Demon Mania (Demon Frenzy Series Book 2) Page 9

  “The locals claim they don’t know much about it, but it’s obvious they know more than they want to say. It seems most of the members were brought here from other areas, and nobody knows who they are, but I heard a lot of talk about women with hair all over their faces and men with more than the usual amount of ugliness.

  “They obviously aren’t short on money, because when they first settled here six years ago they built a big sort of palace and some other buildings. They order groceries and supplies by the truckload, and they also buy cattle from some ranches and truck them in themselves. That’s a whole lot of hamburger, so there must be plenty of mouths to feed.”

  “Who’s their leader?” Shane asked.

  “Nobody would tell me his name, but somebody said he calls himself the son of God.”

  “Did you hear any talk of demon activity?” Amy asked.

  “A few people said they’ve seen huge weird birds with bat wings flapping around the cult compound, and a couple others said they’ve seen some strange looking things running around in the desert out there. But like I said, most people didn’t want to talk. It seems the church makes a few merchants and ranchers very cheerful, but nobody else sounds happy. They wouldn’t say why they’re afraid, but if I could put fear in a bottle and sell it I’d make a fortune here.”

  “The rocks are good and hot now,” Joe said. “I mixed up the same sweat potion Neoma used, but I added a little something extra. I’m hoping it’ll give us visions. We’re up against a tough enemy, and we need something to give us an edge. So when we go in the sweat lodge, ask your spirit guides to show you how this enemy can be defeated.”

  He frowned and stared at the fire. “There’s a time for laughing and a time for weeping, but right now that time is over,” he said. “Now we gotta turn our thoughts to blood. Now we gotta make ourselves as hard as arrowheads and as sharp as swords. Right now we’re sitting around talking shit, but after we come outta that sweat lodge we’re gonna be warriors and nothing else. We’re gonna sleep on the ground with our ears open for the enemy sneaking up. We’re gonna wake up in the morning and practice with swords and knives and arrows till we’re ready to take the fight to them and destroy them no matter how many guns and demons they might have. After we come outta that sweat lodge we’re gonna think like warriors and act like warriors, because if we don’t our enemies will kick our asses and demons will eat our bodies and nobody will remember our names.”

  “That was a pretty speech, Joe,” Nyx said. “Did you get it from a movie?”

  Joe went to the tin shed behind the house and returned with a shovel and an old metal wheelbarrow. He shoveled the hot stones into the wheelbarrow, wheeled them to the shed and returned.

  They all undressed, dropping their clothes on the ground near the fire, and followed Joe to the shed. The rest of them sat on the dirt floor around a pit filled with blazing rocks while Joe shut the door, making the air inside as hot as a furnace. He poured a bottle of liquid over the rocks, and the shed filled with a thick cloud of scorching steam with the heady odor of strange herbs and incense.

  Joe sat beside the pit, and the red glow of the rocks made his face look spectral and unearthly in the steam, like the ghost of some ancient warrior. He began to chant. It was nothing like any song Neoma had ever sung. It was an eerie rhythmic cry that sounded as natural and as bloodcurdling as the howling of hungry wolves in a night forest.

  It sent shivers down Amy’s spine. Her heart pounded hard and her eyelids grew heavy. She sank to the dirt floor and felt herself becoming weightless, lighter even than air.

  She was perched in a tall cottonwood, staring down at a beautiful circular building made of stone. Near it and radiating out from it were four long one-story adobe buildings forming a cross with the big circular building at the center.

  It was three stories high with a dome-shaped roof, and jutting up from the center of the dome was a circular room making a small fourth story with windows facing all directions.

  She flew around the room on the roof and saw three watchmen inside it armed with rifles. They were sitting on chairs and looked bored. She tried to peer into the windows of the lower three stories, but they were shuttered within.

  The windows of the one-story buildings were also shuttered, but when she perched on the roof of one of them she didn’t need windows to know what was inside. She smelled rotten eggs, dead rats, and spoiled cheese. It was a dormitory filled with demons. She flew to the next one and smelled more demons.

  The smell was different but not much better when she flew to the third dormitory. She heard occasional voices inside but couldn’t make out what they were saying. The voices sounded odd, some guttural and some shrill, and they didn’t seem to be carrying on a conversation; there’d be a short burst of words from one part of the building and maybe twenty seconds later another sporadic burst from another part.

  She didn’t think the things in the building were demons, but she wasn’t convinced they were human either. Whatever they were, they occupied the fourth building as well.

  She flew back to the cottonwood and examined the grounds. Nobody was walking about, just a big expanse of arid wasteland empty except for yellow grass, shrubs, boulders, and a few trees. She spotted a harpy perched in a nearby juniper. It seemed to be unaware of her and was looking at a narrow road with no traffic some distance away. Amy examined the other trees near the buildings and saw three more harpies perched in them, each one gazing in a different direction, apparently guarding the compound like the watchmen on the roof.

  Emily’s in there, Amy thought. I can feel her in there.

  “Yep, your baby’s in there okay,” said a man’s voice inside her head. “But you’re going to have a hell of a time getting her out.”

  Amy was startled. She peered around and saw a nighthawk perched in a nearby tree staring back at her, and she knew it was somebody’s astral body.

  “Who are you?” she asked, and she was startled again because her own voice seemed to be coming from somewhere far away.

  “Unseen,” the voice said.

  The nighthawk spread its wings and flew away.

  ***

  Sheriff Jack Roamer was sitting in his living room sipping rye whiskey and playing solitaire. The room was quiet and lit by just one dim lamp. He very rarely turned on the TV these days because his wife had liked to watch it every night, and after she died having it on made him think of her.

  He hated playing solitaire, but the feel of cards in his hands always had a soothing effect on his nerves, and it seemed stupid to shuffle and deal them without playing something. He was turning over the jack of hearts when his doorbell rang.

  He looked at his watch: a quarter after eleven. None of his friends ever came by without calling first, and none of them ever came by this late. He pulled his Smith & Wesson revolver from its holster on the coffee table, padded to the front door in his slippers, and peered out of the little window at eye level.

  It was a man with short brown hair and a strange narrow face with a beard, someone he’d never seen before.

  “What do you want?” he asked without opening the door.

  The man said something but his words sounded slurred and Roamer’s ears weren’t what they used to be.

  “Could you repeat that?” he said.

  “Talk business,” he said.

  Roamer unlocked the door but kept the gun half raised as he opened it. There was an animal smell like a wet dog as the man slipped past him into the living room.

  He shut the door without locking it and stood near it as if he might want an escape route. The man was standing a few feet away with his back to him, and Roamer thought he heard him panting softly as he glanced around the room.

  Suddenly he turned, and Roamer sucked in his breath when he saw the face clearly.

  It wasn’t a man after all. It was a woman, but like no woman he’d ever seen before or ever wanted to see again. She had the icy blue eyes of a wolf, all iris and pupils with no whites. Sh
ort furry hair grew down her forehead so far that it almost touched her shaggy eyebrows, and at the sides of her head it was too short to hide the pointy tops of her furry ears. The hollow cheeks of her narrow, bony face were matted with the same furry hair.

  But clearly she wasn’t a man, because her shirt was unbuttoned far enough to expose her breasts almost to the nipples. They too were covered with short downy fur as well as the rest of her chest.

  Maybe she was a man who’d had a sex-change operation, Roamer thought. One that didn’t work out too well.

  “Business,” she said, slurring the word so badly he could barely make it out. “Carrot or stick. Your choice.”

  She reached in her shirt pocket and pulled out a small wad of Monopoly money. “This is carrot,” she said.

  “I don’t want play money,” he said. “When do I get the real stuff?”

  “When you earn it.”

  “What do I have to do?”

  “You’ll see.”

  “And what’s the stick?” he asked.

  The woman stepped up close to him and held her hand in front of his face so he was staring at her sharp black nails. Suddenly they grew an inch longer.

  “Stick,” she said. “I stick your throat, tear out your windpipe.”

  She opened the door and stepped out onto the porch but turned and stared at him before she left.

  “See you soon,” she said.

  Her mouth opened wide in a horrid sort of grin, and with a long wet tongue she licked her fangs.

  Chapter 10

  “Whoever it is, he’s not one of us,” Nyx said. “We’re all that’s left of the Unseen.”

  Bloody Joe had put more wood on the campfire, and they were all sitting around it. The night breeze was cool, and Amy wrapped her arms around her chest and huddled into the warm duck jacket she’d bought earlier in the day.

  “I’m not so sure of that,” Lucky said. “I know all of us thought we were the only Unseen, but I don’t recall Neoma ever specifically telling us that. Does anyone else?”

  “Nope,” Joe said.

  “She never told me that either,” Amy said. “Come to think of it, I asked Red if there were any other Unseen headquarters anywhere near Blackwood, and he was cagey about it. He didn’t say yes or no.”

  “That’s the way some secretive organizations operate,” Shane said. “Maybe the leader of a cell knows about other cells, but the people below them don’t. That way if they’re captured and interrogated they can’t blow the cover of other cells.”

  “It could be our enemy trying to trick us,” Joe said.

  “Whoever it was, I don’t have a warm and cuddly feeling about him,” Amy said. “Something about him set off my creep alarm.”

  “What about the rest of you?” Joe asked. “Did your spirit guides show you anything useful?”

  “All I did was fall asleep,” Nyx said. “I was hoping whatever shit you put in that steam potion would give me a nice buzz, but it musta just been sleeping pills.”

  “Did you dream?” Joe asked.

  “Yeah, but it was some stupid crap that didn’t amount to anything.”

  “What was it?”

  “None of your beeswax.”

  “What about you, Shane?”

  “I dreamt I was back in my saloon in Blackwood. It was very dark in there and I only had two customers. One was Jerry Jefferson, the guy I saw Sandoval sacrifice to a demon, and the other was Mack Riley, who was killed in Sandoval’s house. I knew they were dead and shouldn’t be there, but they kept ordering drinks and pouring them down as fast as I could bring them. Except for ordering drinks they weren’t saying a thing, just sitting there silently at a table in the back corner looking white as sheets in the dim light, and when I brought their drinks they stared at me in a way that made me feel ice cold. Finally I told them it was past closing time and they’d have to leave.”

  “Did they say anything then?” Joe asked.

  “Yeah. Jerry Jefferson said, ‘Never trust a gray wolf in lamb’s clothing.’ And then Mack Riley said something really weird. He said, ‘If you want to see your girl again, you’ll have to ride the freak bus to find her.’”

  “How ‘bout you, Lucky?” Joe asked.

  “I dreamed I was back in El Paso playing five card draw. I had a full boat, fours and eights, so I was betting heavily, but nobody dropped out and somebody always kept raising me. There was getting to be so much money on the table I decided I’d better have another peek at my hand, and then I realized it wasn’t a full house after all. I had five aces, all of them spades. I knew I’d have to fold because if I showed my hand the others would think I was cheating. But I looked around the table and the other five players had all turned into demons and were grinning at me with saliva dripping off their teeth, and I knew if I folded they would all pounce on me and devour me. So I was in a pretty pickle—I didn’t dare fold and I couldn’t show my cards either or they’d think I was cheating, and I knew the penalty for that was hell.”

  “So wha’d you do?” Joe asked.

  “The only thing I could do—I stayed in the game and kept betting. I didn’t have any more money to bet, so I was betting my body parts, my liver, my spleen, my lungs, and finally my head. That’s when I woke up.”

  “That’s not a good dream,” Joe said. “Ace of spades is the death card.”

  “Well if y’all think your dreams are so damn important, I may as well tell mine too,” Nyx said. “I dreamed I was having sex with Justin Timberlake. He was pretty hot.”

  “Who’s Justin Timberlake?” Lucky asked.

  “You wouldn’t know him, Lucky. He lives in the twenty-first century and you’re back there in the nineteenth.”

  “What did you dream, Joe?” Shane asked.

  “I didn’t dream anything.”

  “I guess you’re the lucky one,” Shane said. “At least it’s better than dreaming about Justin Timberlake.”

  “Not so lucky,” Joe said. “My spirit guide usually gives me a glimpse of my future, and this time all it showed me was nothing.”

  ***

  “I am the lamb of God and the son of God,” Godson said. “Verily, whosoever believeth in me shall have eternal life, but whosoever doth betray me shall rot in the outer darkness where men weep and gnash their teeth.”

  He was seated on his throne in the Full Moon Room, but this time his throne had been placed a little distance away from the back of the room. Terra sat beside him on her ordinary humble wooden chair, and in front of him the room was crammed with his disciples kneeling on the floor because he hadn’t given them leave to rise.

  Behind him stood the gaunt and ghastly Xaltotun the stickman, a mazzikin more loyal to Terra than to Godson, a fact she hoped wasn’t known by the all-knowing son of God. On either side of the stickman stood a harpy with its wings majestically spread open to wow the rubes, and beside and behind them stood a dozen lesser demons—listeners, grimsnuffers and the like. Babbleboons were never allowed to attend Godson’s solemn services because they didn’t know how to behave.

  “Behold my flock of angels, whom it doth well please to serve the lamb of God,” Godson said. “Many more angels abide here to attend and adore me, and countless are the hosts of angels in heaven and earth who wait eagerly to fulfill my wishes.”

  Behind his flock of angels a white curtain was suspended from a long rod screwed into the circular wall, hiding the great surprise he intended to unveil in a moment. To Terra it looked like a cheap shower curtain, but then Godson’s taste generally ran to the tacky.

  “The son of God is all things,” Godson said. “He is both healer and punisher, creator and destroyer, the giver of life and the taker of life. Being all things, he is both male and female. I perceive that some of you who are of little faith doubt this fact. But doubt no longer! Last night while most of you slept, the son of God was in labor like a woman to bear proof for you. Behold the fruit of my labor!”

  He raised his jeweled scepter, and Xaltotun the stick
man stepped back to sweep open the curtain and reveal the miracle: a naked baby sitting in a stroller.

  “Bring her to me, Xaltotun,” Godson said, and the horrid stickman picked up the screaming infant and carried her in his bony clawed hands to Godson, who grasped her awkwardly and made her wail the louder.

  “Behold my daughter, born unto me last night,” Godson said, speaking loudly to be heard above the wailing. “Her name is Sophia, which means wisdom. We shall raise her in the paths of righteousness and glory, and she shall grow in wisdom to become very nearly—but not quite—as wise as the son of God himself. It takes a village to raise a child, so all of you shall help to raise her, my disciples and my angels alike, and we shall rejoice as she blossoms like a sacred rose in the holy light.”

  Terra noticed that the screaming child was peeing on Godson. He noticed it too and hastily handed the infant to the stickman. The emaciated fanged demon carried her upside-down by her legs and clumsily stuffed her back into the stroller while Godson folded his hands across his belly to hide the large wet spot on his white robe.

  ***

  Bloody Joe awoke while the stars were still bright. He and Nyx were lying on one sleeping bag with the other one over them as a blanket, and he slipped out quietly so he wouldn’t wake her. He used a stick to pull the swords and the cage full of arrowheads out of the still-glowing embers of the campfire, and he quietly put some more wood on the embers and fanned them with a scrap of plywood until the new wood caught.

  Lucky was snoring in his sleeping bag at the other side of the fire, and some distance from him Shane and Amy were sleeping on top of one bag with the other one over them, the same way he and Nyx had been sleeping. Amy’s head was nestled on Shane’s shoulder, and as Joe glanced at her he wondered if she would ever see her baby again. He doubted it—what could five people do against a big cult with rifles and demons?

  He thought it likely they’d all be killed. His spirit guide had shown him no future, and during the night when he couldn’t sleep the stars had looked colder and more distant than he could remember them ever looking before. It could be his spirit guide hadn’t given him a dream of the future because this part of the future hadn’t been written yet. That was the case with certain events, especially with battles that would be too close to call. But the battle they were likely to face looked anything but close to Joe.