Once You Go Demon (Pure Souls) (22 page)

He smiled like a child amused. “Sit.”

Seated before him, she could see more fully the study of dichotomies this man presented. He was clearly an older man; perhaps in his sixties. Wrinkles lined his eyes, his shaven head still played host to barely-visible gray stubble. Yet, his brown eyes twinkled, and his movements, though few, were graceful and liquid. Thin, yet with full cheeks, a hint of a smile teased his lips. Riona couldn’t tell if it was because he was delighted to see her, or because he was amused by her confusion.

“Are you human?”

It seemed a fair question to ask someone sitting in a jungle inside an office in the middle of Boston’s industrial zone.

“Ah-ah-ah.” He wagged his finger before her. “My question first. And you must give me your answer correctly, and then, you can ask yours. Now …” He shifted slightly. “What is the sound of one hand clapping?”

The roll of her eyes, a response in which she was all too well rehearsed, came on before she could stop it. “Oh, brother. That old one? I went to college, you know. I took Intro to World Religions. I know the answer is silence.”

Again, his finger admonished her. “That is not your answer.”

“Yes, it is.”

“No, it is not,” he affirmed. “It is the answer for many, many people. But you are not many, many people. You are you.
Your
answer is different.”

“It is, huh?”

Riona flattened her hands out, palm side up, over her knees and stared at them, trying to figure out if her newly discovered angelic heritage had tipped her off to some heretofore unnoticed physical anomaly. Her bisque-toned phalanges looked just as human as ever. She pulled her left hand down and raised her right to the level of her eyes for closer inspection. Several swats through the air failed to produce more than a rush of air on her face.

She bit her bottom lip and mulled it over, wondering if the monkish man in front of her knew just how different she was. A day ago, she had said,
Yeah, I’m a Pure Soul, so I guess I’m hardly status quo.
Now, her inner nag chastised her with a tongue click and a cocked hip,
And oh yeah, the daughter of an archangel and the bequeathed of a dagger that can kill immortals. Does that mean I get circled in the ‘one of these things is not like the other’ game?

Then it clicked. Yes, she was different. As Ramiel had once told her, she was hard-wired to be who she was, an ass-kicking demon slayer. Silence would never be her answer for anything. Actions would. Always.

Riona cocked back her hand, swung forward, and slapped the monk right off his keister.

Her hands cupped over her mouth when she saw the old man rubbing the raised red welt across his face, kissing the floor.

“Oh, my God. I’m so sorry. I didn’t … I just thought that was the answer. I’m such an ass. Are you okay? Do you want me to go get that guy outside? Please don’t sue me. I’m saving up for a new car.”

With each heave of the monk’s body, visions of a kitchy little sports coupe dimmed. So engrossing was her anxiety, that it took her a good few blinks and breaths to catch on that the man before her wasn’t crying, but laughing.

“Sir?”

He rolled up slowly, giving her further evidence of just how tickled pink he was.  “That,” he said, pausing to shake a finger at her. “That was the correct answer. It is the only one that his daughter would have given.” Then, holding his palms up to the sky and shouting as though the trees were his audience, he added, “I believe that is satisfactory?”

“Indeed,” came a voice that was both everywhere and nowhere. Like wind, it wrapped around the contours of her face, brushed along her cheek, and left her feeling a little colder. “Thanks, Sid.”

“No problem. I think I’ll leave you two be.”

“Leave us be?” Riona wheeled about, searching the borderline of the trees. “Who else is here?”

But when she faced the platform again, the monk was gone. In his place stood a dark-skinned man with broad shoulders, deep green eyes, and an air of confidence that could put Trump to shame.

“Hello, Riona,” he uttered, using the voice that had brushed past her before.

She’d seen enough B-grade romantic comedies and ripped through enough classic lit to know without a doubt who this man had to be. Turned out, Big Boss was as much an addict to recycling plots as James Cameron. “Hello,
Dad.
”

“Dad?” The word swished in his mouth, and he spit it out again with much the same appearance of testing it. “Dad? It sounds so plebian. Surely you can address me as something other than
dad.
”

She held back her tongue, which wanted to suggest several possible replacements, many of them of the four-lettered variety, and instead offered through ground teeth, “Maybe your name? But I’d have to know what it is first.”

He nodded approvingly. “Yes, that will do. My name is Michael.”

Chapter 24

“What about Fenway? You don’t suppose she might have gone to Fenway, do you?”

The only answer Jerry got from Dee on that was a grimace followed by an eye roll.

“She might have wanted to catch a game,” Jerry retorted.

“So close to Christmas?” Dee asked as he turned a corner and started a slow drag up the street, his eyes surveying the nooks and crannies of the alleys and byways of the hardly inhabited area. “I highly doubt it. I don’t get it. Why can’t we sense her? I mean, my name ain’t exactly Magellan, but I can usually get a sense of the general direction of where she is.”

Jerry sighed. “She could be trapped behind a morgana box. Though that would mean one of the elites is with her.” Which could mean either the Seven or Grigori, though she had no reason to be on the calendar with any of the archangels of Heaven today.

Jerry felt his grip tightening, his fingernails on the edge of drawing blood against the heel of his hand. “Fuck!” His fist flew forward, cracking the plastic shell of Dee’s dashboard. “It should be Ramiel out here searching for her. How the hell could he just drop a bomb like that and not think she was going to freak?”

Mercifully, Dee overlooked the damage to his POS pickup truck. “You heard him. If she had used the dagger to slice the turkey and we had eaten it, there’s a chance the damnation curse would have poisoned us. I’ve had some serious binge sessions in my day that made me wish I was dead, but I’ve never had my mortal soul corrupted by some giblets.”

“Still, that’s fucking unfair of him.”

“And you were so much better?” Dee asked, eyebrow raised. “Don’t try that ‘I promised not to tell’ crap with me. What about Riona not knowing worked in your favor?”

Jerry considered if he had anything to lose by telling the truth. He couldn’t see how, now that everything else was out on the table. “As long as she was trying to figure out what the angelic blade meant, she kept coming to me for info. It gave me a chance to show her she could believe in me, that I could help her.” Hearing his own words, he huffed out his frustration in a blunt gust. “Yup, show her she could trust me to keep the truth from her for my own selfish reasons. Winning!”

Marc’s cell phone chirped. At first Jerry figured it was just another call from a local parish needing a filler priest—he’d stopped taking those calls a few weeks ago—or from Marc’s mother—he’d never started taking those—but to his surprise the number came up as the Grotto.

“Goddess?” Jerry’s voice was full of hope as he picked up the call, bringing both the standard issued Nokia and Dee’s eyes to his ear. “News?”

“Yeah, some,” Persephone answered. “Chipper just came back from some errands. He says he dropped Riona off at some Buddhist studies center in South Bean. I didn’t even know he’d come by this morning, or I would have called him sooner. They were both off before I woke up. I’m going to text you the address in a second, okay?”

“Praise be, Goddess! Thank you. Thank you so much.”

“Jerry, you know I’m not
really
a goddess, don’t you?” Persephone’s tone lacked chastisement, but still suggested discomfort on his behalf.

“Of course you are,” he corrected. “Every woman is.”

There was a pause on the other side, then Persephone exhaled. “Wow, you might stand a chance with her if you sweet talk like that. Okay, it’s coming now. Let me know if you find her, okay?”

The address wasn’t but a half-mile from where they were.
Finally, a bit of luck
, Jerry thought. When they pulled up outside the building and Dee paralleled between a docked semi and an old Cadillac town car, the feeling of the presence of an energy radiating hellfire hit the pit of his stomach, making him want to hurl.

“What? What’s up?” Dee’s voice was full of genuine concern as Jerry doubled over in his seat, clutching at his stomach.

“I’m betting that’s not just coincidence,” Jerry muttered, his hand pushed inside his jacket and pawing his aching abdomen in a tribute to Napoleon. “Demons, a lot of them. Has to be, because I’m a bit too old to be suffering PMS.”

“That and the obvious.” Turning off the engine, Dee used a carabineer on his keychain to snap the keys onto a belt loop of his jeans and opened the door. “Come on, let’s find Riona and get the hell out of here. Demons aren’t our problem right now.”

Even though his palms twitched and magic tickled his fingertips, wanting to leap out and decimate, Jerry schooled his instincts and focused on the goal. Too bad that the bobble-head boob and his four friends who had the misfortune to round the corner precisely at that moment didn’t feel the same.

Five to two seemed an unfair advantage, but Jerry was willing to give them a running start.

“Walk away now, and we don’t have to do this,” Dee managed to get out ahead of him. “We’re not here for you.”

“And miss a chance to give my boys here a little on-the-job training?” the head of the demon posse sniveled back, slurping his words. “Now what kind of minion of Hell would that make me? Besides, all I see is two Pure Souls. And since neither of you has that awesome rack the Keystone is supposed to have, all they’re really risking is a few broken noses, hey? No way two pillars can do much harm.”

“On the job training, huh? Well, give me just a gander.” Jerry ignored the head of the training party, a demon with whom he’d never had the displeasure whilst in Hell, and focused his shake down on his students. “You two are bangers, like your laughable asshat leader here. Hate to say it boys, but you’re looking at an eternity of grunt work. Enjoy topside for the moment, because after orientation you’ll be on mule duty for fifty years. You? Yes, you, the lean and green tribute to the Wicked Witch. You’re an asmodeic goblin. Well, good news/bad news there. Oh, yeah, you’ll be sent out to seduce and screw, but don’t worry, they’ll all have great personalities. And you, little guy, you particularly warm my cockles. Nascent gnosis demon. Let me lay down some wisdom for you: what you don’t know
can
hurt you. Why don’t you scamper off now and find a business man or meter maid to taunt? We got things to do.”

The head demon bared his teeth. “Wise for one of the world, pure
drool.
Too bad all those book smarts won’t help you a lick when I start pounding your ass.”

Jerry leaned towards his partner, keeping his eyes fixed ahead. “How many you want?”

The demigod seized up the selection, with a flick of his finger, he motioned at the bangers. “Those three should do me. You handle the other two?”

“Just the one,” said Jerry. “Asmodeics are lovers not fighters, though honestly they suck at both. I’ll handle Evil Einstein. Let’s make this quick, shall we?”

The asmodeic, as predicted, fled with the first flinch. The bangers didn’t have a chance to get their bearings. Before they could even lay a punch, Dee had laid them down with a roundhouse kick. They stumbled to their feet before moseying off a few steps, trading grunts and punches, while Jerry did a pacing-eye lock routine with the gnosis demon.

“You know a lot about the demon castes for a human,” the demon stated, instigation dripping in his tone.

“I’ve gotten around in my day.” Jerry wasn’t sure if Azazel had spread news about his current gig. Probably not, unless there was an advantage to doing so.

Dee had moved further up the street, toying with the bangers like a cat with a toy.

“I’m a bit of a collector of odd facts,” Jerry continued. “Like you were as a human, I bet. So what were you? Librarian? Stock analyst? Gossip columnist?”

“Extortionist,” the demon answered with muted pride. “Till one of my victims decided he’d rather see me six feet under than keep paying my volume rates.”

“And now you’re a demon,” Jerry concluded. “How’s that hanging with you?”

“What, are we bonding now? Don’t think just because I’m nascent I don’t catch on that you’re feeling me up for info. Can we just get to the point where we start kicking each other’s asses?”

With a flick of his fingers, Jerry urged him forward. “Take me if you think you can. But, like I said, I’m not here for you, and you’re costing me time. Just tell me what I want to know, and I’ll let you go.”

“You’re full of yourself for a pillar,” was the snipping response. Still, the crouching demon stayed poised, but unmoving. 

Patience had ceased to be a virtue. Jerry pulled into his soul and connected to the hellfire within, funneling the dark magic into Marc’s body and shoving it into his extremities. In seconds, his hands erupted in flames. His blazing fingers reached out and curled around the throat of his petrified onlooker.

“Now talk. Y’all wouldn’t be sent into the daylight without a proper glamour just for training. Tell me what you’re really doing here, and I’ll let you go. Don’t, and you’ll be kissing your demon flesh good-bye, because I will incinerate your know-it-all ass.”

The gnosis demon glanced back over his shoulder, looking for reinforcements. All he could see was his remaining teammates having their asses handed to them in divine style by Dee. He seemed to weigh his options for a moment, then gasped out, “Recon.”

Jerry notched an eyebrow and waited.

“My liege thought this area might suit us, somewhere where we could come and no one’s likely to notice.”

“And what’s your assessment, demon?” A twinge of self-reflection casting out that word played in his thoughts. “Going to work here for you, is it?”

“No.”

“And just why not?” When there was no response, Jerry turned up the heat in his hands and grasped even harder. “Why not!?”

The demon grinned. “You know the first rule of real estate, right? Location, location, location. Yeah, so do other …
People.
” He squirmed, but couldn’t break free. “That’s it. That’s all I know. Now let me go!”

“Well, I am a man of my word.” Finger by finger, Jerry’s grip loosened. His victim clutched at the singed flesh of his throat, his chest heaving in a war of need versus ability. “Go. Fast.”

The demon notched his head in acknowledgement, turned, and bolted.

“Dee! Heel, boy.”

Dee’s fist connected with the jaw of one of his assailants, sending a liberated mandible flying in to the alley. Disappointment transformed his features, bringing a pouty frown. “But I was just starting to have fun.”

Jerry clicked his tongue. “We’re here to find something. We’ll always have opportunities to slay later.”

Not even trying to hide his disgust, the demi-god stowed his weapons by relaxing his fists and backed toward Jerry. He took one look at the gnosis demon, who himself had started to edge toward the others, and searched the shadows.

“Find anything out?”

“You assume I was interrogating,” Jerry mused. He led the way from the niche between the buildings they’d stumbled into.

“You’re always interrogating,” Dee returned. “Leopard can’t rub out his spots. That’s who you are. So don’t act like I don’t know that. Did you find out something or not?”