Demon Master Read online

  Breakfast was over with that, and I had a giant dog to get into my car. Ice cream—and Gyro—could not wait.

  10

  Florida: Ring

  On Route 441 in Hollywood is The Castle Animal Clinic, a modest building between a paint store and an auto shop. Gyro loped in through the glass door ahead of me to an enthusiastic greeting from Sandra and Lena, who ran the front of the house.

  “Big boy! What are we doing today?” Lena asked, as Sandra continued to fuss over him.

  “Just nails today, and thanks for seeing the big goof without much warning. He’s tearing up the new couch, and I lose every argument with him about staying off the furniture.”

  Both women were in their late forties, motherly, and had a deft hand with the patrons, regardless of whether they had hands, paws, or claws. Sandra, a blonde, favored skin-tight scrubs in garish colors to augment her makeup, which appeared to have been applied with a paint gun. Her blue eyes swam in an array of eye liners and shadows that gave her a vaguely surprised look at all times. Lena was no shrinking violet, either, although her taste in makeup was more subdued. Jewelry was another matter entirely. Her straight brown hair rarely covered her trademark earrings, which ranged from spoon-like appendages covered in sequins to hoops that a parrot could roost in.

  “Gotcha, Ring. Let me take him back and we’ll have him out in a jiff,” Sandra said as she walked around the counter and opened the door to the grooming area.

  Gyro immediately walked in, knowing that every trip to the Castle resulted in ice cream. He may have looked the part, but he was no dummy. I sat on a squeaky pleather chair for the ten-minute wait and thought about ice cream while looking out over the blizzard of traffic.

  I had gotten a text message that Liz Brenneman’s lock was malfunctioning, so I dropped Gyro at home and headed for Hardigan Center. Liz, an attorney, had rented from me for six years, two of which were lost in a haze of wine and the crashing avalanche of an ugly divorce. She occupied the spot to the right of the Butterfly and was a fixture in the front window, pacing back and forth in a harried rhythm with a phone held to her ear. At thirty-eight, Liz had the desperate beauty of a fancy guest soap that had been used too often but whose original features still stubbornly remained.

  I arrived at the center, parked, and got my toolbox out of the trunk. Liz’s neighbor to the right, Glen Ferloch, made eye contact with me and gave an awkward wave with his spindly arm, but, then, everything Glen did was awkward. A blonde Ichabod Crane twin with thinning hair, he stood two inches taller than my six foot three and weighed roughly half as much. With large teeth and a spastic manner, he moved about his office space and life with the rhythm of a twitchy stork, but was so earnest that he was impossible to dislike. Glen had located his business in the center two years earlier and paid the rent one day early without fail. He owned a small niche service that transported and transplanted highly desirable trees, an unusual job that people with too much money were happy to pay for.

  “Ring! Morning!” Glen called as he reached out from his partially opened door and pumped my hand vigorously, his other holding a phone. “Just wanted to say hey!”

  I nodded, and before I could respond, he ducked his tangle of limbs back into his office and walked toward the back.

  Liz was not at her desk, so I knelt at the lock and pushed gently against the center cylinder. The lock, of course, smelled like oranges, which meant that Liz had been using her key to stab her daily snack. The buildup of pulp fouled the door, causing me to squat in the hot sun while fiddling with the lock. I gave her a menacing smile and prepared to lecture her about respecting doors only to hear her phone ring through the glass at the perfect moment for her to effect an escape. She gave me a smile of apology and turned to her laptop, assuming a facial expression that meant the call was business of the paying kind. I opted to smile and walk back to my car. I knew my landlord duties were concluded for the day, which meant it was time to relax until Risa and Wally would pick out my clothes for our hunt.

  I could be many things around them, but being poorly dressed was not an option.

  Hours later, club music began to leak into my car as I parked on a discreet side street a solid block from the front entrance. Risa and Wally had left some time earlier, opting to go in as a pair simply because the club was large enough to provide anonymity once they were inside. They anticipated no problems getting in without delay. I detest waiting, unless I’m fishing, so I handed over a fifty to the bouncer and slid past the line. It was only money.

  I pushed through the crowd to the left end of the main bar. The décor was dark, the lighting the same.

  I caught the bartender as she was mixing and said simply, “Bourbon. Please.”

  She looked up, a pretty woman under the heavy makeup and tan of someone used to late nights and late mornings. Her dyed blonde hair was pulled back severely into a ponytail and a single, trailing curl that shined red in the lights along the bar.

  “Sure. Ice?” she asked. I liked her instantly.

  I had my drink in a minute, so I began to scan for Wally’s face first. I knew Risa would be next to her but invisible among the taller crowd. I found them quickly, dancing together on the main floor not twenty feet away, clearly having fun without reserve. Wally danced with abandon, laughing as she threw her head left to right in rhythm with the music. Risa was far shorter but moved with a sinuous athleticism that was watery and erotic. Both were being watched by men and women alike, but I knew that their fun could only mean one thing. There was an immortal here, and they had identified it. Since they were dancing, it meant that they thought I needed to be here to kill it. One of us is strong, two are powerful and crafty. The three of us together are something entirely different. I sensed nothing, smelled nothing; there was no fear or menace anywhere, and that meant that they had found something new.

  Or something very, very old.

  “Do you feel it?” I asked no one, knowing Wally and Risa would feel the immortal in the room. There was something here, and it was hungry.

  I didn’t approach Wally or Risa, nor did I look around for them. It was ill-advised, given the unknowns. When my phone pinged a message, I knew that it was time to act. Long hair. Brunette. Tall. Black skirt. W/ single male blue shirt. To front door. Meet outside. I began shifting through the crowd, neither hurried nor allowing myself to be held up or have my view occluded. There she is. With the target in sight, my path to the door became less passive.

  I saw Wally’s head to my right, which meant that Risa was approaching the door behind me, as well. The target slid out the door with her selection from the herd, a male of medium height. From behind, he was average and alone. His arm was possessively draped around her waist, and he walked with the blissful myopia of a man who was, in that moment, working well above his pay grade. They turned left outside only steps ahead of me, but the crowd had not thinned enough to allow discrete action. I couldn’t get a bead on what exactly was happening.

  The immortal had body language that was hardly predatory. She turned in profile to me, and I saw a woman in her thirties with fine features and skin bronzed by the sun. She was pretty in a cultured way, like an upscale corporate drone with a killer body. I could imagine her in equestrian gear. She allowed her bland partner to kiss her lightly on the lips. It was brief, but for her teeth nipping playfully at his lip. I heard her low voice tell him she would see him in a minute as the jangle of car keys in her hand signaled her peeling off to the parking lot.

  Hold back, I motioned behind me. I sensed something different was at play here. Risa and Wally came forward to stand with me, silent but watching with the same curiosity. Our male target staggered slightly, his balance failing with each step as he wound his way into the darkening street.

  “Is he drained? Wounded?” Wally hissed, voicing our collective confusion. Contact with the immortal had been minimal, but the man was swooning and, after a series of choppy steps, crashed headlong into an alcove. His spastic fall left him on his
knees. Risa rushed ahead but pulled up cautiously when he turned to face us, his face a rictus of pain in the sickly yellow of the street’s sodium lights. I took his elbow and helped him to his feet, but a spasm slammed him into a bent position as he coughed in agony, a deep-chested heave that took him onto his toes. With one massive cough, he vomited and slipped from my grasp, stone dead, body folding in defeat.

  “What is that? What came out of him? Look. Look,” Wally said, her voice rising in horror.

  We were all staring even as Wally shone her keychain penlight at the wetness on the concrete. In the middle of the repulsive discharge lay three huge acorns, glistening with his blood.

  “Acorns? Giant acorns? How did they get in him? Did she force him somehow?” Wally’s litany of questions was a running dialogue of her confusion.

  Risa said quietly after a moment, “She bit him. Or put something in his mouth. He was a medium for her—that’s why she said she would be back. She used him as a vessel. And she knew it would only be a matter of minutes before he had served his purpose.”

  It made sense. It meant that she had been watching us but was gone. She had been careful. Discreet.

  “I know what she is,” Risa said, her voice flat with anger.

  We turned to Risa as she spoke.

  “Acorns. In a human host. This is bedtime story shit, but darker. Far more dangerous, because she must keep seeding her marks. It’s a never-ending cycle. She’s a feeder, just not one that we hear much of. She’s a druid, I think? Remember, two years ago, when we were trading info with that nutjob from Ireland? He was tracking the genealogy of incredibly old family lines that had migrated here to the States, but we could never really grasp what he was describing. He kept calling them Keepers and Tenders. I think we’ve met our first. And, judging by how casual she was, old. Old and as wanton about death as anything we can imagine.”

  I thought about it for a minute, chewing on the idea of acorns, oaks, and ancient Celts who spread death through germinating seeds inside a victim. I thought we would start with the obvious. I held out my arms to link up for the walk back to the car, away from the body and the scene, but not before putting the enormous seeds into a napkin that lay on the street, then into my pocket. They were still grotesquely warm against my thigh.

  “Let’s answer a question. Where do giant acorns come from? Presumably, giant oaks. So . . . where are the giant oaks? And who tends them?”

  11

  Florida: Ring

  I sat on the dock with Gyro, listening to traffic across the canal. Lights of different colors smeared the dark water lapping at the pilings even during the quiet hour, when the tide went slack and the wind was still. After seeing such a gruesome death, we all retreated to our safe harbor to digest the bitter rage that sickened us. Risa would sit in the shower, each stinging minute of spray focusing her hatred of immortals ever more pointedly. Wally would run until she threw up or dissolve into quiet sobs on her bed, clutching her sheets in hands that went white with hate. I chose to sit here, by the water, trying to spare the world my temper, until the sun began to rise and the first ducks began their endless patrol of the seawall. These were the moments when we were weakest, when our humanity and desire for vengeance made us vulnerable.

  Defining my existence is difficult. My morality is even less easy to describe, although I like to think that, despite the chaos that removing immortals causes, I serve the side of good. Liberating the personal effects of our targets might be theft, but those gains are largely applied to continuing the fight. Beyond the simple removal of evil, we were all personally motivated by loss. For Wally, it was a friend of the family who had been as close as blood. For Risa, it was an uncle she loved so much that the story was something I had heard exactly once in the fifteen years I’d known her. Three murders, three people, miles and years apart. At the time, the crimes only had one thing in common.

  Each death turned us into hunters, and we realized we were all three immune to fear, something that meant bad news for immortals.

  I went inside to see my women and find out what they were thinking. I knew what I was thinking. I wanted to kill every fucking immortal on the planet, and then stomp their ashes into the ground.

  Risa was on her bed, a towel around her as she sat cross-legged and still. Wally was stretched out next to her, looking at the ceiling and pulling her lip in thought.

  “Hey,” I said, sliding into bed next to Wally. She put a lazy hand on my leg and began drawing something known only to her.

  “Weird one tonight. The vibes are shitty,” Risa said.

  “How so? I feel bad, but not any worse than some of the older kills,” I said. Age mattered a lot in terms of how we absorbed the energy from my kills. I used the blade, I drained their power, and I passed it on to Wally and Risa by contact and connection. It was a simple system, but sometimes, it felt wrong. Like now.

  “It’s unfinished,” Wally said.

  Risa snapped her fingers, turning to look at me. “That’s it. Unfinished. Like an echo of something left behind after the kill. Like—more of them. More than are usually here during tourist season, I mean.”

  “Ok, I get that.” I looked inward, feeling the gaps in my power. She was right. Something more was there, just at the cusp of my senses. “Have you ever felt this before?” I asked.

  Wally said nothing, but Risa nodded once, her eyes bright with pain. “Yes. You have too. We all have.”

  “The first kill?” I asked.

  Risa let a breath trickle from her lips, then frowned. “The first kill. The one that made us understand who were were meant to be.”

  And then, she began to remember.

  “It was his funeral. Uncle Lev,” Risa said. “I can still smell the oranges on his hands, when he would be in the grove all day. Aunt Ruth was dead because cancer sucks and I fucking hate it, and there was nothing any of us could do. We buried her, and Lev was just—he needed a moment. So we gave it to him, and this car pulls up,” Risa said.

  Wally turned over. We’d never heard that part of the story. Just that her uncle had been killed.

  “A woman gets out. She’s in a dress. She looks like a mourner, and goes to Lev, standing by the water fountain in the gazebo, you know the one in the middle of the cemetery?”

  “I do,” I said. I’d been to it many times. I had family buried nearby as well.

  “I told you she was a hunter of some kind. She held him, and he never fought back. Even at a distance, I could smell flowers, but too sweet, like they were dead. She drained him right there in front of everyone, not fifty feet away. In seconds. Not his blood. His life, like a succubus or a sylph. Then she got back in the car and pulled away. He collapsed, and all hell broke loose,” Risa said.

  “Did you see any transfer? Any light?” I asked.

  “Too bright. Daytime in April. Maybe, but I was young, didn’t know what I was seeing. I know now, of course, but—we never know until it’s too late with the undying. They’re always a step ahead,” Risa said.

  “Not anymore,” I said.

  “No? How?” Wally asked, curious.

  “For fourteen years we’ve been picking off the ones who come after us. No longer,” I said.

  Wally grinned. She loved a good fight. Risa looked thoughtful. She loved a good plan.

  “Don’t worry. We hunt, but we hunt smart,” I said.

  “Where do we start?” Risa asked.

  I held up the acorns. “We already have.”

  “I have another idea. You want to go to them?” Wally asked.

  Risa and I both looked at her phone, which she held out to us.

  Wordlessly, Wally handed it to me. On it was a blurred picture of a tattoo. It was a snake, black and silver, position on the body unknown, but there was a liquid quality to it that was both admirable and unnerving.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  Risa spoke first. “I think it’s African. It’s on the shoulder of a guy that Angel fired last week for being drunk on the jo
b.”

  Angel was the last tenant in Hardigan Center, a brown bulldozer of a guy with a shock of black hair and hands like five-digit bricks. He stood just over five feet tall but weighed well over two hundred pounds, slabs of muscle a testament to his years as a mason. He didn’t tolerate drunks, or laziness, or stupidity.

  “Who sent the picture? Angel?” Wally nodded at me as Risa tapped the screen.

  “Look closer. This isn’t ink. And, once Angel calmed down, he started to think that maybe the guy wasn’t drunk, but sick from the tattoo. One small problem. The guy didn’t get it from any needle. Angel said they were on a site and, during a break, a friendly Haitian Tante’ next door offered them drinks. The next day, Angel says the guy, Denis, came to work late, acting like he was hammered. He was aggressive, slurring his speech, and threw his tool belt when Angel asked him why. My question is, just what was in that drink from the kind-hearted neighbor, and are there four more guys on the crew who are going to lose it and go batshit crazy?”

  Wally then handed me her phone with another picture on it. It was a serpent nearly identical to the first picture, but this was painted on a reed mat of some sort. Underneath it was the caption From the University Collection, Benin 1989. Risa peered closer at the screen. “You notice how that serpent seems . . . flat? Like a husk? I know what it needs. A host. And Denis was a nice warm body to be exploited.”

  She scrolled down slightly. There, under the university caption, was an identifier for the picture. It read simply Parasitic Spirit: Negwenya. Wally unlimbered, stretching as I helped Risa to her feet and picked up the bowls. Gyro padded ahead toward the sliding glass doors. Wally glanced at her phone again.

  “Let’s go visit our Auntie for a drink, shall we?” I said.

  We considered our visit and decided to do a simple drive by for a look. The address was in a working-class neighborhood of tidy homes that were built in the 1960s. Immigrants from the Caribbean had opened shops and restaurants in nearly every nearby strip mall. One home, painted white with teal trim, was our target. We were pleasantly surprised to see a small sign in the garage window offering psychic readings from Miss Jean, Seer. That was our ingress. Risa narrowed her eyes briefly, looking back at the house while she punched the number on the sign into her phone.