"Next time, knock, if you don't mind."
Alastor squeezed his right hand into a fist. Ropey, pencil-thin black tentacles erupted from the pavement and seized the two iguana-like demons charging the Hotel's main entrance. The first squeezed off the trigger of his mini-bazooka. Alastor flung up his microphone; a red haze like heat distortion flared, vaporizing the incoming shells. A quick cross of two fingers and the mini-bazookas of both attackers exploded into white-hot slag.
The smartest attacker opted to flee. Or try to. The tentacles coiled up his legs like vines and squeezed. The iguana screamed. His screams rose in pitch as the tentacles sliced through clothing and skin and muscle and bone. His legs collapsed like stacked vertical dominos of meat.
His compatriot yanked paired large-bore pistols from his belt and opened fire. With a sound like scissors through mud, the tentacles ripped him in two. The pistols landed in his guts. All three melted into the ground.
Alastor was growing tired of guns.
Movement to his left. Vaggie, leaping from balcony to balcony and then to the ground. "There were three more in the at the staff entrance," she said. She leaned on her spear. "They won't be coming back."
As subtle a hint as Vaggie was capable of, that spear. A former Exterminator's holy weapon, scavenged after a past Extermination and now used to bodyguard Lucifer's only child. (The irony was delightful.) In addition, the only weapon in this part of Pentagram City that could wound, perhaps even kill Alastor.
For now.
"Good," he said and entered the Hotel.
Everyone was in the lobby. Charlie paced up and down between the bar and one of the couches, Angel's pet in her arms. Niffty was behind the bar with Husk. Alastor smiled at Charlie, stopping in her path.
"All taken care of, my dear."
Her shoulders sagged in relief. "Thanks, Al. A turf war on this side of town… I didn't think it could happen."
"Turf wars can happen anywhere after an Extermination." Not exactly true. The areas under the control of particular Overlords were generally free of them.
"If it was a turf war." Vaggie came up Alastor and stood beside Charlie. "I didn't see anyone else fighting in the street except this bunch."
"The turf war is several blocks over," Alastor said. "They were strays." He kept his gaze on Vaggie as he talked. The little moth demon's brows dipped down, but she didn't argue.
"If you say so." She shrugged. "I'm going to clean up," she announced and left the lobby. Charlie cast a worried glance at Alastor and followed her.
Alastor watched until they were out of sight, smiling through the temper rising within him. If you say so. Vaggie was added impertinence to her bad habits of cursing and rudeness. The implication that the attack was due to him rankled. Worse, Charlie was –not being swayed by Vaggie's unspoken misgivings, perhaps. But growing worried.
"Are you having problems, Al?" she'd asked him the other day. His answer had been swift and amused and insincere. "No, my dear. Not at all."
He couldn't tell her the truth. He could barely admit the truth to himself.
Overlords didn't discuss their problems because Overlords didn't have problems. Overlords were problems – for lesser demons and on rare occasions for each other. He suspected he had such an occasion on his hands.
"Is there anything you want me to do, Alastor?" Niffty peered up at him with her single eye. He smiled down at her. Niffty wasn't the sharpest knife in the drawer, but her dogged loyalty was soothing.
"Just what you are, sweetheart. You, too, Husk." The cat-demon grunted. Alastor took it as assent.
Suddenly he wanted away from the Hotel, with its unspoken questions about his ability to defend it. "I'm going out for awhile," he said to Husk. "Tell Charlie that if she asks."
"Yeah, sure."
Alastor's mood lightened somewhat as soon as he closed the Hotel door behind him. Across the street, demons scurried into doorways or into shops or down alleys. His reputation wasn't completely in tatters, merely a little scored.
His route from the Hotel was a familiar one. It led him to the main hub of the city, skirted Cannibal Colony and then on to the west side of the Pentagram. As with the hotel's neighbors, demons fled as he approached.
But.
Were some of them slower to flee than others? Did one glance at his fellows in shared humor? The urge to lash out flared; Alastor squashed it. No need to teach these idiots a lesson, as he had Pentious and his flunkies.
His powers brought him the echoes of whispers. Rumors. Rumors about him. Some were ridiculous – that he had found a way to the Lust Ring, that he secretly led a mixed coalition of cherubs and imps to bring down other Overlords, that he and Vox were arranging a public insult contest. Others, however, cut too close to the truth: that he had a paramour whose species varied but her sex never did, that Lucifer wasn't pleased with him, that the Radio Demon was losing his touch.
Worst of all, the rumor that something was affecting his deals.
Someone had found out his contract with Jemma. Only one other being knew about beyond Jemma and himself: Niko, and Niko shouldn't have known about Jemma's accusation of a false deal.
If he had found out… how?
Jemma?
Ridiculous. She had no means of contacting Niko, and no reason to tell him anything at all.
He would take care of that later. There was other business he should tend to while he was out.
Bunker's Pawn Shop was not far from the edge of the better part of Pentagram City. Alastor suspected the spot was chosen for just that reason. Even the well-to-do could need quick money.
The lettering on the pawn shop door was done in neat block letters, the opposite of the glaring neon sign stretching across the display window. The door's bell jangled merrily as Alastor pushed it open. "Bunker, my good man! It's been too long!"
The demon at the counter raised his head from his laptop. He vaguely resembling a walrus, except for the lion's feet, extra pair of arms and pinpoint laser melded into his lower left hand. His broad, brown-furred face split in a grin, baring tusks. "Al," he said. "How are you?"
"Well enough, well enough." Al? What was this 'Al' business? He'd always been 'sir' to Bunker. Alastor leaned on the register. Behind the register and Bunker a high shelf held lockboxes of different sizes. "Anything for me today, hmm?" There would be. There always was, the fourth day of each month. The pawn shop's expansion had happened because of him.
"Oh." Bunker glanced down at his laptop. "Not today. Maybe next week."
He'd misheard. "I beg your pardon?"
Bunker didn't look up. "I said, maybe next week."
"That wasn't our deal, Bunker."
Now Bunker did raise his head. "Deals can change," he said. "Even yours, Al."
A strand of his eldritch web chimed softly.
No. He'd not have another problematic deal. Not again. Not for…this.
"Once made, my deals are permanent." The shop lights dimmed, went out. Alastor leaned on the counter and into Bunker's personal space. His claws cracked the counter. He stared down the other demon through a red haze. The floor shook ever-so-slightly. The shelves buckled. "They are not subject to change or alteration by anyone. Do you understand?"
Sweat beaded Bunker's forehead and rolled down his face. He groped along the counter for a handhold to stay upright and failed. He fell and scrabbled to his feet, nodding vigorously. "Y-yes, s-s-sir. I-I have something you'll l-like." He yanked a large key ring off his belt and counted off keys until he reached the proper one, then fumbled with it and the lock of his smallest strongbox. He dropped the strongbox onto the counter and opened it.
Alastor eyed its contents. A handful of emeralds, three Greed ring diamonds, a woman's gold ring set with pearls in the art nouveau style of his youth. "Excellent!" He tipped the gems and the ring into his hand, and from there an inside jacket pocket. "Until next time, Bunker."
His web snapped back to normal.
Alastor spun on his heel and stalked out of the pawn shop.
Fury blinded him. He stormed through the city barely aware of his path, until finally he realized he was on the outskirts of Cannibal Colony. For an instant he entertained the thought of finding Rose's girls and urging them to hunt down some hapless simpleton wandering too close to the Colony's boundary. He would even participate. A hunt always helped him relax.
He dismissed the idea. He needed to speak to Jemma. If Niko had – somehow - communicated with her, he wanted to know. Moreover, he was not going to risk any more breaches in his web and they'd not conducted their contracted business since New Year's Day. That, too, would help him…relax.
#
Henbane. Mandrake. Powdered silver. Frankincense, Crushed lapis lazuli. Mercury. Iron shavings. Gold dust.
Renee drew a line down the center of the notebook page. On one side, the ingredients for her magic circle. On the other, the cost.
Which was not the same as the price.
She scowled down at the columns, tucking loose strands of hair behind her ears. If it were simply a matter of money, her plan would be much easier.
"It's like this, Renee," Moloch (of course his name was Moloch now, pretentious shit that Jared was) had said at the meeting with her old ceremonial magician colleagues. "Say you're right. Say your Ouija board is now a perfect locus for a summoning circle, having been used as one to bring in an actual, honest-to-gods demon. Say we help you get what you need to make a new circle. What's in it for us?"
Renee's offer of money hadn't worked. Sex hadn't worked. Moloch and his lodge – once her lodge—wanted access to the portal for their own summoning. Nothing else.
They were humoring here. Playing along. They didn't truly believe her, but they wanted access to what she could offer: the privacy her five acres offered, the comfort of an already-established working area. For a brief, insane moment she thought of refusing, just to see Moloch's reaction. Thought of abandoning her plans.
She agreed, of course. What choice did she have, if she wanted revenge on Jemma and Alastor?
Not revenge, Renee told herself. Justice. Justice for the wrongs they inflicted on her. Alastor had betrayed her. And Jemma?
For as long as Renee had known her, Jemma had it easy. She had parents who loved her, a comfortable home life, successful older sisters who doted on her. Despite being only on the cute side of pretty, she attracted men like flowers attract bees. She sailed through her studies. She was easy to like.
All of that Renee could have forgiven as Jemma being Jemma. If not for the fact she somehow, always, took away or ruined what Renee held dear.
It was Jemma who had stopped attending their coven meetings first, citing a heavier class load and the need to keep up her grades for her soccer scholarship. A lame excuse. Renee's class load had been heavier; engineering as opposed to library science. They managed for a time, but gradually the others had slipped away as well.
The situation reached the point she couldn't even discuss anything outside the mundane world without Becky or Anita or Kirsten exchanging tolerant looks and half-smiles.
Dennis Hunter was the only man who existed on their campus as far as Renee was concerned. She pursued him, almost had him…until the day he told her she was a "good friend with benefits". The next time she saw him he was picking up Jemma outside her student co-op.
Jemma hadn't expressed an interest in Dennis before. Years later she dumped him, and months down the road Dennis was still obsessed with her.
The worst, the absolute worst thing Jemma had done happened at last year's Halloween party.
Aleister Crowley had been Renee's guiding light and hero since she picked up Magick in Theory and Practice in the seventh grade. She read not only everything he wrote but everything she could find about him. His fondness for Ouija boards duly noted, Renee started her séances in her sophomore year of high school. Her attempts to contact him failed. Later, with the coven, things happened that couldn't be explained conventionally: an extra shadow on the wall, a drop in temperature, objects moved at random. Never contact with Crowley, or anything else.
Until that night.
Against all expectations, someone answered. It wasn't Crowley, but that didn't matter. This was proof. There were other intelligent beings besides grubby, judgmental humans, a world beyond the petty physical existence she was forced to endure.
Jemma destroyed the moment with her slutty school-girl joke of an offer.
Renee couldn't believe it. She moved through the next couple hours on autopilot, acting – eventually – as if nothing was wrong. All the while within her a cold, blinding fury took root and grew. When Jemma was too drunk and too stoned to notice, Renee led Becky and Kirsten (Anita flat-out refused) back inside to see if this Alastor was still around.
He was, and more than willing to talk, and do more than talk. He wanted to make deals.
In person.
All he needed, Alastor painstakingly spelled out, was an anchor to the living world. Blood would do nicely.
No hesitation. Renee ran to her study, grabbed her ashamed and sliced the meat of her left palm, dripping the blood onto the Ouija board.
Alastor was simply…there. Standing next to the kitchen table.
Renee wasn't sure what she had expected, but it wasn't a man in his thirties dressed like a Great Depression dance marathon host with an uncanny resemblance to a deer. Kirsten took one look at him and bolted out the back door. "Excitable, isn't she?" the demon asked. "A pleasure to meet you both! Shall we get down to business?"
Becky went first. She wanted her white-picket-fence life. "And you, my dear?" Alastor asked politely, smiling as he had since his arrival.
What did she want? Truly?
Her answer wasn't the knowledge or power she'd chased for over half her lifetime.
"Jemma," she spat. "She wants a demon lover? Then fucking give her one. Find an incubus to drive her out of her goddamned mind."
Alastor nodded. "Easy enough. It's a deal, then?" He held out his right hand as he had with Becky. Renee shook it, ignoring the oppressive sensation of darkness – of calculating evil – that hovered between them and then around her. In her cold fury, the difference between good and evil didn't matter. Nothing mattered but her desire – her need—to make Jemma lose out for once.
Alastor vanished just as he'd arrived.
Renee and Becky exchanged looks, fellow conspirators, and went outside to the fire pit.
Time passed. Renee didn't hear from Jemma, or of Jemma. This normally wouldn't surprise her: for all their talk, the five of them were drifting apart, and none of them seem inclined to stop it.
Then Becky made arrangements for a Thanksgiving meet-up. Renee got there the same time as Becky. They made small talk while Kirsten arrived, then Anita.
Then Jemma.
She didn't look harried, or anxious or on the edge of a nervous breakdown. She didn't even look sick. Renee quickly covered up her shock and rage with the pretense of friendship. The mask slipped once or twice, but nothing came of those instances.
She didn't remember the conversations. They didn't matter. Only one thing did:
Alastor had welched on their deal. Welched on her. And as usual, Jemma walked away scot-free.
Once home, she grabbed the closest dinette chair and heaved it across the room into the back door. Glass and wood shattered and splintered onto the linoleum.
"YOU MOTHERFUCKING CHEAT! YOU'RE NOT GETTING AWAY WITH THIS, ALASTOR! YOU'RE NOT!"
Where there was one demon, there were more. One of them was bound to be open to another deal. And one of those had to be more powerful than Alastor.
If she had to summon every last demon in Hell to find that one, she would.
So she'd bargained with Moloch. And she bargained with others. People who knew as much as if not more about summoning magic than Moloch did. Moloch was not happy about the Thelemites being invited, or the pair of Wiccans. He hadn't backed out, though.
Only one thing marred that small victory.
"Will Sunrise be attending?" Moloch asked.
Sunrise was Jemma's coven name.
Jemma. Always fucking Jemma!
Renee slammed the notebook closed and pushed it aside. She had calls to make.
#
Jemma walked through her apartment complex's interconnecting parking lots, intent on a little personal peccadillo: checking out the new tenants. The first of the year always chased out the old residents and brought in the new. Probably something to do with the cliché of a new year.
A new year. A new start.
That was the theory, anyway.
Whoever they were, she wished them luck. At the end of her own building she waved to a family of four unpacking a U-Haul truck, a minivan and an SUV. The kids waved back; the parents didn't. Most likely too busy… or thought she was a nosy busybody. Jemma accepted that particular cup; she was being a nosy busybody. She'd rented her apartment three years ago, and considered herself among the old-timers. Finding out who moved in was her unofficial right. Besides, knowing who belonged and who didn't was a matter of safety.
That was her story and she was sticking to it.
BelleWoods Apartments consisted of four separate buildings. Jemma's only had the one family moving in. The second building had five new sets of occupants. Another family (of three this time), two girls just out of high school by their window stickers, two graduate students by the amount of books and their parking passes, and a solitary middle-aged man.
All waved in response to Jemma's initial greeting, the solitary looking as if he were heading over to talk. Jemma picked up her pace.
The third building didn't have new tenants, but it did have an eviction. Furniture, clothes, kitchenware and other household detritus were heaped among shrinking mounds of snow. Maintenance raked it all into more convenient piles and tossed it into the rent-a-Dumpster.
"Heya, McIntire," one of the crew called out. Jemma waved. The maintenance worker laughed and turned to her companions, making some comment. Probably about her, Jemma guessed. Let them. She didn't care.
She was in too good a mood.
That surprised her. The source of said good mood was three days past: Alastor's invitation. Thinking back, Jemma felt her cheeks warm. That night had been fun. He had been fun -attentive, charming, even playful. At one point he told her a joke in the middle of everything, and, uncertain how to respond, she gave into helpless laughter. They both agreed there was no need to renew their second deal. "You had a good idea, clever girl, even if the results weren't what you hoped."
The only bad moment came hours later. "Until her endurance gives out" hadn't been hyperbole. On the edge of exhaustion, Jemma insisted on a bath. Alastor followed, and though he didn't join her, he took over washing her hair. Jemma didn't object. A comfortable silence stretched out between them for a time.
"This has been a lovely evening," Alastor had said at last, drawing his fingers through Jemma's hair. "I hate to spoil it and end on an unpleasant note. But I must."
Jemma craned her neck. "Spoil…?"
Alastor gathered her hair and gently wrung it. "New Year's Eve has always been a time of -licentiousness, of release. I won't hold it against you. But you should know." He lowered his face to hers, his breath warm on her cheek.
"I don't share, my dear. I have antlers, but I won't wear horns."
"Last night was a mistake. It won't happen again." She felt a chill that had nothing to do with the bath water. Worse, she felt she had disappointed him.
A quick kiss on the top of her head. "I trust not."
Not the best ending … but it couldn't ruin the beginning and middle of that night, even now.
The last loop of the parking lot led around to the main entrance of the last building. Part of it jutted out at a short right angle aimed back at Jemma's building, forming an L. With perhaps the shortest short leg of an L-shaped building in the state. The parking spaces of the long leg were filled with regulars. No one moving out. Jemma rounded a van done up like the Mystery Machine but in neon blue, green and fuchsia to check out the smaller leg.
Most of the spots in front of the shortest leg of the L were filled with a couple vacant, a smile missing teeth. Like the previous section, Jemma knew the vehicles.
One of them she knew too well.
Dennis' custom-painted sapphire blue Ford Escape.
Dennis' custom-painted sapphire blue Ford Escape hooked to a U-haul and next to a Two Men and A Truck van. The men (there were actually three) of the slogan systematically emptied out the van. Dennis and his two best drinking buddies streamed from the U-haul to the main entrance and inside.
One of the Three Men glanced in her direction. Jemma ducked behind a Lincoln that had seen better days, peering over the rusty trunk.
It was a drinking buddy moving, not Dennis. Probably Brian. Had to be.
Jemma's conviction this was the case lasted until the drinking buddy who wasn't Brian fist-bumped Dennis, and the parking lot acoustics carried his loud "Good luck with the new place, man!" to her.
Shit, shit, shit! Jemma turned and darted around the corner to the longer leg, leaning against the neon Mystery Machine. Why was Dennis doing this? Why hadn't he told her? She hadn't drunk enough New Year's Eve to forget that particular news. Did he believe she'd think his relocation was a wonderful surprise out of a cheesy romcom?
She set off for her apartment, trying to suss out Dennis' motives. Trying to win her back was right out: she'd made it clear they were through. It could be as simple as wanting a new place to live; that made grudging sense. Hadn't he said something about starting a new job soon? BelleWoods could be closer to it. Another possibility.
Halfway past the third building the wind kicked up. Unease crept over her. The clouds hung low and heavy, and she quickened her pace. Unease segued to dread, the dread she always subconsciously associated with Alastor.
Jemma sprinted through the second parking lot and reached her building at a full-out run.
She took the stairs to the second floor two at a time. For once the key slid neatly into the lock and she slammed her apartment door shut, sliding the deadbolt. She hung her coat on its hook.
Hands seized her around the waist and pinned her next to the door. The entryway overhead light dimmed, the all-too-familiar sensation of danger and foreboding engulfed her. "Alastor?"
Claws grabbed hold of her shirt's neckline and pulled, scattering buttons and tearing cloth, severed the front panel of her bra in two, then yanked the sleeves and straps off her shoulders. Hands kneaded her breasts. Jemma stared into glowing red eyes, a huge golden smile needle-sharp. "Al, what –"
His tongue snaked a trail along her collarbones and Jemma forgot how to speak.
He shoved her jeans and underwear halfway to her knees, the heavy silk of his pants rustling on her thighs as he ground his erection against and inside her. Jemma clung to his shoulders and before long fireworks went off behind her eyes –
Sharp, piercing pain in her right shoulder.
"OW!" Jemma pushed him away. " Jesus, Alastor, what the fuck was that?"
"Apologies. My temper got the better of me."
Jemma clamped a hand to her shoulder. There were twinned arcs of indentations in her skin. Her fingers came away bloodied. And not with just a drop or two.
"Shall I kiss it and make it better?"
His lips brushed the hollow of her shoulder, moving over the punctured skin. His tongue followed, lapping her blood like a cat drinking milk.
"There. No more bleeding. Will that do?" Alastor studied her with half-lidded eyes. "You taste delicious, my dear."
Jemma shuddered. "That wasn't cool, Alastor." She slid along the wall until she bumped into the catch-all table. At least he couldn't pin her again. And a Kleenex box was there. She grabbed a few to clean her hand. "The complete opposite of cool, in fact."
"Come now, I don't usually bite you that hard. "
"I don't mean just the bite! I mean…what we just did."
"Tsk. You enjoyed it. I could tell." He looked dumbstruck; his brows slowly dipped down. "I…could …tell…"
"Yeah, well, getting off doesn't mean I enjoy being manhandled. I'm not a mattress or a fleshlight. I -"
He was fully dressed, Jemma realized. She wasn't. Face hot, she tugged her clothing into its proper places, folding her arms to create the illusion her shirt and bra were still intact. "I wasn't expecting surprise, angerfuck!" she continued. "Give me a heads-up, even if it's just, 'You, me, now.' Okay?" She paused. "Please?"
Alastor rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "Very well," he said. His smile widened. "Do I get good Demon Lover points for not destroying this jacket?"
She couldn't tell if he was joking or not. She didn't know if she should treat the question as a joke or not. When it doubt, don't. "Yes," she said. "You do."
"Excellent!" Alastor tossed his microphone cane from hand to hand and leaned on it. "I've another question for you, dear, and it's very important.
"Have you seen or heard from our incubus friend, by any means?"
"No. Why …wait. He was in my dreams a couple times last month. Does that count?"
"It does." Alastor's grim tone belied his ubiquitous smile. "What did he do in those dreams?"
"Nothing," Jemma said. "He was just there, in the background. I think he asked me questions a couple times, but –"
"What questions?"
"I don't remember."
"Why didn't you mention this to me before?"
"You didn't ask."
"Touché." Alastor reached into his jacket and withdrew a calling card. "If he shows up again in any form – a nightmare, a daydream – let me know at once."
Jemma put the calling card in her jeans pocket. "What's going on?"
"I'd rather not go into the sordid details, my dear. Let's just say I need to tie up a loose end."
12