Hell Is Coming (The Watcher's Series Book 1) (19 page)

“Frank Swanson. What an unexpected pleasure.”

Sitting in the booth was a relaxed looking dark-skinned man in his late twenties, some sort of ridiculous bright blue cocktail with a novelty straw in the shape of a naked woman in it on the table in front of him. The drink also had a small orange umbrella in it. I hoped he was being ironic drinking that. The guy’s dark hair was close shaved and he had unexpectedly soulful brown eyes for a demon that soon changed to bright yellow when I caught a brief glimpse of his true demon face. The demon’s eyes locked on to me as he smiled and I looked away, not in the mood for his flirtatious games.

“That’s a nice meat suit, Lucas,” Frank said, pausing by the table was sitting at. “What happened to the other one?”

“I got bored with that one,” Lucas said, his voice smooth and deep. “You know how it is, Frank.”

“Not really.”

Lucas turned his attention to me as if he couldn’t be bothered with Frank’s seriousness. “I see you’ve brought company.” He regarded me like you would an exotic creature in a zoo. “A baby Watcher no less. Nice.”

“Thanks,” I said. “That doesn’t make me self-conscious at all.”

Lucas smiled, almost impressed. “Feisty too.”

“My niece.” Frank sat down in the booth opposite Lucas. I sat in beside him. “Keep your demon eyes to yourself, Lucas.”

“But she’s perfection.” Lucas stared at me like he wanted to dive right in. “How can I keep my eyes off such a beautiful creature?” His appraisal of me was a bit over the top, but he somehow got away with being so gregarious. I put it down to being a club owner and spending most of his time with beautiful women, telling them what they wanted to hear. “And what is your name?”

“Leia,” I said, looking him in the eye, trying to seem like I wasn’t affected  by his presence, though I was for some reason, which surprised me. I was there on business. It didn’t seem right to be checking him out in that way. He was a demon after all. The fact that I found him attractive disturbed me, but I couldn’t help it. There was something about him. He intrigued me. Maybe because I sensed there was more to him underneath the boisterous club owner façade. Attraction is attraction anyway. Who knows why some people reel us in and others don’t. The fact that he was a demon made it even more disturbing. I should have hated the guy on sight, given that his brethren had kidnapped my brother. Lucas didn’t appear to have the air of evil menace possessed by all the other demons I’d met so far. That was refreshing to say the least, and it made me wonder if not all demons were bad.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Leia.” He extended his arm towards me. “I’m Lucas.”

I hesitated a second then shook his hand. A strange tingling sensation prickled my skin and I couldn’t believe I actually blushed.

How embarrassing
.

“Behave, Lucas,” Frank said and Lucas let go of my hand.

“You have a beautiful niece, Frank.”

“I didn’t come here so you could leer over my niece. I need information.”

“And what makes you think I have information to give?” Lucas had his gaze fixed on Frank now.

“That’s what I’m here to find out. You still owe me, don’t forget.”

Lucas stared at Frank for a moment like he was going to take offense at that. Frank held his gaze until Lucas smiled. “Unfortunately, I do.” He looked at me. “Did Frank tell you why I owe him, Leia?”

I shook my head and looked at Frank. He seemed uncomfortable now, but then Frank always did when people were around. “She doesn’t need to know that,” he said.

“I think she does, Frank,” Lucas said. “Your niece here should know what a stand-up guy her uncle is, right?” He looked at me as if for confirmation. I shrugged noncommittally.

“Okay, then.” Lucas was evidently savouring the moment. I heard Frank sigh beside me. “I was having a little trouble a while back with a faction of demons who were causing havoc in the Perv District here. This faction wanted all the business for themselves and they were killing demons and humans alike to get what they wanted. They posed a real threat to my various businesses.” He stopped to smile at me. “I’m just a business man. I don’t like violence—”

“You’re a demon,” I said interrupting, taking mild enjoyment from pointing that out.

Lucas made a show of being offended. “We’re not all violent beasts; some of us actually enjoy being here on earth. It has its own pleasures.” He gave me a knowing smile. I couldn’t help smiling back, but I stopped when I saw the look on Frank’s face.

“Just finish the story,” Frank said. “So we can get down to business.”

“Alright, Frank,” Lucas said regarding me once more. “Your uncle isn’t known for his patience.”

I glanced at Frank who shook his head. “Moving along,” he said proving Lucas’s point.

“Told you,” Lucas said. “Anyway, I’m a businessman. Violence just leaves a sour taste in my mouth. I saw enough of it in Hell to last me an eternity. It gets old, you know what I’m saying? So I call Frank, ‘cause he owes me one for information I provided to him. I always call on my debts, Leia, you’ll learn that about me. So I explain the situation to Frank and Frank says he’ll ‘sort it out,’ which he did.”

“What did he do?” I asked, more to move him along than out of any interest I had in the story he was telling. Knowing Frank, I knew where the story was going.

“What he does best,” Lucas said. “He tracked down the leaders of the faction and he killed them, all twelve of them. But you know what he did then?” He paused, obviously waiting for my response.

“Go on.”

Please just hurry up
.

“Well, he only cut their heads off and put them on spikes right in the centre of the Perv District where everyone could see.” He started laughing. “People were
freaked
, man, you remember, Frank?”

“I remember,” Frank said tight-lipped.

“The cops thought there was some mad serial killer on the prowl and all the while most of Mercy City was scared shitless because they thought their heads where going to end up on a spike. The religious nuts saw it as some kind of divine retribution, like a warning from God not to get involved in the sex trade or that’s what happens, you lose your head.” He made a cutting motion with his hand across his neck. “And the demons, they knew to whom those heads belonged. That faction that was causing all the trouble, they soon moved on somewhere else. They got the message right, Frank?”

“They did,” Frank said, clearly humouring Lucas.

“So, Leia,” Lucas said leaning towards me, fixing me with his smouldering dark eyes. “What do you think of your uncle now, huh?”

I shrugged, not really knowing what to say. “I guess he did what he had to do.”

Lucas’s eyes narrowed. “This one will go far, Frank.”

“Alright, Lucas, you’ve had your fun,” Frank said. “We need to talk
now
!”

“Always wanting to get straight to business, a man after my own heart. So shoot, what do you need to know?”

“I take it you’ve heard about the Nephilim kids going missing?”

“Yes, I may have heard something about that.”

“You have any idea what’s going on there, you know who’s taking them?”

Lucas looked uncomfortable for the first time since we got there. I could tell he knew something but was reluctant to say what. “My brother was taken,” I said.

“Your brother?” Lucas said. “So that’s the real reason you’re here, is it? To find your brother?”

I nodded. “Yes.”

Lucas looked at me as if deciding whether or not to give up what he knew. “This one goes above my pay grade if you know what I mean.”

“You’re not exactly a minor demon, Lucas,” Frank said. “Are you saying that whoever is doing this is high up? Higher than you even?”

“A lot higher.” Lucas looked around the club. “I don’t even feel comfortable talking about this.”

“Well, tough. You owe me, Lucas. Spit it out, tell us what you know.”

Lucas looked pained for a moment. When he spoke, he spoke in a low and serious voice, his previous swagger all but gone. He looked fearful, which I didn’t think was possible for a demon.   “I don’t know much, I’ve just heard a few things is all. There’s a high-level demon—and I mean, right up there—taking Nephilim kids because he’s using them to fulfil some sort of plan.”

I didn’t like the sound of that. “Using them for what?”

“From what I hear, he’s building an army,” Lucas said. “Though I don’t know what for.”

“An army?” said Frank. “But the kids are Nephilim.”

“I know, but he’s turning them.”

“Turning them?” I said uneasily.

“Demonizing them.” His eyes bored into me as he said it.

I looked helplessly at Frank then back to Lucas. “You’re saying my brother is being turned into a demon?”

“He probably is one already.”

“That can’t be true.” I shook my head in disbelief.

“How reliable is this information?” Frank asked.

“You know me,” Lucas said. “When have I ever lied to you?”

Frank stared at Lucas and then looked at me. “We don’t know anything for sure, don’t start panicking yet.”

“That’s easy for you to say, it isn’t your brother being turned into a demon.”

“You’re right.” His voice was deliberately calm. “I’m just saying we don’t know for sure yet, that’s all.” He looked at Lucas. “Who’s supposed to be doing this? You have a name?”

Lucas thought for a long time. “I’m taking a big risk here man, giving you a name,” he said. “The word is out there that if anybody even speaks it they’ll pay dearly.”

“Hey, I almost got killed for you. Tell me.”

“Alright, but you didn’t hear any of this from me, got it?”

“I got it, now speak.”

“The demon’s name is Abigor,” he said in a hushed tone of voice. “He’s the worst of the worst and not to be messed with.”

This just keeps getting better
.

I was never going to get Josh back and not only that, he was now condemned to live as a demon so he could serve in some demon army. It was all I could do to hold back my tears as I sat stiff and silent at the table.

“Where can we find this Abigor?” Frank asked.

“That I can’t help you with,” Lucas said. “Abigor is only found when he wants to be found. And listen,” he leaned in towards Frank, “I know Abigor from my time in Hell. He was feared even down there. I wouldn’t advise going up against him unless you want to die a horrible death.”

I’d heard enough at that point. I stood up and bolted away from the table, ignoring Frank’s pleas to come back. I felt sick so I burst through the front doors of the club, the brightness from outside causing me to squint. I knelt down under the canopy above the doors, my chest tight, on the verge of hyperventilating.

Frank ran out a moment later. “Hey,” he said, putting a hand on my back that I immediately brushed off.

“Leave it,” I said. “Just leave me alone alright, Frank?”

Frank said nothing for a moment. “I’ll be in the car when you’re ready.” He walked away and sat in the car. I stayed crouched over under the canopy of the club for another few minutes before I was able to get up and walk to the car. Frank said nothing when I got in. He started the car and drove.

“I need you to take me somewhere,” I said after a while.

“Where?” he asked frowning.

“To pick up Kasey’s body.”

In between crying, disgust filled me as I laid eyes on Kasey’s dead body. Her corpse lay on the filthy floor in the room where Frank had killed her days before, or rather, where he had killed the demon. I had to keep reminding myself that the demon killed Kasey and not Frank. Her eyes were  open and her face was ashen,  frozen in shock. She’d been dead for almost three days, enough time for the rats in the building to gnaw pieces of flesh from her dead body.

Frank wrapped Kasey’s body in a blanket he got from the car, then we carried her to the back of the building where the car was parked and no one would see us. We put the body in the trunk and drove back to the cabin. Once there, Frank got hold of two shovels and we carried Kasey’s body to the edge of the forest at the back of the cabin.

“Thanks for your help,” I said. “I can do the rest alone.”

Frank nodded and walked back to the cabin.

Choosing a small clearing just inside the forest perimeter—not far from where Frank buried Bane—I started digging with the shovel. The ground was soft, but even so, it took me a long while to dig a hole that would be deep enough. When I’d finished digging I threw the shovel down and sat beside Kasey’s body, which was still wrapped up in the blanket. Only her head was visible. I stared down at her gray face, trying to ignore the holes in her cheeks left there by the rats.

Kasey had always been a good friend to me. Next to Josh, she was the only person who understood me, mainly because I let her in, because I trusted her.

Kasey’s parents both died in a car crash when she was eight years old, so she could understand how losing my own parents could affect me. We had that in common and that’s what initially bonded us when I first met her in high school, that and the fact that we were both in foster care, in homes that we hated. The only difference was that Kasey got the courage to hit the streets when she was fifteen, unable to take the abuse from cruel foster parents anymore.

When she started living on the streets, she developed a front, an attitude that helped her cope with the rough and unforgiving environment she was trying to survive in. She was smart, so she quickly adapted to that life.

We continued to hang out together even after she lived on her own.. She told me she didn’t feel alone on the streets because she knew I would always be there for her if she needed me, which I was. Even the time some asshole dealer that she owed tried to pimp her out to pay the debt, I had Josh step in and he put the dealer in hospital. Then there was the time she got really sick during a particularly cold winter in Mercy City. I somehow found the money to put her up in a hotel room for a week until she got better, bringing her food and medicine everyday, staying by her side. It wasn’t a chore because I knew she would have done the same for me if she could. People didn’t see that side of Kasey; they didn’t see the love in her. All they saw was the skanky street kid with too much attitude.