the door open, I make the obvious choice when faced with a soon-to-be-dead minion and a need for memory tinkering: call for help.

  Smythe! There’s a minion in the waiting room at my counselor’s. Help! Come quick!

  A pause and then his essence explodes into my mind, excitement coupled with a let’s-get-this-done emotion guaranteed to put me in a fighting state of mind.

  Coming.

  As soon as Kathy steps into the waiting room, Smythe portals beside me.

  Before I can ask him how the hell I’m supposed to kill a demon without anyone calling the cops or the men in white suits, the noise escalates. The male client yells at the minion—about her being a crazy-ass bitch—while Kathy tries to deescalate the situation using a soothing voice that would calm a normal human, but eases the minion about as much as slicing a hole in her stomach.

  Smythe gestures at the door. “The cleanup crew can erase their memories. Go kill the damn minion.”

  Oh, yeah, right. I knew that. My panic moment kept my brain cells from firing.

  I dart out the door into a scene from hell. Not really, but it sure did resemble one. Long minion fingers wrapped around the man’s throat while he did his best to pull her off without making a direct hit. Kathy and the receptionist had joined in the tug-fest, trying to peel the minion’s fingers from the man’s throat. All three humans were getting nowhere fast. Blotchy spots colored the man’s face an ugly shade of red.

  “Step back!” I yank the receptionist free of the melee, shoving her to the side as I draw back my sword.

  Kathy’s eyes pop wide, but she moves out of the way of the impending blow. Unfortunately, so does the minion.

  The man drops to the floor, hands around his bruised neck, as the minion leaps backward, avoiding my attempted slice.

  “Bitch! Do you know who I am?”

  Why is it demons and minions possess an inflated self-identity? I don’t give a shit who she thinks she is. All I care about is she’s a minion, which means she must die. End of story.

  Drawing my sword up at the ready, I step toward her. “I don’t care.”

  Evil creeps through her smile. “I belong to Rahab.”

  Oh, goody. One of Rahab’s wanna-be’s. I might be unable to kill the demon, but I can take down all his ego-inflated minions.

  Spit bubbles in the corners of her mouth as she screams her qualifications, obviously assuming they would impress me to the point of giving up. Fat chance, minion.

  “I’m the best there is. The best. I’m the best girlfriend ever in the history of the world. But that fool,” she points to the man, “left me for some bitch not nearly as good as me. He deserves to die. Get out of my way, Justitian.”

  She runs at me. I swing. Not fast enough, though. Red oozes from the slice on her arm. A gasp comes from one of the three humans who watch our fight. The minion rubs her hand over her bleeding upper arm, a snarl twisting her face into pure evil.

  “That hurt, bitch.”

  “So sorry I missed.”

  She circles around, me mirroring her movements, a dance to the death.

  She young. Easy to kill. Let me in. The justitia’s voice echoes in my head. I end her now. No play.

  Alrighty then. If the entity along my nerves wants to kill the minion, so be it.

  I draw in a deep breath, eyes focused on the minion who stares at me, both of us watching the other for the smallest movement. Purple light fla
res, obscuring my vision for a split second, a clear indication the justitia powers my movements. My body moves faster than I thought possible.

  While the justitia has taken control of my limbs before in a fight, it’s been nothing like this speed. A heady power rush fires off a sense of euphoria. Whatever changed between the entity and me, I like it.

  My body moves in a blur of speed not even the minion with her hyper-acute senses can track. One minute she stands snarling at me, eyes scanning my body for a subtle twitch indicating an impending attack, and the next blood spurts across the blue and white sofas as her head drops to the floor with a rolling thud.

  The sound of her head and body hitting the white carpet echoes in my mind, a slow-motion reel of horror. My body slows to normal, no longer the super-fast speed used to kill the minion.

  Screams and gasps reverberate against blood spattered walls, background noise barely registering as I use the flat of my blade to catch the demon’s essence before it escapes back to its host. The gray mist sizzles on my justitia, destroying a small part of the demon. Kill enough of a demon’s minions and you’ll kill the demon. Eventually.

  I turn. The man sits on the ground, the receptionist kneeling beside him, both staring at me, faces frozen in horror. Kathy takes a step back, eyes wide. I glance down at my blood-spattered clothes. Crap. There went another outfit.

  When I raise my eyes, Smythe stands in the doorway to Kathy’s private office, holding up a finger, phone against his ear. In the silence I hear the words, “cleanup crew STAT.” Good to know they’re on their way. Even better to know he had enough confidence in my minion fighting abilities to stay out of the way and let me handle it.

  Maybe I’m not as big of a screw-up as I thought.

  Harsh breathing dominates the small space. I should say something, should try to ease their fears, but what difference did it make? Soon the cleanup crew would erase their memories, leaving them with some happy-happy the formerly soothing office could never hope to match.

  I look at Smythe as the three continue to bounce gazes from the headless minion to my no-longer-a-sword justitia.

  I thought you were going to help. Telepathy rocks. Especially in a situation where humans—even if they are about to have their memories erased—don’t need to know when you’re questioning your boss’s judgment.

  Didn’t need to. You had it covered.

  And don’t those words give a girl a case of the smiles. He thinks I’m a good fighter. A far cry from when we first started. Also nice to know he didn’t abandon me like last time.

  I offer him a grin.

  When we get back, you’ll need to tell me what you did to move so fast. You blurred out. I had trouble following you.

  Before I can respond, the man recovers enough to speak, pointing at the headless minion as he clears his throat, his raspy voice an indication of a throat injury. “What the hell was the gray mist that came out of her?”

  I glance at Smythe, who shakes his head. I look back at the man’s wide-eyed expression. What difference does it make if he knows? Whatever I tell him will disappear soon enough. Ignoring Smythe’s continued head shaking, I answer. “Demon essence.”

  Amazingly enough, human eyes can widen to cover half a face. “Seriously? Like she was possessed?”

  “Yep.” I nod.

  He turns to a pale-faced Kathy. “See? I told you she was the devil’s bitch.”

  Kathy continues to stare at the minion, green tingeing the counselor’s pale face as her gaze bounces to the streaks of blood turning her calming office into a macabre crime scene. Ignoring her client, she turns to me, her head tilting. “You killed her.”

  “She was a minion.” My eyes narrow. “A demon’s minion. She deserved to die. Her kind wreak havoc on earth.”

  “But you killed her.” Her soft tone holds…wonder?

  Smythe steps into her office, disappearing from view, the movement snagging my gaze. Low voices escape. The cleanup crew has arrived.

  As I return my gaze to Kathy, a memory plays in my mind, a reminder of how naïve I was several months ago. When I first started this demon-killing gig, I thought minions could be saved. If only I could convince them of the demon’s evil, convince them to forsake the bad for the good, I could draw out the demonic essence, returning them to human status.

  It never happened. It never will happen. Maybe if I catch a person before they decide to become a minion, before demon essence enters their body, corrupting their soul, then I can save them. Like I tried to do with Donny.

  Maybe I should forgive myself for killing the football star. He would’ve swallowed Rahab’s evil essence whole, without a second thought. Donny showed no remorse for cozying up to a demon; why should I feel bad for killing him before he hurt a lot of people?

  Epiphanies one has in a shrink’s office.

  Oh, yeah, I might want to answer said shrink before the cleanup crew erases her memory. It might not matter in the grand scheme of things, but for whatever reason, I want her to understand.

  “She couldn’t be saved. She was no longer a woman, she was a minion. You can’t save minions. You can only kill them before they kill you.”

  Her eyes focus on me. “That’s what you do isn’t it? Kill these,” she waves a hand at the body, “things. That’s why you’ve been missing work.”

  I blink at her insight as Smythe steps out of the office, two mages behind him, obliterating my chance for an answer.

  “Nice kill,” one of the mages says, nodding his head as he looks at the body.

  Kathy turns as she glares at the three mages, red splotches obliterating the paleness of her face. “Who the hell are you and what are you doing in my office?” She steps forward, hands planted on her hips, confusion and anger replacing her fear.

  The two mages stop, eyes widening before they squeeze them shut and shake their heads. Almost as if she threw a spell at them. Which I’m pretty sure she didn’t, judging from her red face and trembling hands. Not to mention she’s a counselor, not a mage. Diagnosis: adrenaline rush after danger. Clearly the mages were surprised by her temerity.

  “Ma’am,” one of the mages places a hand on her shoulder. “All you saw was an argument. All any of you saw was an irate woman—”

  “But she’s my ex-girlfriend,” the man interrupts the attempted spell. “I knew she was crazy. Like evil demon crazy. No one believed me.”

  The mage drops his hand from Kathy’s shoulder, walks to the man, puts his hand on the guy’s shoulder and looks into his eyes. “You are correct. She was crazy. She came in here irate, yelled at you, but then left when threatened with the police. Isn’t that right?”

  Three sets of eyes glaze as the mage writes a new story for what they saw. A shame he can’t leave Kathy with the knowledge she deduced so she can understand why I miss work, so I don’t have to lie to her. I’ve only just met her, but something about the woman makes me want to tell her the truth. About everything. And have her remember.

  On the other hand, perhaps it’s best her mind gets erased. Then I can stick to my tried and true lies with all my secrets intact.

  While the mage continues his tale of the crazy woman yelling then leaving and what everyone saw and did, the other mage begins the process of magically scrubbing the room clean of blood. I look at my blood-stained clothes. Back to the clean walls.

  It never hurts to ask.

  “Hey,” the room-cleaning mage turns as I approach. “Think you can get rid of this blood?” I gesture to my clothes. “I have an appointment with Kathy here and I’m sure she’ll think I’m major nuts if I walk in looking like this.”

  The mage raises a brow. “An appointment?”

  “It’s a long story.”

  He shrugs, waves a hand and poof, my outfit is saved. I grin.

  “Thanks, man.”

  He shrugs again, returning to his work.

  I slide around both mages to Smythe.

  “Think he can weave a tale about how I’m normal so I don’t ha
ve to come back?”

  Smythe cracks a smile, his eyes twinkling. “Making you normal would be too big of a stretch.”

  “Gee, thanks.”

  “Seriously, though. Would she really release you after one session?”

  Sure, sits on the tip of my tongue, but I stop to think about it. Would she? The last trip to the shrink got me a week’s stay in a psych ward before I convinced the good doctor to release me and Hell week included twice-daily counseling sessions. I sigh.

  “Probably not.”

  He slaps a hand on my shoulder. “As much as I agree with you about these sessions, if you want to keep your job, you should suck it up and act like no minion interrupted your chat.”

  Normally I’d interject a bit about how the Agency should man up and pay for my salary so I can quit and work for them full time, but with all Eloise said about the place, I’m no longer so sure I want them to pay me. Was it dirty money if a demon had had his or her hands on it? Until we get the Agency demon killed, I’m better off with my nurse’s salary.

  Besides, I love being a nurse.

  Which means I get to stay for a counseling session once this whole mess gets scrubbed clean.

  Chapter Twenty

  Smythe leaves to meet Will while the mages continue to scrub the scene. Despite a dead body in the waiting room, the mages manage to convince the man and receptionist nothing strange occurred. Not sure what memories they planted in the man’s mind to explain the time lapse, but as soon as he walked out the door, they sat me in Kathy’s office and told her we’d had a successful hour session.

  Once the mages give everyone shiny, new memories, they disappear with the minion’s body to rig a crime scene not involving Kathy’s male client. Nice of them to divert blame from the poor guy. His bad choice in women shouldn’t result in being blamed for a murder he didn’t commit. As soon as they portal away with the minion, Kathy snaps out of her trance. Right on cue.

  Her eyes squint as she presses fingers against her forehead.

  “Are you okay?”

  She nods. “All of a sudden, I have a raging headache.”

  “I’m sorry. I hope it feels better.”