DARKNESS CALLS Chapter Eleven
The kid who had broken the marble stood up and joined the others. Now it was two each for Amber and Sherietta. Not good odds, given that the teenagers had hammers and neither Amber nor Sherietta was showing any evidence of prowess in self-defense. Their magical defenses didn't seem to be doing much, either. Everyone was pretty much ignoring Joey and me, which was enraging and humiliating. Here I was supposed to be a badass karate-werewolf, and the demon had rendered me totally fucking powerless.
From the hallway came the sound of the front door being kicked in. Five seconds later Sherietta's satelles appeared in the family room doorway, a gun in his hand.
"No, Roland!" Sherietta screamed. "Not the gun! He's stronger than we thought!"
The bodyguard nodded and slipped the gun back into a shoulder holster. He glided forward on the balls of his feet.
"Katy, my pet" said the thing inside Walter's body, "introduce yourself to the big man."
The girl dropped her hammer and stepped in front of Roland. He paused.
"What are you going to do to me?" she stared up at him.
"Don't speak to her, Roland." Sherietta's voice was strained. "Knock her out; silence her. Kill her if you have to!"
"Shit," he said. "She's just a girl."
The girl grinned. "Will you be my friend?"
"Roland — don't listen to her!" Sherietta reached toward him. The boy in front of her raised his hammer. She shrank back.
Sherietta's satelles was staring down at the girl like she was the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen. Suddenly he was in high lust; I could smell it.
She reached out and put her hand on his crotch. "Wow," her grin widened, "you really are a big man!"
Roland grabbed her. They toppled over onto the floor. Before they'd even hit the ground he was ripping off clothes as fast as he could, making no distinction between hers and his.
Sherietta stared down at them, a look of horror on her face. I don't think the CEO of Eveningstar Investments was used to this sort of a situation. It wasn't your typical boardroom merger.
Amber looked back and forth at the two boys who guarded her, searching for an out. The doorman grinned and ran his tongue across the head of his hammer. She blanched.
I craned my neck to look for Joey. My little brother was still standing beside me, his head tilted forward, staring at the floor.
He raised his head. "Darkfather," he said, "I'm here."
Darkfather? Oh, shit.
"Ah, my sweetness," said the thing inside Walter. "Finally you speak. I'm hurt that you did not greet me earlier."
"It wasn't time, Darkfather."
"But now it is? Time for what, my sweetness?"
"To make a bargain."
"What the fuck are you saying, Joey?" I strained at the invisible ropes. "Don't ma– "
Walter made a sharp motion with his hand, like he was jerking on a leash. "Silence, dog!"
Now my throat was bound, too.
"Go on," the thing purred. "What is the bargain?"
"Me. But only if you let them all go without hurting them."
"But my Joey, I have you already."
Joey slowly shook his head. His topaz eyes were fixed on Walter. "Not like you want me. You'll never have me that way again, unless I let you."
"You are being very brave, my sweetness. Perhaps we should test your resolve. There are so many different games my children can play with your relatives. Surely you know what I mean?"
Joey swallowed. "I know you're trying to scare me. But I'm not your toy any more. You can't do the things to me you that did before."
"Why ever not?"
"Because I'm stronger now. Can't you tell?"
"Of course I can, sweetness. Your Darkness calls to me. Such a deep, rich Darkness. How ever have you gained such depth?"
"From you, Darkfather. You made me go deeper and deeper just to stay alive." Joey's eyes gathered the light in the room, no longer the nervous gaze of a deer peeking through the foliage. Now they were the lambent eyes of the tiger emerging from the jungle.
"So now," he continued, "you have to bargain with me. You'll never get me back unless that's what I choose."
Oh, God, Joey. Don't do this. Please don't do it.
Walter's body sighed. "Very well, my Joey, I shall bargain with you. I will let the others go unharmed, and you will open yourself to me fully."
"Don't believe it, Joey," Amber said. "No matter what it promises, it will twist the agreement to its own end. Because it releases us now doesn't mean it will stop."
"So what?" Sherietta snapped. "That gives us time to make our own plans. Don't be a damn martyr, Amber."
As all this was going on, the boys guarding Amber and Sherietta just stood watching, hammers in hands like soldiers awaiting further orders. The bodyguard and the girl were rolling around on the floor, screwing. His pants were around his ankles and he was slamming into her with deep bestial snorts. She was clawing at him like a cat in heat.
The thing in Uncle Water ignored everyone. Its attention was focused entirely on Joey.
"Agreed?" it said.
No! Fuck, Joey! No!
"Agreed," said Joey.
The demon smiled. It was the sickest expression I'd ever seen. I'd thought the Nasfuratu version of Fellers was scary. This was worse; this was purest evil.
"So beautiful, my Joey," the thing inside Walter crooned, "and powerful. Yet so untrained and naive."
"Now," Joey said. "Come to us now."
"Us?" Walter's eyes blinked suddenly. "Did my sweetness say `us'?"
"Yes." Now it was Joey who smiled. "My mother and me. She is here, too."
"Mercedes?" The thing hissed like a giant snake. The room began to darken. "The shade of Mercedes is with you? How is that possible?"
"She was hiding. She came out after you left. Come on, Darkfather. I'll show you what my mother's taught me."
The demon snarled. The light outside dimmed as darkness unfurled around Walter. The stench of sulfur flooded the room.
Joey's eyes blazed golden. For a second it was like they were glass and the sun was shining through them. Light cut the shadows like a jigsaw cutting plywood. Someone screamed.
Click. The room was quiet; the shadow and the smell were gone. I blinked, suddenly back to myself. It was like waking up abruptly from a nightmare. What had I been thinking? There were no ropes — and there never had been.
I jumped to my feet.
Walter collapsed onto his knees and threw up.
"What the hell!" Roland yelled and pushed the girl away. He scrambled for his pants. The girl recoiled. She pulled her knees up to her chest and started wailing.
Two of the boys dropped their hammers. One looked around wildly, ran to the patio door, slid it open and was gone. Another fainted, falling to the floor like a puppet whose strings had been cut.
The doorman still had his hammer. He dashed at me, swinging it wildly. I sidestepped and took the hammer from him, breaking his wrist in the process. Little bastard. He howled but kept on running, following his companion out the patio door.
I turned to Joey. He was standing motionless, staring at the ground. I took a step closer, but didn't try to touch him.
"Bro?"
Slowly he raised his head. His eyes were still lambent tiger-eyes, but softer. Satiated.
He gave me a sweet Joey smile. "It's okay, Daniel. I got it." He touched his chest. "Here."
Oh, no, Joey. Please, no. "It's inside you again?"
He giggled. "No." He reached under his shirt and pulled out Vivana's cross. "Here. It's in here." He jiggled the chain and the cross flashed as it spun. "Like a genie in a bottle."
Amber and Sherietta stared in wonder.
"Bro ... " I swallowed. "Would you tell me what just happened?"
"Sure, Daniel. Mom didn't think the witches would be able to trick it, and I knew that it wanted me back. So we made our own trap."
"What do you mean about ... your mother? Mercedes is still alive?"
"No, she's dead. But she left a part of herself behind, the part that has the memories. That part can stay around for a long time if it has something important to do."
Amber and Sherietta exchanged a look of astonishment.
"I'm sorry I didn't tell you, but I had to surprise it. Like it said to do in your book."
"My book?"
His nod was solemn. "It's what Sun Tzu says. `Let your plans be dark and impenetrable as night; when you move, fall like a thunderbolt.' Right?"
I nodded slowly. "Yeah, bro, that's right. I didn't know you read him."
"You told Amber to, so I thought I should. He's smart, Daniel."
"Yeah. But — how did you do it?"
"Mom taught me how to make a trap for it in the cross. I had to invite it to come back and get it to agree. Then I had it."
"Of course," Amber brushed her hair back. Her face looked composed, but the hand was shaking. "We were all worried that because of his possession, Joey would be more vulnerable to the demon. We forgot that the demon would also be more vulnerable to him."
Joey nodded again. "I told you, Daniel. I needed to be here."
Well, what the hell. Turns out my little brother had been right all along.
So that was that. Amber and Sherietta cast spells or whatever to put the girl and Walter to sleep. Then they got on their phones and started making calls. I'll give this to Sherietta, she may have done shit when we were facing the demon, but when it came to cleanup she was almost as effective as Fellers had been.
It's been a couple of days now. The Estrellas say everything's cool between us. In fact, they've pretty much acknowledged that they owe Joey and me a big favor. Amber's looking through Mercedes' old notes and seems happy as ... well, happy as an anthropologist doing work she loves.
Sherietta contacted another "specialist" who removed all memory of the demon from the teenagers' minds and turned them over to a foster home. Walter's still in pretty bad shape and the specialist needs to work with him a bit longer, but Amber says he'll be okay.
As for Joey and me, we're back at home and the patio door's been fixed. From the outside everything looks as normal as it's always been. Only Joey's more-or-less moved into my bedroom and every night we're fucking like Energizer bunnies. The lightblind world, I know, would be outraged by our relationship. There's a part of me that is, still. But the judge inside is getting smaller and quieter. Maybe that's just because the moon is waxing.
We won't have Fellers around to help this next time. Joey thinks it'll be okay. He said he's not worried about dealing with me as my beast self comes to the fore. I'm trying to trust him on this. I've learned that he knows a lot more — and is a lot more capable — than I'd thought. Every once and a while he stops and gets that faraway look in his eyes, and I know he's listening to his mother's ghost. It's both sweet and creepy at the same time. My baby brother is growing up and, damn, he's growing up fast. I wonder what he's becoming.
Guess I'll know soon enough. In the mean time, the dry spell has passed and I've started another painting. It's a portrait of Joey.
Oh, yeah.
THE END of Darkness Calls
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Hello, Reader.
No, I'm not the demon. It's me, Joey. I figured that since it had told you everything that happened up until we went to confront it, you deserved to know how all that turned out. These last two chapters I took from Daniel's journal and posted myself, the same as the demon did with the earlier ones. I know that because I've been stripping its memories away from it, one at a time. It's true what my darkfather said, that it can't be destroyed. But there's all kinds of stuff you can do to something that's indestructible, if you know how. Mom's been teaching me.
There's some things that I need to teach you, too. Darkness is coming back and it's going to be soon. In my lifetime, for sure, and probably in yours. Everything is going to change. We'll all have to work together for there to be any hope of getting through it. I know that sounds new-agey, but it's true. I'll be writing more soon to explain what I mean. Keep an eye out for it. This is important.
InvertedBeast@yahoo.com