Demonic, page 13
I drove around the block and parked right before we reached Quinn’s street. It was in front of a fire hydrant, but most likely the authorities in the area would be too busy to write a ticket.
We got out of the car.
There was lots of screaming. I hadn’t yet heard any gunshots.
“I think they’re distracted,” said Quinn.
We scurried around the corner, as quickly as we could when one of us had an arrow sticking out of their leg. There was a thin cloud of smoke in the air—had the cops used tear gas? I’d assumed that this new batch of police officers were all going to die horrible deaths, but maybe they’d come prepared.
Demons were choking and coughing. At least one of them wasn’t wearing a mask, and had the same blurred face as the others. (Unless it was one I’d already seen. It was hard to keep track.)
Perhaps our problems were over, and all of these supernatural beings would be apprehended by the law and incarcerated.
We hurried to Quinn’s car. She opened the driver’s side door.
“Shouldn’t I drive?” I asked. “You’ve got...you know, the arrow.”
Quinn shook her head. “I’m driving.”
We got in. As she started the engine, I hoped that the cops were too busy quelling the demon riot to look back at us.
One cop did look back at us. An instant later, he got a Samurai sword through the chest. The demons might be coughing, but they weren’t defeated.
We sped away.
“Oh, no,” said Quinn.
“What’s wrong?”
She tapped the rearview mirror. “Look.”
Instead of using the rearview mirror, I glanced behind me.
All of the demons were gone.
“Is that good or bad?” I asked.
It was my turn again to receive the “you must be the stupidest human being on the face of the planet” look. Which, I suppose, meant that this was bad.
Chapter Sixteen
“Where’d they go?” I asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Did they give up?”
“Yes, Corey. That’s what happened. Once we got a block away from the massacre, they all said, ‘Well, there’s no sense trying to catch them now!’ We’re lucky enough to be hunted by unambitious demons.”
“I get that it was a stupid question,” I admitted. “But I don’t understand the need to be so unpleasant. Like, we’re both in this mess, why be antagonistic toward each other? Why not work as a team?”
“If not for you, my biggest problem today would be that the coffee maker in the break room isn’t working.”
“No, no, no,” I said. “Don’t pretend that your life would be all hunky-dory magically happy if I hadn’t messed things up. You were married to a psycho killer who murdered his latest victim less than a week ago. And if anything, we bitch about our jobs all the time, so even if we removed the whole idea that your husband is the frickin’ Toledo Trasher, your biggest problem would not be the broken coffee maker.”
“Was the Toledo Trasher,” Quinn corrected. “I don’t think he’ll be doing any more serial killing now.”
“You’re sure his limbs won’t grow back?”
“Pretty sure.”
“What if the other demons collected them and held them against the stumps? Would they reattach?”
“I’m not...” Quinn thought about that for a moment. “Shit. Maybe he will kill again.”
“I should’ve chopped up his limbs even more.”
“It’s all right. We were busy.”
“So this portal thing. How do they use it? Can they just pop up anywhere?”
“I’m not sure. I didn’t think so before, but I do now.”
“But did they know to pop up at your house because Vic told them that’s where we were? What I’m asking is, will they be able to find us anywhere?”
“I don’t know.”
“It seems like a pretty important detail if we’re trying to go on the run.”
“I agree,” said Quinn. “But as we’ve discussed, Vic wasn’t in the habit of giving me information that would protect me from him. I truly don’t know if they can just find us, or if they have to know where we are first. For the sake of my mental health, I’m going to pretend it’s the latter.”
“That seems reasonable. I mean, wouldn’t one of them have materialized in the back seat already?”
“Maybe.”
“They let us go, so they’re pretty confident in their ability to find us again,” I said. “But the whole ‘no demons in our back seat’ thing seems to indicate that they have to put in some detective work to find us first. I think that as long as we don’t have a news helicopter broadcasting our whereabouts to the world, we might be okay for a while.”
“I hope so.”
“Also, they’d want to take some time to heal, right? A lot of them got shot. If I were a demon on a holy mission, and I got shot in the face, I’d want to recuperate a little bit before I went after my targets again.” I recognize that I was speaking with great authority about supernatural beings that I didn’t even know existed when I woke up that morning, but it all seemed to make sense. If our torment was going to last for eternity, there was no rush for them to get started.
“You could be right,” said Quinn. “Or a half-dozen of them could drop onto our car any second now. I don’t know.”
“Speaking of which...” I started to bring up the fact that she’d said there’d only be about a dozen of them, or as many as twenty, but then I decided it was the kind of pedantic observation that would piss me off if Quinn made it, so I didn’t finish my sentence. “I think we did pretty well, all things considered.”
“Are you serious?”
“I’m not saying we had a good day. I’m saying that we’re both still alive. How many of our co-workers do you think would have survived? Do you think Larry would still be alive right now? Patty? Stacey?”
“I get your point,” said Quinn. “I just think it’s a dumb point to make.”
“Well, I’m looking for a silver lining anywhere I can find one. I don’t expect a medal or even for somebody to say something nice about me, but because of me, the Toledo Trasher may have claimed his last victim. Or they might fuse his arms and legs back on. Either way, I think that any day where you chop up a serial killer is a day where you did something productive.”
“Then kudos, I guess.”
“Thank you.”
“That wasn’t sincere.”
“I don’t care,” I said. I glanced up at the rearview mirrors. “No demons in our backseat yet.”
Quinn said nothing.
“Do you think the dead cops had families?” I asked.
“Of course they had families. Six dead cops, and none of them had families? Yes, Corey, they had loved ones.”
I’m not sure why I asked Quinn that question. I guess I thought she might try to assure me that the dead cops were all single, dedicated to nothing but their job. But even if she’d said something like that, it would’ve been sarcastic. The question was just something that blurted out of my mouth without being vetted by my brain.
“It was at least seven,” I said. “But maybe only seven. God, I hope it was only seven.”
“Who was the seventh?”
“One got impaled by a Samurai sword, right before we got in the car.”
“Damn.”
“Yeah. But if the tear gas kept them away, there may not have been an eighth or ninth. Which, I guess, means that you probably have cops inside your house.”
“Lovely.”
“I’m torn, because I want them to be spared the sight of a pile of body parts lying against the wall. But if the body parts are gone, that means the demons took them, and I want that even less. So I guess technically I want the cops to see the body parts.”
“How about you shut the fuck up for a little bit?” asked Quinn.
“No,” I said. I didn’t want to be annoying—I never wanted to be the annoying guy in any social situation—but I couldn’t shut the fuck up until I knew our plan. “What’s our plan?”
“I don’t know.”
“That’s what you said last time. There has to be some kind of plan. We have to be headed somewhere.”
“For right now, I just want to get as far away from them as possible.”
“That’s a good start,” I said. “But at some point we’re going to need more than that. So let’s discuss it. We need a place to go. Where can we best hide?”
“I don’t know.”
“How about Canada? That’s a decent first thought. Let’s say we’re driving to Canada, and if a better idea comes up along the way, we can always change our mind.”
“Do you really think we can cross the Canadian border if the cops are after us?”
“No. That’s why I left it open to a better idea.”
“Just stop talking,” said Quinn.
“I don’t believe you when you say you don’t have a plan,” I told her.
“Fine! I have a plan!”
“So tell me.”
“You don’t need to know.”
“Are you planning to hand me over to the demons? I know we haven’t really discussed it, but you did try to sell me out earlier. I was going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that you were just faking it.”
“I’m not handing you over to the demons.”
“Then what is your plan?”
“How have you not figured this out yet? If the demons catch you but not me, I don’t want you to be able to tell them where I’m going. Okay? I don’t want you to know the plan because you might blab it to them. It’s really a simple concept.”
“You could’ve just said that.”
“I didn’t want to say out loud that I don’t trust you. I figured you’d be able to work that out for yourself.”
“I wouldn’t tell them.”
Quinn glanced over at me. “Oh, really?”
“Really.”
“If they bit your fingers off, one by one, you wouldn’t tell them where I was going?”
I hesitated a bit too long before I said, “No.”
“You would tell them before they even broke the skin.”
“I don’t believe that’s true,” I said. Maybe I would resist them as they...no, actually, I’d start talking as soon as the demon opened its mouth, before my finger even went inside. There’s no shame in admitting that. If you know you’re going to talk before all ten fingers are bitten off, why let them bite off the first one?
“It’s totally true. And biting your fingers off isn’t even where they’d start. They’d start by burning them. As soon as your left pinky started to sizzle, you’d tell them everything they wanted to know.”
Okay. She was right.
“Don’t tell me, then,” I said.
“I won’t.”
“Can you give me a general idea of how far it is? Are we fifteen minutes away? Are we going to be driving all night?”
“I’m not even giving you a distance radius.”
“Okay. Suit yourself. I understand. But we should really learn to trust each other.”
“Maybe we will. We’re not there yet.”
I decided that I would spare her my voice for a while. I sat quietly while Quinn drove. Before too long, we were back on the highway.
“You should check what the news has to say,” Quinn told me.
I took out my cell phone and pulled up my local news app. “We’re the top story,” I said. The breaking news story was about a huge disturbance at the suburban home of Vic and Quinn Fielding. Seven police officers, whose identities were being withheld until their families could be notified, had been killed. Witnesses reported many gunshots, and numerous people in devil masks outside the home. Inside the home was a bloody scene of gruesome carnage.
“Did it say anything about Vic being found?”
I scrolled to the end. “Nope.”
“What about his limbs?”
“Nothing. It says ‘a bloody scene.’ That doesn’t mean they weren’t there.”
“Do you know any cops?” Quinn asked. “Anybody who could give you inside information?”
“How would I know any cops?”
“Why wouldn’t you know cops? People know cops. Cops don’t just hang out with other cops.”
“If I had a cop buddy, I would’ve said something by now.”
“I didn’t mean a corrupt cop. I meant a cop that you could call and...actually, no, you shouldn’t be calling cops that could trace your phone. I’m sorry. That was a ridiculous idea. It was like...never mind.”
“It was like what?”
“I said, never mind. I’m trying to be nicer.”
“You were going to say that it’s like something I would’ve said, weren’t you?”
“I said, I’m trying to be nicer! If I censored myself before I made a bitchy comment, why are you still trying to drag it out of me? You’ve spent this whole time complaining about my attitude, but when I try to fix it, you won’t let me.”
“You’re right, you’re right,” I said. “I appreciate your effort.”
“Good. Anyway, all we have to go on right now is the news report. They know it’s my house, obviously, and they know that Vic and I are nowhere to be found. That guy Herschell probably told the cops that we tried to kidnap him, so that’s not great. But they also have eyewitness reports of lots of people in devil masks outside, so they won’t be able to completely focus on us. They’ll try to track us down for questioning, but they know we aren’t responsible for the slaughter—at least not alone. They’ll do DNA testing on all the blood and find out that it came from a lot of different people. I have no idea how long it takes to DNA test blood. Do you?”
“Not a clue.”
“I guess it doesn’t matter.”
“Will they be able to identify the demons based on their DNA?”
“I’m not sure,” said Quinn. “Maybe?”
“I’m asking because none of them seemed very concerned about spilling their own blood at the scene. They’re wearing masks to cover their funky faces, but if they have families and jobs at home, they wouldn’t want their blood to turn up at a crime scene. So I was wondering if maybe their blood would sizzle away, or if it somehow wouldn’t identify them.”
“Vic and I never discussed his DNA, but it wouldn’t surprise me a bit if it was reconstructed after his change. Maybe none of the demons have their DNA records on file, but you’re right, they still wouldn’t want to splash blood around a place where seven cops were murdered. I don’t actually know this, but I’m going to say that, no, they can’t be identified by their DNA.”
“Okay.”
“How would knowing their identities help us? Were you going to track them down one by one like a vigilante?”
“No,” I said, although to be honest I couldn’t imagine returning to a life of accounting spreadsheets after this, and hunting demons would contribute more to the world. “I just figured that the more information we have, the better.”
“True.”
“Do you think our co-workers are worried about us?”
“Look, Corey, I just explained that I’m trying to be nice. But if you’re going to keep throwing questions at me like a five-year-old, I’m going to lose it. I may look like I’m keeping it together, but I promise you, I’m hanging on by a thread.”
“You don’t really look like you’re keeping it together,” I said.
“If you have legitimate questions that I can answer, or you have important observations to share with me, or if you want to make conversation in a way that doesn’t make me want to run this fucking car right into the median, I’m all ears. If you want to ask me if I think the cops are okay or if our co-workers are worried about us, keep it to yourself. Make up an imaginary friend and ask them.”
“I really don’t think you want me to have an imaginary friend right now.”
“The message I’m trying very hard to communicate right now is, until you have something worth saying, shut up.”
I nodded. “That’s a reasonable request.”
I was quiet for at least two full minutes.
“I have something worth saying.”
“What?” Quinn asked.
“There’s somebody in a devil mask driving right next to us.”
Chapter Seventeen
Quinn glanced over. Our car swerved a bit, and she quickly corrected.
But, yeah, right next to us, on my side, was a snazzy red sports car. (I’m not purposely withholding the make or model; I just don’t know much about cars. I’m lucky I knew it was a sports car.) The driver was wearing a cheap plastic devil mask, with the red of its face so red that it looked fluorescent. The driver, noticing me staring at him, gave me a friendly wave.
I almost asked “How did he get a car?” but there was no reason to ask that out loud. Quinn wouldn’t know. Maybe the demon had stolen the car from somebody in Quinn’s neighborhood, or maybe it had already rented one before it showed up at her house, or maybe Satan let the demons drive cars out of Hell. All that was truly important was that the driver next to us was wearing a devil mask.
“Is he alone?” Quinn asked.
“Unless another one is in there hiding, yeah.”
“Thanks. Dammit.”
“Is this good news in a way?” I asked. “If he’s driving a car, at least he’s not teleporting.”
“I guess if you want to take that attitude, we could look at it as good news, yeah. But it’s not good that they’ve already caught up to us.”
“Well, again, not trying to be too optimistic, but so far it’s only one.”
“Do you recognize the mask?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Think. It would be nice to know if it’s one of the demons from before, or a different one.”
