Demon Seeds_A Supernatural Horror Novel

by Tobias Wade

  “Marapoza is a volcano?”

  “Built on a volcano,” Henry replies. As more molten veins begin running through the walls, Elijah is able to make out the giant Codex Gigas open in Henry’s arms. “The Beast has kept his house dry for the day he might enter and dwell in its walls. We’re going to pull the plug, you and I, and drown out his last bastion on Earth.”

  Something stirs at the end of the tunnel. A flash of shadow, perhaps nothing more than a globule of molten rock. Henry’s face is buried in the book, oblivious even as he walks unerringly through the treacherous rocks.

  “Can other things from The Beast’s realm enter too?” Elijah asks, voice hoarse and strained.

  Henry looks up and smiles, an infernal light glinting off his smooth black eyes. “They’re already here,” his voice seems to rob some of the meager light from the place. Elijah shivers again, despite the heat. He’s a teacher, he reminds himself. A man of reason. This is nothing but an exploration, pushing the boundaries of his reality into marvelous heights of new knowledge. So why was he starting to wish that this was all just a bad dream?

  A loud THUD—Henry had dropped the book with a sound like a falling tree. His old hands were trembling as they run through his gray hair. He falls to his knees, panting and wheezing, the dark, wet rasp creeping into every other breath.

  Elijah drops to his knees beside the decrepit creature who looks at least ten years older than he had at the start of this journey. He puts a hand on the old man’s back to comfort him, but Henry pulls back sharply as though he’d been burned. Black eyes glare at Elijah with suspicion from the huddled figure.

  “I’m ready to take the seed when you can’t bear it anymore,” Elijah says, trying to keep the eagerness out of his voice. The black eyes narrow further. “If you wait too late, then the demon will take over, right? Then neither of us will profit.”

  “You would steal from me,” the rasping voice.

  “You are my master, and I am your Krisha,” Elijah coos in a voice as thick and sweet as syrup.

  Henry pulls himself to his feet, trembling for the effort. Elijah reaches out to assist again, but the old man pulls away sharply. “Thank you, Krisha, but it is not yet time. The well between worlds is not far, but we must hurry.”

  Elijah pulls a tight smile and nods, staying a respectful distance. Stubborn fool. He’d rather risk his life than give up a chance at that power. A trait they had in common, perhaps.

  The path was leveling out and widening now, and the light grows more intense. Open pools of lava now bubble near the walls, and they have to be careful where they walk to avoid the heavy droplets oozing overhead. Henry is staring into his book once more, mumbling to himself and checking his surroundings as he picks a steady path. Another shadow darts forward in the corner of Elijah’s vision. Something is unmistakably watching them.

  “You called this The Beast’s house,” Elijah breaks the silence. “I see many houses though. What else lived here?”

  More than houses—a full city is revealing itself around them. Dwellings are carved directly from the rock in the widening cavern, with openings for doors and windows embedded into mountainous hillsides and stalactites. In the distance, tall pinnacles of rock seem artificially placed, marching in ordered columns along an open river of molten stone.

  “A house for his spirit,” Henry replies, “and a city for his worshipers. I don’t suppose any still remember their old God.”

  Henry is following the molten river with purpose now. Seeming confident in his route, he claps the book shut and stores it safely in the metal case once more. Elijah has to practically jog to keep pace with him now, and a moment later he’s at a full run. The old man seems invigorated by the air here, his limbs a dark blur as he scampers down a sudden steep slope. The river of molten rock lances off the cliff to tumble as a waterfall might into a churning lake below. A narrow stone bridge crosses the lake, many palatial structures dominating the surrounding ground. In the center of the bridge is a small gazebo-like structure, carved from white marble yet so delicate and intricate in design that it might as well have been spun from spider silk.

  Elijah rests panting while trying to discern how to navigate down the slope. He can’t get enough oxygen in the heavy air, and Henry has already reached the bottom before Elijah can begin the descent.

  “You have less than ten minutes left to live, unless you do what I say.” The ice in Elijah’s veins provides stark contrast to the burning air. The voice came from behind him—an uncompromising voice with a granite edge. “Don’t turn. Don’t look at me. Just lean on your knees and catch your breath. That’s right.”

  Elijah nods, not daring to move. Henry doesn’t even notice him—he’s crossing the bridge toward the marble gazebo.

  “Who are—”

  “Silence,” the voice growls. Elijah swallows hard as fingers trace the back of his neck. “The man you call master has deceived you. He has no intention to share his power. You’re here for one purpose only, so that your blood may complete the ritual and close the portal. If you go to him now, you will be sacrificed. Nod to show you understand me.”

  Elijah does so. He tries to sneak a glance behind him, but the fingers tighten around the back of his neck, holding him in place as surely as an iron vice. Can a human have a grip like that? Elijah doesn’t think so.

  “If you try to run, he will kill you,” the voice continues. “The seed has grown too ripe within him, and I cannot save you from him as he is now.”

  “Why should I trust you?” Elijah’s voice is barely above a whisper. Henry is in the gazebo now, and he glances back up the cliff face.

  “We have no time to waste. Hurry!” Henry shouts.

  “Because you are afraid. I can taste it on you.” The breath is hot on Elijah’s skin, scalding like boiling steam. Hotter than the heat billowing up from the surrounding lava. “I am the shepherd of fear, and I still have enough of my humanity to understand you—to care for you—to guide you safely to the other side. He does not.”

  The grip slackens, and Elijah is able to turn around. More black eyes, but they’re staring from a more human-looking face. Bald head, strong features, and a kindly paternal smile.

  “Krisha! What are you doing?” Henry howls, a wild, guttural sound like a tiger who has been taught the human tongue.

  “You took the seed too, didn’t you?” Elijah asks.

  “I was the first to take it, and just as swiftly did I pass it on to retain my humanity. My name is Ender Maston, and the only way for you to survive is to do exactly as I say.”

  A few moments later, Elijah is sliding and bounding down the rocky slope alongside the cascading river of fire. “I’m coming, master!” he shouts to Henry. “Your faithful Krisha is coming.”

  17

  The full spectrum of humanity is apparent while Flight 477 makes its emergency landing in Montreal. Many are silent, their faces stone, daring not even think too loud for fear of what they might hear. Others chat nervously, manic speech interrupted with bursts of hysterical laughter in their desperate rush to expel the thing taking root inside them. The old woman whose mind was infiltrated shakes uncontrollably, muttering to herself. Some weep or moan from injuries suffered during the chaos, both physical and emotional.

  Can a spiritual wound bleed? Jessica wonders. Can it be fatal?

  “She was just trying to scare you, you know,” Dantes says. She feels the distant pressure of his hand on hers, but it swiftly vanishes when it fails to illicit a response from her. “That’s all they can do. Scare people. They make up lies and—”

  “I don’t need comforting. I’m not scared,” she replies.

  “You don’t believe it though, do you? You being… part of all this even before the first seed was discovered. It’s crazy to think—”

  But the words blend together like the uniformity of raindrops on the roof. It’s a lonely feeling, but cathartic too. Like she just finished a long hike and was standing alone on a mountain top. She was
looking at the same world she always had, she was farther away from it than she’d ever been, but that distance only made her see more clearly. She wasn’t broken, or crazy, or lost somehow by her own design. She always knew that something didn’t fit, and she’d always assumed it was her. Mom—or at least the woman who had played her mother so convincingly—she had solved the puzzle. Jessica’s dark, destructive thoughts weren’t hers at all, but The Beast thinking through her.

  How much else of her life belonged to him then? Was it just the thoughts that drove her to jump, or was it every bad feeling she’s ever had? When she was eight years old she’d had her bike stolen right in front of her by one of the bigger kids. Even then she’d wanted to run him down and hurt him. Really hurt him—make him choke on the handle bars or break his fingers beneath the wheel. Was it her wanting that, or was it The Beast? Or is there any difference at all?

  “… Jessica?”

  She blinks and rubs her eyes, turning to Dantes. He gives her a dopey grin, and she returns it with tight-lipped acknowledgment. People are standing in the aisle, waves of tension and agitation running up and down the herd as they try to maintain their civility while filing off the landed plane. The nervous chatter rises, but Jessica can see through the smiles and clearly picture how each screaming face looked less than an hour ago.

  Jessica waits until the plane is cleared and her wheelchair is brought from the back of the plane. Dantes volunteers to push her, but she says she could use the exercise. Really it just feels better not to have him standing behind her. The weight of concern in his eyes feels like an unwelcome burden at the moment, and she allows herself to fall slightly behind the two soldiers as they navigate the airport to get their bags. The plane needs to be checked for the source of the “mechanical abnormalities,” and they won’t be able to get a new one until the morning.

  “We’ve got some updates from Jacques,” Dantes says.

  “Yeah? Did he find Henry?” Jordan grunts, ruffling a hand through his short hair for the hundredth time, almost like he was trying to wipe something off. “Bastard probably got one look at the thing and got the hell out of there.”

  “Henry and the Codex. Jessica was right about his goal. He picked them up posing as a cab driver, then followed them into the woods where he dropped them off. Henry killed a man using some kind of fire we haven’t seen before, then stepped into the shadows and disappeared. Jacques will meet up with us in Iceland as soon as he can.”

  “You don’t think he—”

  “The seed? Absolutely not. He might be a self-serving bastard at times, but he saw what happened to Ender the same as the rest of us. No way he’s touching that.”

  “What about Jessica’s mom?” Dantes asks from the corner of his mouth. He spares a glance back at Jessica, but she pretends not to be listening.

  “Planted in the ground like a seed ought to be. We were at peak cruising altitude—I don’t care what she was, nothing walks away from a 40,000 foot drop.”

  “She wouldn’t have jumped if she didn’t have a plan.”

  “I figure jumping was the plan.” Jordan hauls his duffel bag off, finding the other bags shortly after. He glances at Jessica too, but she pretends to just be watching a TV screen. The ‘terrorist hacking attack’ at the Los Angeles airport is already on the news. Animated pundits are arguing about who was to blame, getting red in the face as they scream their rhetoric at each other. How quickly fear divides us…

  “Her real mom was still in there, I think,” Jordan continues. “She was at war with the demon, and she won. At least for long enough to take the dive. She sacrificed herself to stop the demon from hurting Jessica.”

  Jessica closes her eyes and listens to the sound of her own soft breathing which is somehow louder than the bustling roar of the airport.

  The mid-flight panic has washed over the entire airport, and at least a dozen flights are grounded for inspection. Jordan sits in the front seat of the taxi, calling hotel after hotel trying to find a vacancy. Jessica watches the scenery stream by into endless, shapeless blurs.

  “First time out of the country?” Dantes asks. There’s a desperate eagerness in his face that reminds Jessica of the other passengers: that need to hold onto normalcy so badly.

  “I’ve traveled a lot,” he rambles. “One of the perks of the job, I guess, but it’s not like they were exactly tourist destinations.” He doesn’t sound comfortable talking about it, but he doesn’t seem to know how to change the topic. He pauses for a moment, but evidently he’s even more uncomfortable with the silence between thoughts.

  “Grew up in Venezuela, but there was no place for me there. When I met Ender, I was part of a gang. We used the rise of Hugo Chavez as an excuse to rebel, but we were just kids trying to survive any way we knew how. People were scared when they saw us, and I thought that was the same thing as respect. Then Ender and his men came in and I saw how they treated him, and how the people celebrated when he started driving out the gangs. I told him I’d help if he took me with him when he left. I didn’t think he really would—I was barely a teenager and didn’t even know how to shoot a gun. Do you know what he said though?”

  Jessica watches Dantes while he talks. It’s interesting to see how tense his mouth is between words, like he’s speaking against his will.

  “What did he say?” Jessica prompts at last.

  “I don’t need soldiers. The world has enough soldiers. I need men, and you don’t need hair on your chest to be a man.”

  “What do you need then?”

  Dantes shrugs. “I don’t know, but knowing that he saw it was enough for me. I was a man when I left Venezuela. Maybe that’s all any kid needs to grow up—for someone they respect to come along and believe it for them. Libya after that, Iraq, the Congo—never stayed in one place long. We did our job and got out. Sometimes he’d fly back to the States to visit you and your mom, and the rest of the crew would blow through their earnings and live large for a while. I always wanted to come with him there too, but he’d say no. ‘You’re in charge while I’m gone,’ he’d say. He never explained why, and some of the men gave him a lot of shit for it, but he was our captain. If people didn’t honor that, they didn’t stay with us long. Then he’d always be back with another contract, and off we’d go again.”

  “Not captain anymore though, is he?” Jordan mumbles. “No sergeant anymore either. Marques dead. Jacques won’t come back if he’s got any brains in him. Just us two stubborn idiots with a head full of glory days and an early grave to look forward to.”

  “It’s too bad you didn’t come back with him,” Jessica says softly. “It would have been nice to have a friend back then.”

  Dantes tries not to smile, but does a poor job of it.

  The taxi eventually pulls to a stop outside a bed and breakfast which must have passed its prime at the turn of the century, although exactly which century was anyone’s guess. The ornamental iron fence is so infested with dry, dead weeds that it would be almost impassible even without the fence. Rotting boards jut haphazardly from the building, and all the windows of the third story are boarded up.

  “Seriously?” Dantes asks. He gets out of the car and circles around to help Jessica out.

  “Seriously.” Jordan pays the taxi driver and starts unloading the luggage. “Everything is sold out in a ten-mile radius around the airport. The whole place is grounded now. They don’t know what to make of it.”

  An elderly woman with lopsided makeup helps them check in. Jessica can’t stop staring at the lipstick which runs jaggedly up her face on the right side. It wouldn’t have been so disconcerting if the left side of her face wasn’t so immaculate.

  “Morning checkout is fine,” she says, pulling a real metal key off the shelf and handing it to Jordan. “Or the day after, or as long as you want—that’s fine too. It’s been so quiet around here since my husband Max passed.”

  “Make it two rooms then,” Jordan says, shuffling through his wallet for a credit card.

&
nbsp; The woman peers over her desk, seeming to notice Jessica for the first time. “Oh goodness, are you okay? Took a nasty fall, did you? Max used to tip over all the time too—nothing there, he’d just stumble on his own two feet.”

  Jessica forces a sickly sweet smile. “Happened in jail. Monopoly game got out of hand when I tried to bribe the banker to get out.”

  The woman nods sagely as though many of her friends had suffered in the same way. “Of course, of course. Mind you Max used to be quite the sportsman, so it’s not like he was always that way. Played baseball for years—had an arm like you wouldn’t believe—they used to call him The Cannon.”

  Dantes takes the second key and hands it to Jessica. He mouths the word ‘Monopoly’.

  Jessica nods solemnly. “It’s a vicious game. Brings out The Beast in us.” She wishes she hadn’t said that the moment it comes out of her mouth. Dantes snorts in response—something like a smothered chuckle. It seems like she can do no wrong in his eyes.

  Jordan is already halfway up the stairs carrying his duffel bag, a cascade of creaking in his wake.

  “… could have gone professional even,” the woman behind the desk prattles. “If he hadn’t gotten called up by the draft, he really might have. Would you like to see some pictures?”

  “We really need to get some rest—” Dantes picks up Jessica’s bag and slings it over one shoulder.

  “I’d love to. Got to love a man in uniform,” Jessica says, folding her hands on the table to lean her chin in rapturous captivation.

  “Don’t you think you should—”

  “You can just drop that in my room on your way upstairs,” Jessica says, grinning and enjoying his obvious befuddlement. Dantes shifts from one foot to the next for a few seconds, then nods and hurries to obey.

  “That’s what he was wearing when I met him! The name’s Gladys, by the way,” she says, shaking as she bends down to rummage under the desk.