Vampire Fire, Page 3

  I had a sudden idea, although there was a chance it had been prompted by Elizabeth. “And where do the dark masters fit into all of this?” I asked.

  The devil frowned—or tried to frown—since he was currently grinning like a circus clown. “They are problematic, Sam. They have been banished to a place and time that I do not yet have access to. But I am ever hopeful, and I am patient.”

  “Which place and time?” I asked.

  “The universe is far bigger than anyone could ever know, even the Creator.”

  I blinked at that.

  “Oh, does that surprise you, Sam? That the one you call God is so vast that even He, to this day, is still exploring his farthest reaches?”

  I might have blinked again at this.

  “Why do you think you are here? Why do you think I am here? We are here, created, to help this God to explore who he really is.”

  “I’m not sure I’m following...”

  “All life, even mine, is from the Creator. We are living extensions, and as such, we have a job to do.”

  “To explore?”

  “And to experience. To live and play and continue pushing the boundaries of who He is.”

  “And some of these boundaries lie outside of what He knows?”

  “Outside and inside, Sam. For all exists within the Creator.”

  “And this Creator is limitless?”

  “So far, yes.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means He hasn’t found His end.”

  “Are you the enemy of God?”

  The devil laughed. “I am he, Sam. And so are you.”

  “Jesus.”

  “Him, too.”

  I drummed my longish, pointy nails along the metal table. I might have dented the surface. “And these dark masters. They are somewhere safe from you?”

  “In a word, yes.” He paused, and I sensed he wanted to take my hand, but he resisted. “But let me ask you this, Sam: Is your world safe from them? Trust me, they have caused torment on par with even my own work. They have fomented hatred and rage and revenge. Trust me when I say that each and every one of them deserves their own private hell.”

  We were silent. The dragon tattoo seemed to be moving faster now, winding over the forearm with just enough speed that I could actually see it moving. I wanted to rub my eyes, but I didn’t want to give the devil the satisfaction of knowing I was questioning my vision... or sanity.

  “And God allows people to suffer in hell?”

  “God gives humans the ability to create.”

  “Even their own versions of hell?”

  “Exactly.”

  “And what happens after a soul leaves hell?”

  “It moves on to their true destiny.”

  “Which is?”

  “I do not know, Sam. But I do know that some will find the peace they seek, and find the loved ones they miss, and will have learned the errors of their ways. Ideally, they emerge from the hell experience better people, more evolved people, and ready to give this thing called life a go again.”

  “You said some?”

  “Indeed, Sam. Others are truly lost souls, so evil, and so broken, as to never hope to be fixed.”

  “And what happens to these souls?” I asked.

  “It is assumed they return straight to God, to be absorbed... and forgotten.”

  Absorbed and forgotten seemed like a terrible fate. I thought about this, and suddenly wishing I had another chili mango smoothie. Perhaps it was all this talk of the fires of hell.

  I said, “So, you’re here to hire me to help you find my ex-husband’s lost soul?”

  “Yes and no, Sam. I’m not here to hire you. I’m here to bargain with you. If you give me your ex-husband, you will save a life. Perhaps you even two lives.”

  “Two lives? I don’t understand.”

  “I seek Danny Moon and another.”

  “Who’s the other?”

  “You will know soon enough who, Sam.”

  “Fine,” I said, and it occurred to me that the devil just might have gotten a glimpse into the future. Or not. Maybe he was just that good at orchestrating lives. The ultimate puppet master. “So, how does someone run from the devil?”

  “There are really only two ways to run—or hide—from the devil. You already know the first, and you are intimately aware of the second, Sam.”

  I raised my eyebrow at that, but he was right. I knew that the highly evolved dark masters had sought refuge outside of space and time, beyond the devil’s reach, in a place even he was unaware of. But Elizabeth, the entity within me, wasn’t outside of space and time, was she? No, she was here, with me now, no doubt listening to all of this, including my own thoughts.

  I nodded and said, “Possession.”

  “Very good, Sam Moon.”

  The idea that Danny was presently possessing someone was a disturbing one. But I had an objection. “Then why don’t all souls hide from you?” I asked. “Why don’t all souls possess another, if only to escape hell?”

  “Because only a few know how to truly possess. Only a few know how to delve deep enough and integrate fully enough, to escape my detection.”

  “Such as dark masters,” I said.

  “Indeed,” said the devil.

  “Except Danny was no dark master,” I said. “Trust me.”

  This seemed to amuse the devil, but with the hideous grin of his, it was hard to tell. “Let me ask you: How long was Danny in the company of the female vampire?”

  He was talking about Detective Hanner. I considered his question. Near the end of Danny’s life, he had teamed up with Hanner, my one-time friend. That they had conspired to kill me was the reason for the “one-time” part. Among other things that Hanner had done to Fang.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “A few months, maybe?”

  “Long enough to get him in trouble, I suspect,” said the devil.

  “Trouble how? What the devil do you mean?”

  “The devil means that your Danny boy was a dark master in training.”

  I was about to speak, but I couldn’t. I just couldn’t. I just sat there, mouth open, looking like a dope, while the devil stared at me unblinkingly, his pet dragon inching along his forearm.

  Inching and inching.

  ***

  Finally, he went on. “The highly evolved dark masters, such as the entity within you, are powerful indeed. More powerful than even you might realize. Consider this: they have fully escaped my reach, and exist outside of time and space. Additionally, they are beyond my reach even now.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “If, say, you were to find yourself on the wrong end of a silver dagger, the entity within you would simply slip into the netherspheres, and thus, slip through my fingers yet again. But not so for Danny boy.”

  “Because he wasn’t a full dark master,” I said, and still, the thought of Danny being anything other than the sniveling, cheating, rotten husband he had been, was nearly impossible to wrap my brain around.

  “You are correct, Sam. The less-evolved dark masters, as in, those who perished before their training became complete—such as the fate of your husband—can still do some damage.”

  “They can still possess, you mean?”

  “Indeed, Sam. But the good news is, they are not beyond my reach. They are in hiding. I need only to find them.”

  “And what do you do when you find them?”

  “Oh, it can get very messy, Sam. Very messy.”

  “You kill the host,” I said.

  “Well, I can’t kill anything, Sam. Not really. But I can influence others to do very bad things to them.”

  “Such as murder them.”

  He said nothing. He didn’t have to.

  I drummed my fingers on the metal table, denting the crap out of it. “You said I could save two lives.”

  “Indeed, Sam.”

  “Why do you care if I save two lives? Sounds like you have this all worked out. Find the escape
e, kill the host, drag the offending soul back to hell.”

  “I do not care, quite frankly. I wasn’t created to care. But I was created to fill hell.”

  My investigator instincts kicked in. Throw out all this bullshit supernatural mumbo-jumbo, and in the end, this was just another missing person case. “You are offering two lives for his one.”

  “Two is better than one, Sam. Now, do we have a deal?”

  “Who is the second person?” I asked.

  The devil’s eyes flashed again. “You will know soon, Sam. Even as we speak, my pet is orienting on them now.”

  “Your pet?” I asked.

  “Perhaps pets is a better word,” said the dark prince of hell.

  And just as the words left his mouth, the dragon on his forearm reared back, and let loose with a small blast of fire.

  Real fire, and real smoke.

  Chapter Five

  I met the devil today, I wrote in the AOL instant chat window.

  It was late and I was in my living room with my laptop on my lap and a cup of coffee nearby. Earlier, when the kids had gone to bed, I had feasted on a packet of pig and cow blood. Foul stuff, surely, but at least it kept the demoness within me weak, which was how I preferred her.

  If written by anyone else, I would assume they were being dramatic. Please tell me you’re being dramatic, Moon Dance.

  I wish I were.

  The devil?

  Yes.

  Okay, let me process this information.

  Trust me, I’ve been processing it all day.

  Did he have horns, a pitchfork?

  No, and no. But he did have a dragon tattoo.

  A short pause, then: Okay, Moon Dance. Maybe you should tell me about it.

  So, I did... from my first sip of my chili mango smoothie, to the mini-explosion of fire from the dragon tattoo...

  ***

  I’m not sure I needed all the lurid details of your chili mango smoothie, Moon Dance, he wrote after I had finished typing my long, slightly rambling, although surprisingly mistake-free, retelling of my encounter with the devil outside Jamba Juice. But the rest of it is... fascinating.

  Do you think he really was the devil? I wrote.

  I am leaning toward that he might be the real deal, based on your description and experience.

  I am, too.

  How much did he know about your life?

  He seemed to have a comfortable handle on what I was and what I had become.

  Could he communicate with you telepathically? Or you with him?

  No, and I didn’t try.

  I would have been surprised if you could, Moon Dance. We are closed off to other immortals, even, apparently, the devil.

  Even closed off to God?

  I don’t know, Sam.

  I wrote: The angel, Ishmael, can still communicate with me telepathically.

  He was once connected to you, Sam. I suspect he was granted special access. After all, what use is a guardian angel if that angel can’t intimately and accurately know the very stupid decision someone is about to make?

  And the alchemist, I wrote. He can hear my thoughts.

  The alchemist is using powerful magicks that neither you nor I understand.

  And what about Tammy? She can hear anyone and everyone. No one is safe from my daughter.

  Your daughter might be an in-betweener, Sam. Same with your son. They are expanding into something truly unheard of—and unseen—as far as my own research goes.

  I knew Fang’s own research was as extensive as it came, perhaps second only to the Alchemist’s own knowledge. Fang, I knew, was dying to enter the Occult Reading Room. Thus far, he’d not been granted access, for reasons unknown to me.

  I wrote: I’m leaning toward God having access to my thoughts. I mean, he’s the Creator of all, am I right? What could be hidden from him? Or her? Or whatever he or she is.

  But the devil doesn’t? asked Fang.

  The devil didn’t seem very different from you and I. And he definitely didn’t seem very different from the demon that possessed the Thurman family on Skull Island. His influence and range seemed to be contained somewhat.

  Unless someone invites him in, wrote Fang.

  Exactly, I wrote. Then all bets are off, and your life is in his hands.

  And they’ve been looking for Danny all this time?

  I assume yes.

  Any chance Danny went to, you know, heaven? Maybe he found salvation just before death? Maybe he repented and begged for mercy?

  He was helping to lure me to my death, if that says anything.

  But what if he thought killing you was truly the right thing to do? To destroy what some think of as evil?

  I shrugged in my own living room, although Fang couldn’t see me do so.

  The devil didn’t think so, I wrote. The devil seemed to think a very special hell had been waiting—and still is waiting—for Danny, fashioned after my ex-husband’s own particular beliefs. Apparently, Danny was very afraid of hell, and suspected he was going straight to it. Apparently, Danny had done something far worse than I—or anyone—knew. Apparently, and this is according to the devil, Danny was a big deal in the sex-and-drug trade in San Bernardino County. He both loved what he did, and hated himself for being a part of it, and, according to the devil, Danny had hurt a number of people, killing some, too.

  Jesus. Your ex sounds like a real peach. Well, please tell me that you laughed in the face of the devil, and told him to go back to hell?

  I said nothing. Or wrote nothing. The cursor in my IM window blinked, waiting.

  Moon Dance? came Fang’s words a minute later. Moon Dance, please tell me that you didn’t make a deal with the devil. Especially a deal for that shithead ex-hubby of yours.

  Still, I didn’t respond.

  Moon Dance?

  Chapter Six

  I was alone in my office.

  My kids were asleep and it was hours before dawn and I was staring down at a mostly blank piece of paper. That there was a real devil out there, I now had no doubt. There were angels, and demons, and ghosts, and witches, and vampires, and werewolves, and magical tattoos, and God knows what else. Was it really a stretch to believe that there might be a devil, too?

  “Yes,” I said aloud. “Yes, it is.”

  Mostly because it went against everything I believed about the universe. I did not believe that a god of creation would punish his creations for choosing poorly, as I had been taught in Sunday School. Choose Christ, and go to Heaven. Choose anything else, and suffer in hell. I had rejected the notion at an early age, as it felt false to me.

  But the devil’s explanation made a kind of sense, too. And my own reason for existence had been explained to me similarly. With enough thought and belief behind anything, that thought or belief is summoned into existence. Well, there was certainly a lot of thought and belief in and around the devil. And hell, too, for that matter. And not just thought and belief, but a real fear, all of which gave the devil more power.

  That each hell was personal, and modified to fit the expectation and belief of the soul, was beyond my comprehension. If so, there were literally billions of hells out there.

  All managed by the devil and his minions.

  Too weird, I thought. Just too damn weird.

  No, I had not made a deal with the devil, but I had told him I would think about it, and that’s what I was doing now. Thinking hard. On top of my paper were the words Pros and Cons, with a line drawn down the middle. So far, there was nothing else on the page.

  The devil’s offer had been basic: two lives for one. Who the two lives were, I didn’t know. But the one was Danny’s soul. I could live with that part of the deal.

  I had asked what the catch was, and the devil had laughed, throwing back his head, as the dragon on his arm snorted out another lick of flame. When he was done laughing, he mentioned something about being unfairly blamed for one-sided deals, deals that always favored him, in the end. I asked if there was any truth in tha
t, and he had said maybe, and laughed again, which didn’t exactly ease my apprehension.

  I told him I also took checks, and gold bars, and he had laughed at that, too. The devil, apparently, only bartered. And had a sense of humor, to boot. Go figure.

  I had told the devil I would think about it. He had nodded, smiled far bigger than was necessary, and sauntered off to, you guessed it, a Harley-Davidson parked not too far away.

  And, like the original rebel that he was, the devil roared off without a helmet... and with reckless abandon.

  ***

  The pros and cons were fairly obvious.

  Pro: I saved two lives.

  Con: my bastard ex-husband would serve an apparently well-deserved and expected sojourn in his own private hell. Perhaps that was a pro in some people’s book, but I did believe in forgiveness, even if the demon bitch inside of me craved revenge. And she did, too. I felt it. I felt her objection deep within my mind.

  Pro: Danny wouldn’t actually suffer in hell for all eternity, which was actually a pro in my book. Hell, I did have two kids with the guy. But he would suffer just long enough to satisfy his own version of hell.

  Con: How could I trust the devil? How could I trust any of this? I needed, of course, a second opinion.

  I considered all whom I might call upon, and only one name rose to the surface.

  Tomorrow, I thought, when I looked at the time. Dawn was just a half hour away, and already I was feeling the weight of sleep creeping over me. Tomorrow, I will summon my guardian angel.

  My ex-guardian angel.

  Ishmael.

  Chapter Seven

  “You did say three-headed?” I asked.

  “I did, Sam. I did, and I really wish I hadn’t.”

  It was just before noon—and I wasn’t happy about that. Usually, I’m sleeping now. Usually, it takes two alarm clocks and a little luck to get me up around 1:30 p.m. But on this morning, my cell had rung incessantly. I didn’t always hear my cell ringing, but the caller had been persistent. The caller knew they had to be persistent to raise me from the dead. The caller had been, of course, Detective Sherbet.