by D V Wolfe
The guy pushed on the bottom of the trap door and stood up, his head and shoulders emerging first from the floor. I heard the unmistakable sound of Big Joe being snapped back together after being loaded.
“Don’t shoot, Rosetta!” I yelled up through the hole.
“Bane?” Rosetta called.
“Yeah,” I yelled. “We brought you a demon-gram.”
Two large hands grabbed the demon by the shoulders and ripped him up and out of the floor.
“Good to see you’re feeling better,” I said to Gabe as I climbed out and set down the sawed-off to help Noah with his load.
“So was this your welcome party at the truck?” Gabe asked.
I nodded. “Yeah, I guess the door-to-door mission work isn’t... well, working, so they’re trying a more direct, in your face approach.”
Noah and I carried the duffles to the table and started laying everything out. In one corner of the room, Gabe had the demon in Stacks’ recliner.
“Not my chair!” Stacks barked from the far end of the hall.
“Well, what do you want me to do with him?” Gabe asked, looking around. “Everything else is a stool, which isn't a lot of use when it comes to tying a prisoner to something. I can’t tie him to the couch. Any other suggestions?”
“Here’s a chair,” Stacks said, pushing his computer chair down the hallway. “Get his ass out of mine.”
Gabe shrugged and picked the demon up and slammed him down into the computer chair. The demon groaned and squeezed his eyes shut. “There,” Gabe said to Stacks. “You happy now?”
“Ecstatic,” Stacks said, reaching forward and ripping the tape off the demon’s mouth.
“I’m not,” the demon sputtered. “I think Gargantua here somehow managed to ram my spinal cord down through my asshole.”
“Hold onto that sensation,” I said, flipping the first duffle over to dump out the contents on the table. “It may come back around.”
“Why did you take the tape off?” Gabe muttered at Stacks. “I still have to restrain him.” I tossed the roll of salted tape to Gabe who ran a loop around the demon’s torso and slapped a piece back over his mouth. “Oh don’t worry there Slick, we’re not going to impair your freedom of speech, at least not for long. I just need to take a few precautions to make sure you don’t leave us too soon.” Gabe flipped his hunting knife open and the demon began to scream behind his tape. I caught Noah’s eye and noticed that he had gone pale under his freckles.
“Gabe, he’s an Empty House. He can’t smoke out.” I had a feeling he couldn’t “compel” either or I was sure he would have tried it in the tunnel.
Gabe closed his knife and stepped back. “Just take away all my fun.”
“What was he going to do?” Noah whispered next to me.
I turned to him. “Carve a devil’s trap into his skin so the demon couldn’t get out.” Noah started turning green. “But he doesn’t have to. The demon is an Empty House and he can’t smoke out.”
“Alright,” Gabe said. “Now let’s see what this a-hole has to say.” He reached forward and ripped off the tape.
“Sons of bitches, I think you tore off all my lip skin,” the demon howled.
I shrugged. “Why do you care? They aren’t actually your lips and I’m sure whatever big daddy demon’s ass you’re kissing won’t notice if the lips on his derriere have skin or not.”
The demon gave a harsh laugh. “You have no idea who I work for, do you?”
“Is it this pain in my ass, named Berith?” I asked. I didn’t miss the dimming of the overhead lights and the camping lantern on the table next to me as the trailer rumbled under our feet. I kept my attention glued to the demon, watching for what kind of reaction we would have. He didn’t look pleased to hear the name. If anything, the skin he was wearing went paler, making all the fine black hairs stand out even starker against his pasty skin.
“You know then,” the demon said softly.
I frowned. “Your boss? Yeah, almost got to meet him in St. Louis. Too bad about his party getting trashed.”
The demon chuckled and shook his head. “He’s not my boss. He’s the travel agent scoping out the trip for what’s really coming. Are you really so dumb that you don’t see the signs?”
I perched the barrel of the sawed-off on the edge of the demon’s knee. “In the event of you pissing me off, your knee cap can be used as a teacup saucer and I’m minutes away from needing a cup of tea.”
The demon shook his head, “So much bluster for such a tiny fly in the ointment. The end of the mortals is coming. The Reign of Hell will begin and the Dukes and Princes will take their place in the realm they were meant to rule. What is left of your kind will become footstools and furnishings for us.”
“So you clowns have some kind of plan you’re working on. How does New Covenant fit into it?” I asked.
The demon was silent. He was breathing fast and he’d moved his gaze to his lap.
I sighed. “Hey genius, the only game I like to play is Assistive-One-Man-Russian-Roulette and there’s a winner every time. Did you forget that you’re in an Empty House and you can’t smoke out? You only have the one choice: answer the question.”
The demon didn’t move. I picked up Gabe’s hunting knife off the table and moved around behind the demon, taking one of his fingers and sliding the blade of the knife between his fingernail and the nail bed. The demon screamed.
“What does the New Covenant church have to do with your reindeer games?” I asked again.
I glanced over and saw Noah bend forward, putting his head between his knees. Gabe was staring at the demon’s face and I saw Stacks and Rosetta behind him, listening. I inched the knife back out from under his nail, keeping just the tip resting on the cuticle. The demon was breathing hard but he didn’t say anything, so I shrugged at Gabe and slid the knife back under the nail. The demon screamed again. “Souls! They need the souls!”
I pulled the blade back out to the cuticle. “Keep talking.”
“For the prophecy,” he said, his voice weak and pained. “There must be a number of pious souls to give a blood oath to the Reign.”
“But I have the book now,” I said. “So they’re out of luck. We’re working on our own hoodoo to null and void your blood oaths.”
The demon started laughing now and shaking his head. I wiggled the blade back under his nail and he stopped. He was hissing and swearing now. “It has,” he began, pausing to breathe with his eyes shut, “nothing to do with the book. It’s a blood oath on black stone. The oath isn’t held in the book.” He suddenly sat up straight as if he realized something.
“Something you want to share with the class?” I asked.
The demon was silent again. He kept his head bowed, his gaze on his lap, and he was muttering something to himself.
“What is he saying?” I asked Gabe. Gabe leaned forward to listen to him.
After a minute Gabe shook his head. “I don’t know, something in Enochian. I heard something about a dog or dog’s something.”
“Probably talking about us,” I said. I felt something give under my finger and looked down to see his fingernail had popped off. “Whoops,” I said. I grabbed another finger and immediately had to let go. His skin was boiling hot. I looked down at the pads of my fingers and saw the skin was black. The pins and needles that followed a burn, raced up my arm. The chair he was sitting in was starting to smoke, the plastic melting and beginning to drip onto the carpet. I took a step back. The man himself was starting to smoke, his skin beginning to melt and peel off, the tissue and muscle underneath, exposing itself in places.
“What the fuck,” I said. “Rosetta,” I yelled. “Get the fire extinguisher!”
“It won’t matter,” Gabe breathed next to me.
And he was right. By the time Rosetta got the fire extinguisher over to us, the man’s eyes had burned inside his skull and a fine gray ash had started to drift out of the now-vacant eye sockets. His mouth was hanging open and more of
the gray ash was drifting on the air in the soft final breath he’d given. I leaned closer to him and saw even more ash drifting down from inside his nostrils.
“I thought he couldn’t just smoke out and leave the body,” Noah said. “Because he’s an Empty House.”
I nodded. “That wasn’t him smoking out,” I said. “If he’d been possessing this guy, instead of riding his Empty House, this poor bastard,” I nudged the man’s knee in his melted polyester pants and pulled my foot away, melted fabric clinging to the sole of my shoe. “Would be up and talking. Telling us about his life as a deacon until some black smoke went up his nose one day and started changing his mind on everything he did or knew.”
“If he didn’t smoke out,” Noah said, his voice shaky. “Then, what the hell happened?”
“He ashed out,” Gabe said. “Killed himself and his vessel.”
“And that’s why I didn’t want him in my chair,” Stacks said.
16
“What?” Noah asked. “Why?”
Stacks shook his head. “Probably thought he’d told us too much. His boss must be pretty bad news if he can scare a demon so much that he’d rather cease to exist than risk them finding out what he told us.”
I shrugged. “Well good news for us then. At least we know he told us something good.” I looked around. “Anyone happen to take notes while he was talking?”
Stacks grabbed a piece of paper and started scribbling. “I guess I always have to be the brain and the brawn.”
“Oh don’t worry,” I said. “You’re not a show-stopper either way. Just write.” I read the paper. “No, he said ‘the pious souls must give a blood oath to the Reign’.”
It took us about half an hour of arguing before we had a version of the demon’s account that we could agree upon.
“Ok,” Rosetta said, pushing her way through all of us to sit down in Stacks’ chair. She glared at Stacks who was about to protest and he slumped down onto the couch next to Noah. “He said, ‘the end of the mortals is coming. The Reign of Hell will begin and the Dukes and Princes will take their place in the realm they were meant to rule. What is left of your kind will become furnishings for us…”
“And footstools,” I said.
Rosetta rolled her eyes. “Great input, Bane. I think we get the picture.” She turned back to her notes. “The Dukes and Princes need souls. Not just any souls but pious souls for the ‘prophecy’. And they have to make a blood oath on the black stone. And the oath isn’t held in the book.” She finished reading.
“Ok,” I said. “So the baddies are planning something with oaths and prophecies and some kind of Duke Reign,” I said. “Does that really change what we have to do at New Covenant that much?” I looked at Stacks. “Does that change the spell thing you were going to do?”
Stacks shrugged. “If the lore about Omnia Purgo is true, I think I can modify it to work on a blood oath.”
“But a blood oath made in service of the Dukes and Princes of Hell?” Gabe asked.
Stacks scratched his head. “We might need the extra ‘Big Gulp’ size of holy water, but I think the concept will be the same.”
I picked the book from New Covenant off the table. It seemed like it was even heavier now. Heavy and useless. Burning this thing or performing some kind of ritual on the book wasn’t going to save these people. There were bigger, badder things afoot. And what if Stacks couldn’t reverse them?
“Hey,” Noah said. “At least we know that the people signing up at New Covenant weren’t signing deals…”
I turned to him. “Blood oath or deal, I don’t think it really changes anything for them.” I turned to look at Gabe. “Either way their souls are going to play the role of the ‘littlest inmate in Hell’, right?”
Gabe nodded. “From what I’ve heard, the point of a blood oath is for the souls to take the place of the low-ring demon in Hell. That’s probably why they needed so many.”
“How is that different from ‘blood sacrifices’?” Noah asked.
“Blood sacrifices are to form a vessel, topside for the demon,” Gabe said. “The humans lose their lives, but not their souls.”
Stacks sighed. “I need to do some reading, so everyone calm the hell down and do something constructive. Fill some shotgun shells or stuff some hex bags and let me think.”
I opened my mouth to tell him exactly where I planned to stuff his hex bags when I heard the tinny wail of my cell phone coming from the junk I’d dumped on the table. I snatched it up and flipped it open. I glanced down at the number before putting it to my ear. “Hi Tags, to what do I owe the pleasure of…”
“How about final rites before the world comes crashing down around your ears,” Tags barked.
“You have my attention,” I said.
“Something is coming Bane,” he said. “Something big. And it’s carrying a big ugly axe to grind with your name on it.”
“You sure can paint a word picture, Tags,” I said. “Any idea what I did to rate such an honor?”
“Can’t be anything good. The big-wigs downstairs are making noise about a prophecy and time getting closer to some big event.”
“Something about a Reign?” I asked.
“I heard them say something about ‘rain’, yeah,” Tags said.
“Not rain. ‘Reign’. Like a king’s reign,” I said.
“Shit. So where did you hear about it?” Tags said.
“Long story,” I said. “Anything else?” Light was peeking around the cardboard in the windows as the sun started to rise.
“Just that they’re coming for you. I heard Messina so many times in the conversation they’re either planning to paint the town red with your sorry hide or buy up all the good real estate in central Indiana,” Tags said. “If I were you, I’d get the hell out of Dodge.”
I shook my head. “Can’t do that just yet. We’ve stepped in something here and I can’t leave without cleaning up after myself. You know the annoying Kansan farm kid in me. Gotta leave a place better than I found it.”
“Blow the ‘Kansas farm kid’ crap out your ass, Bane. Why the hell are you really still there?” Tags asked.
“They’re caught in some kind of soul ‘deal’, Tags,” I said quietly. “Kids, young families.”
“Deals?” Tags said. “Bane, if it’s ‘deals’ than you know there’s no…”
“Not exactly ‘deals’,” I said. “Something else. Blood oaths. Stacks is looking into it. But I can’t take off. Not without trying…” I cleared my throat. “Besides, this is definitely a hunt and last I heard, Walter wasn’t seeing much. He didn’t even have Messina on his radar and we’re up to our asses in demons here. I don’t know if he’s off his game or if there’s something else at work.”
“Oh yeah,” Tags said. “About that. Apparently, Walter swept his house and nothing was registering on his E.M.F. and so after two days of hearing nothing, Walter got spooked and called on Miss Hattie to do a reading and see if she could see anything. Her vision was foggy, but she could see the same unrest and unnatural entities moving around causing mischief as always, so they did a spirit walk and they found the block on Walter was originating from Messina this time. Something there has the juice to block a Harbinger. If that isn’t a reason to ‘cut and run’, I don’t know what is.”
“Oh joy,” I said, glancing over at Stacks. He looked up at me and our eyes met. “Your stupid town is the reason I’m not on the road tracking Sister Smile.”
