A Grim Situation

by Whit McClendon

  I grabbed the bindings at his arms and legs and picked him up like a bale of hay. The sliding door to the balcony was still open, and I carried him out into the daylight with me. As the sunlight hit him, he screamed behind the gag and squeezed his eyes shut, thrashing as best he could underneath his bonds.

  On the balcony, I scanned the area and saw that in spite of the noisy battle in the apartment, no one had ventured out to look. I could hear sirens in the distance, though, so someone might have already called it in. Figures, I thought. Even so, the fact that there wasn’t a crowd to deal with was a huge relief. I looked over the edge of the balcony, and the woman was still down there, dozing under my spell.

  I hefted my struggling bundle and leaped over the railing. With him wriggling like that, it wasn’t easy to keep Andy’s head from slamming into the concrete when I landed, but I managed. I hoped he didn’t get whiplash. The instant I hit the ground, I started running towards the back fence where I had initially entered the complex. Thankful I had minimized the chance of getting bitten by the Andy-demon by stuffing that fabric in his mouth, I slung the body over my shoulder, then jumped up and over the fence. I cleared it easily enough, and then I was on the grassy slope beyond.

  Andy-demon’s thrashing intensified as he figured out where I was headed: the river. Running water grounds out many kinds of magick, and both he and I knew that the incubus would never be able to stand being in the water for any length of time. Bound and gagged as he was, the demon had very little to say about it. At least until he managed to spit out the gag. I should have used a bigger chunk of curtain.

  “You can’t stop us!” he screeched. “Our time has come! We’ll take all the humans and then the Faerie will be next! We know you, Kane! We know you…”

  Always with the delusions of grandeur, the incubi. Dangerous, yes, but generally far too disorganized to pose that kind of a threat. Annoying, though. Its gibbering ceased when we hit the thigh-deep water. It was cold, and the current was strong, but I’m pretty solid, so I managed to stand against the chill rush. I shut the Andy-demon up by plunging his head and torso under the water’s surface. I held him down there for a long handful of seconds, then yanked him up. He sputtered furiously, gasped for air, then started screeching at me again in the demon’s voice.

  “Nope,” I muttered, and held him under again. His body whipped and thrashed about like a man-sized salmon under my hands, but my grip was firm. Gradually, its struggles slowed. I thought about pulling him up, but figured it was better to be sure. I waited another half-minute, then was rewarded by an ugly yellow and red flash of light that blazed from within Andy’s body, turning him into a human jack-o-lantern. “Gotcha, you asshole.” I waited ten more seconds, then yanked Andy out of the water and dragged him up onto the concrete bank of the canal. His body hung limply in my arms, all the fight gone out of him along with the demon.

  I slashed open the lengths of curtain and freed his limbs, then put my hands on his sternum. I leaned over and began pumping. His ribs cracked under my hands, and I eased up a bit so I wouldn’t break them entirely but kept pumping. Just when I started thinking about where to hide the body, he finally convulsed, spewing water everywhere. He struggled to pull in a decent breath, only to cough it out again along with more water, then repeated the process. Hacking and sputtering, Andy pushed himself to a sitting position. I slapped him on the back a few times and remained silent while he gathered himself.

  “Hey,” I said as I touched his shoulder. “You OK, man?”

  “What…in…the…” his face contorted with shock and pain as the results of the last several minutes registered. He clutched his chest in agony as he cleared his lungs and sat there, curled around his pain. When he groaned, I sent a touch of magick into him to lessen his discomfort. I needed some answers, and if he was worried about everything that was broken, I’d never get them. He sighed with relief and sagged back into the grass. “Who are you? Oh, man…what happened?” His eyes drifted to mine. They were a normal blue now, the pupils back to their usual size. The demon was gone, for certain.

  “What do you remember?” I asked in return. I could get a lot from him if I went into his mind a little deeper, but he’d been through a lot. I figured I’d start easy.

  He furrowed his brow as he thought. “I…” he began, “I was making a sandwich. In the kitchen.” He looked around, taking in the drainage canal and the grass that surrounded us. “How did I get out here? Where’s Lisa?” Concern edged into his voice as he started to realize that something big had happened.

  I spoke in a soothing voice, hoping to keep him calm enough to give me a few answers. “You kind of lost it there for a bit. Went a little crazy. Did anything else happen, anything at all?” I was surprised that he didn’t remember anything. I guess the demon had shoved him down deep.

  His eyes flicked away from mine and I caught his embarrassment. He stared at his feet for a moment before confessing. “I…I tried a few pills a friend of mine gave me.” His gaze returned to meet mine, his voice pleading. “He said it would help me focus and keep me awake. I needed it! My work is running me into the ground and the night classes I’m taking are killing me! I took the afternoon off so I could get some sleep, but I’ve got a report due in class tonight, so I…I tried the pills.” He looked around, as if finally understanding that he was no longer in his apartment and was instead lying in the grass next to the canal. He slowly started to shake his head. “How did I get here? Where’s Lisa?”

  “She’s fine, you just rest a minute,” I said. “Who gave you the pills?”

  He frowned for a moment, thinking. “I can’t remember. But that’s crazy, I just saw him yesterday! I know him! But I can’t remember what he looks like. His name is…what is it? I can’t think of that either. What’s wrong with me?”

  He was becoming more distressed, which wasn’t going to help anything. “It’s OK, just relax. It’s all right, buddy, just rest.” I encouraged him to lie back in the grass and sent a bigger dose of calming energy into him. His eyes closed and slumber claimed him. He was exhausted, not only from the weeks of living on so little sleep, but from the possession itself that had wrung him out like a dish rag. He’d hurt like hell when he eventually woke up, but he’d be alive, and without a demon giving orders to his body. I figure that’s a win.

  The sirens were almost on top of us, so I knew I needed to get moving. Leaving Andy asleep, I jumped the fence again and went to check on Lisa. The exhausted woman was still dozing where I’d left her, so I figured she’d be all right. I hopped up to the balcony and slipped into the apartment. The place was a wreck, but then, dealing with demons was often a messy business. At least there were no entrails to clean up this time. Well, except for the cat.

  I went into the kitchen and looked around but only saw the usual kitchen stuff. The apartment was a small one, only a bedroom and a living room, and I found what I wanted in the bathroom by the sink. A small amber pill bottle sat there. It was anonymous, having no label, although it looked pretty standard. I shifted my perception so that I could see in a different light and was taken aback by the play of energies that surrounded the remaining pills. An ugly glow surrounded the bottle, a sickly yellowish light streaked with red. Not good. These were no run of the mill uppers, no common stimulants to keep someone awake and help them focus. Someone had definitely used magick to make these, and with focused ill intent.

  I picked up the bottle, twisted off the cap, and looked inside. To the naked eye, they looked like regular pills, oblong and beige colored. But the power that seethed around them was potent. I twisted the cap back on and turned to make my way out of the apartment.

  The sound of feet pounding up the stairs outside and the voices of police officers reached me, and I knew the cops would be in the apartment in moments. Not wanting to deal with that kind of nonsense, I dimmed myself and bolted back out to the balcony. From there, it was another easy jump to the parking lot below. The police cars were there, red and blue lights fl
ashing, but the few officers remaining looked right past me at another officer who was waking Lisa up. I dodged around one of the cars, jumped the fence yet again, then leaped over the rushing waters of the canal. I glanced at Andy as I went past, but he was still slumbering in the grass. He would awaken soon enough, and although I knew he would be beside himself when someone told him what he did, I didn’t have time to help him with that. He and Lisa would have to deal with that on their own. I had more important things to do. It was surprising to me that the goddess hadn’t given me a more specific vision regarding this incident, but then again, I was pretty sure she had suggested I park my butt on that bench in the first place. Mysterious ways and all that.

  The pills rattled in my hand as I ran down the hike and bike trail towards my house. If there were more of these bottles around, that meant trouble, and a lot of it. If they somehow made the victim more susceptible to demon possession, that was going to get ugly in a hurry.

  Although I could see and feel the magick in the pills, I could tell nothing of their origin. Fortunately for me, I knew someone who could. And I would bet a ton of money that she would be happy to help, especially if it meant she got to strap her guns on. Drugs of any kind were a rough business, and if the malevolent aura surrounding these pills was any indication, I might need her to bring extra ammo.

  I reached the house and slipped in the back door. The landline, as Ariana had called it, was on the kitchen table with a pad and paper next to it. There was only one number written on the pad, as I’m not much of a talker. I picked up the handset and pushed the button that awakened it, and the dial tone erupted from the tiny speaker. If Ariana lived a little closer, I might have been able to reach her with my mind, but the distance to her house in the country was too far for me. I carefully punched out the numbers from the pad and waited for her to pick up, hoping she wasn’t busy. Not that I cared. This was far more important than whatever she might have been up to.

  “Kane?” her voice held a note of concern. “What’s wrong? What happened?”

  “What spell did you use to know it was me?” I was genuinely interested.

  She laughed a little, “It’s called Caller ID, you dummy. It tells me who’s calling based on the phone number. I recognized yours.”

  I blinked at that. Technology was getting closer to magick all the time.

  “I just yanked a demon out of some guy,” I explained. “He had taken some pills, and I think they made it possible for the demon to get into him. I need you to figure out where the pills came from so we can stop them from making any more.”

  “Wow,” she laughed again. “Magick pills, demons, and drug dealers, oh my. You sure know how to show a lady a good time.”

  I ignored her joke. “Are you at home?”

  “Nope,” she answered. “I’m actually in town. Had to pick up some stuff from Costco, but I just finished. Want me to swing by and pick you up? I’m in the Jeep.”

  That made me smile. Most of the time, Ariana zipped around town in a tiny little car, a mini Cooper. Occasionally, she broke out the fortified, souped up, anti-zombie Jeep she had inherited from an uncle. Against my better judgment, I liked it. It was a brutal and vicious machine, a weapon in its own right. I could relate.

  “Yes, you know where I am.”

  “Be there in five,” she said brightly and disconnected the call.

  I pushed the button to send the phone back to sleep, set it back in its cradle, then sat down in one of the two kitchen chairs to wait. It seemed fortuitous that Ariana was already in town, just a few minutes away. Just as it seemed quite lucky that I had chosen to sit on that bench at that particular time. I shook my head again. Mysterious ways, indeed.

  Chapter 3

  “That’s the third one this week, right?” Detective Jim Kaley asked as he jotted notes on his notepad. He still used the same battered little black notebook he’d had since he was a rookie, even though refills had become harder to find.

  “Yep. Third one.” The woman that knelt on the carpet was Jim’s opposite in almost every way. Where he was tall and lanky, Detective Avery Lynne was a smidge over five feet tall and sturdily curved. He was slightly older at forty-six, his hair was thinning and blonde, while hers was jet black, cut in a stylish bob that hung an inch above her shoulders and swished when she turned her head. Jim favored cheap brown suits while she preferred to be more stylish on the job, though she favored men’s slacks because of their useful pockets. The detective badge clipped to the left side of her belt glinted against the deep blue of her blouse, and a well-used 9mm rode on her right hip, its slim holster worn from daily use.

  Avery examined the remains of the dead cat, and although her face was neutral, she was thoroughly disgusted. She had seen a lot in her time as a police officer, and even more as a detective, but stuff like this still managed to surprise her. She shook her head and stood. With a nod in the general direction of the suspect, Andy Dembrow, in the parking lot down below, she turned to Jim and asked, “How does he seem to you? Pretty normal, right? Just like the others.”

  “I don’t know,” Jim answered with a typical shrug of the shoulders. “What’s normal these days? He seems like an ordinary guy, by the looks of it. Day job with heavy hours, going to school at night, lower-middle class apartment. Until we talk to his friends and family, we won’t know if he was prone to this kind of thing.” He raised an eyebrow at the bloodied carcass of the cat Avery had been examining. “Domestic violence, I mean. Something tells me that eating cats was not a usual thing for him, regardless.”

  “I have to agree with you on that one, Jim.” Avery slowly scanned the room with eyes that shifted from grey to green depending on the light and her mood. Jim kept quiet. He had seen her do this before and knew better than to interrupt her. She took a deep breath, closed her eyes for a few seconds, and then opened them only to repeat the process. Her voice was quiet when next she spoke, as if she were speaking more to herself than to her partner. “There was a third person in here.”

  Jim nodded and jotted something in his notebook. He had seen no evidence of a third person in the room, but he knew Avery’s tone. It didn’t matter what he thought, when the forensics guys went over the room, they’d find evidence of a third person, no doubt about it. Even if they didn’t, something would come up later to prove her correct. He never knew how she did it, but after three years as her partner, he knew to trust Avery’s instincts implicitly. Beside him, she let out a huff of frustration

  “This is weird. The door wasn’t forced. It was locked when we got here. The only way in or out was through the sliding door on the balcony.” She turned her intense gaze on the other detective. “We’re four stories up, Jim. That’s a hell of a jump.”

  “Well,” Jim began, “you know these kids and their parkour these days. They do some pretty crazy stuff.”

  One side of Avery’s mouth quirked up in a smile. “That’s true, yes.” She surveyed the extensive damage in the apartment and sighed. “Even so, why would some parkour-running kid jump up here and throw down with our guy? It doesn’t make any sense. And the guy’s story? Making a sandwich one minute, then waking up outside, soaked to the bone and beat to hell with no memory whatsoever of what happened? I’ve heard some wild ones before, but he believed every word.”

  Jim nodded. Again, he trusted Avery’s assessment of the perp’s story. It had been crazy and irrational, but Andy had believed it completely. Jim flipped back in his notebook and checked his notes. “I don’t know what to think. He mentioned some pills, but there were no drugs stronger than ibuprofen, cough medicine, and some muscle relaxers in the medicine cabinet. Nothing in the trash, either. His story is flimsy as hell.”

  Avery looked around the room again and frowned. A stack of papers had been scattered across the kitchen table, and she walked over and glanced at them.

  “Where was he going to school?”

  Jim tugged at his faded brown tie to loosen it and flipped a couple of pages in his book to check his
notes. “Houston Community College. Looks like he was working on an HVAC certificate.” He looked up from his notepad. “Good money in that.”

  Avery laughed. “In Texas? You can say that again. If my air conditioning goes out, I can’t call a repair guy fast enough.” Her eyes wandered over the papers and something tugged at her attention. Scanning them more carefully, she noted that most of the assignments were for the same class. “You’ve got his work information?”

  Another couple of page flips and Jim responded. “Affirmative. It’s not far from here, actually.”

  Avery stared at the top corner of one of the papers, noting the instructor’s name at the top. Something there was important, though as usual, she had no idea what. “Same for the college, but in the other direction.” She frowned slightly, then asked, “Didn’t one of the other guys work at Vitamin Shoppe?”

  Jim flipped a few pages back. “Yep. Second one, Arturo Diaz. He was the manager, but he wasn’t there when he freaked out. He was at home in Cinco Ranch.”

  Avery nodded, assessing the information. “Vitamin Shoppe is just around the corner from the college. That’s just a few miles away from here. Let’s check the school out first.” She took out her phone and snapped a picture of a few of Andy’s papers.

  “You got one of your hunches?” Jim leaned over and copied down the same info, knowing that anything she captured would end up being important. One of the reasons he enjoyed working with Avery was the fact that her intuition was surprisingly accurate. Not only that, but they’d run into some tough scraps as a result of her ability to chase down a lead, and the smaller detective was fun to watch in a fight. Everyone underestimated her because of her build, her height, and the fact that she was a woman, but that always ended up being a mistake. Sometimes, he wished he had popcorn so he could better enjoy the show.

  Avery shrugged. “Nothing so solid. Just filling in the details.”