by D V Wolfe
She was growling. Something low and guttural almost as if she was chanting but in a voice that didn’t belong, even in the spirit, of this girl. I couldn’t see her reflection in the mirror from where I was in the hall because she was blocking it, her face so close to the mirror it was probably touching the glass. I took a step towards her, the .45 in both hands.
“I WILL TAKE YOU TO HELL. THE SEED IS SOWN AND IT MUST BE UNDONE.” If I hadn’t seen the little girl’s jaw moving in rhythm with this threat, I would have sworn it was coming from somewhere else. I took another step towards her. I knew I should have just shot her from the hallway, but I was transfixed. What did her face look like?
The board under my foot groaned and the little girl paused. Then, slowly, her head rotated on her neck. Her face was red and skinless and her eyes burned bright like two hot coals.
“YOU WILL BURN!” She boomed.
I unloaded three rounds into her. She flickered and vanished. I heard something crash from around the corner at the end of the hall and I hurried on, trying to get my heart to stop attempting to jump out of my chest.
“Shit,” I heard Roy groan as I rounded the corner and skidded to a stop.
Roy was on the ground, trying to get a rug disentangled from his prosthetic foot. He looked up at me and glared. “There you are. Why the hell didn’t you come when you heard us yelling?”
I dropped down to help him get untangled. “I didn’t hear you yell.” We got the rug off him and I looked around. “Where’s Noah?”
Roy’s face crumpled in anguish. “It took him.”
“Where?” I asked. “What form did it take?”
Roy was almost crying, either in pain or shame I couldn’t tell and I wasn’t going to press it as I helped him to his feet. “It was this black mist,” Roy said. “We were checking out one of the rooms back down that hallway and it just whooshed in, and then he was gone.”
I put an arm under Roy’s to steady him and he clamped his right arm around my shoulder, leaning against me slightly.
“It’s a mirage,” I said to him. “A decoy the spirit created. Noah’s gotta be around, show me where it happened.”
Roy nodded. He was breathing hard and I was suddenly worried that his heart might not have been up to a hunt like this. He was wheezing and leaning against me. The hallway on this side of the building was a lot more narrow, barely wider than two people walking side-by-side.
“This thing is angry,” Roy wheezed. “It wants something. Can...Can we stop for a second?”
I paused and he sagged against me, his head close to my shoulder.
“What do you think it wants?” I asked Roy, staggering a little under his weight.
Roy’s head shot up and his gaze met mine, his eyes a blinding red. “You. It wants you, Bane.”
15
I shoved against Roy but I didn’t make much progress. He was a couple of inches taller than I was and probably about a hundred pounds heavier.
“Your presence is requested downstairs a little ahead of schedule,” Roy said, chuckling.
“Well, I love to disappoint,” I groaned, shoving against him again. He had me pinned to the wall of the narrow hallway. I had my .45 drawn but in my right hand. My stupid hand. I did my best and got it close enough to fire into his rib cage. I had five shots left in the clip and I emptied them all into Roy. He screamed as the wrought iron burned at the demon inside of him but if anything, he seemed to only press me harder into the wall. The gun was no use to me anymore and I let it drop from my fingers as his hands came up around my throat. I pried at his hands but they had my neck in a vice and they were tightening, squeezing at my air passage. I grabbed his ears and tugged his head forward, looking for the pentagon branded behind them. Was Roy an Empty House? No pentagon behind either ear. He was possessed.
“Do you have any idea,” Roy roared and his voice was reverberating as the demon possessing him started to burn out his vocal cords. “How many resources I have had to waste on tracking you down to send you back to the pit where you belong?”
I had about a hundred snide comments that came to mind as a reply to this but I was having a hard enough time getting air to breathe, let alone sass. Karma, I guess. Or irony. I wasn’t sure. All the times I’d been sarcastic to the things I’d hunted and here I was, getting the shit choked out of me by a demon and I couldn’t even muster the air to ask him if he’d ever considered knitting as a hobby instead.
I tried head-butting Roy but he reared back, the anger pouring from his eyes felt almost as if it was physically burning me. He leaned in close again and there was spittle forming in the corner of his mouth with the effort of choking me. My vision was blurry and going black. The penlight was on the floor, casting a low light on the opposite wall in the cramped hallway. In the last light of my vision, I saw movement. Oh, thank god. Noah. I hope he ran for the door and didn’t look back. My vision blacked out and I could feel something wet hit my arm and burn into me. It was a dull pain. I was starting to feel disconnected from the pressure around my neck.
I had failed. I was going back downstairs to be taunted as I tried to get back in line for another Empty House. As the people I loved up here went on with their lives and kept fighting, kept putting themselves in danger...kept dying. The image of Gabe, leaning against his Triumph and smiling. Blue eyes and bearded cheeks turned up because Gabe always smiled with his whole face. And then one of Noah and I arguing in the truck about funeral homes and severed heads. Of him teasing me and snoring with his head back on the seat. I couldn’t leave him here. I had to make sure he got out of here alive. Then Hell could have me. I scraped together every bit of consciousness I had left and forced my eyes open. Roy was an inch from my face, smiling. I shoved against him as hard as I could and he rocked back slightly. I had nothing left. I tried again and Roy just laughed.
“Finally, you no longer will be the pain in my…” At first, I thought Roy was mocking me with the strangled noises he was making. The pressure on my neck started to let up slightly and I gasped in air, the black, hazy cobwebs shifting to the edges. Hands. There were huge, bear hands grabbing Roy around the throat.
Then, the air was filled with a booming voice. At first, I thought the little girl was back, but even in my slurred-consciousness, I knew that she was probably a fabrication by the demon possessing Roy. This was his funhouse. The look on his face told me he didn’t seem to be having fun anymore. Struggling through the haze that was beginning to lift in my head was comprehension. I knew that voice and I knew what it was doing.
It was Gabe, performing an exorcism.
The red light in Roy’s eyes was flickering now as the demon fought against the dry-heaving happening behind Roy’s closed lips. I was about to get a demon upchucked on me. I closed my eyes and mouth and looked down. I’d never been this close when one was expelled but I knew that because I was wearing an Empty House I wasn’t vulnerable. Still, I didn’t relish the thought of his elbow or ball sack going up my nose when he became smoke and left the body. There was a scream and a retching sound an inch from my ear and the hands released my throat. I opened my eyes to see Gabe pulling Roy back by the throat and leaning against the opposite wall.
Roy was gasping now, still pinched between Gabe’s hands. “Let him go,” I said. “You’re choking him.”
Gabe’s eyes met mine and I saw relief crashing down over his expression of fear and rage. He didn’t loosen his hands. I rushed forward and pulled his hands off Roy’s neck. Roy slumped to the floor, coughing. I was still holding Gabe’s hands. Gabe’s expression was frozen. Only his eyes moved, studying me as if to make sure I was really there.
“You’ve got a hell of a good sense of timing,” I said to Gabe. I tried to drop his hands but he hung onto my left and raised his free hand to touch my face. He paused half-way and let his hand drop. He let go of my left and looked down at Roy. I squatted down next to him and met his watery grey eyes with mine. “Just you in there now, Roy?”
Roy coughed an
d wheezed and Gabe and I each grabbed one of his hands to lift him back to his feet. He wasn’t too steady, so we helped him lean against the wall and he reached down to rub at the spot his prosthetic connected to his leg. “Damn demon,” he growled. “He’s been riding me since yesterday. I thought I could throw him off me, but he just dug in deeper.” He rubbed a hand against his neck. He paused and looked down at his side. His overalls were turning red from a spreading stain on his side. Shit. I forgot I’d shot him. I dropped to my knees and pulled at his shirt, trying to get a look at his side. “Looks like you just grazed me,” Roy wheezed as we both stared at the bloody trench a bullet had carved in his side.
“Shooting with your stupid hand?” Gabe asked.
I nodded. “Righty never was good at aiming.”
“Thank god,” Roy groaned.
“Where’s Noah?” I asked, jumping to my feet. I looked at Roy. “Do you remember where the demon left him?”
Roy craned his neck around. “One of those...shit,” he stopped craning his neck. “One of those rooms.” Roy pointed at the last two doors down the hallway back towards the front of the building. “It’s kind of fuzzy,” Roy said. “Sorry.”
I glanced at the .45 then decided against it. It was empty anyway.
“Hang on,” Gabe said. “I’ll come with you.”
I shook my head. “Stay with Roy and keep the pressure on his side.”
The first room was full of tables and chairs stacked high and close to the door. I could barely make out a pathway around the towering furniture. I did a double-check. No Noah and no footprints in the dust on the floor when I shined my penlight over it. I backed out into the hallway and checked the last door. Pay dirt.
The sawed-off was laying on the floor by the door, discarded as if it had been dropped and then kicked away.
“Noah!” I shouted into the darkroom. There was a sound like something heavy falling against a closed door off to my left. I really hoped the demon had been alone here and I wasn’t about to open a door to find five more of them playing cards and farting. The door looked like a closet door. I raised the sawed-off and let the door swing open.
Noah fell out. He’d been tied up and gagged with what looked like a dirty corner of the sheet that was covering a chair in the corner. The sheet was now half off of the chair, trailing on the floor, the ragged edge clearly visible. I pulled the fabric out of his mouth and when I pulled my hand away from him, I had a smear of blood on the back of it.
“Sonofabitch,” Noah hissed as I started working on the rope tying his hands to his feet. I sawed through it with the machete while Noah just kept repeating, ‘sonofabitch’, ‘sonofabitch’. “Roy is a demon.”
I shook my head. “Possessed by.”
“What the fuck does that matter? Where is he?” Noah asked and I recognized the higher-pitched voice that always happened when Noah was starting to get his dander up.
“Gabe exorcised him,” I said. “Now hold still or I’m going to accidentally, on purpose, slit your wrists.”
“Gabe is here?” Noah asked, still keyed up, but managing to hold his wrists still.
I nodded. “Long story, no need for more questions, let’s get your ass up because your head is bleeding.”
I pulled Noah back down the hall to where Gabe was standing, supporting Roy.
“Give me the gun,” Noah said to me. “I’m going to shoot him.”
I was confused at first. “You mean Gabe or Roy?”
“Roy,” Noah snapped. “He waited until my back was turned, knocked the sawed-off out of my hands, and then hit me over the head with something.”
“Was it the sawed-off?” I asked him.
“Maybe,” Noah muttered. “Doesn’t matter. Give me the gun.”
“Nope,” I said. “Roy isn’t possessed anymore and he’s in worse shape than you are.” I took Noah over to look at Roy’s side.
“What happened?” Noah asked. “Did you have a shot ricochet?”
“Stupid hand,” Gabe and I said together. Noah looked up at us, confused.
“I had the gun in my right hand when I shot. It’s my stupid hand, so it looks like I just grazed him.”
“At point-blank range,” Gabe said with a grin.
I gave him the finger. “In my defense, I was also being strangled at the time.”
Noah worked his cauterizing magic on Roy’s wound to get the bleeding to stop. Roy threw up on the floor, but with the shape, the building was in and the fact that the owners didn’t even bother to lock the front door, I doubted anyone would care about a little vomit. Noah’s head was still bleeding but he didn’t trust me to help guide his hands to the spot without having some fun and lighting his hair on fire along the way. Gabe said he had a first aid kit on his bike and the four of us stumbled back out onto the building’s porch and blinked in the bright daylight.
We hobbled across the street and back to the parking lot. We got Roy’s truck door open, and his ass settled in the seat. We tucked his legs in and I got a look at the customized pedals he’d had put in to accommodate his prosthetic. Roy was quiet and he looked horrified and sad. I knew that look. Tags had made it. Rosetta had made it. Slosh, Civ, even Walter. It was the look of horrible realization that comes when we figure out we’re not invincible. And that we’ve picked a line of work that equates to trying to empty the ocean with a teaspoon when it comes to the evil shit we hunt.
“Roy,” I said softly. “It sure was nice to meet a seasoned hunter, like yourself. Well, really meet you now with no house guests.”
Roy looked up at me, tears in his eyes and I moved to block Roy from view by Gabe and Noah who were fussing over Noah’s head a few feet away. “Roy, what’s always been your favorite part of the job?” I asked.
Roy looked confused at the question and then he turned his gaze to his dashboard and sniffed hard as he tried to hold everything in. “I guess I’d have to say the getting creative part. I mean when you know what you’re hunting, but you don’t have what you need and you have to come up with a different way to skin the cat.”
I raised an eyebrow at him. “That’s pretty impressive. Most folks I ask say they like experiencing the supernatural, or making the weapons, or doing the research. You like the...creative parts of it, huh?”
Roy leaned back in his seat, looking a little more comfortable and in his element. “It can be an art. Once, I was hunting this nest of vampires, back in ‘85. They’d taken over this farm, north of Onega. I was coming back from a landscaping gig I did on the side to pay the bills, and I was pulling my wood chipper behind me. Didn’t have time to go home for my axe.” Roy met my grin with one of his own.
“So you ‘chipped’ them?” I asked.
Roy’s grin got larger. “Old lady Mercer still calls me every spring to remark on how brilliant the colors are in that flower bed of hers.”
I patted Roy on the shoulder. “You should write a guide or something about how to ‘McGuyver’ a hunt. Because we’ve all been there. A day late and a dollar short on a hunt without what we need, or think we need.”
Roy shook his head as if to brush me off. “I’m just an old-timer who can’t cut it anymore. Who’d want to listen to me run off at the mouth?”
“I would,” I said, meeting his gaze. “You have no idea how many lives something like that could save. A lot of us throw the towel in or go off half-cocked when we don’t have what we need. Either way, it usually gets us killed.”
Roy held my gaze for another minute before I saw the corners of his mouth tip up at the edges. “I suppose I could write some stuff down.”
“And when you’re done,” I said. “Call Walter with instructions about how the rest of us can get a copy of your guide.”
Roy shook his head and leaned forward to plug his key into the ignition. “Shit, me writing a book.”
I shrugged. “Why not. Just think of all the situations other hunters will bring to you to ask what they should do.”
I stepped back from the truck to
let Roy pull the door closed. He winked at me and then glanced over at Noah who had a line of white gauze around his head, and Gabe, who was snapping at him to hold still while he got it secured.
“Sorry about everything,” Roy said to Noah.
Noah shrugged. “He’s used to it,” I muttered to Roy and Roy chuckled. Gabe gave up and walked over to shake Roy’s hand.
“Thanks for saving me from permanently being Hell’s pony,” Roy said to Gabe.
Gabe smiled. “It wasn’t a good look for you.”
Roy shook his head. “Nah, I don’t expect it was. You all be good now.”
We nodded and moved so that Roy could back out of the space. As soon as he’d disappeared down the street I turned to Gabe.
“How the hell did you know where we were?” I asked.
Gabe groaned. “Well, you told me you were in Kansas City.”
I nodded. “Big place. Spans two states. Go on.”
Gabe looked down at the ground. “And I hacked your cell phone GPS to see where the coordinates had been and I found the diner.” I felt my eyes beginning to narrow and Gabe kept going. “And from there, I picked up the sulfur trail, and then I saw your truck and I saw you and Noah going inside the building with that man...so I followed.”
“Because of course, we can’t look out for ourselves,” I said. But then I had to pause. Shit. This time, it was damned lucky that Gabe had followed us. I decided to push through before the fact that I’d just proven my own point dawned on Gabe or Noah. “What are you doing in Kansas City, anyway?” I asked Gabe. “I thought you were on some top-secret mission from The Order?”
Gabe nodded. “I just made a little detour.” His gaze met mine and then I saw it drop as he studied my sore neck.
“Jesus, Bane,” Noah said beside Gabe. I glanced at Noah to see his attention focused on my neck too. “I mean, I think I know why, but holy shit, people like to choke you.”
We got Noah into the truck and settled. He was still having some balance issues from his blow to the head and I knew I was going to have to try to keep him awake for a few hours to make sure he didn’t have a concussion. I closed the truck door so Noah wouldn’t fall out and turned to look at Gabe. He reached behind him and pulled out the.45. He handed it to me and I tried to ignore the fact that it was warm. And then, I tried not to think about where it had been tucked, to make it this warm.
