When the demon-killing, superhero asshole hit me, it hurt a good bit. Kind of like I would imagine getting shot wearing a bulletproof vest. The fact that it was meant to cave my chest in wasn’t lost on me in retrospect, but the dull, aching shock of concussion and pain distracted me for a moment.
That moment was all he needed to zip over and rip out Cora’s throat.
I felt rage filling me as I saw her gushing body topple to the ground like a lifeless doll. I didn’t have time for that kind of anger now though. While the protections I’d already put in place had cushioned the attack and robbed it of any physical inertia (hence why I was still standing instead flying back like I was in a bad martial arts movie), the attack was only partly physical. If he got his hands on me and went to work, he could very well kill me before I was ready to die.
Raising my hands and trying to force a friendly smile, I called out to him as he rounded on me, his eyes widening when he saw I wasn’t lying in a dead, ruined heap. “Hey, chief. Not a demon. Neither was that girl you just fucking murdered.” I could feel the anger lapping against the boundaries of my control, and I tried to push it down again.
“Bullshit. That’s all this town is. Just a nest of fucking demons.”
Nodding, I tried smiling again. “No argument there. Brimley is a giant shithole. Wall to wall demons running from the new management in Hell. I’m sure you’re doing God’s work with your whole killing spree thing you’ve got going on here.” I gestured to the dead demon he’d killed just moments before. “But we are not demons. We just got here.”
The man stared at me for a moment, seeming to consider my words. “Then why are you here? And how do know about demons and this town and all?”
I puffed out my breath as I weighed both my options and how much truth I should give him. He seemed willing to talk, but that could be a bluff. And I thought I could delay him enough to do what I needed to do, but it would be a near thing. If I could get him to cooperate, or at least not try to murder me for five minutes, that would be better.
So some honesty then. We’ll call it diet honesty. Same great honesty taste, but not so filling.
“Well, we got sent here by a…well, a magic creature is the simple answer. A magic creature that is apparently a giant dick and thought it would be funny to stick us in a place filled with demons. And I know about this stuff because demons and the people they run with have ruined my life since I was around your age. So I know a lot, but believe me, I’m not a fan.”
He frowned at that. “Okay. But if that’s true…if you’re not a demon or at least buddies with them, why can I smell the corruption on you? I can almost see it.”
Ugh. “Well, two reasons. First, like I said, I’ve been dealing with these people for decades, so no doubt, some of their stink has rubbed off on me. Second, I have a variety of things from Hell in my body at the moment, for reasons I don’t have time to explain right now. But again, not your enemy, not a bad guy. Just need to get going so I can save the girl you just killed.”
He raised an eyebrow, looking uncertain. “Save her? What do you mean? She’s dead.”
Gritting my teeth, I started judging the distance to the truck stop as I kept talking. “Look. What’s your name? Mine’s Teddy.”
“Um, Phil.”
“Okay Phil. Good to meet you. That woman you just killed is my niece, Cora. One of the best people I’ve ever known. Because of helping me, if she dies, she goes to Hell. Because of you, that’s exactly where she is right now. With all the demons you just sent back there. And I have to get her out, right now, before something even worse finds her.”
I could see that I was losing him as I talked. Aside from being covered in layers of drying blood, he looked like an average, nice-enough dude. Until his eyes started to flare with whatever weird bloodlust he had going on. I didn’t know exactly what he was, but I had a strong feeling he was what a lot of the Infernals called “Vesper”, their supposed anti-Hunter secret weapon that was going to reclaim Hell for them.
Well it looked like they fucked that one up pretty good.
Still, whatever this guy really was or was headed towards being, he clearly didn’t have a good grasp on much of anything, including his own impulse control. I half-expected him to bolt forward and try to kill me again when I said Cora was in Hell, but either way, I was past wasting time trying to placate Phil the Devil Messiah.
“Korscchulughtap.”
Phil blinked. That was a bad sign already. According to what I read, that should bind someone from moving at all for at least a week. But given how he was shitting on demons like they were portapotties at a chili cookoff, I had to account for the fact that infernal spells might not be as effective against him—even old, powerful stuff like that.
So instead of waiting to see if I had actually bought any real time, I ran my ass off.
When I hit the door to a place called “Hattie’s One-Stop Emporium” (because you want your demon store to be properly folksy), I glanced back and saw that Phil was slowly walking toward me like he was trapped in tar, but he was also speeding up the further he made it. So that was just going to be a problem then. Fair enough.
Going on inside, I scanned the shelves for what I needed. Most of the shelves were filled with odd assortments of crap, but finally I found the hallmark of any good truck stop. A dusty case filled with weird and cheaply-made knives. Busting the glass, I pulled out one that had a crudely-realized snake or eagle or something on one end. It should work okay if it didn’t break going in. Grimacing at the thought, I ran to the men’s bathroom as I heard the front door being pushed open.
I had maybe ten seconds to get this right. Making a cut across my forearm, I sucked in my breath as I used the tip of the blade to slide free a tiny silicone packet holding ten strands of light brown hair.
Cora’s hair.
Winding the strands around the knife, I readied my blade over my heart, hoping I had it in the right spot so it would go between my ribs cleanly. While I had never done this ritual before, I felt pretty sure it would work, at least as far as me and Cora were concerned. As for if I could use it against the homicidal maniac coming to kill me, we would have…
The door began to push open and so I began.
“Hell is a forest deep and dark. Its earth is cold, its trees are stark.” Phil was looking at me now, murder in his eyes as he began to reach out slowly.
“One that I love is in Hell’s embrace,” I pressed the tip of the knife into my chest as I suddenly bolted toward Phil. “so please let me suffer in her place.”
As I hit the surprised man, I jammed the knife in as hard as I could, using my impact against Phil’s chest to finish driving the point home into my heart. The effect was immediate, and as I felt blackness filling my vision, I wrapped my arms around Phil and held on tightly.
“Let’s go for a ride.”
One second I was sitting in the house of a very strange demon (who had apparently just been stalling until the demonic lynch mob could reach his door for the fresh meat) and then the next I was lying on a dirty bathroom floor. The demon had given me a blanket, but that was gone now, of course. I was back to being naked and cold again, so yay.
Then I saw Teddy’s body.
There was a knife sticking out of his chest, and most of the skin on his hands and arms was burned to black. Even with all I had been exposed to lately, it was really hard seeing him like that. And I didn’t understand how he had gotten me back this time, as I saw no way he’d have a doll with him. Then it hit me.
I didn’t have a doll to bring him back either.
I checked the bathroom quickly for anything he might have left behind—a clue, instructions, something. But there was nothing that I could find. Finally, I went out into what was apparently the truck-stop I had seen when we first arrived in Brimley. Looking around for people with no luck, I took some odd souvenir clothing from the shelves, money from the cash register, and keys from a purse I found behind the counter. I didn’t like stealing, but I didn’t have time to waste. I needed to get back to Teddy’s house, and judging from the hundred or so bucks I had gotten from the register and purse, I was going to be driving it. And I had no idea where fucking Brimley even was.
Driving through the small town was an eerie experience. It felt like being in the aftermath of a horror movie. I would go for a street or two with no sign of anything being wrong, and then I would find the bodies of a couple of boys or an old man scattered across a sidewalk or driveway. I considered going back to my old body for whatever I might have on me, but I doubted it’d be worth it. I had been traveling light except for the tumerin when I went to get Teddy from the Blind Court, and I really didn’t want to run into the thing that killed me again.
So I followed signs until I hit the interstate and then I turned west, going just as fast as possible without running a risk of getting pulled over in a stolen car without a license or anything else. I kept telling myself that Teddy would be fine, but I couldn’t know that. I also had the gnawing fear that whatever he had done to bring me back might have messed things up for him to come back via the dolls, but I tried to push the idea aside. I had no real reason to think that. It was just fear talking.
And I had enough to worry about as it was. My latest journey into Hell worried me. I didn’t understand what that demon was talking about, and I didn’t think I wanted to know. And for all my suspicions that he was just stalling until his demon buddies could come to eat me or poke me with pitchforks or whatever, he had seemed as surprised as I was when they started beating at his door. I would have to ask Teddy about it when there was time.
For now, I pulled up to the house and ran inside, Heckle and Jeckle looking at me with the golem version of surprise and happiness. Not having time for chit chat, I told them to prepare the room for a doll ritual while I went into Teddy’s workshop to get his doll.
Even after all these months, I had never been in his workshop before. Entering it now, I found myself slowing to an awed stop at what I was seeing. First of all, it was way bigger than I expected. So much bigger that I didn’t understand how exactly it even fit in the house at all. Beyond that, while there was a portion of it that was clearly intended for making the dolls, beyond that there were rows and rows of books neatly shelved and organized.
As I drew closer to them, I saw that many of them looked very old and were written in languages that I either didn’t read or had never even seen before. Walking between the bookshelves with amazement, I found myself wondering how much there was that I still didn’t know about my Uncle Teddy. That’s when I saw a short hallway at the back of his secret occult library. It terminated in a simple wooden door, and I was tempted to go and peek inside, but forced myself back to the task at hand. Every second I wasted was leaving Teddy trapped in Hell longer.
Hurrying back to where he had described he kept our most current dolls, I opened a large wooden chest and found what I was looking for. Carrying his doll back to the ritual room, I found that Heckle and Jeckle had everything ready. Two minutes later, the ritual was complete and the doll was burning.
Except it just kept burning. It didn’t disappear, and Teddy didn’t come back. I was far from an expert, but in my experience it happened much faster than that. A feeling of panic growing in my chest, I double-checked that all the steps of the ritual had been done properly. When I confirmed the ritual was right, I started to feel a cold feeling crawl up my spine. Maybe he really had messed up his ability to come back via the dolls with whatever he had done to get me back this last time.
I found myself weighing my options, which I knew were few, and I was already checking my phone for the best directions back to Amerson Park when suddenly Teddy was back. Dropping my phone, I ran up to him with a blanket and gave him a quick hug from behind as he stood up. Looking over his shoulder, he gave me a weary grin.
“I told you, I’m not that kind of uncle.”
Shoving him in the shoulder, I wiped my eyes with relief. “Shut up.”
Teddy headed toward the door to go get dressed when he turned back and looked at me, his face more serious. “Thank you for saving me. Again.”
I shrugged and gave him a smile. “It’s what we do.”
He looked as though he wanted to say more, but finally he nodded and walked out of the room.
My smile faded once he was out of view. Teddy looked okay, but something was still weird. Aside from the abnormal delay in him coming back, he smelled funny. Like sulfur or smoke or something. And when he had looked at me, his eyes were bloodshot. But I didn’t understand why that would be. This physical body should never have been in Hell, and besides, what I had seen of Hell didn’t smell like fire and brimstone anyway.
More questions for Teddy, but there’d be time for that later, after he had changed and had a chance to rest. For now, things were finally…
There was a knock at the door.
I got Jeckle to stand next to it as I looked out the peephole. It was just a plain-looking older man that I didn’t recognize, but that meant very little. I debated waiting until Teddy was back out, but given the golems and the protections on the house, I figured I was safe enough to at least have Jeckle open the door.
“Can I help you?”
The man had looked up as the door had opened, giving me a small smile as he regarded me with cool blue eyes framed by a pair of old-fashioned wire-rimmed glasses. “Hello, Cora.” Without waiting for another word, he stepped across the threshold of the door without being invited or allowed in, which I didn’t think was even possible. “I’m Christopher Darrow, an old friend of your uncle’s. And I think it’s time the three of us had a little chat.”
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Credits
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