Contents

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Cover

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Thank You For Reading!

Raw Power

An Urban Fantasy Novel

By Ambrose Ibsen

Copyright © 2016 Ambrose Ibsen

All rights reserved.

This one's for Iggy, James, Ron and Scott.

ONE

I tell you, there's no finer sound than that of breaking bones. Music to my ears.

I don't mean to make myself out to be some sort of hardass, I really mean it. Ever taken a nutcracker to a handful of walnuts that are still in the shell? You know that sound they make, just as the shell is giving way? That cracking sound that tells your brain: “Hell yeah, you're about to enjoy some walnut-flavored goodness”? It's kind of like that; the sound of a humerus snapping, of a jaw cracking, is a subconscious cue that reminds me I'm about to get paid. The breaking of a man's nose after a hard left jab may as well sound like the ringing of a cash register as far as I'm concerned.

We were out in an alley just then, after a brief but heavy rain had left Detroit awash in a humid haze scented with motor oil. I remember it well; the Dali I'd been hired to recover was propped against the wall of the alley like something reserved for the weekly garbage pickup. The asshole who'd put it there, one of two swarthy pricks dressed in cheap black suits, had set it down and approached me with his hands up, hoping that we could talk things through. Maybe, he thought, he could pay me, get me off of their case with a few greenbacks. He'd started sweet-talking me with an accent too tinged in the hues of central Europe for me to understand.

And, anyway, the client wasn't paying me to talk.

The meter was running and that painting had already been gone too long from its private collection. It was one of the lesser-known works in Dali's oeuvre, a handsome little piece called “The Burning Giraffe”. I'd always admired it, with its curious, drawer-filled figures, masterful usage of blues and greens, and the image of the burning giraffe in the background. As zany and thought-provoking as any work of art has ever been. When I was through with these guys, I'd allow myself a nice, thorough look at the thing before returning it to Mr. Amundsen.

Eager to wrap things up, I met this first fella's attempts at diplomacy with an elbow to the face.

His partner, all too happy to stand back and feel out the situation up to this point, was spurred into action. He pulled out a hell of a knife, definitely not within legal limits for concealed carry, and started running at me with his big, sharp teeth bared. They glowed white in the darkness of the alley as he loosed a great shout.

I love it when they give me a target.

Half of those pretty teeth were out of his mouth before he managed his first clumsy thrust of the knife, owed to a surprise kick. I wheeled around after delivering that kick, not a little amazed that he'd stayed upright, and buried a fist in his ribs as he staggered towards me for another slash. He caught nothing but air and then collapsed, the knife clattering to the ground and his face going pale. His buddy, with a nose that looked all kinds of busted, backed against the wall and pleaded through the swelling.

Gently, I kicked the second thug's knife into a nearby sewer and then paid the first gent a visit. He was real twitchy, had a look on his face like I was going to kill him outright. And, to be fair, his fears weren't completely unfounded, except that killing wasn't really my style. I'd lay into him, though; make it so that he wouldn't be able to leave till he'd had a nice, long sit. Maybe he'd have the time to consider a new career, something other than stealing precious paintings.

Pressing his back against the rain-soaked bricks, his suit torn at the shoulders and thoroughly dampened, he looked like he wanted to squeeze himself into a little ball, to shrink down and disappear into the grooves in the wall.

Wasn't going to happen.

With my heel, I stomped on his right hand, giving it a little turn till I heard the jumble of fingers creak, groan, then snap.

There it was, that excellent sound of bones being broken.

Almost payday, I thought.

Tears were running down his face as I kicked him in the gut. He was out of commission after that, slumping over and heaving what looked like chow mein onto the ground. Had I been a little slower, I might've ended up wearing it myself.

With the two thieves incapacitated, I waltzed on over to the paper-wrapped bundle against the alley wall. It was the right size and shape; slipping a finger into one of the seams and partially unwrapping it, I glanced over the thing briefly and found that it was indeed “The Burning Giraffe”. I got a little thrill at having such a great work so close at hand. In school, I'd written more than a few papers on Dali. Seeing his work in a museum was one thing; recovering it from a few art thieves in a dark alley and holding it in my own hands was quite another. Exhilarating isn't strong enough a word.

Oh, I guess you're probably wondering how it is that a brawler like me knows so much about art, eh? It's true that most hired muscle out there can't tell a Dali from a Van Gogh; a Titian from a Monet. That's where I'm different. I might beat the shit out of people for a living, but I bring a little class to the job. Just try and find a gang-banger who knows something about Renaissance art, who can tell the Honjo Masamune from a fake. Here's a spoiler: you won't.

I guess it all really started about six or seven years back before this particular incident in the alley. That was when I started college. I had friends and family telling me back then that an advanced degree in Art History wouldn't do me a whole lot of good in the real world, that the material didn't have any value outside of a museum or classroom. They said I'd never land a paying job with it.

Ha! If they could only see me now!

Of course, this line of work wasn't really what I had in mind when I graduated, but if bashing heads in and recovering stolen masterpieces gave me an opportunity to put my art know-how to use, then that was good enough. Plus, none of the local museums were hiring curators, so it was either take jobs like this one or seek a dead-end alternative. When the student loan bills started showing up, the choice was clear. You can only defer those suckers for so long. These are tough times we're living in, folks, and in this economy you have to do what you can to get by.

Some people might seek out a job at McDonald's. Some people might work at a laundromat or clean toilets for a living. Nothing wrong with that. Not a damn thing.

But me?

I started off small. Signed on with an agency that recovered debts of all kinds. We were repo-men, sort of, operating in a legal gray-zone. Technically, we were only supposed to hound people to repay their debts, but when you live in a city like Detroit, so rundown and so short on cops, it's real easy to take things a little further than that. Turns out that people are really friendly and willing to negotiate payment plans when you kick in their doors at 3AM and threaten 'em with a knife.

Ahem. But, I digress.

I was bringing in a lot of money for the agency, and my name got around. I got to be a little bit of a celebrity, I guess, because before I know it I'm getting offers from these rich old guys, asking me to track down thieves and return stolen goods. It started with jewelry and electronics, but when word of my degree got out, even richer dudes started asking me to find artwork that'd been stolen or smuggled out of private collections.

What can I say? I was living the American dream. Self-employed and mostly loving it.

“The Burning Giraffe” was the latest in a string of recoveries I'd made for Mr. Amundsen. I knew the guy was insanely loaded; I'd been outside his house a few times and had seen more than a couple imported cars with unpronounceable names in his winding driveway. He'd taken a real liking to me, and had hired me several times now to handle jobs like this one for him and his friends. I was loving the money, and the client knew a good deal about art, so we hit it off pretty well.

With “The Burning Giraffe” tucked safely under my arm, I straightened out my clothing, rolled my shoulders to dissolve the tension of the chase, and proceeded to empty out the wallets of the two unconscious thieves before sauntering to my car and whistling a tune.

Waste not, want not, right? Didn't make sense to waste that low-hanging fruit.

When I got to my car, I had a good look at “The Burning Giraffe”, then buckled it into the front passenger's seat, using the seatbelt. Then, I quickly roared onto the main drag, heading straight for Mr. Amundsen's place. He lived a few miles out of Detroit, in a small, affluent suburb. The drive would take me fifteen minutes if the traffic was good.

Cranking up the stereo, I turned on a little John Coltrane and hit the AC.

The thickness of my wallet was such that I was sitting a little lopsided. Those thieves had been carrying enough cash on them to stage an escape from the country. That's probably what they'd been planning on, though how they'd have gotten the pilfered painting through customs was a mystery. Didn't matter, of course. I'd gotten the thing back, out-thieved the thieves. It felt good.

The little pile of money pressing into my ass-cheek made the potholes in the shitty Detroit roads that much easier to tolerate.

***

“Lucian, it's great to see you,” said Amundsen, stepping through the monumental gate outside his property with a pair of bodyguards. He took hold of my hand and shook it like he was genuinely happy to see me-- and not just because I had his precious painting under my arm. “I take it you didn't encounter any trouble?”

I shook my head. Hadn't been a spot of trouble about the whole thing, unless you count the dull ache in my elbow, from knocking that guy in the nose. Hazards of the job. “Nah,” I replied. “Got her back safe and sound. A real beautiful piece, too. I hope you don't mind that I had a little peek.” I handed over the parcel.

The client, dressed in a long black jacket, gave a hearty laugh. “Not at all. Seeing a work of this caliber up-close is a real treat for a man who knows his art.” One of the gorilla-looking bodyguards accepted the painting from him and carried it through the gate, up into the property. Amundsen dismissed the other, so that it was just me and him standing outside the gate in the warm night. The air here smelt crisper than it had in Detroit. No oil or piss-stench to be found, just fresh suburban air. I thought just then that it'd be a fine way to live, settling down in some gated property where the riff-raff of the city couldn't get at you.

When the guards had left, Amundsen fished his wallet from his back pocket and handed over a fat wad of cash. He didn't even bother counting it, but simply folded it over as best he could and presented it with a smile. “I can't thank you enough,” he said. “That painting means the world to me. You're really the best I've ever met in this profession, Lucian.”

Amundsen was a tall guy, really lean. Looked like a middle-aged Peter Cushing. Black hair, with grey marking the temples. He was the type to act serious at all times, except that when the conversation changed to art, he'd give a genuine smile and his eyes would widen like a kid's. Always polite, always professional, I liked the way he carried himself. Aside from the palatial habitation through the gate and the fleet of expensive cars in his garage, he wasn't showy about his wealth. The dude wore nice, tailored suits of a modest sort and never acted particularly stuck-up. He was even willing to chat with a bit of hired muscle like me without his own guards present. Compared to other clients I'd had, Amundsen was a pleasure to work with, and I'd be a liar if I said I wasn't beginning to consider him a friend at this point.

While returning his wallet to his back pocket, I noticed a pendant hanging around his neck from a silvery chain. The pendant was shaped like a star, with several sharp-looking points, and there was something etched into it that I couldn't make out. Writing of some sort. It was a light-colored metal, possibly silver. Had I only been able to get a closer look I could have positively identified it, but it was out of sight behind the bulk of his jacket in the next instant. How he wore that jacket on such a humid night was beyond me. Anyhow, the pendant was a little gaudy, but I figured old wealthy guys like him are allowed to have eccentric taste and I didn't say a thing about it. Instead, it was he who continued the conversation, arching a brow and draping an arm over my shoulder.

“Lucian, I feel our professional relationship has blossomed, come along a great deal, since I first hired you. I think that I can trust you with most any job.” He peered up at the sky narrowly. “It occurs to me that the night is young. I'm asking a lot, but I was wondering if you might have it in you to consider another offer of mine. I've a new job that needs done, a little short-notice, that could benefit from your expert treatment.”

He was buttering me up something fierce, throwing out words like “expert”.

And, what can I say? It was working.

“Oh, what is it?” I asked.

He grinned, evidently pleased that he'd piqued my interest. “Well, to begin with, I'll gladly pay you double-- no, triple-- for this one, on the condition that you take care of it tonight.”

The sound of my jaw dropping to the curb could probably be heard for miles around.

A guy like me values his time. You have to put some serious cash on the line to get my attention. But if the price is right, I'm willing to deliver the goods stat, be your repo man, treasure hunter, whatever you want me to be.

Well, not whatever you want me to be, you perv. I have standards.

But it's safe to say that Amundsen had gotten my attention. For that kind of pay, there was little I wouldn't do. If he wanted me to set off in search of some lost painting or curio of his, then I was ready and willing. Money like that could put a hell of a dent in my loans, pay my rent for half a year and more. The alternative I'd been planning was to return to my apartment, turn on some music and get drunk as fuck. Scoring a few thousand bucks, tax-free, for a single night's work, sounded far better. I told him as much. “I can head out immediately. What is it?”

Amundsen's mouth did this little thing, where the lips were pursed and his chin wobbled. I guess that was his thinking face. “Well,” he began, cracking a smile, “it isn't a painting this time.” The smile didn't linger long, though.

Oh, God, I thought. He's about to ask you to bury a body or something for him.

I desperately began considering different parts of town with the lowest populations and the loosest soil; wondering which stores had the best prices on shovels; whether the yet-undescribed body would fit in my trunk.

Oh, shut up. Don't tsk-tsk me or bring your morals into this. This is a lot of money we're talking about here!

From the breast pocket of his jacket, Amundsen drew out a small, folded paper. Unfolding it, he handed it over to me, and in the light of the nearest streetlamp I could make out a simple drawing. It was an ink drawing of a box, perfectly square. There was a weird design on the top of the lid that reminded me of the pendant Amundsen was wearing, and the sides of it were done up in a filigree design.

“The design there, on the sides,” he said, pointing to the filigree, “is in gold. Inside the box,” he added, “is some ash.”

I furrowed my brow, still scanning the picture. “Uh... like, cigarette ashes, or... cremains, er...”

“Not quite.”

I nodded. “OK, and who has it?”

Amundsen shifted uncomfortably and gave a little shake of his head. “I'll give you an address. A small group seems to have taken it, though you shouldn't encounter any trouble. My understanding is that the thieves aren't in tonight, and have left the box unattended in a certain house where their type has been known to meet. It should be a very simple retrieval. They intend to use it in some sort of ritual.”

I laughed aloud. In retrospect, maybe I shouldn't have. “A ritual? Wait, like, voodoo? Devil-worship?”

The client said nothing.

I knew guys like him could be eccentric, but until today, I'd never known Mr. Amundsen to be into, well, that kind of thing. Years back, an interest in the occult could ruin one's reputation. These days, though, it was stunning to me just how many folks collected occult trinkets for the fun of it. I guess devilry was in vogue or something. Up to that point, I'd only known Amundsen's collections to contain cherished pieces of art, though it stood to reason that he'd have to fill that hulking house of his with other shit. Sure, why not occult collectibles?

If there's one thing I learned early on in this gig, it's not to ask too many questions. You start poking and prodding around in aspects of the job that don't really concern you and you can piss off your clients. There was way too much money on the line for me to risk that, and besides, I liked Amundsen well enough not to pester him about the particulars. Some people had made off with his little pentagram box and were trying to summon Satan with it while beating tom-toms or something similarly ridiculous. OK, I can handle that.

“All right,” I said, clearing my throat and tucking the paper into my pocket. “Where can I find it?”

The smile returned to Amundsen's lips. “Like I said, I'll provide you with the address.”

TWO

Amundsen had me going out to some shitty neighborhood in Flint. Flint was about an hour's drive away on the highway, though taking the back roads would likely be faster for me, since I could speed as much as I wanted without having to worry about a dickish highway patrolman writing me up. On the way, I stopped at the 7/11 for a coffee and went real heavy on the cream and sugar. I realized I hadn't eaten anything since that morning and picked up a few gas station cheeseburgers, too. What can I say? When I celebrate a big payday I like to pull out all of the stops.

When I finally got to the place, though, a large, burnt-out shell of a house at the end of a winding, unoccupied street, it wasn't at all what I'd expected. Oh, sure, it looked like the kind of house where some emo kids might meet up to fuck around on the weekends, but the entire atmosphere was so eerie that I couldn't shake it, and I wondered what'd possessed them to bring Amundsen's little box out here. Then I started wondering about what was in it, and why it was so important to him anyway, but I caught myself before jumping into that rabbit hole.

Don't ask questions. It isn't any of your business, remember?

I parked the car a little ways away and shut off the headlights a while before that, so that I could approach the house without being heard or seen. I don't know if it was just a sudden change in weather or what, but the wind had grown considerably colder in the past hour, and I was suddenly regretting my choice of T-shirt and jeans. A jacket would've been nice.

The curb was pretty busted but I followed it a while and sized up the exterior of the house. A fire had wreaked havoc on it if the scorch marks were any indicator, and a large part of the roof had caved in. All of the windows were broken and the lawn was so overgrown it might've been declared a metropark.

There was no telling what I could expect. Amundsen had been entirely too vague. He wanted me to get the box back and was paying me a shitload to do it, but as I approached the house and the cool wind reached my arms, I began to feel nervous.

Nerves in a job like mine aren't a good thing, least of all when you're standing outside the house where the action's about to go down. There's a place and time for butterflies in the stomach, for self-doubt, but mere moments before go-time ain't it. I balled my fists and ambled up to the edge of the building where I'd be able to peer into one of the burnt-out lower-story windows, unsure of what I might see.

Amundsen had assured me that there would be no one here. All I needed to do was poke around in this creepy house till I found his box and then beat it. Something about that wasn't adding up, though. The air was heavy. I didn't feel alone here.

I stuck my head just inside the window like a thief in search of a freshly-baked pie and caught only the faintest glimmers of orange cast onto a wall in some adjacent room.

Sure as shit, this was the place.

And something was going on inside.

I thought he said the place was going to be empty. Damn it... I didn't have any reservations about roughing up a bunch of Harry Potter wannabes, but the fact that the house wasn't completely abandoned only ramped up my nerves and made my stomach stir up the dregs of those god-awful cheeseburgers.

Gulping down the dread that was quickly welling up in me, I did my best to ignore the subtle, breathy chanting I could hear issuing from deeper in the ruined domicile. Yeah, full-on chanting, like the kind you might hear in some voodoo orgy. I didn't know a whole lot about that kind of thing back then and have never been a religious person, but I knew enough to know that ritualistic chanting rarely ends well. In the movies, people or animals are brutally sacrificed, or demons are conjured up from the bowels of Hell.

Not that I believed in any of that. But knowing that I was about to barge into a room full of people who did believe brought an apprehension over me that was difficult to describe and even more difficult to dispel.

I edged my way around the house, my hands pressed to the cool siding, and sought out another window.

The chanting was getting a little louder with every step. Female voices, all of them. Couldn't hear a deep note in the entire chorus, and I stood by to listen for quite some time. I had no idea what they were looking to do, or why the smells of roasting meat entered the sensory equation a few steps later.

As I crept around the property trying to get a peek and establish the best entry point, I felt like a camera guy who makes nature documentaries for TV. Though, instead of wandering through the jungle to watch a couple of rare animals fuck, I was trying to sneak up on a little black box full of ashes.

I seriously doubt that any of those documentarians have ever been so utterly thrown off balance by what they've discovered, though.

Very carefully, and only after taking hold of a two-by-four I'd found on the lawn, I looked around a corner and found the sort of entrance I'd been looking for. Except, rather than pounce out and start pounding heads, I froze in place and tried to take it all in.

I'd been right about one thing; there was nothing but women in the place, all of them standing in a circle, hands joined and chanting.

A detail that was not lost on me, however, was that a scrap of clothing did not exist among the lot of them.

There must have been ten or fifteen nubile young things standing there, all of their good bits in view despite the wind's chill, chanting in some guttural language whose like I've never heard. I can't recall specifically how many there were; counting is not my strong suit when I've got an erection.

Watching the spectacle for a long while, I realized that this was some sort of Witch's Sabbath. I can't take credit for that revelation; I'd seen more than a couple paintings from fellows like Goya depicting such things. The whole scene was rendered almost as darkly by the flickering firelight, but was a good deal easier on the eyes than any of those pieces had ever been. Young, sexy witches? If not for the fact that I had a job to do, I might've joined in.

The scene was on the lawn. The back of the house had crumbled away, and the hollows were lit up by the firelight like a massive jack-o-lantern. The congregants were standing in the grass, and on a spit positioned just above their bonfire was a hunk of meat. What kind was hard to say. It might've been a trick of the light, but I thought I caught sight of fingers on that bit of meat, as if a thick, human arm had been set to roast.

Ultimately, I spotted the little black box on a makeshift altar. It was off to the side, about twenty feet away from my present position. It would have been a simple thing for me to rush over and take hold of it, except that, with so many sets of eyes in the area, there was no way my approach would go unnoticed.

And then it happened.

From behind, I felt a strong push. Two hands met my back and shoved me forward, so that I fell into the grass and out into the open.

Shit.

I wasn't particularly frightened at this point; all I'd seen so far was a bunch of sexy babes chanting and carrying on like loonies around a fire. I sprang up and balled my fists, preparing to deck whoever it was that'd just pushed me.

And then the chanting stopped.

All eyes were on me.

The hands that'd pushed me down belonged to a kid. The kid, about twelve or so years old and scrawny, just didn't look right. His eyes were too big, his skin too pale. He was dressed in rags and stared me down with a vacant intensity that chilled me to the bone. He was human in shape, but, at the risk of sounding crazy, I admit he seemed anything but.

What happened after that, well, is more than a little hazy. Things moved quickly from that point. I could have handled myself a little better, maybe even escaped, but I didn't truly sense the danger of the situation until it was far too late.

I went to grab the kid's raggedy collar, but when I threw him down to the ground, he suddenly disappeared into a cloud of black cockroaches.

I shit you not.

His skin, like the exterior of a pale balloon, was torn away the instant he met the grass and then a thousand cockroaches simply erupted from the space he'd occupied like he'd been some kind of infested pinata.

I didn't have a whole lot of time to process the colossal mass of writhing insects in the grass before me, because in the time it took me to loose a groan of disgust and turn around, I noticed that the entire group of women had stopped what they were doing and were now running straight for me.

Believe me when I say I'm a dick. To lick it in this line of work, you have to be a bit of an ass. Still, I'd never hit a woman. I was raised better than that, and the thought of doing so makes me cringe a little.

Those women-- those things-- that were running at me just then, though?

I had positively zero problem letting my fists marry their faces. I'd have let my fists write their own vows and everything, in fact, they were so damned hideous. In a split second, something had radically changed in their appearances. They were no longer young, gorgeous women, but hags. Crones. There is literally no word in the English language that can sufficiently encapsulate the distinctive mixture of antiquation and inhuman repulsion that these creatures possessed in spades. I wanted to give them the beat-down, defend myself as they bum-rushed me, but if we're being honest I also didn't want to touch them.

I got knocked around good and proper by the throng of women as they got within arm's reach. I say “women”, but I should really refer to them as what I now know them to be: witches. In film, witches tend to be represented as something silly; impotent foes that can be dispatched with a bucket of water.

There wasn't enough water in the whole of Flint to fuck their shit up, though. I felt confident of that. They took turns stomping the hell out of me, some of them still muttering in that deep, throaty language that's so grating to my ears even now, in reminisce. I fought to stand, seeking out the two-by-four I'd dropped, but couldn't even get to my knees. They were too strong; unnaturally, unbelievably strong for beings so undoubtedly old. Their shapes were frail, their frames were bereft of developed muscle, but they knew how to throw a punch. It was like getting whacked by Iron Mike from every angle. Just as the blows were becoming more and more intense and I found myself pinned to the ground, too weak and injured to stand, I realized what was happening.

These bitches are going to kill me. I'm about to get beat to death.

Someone in the group kicked me over onto my back with a technique that would've made Pele proud and then proceeded to show me the first example of bonafide magic I'd ever seen in my life. We're not talking rabbit-out-of-a-hat level stuff, either.

The rest of the group quit beating on me while this single crone, extending her bony white fist, uttered a few words. Before my eyes could even register the change, her hand had been completely  transformed into something I recognized all too well.

A long blade.

Dazed by the attack and seeing stars for all the blows to the head, I wasn't too stunned to know what that meant. My body squirmed in anticipation of the killing blow. I felt like a chicken with its neck stretched across the chopping block. There was nothing I could do. Rolling out of the way was impossible for the wall of sneering and apparently super-powered witches that surrounded me. The bitch scowled and then reared back, ready to plunge that blade into me.

I winced before the blow was even struck.

At that moment, or as close to it as I can reliably remember, there arose a commotion from around the other corner of the house. I only got a brief look at them right before the end, and wasn't sure who they were specifically, but the circle of witches took off at the sight of them, which was good enough for me. They wore all black, had gas masks of some kind on, and were holding guns that would've made Chris Kyle blush. I heard the deafening report of those selfsame guns as the masked men unloaded into the fleeing throng.

The witches were gone in the next instant.

But not before that bitch with the magical knife-hand buried her arm in the left side of my chest till her elbow was tickling the lawn, of course. She ran off shortly thereafter with the rest of them.

I thrashed, felt a sharp pain, and then began seizing. The breath was gone from my lungs and I noticed a distinct popping in my chest where my heart should have been. A warmth surged suddenly from the wound and I felt the most intense panic of my life in those few moments before the darkness came.

As I was grasping at the final straws of life, I saw a pair of dudes towering over me. They pulled away their masks, looked down at me with something of pity in their eyes, and tried not to step on my face with their size 14 combat boots. “Shit,” said one to the other, “poor guy's had it.”

THREE

I guess that that should have been the end of the story. This part, the part that follows, really shouldn't exist.

I should've died on that lawn, been carted off to a morgue and properly mourned with a memorial service far too expensive for any of my relatives to afford, while dressed in a suit that would have made my beaten-up corpse look nifty.

But that isn't what happened.

Sometimes in life, we roll the dice. We take chances, or are preyed upon by the forces of fate, over whose whims we haven't even the remotest shred of control. Well, a dice roll like this one gave me a result that should have been damn near impossible, mathematically. It was like rolling a pair of dice a million times and getting snake-eyes every time. And then, on that millionth roll, doing it another million times and getting snake-eyes for all of those, too. Things like this just don't happen, or aren't supposed to happen, but I guess you could call me living proof that they sometimes do.

When I opened my eyes and took in the bright, blinding light, it wasn't Saint Peter or Buddha looking me in the face, but rather some dude wearing a surgical mask. I couldn't feel my body, wasn't even sure that it was still there, but I could see. The lights were uncomfortably strong and a slight heat radiated off of them. Who the fuck is this guy and why's he shining a light in my face? was my first thought upon waking.

Nope, it wasn't “Thank goodness I'm alive!” or “Now that I have a second chance, I'm going to be a good person and donate all of my earnings to charity!”

I was alive, and I was pissed off.

This is probably what a newborn baby feels like.

Perhaps catching a bit of annoyance in my expression, the masked fellow, a surgeon, I presumed, began to speak. I couldn't see his mouth because he was wearing that white mask, and I have to admit that it put a hell of a scare in me, hearing his gentle voice emanating from god-knew-where and not having a mouth I could attribute it to. It was like a bad acid trip.

“You're awake,” he said in a soothing tone of voice well-suited to narrating children's television programs for the pre-K demographic. “You're very seriously injured, Mr. Colt. Your life is at stake at this very moment, but we have managed to restore consciousness long enough to have you answer one crucial question.”

If he asks me whether or not I'd like to become an organ donor I'm going to rage, thought I.

“We've only one hope if we wish to save your life. It is a rather controversial procedure, virtually unknown in Western medicine. The risks are great, and--”

If I'd been able to speak right then, I'd have cut him off. I didn't even listen to the rest, which, upon reflection, might've been a mistake. I wanted his miracle procedure, silver bullet, whatever you want to call it, and I wanted it in the worst way.

The surgeon finished his spiel with, “Despite these risks, would you still like to go through with the operation? I need some indication of yes or no from you. Nod your head if you can, or blink twice for yes.”

Tears poured from my eyes. My vision was cloudy. I wanted to live more than anything, goddammit. “You don't know what you've got till it's gone”-- it's a cliché for a reason. And standing this close to the brink, watching my future fall away, I got to thinking about how awful it would be if I never got to experience the finer things in life again. I'd never get to see what my future kids would look like, or my grandkids. I'd never know the satisfaction of securing proper employment, or the pleasure of a good meal with friends. I'd never have shower sex again.

I needed this damn procedure done.

I don't know where it came from, but I gave the guy as firm a nod as my banged-up shell of a body could muster. Evidently that was sufficient, because he motioned to someone else in the room and the corners of his eyes wrinkled in a smile. “Don't worry,” he told me. “We're going to get you fixed up. You'll be with us again before you know it.”

“Sure,” I wanted to say. “I just hope your people are willing to be flexible with the payments, because I've got more than a hundred thousand bucks in student loans, bud.”

The surgeon started giving orders in what sounded like German and the air around me was filled with commotion. I heard squeaky carts being wheeled by, heard the clatter of metallic instruments, the oddly comforting din of medical equipment as it powered up. There was something else that I noticed just as the anesthesia hit, a voice amidst the melange of ambient noise that I recognized.

It was Mr. Amundsen's.

FOUR

Let me tell you something.

Getting raised from the dead sucks ass.

It took me a while to realize that awareness had stolen over me. I was thrust into cognizance in the space of an instant, and it was like coming out of the worst kind of booze-induced blackout. Before I even opened my eyes I could feel a profound throbbing in my limbs and torso.

Ah, yeah.

I'd gotten the crap beaten out of me by a coven of hateful witches.

Wait, what?

I opened my eyes. Blinking till the blurriness went, I took a long, hard look at the room I was now in. It was a hospital room, a nice one, outfitted with an expensive-looking flat-screen TV, and an impressive array of machines. The place was crammed with HGTV-worthy fixtures and flourishes, and done up in a carefully coordinated color palate comprised of soothing blues and eggshell. An interior designer's wet dream.

The first thing I noticed when I found my neck capable of sustained movement was the fellow smiling at me from the plush recliner across the room.

Amundsen.

I was never happier to see a familiar face and would have hopped out of bed to kiss his feet if only my body would have cooperated. The drugs, or something else they'd given me, hadn't completely worn off yet, though. I felt weighed down, sluggish. Parts of my body were waking up while others were still in a deep sleep. I returned his smile as best I could and laid my head back.

This was a kick-ass hospital. Even the pillows were comfy.

“So glad to see you awake,” said Amundsen with a faint titter. The noise was uncharacteristic of him, but hey, the guy was excited to see me pulling through. At least, that's what I figured. “First off, I want to sincerely apologize.” He came over and I felt him lay his hand on mine. My arms were still pins and needles in their entirety, but I could more or less process the sensation. “I want to apologize for sending you on a mission that was very clearly out of the norm. It was far too dangerous and you didn't have the proper training to deal with something like that. I thought for sure that the place would be abandoned and that you would meet no resistance, but it seems my intel was wrong. And I gave you precious little information before setting off, too. Rest assured that I accept all of the blame, and that everything will be taken care of.”

This came as a huge relief. I sighed, smiling afresh, and turned to him. “Can't believe I'm still around,” I managed to mutter. My mouth felt like it'd been stuffed full of cotton and I couldn't speak loudly, but the words still crept out. I was out of it, not really putting a whole lot of thought into the maniac scene that'd laid me up to begin with. “So, what, you pay for a heart transplant or something? Get me to the top of a transplant list with your connections?” I snickered dreamily.

Amundsen's smile intensified, if anything, and with this sharpening came an added degree of what my dizzy brain could only guess was amusement. “Something like that.” He patted the back of my hand condescendingly, but under the circumstances it didn't bother me very much. I noticed he was still wearing that weird, gaudy pendant of his. My vision was a little blurry, so I couldn't get a great look, but it was shaped like a many-pointed star, covered in writing. There was something in the middle of it, too. Looked like a rough, dark streak across the center of the piece.

Ah, there it was. My memory and cognition were marching back into service now. I gulped, but there wasn't any spit there. After spending a few moments wrestling with a dry boulder of air in my throat, I finally choked out, “So, what exactly happened back there? Were those, like, legitimate witches? I mean, they must've been, right? Since...” I lowered my chin so that it was pointing down at my heart. “Hell of a night.”

The hand-patting continued. “Oh, Lucian, I wouldn't worry about that. It'll all be clear soon enough. You'll have all the answers you require, and perhaps more, very soon now.”

Huh, more answers than I require? That seemed unlikely, since I had a metric ton of questions I wanted answers to.

“Well anyhow, thanks for saving me,” I said, raising my head and sporting a sleepy grin.

“No problem, Lucian.” He returned to his seat across the room.

And that was the moment I first noticed I was shackled to the bed with manacles of remarkable thickness.

My gaze narrowed. I gave my arms a little shake, listening to the jingle-jangle of the chains as they were made to rattle. I laid back, closed my eyes, and then looked down at my arms again.

Yup.

Still chained up.

“What the fuck?” I muttered, feeling my pulse quicken for the first time since I'd been struck down in that yard.

Amundsen gave a sympathetic nod and motioned to the manacles with two fingers like he was tapping the keys of a tiny piano. “As for those, well, I think you ought to wait for Dr. Sargasso to come in and explain.”

FIVE

Dr. Sargasso walked in as if on cue. He was in a pair of green surgical scrubs, had a white surgical mask pulled down below his chin and some tight-fitting head covering made of the same papery material. He smiled at me warmly, glancing down at his wristwatch and then making a few brief marks on a clipboard.

I didn't even give him a chance to introduce himself before I sat up in bed and shook my chains. “What the fuck, man?”

I lacked experience with hospitals. I'd gotten my tonsils out at eleven, though, and felt pretty confident that medieval-looking shackles weren't a part of post-operative care. My folks had let me eat as much butter pecan as I could stomach, but they hadn't chained me up like a hostage. Somehow, I didn't think I'd be able to crack open any peer-reviewed journal of medicine and find a good study describing the benefits of holding a patient prisoner. Emerging from my drug-induced haze, I wanted some fucking answers, and I wanted them right away.

With an understanding nod, Dr. Sargasso looked over at Mr. Amundsen and donned a slight grin. The bastard almost looked amused at my annoyance. He cleared his throat and held the clipboard behind his back, approaching my bedside and knitting his gray, fluffy eyebrows. “Mr. Lucian Colt, I was the one who performed the operation on you. I was in just a few hours ago to assess you, and I have to say that you've healed remarkably. Though, it comes as no surprise, really. You're the first subject to have undergone this procedure to my knowledge, at least since the Middle Ages, but it all seemed like solid theory on paper.”

My head was spinning. My chest ached dully the more he spoke; either the pain meds were wearing off or hearing him talk vaguely about the procedure was inciting my incision to burn. Maybe it was both. The bruises on my body made themselves known every time I shifted around in bed, but I did my best to ignore the pain.

“Anyway, those restraints will only be in place a short while longer, I promise you. Just until we know you're stable.” His voice was so calm, so breezy, that I almost wanted to believe him.

“Restraints.” What a pretty euphemism that was. Yeah, sure, buddy. These are just plain old hospital restraints. I bet Spanish Inquisitors used to tell their victims the same thing before yanking out their fingernails.

I leaned back in bed and grit my teeth so hard that I could hear them straining in their sockets. I wanted out of this place, and my heart was doing something crazy, something I'd never felt it do before. It was only natural, I reckoned, after sustaining such a terrible injury, but the way it was beating-- no, thundering-- along, made me kind of nervous, even as I felt my anger mounting.

“How are you feeling?” asked the doctor, patting my knee. “How is your pain? We can get you something to take the edge off if you like.”

I wasn't listening. My whole body felt tense and rigid. Something was wrong, but I couldn't for the sake of me put my finger on it. I had a jackhammer in my chest, and at any moment I thought it might break free. I dug my heels into the mattress and took a deep breath.

“When you arrived,” continued the doctor, “you were practically dead. In fact, if you want to get into the logistics of it, you were completely gone by the time I arrived on the scene and got you transported here. A typical heart transplant wasn't an option-- the pericardial tissues, for one, were too far gone already. It would have been a waste of a donor heart.”

“What the hell are you driving at, then?” I spat. There was a heart thumping in my chest like a locomotive screaming down the rails, sure as shit. My face felt flush, my vision blurred just a little. “So, what, you stick a robot heart, a piston or something in there? Feels like I've got a horse kicking me in the tit, man.” I patted the left side of my chest as best I could, the heavy manacle clanking against the bed railing.

Mr. Amundsen chuckled, crossing his legs and appraising me with the sort of child-like interest I'd only ever seen in him while discussing artwork.

“It's not funny,” said I. “How in the hell did you save me, then? You said that this little operation of yours hasn't been done since... the Middle Ages?”

Dr. Sargasso nodded. “That's right. It's experimental, a little... fringe, really. I've only ever read of it. The materials, you understand, are hard to come by, so it isn't as though this procedure can be implemented on a regular basis. I drew my inspiration from a medieval text, actually, a work by a little-known doctor penned in the early days of the Holy Roman Empire.”

I had no idea what the fuck any of that was supposed to mean. I even chuckled a little, thinking that I must be hallucinating. This dude was talking about old, esoteric books, and from where I was standing we were in the hospital, in the twenty-first century. What was he going on about? What did it have to do with me? I'm no expert on books, but I figured that most texts out of that era were filled with religious ideas and philosophy. Nothing whatsoever, save for barbarous, obsolete techniques, could possibly be gleaned from any medical text that old. Right?

“So... you put a pig's heart in me?” I scoffed. “A cow's? You use alchemy or something to forge one out of gold? What is it?”

Dr. Sargasso licked his lips. “Tell me, Mr. Colt, are you a religious man?”

I shook my head.

With a great deal of relief, the man's stance loosened and he gave a hearty laugh. Amundsen, too, could be heard to chuckle. “Thank goodness for that,” continued the doctor. “News like this might've been a little difficult for you to handle if that were the case. I probably should have asked you before you went under the knife, but you scarcely had the energy to give me your consent then.”

I stared at him blankly, my heart quaking and quivering. No, this wasn't an artificial heart or a transplanted organ at all. It felt like he'd opened up my chest and let a wild animal loose inside of me. I grimaced as the thumping increased and tried to sit up, my entire chest tightening in the process.

“The heart we gave you, Lucian, belonged to a demon,” the doctor said, the amusement disappearing from his features forthwith. He leaned in, repeating, “a demon,” in case I hadn't heard.

Oh, I'd heard him the first time.

Not that I believed a fucking word.

“A demon's heart?” Through the discomfort, I cocked my head to the side and looked at the two of them in turn. “A demon's heart?” I forced a laugh. “Whew, good one. You got me. Now, what did you do to me, really?”

If those guys were kidding around, then they had perfect poker faces and were willing to take their jokes further than anyone I knew.

“Well?” I asked through a wince.

“A demon's heart,” repeated the doctor.

SIX

I like to think of myself as an open-minded guy. I listen to experimental jazz, enjoy art of all kinds and would be considered rather worldly by all of my friends. And, hell, I've been known to enjoy a good spooky story from time to time. Horror films, too.

But this?

These two stone-faced jokesters weren't willing to budge, and even after a five-minute silence on my part, where I stared them down and grew even more displeased with their assertion that the heart in my chest was a “demon's”, they refused to say otherwise.

Almost as if they weren't lying.

I'd seen some shit before going down at that Witch's Sabbath. A bunch of sexy women had transformed into hags before my very eyes, and one had even turned her hand into a goddamn knife-- an incredible illusion if I've ever seen one. Then again, I guess it hadn't been an illusion after all, because the bitch had run that blade straight through me.

So, witches were real.

OK.

I was kind of coming to terms with that fact.

I was hesitant to accept it, still searching for alternative explanations, but knew that I'd experienced things at that Witch's Sabbath I'd never be able to explain rationally.

But, demons?

“You guys are fucking serious, aren't you? Demons... demons don't exist, though,” I said, my eyes softening just a touch. I looked down at my chest, wondering for the first time if something truly infernal was what was keeping me alive. I prodded the flesh gently, and as if in response, there came a grotesque lurching from beneath the skin, meeting my fingertips and causing me to recoil awfully. I tried to pull the gown away, to look at my breast and find the incision the surgeon had left behind.

There was none.

No scar, no bandages covering a fresh incision. The skin was pristine.

My heart flopped over in my chest like a dog rolling onto its belly, causing my breast to contract and roil.

Well, shit. My old heart never did that kind of thing.

“A demon,” the doctor uttered for perhaps the thousandth time. “The heart you now possess was taken from a demon's body. And don't bother looking for a surgical incision. We made one, but it's long since healed.” He took a phone from his pocket and dialed in a short number. With his back to me, he spoke in hushed tones to someone on the other end before promptly hanging up. “Just a moment, and I'll prove it to you.” He stole a narrow glance at Amundsen, who was standing beside him now. “I'd hoped you'd just take me at my word, Lucian, but I can prove it to you if you insist.”

I didn't know what he meant. What, was he going to drag some demon's corpse into the room?

There was a knock at the door. A young woman in an old-fashioned nurse's outfit-- white cap and all-- wheeled in something that was covered in a white sheet.

“Thank you,” said the doctor, taking it from her and setting it in front of the bed. He grabbed the edge of the sheet and then nodded to the nurse. “You might want to look away for a moment, miss.” Then, returning to me, he said, “Look here, Lucian.”

He whipped the sheet away, revealing a tall mirror. It was a beautiful thing, intricately worked with no shortage of artistic flourishes along its metal frame. It was also crystal clear, the clearest-looking mirror I'd ever seen. Probably made with real silver. It was an antique, no doubt, but the mirror's excellent condition made it difficult for me to say with any certainty how old it was and, besides, the overall design of the thing didn't belong to any established style that I was aware of.

But ultimately, I didn't really give a shit about the mirror or its craftsmanship, because what I saw in it arrested my attention and put such a scare in me that I thought I'd lose my mind.

Sitting up in bed, staring back at me, was a hideous creature. It occupied the same space in the reflection where I should have been, and it looked exactly like me in every capacity, except that its face was all wrong. Warped, oil-colored skin, piercing yellow eyes and a mouth, all teeth, opened in a silent shout.

I didn't know what demons looked like, but “demon” seemed a fine label for this monstrosity that stared back at me from the mirror with wide eyes.

Watching me sink into the bed, pale and enfeebled by terror, the doctor draped the sheet back over the mirror and handed it off to the nurse. “Please return the Astral Mirror. I don't think we'll be needing it anymore.”

The nurse took it back into the hall and closed the door softly behind her.

In the meantime, I pawed impotently at my face, finding my long, familiar nose, my strong jaw, my brow, eyes and ears. Everything was in its proper place, felt just like I remembered it. I glanced up at the doctor, shaking all over.

“Don't worry,” said Dr. Sargasso, dropping to one knee and taking one of my hands in his. “The Astral Mirror is a tool that we use to see what lurks inside of a person-- your outsides, however, are very much unchanged.”

Oh, boy. What a goddamned relief that was. The hideous monster I'd seen in the mirror was inside of my body, but at least no one would be able to see it on the outside. Was he fucking around with me, or did he really think that was a good thing?

I clawed at my covers, breaking into a cold sweat and canvassing the ceiling. My heart hadn't quit, it was still pounding and pounding. My chest had gotten sore for all its stirring, in fact.

“Are you all right, Lucian?” chanced Mr. Amundsen, coming up to the other side of the bed.

I was a lot of things just then, but I sure as hell wasn't OK.

My heart jumped up into my throat. Literally.

And then everything went fuzzy.

***

When I regained control and found myself sitting up in the hospital bed, the first thing I noticed was that my right hand was no longer weighed down. I was still wearing the manacles, but something had changed.

Craning my neck around the edge of the bed, I saw that the chain had been pulled out of its anchor in the wall. Scraps of drywall littered the floor and the end of my chain scraped the dusty tiles. I then looked at the other side of the bed, where I found Mr. Amundsen tucked into a fearful crouch and Dr. Sargasso on the floor, beside him, rubbing at his face and cursing.

The doctor had a wicked cut on his face, and the very edges of it were reddened in a vaguely chain-link pattern.

Putting two and two together, I realized what must've happened. “Oh, shit... are you OK?” I gulped. “Did I do that?”

Rising to his feet, the doctor walked around to the other side of the bed, took up the slack chain that trailed from my right arm, and then hastily tied it around the bottom wheel of my bed. He was some time in composing himself, but when he finally replied, his calm tone had mostly returned. “As I said, those shackles are on for a reason, Lucian. Until we know for certain the transplant has succeeded, we need to keep... everyone in this building safe. You'll stabilize soon enough.” He patted at his cheek, a palm's worth of blood dribbling down onto his scrubs. He grimaced. “I need to take care of this.” The doctor gave Amundsen a look before ambling unsteadily into the hallway.

Amundsen stood up and felt his way back to the chair, his eyes fixed on me like I might reach out and kill him.

My heart had calmed down, at least. It'd fallen into what I felt was a natural rhythm.

But what had happened there, and why couldn't I remember it?

Was I right in thinking that my brief period of unconsciousness and the resultant outburst had been caused by the demon?

A demon? Jesus Christ... this has to be a joke. Demons don't exist, man. This can't be right.

Of course, up until recently, witches hadn't really existed, either.

“Why did you do this to me?” I asked Amundsen after a time.

He looked at me sorrowfully, kneading at his greying temples. His large eyes didn't stay on me long; they drooped to the floor in shame. “You said you wanted to live, Lucian, and I wanted to give you that choice. This was the only way to make it happen. The only way.” He looked up gravely, his brow dotted in sweat. “If you've changed your mind, I can ask the doctor to remove the heart, I suppose...”

What a gracious offer that was. If I didn't want to house the heart of a violent demon I could just ask ol' Dr. Sargasso to come on in and scoop it back out. I could go back to being dead. That sounded like a real treat.

Not.

“That isn't much of an option,” I replied. “Deal with it or just die? Thanks a lot.”

Looking a little offended, Amundsen stood up and shook his head. “Now, you may not see it yet, but this is a gift, Lucian. It's a gift that no other living man possesses. In time, you will come to understand it as such. The Veiled Order has great plans for you, Lucian. You'll grow so powerful, do such good in the world for our organization. Those criminals who did this to you in the first place will cower in your shadow very soon now.”

I frowned. “Well, it was nice of you to let me know that this little operation of yours had strings attached. Considerate. I always wanted to sign up to... do whatever it is you're talking about.” He'd mentioned an organization; what, was I going to join the Super Friends? I wasn't sure exactly what he meant by any of this and didn't have much time to dwell on it because the thumping in my chest resumed with a vengeance. I groaned, feeling like my heart might explode, and clutched at my breast.

Amundsen noticed and walked over to the door. “He needs sedated,” he shouted.

Not a moment later and that same young nurse who'd wheeled in the nightmarish mirror was rushing in with a syringe. She flicked the cap off of the needlepoint and gave the thing a few quick taps while testing the flow. She didn't ask any questions or even tell me it was going to hurt. She squatted down beside my bed, pulled down the edge of my gown and began sizing up my deltoid.

“Hey now, hold up a second--”

She stuck me in the shoulder, hard.

“Damn it!” I thrashed a little, my heart flopping and squirming like a dying fish. “This isn't necessary, you know. What about patient satisfaction? Don't you people have those little surveys for people to fill out after they get discharged, for government reimbursement? I'm going to give all of you fucking zeroes for this!”

The nurse stood up after pushing the whole of the syringe's contents into me. It burned a little, made my shoulder feel numb and tingly. Then, dropping the used-up syringe into a red container on the wall, she walked out without a word.

“By morning,” said Amundsen, “you'll be able to wander freely. No restraints, no sedatives... but, until then... you must rest. We'll be having someone watch you, too. An orderly will be posted in your room at all times, should you need to use the bathroom or anything of the sort.” He patted me on the foot as I felt a wave of numbness wash over me. That shit, whatever it was, worked fast. “I'll see you in the morning, Lucian. Take care.”

I was going to tell him to go fuck himself for using me as his occult plaything when, suddenly, it was lights out. The sedative hit me like a load of bricks and I sailed into unconsciousness with nary a struggle.

SEVEN

I woke up again, at some point, and felt immediately that something wasn't right. Don't ask me what. I couldn't have told you even if I'd had a hundred years to answer. I felt groggy, weighed down. That was likely the sedative, or whatever else they'd been feeding me over the course of my stay. But that wasn't all.

That wasn't the worst of it.

Most drugs that I know of don't incite feelings of terror or panic. Some might, maybe, but the fright coursing through me seemed to stem from another source. I could feel it in my veins. And I don't mean that metaphorically.

The demon heart, I figured, was at the root cause of this feeling.

I couldn't feel the rest of my body, but could sense my heart galloping along. My vision was blurry, my thoughts were fuzzy. It was like being held underwater. Everything was dampened, unfamiliar, delayed. I tried to move my hands, my feet, just to ensure they were still attached to me, but couldn't raise them an inch.

When I resigned myself to just laying back in bed and calming down, however, I noticed myself sitting up. My legs and arms worked in tandem, and I sat up in bed with ease. The trouble, though, is that I wasn't doing it.

That's right. My body was moving of its own accord, or under some agency other than my own.

This development brought about a lot of confusion in me. The terror faded away, and I just dwelt deep in my headspace, baffled. How is this happening? I thought. I didn't try to sit up, and yet, I did.

Next, I guess I started to speak. Er, rather, words started coming out of my mouth, but I wasn't the one coming up with them.

Someone was sharing my vocal chords, my lips; someone was co-opting my body and speaking through it as though it were a puppet.

“Excuse me,” said the entity speaking through me. I could hear the words dully. They echoed in a strange way. Was I schizophrenic now, or had the demon in me completely taken over my body? And, if that was the case, was I supposed to be aware of its control over me? I was still in there, somewhere, it was just that my consciousness and its sway over my physical form was severely diminished. My mind had been tucked away neatly into some dark corner to make room for this new something that now spoke and sat up using my bones and muscles.

It was the most uncomfortable thing I'd ever felt. Imagine walking into your house and finding the entire thing ransacked. Your clothes are strewn all over the floor, the kitchen's a fucking mess, your dog's been shot and there's piss all over the toilet seat.

Now imagine that same sense of having been violated. Except we're not talking about your home-- no, in my case, this awful feeling was issuing from inside of me. My insides, my mind, had been rearranged without my permission, and were presently being used in a way I hadn't consented to.

“Excuse me,” repeated the thing speaking through me. “I'm so thirsty. Please, may I have some water?”

I focused hard. As best I could tell, through my tenuous link with my physical body, I wasn't thirsty. I didn't need any water, and still couldn't tell who the intruder was speaking to. But I'm not thirsty. Why ask for water? I thought.

From my periphery came a young man dressed in teal scrubs. He was tall, with curly black hair, and stooped down at my bedside with a plastic water jug in hand. I presumed this was the orderly they'd posted in my room to keep watch. He held out the jug and shifted the straw towards me so that I could take a sip.

“The air here gets dry,” he said, smiling. “Makes me mighty thirsty, too.” He was friendly, trying to make chit-chat with me. He was probably a swell guy, possibly going to nursing school or something similar. I'd never seen him before, and had no reason to bear him a grudge.

That was why it was so surprising when I jerked towards him and spit in his face.

Well, it wasn't actually me doing it, remember. I'm not that big a jackass. I don't spit in people's faces. Something else was responsible for this, something using my body. I was hopeless to stop it.

The orderly fell back onto the floor and began to wail. He clawed at his face, thrashing from side to side like he'd just been seriously injured. I watched on from deep within my head, baffled at this behavior. I mean, getting spit on sucks, but he was overreacting a little, wasn't he?

And then I noticed.

His skin was being eaten away.

Rapidly.

Smoke rose from his face as the skin was burnt. Blood began to ooze from gaping holes in the flesh, and as he clutched at it, yet deeper parts of his anatomy became visible. We're talking muscle here. Bits of bone. His lips were destroyed, giving him the look of some rejected Batman villain, and his eyes were degenerating into something like runny egg whites.

My spit had done that to him?

The next thing I witnessed was a swift motion of both my arms. Somehow, I managed to pull off not one, but both manacles. They dropped to the floor, clattering distantly. The imposter then stood up, using my legs, and turned in the direction of the window.

I was being trotted around the room and couldn't even tell you how.

After a brief pause, I punched out the window, showering the floor in glass. Just beyond the edge of the busted pane was a set of thick iron bars, like those you might see in a generic jail cell.

What kind of hospital used iron bars on the windows? I was beginning to think that this wasn't a typical hospital at all.

Though, maybe that should have occurred to me sooner. They did weird shit here, like implanting demon hearts into their patients. The bars on the windows were not exactly the first red flag.

With a grunt, I managed to pull the bars in opposite directions. They gave like they were made of rubber, and the resulting space looked just large enough for me to wriggle through.

And that's exactly what I did.

We were a few stories up, but I guess I didn't think much of plunging out of a second or third story window down into the grass below.

It was a quiet, dim night. A new moon, if my perusal of the sky was to be believed. We were out in the middle of nowhere, too, judging by the lack of buildings in the area and the abundance of visible stars.

I heard a soft voice as I stood there. It wasn't coming from outside, but from within me. It was like I was standing within my body with someone else, and we were having a quiet conversation. If my consciousness had been able to reach out just then, it might've bumped elbows with this other thing that now spoke to me. The voice said, “Say, you look tired. Why don't you relax while I take this thing for a proper spin?”

By “thing”, I figured he was talking about my body.

Despite all I'd just seen, I couldn't muster up a single reason to refuse. “Sounds good,” I thought.

And then, my thoughts faded into darkness for a good, long while. My mind was blotted out. If my senses had been dampened and my connection with my body weakened previously, then the effect had been multiplied a thousand-fold now.

I'd sunk to the bottom of a deep, dark lake with no idea as to when I might resurface, while something else took a turn captaining my body.

EIGHT

It was morning when I woke up.

That is, when I really woke up, feeling like myself again.

My body was wicked sore and the surface I was laying on was rough. I kind of missed the hospital mattress.

Oh, shit, I remembered. You left the hospital, didn't you?

Well, that wasn't quite right. My body had left the hospital, it was true, but someone else had been at the helm. Or, rather, something else. A demon.

I had a look around, finding my surroundings mostly dark and shadow-swollen. There was some light coming from above, though. It was the sky, mostly dim but with traces of a rising sun bleeding through.

By the looks of it, I'd spent the night out and about. A cool breeze washed over me, sending me into shivers. The hospital gown was still draped over me, but underneath I was wearing a pair of basketball shorts that I didn't recognize.

Come to think of it, I didn't own a single pair of such shorts.

This was getting weird.

I stood up, massaging the back of my head where a dull ache was forming, and took stock of my surroundings in earnest. It took me a while to recognize them, though. It was a building, partially destroyed. The room I was in now was a real sorry mess, and the roof in this spot was gone, giving me a perfect view of the sky. A bit further on, a wall was missing, mostly crumbled or burnt away, and beyond I could see a lawn of decent size, thoroughly overgrown.

I remembered this place.

The house...

This was the shithole Amundsen had sent me to, the place those witches had conducted their sabbath.

The place I'd died.

I paced around dazedly for a short while, looking around and expecting a gaggle of hags to jump me at any moment. None came, though. The place was quiet, unbelievably so. Not even the breeze made any noise as it ambled in. I looked down at my body in the dim morning light and marveled at the bruises marring my limbs. I knew the witches had beat the crap out of me, but they looked a lot worse than I remembered. And then there were the wounds on the knuckles of both my hands. I sure didn't remember getting those. Had I injured myself in the night?

What was I doing in this place, and what had I gotten up to all night?

Not knowing was pretty scary, I'll admit.

I'm no stranger to getting blackout drunk, to waking up in unfamiliar places with little recollection as to how I ended up there. This was a little different, though. When you're drunk, you're technically still in control. Lower inhibitions and all that, but you're still there, calling the shots. You can be held accountable for your actions if you hit the bottle too hard, and usually, unless you really fuck yourself up, you can remember what you've done over the course of a wild night. When someone else barges into your head and takes your body for a spin, however, it's another thing completely.

I gulped. This motherfucker inside of me was going to have some explaining to do.

Trouble was, I couldn't sense him. Under the circumstances, my heart was calm, beating normally, and that foggy feeling of being subdued had completely passed. It was like something had taken firm hold of me in one moment and then had suddenly let go in the next. I was free, in control once again, and had no idea what had transpired.

I started pacing through the house's many rooms, all of them strewn with garbage and burnt-out, and ducked through the windows, trying to find some evidence of what I'd done in my strange nocturnal state.

The last thing I expected to find outside the window was a cop car, its lights flashing as it drove up onto the lawn, practically to the front door of the house.

About a half dozen others followed, and cops spilled out of them as they screeched to a stop.

Guns drawn.

My blood turned to ice. “Oh, fuck.”

The cops were here, most of them wearing full tactical gear. Some of those guns were big; they weren't just carrying sidearms. It looked like they'd come to put down a gang of elephants. I chanced to peek out one of the windows again, and nearly caught a smoke grenade in the face.

The place was stormed by police before I knew it. They had me on the ground within seconds, were shouting orders to keep my head down, to keep my hands where they could see them. The barrels of high-powered guns were pressed into my body. More than one boot connected with my ribs; “accidentally,” I'm sure.

“You're under arrest, motherfucker,” uttered one cop, kneeling beside me and handcuffing me as roughly as he possibly could. Literally, he could not have twisted my arms behind my back and squeezed the cuffs on any harder without ripping my arms from their sockets.

I was crying. I'll admit it. Ever wake up in a strange place only to get manhandled by cops? I had no idea what I'd done to deserve this treatment, which made it all the worse. Had I killed someone? Taken a police car for a joyride? Nothing I could have possibly done over the course of a single night seemed worthy of this sort of treatment, but here they were, treating me like a lovechild of Hitler and Bin Laden.

The cold barrel of a rifle met the back of my neck. The metal pressed in hard, hard enough to leave a mark. A shot from this thing would sail straight through my spine and scatter my throat against the floor.

With my hands cuffed behind my back and the strange shorts I was wearing now soaked in my piss, I waited for the bang. This was it. I was about to get executed. Death by cop wasn't how I'd expected to go out of this world, but here I was, on this godforsaken property where I'd been killed once already.

NINE

I was pretty well into my sobbing when a booming voice broke through the commotion. It soared above the rest of the noise, and the cops around me fell into silence as their attention was directed at the newcomer. Big, loud footsteps could be heard across the floor. This guy was walking so hard I could feel it in my bones from across the room. “Hold your fire,” he barked.

“The fuck are you?” asked one of the cops.

I turned, trying to get a look at this guy, but only succeeded in catching a brief glimpse of the impressive-looking badge he held out. He was dressed in all black, but it wasn't tactical gear like the cops wore. A black suit, a black overcoat. Dude was wearing sunglasses, too, unless I was mistaken. The gun against my neck had eased off enough for me to turn my head, but I could only see so much.

“Back it up or I'll have your balls off before you can even say 'ouch',” said the guy in black, pointing to the cop who'd been ready to shoot me just a second ago.

“Who does this cocksucker think he is?” muttered one of the cops from nearby.

“Is he a fed? What the fuck is this?” asked another.

“We're in charge here,” said the thug above me, lowering the tip of the rifle till it touched the small of my back. He really dug it in there, giving it a little twist like he was trying to put out a cigarette.

The guy in black stopped in front of me, his polished black boots so close to my nose that I could smell the farm that'd produced the leather. “I'm only gonna warn you once,” he bellowed. “Back the fuck up.” This guy seemed to be on my side, but he wasn't one for delicacy. “You want to stay on the force? Collect that pension someday? Step away and maybe I'll give you that chance.”

“Now look,” said one of the cops, trying to keep his voice low. He was speaking more calmly, putting on his negotiator's voice. “This perp's got a rap sheet a mile long. He got up to some serious shit last night and we're not just going to let him walk out of here. You know how many good cops he assaulted last night on his way here? I've got the city's ICU's full of injured officers, I'll have you know. Theft, arson... The guy's an animal. If you had any sense you'd let us put him down right here, right now. We're entitled to use deadly force after all we've seen him do, and he's had repeated warnings to surrender--”

“I don't give a shit. Get the fuck out of here. Else you can talk it over with my superiors.” Outside, the sound of several vehicles approaching could be heard. Tires pounding pavement and brakes screeching. Then, footsteps. Lots of them.

It was with no little muttering that the cop backed up and removed his rifle from my person.

Before I knew it, I was being lifted off of the ground by my handcuffs by the guy in black. My shoulders ached as he pulled, and I quickly gained my feet, glancing around the room at the tense cops with all the fear of a lamb in the slaughterhouse. Without another word, the guy in black gave me a shove towards the doorway. Then, in a move that left me stunned, he grabbed one of the high-powered rifles from a nearby cop and shot the chain that held my cuffs in place. The chain broke easily and everyone in the room startled. Guns were pointed at us both.

“Relax,” said the guy in black, straightening his sunglasses and throwing the rifle to the ground. He led me out of the building, across the lawn and past the wall of cop cars, towards a black SUV parked some ways away. Its windows were tinted a deep black, too.

Damn, I guess this guy really likes the color black, eh?

A few other black SUVs of the same make and coloration were parked behind the cop cars, and from these there came a number of SWAT-looking guys. They didn't have any badges on, nor any lettering on their uniforms to let us know what department they were with, but one thing was for sure-- they were scary as hell. Some of these guys were big. I mean NFL big. Broad shoulders, a good foot taller than me, and so muscular in their tight black outfits they looked carved from stone. They ambled to the house, guns strung over their shoulders. This must've been my rescuer's backup.

The commandos coming out of the black SUVs started arguing loudly with the cops, but before I could glean the nature of their disagreement, which almost certainly had to do with me, the guy in black was throwing open the passenger-side door of an SUV and shoving me in.

This vehicle didn't have any plates, which gave me pause. I'd been rescued from the cops, but who were these guys? Had I just been tossed from the pan, into the fire? This reeked of the sort of covert ops you see in movies. This beefy motherfucker who was now dropping into the driver's seat, dressed in all black and wearing sunglasses despite the fact that the sun had barely risen, was the kind who made people disappear for a living. What had I gotten myself into?

I cleared my throat, the smell of my piss stinging my nostrils. I was too damn scared to be embarrassed, though. Sniffing, I wiped at my eyes and dried the last few tears that still crowded their edges. “So, uh,” I said in my steadiest tone of voice, “what the hell is going on, man?”

The man removed his sunglasses, tucking them into the breast pocket of his jacket. His skin was a little pale, and he ran a hand through his dark hair. His eyes, deep-set and intense, narrowed as he stared out of the windshield and tore onto the main street in a hurry. “Still trying to figure that out, Lucy.”

I cringed. “Lucy”. I'd been called that before. Everyone and their mother liked to call me “Lucy” for short. Kids in school had done it when I was young as an emasculating insult, and still others had done it as a misguided show of endearment. My older brother, Conrad, had always called me that, too. I hated it, but wasn't about to correct him.

He knew my name, though. How? I'd never met him before, I was certain.

“Who are you?” I asked. Then, I added, “And how do you know my name?”

“Chief Kubo,” he said without missing a beat. He slammed the accelerator and sped around a turn, starting for the highway entrance ramp. We were headed out of Flint in a hurry, though I couldn't say where to. “I'm with the Veiled Order,” he finished.

The Veiled Order. Wasn't that the organization Amundsen had mentioned in the hospital? The one who'd done this to me, and which had such great plans for me in the future?

I guess they'd sent those guys out to collect me, their precious possession. I was a dog that'd gotten loose, and they were the dog catchers, these guys who traveled in jet black vehicles and pushed the cops around. Did they have ties to the FBI or something?

“So, are you a federal agent?” I chanced.

Kubo didn't reply to that one.

“Are you taking me back to that hospital?”

Still no reply.

We were on the highway, coasting along at a cool eighty miles per hour. Kubo eased it up to eighty-five. He was the kind of guy who could afford not to give a fuck how fast he was going. No one in their right mind was going to pull him over, even without plates on his car.

“Why have you come for me?” I asked, exasperated by his silence.

He sighed. “Because it's my job. I'm your boss, idiot. Your babysitter, whatever.”

Now, what was that supposed to mean? “B-boss?” I tried the word out on my lips, but it didn't sound right.

That must've been because, to the best of my knowledge, I'd never signed up to work for this guy. I watched the highway scenery as it was lit up by the dawn and dropped my hands into my lap. “I don't remember signing anything... interviewing for any kind of job,” I said quietly.

Kubo smirked, but said nothing. He didn't give a damn.

TEN

When we made it to the facility and had parked the SUV in a large lot blocked off by tall gates sturdy enough to keep Godzilla out, Kubo led me inside by the arm. We walked in through a set of sliding double doors. The way forward was locked tightly, and it was only after he swiped a keycard and entered a ridiculously long string of numbers into a keypad that the inner door finally opened, revealing a lobby of great extent, and furnished with sleek furniture.

Not that there was anyone to be seen there.

We stepped inside and the door closed behind us with a hiss, effectively blocking the outside world from view. This was the kind of place where intense shit went down; dangerous, experimental pathogens might be developed here. Maybe this was where the President kept that infamous red button of his, for launching nukes. It occurred to me, too, that this could be the kind of remote facility where terrorists got spirited away to. Am I about to get water boarded for busting out of here last night? I wondered shudderingly. Kubo let go of my arm and took on a slightly more relaxed stance as he led me out of the lobby and down a narrow hall, accessed by-- you guessed it-- another long sequence of numbers.

“Is this some kind of FBI holding facility?” I squeaked as he started down the meandering hall. Like the lobby, this space was done up in a greyscale color scheme. The carpeting was a faint black color, the walls were slate and the ceiling a very light grey. The doors, of which there were several along the way, were of a dark black coloration; some kind of thick wood, stained with a rich varnish. The fluorescents were harsh, made the place feel sterile, and even as we turned a corner there wasn't a single window to be seen.

“No,” said Kubo. “We're not FBI, though we sometimes lie to law enforcement just to speed things along. It's easier to lie than to tell them the truth.” He charged ahead, picking one of the countless unmarked doors and pushing it open. A light came on automatically and he waved me inside. “We do have some members who are employed by the FBI, however. It helps us grease the wheels on those rare occasions when we have to deal with the feds.”

By the looks of it, it was a conference room. Looking and feeling like utter shit, I couldn't help but laugh. What, we were going to sit down and talk business with me looking half-dead and still damp with piss? It was ludicrous. I took the seat that was offered to me, a firm, leathery chair of which there were several, all arranged around a solid grey table. There were screens on both sides of the room and a massive projector bolted into the ceiling, with lenses on both sides. It reminded me of a lecture hall, and was every bit as stuffy. Not a hint of outside air had ever touched this space.

Well, I thought, setting my hands on the table and staring down at the cuffs that were still locked around my wrists, It's not the first time you've shown up for a lecture feeling like crap. I remembered my college days, stumbling into Monday morning classes after weekends of hard drinking. Looking back on it, it was a miracle I lived, much less graduated. Kubo plucked me from my reverie as he dropped down into a chair of his own and cracked his big, beefy knuckles.

The guy looked Japanese, and with a surname like Kubo he almost certainly was. He was bigger and stockier than any Japanese guy I'd ever met, though; a bit taller than me and far more muscular. I made my living roughing people up, but this guy walked on higher ground. Power radiated off of him in great peals like invisible thunder. Just sitting across from him was enough to get a taste.

Kubo tugged at the collar of his shirt and yanked off his jacket. Then, rolling up his sleeves and revealing forearms of incredible thickness, he glanced me over narrowly. “You remember anything about last night? Where you went, what you did?”

I pursed my lips, shaking my head. I couldn't remember a damn thing, though if my run-in with the cops that morning had been any indication, then I'd gotten up to something mighty bad. Up to that point I'd only ever been arrested once. Bought some weed in high school and got picked up by a family friend who was a cop. They threw me in the county lockup overnight to try and scare me straight. It didn't work; if anything else, it only taught me to act more discrete when making transactions of that kind. My encounter with the police that morning, however, had been completely different. Those cops hadn't planned to just arrest me, to take me downtown and let me sit in a cell with a bunch of other criminals. They seemed like they'd been planning to gun me down on the spot, put me down like a rabid animal. I got shivers just thinking about how close I'd walked that line. Shit, I still do, to this day.

“The demon in you took over,” he said. “It was the night of the new moon. This was to be expected. We should have locked you in the containment room, but the doctor wasn't sure whether you were stable enough to make the transfer. I guess you were. The Veiled Order will handle the legal issues; don't worry about last night. We'll need to be more careful in the future, however.”

I didn't need him to tell me the demon had taken over. I could still remember the moment the thing had gained full control, the moment I'd leapt from the window of the hospital.

Glancing around the room, I asked Kubo a question of my own. “What is this Veiled Order everyone keeps talking about? No one's given me a great answer, yet I get the impression that I'm on their payroll now. What's up with that? And, uh... if they're so damn important, what are they doing hanging around Detroit of all places?”

“The Veiled Order is older than any of us can say. It has descended from secret societies throughout history, and its core members are comprised of a lineage that has ruled since times immemorial. The Order has its fingers in every pie you can imagine; every field of influence, be it government, finance, biomedical research... the list goes on. When tinfoil-hat wearing kooks talk about secret societies pulling the strings, the man behind the curtain, it ain't the Bilderberg Group or the Trilateral Commission. Not the Illuminati, either. The real manipulators, the only ones, are the members of the Veiled Order. Nothing of real import happens in this world that they don't know about. They've got their ear to the ground constantly and have such a wide network of members and associates that it gives me a headache just trying to describe it.” Smirking, he added, “And Detroit? Well, ain't it just the perfect place for all of this secret shit? No one would ever think to look in Michigan for the high-ranking members of a secret society. Think about it, Lucy.”

I didn't really know what to say, so I didn't say anything at all. Instead, I just shifted my thighs uncomfortably, trying to get over the cold spot that plagued the front of my shorts. Didn't they have a shower in this joint? A change of clothes?

“The mission of the Veiled Order is to protect humanity from what dwells in the Beyond. There is a veil that exists between this world and the next, and sometimes, that veil thins out, grows weak. Outsiders cross over. It's our job to beat back those outsiders and maintain the status quo. If not for us, then the species would have died out long ago.”

This was all a little hard to believe. “OK, that's pretty cool, I guess...” If what Kubo was saying was true-- and I guess I didn't really have any reason to doubt him, aside from the sheer enormity of this disclosure and its far-reaching implications-- then every other conspiracy theory I'd read about in the past seemed quaint by comparison. The JFK assassination? The moon landing? Who could possibly give a rat's ass about those when this group was keeping demons, witches and who knew what else hidden from the public?

“I bet you guys know a lot about conspiracies and such, eh? What about, say, Kennedy? Was it actually the guy on the grassy knoll, or...?”

Kubo arched a brow. “Actually, Kennedy was put down by a member of our organization. He'd infiltrated the highest ranks of the US government without the public realizing he wasn't human.”

I chortled. “What? JFK wasn't human?”

“No. A werewolf, as a matter of fact. The bullet that took him out was forged of pure silver and thoroughly blessed.”

“Huh.” I folded my hands in my lap and straightened out my gown a little bit. “Didn't expect that.” I looked around the room. “So, what are we doing in here? You think I might be able to shower or something?”

“We're getting straight to work,” he replied. “When we're through with this briefing, you'll be free to go, princess. Till then, you need to stay put.”

I grimaced. Awesome. One minute I'm getting possessed by a demon. The next, I'm getting shaken down by murderous cops. And now it's time to punch the clock and pretend that none of that happened.

There was a knock at the door.

“Come in,” bellowed Kubo.

From the hall there entered two individuals. First was a girl, very thin and slightly hunched. She was dressed in a bizarre outfit; it looked like a burlap sack with a hood sewn onto it. There were some designs embroidered onto the rough-looking fabric in black thread, but they were chaotic and bespoke an unpracticed hand. Long, black hair escaped the edges of this hood and framed her youthful face. Glassy eyes looked into the room, blinking rapidly. Though she looked rather young, perhaps a teenager, she stooped and ambled about like an old woman. She said nothing, but slowly navigated her way to a seat. Then, sitting down, she began to twitch and mumble to herself.

The other individual, a young guy, looked like a greaser straight out of an old movie. His brown hair was swept back with a thick layer of pomade, and his thin frame was draped in a well-worn leather jacket. A pair of ratty jeans, a pristine wife beater and a pair of black boots with pointy, silver tips completed his ensemble. I could see a switchblade tucked into his back pocket. He leaned against the other end of the table, nodding to Kubo and appraising me frigidly. “Who's this guy?” he asked, clicking his tongue. “He reeks of piss, chief. You hiring hobos now?”

Kubo smirked. “Sit down, Joe.” When Joe had splayed out into his seat with a sigh, Kubo stood and pointed at me. “This is Lucy. He's a new hire. The Demon Heart you've both heard about.”

My face reddened as the three of them squared me up. I had to admit, though-- “Demon Heart” was kind of a badass title.

Joe picked at a hole in the knee of his jeans and snickered. “Lucy, eh? The hell kinda name is that? They gave this pussy the demon's heart? Woulda made more sense to put it in Isabella over there, don'tcha think?”

The twitching girl with the glassy eyes turned to him, cocking her head to the side. “Isabella doesn't want a demon's heart, thank you.”

Either Isabella wasn't presently in the room or this weird-ass chick referred to herself in the third person. The latter seemed most likely.

“So, you're Joe,” I said, nodding to the greaser, “and you're Isabella?”

The two of them nodded, except that Joe had to take exception to something, assert his dominance. This would become a common theme with him, I could sense it even then. “Actually, the name's Fire Joe. But maybe I'll let you call me 'Joe' someday.”

I held back a chuckle, but my grin betrayed me. “Fire Joe? Why's that?”

Pulling a silver Zippo lighter from his pocket, Joe gave it a flip and switched it on. A small flame danced about, and to my horror, he held a fingertip over it for several seconds. When he finally drew his finger away, he reached out and took hold of my arm with his other hand, slowly tracing a line against the cuffs that still hung around my wrists. One after the other, the cuffs fell noisily to the table, the metal sheared apart easily, as if it were paper. It was incredible. The small line glowed, had been super-heated by his fingertip. It was like he'd gathered up the heat and then focused it in one spot. He was a human blowtorch. Rubbing at my wrists, I sat back in my chair. “H-how did you do that?”

Joe reclined, giving a toss of his shoulders and donning a satisfied smirk.

“We'll worry about that later,” said Kubo, crossing his arms. “You can get to know each other on your own time. I've called you all here to discuss something far more important: The details of a new case. This team has been assembled by the leaders of the Veiled Order, and I have been chosen to lead it on this mission to track down the coven of Mater Agatha. Pay close attention.” Fishing out a remote from a nearby cubby, Kubo dimmed the lights and switched on the projector.

Damn. I'd been conscious and in control of my body for, what, an hour? It seemed a little early to start slamming me with fresh work. I perched my chin atop the back of my hand and slumped forward as the briefing began.

ELEVEN

The Veiled Order, I'd been told, was committed to hunting down denizens of the “Beyond” who chose to meddle in human affairs.

I guess that made us like the Ghostbusters; killing zombies, beheading vampires and banishing frisky poltergeists.

But as Kubo began his brief presentation, I found myself annoyed at the lack of background details. Everyone else in the room seemed to know about this coven already, was comfortable with the idea that witches, demons and other baddies were as real as you and I. Me? I'd only just learned their names, had only gotten a proper explanation of the Veiled Order's mission statement moments ago. It was like being the new guy at the office; it was business as usual for everyone else, but I was going to have to work my ass off to keep up.

Kubo's slideshow was mostly there for illustrative purposes; he wasn't going to make us read detailed slides or anything. I gazed up at the screen and paid close attention, deciding to give this thing a proper shot, lest I appear any more clueless than I already did. When the first photo came across the screen however, I wished I hadn't looked.

“What the...” I muttered. It was a photograph of a room in a house. The fixtures looked old; there was a table, a shuttered window, the edge of something like a shelf or mantle. I wasn't really focusing on the décor, though, so much as the vibrant, red smears that covered all of these surfaces. The table was marked in black streaks of what appeared to be ash, and the streaks joined to create what I could only guess was a magic circle of some kind. Within it, in a puddle of half-clotted blood, was an arm.

A tiny arm.

My guts did a somersault and I felt like I was going to be ill. I looked away, then quickly glanced back at the screen to make sure I hadn't mistaken it.

Nope. That's definitely a baby's arm.

The other three didn't so much as flinch. Joe and Isabella looked to the screen, poker-faced, while Kubo paced and started into his spiel. Maybe this kind of thing was normal in their line of work.

If that was the case, then I was definitely having second thoughts about joining up.

“We've been tasked with tracking down the coven of Mater Agatha,” began Kubo. “They've been busy of late, kidnapping kids and carrying out charming little rituals like this one across town. This photo was taken at a crime scene eight months ago. Since then, seven other local infants have met the same fate.”

Kubo slowly brought up seven more crime scene photos of similar grisliness, pausing on each one to make his point.

I'm going to spare you the specifics. To be frank, I couldn't even bear to look at half of them, and by the time he clicked over to a less distressing picture, one of the old, burnt-out house I'd just woken up in, my face must've been paler than the white screen. Suffice it to say the photos were fucked up. Pictures of dead bodies were one thing, but photos of kids all broken up like toy dolls was something else entirely. If Kubo was trying to get us worked up with his little presentation, then it was working. Through my disgust, I was getting pissed.

Kubo continued. “Last we tracked them, the coven was using this abandoned house in Flint as a center of operations. We interrupted them during their nightly worship and they scattered. Our team had expected more resistance, however as the witches are nearing their goal, they're getting more defensive. They need to sacrifice only one more child to succeed, and it is our job to hunt and kill each and every one of them before they do so.”

I nodded, peering cautiously at the screen. “So... what happens, then, if they manage to get their hands on another baby and, uh...”

“Something terrible,” said Kubo, simply.

My question had earned me curious looks from the other two. Joe smirked and shook his head, as if he were surprised at my ignorance. Isabella was looking at me, too, but her glassy eyes may just as well have been peering straight through me. Her head bobbed side to side and a few unintelligible words dribbled from her lips.

“They're looking to summon up a powerful force of evil, a dark deity, to do their bidding,” continued Kubo. “And if they succeed, the Order is going to have a hell of a time. But never mind that. We aren't here to discuss what'll happen if they're successful. What's important is that we sense the threat and are moving to nullify it.” He turned back to the screen, the next slide showing a black, doubtful shape along a twilit street. It appeared hunched, humanoid, if only for its long limbs and the suggestion of a pale, leering face. The photograph was taken from a distance however, and was of rather poor quality. “Mater Agatha's coven is incredibly dangerous. The witches on her payroll are not rookies. They aren't your run-of-the-mill craft users who picked up some tricks on the street. They're ancient practitioners, all of them, and their insights into the craft are profound. We'll have to tread very carefully moving forward. The higher-ups have put this team together with the express purpose of hunting down these dangerous witches. They believe that our abilities make for good synergy, and I have to say that I agree with their choices. So long as we can get our acts together and follow directions, we should come out on top.”

This last bit was evidently directed at yours truly, for the way Kubo appraised me, arching a bushy brow. He looked at me like I was a kid he had to babysit, a contemptible liability.

Oh, come on. What do you want from me? I wanted to throw my hands up. The demon's heart had been in place for, what, a day? I wasn't exactly feeling like Superman in that conference room, wearing a tattered hospital gown and reeking of piss. It was true that I'd gotten into some trouble; I'd done some shit the night before, had jumped out of a window and had somehow made it all the way out to that abandoned house in Flint-- on foot, no less. But this demon's heart wasn't really living up to the hype. Were they expecting it to turn me into Bruce Lee? Did they want me to just wake up and know what to do? These three weren't exactly being patient with me.

“The coven is thought to be comprised of ten to twelve members, plus numerous familiars. They're running a tight operation, and this late in the game they're going to be extra careful. We're going to have to force them into conflict or hope they mess up and give themselves away. We have many feelers searching them out, but there's a lot of talent in their corner.” For my benefit, Kubo went on. “Normally, we hunt small-timers, or lone wolves. A coven of this age and strength is not at all a common target.”

“Ok,” I replied. “So, our talents compliment each other.” I looked at Joe. “I know what you do, with your little fire thing, but what about Isabella over there?”

Joe crossed his arms, his greased up hair quivering as he shook his head. “Little fire thing, he says. Maybe I'll ask the chief to let me take you out back to show you more of what I can do.”

Isabella stared at me blankly, and didn't seem in any hurry to respond. Thankfully, Kubo chimed in. “She's a magician.”

A magician? What the hell was that supposed to mean? I'd faced that coven of witches as a plain old human, and they'd torn me to shreds. Was I supposed to believe that card tricks and disappearing coins were enough to keep the savage witches at bay? Need I remind you that one of them turned her hand into a frigging sword and murdered me with it? “OK, cool. So, we've got, uh... a yakuza, a pyromaniac and David Blaine on our side. Neat.” Canvassing the room, I returned to Kubo and shrugged. “What's my power, then?”

“You're a smartass, for one,” blurted Joe, toying with something in his back pocket. It was the switchblade; I could tell by the way he was fidgeting that he was seeking a good way to pluck it out of his pocket and open it before plunging it into my ribs.

I leaned away from him a little, glancing up at Kubo. “Well?”

Kubo shut off the projector and chuckled. “Not sure, actually. For all I know, you might be a dud. Time will tell, but for now I can only guess that the top dogs have sent you along as a meat-shield.”

“Oh, fuck you,” I said, throwing up my hands. “When is this demon heart supposed to kick in? What do I have to do? Do I transform into a monster or something? Will it make me a great fighter? Can I vanquish souls to Hell with a magic spell?”

This time, Kubo grimaced, his massive frame bristling. “Actually, you can't. Because this isn't a goddamned cartoon. Your powers will take some time to develop. The demon heart will have to get accustomed to your body, but there's no way for us to know exactly how your powers will manifest because transplants like this one are seldom done. There's no step-by-step guide, no 'What to Expect' book I can refer you to. Shut up and take this.” He reached into a box at his feet, pulling out a large handgun and a black cell phone. “Both are for official use only,” he warned, adding a small cardboard box of bullets shortly thereafter.

I eyed the gun first. It was the biggest, meatiest thing I'd ever seen and looked like it might take my arm off if I dared to pull the trigger. Seriously, the giant silver piece probably had a great deal of kickback. I never carried a gun at my old job, didn't bother. Not that it would have been a bad idea, for my own protection, but my experience with firearms was practically nil, and to see this imposing piece on the table before me made me kind of nervous. I stood up and tried to tuck it into the waistband of my shorts, but the thing was too heavy and nearly fell out. I scrambled to grasp it and then set it back on the tabletop, lest I accidentally shoot myself in the groin.

The phone was really something else. It was made of a tough, black material that felt sort of like leather. It was an old model, a flip-phone, and a cursory look at its pixellated screen made me chuckle. The buttons were chunky, back-lit. A phone like this one might be useful in the field while running away from bloodthirsty witches and dialing for backup, but it looked like a joke. “You secret society guys sure are cutting edge,” I said giving the phone a shake. “You ever hear of smart phones? How the hell am I supposed to update social media on this dinosaur?”

Leaning on the table, both fists pressed into it, Kubo glared at me. “I thought I told you, it's for official use only. That's the phone we're going to use to get ahold of you when we need you. Sorry it doesn't have enough frills for you, princess.”

Joe burst out laughing, relaxing somewhat and crossing his arms once more. “You're pretty high maintenance, you know that, Lucy?”

With that out of the way, Kubo opened the floor to questions.

Oh, sure, I had questions. Lots of them. But I wasn't really sure where to start, or if I actually needed them answered badly enough to subject myself to more of the team's bullshit. The mission was pretty clear; I'd be doing whatever Kubo told me to do and we'd be looking for witches. Whenever we found them, we'd kill them. Simple, clear-cut.

Now, don't misunderstand. I wanted those witches dead. They'd done a number on me, after all. I wasn't exactly a part of this Mater Agatha's fan-club. And yet, the stubborn part of me, the part that hated being pushed around and left out of the loop, detested this arrangement. No one had told me that this heart transplant had strings attached. There hadn't been any advertisement detailing “One Free Secret Society Membership When You Buy One Demon Heart!” And yet, here I was. Had the circumstances been different, or had the team been a little more understanding and welcoming, maybe I'd have been more cooperative. As things were however, I still wasn't sold. Wanting the witches dead wasn't enough of a motivator; I needed them to sweeten the pot if I was going to work alongside them and field their shitty attitudes all day.

“So,” I began. “What's in it for me? I tag along, your talented Demon Heart, and... what do I get for my trouble?”

Evidently, Kubo had been waiting for me to ask that question, because with a big smirk I wanted to punch off of his face he drew a folded piece of white paper from one of his pockets and slid it across the table to me.

I opened it, recognizing it in an instant for what it was.

It was one of my student loan bills. “H-hold on a second, where did you get this?” I asked. In retrospect, that was a stupid question. These guys hunted witches and other paranormal crap for a living. Getting ahold of someone's bills was child's play for the likes of the Veiled Order.

“Working for the Order is lucrative, Lucy. You stand to make a good wage, but beyond that, my bosses have offered to pay off your loan balances in full should we manage to strike down the coven. Think of it as a little bonus.” Kubo looked satisfied, and it was because he knew he'd just won me over. There wasn't a flat-broke, debt-ridden graduate I knew who would possibly turn down such an offer.

“Y-yeah, OK. Sounds good,” I said. And then I shut my damn mouth, lest the terms of the deal change. A decent payday and all of my loans paid off? I couldn't start looking for that coven fast enough.

Walking over to the door, Kubo prepared to release us. “I'll be in contact when I have my orders. Keep that phone handy,” he said, pointing to me in particular. “I may call you at any hour, and you'll be expected to join me in a timely fashion at any given destination. Understood?”

Still numb, I nodded. This must be what lottery winners feel like. It was a staggering sort of peacefulness that washed over me, sufficient to ward off all of the stress and terror I'd faced in the past twenty-four hours. One completed mission would make me a free man, squash all of that debt I'd been carrying around for years. It was an incredible relief.

There was one problem, however.

“Chief,” I said, standing up. “There's one thing I need to ask you, though. It's important.”

Kubo looked at me expectantly.

I peered down at my rags. “Can you hook me up with some clean clothes? And, you know, if you have my personal effects just laying around, those would be great, too.”

TWELVE

Kubo was able to give me my stuff back without too much trouble. I was given a clean gown to wear in place of a shirt, since the one I'd come in with was torn up and covered in blood. My jeans were more or less OK, save for a few stains here and there. Gave them more character, I figured. My keys and wallet were returned, too, and I was surprised that the latter hadn't been messed with. The fat stack I'd lifted from those two art thieves on my hunt for the Dali, along with the money Amundsen had given me, was still inside. My car had been towed to the facility a day ago, and was waiting in the parking lot as I left the lobby. Joe and Isabella had long disappeared by the time I'd cleaned myself up. Kubo had walked off into the complex after handing over my things and hadn't said so much as goodbye.

Coming up to the car, I climbed in and took a deep breath. Sitting behind the wheel again was surreal; when last I'd driven the old girl, I'd been a completely different person. Ignorant, naïve, blind to the world of the Beyond.

Oh, and I guess I'd been one-hundred percent human then, too. I wasn't sure I could say that anymore, not with this new heart beating in my chest.

I stuck the key in the ignition and sped out of the lot as soon as the mammoth gates parted and allowed me onto the main drag.

I needed a drink.

***

The day was young, but I didn't much care. When you're in a business like mine, people don't think twice when they see you drinking hard liquor at ten in the morning. I stopped by my place long enough to take a shower and throw on a proper shirt, and then paid a long visit to a local restaurant that specializes in kegs n' eggs. Sucking down several beers, a few omelets and some sides of greasy hash browns, I realized I wasn't full yet. The hunger that came over me then felt insatiable, and before I left, my gut sticking out a few more inches than usual, I ordered a couple of shots, along with a bacon cheeseburger, fries and sundae.

With an ass-load of money in my wallet and nothing but time to kill until Kubo deigned to call me, I started down the street for Sam The Record Man, eager to pick up some new vinyl. I had a pretty decent audio setup at home and collected records when my finances allowed. Some jazz or classical on the turntable, a long bath and some good booze-- not the cheap stuff-- sounded like a damn fine way to spend the day. Maybe I'd be able to forget everything I'd just been through. I even considered stopping by at the cigar shop across the street as I pulled open the front door of Sam's and walked in.

My appreciation of art extends far beyond pictures. Music is the air I breathe; I listen to it while driving, while doing the dishes, while going for walks. Not a day goes by that I don't listen to at least a few tunes, and my tastes are pretty eclectic. My favorite genres have always been jazz and classical, but I have a soft spot in my heart for alternative rock styles like shoegaze and poppier stuff, like twee. Sam's was the best damn record store in town, and they always brought the goods. I knew the owner to be a guy with excellent taste, and whenever he worked the two of us would often spend an hour or more just hanging out at the counter, talking about Bill Evans, Art Blakey and others. At Sam's, I knew everyone who worked there by name, was comfortable with every face behind the counter and almost felt like the store was a home away from home. It was anyone's guess how many hours I'd spent in the place over the years.

Stepping inside, I was hit immediately by that somewhat stuffy, papery smell you get when you cram thousands of records and CDs into a confined space. It wasn't a large building; the main room was devoted to CDs, and a smaller room beyond it, accessed by a narrow doorway, housed rows upon rows of records. Virtually every surface was crammed with goods; if not for my love of music, I might've been disgusted by the place. Once, I'd taken a girl there on a date and she'd hated it, called it a hoarder's nest. Looking over the dense stacks bathed in the dim lighting, I could see what she meant.

Wheeling over towards the desk, I saw it was Scott working there. He was a cool guy, a few years younger than me, and his interest was mainly in old new wave bands like Talking Heads and Devo. I'd been hoping to find Jessie working the counter today. She was a real treat for the eyes; barely eighteen and covered from head to toe in awesome tattoos. Her sleeve tattoos were done up like trees, crowded with green leaves and peppered with small forest animals. She had this other one, too, on her lower back, which I'd admired one night after a party when she decided to come over to my place and--

Anyway, it occurs to me that that's a story for another time. More important things were happening in Sam's than my boner-inducing reverie.

Scott was standing behind the counter, looking at me with wide eyes, his mouth half-open like he'd just gotten the wind knocked out of him. No, actually, he was crouching, grabbing at the edge of the counter with one hand and furtively searching with the other for the Louisville Slugger I knew the staff to keep behind the counter. At the sight of me, the guy looked poised to shit himself, and I couldn't for the life of me say why.

I turned around quickly to make sure I hadn't been followed in by a ghost, and then looked back at him, giving a quick nod. “Hey, Scott. What's up, man?” I took a couple of steps towards the counter, but he urged me off in a hurry, throwing his hands out like an enthusiastic mime building a wall.

Scott could barely speak, could hardly find the words. “Y-you get o-out of here,” he managed, his face going a shade paler as I slowly approached.

I showed him my palms, glancing around the store confusedly. There was no one else in there, no other staff or customers to speak of. It was just me and him, and the two of us had no beef with one another, had always gotten along fine. Why was he so scared of me?

His next bit of stammered speech made it clear.

“Get... g-get the fuck outta here, Lucian.” When I appeared incredulous, he continued. “D-don't gimme that look, like you don't remember coming in here. I don't k-know what you were on, but you aren't welcome here anymore, a-and if you don't get the fuck out now, I'm calling the cops.” He reached for the bat, clutching it to his chest and backing up against the wall. “I-I'll hit ya, bro.”

I took a step back, hands still raised. “Whoa, now. What the hell are you talking about?” My memories of the prior night were fuzzy, bordering on non-existent, but I felt pretty sure that I hadn't visited a record shop in my demon-driven haze. “I wasn't here last night, Scott. I... I...” Turns out I couldn't really tell him where I'd been the night before, so I just let it drop. “Put down the bat, man. I'm not going to hurt you.”

Scott shook his head fervently, his brow dotted in sweat and his ordinarily rosy cheeks glowing like hot coals. His chest was heaving beneath his vintage Blondie T-shirt, and his thin wrists were flexing as he gripped the Slugger afresh. “Y-you came in here last night all kinds of fucked up, man. You assaulted me, threw me down onto the counter in front of all the customers and demanded to know where we kept the Stooges records. Said you were... were gonna...” He trembled at this part. “Said you were gonna kick my head clean off my shoulders if I didn't give you Raw Power and Fun House on vinyl. After I gave you those, you literally ran out the door, faster than I've ever seen, and knocked a few displays over on your way out. Y-you need to leave. Now.”

A lot of bizarre shit had gone down in the past twenty-four hours, but this one was too out there to believe. The Stooges? The gritty, proto-punk band fronted by Iggy Pop in the 70's? I stood there and started laughing in Scott's face. “Dude,” I said, “that's a good one, but you know I'm not into them. I hate that kind of shit, it's too loud. For stoners. Has no structure.” My smile fell away pretty quick after that, because Scott was still holding onto the bat and was slowly leaning over the counter like he intended to bean me across the head with it. “Look, man...” I started, “I don't know what happened here last night, but... I, I mean... you know me, Scott. I'm not... this doesn't add up!”

Scott took a feeble swing, knocking over a small case of nicknacks and strewing them all over the floor. “Get out!” he shouted.

“Fuck, fine!” I backed out of the store, bumping into a young woman who was coming in, and then quickly beat it across the street. Unsettled by the exchange, I jogged all the way home, wondering just what I'd gotten up to the night before. The cops had been after me. A demonic, late-night visit to the record store wasn't completely out of bounds, but I had a hard time believing that demon-possessed Lucian had stormed in to search for some shitty 70's rock records.

I scrambled up to my apartment and locked the door behind me, wondering if I wasn't going to hear the peal of sirens in the distance. Would the Veiled Order take care of everything for me? Kubo had gotten the police death squad to back off in the abandoned house earlier, but he wasn't here now to beat them off of my doorstep. I looked out the peephole for a while and then edged my way into the living room.

“I don't believe it,” I muttered. “Scott's a friend. I wouldn't just march in there and do that. And of all the records to steal... It was probably some junkie that looked like me.”

I rummaged around in my cabinets for my bottle of Johnny Walker Blue, still mostly full and reserved for special occasions, and poured myself three fingers' worth. Then, palming at my forehead, I ambled into the living room to my turntable. I was developing one hell of a headache.

There, atop the glass cover, were two records I didn't recognize. I picked them up and glanced them over before throwing them to the ground the next instant, as though they were blisteringly hot.

Raw Power and Fun House. Stooges records.

“Aw, shit.”

THIRTEEN

I spent that evening cooped up in my apartment, standing by the window on the lookout for flashing lights, in my underwear.

I mean, what else is a gun-toting, demon-hearted badass supposed to do with his time?

Fixing myself drink after drink, I couldn't seem to enjoy my usual buzz. The stuff was hardly touching me, its sedating effect completely absent, so that around midnight I finally hung it up and put my collection of bottles away. Over the course of hours I tried watching movies. Die Hard was on, and I sat through the first ten minutes before trying some home improvement show on for size. A little later I tried reading a few chapters of The Picture of Dorian Grey, except that I couldn't focus on the prose. My eyes skipped around the page so that virtually nothing sank in.

I couldn't stay still.

I know a thing or two about what it feels like to be on drugs, and this was as close to a combo of speed and cocaine as I could imagine. Fidgety, hyper-aware and hyper-paranoid. Not the best feeling in the world.

Pacing around my apartment like a madman, I decided to give music a try.

From my stacks I pulled an old favorite of mine, an original pressing of Coltrane's My Favorite Things. It was a masterpiece, a record I'd had a hell of a time hunting down, and I'd paid a pretty penny for it. The minute it'd come across Sam's desk I knew I had to have it. The old softie had saved it for me before putting it on the shelf, knowing I'd been looking for it. I felt bad as I loaded up the record. I'd fucked up last night, and now my favorite haunt in town was off-limits. Demon-possessed or not, why had I decided to go to Sam's? Why had I roughed up Scott and stolen merchandise that I didn't even care for?

“My Favorite Things” came on, the familiar piano sounding, accompanied by scarce splashes from the cymbal. Then the soprano sax kicked in, Coltrane's melodious lines weaving slowly into improvisational territory. This was a hell of a track, a dynamite opener, nearly thirteen minutes long, and it never failed to cheer me up. The soothing effect of the album was always doubled by the time “Everytime We Say Goodbye” came on. I flopped across my couch and listened with closed eyes.

But I felt nothing.

Blinking confusedly, I sucked in a deep breath and focused hard on the meandering piano solo that was firing up just then.

Nope.

This music sounded like straight-up garbage.

“What the hell?” I muttered. That couldn't possibly be right. It was possible I just wasn't in the mood for jazz, but a complete dislike for the record was unfathomable. I'd listened to My Favorite Things after breakups, after failed exams, awful days on the job. It was my stress-relief record, and a hell of a lot cheaper than valium. So, why wasn't it working? Why was the searching, complex soprano making me suddenly upset? In that moment, I wanted to bat the record off of the player and stomp it to pieces.

There was no accounting for the anger that spilled through me half-way into the opening track. I sat up, red in the face, heart pumping with vigor, and looked to my turntable with a grimace as though it'd just betrayed me. Clawing at the ratty armrest of the sofa, I forced myself onto my feet and sauntered over to it, turning it off. The resultant silence was a welcome change, but the anger remained firmly in place.

Flexing my fists I stalked around the living room like a caged animal. Heat was radiating off of my body and sweat was marking the armpits of my t-shirt. I took it off and threw it over my shoulder, into the kitchen. Peeking at the thermostat, I found it set to a comfortable sixty-eight degrees. Why the sudden rush of warmth, then?

The left side of my chest throbbed, the pounding of my new heart sending wave after wave of raw heat through me. It was the demon, probably. Shaking my head, I walked to the fridge and pulled out a water bottle. I pressed it to my forehead, relishing the coolness, and sighed. “I dunno about you,” I said, “but I just want to relax. What's the matter? Not into jazz? I pictured demons as real cultured, sophisticated types. Is that just a stereotype in the movies?” Cracking the lid off of the bottle, I took a long gulp. “You could stand to be a little more like Al Pacino in The Devil's Advocate, you know that? He was evil, but seemed pretty fun. You? You're just a dick. I feel like I'm going into menopause over here.”

The warmth persisted, intensified. It felt like I had a fever, except the fever was somehow sentient and attempting to crawl out of my skin. I peered down at my bare midsection, surprised to find the skin red and dotted in sweat. Returning to my turntable, I rifled through the rest of my collection, trying to find something else to listen to. So, the demon wasn't into Coltrane. Perhaps Tchaikovsky would calm it down.

I loaded up an old record full of classical pieces, the first of which was Tchaikovsky's Marche Slave.

You wouldn't know it by looking at me, but I'm quite a fan of classical music. In college, I was in with the student orchestra's social circle, and maybe that was where I'd first developed a taste for Chopin, Beethoven and others. Or, come to think of it, maybe it was those horny orchestra chicks, whose hours of practice on the cello allowed them to do things with their nimble hands you wouldn't believe, that first spurred my interest...

Either way, I had a decent-sized collection of classical works, both on vinyl and digital, and listened to them with frequency. It only took me a few bars of impatient listening to realize that Marche Slave, also a former favorite, sounded like complete shit. With a good deal less care than I usually afforded my records, I reached into the player and yanked the thing out, tossing it across my living room like a frisbee. The fever was growing. I felt like my insides were slowly melting, pooling in my gut. The heat made me feel lethargic, and yet a profound anger surged on, seeing me stomp across the room in circles.

“What do you want from me?” I asked, kneading at my chest. The left side was getting sore for the thumping of my heart. I balled my fist and gave my left breast a hard tap, trying to quiet the active organ down, but it only seemed to writhe harder in protest. “I just want to relax, goddamn you. Let me relax!”

On the floor, where I'd left them, were the two Stooges records I'd apparently stolen from Sam's the night before. “What, you want me to turn on this shit?” I stooped down and picked up the first, called Raw Power, and tore off the thin plastic wrapping. With all the finesse of an angry kindergartener, I removed the record from its sleeve and put it on the turntable, adjusting the volume so that I wouldn't annoy my neighbors. “Here you go, you asshole. Enjoy.”

The record started turning and the first track began.

From the very first note, I was released from my fever.

A charging guitar broke through the air at once, accompanied by thumping, hypnotic bass and a thick wall of drums. I stood there, stunned at the sound. It was gritty, grungy, unlike anything I'd ever heard. Scanning the sleeve, I found the name of the song, “Search and Destroy”, and even started tapping my foot along with the first chorus.

I'm not the kind of guy who listens to rock n' roll. I mean, alternative rock, indie rock, the types of rock that are popular nowadays with the artsier crowd, are all right. I'm not above listening to something on the college radio stations if it makes me more well-rounded, and I've gone to more lame gigs to watch awful rock bands in the hopes of getting laid than I care to count. But stuff like The Stooges has always been too chaotic and loud for my tastes. Low-brow.

That's why it was such a surprise when I found I loved it. Something, seemingly deep inside of me, was really getting off on Iggy Pop's frantic vocals and the fiery roar of electric guitar. There was a beauty in it, beneath all of the lo-fi grit. What I'd once cast aside as violent and unrefined was now tickling my earholes like nothing else, and I cranked up the volume further, swaying side to side as the opener heated up.

The heat within my body had dissipated, or else I was enjoying the music so much I was no longer cognizant of it. The anger I'd felt faded into the background, but a high energy remained. This music was amping me up like a shot of adrenaline to the heart. My limbs twitched, the muscles taut, and a great excitement coursed through me. The demon, apparently, was a big fan.

Pumped up beyond all reason, I pounded my fist to the music, my knuckles pressing firmly into the edge of my oaken writing desk.

I was startled as the desk disintegrated into splinters with a single punch. The sturdy wood gave way like an eggshell and the mass of papers and trinkets atop it tumbled to the ground along with the shattered fragments that'd once been furniture.

The music faded into the background for just a moment as I surveyed the damage.

No way in hell I'd punched clean through the desk. Putting a few dents in the wood was reasonable, maybe, but this was more damage than any untrained man should have been capable of. The desk had been made of thick wood, far thicker than those panels that martial artists punched and kicked through for practice. I'd broken the thing, reduced it to a jumble of splinters, and I'd done it effortlessly. Clenching my fist and staring at the wreck with wonderment, I picked off a few flecks of dust on my knuckles and looked to the turntable.

What the hell is going on with me? How did I do that?

I didn't feel any different. For a guy who'd just gone through a heart transplant not two days ago, I guess I was in mighty fine shape, but I still felt very much like good ol' Lucian. It was painfully clear, though, that there was much more than just Lucian running under the hood. Something had changed inside of me, something crucial. Something that allowed me to knock apart expensive wooden furniture with a single stroke of the fist.

Kubo had said that my powers were still developing. They were a mystery. There was no telling what I would become, what I would be capable of down the line. For the first time, the thought of gaining inhuman powers was frightening. I always thought that having super strength or the ability to fly might be cool, but actually exhibiting supernatural abilities made me sick to my stomach. Things were changing inside of me. Things that I couldn't control. And they would only continue to change in ways that no one could predict. Someday, it was possible, I'd get to the point where I wouldn't even recognize myself.

I remembered how, at the hospital with Dr. Sargasso, I'd looked into that antique mirror and seen my “true” reflection. Just hazily recalling the awful face of that monstrosity that'd stared back at me was enough to get my legs shaking and my stomach sinking through the floor. That was what I really was now, on the inside, at least. Gulping, I raced off to the bathroom and turned on the light, looking nervously into the mirror and prodding my face delicately.

I was still the famously handsome Lucian. My usual features were intact. My outward appearance hadn't changed, just like the doctor had said. Still, I was apprehensive. I had a literal monster living inside of me, rent-free. There had to be some kind of down-side to this beyond just lifting a few records from Sam's. I walked around my apartment in a daze, feeling like an utter stranger, and just marveled at the busted desk while The Stooges raged on.

Shutting off the record player, I clenched my teeth and sauntered off to bed. I'd had more than enough self-discovery for one day. The heavy questions weighing on my mind were simply too much, and the implications too mind-bending. I'd flood my brain with sleep and think this thing through with a clearer head in the morning. Kubo had said that my powers would begin to manifest soon, but even he didn't seem to know what would happen inside of me. No one within this Veiled Order did, and they knew pretty much everything else. I was a loose cannon, a time bomb waiting to go off for all I knew.

I settled into bed, casting off my covers and rolling onto my stomach.

Maybe you'll get some rest and feel better about this in the morning, I thought. But then, before I could stop it, another thought crossed my mind. This monster inside of you... does it sleep?

The rest of the night was spent trying to dodge that question inside my own head, and attempting to ignore the nagging presence of something else in the room with me. I'd felt this same presence the night before, when my body had betrayed me and the reins had ended up in someone else's hands.

I was brand-new to this “Demon-Heart” thing, but I was already having second-thoughts about it.

***

The rattling of my work-issue phone woke me up sometime in the late afternoon. I rolled onto my side and picked the thing up, fumbling with it until I managed to open the black clamshell, and then looked over the screen groggily. There was a text message waiting for me, from Kubo, and it was as curt as I would have expected from a guy like him. No “How are you?” or “Good morning!” Just straight to the business.

I read it aloud, yawning. “Meeting at Boulder Brewery, 5 PM, sharp.” That last word was written in all-caps. Kubo was certainly the type to value punctuality.

Boulder Brewery was a bar and grill downtown. It was a little ways from my apartment, but I figured that if I started for it now I could make it there on foot with more than enough time to eat, drink and enjoy myself before getting down to brass tacks with Kubo and the gang. The chief almost certainly wasn't inviting me out for wings and beer, after all.

I peered through the blinds and found it looked to be a fair day. Pulling on some clothes I washed my face and stepped out the door, but not before queueing up Raw Power on my smartphone and sticking my earbuds in.

FOURTEEN

I was into my second listen of Raw Power and crossing Monroe Street when the urge to run came over me. Not for any particular reason. I just plain wanted to sprint.

You've gotta understand, I've never been the athletic type. From childhood I detested rigorous physical activity, preferring to sit around and have the action come to me. If you ask my mother, she'll dig up a few old photo albums featuring pictures of me during what she affectionately calls my “fluffy phase”. In gym class, I was always the slowest kid to run a mile; hell, I'd cut across the parking lot and hide between the faculty's cars where my teacher couldn't see, and then munch on snack cakes I'd smuggled till the class was almost over and I could jog to the finish line, pretending I'd succeeded. In recent years my tolerance for physical activity, mainly of the ass-kicking type, had grown, but you still weren't going to find me toiling away in a gym.

But, damn it, I wanted to run.

And so I did.

The rampaging guitar in the second half of “Gimme Danger” propelled me down the streets. It was like heroin; even if I'd wanted to stop listening I wouldn't have been able to take the earbuds out. I could feel a fire in my blood, and a satisfying burn wormed its way down my legs as I met the ground with hard, rapid steps. I wished I'd worn something more comfortable for running in, as my Chuck Taylor's weren't really going to cut it, but I ran anyhow.

In all my years, I couldn't remember enjoying running this much. It felt completely effortless, like I was being propelled by forces outside myself. The burn in my legs faded quickly and I began to give in to the momentum I'd built. Like a practiced sprinter I tore down the sidewalk, bypassing other pedestrians with shopping bags who looked at me like I was insane.

Actually, that wasn't right. They weren't looking at me like I was crazy. They were staring on in disbelief.

Because I was going really fucking fast.

If Usain Bolt could somehow breed with a muscle car, I'd have been their weird, hybridized son. It hadn't registered until the other people on the street took notice, but when I caught microsecond-long glimpses of their mouths hanging agape, I knew it was me. The scenery was passing by so quickly it was dizzying, the buildings zipping by as though I were sticking my head out of the window of a truck going seventy-plus down the road.

I was at the Boulder Brewery before I knew it, and came to a stop so sharp that the soles of my high tops shed a few layers of rubber in the process. Catching my breath outside the door, I was thankful for the lack of passersby here. It was still early, and the place didn't look particularly crowded. Grinning, I stretched a little, flexing my legs. Maybe I shouldn't have done that. Draws a lot of attention, sprinting around like The Flash. I bet Kubo would be pissed if he saw me doing that out in public.

The run had increased my already monstrous appetite. Rubbing at my gut, I strolled into the restaurant, and was seated at the bar soon thereafter. The Boulder Brewery, if you've never been there, is one of my favorite restaurants in town. They serve this kick-ass bunless burger, a whole pound of beef, topped in barbecue pulled pork and fried onion strings. Oh, and then there were the endless cheese fries and a selection of craft beer that would give the most hardened beer hipster tingles in all the right places. I didn't come here too often, as the food was a bit pricy, but with my wallet still burgeoning I figured I could afford to splurge.

I called over the bartender, a sexy cougar with a low-cut white top and a pair of smokey, greenish eyes, and ordered a rum and coke to start with. I hoped Kubo wouldn't mind me imbibing before the job. A short while later she dropped my drink off with a big smile and I took a long sip. It was just after 4 PM. Kubo wasn't planning to meet until 5. That gave me enough time to scarf down a meal and a few more drinks.

Wonder what Kubo's got for us, I thought. It's probably big, whatever it is. Maybe he knows where the witches have gone. Oh, man... when we find them, I'm going to tear them apart, limb from limb. The more I thought about the coven, about the mission ahead, the more I started itching for a fight. I wasn't just a weak human anymore. I was a demon-hearted, desk-smashing engine of destruction, and when I met those bitches again I was going to make them sorry they'd ever taken up hocus-pocus.

I centered my drink on the coaster and leaned over the bar, intending to start a little small-talk with the bartender, when I felt a firm bump to my right shoulder. Someone had jostled me, hard, and it was all I could do not to fall off of my stool. I took hold of the counter and remained upright, shooting a dirty glance at the guy who'd bumped me.

The dude had at least a foot on me and was wearing a black leather jacket. His hair was long, with large swaths shaved out of the sides. I didn't know what to make of that. If this was some new style, then it was the trashiest, stupidest thing I'd ever seen. The guy's gaze darted my way and a sneer drifted across his lips. Putting one of his elbows on the bar next to me, he cast a long shadow and started barking at the staff. He spoke like an idiot, with a deep voice so booming that his words could scarcely be parsed. He said something about whiskey, then sent one of his thick palms against the top of the bar with all the fury of a horse's hoof.

That was when it happened.

When the guy jostled the bar with his hand, my rum and coke slowly edged over, falling from the coaster and spilling across the counter.

Getting bumped by some ruffian at a bar was something I could handle. Whatever. It happens.

But having my drink spilled?

That was something I simply couldn't abide.

Deep within me an intense anger sprang up from seemingly nowhere. I'd been in a great mood up to that point, energetic and pleasant. In the time it took for my spilled drink to reach the edge of his elbow, I'd grown absolutely livid, however. Clearing my throat, I tapped him on the shoulder and leaned in. “You've gone and spilled my drink, mate. I hope you plan on buying me another.”

The rough in the leather jacket hadn't even noticed the spill, apparently, but turned to face me, the sneer burgeoning across his acne-scarred face once again. “Oh, my bad, bro,” he muttered in that deep voice of his. That he was anything but sorry was clear from the very first syllable. Dipping one of his thick fingers in the puddle of drink, he swirled it around and then flicked a bit of it at me. “Seems to me like your drink's still there, bud. Maybe you just lap it off the bar like a dog, 'stead of leaving a mess for this here pretty lady.” He grinned at the now timid bartender, his yellow choppers looking crooked and stumpy.

The anger took over.

Well, not the anger, exactly.

But something inside of me surged to the fore, eclipsed my consciousness temporarily, just as it had that night when I'd escaped the hospital. It was uncomfortable, a feeling of terrible violation. Someone else surfaced while I was simultaneously buried. And yet, in these particular circumstances, I waived my discomfort. I didn't like like the feeling of this emerging presence within me, but I wasn't about to try and bottle it up, either.

It was the demon.

I uttered words then that I, personally, had had no intention of speaking. They came from another set of lips entirely, from a second mind caged within my own body, and when they'd been spoken, I sat there, stupefied, my jaw dropping nearly as far as the surly, leather-clad prick's did.

The exchange went like this.

“I'm sorry to hear about your grandmother, Eugenia,” I began. Bear in mind that I'd never seen this guy in my life, and that there was no way on Earth I could have possibly known his grandma's first name. “Pancreatic cancer is the silent killer. I'm surprised she lasted as long as she did, to be frank.”

So, in case you're as lost as I was then, I apparently knew this guy's grandmother's name, and that she'd just recently died after a battle with pancreatic cancer. Don't ask me how I knew that.

“W-what?” he said, his punchable face contorting into a mess of confusion. “Do I know you?”

I smirked. The demon was back, and he wasn't through yet. “Eugenia and I went way back. I knew her when she was held up during the firebombing of Hamburg. Very heroic, the way she sucked Allied cock day and night just to get out of that hellhole. You know, your grandmother, that legendary whore, got knocked up by one of the Americans back there and gave birth to your father in '44, when the war was winding down. I was there, too. She sucked a good dick, Eugenia. I wonder if, in the end, she could still remember the taste of my--”

The bruiser's fist was locked around my collar before I could finish.

“The fuck did you say?” he demanded. I have to admit, the guy looked more spooked than angry just then. Apparently he really did have a grandmother named Eugenia, who'd died of pancreatic cancer recently, and who'd had a son in 1944 after surviving the Allied firebombing of Hamburg. Though, by the looks of it, he hadn't known about the finer details of his grandmother's wartime exploits.

Apparently the demon in me wasn't intimidated, because I blew the guy a kiss and continued. “She used to love it when the soldiers gave it to her rough, passing her around like a plaything. A tight little ass on that one, too. Why, your daddy, Richard, didn't include that in the eulogy last Tuesday morning, did he?”

The guy went mental, tossing me off of my stool. Red-faced and not a little horrified, he pointed to the door and then motioned to a table of scruffy-looking guys in the corner. “Out, now. I'm going to teach you some manners, motherfucker.” He pulled the edge of his jacket aside, revealing the hilt of a big knife. “I'll teach you better than to talk shit about my grandmother, you prick.”

Just moments ago, I'd been thinking about those witches and burning for a fight.

Now I had one on my hands.

Wishes do come true, I thought as I sauntered casually from the bar and started for the main entrance. What few people were in the restaurant looked on nervously. They were probably sure that this gang of thugs would wipe the floor with me, carve me up like a Thanksgiving turkey. I chuckled at the thought. Well, let's see what this demon can really do.

FIFTEEN

We were hardly into the alleyway behind the restaurant when the big guy rushed at me.

The knife was out of his waistband in a flash, and his hulking frame bounded towards me with a clumsiness that was almost endearing. He loosed a growl, looked positively distressed over the shit I'd said about his grandma. Poor guy. He never stood a chance.

Under ordinary circumstances, I would have been a little nervous about tackling a guy as big as this one head-on. I'm no small-fry, but this dude was big, and in a fight, size does matter. A little bit, at least. This fella had a good deal more weight to throw around, longer reach, more muscle.

What he didn't have, though, was a demon inside of him.

I let him get pretty damn close to me with that knife before I reached out and took hold of the offending wrist. With a quick jerk I had him on his knees, the arm bent back in the most uncomfortable configuration possible. The knife fell to the concrete and his buddies all startled for the sound of its clattering. They were gathered around the entrance to the alley, as if to keep me from escaping.

If they'd had half a brain between the three of them, they'd have taken off right then and there.

The demon was almost fully in control here. I was hazily aware of what was happening, had about the same level of input that a ringside spectator might have at a professional wrestling match. If I shouted at the guys to throw a folding chair, then maybe they'd listen in such a scenario. It was the same thing with this demon; I could make a suggestion, and the demon could choose whether or not to take me up on it.

In this case, the demon complied.

Break his arm, I thought. It seemed like the best way to incapacitate him, and nothing short of a busted limb was going to keep him from taking another shot with that knife.

Well, with what I can only call elegance, the demon in me gave the hefty guy's arm a little twist and, wouldn't you know, it broke loudly at the elbow. The demon knew just how to move the limb to make it give way, and the joint could be heard to pop as he turned it in his grasp. Er, my grasp. Whatever. You get what I mean.

I'd just broken this guy's arm.

With one hand.

I was barely touching him, really.

Now, if you've never seen a big man like this one cry, then I highly recommend it. He was on his knees, looking up at me with fear in his eyes and doing this obnoxious, open-mouthed crying I'd only ever seen from kids throwing fits at the grocery store. He writhed a little bit, tried to pull his busted arm from my grasp, but couldn't do it. The demon in me was too strong, would let go of him for nothing.

“W-what are you?” he managed to gasp between sobs.

I didn't dignify that with an answer.

Instead, I continued twisting, till pieces of bone shot out of his skin and a bit of blood was ejected from the wound as if through a spray bottle. He yelped, quivered in my grasp, and then I let him go.

He didn't dare attack me after that. As best he could, he rose to his feet and started stumbling the opposite way, hoping to escape. I wasn't going to let him do so easily, however. The fight so far had been an unfulfilling test of my new strength. I needed to see what I was really capable of.

Thankfully, one of the big guy's friends was on his way. He'd fished a length of pipe out of the gutter and was rushing at me now, a mane of unwashed hair flapping in the breeze behind him and a high-pitched shout on his lips. Guy looked like a dirty hippy, something straight out of a Grateful Dead concert. He was my height, but thin as a rail, and I noticed as he rushed me that he was missing several teeth.

For fun, I let this one hit me with his pipe.

I didn't block it, didn't make any effort to dodge. I just stood there and took it like a man, right to the side of the head. The demon in me seemed to think it was a good idea.

And, you know, it didn't kill me.

But it'd been a stupid fucking idea.

Tip: Even if you're possessed by a powerful demon, getting smacked upside the head with a length of steel pipe by a grown man hurts like hell.

Ordinarily a hit like that one would have been sufficient to dash my brains against the ground, but not this time. This time, I staggered back a few paces, then righted myself with a grin. The dirty hippy glanced back at his friends, who were running off without him now, and then nervously weighed the possibility of taking another swing. You could tell by the way he hesitated, by the way his bushy eyebrows trembled in apprehension, that he wanted to run. His was the face of someone who'd just encountered something profoundly powerful, something beyond his feeble understanding. Still, to his credit, he wound up like Mark McGuire and let her rip.

This time, I didn't stand idly by and allow myself to get hit.

I grasped the edge of the pipe and tore it from his grip before lunging at him and slamming him into the wall. Dust was ejected from the space between the bricks, and he looked stunned for the impact, his eyes going momentarily blank. Tossing him to the ground, I went in for a stomp, but missed.

In the interim, the crafty hippy had gone for a hail mary.

He took hold of his buddy's knife and, without warning, plunged it straight into my gut.

The demon was unseated and, for a minute there, it was just plain, old, frightened Lucian standing in the alley with a knife sticking out of his belly. “Oh, fuck,” I muttered.

A pipe to the head hadn't done me in, but a knife to the guts was a whole new level of injury.

The hippy seemed not a little horrified with himself and fell back, doing the crab-walk till he'd built a bit of distance with me. He seemed to want to speak, but his face was pale and he couldn't find the words.

My stomach burned. Slowly taking hold of the knife handle, I peered narrowly at my gut. It was probably gushing with blood right now. The sight of the blade digging into my entrails was probably going to make me lose it. I was terrified, shaking.

What I saw next, well, there was no explanation for it.

The knife, blade, handle and all, was melting.

Yes, you read that right.

Melting.

Like a clock in a Dali painting.

A wave of heat struck my face as I looked down, and I noticed the weapon becoming bent and distorted. The metal bubbled and began to fall away into a puddle of silvery liquid at my feet. When it'd completely melted, no wound remained. My abdomen looked as pristine as ever. My shirt was a little torn where the knife had gone in, but that was it. I patted my belly incredulously, but failed to find a cut of any kind. It didn't even hurt.

“Well, look at that,” I said to the guy, laughing heartily. I couldn't believe it.

He wasn't quite so happy for me, though. He backed himself against the wall and looked up at me as though he were faced with Satan himself.

It was time to wrap this up. I was pleased with my powers, with the new strength I'd gained since the transplant. Blows to the head, simple knives; I seemed impervious to them while the demon was inside me. I instantly began to wonder how I might use these new talents to become the life of every party.

I could be like Houdini, except totally hardcore.

But first, there was the dirty hippy. He needed dispatched. The demon in me had made up its mind on the best course of action. What with my being forced into the background, I wasn't really in a position to argue with it.

We're gonna eviscerate this guy. Paint the alley with his blood, came the demon's suggestion, as if it were the most commonplace, well-adjusted act in history.

Kneeling down, I took hold of the guy's stomach. My fingers pressed into his shirt, into the soft flesh beneath. Tearing it all away and baring his intestines would be a simple thing; when they were out, I'd skip rope with them, gnaw on them like a dog.

Wait a minute, I thought inwardly. Maybe that's going too far. I mean, murdering the guy? Thats pretty fucked up, man. Unnecessary, no?

Didn't matter. The demon seemed pretty sold on this plan.

Just as I was about to gouge this guy's guts out, there came a gunshot.

In the next moment, I was doubled over, clutching at my upper arm and thrashing against the concrete. The pain that wreaked my body then was unlike anything I'd ever felt. It radiated from my arm, into my chest, and then into my legs, all while inflicting an intense burning.

I'd been shot.

Bullets, apparently, could still do me in.

I howled, and the sounds issuing from my throat were not altogether my own. I cursed in languages I didn't speak, and then slumped against the wall, sweating, panting and murmuring.

The hippy was running as fast as his feet could take him for the entrance to the alley, and three people were fast approaching in his place.

Kubo, Joe and Isabella.

Kubo had a gun in his hand. Quickly returning it to his shoulder holster, he knelt down beside me and punched me in the side of the head. “You imbecile,” he said through grit teeth. “The hell you doing out here, getting into fights with people? You're drawing unnecessary attention to yourself. I didn't call you here for this shit. We have a job to do. If I hadn't come out here early, then you might've fucked everything up.”

The bullet in my arm was still aching, and a fresh jolt of pain shot through my body. Wincing, I struggled to draw breath and looked up at him tearfully. “C-chief, I'm sorry... I'm sorry... it... it hurts so damn bad, chief.”

“Shut up,” he said. “It's not like it's going to kill you.” With a knife in hand, Kubo steadied my upper body and dug right in. With some careful carving, every bit of which I felt in full, he dug the bullet out. It fell to the ground, the blood on it quickly evaporating. Once it was out, the pain immediately stopped and the wound began to heal before my eyes. We're talking incredibly fast, like something out of a movie. I flexed my arm in disbelief, poking and prodding the spot where, just moments ago, I'd had a gunshot wound.

Kubo stood up, putting his knife away and looking down at me with disgust.

I rose, steadying myself against the wall. “Why... why did that hurt so much? I got stabbed earlier and it didn't feel anything like that.”

He arched a brow, patting the gun resting just beneath his jacket. “The bullets are silver, and they're blessed. That's a mighty bad combo for people like you.”

Joe snickered, tugging on the collar of his jacket and looking to the entrance of the alley. “Maybe you should hit him again, chief. Make him hurt real bad for making such a show, eh?”

Isabella was sauntering around the alley, talking to herself. She was in another world completely, probably hadn't seen anything that'd gone down in the alley. She ran her hands against the brick walls, her eyes wide and glassy, and fidgeted with the hem of her burlap-colored outfit.

“The more you insist on misbehaving, the shorter your leash,” said Kubo, starting through the alley. He led the three of us out, to the black SUV, which was parked at the curb. When we were all seated, he didn't waste a second, speeding away from the restaurant in a flash. Some minutes down the road, he flipped open his phone. “I've received word from one of our field agents that the coven has been spotted in a nearby neighborhood. They're targeting a particular infant, by the looks of it. I have the address. We're going there straightaway, just ahead of them.”

I'd been preoccupied with other thoughts up to that point. I'd very nearly murdered a guy. Savagely. In horror-movie fashion. I felt numb all over, and trembled in disbelief as the hippy's frightened visage turned up again and again in my memory. I'm a lot of things, but I'm not a murderer.

At least, I used to be able to say that.

Now, with this demon inside of me, I couldn't be so sure.

I was disturbed by the complete nonchalance with which I'd assaulted those guys, the pleasure I'd felt at breaking their bodies. It just wasn't like me to get off on that, at least, not to this degree. I'd been in the business of roughing people up for a while now, and fights did bring a certain adrenaline rush. But this was something else. This was bloodlust. I felt ashamed and wished I could somehow apologize for what I'd done to those two. Having a demon inside of me was no excuse for walking around like a sociopath. I wasn't sure if it was possible, but I wanted to try and get a tighter grasp on this presence within me, lest it take over completely and do some really unsavory shit.

Shaking my head, I struggled to get back into the game.

“I see,” I replied. “We're going to intercept the witches and kill 'em before they can get there?”

“No,” said Kubo flatly. “We're going to kidnap the kid before they can.”

SIXTEEN

I've done a lot of things in my life I'm not proud of. Beaten a lot of people up for money. Peed in my fair share of swimming pools.

Preparing to kidnap a baby was near the top of the list.

“What do you mean?” I asked, hoping for some kind of clarification. Somehow, Kubo's suggestion that we were going there to kidnap the kid first didn't sit well with me. What, were we going to take care of the kid till this whole witch thing blew over? Had I been brought on as a demonic daycare worker?

“I mean what I said,” he replied. He'd taken us into a quiet neighborhood. Well-manicured lawns were lit up by the streetlights which now flickered on in the dusk. He slowed down, scrutinized the houses one-by-one, and then after briefly consulting his phone, pulled to a stop. “This must be the place.” Kubo turned to Isabella and gave her a little nod.

Sitting upright, Isabella began to sway from side to side, her hands doing some jerky little movements that reminded me of cat's cradle without any string. She kneaded her fingers together, twisting them in an uncomfortable way, and started mumbling to herself feverishly.

I noticed something about Isabella then, something that I'd neglected to notice before.

She never closed her damn eyes.

Those pale, glassy eyes were always open, staring. I looked at her in the side mirror, shuddering as she got busy doing whatever it was she was doing. She'd been called a magician by Kubo during the briefing, but her powers weren't manifesting in any perceptible or impressive way. Joe back there might've been a dick, but at least he could do cool things with fire. Isabella's schtick, well, I could find that on any old Detroit street corner or mental hospital.

Isabella clammed up and relaxed, folding her hands in her lap.

I guess that meant she was done. Not that I could perceive any change in our surroundings. “What was that?” I asked, glancing around at the others.

“Why don't you go check?” suggested Kubo, unlocking the doors to the SUV.

I stepped out of the vehicle, closing the door behind me and scanning the surrounding area. We'd pulled up in front of a nice, two-story house. It was painted a light blue, as best I could tell in the failing light. The lawn was big, freshly-mowed, and a well-kept garden could be seen to the right of the porch. The curb was clear, there were no other cars in the street.

Everything looked thoroughly normal.

And then it hit me.

“Holy shit, the SUV's gone.” I'd just climbed out of the thing, and yet, it had disappeared, completely. No way Kubo had managed to drive it away in the space of a second. Panicking, I turned around and started walking into the street.

I didn't get far, though, ending up with a face-full of invisible SUV.

The vehicle was still there, all right. Isabella had just made it invisible.

Scrambling to find the passenger-side door, I threw it open and climbed back inside, stunned. “How the hell did she do that? That's incredible!”

“You ain't seen nothing yet,” said Joe.

“All right, phase two, Isabella. Just like we talked about.” Kubo looked back at her, hands on the wheel. “And try to hurry. We need to wrap this up. I have a feeling the witches are on the move.”

Isabella went back to her bizarre game of pat-a-cake, mumbling and swaying and gesticulating like mad. I looked out the window, wondering what she might do next, and about fell out of my seat when I saw the entire front of the house fading away like a fine mist.

Imagine taking an eraser to the outside of a house, an eraser that could delete more than just lines on a page. Imagine that you could wear away siding, brick, all of the inner bits of a home and just leave the inside of it exposed, wide open, like the back of a doll house. That's exactly what Isabella had done. The outside of the house had melted away slowly, and we could now plainly see everything that was going on within the abode. I was stunned, glancing nervously to Kubo, who was leaning towards my window and watching the inhabitants of the house mill about.

The family living there, a young couple and their baby, seemed completely oblivious to our spying. Apparently the erasure of the wall only worked one way. “It's sort of like a one-way mirror,” explained Kubo as his eyes followed a woman. She was mounting the stairs with a bundle in her hands. Walking along an upstairs hallway, she opened the door to one of the three bedrooms and approached a crib, gently setting the bundle inside. She was putting her baby to bed. Tip-toeing out of the room, the woman switched on a night-light and closed the door behind her. We watched it all from afar, like it was some sort of puppet play.

“So, we have to go in there and take that baby?” I asked.

Kubo shook his head. “No, you have to go in there and get the baby.”

I wasn't eager to add kidnapping to my rap sheet. Living like a mercenary who tracks down stolen goods and kicks asses for money doesn't mean I'm without morals. This didn't set well with me at all. The very thought of hopping in there and stealing that kid, of disturbing this normal, happy family's status quo of sleepy suburban bliss, was awful. And then, to top it all off, there was the whole demon thing. Still wreaked with guilt for what I'd done to those guys at the bar, I couldn't help but wonder what the demon in me would do to a baby. What if I went ballistic and hurt the kid? My blood ran cold as I considered that possibility, and it very nearly kept me from leaving the car.

In my line of work, collecting debts and retrieving stolen stuff, I'd hurt a lot of people over the past few years, never really putting a lot of thought into my actions. Lucian Colt had been a grade-A prick, a guy whose conscience could be bought for the right price, for a long time. Now, with this demon heart, there was an added variable, something that made me extra dangerous. I had a responsibility to keep it in check, to adjust my ordinarily nonchalant attitudes towards violence. But, could I control the thing? I fought on both sides, weighing the pros and cons of taking the baby from its crib. It wasn't right; the very idea made me feel like a terrible person.

And yet, I knew what we were up against. If those witches got ahold of the kid, there was no telling what they'd do.

No, that's not true. I knew damn well what they'd do to it, remembering those crime scene photos from Kubo's slideshow with altogether too much vividness.

That kid would be safer with us. There was no doubt about it.

Nodding, I put my hand on the door and prepared to exit. “How should I go in? Can I just stroll in? Can Isabella make me invisible, too?”

Kubo took some time in weighing his thoughts before responding. “No need,” he finally replied. “You should be able to walk up the lawn and just jump up there to the second story window. Aim for the nursery. We'll knock out the window so that you can enter without having to smash through it.”

My laugh earned me dirty looks from both Joe and Kubo. “Yeah, right, just jump all the way up there. Good one. You guys have a ladder or something I can use? Or, maybe I can sneak in through the back door and--”

“You'll jump.” Kubo's voice was firm, and he looked set to throw me out of the car if I didn't leave at once.

I'd done a few remarkable things since receiving this demon heart. Jumping out of the hospital window and landing safely was one. Smashing a desk with a single punch and sprinting at an ungodly speed were others. Somehow, though, a jump of two stories seemed like too much. There was no way I'd be able to do it. Apparently that was what was expected of me, though, and before Kubo could stare at me long enough to bore holes in me, I decided to step out of the car and give it a shot.

Walking up to the house carefully, I found that its exterior had returned to its normal state, no longer transparent. I couldn't look inside unless I was near a window, but I knew where the nursery was and set my sights on the lacy curtains that marked it. Limbering up, I did a couple of quick stretches before breaking into a jog and leaping into the air.

I gave it my all, really let my legs act as a spring. It felt like I was pushing the Earth away from me as I left the ground and began towards the house's blue siding.

I was over the bushes, reaching skyward, when I realized I wasn't going to make it.

My jump was good, far better than it had ever been, but it wasn't superhuman.

Flailing, I smacked into the side of the house, an audible thud knocking dust from the siding, and searched for something I might hold onto to keep from falling ass-first into the garden below. That was when the demon's instincts took over, and, like a gecko, I scurried up the side of the house to the second story window.

It had all happened so quickly I could scarcely say how I did it. One minute I'd been terrified of falling and hurting myself, the next I'd managed a foothold where there was none. With an unnatural deftness, I'd scaled the exterior of the house, clinging to the siding until I could lock a hand around one of the shutters outside the nursery window.

I slowly pulled myself up, squinting through the window and into nursery.

The baby, dressed in a blue onesie, was snoring away in his crib.

I'd made it, was within ten feet of the kid, but how was I going to get at him? Kubo said they were going to get rid of the window so that I could enter the room, but they were taking their sweet time in doing it. Looking out to the street, I frowned in the general direction of the invisible SUV and waited.

Then, from seemingly thin air, came a tongue of fire. It rolled into the pane of glass, and slowly traced the edges. Before I knew it, the glass was actually melting and the way was open. The pane gave way like candle wax, dripping down the side of the house and crystalizing.

My hands were getting sore from grasping the edges of the shutters. With one final effort, I swung my legs around and rolled into the room, landing within inches of a cluttered side table. A baby monitor, glowing with a little red light, was situated on it.

Shit. There's no way they didn't hear me entering the room. For a few moments I stood completely still in the nursery, staring at the door and waiting for someone to barge in and catch me trespassing.

No one did.

The house was still, quiet.

It was a little while longer before I found the courage to approach the crib. The little tyke was breathing deeply, rolled onto one side and swaddled in a soft-looking blanket. A mop of messy blonde hair, a few drops of drool hanging from the corner of his mouth, he looked like he could sleep through an earthquake.

And it was a good thing, too, because I could see Kubo standing in the street now, trying to get my attention with a wave. He was motioning to me, bringing his arms to his chest.

He wanted me to grab the kid.

Licking my lips and looking between Kubo and the sleeping baby, I slowly extended my arms.

Kubo rushed back into the invisible vehicle, disappearing from view. Still, I hesitated. What if I woke the kid and his parents heard it on the baby monitor? I was the good guy here, trying to save their baby from getting carved up by witches. But they didn't know that. If they walked in and saw me hovering near the crib, they'd freak out, and I wouldn't be able to blame them.

Something moved outside, shifting across the lawn.

And it wasn't Kubo.

Gulping, I leaned over the crib, trying to get a better look. A soft scratching, as of some small animal scaling the outside of the house, could be heard. A squirrel?

No. What I'd seen had been too large and dark for a squirrel.

Unless my eyes were playing tricks on me, it'd been shaped like a large teardrop, and had slithered through the grass silently. Jet black, the color of midnight.

Instinctively, I grabbed the kid and held him close, falling back a couple of paces and pressing my back to the wall. Crouching, I took cover behind an open toy box and fixed my eyes on the window.

From outside, a large, pale hand tipped in thick, grotty nails gripped the sill. Then another. The two hands belonged to the shadowy thing I'd seen racing across the lawn, and I could see it for what it was now, the scarcest impressions of its hideous visage visible beneath the shade of a large, black hood.

A witch slid into the room with all the grace of a silent gymnast.

Honestly, though, if gymnasts looked at all like this leering, surly bitch, no one would watch the Olympics on TV. No one.

The coven had arrived, and they were here for the kid. I held my breath and wondered just how the hell I was going to get out of this one with a sleeping infant in my arms.

SEVENTEEN

I had a mini panic attack as I crouched behind the toy box, watching the witch take her first few steps into the nursery. She craned her neck, locks of white hair spilling over the edge of the crib as she looked into it. With a clawed hand like an eagle's talon, she mixed around the covers, her face rapidly contorted into a hateful scowl that defied easy description. Her face looked waxen, and with every ounce of anger that entered into her expression, the wax only seemed to melt into a dissatisfied pile resembling a spent candle. The creature hissed, whipping her head this way and that about the room.

Could she smell the kid? What about me? Could she sense me?

The kid in my arms stirred a little, bringing a chubby fist to his eyes and yawning deeply.

Just like that, the witch's eyes were fixed on the toy box. She'd heard, and was zeroing in on the source of the yawn.

Fuck.

My muscles tensed, my pulse shot through the roof. What the hell could I possibly do here? Without a kid in my arms I'd have been able to jump out of this corner and knock her around real good. But with a sleeping baby in tow? I'd be defenseless, wouldn't be able to throw so much as a punch without leaving the kid vulnerable. I thought about setting the kid down on the floor gently and attacking the witch, but thought better of it. Kubo and the others had to be seeing this. They had to know what was going on, right?

I sure hoped so.

What the hell were they waiting for?

The witch took a step towards the toy box, pulling it away and finding me crouched behind it, her target held tightly in my arms.

Her dark eyes shot open in surprise.

And then, just as quickly, they clouded over in fear.

When she started backing away, falling into a series of trembling murmurs near the window, I thought that perhaps I'd frightened her. Could she see the demon in me? Could she sense my power? Within a few seconds however, I realized it was something else altogether that had warded her off and compelled her to flee towards the window.

She didn't manage to get all the way out of it before the flames overcame her, however.

From all about her there erupted little tongues of flame. They seemed to originate from deep within her own body, busting through her flesh and dark garb as though the burners on a gas stove had just been switched on. The tongues of flame didn't stay small, though, quickly growing into a massive, unmanageable blaze.

The nursery was lit up like the Fourth of July. Rather than the ear-shattering pop of fireworks, though, the room was filled with the witch's gasping screams.

She was exploding into flame, with fire surging from her eyes and mouth. She was a jack-o-lantern full of gasoline, a pincushion full of lit sparklers. Before I knew it, she was completely spent, her body falling away into ashes, which were carried out the open window by a cool breeze.

Just like that, the witch was no more.

Incredulous, I held the kid close. He hadn't stirred, despite all the screaming. He hadn't even opened his eyes. I peered down at him, wondering if he wasn't deaf, and then slowly sauntered towards the window, stamping on the remnants of the witch's cloak that still glowed with fresh embers.

A few other dark shapes, just like the one I'd seen before, darted across the lawn and down the street, disappearing into the distance.

The coven was fleeing. They'd fallen into a trap and knew better than to risk sacrificing more than one of their members.

With the witches gone, the SUV came into focus once more, the invisibility spell dropping away like a veil. Kubo stepped out, shouting to me from the street. “OK, now put the kid back. We're going after them.”

I glanced around the nursery. The air reeked of burnt human flesh. There was an immense, oily stain on the floor where the witch had been immolated. Somehow, I felt guilty putting the kid back to bed, but knew the parents would barge in at any moment. Why they hadn't come when the witch was screaming her guts out I couldn't say.

Very carefully, so as not to wake him, I set the child in his crib and draped a blanket over him, which he promptly kicked off. Then, like something out of a fairy tale, I slipped out of the window and bounded down onto the lawn below, falling into a jog as I approached the SUV.

Kubo threw open the door for me, and I stumbled in. He didn't even wait for me to get my seatbelt on before peeling off at great speed. “Change of plans. We're leaving the kid behind, following the rats to their nest. We beat them to the punch and they're fleeing now. While Isabella had us tucked out of sight I turned a little trick of my own and got a trace on one of them.” He narrowed his gaze and then cracked a window to sniff the air. Then, running a stop sign and screaming out of the neighborhood, he held out his hand, one hooked finger extended, and made a movement like he was tugging an invisible piece of string.

“It's just as well,” I replied, winded. “That kid's parents were going to storm in any minute, what with all of that ruckus.”

“No,” said Isabella simply.

I looked back at her, cocking my head to the side. “Yeah, they definitely heard. That witch screamed bloody murder on her way out. By the way,” I said, turning to Joe, “How the hell did you do that?”

He simply grinned, running a hand through his greasy mop and glancing out the window cooly. “Self-combustion happens to be my specialty.”

“No,” repeated Isabella incessantly, leaning forward. “The parents could not hear what happened. Isabella cast a spell that dampened the sound coming from that room.” She started fussing with her hands and fingers again, as though practicing the exact movements she'd made in casting it. “Isabella stuffed their ears with psychic cotton.”

Psychic cotton. I liked the sound of that, and laughed aloud. “Very nice.”

Patting his gun, Kubo grinned. “They're slowing down. We're getting close to the spot. Get ready to knock on Mater Agatha's front door, everyone.”

EIGHTEEN

The scenery was rapidly changing as day gave way to night. I recognized this part of town, on the outskirts of downtown Detroit, as an old warehouse district. It wasn't used as such these days, with most businesses staying the hell out of an area so bleak and rundown. Maybe in the 70's and 80's the grim, tarnished warehouses that lined these narrow streets had been frequented by honest types. The only businessmen that haunted this part of town anymore were probably the ones who cooked meth.

Kubo kept tugging on his invisible thread, like he was reeling in a line. Sometimes he'd relax, let go completely, as if he were giving some far-off fish extra line to play with. It was all a very sensitive process, and when he was reeling in to get a better feel for the witch's current position, he was absolutely silent. A bit of sweat formed across his brow and his face reddened. This was evidently a taxing ability, one that required immense focus. That he could continue driving while practicing his spell craft, albeit recklessly, was a marvel.

We were deep into the knot of old warehouses, our surroundings cut from view by towering, empty buildings that had once been used by the auto industry. Emblems for old car makers could still be seen on some of them.

Kubo dropped his line and then hit the brakes, snapping his fingers and pointing back to Isabella without looking at her. “Do it now.”

Twitching, Isabella undid her seatbelt and started patting the tips of her fingers together. Breathy whispers accompanied this display. Sitting beside her, Joe leaned away, like he didn't want to get too close to whatever it was she was doing.

Then, she clapped her hands. “It's done.”

“What is it?” I asked. Isabella's spells were kind of subtle. She wasn't lighting people on fire, so I didn't really know what to look for. “What did she do this time?”

“She's merely dampened the sounds of our approach. Any sound we make as we walk in will be far quieter. It should help us get the jump on them. Ready?” He parked and exited the car quickly, walking off towards one warehouse in particular, a white one whose only noticeable markings were a series of faded numbers on the uppermost wall, beside the logo for General Motors. “Get your gun ready,” he added, looking to me as I stepped out.

Oops. Freezing in place, I shot him a worried look and then tried to play it off as no big deal. “Actually, I forgot my gun. It's at home. But, you know, it's not like I need it, right? We can handle these witches without it.”

Kubo's jaw tensed visibly. His eyes hit me like daggers, and I have to say I felt bad for disappointing him on my first mission. I hadn't intended to leave the gun behind. It just wasn't something I was used to carrying.

“S-sorry,” I said.

Joe and Isabella passed me by, joining Kubo. Without another word, the chief stormed forward, gun drawn, and motioned to the rest of us to keep our eyes open.

I followed them.

The ground here was mostly concrete, except that large cracks had formed over the course of countless seasons and huge weeds had snuck into them. The swish-swish we made as we walked through them seemed mighty loud, despite Isabella's spell.

As we marched along, walking the narrow strips between different warehouses, I felt frustrated. This was my first time on the job, my first real mission, but I didn't know a damn thing. I didn't know how all of this magic worked, but I had people on my team employing it all over the place as though it were an obvious, everyday occurrence. We were trailing dangerous witches and I hardly knew a thing about them, either. Wouldn't it have made more sense for me to take a written test, first? Couldn't I have had a few classroom hours; have someone explain to me the particulars of this huge new world I now worked in? A little more background might've been nice. Useful, even. I hated being the rookie on the team, and having to ask “Whoa, what's that about!” every time something even remotely impressive happened was getting old.

“I can feel them nearby,” said Kubo, reaching into the air with his free hand and giving his fingers a slight twitch. If I focused real hard, I could almost make out a tiny, gossamer thread tied around his pointer finger. He was testing something, judging distance with his tracing spell. When he was sure, he nodded and continued trudging forward, turning yet another shaded corner and approaching the front of the warehouse with the GM logo on it.

Before he had a chance to utter his next set of orders or further test his trace, Kubo's attention was drawn to the open door of the warehouse. His eyes and gun were aligned in tandem as if through magnetism.

It was a kid, a boy of eight or nine years, with brown hair and big, blue eyes that reflected the bright moon. He peered out at us innocently, touching the edge of the door and cowering a little.

But Kubo didn't lower his gun. Closing one eye, he took aim and squeezed the trigger.

My frantic cry of “What are you doing?” was drowned out by a gunshot. Isabella traced a shape on her palm with a single finger, and the report of the gun proved surprisingly quiet as a result.

The bullet struck the kid square between the eyes, but no fear or pain entered his expression. He hit the ground, twitching for a moment.

And then his body erupted into a mess of cockroaches.

Oh, yeah, I thought, feeling a touch of relief. That was a witch's familiar. It was just like the kid who'd shoved me at the witch's sabbath that first night, a swarm of cockroaches dressed up in a human-shaped illusion. The bugs quickly scattered, and I looked to Kubo, who grimaced.

“Shit,” he muttered. “Get ready, because those little things are about to blow our cover. There may be other familiars around, so keep your wits about you.”

Taking in a deep breath, I took a step forward, hoping to follow Kubo into the warehouse. Joe and Isabella were half-way through the door when I realized I couldn't move my right foot.

I looked down at it, mystified.

“What's the matter?” asked Kubo in hushed annoyance.

I shook my head. “I... I dunno...” It was like my foot had been fixed to the ground by a giant wad of chewed bubblegum. I strained to move it, but it was cemented in place, held fast by something.

A bit of shadow, incongruously dark, bubbled out from beneath the sole of my Chuck Taylor. An enchantment? I thought.

There wasn't enough time for me to wonder.

The shadow beneath my foot morphed quickly, becoming a large, black spike that tore through the sole of my foot and erupted out the top. I yelped, losing my balance and almost falling over. The black spike continued to rise after running my foot through, till it was almost to waist-height.

My mouth went dry and pain tore up through my leg. The others looked on in shock as I thrashed, effectively staked to the ground by this shadowy spike.

“Oh, God...” muttered Kubo, raising his gun. “You tripped one of their circles or something.”

The witches had evidently booby-trapped their hideout with more than just roach-infested meat puppets. What a surprise.

Not.

All around me, small, circular shadows danced across the ground. Then, with no warning, they exploded into long, searching spikes, which began to pierce my body from every direction. The ground beneath my feet was entirely black, the cement and grass eclipsed by the dark trap.

Like rocks rising from the ground in a severe earthquake, the jagged things pierced my legs, my abdomen, my chest and neck.

I was skewered all over, the shadow-borne spikes sailing through my body with ease.

A torrent of blood rushed from my mouth as the others staggered a few paces back. They looked on in horror as my vitals were pierced, one by one, like chicken shish kebabs.

No... damn it, no... I don't want to die here... I wanted to scream, but my neck had been routed by a jet black spike, taking my voice box along with it. The sounds of me gargling with my own blood were the best I could muster. I wondered if Isabella's spell was dampening those sounds, too, or if the witches who'd done this to me were secretly getting off to them in the distance.

It was lights out. I was thankful, at least, that the end came quickly. I loosed a final sigh and slumped, embracing cold oblivion.

NINETEEN

And then I opened my eyes.

I looked like something straight out of Hellraiser, like a hunk of meat suspended on far too many butcher's hooks, but I was alive. The demon in me wasn't having it, was somehow sustaining my bodily tissues even as lengths of razor-sharp shadow were currently embedded in them. My body had been raised a few feet off of the ground by the surging spikes and I'd lost a good deal of blood. But, as it had done a few times before, the demon compartmentalized me, ushered me to the safety of the backseat, and took control.

I started to laugh.

I don't know how that magnificent bastard pulled it off without a voice box, but roars of deep laughter spilled from my bloody lips and my bloodshot eyes were thrust open wide, surveying the scene. I looked down at my body, looked at all of the different points where it'd been savagely pierced, and evidently shrugged it off. “Well done, well done. A fine enchantment, this,” I said, still chuckling.

The rest of the team didn't seem to know what to do with themselves. Joe had his back up to the side of the warehouse and was crossing himself repeatedly, looking at me as though I were something alien, something not to be trusted. Isabella's eyes were wider than usual, and her twitchiness had ceased. She stood beside Joe, still as a statue, perhaps hoping that I wouldn't notice her. Even Kubo, hardass that he was, had gone pale, watching me laugh and twitch from amidst the nest of spikes.

“I'd like for the whores who did this to present themselves!” I declared, wheeling my head around at an unnatural angle and glaring at the open doorway of the warehouse where a few stray cockroaches still scurried. “Come and take a bow!”

It's an incredible thing, to go on living when you should be dead. I'd been speared more than a dozen times, but the demon in me couldn't concern himself with that, the anger far eclipsing any fear I'd had of dying.

Wiping at his brow, Kubo pulled a strip of white paper out of his pocket. It was marked in symbols, some kind of foreign writing. “Keep your eyes open,” he warned, his voice a low grumble. “We've just walked into an ambush.” The chief dropped the paper on the ground. Instantly there was a subtle rumbling, which only subsided as the deadly spikes were withdrawn.

The spell that'd speared me rapidly disappeared, leaving me a slab of shambling, gushing meat. As the spell gave way, I hit the ground face-first, my limbs all broken and my wounds spilling an incredible amount of gore. Nonetheless, I persevered, inching across the ground like a wounded worm and baring my teeth. “Well? Where are you?”

We didn't have to wait long for an answer. The empty spaces between the nearby warehouses were filled with dark, human-shaped silhouettes. Kubo stiffened, motioned to the others and clutched at his gun so hard that he shook. “They're here.”

I buried my face against the ground, taking deep breaths, with grass and dust accosting my nostrils all the while. Can pierced lungs still deliver oxygen to a fractured body?

Evidently they could. Either that, or I was sustained by something altogether different now.

Gradually, with every passing moment, I felt the pain fading away. Wounds were closed with a hiss, as though being soldered by an invisible hand. Strength and the capacity for movement returned, and it wasn't long before I extended a fully-functioning arm and clutched at the ground.

I pulled myself up with a low groan, standing in the new moonlight with a maniac smile still pressed to my lips. As best I could tell, I was totally covered in blood. My clothes were soaked through, my skin was awash in it. Sniffing the air, I turned to the assembly of hooded figures and spit on the ground, tensing the muscles in my arms and cracking my knuckles.

For a demon, getting impaled is just another bump in the road, I guess. A trifling nuisance.

“You did walk into a trap, my dears,” came a crooked old voice in the distance. Soft footsteps broke up the silence as someone approached. “Walked straight into it. Did you really believe us to be so naïve? Did you truly think we wouldn't know we were being followed? You don't give us enough credit.”

Kubo grit his teeth, glancing about for the source of the voice. “Show yourself, Agatha. I didn't come here to listen to you talk about how clever you are.”

Agatha chuckled dryly, still hidden from view. Her voice seemed to snake into our ears from multiple locations. She could have been anywhere. “I rather think not,” she replied. From every direction there materialized a dense, opaque fog. It surged in on a chill breeze and obscured my surroundings completely. I was only a few feet away from Kubo and the others, but couldn't see them. Visibility was so low that I couldn't see more than a few inches in front of me. It was a pervasive, clinging fog, like nothing ever seen in nature. Agatha had cast this haze and intended to keep us trapped in it.

I heard Kubo curse. “Lose the fog, Agatha. Why not drop the illusions and fight us on equal footing? Then we'll see who's trapped who.”

A few hoarse laughs erupted from nearby, the witches amused at the suggestion.

“No,” said Agatha. “All of you have reached the end of your journey. As we speak I have two of my sisters dispatched back to that house. They will have the child in their possession very shortly. When the full moon comes, our final sacrifice to Gadreel will be secured. But never mind that. I must warn you; the end will not come quickly. I intend to make you suffer for your meddling. I trust that the Veiled Order will handle your funeral arrangements? That is... if there's anything left here for them to identify.” She burst out laughing, a hideous fit of cackling and gasping laughter that incited a fierce nausea in me.

Any creature capable of making such sounds needed to get wiped off the map, with prejudice. My interactions with Agatha and her coven were vanishingly few, but right then I found that I could agree on something with the bloodthirsty demon dwelling inside of me.

These witches needed to die.

Every last one of them.

A deep chanting arose from within the fog. Guttural, clipped phrases I couldn't hope to decipher spilled from the coven's lips as they prepared some spell or ritual en masse. Their booby traps had been enough to turn me into a pincushion; what could these witches do by concentrating all of their energies into a single, powerful spell? Let's just say I didn't want to find out.

I balled my fists and started through the fog. There was no telling where I'd end up, or if I was moving at all, the barrier was so dense. I figured that if I kept on walking, though, I'd end up face-to-face with someone. Would it be friend or foe?

From nearby, I heard the click of Joe's Zippo. He switched it on, a dull orange flame cutting through the haze. Joe was just a few steps away from me, and though I couldn't see him, I could see the flickering flame rising into the air. He was holding it over his head, preparing to launch an attack of his own. “Fuck this shit,” he spat, the flame growing brighter and larger. “Hope you bitches are ready, because we're about to have us a good ol' witch burning, just like in the old days!”

“No, Joe, don't--” Kubo tried to warn him, barking in panicked tones I'd never heard him use.

But it was too late.

The flame from Joe's lighter whipped through the air in a giant arc, expanding, growing brighter. It seemed to eat up the fog, making it thinner in places where the flame burned hottest.

I don't know what Joe was intending, but I'm pretty sure he hadn't planned on blowing everything to smithereens.

Kubo's warning made sense to me just a moment too late. Sensing the oncoming explosion, I hit the ground and covered my head.

Not that it helped.

Boom.

The entire back of my body was scorched by a torrent of rampaging fire.

The fog was ignited, apparently very flammable, and the entire area was lit up by a spectacular explosion. Warehouses were blown apart, their crumbling serving to dampen the cries of witches from all around. I felt the ground rumbling beneath me as the buildings came down, felt my skin sizzle till it looked approximately the same way I like my bacon. The pain was incredible, as was the ear-shattering bang that had accompanied the blast.

I closed my eyes and screamed into the ground, waiting for the intense burning to stop.

It never did. My body was enveloped, and when the initial explosion had run its course, I felt a huge mass of rubble crashing onto me.

TWENTY

When the smoke had finally cleared and silence reigned over the scene, I had a hell of a time getting free of the rubble. Slowly, I rolled off pieces of numerous warehouses which should have left me flatter than a pancake and gained my feet. Already my skin was coming together nicely, the horrible burns that'd plagued it just moments ago rapidly disappearing.

Knife-proof and fire-proof? Today was shaping up to be a pretty good day for me.

The same could not be said for the other members of the team, whom I couldn't track down even as I surveyed the smoking mess all around me. Three whole warehouses had come down and still others had been thoroughly damaged. Smoke rose from beneath the slabs of wood and concrete that formed an unnavigable sea, and I was sure that compartmentalized fires were still burning throughout the wreckage.

“C-chief?” I called out, knocking dust from my hair and coughing.

There was no sign of the witches, either. It was possible they'd been crushed or incinerated in the blast. The explosion had been pretty intense. If not for the demon heart in me I'd have bought the farm, no doubt about it. Had the witches managed to escape? Could they have shielded themselves? Somehow, I didn't think so. Spell casters like Isabella seemed to need time to cast their enchantments. I didn't know a damn thing about spell craft, didn't know whether proper shielding spells actually existed, but figured that the witches would need at least a little notice in order to properly cast such things. Maybe they'd been far enough away from the blast to survive. Maybe they were more resilient than I gave them credit for. Whatever the case, I saw neither hide nor hair of them as I took a few wobbly steps forward.

From under a mound of concrete, I heard faint stirrings. Bracing myself, I squinted through the night, only to see Kubo and company emerging from underneath. They looked surprisingly good for having been buried in rubble, and as the smaller pieces were moved, I could see why.

A forcefield, like an invisible bubble, had shielded them from the worst of it. Getting closer, I could see the vague outlines of a paper sigil on the ground, near Kubo's feet. Crafty bastard had probably thrown it down when he realized what Joe was fixing to do.

“Hey, over here!” I called, tripping and falling on my face. The mound of rubble was uneven, difficult to scale. I sat up, looking down at the group, and noticed Joe was missing. “You two OK?” I asked. “Where's Joe?”

Kubo's spell was called off, and he reached out of the wreckage, gaining some ground and calling out to Joe. He didn't have to search for long, spotting the pyromancer just a few feet away, his body half-obscured by a piece of fallen roofing.

Kubo called me over, and the two of us hoisted the wreckage from Joe's body. Joe twitched as we did so, his breathing ragged and his clothing-- or what little remained of it-- covered in dust. He was covered in small burns, and didn't look capable of standing. But he was alive, which was no small miracle. Being at the epicenter of the blast, he should've been blown apart, yet there he was, still in one piece.

Well, nearly one piece.

His right arm hadn't fared so well.

The arm that'd raised the lighter into the air had been thoroughly scorched past the elbow and didn't look like it'd ever work again. In fact, it was so awfully charred and eaten away by the flames that the slightest breeze seemed capable of making it disintegrate into ash.

Kubo scooped up Joe carefully in his arms and then slung him over one shoulder. “We need to go, get him some help.”

I nodded, offering Isabella a hand as she attempted to clumsily mount the wreckage. “What about the witches, chief?”

Kubo glanced behind him. It was dark, the moonlight blocked somewhat by a swirling cloud of dust in the air. It was impossible to know whether any of the witches had survived; no trace of them could be see outside the wreckage and he certainly didn't seem interested in searching. “There's no time. They may have been caught in the blast, but I'm sure Agatha made it out, at least. We'll discuss that later. We're in no shape to fight them now, anyhow. The authorities will be here soon, I'm sure, and they'd only get in the way. A blast of that magnitude, even in a mostly abandoned part of town, is sure to raise a few eyebrows.”

Leading the way, Kubo jumped down piles of busted building material, cutting a makeshift path into the rubble. After several minutes of confused and inelegant maneuvering, he led us back to the SUV, upon which he laid a hand for some moments before declaring it safe. Apparently the witches hadn't booby-trapped it. Kubo laid Joe across the third row of seating. Then the three of us hopped in and left the warehouse district just as the sounds of sirens could be heard to stir in the distance.

I looked back at Joe, who barely moved. His breathing was weak, his face pale. “Is he gonna make it?” I asked.

Isabella was in a daze, leaning against the back of her seat and staring up at the car ceiling. She kept wetting her lips, her shoulders limp and her hands buried in her lap. Her burlap-colored outfit was singed, as were the ends of her dark hair, but she looked mostly OK. Kubo, too, was looking all right, considering what we'd just faced. And anyway, he was far too tough a guy to ever admit to his being pained by something. For all I knew he was actively dying in the driver's seat, struck some mortal blow. I'd never know it until it was too late, though.

“He'll be fine if we get him back to HQ soon,” replied Kubo, giving the SUV some gas and turning onto Bancroft Street. A mile ahead, I knew there to be a highway entrance ramp. While sliding into the right lane, Kubo toyed with a black box on the dash, a police scanner, turning knobs until he happened upon a particular channel.

--yeah, copy that. Kid's just over a year old, blonde hair. Last seen in a blue one-piece outfit. Was in his crib. The second-story window was the point of entry, and there's a burn on the carpet--

“Goddammit!” Kubo punched the steering wheel, denting it out of shape. “They got the kid.”

I held my breath. Those witches, those hideous creatures, had abducted the kid after all. The coven had played us, outsmarted us, and that baby had been taken from its parents. I felt immensely guilty, wished I'd stayed in that nursery, standing sentry. But it was too late. “S-so... what now?” I chanced.

Fuming, Kubo switched off the police scanner. “The coven has what it wants. They're simply going to lay low now, remain hidden. That's all they have to do to win this game, disappear for a while. They won't risk being found out again and will stay put until the time comes to make their sacrifice. We may have blown our only chance at stopping this. The Veiled Order is going to have to keep its ear to the ground... we have until the night of the full moon.”

“I see.” I gulped. “So, things aren't good, I take it?”

Kubo shook his head.

He pulled onto the highway, screaming onto the entrance ramp at seventy-five and then kicking it up to ninety when the road straightened out. He drove ninety-plus all the way to HQ.

TWENTY-ONE

Dropping Joe off at the Veiled Order's headquarters was done with very little fanfare. A team of medics was waiting just inside the gate, and they carted him off immediately upon our arrival, probably taking him to the same room where I'd been held after my operation.

Kubo didn't wait around to see how Joe was doing, didn't ask the medics any questions as they carted him off. The chief simply shut the doors and then pulled back out of the complex, returning to the highway. He intended to drop me and Isabella off at home.

With precious little chit-chat, Kubo made the drive to my apartment, letting me off at the curb. “I'll be in touch,” he said as I opened the door and stepped out. It was the longest sentence he'd spoken the whole way.

Dizzied by the night's events, I stumbled into my place and locked the door behind me.

Then, bushed, my clothing still dusty and scorched, I flopped onto the sofa and took a nap.

#

The sleep didn't last long, my dreams punctuated by scenes from my waking life. I was startled awake by a dream that'd ended with an exploding warehouse, and sat up, wiping at my eyes. There had been some other memories in the mix as well, fragments that I could only trace to that first night, when I'd first received the demon's heart. The night I couldn't remember. My brain had been teased by snippets of memory featuring me dashing across rooftops, entering the abandoned house in Flint, shoving over a display at Sam's and shouting obscenities at Scott. There was also another bit, where I'd threatened a young pedestrian and stolen his shorts.

The apartment was dim; upon returning I'd only switched on the light over the kitchen sink. My limbs still sore from the night's events, I ambled to the sink and took a few gulps directly from the tap. I also splashed some water on my face and changed out of my sooty clothes.

Still, I didn't feel any more human for it.

My mind was racing with questions, with concern.

I didn't hardly know Joe, and the guy was sort of an asshole.

But I was worried about him.

If anyone on Earth could patch the guy up, it was those shady bastards with the Veiled Order. I didn't have any doubt in my mind that they'd call in some expert, perform some esoteric procedure and make him feel like new, but I still didn't think it was right, the way we'd just dumped him off at HQ. Kubo was far too impersonal, too committed to the mission. I couldn't help but think that he only viewed us as disposable underlings, pawns in some larger game.

I switched on the turntable, listening to side one of Raw Power. I paced along with “Your Pretty Face Is Going To Hell” and well into “I Need Somebody”, but the music only seemed to make me more agitated. I wanted to walk, to get some fresh air. And maybe some answers.

I weighed the idea of returning to HQ, of having a chat with Kubo. He'd taken me out on this reckless mission tonight, and had scarcely told me anything about what we were doing or why we were doing it. What were the witches up to with all of this sacrificial business? How does this magic stuff work? These and other questions were all something he could answer for me, and putting on a pair of old tennis shoes, I decided to go for a twilit run to HQ. Sufficiently amped up by the music, I locked up and started onto the dark streets.

***

The front door was heavily reinforced. The gate had been easy enough to scale, but I could have thumped this monstrous door all night and it never would have opened. Instead, I tapped the button on the intercom like a civilized person and waited for someone to buzz me in. Kubo hadn't told me about how to get into the Veiled Order's offices during his little briefing. Perhaps because I wasn't supposed to visit except for official business. Kubo liked to throw that shitty verbiage around, “official business”. Like that was supposed to mean something to me.

I hit the button again, scoring the somewhat groggy voice of an overnight attendant. “How can I help you?”

“Hey, this is Lucian Colt. I, uh... work here. And I was hoping to come in and have a talk with Mr. Kubo?” I leaned against the concrete doorway, tapping my foot.

There was a grumble from the other end of the intercom. I wasn't sure that the fellow was going to let me in, until, suddenly, the door gave way with a click and he buzzed to tell me that I was “all clear”.

I walked into the well-lit lobby. It was every bit as pristine as I remembered it from the last morning, during my previous visit with Kubo. Except for the sleepy-looking guy with his ankles up on the counter, and one other person, the lobby was empty.

This other person standing beside the desk, however, made me stop in my tracks.

It was Mr. Amundsen.

I stared at him a long while, unsure of what to say. I wasn't exactly happy to see the guy. When last we'd met, I'd been chained to a hospital bed and drugged out of my mind. He smiled at me, but it was impossible for me not to see something of the predator in that smile, and I took a step back. “What are you doing here?” I asked.

He grinned, approaching me with all the warmth he usually afforded me. “I should probably be asking you that, Lucian, but I'll have you know that I spend a great deal of time here, doing administrative work with the Order.” He leaned against the front counter with one elbow. “Now, what can I help you with this fine night?”

Amundsen was dressed in a black suit, mighty fancy dress for one to be wearing at nearly three in the morning. The silvery pendant I'd noticed on him before was featured prominently over his black tie. Many-pointed star, inscribed with strange, foreign-looking markings. A black streak across the middle. It'd been on his little black box, too, unless my memory was failing me.

“I, uh...” I cleared my throat, speaking more forcefully. “I came here to get some answers. You jerks brought me into the fold but haven't told me a damn thing about what really goes on around here. I want to talk to Chief Kubo. I want to know more about these witches, about the magic...” Then, I added, “And I want to know how Joe's doing. He got hurt tonight, and Kubo just handed him over to the medics without a care.”

Nodding amusedly, Amundsen combed a hand through his hair and tried to hide his smile. “Well, I suppose you're entitled to know a little more about this organization, Lucian, being a prominent member and all. It's never been our intention to keep you in the dark, you understand, but the circumstances being what they are-- the coven, having arrived so close to their aim-- there's been precious little time for a proper introduction.” He motioned to a nearby hallway, just beyond the bank of elevators, and started from the front desk. “We can talk on the way to the infirmary.”

As I fell into step behind him, Amundsen continued. “I was surprised to see you here. It isn't the night of the new moon, after all.”

“What do you mean by that?” I asked.

Taking on something of graveness, Amundsen frowned. “I thought it was made clear to you, however it is official policy, absolutely required, that you check in during the night of the new moon. Whenever there is a new moon, you must come to this facility for placement in a specialized containment room.”

I gulped. A containment room could have been a lot of things, but it sure didn't sound cozy. “Why's that?”

“Because, on the night of the new moon, the demon's consciousness is fully realized. That is, during those nights, it will take you over completely. This is the only well-documented side-effect of the transplant procedure, and one that we have taken steps to overcome. There is a fortified room in this facility specifically outfitted to keep you put until morning. When the night of the new moon ends, you will find yourself released at dawn. But not a moment before then, lest you go on a rampage like you did that other night.” He shot me a look from the corner of his eye. I felt like a kid getting grounded for sneaking out of his room.

Still, I'd fucked up pretty bad the other night. I'd ended up in that abandoned shithole out in Flint, I'd frightened Scott at the record store and had done God knows what else. It was probably for the best, this “containment” period. We rounded a corner, entering a small elevator and going up two floors. The elevator smelled stuffy, and was decorated in shades of red. Red walls, red carpet, red-tinted fixtures. It was a little much. The doors opened into a small lobby that looked like the waiting room of a hospital. A few nurses ambled around, chatting quietly with one another and marking things on their clipboards. “So,” I said, following him into the infirmary, “what's the story with this 'Veiled Order', huh? Are you, like, the leader?”

Amundsen chuckled, leaning against one of the waiting room chairs and crossing his arms. “No, I'm not the leader.”

“Is Kubo the leader?”

At this, Amundsen just shook his head. It was becoming clear that I wasn't going to find out just who the leader of this shady organization was. That kind of info was well above my pay-grade, apparently.

“OK,” I replied, pressing on, “tell me more about it, then. What's the point of it all? How long's it been around, and why is it so focused on stopping Mater Agatha's coven?”

“My,” began Amundsen, “so many questions.” He toyed with the pendant around his neck as he began. “The Veiled Order is an ancient sect. The dissolution of various secret societies over the centuries has produced a number of individuals with a great deal of, shall we say, forbidden knowledge. It is principally these folk, along with talented individuals like yourself, that our group employs. There are members worldwide, but we keep our headquarters here in Michigan, around Detroit, because it is inauspicious. It is, truly, the perfect place for us.”

A few guys in black suits came up from the stairwell, passing the two of us on their way to the infirmary. I noticed them giving me the stink eye, mumbling something to one another as they went by. “What's their problem?” I asked, watching them disappear down the hall.

Amundsen patted me on the shoulder reassuringly. “Well, Lucian, it has to do with that transplanted heart of yours. You see, people aren't used to working alongside demons around here. Usually, they're tasked with, well, hunting them. Pay them no mind, they'll warm up to you in no time, I'm certain.”

I stuffed my hands into my pockets and considered everything I'd just been told. Frankly, there wasn't anything new here; I'd gotten this same song and dance when asking for more information before, and it seemed to me that this was the kind of canned speech the higher-ups gave to new hires. They didn't want to spoil the mystique, give me too much to work with. It wasn't any of my business, as far as they were concerned. I was just a tool at their disposal.

In my previous line of work, I'd always made a point of not asking too many questions. The client's privacy was maintained above all, lest they get dodgy and hire someone else. Now, working for this secret society, I was changing my policy. I wanted some damn answers, and wasn't going to let Amundsen off the hook easily.

He disarmed me with his next statement, however. “Well, enough about all that. Wouldn't you like to see your friend?” he asked, motioning to the hallway. “We can see him straight away. Joe, I'm told, is recovering marvelously.”

“Uh, sure,” I said, following him from the waiting area and into the infirmary proper.

There were only a handful of rooms, and they were all just like the one I'd been in. Handsomely furnished and simple, but with bars on the windows like a prison. Joe's was the last room on the right, and Amundsen held open the door for me as we approached.

A familiar face was leaving the room as the two of us entered. Dressed in his usual green scrubs, and with a large bandage across his cheek, was none other than Dr. Sargasso. He startled a bit as I walked in, and then dodged out of the room quickly with a perfunctory smile. Poor guy, I'd done a number on his face with that length of chain. I almost felt bad about it.

Almost.

Joe was laid up in a comfortable-looking bed, his ankles raised with pillows and his injured arm raised on a solid block of yellow foam. The limb had been wrapped tightly in white bandages and was completely immobilized. He looked better now than he had in Kubo's SUV. He was in a light sleep, breathing softly. His color had improved and it was clear that one of the nurses had come in and given him a bed bath. His hair, usually greased back, was spread across his pillow in a disheveled pile.

“Hey, Joe,” I said, leaving Amundsen in the doorway and approaching the bedside. “You, uh... you doing OK?”

Joe opened his eyes weakly and looked over at me, a small chuckle leaving his lips. “Been better.”

Not wanting to come across as a sappy guy, I walked up and playfully slugged him in the shoulder.

Punching someone laying in a hospital bed was probably a stupid idea, in retrospect.

Joe looked up at me with venom in his gaze, struggling to sit up. He fixed his eyes on me and shrugged. “Well, what do you want?”

I grinned sheepishly. “Well... you know, I just wanted to see how you were doing. Kubo just sort of dropped you off and, uh... we work together, so...”

Joe arched a black eyebrow and sank back against his pillow. “I'm touched. Next time, maybe bring me one of those edible arrangements or something, yeah? I like pineapple. Strawberries are OK, too, but don't you dare bring me oranges.”

I glanced back at Amundsen briefly. Suddenly I was feeling like a real idiot for coming by to visit Joe. He obviously didn't want me there, and it wasn't like we were particularly close. Whether Joe's disdain for me was owed to my housing a demon's heart I was unsure, but that he didn't like me a whole lot was crystal clear. “So... you think those witches made it out of there alive?” I asked, pacing at his bedside.

At this, Joe started up, frowning. He lurched forward in bed and balled his good fist, his bandaged arm twitching. “I tell ya, if they didn't burn in that explosion I'm going to toast 'em up yet. When I get out of here I'm going to hunt their asses down and make them sorry. What I did was irresponsible, but how was I supposed to know their stupid spell was flammable?” He shook his head, his mess of hair flopping from side to side. “Those bitches are gonna pay. No one escapes Fire Joe twice. No one.”

He said it with such conviction that I wanted to believe him.

“Totally, man...” I gulped. “But, you know, it's important that you get your rest now. Maybe put that out of your mind and just relax. We'll have plenty of time to finish the job once you're well.”

“Oh, fuck off with all of that,” snapped Joe. “Time is the one thing we ain't got none of. Those witches are this close to succeeding,” he said, holding his fingers an inch apart. “They kill that last kid and, boom, they win. Game over.”

That reminded me of the other thing I'd wanted clarification on. Glancing between Joe and Amundsen, I licked my lips pensively. “Yeah, so... what happens if they win? Kubo told me they were working to, uh... raise some kind of god? Or something? What, exactly, do we stand to lose here?”

At this, Joe craned his neck around me and looked to Amundsen, guffawing incredulously. Then, he glanced up at me, the cluelessness showing through in my wide-eyed expression, and laughed even harder. Settling down, he pointed at me with his thumb and nodded to Amundsen. “Wait a minute... wait a minute, you mean to tell me that he doesn't know yet?”

TWENTY-TWO

Amundsen had had enough of our little chat and broke it up immediately with a clap of his hands. As if the preceding conversation hadn't taken place at all, he walked up and took me lightly by the shoulders, hoping to maneuver me out of the infirmary. “Well, Joe, we need to let you rest. Get some sleep. Mona's treatment should fully heal your arm within a day.” With a nod, he started for the door.

Not that I budged.

“Wait a minute,” I said, raising my voice. “What, specifically, do I not know yet?” They were keeping me in the dark about everything, but this tidbit of Joe's sounded more than a little important.

Joe demurred, chuckling to himself and closing his eyes, feigning sleep. “Never mind, tex. They like keeping us in the dark about shit. We're like government employees around here-- we only get told things on an as-needed basis. Forget I said anything, Lucy.”

Nostrils flared, it took everything in me not to reach out and punch him across the chin. “Whatever, man,” I said, turning and storming out of the room behind Amundsen. The secrecy was getting to be too much. It was damn insulting, in fact. If they didn't want to spill their deepest, darkest secrets, well, that was one thing. No one was asking Amundsen about his sexual fetishes or bathroom habits. Stuff that actually concerned me, though? They had zero excuse to keep such information from me, and I was getting mighty tired of their tight-lipped policies. If they wanted to keep me on board, they'd have to spill it. And soon.

Amundsen smoothed out the front of his jacket and led me back into the small elevator. We rode down to the first floor lobby. Laughing to himself, he extended a hand to shake. “It's been good seeing you, Lucian. Let me know if you need anything. Chief Kubo will be in touch soon, I'm sure. Thank you for your hard work today, also.”

I didn't accept his hand, though. I looked at him like he'd just shot my dog, instead.

“You guys have some explaining to do.” My voice echoed in the lobby. “I like you, Mr. Amundsen. I worked for you a while before all of this and never asked you any damn questions. But now I have some serious misgivings about this little arrangement of ours, and all I'm asking for is a bit of transparency. If you want me to stay onboard, you're going to have to give me more to work with. What was Joe talking about up there? What don't I know? What are the witches working towards?” I was red in the face, pleading.

Amundsen smiled politely and withdrew his hand, placing them both behind his back and pacing towards the front door. “Joe was not mistaken when he said that information within our organization is dispensed on an as-needed basis, Lucian. Ours is not an organization that places value in transparency. I hope you'll forgive me but that's all the time I have tonight for fielding your questions.” He motioned to the sleepy doorman and the front door opened. “Have a good night.” Amundsen turned and walked away, disappearing around the corner.

I stood there, in front of the door, seething. Shooting the guard a dirty look, I slowly exited, marching into the cool night with more questions than I'd arrived with. They were going to keep me in the dark. No matter who I asked or how much I pressed, they weren't going to tell me anything I didn't absolutely need to know.

Spitting on the stone steps of the entryway, I sprinted across the parking lot and made a running jump over the black metal gates.

***

I walked the streets for a while during those last hours before the morning sun reared its head. I was feeling like shit, agitated and lonely. These Veiled Order guys were keeping me clueless, completely, and almost seemed to enjoy doing it. I wasn't valuable enough to them to warrant real politeness or even a proper answer to my straightforward questions. I was chopped liver, disposable.

Wheeling around downtown on my way back home and feeling awfully lonesome, I had half a mind to find a little company, a girl to take home with me. It occurred to me that all of the bars were closed, though, with all of the cute young things having wandered back to their places in a drunken stupor. There would be no getting lucky tonight, unfortunately. Realizing this, I set my sights on the next best thing.

A ham and cheese omelette at Waffle House.

I sauntered up towards the brightly-lit, yellow building through an alley that reeked of fresh vomit and the urine of bar-hoppers.

Not exactly the kind of smells that rouse the appetite.

I was within forty or so feet of the entrance when I sensed something behind me. It was a weird kind of feeling, like a single finger had brushed up against the hairs on the back of my neck. Glancing over my shoulder, I noticed someone following me through the alley.

A black cat.

It was by itself, a small, thin little thing with matted fur. It mewed softly, its paws touching down on the moist concrete very quietly, its tail raised and yellow eyes fixed on me. I paused, watching it for a time, and found that it stopped, too, when it noticed me looking at it.

“Scram,” I said. “I haven't got any handouts for ya, cat.”

The cat's gaze narrowed and I almost thought, with an inward chuckle, that it seemed to understand me.

Taking a step back and throwing out my arms suddenly, I made a barking noise and tried to scare it off.

The cat didn't budge, didn't seem in the least bit concerned with me. “Man,” I muttered. “The strays are getting pretty ballsy these days.”

I turned and started again towards Waffle House, but not before glimpsing another new arrival in the alleyway before me. Standing about twenty feet away, near the back of the restaurant, I spotted a little girl. She stood in the center of the alley, her white dress in tatters and her face paler than the moonlight that drifted down from above. I squinted and got a better look at her face, noticing that her eyes were wholly blank, like white billiard balls, and almost as large.

A persistent black cat and a kid with huge, fucked-up eyes corner some guy in an alley outside a Waffle House.

It was like the start of a bad joke.

And it sure as hell wasn't just a coincidence.

Carefully I placed my hands in my pockets, wanting to look relaxed and casual. If these things were familiars like I thought they were, then I didn't want to rush into a fight and provoke their masters. These two might've been following me for a while, letting members of the coven know my exact position. How many witches were trailing me? Were they nearby? Would the witches attack me in public, gang up on me?

Noting my surroundings, I realized that a back alley near a Detroit Waffle House at almost five in the morning hardly constitutes a “public” space. Lots of shady shit went down in such alleys at all hours of the day; if I got attacked by witches here, the only ones who'd see it would be the shambling drunks or prostitutes that haunted the back streets. People that no one would ever believe.

Not liking my odds, I doubled back towards the cat.

The way I saw it, I'd rather drop-kick a little cat and get away than end up punching another one of those roach-infested meat puppets.

The cat gave up only a bit of ground, backing towards the other side of the alley as I approached it. Its eyes never lingered, the yellow spheres glowing in the low light and dissecting me with a furtive interest. From behind me I could hear the pitter-patter of bare, child-sized feet against the wet cement.

The kid was coming up on my six.

I was hoping to jump over the cat and make a break for it around the corner, when suddenly I was stopped in my tracks. My legs went numb, then refused to move as something fixed me into place. I was like a screw wedged into the cement, my legs held close together and incapable of movement.

Stuck. Pinned. Held fast.

I gulped, recalling vividly what'd happened to me the last time I'd been frozen in place by something unseen. It'd been an enchantment outside the warehouse, hours ago. It'd been a hell of a spell, a trap that'd run my body through all over with black spikes like some hateful cactus. The present feeling of immobilization was very much the same, though no spikes materialized. As I waited nervously in this spot, the black cat and ghostly girl scurrying out of the alley and vanishing from sight, I heard a series of heavier footfalls approaching me.

At my feet, I noticed that the concrete had been stained with black ash. I was standing in a circle, hastily-scrawled, and its outer reaches had been inscribed with rough, angular symbols. Like an idiot, I'd been too focused on the two familiars to see it on the ground before me and had walked right into it. I tried to move my feet, to scuff up the markings, but they were clamped down against the ground with unbelievable force.

I wasn't going anywhere.

Whoever it was walking down that alley had me right where they wanted me.

And I didn't have anyone to help me this time.

No Joe, to light everything on fire.

No Isabella, to contort her fingers and make me invisible.

No Kubo, to throw around his fancy, magical slips of paper.

I braced myself as a dark shape lumbered into the alley before me.

TWENTY-THREE

The cloaked hag muttered to herself.

Standing a good foot shorter than me, she steadied herself against the wall of the alley and cast a single, grotesque eye up towards me from beneath the edge of her vast, black hood.

It was one of the witches, all right. Her waxen face was illuminated by the far-off glow of the Waffle House. I watched as her eyes dropped to the magic circle on the ground, and as her lips crinkled in the corners, forming what I took to be a smile. Her lips were like two earthworms, their bodies rubbing up against one another, while a small laugh grew in her throat.

“Well,” said the croaking thing, approaching me until she'd come uncomfortably close, “let's see what it is I've caught.” The witch reached out and took my arm, turning it so that my wrist was facing her.

I let her have it. Not because I couldn't have overpowered her, but because I was too stunned to protest. This hideous thing was running its long, clawed fingers against the inside of my forearm, purring and squinting as if looking to conjure up my veins like charmed cobras. Finally, she set two fingers against the center of my wrist and closed her eyes.

In the next moment the bitch reared back and fell against the wall with wide eyes, stammering but unable to form a proper sentence.

Giving my arm a shake and trying to free it of the sensation her touch had produced, I grimaced. “What do you want with me?”

From a half-crouch she surveyed me cautiously, eyes trembling in their sunken sockets. “Y-you,” she finally managed, “are a demon.”

“Well, obviously,” was the best I could come up with, sporting a slight grin. “But thanks for noticing.”

Her breathing kicked into overdrive. I had her freaked out, hyperventilating, and I didn't have the foggiest idea why. She clutched at her black cloak like a church-going woman who'd accidentally tuned into a hip-hop radio station and shuddered. “But this can't be. You... you're working with the Veiled Order, are you not?” Her throat quaked as she spoke, a mound of loose skin hanging below the almost nonexistent nub of her chin.

“That depends,” I replied, “on who's asking.”

Pacing around me but keeping out of arm's reach, she shook her head. “It bewilders me... why do you serve the Veiled Order when me and my sisters devote our lives to serving beings like you? Why not join us, demon? Help us to rid the world of the destructive Veiled Order?”

I chuckled, placing my hands on my hips and peering down at the circle below my feet. “That's a mighty fine offer,” I said. “Let me out of this little trap and I'll consider it.”

Pursing her lips, the witch's eyes narrowed and her flabby face took on a graver look. Though it may have only been a change in the light, her features looked more pointed now, animalistic. Her teeth, sharper than before, were bared in a grin. “It's all right. I will convince you to join us through other means.” Holding out one hand, she started into a guttural chant, the bulk of her face mercifully hidden beneath the hood.

I watched as her hand transformed into a long, glimmering blade that looked awfully familiar.

Shit. I'd seen this trick before, and I didn't like it.

My heart began to race. I tried to move my feet, tried to lash out at her, but found I lacked the reach.  As the creature glared up at me, revealing a visage of refined hideousness and animality, she reared back and prepared to let me have it, the blade poised to run me through.

Hadn't I been stabbed enough for one night?

Damn it, I thought. Don't you have something for me here? Can't you do anything? I was asking the demon, but I couldn't be sure whether he was aware of my thoughts.

The witch loosed a chilling war-cry.

I closed my eyes, waiting for the blow to come, and then felt something come over me. I found myself removed from the situation, made a spectator as someone else sat down in the hot seat.

The demon.

It was taking over for me.

Turns out he did make house calls. All I had to do was ask.

I'd long gotten over the discomfort it caused when he took the reins. I didn't care about being displaced, about being forced to watch from the sidelines. As I reopened my eyes and saw the witch before me, her enchanted hand raised to deal a deathblow, I willingly threw the demon the keys. He'd know what to do in this situation, would handle things where clueless me would fumble.

“We shall see,” muttered the demon through my lips, outstretching his arms.

This got the witch's attention. Either that, or it was the nigh instantaneous change in the air. An unseasonably cool breeze shot through the alley at once, ruffling the witch's cloak and giving her pause. On it came the scent of fresh rain. Taking another step back, the witch looked skyward, as if expecting a furious rain to fall.

What she didn't expect was the white-hot lightning bolt that surged from the clear sky and struck her dead-on.

So intense was the heat that wreaked her body that she wasn't even afforded a scream in her final moments. Like a flagpole in an open field she coursed with an incalculable surge of electricity. Then, before the wave of heat had even dissipated, or my eyes had been readjusted to the usual dimness of the alley, I saw that a vaguely human-shaped smear had formed against the ground. The outline of a person was rendered in hues of black, like charcoal, and a smoldering cloak remained draped over it.

The demon and I had a good laugh. I, laughing internally; the demon, outwardly. The scent of burnt flesh flooded the alley; an awful smell, but one that I relished because of what it meant. Glancing down at my feet, I noticed I was still held in place by the magical seal the witch had inscribed. Freeing myself of it was a matter of some few moments with the demon's help.

Opening my mouth, I loosed a few drops of spit upon the ground. They struck the cement with a sizzle, rapidly eating away the seal and even some of the concrete below. With the symbols disrupted in this way, the seal lost its effectiveness and I was free to step out of it.

Stretching, I gave my neck a little twist and returned to the captain's seat. The demon sank back into the depths of my mind, and I could sense it was pleased with the work it'd done. “Thanks,” I said, looking up into the sky, smirking.

I'd lost my appetite and figured I'd return home. Continuing down the alley, going back the way I'd come, I spotted the form of a blank-eyed girl near the edge of the street. She lingered there timidly, hands pressed to the sides of her raggedy dress. The familiar was still watching me, trying to track my movements. A black cat circled her heels, sniffing the air and staring me down from afar.

Pointing directly at her, I said, “Get out of here. Go and tell your masters what I've just done. This is what they can expect if they interfere with me.”

Both the girl and the cat dashed off, disappearing from sight.

Stepping out of the alley with my head held high, I shoved my hands in my pockets and took my time walking home, triumphantly. It felt good to take matters into my own hands, to defend myself without Kubo and the others giving me shit.

I still didn't have a lot of answers, but two things were clear to me.

The first was that, if the worst happened, I didn't need the Veiled Order.

I could take care of myself.

The other was that being able to control lightning bolts was way fucking cooler than anything Joe could do with his dumb lighter. I couldn't wait to try it again soon. “Fire Joe doesn't have shit on Lightnin' Lucy.”

TWENTY-FOUR

I sat on the couch, toying with the black flip-phone.

On the one hand, I knew I probably needed to call Kubo and tell him about my encounter with the witch in the alley earlier that morning.

On the other, I wasn't in the mood for a lecture. His “for official business only” schtick had really rubbed me the wrong way, and I almost delighted in keeping this tidbit from him as a result. If he pressed me I could play dumb, throw it in his face and tell him that I wasn't sure whether it counted as “official business”.

I held off on calling him, ultimately, because there wasn't really much to tell. I'd met one of the witches, smited her with a thunderbolt like a badass Norse god, and then I went on my merry way. What use could he possibly have for that information? We knew some of Mater Agatha's coven to have survived; if nothing else, the witches she'd dispatched back to that suburban home to collect the infant had survived Joe's firestorm in the warehouse district. I'd have bet my bottom dollar that at least a few of them had squeaked through that debacle relatively unscathed, too.

I'd done Kubo and the others a favor, culled the numbers of our enemy. There was no need to call and report to him.

I pulled up the archaic calendar application on the phone and did a bit of figuring. Though I can't attest to being an expert on the phases of the moon, it seemed to me that we had about eleven days before the the full moon. That was all the time we had to save that kid and keep the witches from summoning up some fearful thing that, apparently, no one wanted to tell me about. It wasn't much time, less than two weeks, and yet I remembered what Kubo had said. He'd hoped that the witches would give themselves away in the interim, that they'd show themselves or trip up along the way. My little encounter with one of them in the alley outside the restaurant certainly seemed like a slip-up. For whatever reason, the witch I'd met had felt compelled to confront me. Just couldn't stay away.

“I guess demons are like catnip, but for witches.” I set the phone down on my coffee table and kicked my feet up. The witch had asked me to join her and the coven, to fight with them against the “destructive” Veiled Order. It didn't surprise me that an abomination like her should consider the Veiled Order “destructive”, and yet I wondered what she'd meant. More than that, I wondered what the hell she was thinking believing that the demon in me would ever want to join forces with the likes of Mater Agatha.

The afternoon was spent napping. In those moments where I awoke to take a piss or shift on the sofa, I checked my work phone. No matter how many times I checked, however, there was no message from Kubo. Things were quiet as far as the mission was concerned. Otherwise those douches at the Veiled Order hadn't heard anything they were willing to tell the likes of me.

A secret society has to keep things, well, secret.

I get that.

But what I couldn't understand was the utter secrecy with which they operated even around their low-level members. Joining a secret society hadn't been like anything I'd ever imagined. There'd been no swearing in, no ritual, no passing on of knowledge. Joining the Veiled Order had been like starting at a new office, except instead of a cubicle, I'd been given a demon's heart and a cell phone straight out of 1997.

When more sleep wasn't forthcoming, I started pacing around the room. Still, the anger in me continued to grow till I felt I might start punching in the walls of my apartment. Putting on a jacket, I decided to step out. The day was young, and a trip to the bookstore or bar would likely soothe my nerves a good deal more than spending the day inside, climbing the walls.

Fiddling with my keys, I stepped out and went to lock the door, when I noticed something was amiss.

It isn't the greatest complex in the area, but my apartment building is a pretty decent deal for the price. It's a two story building, only about a dozen units on each floor, and for the most part all of the tenants keep to themselves. I'd lived in far dirtier, noisier places than this one as a student, and appreciated the way that people didn't blast their music or host obnoxious parties in this place. I hardly knew my neighbors; I might've recognized them in a lineup, but the sounds of their voices and even their names were pretty hazy. There was one exception, a girl who lived across the hall from me by the name of Heather. Heather was just out of school, a physical therapist with bottle blonde hair and a rack so perky it must've been crafted by one hell of a surgeon. She had a little dog, a Pomeranian, that I really couldn't stand. She'd take it for walks sometimes, and its yapping would fill the halls till she finally dragged it out onto the street on its leash.

Well, that Pomeranian was out in the hall as I stepped out of my unit.

Trouble was, the poor thing was laying on the ground outside my door, its guts hanging all over the place.

I knelt down, looked the animal over closely and felt sick to my stomach. Someone or something had slit its body open, ass to throat, and had left the innards splayed against the grey hallway carpet. The Pomeranian was laying in a pool of its blood; it looked pretty wet, but I couldn't be sure just how fresh it was.

I was about to stagger down to Heather's and was wondering who the hell would do such a thing to a dog when I noticed a large marking on the outside of my door. It was a simple, circular design, evidently drawn in the dog's blood, and it reminded me of the magic seal I'd stepped in the night before, in the alleyway.

I immediately turned around, looking from one side of the hall to the other.

The witches.

They'd been here.

Approaching me in an alley downtown is fair game, but if you think you can bring a fight to my literal doorstep and get away with it you're in for a rude awakening. Livid, I tried to wipe away the symbol on my door. The blood, however, had dried too much.

It was time for me to call Kubo. I didn't like the thought of reaching out to the chief, but knew I didn't have a choice. Things were heating up, and now the witches knew where I lived. It was possible that I'd been tagged by one of them, or that they'd followed me home last night. Kubo, though, would know what to do. I went to open the door to my apartment but paused as a faint rustling sounded from behind me.

I turned and watched as the Pomeranian's exposed guts began to writhe in its abdominal cavity. Then, without warning, a length of intestine shot out towards me like a whip, winding itself around my neck and tightening with all the force of a boa constrictor. I coughed, trying to tear the slick intestine away from my throat, but it only squeezed tighter, eventually bringing me to my knees.

The lights in the hallway flickered several times before they eventually shut off completely. The light coming in from the windows on the two ends was snuffed out by a shadowy mist and the space was darkened considerably. Straining to breathe, I tugged on the length of gore fastened around my neck and watched in horror as someone ambled down the hall towards me from the direction of the fire escape.

Stepping slowly, deliberately, was a young man. He was tall, with dark hair and stunning blue eyes. I recognized him the moment he came into focus, even though he appeared disheveled. The circles under his eyes bespoke countless sleepless nights, and the needle in his trembling hand dripped with a bit of liquid. I recognized him because he was my older brother, Conrad.

Trouble is, my brother Conrad was dead.

He'd been dead for years now.

This probably doesn't seem like the best time for me to launch into a bit of family history, but I want you to bear with me. See, despite what you may think, I come from a decent background. My folks divorced when I was young, but up until that point we lived a fairly comfortable lower-middle class life in a nearby suburb. It was me, my parents, and my older brother, Conrad.

And everyone loved Conrad.

That one child should be favored over his siblings is nothing new. Happens all the time. And I'm convinced now, after so many years of reflection, and late nights of drinking, that my parents never meant anything bad by it. They just preferred him. Everyone did. Conrad was a child of promise. He was walking before he was a year old, learned to read and count by the time he was three. Did great in school, played sports, was a handsome devil. My youth would have been spent competing with Conrad for my parents' attention, except that I knew better than to think I'd ever win. No, I learned early on that Conrad was the chosen son, the one who would go on to do great things and do right by the family name. I got used to playing second fiddle and just kept my head down. It was easier that way.

Conrad and I, we looked kind of similar. I don't mean that we were twins or indistinguishable from one another, but you could tell we were brothers, certainly. Back in the day, people would always tell me that I was the spitting image of my brother. It pissed me off so much, knowing that the best attention I could garner was a comparison to him. “Your eyes are just like his,” they'd say. Or, “Are you sure the two of you aren't twins?” Shit like that. It got tiresome, listening to that day in and day out till I graduated high school.

But then, one day, all the comparisons stopped.

Because Conrad died.

See, for all of his “promise”, for all of his natural talent and charisma, Conrad was no angel. He'd been hiding a nasty habit from everyone in my family. For him, lies were an effortless thing. His delivery was such that he could piss on your pant leg and tell you it was raining and you'd believe him even as you watched him whip it out. But this little habit, a drug habit, caught up with him, and in the end, he couldn't talk himself out of that one.

We found him one morning as I was preparing to head to school. He was slumped over the toilet with a needle in his arm, face serene and eyes totally blank. Even in death he was handsome and carefree-looking. Even in death I was a little jealous of him.

Oh, my folks mourned. You'd better believe it almost killed them, my brother's death. And me? Listen, I know you probably think I'm dirt already, but I'm going to tell it to you straight: I didn't even cry at his funeral. It's not that I didn't love my brother in some capacity. I did. I mean that. The two of us grew up together, and despite all of the comparisons and other bullshit, we were still family. But I could never bring myself to cry over him, to mourn him like the others did. His entire life, or the vast majority of it, had just been such a sham in my eyes. The world had fed his ego, blown him up to this being of grandiose proportions, and when the house of cards came tumbling down, everyone suddenly knew what he'd really been.

A phony. A sweet-talking drug addict with a pair of baby blue eyes and a wicked smile. Nothing more, nothing less. He was never going to go on to do great things. Wasn't going to get a doctorate, run for President, nothing. And somehow, deep down, I'd always known it.

He was buried in a quiet ceremony that summer. That was that. All she wrote.

And so you can probably imagine what a fucking shock it was to see him ambling down the hall of my apartment building, clutching a syringe in his hand as a Pomeranian's intestines tightened around my neck.

The specter of Conrad shambled towards me, stopping within arm's reach and then falling to his knees. His mouth was moving, but no words that I could hear were coming out. His lips were blue, his skin pale as porcelain. As I struggled to draw breath, I finally heard him speak.

Hearing that voice again, after almost a decade, is the single most frightening thing I can recall experiencing. Getting stabbed by witches, all of this other stuff I'd done with the Veiled Order, none of that could hold a candle to the bone-chilling tones of my dead brother's voice.

What he said, specifically, only added to my terror. “It should've been you, you know that?” he said. “I was supposed to live, Lucy. I was supposed to make it out of this town, make a name for myself. Mom and dad never gave a shit about you. You and I both know it.” The apparition held out his syringe, then plunged it into his outstretched forearm. Groaning, he suddenly stood up, walking in reverse towards the fire escape and slipping back into the shadow.

The next thing I knew, I could breathe.

There was no intestine wrapped around my throat. For that matter, there was no dead Pomeranian in the hallway and no circle drawn on my door in blood.

It'd been an illusion, apparently. A mighty convincing one, at that.

I was sitting in the middle of the hallway, shivering, hyperventilating.

And I was sobbing.

I struggled to climb to my feet, clawing towards my door and shoving it open. I needed to talk to Kubo. This shit was getting out of hand. The witches knew where I was, and this was all far too serious. Violence, I could handle. Head games like these, dredging up long-dormant memories? Hell, no. The witches had probably discovered something about me last night. Between trying to attack me in the alley and turning me into a pin cushion outside the warehouse, they'd figured out that they couldn't hope to kill me.

But that didn't mean that they couldn't torture me psychologically. They knew just where to hit me, what screws to turn to make me miserable. In a way, pain like this stung a hell of a lot more than their physical violence ever had.

I locked my door, shuffling inside. Terror coursed through me, and my throat struggled against a series of fresh sobs. I was being hunted, actively targeted by creatures whose powers were beyond my understanding.

More than that, though, I wept because I'd just seen my brother.

I might've been almost ten years too late, and I might've hated hearing that filth he'd spoken.

But, goddamn it, I missed him.

TWENTY-FIVE

“You've been crying,” was the first thing Kubo thought to say with a smirk as I opened the door for him.

“Nah,” I replied. “Been chopping onions all day. Was fixing a casserole, since I'm having your mom over tonight. Hear she's a big eater.” I'd filled him in over the phone about my meeting with the witch in the alley the night before, and about the horrific visions I'd just been subjected to in the hallway.

For his part, Kubo seemed surprisingly sympathetic, though when I finished rehashing the details to him in my living room, he seemed poised to read me the riot act for not calling him sooner. Noticing that I'd already been pretty shaken up by all that'd happened, he let me off easy. “In the future,” he insisted, “you need to call me immediately. Should you see the witches again, or fall into another one of their enchantments, I need to know about it.”

“Sure, no problem.”

“One more thing,” he added. “It's unwise to let the demon take full control of you too often.”

I chuckled nervously. That demon had saved my bacon a few times now. I was having trouble imagining the possession as a bad thing, considering. I mean, escaping that first night and wreaking havoc? That was bad. Hurting those dudes outside the brewery? Also bad. Still, the demon had pulled some serious weight during a few incidents now. I couldn't just write off the value of a full-fledged possession. The demon might've been murderous, but he knew what he was doing. “Why's that?”

Kubo firmed up, crossing his arms. “The more you let that devil come out and play, the more he's going to want to do it. Understand? In time, the demon's personality could completely supplant your own. Use its power judiciously and learn to fend for yourself in the face of a threat. Even though the demon is a useful tool, you don't want it calling the shots one-hundred percent of the time. And if you keep invoking it, letting it take control, that's where you're headed.”

I hadn't really considered that before. I looked inward, trying to suss out the demon's presence within me. There was something stirring in the darkest recesses of my mind, but at a time like this, when my heart was calm and there was no threat present, I couldn't sense it. “Yeah, OK. That makes sense,” I replied. “So... you said you could do something to protect me from those witches? Do something to my apartment to keep them away?”

Kubo nodded. He unpacked a large stack of paper slips with writing on them and stole a roll of tape from the battered remnants of my desk.

“What are those for?” I asked. I'd seen him use them before, but had never gotten around to asking about how they worked.

“They're seals,” he said simply. Then, noting my confusion, continued. “Imagine if you could distill a spell to its very essence. Like that stuff Isabella did, making the car disappear, whatever. What if you could carry spells like those around in your pocket and use them at a moment's notice, without having to consciously cast them? Well, that's what these are. They're pre-prepared spells. All you have to add is a little will and the seal is activated. I prepare seals for all sorts of different applications. These are simply seals of warding. I'll post them around this place and they'll keep supernatural beings out-- unless they have your permission to enter.”

I grinned. “Yeah, but, I've got this demon in me. Is it going to keep me out of my own apartment?”

He arched a brow. “You know, it just might.”

Kubo went from room to room, taping up sigils on each wall and window. Finally, he set one on my front door and tucked the remaining stack into one of his pockets.

“That should do it,” he said. “You should be able to sleep a little easier, this way. It won't keep the witches from knowing where you are, but it'll keep them from messing with you while you're at home.” He cleared his throat, adjusting his jacket and pointing to the door. “Now, do me a favor and get ready. We're leaving.”

“Huh? Where to?” I asked, running a finger against one of the seals on the wall. It was made of a fine, coarse paper, and the ink on it was extremely thick, like it'd been laid down by a brush. The symbols were probably Japanese, and I admired them from across the room as I slowly slipped my shoes on.

“We're going to see a friend of mine,” replied the chief, standing by the door.

I scoffed, looking for my keys and wallet. “Wait a minute, a surly dude like you has friends? When did that happen?”

He ignored me, continuing, “Those witches seem to have cast a spell on you. I can't lift it, not here, but my friend can probably clear it up for you. It's a trace spell.” He narrowed his gaze, looking at me as though he could see some sort of invisible filth emanating from me. “The witches are able to keep tabs on you. Their energies are concentrated on you, subduing your power and inciting terror. We need to clear it at once, unless you want to risk another episode in the hallway, Lucy.”

I didn't need to be told a second time.

Walking over to the door, I locked up and followed Kubo down the hall.

TWENTY-SIX

On the car ride to the lot outside of Yao's, I'd tried to ask Kubo a few questions. As usual, he wasn't in a talking mood. He declined to expound upon what the witches were up to, and our odds of tracking them down in time to make a difference. He also refused to tell me his favorite flavor of ice cream.

What he did explain, in brief, was how magic worked.

My whole life I'd been ignorant of real magic. The stuff on TV, the kind of magic you might see on a Vegas stage, was nothing like the real thing. Real magic, Kubo explained, was a harnessing of raw, vital energy that existed all around us. There were two worlds, the world of the living and the world of the dead, each of them self-contained. Between them, however, acting as a sort of medium, existed an energy, what we called magic, and sometimes a sensitive individual can tap into this energy that lurks between two worlds and do things with it. There were more types of magic than one could count, with worldly-- and unworldly-- traditions being further augmented by the strengths and personalities of spell casters. Those attuned to the ways of the craft could even interact directly with the world of the Beyond, accessing spheres of entity that should have been closed off to their kind.

“Of course,” he added, as he parked the SUV, “types of magic that test the limits in that way are dangerous, and there are groups, like the Veiled Order, who hunt down anyone who dares practice such arts.” Unbuckling his seatbelt, he summed it up perfectly before stepping out. “One bad apple can spoil the whole bunch. If the balance is upset, it can negatively affect everyone.”

I followed him out of the car, asking him a few questions about how it was he'd gotten into magic in the first place, however Kubo didn't seem much in the mood to talk anymore, and clammed up, walking towards Yao's.

Yao's was a Chinese restaurant, situated just off of Decatur road, in a large strip mall. The other businesses in the vicinity were legal offices and payday loan outfits, and the buildings were separated by narrow passages that the homeless sometimes squatted in during inclement weather. I'd eaten at Yao's several times in the past, had even been something of a regular customer, except that I'd once found a few fingernails in my sweet and sour chicken and had sworn the place off as a result.

A damn shame, too. It was hard as hell to find someone in this city who could fry up a perfect pork dumpling like the dudes at Yao's.

“So, we getting some lunch first or something?” I asked as he mounted the curb and started towards the front door.

As if to answer my question, Kubo altered his trajectory and quietly strode to the short alley between Yao's and a stuffy-looking lawyer's office.

I knew this spot pretty well, so when Kubo began to lead me through the alley, I was more than a little confused. “Hey,” I said, nodding to the opening ahead, “this doesn't go anywhere. Just leads to another parking lot. Where we going?”

The alley couldn't have been more than twenty feet long, and it stood between the two buildings, joined at the top and forming a kind of tunnel. The ground was soiled concrete, and I noticed the low-hanging ceiling to be marked with a bunch of spent gum and stickers for local bands. There was a solitary light fixture about half-way through the tunnel, but the bulb was busted and I couldn't remember a time when it actually worked.

We were almost to the other end when Kubo stopped and slowly pointed to his right. Then, turning, he started down a new tunnel.

A tunnel that shouldn't have been there.

Like I said, I knew this spot. Had patronized this restaurant numerous times in the past, walked this very alley more times than I cared to count. There was no way in hell I'd missed this connecting tunnel whose length Kubo now walked. Where had it come from? It looked every bit as soiled and faded as the rest of the joint, but lacked the gum, stickers and cigarette butts of the former passage.

I was freaked out, but I followed behind him, mumbling to myself. “Where the fuck did this come from? No way this path has always been here.” In fact, the further we went, going deeper and deeper down this tunnel that shouldn't have even existed, I realized something was wrong. We'd been walking more than a minute, should have completely walked the length of the entire strip mall.

But still we were walking.

Either this was some hidden, magical space or I was losing it.

I tapped Kubo's shoulder and felt it tense beneath my finger. “Chief, where the hell are we?” I marveled at the dim, unlit space. It was growing darker and darker as we went on, leaving the faint light of the previous tunnel at our backs. The way forward promised of no more light, either.

“Tell me,” said Kubo, “do you know anything about physics?”

I shook my head. I knew as much about physics and complex math as I did about underwater basket-weaving.

“Well, consider this a space in the in-between realm I talked about. It's invisible to outsiders, but exists alongside the world you know.” With that, he redoubled his speed, marching down the passage into a darkness pregnant with uncertainty.

There wasn't enough light to see by, and I was getting terribly nervous as I followed along. So, this was some kind of metaphysical phenomenon between our world and the world of the dead? Some little pocket that could only be accessed by people in-tune with magic? I gulped. What if we couldn't get back out again, and were permanently stuck in this in-between world, like coins wedged between the cushions of a filthy sofa?

Kubo halted, rummaging around in his pocket for one of those magical seals he carried. Squinting at it, he dropped it on the ground and then pressed his hands together.

From nearby, a handful of small fireballs materialized, hovering in the air like balloons. These gave Kubo all the light he needed, and he knelt down, gripping what appeared to be a door handle in the concrete floor.

“So, that spell was, like, your version of a flashlight?” I asked, poking at one of the fireballs with my finger.

Bad idea.

My finger went numb first, and then my whole right arm. Cursing, I shook my limb around in circles till the feeling returned.

Kubo was standing beside what appeared to be a wooden door. It was made of a thick, faded wood, and looked like it would have fit in perfectly with the décor of a viking stronghold. The door handle was even a metal ring, and it bore the primitive cast of a lion on its outermost edge in clumsy relief. “Actually,” he said, wrenching the door open and revealing a dark abyss on the other side, “those are Will-o-the-wisps.” He pointed at one of the fiery orbs. “Don't touch.”

Pacing over to the yawning chasm in the floor of the tunnel, I chuckled. In the ghostly firelight, the paleness of my face was all too evident, however. “S-so, this friend of yours... she a mole person?”

Rather than dignify that with a response, Kubo took me by the arm and shoved me through the trapdoor, into the abyss.

I fell through the floor of the tunnel into an unnatural, impregnable darkness. And I screamed the whole damn way, never knowing whether I'd reach the bottom.

When I managed to open my eyes, however, I found that I was not only standing on two feet, but that I wasn't tumbling into an unlit abyss after all. I was standing at the doorstep of a small, dimly lit cottage couched between two rain-soaked footpaths. A dense forest crowded the structure on all sides, with only a small ring of overgrown grass acting as a clearing near the door.

I turned and found Kubo standing nonchalantly at my side, striking at the door with his meaty fist.

Let me break that down for you.

We walked down an alley next to a Chinese restaurant, and from there, we entered a really long alley that shouldn't have even existed. At the end of that alley, Kubo had summoned up ghost fireballs and opened a door in the ground, which we'd jumped through. Instead of falling into the center of the Earth, though, we'd ended up standing outside of a quaint little cottage in the middle of a pine forest.

I didn't have the slightest idea of how we'd gotten there, but I felt pretty sure we'd broken every law of physics along the way. Hell, physical laws that hadn't even been discovered yet had been broken.

Blinking at the door as it eased open, I pinched myself.

Still awake.

Kubo walked in and looked back at me expectantly, waiting for me to join him. Glancing over my shoulder at the misty woods, I scampered into the cottage behind him, unwilling to face the bizarre, metaphysical ramifications of our surroundings.

The door closed with a creak behind me and I found myself standing in a dingy room crowded from floor to ceiling with shelves. And on those shelves were glass and metal containers of all shapes and sizes. Many of them contained liquids of varied colors, while others held questionable things suspended in said liquids. Small potted shrubberies were peppered throughout the space, exploding across the shelves and invading the nooks and crannies with their long, searching growths. There were shelves sagging with ancient-looking books, and just beyond, what I fancied to be a collection of cages, from which emerged the strangest, most disconcerting sounds.

Kubo's friend evidently had some weird hobbies.

From the right-hand corner of the room I caught sight of someone stirring. It was an old woman, her face so wrinkled it looked like a slumping stack of pancakes. Two bushy, white eyebrows and a shock of white, frizzy hair topped it all off, and the creases of the woman's face churned as she glimpsed Kubo, indicating either happiness at seeing him, or else severe gas pains. It was literally impossible to tell. She was an aged creature, older than anyone I'd ever seen. Older, even, than the witches in Mater Agatha's employ.

Still, the woman moved towards us from across the room with great, almost alarming swiftness, winding through the shelves and stacks with the grace of a serpent.

And as she stationed herself before Kubo, extending a stubby, withered hand to shake, I could see why.

She was only human from the waist up. In place of legs, she had a long, greenish length of muscled flesh that extended several feet behind her in a segmented taper.

I'd been bullshitting with Kubo before, asking whether his buddy was a mole person.

Turns out she was closer to “snake-person”.

I was completely caught off guard by this, disgusted, if we're being honest, but I tried to hide it by looking away from her coiling, olive-green lower half. Don't stare at it, I told myself. It's rude to stare. Maybe she's self-conscious about it.

What constituted proper etiquette when dealing with monstrosities like this one? Was it a faux pas to stare at the lengthy tail that dominated her lower body? Was it proper to discuss her affinity for gobbling field mice, or to discuss the outcome of her most recent molt? In the end, I just shut up and let Kubo do the talking.

With more charm than I'd seen him use up to that point, Kubo took her hand and shook it graciously. “It's good to see you again, Mona. You're looking well.”

Looking well? I thought. Seriously? I knew you were into some weird shit, chief, but your taste in women is completely beyond me.

The serpent lady, Mona, peered over Kubo's shoulder, rising up on her coiled lower body, and shooting me one of those pudgy, indecipherable looks I took to be a smile. “And who is this you've brought with you?”

“This is Lucy,” replied Kubo. “He's new, and he got himself into a bit of trouble with Agatha's crew. I was hoping you might be able to help him.”

Mona appraised me carefully, then retreated into the depths of her cluttered abode. The sound of rattling glass bottles could be heard. “I see he's been marked,” she uttered. “Agatha's magic is powerful, I grant her that. From one witch to another, she has my compliments. Nothing a little ingenuity can't dispel, however.”

While Mona busied herself with her things, I stood next to Kubo and leaned in. “Wait a minute... Mona's a witch? Why are we working with her?” I asked, voice low. “I thought we killed witches.”

Kubo looked at me like I was the dumbest man alive. And, in this little world we now inhabited, it was a definite possibility that was the case. “Not all witches. The Veiled Order only goes after those craft users or denizens of the Beyond who insist on meddling in human affairs.”

Apparently snake-people were A-OK, too.

Mona returned a short while later, having moved some stacks of old books out of the way and created a magic circle on the floor in chalk. “Come here,” she said, pointing to me with one of her stubby fingers. Her hands and arms seemed thoroughly atrophied, and while I initially suspected it might've been due to some illness or deformity on her part, it now seemed more likely that they'd simply shriveled up due to disuse. That is, she was becoming more snake than woman.

Kubo and I walked to the circle, the open spaces between the intricate symbols filled with bunches of dark, leafy herbs gathered from her numerous potted specimens. These herbs were lit, and produced a good deal of odorous smoke. She pointed to the center of the circle and instructed me to stand within it for what she called a “cleansing”.

I hesitated.

Well, excuse the hell out of me for being a little gun-shy where magic circles are concerned. I'd stepped into my fair share over the past couple of days, and every time it'd been bad news. I'd been immobilized by these things, had spikes driven through my body by them, and wasn't exactly looking to add to the experience. When Kubo impatiently nudged me towards it, I gulped and paced around its perimeter before cautiously stepping inside. Thankfully, no spikes erupted from it, and I could still move freely within.

So far, so good.

“Young man,” said Mona, reaching over the edge of the circle and touching my arm.

I recoiled.

“You've been marked by one of those witches. A spell has been cast upon you, which allows them to track your whereabouts. I will now clear it and you will walk free, however you should be very careful from this point on. A tracking spell is a common thing, but it is not often that a spell of this particular complexity is encountered. There are not many, save for the caster, who could hope to dissolve the stuff of this spell. You should be happy that Takeshi is so well connected.” The folds of her face parted in a toothless grin. I saw the edges of a forked tongue escape her lips, tasting the air before she fell into a series of chants.

I smirked, looking to the chief as small clouds of smoke billowed up from the burning herbs. “I really owe you one, Takeshi.”

Kubo rolled his eyes and paced around the room, scanning the objects on the shelves and peering into glass jars narrowly.

“It is important,” added Mona, pausing in her chanting, “that you breathe in the smoke.” She motioned towards the burning herbs with the tip of her green tail, effectively sending a shiver down my spine.

I did as I was told, taking in a few lungfuls of the smoke until I coughed. Certain of the herbs produced sweet-tasting smoke, others acrid. I wasn't sure what combination she was using, whether these herbs even existed in the world I knew, but I kept on sniffing at the smoke until, some minutes later, her chanting finally ceased.

“It is done,” said Mona, inviting me to leave the circle.

“T-thanks.” As I rushed over to Kubo's side, I tried my best not to look at the old serpentine witch. It wasn't that I was ungrateful. I just couldn't stand the sight of her.

“No problem.” She leaned against an exposed counter and nodded towards me. “This isn't the first time we've met, you know.”

I turned to face her, trying to focus on anything but her fat, squirming tail, which playfully slapped a beat against the floor. “What do you mean?” I don't usually hang with half-snake, witchcraft-practicing ancients, so I felt pretty sure she was lying. Meeting Mona was not something I'd just forget, that's for sure. Already I was sensing that I'd have a hell of a time scrubbing every trace of this bizarre encounter from my mind.

“It was in the hospital,” she continued, her tongue darting out once more as she approached me. “You're the Demon-Heart. When your body was brought in by the Veiled Order's strike force, it was me who kept your soul in place. I preserved the bulk of your bodily tissue, prevented further degradation, so that you could undergo the transplant.”

I massaged the back of my neck.“T-thanks for that,” I said. No sooner did the words leave my mouth did I question whether or not it was something I should be thanking anyone for. Technically, the Veiled Order had turned me into a monster. Was that really something to be thankful for?

“Takeshi, is there anything else I can help you with? It seems you only ever stop by these days when you need a favor! It's enough to make an old woman worry. You never even call.” Mona's eyes opened very slightly as she sported a grin, deep yellow orbs coming to light beneath the sloppy lids.

“I've been busy with work,” he replied, hands in pockets. “I promise we'll catch up again soon.” He pointed me towards the door, pacing through the room slowly. “As always, I owe you one, Mona.”

“Think nothing of it, dear. Take care of yourself.” Mona settled back into her corner, putting out the smoldering remains of the herbs as she went. “Oh, and it was very nice to meet you again, er... Lucy, was it?” She worked over it for a time. “What a strange name for a Demon-Heart.” The sounds of her hissing contentedly reached my ears as I neared the door.

“N-nice to meet you, too,” I lied.

Kubo opened the door and I leapt out before him. “Mona is a powerful witch with many centuries of experience. She's taught me an incredible amount over the years, and helped me hone my spell craft.” The door closed behind him softly.

I couldn't shake off the goosebumps. “Yeah, I guess that you've gotta be talented when you've got a body like that.” I shuddered. “Can we go back to the real world now? You know, where people don't slither around on their bellies and shit?”

Kubo grinned. It was a bigger smile than I'd ever seen him don, and it made me really uncomfortable. The man was a brute, capable of some real savagery, and never was I more reminded of that than when he broke his usual stoic expression to smile. “Real? Tell me, what about this world seems false to you? In some ways, this place we're now in is realer than anything you've ever known.”

I was through with the pseudo-philosophical talk and just wanted to get back to Detroit. Sighing, I glanced around, searching through the dense wilderness all around us from that dark opening we'd arrived through.

It was nowhere to be found.

“You're looking for the opening,” Kubo guessed. “You won't find it. Come, this way.”

There were two paths winding around Mona's place, each of them well-worn by the service of many feet over the years. We took the one on the right. I followed close behind Kubo, wondering how long it might take for us to get back.

And then, suddenly, we were standing on top of that wooden door in the floor of the alley.

I hadn't hardly blinked, hadn't even made it half-way around Mona's cottage, when the scenery suddenly changed. It'd been seamless, like a scene change in a film. I reached out and touched the cool walls of the tunnel, which were still faintly illuminated by the ghostly will-o-the-wisps. From there, we walked quickly to the adjoining alley, which ran alongside Yao's, and returned to the parking lot, where the SUV was stationed.

Stunned by our journey, I looked to Kubo and pointed back at the way we'd come. “So, there were two paths outside of Mona's cottage. Where does the other one lead?”

That brutal grin played across Kubo's face once again as he hopped into the car. His voice was muffled as he slammed the driver's side door shut, but I thought he said, “You're not ready for that.”

TWENTY-SEVEN

I declined the offer of a ride home. After all I'd seen at Mona's, I felt the need to decompress. Yao's wasn't so far from my place, so that I took my time in walking the streets, meandering over the course of hours towards my apartment.

It was a cool day, and it grew even cooler as the evening drew near. I palmed at my exposed arms and elbows, trying to bring a little warmth to them, but shivered all the same. Funny that the demon in me couldn't keep me from getting cold.

I looked into shop windows, toyed with the wares of downtown street vendors and bought myself a soft pretzel with extra cheese from a passing food truck. The hours wore on, and before I realized it, I was covering the same ground, walking circles around the same few blocks of downtown. Stopping in place, I peered up at the darkening sky and tried to decide what to do with the rest of my night. It was clear I was trying to put off my return to the apartment. After the awful hallucinations in the hall, it no longer felt safe. Mona's ritual had knocked the witches off of my trail, probably, but I knew those persistent mongrels weren't going to lay off so easily.

Just as I was considering the rest of my day, I felt a pair of eyes settle on me. Glancing around, I saw they belonged to someone familiar.

It was Joe.

Dressed in a white T-shirt and a pair of camouflage-patterned shorts, he arched a brow. “The hell you doin' out here, Lucy?” He was sitting on the stoop of an old house, turning his silver Zippo between his fingers.

“Joe?” I asked, looking at him as though I doubted he was real. “They let you out already?”

That was when I noticed his arm. Where it'd been a burnt-up mess after the explosion at the warehouse, it looked good as new now. I couldn't even tell he'd been burned, and he flexed his bicep in dramatic fashion to drive the point home. “Hell yeah, they did. And not a moment too soon. Hated being stuck in that fuckin' place. Those nurses there are damned stuck up.” He sniffed the air. “Ol' Mona really brings the goods. When they brought her on I knew it'd all be taken care of.”

I felt a little queasy, recalling the slithering, reptilian form of Mona, but was still impressed by the results. Her treatment had healed Joe completely, and in record time. Despite my having witnessed a number of magical spectacles recently, it still seemed unbelievable. I stared at Joe's arm for a long while, incredulous.

“So, I just wanted to say,” mumbled Joe, making an obvious effort to look past me, “that, uh, I appreciate your comin' to visit me. That was real nice of you, Lucy.” He chuckled a little. “The Veiled Order isn't exactly a regular office job-- I mean, we ain't throwing potlucks and shit. But, you know. That was cool of you.”

“Oh, yeah. No problem, man. Glad you're feeling better.” I glanced at the house whose stoop he was stationed at. It was a two-story thing, brick and pretty shabby. The house was rough around the edges like everything else in this particular block. “What're you doing here?” I asked, nodding at the place.

He shrugged. “Oh, this is my ma's place. Lived here all my life.” He stood up, stretching so that the bottom of his shirt rode up and his fuzzy naval was bared.

“Ah, I see.” I nodded and prepared to make my way down the street. “Well, it's been good seeing you... I'm sure we'll be on the job again soon.”

Joe leaned against the wooden handrail and nodded towards the screen door of the house. “Well now, wait a sec. You, uh... you wanna come in?” He was looking past me again, didn't want to seem too eager. “Maybe get something to eat? Ma's made some awesome spaghetti, if you're into that sorta thing.”

My stomach rumbled audibly, as if “spaghetti” had been some secret code word. The pretzel I'd scarfed down was long-gone by now so that a proper meal sounded mighty fine. “Yeah, sure,” I replied. “That sounds good.”

Joe waved me up onto the stoop and opened the door. “Welcome to the Casa de Joe.”

TWENTY-EIGHT

The Casa de Joe was underwhelming in almost every capacity, from the worn-out, 1970's style furniture that filled the place, to the tacky, department store framed art that adorned the walls. I'm one to give credit where credit is due, though, and I've gotta say that the place was impeccably clean.

I mean, seriously. The cleanest house I've ever been in. Joe must've been a stage-five germophobe.

After a short tour through the downstairs, Joe led me into the kitchen. The white linoleum had been laid before I'd even been born, but you never would have known it for the way it shined. I took a seat at the kitchen table and accepted the bottle of cold pilsner he offered me. As he'd promised, there was a big pot of steaming spaghetti on the stove, and Joe refused all offers of help as he took to plating some for both of us.

Mounds of al dente noodles, copious spoonfuls of meaty marinara and a heaping snowbank of cheese were carried over to me on a plate. “Don't be shy,” he said, grinning. “If it's too much for ya, I'll send you home with a doggy bag.”

“A doggy bag?” I scoffed. “May as well fix me another, wouldn't want you to have to get up twice.”

Joe was thin as a rail, so it came as something of a surprise when he fixed himself a plate of equal proportions to mine. He set it down on the table and took a few moments to adjust his well-sculpted pompadour. Then, settling into his chair, he closed his eyes and lowered his head in a brief prayer. He caught me snickering as I started into my food and shot me a dirty look as he finished. “Shut up,” he said, grabbing his fork and twirling up a giant mass of noodles. “It's an old habit. Makes the food go down easier.”

Damn. Here was Joe, a mouthy greaser who made his living playing with fire and hunting witches, but he still had time to play dinner host and even say grace before eating. He was a good kid, in the traditional sense, and I'd been unprepared for this level of earnestness from my usually shit-talking host.

I kid you not, the spaghetti he served me was the best I've ever tasted. Don't you dare tell my Italian grandmother that, else she'd run me out of town, but Joe's mother's cooking was out of this world. Perfectly prepared and masterfully seasoned. Apparently he thought so too, because for a long while the two of us just sat there and dug in noisily, like two hungry animals.

When we'd plowed through most of our food, things slowed down a little and we started chatting. I asked him a bit about how long he'd been involved with the Veiled Order, but wasn't prepared for the disclosure that followed.

“Been hanging around the Veiled Order about two years now,” said Joe, pausing to think. The corners of his mouth were marked with sauce, which he deftly cleared away with a napkin. “A few years before that was when I got really good at the whole, uh...” He whipped out his lighter and gave it a spin. “You know.”

Mulling over a mouthful of pilsner, I nodded. “How'd you get started? Playing with fire, I mean.”

He sat back in his chair, grinning and apparently lost in reverie. “Always liked fire. Played with firecrackers a lot as a kid and almost blew my hands off one Fourth of July. Ma would get after me for stealing her lighters, for starting little fires in the yard.” He shrugged. “The fire just called to me.” Joe gave his bottle a little swish and then emptied it. Grabbing two more from the fridge, he set one bottle in front of me and then continued. “I was in high school when I realized I had a knack for manipulating flames. Scared the shit out of me, first time I did it. Thought I was going crazy, or that I was demon-possessed.” He backtracked a moment, stammering. “I m-mean not that there's, like, anything wrong with demons n' all that.”

“No offense taken,” I replied.

Joe went on. “So, yeah, I started practicing. Got to be so that I could focus and manipulate the shape of a flame. Could make it move, spread, whatever. It was just my own personal project. Never learned how it all worked until I joined the Order and had Kubo spell it out for me. I'd just play around with it in my room, do it at parties, you know. Fuckin' around, never taking it seriously. But then, I got to be so comfortable around fire that I could make it do stuff without thinking. That's when things got out of control. Started getting into trouble with it, drawing attention to myself.” He licked his lips. “The Veiled Order caught on. 'Stead of locking me up, though, they offered me a job.”

“Huh.” Slurping up a stray noodle, I asked him another question. “So, what do your parents think about your, uh... gift?”

Joe held up one finger. “Parent, singular,” he said. “Dad's outta the picture. Heard he died in jail some years back. I've lived in this house with ma my whole life. And she doesn't know a thing about the pyromancy. I wanna keep it that way.” He snickered. “She thinks I work in a cubicle some place. Helps that Mr. Kubo drops by, lookin' real sharp in his suits, to pick me up now and then for jobs.”

The taste of marinara on my tongue was a little less sweet, just then. “Sorry about your dad,” I said. “Must've been hard, growing up with just your mom.” It was an awkward thing to say, but under the circumstances I didn't really know where to take the conversation. Silence, probably, would have been better.

Joe's dark eyes crinkled in the corners, as did his nose, like he'd just smelt something foul. “Nah,” he said after a small gulp of beer. “It's not a big deal. Me and ma do all right for ourselves. She doesn't get around so good these days. Upstairs sleeping, in fact. But we never needed his help. I take care of things around here, clean up and pay the mortgage.” He motioned to the stove. “She keeps the food comin'!” Joe laughed, then patted his stomach. “And you? How long you been living 'round here? What's your story, Lucy?”

I pursed my lips.

Well, my story was a fair bit rosier than his, for starters.

As I started talking about my own past, I have to admit I felt like shit. As I'm sure you're aware, I like to bitch and complain about things. Discussing my relatively stable and pleasant upbringing made me realize just how privileged I was, and how little I had to complain about, especially to someone like Joe.

Unlike Joe, I didn't grow up in a rough part of town, or with only a single parent. I grew up in the suburbs, in a decent little house, on a street where we knew all of our neighbors and I could ride my bike without the fear of getting roughed up. My parents had split up years back, but my brother Conrad and I had still seen them both plenty, dividing our time between their homes. Unlike Joe, my dad had always been in the picture, his biggest sin being that he was a little too obsessed with collecting model railroad stuff.

Not that I told Joe any of that.

“My parents split up when I was young. I had a brother, but, uh, he died about ten years ago. I've lived around Detroit all my life. Went to college, got a Master's degree in Art History, but...” I chuckled. “Never could find a good job with it. College was fun, but I ended up with a whole lot of debt for it.” Shrugging, I squeezed the beer bottle, watching the liquid swish around inside. “You ever go to school? To college, I mean?”

Joe guffawed. “Hell, nah. Dropped out of high school in my senior year, matter of fact. College was way too expensive, and even then ma wasn't doing so well around the house, so I decided I'd stay put and help her out with things. Never cared much for school.”

“Ah...” Goddamn, I felt like a heel. Joe seemed like a genuinely good guy. He cared about this mother, had dropped out of school to work and support her, and here I was, complaining about how much debt I'd racked up pursuing a worthless college degree. I probably looked like a spoiled brat to him.

“What'd you do before you joined up?” he asked. “You said your degree didn't open any doors, so what'd you do before this?”

“Oh,” I said, cracking a grin. “I was kind of a debt collector. A repo man.” I took a swig of my pilsner and rambled on like a fucking idiot. “Initially I worked with this local debt agency. Knocking on doors, collecting delinquent debts. You know, getting in people's faces and making 'em cough up the goods. Did real well at that, until I started working for that guy, Amundsen, who's a member of the Order. I collected stolen goods for him and his rich buddies under the table. Shook guys down and beat 'em senseless. Not so different from what I did during the debt collection days, except the pay was much better. Lot of people in this city who can't pay their bills. Putting a scare in them is easy, and I got to be pretty good with my fists because of it.” I was beaming with pride as I recalled my exploits, and I couldn't have possibly been more tone deaf for it.

“I see,” said the ordinarily talkative Joe, apparently at a loss for words. He squirmed in his chair, apparently uncomfortable. And suddenly I understood why. Joe didn't live in a great part of town, and both he and his mother had probably known financial troubles over the years. People like him, who'd been down on their luck, had made up my clientele in those days. Hell, I felt pretty sure that my work had taken me to this very neighborhood not so long ago. I'd probably collected debts from people living just a couple of doors down.

Joe continued, his tone a little softer than I was used to hearing from him. “I hope you don't mind me saying this,” he began, “but why would you do that kinda work? I mean, if you didn't have to?” He paused. “It sounds kind of nasty, coming after people who can't pay their bills, you know? A guy like you has a degree, could have done any number of things for cash. Why, uh... why that? Those bill collectors really do a number on people, ruin their lives, sometimes. And it sounds to me like you sorta liked it.”

The question hit me like a train.

And you know why?

It wasn't just that I felt like a downright idiot for running my mouth in front of Joe, though that was definitely true.

The question affected me so because I'd never given it much thought.

I know it's going to be hard for you to believe, but the jobs I'd worked in the past few years, all of which had involved my shaking down people for money and often turning to violence in the process, had been taken on just because. I literally didn't have a reason for doing such work. Joe was right, I could've done any number of jobs instead. Could've earned a more honest living, a living that wasn't dependent on hounding the impoverished, on threatening and harming people to pay back debts with money they didn't have. And then, even though my hunting down stolen art wasn't quite as grimy as the debt collection stuff, I'd come to take entirely too much pride in it. He was absolutely, one-hundred percent correct: It sounded like I'd liked it, because I had liked it.

That didn't leave me in a very comfortable state of mind.

“I dunno,” I finally answered. And it was the truth. But now that the question was asked, I had no choice but to face the reality of it. It was a question I had to answer, if only for my own sake. Why had I gone for jobs like that?

After school, it'd become clear that I couldn't pay off my loans with the crummy degree I'd toiled over for more than six years. Literally, a Masters in Art History was about as useful as toilet paper in this city. The debt collection jobs, well, they weren't real thorough in their selection processes, and there were bonuses offered for those employees who could-- to put it delicately-- consistently perform in recovering debts.

I remember the feeling that came over me when, after graduating, I realized there was no high-paying job waiting for me and that I'd have to find some way to pay off my mind-boggling loans. I felt betrayed, like I'd been lied to by society. A college degree was supposed to pave the way towards a higher quality of life, but it wasn't actually that easy.

And so I came to consider myself a victim. And when you think yourself a victim of some far-reaching plot, when it's just you against the predatory student loan companies, well, it gets a little easier to play the part of predator yourself. It's a dog-eat-dog world out there, and from the very first opportunity I took a hell of a bite out of my fellow dogs.

People like Joe and his mother.

People who were struggling just as much as I was, people who just wanted to make ends meet.

I'd met a lot of shady shitheads in my time doing repo work, too. I don't want to make it sound like the targets were all kindly old ladies and hard-working people who'd overextended their finances. But even then, what right did I have to knock in their doors and threaten them? Near the end of my employment there, I'd done some real harsh things, had turned up the heat and put on some rude displays that made me cringe in retrospect. In the moment, it was an easy thing for me to offload, though. There was no guilt involved, because I felt myself to be the victim of yet greater villains. It was my situation that was unfair. No one else's suffering even figured into it.

Sitting in Joe's kitchen, I found myself growing misty eyed. I was disgusted with myself and wanted nothing more than to force these thoughts from my mind. I'd spent the past few years being a detestable human being, and even though it was something I needed to reflect on, the kitchen table wasn't exactly the ideal place for it. I guzzled my beer and forced my best, most laid-back grin. “Paid well, though. I will say that.”

Joe shook his head. “Whatever you say, man. Why'd you join the Order, then? What made you want to take on the demon's heart?”

It was my turn to shake my head, and I started laughing. “Oh, that was all just a happy accident, I guess. See, I got mixed up with those witches and they killed me. The guys at the Veiled Order apparently had a demon heart laying around and were just spoiling to use it. Mr. Amundsen put in a good word for me. The rest is history. Hazy, confused history. And you? What happened when they offered you that job?”

“Well,” said Joe, “I didn't really have a choice. They weren't going to let me off easy after I'd brought so much attention to myself with my fire tricks. Figured it made more sense to work with 'em, rather than against them. But, they pay pretty good, too, which helped out with things around here. And then, you know, this is my city.” He looked down at his bottle, now empty, and turned it in his hand. “I grew up here, and I want to give back in some way. Maybe I won't go on to do great things... the people 'round here aren't going to remember my name when I'm gone, of course... but if I can keep monsters like Agatha off the streets, make 'em feel a little more secure when they lay their heads down at night, then I'd like that.”

Thoroughly ashamed with myself already, I didn't need to be hearing this sincere little spiel of his. I threw up my hands, tossing a balled-up napkin at him. “Yeah, yeah, we get it! You're a real swell guy, Joe! Geez, make me feel like a piece of shit, why don't you?” I laughed. “That's real sweet of you, all of that. They're gonna give you the key to the city someday. Maybe the Pope will canonize you.”

Joe rolled his eyes. “You want more spaghetti? I liked it better when you were too busy chewing to run that mouth of yours.”

From the hall, I heard a series of slow footsteps. The two of us turned and saw the bent form of an older woman crossing into the kitchen. Her hair was more salt than pepper, and she used a rubber-tipped cane to get around. She smiled at the two of us as she inched her way in, leaning against one of the counters. “Joe, you didn't tell me you had a friend over. You boys enjoying the spaghetti? Help yourselves, there's plenty more where that came from. I was just coming down to see if the dishes needed done. Want me to fix you some dessert?”

Joe practically jumped out of his chair, walking over to his mother and taking her gently by the arm. “Don't even think about it, ma. I've got it covered. You shouldn't be outta bed anyhow.”

Joe's mother smiled, smacking him on the shoulder gently. “Sorry,” she said to me. “My son likes to fret over me way too much. Thinks I'm made of glass. I'm Margie, it's nice to meet you, uh―?”

“Lucian,” said Joe when I didn't respond. “His name is Lucian. I work with him.”

I was frozen, petrified.

Looking across the room at the woman, my eyes swelled with panic and my heart began to quake as though it might erupt through my chest, Vesuvius style.

I recognized this woman, and it only took me an instant's reflection to realize why that was.

Joe's mother had been one of the last people I'd collected from during my time with the repo agency.

TWENTY-NINE

Slipping out of that house not ten minutes after carrying my plate to the sink was a real marvel. Joe wanted to know what the rush was, and I lied, telling him I had an appointment I'd nearly forgotten.

Of course, that was bullshit.

I didn't dare tell him the truth.

Here I was, a wolf in sheep's clothing, sitting in this woman's house, eating her delicious spaghetti. I was incredibly thankful that she didn't seem to recognize me. I remembered her, though. That cane, that grey hair and kind smile. I couldn't say why, but it stuck with me. It'd been a quick job, one of the last ones I'd done. It's not like I'd sucker-punched her or slashed her tires or anything, but I remember delivering one of those stern speeches of mine, demanding to know why it was she hadn't returned our calls. The collection had been over something stupid, minor. A missed payment on an appliance or something like that.

I thanked them both profusely and bid them a good evening before jogging down the road, my face redder than a cherry.

What were the odds? The more I thought about it, they were actually pretty decent; I'd worked my ass off with that agency, knocking on doors, uttering threats, and worse, for years. The further I went, running past the homes and businesses whose owners I used to prey on, I tried to drive the night's events from my mind. I attempted to focus on the meal, on the other conversations, the fact that Joe had warmed up to me a little.

Didn't matter.

I felt like a piece of trash, no better than the hungry rats that raced past an open garbage can to my left.

I stopped and started heaving into a gutter.

A damn awful waste of good spaghetti, let me tell you.

I ran the rest of the way home, feeling like a terrible fever had come over me. I walked into the building, entered my unit without the least bit of fear. All of the seals Kubo had placed for me earlier in the day remained intact, and I knew I could breathe easy inside.

Flopping down on the bed, still fully dressed, I realized I had a lot of thinking to do.

***

In the days that followed, I left home exactly one time, to throw a bag of trash in the overfilled dumpster. The rest of my time was spent sulking around the house in an uncharacteristic depression. The demon in me didn't seem to object to this, and I didn't feel the urge to sprint or wander or fight like I had in the past week. We were content to sit around the apartment, deep in thought, and subsist off of whatever leftovers were in the fridge.

It's a damn awful feeling to realize you aren't what you thought you were.

If you'd asked me my opinion of myself some time back, I'd have told you that I was a decent guy. Rough around the edges, sure, and I'd made some real questionable decisions over the years. No doubt that I'd have admitted to a general lack of kindness or compassion, but I'd never thought of myself as a real villain. I'd never looked in the mirror and seen a monster.

Well, except for that time, with Dr. Sargasso, when I'd looked into the antique mirror and glimpsed the demon inside of me.

But that was different.

Now? Talking with Joe had really laid it bare, made some things clear to me. For years I'd been on autopilot, functioning with a total victim's mentality and caring only about myself. A little selfishness is one thing, but I'd made a living at hounding and humiliating people, and now that I had a little distance from it all, I didn't recognize the guy who'd done that unsavory work.

Everyone makes mistakes. Everyone has a skeleton or two in the closet. Having done things like this didn't make me that bad a guy, did it?

Don't answer that.

I was a bad dude, the lowest of the low. I get it.

Over the course of some days that all finally sank in, and I got real disgusted with myself. But even my self-pity has limits, and when I'd sufficiently moped and felt guilty over my past, I started considering what I might do in the future to improve.

I was with the Order now. That was one thing. Like Joe, maybe I could make a difference for the people living around here. Keep the community safe by forcing the monsters off of the streets. My thoughts returned to that poor kid the coven had kidnapped. About a week to go before they did horrific things to him in the name of their debauched magic.

Maybe I'd done foul work in the past, but to that kid, I could be a hero. If we could locate the witches, I'd use every trick in my arsenal to bring them down. Returning that kid to his parents and preventing any others from suffering at the hands of Mater Agatha was the first step in what would be a very long path of atonement.

I was sitting on the couch, vacantly watching reruns of Friends, when the work-issue phone started to buzz with ferocity. Grabbing it up, I answered breathlessly, like I'd been waiting for it to ring all day. “Hello?”

“You at home?” asked Kubo. I could hear his blinker clicking on in the background. He was calling from the SUV. “One of our informants has a possible lead for us. I need to pick you up so that the two of us can scope it out. I have a feeling you'll be working closely with this informant in the future, so it's best you meet him now.”

I ran a hand through my hair, finding it tousled and matted with days of accumulated oil. “Sure, yeah. I'm home.” I sniffed at my shirt, cringing at the sour cologne of cheese dust and curdled Haagen-Dazs that clung to me in abundance. “I need a few minutes to clean myself up. That OK?”

“Make it quick,” replied Kubo before hanging up unceremoniously.

I made a run for the shower.

THIRTY

“This informant of yours is fully human, right? Not half-human, half-weasel or something similarly fucked up, right? Because-- and I don't want this to come across as ignorant or intolerant or whatever-- I can't say I'm too crazy about the circles you apparently run in. Old Mona came to me as quite a surprise.”

Kubo turned, pressing a solid, black boot to the accelerator and speeding into the turn so hard that I was whipped to the side. “It isn't much further now.”

That didn't bode well. He wasn't answering my question.

I straightened the collar of my blue Polo and peered out the window. We'd been driving about ten minutes, but had gone a little ways out of Detroit, taking a number of back roads whose names I'm hazy on. Another ten minutes of silent driving and we were in a tiny town called Mitchum, which I'd only ever heard brief mentions of. I knew that there wasn't a whole lot in Mitchum, and that only a thimble's worth of people actually lived there. My impressions of the place saw these bits of hearsay ring true, because as we started through the tiny settlement I struggled to find any businesses, aside from gas stations and decrepit-looking convenience stores, that weren't completely shuttered.

Turning onto a stunted gravel drive, Kubo parked the SUV in front of a building whose door and windows were flimsily boarded. It wasn't a very large building, about the size of your average fast food joint, and looked like it'd been closed for at least fifteen or twenty years, based on the way the brown paint on the exterior had chipped and faded. Its general outlines had been withered due to the strain of many seasons without repair.

Kubo shut off the car and stepped out, smoothing out his tie and jacket while sizing up the entrance. He was wearing his shades today, square and very dark, and he let them droop down the length of his nose as he stepped forth to appraise the blocked door. There were a few sheets of thin wood nailed across the threshold, though the job was a clumsy one and such panels weren't going to keep anyone out. Small animals like squirrels and racoons could probably slip in through the breaks in the panels, too.

As Kubo made a beeline for the door, I watched confusedly from the SUV before giving chase. “What are we doing here?” I asked, my feet kicking up a cloud of dust as I shuffled through the gravel. “This place looks like hell. Probably infested with God knows what.”

Kubo was touching the panels of wood, giving them a slight shake. Suddenly, the panel on top swung out of the way neatly, providing just enough space for one to climb in, should anyone prove stupid enough to enter such a dilapidated old building.

Draping one leg over the bottom panel, Kubo stepped in awkwardly and shot me a look from behind his shades that said “You'd better keep up.”

I went in after him, not a little nervous. “So, what is this? An old Taco Bell?”

Kubo removed his glasses. Scanning the large room, which might have once been a club or dining room, judging by the stacks of dusty chairs and tables that lined the corners, he started towards the rear, where there was a narrow wooden door. The way was lit by the bits of natural light that came in through the gaps in the boards and some few breaks in the ceiling. It was perilously dark, however. “This was once a bar. It was called Willard's Speakeasy, for its original owner, Thomas Willard. During the Prohibition years, the basement of this establishment was run as a speakeasy. After Prohibition, the whole place was run as a bar and did good business for many years.” He opened the wooden door, the stubborn, warped frame groaning as he did so.

On the walls, which were clotted in dust and cobwebs, I could just barely see the remnants of a mural depicting an oasis. There was a body of water surrounded by white sand, replete with palm trees and nude, tastefully-rendered feminine figures. It wasn't exactly a professional job, the amateurish strokes in the palm fronds giving the artist away, but it had a certain charm. You'd never find work like this in a museum; I'd never written dissertations on this kind of art in college, but, like a good bit of graffiti on the side of an abandoned building, it'd probably made for quite the conversation piece during the bar's heyday.

Looking over Kubo's shoulder, I noticed he was climbing down a flight of stairs into a space of terrific darkness. I stood at the top and demurred. “You've got to be kidding me. Why we going down there?”

“Because I prefer to do business in the Speakeasy,” came the cheery reply from below.

But the reply hadn't come from Kubo.

***

The voice that'd answered me from somewhere in the unlit cellar of Willard's Speakeasy was that of an older man, somewhat airy. The tone had been even and cheery, but it freaked me out all the same. Someone had actually been waiting for us in that dark basement?

I started down the stairs reticently, just as Kubo's ghostly will-o-the-wisps lit up the depths ahead of me dimly, and braced myself for the sight of this waiting stranger who Kubo now addressed as “Ernie.”

“Ernie”, I thought, just had to be code for “giant, slithering half-snake dude” or “enormous spider that can talk and cast spells.”

When I set foot in the cellar and looked out across the bare concrete floors, at the long, dusty counter where Kubo now sat, and got my first proper look at Ernie, I have to say I was a little disappointed.

When you've been rubbing elbows with half-serpentine witches and other weird-ass folk, the sight of a mere ghost is underwhelming. Quaint.

And that's what Ernie was. A bonafide ghost.

Standing nearly as tall as Kubo and propped up on his elbows behind the bar, Ernie winked at me, his ethereal features outlined in a shimmering blue light. He looked to be an older man; if forced to place him, I'd peg him for about sixty, maybe older. He had big, emotive eyes, clear and blank as polished diamonds, and wore an oversized coat. Long, greasy locks of hair escaped from the edges of a slouching beanie cap, and when he walked, I found he did so with a noticeable limp.

That was weird. Did ghosts keep their maladies after death? It was hard to imagine the soul of a dead man hanging around long after his passing, while still having to deal with a bum knee.

“Hi,” I managed, sidling up to the bar and keeping my distance from the floating, ghostly spheres. “I'm Lucian.” I extended my hand to shake his without putting much thought into it, and then startled as he reached out and passed his own hand straight through mine. I couldn't feel his touch, but a terrible cold seized my fingers and saw me wince.

“Welcome, Lucian,” said Ernie with a grin. Most of his teeth were missing, and those that remained didn't look to be in particularly good shape. More and more he was reminding me of a homeless person. He just had that look; the unkempt appearance, the oversized coat, the limp.

Kubo perched himself atop a barstool caked in grime and nodded to the ghost. “I hear you have something for me, Ernie.” From his pocket, he drew a large, highly-polished piece of coinage. A Kennedy silver dollar, unless I was mistaken. The chief turned it between his fingers, catching Ernie's eye. “You saw something in your nightly walks, I take it? Something related to Agatha's gang?”

Still watching the silver coin reservedly, Ernie started chewing his lower lip aggressively, like he wanted to get ahold of it right away. Wringing his hands and subtly panting, the ghost looked like some sort of junkie in need of a fix. “You're all business, ain't ya, Kubo?” He laughed nervously, then leaned forward. “Yeah, I'll tell ya a thing or two.” He looked from me to the chief, and closed one eye. “You won't hear this one anywhere else. Ernie's big scoop.”

Setting the silver dollar on the bar with a loud and satisfying clack, Kubo slid it to Ernie, leaving a trail in the dust. “Ernie here has been dead a few years. In life, he worked for us as an informant. When he died, his soul stuck around and he continued working with the Order. Though he's centered here, in the spot where he died, he's able to travel during the night and goes on nocturnal walks through Detroit, keeping an eye out for anything suspicious. Then he gets back to us if anything trips his bullshit alarm, get it?” Kubo cleared his throat, a grin teasing the corner of his mouth. “And he likes his silver, too.”

Ernie pawed at the coin lovingly, picking it up and rubbing his bluish, ghostly fingers across it. “That he does, that he does! Kubo knows just what I like!” With a shiver, Ernie sent the coin flipping through the air with a flick of his thumb, and then caught it.

“How's he doing that?” I asked Kubo, leaning in and keeping my voice down. “His hand passed right through mine. How can he, like... touch things and move them?”

“Ghosts can't physically interact with the living,” replied Kubo. “But they can move inanimate objects without much of a problem. If they reveal themselves to us, we can see them, but otherwise they remain invisible. That's what makes them ideal informants. They can, and do, walk the streets at night, and for the most part, nobody has the slightest idea they're being watched. Certain craft users or supernatural beings may be able to see ghosts outright, or sense them, but Agatha and her friends probably don't have that ability. Ernie here is indispensable.”

Ernie did an exaggerated bow, chuckling. “Mighty kind of you, Kubo, but why'd you bring this kid along? I get the feeling he doesn't know much about the Beyond or anything. He a new hire er something?”

“Yeah,” replied Kubo, stretching at the shoulders. “But never mind Lucy here, what've you got for me? I held up my end of the bargain. You've been paid. Now tell me what I came to hear.”

“Sure, sure.” Ernie pocketed his coin. How it remained inside of his ghostly pocket I hadn't the slightest. “So, I seen some things. I'm walking down the street last night. Few hours before sunrise. Crossing the street around Miami Avenue, when I see this car, right? Suspension's rockin', windows all fogged up, and I look inside to find two young folk getting it real good, you know?” His eyes widened as he donned a salacious grin. “The things they were doin', boy.” He whistled. “She had her--”

“Stay on topic, you old lech,” interrupted Kubo, knocking on the bar with his fist.

“Right, yeah. So, anyhow, after all that, I'm walking towards this old church. Old Baptist place... eh...” Ernie closed his eyes, his brow furrowing into a series of bluish wrinkles. Then, he snapped his fingers. “Emmanuel Baptist Church! That's the one, over on Ford Street? Near the old Biloxi theater house?”

“That church is closed, last I checked,” said Kubo, looking rather disinterested in what Ernie had to say.

“Oh, it is. It is closed. Been that way a couple of years now. Which is why it was so surprising to me when I saw a couple uh people slippin' in real discrete like.” He crossed his arms, standing upright, and motioned to me with a thrust of his chin. “See, kid, there's something you've gotta know about old Ernie, and that's that his eyes never miss nothing. Got the best eyes in the game, sharp as a barn owl tracking a--”

“Goddammit, Ernie!” shouted Kubo, kicking at the bar and making the whole thing rattle. “Just spit it out! Enough of this grandstanding bullshit.”

Shaking his head, Ernie hobbled around behind the bar for a moment, mumbling to himself. “Yeah, all right. I'll tell ya what you wanna hear, no bullshit, no bullshit.” The bar was still quivering for Kubo's kick as he went on. “I see a few dark shapes, like things wearin' cloaks, slipping in through a side door. I tell you, I pass by that door all the time on my walks, and I've never seen it open. Fact, it's been padlocked for ages. But not anymore. And these cloaked folk, they just slink into the place like they own it. Naturally, I couldn't resist looking inside, and I followed them in. I didn't get too far, since they had some pretty powerful wards in place. It was witchcraft.” Ernie placed a palm against his breast. “Powerful witchcraft, I'd bet my afterlife on it. And when they took off their hoods inside the joint, I seen 'em through a window. Was that mother of all whores, Agatha.”

“How do you know it was her?” I asked, looking between Ernie and Kubo. “Have you seen Agatha before? What if it was someone else in there?”

Kubo shook his head, waving a hand at me as though I were an annoying fly trying to land on his sandwich. “Never mind him. So, you saw Agatha. What the hell was she doing in that church?”

Ernie ran a few fingers against his chin as he considered the question. “Seems to me they were fortifying the place, preparing for something. Something big, if I had to wager.” He grinned. “And you know me, I'm a betting man, Kubo. Anyway, the wards in that place were so strong I couldn't even enter. They're planning something there, trying to make sure that people steer clear.”

Kubo stood up, nodding firmly. “Excellent, Ernie. I appreciate the tip.” Turning to me, Kubo pointed up to the staircase. “Let's hit it.”

“Wait,” I said, looking back to Ernie. “You want to tell us some more about what you saw in that car last night? I mean, since the important part is over now?”

“Shut the fuck up, Lucy.” Kubo gave me a light shove in the arm towards the stairs.

“Curious, though,” I continued as I fell into step behind Kubo and started following him upstairs. “How did you die, Ernie?”

From behind the bar, Ernie grinned widely. “What can I say, young fella? I liked the drink a little too much and caught myself a spot of that cirrhosis.” He shrugged. “There are worse ways to go, I'spose.” Waving at us, I saw him reach into his pocket and palm the silver dollar again. And then, gradually, he faded from view, the bluish glow surrounding his body dying out. Ernie was gone, and the sound of his shuffling, disembodied footsteps could be heard throughout the cellar.

As we left the building and started across the gravel drive towards the SUV, Kubo glanced back at me. “He's a goddamn liar. You know that, right?”

“What do you mean? About the Agatha thing? You think he made it up? Seeing her in the church, I mean.”

“Nah, that's solid intel right there.” Kubo climbed into the driver's seat and slammed his door shut. “I'm talking about the way he died. Wasn't cirrhosis that did him in.”

I arched a brow. “Well, why would he lie about that? He certainly looks like he might've been a drunk in life.”

“Oh, he was,” continued Kubo. “And a notorious gambler, too. I came by for intel once a few years back and found him dead in that very cellar. He'd been playing russian roulette with one of his buddies, the prize being a pint of cheap booze.”

“Shit,” was all I could think to say.

“Today, we prepare,” said Kubo, changing the subject and pulling out onto the main road. “Tomorrow morning, when I've had time to take care of a few things, we're going to crash that party as a team. Get some sleep, because I'm going to need you up early tomorrow, got that? We get one chance at stopping them. We blew it last time, but we got lucky. The witches were too sloppy and old Ernie caught them sneaking around. We won't get a chance like this again, so it's do or die.”

I nodded. “Will do.”

As we drove on, I remembered standing in that nursery some nights before, trying to smuggle that infant away from the witches. The ambush in the warehouse district, and the subsequent explosion courtesy of Joe soon thereafter, also flashed through my head. I balled my fist and tried to ward off thoughts of what might happen to that kid if we didn't come through this time.

Kubo was right.

This was do or die.

And if I had my say, those witches were going to die.

THIRTY-ONE

Ever struggle to sleep before a big test or a hot date? You toss and turn all night. It's like your head wants to keep you up, think about everything that could possibly go wrong and come up with a plan. But at the same time, your body can't keep up. It craves rest. And when the alarm clock goes off, you're a damn mess.

That's precisely what it was like for me that night when I tried to get to sleep, except it was made all the worse by the demon inside of me, who could sense the oncoming fight and seemed to be getting excited. Whenever my thoughts turned to punching Agatha in the throat, my heart would begin to thrash violently, and my mind would run into lengthy, violent daydreams. I wasn't too good at controlling the direction of my thoughts when the demon got involved, but I tried my damnedest to do a little relaxing.

I ate a big meal, treated myself to a large platter of sushi from a local spot, and washed it all down with some Asahi from the local asian market. Then, with a fully belly, I took a long, hot shower, delighting in the steam until my water heater gave out and started spraying me with ice. Afterward, I put on some comfortable clothes, a sweatshirt and a pair of sweatpants, and hopped into bed with a book.

I couldn't read for shit, though.

I'd hardly cracked the cover when my mind was inundated in perversely violent fantasies. When reading proved futile as a sleep aid, and my John Coltrane record sounded every bit as unpleasant to me as the last time I'd tried to listen to it, I put out the lights and burrowed under the covers.

The night was mostly sleepless.

***

I was standing at the kitchen counter, brewing up a pot of coffee, when the firm knock came at my door. Palming at my eyes and trying to make it look like I hadn't spent the whole night fucking around, I opened the door and presented with the least groggy smile I could furnish.

I wasn't fooling anyone, though.

Kubo, Joe and Isabella stood outside my door, and from the minute he laid eyes on me, the chief was madder than hell. “Lucy, you damn idiot, you look like you haven't slept a wink.” He grabbed onto the shoulder of my sweatshirt and dragged me into my own place, slamming the door shut after the other two had wandered in behind him.

I shrugged my way out of his grasp and ambled towards the kitchen, switching off the coffee maker. “Look, it's not like I was out partying. I tried to sleep, man... it's just I couldn't.” Rummaging around in my cabinets for a large mug, I looked over at them. “Anyone else want some coffee? I'm going to guzzle a few cups, if y'all don't mind.”

Joe and Isabella were walking through my living room; Joe regarding my décor with a veiled derision and Isabella marveling at every flourish and fixture as though it were her first day on Earth.

“Nice place you got here, I guess,” said Joe, frowning before my framed replica of John Martin's The Destruction of Tyre and refusing my offer of coffee.

Let me tell you something: Joe might have a heart of gold and all that, but the dude's got shit taste in art if he doesn't like The Destruction of Tyre. The painting is a masterwork, totally underrated, and features the ruination of the city of Tyre by a monstrous wave. The sky is black, and crackling with lightning. Aside from being aesthetically pleasing, it was, in my opinion, the most badass apocalyptic painting of all time. Joe was a Philistine, full-stop.

Kubo wasn't interested in coffee either, but after her brief spell of wandering, Isabella meandered into the kitchen looking like she was high on a dangerous cocktail of drugs. I still didn't know what her deal was; she had a weird way of moving and speaking, even when she wasn't doing her magical thing. On first glimpse, I'd thought that maybe she wasn't right in the head, and yet whenever I spoke to her, I found that she answered clearly, in full-- if not strange-- sentences.

“Isabella would like coffee,” she said.

I packed it with cream and sugar as per her mumbled instructions. Watching her accept a mug of steaming coffee and blow on it from beneath her burlap hood, I didn't know what to make of her. She was wearing that sack of an outfit again, the outside messily stitched up with bizarre designs in black thread. On further inspection, they looked like misshapen snowflakes. I wondered why she wore such an outfit, and if she ever changed out of the damn thing.

Isabella was done with the coffee in a flash, first sticking her tongue in it like a timid kitten, and then guzzling it like a truck driver when she found it wasn't as hot as it looked. Panting, she handed me the empty cup without a word and then continued touching all of the shit in my living room with wonder.

“So,” I said, leaning against my counter and sipping at my coffee, “is everything set? Did you make your preparations, or whatever?”

Joe flipped through my vinyl while Kubo joined me in the kitchen. “There's a lot riding on this, so, unlike you, I've spent the last day getting ready. For starters, I have an Order strike team prepped and ready, just in case things go south. They'll be less than a mile away from the church, monitoring things from air and ground, and will storm in should I fail to contact them every half hour. If we can't put down those dogs, then the strike team may be able to do it. At the very least, they can blow the place apart and disrupt their plans further.”

I almost choked on a gulp of coffee. “Wait, blow the place up? What is this, the Tet Offensive? There's probably gonna be a baby in there, chief. A fucking baby.”

Kubo was standing close, looking down at me with evident disdain woven into the twitchy caterpillars of his brows. “Don't give me that shit. There's a whole lot more at stake here than a single kid. Don't forget that.”

I looked into my cup, breaking eye contact and trying not to let him intimidate me. Slurping coffee in Kubo's shadow, I glanced up at him. “You keep saying that, but even now I don't know what the fuck they're trying to do, these witches. What's the end-game?”

Kubo frowned. He wasn't in a mood to answer questions and belted out yet another canned response. “They're prepping the church for their ritual. On the night of the full moon, they'll sacrifice that infant they kidnapped in the hopes of summoning a powerful demon and bringing it under their control.”

It was Joe who clarified, uttering something under his breath that I very nearly missed. “Yep, they're trying to take hold of the demon inside of you, bro. Obviously.” He stuck his thumbs in the pockets of his jeans and stood beside my kitchen table.

The chief shot him a death stare, but the cat was out of the bag. “Shut your goddamn mouth, Joe.”

It was all I could do not to drop my coffee. I juggled with the mug a minute, splashing hot brew all over my hands. Looking between the two of them, I tittered, leaning back against the counter and letting my legs splay out across the floor. “Yeah. Wouldn't that be something?” I felt my skin growing hot, flushed. Sucking my teeth, I steadied my mug and stuck a finger out at Kubo forcefully.

Here's a hint: It wasn't the pointer finger.

“He isn't lying, is he?” I said after a few moments of complete silence. “You son of a bitch, you've been keeping this from me all this time?” I looked at the three of them. Even Isabella was paying attention now, sauntering into the kitchen cautiously. I had half a mind to throw my coffee in Kubo's face but narrowly resisted the urge, instead giving him a shove across the room.

Kubo was a big guy, had a fair bit of height and weight on me.

But even a big guy can get pushed around by a demon.

I was pissed, damn near spitting, as Kubo hit my refrigerator with a thump. “What the hell were you thinking? How long did you think you could keep this from me?”

Without missing a beat, Kubo stood up and straightened himself. “It wasn't relevant,” he replied cooly. “Knowing about it would have only complicated things, given you something more to worry about as you participated in the mission.”

“No shit!” I blurted. “And do you know why that is?” I socked myself in the chest with such force that it would have killed me if not for the demon heart racing inside of me. “It's because they've been after me this whole damn time! I'd say that's pretty fucking relevant, you asshole.”

Approaching me carefully, Kubo sighed and gingerly took hold of the mug I still held. Half of its contents had been spilled already. Setting it on the table, he nodded at the door. “Get yourself dressed. We can talk about it more on the way.”

THIRTY-TWO

If there's one thing I hate, it's being lied to. Misled.

I can withstand a little fib now and then.

Lie to me about what brand of fabric softener you use and I'll let it pass.

But this? This was a frigging whopper.

I mean, guys have been buried in the desert for less.

I was riding shotgun as Kubo pulled away from our place and started for the church where Agatha and her sisters were holed up. Before we got there, though, I intended to get answers. This thing was about to get blown open, completely, with a disclosure that'd make Wikileaks proud, else I wasn't going to fight.

That's right. I was willing to take my marbles and go home, if that was what it took, and I let Kubo know it. I wasn't just going to smile and nod like I'd been doing. I was too deep into this to get lied to anymore, and I wanted to know the whole story, start to finish. I sat in the passenger seat, arms crossed, while Kubo started.

“From the fucking top,” I reminded him. “And don't gloss over any important shit, else you guys can drop me off here.”

Straightening his shades, Kubo gripped the wheel. “Whatever you say, princess.” He paused. “The demon inside of you, Gadreel, is a fallen angel.”

My heart lurched in my chest, almost as if the demon within me were answering to the name. I uttered the syllables under my breath, shuddering. Something about them felt right. Gadreel.

“Gadreel,” Kubo continued, “was on the Order's radar. Had been for a long time. From the shadows he'd been orchestrating a lot of shit-- making trouble for us. Gadreel, you see, has a rich history. As one of the fallen grigori, he's been messing with humans since day one, and he was the one who taught men the art of war. You've basically got the god of war inside of you, the inspiration behind the Greek god Ares. Oh, but Gadreel wasn't just into war and killing. He and his fellow grigori enjoyed another hobby. Breeding with human beings. As I'm sure you know, that sort of thing doesn't really fly. If denizens of the Beyond merely interfering with humankind is off the table, then you can be sure that bedding them is a far graver sin in the eyes of the Order.”

So, Gadreel liked beating people up and getting laid.

We had a lot more in common than I'd previously given him credit for.

Kubo went on. “Agatha and the members of her coven are well known to the Order because, in the past, they've assisted us on numerous jobs. Contractors, of a kind. But, not too long ago, the coven went rogue. They started inquiring after the demon Gadreel so that the heads of the Order got suspicious. An investigation revealed that they were trying to summon the demon into this world, to invoke and enslave it, and they'd even taken steps towards crafting a powerful spell to control the demon. Spell craft of this order is virtually unheard of. The needs that would have to be met to make a grigori your slave... the power it would require, would be immense. And because of that, Agatha and her sisters turned to blood sacrifice. Blood, especially that of children, is the most potent ingredient one can utilize in maximizing the power of spells. But they needed a lot of it. When kids started disappearing eight months ago, we took notice, and it wasn't long before we could trace the crimes to Agatha.”

I felt doubly betrayed, knowing that Agatha had once been on the Order's payroll, but I held my tongue. That explained why the ghostly informant, Ernie, had been so sure he'd seen Agatha in the abandoned church. He'd probably worked with her in the past.

“We commanded the coven to cease its rituals at once and we tried more than once to apprehend the witches. We failed. In time, the situation became more desperate, and the higher-ups in the Veiled Order began getting nervous. They hatched a new plan, decided we needed to beat the witches to the punch, if you will. And they started learning everything they could about Gadreel, dedicating tremendous resources towards summoning and capturing the demon before Agatha could. See, if Agatha and her sisters gained control of the grigori, then the end result would be widespread destruction. If the Order could control the demon however, then perhaps we could cross a powerful enemy off of our most wanted list and use his power for good, all at once.”

“So, that's what you did,” I uttered.

“Exactly. We poured a lot of effort into conjuring the demon, and when we had him where we wanted, we managed to immobilize him with potent magic. This was the work of numerous experts in every field of magic you can think of, but he still couldn't control him. It was a trap. The Order had to call in favors from all over this world and the next. We weren't even sure it would work. But we got him, imprisoned him, and then we got the bright idea to carve out his heart. We weren't going to put together a spell to control the demon and make it bend to our will, as that would have been far too difficult and dangerous. But we had another method, an experiment that some of the top members of the organization had always wanted to try. That's the demonic transplant that you underwent. All they needed was a suitable body.”

“Well, thank goodness I was there to help them out with that requirement.” I shook my head. “To think, if not for me, that demon heart might've spoilt.”

“It was done to keep Agatha from invoking and controlling the demon,” said Kubo. “We thought that, by carving out its heart and cremating its body, that Gadreel would be out of their reach. Once the heart was transplanted, that is. But it seems we were mistaken, because you were still drawn to the house in Flint, where they had staged a ritual. That night, when you escaped? The residual energies of their invocational spells were enough to draw Gadreel back to that place, even though the witches were gone. You fought through town on your way back there, wreaking havoc. It was there that I found you, getting attacked by police. The demon still lives on in you, and though its presence is diminished, they can still gain control of it if their spell is fulfilled. In this case, however, they'll get a side of Lucy in the deal, too.”

“So, the two sides in this are basically fighting over who gets to control me, huh?” I worked at my forehead with the heel of my palm. “And that box of ashes Amundsen sent me to pick up that first night... that was full of the demon's cremains, wasn't it?”

Kubo nodded. “That's right. The coven managed to snatch the box and were using it to strengthen their magic. With Gadreel's remains, degraded though they were, they'd hoped to amplify their influence over the demon. We're still not sure whether it worked, but Amundsen thought you might be able to steal it back, not knowing that the coven was holding a sabbath that night. When you got caught in the crossfire, well, we found our body. The transplant was carried out on Mr. Amundsen's recommendation and... here we are, Lucy.”

I gulped. It didn't make sense to me. This whole time there'd been a mess going on behind the scenes that I'd never been made privy to. I couldn't parse the truth from the lies. My head was spinning. “And where the fuck are we, exactly?”

Kubo pulled over, parking the SUV against the curb. “As it happens, we're a few blocks away from the church where Agatha and her sisters are waiting. Are you ready to get out and face this, or do you still insist on wasting time with questions?”

I sat bolt upright, appalled. “Oh, well, excuse the fuck out of me, Takeshi! Sorry for asking all of these meddlesome questions and all! I hope you'll forgive me! It's just that I don't know what I can believe anymore. How do I know I can trust anything you've told me after all of this?”

Kubo groaned, punching the steering wheel. “It's real simple. We beat the witches to it, captured Gadreel and cut out his heart. That heart is in you, but the witches can still gain control of the demon if they succeed. And they're damn close to doing it. We did it because we wanted to use the demon's power for good in the world, rather than let Agatha harness it for herself. Unless you'd rather be working under Agatha from here on out, I suggest you put on your big boy pants and put all of this behind you. I can't make it any clearer. What could you possibly have questions about beyond what I've just explained? What do you still have doubts about?”

I sniffed the air, sitting silently for some time with a grimace. “Well,” I began, “were you lying when you said JFK was a werewolf?”

Joe started laughing his ass off from the back seat.

“No,” replied an exasperated Kubo. “That was true. You won't find it in any history book, but he was a bloodthirsty werewolf. He went through an unprecedented amount of young White House aides. Idiots at the White House kept hiring new ones, thinking that they were just quitting without giving notice, but Kennedy was taking them home every night and literally devouring them. There were several bags of bloody clothing stuffed into the cabinets in the Oval Office that were found after the fact. Anything else you want to know about? Because if that's all, I'd really love to get a start on this fucking mission, Lucian.”

“Lucian?” I tried to hide it, but a flicker of a smile danced across my lips. “Much better, chief.”

THIRTY-THREE

The Veiled Order and the coven of Mater Agatha were playing a high-stakes game of chess, and I was the pawn they were both struggling to control.

And I wasn't really cool with that.

Still, I followed Kubo and the others out of the SUV and got my game face on. It wasn't because I wanted to help the guy. Kubo, and the other two, for that matter, had kept important information from me despite all we'd been through. It pissed me off, to say the least, and a part of me would have preferred to send them into the lion's den without their trusty Demon-Heart.

But I had reasons of my own for tagging along, despite my anger.

For starters, I wasn't trying to work for Agatha and her sisters. It just wasn't going to happen. I'd strike 'em all dead before they managed to pull off their spell if only to spare myself a lifetime of servitude.

And then there was the kidnapped infant to think about. It would have been far too easy to just turn my back on the tyke, to walk away or, worse, try to bring down a hundred lightning bolts on the building and burn it to the ground. But I wasn't willing to gamble with anyone else's life. I'm not like that. Not anymore, anyhow. Despite his keeping the truth from me, Joe had helped me realize something important.

Lucian Colt's never been a good person.

I've been a lot of things over the years; passive, indifferent, violent, greedy, selfish.

Maybe a little sexy.

But I'd never been a good person, not by a long shot. That was going to change today. I was gonna save that kid and punish the witches that'd taken him from his folks. Today, despite my reservations, I was going to follow through and do the right thing by participating.

Now, as for what might happen after the job was done, that was anyone's guess.

Maybe, when the job was through and the checks had been cashed, I'd walk away. Disappear.

The four of us walked on the sidewalk, with Kubo leading the way. Isabella bumbled behind him and Joe hung back casually, slumping, with his hands buried in the pockets of his leather jacket. As for me, I brought up the rear, staying several feet behind Joe and keeping to myself. I didn't much want to talk to any of them and had far too much to think about.

Much as I hated to admit it, Kubo had had a point. My knowing the truth, that the witches were after me, wasn't exactly helping me keep my head clear. The gravity of the mission was eroded a little bit by the haze of hurt and confusion that washed over me. When the time actually came to act, I had no doubt I'd be able to spring into action and kick some witchy ass. But until then, I had a fair bit of moody brooding to do.

We were getting close, apparently, because Kubo slowed his pace and started keeping his eyes peeled for anything untoward. “It's daylight out, so we shouldn't have to worry about any familiars outside,” said Kubo, turning to the rest of us. “But it's possible they've laid other traps near the building, something to tip them off in the event that craft users should drift near.”

He paced on carefully, studying his surroundings with no little closeness. When we'd pushed on a little further, he signaled to Isabella.

Poking and prodding at her palms, Isabella's curious spell craft drew the curious glances of some passing motorists.

“They won't hear us coming,” said Kubo when she was through. “And they don't know we've found them out. We have the element of surprise in our favor. They're done for this time. Stay close to me and keep your eyes open for anything out of sorts.” Then, scowling at me, he added, “You care to join us up here, Lucy?”

“Not really,” I said, meeting his scowl with one of my own.

The team marched on.

It was a few minutes later when the destination came into view. Ernie had called it an abandoned church and had even given us the name, though it wasn't until I saw it in person that I actually recognized it. I'd driven by this church countless times, had gone to the elementary school around the corner, which was also some years closed. I took a hard look at the building, not sure what Kubo and the others were looking for. The grounds had become rather overgrown, which made it a little easier for us to snoop around without drawing much attention from drivers on the busy roads nearby.

Kubo was moving so slowly he might as well have been crawling through the overgrown grass. Every mass of leaves, every arbitrary pile of twigs, was cause for suspicion, and he investigated them gingerly with his outstretched foot before slowly moving on.

“You looking for land mines over there?” I asked, yawning.

“Something like that,” he replied, nearing the building and laying a hand upon the brick exterior. Closing his eyes, he loosed a long-held breath and pressed his palm into the building. “I can sense them inside. There are numerous presences within.” Kubo reached into his pocket and took out a stack of paper seals, bound together by a rubber band. Smacking the bundle against his palm, he flipped through them, made sure none were sticking together. “I prepared these last night. I need to post them all around the building to break down the barriers that are in place. Ernie was right; there's powerful magic guarding this building. This spot is heavily fortified. I'll post my seals all over the property after I've found the source of their warding spells. I'll tamper with their seals and make them amplify the power of mine, instead.” Looking up and down the length of the wall before him, he appraised the worn-out bricks with care. “If I were Agatha, where would I hide the grounding seals for a barrier like this? Where would I center these spells?”

Isabella had wandered from his side, pushing through the overgrown grass and exploring the grounds. She called his attention to a large, flat stone half-buried in the swaying grass. “Isabella would use cornerstones like this one,” she said, pointing down at the stone.

Kubo rushed over, tore away a few fist fulls of grass, and then grinned. “Nice find. You're right, Isabella. The cornerstones make the most sense. We need only disrupt one to break the barrier, but I'll be interested in finding the other three so that I can manipulate them and power up my seals.”

I ambled over to the stone. It was a polished thing with a flat, clear face, and it didn't look like anything that belonged on the property. On the smooth surface was an intricate magic circle, drawn in careful smears of black ash. “What, the witches are drawing their power from this rock?” I asked.

“Not quite.” Kubo rifled around in his jacket pocket, eventually producing a small vial of water and a tiny bag that looked like a coin purse. “These stones, cornerstones, contain large amounts of quartz. They're fashioned by skilled craftsman to conduct energy, and the surface is made smooth enough to inscribe potent seals on, like this one. Agatha hid them in the four corners of the property, I bet, hoping that no one would find them in this mess of a yard, but now that I've found one, I can wash away her seal and inscribe one of my own.” He poured a bit of his water onto the stone and the magic circle was quickly eaten away. A puff of steam rose from the design as it was dissolved. With his hand, Kubo wiped away the dregs, leaving the stone clean and ready for a new circle.

“So, you just wash it off and write your own spell on it?” I asked. “Seems too simple. You dump some water on it and that's it? I thought these witches were supposed to be good. What if it had rained? Would her spell have gone to crap then?”

Kubo took a stick of black chalk from the small bag and then began slowly drawing a double-walled circle upon the stone. Within it, he drew a five-pointed star, and across the center of the star, was placed a large, black smear. I'd seen this very design before, on Amundsen's pendant. The inner ring was filled with small symbols as he further explained. “Mere water isn't enough. The water I used to cleanse the stone is enchanted. It comes from a particular spring, and has been aged for decades in a sealed vessel packed in rare herbs. It isn't easy to come by; a gift from Mona. This chalk is made from talc and ash. Aside from blood, ash is the best medium one can use in creating magical seals. It's been used since ancient times, its magical properties revealed to man by denizens of the Beyond eons ago. Not just any ash will do, though. Different types of ash have different properties. This stick was made with the ash of wormwood.”

I feigned excitement. “Oh, boy! And what the hell's that supposed to mean?”

Kubo finished his work, returned the chalk to his bag, and then cleaned off his hands, chuckling. “It means it's a bitch and a half to wash off. Wormwood ash is the permanent marker of the spirit world. Agatha won't ever be able to recover this cornerstone.”

I hate to admit that I was impressed. Kubo was a lying prick, a cold motherfucker who didn't care about me or the others except as a means to an end. But when he was in his element, demonstrating his skill, it was arresting to watch. The guy was a master.

“Where'd you learn all of this, Kubo? How long have you been practicing spell craft?” I asked as he started looking for the next cornerstone.

He replied disinterestedly, his tone relaying that he was far too preoccupied with the thrill of spell craft to talk about it right now. “My grandfather taught me. Maybe I'll tell you about it sometime,” he said absently.

One by one the other cornerstones were found, and like the first, Kubo took his time erasing Agatha's work and replacing it with his own. When the four stones had been changed and the building was primed to amplify only his own spells, he started tacking the paper sigils to the outside of the building. He didn't need tape this time, however. They stuck to the bricks like dryer sheets drawn to staticky laundry. “What I've done,” he said, his deep voice marked in pride, “is effectively shut off their power. Disconnected their alarm system. Now, by posting these sigils on the outside, I'm casting a spell of my own. I'm changing the locks and moving in, see? Any spell I cast inside the church now will be boosted by this barrier the sigils create, and the whole thing is made possible because I've commandeered the cornerstones. Make sense?” Kubo was speaking like a lecturer now. I think he secretly wanted to gush about spell craft, to geek out about it with an interested party. I'd never taken him to be that kind of guy; he was far too serious most of the time. Then again, I'd never seen him work this hard, either.

“Not really,”I admitted. “This is all a bit over my head. But... it sounds to me like Agatha and her crew have just been evicted.”

Kubo placed the last of the sigils. “Absolutely goddamn right.”

THIRTY-FOUR

We approached the nearest door and began planning our entrance. Kubo could sense its inhabitants but we couldn't be sure just where inside the church they were. The main entrance, marked by large, wooden double doors, was out of the question. It was thoroughly chained and would have made too obvious an entry point for any watchful witches. We set our sights instead on a side door, presumably the one Ernie had seen the witches entering through the other night.

Before we went in, Kubo studied the door carefully. He touched it, pulled it open very slightly and studied the frame. Spotting something inscribed upon the inside of the frame, in the lower left, he looked to Joe. “Torch the door and the frame. It's been marked and we're going to tip them off if we cross the threshold without first destroying this seal.”

With more finesse than I'll ever be able to understand, Joe walked up, lighter in hand, and made light work of the door. First he melted the hinges by superheating them, allowing the door to fall outward onto the grass. When Kubo had dragged it out onto the lawn, Joe showered it with small tongues of flame until the thing was left a pile of cinders. The frame was next, and was a little trickier. He zeroed in on the small seal that'd been etched into it and burned that portion first. Then, melting the nails that held it in place, he pulled the door frame loose and burned it just like he'd done the door. “Voila,” he said, closing the Zippo with a click.

In the process of getting rid of the door and the enchanted frame, we'd created quite a bit of smoke. It wasn't a subtle affair, and I had trouble believing that onlookers from the street wouldn't take notice. We were setting fire to things, breaking into an abandoned church. Even if the view was decently blocked by overgrown foliage, the possibility of being found out by passing motorists or pedestrians seemed high.

And don't even get me started on the witches.

What if they smelled the smoke? Heard us fucking with their door and came rushing at us from the next room?

Thankfully that didn't happen, and Kubo explained why when I kept looking nervously towards the street. “Isabella's muffling our sounds. Moreover, the fire and smoke has been masked by an illusion of clear sky. In order to actually see what's going on, someone would have to come up to within a few feet of the scene. Relax.”

“Well, why not just have her make the side of the church disappear, so we can see where the witches are hiding?” I asked. She'd done that to the house we'd scoped out, allowing us to zero in on the nursery and find the kid before the witches could get to him.

“There's a ward in place, protecting the walls from being peered through. It's an elementary spell. The seal that's generating it passively is probably scrawled on a floorboard or something. Anyhow, if we were to do that, we'd only see darkness. They've effectively blacked out their windows to keep craft users from snooping.”

Isabella was standing beside Kubo, her entire body twitching with a fury I'd never seen before. Her hands and face were particularly animated, and she shifted from one exaggerated expression to the next, her freckled face contorting like mad while her hands continuously pawed at the hem of her burlap garment.

“I think you broke her,” said Joe, slapping me in the arm. “That coffee probably wasn't a good idea.”

This seemed to upset her, because Isabella got in Joe's face and wagged a finger, her cheeks reddening. “No, no, no, that's not true. Coffee is fine. Mother never lets Isabella have coffee, but Isabella adores coffee, and if Isabella says it's OK to drink coffee, then it's OK. Isabella can make her own decisions. Mother doesn't speak for Isabella all the time.” The words came so hot and fast, and her grip on the collar of Joe's jacket tightened so quickly, that me and Kubo had to pry her off. In the space of a second, she'd turned into a wild animal, and was even scratching and spitting at him as we pulled her away.

“Jesus,” I muttered. “What's her problem?”

Kubo stood between her and Joe. “It's complicated.”

For his part, Joe started laughing, hands raised. “When it comes to Isabella, I just don't ask questions anymore.” He looked at her and bowed his head slightly. “Sorry, babe. I didn't mean nothing by it. You drink all the coffee you want, long as the enchantments keep coming.”

Slowly, Isabella calmed down, smoothing out the locks of bristling black hair that spilled from the edges of her hood. She took a deep breath, and then started twitching again, her fingers squirming at her sides as though she were thumping on an imaginary keyboard.

Note to self: Don't ever tell Isabella what she can or can't drink.

She'd always been weird, but that outburst had served to change my opinion of her drastically. Though talented, something clearly wasn't right about Isabella. She was a loose cannon, a bomb waiting to go off, and if we weren't careful, we were going to get caught up in the blast.

Kubo waved her in, asking her to initiate a new spell. “Invisibility. If you need a few more minutes to gather the energy, take your time. It's no rush, Isabella.” Pulling his jacket away, he hit a button on a small black square that was fastened to his belt. If I had to guess, that was the device the Veiled Order strike team had given him. If he failed to hit it once every half hour, they had express orders to storm the church.

Isabella mashed her hands together without hesitation, mumbling to herself. She was a little red in the face, the color not having escaped from her cheeks since her freak-out, and seemed to be having a harder time of spell casting than usual.

Joe walked up behind me and explained why. “Isabella can only cast so many spells a day. It takes a lot of focus, and if she works too hard, she can literally give herself an aneurysm. Tricks like hers can be very taxing. I think that's why she acts so weird. Probably pushed shit too far when she was still learning the ropes and fucked up her head.” Joe knocked on his forehead and clicked his tongue. “Hollow up there, I'm tellin' ya.”

“I see. And who's her mother?” I whispered. “The one who doesn't want her drinking coffee?”

Joe chuckled under his breath, shaking his head. His pompadour fell out of place, a few locks brushing against his forehead. “You wouldn't believe me if I told you.”

“OK,” said Isabella, “it's finished.”

I looked down at myself, then over to Joe.

Well, we didn't look invisible.

“Did it work?” I asked, motioning to Kubo.

He nodded. “She made us invisible to others, not to each other.”

Nifty.

That meant we were all ready to dive into the snake pit.

Before starting into the church, Kubo drew one last thing from his pocket, handing it over to me. “You'll be needing this.”

I accepted a small glass vial, filled with green liquid. “What is it?”

“Another gift from Mona. Take it now. It takes a little while to kick in.”

I eyed it suspiciously, giving the vial a shake and then wrenching off the rubber top. One whiff of the stuff was enough to make me retch; it smelled largely of moldy grass clippings and vinegar, with hints of dead fish. “Whoa, that's foul. No thanks, chief. Whatever it is, I'm sure I don't need it. You be sure to thank Mona on my behalf, though. Real sweet of her.” I prepared to pour it out, but Kubo caught my hand.

“Bottoms up, princess. This one isn't optional, since you're apparently unwilling to carry your gun. Either you guzzle it or you take it as a suppository. We don't have time to sit around and wait for you to make up your mind. It's a strength tincture.”

Gritting my teeth, I looked back down at the vial and felt my mouth water. That always meant one thing. I was about to puke.

And I hadn't even sipped it yet.

The very idea of drinking it made me want to barf.

The team was all ready to head into the church. They were just waiting on me to take my pungent new medicine. Holding my nose, I opened wide and poured the stuff straight down my throat.

And then I started coughing.

The stuff burned like hell, scalding my esophagus as though I'd guzzled literal fire. I struggled to breathe afterward, throwing the vial into the lawn and gasping for air. “O-oh... Oh God...”

Kubo wasn't paying attention. After I'd swallowed the stuff, he'd turned and started into the church, Isabella close behind him.

Joe snickered as I clutched at my throat and crept in after them. When I finally recovered enough to see straight, I followed, tears in my eyes.

I don't know what was in that, but it'd better do something impressive, else that old snake lady is going to be next on my list.

THIRTY-FIVE

I didn't know exactly what was in that tincture, but apparently Gadreel frigging loved it, because from the minute I set foot in that church and started looking out for witches, my heart started to pound like mad.

Gadreel. It felt weird, being able to name to the demon. For so long, he'd been something of a nebulous outsider, someone relegated to the margins of my personality and only coming to the fore when I was out of my depth. Now I knew his name, had some idea of his hobbies. Apparently he liked screwing human women and getting into fights.

Frankly, I'm surprised we weren't acquainted sooner.

My heart was going so hard I was nervous that everyone else could hear it. My muscles were tensing, and despite the relative coolness of the room, I'd broken into a sudden sweat. The fever was back. Gadreel knew it was his time to shine, his time to make an appearance. Surely, in the fight ahead, there'd be a whole lot more of Gadreel than Lucian participating. The strength tincture only seemed to be making things more intense. As if the demon's influence over me in the past wasn't intense enough. This was Gadreel on steroids. Never mind Kubo's claims; the thing had kicked in quickly. If it kicked in any more than this, my head was going to pop off my shoulders like the cap of a shaken two-liter.

Kubo had his gun out, and was training it on each and every of the battered, dusty pews that we passed. It was a rather small church, with a tiny altar, three sets of wooden pews and little else. The rest of the fixtures had either been moved elsewhere or lifted by thieves since the building's official closure, and bits of garbage had been left in their places. The floors, cement, had probably been carpeted once, but now wore empty Coke bottles and crushed packs of empty cigarettes. Dead leaves, too, were aplenty, and as they skittered across the room in the draft, I couldn't help but shudder.

It was pretty clear that there was no one else in this room with us, but Kubo marched on in a slight crouch as if he were inching through a war zone. Far behind the altar, and to the left, was a door hanging slightly off of its hinges. To the right was an open doorway, leading to a hallway.

We were going to have to go down one or the other, but how the hell were we supposed to know which way was the right one?

Kubo, though, the marvelous bastard, had it figured out before I could even ask. “We're going to the right,” he said after a short pause. He'd bent down to touch the floor, and had apparently sensed movement in the hall that extended to the right of the altar. “The witches are underground, in the cellar. I can feel them. We need to go down that hall and find the cellar door.”

And so we went.

But not before Kubo stopped dead in his tracks.

He'd just walked past the last pew and had glimpsed something behind it that made him take aim with his gun.

I rushed up behind him, pushing Joe and Isabella out of the way, and found a number of blank-eyed, presumably cockroach-infested kids in rags sitting against the concrete.

Familiars.

Four of them.

Kubo stayed his hand, didn't fire upon them even though they were easy targets. They couldn't see us; Isabella had made us invisible and had dampened the sounds we made in order to allow us a discrete entry.

Unfortunately, that didn't stop me from lashing out at the familiars and breaking the carefully-laid illusion like a pane of glass.

I gave into the pounding of my heart, and Gadreel incited me to violence. I reached out and batted at the nearest familiar, knocking his bloated, misshapen head against the nearest pew and watching as a swarm of roaches burst forth.

That was all it took.

They could see and hear us now, and they were all looking at me. These things were dumb automatons, largely incapable of emotion or self-directed thought, if my previous dealings with them were any indication. But, as I struck one of them down and suddenly came into view, I noticed their eyes widened in something like shock.

And so did their mouths.

The familiars began to shriek, scrambling across the room and running circles around the four of us. The sounds that left their lips were unlike anything I'd ever heard, and were so grating that I couldn't help but wince. For those who are unaware, some species of cockroach are capable of making noise. It's a shrill, high-pitched sort of chirp, and to hear even a single roach vocalize in such a way is enough to make my skin crawl.

Now imagine the many thousands of dark roaches that must've filled the hollowed-out bodies of these vacant-looking familiars.

That chirping was amplified a million times, and packed such a wallop I was left stunned. The familiars were calling to their masters, informing them that the church had been infiltrated by unwelcome outsiders.

That is, the jig was up.

And I'd just blown it.

In a bit of quick thinking, Isabella held out one of her hands and began to shriek along with the chorus of insect-ridden shells. “Stop! Stop!” she pleaded, her fingers waggling furiously.

And then, they did.

Glancing narrowly at the three remaining familiars, my ears still ringing, I noticed their mouths had vanished. Isabella had done something, whipped up some sort of spell that had effectively erased their mouths and prevented them from screeching.

Kubo charged forward, cursing. “Take care of them, Joe. We're going downstairs, now!”

With a nod, Joe flipped his lighter open and took to burning the three remaining familiars. Their thin skins gave way, and the hordes of insects within were subsequently burnt to a crisp.

There wasn't time for high-fives or celebrations, though.

“Lucy, get the fuck over here,” said Kubo, taking my arm as he went on. “You and me are up front. Joe, get behind Lucy. Isabella, you need to stay in the back. This is the real thing, so get ready.” He led us down the hall, no longer bothering to creep around or mask our approach.

The witches knew we were there.

They had to. There was no way that ungodly cacophony had gone unnoticed.

The hallway was short and branched off into a couple of different doors, but upon throwing them all open and scoping out each new room with his gun raised, Kubo found them all empty. One was a restroom, left in an awful state of disrepair. There was also a closet, along with a room that might've once stored religious objects. The door to the cellar was the last on the right, and as it banged open, we were greeted by a dense darkness.

This was it.

Kubo led the charge.

THIRTY-SIX

I wasn't sure what I expected to find once we got down there.

At the time, Gadreel was more in charge than I was, and I was content to sit back as a spectator, only poking my head out when the others spoke to me. We hustled down those stairs, arriving on solid floor which was quickly illuminated by Kubo's signature will-o-the-wisps.

It became clear that the basement of this church was enormous, and our immediate surroundings were cluttered with refuse. Busted chairs, mounds of clothes, a couple of splintered coatracks and upturned shelving units.

The garbage had been cleared from the center of the room, and taking a couple of exploratory steps inside, I could see why. A large circle, with a circumference of roughly thirty feet, had been drawn in what seemed to be a mixture of blood and ash. I couldn't quite tell in the low light, but the color looked about right. Kubo's hushed mutterings shortly thereafter confirmed my suspicions.

It was very much a work in progress, with flowing, intricate symbols written all about it. Certain of them had been carved directly into the cement, and new, black candles festooned the five corners of the painstakingly rendered star at its center. Kubo dropped to one knee and looked it over with wonder; the guy was practically drooling. He'd hinted at the fact that Agatha's coven was devising an incredible new spell capable of enslaving me, and even though I didn't know a lick about spell craft, I could see in this circle's designs that he'd been right. It looked ridiculously complicated. He pored over it for a few moments, his breath held up in his lungs. It wasn't the best time for him to geek out, but he couldn't seem to help himself.

I tapped him on the shoulder when I saw something across the room that warranted our attention, however.

There was someone there, sitting in a high-back chair.

And unless I was mistaken, they were holding a baby.

Even through the darkness, scarcely parted by the glow of the will-o-the-wisps, I could feel a pair of dark, hateful eyes carving into me from across the room.

Kubo stood, holding his gun out before him. “Agatha,” he said. Stepping around the circle, almost out of reverence, he waved to me and made sure I was following. Joe and Isabella stayed further behind, looking cautiously at the complicated designs on the cellar floor.

“None other,” said the old witch, her voice a dissatisfied croak. She didn't move from her seat, but continued staring us down as we closed the distance. Our approach was cautious; neither of us could be sure of what Agatha might do. There was nowhere for her to run, but her bag of tricks ran far deeper than either of us probably knew.

Now, as I got to stand about fifteen feet from her, I noticed something that turned my stomach. Agatha's cloak was drawn to one side, and the child was pressed to her bare skin. More than that, though, one of the crone's sagging breasts was exposed, and she had the child nursing at it. A stream of red, viscous liquid spilled from the corner of the kid's mouth as he suckled.

I'm not a doctor, but I knew enough about breastfeeding to know that that shit wasn't natural.

I about threw up Mona's strength tincture right then and there, but somehow kept it down. “What the hell are you doing?” I managed to ask.

Agatha shot me a fresh glance, fierce and cold. “No, I'll be asking the questions here, Gadreel. This is my domain, and I won't abide such rudeness. What I want to know is how it is you managed to come here undetected. We'd placed a pox on you, should have known all about your movements, but I see that's been cleared.” She narrowed her gaze and looked Kubo square in the face. “Oh, I see. You're still cavorting with that miserable whore, Mona.” Agatha shook her head, chuckling throatily. “It makes no difference. You may have found us, but you lack the power to stop me. Having been foolish enough to enter the lion's den, I'll make certain that none of you leave with your lives today.”

“Actually, how about you just hand over the kid,” I growled, stepping past Kubo.

Agatha began to laugh. The sound of her laughter, a genuine cackle, was harsh as it bounced off of the cellar walls. My ears still hadn't fully recovered from listening to the familiars screech. “This child is an offering for you, Gadreel. Don't you see? On the night of the full moon my spell will be complete and the two of us will be bonded forever. I'd hoped to win you to my side peacefully, but I found that I preferred a sure thing.” She stood up suddenly. “No matter. I'll have my way when all is said and done.”

Agatha raised one of her arms, giving some signal.

That was when we got swarmed.

THIRTY-SEVEN

From the shadows, of which there were no shortage in the cellar, came the witches.

It was hard to say exactly how many there were. I thought there must have been at least six bounding out of the shadow towards Kubo and I. They leapt from the shadows as if the room were some deep pool and they were dolphins breaking the surface to do a flip. Their pale, clawed hands took hold of us and tried to drag us to the ground where they would savage us with the same blows that'd killed me once upon a time.

If you ask me, their assault was rather inelegant for a bunch of experienced magic users.

Kubo was knocked to one side as the witches jumped him. Two of them pushed him to the ground and made him drop his gun, while the other four focused on me.

I wouldn't be toppled so easily, however.

Or, rather, Gadreel wouldn't.

With the demon's power coursing through me and the strength tincture pushing me to still greater heights, I let the witches hang on me for a moment before flinging them off of my arms and legs like rag dolls. They didn't even know what hit them as they crashed into the walls. One minute they'd been ambushing us and jumping all over me. The next I'd cast them off with ease.

I love it when things work out that way.

Before they could all gain their feet, I was throwing my fists around. The two witches who'd subdued Kubo now set their sights on me, and I was left to fight off the whole horde.

The first time I'd met the coven, I'd been awed by their strength. Physically, they'd overpowered me without trouble then. But now, the tables had turned, and as my fist connected with the first witch, they knew they were outgunned.

Like the head of a sledgehammer, my fist rocketed through the air and crashed into the face of an oncoming witch.

The look of surprise never even fully materialized across her face. The stuff of her visage wasn't strong enough to bear the blow, and I split her head, skin, bone and all, with a single pass. Her corpse slumped to the ground hard, and her sisters took three steps back, fully realizing what they'd just walked into.

They were boned, and they knew it.

Growing livid, Agatha sputtered a few guttural syllables and began flooding the cellar with a choking, impenetrable mist, just as she'd done outside the warehouse the other night. It was the ace up her sleeve, and before her face was blotted out by the fog, I saw a sinister smile creep across her waxen face. She fully intended to trap us within it and kill us one by one. Without being able to see, we were sitting ducks.

Kubo, though, had come prepared.

Just as the fog began to envelop him, he pulled a glass vial from his pocket and threw it down onto the floor. As it shattered, a powerful gust rocked the room, knocking the witches to the ground and clearing the mist completely. The air was left chill as the dead of winter. I could see my breath.

That must've been another gift of Mona's. I have to say, she might've grossed me out, but by this point, I was ready to buy her a box of chocolates and kiss her on the mouth.

Kubo laughed, delighting in the sour scowl Agatha wore. He reclaimed his gun and pointed it straight at her, hesitating to pull the trigger only because she still held the infant in her arms. “You were sloppy, Agatha. Too sloppy. I honestly expected better from you, but the wards you set, while impressive, were too easy to diffuse. You banked everything on not being sniffed out. You were so confident in your choice of location that you neglected to really prepare for the likes of us. You underestimated me, the Veiled Order. And now your time's up. How does it feel, knowing I've commandeered your cornerstones, given myself the home field advantage?” He laughed, his voice coming through like the roar of a bear. “This is the end.”

Agatha took a step back, bumping into her chair.

The other witches, spurred into action, tried to team up on me, but they didn't make it far.

One after another I took hold of them. Some jumped on me and tried to dig their grotty claws into my skin, only to get thrown to the floor. When they were laying prone, I buried my fists in their skulls, ending up wrist-deep in gore. Their heads gave like melons, painting the concrete below in crimson and bits of flesh that looked not unlike uncooked hamburger.

One or two of them started mumbling, trying to cast a spell. They couldn't get it off the ground quick enough to evade my blows, however. In the case of one, I literally tore her mouth from her face before she could finish her incantation.

For me, it was kind of like watching a hyper violent film. I was in control, and yet, the positively outrageous offense I was launching came from elsewhere. My hands and arms were used in doling out punishment, but were guided by a mind far more learned in the ways of combat. My muscles ached as the strength tincture beefed them up. The god of war told me where to swing, and seemed poised to take no prisoners. With my awareness cut in two, the demon and I worked in tandem, sharing the same brain, the same body, the same fists. I could sense him, and he could sense me. And in that moment, our wills were centered on the same aim.

Kill.

Kill everything.

Everything that moves.

There's a saying people use to describe periods of intense anger. “I saw red,” they'll say. Well, for me, it rang true, and not simply because I had fat drops of witch's blood running down my face. My eyes shook so that I almost couldn't see straight. The energy surging through me was almost too much for my mortal coil to contain, and I felt like I might suddenly fall to pieces at any moment. As I grunted and screamed and savaged the coven, I began to see everything in hues of red, almost as if the inside of my body were slowly filling up to the brim with hellfire.

The last few tried to run.

Kubo pumped them full of lead, and from the rear I heard the clicking of Joe's Zippo.

They got torched in short order, clutching at their bodies and shrieking on the floor in the seconds before the flame fully consumed them.

Now it was just the four of us and Agatha.

Agatha was backed into the wall, no options left to her. The only reason she still lived was the bundle of joy she clutched to her chest like a life vest. That kid was sitting tight, seemingly oblivious to everything that was going on. “What a mistake the Veiled Order has made this day, threatening an ally like me. Why, I was a great asset to the organization, a longstanding member. I see that this is how they choose to repay my years of service. I wonder, though, if this Faustian bargain you've made won't come back to bite you... dealing with demons has never been the Veiled Order's specialty. This time, in teaming with one, I wonder if you haven't bitten off more than you can chew. It's unwise... I expect it will backfire on all of you, horribly.”

“Drop the kid,” I bellowed in a voice too deep and feral to be my own.

Agatha refused. She extended one hand, allowing it to take the shape of a long, serrated knife with the utterance of some few words. This was her greatest hit, and she couldn't help but trot it out one last time. Leveling the blade against the baby's throat, she looked out at us with wild eyes. “I will kill this child,” she warned. “I will find another after I escape here and fulfill the ritual myself. Back away now, or I'll slash his throat!”

Kubo raised his gun anyway. He didn't give a fuck about this kid. From the very start, it'd been about the mission for him. The kid was a distraction, a pawn caught up in the game just like Isabella, Joe and I. All he wanted was to see Agatha dead, collateral damage be damned.

I still had enough control over my body to get my way, though. I'd come here to protect that baby, and I wasn't about to let the kid get hit by a stray bullet.

Everything went into a kind of slow-motion in the next instant. I was acutely aware of Kubo's movements, of the electrical activity that informed them. I could sense his muscles tensing, his finger twitching as it went to squeeze the trigger.

And then, things sped back up.

I batted the gun out of his hand, and it fired as it struck the floor. Then, grabbing Kubo's arm, I whipped him over my shoulder like a Judo master, so that he crashed into the wall head-first.

Knocked him out cold.

“I'm in charge here, sorcerer,” I barked at him as Joe and Isabella looked on in horror. I doubt if he heard me, though.

In the time it took me to handle Kubo, however, Agatha had gone in for the kill. Raising the blade, she held the infant out before her and took a swing.

She'd promised to kill the kid if we didn't cooperate and now she was following through.

THIRTY-EIGHT

The kid disappeared.

Even as Gadreel was looking through my eyes, he had to do a double-take.

One minute, Agatha was about to stab the kid with her knife-hand; the next, the kid was nowhere to be found.

The old witch's eyes almost popped out of her head when she whiffed, catching nothing but air. “What... what?” she screamed, unwilling to believe her eyes.

From behind me, I heard a baby's cry.

Isabella was holding the kid, and was standing near the stairs, ready to race up them at any moment.

Agatha stamped her foot against the ground. “How? How can this be?” She pointed her knife-hand at Isabella, her pale, waxy face narrowing in a beastly snarl. She was too angry to speak anymore, the corners of her mouth crowded with foam.

With a scream, Agatha lunged past me, sprinting for Isabella. She was fast, enormously fast.

If not for the fact that I had Gadreel on the assist, I might not have been able to grab the hood of her cloak and drag her to the ground.

Agatha choked as her cloak tightened around her throat. With an open palm, I gave her a smack in the neck, so that her head was separated from her shoulders. Agatha's last breaths sputtered from a pair of trembling lips. I looked her in the eyes as consciousness fled from them and then cast her head towards the unconscious Kubo.

Isabella raced up the stairs, infant in tow, looking positively frightened. Joe, too, had gone utterly pale, and his knees were knocking against one another as if he might piss himself. He tried to stammer a congratulations for a job well done, but he couldn't get the words out.

And, besides, the job wasn't done.

Not yet.

Agatha's body, sans head, began to writhe on the ground, inching forward a few feet like some sort of giant worm.

In the next moment, it was easy to see why. Bursting through the open cavity of her neck was exactly that. A large, segmented worm.

Yeah, take a minute to picture that. A thick, pulsating worm the size of a small dog, inching its way out of Agatha's body. It was a brilliant white, the same color as Oreo filling.

I don't know about you, but the sight of that thing was enough to turn me off of Oreos forever, once I'd made the comparison.

The worm spoke; a circular mouth lined in fangs produced a shrill warning. “I'll kill the lot of you yet!” The voice was very much Agatha's; I felt like I was meeting her for the very first time. This was the real Agatha, apparently, the thing that'd been calling the shots.

That mouth opened, and a thick, foamy spray surged forth. Sailing through the air, the blast missed me narrowly, instead hitting the cellar ceiling.

The wooden joists above our heads began to fizz and burn.

Excellent. The worm had acidic spit.

I took a few steps back, not wanting to get hit by the stuff as it dripped onto the floor from above. It probably wouldn't have killed me, but having my body subjected to acid burns wasn't high up on my list of wants. The ceiling was eaten away and the building above us began to groan.

“Shit,” I muttered. The place was going to fold. Before long, the church was going to collapse in on itself, and we were going to be buried in the cellar beneath a mountain of rubble.

Me and Agatha stood a decent chance at living through such a thing, but Kubo and Joe likely wouldn't. Then there was Isabella. Had she left the church altogether, or would she and the infant fall through the floor and end up buried, too?

“Step back, Lucy!” With a yell, Joe clutched his lighter and made Agatha's corpse ignite. By proxy, the worm slinking out of it was caught up in the flames as well.

Saved me the trouble. Fighting that giant, disgusting creature mano a mano hadn't appealed even to the violent demon in me. Joe worked the flame in a giant ring until the whole of the corpse was engulfed. There would be no escaping the fire.

If you've never heard a giant worm scream while it burns to death, you haven't missed anything. I'd recommend you just go on living without experiencing that, because the sounds it makes are just about as horrific as you can imagine. Worse, even.

In its death throes, the worm spat great, foaming mouthfuls of acid about the room.

The walls were struck and solid bricks were dissolved. The ceiling was hit again, and now the weakened beams were beginning to sag and break.

Agatha and the worm within her were dead.

But the house was about to come down.

THIRTY-NINE

Gadreel was still in the captain's chair as the church began to disintegrate all around us. I sprinted out of the building, climbing the stairs, making my way down the hall and exiting the building the same way we'd come in. Isabella was out on the lawn, twitching awfully and holding a screaming baby.

The church collapsed in on itself, but not before Joe manged to stagger out, Kubo in tow. The chief had regained consciousness, but was leaning on Joe as they exited.

With a terrible crash that could not have possibly gone unnoticed, the building sank and crumbled. A cloud of dust and splinters rained down on us as we watched it come down.

“Holy shit,” muttered Joe, letting go of Kubo and falling onto the grass. His pompadour was covered in dust and his breathing was labored for hauling Kubo up the cellar stairs. “It's over. We did it.” Laughing, he repeated, “it's over” about a dozen more times.

Apparently Gadreel had other plans, however. Because for him, it wasn't over.

When he'd gone into a rage in the cellar, targeting everything that moved, he'd apparently included Joe, Kubo and Isabella in that.

I turned and looked Joe in the eye, grinning widely. “Over? Not yet.”

***

What happened next was out of my control. Gadreel was intent on killing the rest of the team, and though my consciousness politely suggested against it, my preferences fell on deaf ears.

Gadreel was calling the shots completely.

My body was his to use.

I couldn't even argue, I'd been shoved so far into the corner.

Joe was the first target. I raced at him, shoved Kubo away and pinned him to the ground. He panicked at first, and then managed to open his lighter. A large tongue of flame burst from it and washed over my body, but even as my skin began to smolder I didn't ease off of him. “The three of you will pay for what you've done. You misled me,” I said. “You deceived me all this time, hiding the true nature of this mission. For that, you will die.”

A bullet sank into my back.

Kubo's doing.

I turned and scowled at him. The bullet burned awfully. I mean, it was really excruciating, just as it had been the last time I'd been hit with one of Kubo's blessed bullets. But it wasn't enough to bring me down. A second shot, this one to the leg, only increased the pain. But Gadreel was too strong. A hundred blessed silver bullets wouldn't have been enough to bring him down.

I left Joe and took a swipe at Kubo. I found he only had use of one of his arms. Apparently when I'd thrown him in the cellar I'd dislocated one of his shoulders.

Oopsie.

He fired at me again, missing, before the gun was knocked from his hand and the offending fingers crushed. Kubo cried out, gripping at his hand and staggering back. The fingers of his right hand were mashed up, busted, and blood poured from the fractured joints.

I chuckled. “You've earned this,” I told him. “You brought this on yourself, Takeshi. When your grandfather taught you spell craft so many years ago in Kyoto, I'll bet you never expected you'd die this way, did you?” The demon was tapping into forbidden knowledge again, uttering things I shouldn't have had the slightest notion of, just as he'd done to that rough in the alley outside the brewery. “You should've taken over at the temple like he wanted you to. It would have been safer. You and I would have never crossed paths, Takeshi. But you fucked up. Bit off more than you can chew, and when I'm done manhandling your corpse, I'll drink your blood and move up the chain. Your friends at the Veiled Order won't know I'm coming. Your bosses, bless them; I'll be dancing in pools of their blood.”

A fresh wave of fire struck me from behind, but it didn't slow me down. “Fool,” I spat. “I make my home in hellfire. Do you think it's possible to burn me?” I smirked. “That mother of yours is rather sick. Her bone cancer isn't getting any better now, is it?” Gadreel laughed deeply, heartily. “Maybe I should come over, lay her down and give her the kiss of life, eh?” I reached down and squeezed my crotch. “She always had a thing for bad boys, didn't she? May as well give her one last go on the cock carousel before she kicks the bucket. Just hit it and quit it like your father did, yeah?”

Joe was shaking. His eyes were brimming with tears and he held onto his lighter so tightly his hands were getting burned in the process.

Turning back to Kubo, who was fussing with his stack of paper sigils and only succeeding in dirtying them with his blood, I reared back and prepared to cleave through him just like I'd done to the witches.

The blow should've connected, however as my fist was about to strike the top of his head, I met some resistance.

Psychical resistance.

As though an unbreakable, invisible wall separated me from Kubo, my blows were just shy of connecting.

It was Isabella's doing.

“Bitch!” I shouted, pointing at her. “I'd intended to save you for last, but since you insist on interfering, I'm going to carve your guts out, you twitching idiot!” I ran at her, watched as her eyes widened and her hands were wrung till the knuckles grew white. She'd set the baby down in the grass and flinched as I approached like she was waiting to get gored by a raging bull.

I crashed.

Another invisible wall.

Thrashing, I tried to approach from another angle, but found myself blocked in. The more I moved, the more the invisible barrier closed in on me. The fit was so tight now that I couldn't even shrug my shoulders. I was being squeezed with incredible force into submission. Though I roared and cursed, I was stuck.

Trapped.

Kubo stood up, clutching at his hand and panting. “Hold tight, Lucian. You let the demon do too much of the heavy lifting. He's taken over. We're going to force him into the background together. Ready? You'll be yourself again in no time. Just take some deep breaths and listen to my voice. Listen to my voice. I'm reaching out to Lucian, the Lucian we know. Come on out of there, Lucian, and put the demon in its proper place. Regain control of the body that's rightfully yours. The demon is a tool that you control. Don't let it take full possession of you. I know you can hear me, Lucian.”

Gadreel struggled within the invisible box, and then, soon thereafter, he struggled against the confines of my mind.

I could hear Kubo. I could hear him speaking to me, rather than the demon, and slowly my own will was gaining momentum. I was stepping out of the shadows, grappling with Gadreel as he tried to stay put. He liked it in the captain's chair, liked being in total control.

Gadreel was strong, but he didn't know my body as well as I did. Not yet, anyhow.

Shaking against the walls of the invisible box, I shook and groaned.

The next thing I knew, I was slumped over, head between my knees in the grass.

But, importantly, it was me sitting there. Not Gadreel. The demon had relinquished its control, returned to the background where I could still feel it seething.

I passed out just as the sound of a helicopter came from overhead.

FORTY

When I awoke, I found myself in a familiar setting. A comfortable bed, a bit of sunlight coming in through the barred windows.

I was in the infirmary back at headquarters.

This time, though, at least I wasn't in chains.

I sat up, recalling with too much clarity everything that'd transpired at the church. We'd finished the job, stomped out Agatha's coven like the bunch of rats they were.

Oh, and I'd been completely possessed by Gadreel, tried to kill my team mates and spewed a lot of really hateful shit, too.

It was the latter that concerned me most. I wasn't sure how long I'd been in the infirmary but I knew one thing: I'd been there long enough. Standing up and giving my legs a little bend at the knee, I found myself stable enough to walk and marched to the door. I was still in my regular clothes, which were pretty roughed up and dirty. The back of my shirt was almost completely eaten through for the flames Joe had sent my way.

After all I'd said to the guy, I was surprised he hadn't shown up at the infirmary and finished the job while I recuperated. I certainly deserved it.

I left my room, ambled down the hall towards the lobby. There, seated in one of the chairs with his legs crossed, was Kubo. He was looking a little rough himself, and one of his arms was in a sling. The fingers of one hand, too, were knotted in thick bandages.

Poor guy was going to have a real hard time wiping in the bathroom, by the looks of it.

I winced as I looked him over. Yeah, that'd been my doing. Apologies were in order, but then, a mere apology wasn't going to magically restore Kubo's rotator cuff. I caught his eye as I walked out, and he stood up promptly.

“Awake, are you?”

I nodded. “How long have I been out?”

Kubo shrugged. “Four, five hours.”

It hadn't been very long at all, then. Feeling relieved, I launched into an apology forthwith. “Look, chief... I”m sorry about what happened back there. I wasn't myself, and--”

He shook his head. “Don't worry about it. We completed our mission. Everything that went wrong was the demon's fault, not yours. Really, it was the Veiled Order's fault, for not teaching you how to better control the thing. We managed to get out of there alive, haul your ass back to HQ and knock Gadreel down a peg. You came back to us when I worked with you out there, so we didn't have to resort to an exorcism or anything like that. Consider yourself lucky.”

“And the infant?” I asked. “He was OK? Didn't get hurt or anything?”

Kubo chuckled. “Well, aren't you precious. Yeah, the kid got returned to his parents, safe and sound. He'll have a lot to talk about in therapy someday, of course.” He straightened the blue straps of his sling.

“And Joe?”

“What about him?” asked Kubo. “He's alive.”

I bit my tongue, the very same tongue that'd let me talk such shit to him. I'd really laid into Joe, had said vile things. My face reddened for the mere remembrance. “Listen, chief, I've gotta go. But before I do, I want to know one thing.”

“Sure.”

“The demon... back there... he said things that I didn't know about. I mean, he has a way of... tapping into people's heads or something. Talking about things that I, Lucian, don't know a damn thing about. How?”

“The demon walks on completely different ground. He uses magic, but it's a different kind. I can't pretend to be an expert on demonology, but peering into someone's heart and using painful memories or the like against them is standard. I'm surprised he doesn't do it more.” Kubo nodded. “Anyway, you've been medically cleared. I'll be in touch.”

With half a shirt on my back, I hastily made my way out of the complex and hit the streets. It was late afternoon as I set off for Joe's place.

***

When I got to Joe's house, I found him sitting on his stoop again. He was stretched out across the first step, his heels up on the handrail, and he was tinkering with his Zippo. The metal wheel turned beneath his thumb and he watched a small flame reservedly for some time. He hadn't changed out of his clothes yet, looked like absolute hell. He knocked a few splinters out of his bedraggled pompadour as I sauntered up. As I'd approached from a distance he'd kept one eye on me and the other on his lighter.

Joe stood up and prepared to go inside just as I stopped at the stoop. He didn't want to talk to me, and I sure as hell couldn't blame him. “Hey,” I said, “there's the guy who owes me a new shirt.” I toyed with the singed, ratty edges of my shirt and grinned, but he was in no joking mood and I quickly lowered my gaze. “Hey, Joe...”

Crossing his arms, Joe returned his lighter to his pocket. “Job's over, Lucy. What're you doing here?”

Ouch. Dude had had me over for dinner the other night. Now he was giving me a dirty look, waiting for me to fuck off.

“I wanted to apologize, Joe. For everything I said and did back there.” I gulped. Apologizing isn't my strong suit. Usually, if I give someone as much shit as I gave Joe back at the church, I never speak to them again, consider them dead to me. Trying to make up for the comments I'd made to him about his mom was going to be rough, to say the least. But I'd be damned if I wasn't at least going to try.

“Lucy,” he said after a sigh. He looked up into the sky, leaning against the screen door. “You don't need to come around here and--”

“But I do,” I interjected. “I said some awful shit, and I need to own up to it. I want you to know that it was the demon talking, and not me. But I'm still responsible. If I'd controlled it better, then maybe I wouldn't have attacked the three of you and said such things.” I ran my tongue against my molars and kicked at the pavement with the tip of my sneaker. “And, uh... I'm sorry about your mom, too. I had no idea, man.”

“Look,” replied Joe, shaking his head, “don't be sorry about that. That ain't no one's fault.” He stood silently for a time, then shrugged a little. “And anyhow, Mona's working on a little something for her. It's technically against the rules, you know, for craft users to meddle with human folk, but she's whipping up some tincture that might patch her up, so don't sweat it.” He cracked a grin. “You can buy me a beer sometime. Or several.”

“Hell, yeah,” I replied. “That's no problem.”

“Cool,” said Joe, opening the screen door. “So, is that all you came by for? To apologize for running your mouth?”

My cheeks went red. “Well, that, and to apologize for almost killing you, too.”

He chuckled. “It happens.” Pointing at the house, Joe continued. “Wanna come in for a beer? I'm sore as hell. Was thinking I might order a pizza and watch a movie.”

I climbed the porch. “Fuck yeah, man. My treat.”

***

Joe and I went on to become fast friends. Over the next few weeks, the two of us hung out together and hit up bars and movies. Along the way, he taught me a little more about the world of magic, and about pyromancy.

He wasn't the only one.

Though things with the Veiled Order were mostly quiet, Kubo had called on me a few times for meetings, wherein he'd taught me some basics. He explained to me how it was that magic worked, gave me a basic rundown on magical seals and how, certain designs and incantations can channel free-flowing energy from the world of the Beyond into our own.

For instance, that circle I kept seeing everywhere? The one that Amundsen wears around his neck, and which had been on top of that box of demon cremains? Turns out it's a pretty versatile seal, the Seal of Seven Waters. Depending on the sigils that are inscribed into it, it can take on several different uses, from creating a spell-powering antenna like Kubo had done back at the church, to making things explode.

Most of this went over my head, but he assured me it'd make more sense in time. He even said he'd teach me a thing or two, some basic spells, down the line.

I saw nothing more of Isabella in the weeks after we'd dashed the coven's plot. Apparently she'd gone off to live with her mother, though Kubo was pretty tight-lipped when it came to discussing her. She was a weirdo, an enigma, and something told me she'd stay that way.

Except for a brief visit to congratulate me on the work I'd done, I didn't see much of Mr. Amundsen, either. He'd come by and dropped off my payment, along with a letter from my loan company, saying that the balances had been paid in full.

Man, when I cracked open that envelope, the relief I felt almost made the whole ordeal worth it. I was debt-free, and I'd only had to take a demon into my body and hunt a coven of dangerous witches.

Maybe sticking to a dead-end desk job would have been the better route, in the long-run.

With the large payment I'd received for the job, I paid up all of my bills and still had a good deal extra to sustain me until the next assignment came.

And, believe me, it was only a matter of time before the next job came down the pipeline.

***

On the day before the new moon rose, Kubo gave me a call to let me know he'd be picking me up. I was to spend the night in the Veiled Order's containment room, a cement bunker inscribed with powerful seals that would weaken my demonic powers and keep me from busting out to wreak havoc on the city. It wasn't exactly my idea of an exciting night, but after losing myself to Gadreel at the church, I was in no hurry to let him have his way.

I climbed into Kubo's SUV without protest when he pulled up, bringing along only a new change of clothes and my phone. We drove to HQ and I was led down into the cellar to a room I'd never visited before. It was the size of a gymnasium, and was constructed completely of concrete. Intricate magic circles whose exact powers I couldn't guess were etched directly into the stone, and there was scarcely a surface in the unfurnished room that didn't feature some bit of spell craft. Even the manacles that would leash me to the room's center were done up in flowing, foreign-looking symbols.

Kubo ushered me inside, and from the moment I crossed into the first magic circle, I felt a strange sensation come over me. It was a numbness, not unlike the haze that'd come over me after surgery. There was no anesthetic in my system, however; it was the room acting upon the demon inside of me. I felt my limbs growing sluggish, felt my head grow fuzzy. And, deep within me, like a dog approaching a glowing hearth, I felt something lay down for sleep. Gadreel had been subdued, at least temporarily, by the power of these seals.

Kubo chained me up and took my belongings, setting them down on the ground near the door. “When the moon rises, Gadreel will take notice,” he said. “Don't be fooled by his weakness right now. He will take you over completely and won't give in till sunrise. Unless unbound and escorted from this room by someone else, you won't be able to leave it till morning. I'll be by then to unlock you.” Making sure the manacles were firmly locked, he added, “And when I do, we'll be discussing the next job. Something's just come down from the higher-ups, a new assignment. I know you'll be looking forward to it.”

I shook my head. “If it's anything like the last one, I have my doubts. Who knows... maybe I'll sit this one out, man.”

Kubo chuckled, turning down the lights and standing by the door. “No, this job may very well end up more dangerous than the last one. Get some rest while you can. We'll be needing your help.”

More dangerous than hunting Agatha?

Call me crazy, but deep down I liked the sound of that.

As Kubo prepared to leave the room, I called out to him. “One last thing, chief. Can you do me a favor? It's going to get pretty damn dull sitting around in this room till morning. Am I allowed to listen to music?”

The chief paused. “I guess so.”

I motioned over to my phone on the ground with my chin. “Hand me my phone real quick?”

Kubo walked it over, and I wasted no time in scrolling through my collection of music. Selecting Raw Power, I put the album on repeat and handed it back to him just as the first, explosive chords of “Search and Destroy” rang out. “Thanks,” I said.

Kubo set the phone down on the ground and walked out, locking the thick, concrete door and leaving me sealed within.

It was going to be a long night.

Standing at the room's center, marveling at the enormous carvings all around me, I tapped my foot to the song and started singing along.

Deep within me, something stirred and took notice.

END.

Thank you for reading! I hope you've enjoyed Raw Power. Want to read the next book in the Demon-Hearted series? See where Lucy, Kubo and the others end up next time? Consider joining my mailing list below for news and updates on the series!

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Table of Contents

Contents

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Cover

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Thank You For Reading!