Demon Destiny Chapter 2

Lucas accepts the job.

Chapter 2

 

As Lucas stared down into the drab eyes of a young girl, no more than twenty he felt relief, dejection, and a terror in his soul. All at once. Men were not meant to feel that much emotion in a single moment, and Demons even less so.

     Keeping a straight face was impossible but Lucas did his best as he looked up to see both creatures staring at him. Again, that s**t was unnerving.

     “We realize it is not what you expected.”

     As his expectations had ranged from murdering a unicorn to taking on the Chinese government singlehandedly, he had to disagree with the guy. This girl had to fit somewhere on his expectation spectrum.

     But he answered, “She does seem,” Lucas glanced at the picture again. The girl looked haggard. As if life had already taken the best of her. Though passable as far as looks, she would disappear in a crowd for all the memorable traits she possessed. Her mundane life was as uneventful as her face. Married at eighteen to a high school sweetheart turned drunk, after that, nothing notable. He finally settled on, “an unusual choice.” 

     Neither creature supplied a response so Lucas looked back down to memorize the minute details of this young human’s life.

     “This says that she associates with the Montgomery Group.”

     No response.

     “You don’t find it odd that a human has connections to one of the largest Witch covens this side of the world?”

     “The Witch covens take on employees just as we do,” Dracul answered. “It is a human, and most likely worked as an intern for a time. They must pay for their living.”

     “And yet, it isn’t listed as a job she possessed.”

     He waved that fact away.

     Lucas closed the folder and slid it to the center of the table. “She hardly seems worth my time.”

     They smiled at him. It felt like worms crawling up his spine.

     “She is not as accessible as she appears,” Dracul said. His head tilted toward his brother again and Lucas got the impression they were communicating. “First, we sent collectors after her.”

     Collectors were the Shadows sent to steal people away from their loved ones. They were the stories that mothers used to keep their children in line. If you don’t behave, a collector will come and snatch you off the street. No one will see it happen, no one will be able to find you, and no one will see you again.

     A disturbance at the door stopped conversation momentarily and Lucas looked over to see the third portion of Trinity stride into the room. Navaar’s eyeless face was just as grotesque as the others but there was something about him that drew the eyes. Lucas wanted to look away from the hideousness but at the same time, he didn’t.

     This one wore a charcoal suit to the others tan and black. He strode straight through the room and grabbed the remaining chair at the table. They had to be able to see somehow. No blind being could navigate that confidently.

     “I apologize for my lateness. I skipped breakfast this morning and needed to catch a bite.” 

     There was nothing threatening about his statement, nothing that meant anything more than that he had stopped to grab some food. And yet…

     Lucas recalled the boy in the hallway and filtered through the rumors he had heard regarding these creatures of the dark. His human mind rejected it. His Demon mind understood that it was the truth and respected this evil for what it was.

     His mouth opened before he could stop it. “So you eat kids, huh?”

     All three creatures stilled and turned their heads in his direction.

     After an uncomfortable silence Navaar finally smiled and spread out his hands. “We all must eat.”

“Yeah. Cannibalism all the way.” Lucas tried not to judge. When that didn’t work, he judged the f**k out of them.

     “Cannibalism, Leraje? Humans are beneath us on the food chain. Would you hold it against someone who had fish for a meal, or bovine? We eat that which provides nothing for society and only takes time, energy and money.”

     “Your kindness is staggering. No judgment from this corner.” If he had a gavel, they’d already have life, no parole. Death penalty, even better.

“I’m half human,” Lucas leaned forward in a conspiratorial whisper, “don’t tell the general pop. You want a bite out of my a*s?”

Anyone who had a decent nose could smell the human in him. Even at his worst, when his father had all but killed every trace of humanity, those strong enough could decipher the taint of human blood inside him.

Navaar smiled. “A demon’s soul is extremely gritty, worthless to us. You’re safe.”

Lucas didn’t believe for an instant that these beings left the children’s bodies in peace before or after they nabbed the soul. How environmental of them. Waste not. Use every piece until nothing is salvageable.

     “How far had you gotten before I interrupted?” Navaar continued as if the last five minutes hadn’t happened.

     “We were just discussing its evasion of our collectors.” Dracul responded. Sethos still sat silently.

Lucas pushed his disgust away once more and allowed Leraje to deal with the rest of the meeting. His conscience was still an embryo, and it wanted to make him spew his breakfast. Better to compartmentalize for now.

     “After the Collectors failed, you sent an assassin?”

     “We sent many. All have failed.”

     “Failed how? Dead?”

     “No, they return and say that they cannot retrieve her and pay a penalty to get out of the blood contract.”

     Lucas winced. Penalty pay was b***h. If an assassin didn’t complete the contract, they paid in flesh.

     “So it doesn’t matter if your pet is dead when I bring her in?”

     “At this point, no. Our deadline is fast approaching and--” Dracul had spoken but stopped abruptly.

     “The Seers?” Lucas prompted.

     None of the Three responded.

     “Look if I have a deadline, I need to know now"“

     “Our Seers do not see,“ Dracul said softly.

     Impossible. And Lucas said as much.

     “When things are in flux, there are times when they go quiet. This human is the catalyst that will create the future’s variance.”

     “Must be a damn lot of flux for them all to shut up,” Lucas murmured.

     He reached out and grabbed the folder again, opening it back up to the picture of the young girl. The photo wasn’t recent. Not even a photographer could get close to this girl?

     “How is she slipping away from everyone?”

     “We suspect a spell,” Dracul said.

“Blocking spell.” Navaar finished.

“A spell, huh? Must be a powerful Witch, then.”

     The Three stared at him.

     “Maybe from say, the Montgomery Group?”

     They remained unmoved and said nothing but Lucas could taste the scorn. For all their power they couldn’t fathom why any being would tolerate a human, let alone protect one. It didn’t even register for them.

     Well, they were idiots.

     “The spell seems straightforward. Not so much protection as blocking. It won’t keep it from harm. It simply won’t allow harm to find it, if the harm is coming from a being. Accidents seem to affect it normally. At one point an assassin swore he stood in the same room with it, yet he could not get to it. He attempted to burn the building to the ground, but it escaped.     

     “Interesting.” Lucas glanced at the photo once more. For a human, she was certainly causing a lot of trouble. This girl had made a worldwide corporation freeze. He wondered if she even realized that leading members of the world wanted her dead.

     The Seers not seeing was bad news for this girl. Stories said that a Seer only froze when they saw the death of the one they watched. Trinity kept Seers for every detail of their company as well as their own lives. That meant that everyone was fated to die, or everyone important anyway, and this girl was the key to that. Her life was their destruction, her death their salvation.

     A detail of the Bio caught his attention. “You sent someone after her husband?”

     “A necessity.”

Lucas doubted it.

Navaar spoke. “You will bring her to us in two months time. Dead, preferably, but alive will do.”

He couldn’t find a reason this would be a conflict of interest so he was stuck.

Lucas reached down to his calf and pulled out a stiletto. He punctured his palm and used the tip of the knife to make the wound deep. Blood welled and then dripped from his hand. The drops manipulated midair and formed a ribbon around his wrist tying a blood oath to the contract.

If he failed he would need to report for penalty pay eventually. They didn’t specify a time because his reputation spoke without him needing to say a word. If he failed he would come in when he was good and ready.

If he failed Trinity might be too dead to bother with his penalty pay. An appealing thought, that.

Once Lucas had left the room, the lobby and the building and felt the cool air coming in from the San Francisco bay, he breathed easier. It was spring in the city and he had just taken his first job in over twenty years. He should be ecstatic. For the umpteenth time he hoped that he was going through a midlife crises and he would wake up soon and realize he could murder anyone he liked without qualm. Maybe he would be able to walk up to this girl, snap her neck and smile. Done and done.

He wondered what it would feel like to take her life, to watch the light die in her eyes. Sickness welled inside him. Damn it. 

Great Empiri, he was wallowing. He was wallowing in the knowledge that he would abhor her death and he hated that he hated it.

People milled around him and Lucas shoved his mind to the task ahead. At this point, he didn’t have a choice but to move forward with the hit. It would take a week or so to find the girl and he had to come up with a way around the pesky spell. But he didn’t think it would take the whole two months. Two weeks maybe. She was only a human.

His thoughts turned to Trinity as he headed down the street to his apartment. There were no solid facts on whom or what they were. Some said they were Empiri monks who had lived in the mountains, mutilating themselves into insanity. Others said jealousy made them murder all their precious deities. Lucas never cared to investigate. They had always paid on time.

He did feel a twinge at the thought of such reprobates living in the time of the pure souls of the Empiri. Even to a sinner like him it was distasteful.

The girl was an interesting turn of events. No one had vied for power against Trinity since before Lucas was born, and those attempts were short and bloody. Now, a slip of a girl had the Three quivering in their expensive loafers.

     Lucas knew that if Trinity went down so did the world’s economy. Thousands of businesses, groups and tribes relied on the economical stability the company provided for the world. That didn’t even begin to touch the pull they had in almost every monarchy and government amongst the races. Their niche in the world ran deep and wide and it might be argued that without it the world would fall into chaos.

     Repugnant though they may be, they were sturdy and the held the fabric of society on a global scale in their iron fists. An unexpected crash would cause world wars between the races trying to vie for power.

     Maybe it would be better if she died. Maybe Lucas was helping the world. If Trinity fell and there was nothing to unite the races in their stead, the Earth’s population would destroy itself and take the world with it.

To stop that all Lucas had to do was kill one innocent girl.

    

Author's Note

The length of this chapter is quite a bit shorter than the first chapter. The length of this chapter will be the standard for the rest of the novel.

Reviews

[Jason van Dongen]

I am not usually a fan of horror or paranormal literature (or movies, for that matter), but I liked your first chapter, so I read the second. What brought me back was your style, and Lucas. He has a strong presence, and I found myself sucked into his vortex. I will be reading your other chapters at some point, because you have engaged me with your character and style, and I would like to see if you can engage me with your plot. Keep writing.

[Valerie Rian]

Again thank you for the great review and thank you for pointing out something I did right. I will do my best to capitalize on that :)