The Demon Deception (3 page)

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The sound of bass
thudded through the alley. The noise was coming from one of the
hottest hip-hop clubs in New York. The main club entrance was on
Empire Boulevard, but this alley ran directly behind it. Two large
men guarded the back of the club. Both stood over six feet, and
massed over two hundred and twenty pounds, none of it fat. One was
a light skinned Hispanic, the other an ebony skinned black man.
Their breath hung as thick fog in the cold of the night. Both of
them wore black leather jackets, jeans, and heavy boots. Glock 9mm
pistols were holstered on the right side of their belts, and
magazines with extra bullets were holstered on the left. They wore
watch caps against the cold. Gloved hands were crossed before them.
These two were professionals. It wasn’t the entrance to the club
they guarded, though. Instead, they guarded the entrance to
catacombs below the building.

Eli watched steadily, noting the people that
went in and out of the catacombs. At current count, there were
twelve women, and seven more guards, each as large as the two on
the door. He was waiting for someone in particular, though, who
hadn’t arrived yet. This was a long time coming. He had tracked
this individual for many years, across Europe and South America.
The last time he had seen the coven master had been in the jungles
along the Amazon.

Brazil was an assignment he didn’t enjoy. He
hated the jungle, and that coven had been extremely brutal. They
preyed on street children from different cities across Brazil.
Those children were considered throwaways by society, and when they
disappeared, the authorities didn’t care. The horrors he had seen
when he destroyed the coven would have given a normal man
nightmares for the rest of his life. The coven master had gotten
away, though, sacrificing the coven to gain his escape.

It had taken a year for him to track the
coven master. Eli knew that the vampire would eventually make a
mistake. It was only a matter of time before Eli found him. Now, he
had tracked the fiend down. Missing people were often the trail
that Eli had to follow. Clusters of activity gave these monsters
away. The horror was, that children were a disproportionate
representation of the missing that he tracked. It was always the
innocent that suffered. The missing child he was looking for was
Cynthia Rowland, kidnapped off the street at a park in Brooklyn.
Eli was hoping find her before anything happened to her
tonight.

His present business aside, Eli was happy to
be in New York. He missed civilization. It had been a few years
since he was in NYC, and a long time since he had spent more than a
few days in the city. After a few months hunting in New York, he
narrowed the area down to Brooklyn and then to this area off of
Prospect Park. It was a matter of following the crime statistics.
The missing children stuck out from the regular crime in the area
like a bruise on the city.

Eli watched. The hip-hop club was a good
setting to hide the activities of the new coven. The master and his
coven were able to move unnoticed in the area. There was also a
good selection of physically fit males to recruit for the
guardians. They were from the area, so they blended in well. Their
old gangs were schooled pretty quickly about the dangers of
objecting to the new affiliations and activities of their old
members.

After he worked out the location of the
coven, he rented this small apartment across the alley from the
club. He had been here, on and off for a week, watching their
activities. It took a while, but he found the weak link. That weak
link was more than willing to give up the coven master’s activities
and schedule. The weak link was on his way out to the ocean, the
body dropped into the Hudson. Now, Eli watched the alley, drinking
a coke. The light in the apartment was turned off to avoid unwanted
attention. Lately, Eli was in the apartment twenty four/seven,
waiting.

He hoped that he could take some time off
after this mission, take in the sights, and see how much the city
had changed. It had been fifty years since he was able to spend
time in New York. Now, he flew in for work, and then he flew back
out. When he first came to the city, speakeasies, prohibition, and
mobsters like Lucky Luciano were the social problems the city had
to deal with. Now, new gangsters, more violent than the old ones,
were the social blight on the city.

Tonight was the night though. He knew that
from the astrological alignments that were occurring. That and the
blood moon tonight. That crap was readily believed by ‘witches’
that it had become standard stock. It was part of the shtick that
the master used to lure his mistresses into the ‘coven.’ Foolishly,
they thought that the rituals they participated in were some type
of Gaian Celtic ritual, not recognizing the demonic nature of the
magic, and the damage it did to them as they participated.

He shifted on the seat, leaning forward.
Modern culture had done much to de-stigmatize and legitimize the
occult. Most of it was harmless. Sometimes, though, when a man like
the coven master was involved, souls hung in the balance, warped by
a series of what seemed to be harmless choices that became more
dangerous as they continued participating.

The drugs, the cult, the sense of belonging
to something bigger than themselves, led to disaster for these
rich, bored Manhattan socialites. They liked the adventure,
slumming in Brooklyn. It helped relieve the ennui of their rich,
spoiled existences. It was the Manson family, only with a demonic
twist. The socialites were sophisticated, though incredibly naïve.
They didn’t realize that the child’s sacrifice made them victims as
well. Tonight, they had made a conscious decision to give their
souls to evil, though they didn’t understand this. To them, there
was no good or evil. There was no walking away from this decision.
Their path to darkness and damnation was complete.

A black limousine arrived at the end of the
alley. It pulled up far enough for the back door to open onto the
alley. The chauffeur ran around the limousine and opened the door.
Eli watched the coven master step out. Eli leaned back, pulling
away from the window. If he was seen now, the coven master would
bolt. Eli would have to start the hunt all over again. It could be
a year or more before he found this creature again. Eli studied
him, not looking directly at him. He knew the coven master would
feel Eli’s gaze, so he used peripheral vision to watch the vampire
walk down the alley.

The vampire was a bearded, olive skinned man,
thin, but taller than the two guards at the entrance of the
catacombs. Long hair brushed against the fur collar of the long,
leather coat that swept the ground as he walked. The coat was open
to showcase the expensive clothes and gold chains. Even in the
cold, his shirt was unbuttoned, showcasing his muscularity and the
masculine, hairy chest. The coven master was all rock’n’roll. He
was Morrison, Plant, and Mercury all rolled into one. He had a
vibrant sexuality that lured bored socialites. The coven master
nodded at his guardians, and walked between them to the door. The
door opened, and he disappeared into the catacombs.

Eli stood up and stretched. He already had
the pistol, a Springfield XD, .45 caliber, belted on. He picked up
the Keltec shotgun, and shrugged into the harness that it was
attached to. He put on his long leather jacket. He turned to the
door, and walked out of the apartment. He shut the door, and locked
it. He walked down two flights of stairs, and then out the front
door to the cold of the night. He breathed in the chill air.

Eli walked around to the back of the
building, through a weed filled side alley that opened on the alley
in back. The cold air eddied and trash flew before the wind. He was
thankful that it was cold tonight. Ordinarily, there would be
prostitutes plying their trade as single men came out of the club,
the girls earning money to pay for their drugs. The smell of urine,
from men unwilling to wait in long lines inside the club,
overpowered the senses on a warm night. Not tonight, thankfully. It
was too cold for them to brave the alley. As it was, there would be
no innocent bystanders or witnesses.

He took a deep breath and stepped around the
corner. Brownstones and brick buildings framed the alleyway. Eli
immediately drew the notice of one of the catacomb guardians. He
turned and walked in their direction, waving towards them as he
walked. The guardian took the back of his hand and hit the other
guardian on the arm, pointing with his chin.

The man walking towards them was a short man,
approximately five foot five inches tall, weighed about one hundred
and thirty pounds, looked to be in his mid-forties. He had curly
brown hair, and a close cropped beard. He was dressed in a long,
brown, leather coat. He had on khaki pants, brown shirt, and brown
leather work boots. He walked closer, then waved again at the
guardians. “Hey, I think I’m lost. I’m supposed to do an interview
with DJ I. Is this the entrance to the Rub? I need to get in before
I lose my interview. Here’s my press pass.”

The guardians relaxed as the man talked. If
they had given it thought, they would have realized that his
clothes marked him as an outsider, someone who wasn’t in the music
business at all. The mention of the press pass allayed their
suspicion. They didn’t have time to realize their mistake, though.
His hand came forward, and only then did they know.

They tried to make up for it with a partial
shift to their animal forms, relying on instinct instead of
training. They were both lycanthropes, the demonic magic inside
that had perverted their souls lending power to the shift. Odds
were extremely good that both of these men had done some horrific
things in their lives to manifest their nature in this way. Not
that anything was left. Their souls had been consumed by the evil
within.

They had no chance to complete the shift. Eli
shot them both in the chest, at point blank range. The silver in
the bullet hit their flesh, shunting the magic from their demonic
possession. They screamed as their bodies could no longer process
the magic that sustained them. Demonic possession had taken their
souls, and replaced it with hellfire. The conduit for the demonic
magic was broken. Their bodies could no longer contain the
hellfire, and it ate them from the inside out. They perished in a
conflagration of energy. The sound of the music from the club
drowned out the gunshots and the screaming. Eli stepped back from
the ashes drifting slowly on the cold wind blowing down the alley.
The smell of sulfur whirled away.

Frangible was such an interesting word. He
loved the way the word felt in his mouth. It filled the mouth, and
rolled off the tongue. Eli loved saying it. Silver, while one of
the best metals for killing demon spawn and the possessed, was not
a very good ballistic metal. It was too hard, and didn’t take the
spin imparted from the lands and grooves of the gun barrel. Gold,
platinum, and palladium were also good for killing the possessed,
but was too expensive to make his special bullets with. All of
these metals were too hard to make a good bullet. So,
experimentation and modern technology were used to create a silver,
frangible bullet.

Frangible bullets were originally designed to
keep bullets from over penetrating. If a sky marshal had to shoot a
terrorist, bad things would happen if the bullet penetrated through
the terrorist, and then compromised the skin of the aircraft.

Frangible bullets were made from a powdered
metal in a polymer adhesive. He had taken it one step further, and
made his frangible bullets with powdered silver. Since the bullets
were frangible, they had good ballistics coming out of the barrel,
they transferred all the energy of the bullet to the target, and
they shattered, spreading fragmented silver and polymer powder
through the bullet cavity. It sure beat having to use knives or
swords to fight lycanthropes and other nasty demonic creatures.
Plus, since a lot of them use pistols and rifles, it evened the
score.

He walked up to the door, and looked for
booby traps. After so many years, he understood that a careful man
lived much longer. He didn’t see any, and slowly opened the door,
looking for other problems. He saw a young man in the room. The
young man looked like one of the local Italian kids. He was dressed
like the other guardians. He seemed to be human, though. The
Italian didn’t notice him immediately, so Eli stepped in and
quickly shot him. Eli caught the guy as he was turning to see who
had opened the door to let the cold air in.

There was another man there who didn’t think
twice about the guy Eli had just shot, and turned to run down the
hallway. He shot him in the back, twice to make sure the thug
didn’t get back up. The thug was another human. Evidently there
were more people in here than the ones he counted coming in. It
didn’t matter, though, human or possessed. Anybody working here was
on the wrong side. He had no mixed feelings about what needed to
happen. All he had to do was think about Cynthia, and all
hesitation vanished.

He holstered his pistol, and pulled out the
Keltec pump shotgun. The shotgun held fifteen shells. These were
different than the bullets. Shot didn’t need the spin of the lands
and grooves of the barrel for accuracy. The shot was silver. As Eli
walked forward, he noticed the small camera mounted just inside the
door.

“
Ah well, they know I’m coming,”
he
thought. He shot the camera. He didn’t want them to know what he as
preparing for them. He pulled a flash bang out, pulled the pin, and
threw it into the room beyond. He put his hands over his ears. It
went off, his hands dropped to his weapon, and he went into the
room. There was a guardian, and two more humans. The humans were
disoriented by the flash bang. The guardian was caught changing,
half way between forms. He shot the lycanthrope first, then
finished off the two humans. The lycanthrope burnt to ashes, and
the two humans collapsed on the floor, blood pooling from their
wounds.