Chapter 13 #2
“Who are you?” Greg spits, looking me up and down. It’s so weird seeing the animosity in his face, hearing it in his voice, but having him just stand there. Whatever Connor did that made him unable to move is worth the effort.
“I’m here for Emma. Remember her? Emma Harper? May you rot in hell for what you did to her.”
His confusion clears into vicious glee. “I heard she died. Stupid bitch deserved it.” He dives sideways, through a doorway. Connor swears and follows. I guess the freezing mojo wore off.
There’s the sound of colliding bodies, muffled curses, and then a crash.
I edge to the doorway and peer around it into a living room.
There’s a broken vase on the floor, and Connor and Greg are locked together in a weird upright wrestling match.
Greg is way stronger than any eighty-year-old should be, driving home to me exactly how dangerous this situation is.
I watch with my heart in my throat, wanting to help Connor but not sure how to do it without making things worse.
Just when I’m starting to think I should throw something at them and hope for the best, Connor snatches his Taser from its holster and zaps Greg, who staggers back.
I barely have time to be surprised by how little it affected him before Connor’s grabbing his arm and slicing into it with the dagger, then slapping a handful of herbs into the cut.
Greg screams, then collapses dramatically to the floor. Connor stands over him, panting.
“You fucking turd.” He looks over his shoulder at me. “Could you go get the blue lunchbox from my kit, please?”
I nod and hightail it out of the house.
Outside, everything is… normal. The sun is shining. Someone nearby is mowing their lawn. There’s even a bird singing. It’s so trippy.
Luckily, Connor didn’t lock his car, because I totally forgot to get the keys.
He’s usually pretty strict about not leaving it unlocked with his kit inside, but I guess maybe he thought we’d need to get into it in a hurry?
Which isn’t a cheerful thought. I grab the blue lunchbox—which has Thomas the Tank Engine on the front—and head back to the house.
Greg is still in a heap on the floor, sobbing quietly. I assume that’s because of a psychic thing rather than physical, since the wound on his arm isn’t even bleeding anymore.
Should it have stopped bleeding already? Sure, Connor didn’t hack his arm off, but it was a decent cut.
Connor’s pushed some of the furniture back and is laying a salt line in a circle around Greg. I’m definitely not ever going to mock that belt of his again, not even to myself. It’s like Mary Poppins’s carpetbag.
I bring him the lunchbox, and he opens it to reveal chalk, more salt, packets of dried herbs, tealight candles, and matches. Trepidation rises in me.
“What’s all this?”
“I was hoping we could cleanse him of demonic influence with just the herbal wash, but it’s too intertwined with him. He’s made a lot of blood sacrifices—other people’s blood—and traded a lot of his personal soul energy for demonic favors during his life.”
I blink. “So that’s actually real? Demons trade for your soul?”
“Some demons,” Connor corrects, picking up the chalk and starting to draw symbols on the floor.
“The ones that have power of their own. And they don’t trade for your soul, but rather the essence of it.
Greg here has dozens of tiny lines linking him to at least two different demons.
They’re feeding off his humanity in exchange for whatever favors he asked for—I’m gonna guess that slower aging was one of them—and when he eventually dies, they’ll use their connection to his soul as a summoning to come to Earth without a circle to constrain them. ”
I stare at Greg, aghast. “You’re giving demons free rein to wreak havoc on Earth in exchange for a few extra years?”
“That’s the kind of scum Greg is,” Connor agrees. “He’s also stupid, because his immortal soul won’t survive this experience and he’s giving up however many future lives he had coming for a bit longer in this one.”
Greg chokes off his sobs and lifts a tearstained face. “W-What?”
“Your demon buddies didn’t mention that, huh? There’s nothing left for you, moron. When you die, that’s it. Your existence ends.”
“N-No… that’s not right. They p-promised I wouldn’t go to h-hell.”
“Oh, you won’t,” Connor assures him. “Mostly because there is no hell. You’re going exactly nowhere. This is it—you get nothing else. The rest of us live and die and live again infinitely, but your journey stops right here.”
His face goes slack with horror. “No heaven?”
Connor rolls his eyes. “There’s no evidence heaven exists.
Also, reincarnation, remember? But even if there was a heaven, you definitely wouldn’t be going there.
You traded your soul energy to demons, remember?
Now it’s not strong enough to reincarnate.
When this body dies, so does your no-longer-eternal soul.
Because you’re an asshole.” He continues calmly drawing with the chalk, as though he’s talking about the weather.
“Noooo,” Greg breathes. “No, that’s not what’s supposed to happen. They promised!”
Not looking up, Connor asks, “What exactly did they promise? In the exact words.”
“That my soul would be safe!”
Now Connor looks at him. “They said ‘your soul will be safe’?” Greg hesitates, and Connor goes back to drawing.
“Yeah, that’s what I thought. But just so you know, even if they’d said that, it would be no guarantee unless you defined ‘safe’ as being ‘able to continue reincarnating the same way it always has without any obligation or connection to you and/or the otherworld and/or any being or beings thereof.’ Or words to that effect. ”
Greg stares at him, then starts sobbing again.
I wish I could say I feel sorry for him, but he convinced a sweet, innocent girl to trust him with the plan of sacrificing her to a demon, thus leading to her summoning a demon herself and having her soul eaten by it.
And who knows how many other people he did that to?
Not to mention the whole letting demons use him as a back door to Earth so they can…
do whatever gross things demons do. Probably more killing.
Nope, Greg deserves everything he gets.
Wait…
“Are you going to kill him?” I blurt. I’m not sure how I feel about that. Yes, I think Greg’s earned his punishment, but I don’t think I want Connor to have to murder another human being in cold blood.
“You’re going to kill me?” Greg wails. “I don’t want to die! I’m not ready to die!”
“You really are a waste of space,” Connor tells him. “I’m not going to kill you. I’m going to sever all the connections you have to the demons you summoned, then make it so you can’t summon them again.”
I’m totally impressed that he can do all that.
Greg must be too, because he stops crying and throws himself at Connor… but slams into an invisible wall. Literally slams—I see the side of his face flatten as though it’s pressed against something.
“Thanks for waiting until I was done to do that,” Connor says, putting the chalk back into the lunchbox and dusting off his hands.
Greg glares with eyes narrowed to slits, then starts chanting. I don’t understand the language… though some of the words seem kind of familiar.
Connor laughs. “In Latin? How fucking pretentious. Though I guess I shouldn’t expect more from a douchecanoe like you.” He folds his arms and smirks, seemingly waiting for Greg to finish.
“Uh, Connor? What’s he doing?” Greg’s chanting intensifies.
“Summoning a demon.”
I take an involuntary step back. “Shouldn’t you stop him?”
He glances over at me with a warm smile that makes me relax, even though a man eight feet away from me is summoning a demon.
“Nah. Dumbass is summoning a demon while standing inside a containment circle he didn’t draw and without having put up any safeguards of his own.
He’s basically offering himself up as a snack. ”
The chanting cuts off just as it seems to have reached a crescendo, and Greg stares in shocked horror at Connor.
“Emma fell for this guy? Really?” Connor asks into the tense silence. “Were there no other men in Chicago that year? Or women? And was there an ice cream shortage? Because a carton of rocky road would be a million times better than a date with Greg.”
I smile weakly. In any other circumstances I would have laughed and made a cutting remark about what a doofus Greg is, but I’m too busy looking around and hoping a demon isn’t going to join us.
“Did he stop before—”
There’s a popping sound that hurts my ears, and suddenly Greg’s not alone in the circle. He scrambles back, pressing himself up against the edge, eyes wide and with his breaths coming in sharp pants.
I take another step back. Just in case.
The… thing—demon, I guess—in the circle with Greg looks nothing like the one Josh banished last spring. That was formless, a collection of shadows and bad feelings. It made the air in the basement seem thick and terrifying, but if someone asked me to draw it or describe it, I really couldn’t.
This, on the other hand… this almost looks human. Okay, no, it doesn’t. But it could pass for human at night on a dark street if it was wearing a hoodie and I wasn’t looking directly at it. It’s humanoid.
With cat-slit eyes.
And curving horns so black, they seem to suck in light.
And a gaping maw instead of a mouth.
Definitely not someone I’d want to run into on a dark street. Or anywhere.
In a voice that hurts my ears, it says, “Wellllll, wellllll. Thissss issss interesssting.” Its mouth—maw?—doesn’t move, but a forked black tongue flickers out from the darkness within.
Greg summoned this thing deliberately? More than once? My estimation of his intelligence goes waaaaay down, and it wasn’t that high to begin with. I really hope Connor’s as good at this shit as he thinks he is and that circle holds.
“D-Demon,” Greg stutters, his voice cracking, “I h-hath summoned thee to smite mine enemy.”
“Oh, fuck off,” Connor says. “Seriously? Smite?”