Practical Demonkeeping pc-1 Read online

  “Please, Rachel, you have what you want. There’s no reason to keep these people here.”

  Rachel took the pages. “I’ll make it up to them once I have the power. It won’t hurt to keep them here a few more minutes.”

  Travis fought the urge to look back toward the woods. Instead he cradled his head in his hands and sighed deeply as Rachel began to read the invocation aloud.

  -=*=-

  Augustus Brine finally convinced Gian Hen Gian to lie down on the ground. It was obvious that Rivera would not listen to anyone until the Djinn relented.

  “Now, Masterson, where in the hell did you get that metal suitcase?”

  “I told you, I stole it out of the Chevy.”

  “Who owns the Chevy?”

  “I can’t tell you that.”

  “You can tell me or you can go up on murder charges.”

  “Murder? Who was murdered?”

  “About a thousand people, it looks like. Where is the owner of that suitcase? Is it one of these guys?”

  “Rivera, I will tell you everything I know about everything in about fifteen minutes, but now you’ve got to let us finish what we started.”

  “And what was that?”

  Brine spoke up, “Sergeant, my name is Augustus Brine. I’m a businessman here in town. I have done nothing wrong, so I have no reason to lie to you.”

  “So?” Rivera said.

  “So, you are right. There is a killer. We are here to stop him. If we don’t act right now, he will get away, so please, please, let us go.”

  “I’m not buying it, Mr. Brine. Where is this killer and why didn’t you call the police about him? Take it nice and slow, and don’t leave anything out.”

  “We don’t have time,” Brine insisted.

  Just then they heard a loud thump and the sound of a body slumping to the ground. Brine turned around to see Mavis Sand standing over the collapsed detective, her baseball bat in hand.

  “Hi, cutie,” she said to Brine.

  They all jumped to their feet.

  “Mavis, what are you doing here?”

  “He threatened to close me down if I didn’t tell him where you went. After he left, I got to feeling like a shit about telling him, so here I am.”

  “Thanks, Mavis,” Brine said. “Let’s go. Howard, you stay here. Robert, in the bed of the truck. Whenever you’re ready, King,” he said to the Djinn.

  Brine jumped into the truck, fired it up, and engaged the four-wheel drive.

  -=*=-

  Rachel read the last line of the invocation with a grandiose flourish of her arm. “In the name of Solomon the King, I command thee to appear!”

  Rachel said, “Nothing happened.”

  Catch said, “Nothing happened, Travis.”

  Travis said, “Give it a minute.” He had almost given up hope. Something had gone horribly wrong. Now he was faced with either telling them about the candlesticks or keeping his bond with the demon. Either way, the hostages were doomed.

  “Fine, Travis,” Catch said. “The old man is the first to go.”

  Catch wrapped one hand around Effrom’s neck. As Travis and Rachel watched, the demon grew into his eating form and lifted Effrom off the ground.

  “Oh my God!” Rachel put her fist to her mouth and started backing away from the demon. “Oh no!”

  Travis tried to focus his will on the demon. “Put him down, Catch,” he commanded.

  From somewhere down the hill came the sound of a truck starting.

  Gian Hen Gian stepped out of the woods. “Catch,” he shouted, “will you never give up your toys?” The Djinn started up the hill.

  Catch threw Effrom to the side. He landed like a rag doll, ten yards away. Rachel was shaking her head violently, as if trying to shake away the demon’s image. Tears streamed down her cheeks.

  “So someone let the little fart out of his jar,” Catch said. He stalked down the hill toward the Djinn.

  An engine roared and Augustus Brine’s pickup broke out of the tree line and bounced up the dirt road, throwing up a cloud of dust in its wake. Robert stood in the bed, holding onto the roll bar for support.

  Travis darted past Catch to Amanda and Jenny.

  “Still a coward, King of the Djinn?” Catch said, pausing a second to look at the speeding truck.

  “I am still your superior,” the Djinn said.

  “Is that why you surrendered your people to the netherworld without a fight?”

  “This time you lose, Catch.”

  Catch spun to watch the truck slide around the last turn and off the road to bound across the open grass toward the candlesticks.

  “Later, Djinn,” Catch said. He began to run toward the truck. Taking five yards at a stride the demon was over the hill and past Travis and the women in seconds.

  Augustus Brine saw the demon coming at them. “Hold on, Robert.” He wrenched the wheel to the side to throw the truck into a slide.

  Catch lowered his shoulder and rammed into the right front fender of the truck. Robert saw the impact coming and tried to decide whether to brace himself or jump. In an instant the decision was made for him as the fender crumpled under the demon and the truck went up on two wheels, then over onto its roof.

  Robert lay on the ground trying to get his wind back. He tried to move, and a searing pain shot through his arm. Broken. A thick cloud of dust hung in the air, obscuring his vision. He could hear the demon roaring behind him and the screeching sound of tearing metal.

  As the dust settled, he could just make out the shape of the upside-down truck. The demon was pinned under the hood, ripping at the metal with his claws. Augustus Brine hung by his seat belt. Robert could see him moving.

  Robert climbed to his feet, using his good arm to push himself up.

  “Gus!” he shouted.

  “The candlesticks!” came back.

  Robert looked around on the ground. There was the bag. He had almost landed on it. He started to reach for it with both hands and nearly passed out when the pain from his broken arm hit him. From his knees he was able to scoop up the bag, heavy with the candlesticks, in his good arm.

  “Hurry,” Brine shouted.

  Catch had stopped clawing at the metal. With a great roar he shoved the truck up and off of him. Standing before the truck, he threw his head back and roared with such intensity that Robert nearly dropped the candlesticks.

  Every bone in Robert’s body said flee, get the hell out of here. He stood frozen.

  “Robert, I’m stuck. Bring them to me.” Brine was struggling with the seat belt. At the sound of his voice the demon leapt to the driver’s side of the truck and clawed at the door. Brine heard the skin of the door go with the first slash. He stared at the door in terror, expecting a claw to come through the window at any second. The demon’s claws raked the support beam inside the door.

  “Gus, here. Ouch. Shit.” Robert was lying outside the passenger side window, pushing the bag with the candlesticks across the roof of the truck. “The play button, Gus. Push it.”

  Brine felt the pocket of his flannel shirt. Mavis’s recorder was still clipped there. He fumbled for the play button, found it, and pushed, just as a daggerlike claw ripped into his shoulder.

  -=*=-

  A hundred miles south, at Vandenberg Air Force Base, a radar technician reported a UFO entering restricted air space from over the Pacific. When the aircraft refused to respond to radio warning, four jet fighters were scrambled to intercept. Three of the fighter pilots would report no visual contact. The fourth, upon landing, would be given a urinalysis and confined to quarters until he could be debriefed by an officer from the Air Force Department of Stress Management.

  The bogey would be officially explained as radar interference caused by unusually high swell conditions offshore.

  Of the thirty-six reports, filed in triplicate with various departments of the military complex, not one would mention an enormous white owl with an eighty-foot wingspan.

  However, after some consid
eration, the Pentagon would award seventeen million dollars to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for a secret study on the feasibility of an owl-shaped aircraft. After two years of computer simulations and wind-tunnel prototype tests, the research team would conclude that an owl-shaped aircraft would, indeed, be an effective weapon, but only if the enemy should ever mobilize a corps of field-mouse-shaped tanks.

  -=*=-

  Augustus Brine realized that he was going to die. In that same moment he realized that he was not afraid and that it did not matter. The monster clawing to get at him didn’t matter. The chipmunk chatter of his voice playing back double-speed on the recorder didn’t matter. The shouting of Robert, and now Travis, outside the truck didn’t matter. He was acutely aware of it all, he was part of it all, but it did not matter. Even the gunfire didn’t matter. He accepted it and let it go.

  -=*=-

  Rivera came to when Brine had started the truck. Mavis Sand was standing over the policeman with his revolver, but she and Howard were watching what was going on up the hill. Rivera glanced up the hill to see Catch materializing in his eating form, holding Effrom by the throat.

  “Santa Maria! What the hell is that?”

  Mavis trained the gun on him. “Stay right there.”

  Ignoring her, Rivera stood and ran down the road toward his patrol car. At his car he popped the trunk lid and pulled the riot gun out of its bracket. As he ran back past Howard’s Jag, he paused, then opened the back door and grabbed Robert’s hunting rifle.

  By the time he was again in view of the hill, the truck was upside down and the monster was clawing at the door. He threw the riot gun to the ground and shouldered the rifle. He braced the barrel against a tree, threw the bolt to jack a shell into the chamber, sighted through the scope, and brought the cross-hairs down on the monster’s face. Resisting the urge to scream, he squeezed the trigger.

  The round hit the demon in his open mouth and knocked him back a foot. Rivera quickly jacked another shell into the chamber and fired. Then another. When the firing pin clicked on an empty chamber, the monster had been knocked back from the truck a few feet but was still coming.

  “Santa fucking Maria,” Rivera said.

  -=*=-

  Gian Hen Gian had reached the top of the hill where Travis knelt by Amanda and Jenny.

  “It is done,” the Djinn said.

  “Then do something!” Travis said. “Help Gus.”

  “Without his orders I may carry out only the command of my last master.” Gian Hen Gian pointed to the sky. Travis looked up to see something white coming out of the clouds, but it was too far away to make out what it was.

  Catch recovered from the rifle slugs and went forward. He hooked his huge hand behind the reinforcement beam of the truck’s door, ripped it off, and threw it behind him. Inside the truck, still hanging from the seat belt, Augustus Brine turned calmly and looked at the demon. Catch drew back his hand to deliver a blow that would rip Brine’s head from his shoulders.

  Brine smiled at him. The demon paused.

  “What are you, some kind of wacko?” Catch said.

  Brine didn’t have time to answer. The reverberation of the owl’s screech shattered the windshield of the truck. Catch looked up as the talons locked around his body, and he was swept into the air flailing at the owl’s legs.

  The owl climbed into the sky so rapidly that in seconds it was nothing more than a tiny silhouette against the sun, which was making its way toward the horizon.

  Augustus Brine continued to smile as Travis released the seat belt. He hit the roof of the truck with his injured shoulder and passed out.

  -=*=-

  When Brine regained consciousness, they were all standing over him. Jenny was holding Amanda’s head to her shoulder. The old woman was sobbing.

  Brine looked from face to face. Someone was missing.

  Robert spoke first. “Tell Gian Hen Gian to heal your shoulder, Gus. He can’t do it until you tell him. While you’re at it, tell him to fix my arm.”

  “Do it,” Brine said. As he said it, the pain was gone from his shoulder. He sat up.

  “Where’s Effrom?”

  “He didn’t make it, Gus,” Robert said. “His heart gave out when the demon threw him.”

  Brine looked to the Djinn. “Bring him back.”

  The Djinn shook his head balefully. “This I cannot do.”

  Brine said, “I’m sorry, Amanda.” Then to Gian Hen Gian, “What happened to Catch?”

  “He is on his way to Jerusalem.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I have lied to you, Augustus Brine. I am sorry. I was bound to the last command of my last master. Solomon bade me take the demon back to Jerusalem and chain him to a rock outside the great temple.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me that?”

  “I thought you would never give me my power if you knew. I am a coward.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous.”

  “It is as Catch said. When the angels came to drive my people into the netherworld, I would not let them fight. There was no battle as I told you. We went like sheep to the slaughter.”

  “Gian Hen Gian, you are not a coward. You are a creator — you told me that yourself. It’s not in your nature to destroy, to make war.”

  “But I did. So I have tried to vindicate myself by stopping Catch. I wanted to do for the humans what I did not do for my own people.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Brine said. “It’s finished.”

  “No, it’s not,” Travis said. “You can’t chain Catch to a rock in the middle of Jerusalem. You have to send him back. You have to read the last invocation. Howard translated it while we were waiting for you to wake up.”

  “But Travis, you don’t know what will happen to you. You may die on the spot.”

  “I’m still bound to him, Gus. That isn’t living anyway. I want to be free.” Travis handed him the invocation and the candlestick with the Seal of Solomon concealed in it. “If you don’t, I will. It has to be done.”

  “All right, I’ll do it,” Brine said.

  Travis looked up at Jenny. She looked away. “I’m sorry,” Travis said. Robert went to Jenny’s side and held her. Travis walked down the hill, and when he was out of sight, Augustus Brine began reading the words that would send Catch back to hell.

  -=*=-

  They found Travis slumped in the backseat of Howard’s Jaguar. Augustus Brine was the first to reach the car.

  “I did it, Travis. Are you all right?”

  As Travis looked up, Brine had to fight the urge to recoil. The demonkeeper’s face was deeply furrowed and shot with broken veins. His dark hair and brows had turned white. But for his eyes, which were still young with intensity, Brine would not have recognized him. Travis smiled. There were still a couple of teeth left in front.

  His voice was still young. “It didn’t hurt. I expected one of those wrenching Lon Chaney transformations, but it didn’t happen. Suddenly I was old. That was it.”

  “I’m glad it didn’t hurt,” Brine said.

  “What am I going to do?”

  “I don’t know, Travis. I need to think.”

  36

  JENNY, ROBERT, RIVERA, AMANDA, TRAVIS, HOWARD, AND THE SPIDER

  Rivera drove Robert and Jennifer to their house. They sat in the back, holding each other the whole way, not saying a word until they thanked him when he dropped them off. On the drive back to the station Rivera tried to formulate a story that would save his career. Any version of the true story seemed like a sure ticket to a psychological disability retirement. In the end he decided to tell the story as far as the point where The Breeze disappeared.

  A month later Rivera was pumping Slush-Puppies at the Seven-Eleven, working undercover for the robbery division. However, with the arrest of a team of robbers that had terrorized convenience stores in the county for six months, he was promoted to lieutenant.

  Amanda and Travis rode with Howard. At Amanda’s request, Gian Hen Gian
saw that Effrom’s body was turned to stone and placed inside the cave. When Howard stopped in front of Amanda’s house, she invited Travis to come inside. He refused at first, wanting to leave her alone with her grief.

  “Have you completely missed the significance of all this, Travis?” she asked.

  “I guess so,” he said.

  “Did it occur to you that the presence of Catch and Gian Hen Gian proves that Effrom is not gone completely? I will miss him, but he goes on. And I don’t want to be alone right now. I helped you when you needed it,” she said, and she waited.

  Travis went in.

  Howard went home to work on a new menu for his restaurant.

  Chief Technical Sergeant Nailsworth never found out what happened to Roxanne or who she really was, and he was heartbroken. Because of his grief he was unable to eat, lost a hundred and fifty pounds, met a girl at a computer user’s meeting, and married her. He never had computer sex again outside the privacy of his home.

  37

  GOOD GUYS

  Augustus Brine declined offers for a ride home. He wanted to walk. He needed to think. Gian Hen Gian walked at his side.

  “I can repair your truck, make it fly if you wish,” the Djinn said.

  “I don’t want it,” Brine said. “I’m not even sure I want to go home.”

  “You may do as you wish, Augustus Brine.”

  “I don’t want to go back to the store either. I think I’ll give the business to Robert and Jenny.”

  “Is it wise to put the drunkard in the wine barrel?”

  “He won’t drink anymore. I want them to have the house, too. I’ll start the paperwork in the morning.”

  “It is done.”

  “Just like that?”

  “You doubt the word of the King of the Djinn?”

  They walked in silence for a while before Brine spoke again.

  “It seems wrong that Travis has lived so long without having a life, without love.”

  “Like yourself, you mean?”

  “No, not like myself. I’ve had a good life.”

  “Would you have me make him young again?”