devil 02 - tween a devil and his hard place Read online

  Alarm crawled up my spine like a slimy supra demon. “Then how did you know he was a Satanist?”

  Now she looked decidedly uncomfortable. “I have to go, Astra.” And she just…hung up!

  Chapter Eight

  Dastardly Deeds

  The demon bent to do its worst, his thoughts on making hay,

  With zest our demon slayer zapped, his willingness to play.

  The Viper dropped silently into hover in a field at the edge of dense, night painted woods. I experienced a sense of déjà vu as my dream from the previous night lurked in my mind. I looked up at the sky as I emerged from the Viper and saw the same strange ribbons of clouds skittering rapidly over the same fat moon. I shivered, causing Emo, who had come up beside me and was tucking a long, slim knife into a band he wore around his arm, to look at me and cock his head. “You okay, boss?”

  I raised my eyebrows at him and gave him a brisk nod. “Let’s get this over with.”

  I could feel my partner watching me as I left the relative brightness of the open field and forced myself into the trees. I knew as soon as I entered the woods that something was not right there. Evil tainted the air like a bad smell, coating everything under those trees and bringing the hairs up on my arms like static electricity.

  I felt Emo as he joined me and turned to him. The light of the obese moon came through the trees in wimpy strings that painted Emo’s gorgeous golden face in soft stripes. It was hard to get a bead on his emotions through the striping affect but I saw the red flame in the center of each eye that told me he was more than wary.

  As if to punctuate my thought, Emo shuffled my mental drawers and said, There’s something bad building here, Astra. I don’t like it.

  I stared into his shadowed face for a beat and then said, I feel it too. Stay close. We might need to fight our way out of here.

  Almost simultaneously we reached for our knives and started off again, following the trail of evil to the spot that I could picture in my mind. The spot where my Aunt Deirdre and I had had our little moonlight chat. I now knew that my dream had been more than a visitation, it had also been prophecy.

  As I retraced my steps from my dream, the air around us became gradually more charged until I could feel my hair moving away from my head and a random touch brought sparks that stung and spat in the cool night air.

  Malevolent breezes moved through the trees and swayed against us, not like normal wind, which touches you and then moves on but like a disembodied presence, which winds softly around you and then pulses away, only to return as if drawn to the light in your soul.

  There was something more in the wind too. Something that made my stomach clutch and caused sweat to bead against my upper lip.

  I took deep breaths against the need to escape that caressing, invasive wind and risked a glance at my partner. One look at his face told me all I needed to know. The air was filled with more than evil.

  It had sexual heat too.

  It was at that moment that I smelled it, the primordial musk that was the human sexual experience. And I knew. Black rites were being performed, with sex as power. I was both disgusted and relieved. At least it wasn’t the blackest of magic rites, which used human sacrifice.

  But this could be almost as bad. Especially if the victim were unwilling, or worse, a virgin. Some cultists used only virgin sacrifices for these rites. And I was praying my friend Raoul wasn’t one of them. I wasn’t sure I could ever forgive him for that.

  I could feel the woods thinning and knew we were getting close. I stopped and Emo ran into the back of me, nearly panting in my ear. I turned to glare at him but he just shrugged.

  I jumped as the tree next to me moved. But then realized it was just moving in the building wind.

  It wasn’t a natural wind.

  For the last several minutes my mind had been registering a booming sound on an almost subconscious level. I had been processing it as if it were thunder and kept looking up to the sky. But as we stood near the edge of the clearing where I was now certain the black rites were being performed, I suddenly realized that what I had been hearing was chanting. The sound bounced off the dense vegetation in a way that amplified it out of proportion, creating a general feeling of being larger than life and making it darker even than I knew it to be.

  I took a deep breath and reached out with my aura. The magic in the air tangled with my senses for a moment and I had to struggle to push past it. But once clear of the cloaking magic in that clearing, I got a general sense of humans, dozens of them, in various states of magic intoxication.

  I opened my eyes and looked at Emo. Sometime in the last few seconds he’d moved closer to me and was now standing a mere breath away. His eyes were dark pools of black velvet, touched in the center by a tiny red flame that now flickered softly in the building magic. I sensed his need to touch and be touched and, just for a moment, I felt myself swaying toward him, my eyes closing and my lips tingling in anticipation.

  Just before our lips met I felt his hand at my waist and heard him sigh. My body pulsed suddenly with need and I very nearly gave in to it. But a thought passed through my mind that extinguished the rampant sexual feelings like ice water poured on a candle.

  This was my friend and partner and we were only reacting to the sexual heat that was coming off the rites in that clearing. If we touched each other at that moment it would ruin our friendship for all time. I jerked away from him before his lips could touch mine.

  He opened his mouth as if to object but I shook my head and turned away.

  Taking a deep breath, I stepped into the clearing. What I saw there wiped any feelings of regret right out of my mind.

  The clearing was nearly filled with bodies. The participants wore rough, hooded robes in dark colors, their faces and most of their bodies obscured. They were crowded together around something in the center of the clearing and their bodies swayed as if enchanted. The deep rumble of their chanting pulsed and vibrated the air around us.

  I felt Emo join me but didn’t turn to look at him. I didn’t want to know what was in his eyes at that moment.

  The scene before me was blurred by something, as if I were looking through steamed or filmed glass. I blinked to clear my vision but when I opened them again the scene was still blurry.

  I wondered if something was happening to my eyesight but then my mind registered movement in the air above the swaying witches and, with a jolt of understanding, I realized what I was seeing.

  Spirits, possibly hundreds of them, hung above the proceedings in that clearing. Adding their energy to the rites and pulsing with intoxication from the energy coming off the sexual rite.

  If I squinted I could just make out ghostly faces in the cloudy air above the crowd and human forms that seemed to be unclothed.

  I stood rooted to the spot. I was afraid to move because, with my powers, I tended to draw spiritual attention even when I didn’t want it.

  Emo touched my arm and I turned my head to look at him. He nodded once and I looked in the direction he’d indicated.

  A single form in a long, black robe stood just outside the circle, head thrown back and arms raised high. He stood on a raised platform of rock, towering above the gathered group of black worshipers.

  I couldn’t see his face but I knew he was chanting something that was bringing the spirits forward to enhance the energy level. I couldn’t help wondering what he was generating all of the power for.

  As I had the thought it was as if the figure on the rock platform heard me. The shadowed face turned in my direction and his arms dropped a fraction, as if he’d momentarily lost focus. I could have sworn I saw him jerk in surprise.

  But he quickly recovered and raised his arms even higher, increasing the volume of his chanting until I could hear him above all the rest. My heart thundered in my chest. I recognized that voice.

  The renewed vigor of Raoul’s chanting caused the spirits in that clearing to roil and twist and push against the dark celebrants. Robed
figures in the circle jerked and pantomimed distress as they became only slightly willing vessels for the frantic spirits.

  One by one they dropped to the ground and fell upon one another.

  I was startled into taking a step forward, thinking that they were going to harm each other and realizing that Raoul would have to live with those results for the rest of his life.

  Somehow I felt responsible for his current state of mind. Maybe I had pushed him too hard. Maybe my insistence that he spy on the coven for me was to blame. Whatever had brought him to this low point, I felt it was my duty as his friend to help him get beyond it.

  I quickly realized though that the writhing figures on the ground were not trying to kill each other. When the first pair of robes hit the dirt…minus the witches who had been wearing them…my face turned a blazing shade of red and I started to turn away. I would wait for Raoul in the woods. No reason I needed to watch a bunch of horny spirits party hearty using the flesh of a bunch of willing witches.

  But before I could take three steps toward the woods the air pulsed once in a sort of sonic boom and then a backwash of electrically charged air that smelled of the deepest kind of evil blew outward, away from the center of the clearing and hit the line of trees that surrounded the space, causing them to bend backward almost to the breaking point.

  I thought at first that it had been an explosion of some kind. But no one in the clearing moved. No one ran away. In fact all activity had stopped and everyone watched. Waiting in eerie silence.

  Like a herd of deer caught in an open field that was surrounded by hunters, the dark celebrants seemed rooted to the spot in helpless horror.

  Finally, a scream erupted from the center of the crowd and my head jerked in that direction. The celebrants fell away and I could finally see what had entered the epicenter of that sexual tornado.

  The first scream was quickly followed by several more as the naked young woman who lay tethered to a large, flat stone altar realized what was about to join her on the altar.

  It was bent almost double at the base of the altar. Its long, wormlike body was outlined against the dusky fog of the clearing with a double row of thick, sharp spikes, which reached from the top of its head to the tip of a thick, short tail that waved frantically, beating celebrants away from the altar and ended in a deadly looking fork.

  The head was wider than the body and sported long, curved horns that rode the sides of its head, just above narrow, glassy eyes. As it slowly unfolded itself into an upright position, its arms, long and banded with tight, lean muscle, rose toward the screaming woman, who was now being held down by a couple of her fellow witches as she tried to struggle free from the thick ropes that bound her.

  I realized the woman was a witch and was therefore probably a willing participant of the ritual but my relief at that fact was quickly replaced by dread at what she and I both just realized was about to happen to her.

  Now that it was upright, the long, purple body of the demon who was about to mount the altar and the witch showed an extra appendage, just below the waist that was purple and spiky and leanly muscular just like the rest of the body and promised extreme pain and certain death to any unfortunate female it decided to make its acquaintance with.

  Another scream from the witch on the altar punctuated that thought and I reached into one of my soft, knee high boots for a knife.

  Now it was time for me to intervene.

  I straightened, gave a sigh and reached back for Emo. He grasped my hand and shuffled my mental drawers. I’m with you boss. Any idea how we’re gonna vanquish a fire demon?

  I threw him a mental shrug and said, No clue. As usual, we’ll be winging it.

  Frunkin’ wonderful.

  The first thing I had to do was get its attention. I strode quickly into the robed crowd, urging the upright ones out of my way with a show of my upraised knife and kicking the ones writhing on the ground to encourage them to move out of the way.

  As I neared the demon, whose spiked back was still turned to me as it started climbing onto the altar, I flicked out with my power and gave the scary, jutting member on the front of its body a painful electric noogie.

  The thing screamed like a girl and whirled around, falling off the altar and landing on its feet.

  I almost screamed like a girl too when I got a look at its face.

  The demon’s face consisted of a tall, scaly purple brow with spiky hairs growing out from a V at the center toward its horns. The eyes were narrow, bulging, red and fizzing now with angry sparks, probably due to the fact that I had electrified its joy stick. The lower half of its face was all snout and teeth. Hundreds of long, razor sharp teeth fought for space in a cavernous mouth that constantly leaked saliva. It flung up its head and roared as I neared, flinging spit in a wide arc around its raging form. It seemed to take offense at the fact that I intended to kill it.

  Go figure.

  My mental drawers shifted. Way to go, boss, now you’ve pissed it off.

  Thanks for your ongoing support and admiration, Emo. It means a lot to me.

  Hey, no problem. Now what?

  Well, the good news is that it is no longer focused on the witch.

  And the bad news?

  I think you know what that is, my friend. You might want to dredge up some of those royal powers you’re usually so stingy with.

  I felt him take mental offence and smiled. You know, part devil, I can’t seem to help myself.

  I am not stingy with my powers, Astra. Don’t you think I’d like to use them? I haven’t had them for a while you know. I’m a little rusty that’s all.

  Now’s the time to practice, partner.

  No, Astra, the time to practice is in the privacy of the office, when there isn’t a demon from the fires of Hell spitting on my brand new silk shirt. That’s the time to practice.

  I turned and grinned at him and he sighed.

  I felt the air around us change and Emo grunted a bit with the effort. Despite the effort required to initiate his power, however, it grew quickly once it hit the already power-drenched air of the clearing and I felt Emo’s surprise in my mind.

  I pulled my own power forward and let it join Emo’s. The result was impressive, if I do say so myself.

  The circle quickly cleared of celebrants. They moved beyond the light to hover on the perimeter of the clearing, away from the raging demon and me. Apparently nobody wanted to be there when we unleashed all that power on the very pissed off demon with the droopy pee-pee.

  The only ones still left in that clearing were Raoul, who stood completely still, with head bowed and hands clasped in front of his robed body, as if he were in a trance, and the unfortunate hostess of the evening’s festivities on the altar, who also seemed to be less than conscious.

  The demon opened its spit-filled maw and spoke in an impossibly deep, gravelly voice that pounded through the clearing and made the trees all around the edge dance manically again. “You dare to disturb the dark purpose!”

  I stood up straighter and adjusted my expression from “Oh shit” to “Aren’t I a badass”. “I do.”

  The demon stood for a beat staring at me as if it thought I’d lost my tiny frunkin’ mind.

  I think maybe I had.

  Then it raised its snout into the air and screamed.

  The clearing exploded with the sound of human suffering. Beyond the light, I could just see the dark celebrants curled into fetal balls on the ground, clasping their ears and shrieking as if in exquisite torture. The spirits that had inhabited their bodies fled the human bonds to get relief from the ripping pain the demon’s voice was causing.

  Emo and I covered our ears and looked at each other. Let’s get this jerk! Emo thought at me and I nodded.

  We turned as one and focused our power on the screaming thing in the center of that clearing. The wall of power roared across the clearing and hit him, sending him flying into the thick trunk of a tree that was probably a few centuries old. He hit the tree and skidde
d down until he landed in a purple pile on the ground.

  The trunk of the tree where he touched it burst into flame and the tree went up like a torch, all one hundred feet of it consumed in about three seconds.

  Emo and I gulped. The power we had thrown out died with a pop and we stood there naked to the world, magically speaking, as the demon picked itself up and started moving toward us.

  As he did I became aware of a series of whooshes behind the demon, which heralded the appearance of several more of its kind. I realized with a start that the demon hadn’t simply been throwing a temper tantrum when it had screamed but had apparently been calling for backup.

  Aside from being a little bit impressed with myself over the fact that a demon from the fires of Hell thought it needed backup to deal with me, I was just about ready to pee my pants over the reality of not one but eight of the things coming for me in that clearing.

  Dimly I became aware of Raoul, who apparently had come out of his trance and was chanting again.

  Too little, my friend and too late I think.

  “Get the Hades out of here, Raoul!” I screamed.

  No response. The chanting continued.

  The original demon continued toward us and as he drew near he burst into flame. I realized with a start that he was going to stay that way and my fear of our predicament climbed another few notches.

  Emo, get out of here. Now!

  Not gonna happen, boss.

  Do it or you’re fired.

  You’d better come up with something fast or we’re both gonna get fired.

  I shook my head at his bad joke and shifted my mental drawers. Dialle! Emo and I are about to become demon toasties, do you think you could spare me a few minutes of your time and maybe a few bazillion jolts of your power?

  The air shifted again and Prince Dialle was standing beside me. I turned to him and grinned, feeling my heart—and other parts—warm at the sight of him. But before I could tell him how happy I was to see him the demons attacked.