The Demon Side (7 page)

“It’s cool. I get to see my dad more. So that’s a plus. What do your parents do?” Etta turned her face from me and directly toward Gabe while I sat on the coffee table in front of her. I couldn’t tell if Gabe’s heart rate sped up because of the full frontal view he had of her now or her question.

“Uh, my dad is kind of high up there where he works. What about your parents?” He wasn’t lying, but he didn’t divulge the whole truth.

“Etta, I’m warning you, this kid is hiding something. Get rid of him now!” I pleaded, but she only snuggled closer to Gabe.

“Well, my dad used to be a 0311—I mean a grunt. But now he’s in admin. I take it your dad isn’t military?” Etta’s coy smile at the boy fueled my already boiling irritation. I couldn’t just watch as she flirted with this worthless, lying punk.

“Last chance!” But my words fell on Etta’s deaf ears. With a small push of energy, I knocked over a picture on the old maple bookshelf, causing the glass to shatter on the floor.

“Whoa. How’d that happen?” Gabe’s gaze searched the room. What a weird reaction. Usually, people look at the item first then come up with a million questions for the happening. But he instantly began looking around.

“House gets drafty. Sometimes it knocks stuff over.” Etta’s nervous laugh was enough to cover her fear. The musky scent of it filled the room as she picked up the photo. The look on Gabe’s face told me he smelled her fear, too. Either he had a great sense of smell or the boy couldn’t be human. I thought for a moment he might be the Demon I had been waiting for, but he didn’t seem to enjoy the smell the way I did. He was repulsed by it.

Etta sat back down next to Gabe, this time close enough that he had to lift his arm over the sofa to sit comfortably. Her closeness and stench made him uneasy. Clearly a sign he had an interest in her, but not the same one she was thinking. Etta snuggled into him and his arm wrapped around her shoulder. How easy was this girl? She was trying my patience—a virtue I hadn’t much of to begin with.

“You have really pretty eyes, Etta. Do you have a boyfriend?” Gabe nervously asked.

And that straw broke my back. With one fluid movement, I yanked Etta off the couch and sent it rolling with Gabe still on it until it crashed into the dining room table. Etta ran to the couch, trying desperately to lift it off of his limp body.

“Get it off of him now!” Etta’s grunts of exertion were somewhat amusing. I’d sent the couch rolling like a barrel down a hill without effort, but it took everything she had to lift one end. But just as she had ignored me, I blocked out Etta’s pleas for help.

“Bravo! Bravo!” The sound of clapping came from behind me. I turned only to be taken aback at the appearance of an eight-foot tall, dark green serpent. His yellow-orange snake eyes gleamed with gratification as he clapped his two deformed clawed hands together. The good news was my temper tantrum had drawn out my houseguest. The bad news was that I knew exactly who he was.

“Alastor! What brings you here to my quaint domain?” I asked as I opened my arms, inviting him to embrace me.

Considered one of the cruelest Incubi even by his own kind, Alastor excelled at causing feuds within families. Not only did he breed like a wild rabbit, but he made sure the mothers and their families’ lives would end in horrible, disgusting acts of murder after he got what he wanted from them. I despised him and his kind but I also admired him. He too was a master of his craft.

He’d once gotten a fifteen-year-old Catholic choir boy to not only kill his father, but also feed his rotten corpse to his mourning mother who was unknowingly pregnant with Alastor’s child. When she finished consuming her husband, she hung her son and consumed his body to feed her unborn child. This incident earned Alastor the nickname, The Executioner. He never knew where to draw the line. His cockiness got in the way of his brains. With no qualms about revealing himself to the world so he could take credit for his despicable acts of lust and gore, he often drew the attention of the Arches. I disliked the visits his acts brought.

“Rahovart! My, it has been a long time. How are you, brother?” Alastor slithered over and embraced me, not out of brotherly love, but to read me. Let the games begin, I thought. Demons can read each other without the trouble of a walkthrough, but the more physical contact you have with another Demon, the more you can read their mood and intentions. With the recent events, I wasn’t sure what he would learn from our “hello.”

“It’s been a long time. Last time I saw you, you were traveling with Paimon to Salem, Massachusetts. How did that go for you?” I asked Alastor.

“Worked like a charm. Those Puritans were too easy. Their men were already so corrupt and their women were foul with the stench of sin. It literally became an evil buffet. You should have come with us,” Alastor said with excitement and conceit.

“So I heard. You disappeared for quite some time after that. Many have come looking for you.” No one ever came looking for Alastor, but I was curious about what he would say regarding his sudden disappearance.

“Ah, yes, my extended vacation.” Alastor clapped his claws.

“
You
take a
vacation
? I heard a much different story.” Alastor and I chuckled for a moment. He knew what I was getting at. Rumor had it he’d followed a family full of Islamic converts to a village in the Middle East. The villagers got wise to his presence when some of their virgins ended up pregnant. After some very crafty planning, they were able to lure him into an incense lamp, which is exactly why I chose to stay in the certainty of my home. The Middle Eastern people were great at ambushing Demons and Angels. A Demon by the name of Jin remained trapped for millennia by the Persians until a great war broke out, freeing him from his captors.

“Those damned people trapped me. If it wasn’t for a certain Marine, I’d still be in that cramped lamp,” Alastor sputtered. He’d finally been duped by people he always deemed beneath him. I found it quite humorous.

In the middle of my silent chuckle, it hit me. Did he say a Marine? Alastor wasn’t following Etta. He was following John. If John had released Alastor from his glass prison, that would mean John could be the good guy he appeared to be. The more blood and evil around a Demon the stronger it becomes, but in order to break from a prison, it must attach itself to a very sick, twisted, and damned person. I never would have pegged John that way. I couldn’t push Alastor on the subject or he might see through me and mislead me.

“So are you traveling through again, my brother?” I knew he wasn’t traveling through, but Alastor was the type that needed to believe he had the upper hand even in the most trivial of situations. If I kept him thinking he was superior to me, his ego would blind his judgment and his gums would start flapping. Similar to the villains in Saturday morning cartoons, he always had a long drawn-out monologue giving away his plan when he should just keep his mouth shut and kill the superhero already.

“You know why I’m here. The man freed me, but the girl is irresistible. Those succulent hips and firm breasts are to die for. The question is why
you
are still here.” Alastor’s orange serpentine eyes narrowed as he cracked a smile. His rhetorical question was so transparent. He knew exactly why I’d been here for five hundred years.

“Property such as this comes around only once in a lifetime.” I snickered uncomfortably.

“Oh God, Gabe! Are you okay?” The sound of God’s name made Alastor and me cringe and turn our attention to Etta. She dusted off Gabe’s shirt as he cracked his neck from one side to the other. The smell in the air changed from stale newspaper and coffee to a sweet field of wheat and barley. A glint of gold shimmered in Gabe’s eyes as they fixed on Alastor and me. Alastor stood next to me, ready to fight as he inhaled the scent we knew all too well. Before, the blink of the human eye, I flashed to Etta, grabbed her from Gabe’s side and threw her ten feet behind me.

“Well, well, well, if it isn’t Gabriel the Arch! Come to dance with the devil’s children, I see. Or have you just finally realized the man upstairs is full of shit?” Alastor hissed.

I wasn’t in the mood to fight an Arch, especially Gabriel, but with Alastor here, I knew this face-to-face meeting would only end in a fight. Alastor had the knack of instigating trouble by himself, and with the numbers stacked in our favor, Alastor viewed this as an easy victory. I hoped Gabriel wouldn’t be stupid enough to fall for his tricks.

The change in Gabriel’s eyes from green to gold told me he was in stupid mode today. Gabriel readied to engage in battle, putting himself right where Alastor wanted him. As much as I had an honest distaste for Gabriel the Arch, I respected him for the warrior he was. He never pulled any cheap shots or tried stabbing you in the back. Many times I have fought against him only to be locked in a stalemate. If he were ever to be clipped by my blade, which was by no means easy to pull off, I wanted the victory to be my victory alone.

Clipping an Angel’s wings is a very difficult task. They are not made of bone and feathers like many humans believe. Only the most loyal and strongest of Angels are chosen to have wings. The strongest and most loyal of those become Arches. The highest-ranking angel from each of the ten choirs rips the Angel’s back open and attaches a stone frame that fuses itself into the bone and muscles. Thousands of blades made of a biological metal a hundred times harder than titanium are then fused to the stone frame. The average wingspan is ten feet across from tip to tip but the higher on the totem pole the Angel is, the larger his wing span.

Over three days’ time, the biological metal shoots out vines that connect to the peripheral nervous system, allowing the Angel control of not only his transportation but the deadliest weapon ever known. Each tip of the feathers produce more poison than all the venomous poisons created on Earth combined. If you are skillful or lucky enough to clip an Angel, not only do you get his power and energy, but you have damned him to a mortal life on Earth. Should the clipping kill the angel, you damn him to Purgatory. Sounds easy enough unless you take into account Gabriel is second in command with a wingspan of over twenty feet, making it an arduous undertaking to get close enough to strike him without him striking you.

“Rahovart the Heir, my quarrel is not with you this day. I only seek out Alastor the Executioner. He is required by God to appear before the Tribunal.” Gabriel nodded his head to me, never taking his golden eyes off of Alastor. The Old World speech the Arches used during “official business” was annoying but I couldn’t get worked up right now. Surveying the standoff, I knew I could make it work to my advantage if I kept my cool.

No Demon has ever gone before the Tribunal and returned. Simply being called before them was a sure death sentence. The Tribunal only offered two sentences: freedom or Purgatory. Once sentenced to Purgatory, a Demon loses all of their special abilities and their power diminishes greatly. For an Angel, their wings are stripped away. The excruciating pain of an Angel’s wings being ripped from him is far greater than any possible earthly death. But the punishment does not stop there. Their incredible strength is reduced to practically nothing. Both entities barely have the strength to move, but are given enough energy to stay conscious of their surroundings and pain. That is where the Tribunal has sent every Demon and Angel it has called on to appear. In all of time, not one has been set free.

“What the hell is going on?” Etta’s voice trembled. Alastor watched from the corner of his eye as Etta hid behind me, wrapping her hands around my arm. Etta showed favor toward me and relied on me to protect her. Her touch calmed me and gave me confidence in what I planned to do, but Alastor read into our interaction closely. My plan was to hand him over to Gabriel. The shock of this might cause Alastor to attack me. If he believed, even for a moment, I had an ounce of feeling for Etta, he would surely use it against me in a fight or worse. I gave a low growl as I ripped my arm from Etta’s hold, hoping to scare her away from me and show a lack of concern for her.

“I will not interfere with your business, Gabriel, but you mustn’t forget the number one rule—never combat in front of an innocent human. So I kindly ask you to take your business with my brother Alastor elsewhere.”

“You traitorous fool!” Alastor bellowed.

“You know the rules, my brother.” I protruded my chest outward to let him know I meant business and if he wanted to charge at me I was ready to fight.

“With two of us and one of him, we could easily kill him and be done with The Great Circle of Arches. With Gabriel gone, they will weaken, and we will ascend to rule.”

“It is not my fight, brother, and I don’t think your Master would approve of such a plot without his consent.”

“What do you mean,
my
master? Lucifer is your Master, too, or have you been so blinded by the girl that you have forgotten that?”

At this point in my existence, I had no Master. I followed orders from no one, because I received none. I came to be a forgotten soldier in Lucifer’s army, and to be honest I preferred it that way. It left me the time to pursue other forms of entertainment, but if I wanted to get back to my normal dealings, I had to get Alastor as far away from Etta and John as possible. My best chance at that would be to let Gabriel take Alastor. There was just one small problem. Etta was still in the room. If Gabriel tried throwing his golden shackles on Alastor, he could make a move for Etta to shield him. The sheer power of Gabriel’s throw could kill her, and if any part of the golden shackles touched Etta’s human skin, she would be instantly damned and sent to Purgatory.