A Demon on the Payroll

His minions were ignoring him.

Shouting out his rage, he turned and stomped off to an office, slamming the door behind him. I didn't know who he was, but I did know what he was. Likely a distant cousin of mine, the man was the reverse of my sister, Elizaveta. She could banish, he could summon. Two sides of the same coin. I turned to Jim. He was our marksman.

"Take out as many of the flyers as you can. I shall try to get to the fourth floor and remove their leader. If you can afford some suppressive fire, that would help."

He nodded without looking at me, fired and shot another one out of the air. Kallista stepped through the door in my wake, her bespoke body armor much nicer than what I wore. Raising her hands above her head, she called out.

"Only fire at the demons!"

I had no idea if her compulsion worked. That's all that the mobsters were firing at any way. As I went for the nearest stairwell, I heard her continue.

"Only attack the criminals." She spoke in Enochian. I was mildly annoyed that she knew how to do this. I had just learned that I understood the language a few minutes earlier and now realized that my sister was ahead of me. Shrugging off my petty jealousy, I began running up the stairs. The gunfire continued and was answered by screeching and chittering of the flying creatures. When I got to the second floor, a man firing at one of them was shocked to see me and spun my way.

Jim put two bullets in his chest, and the thug fell backwards. I continued on, avoiding skirmishes where the mobsters were fighting the demons hand-to-hand. From a distance, the demons were spitting acidic bile, and the mobsters were using guns. Up close, it was claws versus baseball bats.

When I hit the third floor, I heard Jim yelling to get down. I immediately tucked and rolled and looked about. I didn't see anything of consequence until I realized that Jennifer had followed me and was on the stairs I had just left. Jim's shout was for her, and I saw a man in a suit slumped over and not moving on the stairs next to her.

Kallista was supposed to be keeping her safe. Where was she?

"Go back to Jim and Siobhan!"

She pointed across the atrium, and I saw Siobhan doing the same thing that I was, making her way to the fourth floor on the parallel stairway. Seeing the corpses in her wake, I realized that she was taking her time to eliminate threats along the way.

"All right, go back to where Kallista is."

Jennifer just shook her head. "Keep going." She suddenly raised a Heckler-Kotch SFP9 and shot over my shoulder. Turning, I saw a flying demon from the other side of the building plummeting to the ground. It was an impressive shot.

The stairwell leading from the third floor to the fourth was about fifty yards away, and I began running. Halfway there, the demon we had fought the previous night lept from the shadows and slammed into me. I purposefully went to my knees, staying low so that I wouldn't go over the guardrail and tumble to the first floor. As it approached, I again caught the foul odor of rank sweat and hot iron. The walls were ringed with offices and in the area between those offices and the railing were desks for secretaries and comfortable chairs for people waiting to be seen. Grabbing one of the chairs, I swiveled like a discus hurler and threw it at the demon. It had to weigh fifty pounds, and it knocked him back six feet.

I could kill him on the way back down. I continued running towards the next stairway and saw a woman sitting on the lowest stair, crying. I assumed that she was a secretary. Behind me, I heard the demon speaking loudly in its odd, crunching voice.

"You! I can smell you, prey." I turned back and looked. It was staring at Jennifer, but it stopped, tilted its head up in the air and inhaled. "And... And children. Two of them. I shall kill you, track them down, split open their bones and suck out the marrow."

I was about to start running back when the woman on the step stood and spoke. She was tall and beautiful, dressed for business in a too tight pencil skirt and a large, dark blue jacket.

"Please." Her voice was tremulous, and seemingly filled with fear, but that changed as she laughed. "Please, just stay right there. Make this easier on both of us."

As she threw back her shoulders, the too-large jacket opened wide, revealing two Uzis with shoulder straps. One hand for each, she grabbed them and raised them my way.

Running in the opposite direction, I dove over one of the desks. The sound of rapid gunfire followed me, but I hadn't been hit. Knowing that we were in a building owned by the mob, I hoped that the desks would be bulletproof. Looking towards Jennifer, I yelled out for Jim. I could hear a rifle firing from the first floor. One shot. Two shots. Three. The Uzis behind me fired no more. I was about to head towards the demon and Jennifer when I saw her again trying to jam her fingers into her chest.

"My children? The hell you are," she spat at the demon.

Her fingers actually sunk into her chest. As they withdrew, I saw a shimmering, silvery blob that she jammed into the cylinder of her ancient pistol. Closing it, she pulled the trigger, and a streak of silver entered the chest of the demon.

It stumbled back, clutching at the wound. It looked up towards the ceiling, first to the left and then to the right. Seemingly confused, it looked down at its chest. The contours and edges of the demon began to blur and fade as it let loose an awful keening that tore at my soul. The undoing of the demon continued, its limbs growing wispy and fading away. Finally, all I could see was a vague outline and a mist, and a red vapor that trailed away towards the ceiling.

Jennifer was sitting on her ass, her hand on her chest and breathing deep.

"Stay there," I yelled as I ran back towards the stairs.

I marveled at how she had been able to keep up. I knew how her stroke had affected her and had seen how she limped after a strenuous day. Wondering what the cost had been for what she had done, I made my way past the murderous secretary and up the stairs.

Finding the summoner wasn't difficult. I could hear him chanting in Enochian and followed his voice. The man was in what appeared to be the largest office in the building and was standing behind a large desk. Between the desk and the door was a large circle with sigils engraved on the floor. The air over the circle seemed to waver, and the room stunk of rotten eggs. Sticking out of the floor in that circle were three gigantic fingers that were soon joined by a fourth and a fifth. A hand was pushing itself up out of the floor, and it was gigantic. A dark red, the hand appeared to have scales.

This summoner was crazy.

"What are you doing? You can't control it."

He smiled, and it was dark, malevolent and spoke of insanity. "I know what you are now, Djinn. You are one of those that are in between. You chose neither side and have been condemned to an existence on this plane. Like the demons, you're mine to command. Did you help my wife take Menilek?"

I could draw and fire at him, but while I had hoped that the desks outside had been bulletproof, I was almost positive that this one was. Instead, I raced along the edges of the room, avoiding the flailing hand and the base of a forearm in the circle, and moved behind his desk with him. He seemed angered and indignant and bellowed in Enochian.

"I abjure thee. By the old rites, I command you to slay the other intruders."

Stepping up close, I grabbed the head of the man that had started all of this, the man that was responsible for the death of those women. The man responsible for all of the deaths outside the door and who would unleash horrors on this world. I was going to snap his neck. Instead, I squeezed until I thought I was about to crush his skull.

"I am no Djinn, your son isn't Menilek, your wife isn't the Queen of Sheba, and you are no Solomon."

Grasping his torso and stepping close, I hip tossed him into the circle. The giant hand was now a hand, wrist and forearm, pushing its way out of a Stygian depth. It quickly pivoted and caught the man as he began screaming in terror. Slowly, the hand began to lower, and the summoner's screams grew louder as it was dragged down into Hell.

Once the hand and the man were gone, the air above the circle returned to normal.

As I stepped out of the office, I saw that most of the imps were dead. Siobhan rushed over to me and looked towards the office door. I shook my head.

"It is over. Let us finish here, and then we can leave.

She looked over my shoulder, shrugged, and we moved to the railing where we had initially seen the summoner. It was a shooting gallery. We worked with the thugs, shooting the imps out of the air. Eventually, we gathered Jennifer and went back down to the first floor, passing both human and demonic corpses as we went.

Kallista was in full control of the surviving mobsters. She had them lay down their weapons and then locked them in one of the larger offices. Siobhan took out her phone and made a call.

"Finn? We're going to need a cleanup." She looked around the building. "A big one."

Two days later, Siobhan and I went over the security of the new homes for the women and children. While at one of the houses, I saw children at play. Leading them was a little boy with jet black hair, slate-gray eyes, and angular features. The other children followed his lead a little too uniformly. While the adults spoke about overlapping coverage for cameras, I approached the children. Squatting down next to the boy, I smiled.

"Hello. My name is Yekong. I think that we may be distantly related. Do you know what that means?" He shook his head. "We might be cousins. I knew your daddy. Not well, but I knew him. I have good news. I shall be watching you. If you need me, I will help you. But I want you to be a good boy. Because again, I will be watching you. Remember what I've said as you grow older. You want to always be a good boy, yes?"

The child nodded his head, and I hoped that he understood what I was truly saying.

EPILOGUE

It took the demon years, and years, and years to fully reform. Time ran differently in Hell. When it had, it returned to its side of the portal. It was a tracker, after all. Remembering paths and finding its way is what it did. The creature used what little power and energy it had to force its way through to the office of the human. Seeing that the circle on the side of hell was broken, the demon stepped out, strode to the door, took another step and found himself back in the circle.

Confused, it again walked to the door and tried to step out. Again, it returned to the circle.

Hesitating, it tilted its head and sniffed the air. Slowly turning in a circle, it saw the girl sitting in the human's large chair, her hands clasped and a smile without mirth on her lips.

"I'd hoped this would work. I wasn't really sure, you know? I took a guess that once you were here, the things that affect people would also affect you. Like, needing to sleep. Not much. I just needed a tiny little window.

"It must've taken a lot out of you to crawl from there to here. You were tired. Just for a moment, just for a second, you zoned out. You slipped away, and that's when I had you. Mom never said anything to me about you. Of course, she didn't. Why would you tell something like that to your children?

"But the rules are different when she's sleeping. I can see what she dreams about, and I can help against her nightmares. You were going to kill my mom? You were going to split open William's bones and suck out his marrow?"

The demon was wary, but also hungry. It would let this child ramble, learn what it could, and then consume her. Its patience was rewarded as the child began speaking again.

"I can open a window sometimes. It's easier with people that I love. Or, I don't know, are dogs people? Anyway, I opened a little door so he can come and go when he wants. You can't. You're stuck. But Dink? He loves William so, so much. You really shouldn't have threatened my brother."

The demon heard a low, terrifying growling, and turned to see an overly large and fearsome dog. It turned back to the girl.

She was gone. The girl had somehow left, but the dog remained. The demon slowly backed into a corner as the dog approached, step-by-step. Soon, the demon agreed with the girl. It should've never threatened the woman's son.

With thanks to my supporters, the readers who invest their time in my weirder writing, and my beta-readers.

Jennifer is introduced in 180 Days in Montauk, which started this shared universe.

Yekong is introduced in the Alistair series, known as Nephilim Unbound.

Siobhan is also introduced in 180 Days in Montauk, but is the main character in the The Protector series.

Coming up: Second Hand Hearts, a new story in the Pueblo series.