by D V Wolfe
I nodded. I’d heard it before. I hadn’t expected to get any brownie points for putting Walter’s wife back in the afterlife. Noah still looked disappointed so I prompted Festus on. “So, as most of the cannibals were mortal, I’m guessing there were no points for those kills.”
Festus nodded. “But you did kill Mastick, the Carrion,” Festus’ eyes were back on the notebook. “And there was a demon amongst the tribe, a high-ringer most likely put there by the demon behind the soul stone. And it looks like you killed him. Something about Solomon’s Spice on your shirt when he bit you.”
“Really?” I asked. I tried to remember. There had been Solomon’s Spice coating the bottom of my fanny pack. When I’d changed ammo out of it, I’d gotten it on me. I closed my eyes and thought hard, trying to remember if I’d seen any of the cannibals begin to liquify. It had been a crazy day. Maybe I just missed it amongst the flamethrowers, blood spray, and bonfire. “So five points for the demon,” I said. “And what’s a Carrion worth?”
“Three points,” Festus said, moving his finger across a column in the notebook.
“Mastick? Big fuck-off Mastick who ripped people’s throats out with his teeth and snapped necks with just a couple of fingers is only worth three souls?”
Festus looked over the notebook at me and shrugged. “He’s a Carrion. I told you, they’re like want-to-be demons. So yeah, three souls.” I glared at Festus and he glared back. I knew the soul points bullshit wasn’t his fault but it still didn’t stop me from wishing I could tweak the messenger’s nose at least.
“Well, and we just killed a ghoul,” Noah said. “In Jethro. We just came from there. Bane bashed its head in with a hammer.”
“Rubber mallet,” I said when I saw the look of interest on Festus’ face.
“I heard about the ghoul, but I hadn’t heard about the means yet. Sounds thrilling. Ghouls are worth four souls because of their inherent power and because of the power they ingest as they serve as basically the opossums of the supernatural world.” Festus paused and looked up from his notebook, a wistful look on his face. “It might have been nice to see something else get the shit beat out of it for a change.”
Noah snorted. “You should just come on hunts with us. Bane gets the shit beat out of her all the time.”
“I’d be lying if I didn’t say I was jealous of your front row seats to that,” Festus said to Noah.
“So, my total now is four hundred and twenty-six,” I asked, glaring from Noah to Festus. It was still a long way from zero, but better than four hundred and seventy-nine.
Festus nodded. “Four hundred and seventy-nine, minus the thirty-five for high-ring demons, the two for the necrowitch, one each for the two bugbears, two for the alpha bugbear, five for the demon in the cannibal tribe, three for the Carrion and four for the ghoul.”
“So, how many souls are the demons that can possess people worth?”
Festus shook his head. “You would have to kill the mortal as well as the demon possessing them to count the kill and as those demons can be exorcised, I don’t believe it would win you any points with the flying monkeys upstairs.”
“Fine,” I said. I was disappointed. Five souls each was the most I was ever going to get from demons.
“Of course,” Festus said quietly, almost more to himself than to us. “There are the low-ring demons…”
“Would those happen to include, oh I don’t know, Presidents, Dukes, etc.?” I asked.
“If I don’t blow up in the next ten seconds, you can take that as a yes,” Festus said. I felt Noah next to me, leaning forward to watch Festus.
“He’s not a bag of popcorn in the microwave,” I muttered to Noah. I turned back to Festus. “So if they don’t travel by Empty Houses or by possessing people…how would I ever...cross paths with one of these low-ring demons...hypothetically-speaking.”
Festus sighed. “I’d forgotten how slow you were, Bane. I assumed you’d know the answer to that from St. Louis.”
I paused, thinking. “I mean, I didn’t get to meet ole Dukey. We stopped Scratch before he could finish the ritual. He had wanted to ‘bleed’ Noah out, but...”
Festus nodded. “For a low-ring demon to ascend, mortal blood must be shed. That’s why so many of them rise during your human squabbles on battlefields. It’s very convenient. All we have to do is arrange the ritual and hide a few high-ringers here and there. Then, it’s as simple as turning on the faucet.”
“Wait, so when humans die…” I started.
Festus shook his head. “Not just die from natural causes. Murder. It has to be murder. It’s why the upstairs management made it rule number one for you mortals. They know that’s how Hell operates.” Festus shrugged. “It’s really not that easy though. The rite has to be prepared to channel the power of the life being ripped from the mortal before the murder takes place. And the more powerful the low-ring demon, the more blood it takes to hoist their asses out of the pit. That’s why wars are always the most convenient.”
“And then when they do make it topside?” I asked.
“They are the reason the term ‘hell on earth’ was coined,” Festus said.
“Lovely,” I said. “What kind of...body do they have while they’re stomping around up here?”
Festus snorted. “Whatever the hell they want. Godzilla, kindergarten teacher, Batboy, neighbor’s dog, movie star, or a politician. And they can change their body at will when they reach full ascension.”
“Full ascension?” I asked.
“When the ritual is completed. They’re actually pretty vulnerable while they’re ascending because they’ve still got one foot in Hell and…” Festus paused. It was slight, but I could see the color draining from his face. “That’s enough hell-time stories for tonight, kiddies. I just came to give you your totals and now I’m going off to do something despicable to balance out my karma.”
I grimaced. “Will they torture you for telling us all of this?”
“Probably,” Festus said on a sigh. “But, I guess it’s nice to always have something in my existence I can depend on, like being tortured. Kind of like you screwing up. I can set my watch by it.” Festus grinned at me. I gave him the finger. He turned his back to us and started walking away down the road.
“Thanks, Festus,” I yelled after him. “You know it’s customary to finish a conversation before fucking off.”
“I thought it was finished,” Festus said, glancing back over his shoulder. He smiled and I saw the gold tooth, already back in place, glinting in the sunlight. “Thanks for the tooth. Carry on. I’ll be around.” I blinked and he was suddenly two hundred feet away, then three. His dark outline began to distort above the hot blacktop in front of us. Then he was a heat shimmer and he was gone.
Noah was shaking his head beside me. “You know, I watch every time and I still can’t figure out how Festus disappears.”
“He’s a one-trick Vegas act, alright,” I said, moving back to Lucy. We climbed in and I turned the engine over.
“So, four hundred and twenty-six,” Noah said. I could hear the slightest edge of worry in his voice.
“Yep,” I said. “Not bad, huh?” I winked at Noah and my cell phone started buzzing in the seat next to me. I picked it up and looked down at the screen.
“Fuck,” I groaned when I saw the caller ID was unavailable. I put Lucy in gear and turned off the radio.
“What?” Noah asked.
“It’s Nya,” I said.
“So?”
“So, she’s going to yell. You better put your fingers in your sensitive ears,” I said.
“How do you know she’s going to yell?” Noah asked.
“Because it’s been over a week and we’re back in Oklahoma instead of holing up somewhere, hiding from this imaginary demon. She’s going to be pissed that we’re out in the open even though the demon hasn’t stuck his head out of his fox hole to make a frontal assault on us.”
“You should tell Nya that,” Noah said, feigning serious
ness. “And you should tell her to mind her own business and that you’re doing just fine on your own and you’re not afraid of any big ‘ole demon.”
“Maybe I will,” I said.
“You should,” Noah said. I looked down at the phone and blew out a sigh. Noah grinned. “I’m going to enjoy watching this.”
2
“Bane,” Nya barked and I could hear her deep inhale as she prepared to start ripping me a new one.
“Hi Nya,” I said, trying to stall her out. “Your ears must have been burning. I was just thinking about…”
“What the fucking hell, Bane!” I was too slow. Nya had gotten her full head of steam going and now I just had to accept the fact that I was tied to the tracks and there was no stopping the ass-chewing train. “You are a jerk! Do you know how fucking worried I was when I couldn’t get a hold of you!? And where the hell were you? The last time you hit a tower you were somewhere in podunk Oklahoma which is strange because I told you to get somewhere safe, away from Oklahoma. I told you that a fucking demon is coming for you. For all, I knew you were dead in a ditch somewhere.”
I thought about countering with the fact that I never knew where she was due to her aversion to cell phones. Nya always used payphones to contact people. She said she didn’t like carrying a homing beacon to find her but she had insisted that I carry one. Carrying a cell phone had saved my skin a time or two, so I didn’t complain about it as much now. I decided to take the high ground and just try to move the conversation forward.
“Well good news,” I said. “I’m not dead in a ditch somewhere.”
“Where the hell have you been?” Nya asked and though her volume told me she wasn’t done yelling, there was slightly less hysteria in her tone.
“Hunting,” I said. I prayed to the god of reasonable excuses that this would be enough to pacify her.
“In Oklahoma?” Nya asked and I could hear the disbelief in her voice. “Isn’t that a coincidence. You want to tell me the truth?”
I sighed. “Ok, so we got a tip about some chewed-on corpses in Oklahoma. We thought it might be Sister Smile, so we came down here. Turns out it was a ghoul, so we ganked it. Case closed.” An idea occurred to me that might throw Nya off her ‘tearing-me-a-new-one’ game. “Oh, and we ran into Festus. He gave me my new total. Four hundred and twenty-six.”
“I suppose that’s better than four hundred and seventy-something. To be honest, I’m surprised he’s alive. I thought when he went back downstairs after squealing on those demons in St. Louis and leading the cannibals right to them, his hide would be nailed to an office door somewhere in the bowels of Hell,” Nya said.
“No, it looks like they gave him some light torture and turned him loose,” I said. “It’s possible that Hell doesn’t know that Festus pointed the cannibals to the demons in St. Louis.”
“I suppose it would be mean of me to let it slip to my contacts in retaliation for getting himself kidnapped,” Nya said.
“It wasn’t his fault,” I said.
“It still meant that you had to put your ass on the line to go retrieve his. There could have been demons in Sicily. The demon could have been with the tribe. Did you consider that?”
“Well, he wasn’t,” I said. “Or at least if he was, he didn’t join in on the stabby-shooty part of the agenda. There was one demon there besides Mastick the Carrion, apparently, because he got some Solomon’s Spice in his mouth when he tried to bite me.”
“Well it couldn’t have been the demon if a little hunter Mrs. Dash killed him,” Nya said.
Something Walter had told me popped into my head. “Hey Nya, Walter said that some kind of demon ritual went down in Salvation, Missouri at the same time that we were down in Sicily at Cannibalooza. Do you have any inkling of what that might have been?”
“No,” Nya said, her voice gaining volume and rising half an octave. “What kind of ritual was this supposed to be?”
“That’s the point,” I said. “No one seems to know. Not even Walter. And the demons finished up and cleared out as soon as it was over.” Nya was quiet. “Do you think your contacts would know?” I asked.
“Maybe,” Nya said. “If they do, I’ll find out.” We were quiet for a moment and then Nya asked the question we were both thinking. “Do you think it could have been another ritual to raise the Duke?”
“No idea,” I said. “Walter hasn’t had anything on his radar that’s turned out to be demons in the last few days. But Festus told me about the ritual to raise these assholes. I think we should start looking for evidence of murder in Salvation.”
“Right,” Nya said quickly. “Because that’s how they dredge up those s.o.b.s. I’m on it.”
“Noah and I can help. We can go to Salvation and poke around…”
“Don’t you dare,” Nya said. “I’ve got contacts and I’m not far from there myself. You need to be more careful. These hunts you keep going on. They keep looking like traps.”
I rolled my eyes. “Or we keep thinking that they look like traps. Don’t you think we’re being a little too paranoid?”
“No,” Nya said. “I think you’re being a little too laid-back. You could have died at the hands of the demons in St. Louis where they were trying to raise the demon with six hundred and seventy-nine reasons as to why he would want you dead. You could have died at the hands of the cannibals in Sicily who had been hired by a demon to kill you…”
“We don’t know that for sure,” I said. “There could be a million things the tribe was hired for.”
“With your demon accountant as prisoner and bait?” Nya asked.
I decided to change tactics. “Wait, you keep telling me that I need to be vigilant and careful and that this big, bad demon is coming for me, but so far, I’m the one getting stood up. I thought old Dukey wanted to gank me himself.”
“He might not be picky at this point,” Nya said and I could hear the worry in her voice. “That’s twice now that you’ve slipped through his fingers if he was the one that hired the tribe. Maybe more if he’s behind the fae going nuts…”
“I asked Festus about that,” I said. “He had never heard of demons causing fae ‘will sickness’ or trying to control them.”
“Yeah, well, I trust Festus about as far as I can throw him,” Nya said.” And I don’t think I could get a tight spiral on him.”
“I know, but I believe him. He said it like it would be beneath the demons to work with the fae. Besides, how would controlling them to try to get me killed even work? I mean, I know Vix so that one was conceivably possible, but the bugbears in Alabama? That was pretty random.”
“I think it was pretty random that Joel just happened upon that case and the one person Joel knows that has dealt with fae before is you, so naturally he called you in for help and you didn’t have anything else to hunt and so on and so on,” Nya said.
“But I didn’t have anything else to hunt because Walter’s wife was blocking him. Surely you can’t think that they planned that too,” I argued.
“No,” Nya said. “But honestly Bane, I know that you say you and Joel are done, just like you said that you and Jo and you and Andi were done, but if any of them called you and asked for help on a hunt, would you ever say ‘no’?”
She was right. I would drop what I was doing if I could and head their way.“Fine,” I said, conceding. “Still, I think you’re giving this demon too much credit. That is a huge plan to orchestrate and someone obsessed with killing me when I have less than five months before I head back downstairs doesn’t seem to have a firm enough grasp on reality to pull it all off.”
Nya sighed. “I told you, Bane. Demons will deal with anyone. Even if they think they’re ‘beneath them’. And this Duke is quickly proving that he’s willing to try anything to end you.”
“If we’re right about our Stacks-worthy conspiracy,” I said, interrupting her. “Otherwise, this could all just be a bunch of coincidences. Maybe I’m being punk’d and the Duke is at home watching this whole thin
g on cable while I sweat about him trying to kill me.”
“Bane, I think you know that isn’t true,” Nya said quietly. “Just like you know that this isn’t one of Stacks’ conspiracy theories.” I didn’t say anything and she gave a huff of annoyance. “Besides, while you were at your cannibal jamboree, I found out that there’s another demon that’s joined forces with him.”
“Another Duke?” I asked, remembering Berith and all the bull that went along with dealing with one of those assholes. Now possibly two to deal with? Double the fun, double the pleasure.
“No,” she said. “At least I don’t think so. I’ve learned that if they are Dukes, that’s usually the first thing my contacts will say.”
“Well, he can’t be that powerful if he’s not even a Duke,” I said.
“Bane, there are demons who don’t deal with the classifications and titles downstairs. And they are every bit as murderous and sadistic as the Dukes, Princes, and Presidents.”
“And why would this second demon join forces with the Duke?” I asked.
“That I don’t know,” Nya said. “I’m guessing it’s because this other demon has some vested interest in making you dead or maybe the Duke promised him payment for his help.”
The soul stone.
“Do you think ole Dukey might make this other demon pick up his own payment? Like the soul stone I’m carrying?” I asked.
“Jesus, Mary, Joseph, and a camel, Bane,” Nya said. “We have got to get rid of that cursed piece of rock before Hell’s Easter egg hunt for it gets underway.”
“I can’t just toss it out,” I said. “What if an innocent picks it up? The demons will turn them to finger paint. At least if I have it, I know everyone else is safe. The dickbags will be coming for me.”
“And Noah,” Nya added quietly. A sharp stab of guilt to the gut. I cut my eyes to look at Noah who had lost interest in my phone call with Nya and was sleepily looking out the passenger side window, his head lolling back against the seat.
