by D V Wolfe
“That’s the spirit.”
The SUVs behind us had formed the same barricade, three across, blocking us in.
“If you don’t want a third nose hole to breath through,” one of the demons in front of us called out, you will get out of your vehicle slowly and with your hands raised.”
“Not a real firm grasp on how human anatomy works,” I muttered. “Or how car doors work.”
“What do we do?” Noah asked.
“We get out of the car with our hands up,” I said, raising my hands off the steering wheel. “Well, we try to get out of the car with our hands up. Easier said than done.”
“We’re...we’re giving up?” Noah asked quietly.
I turned to look at him. “No, but we’re going to make it look that way. Use your door as cover. The butt of the ten-gauge is pointed toward you behind the seat.’
“And it’s loaded,” Noah said.
“Of course it is,” I said. “The barrel was pointed at my ass, so why shouldn’t it be?”
“Get out!” The demon yelled at us again. The sound of slides and hammers being cocked echoed from the demons in front of us. Well, they knew how to do something with their guns. Noah and I reached for the handles on our doors and kicked them open. For as much bravado as I was showing Noah, I really didn’t have a good feeling about this. I glanced down and I could see the edge of the sword’s hilt under the seat. I looked up to see the demons moving in, tightening the circle around us. They’d shoot me before I could get it out, let alone stab them. If they searched the truck, they’d find it and take it. Shit. I glanced up and saw red eyes fixed on Noah and me.
The demon who had been the group’s spokesperson so far was moving in front of the rest, a satisfied expression on his face. “Restrain them.”
3
There was a pause as the demons around me looked at their weapons and then at me. I could tell by the looks on their faces that they were trying to decide how to go about keeping their drawn weapons trained on me but still restrain me. I turned my head and saw a similar conundrum had slowed down the demons surrounding Noah.
I heard doors opening on the SUVs behind us and I turned my head to see six more men and women in black suits piling out, also with guns drawn.
“Just... a few of you, put your guns away and restrain them,” the head demon in front of us said. I could hear the frustration in his voice. “Lucifer’s reach, the incompetence is palpable,” he muttered.
The demons behind us were moving in on us, slowly. I turned my head to watch them and I saw they were moving their guns back and forth. They looked unsure as to whether they should point them at Noah and I, or at the other demon scout troop in front of us.
“Now Gladius, I hope you’re not presuming to speak for my division in the legion,” a smooth voice said from behind me. I turned to see a taller demon with a pompadour, removing his sunglasses with one hand. He reholstered his gun and surveyed Noah and me with the same disdain someone would show to a cockroach crawling on the floor.
“Well, if the bad suit fits,” the demon called Gladius spat.
“Our Lord sent me and my division here to reclaim it,” the tall demon said, apparently not hearing Gladius.
“And he sent mine,” Gladius spat, his eyes glowing a brighter red, “to get the job done when your division failed, Turpis. Or did you forget the last time you sent part of your division to deal with these two...mortals.” Gladius said the last word with such disgust that I actually felt like I needed to speak up for the human race. Turpis moved so quickly, I didn’t see it happen. I just blinked and he was standing next to Gladius.
“The task of retrieval and returning it to our lord belongs to my division,” Turpis said, almost in a growl. There were four pairs of hands on me now. The two pairs on my right shoulder and arm began tugging me backward. The two demons holding my left shoulder and arm narrowed their red eyes at the other two and began pulling me forward, towards them. I made eye contact with Noah and saw that he too was caught in the middle of a demon tug of war. I gave an inward sigh.
“Look,” one of the demons wearing an older man said, wearily. He was moving towards Gladius and Turpis. “This House I’m wearing has a bad bladder and two bad knees. Can we just move this along? Does it really matter which division finds the damned thing as long as our lord gets it back?”
“Yes,” Turpis and Gladius spat.
The older demon sighed. “Fine, then how do you want to do this?”
“We need to search the vehicle for it,” Gladius said.
“My division will take the interior,” Turpis said. “Yours can take the...back end.”
Definitely the ‘D’ team. I was guessing Turpis hadn’t been topside since cars were invented based on his knowledge of Lucy’s “back end”. One of the other demons on Team Turpis must be acting as his chauffeur.
“No,” Gladius said. “You’ve already fouled up one encounter with these…” He turned to glare at us. “Bloodstains.” He looked back at Turpis. “I personally will check the interior.”
“Not without me,” Turpis spat. “I know you, Gladius, you’ll pocket it and tell us it’s not here and then go skipping off to give it to him and take the credit.”
The older demon gave another weary sigh and Gladius and Turpis turned to look at him. “Why don’t you both check the interior, together?”
Gladius and Turpis looked at each other, upper lips curled back. “Fine,” Gladius said. He leaned forward a few inches, challenging Turpis.
“Agreed,” Turpis finally said. They looked over at the demons holding Noah and I. “Step back with them.” Noah and I were dragged sideways more than back, the two teams of demons not wanting to lose ground to the other team by letting them take us more towards their side. I caught Noah’s gaze and I didn’t miss the flash of panic that crossed his pale face. This wasn’t good. Of course, I assumed they were here for the soul stone. If that was the case, it was in my pocket, still attached to the necklace and not in the truck. I figured I had maybe five to ten minutes to think of a plan before they finished searching the truck cab and turned around to kill us. I guessed that the demons holding me were probably thinking along the same lines.
“Great Turpis,” one of the demons holding me began, bowing his head in reverence. “Can we not just kill the mortals? Then we could all join in with the search.” Eight demons were holding Noah and I. We each had two from Team Gladius and two from Team Turpis attached to our arms. That was half the total demons. Then with Turpis and Gladius, moving around Lucy to start searching, that only left five demons with guns drawn. One of them being the older demon who looked about two seconds away from saying, ‘I’m too old for this shit’ and taking off for retirement in Arizona. I surveyed the other four. Two of them looked like they weren’t convinced they were holding their guns properly. One was busy watching a plastic bag roll through the ditch beside him in the soft breeze, and the last one was channeling some Mission Impossible, Charlie’s Angels-level seriousness. He was almost squatting, two-handing the gun, and moving the barrel between pointing at me and pointing at Noah.
Turpis and Gladius had paused on either side of the truck to listen to the demon’s suggestion of just killing us.
“Well, you could kill us,” I said. “Of course, then if you can’t find it, you won’t be able to torture us to find out where it is.”
There was silence from the demons except for some awkward weight-shifting. “If we killed them,” Gladius hissed. “Then we won’t be able to torture them if necessary to find its location.”
“Pretty sure I just said that,” I muttered. One of the demons in front of me sucker-punched me in the solar plexus.
I was still wheezing when Gladius moved to lean into the seat on Noah’s side and Turpis leaned in on my side. I held my breath. There were hex bags and salt and protections in the cab that when touched by a demon, should make said demon shit themselves. On the other hand, the sword was under the seat, and if they took the
sword...
“I can feel it pulsing,” Turpis said. “I’ve found it!”
I tried not to raise an eyebrow. I was pretty sure the necklace was still in my pocket. Maybe it wasn’t the stone they were there for.
“Give it to me, Turpis!” Gladius barked.
Turpis drew back from the truck cab and turned to face me, the pink fanny pack in his hand. “I can feel its power calling to me.” He lowered the fanny pack and started to tug at the zipper. I saw it get stuck on the fabric just as Gladius hurried around the truck.
“It resists me,” Turpis said, tugging harder on the zipper. He looked at me. “What means of protection have you put upon it?” I was about to say, ‘plastic zipper’ when Gladius snatched it out of his hand.
“My division was given the task of returning it to him,” Gladius said. I will return it. He started tugging at the zipper as well. He let out a scream as rock salt from inside spilled across his hands. He yanked harder at the zipper.
“You’re going to break it,” I muttered.
Gladius drew his gun and put the tip of the barrel against my forehead, thrusting the fanny pack at me. “Open it.”
I reached for the pack with both arms but the demon stooges were still holding me in place. I made eye contact with Gladius who was dancing around, trying to keep his back to Turpis, who was still trying to grab the fanny pack, all while keeping the barrel of his gun resting against my forehead. If Turpis lunged for the damn thing, there was about a hundred percent chance that Gladius would accidentally squeeze the trigger and blow my brains all over the highway.
“Release her arms,” Gladius said, kicking backward, trying to keep Turpis back. The hands on my left arm, which were working for Team Gladius, let me go. The ones holding me from Team Turpis just tightened their grip. Gladius moved the barrel from my forehead and shot the nearest Team Turpis member who happened to be less than a foot to my right. The gunshot exploded next to my ear and I could feel the blowback of blood and god-knew-what-else hit the back of my neck as the body slumped to the ground and the black haze of a demon without a body to inhabit rose around us like a cloud of angry gnats. My ears were ringing but I was more worried about how quickly things were going to go downhill from here.
I snatched at the fanny pack and got the fabric out of the zipper. I reached into the salt and pulled out the damn space pen. Turpis snatched it from my hand.
“The stone must be inside. I can feel the power pulsing from within it.” Gladius dropped the fanny pack and lunged at Turpis.
“Return it to me, Turpis. It was the will of our Lord that I bring it to him!” They started squabbling and slap-fighting and I saw Gladius get a hand on Turpis’ pompadour. Then the wind began to pick up, the temperature dropping as it rushed around us. I met Noah’s gaze. Probably not a good sign. The black shadowy haze was leaking out of the pen again. It didn’t go into their noses or mouths, probably because they were demons and there wasn’t a soul there to corrupt, but instead it seemed to wrap around them. The shadows of Fred and Murray were growing bigger, crashing into each other, and fighting just like the demons that they were drawing power from. The hands holding me let go, and drew their guns. The five standing with guns drawn from Team Gladius had turned their weapons to point at the members of Team Turpis and as the bullets started flying, I hit the ground. I was prone on the pavement and I looked under Lucy to see Noah curled into a ball at the feet of the demons that were firing at each other above him.
I crawled towards Lucy as quickly as I could, hoping the warring demons wouldn’t notice me. I got underneath the truck and reached out to grab Noah by his shirt. He jerked at my touch and looked up at me. I motioned for him to crawl under the truck with me and we laid there, waiting it out. Bodies were hitting the ground around us and the black gnat haze of demons without a living body to inhabit was getting thicker. There was a howl of pain in front of the truck and I belly-crawled forward to look out. Turpis was stabbing Gladius in the throat with the space pen. Black demon blood was spraying in cast-off over the blacktop. Turpis’ face was contorted in rage and covered with blood spatter. The shadows behind Gladius and Turpis were about fifteen feet tall now, the shadow behind Turpis beating the shadow behind Gladius down. Finally, once Gladius fell, I saw Turpis’ expression of horror and disbelief. He watched his own arms, as if in slow motion as they dug the space pen into his own stomach, pulled back, and then drove the pen through his own neck. Turpis’ hands dropped to his sides and he turned to look down at me, his mouth open in a silent scream as his body began to fold. He hit the ground with his knees and fell forward onto his face. The cold wind that had been blowing around us began to still. The black haze of disembodied demons dissipated, racing off down the road.
I stared out at the bodies lying around us and I was annoyed. If I’d only thought to grab the damn sword and start hacking into them, I could have counted these assholes against my total. Instead, none of them were dead. They were just “homeless” for the moment. The shadows that had come from the pen were gone, sucked back inside it. I rolled out from under Lucy and I heard the scraping sounds of Noah kicking a body out of the way so he could get out on the other side.
“What a bunch of idiots,” Noah muttered, moving around the truck.
“Hell hath no fury like a military general who feels undermined because the boss sent in two teams to do a job,” I said.
Noah paused. “I think that’s too long to be snappy and catch on as a saying.”
“I’ll work on it,” I said, bending down to pick up the fanny pack.
“Well, what do we do now?” Noah asked.
“Clean up,” I said, looking around and shaking my head. “Damn kids. This is why we can’t have nice things.” Noah and I started dragging the bodies back to the SUVs and piling them in the back cargo areas. We moved the SUVs and lined them up on the shoulder, so they weren’t blocking the road. Then, we came back to stare down at the silver pen, still sitting on the blacktop.
“Do you think they were looking for the soul stone?” Noah asked.
“Pretty sure,” I said.
“Where is it?”
“In my pocket,” I said, patting my jeans pocket. I could feel the outline of the stone against my leg. Still safe and sound.
“So why did they go for the pen?” Noah asked. “I mean, surely soul stones don’t give off the same...feeling...or whatever as haunted space pens.”
I shrugged. “Honestly, these were Empty House demons. All of them, I checked. I doubt they’ve ever been close to an actual soul stone, let alone actually seen one. Big Dukey probably didn’t think he needed to send anything higher than a ‘D’ team to get the stone back from a couple of mortals.”
“So he didn’t learn anything from the last time we ran into these clowns in SUVs?” Noah asked.
“He did,” I said, nodding. “He learned he needed to send more than one team.”
“And a lot more luxury vehicles,” Noah said, looking at the seven SUVs.
“Cloth seats,” I said. Noah rolled his eyes.
“So, we’re still being tracked because of that stone,” Noah said, glancing over at me. “I mean, that’s gotta be putting a constant bulls-eye on our backs.”
“Even more so than usual,” I said. I wanted to use the stone to lure the asshole to me so I could kill him and hopefully negate my contract, as Nya and I had planned, but also to get some vengeance for Nya. Still, I couldn’t keep putting Noah into this kind of danger. There was enough of it to go around without me keeping a constant demon-beacon lit in my pants.
“I’ll grab the pen,” Noah said.
“No, I’ll get it,” I said. Noah paused and looked at me. He glanced back down at the pen and then took two huge steps back from it.
“Please be my guest. Definitely not going to fight with you over that thing.”
