Reaper: The Demontouched Saga (Book 3) (8 page)

Tweedle Dum stops us next to a windowless white door. I would have assumed it was the manager’s office before I saw the tag. From what I remember of food service as a teenager, there are two types of restaurant managers. The first type is out on the floor, helping out wherever he can. This is the guy who isn’t afraid to refill a customer’s drink or even bus down a table if it’s needed.

I’d put good money on this guy being in the other camp. The type that sits back in the office all night, letting the place sink or swim without bothering to lift a finger. If you were to ask him what he did all day, he would go on and on about how much paperwork he had to get done. If it’s the night shift, he will invariably bitch about how little the day shift manager does as he kicks back and talks on the phone all night.

Tweedle Dum knocks on the door three times before taking a few steps back. My jaw drops when another clone greets us at the door. I don’t know what is more amazing, seven guys in one place that all look the same, or how I called that this guy would be on the phone. He holds up a finger and goes back to his ‘paperwork.’

“The manager will be with you shortly,” Tweedle says, joining the group of clones standing behind us. If I had to guess, they are here to keep us from running back into the restaurant while the cook and dishwasher are watching the truck entrance.

It’s all the same to me. I’m tired of running.

“You seem to be full of good ideas lately,” Nal says cracking his knuckles. I don’t know what he plans to do in a fist fight against a demon, but I doubt he would last two minutes against any member of the Dum crew.

“If you think you can do any better, I’m open to suggestions,” I say. I know what he is up to, and I’m not sure I like it. He is hoping that they will let down their guard when they think we are going to fight each other. From there we take out as many as we can before they have a chance to react. If Tweedle’s eyes are any indication, this plan doesn’t stand a chance.

Nal walks up and pushes my chest, squaring off facing the chef’s station. “I’m tired of you dragging us into your bullshit.”

I turn around to face him. Even if I know it won’t work, I have to help him sell it. If there is even a chance we can get out of here, I’m game.

On a prep table against the wall, I see a set of knives in a wooden holder. More than enough for me to take the crew down, but I doubt I would have enough time to follow up the act with my knife to finish them all off for good.

Still. The last thing I want is to be tied up and left to rot again.

Or worse.

My mind immediately replays the events in the room when Rick killed Zeke with one key difference. Instead of Zeke being on the bed tied up, it’s Sara. I can see him stabbing her in the chest with Tamiel’s blade until the life leaves her eyes. Then I’m forced to stand there and watch as her soul gets sucked into the orb.

If we are going to do this, we need to move now. I shove Nal back a bit harder than he pushed me. The appearance of anger is the most critical aspect of this act. If I don’t look pissed off enough, they may come in and break us up. That game ends with us captured.

Before Nal can retaliate with a wild right hook that will miss me by inches, Sara steps in between us facing me. She places her hand on my arm and looks me in the eye.

“I got this,” she says.

I feel like I just got hit with Nal’s haymaker. In fact, I wish he had. What would compel her to get involved at this point, and why would she even say something like that. Then I see it.

Her eyes slowly change from her natural light blue to a yellow-orange. Either she picked up a new trick while I was gone, or she has something she should have left back with Uriel.

Before I can stop her, her eyes turn a shade of reddish-orange. She looks back at Tweedle Dumb and within seconds his suit is one large fireball. He drops to the ground, screaming in horror as the flames consume his flesh. The smell coming off his body may be wicked, but Sara’s grin is worse.

Almost… dark.

In the back I notice the dishwasher making a run for the fire extinguisher on the back wall. I drop to one knee and pull my knife out of my shoe and fling it right at the clone, dropping him a good five feet from his mark.

For a moment, Nal looks like he is about to join the fun, but takes a few steps back from the burning body. If I had to put money on it, either the smell of Tweedle is making him sick or he hasn’t watched a man burn before. It may not be high on my list of things I like, but this isn’t the first time I’ve seen it.

I walk over towards the chef, who is trying to hide behind the hotplate. Trying not to laugh as he holds up a couple plates to protect his head, I pull the knife from the dishwasher back to my hand.

From my view I can see a narrow space that I could probably get my knife through, but if it touches anything it might lose the velocity it needs to pierce his heart or lungs. Before I jump over the counter an idea crosses my mind.

I put everything I have into a push against the hotplate. While everything in here is nice and modern, everything also happens to be pure metal. The Tweedle Clan here probably only heard about my skills with a knife. The fact that the chef thinks he is safe behind the counter tells me that someone didn’t do their research.

I’m fine with that. It makes my job a lot easier.

Not long after the grinding sound of metal on tile fills my ears, Chef Tweedle drops the plate and starts pushing against the counter. I can definitely feel the extra resistance, but he doesn’t have enough strength to even slow it down.

The chef starts begging for his life once I have his legs pinned between the hotplate and the grill. Unfortunately for him, I ran out of fucks to give late last night.

He must sense what I’m about to do because I watch him pick up the plates and use them to cover his head and his heart. They won’t stop the knife if I send it at him, but once again there is no guarantee of enough penetration to kill. It isn’t enough to cut a demon with the knife, it is important that I puncture a vital organ in order for it to work. Typically that means I need to pierce the brain or the heart. Lungs and liver can be decent targets too, but nicking the intestines is generally a waste of time.

I could still rush up and stab him in the heart and get it over with, but it would be hard to maintain my push on the counter at the same time. I may have him pinned now, but I can’t be sure he wont break free if I release the pressure any. So I need a plan B, which comes the second I look at the hotplate.

It’s impossible for me to know who put it together, but they weren’t the brightest bulb in the pack. Unless they attached the heat lamps another way, they were just left sitting on the counter. It may not have made a huge difference in how the kitchen operates, but it’s all I need today. I probe the heat lamp stand with a small push, smiling as I move it a fraction of an inch.

The chef gives me a puzzled look. If I had to guess, he is deciding if he wants to hold the plates over his vital organs, or if he wants to stop me from pushing the lamps over. I don’t give him long to make his choice.

I split my push between the lamps and the hotplate, the latter getting most of my attention. The chef drops his plates about the same time I hear the sound of his flesh sizzling from the heat radiating from the bulbs.

One thing that just puzzles me about demons is their aversion to fire. Sure, some like Israfil were able to create and control it as a talent, but most of them fear it. I just find that fear funny when they have all lived in it at some point.

I slowly start to put more and more power into the heat lamp stand and less into the counter, releasing the latter once I have him firmly pinned to the grill. Something tells me that Chef Tweedle wasn’t supposed to be on the menu tonight if at all.

The chef is screaming and pleading for his life up to the moment I release him from his torment with the blade of my knife. If I knew that Nal could put up with the smell I might just leave him to burn, but I use my better judgment and pull the body off the grill. I clean the blade on his chef jacket, turning around to help finish off the clan.

My jaw drops to the ground when I see the clan piled up in a smoldering heap on the floor. “You did all of this?” I say, looking at Sara.

She starts filing her nails. “I’ve been waiting on you for the last five minutes.”

I don’t know how she learned to control these powers, but I do know she is just showing off. It is hard to be mad with someone who could actually kill a demon. Especially someone that isn’t an angel.

“How you holding up, Nal?” I ask when I notice his head in the trash. He gives me a thumbs up symbol before I hear the sound of him losing his lobster tail dinner.

“The manager is still inside,” Sara says, pointing at the door.

I nod. “I won’t ask how you got the necklace back, but I need to know how much control do you have over it?”

She creates a small ball of flame and sends it floating through the room. “I have a little.”

A little? Compared to my ability with metal, she is a damn master. We have one demon left, and we need to get some answers. I pull out a drawing and show it to her. “Think you can create this?”

- 12 -

I give the office door three solid knocks, trying to mimic the cadence that Tweedle Dum used earlier. It takes about ten seconds, but the manager eventually opens the door and pokes out his index finger.

“Now!” I say.

A circle of flame forms below the managers feet, the rest of the pentagram forms a second later. Ancient runes begin to take shape along the outer edge of the circle. The manager tries to escape but hits an invisible barrier when the last rune is completed.

“Devil’s trap,” I say. “Zeke taught me how to make one.” Was an odd time to finally use one, but that is a story for a different day.

Truth is, unless you have someone who can create one out of thin air like Sara just did, they take time to prepare. Unless you know for sure that you will be able to trap one, they always seem like a waste of time. Especially when I can just launch my knife at them and be done with it.

The only other problem I see with them is they only work a certain amount of times. I always felt that the others would end up being more cautious after they learned you knew how to make them. Considering there are only so many ways to hide one, I was waiting for the right moment.

I walk past him and grab his chair. It is one of those heavily cushioned office chairs that I always wanted when I was an accountant. I always heard the same spiel about how the company couldn’t afford them every time I asked, yet they were ok with buying us the cheap ones every few years once they inevitably started breaking. This one is going home with me, Manager Dum isn’t going to be needing it for much longer.

“I have a few questions for you. Depending on how you answer will tell me if you live or die after our conversation,” I say.

He starts uttering something that I can’t make out. Either he is cussing me out in Spanish, or he is doing it in some demonic language. Times like this make me wish I paid attention in Spanish class. It may have had something to do with getting the ugly teacher because I just didn’t give a shit enough to stay awake. I did manage to pass the class though. I didn’t want to have her for another year.

After a minute of his mumbling, I’ve had enough. I reach my hand in the circle and stab him in the foot with my knife. While the knife will only kill a demon if it punctures a vital organ, it sill inflicts considerable pain on them. While I am seemingly immune to the effects of a devil’s trap, I can tell you how bad the knife hurts. I’d say I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy, but as you know that isn’t true.

“English, motherfucker. Use it or I turn your leg into a totem pole.”

He says a few more choice words that I can’t make out before telling me that he doesn’t know anything.

“Let’s make this a game, then. What do you say?” I look at him sideways. I’m not really waiting on a response so much as to pause for a moment to let him think. “If I hear you say you don’t know anything, I cut you. If you lie to me, I cut you. If you threaten me in Demonic again, I cut you. We square?”

He just nods. I guess he said his peace already.

“Don’t give me an excuse to amend the rules to me being offended by your presence.” I take a seat in my new office chair and place the knife on my lap. “First question, where is Rick?”

“Rick?” he asks. Panic fills his eyes when I pick up the knife. “What does he look like, perhaps we know him by a different name?”

I give him a general description, making sure to avoid the part where he might still have my sword. The last thing I want to do is show him that I’ve even had a moment of weakness.

“He was here earlier, but he left not long before you got here,” he says.

“Where did he go?”

He looks down at my hands that are fiddling with the knife. If he tried to avoid answering the first question, he is going to have issues with that. I figure I may not have to repeat myself if I move it around a bit.

He closes his eyes for a few moments before answering. “He is at the old mall close to the airport.”

“I thought they closed that place down a long time ago.”

“They did, but they didn’t destroy it all,” he says.

I study his eyes for a moment, unsure how he got that answer. His voice sounded sure of it though. There wasn’t even a moment of hesitation.

“Think we can trust him?” Nal asks, apparently over his rapid-onset nausea.

“I don’t see what choice we really have. If he says Rick is there, we need to check it out.” I lean forward in the chair. “Tell me everything about his hideout.”

We spend the next fifteen minutes going over everything he gives us, from his horrible drawing of the layout to how many people he keeps where. It is apparent that either this guy has spent quite a bit of time at this compound or he is a pretty good bullshitter. Whatever the case, this is the best intelligence we are going to get.