by Lori Aisling
Bristol was shaking with fury. She heard a deep growl next to her. She looked at Jessie and saw that Jayson had straddled the big cat, his weight holding her down, his hands clenched in the scruff of her neck. He was whispering in the tigress’s ear, and although Bristol could not make out the words, she knew that Jayson was the only reason that Jessie had not thrown herself at Lucifer’s lieutenant.
“We have a plan. We need ta get ta the room they are keepin’ the woman in,” Bror said. Using broken-down cars, bushes, and piles of trash to hide their movements, the group made their way to the building Alexander had sent his soldier to. Entering, Jayson went around the front desk and looked at the map taped to the counter.
“Room 201. That is labeled as the honeymoon suite,” he whispered.
Creeping down the dark halls, and up the dusty stairwell, they found the room. Ristan motioned for the group to get back and they plastered themselves to the wall. Standing in front of the door, he knocked quietly. Hearing footsteps, everyone held their breaths as the doorknob turned and the door swung open. The demon soldier’s eyes widened as he took in Ristan’s evil smile. “Room service,” he smirked. “Allow me to introduce myself. I’m Death. And tonight, I am yours,” he growled as he grabbed the back of the man’s head, simultaneously slipping a blade into the demon’s chin and up into his brain. Catching the body as it fell, he motioned for Bror to open the door across the hall. Unceremoniously dumping the body on the floor, he quietly closed the door and all of them entered the honeymoon suite, room 201.
“Is that all it takes to kill a demon? We can do this,” Bristol whispered.
“The soldiers, yes. Higher powered demons like Alexander, no. With the power of death, Ristan can kill many stronger demons; but these foot-soldiers will fall like any other man. Their life-force will be reborn into another vessel, but there will be no recollection of their past existence- they are simply tools for Lucifer or whatever god they serve,” Bror answered.
Hearing a whimper from across the room, Bristol ran over to the naked woman in the corner. Removing her gag, she whispered to her. “We are going to get you out of here, but you need to help us. We have a plan.” The woman nodded her head, bravery and resolve shining in her eyes.
“I will do my part to get revenge for all my people those evil creatures killed over the last couple of days,” she said quietly.
Squatting down next to her, Bror spoke gently to the battered woman, “We are goin’ ta need you to stay here. Appear bound and gagged. We will not leave ya, but when Alexander arrives, we need ta capture him alive. I believe he might have information about a missing family member of ours,” he told her.
Bristol’s head swung around and her wide-eyed gaze met Bror’s. “You think he knows about Caspian?” She asked.
“I can almost guarantee it. He spoke of a plan that was well underway. Any plan on this realm involves you, Bristol. And surrounding ya are your Others. It only makes sense,” he replied.
“I need blood, but it has to be mortal,” Ristan interjected. “And we need to hurry. We don’t know how much time we have.”
“Take mine,” the dark-skinned woman volunteered. “It is the least I can do.”
Ristan averted his eyes as the woman rose to her feet and walked towards him. “We will get you some clothes when we get you out of here,” he told her.
“It’s ok. Your respect is appreciated, but I’m not ashamed. I am grateful. Please let me help in whatever way I can.”
Reaching out, he grasped her hand. “I’m going to cut your palm, ok?” He asked. She nodded her affirmation and Ristan ran his blade across her hand. Blood pooled and the woman hissed through her teeth. Moving her to the center of the room, Ristan dipped his knife in the crimson fluid that was gathering in her hand and began to draw a figure on the floor with the offering. “This is a devil’s trap. If we can get Alexander to step into it, he cannot leave his body. It is crucial to have him in the center of this symbol. He won’t be able to access his power and he can’t flee.”
Everyone else stood around and watched Ristan work. Jessie, still in her tigress form, laid down on the floor. Her tail was still twitching and she snarled at Boz when he attempted to use his gift to calm her. When Ristan was satisfied with his work, he turned again to the woman. “I need you to get back on the bed. Hold your hands behind you as if they are bound. We will have to replace the gag, but it won’t be tight. I am sorry.”
Nodding her head, the woman crawled up onto the bed and scooted to the headboard. She placed her hands behind her and Bristol put the gag back in her mouth, making sure it wasn’t tight behind her head. She nodded her head when Bristol asked if she was alright.
Ristan pointed at the corners and dark areas of the room, and everyone took their place. “Now we wait,” he said.
Bane
Night had fallen over the desert and Bane made his way silently out of the abandoned barn. Leaving Qian to pick through the old, dusty hay, he made his way silently into the town. Whatever was going on here was bad. Creeping through the streets, he saw dead bodies everywhere. They were already bloating and rotting thanks to the desert heat. Seeing a group of three chayn floating ahead of him, he snuck up behind them and quickly dispatched them, none of them having time to send up their shrieking alarm. As he slowly moved through the shadows, he was able to methodically pick off the stinking demons, one at a time. They were gathered here for a reason and he planned on finding out why. Yet another evening had passed with no message from his Other and he hoped she was still safe. Praying no harm had befallen her, he continued to sneak through the town, looking for a reason for the large gathering of chayn.
Rounding a corner, he found his answer. Not only were chayn in abundance, flickering and floating about, but demon soldiers were hanging around a large bonfire, laughing and poking at the massive pile of burned and dead bodies next to it. One of them was torturing a man that was sobbing while he watched a woman, obviously someone dear to him, being raped on an old picnic table. The woman screamed as the soldier violating her grunted out his completion. Scrambling to get away from him, the soldier slammed the woman’s face into the table, telling her to be still. “Who’s next?” he called out to the others standing around.
“Hell, I’ll take a turn,” one of them said. “She got you off fast, must be some decent snatch.” Taking his place behind her, the man smacked the woman's ass and spread her butt cheeks. “I’m gonna fuck this ass, no reason to leave such a tight honey-hole intact,” he chortled as his cohorts laughed. The man being held on his knees to watch let out an agonizing cry only to be kicked in the face by the soldier that had just violated his beloved. Slumping to the ground, blood pouring out of his nose and mouth, the man’s shoulders racked as silent sobs shook him. The woman let out a soul-piercing scream as the demon rammed into her. Bane shook with anger. He would never get used to the senseless violation and torture. Seeing a defenseless woman getting used and beaten incited his rage. Regardless of how hard he tried to keep his emotions in check, he struggled with this aspect that seemed so prevalent in every Re-Order. The demon ramming himself into the struggling woman grew agitated with her struggles. Ramming her face into the picnic table numerous times, the woman went limp.
“Dammit. She’s done. There’s no fun in fucking a corpse,” one of the other soldiers complained. “I’m out. We need to get back to sweeps, anyway. If Alexander catches us standing around, he’ll get pissed.”
The soldiers began to move out in pairs, the chayn accompanying them, leaving only the demon pounding the motionless woman and the one holding the man.
“Perfect,” Bane thought to himself. Alone or in pairs would enable him to move silently through the night and send them back to hell. But first, he was determined to kill the two soldiers in front of him. Gripping his glaive in one hand, he flicked his wrist and palmed a couple of throwing stars in the other. Moving quietly, he made his way closer.
Grunting, the demon gave one final thrust into t
he woman before pulling himself out of her and buttoning up his pants. Sliding a knife out of his belt, he slid the blade in between the woman’s ribs, lacerating her heart. Turning to his cohort, he motioned to the man on the ground. “Finish him and let’s get back to work,” he said. The other demon pulled his knife and deftly cut the man’s throat, leaving him to bleed out on the ground, the victim’s leg giving a couple of kicks as death took him. Bane seized that moment to act. Stepping from behind a stack of pallets, he let loose both the stars. They each found their mark in the throats of the rapists. Running up to them, his glaive made a sweeping arc, decapitating both fiends in one sweep. Grabbing their bodies, he dragged them over to the pile of corpses and tossed the headless figures behind them. No one would notice a difference. He casually grabbed the two heads and tossed them into the bonfire as he disappeared into the night. To hunt.
Bristol
Waiting in the dark was agonizing for Bristol. She wanted to fight, claw, scream and hear her whip sing through the air as it cut into the demons and chayn that had killed and tortured all these people. She wanted to find Chaos. She wanted to end all the suffering and needless slaughter of people that had already had to survive so much. Despite her eagerness for revenge, she trusted Ristan and Bror. They had experience dealing with Lucifer and his henchmen, whereas she had none. Plus, if there was any chance that this Alexander asshole knew anything about Caspian, then it was well worth the wait.
A cheerful whistle, a tune Bristol felt that she should know, reached her ears before she heard the sure, confident footfalls. She heard everyone hold their breath as the key entered the lock and the doorknob turned. She saw Alexander’s dark shadow as he walked into the room. Taking the few short strides to the center of the room, he was slightly illuminated by a sliver of moonlight peeking through the drawn curtains. Stopping, he drew a knife from a scabbard on his side and dug at imaginary dirt under his fingernails.
“There’s my pretty Pueblo princess,” he told the woman on the bed. “I have been anxious to spend some quality time with you. Tell me. Are you excited to be fucked by the right hand of the devil?”
The woman took a deep, shivering breath, and whimpered.
“Let me tell you how this party is going to play out. First, I fuck every hole you have until I no longer receive pleasure from that. Then, I will make new ones and fuck those, too.” He flipped the knife in the air and caught it by the handle. “Now doesn’t that sound like fun?”
Taking one more step forward put the demon in the center of the devil’s trap. The next scene of events played out as if in slow motion as Bristol watched. Bror approached Alexander silently from behind. Using his right hand, he swung upward, impaling the demon with his battle-ax, the wicked curve of the axe head anchoring itself against the demon’s bottom rib. Wrapping his left arm around his neck, Bror held the razor-sharp edge of a black blade to his throat, pushing hard enough for a thin line of blood to begin to trickle. Unexpectedly, Alexander threw his blade at the woman on the bed, the moonlight reflecting off the steel as it flipped through the air. Movement in the shadows showed Jessie, as she intercepted the strike, the blade sinking to the hilt in her side. The large cat yowled as she hit the bed, sliding off the other side to land in a heap on the floor. Jayson’s un-godly scream deafened Bristol as he appeared instantly next to the large cat. Bristol raced to her friend’s side and she could hear Alexander chuckling as she, Jayson, and Boz gathered around their friend.
Ristan
“Oh, I didn’t know the room was occupied. Did I need to RSVP for this party?” Alexander asked.
Bror pulled up on the battle-ax and the demon snarled, inhaling sharply. “You know this isn’t how this works, right? It’s creative and cute, though.”
Ristan walked up to Alexander from the shadows. Fixing him with an evil grin, he tapped his foot on the floor. Looking down at the devil’s trap, Alexander winced.
“Ristan,” he said, dragging out the ‘s’ to sound like a hiss. “I had no idea. Perhaps I really am slipping in my old age. And who do we have behind me with a firm grip on my fucking liver?”
“Does it matter?” Bror whispered in his ear. “I have waited centuries ta feel your blood decorate my axe. Today is a good day.”
“Bror. Well, then. If there are two Others in the same room, then do tell. Where is the precious Balance? We could end all the fighting right now and just dispatch of the pesky cunt.”
Ristan struggled to keep his composure. Losing his cool would not get them any answers. He wanted to check on Jessie, and comfort Bristol. But this was not the time. He could hear movement behind him and he could tell that Jessie’s friends were assessing her wound. He prayed it wasn’t fatal. “Let’s get down to it. We can do this quickly, or we can remove body parts one by one. Personally, I am fine with either. So tell me. Where is Caspian?” Ristan asked.
“Hmm. The warrior from the south, correct? Big guy, beard, bad attitude towards demons. That one? I wouldn’t know. Or maybe I do. Hell, I don’t know. It’s so hard to remember things when you have lived as long as I have. Or maybe it’s the battle axe lodged in my back. Either way, you are going to need to try much harder, old friend,” the demon chuckled as blood from Bror’s blade pressed into his throat ran down his neck, saturating the starched white dress shirt under his suit jacket.
“I will relish every second of it,” Ristan assured him.
Bristol
Jayson held Jessie’s big head in his lap and ran his hand down the cat’s muzzle. “You’re ok, my pretty girl. You’re gonna be alright.” The big cat blinked her green eyes at him and looked at Bristol and Boz as they approached her.
“Jess, honey. I need you to shift, ok,” Boz told her. “We are gonna get you out of here and get ya all fixed up, but it will be easier to move you as a human. Can you do that for me, lassie?”
Jessie blinked again and very slowly she shifted back to her female form. Biting her lip to hold back a scream, her eyes filled with tears. “Fuck, Jay. It fucking hurts. Feels like someone shoved a tree trunk in my side. Is the woman ok?”
“I am fine, thanks to you. Let me help. I’m a nurse. If we can get you to another room with some light, we can figure out how to fix you up,” the woman said. She had taken a bed sheet and wrapped it around her body as she knelt on the floor next to the woman who had saved her life.
Bristol squeezed Jessie’s hand, tears blurring her vision. “I love you, Jess. I love you so damn much. We will fix this, dammit.”
Jessie weakly squeezed Bristol’s hand in return. “I know you do, honey. It’s all going to work…” before she could finish the sentence, she lost consciousness.
Jayson growled, his rage filling the room. “Find us a room, Boz. She will not fucking die. Goddamn it, she will not die on me.” Fixing the nurse with a stare, he reiterated his vow. “This woman means more to me than anything or anyone on this shit planet. I need you to fix her. She sacrificed herself for you, a perfect stranger. She will not die. Do you get that?”
The woman nodded her head. “I do. And I’ll do everything I can to help. Let’s get her moved. She is losing a lot of blood and we need to stop it.”
Jayson pulled Jessie into his arms and stood. The movement caused Jessie to groan, but she did not regain consciousness. Following Boz out of the room, Bristol moved cautiously, watching for movement. Boz found a room and twisting the knob, it opened. He slipped silently into the darkness, returning moments later.
“This will work,” he whispered to her. “Have Jayson bring her here.”
Bristol turned and nodded to Jayson where he stood in the entrance of the room holding Jessie. The woman they had saved followed close behind. Once they were all in the room, Boz locked and deadbolted the door. Jayson laid Jessie gently on the bed, her moans causing him to clench his jaw, anger dominating his features. The woman they had saved moved towards the bed, holding towels that had been folded next to a wash bin.
“What’s your name?” Bristol aske
d her.
“Tala,” she responded. “Get me some water to clean her up. Do you have medical supplies?”
“They are with the horses,” Boz stated.
“I’ll go with you,” Bristol stated. “Jayson, stay with Tala and Jess.”
“I was planning on it,” he growled. “Your boys in there better get some answers out of that demon before I lose my patience and end him.”
