Demon Frenzy (Demon Frenzy Series Book 1) Read online

  “This lady must be one of Sandoval’s demons,” the man on her left said. “My ear’s ringing like church bells after a royal wedding.”

  “You got off lucky, Lucky,” the guy on her right said. “I got me a loose front tooth.”

  The man in the passenger seat said, “Well, she did tell us that she didn’t want anybody messing with her car,” and all the men laughed.

  The blindfold went back on, and Amy sat quietly and simmered with rage during the long drive back. They took off her blindfold when they reached the compound, but they left her cuffs on and kept a tight hold on her arms as they escorted her into the house. Their disguises were gone now, and she vaguely recognized them from last night. One of them was the small man who fenced so well. Both he and the one named Lucky had mustaches and goatees that they’d kept hidden beneath their fake black beards.

  Neoma was seated at the dining room table, looking through a pile of bills with Ivan. “What’s with the cuffs?” she asked.

  “She’s like a rabid hellcat with a hot fuse stuck up its ass,” one of the men said. “She knocked my front tooth so hard I’ll be surprised if it don’t fall out.”

  Neoma smiled one of her closed-lip smiles and said, “Where’s the money?”

  The man with the loose tooth reached in Amy’s purse and handed the envelope to Neoma. She counted the money, handed it to Ivan, and said, “Take it upstairs.”

  “No fucking way!” Amy shouted. “You said you wanted a thousand and the rest is mine!”

  “Did I say that? Well, I guess I must’ve misspoken.”

  “I want my car back too!”

  “Forget about your car,” Neoma said. “When the cops find it abandoned in a bad neighborhood, they’ll think you were carjacked. Then they’ll find out you withdrew all your money, and when they look at the bank’s security video they’ll notice that two men were with you wearing dark glasses and fake beards. The cops will assume they kidnapped you and made you draw out all your money. Since your body hasn’t been found, the story has just enough mystery to keep it alive on the news, and if you’re lucky maybe Sandoval will buy it.”

  “You bitch,” Amy said. “I have a job waiting for me. I have a life.”

  “Had,” Neoma said. “And who knows, maybe you’ll have a life again someday, if we can destroy Sandoval. But until then, the person you were no longer exists. Get rid of those cuffs, Scotty.”

  The man with the loose tooth cut the handcuffs with his pocketknife and quickly stepped out of the way. Amy stood there for half a minute rubbing her wrists, and then she sprang at Neoma, flailing furiously with her fists. Neoma was instantly out of her chair, fending off her blows with seemingly no effort and grinning as if a small child were pulling some amusing prank.

  Two of the men grabbed Amy from behind, and she kicked over one of the chairs while she struggled.

  “Let’s take this outside,” Neoma said. “I don’t want the furniture busted up.”

  The men wrestled Amy out the front door to the yard, where Neoma was standing calmly with her hands in her hip pockets. Several men appeared from nowhere and gathered around them to watch the fun.

  “All of you scram,” Neoma said. “This is girl talk.”

  The men left, and Neoma continued standing there with her hands in her pockets. “Come on, girl,” she said. “Give it your best shot.”

  Amy suddenly lunged and kicked with her right foot, aiming for Neoma’s crotch. But Neoma stepped aside and grabbed her ankle, pulling Amy down hard on her back.

  “Are you trying to fight or are you taking a nap?” Neoma asked.

  Amy scrambled to her feet and lunged again, her fists flying, but Neoma easily dodged them. She kicked Amy’s legs out from under her, and she was on her back again.

  Neoma put her hands in her hip pockets again and said, “This is boring. If you can’t do any better than this, I’m going back inside.” She turned her back on Amy and stood looking at the sky.

  Amy got up quietly, warily approached her, and then launched her right foot hard at Neoma’s butt. Neoma stepped aside, caught her ankle, and yanked her onto her back again. This time she fell on top of her and pinned her wrists to the ground.

  Amy was unable to move with Neoma lying on top of her. They stayed like that for a minute or more, Neoma smiling down at her, her body pressed firmly against Amy’s.

  “I wish you were mine,” Neoma said. “I’d treat you rough every day, just the way you like it.”

  She kissed Amy hard on the lips, then got up and went back inside the house.

  Amy went back behind the house and sat at one of the picnic tables, feeling humiliated and miserable. She was thirsty but had no intention of going back into the Queen Bitch’s house for water. Yesterday she had been too frightened and confused for the reality of her situation to really sink in, but losing her car today had done the trick. The goddamn thing wasn’t even paid off yet.

  Before long the small man came into the clearing with the young blond-haired man named John. They started fencing again, and she watched because there was nothing else to do. John’s technique was no better than it had been yesterday, but the small man was a marvel to behold.

  When they finished and had removed their masks, she stepped into the clearing and asked the small man if she could try a bout. He turned his back to her and didn’t answer her directly, but he said, “John, go and bring her some gear that’s not sweaty.”

  “Could you please bring me a glass of water too, John?” she asked.

  He nodded and hurried toward one of the cabins. He seemed bashful, almost afraid of her, and she wondered if it was because she had seen him being whipped the night before. Well, he’d get his turn to watch her tonight.

  The small man kept his back to her while they waited for John to return. Obviously she was a pariah to him, an unwelcome outsider, and she wondered why he was stooping to fence with her. Maybe the Queen Bitch had told him to.

  John returned with her gear and handed her a glass of water, his eyes avoiding her face. She drank half of it, set the glass on a stump at the edge of the clearing, and donned her gear. John had brought her the full regalia: jacket, plastron, glove and breeches as well as chest protector and mask. She swished her foil a couple of times in the air to feel its timbre, and only then did the small man turn toward her.

  She stepped forward and took up the fencing stance, and the man engaged her immediately, with no preliminaries, no salute, no en-garde, just a furious attack followed by feints and lunges so fast and unpredictable that she was unable to parry most of them. With no referee to halt them after a touch, she was hit over and over by the tip of his foil, and since he seemed to be following no ordinary rules she soon abandoned them too, jabbing and slashing off target as often as on, but even then she was rarely able to touch him.

  “That’s enough for now,” someone said, and Amy saw Neoma standing by the picnic tables watching. “You seem to know something about fencing,” she said, “but you’re too civilized in your technique.”

  Amy pulled off her mask and was surprised by the amount of sweat pouring off her face, and when she pulled off her jacket and breeches she saw that every part of her body was drenched. She was panting hard, but the small man seemed to be breathing normally.

  How long had they been at it, she wondered—half an hour, maybe even longer? The fighting had been so intense that she hadn’t been able to think about time. She reached for her half-empty glass of water and drank it greedily.

  “Come here,” Neoma said, and Amy went to the picnic tables and sat on one of them in the shade.

  “Have you ever fought with sabers?” Neoma asked.

  “No.”

  “We’ll start you on that very soon.” Neoma handed her some papers and said, “In the meantime here’s some stuff for you to memorize. Your name is now Mary Hutchinson and you’re from Nashville. Tomorrow I’ll quiz you on the names of your parents, grandparents, schools, etc. When Red finds time he’ll put together a
driver’s license for you, in case it’s ever necessary for you to leave the compound. The others won’t know your last name. Any questions?”

  “Just one. Were you born a bitch or did you have to take lessons?”

  “I was born that way. In a few minutes everybody is going to assemble here to witness your oath, so if you need to go to the potty or powder your nose or something, you better do it now.”

  Neoma went to the house, and before long men and women started emerging from their cabins and the woods and coming to the clearing. They stood and stared at her, and she stared back. Altogether she counted two women and nine men, and she wondered if these few people plus Ivan and Shane were the whole of Neoma’s army.

  Neoma came out of the house carrying a sword. She was barefooted and dressed in a long white gown sheer enough that her nipples were faintly visible. Ivan followed her carrying a heavy wooden armchair, which he placed on the ground facing the people.

  Neoma sat, raised the sword high in the air with her right hand, then lowered it and held it horizontally with both hands, her elbows resting on the chair arms.

  “Mary, come forward,” she said.

  Amy came to the chair.

  “Kneel in front of me, place your hands on this sword, and repeat after me,” Neoma said.

  Amy knelt and repeated: “I, Mary, hereby swear by this sword and by the sacred creator of all things to pledge my lifelong loyalty and fealty to the Unseen and to do whatever is in my power always and ever to defeat the Lost Society and its minions, and I furthermore swear never to speak a word about the Unseen to any outsider and never to betray the Unseen or any of its members by any word or deed.”

  Neoma touched the top of Amy’s head with the flat of her blade and said, “I hereby pronounce you a sister of the Unseen, and may you always be victorious in your battles against the dark. You may stand.”

  There was a quiet murmur from the onlookers when she stood, but Neoma silenced them with a gesture. “Unlike the rest of you, Mary wasn’t chosen by us,” she said, “nor did she choose to join us. For this reason she’ll be confined to the compound until and unless I permit her to leave, and if any of you see her attempting to leave without my permission you have standing orders to prevent her by any means necessary. But aside from this restriction, she shall be treated with the same respect due to any other member of the Unseen.”

  Amy was surprised and oddly moved when the onlookers formed a line to greet her one by one. The small fencing master was the first. He was slim and dapper with a black mustache and goatee that made her think of the three musketeers. He bowed and kissed her hand.

  “Welcome to the Unseen, Mary, and may you always be victorious in your battles against the dark,” he said in an Italian accent. “My name is Leandro but you may call me Leo. I would be greatly pleased to fence with you whenever you wish and share with you what small knowledge I have of the art.”

  Most of them began with the same line about victorious battles, and all but one of them told her their names and wished her well. When she apologized to Lucky for punching him in the ear he grinned and said, “Now that we’re fighting on the same side, Mary, you can throw that mean little fist just as hard as you want.” He spoke with a soft Texan drawl and had a lean gambler’s face that looked like too much whiskey. For some reason he was wearing a rather shabby three-piece suit.

  She apologized to Scotty about his tooth and he said, “Don’t matter much, I still got me a few more I guess.” The man with the short red beard told her his name was Reed but everyone called him Red. Young John stared bashfully at the ground as he stammered out the line about her battles. She thanked him, and he hurried away.

  There was a young Chinese man named Siliang who greeted her with an incomprehensible parable about a Zen master who hit one of his disciples over the head for asking a question. A Native American named Bloody Joe told her this was a wonderful place if you enjoyed sitting around on your ass all day doing nothing. A black couple named Brook and Manda told her they were going to grill some steaks in a little while and would be happy if she joined them, but she told them she was fasting.

  The last one to greet her didn’t exactly greet her. It was a tattooed woman with a punk hairdo dyed orange, and all she said was, “You keep outta my shit and I’ll keep outta yours.”

  Now that the greetings were over Amy wasn’t sure what to do, and some of the others seemed uncertain as well, milling around her awkwardly for a few minutes as if trying to think of a way to start a conversation, and then eventually leaving.

  After everyone was gone she sat down on a picnic table, feeling as alone as she had before. She thought about the blood-sister oath she had sworn with Marci; though it was childish it had been sworn out of friendship, and she wondered if it meant less or more than a deadly serious oath sworn under compulsion. And yet she knew that this oath was deadly serious and would transform the rest of her life in ways she couldn’t predict.

  She was now a different person: she was now Mary Hutchinson and was now a member of the Unseen, whatever the hell that was. The life that had been hers for twenty-seven years had been stripped from her, and she knew nothing whatsoever about the new life that had been thrust on her.

  Her stomach began to grumble when her fellow Unseen members came drifting out of their cabins to grill their food, so she slipped around to the front stoop and sat, since she no longer owned a car to sit in. In fact she no longer owned anything except the few items she had brought in her suitcase. When her rent went unpaid long enough, her landlord would haul away the things in her apartment, and she thought one by one of some of the favorite possessions that she no longer possessed, her books, her jewelry, her family photos, that beautiful antique dresser that she had found at an auction a couple years ago.

  She had sat there for an hour or so when she noticed some people heading into the barn with bottles of wine and beer. Soon she heard laughter, a guitar playing, people singing. She wanted to join the party, but she hadn’t been invited.

  But at least she had a whipping to look forward to. A little before 8:30 Manda found her on the front stoop and said, “Mary, I’m supposed to help you find a proper branch now.”

  Amy followed her to a hickory tree near the fire pit, which had a good fire blazing in it. “It’s got to be four foot long and reasonably straight,” Manda said. “That one looks like it’ll do, and this one here looks pretty good.”

  Amy chose the thinner one but then wondered if a thin one might hurt worse than a thick one. Manda handed her a pocketknife and used a tape to measure off four feet.

  “Cut right here,” she said. “Now you trim off all those little shoots and then you have to peel the bark off nice and neat without cutting into the wood. I’d whittle it for you except you’re the one that’s supposed to do it.”

  “Adds a bit of salt to the wound, I guess,” Amy said. “I mean, making me peel my own whip.”

  “Well, don’t take it personally,” Manda said. “We’ve all had to take our whipping, each and every one of us, and we all did our time in that sweat lodge too. Imagine how that felt for me, a black woman being whipped by a white woman while a bunch of whiteys looked on. And what about my husband? How do you think a black man feels standing there naked being whipped by a white woman?”

  “Then why did you let it happen?” Amy asked. “I mean, I didn’t choose to be here, I’ve got no say in the matter.”

  “It’s all part of the cleansing,” Manda said. “Didn’t anybody tell you this? Haven’t you had any instruction?”

  “Not really.”

  “Well, you see, as we go about our lives we pick up unclean spirits, kinda like the way we pick up colds and flus. They might give us headaches and temper fits and make us drink more than we ought, but we don’t even know we’ve got them. There’s no easy way to get rid of them, you just got to sweat them out and whip them out. When you’re in the sweat lodge inhaling that aromatic steam, your spirit leaves your body and the unclean spirits
leave with it, except they usually get lost and can’t find their way back. So that’s one way of getting rid of them.”

  “What if my own spirit gets lost too and I can’t find my way back?”

  “Oh, you don’t want that to happen,” Manda said. “Your spirit would be roaming around here in this material world forever like a ghost, until the sun burns out and then it’d be roaming still in the darkness, and you’d never make it to heaven. But don’t worry, if you get lost Milady knows how to call you back.”

  “I hope so. And what’s the whipping for?”

  “Well, I expect unclean spirits don’t like it any better than you do, so they find a more comfortable place to go.”

  “Yeah, right,” Amy said.

  It sounded like the kind of crap her parents used to tell her and Billy when it was time to go to the woodshed, and the purpose then had nothing to do with unclean spirits but everything to do with discipline. She had been forced to join a fanatic cult that ran on discipline and blind obedience, and there was nothing like a good whipping to keep the acolytes on the straight and narrow.

  “If we don’t even know we’ve got these so-called spirits, then they must not cause a whole lot of trouble,” Amy said. “I think I’d rather just keep them and skip the whipping.”

  “Maybe that would be all right if things were ordinary,” Manda said. “But nothing’s ordinary around here. Sandoval has populated this whole damn county with listeners and herky-jerkies and shitskins and harpies and jabber-suckers and every other kind of minor demon you can shake a stick at, and your unclean spirits draw them to you like magnets.”

  “Neoma told me that we’re safe from demons here,” Amy said. “She said she protects us somehow.”

  “She does her best, but you know what protection is like. How many women do you know got knocked up by a man wearing a condom? Last thing you want to do is attract a jabber-sucker or a herky-jerky to these woods.”