Shades of Twilight #1: Even Demons Have a Day Job Read online

  "Even a Demon Has a Day Job"

  I grabbed the first thing at hand—which turned out to be the coffee can out of some poor guy’s grocery bag—and threw it at the idiot trying to get away from me.

  THUNK and “Ooof!” were the only sounds before he hit the vinyl tile floor face first.

  Mox and Nix appeared at the end of the frozen food aisle as I walked toward my quarry. They looked left and right and then at me as if to say ‘We’re Hellcats. Not our fault if this stuff begins to melt.’

  I shrugged at them, and slapped a Binder on Idiotboy’s wrists. “Not my fault either. I didn’t decide to run into a freakin’ grocery store to hide from us. Jerk!” and I kicked the prone form of the Irredeemable at my feet.

  He grunted and started to Turn, but the Binder did its job and left him stuck in his Human form. He made a sound of surprise and rolled over just in time to get a good look at Mox and Nix Turning back into cats. Big, hellacious cats with spiked collars, but cats nonetheless.

  If it were possible for Denali (aka Idiotboy) to get any paler, now would have been the time. There is only one being on Earth who runs around with a pair of 4th Circle Demon Cats, and that’s me.

  He looked up and made an ‘O’ with his mouth.

  I met his gaze and nodded. “Yep, you’re collected.”

  “Milady Carys, I presume. You don’t really have to do this.” He started, smoothing his drop-dead-gorgeous features into something beguiling.

  Oh brother. What a creep. “On the contrary, Denali, I do ‘have to do this’. It’s my job.”

  “I am flattered beyond measure that you know my name.” He said in his super-sexy voice.

  I rolled my eyes and tried not to let my knees quiver. “Do you have any idea how ridiculous you look laying on the floor with one knot on the back of your head and a duplicate on the front? It’s made a bit worse with you trying to be all suave and seductive. I’m here to collect you, which means I know who and what you are.” With that, I made sure no beguiling was going to happen. I had reminded myself about the bodies—and what he did to them.

  I looked at the toes of my combat boots and yelled “MOM!” in a voice no pure human could duplicate.

  Nothing happened.

  A minute went by and I started to tap one of those boot toes in a gesture of impatience.

  Denali started to smile and opened his mouth. With a nod from me, Mox put one paw on his throat. The grin turned sour and the mouth snapped shut.

  “MOM!” I bellowed again, with feeling.

  This time, the tile started to quiver appeared to turn to liquid. A burnt-orange head 4 feet high pushed up through the pool making ripples that turned to flame.

  An elongated, clawed hand of the same color and sporting nine fingers came up and over to push on the still solid rim. With practiced ease, the demon swung her 20-foot self onto the edge of the door in the floor and stared at me with irritation.

  Her eyes were all golden orb and narrowed. Mine were human-looking blue and wide with feigned innocence.

  “Let’s do the thing properly, shall we?” she growled, hunched into a 12 foot wide shopping aisle.

  “Mom, your wings are about to break the glass.” I pointed out.

  She flicked her fingers in dismissal, but furled the bat-like pair closer to her back. “I’m waiting.” She reminded me.

  “Fine.” I huffed, “Malevelephirame, Malevelephirame, Malevelephirame, Thrice named, thrice called, I summon you to this Judgment.” I stared up at her, hands on my hips, “Better?”

  “Adequate.” She allowed and turned her attention to the now gibbering Denali. He had traded his useless soul to be able to become a ‘demon’, but faced with the real thing, he wasn’t faring too well.

  Mom gave him a big sniff, nodded and said “Justin Xerxes Denali, you are Judged Irredeemable, and as such are hereby Collected.”

  This got him to stop blubbering, but the screaming wasn’t a big improvement. I sighed in relief when Mother ate him.

  With a delicate belch, she looked at me again. “Carys, we have to observe the proprieties. I can’t have my siblings accusing me of lax behavior. You wanted this job in order to ‘get to know’ your human side.” Here she did some eye-rolling of her own, “so do me the courtesy of keeping what you learn to yourself. You were raised as a proper Shade-Demon, and your duties demand that you behave like one.”

  I gave up, and sat on a knocked-over display of beer cases. “Okay, point taken. I guess I have been spending too much time getting acclimated.”

  Mom smiled at me, “No, you’re just doing it a little too well, daughter. If I didn’t know better, I’d have taken you for one of them” she gestured to the shoppers around us, still and oblivious. “You stopped time beautifully,” she added with pride.

  “Thanks.”

  She nodded that massive head and started to lower herself back into the tile. “Keep up your quota, dear. I’ve been getting quite hungry of late.”

  And with a little wave, Lucifer’s sister sank out of sight.

  I finished cleaning up the grocery store mess, but I couldn’t find that can I’d thrown earlier. I Elementaled a new one from it’s section, and put it inside the lonely shopper’s bag before letting time loose again. I genuinely like most of the humans I meet up here, and I absolutely don’t want to screw anything up. My job on Earth won’t last forever—actually, until I become Deadicated to my Demon side (indicated by the suffix “-me” which is the same as “Lord/Ladyship”), I’m still killable and could be transferred at my boss’ whim.

  A history lesson isn’t very much fun, but in order for you to even begin to grasp what’s going on around you, it’s not only necessary but imperative.

  There are eleven circles of Hell. I know, I know, you always hear about “seventh circle” this and ‘seventh circle’ that, but it really is eleven. Of course, only Lucifer can inhabit the eleventh, so that may be where the mistake originated.

  Demons have distinct levels of power, and that power dictates which circles they can inhabit. A Pelh from the 4th cannot enter the 5th; a Culli can travel back and forth between 1st, 2nd and 3rd but no further, etc. Shade demons usually can’t go past the 9th. One more reason for the rest of them to hate me, I guess.

  Anyhow, when Lucifer fell from Heaven he landed…elsewhere. He wasn’t immediately evil, and if the truth must be told, he probably would have relented and asked for forgiveness at some point if things didn’t play out as they did. He would have gotten it too, because Yaweh loved him above all others.

  So he wandered and pouted and passed closer to the Wellspring than he should have. It was the repository of what was ‘left’ after the Creation—the rejected bits and pieces of the rawness that was the Universe. Yaweh used the best of everything; what remained was the worst.

  Incidentally, you might wonder then how evil exists out in your world if the Creator didn’t use any. Simply put, when he separated the egg yolk from the egg white, he was left with some of one clinging to the other (and I say ‘he’ loosely—I can’t ever keep up with the changing incarnations and manifestations so I stick to what I saw the only time I actually saw it. One of my cousins saw it as a Giraffe).

  Anyway, the Wellspring existed on another plane of being; vast, bottomless, seething, and resentful at being rejected. And it fed itself, on itself, of itself until it felt the strong, familiar feelings Lucifer was giving off. So it tripped him, and he Fell. This is the Fall from Grace that the madmen in the deserts talked about. This was when Evil subsumed the former Lord of Light, molded him, mutated him, became him and when he finally reac
hed one hand up out of the inky abyss, it was clawed.

  Sephira had followed the Dawnstar down in order to talk some sense into him. She loved him so selflessly that when he got sucked into the Wellspring, she went tearing into it with arms outstretched. Six others went in more out of curiosity after her and eventually they all came out…changed. She who had tried to save her brother became Malevelephirame.

  So, a few million years later, here I am. My father was an Irredeemable of such renown that Mother went to collect him personally. She pulled a praying-mantis, and a hundred years later I was born. Apparently, the gestation period of the formerly divine is considered ‘long’.

  I am a product of my environment and it must be said: I had a hard time growing up. Shade Demons are either Intangibles or Elementals—they control thought and emotion or physical things. I am the first—and only—to be both. Mom’s siblings have tried and tried to duplicate her results, but all they get are more regular Shades than they care to handle, and then they dump them back on Earth where they cause trouble and that leads us to Irredeemables.

  IRDs are beings that are so evil they cannot be saved. Normally, if someone is truly sorry for whatever atrocities they’ve committed, they can ask for and receive forgiveness. Irredeemables can’t get a pass because there is nothing good left in them to feel remorse, and so they belong to us. I got the job of tracking down IRDs because I was the only one to apply for it. My cousins all think I’m nuts for actually wanting to work. They just plan to run around all millennium causing mischief and mayhem. Go figure. I think they'd do better with an Xbox.

  Sadly, the pre-IRDs are easy pickings for the strongest of them. Shades can imbue human hosts with a semblance of power, and that’s what those silly people are universally looking for. Sometimes, hunting them down can be pretty damned dangerous.

  Being the Collector isn’t just a job, it’s an adventure.

  Sadly, I still have paperwork and I have to change into my Demon form to head back...um...down...to do it. In that body, I can travel through the Ether, which is what exists between Here and There. Time isn’t an obstacle, and neither is distance. I just need a private spot to go all orange and black.

  My apartment is my favorite place, even though it carries a faint scent of Brimstone because of my Turns and those of Mox and Nix. It’s in a building relatively near downtown Chicago that used to be a manufacturing warehouse, and now is divided into five shotgun-style flats: one per floor. I rent the bottom three floors, and would probably pay a monster price for them if the owner wasn’t a Satanist. He can smell the Brimstone, and even though he doesn’t know what I am, he knows its something he wants around.

  I pretty much live on the second floor, because leaving the other two essentially vacant gives me a sound barrier that I really need. Hellkitties make a lot of noise around feeding time, and all three of us can send people into ‘fight or flight’ mode with our less-than-human voices. I also need the bottom floor for transport into Hell. The Ether only works down for that address. I have to have the dirt under me.

  It was dark by the time I got home from the Denali run, and I had the distinct pleasure of seeing the dodgy humans that prowl the streets of my run-down neighborhood. The El ratcheted loudly past once I hit my block, and a homeless man with an eye patch was panhandling with very little success.

  His sign read “Pleas help. War Vet”. I learn more about humanity from watching how you treat guys like this than I do from any other arena.

  I stopped, and he shook his dented coffee can at me.

  “Help me out, wouldja?” he asked in a sort of bored, yet pleading voice.

  I thought a moment. “What is it you really want?” I asked him, pushing a little bit with Intangible so I’d get an honest, heartfelt answer.

  Surprised, he replied in a voice nothing like his earlier one. This time, he sounded much stronger, and a tad angry. “Want? I really want my Goddamn eye back!” He gestured towards his face with the hand holding the can, losing a couple of quarters from the force.

  I nodded. “Okay, no problem.” And I Turned my hand into its clawed demon form, reached through the Ether to the exact moment before he lost the eye all those years ago, and snatched it out of his head before the shrapnel could pierce it.

  Pulling back into the now, I grabbed his empty hand with my human one, and deposited the bloody orb in his palm. I gave him a big smile. “There you go!”

  I got about ten steps away before I stopped dead. Idiot!

  I turned back and found him still staring down at his eyeball with his mouth hanging open.

  “Sorry. I just realized you won’t know what to do with that. It’s this whole ‘not growing up human’ thing. I really don’t make mistakes like this very often anymore.”

  He looked up at me with his good eye, and didn’t close his mouth.

  Sighing, I flipped up his eye patch, took the eye off of his open palm, and Elementaled so I could put it back into his head.

  I didn’t realize his mouth could open any wider, but I’ll be un-Damned if it didn’t.

  “That should work just fine now.” I said gently, and headed home. Another day, another rent dollar. Mox and Nix grumbled in cat-speak about chow and I suggested Mexican as we ambled on.

  The changed man watched me with both eyes until I rounded the corner.

 

 

  Haines, Roseann; Thorn, Ra; Gruley, Jean, Shades of Twilight #1: Even Demons Have a Day Job

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