Demon Underground (2)

by S. L. Wright

  The bar was dark and in complete disarray. My own blood was on the floor in front. Crave’s signature was coming from upstairs.

  “The news said you were in jail,” Bliss said.

  “Not really. Just hanging out with the cops.”

  “Was it fun?”

  I raised my brows at her. “More fun than getting home. How long have those people been out there?”

  “Since you were shot.”

  I had almost forgotten that Bliss and Crave were here when it happened, having sex upstairs. “Have you been here ever since?”

  “I thought you’d want someone to watch over the bar. There were people gathering out front and a news crew arrived before everyone was let go by the police. Lolita ran out of here so fast she was still wearing her apron.”

  I wondered at her calm, but then again, there had been nothing but chaos since she was born. Everything turning topsy-turvy was just another day for her.

  A boom made us both jump. I realized someone had slammed against the metal shutter outside. The rise in noise, loud voices and shouts, made me shudder. “Let’s get upstairs.”

  The television showed the front of my bar being mobbed by people. The reporter was being jostled by everyone around her. It was surreal, as if I’d been dislocated in time. But I could hear them outside, growing louder and bolder as more people converged on the Lower East Side.

  “Nice riot you’ve got going.” Crave waved languidly at the window. “What are you planning for an encore?”

  “Are you going to start in on me, too?” I snapped.

  “Do I need to tell you that I’ve never seen anything so stupid in my entire life?” He started laughing. “If it wasn’t so completely self-destructive, I’d think you were insane. But even insane demons have some sense of self-preservation.”

  “Coming from the guy sleeping on my couch, that doesn’t count for much. It’s not like you haven’t fucked up your life, Crave. Last I heard, your mommy ran away without you.”

  “Good riddance,” Crave snorted. “I don’t need her.”

  “That’s right, you have Bliss now. You can live off her for the next century.”

  His feet hit the floor. “I’m taking care of Bliss. If it wasn’t for me, she would have rushed downstairs right into the arms of the police. She would have ended up in that cell along with you.”

  “He’s stronger than me.” Bliss was looking at Crave with a new wariness in her eyes. “He wouldn’t let me go down when we heard the gunshots. Your signature went out, did you know that? I felt you die.”

  “She came back to life,” Crave said impatiently.

  “She died. And you wouldn’t let me go down.” Bliss rubbed her arm.

  I pictured Crave grabbing on to her, locking his arms around her, maybe even putting his hand over her mouth, urging her to be quiet. Forcing her to do what he wanted.

  “That’s not right,” I told him. “People have to make their own choices. Their own mistakes.”

  Bliss nodded. “You can’t manhandle me into doing what you want.”

  Crave lifted his hands in exasperation. “You’re making it sound like some kind of domestic abuse. I kept you from running into a burning building, Bliss. If I saw you were about to throw yourself off a cliff, I’d sit on you to make you stop, if I had to.”

  “My life wasn’t in danger,” Bliss retorted.

  “Yes, it is, as long as you’re connected to her. You could have been outed as a demon, too. Don’t you think the men in white coats will be here soon to escort Ms. Meyers to the closest hospital for a round of tests, just like that dried-up old stick Cherie? This time they won’t let their miracle-worker disappear. Face it, Allay, you’re going to be staring at the inside of a box before the weekend is over.”

  “I have a good lawyer.” My throat was tight.

  Crave laughed again, meanly. “You’re going to need all the luck you can get, Allay. Forget about the humans; demons will make short work of you. They know how bad it can get when we’re hunted and rooted out. You’ve launched Armageddon against us. You’re a traitor and you won’t have a demon on your side after this.”

  I looked from him to Bliss. “I take it that includes you.”

  A ghost of her usual smile lifted her lips. “No. I’ll stick by you, Allay.”

  “Bliss!” Crave took a few steps toward her, and she backed up one, then held firm. “You can’t stay here. This place is going to be firebombed. I keep telling you, we have to go now, before we’re cut off completely. She’s back now. There’s no reason for you to stay.”

  Bliss kept smiling. “I’m not going anywhere. This is my home, remember?”

  I felt such a flooding of relief, knowing that I’d been right to support her, to care about her. Shock had warned me that Bliss would try to kill me, and here she was, standing up for me against her lover.

  Crave was undone by her refusal. He stepped closer, and this time she didn’t flinch. He started speaking to her quietly, so I eased back, suddenly feeling as if I was intruding.

  As they argued, I went into the back room and shut the door. I couldn’t urge Bliss to stay when Crave was probably right—it was dangerous for her to be here. But I couldn’t ask her to leave, either.

  I didn’t want to be alone. I was frightened.

  I stared sightlessly out the windows, wondering what Bliss would decide. Then I heard the front door to the apartment close and their tread on the stairs going down together. They were in the bar for a long time; then the back door opened and shut. Crave emerged in the courtyard.

  I hesitated, but Bliss didn’t appear with him. Crave turned to glare up at me, and anger and frustration roiled his aura. He blamed me.

  After a while, Bliss opened the door. “He’s gone.”

  “He’s still out there,” I corrected. “Looking up at the window.”

  Bliss went close to the window and looked through the bars. She lifted her hand in a wave, then turned away. “Come on, let’s go to the front.”

  I glanced out back as I followed to see Crave still standing there looking up at the empty windows. I kept expecting to hear him knock down below, but as the minutes passed in silence, his signature slowly faded as he left.

  Bliss didn’t say a word about it, so I didn’t.

  It wouldn’t help to keep worrying over whether I’d done the right thing. I watched the television coverage of my own death and rebirth. It was an appalling repeat of Cherie’s consumption by the media. Bliss flipped around the channels, idly showing me the highlights. There were a number of clips of patrons from my bar: people I barely remembered and others who had been coming here for years, all telling the same horrifying story of my murder and revivification. Except for Lolita. The sight of Lo’s pout as she refused to comment warmed my heart.“You made the Early Show, Today, and even Good Morning America,” Bliss pointed out. She had Tivo’d them all.

  Currently playing was the midmorning inanity. Kelly was exclaiming to Regis in complete astonishment, as she did with every story. “Did you hear what happened last night? A bartender on the Lower East Side was shot in the face by her drug-addled lover.” She waved away Regis’s expression of dismay. “Don’t worry. She’s fine. Not a scratch on her. Customers who were there at the time say that she died and came back to life. Yes! Just like supermodel Cherie! Only this girl—Emma Meyers is her name—she doesn’t claim she’s a messenger from God. No, this girl says she’s a demon.” Kelly nodded solemnly, her eyes round. “You know what makes it even better? The New York Post has a huge headline this morning claiming that Emma is sleeping with Prophet Anderson himself!”

  I put my head in my hands. If that wasn’t proof that you should never lie, then I don’t know what was. It was my own stupid story coming back to bite me. Someone could die and come back to life, and the salacious sex scandal would still dominate the news coverage.

  “... Emma was born in Orange County, California, where she lived with her family in this humble home. She dropped out of
high school, according to neighbors’ reports, and moved into a fancy beach house in Malibu with an . . . um, older man before moving to Manhattan ...”

  The shot changed to one of the front of my besieged bar. “Go back!” I ordered Bliss. She reversed to the last clip. “There! That’s my parents’ house.”

  It looked so peaceful sitting there in the dawning light. The hydrangea was just blooming in heavy purple clusters, and my mom’s SUV was in the driveway.

  “Oh, my God! My parents.” I put my hands to my mouth. “I have to call them.”

  I hurried downstairs, not even seeing the blood on the floor or hearing my name being chanted by the mob outside. The sight of news crews outside my bar had thrown me, but seeing them outside my parents’ house was worse.

  The line was dead. “I had to unplug it,” Bliss explained, picking up the end of the phone line. “It was ringing incessantly.”

  As soon as she plugged it back in, it began to ring. I picked it up and hung up again. It took a few times before I was able to get a dial tone. My parents’ phone was busy, and my sister Kathy’s cell went straight to voice mail. People must be swamping them as well.

  I stuck with it, determined to get through. I kept on having to hang up on people every time. It was a constant battle. I’m not sure how long it took, but my finger had a groove worn in it from the redial button.

  The only time I paused was when I noticed Bliss mopping up the floor. “You don’t have to do that,” I told her, feeling bad.

  “Got nothing else to do,” she pointed out.

  Finally one of my calls went through and the phone began to ring. And ring. I hung on, refusing to hang up and try again. I would let it ring until they had to pick up. But what if they had unplugged it like Bliss? Or what if they weren’t there? What if they had been run off to my sister’s house or to a hotel?

  I had almost hung up to dial my sister when she snatched up the phone, breathless. “Hello? Is that you, Em?”

  She must have seen the caller ID. “Yes! Yes, Kathy, I just saw the news—”

  I hadn’t returned home in six years, not since the last time they’d tried to hold an intervention for me, complete with addiction specialists with their sympathetic smiles. I’d last spoken to my sister at Christmas as the holidays demanded, but it was always perfunctory at best. I had to lie constantly to them, so how could we have any kind of real relationship?

  Now Kathy drew in a deep breath to better scream at me. “What is wrong with you, Emma? What kind of stunt are you pulling now? We’ve been calling you all night. Don’t you ever return messages?” Another consequence of losing my cell phone. “Do you know what you’re doing to Mom and Dad? Do you want them both to keel over from heart attacks right now? Haven’t you done enough damage—”

  I was holding the phone away from my ear, so I had to move quick to hear my mom’s voice replace my sister’s. “Emma? Is that really you?”

  She had taken the phone away from Kathy, and sounded as if she were holding a snake that would bite her.

  “I’m sorry about this, Mom. I really am. I should have called you sooner to warn you.”

  Her voice quavered with real fear. “What’s happening, Emma? What have you been saying to everyone?”

  I tried to explain that I wasn’t a drug addict, I was possessed by a demon, and it had happened that night at the beach, instead of a bad acid trip. I tried to explain everything, but she didn’t understand. I kept having to repeat myself as Kath was shouting and crying in the background that it was another lie to get attention, that I was a born drama queen always trying to get more attention.

  “Demons,” my mom said. “You can’t keep talking about being a demon, Emma. It goes against the Bible. I can’t have you saying that, not to the TV people, not to the newspapers. I don’t know what I’m going to tell my friends.”

  Kath called out, “Tell them she’s nuts! I told you so. Didn’t I say she should be locked up somewhere safe?”

  I tried to stay calm. “I’m not crazy, Mom. I’m no longer corporeal. That’s how I died and came back to life.”

  “That’s wrong, Emma. You can’t say things like that. Our savior died and came back to life, to take the burden of our sin from us. I know this is some kind of play or stunt with your city friends, that horrible cult you’ve gotten involved in. But it’s wrong. You have to stop saying such awful things.”

  I was a little taken aback. She’d always been halfheartedly religious, taking us to the big church events and occasionally to Sunday school. But now she sounded serious, as if blasphemy were still a killing offense.

  “Where’s Dad?” I asked. “Can I talk to him?”

  “She wants Dean.” There was silence, then shuffling, and I realized my mom had simply handed the phone away without saying good-bye. If nothing else, I would have thought her devotion to politeness would have demanded a sign-off. But she was gone without a word.

  Instead of my dad’s voice, it was Kathy again. She was hoarse from yelling so much and was breathing heavily. “Do you really think he wants to talk to you? After all the times you’ve shamed him? Richard had to take the girls to a hotel so they could get away from the reporters. We only hope they can go to school next week. I don’t know what you’re trying to prove, Emma, but keep us out of it!”

  “I will! Just don’t talk to them. They’ll go away—”

  “You stop talking, Emma. Really. Just stop.”

  My sister hung up before I could say anything else. I couldn’t explain it in one phone call, and it was foolish to try.

  What hurt was my dad. It was my own fault. I used to be a daddy’s girl, with a special bond with him. But he had given up on me a long time ago, when I refused to return for the holidays. I’d felt I had no choice, eaten up inside from the guilt of lying and frightened every second that some demon was going to attack my family to get to me.

  The phone started to ring again. I unplugged it.

  Bliss was watching me. “That didn’t go over too well, did it?”

  “No. It didn’t.”

  Bliss flapped her hand. “Give them time. It’s a lot to absorb.”

  “Meanwhile I’m ruining their lives.”

  “Allay, you can’t live your life to suit other people. That won’t make anyone happy.”

  Naturally, that would be her main concern. “I don’t expect to make anyone happy. I just wish they would understand.”

  “Then explain it to them. Saying ‘BTW, I’m a demon’ isn’t giving them much to go on.”

  “I’m trying, but it’s hard—” I broke off at the distracted expression on her face. She was sensing an approaching demon. For a newbie, she had a very long range. “Uh-oh. Who’s coming to visit us now?”

  Bliss lifted her face, concentrating. “That’s Shock. Definitely Shock.”

  I had deliberately put Shock out of my mind because I was afraid of what she would say about all of this. Now I had no choice; I had failed with my family, but I couldn’t fail with her. I had to make her understand.

  20

  I could feel Shock coming from the west, but it took her a long time to get to the bar. She was coming in the back way, like I had done, so when I saw the flicker of a face in the back window, I let out a welcoming cry.

  But the blur of hair was dark, and there were voices and laughter as a guy cupped his hands against the glass and tried to peer into the darkened interior of the bar.

  I ducked down behind the counter, motioning for Bliss to do the same. The voices outside grew louder; then they called my name. The rattle of pebbles against my windows accompanied their calls.

  It felt even worse having my backyard invaded, as if I were surrounded. Going down on a sinking ship, with the waves lapping around my nose.

  Bliss lifted her head. “She’s on the roof. Coming closer.”

  I reached out, but the buzz-tingle of Shock’s signature was like a blanket, with no directional indicators. “Are you sure?”

  “She’s prob
ably coming for the skylight.”

  Together we went upstairs, and Bliss was proven right when a thump came from Shock jumping down on my roof from the three-story apartment building next door.

  “You have good radar,” I told Bliss. “That could save your life someday.”

  “If I learn how to run in stilettos, it might.”

  I snagged the rope ladder and pulled it down. Bliss stepped on the end to hold it while I climbed to the top and slid out the pin that held it closed. As I opened the pyramid top, Shock was leaning over. Her aura was on fire, as if her body were going up in red flames.

  Demon.

  My own aura flared as orange as a caution sign, lurid with fear. I tried to tell myself this was Shock, I could feel it, but her cold, dead eyes staring through that crackling aura was almost too much for me.

  I hurried back down the ladder and stood close to Bliss as Shock descended. She wasn’t wearing her usual petite persona with the platinum blond hair—this guise was darker, more solid, like a wrestler.

  “Who’s idea was this?” Shock demanded before she even stepped off the ladder. “Was it Ram? Did Glory put you up to exposing yourself? Who was it, Allay?”

  “I didn’t plan it, Shock. Phil killed me in front of everyone—”

  “Somebody put this into your head.” Shock stood with her hands on her hips. “I know you, Allay. You don’t make a spectacle of yourself. You’re not into power or intrigue. So what made you announce to the world that you’re a demon?”

  “The ERI machines are going to expose us all—”

  “That’s nonsense! We always get around technology. We always will. You can’t take something that Dread told you and blow it up into this.”

  “Shock, it’s based on Kirlian technology, and it’s real. It will unmask us. Ram has known about it for decades—”

  “Ram! I knew he was behind this. He’s manipulated you into doing this, Allay. He’s trying to destroy Dread, and he’s using you to do it.”

  I took a deep breath. “That’s the third time you’ve interrupted me, Shock. How can I explain when you won’t let me speak? First of all, Ram hates this as much as you do.”