I grabbed his hoop earring and yanked his head around to look me in the eyes, all but growling in his face. “These people are off-limits. Get out now.” I could have escorted any human Axel’s size out the door with no problems. But Axel wasn’t human, and I had no idea how to get him out of the store if he wouldn’t leave voluntarily. My keys with the small canister of demon Mace were in my locker. No way was I leaving him alone with the kids long enough to get it.
He chuckled, calmly extracting his earring from my grip. “Ah, Jesse, ever the honorable warrior. It’s going to get you killed.” He patted my cheek, just short of a slap, then wandered toward the entrance. At the door, he paused to give me a sorrowful glance over his shoulder. “And there’re so few of you left as it is.”
Mentally, I said every four-letter word I knew, and a few I made up for the occasion. “What do you know, Axel?”
He shot me that thousand-watt grin. “I know someone’s not playing by the rules. Shame shame, I know his name. But I’m not telling you without something in return.”
The bell chimed as he let himself out. A pack of kids passed by outside the plate glass window, and when they were gone, so was the demon. Only then did I think to unclench my fists, useless gesture though it was.
I felt a presence behind me, and nearly turned to swing before Paulo spoke. “Friend of yours?” Apparently, he’d taken more notice of our “customer” than I’d thought.
“No. No, that was definitely not my friend.”
“He comes back, you want me to throw him out?”
I only shook my head to the negative, and I found reasons to stay near the door for the rest of the night. If Axel came back, I wanted these kids to run away screaming, but I didn’t think they’d believe me if I told them.
As a precaution, I grabbed my key chain out of my locker and stuffed it in my pocket. My assorted antidemon trinkets made for uncomfortable bulk, but I’d rather be safe than sorry.
Kristyn arrived on schedule at five, and Paulo and Sarah left at seven. I should have gone with them, but I just couldn’t bring myself to leave Chris and Kristyn unprotected. The logical part of my brain knew he could still get to the kids outside work, but the totally irrational part was quite certain my mere presence would ward Axel off. It wasn’t unusual for me to stay well past my shift, and since we were busy, no one thought anything of it.
As the evening wore on, I felt increasingly stupid. Axel was obviously not coming back. He’d accomplished what he’d intended by sowing doubt and temptation in my mind-the big jerk. And if he wasn’t here hassling me and threatening my coworkers, where was he? My first thought was for Mira, of course, but I knew she was safely behind the house wards.
Still, what if he’d only avoided the wards because he had no reason to go inside until now? What if he himself was the one breaking the rules? I wouldn’t put it past him to bargain a soul for a confession. What if…? It occurred to me, when I noticed Kristyn staring at me, that she’d been trying to talk to me for several minutes. “Huh?”
“I said, Chris and I are gonna haul the trash out to the Dumpster; we’ll be back in a bit. You okay, old dude?”
“Yeah. I’m fine.” I forced a smile for her. “I’ll hold down the fort.” Once they were out the door and out of sight, I dropped my head to the glass counter with a sigh. I wasn’t sure I was fine at all. My stomach was in seven different kinds of knots, and I couldn’t seem to shake the goose bumps along my arms. Maybe I was getting sick.
I crouched to fish under the counter, looking for any Tylenol left behind. I had no luck, of course, but as I closed the sliding door, something caught my eye in the reflection. It was no more than a flicker of movement, somewhere behind and to my left, a black blur darting out of sight.
Whirling, I reached for the volume on the stereo, plunging the store into eerie silence. Nothing moved. “Who’s there?” Why do people always ask that? I mean, if something’s hiding from you, you really think they’re just going to pop up and say, “Oh, it’s me!”
I stepped out from behind the counter, glancing beneath the clothing racks and even the shelves, though something would have to be the size of a rat to fit under there. Nothing. Ok, maybe you’re taking paranoia to an extreme, old boy. You know… maybe I was taking paranoia to an extreme. And that wasn’t usually like me.
I fished my key chain out of my pocket, singling out the tiny mirror dangling on its chain. On the surface, it was the kind of compact mirror any girl might carry to check her makeup. But on the back, out of sight, Mira had scratched some runes that turned it into something more. It would take only a moment to see if my new suspicion was true.
I held the mirror up so that I could see over my right shoulder, turning slowly to scan the back of the store. Something twitched in the shadows under the clearance rack. I turned to look without the help of the mirror, and sure enough, that darker spot wasn’t there. “Tricky little bastard, aren’t you?”
Using the mirror again, I watched beneath the rack. Slowly, the culprit emerged to sit in the middle of the aisle.
It would have been easily mistaken for an extra-filthy dust mop, black coils of fur sticking out all over, except, y’know, for the four vaguely insectoid legs protruding from the scruffy mass, each ending in three grasping fingers. There were no eyes that I could see, but as I watched, the thing opened its massive mouth and started to groom its fur with its creepy little hands. The mouth took up nearly half its bulk, and I could see row upon row of sharp white teeth within-like a shark, and venomous to boot.
It was a Scrap demon, one of the parasites of Hell. I’m not even sure it should properly be called a demon. They had very little intelligence and normally existed by draining the life force out of unsuspecting humans. Like all true parasites, they weren’t strong enough to kill their host, but the intense feelings of despair and paranoia they exuded generally made for short life spans in their humans.
In rare circumstances, a stronger demon would use them to soften up his prey, and I had to wonder, “Who sent you, Creepy?” It almost had to be Axel. Dog Boy already had my soul under wraps; he’d gain nothing by this little guy’s sucking me dry. But Axel had reason to push me, to beat me down.
It obviously wasn’t smart enough to realize it had been seen. The Scrap demons hovered just on the other side of the veil, invisible to the naked eye or seen only in peripheral vision. Most of the time, they were explained away as a trick of the light or the neighbor’s cat. Only with something like Mira’s mirror could I get a decent look.
It appeared to be bored. It spidered its way around the floor, idly exploring this and that as it scuttled from shadow to shadow. Its legs bent at impossible angles with more joints than should have been necessary, and it opened its mouth on occasion as if making a cry I could not hear.
I couldn’t just leave it running loose. It was obviously sucking on me, and if I let it alone, it might attach to one of the kids. I just needed to get it into the physical where I could deal with it. Luckily, I had my handy-dandy magic mirror for that.
We sold novelty letter openers in the shape of swords, and I slowly slipped one from the counter. It’d do well enough. I followed the parasite’s reflection in the mirror, waiting to catch the whole thing in the glass. “Come on… just a bit farther…” As if it heard me, it paused with one foot poised, hesitating as I framed its image fully within the mirror. “Gotcha.”
With a quick clench of my hand, I snapped the mirror in half.
The screech behind me was almost deafening. I turned in time to see the nasty thing scuttle under the CD tower. “Come here, you little bastard!” I dove after it.
The mirror trick would work for only so long, and when the Scrap was done being startled, it’d fade back across again. I had to kill it before it got away… and before my coworkers got back.
It scurried out the back of the tower as I reached in from the front, and it made a break for the front of the store. I scrambled after it, throwing a novelty pillow ahea
d of it to startle it back away from the door. The cushion knocked an earring display off a shelf with a crash, and the demonic dust mop reversed direction in midscuttle, darting beneath a rack of Tshirts.
I slid to my knees to reach under there, only to find it gone. Dammit! Had it already faded back across? At the last possible second, I heard a low rattle above me. I jerked my head back as the Scrap dropped down from its hiding place in the shirts, jaws clacking viciously.
As ridiculous as the thing looked, the poison in its teeth wasn’t anything to laugh at. The venom splattered across the back of my hand and instantly burned like all holy hell. I backpedaled fast, scrubbing my hand on my jeans and upending the rack. The vermin charged at me for all of about two feet, screeching at the top of its demonic little lungs, then ducked away under another shelf again.
“Okay, that’s it!” I grabbed a shirt hook off the wall and went fishing. Lying on my stomach on the floor, I could just see the light reflected off its knobby legs, and I poked and prodded with the long hook until I hit something squishy. The thing came boiling out of its hiding place like a little hair ball of fury, snapping and snarling at my face. I don’t think I’ve ever jumped to my feet so fast in my life.
I managed to stomp down on one spindly leg, but before I could feel any kind of triumph, it just snapped the appendage off and limped for the door on three clawed hands. “No you don’t!” Heedless of the venomous bite, I flung myself on it, pinning it under my chest. The thing squirmed and howled through clenched fangs, unable to open its mouth with me on top of it. “Now you’re mine, Creepy.”
Careful to keep the body pinned, I got to my knees. The fur was bristly and greasy under my hands, and I felt my stomach churn. “Done with you now.” The squealing was cut off as I plunged the letter opener through the body with a sickening crunch. The remaining legs twitched and spasmed before finally succumbing.
The door binged cheerfully, marking the return of my coworkers. Kristyn stared at me, and I realized belatedly how it probably looked. The rack of shirts was overturned, the earrings were scattered all over the floor, and one of the CD towers was on its side. And there I was, with a letter opener driven an inch into the linoleum, the telltale remains of the demon parasite already dissolved into nothingness.
The question was plain on her face, and I finally just had to shrug. “Cockroach. Really big cockroach.”
I’m not sure whether she believed me.
14
Around eleven, no doubt still a bit worried about my destructive jaunt through the store, Kristyn strongly suggested that I get myself home to my wife, although her language was slightly more colorful.
“You sure? I can stay, walk you to your car.” It was dark, but the nightlife at Sierra Vista was in full swing. She wouldn’t be alone, and that’s what bothered me. Even though I’d disposed of the little parasite, there was worse out there.
“Chris can walk me out. Go home.” She tucked a lock of purple-pink hair behind her ear and gave me that look. “What’d you get your mom for her birthday?”
Oh crap. I hadn’t even thought of that, today. It must have shown on my face, because she laughed at me. “Wal-Mart’s open. Go across the street and buy something. Perfume or a pretty necklace or something.”
The Wal-Mart was a garish beacon of light, its own little island of fluorescent-lit commerce in the night. You find the weirdest people shopping in the middle of the night-people like me.
It seemed wrong to be shopping for a birthday present when the world around me was going nuts. Still, it wasn’t my mom’s fault I was up to my eyeballs in insanity.
I wandered into the perfume aisle and was immediately flabbergasted. I had no idea what kind of perfume my mother liked. I couldn’t even tell you what Mira wore, only that she always smelled like strawberries. There were boxes with movie stars’ faces on them, things with names I couldn’t pronounce, and something I was almost positive belonged in the smelling salts family of aromas. And why on earth did some of the tiniest bottles cost like fifty bucks? I beat a hasty retreat.
You might think, charging the fees I do, that a fifty-dollar bottle of perfume wouldn’t be so intimidating. But when you figure I spent two weeks in the hospital after my last gig for the president, a week of that in ICU, and the insurance company was still rejecting my claims, you see how that fee disappears pretty quick. That’s why I work at It between clients. Those paychecks help us scrape by.
The jewelry counter was no better. I couldn’t tell you the difference between a diamond and a piece of cut glass.
I must have been making security nervous, because two uniformed guards found a place near me to stop and have a rather loud conversation. That, I’m used to. In the heart of the Midwest, anyone the least bit different is always the first suspect.
The appliance section boggled my mind. There were things to dice, gadgets to juice, doohickeys to puree. I just shook my head and moved on. I firmly believe that our ancestors got by with fire and a stick. It’s good enough for me.
When in doubt, hit electronics. At least there, I was more in my element. Was there a movie she might like? She had a camera, so how about a new case for it? Twice, I started to dial Mira, then snapped my phone shut. If I woke her up this late for shopping advice, I’d be sleeping on the couch for a month.
I found about twenty things I wanted for myself, but nothing for my mother. And I was running out of time. There were only two shopping days left before the party.
A small part of me was absolutely incredulous that I was still thinking of going to a party at a time like this. Men were dead. Something could be stalking me, or someone like me, at this very moment. The thought made the skin crawl across my shoulders as it tried to creep away from the imaginary eyes boring into my back.
No… wait. I could feel eyes on me. No doubt, the security guards were just waiting for me to stuff a big-screen television into my pants and walk out. A cautious glance around revealed no brown uniforms in sight. Then I wondered why in the hell I was being so careful. I wasn’t actually doing anything wrong.
Turning to scan the area around me, I saw no one. Wonderful. Next, the nice young men in clean white coats will come to take me away. Unless you counted the store security cameras, no one was watching me. Sadly, the itch between my shoulders refused to acknowledge my superior logic. I was getting damn tired of this continual and irrational certainty that I was not alone in the universe.
Maybe shopping tonight was a bad idea. I’d come back tomorrow when the sun was shining brightly. (No, I am not afraid of the dark. I’m afraid of the things in the dark.)
I meandered my way out through the various aisles, still halfheartedly hoping that something would jump off the shelves with the tag MOM’S PRESENT already attached. No such luck, but as I rounded the corner to head toward the front, I caught sight of someone dark ducking into another aisle. There is a distinct difference between someone walking down an aisle and someone trying not to be seen, and that was it right there.
Three long strides took me to that aisle, but there was no one there. Deep breath, Jess. Your imagination is getting the better of you. My hand clenched at my hip where my sword should be, and I muttered unpleasant things to myself. Right now, if I had another Scrap demon on me, I was screwed. My mirror was spent, and there was no way I was asking Mira to craft another-not this week, and maybe not ever. She was spending too much of herself, casting spells on my behalf. My only defense would be getting into the house, safe behind Mira’s wards.
You know the old saying, right? Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you. At the other end of the walkway, out of sight, something toppled over with a crash. I darted to the end to see a pile of metal cake pans rolling drunkenly around the floor. One of them wobbled to a stop against my boot. Running footsteps echoed down the linoleum aisle to my left, and I was off in pursuit.
My mysterious stalker rounded another end cap in time for me to see the back of a black hooded
sweatshirt and one fleeing sneaker. It was a tall figure, lean and moving quickly. The chase took us down the picture frame aisle, and there were footsteps behind us now.
“You there, stop!” Security didn’t like our playing tag through the store, evidently.
Normally, I am a law-abiding citizen, but at that exact moment, I was more interested in who had been following me than in stopping. And face it-rent-a-cops don’t exactly count as the law. At least, that’s what I’d say when I felt guilty later.
A walkie-talkie tweeted, and I heard a panting voice say, “I need backup in housewares!” Backup? Are you kidding me? A tinny announcement blared from the intercom overhead. “Code forty-seven in housewares. Code forty-seven in housewares.” Well, now I knew what a code 47 was.
We didn’t stay in housewares long. He was leading me out toward lawn and garden, and since I didn’t think he had a sudden urge to fertilize his lawn, there was probably a rear exit there. In and out of aisles and clothing racks we ran, my stalker toppling displays into my path to slow me down. I hurdled a tower of scattered DVDs easily, but the security guards were having a harder time of it. I could hear them huffing and puffing behind me as several more joined the chase.
It occurred to me in a moment of perfect absurdity that this was the second retail establishment I’d destroyed in as many hours. If I hadn’t been running so hard, I might have spared the breath to laugh.
I probably could have outrun security indefinitely, except for one thing. I rounded the office supplies end cap and saw the WET FLOOR sign a split second before I hit the damp linoleum. I went skidding, arms pin-wheeling for balance. Yeah, it wasn’t my most graceful moment. We’ll just pretend that didn’t happen, all right?
Ahead of me, my quarry met the same fate and crashed into a rack of greeting cards. Wrapping paper and ribbons went flying in a colorful explosion, and a pinata shaped like an ogre bounced off my head with a soft crunch. One trampled card played a garbled version of “Happy Birthday” as it died.
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