The Demon Side Page 5

  “Did losing your wings hurt?” Etta dismissed everything I’d just told her with a shrug of her shoulders and ducked under my arm.

  “Though I don’t remember the exact day I lost them, I do know it is a pain you could never imagine. But I have something else I want to discuss with you.” Etta’s body tensed up. Her breathing became labored and her heart raced. The smell of her fear drifting across the tight attic made me drunk with pleasure. I gritted my teeth down, trying not to get overwhelmed by my hunger, and promptly turned my thoughts to what had truly frightened Etta. Knowing I’m a Demon and that I’ve assisted the demise of so many for centuries didn’t frighten her. All I had to do to scare her was to tell her I wanted to talk or ask her questions about herself.

  “I’ve got to go. My dad will be checking on me soon.” Etta walked toward the access in the floor. I flashed in front of her, blocking her exit. I’d told her everything she had asked for. It became time for her to do the same.

  “The other Demon did those things to you, didn’t he?” I demanded.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Etta attempted to duck around me. Clutching her arm, I could feel her pulse rise. At the rate her heart raced, I was surprised she didn’t go into cardiac arrest. I needed to calm her if I planned on getting anything out of her, but the sooner I knew everything, the sooner I could get everyone out of my house.

  “You know exactly what I am talking about. The rapes and the molestations I saw in your head, he did them. Not a human, but a Demon, the same Demon that followed you here?”

  “I don’t know what you think you saw, but you’re wrong.” Etta tried feebly to pull her arm from my grasp. The look of shame on her face told me I’d hit the nail on the head, but also that there was more to her story than I was able to gather from her thoughts, something she buried so deep that her subconscious hadn’t kept a record of it. That could only mean one thing.

  He was an Incubus.

  Incubi and Succubae are the worst kind of Demons. It’s not that they are more powerful or wicked than a Demon, they’re just driven by the sadomasochistic sexual desire to breed with the human world. Their half-breeds are unreliable and volatile. They have no concept or understanding of our rules of engagement and formed an uncontrollable plague walking the Earth, often drawing the attentions of the Arches. Not that I worry about upsetting the Arches. They are a weakening force in a world that no longer believes. But every slaying of the half-breed children tips the delicate balance of our worlds in favor of the Heavens, which isn’t good news for my kind.

  “How long did you wait until you aborted?” I asked.

  Etta’s eyes widened. She thought long and hard before answering. “I didn’t abort. I was on my high school softball team. During a game, I slid into home on my stomach. I lost the baby the next day. I didn’t even know I was pregnant.” Etta sounded upset. But through her choked up tone, I could sense she was lying about how she lost the baby.

  “How far along were you?”

  “Eight weeks.” Etta chewed her fingernails.

  “Consider yourself lucky. Most women don’t know until it’s too late, and you weren’t far enough into the pregnancy for it to change you. But how did you really lose the baby?”

  “Could you let me go now?” Etta gave one last pathetic tug of her arm and I released it. Seeing the tears in her eyes, I knew I caused more pain than I had intended. I stirred up suppressed memories of an unwanted child’s creation and demise. She climbed down the access back into her bedroom closet when something took over my brain and mouth.

  “Etta, if I don’t know every detail, I can’t protect you.” I heard an unfamiliar note of compassion in my voice.

  Etta clung to the opening, and then dropped to the hardwood floor below.

  “Tomorrow,” she said. “We’ll talk tomorrow after school. But I have more questions, too.”

  “That is fair enough. You will not see me until then.” What the hell was I saying? Did I just make a date with a fleshling? I admit, part of me enjoyed this unconventional developing relationship. I had a chance to get inside of a strong girl’s mind, to actually hear from her mouth all of her fears, weaknesses, and doubts. It could be a buffet of ammunition and an opportunity I couldn’t afford to miss. At least that’s what I told myself for the next twenty-four hours while I waited in the attic for Etta to come home from school.

  Chapter Seven

  Hearing the door open, I flashed downstairs to see the figure entering, sure it wouldn’t be Etta. She shouldn’t be home until three-thirty in the afternoon and René had left for the bar down the street a few moments earlier. I was hoping I would catch the Incubus when I was stunned by two brown eyes. Watching Etta come into focus from the blackened nothing made my body tingle until I saw a set of hazel eyes follow her. There in the family room stood a boy roughly six-foot-two, about a hundred and eighty-five pounds with a broad, muscular build. Probably a football player from her school. I knew his type, the all-American boy on the outside with his straight white teeth and shiny golden locks, but devious, dark, and dangerous on the inside. He feeds off his ego, his sexual conquest and social standing. Great makings for a Demon.

  “Thanks for driving me home, Gabe. You didn’t have to do that.” Etta stood nervously at the end of the loveseat where the punk sat himself down.

  “I was on my way home, anyway.” His heart rate picked up. This boy wasn’t on his way home.

  “Etta, he’s lying. Get rid of him,” I commanded.

  “Well, I appreciate it. Would you like something to drink?” Etta didn’t even acknowledge me. Either she was ignoring me or she had taken her medication and it blocked me out.

  “Sure, you got any soda?” Gabe called out as Etta went to the kitchen.

  “Pepsi,” Etta yelled back.

  “That’ll work.” This punk, or should I say Gabe, walked around the family room picking up the family photos. He stared at each one. This boy was up to no good.

  “You seemed pretty freaked out today. Do you usually get so hysterical over something as simple as a mouse in the girl’s bathroom?” Gabe lifted his shoulders as he took a deep breath. Something in the air caught his attention. His body language changed. He squared off his shoulders and lifted his chin. It wasn’t a normal stance for some high school riff-raff, but something you only see in true seasoned warriors.

  “What can I say? It was a mouse.” Etta appeared from the kitchen carrying two sodas and handed one to Gabe.

  “Etta, listen to me, you need to get rid of him. Something isn’t right with that boy.” This time Etta looked right at me as she flopped down next to Gabe.

  She sat purposely ignoring me, and on top of that, breaking her promise to talk to me right after school. The audacity! She hit a nerve she should know better than to hit. I wouldn’t put up with her insolence anymore. I wasn’t her father, who would just shrug off her outright disrespect.

  Before I acted out my punishment, I decided to give her the benefit of the doubt. This was the first time Etta had company over to the house, and I’d never heard her talk about any friends at school. The only socializing she ever did was on the phone with her friend Mosh about their plans after high school.

  “How do you like Quantico?” Gabe asked as he slicked his hair back with his hand, trying to draw attention to his flexed arms. This boy had watched too many cheesy movies. If that move really worked on girls or women, I would be the most sought after being in the world, with my twenty-two inch biceps.

  “It’s cool. I get to see my dad more. So that’s a plus. What do your parents do?” Etta turned her face from me and directly toward Gabe while I sat on the coffee table in front of her. I couldn’t tell if Gabe’s heart rate sped up because of the full frontal view he had of her now or her question.

  “Uh, my dad is kind of high up there where he works. What about your parents?” He wasn’t lying, but he didn’t divulge the whole truth.

  “Etta, I’m warning you, this kid is hidin
g something. Get rid of him now!” I pleaded, but she only snuggled closer to Gabe.

  “Well, my dad used to be a 0311—I mean a grunt. But now he’s in admin. I take it your dad isn’t military?” Etta’s coy smile at the boy fueled my already boiling irritation. I couldn’t just watch as she flirted with this worthless, lying punk.

  “Last chance!” But my words fell on Etta’s deaf ears. With a small push of energy, I knocked over a picture on the old maple bookshelf, causing the glass to shatter on the floor.

  “Whoa. How’d that happen?” Gabe’s gaze searched the room. What a weird reaction. Usually, people look at the item first then come up with a million questions for the happening. But he instantly began looking around.

  “House gets drafty. Sometimes it knocks stuff over.” Etta’s nervous laugh was enough to cover her fear. The musky scent of it filled the room as she picked up the photo. The look on Gabe’s face told me he smelled her fear, too. Either he had a great sense of smell or the boy couldn’t be human. I thought for a moment he might be the Demon I had been waiting for, but he didn’t seem to enjoy the smell the way I did. He was repulsed by it.

  Etta sat back down next to Gabe, this time close enough that he had to lift his arm over the sofa to sit comfortably. Her closeness and stench made him uneasy. Clearly a sign he had an interest in her, but not the same one she was thinking. Etta snuggled into him and his arm wrapped around her shoulder. How easy was this girl? She was trying my patience—a virtue I hadn’t much of to begin with.

  “You have really pretty eyes, Etta. Do you have a boyfriend?” Gabe nervously asked.

  And that straw broke my back. With one fluid movement, I yanked Etta off the couch and sent it rolling with Gabe still on it until it crashed into the dining room table. Etta ran to the couch, trying desperately to lift it off of his limp body.

  “Get it off of him now!” Etta’s grunts of exertion were somewhat amusing. I’d sent the couch rolling like a barrel down a hill without effort, but it took everything she had to lift one end. But just as she had ignored me, I blocked out Etta’s pleas for help.

  “Bravo! Bravo!” The sound of clapping came from behind me. I turned only to be taken aback at the appearance of an eight-foot tall, dark green serpent. His yellow-orange snake eyes gleamed with gratification as he clapped his two deformed clawed hands together. The good news was my temper tantrum had drawn out my houseguest. The bad news was that I knew exactly who he was.

  Chapter Eight

  “Alastor! What brings you here to my quaint domain?” I asked as I opened my arms, inviting him to embrace me.

  Considered one of the cruelest Incubi even by his own kind, Alastor excelled at causing feuds within families. Not only did he breed like a wild rabbit, but he made sure the mothers and their families’ lives would end in horrible, disgusting acts of murder after he got what he wanted from them. I despised him and his kind but I also admired him. He too was a master of his craft.

  He’d once gotten a fifteen-year-old Catholic choir boy to not only kill his father, but also feed his rotten corpse to his mourning mother who was unknowingly pregnant with Alastor’s child. When she finished consuming her husband, she hung her son and consumed his body to feed her unborn child. This incident earned Alastor the nickname, The Executioner. He never knew where to draw the line. His cockiness got in the way of his brains. With no qualms about revealing himself to the world so he could take credit for his despicable acts of lust and gore, he often drew the attention of the Arches. I disliked the visits his acts brought.

  “Rahovart! My, it has been a long time. How are you, brother?” Alastor slithered over and embraced me, not out of brotherly love, but to read me. Let the games begin, I thought. Demons can read each other without the trouble of a walkthrough, but the more physical contact you have with another Demon, the more you can read their mood and intentions. With the recent events, I wasn’t sure what he would learn from our “hello.”

  “It’s been a long time. Last time I saw you, you were traveling with Paimon to Salem, Massachusetts. How did that go for you?” I asked Alastor.

  “Worked like a charm. Those Puritans were too easy. Their men were already so corrupt and their women were foul with the stench of sin. It literally became an evil buffet. You should have come with us,” Alastor said with excitement and conceit.

  “So I heard. You disappeared for quite some time after that. Many have come looking for you.” No one ever came looking for Alastor, but I was curious about what he would say regarding his sudden disappearance.

  “Ah, yes, my extended vacation.” Alastor clapped his claws.

  “You take a vacation? I heard a much different story.” Alastor and I chuckled for a moment. He knew what I was getting at. Rumor had it he’d followed a family full of Islamic converts to a village in the Middle East. The villagers got wise to his presence when some of their virgins ended up pregnant. After some very crafty planning, they were able to lure him into an incense lamp, which is exactly why I chose to stay in the certainty of my home. The Middle Eastern people were great at ambushing Demons and Angels. A Demon by the name of Jin remained trapped for millennia by the Persians until a great war broke out, freeing him from his captors.

  “Those damned people trapped me. If it wasn’t for a certain Marine, I’d still be in that cramped lamp,” Alastor sputtered. He’d finally been duped by people he always deemed beneath him. I found it quite humorous.

  In the middle of my silent chuckle, it hit me. Did he say a Marine? Alastor wasn’t following Etta. He was following John. If John had released Alastor from his glass prison, that would mean John could be the good guy he appeared to be. The more blood and evil around a Demon the stronger it becomes, but in order to break from a prison, it must attach itself to a very sick, twisted, and damned person. I never would have pegged John that way. I couldn’t push Alastor on the subject or he might see through me and mislead me.

  “So are you traveling through again, my brother?” I knew he wasn’t traveling through, but Alastor was the type that needed to believe he had the upper hand even in the most trivial of situations. If I kept him thinking he was superior to me, his ego would blind his judgment and his gums would start flapping. Similar to the villains in Saturday morning cartoons, he always had a long drawn-out monologue giving away his plan when he should just keep his mouth shut and kill the superhero already.

  “You know why I’m here. The man freed me, but the girl is irresistible. Those succulent hips and firm breasts are to die for. The question is why you are still here.” Alastor’s orange serpentine eyes narrowed as he cracked a smile. His rhetorical question was so transparent. He knew exactly why I’d been here for five hundred years.

  “Property such as this comes around only once in a lifetime.” I snickered uncomfortably.

  “Oh God, Gabe! Are you okay?” The sound of God’s name made Alastor and me cringe and turn our attention to Etta. She dusted off Gabe’s shirt as he cracked his neck from one side to the other. The smell in the air changed from stale newspaper and coffee to a sweet field of wheat and barley. A glint of gold shimmered in Gabe’s eyes as they fixed on Alastor and me. Alastor stood next to me, ready to fight as he inhaled the scent we knew all too well. Before, the blink of the human eye, I flashed to Etta, grabbed her from Gabe’s side and threw her ten feet behind me.

  “Well, well, well, if it isn’t Gabriel the Arch! Come to dance with the devil’s children, I see. Or have you just finally realized the man upstairs is full of shit?” Alastor hissed.

  I wasn’t in the mood to fight an Arch, especially Gabriel, but with Alastor here, I knew this face-to-face meeting would only end in a fight. Alastor had the knack of instigating trouble by himself, and with the numbers stacked in our favor, Alastor viewed this as an easy victory. I hoped Gabriel wouldn’t be stupid enough to fall for his tricks.

  The change in Gabriel’s eyes from green to gold told me he was in stupid mode today. Gabriel readied to engage in battle, putting him
self right where Alastor wanted him. As much as I had an honest distaste for Gabriel the Arch, I respected him for the warrior he was. He never pulled any cheap shots or tried stabbing you in the back. Many times I have fought against him only to be locked in a stalemate. If he were ever to be clipped by my blade, which was by no means easy to pull off, I wanted the victory to be my victory alone.

  Clipping an Angel’s wings is a very difficult task. They are not made of bone and feathers like many humans believe. Only the most loyal and strongest of Angels are chosen to have wings. The strongest and most loyal of those become Arches. The highest-ranking angel from each of the ten choirs rips the Angel’s back open and attaches a stone frame that fuses itself into the bone and muscles. Thousands of blades made of a biological metal a hundred times harder than titanium are then fused to the stone frame. The average wingspan is ten feet across from tip to tip but the higher on the totem pole the Angel is, the larger his wing span.

  Over three days’ time, the biological metal shoots out vines that connect to the peripheral nervous system, allowing the Angel control of not only his transportation but the deadliest weapon ever known. Each tip of the feathers produce more poison than all the venomous poisons created on Earth combined. If you are skillful or lucky enough to clip an Angel, not only do you get his power and energy, but you have damned him to a mortal life on Earth. Should the clipping kill the angel, you damn him to Purgatory. Sounds easy enough unless you take into account Gabriel is second in command with a wingspan of over twenty feet, making it an arduous undertaking to get close enough to strike him without him striking you.

  “Rahovart the Heir, my quarrel is not with you this day. I only seek out Alastor the Executioner. He is required by God to appear before the Tribunal.” Gabriel nodded his head to me, never taking his golden eyes off of Alastor. The Old World speech the Arches used during “official business” was annoying but I couldn’t get worked up right now. Surveying the standoff, I knew I could make it work to my advantage if I kept my cool.