by J. P. Rice
Two snow covered trees flanked the powder blue ranch style house with a red apple front door. A shoveled cobblestone walkway led up to the steps of the front porch. My boot crunched down onto some flakes of melting salt in the driveway as I passed a two-car garage and scurried up the walkway and onto the porch.
I heard what sounded like a Gregorian chant coming from the house as I approached. With my chest thumping, I knocked on the front door.
Chapter 9
The chanting ceased abruptly and shifted to whispers, then heavy footsteps approached the door. I sensed some repellant charms around the house. They were pretty weak, but they reeked of dark magic, so I knew I was in the right place. I heard about a dozen locks clicking, then the doorknob started to turn.
The red door opened a crack and a scruffy older man with silver hair and a matching beard of stubble popped his head out. “We’re happy with our cable company. Stop showing up here.”
He pulled his head back inside and prepared to slam the door in my face. I said, “Wait. That’s not what I’m here for.”
The man kept the door open a crack, only revealing half of his face and one blinking (winking?) brown eye. “Then what do you want?”
“I want to be a part of this.” I pointed at the house, unsure of how to phrase it.
His eye widened. “Be a part of what? I know not what you speak of.”
Time to stop beating around the bush. “I was told to say the words Dank Artistry.”
The door opened more, exposing his entire face. The old man with warts on his nose, forehead and neck asked sharply, “Who told you to say that? Where did you hear it?”
I had his attention now. “I went out drinking one night and someone told me about it. Most of the details are fuzzy because I was wasted. I’m not fit for human society. Never was, never will be.”
“Sorry. All full. Go away.” He shooed me away, then slammed the door in my face. I went to leave, and realized this could be a test. Instead of walking away, I plopped my ass down next to the door and leaned back against the house.
About two hours later, the door swung open. Before I could see whom it was, someone started kicking me. I covered my head, and a voice said, “Go away. We don’t want you here.”
The houses were spaced out enough that the neighbors wouldn’t hear me, so I yelled, “I’m not going anywhere. I’m not a quitter.” Although I was freezing my ass off.
The kicking continued, and the voice said, “If I have to come out here again, I’ll be forced to kill you. Now leave this instant.”
A few more hours passed, and the sun started to mesh into the horizon. I stared at the frozen pumpkin sky studded with marshmallow clouds that would soon be fading to darkness. My eyes started getting heavy when the door cracked open.
Wart Man’s head peeked through a small opening. “The police have been called. Leave or go to jail. Your choice.” He blinked rapidly, leaned his head forward and thumbed a wart on his nose. “Darkness will fall and bullets shall fly. Remain at your own peril.”
I said, “I’m not leaving. I want to be part of this. I can’t go back to my old life.”
The door opened more, as if I had uttered the magic words.
“Perhaps you could enter, and we can talk a bit more,” he said, opening the door and allowing me in.
Shivering, I stepped into a tiny entranceway with a hallway on the left, a staircase straight ahead and a closed door on the right. The tall man in a gray suit and blue tie went into the room on the right and gestured for me to join him.
I walked in and noticed a few lazy trails of smoke coming from incense sticks. Cinnamon. The small office had a desk covered with notebooks and papers, two chairs facing it and two windows covered with black curtains. The wood-pattern painted walls were bare of any decoration.
The ceiling fan rotated slowly, barely moving enough to cause a breeze. That was fine with me because I’d just started getting full feeling back in my fingers and toes.
He tipped his forehead toward the chairs, and I sat down, as he walked around the desk. Before he took a seat, his skin color started to change.
His cheeks went from ghostly pale to midnight black. The skin on his face stretched and pulled in different directions. Normally, shifters’ bodies grew in size and the clothes fell from their bodies. Instead, this man’s body stayed the same size, but kept shifting, his hands becoming smaller and darker.
As the transformation finished, I stared at a hairless cat shifter. His loose skin drooped, causing major wrinkling to his cheeks and forehead. Even his pointed ears on top of his head slouched. I’d seen this low-level demon in the Red Cavern during my last experience. Purrmecius.
“Much better.” He shook his arms and head around, then unbuttoned his collar. His dark, wrinkled neck sagged and bunched up where it met his shoulders.
“This doesn’t scare you?” he questioned, staring at me with intense yellow eyes that matched his prominent whiskers.
My heart banged against my ribcage, threatening to bust through. It wasn’t his appearance that scared me, it was the whole situation. I’d walked through the front door. There was no going back now. For better or worse.
I deepened my voice and said, “Not at all. I heard about what’s been going on around here for the past few years. Let’s just say, I don’t want to be part of the other team. I feel like the beings you represent are more like me than humans. I was just born in the wrong place.”
I hoped it sounded authentic. The cat man dude strutted around the big mahogany desk and finally sat down.
Purrmecius leaned back and peered up at the ceiling fan. “We have many disenchanted humans rushing to our side. What is your name and who did you tell you were coming here?”
“Kevin. And I didn’t tell nobody. I don’t talk to my family anymore. Never been married. Ain’t got no kids. Most people think I’m crazy, but really, I just don’t want to talk to any of them. Keep to myself mostly. As for friends, I got no interest in that. I spend most of my time trying to learn magic.”
Judging by Purrmecius’s facial reactions, I wasn’t doing too bad. Unless he was the best poker player of all time.
“How has that gone?” he asked as he straightened a stack of wire-bound notebooks on the desktop.
“Not great so far. I want to learn more,” I said, trying to sound enthusiastic.
“There is a possibility we can help you with that,” he said with a little purr in his voice. “However, you need to understand a few things.”
I flexed my fingers and they felt normal again. “Okay.”
Purrmecius opened the drawer on his desk and pulled out a green apple. As he wiped it clean with his blue tie, he said, “First, once you join, your life belongs to us. You must obey all commands from your superiors, which is everyone right now.”
I gave him a sharp nod. “Yes, sir.”
He took a big bite out of the apple and crunched away as he spoke, “Second, your outside life is over. You will be permitted to leave for a few hours at a time, but it would be best to sever all those ties.”
“That’s fine. I don’t really have anyone that I want to see.” I fidgeted in the chair, hoping my voice wasn’t changing. That was the hardest part of undercover work.
Purrmecius stuck out his long, slender tongue, leaned to his left and spit apple seeds into his trashcan. As he lifted his head, he said, “Good. Third and finally, you will worship the thirteen, the same as most humans do with Gods. What fools. If you are caught worshipping a false idol, you will be killed on the spot. The thirteen are your life now. Do you understand?”
He stared at me, waiting for an answer. His vertical slashes of pupils widened into ovals, swallowing some of their yellow surroundings. I nodded and replied, “Yes, sir.”
His creepy gaze never left me. “Are you prepared for a life of servitude that will further the ultimate goal?”
“I am,” I confirmed. I knew enough not to ask about the plan. They wanted blind followers.
He spun the apple in his hand, searching for a new spot to attack. He took another loud bite and spoke as small bits of the apple and spittle flew out of his mouth, “Then it is time to begin.”
Purrmecius opened a desk drawer, pulled out an air siren and blasted it, nearly busting out my eardrums. Two red demons in gray sweat suits rushed into the room. Four warm hands grabbed me, lifting me out of the seat by my arms. I didn’t resist, and they hustled me out of the room. They shoved me from behind, and we went down a narrow hallway with an ugly brown carpet.
The two demons I’d never seen before pushed me into a room with a young woman sitting at a square dining room table. Without speaking, the demons pointed aggressively for me to take a seat across from her. We both had place settings with plates and polished silverware in front of us. No cups or glasses. A dome-covered platter sat in the middle of the table, which was draped with a black tablecloth.
Purrmecius entered the room and chewed the final remnants of his apple. His head bounced back and forth, inspecting both of us with an evil grin pasted to his face.
He paced the short length of the table a few times, and said, “Humans. The bane of our existence. They are free to frolic on the earth’s surface, while we are in a penned-up underground, vulnerable to attack from the Supreme Magic Council or any of the various pantheons.”
He stopped pacing and stared at the woman across from me. “You both have hinted that you despise your own kind. Now comes the time to prove it.”
Purrmecius leaned over the table and grabbed the handle of the domed top. “The symbol of life.” He lifted the silver cover, exposing a round burgundy object. As I looked closer, it was a heart on the platter and my stomach turned.
His long golden whiskers perked up as he smirked. “To prove that you aren’t telling tall tales, you must eat this human heart. If you cannot eat the heart of a freshly slaughtered baby, you cannot be trusted to kill one. Which will also be required to gain entry.”
Killing babies? They had raised the immoral stakes over the years. They hadn’t asked recruits to kill a human last time I was here. There was a zero percent chance of that happening.
Purrmecius said, “I shall return in twenty minutes. If there is but the tiniest scrap remaining, both of you will have to leave. We don’t have time to waste and ease you into this process.”
Chapter 10
The cat demon exited the room and left the door slightly ajar.
She was sitting down, so I couldn’t get a gauge on her height, but the woman in a red hoodie was skinny and appeared to be in her late twenties or early thirties. She had short, raggedy bleach-blond hair with long black roots. Her green eyes matched her eyeshadow and brightened up a dark, sorrowful-looking face sporting a perma-frown. She sat across me twisting a knot of greasy hair right behind her ear.
I deepened my voice and said, “Hey, sup. I’m Kevin.” I had to fight off the urge to laugh because I sounded so stupid.
“Nice to meet you. Cheryl Mansfield,” she said and flashed a peace sign.
“You related to Jane?” I joked.
She stared at me, her right eye closing. “What?”
“Nothing. Just an actress from the 60s. So how are we going to do this?” I asked, checking out the heart in the middle of the table.
She shrugged her shoulders, as I pulled the platter toward me and leaned down. I inhaled through my nose. It was gamey with a slight metallic after scent. As I stared longer, I realized it was a pig’s heart.
It was a suckling pig’s heart. The more I thought about it, the demons wouldn’t use a human heart on two people trying to join their ranks. They would probably use it for a much darker purpose.
Convinced it wasn’t from a human, I picked up the fork and knife and tried to cut into the heart. The bloody organ shot off to the side, almost sliding off the slick platter completely. I lowered my grip on the fork to gain more control and placed the blade of the knife right next to it. Carefully, I sawed back and forth with the serrated knife and cut a third of the heart away.
Blood gushed from the incision, collecting in a reflective pool on the silver platter. I whispered, “It’s not a human heart. I think he’s just trying to scare us. Still gross if you ask me.”
Cheryl whispered back, “This wasn’t what I had in mind. Almost seems cliché. But I’ll do whatever it takes.”
“Me too.”
She picked up her fork and knife. “What’s your story?”
Showtime. I needed to stick to what I had practiced. “My story? Hell, I dunno. Been kicked around my whole life. Family ditched my ass and I been on my own since I was ‘bout fifteen.”
Cheryl bit her bottom lip and stared at me as I poked and prodded the heart, trying to devise a plan. She said, “I don’t get along with my family either. And I want to learn magic so bad so if I ever see that loser ex-boyfriend of mine, I can stuff it in his face. Stupid jerk dumped me because, and I quote, ‘that magic stuff is for crazy people.’”
She looked up at me with wide, bloodshot eyes. “Do I look crazy?”
“Lil bit right now,” I joked and smiled. “Maybe we should cut this up into little bits and eat it slowly as we talk.”
“Good idea. So did you have a job?” she asked and shifted around in the uncomfortable wooden chair. I assumed her chair was as rigid as mine.
“Worked in a coffee shop,” I replied.
“Where?” she asked, putting me on the spot.
Shit. I hadn’t worked out that simple detail. Beads of sweat broke out on my body. “Far away from here. It’s shut down now too. What did yinz do?” I’d nearly forgotten to throw in a yinz every now and then to sound like an authentic Pittsburgher.
She huffed and stared at the pieces of heart on the end of her fork. “I worked at a gas station. Place got robbed twice in two weeks, so I got the hell outta there.”
“That blows.” I hoped I was using the lingo and phrases correctly. I didn’t want to make any verbal gaffes like Owen.
Cheryl added, “That was when I decided to join up here. Nothing to lose. Fuck it.”
That sounded like the exact attitude the demons were going for. People down on their luck and willing to do anything to change it. “I feel the same way. Yolo, right?”
“Huh?” she asked and stuffed a few bits of the heart into her mouth. Her mouth puckered, and her lips trembled as she fought to choke down the heart. She put her hand in front of her mouth and closed her eyes as her body shook, trying to keep down the raw organ.
I pushed a little pile of heart together on the platter. “Yolo. You only live once. Just a saying.”
“Oh,” she said, holding her hand over her mouth.
I tossed a few pieces of the heart into my mouth. I chewed them up quickly and swallowed, but they still got caught in the back of my mouth. I gagged and almost spit it out. Fighting off the urge to throw up, I wished I had a glass of water. Instead, the gamey-metallic flavor clung to the back of my tongue and esophagus, causing a constant frown as I fought off the nausea.
I whispered across the table, “Do you know what the women are subjected to down there?”
Cheryl shrugged her shoulders. “Whatever they want is what Purrmecius said.”
I lowered my voice even more. “Do you understand that means fulfilling their sexual urges?”
She sat up straight and a flash of terror ran through her green eyes as she weighed my words. I thought it was only fair to warn her. I wished someone had warned me thirty years ago.
“I guess it’s whatever they want then.” She jammed a few more pieces of the heart in her mouth and turned to the side.
“Maybe we should look out for each other. Do you know magic?” I asked and scooped up another forkful of heart.
Cheryl finished chewing the tough organ and said, “Not really. That’s why I’m here.”
I peered around the room and zoned in on the cracked door. A few moments passed, and I was satisfied nobody was eavesdropping. I still lowered my v
oice, and said, “I know a little. At least, I think I do. Now that I’m here, I’m a little nervous.”
She twisted her hair nervously. “I know whatcha mean. I don’t want to screw anything up.”
Our conversation was stilted because of the unusual circumstances, but there was more to it. I couldn’t help thinking Cheryl was hiding something. I hadn’t smelled any magic on her yet, but some people could hide it until they needed it.
Purrmecius poked his head inside the room. Rubbing the silver door handle, he said, “Five minutes remain. Looks like much work still needs done.”
I looked at a platter with more than half of the pig heart remaining. How had fifteen minutes gone by?
“Can I get a glass of water?” I requested.
“Absolutely not. You must taste the heart of that baby. Taste its soul.” He backed out of the room and shut the door.
I knew it was a pig’s heart, but his words creeped me out and made it taste even worse. Shoving my stomach’s strong objections to the side, I threw a handful of bits into my mouth and swallowed. I gagged and threw up in my mouth. Fighting off the urge to open my mouth and redecorate the table, I choked down the bitter vomit.
Every pore leaked sweat and my body overheated. I leaned over in my chair as my stomach churned in displeasure. I stared at the floor as perspiration droplets fell from my forehead, hitting the hardwood floor in a steady procession.
I grabbed the collar of my sweatshirt and fanned myself off. With the clock ticking, I knew Cheryl couldn’t finish the heart by herself. I’d killed, and tortured people before. Why was I having so much trouble with this?
My knotted stomach writhed in discomfort, but I had to pull my weight. I sat up and looked at the platter. My eyes widened at the sight of a dark pool of blood on the silver platter. Nothing else. Every last bit of heart was gone.
“Did you?”
She finished chewing and said, “You didn’t look so hot. After a while, I got used to it.”
