Stray Ch. 01

The sweltering summer heat slammed into me the second I opened my car door. There was no breeze, despite the shimmering lake that sprawled out around the small, exclusive neighborhood. Even without the breeze, I could smell the rank scent of blood and savaged intestines, mingling with the oily body odor of the seven grossly overweight cops standing idly around a lumpy blue tarp that hid the corpse I'd come to check out from the swarms of flies. They had cordoned off the single road leading to the small strip of obscenely pricy homes, so no rubberneckers were gawking around and fucking up the scents.

Rick Walker, the Van Buren County Sheriff, waddled over to me and I had to bite down on my tongue to keep from giggling when the image of a penguin with the head of a pig and a sheriff's badge flashed through my head. There was no love between me and the greasy fuck dressed as a lawman. Walker was on the take from almost every major meth lab in the county and a pedophilia ring. Of course, very few people were privy to that information. Evil called to evil, and I was half daemon. I could smell the sleaze dripping off him. He, of course, was a Southern-fried Baptist and faggy half-daemons born out of wedlock to a witch ranked very low on his list of tolerance.

Walker stuck out a sweaty paw to me, which I ignored. In fact, I ignored him completely and shouldered past towards the six others clustered around what was probably the most grisly murder half of them had ever seen. Fairfield Bay was a small town, mostly full of white, middle-aged, and rich empty-nesters.

The deputy nodded to me by way of greeting, a perfunctory gesture. I was pretty sure his name started with a 'J'. James, Jordan, Jackass. Something like that, anyway. He was the most tolerable one of the pigs accompanying Walker today, which wasn't saying much, and to be fair, he wasn't as fat and greasy as the others. He didn't know Walker had his hands in every illicit pie in the county, and if he did, he'd probably flip shit. Despite his rank, he still smelled innocent and hopeful. He was like a puppy, no matter what sick shit happened, he still found a reason to keep going. In about twenty more years, he would put a bullet in his skull or a rope around his neck. I could smell that the same way I could smell Walker's nasty disposition.

I slid off my sunglasses, revealing my mismatched copper and green eyes, as one of the boys in blue tugged away the dusty tarp. The pigs all looked away, except Walker and myself. Walker didn't because he was a goddamn sociopath, and I had seen much worse than the maimed woman sprawled in a pool of drying blood. The sunbaked dirt had stripped most of the moisture from the blood, and turned into a sticky, iron-scented sludge. The flesh from her collarbones to her pelvis had been gnawed away, her ribs cracked apart, and her heart had been inexpertly dug out and probably consumed.

Eating hearts was mostly reserved for imps, but they were very neat and precise about it. A wendigo could have done this kind of damage, but the only thing left of the corpse would have been a few chewed bones. Vampires didn't eat flesh or kill their victims very often. Werewolves, aside from not living anywhere near the Ozarks, didn't eat humans.

I knelt on the tarp, carefully avoiding the tacky ooze, and sniffed at the body. One of the pigs gagged, stumbled a few feet away and vomited. Fuckin' rookie. I smiled darkly. I loved fucking with these guys. The best part was that they always came back. I was the best, at least in Arkansas, and it didn't matter how much they hated me.

Beneath the violent perfume of death was something else; the sulfuric taint of hellspawn. Unless I was mistaken, and I wasn't, the daemon that did this was a low-level sex daemon. It was probably female, but it was often difficult to tell with them. The weaker ones tended to either be hermaphrodites or could switch genders at will. The stronger ones sacrificed gender-swapping for more power.

I stood, brushing dust from my knees. "A lust daemon killed her, probably conjured by her boyfriend's wife." I didn't mention that, until quite recently, the dead woman had been pregnant. Her blood had been laced with pregnancy hormones and abortifacient chemicals. They'd figure it out eventually, and if I told them now they wouldn't work nearly as hard to find who had sent a daemon to kill her.

"The hell do'ya know she was screwin' some broad's husband, Kain?" Walker drawled in his nasal travesty of the English language.

"You know my methods, Watson," I quipped, watching confusion paint his fat, red face. Illiterate fuck. One of the other pigs made a choking noise that sounded like a stifled laugh, which I took to mean he, too, still read the classics. Or at least jerked off to Robert Downy Jr. and Jude Law. "Positive. You find the boyfriend, you find the lady who's responsible for this." I gestured at the fly-blown corpse. "Now, gentlemen, if you'll excuse me, I'm out. Peace." I slid my sunglasses back on and strode back to my car. They didn't pay me well enough to stick around in this baking cesspool.

As I'd half-expected, the daemon who had snacked on the dead woman was sprawled in my passenger seat, shimmering slightly with the constant power it needed to remain invisible to the humans. At first glance, it appeared to be female, with wild blood-red hair that reached passed her waist and tits to make a porn star jealous. She smiled at me, batting pale lashes over star-studded obsidian eyes, and blew a bubble from the spearmint gum she'd pilfered from the glove box. I sighed and proceeded to ignore her until I was situated in the driver's seat and we were out of sight of the cops.

"Hmm, Rafael Kain. You're just as yummy as the incubi say," she simpered, then popped another bubble. She smelled like spent cigarettes and I wondered how fast I'd have to be going to break-check a daemon though the windshield.

"Nice to know I'm up to par, Gingersnap," I muttered. I was becoming increasingly less sure that the daemon sitting next to me was, in fact, female. She held herself more like a male, but that could have been because sex daemons fucked just about anything and she'd lost the ability to properly close her legs.

"Ooh, Gingersnap! I like that," (s)he giggled, resting a slim, manicured hand on my leg.

"Paws off, guttersnipe. I don't fuck sex daemons." I glared at the heavily rutted dirt road.

"Mind out of the sewer, Kain. I'm here to talk politics, not lay you." (S)he paused, tapping lightly on the door window. "Big things are happening in Hell. There's talk of over-throwing Lucy." Lucy was the less-than-affectionate pet name for Lucifer, who didn't really give half a fuck about his people. He was a seraph, not a daemon, after all, and he still pined after his first home.

"I don't play with other daemons."

"This isn't a game, Kain, and we aren't asking. You're a daemon, regardless of what your mother was. What happens in Hell, like it or not, affects you." (S)he fell silent for a moment. "When the rebellion comes, Lucy will lose. Even his fallen have turned against him."

"I still don't see what this has to do with me. I'm a stray. I do not mess with daemon politics." I ground out that last bit. I needed a drink, preferably one with a proof strong enough to knock a bull elephant on his ass.

"When my master sent me out to the conjurer, I was told to tell you this. Nothing more, nothing less. I'm not powerful enough to know anything more."

"Who's your master?" I asked, suddenly curious. Only the archdaemons could control another daemon. There weren't that many to choose from.

(S)he laughed. "That's telling, Mr. Kain. I don't give out information like that for free, and you couldn't afford my price."

Probably not. I didn't have that much of a soul to bargain with, and I had no intention of trading it for a name. I could probably force the little fucker to tell me, but I wasn't sure who (s)he belonged to. If its master was a member of the fallen, there wasn't enough magic in the world to keep my head from being mounted on a wall. "What's your name?" I was getting sick of trying to figure out what the hell (s)he was.

"Zavi," the daemon replied brightly. So it was a male. Nice to know, even if the information was virtually useless. Contrary to popular belief, simply knowing a daemon's name didn't give you any power over it. When you summoned a daemon, you got whoever the master daemons sent you. Hell, ironically enough, was a business. "Why?"

"That way when I tell you to get out, I can call you by your name."

Zavi laughed. "So you're a pretty and respectful bastard. Y'know, my master might have hinted that they know who killed your mother."

That got my attention. I didn't consider myself bitter over the fact that a daemon had slaughtered my mother, but I did have every intention of tracking it down and making the fucker beg for mercy. Spoiler alert; I wouldn't give it.

I'd been sixteen and the result of my mother dabbling in magic that, as a white witch, she had no business with. She hadn't told me why she was messing around with daemons again, and she never would. When she came back from her foray into Hell, she more resembled a pile of ground beef than a human. Instead of going into the foster care system, I got myself legally emancipated and started doing odd jobs until I'd turned eighteen and got hired on as a retainer with the local police department.

"Why should I trust your master? Why the fuck should I even trust you?" I snapped, shooting a glare toward the daemon.

Zavi sighed. "You'll have to trust someone someday, Rafe."

"Don't call me Rafe." I hated that the little shit was right. Goddamn lust daemons with their stupid fucking emotions and shit.

"Your mom must have had a weird sense of humor, naming you after the archangel."

"Don't talk about my mom." If he stuck around long enough for me to get home, I had a pentagram and some blessed salt water with his name on it, his master be damned. Pentagrams, when drawn correctly, could trap a daemon, but ordinary holy water was useless and half the time it came straight from the tap. However, there was a blessing spell that was far older than anything Catholicism had to offer that could really fuck over a daemon. Salt didn't do anything either, but it was irritating when sprayed directly into a daemon's eyes. Or anyone's eyes, really.

"You're really defensive, did you know that?"

I growled and stepped on the brakes, watching as Zavi was slung against the dashboard with a satisfying smack. We were still in the middle of some shitty dirt road, surrounded by dilapidated former meth labs. "Go back to Hell and tell your master to shove his hints up his ass. I don't give a blue fuck what goes on in Hell, understand?"

The redhead was rubbing the back of his neck. I hoped I'd given him whiplash. "My master's a female," he muttered petulantly.

"I don't fucking care! Get the fuck out of my car!"

"We'll be in touch, Kain," Zavi sighed and disappeared, his exit causing a cracking noise as dimensions were temporarily ripped open. Now the smell of ozone intermingled with sulfur and cigarettes. It would take weeks to get the smell out.

I didn't really care why the daemons wanted me. Even if I did want to help them, which I didn't, I wouldn't be much use to them. I knew a scant amount of white magic, enough to ward my house and bless water, but no black magic. Black magic was far more powerful, but it essentially poisoned the user over time, and there was the very good possibility that it would turn on the user instead of the intended victim. It was the only type of magic that could kill or control a daemon.

I hissed softly, a little disappointed in myself that I hadn't punched the pesky little fuck in his face, and turned the radio on. A static-maimed rendition of some shitty pop song I'd never heard began to play and I immediately turned it back off. Zavi had fucked with my radio. If he was ever unlucky enough to come near me again, I'd skin him alive. Repeatedly.

I managed to make it home without further incident. Home was a fairly nice, sprawling cabin hidden away in the mountains. Despite its proximity to several towns, it was relatively secluded. I had one neighbor, a sweet Latina who was older than dirt and didn't exactly have a green card. If she had a name, she never told me or my mother. She simply went by Mama Z. She was a witch, though I wasn't sure what kind. She occasionally made me food in exchange for getting to see some of my mom's old magic books.

I shoved through the door, felt the familiar hum of the wards that had been laid into the very foundations, and tossed my keys onto the kitchen table. I needed a fucking drink and it was probably noon somewhere. There wasn't much in the way of food, I basically lived on off-brand soda and those packets of cheap instant pasta that you just added water to and heated. But I did have a nice liquor cabinet.

Since I didn't have any shot glasses, I dumped a few bits of ice from the freezer into a coffee mug and drowned them in bourbon. I sipped contentedly and padded into my living room, where I stopped dead.

There was a half-naked guy on my couch. There was a fucking half-naked guy on my couch, lounging around like he owned the place, and reading my dog-eared collection of Robert E. Howard's stories. I hissed softly and drained the coffee mug. The half-naked guy looked up and opened his mouth to say something, but I cut him off. "Hold on."

I turned around and went back to the bottle of booze. I filled the mug again, then decided to just take the whole thing with me. It was going to be a long goddamn day.

"Who the fuck are you?" I asked, once I was back from the kitchen. The wards on my house could keep out about just about anything, except for maybe an archdaemon. That didn't exactly bode well for me. At least the guy was pretty. If I was going to get the shit beat out of me, it might as well be by this guy. He was well-muscled, but not disgustingly so, and he had gorgeous eyes. They were translucent blue, almost like ice. His hair was just a little too long and an inky black color. And curling from his right collarbone, over his chest and ending just above his pant-line was a black, swirling tribal-looking tattoo. Or, what looked like a tattoo. It seemed to be part of his lightly tanned skin, like he had been born with it.

Half-Naked Tattoo Guy set aside my book and straightened up. "I'm Gabriel," he said, like that should explain everything. I took a long slug from the coffee mug.

"Good for you. Why are you in my house?" Pretty boy or not, I was fucking sick of dealing with people today. Was it too much to ask to just be left alone?

"You're Rafael Kain, correct?" He ignored my question.

"That wasn't an answer," I pointed out. The bourbon was probably making me mouthier than usual.

"Neither was that," he countered.

"I asked first," I muttered.

His lips quirked into a half-smile. "My question was more important."

"Who says?" I was trading comebacks with a half-naked guy who had broken into my house. Maybe I'd finally lost my goddamn mind.

"I do." Gabriel crossed his arms over his chest. I had the sudden urge to lick the ink over his pecs. No hair there, but there was a neat little treasure trail edging down his abdomen. Yummy. Maybe I should have eaten something this morning. I wondered if he would volunteer, then pushed away the thought. If he was an archdaemon, he could easily be fucking around with my head. He didn't smell like a daemon, but I'd never met an archdaemon, and for all I knew, they could smell like cupcakes and strawberries.

"You just answered a question," I said, only slurring a little bit.

Gabriel sighed. "I'm supposed to be here to protect you."

I stared at him for a minute. "From what?" I'd taken care of myself for over ten years.

He looked at me like I had just been licking the windows on a short bus. "From the daemons."

"Newsflash, dude, I am a daemon. And I can take care of myself."

"They're going to use you to bait Lucifer. Even the weakest of the fallen could get through the wards on your house."

It struck me then, through my somewhat addled brain, that the man sitting on my couch was a seraph. Not just any seraph, but one of the elite archangels. Holy shit. "Why would Lucy give a fuck about me?"

Gabriel continued to look at me like I was a fucking idiot. "Lucifer is your father."