Hellforged (3 page)
Authors: Nancy Holzner
Tags: #Fantasy, #Contemporary, #Fiction, #General, #Demonology
I pumped soap into my hand and spread it on his face. “Rub that in. It’ll help.”
I went over to the dispenser to grab some paper towels. As soon as my back was turned, Milsap yelped. There was a splash and some gurgling sounds. I spun around, paper towels in hand, to see Tina holding Milsap’s head down in the sink. Water poured out of the faucet and splashed over the basin’s rim onto the floor.
“Tina! No waterboarding the client!”
She grabbed Milsap’s hair with her left hand and wrenched him upward as she waved some papers, folded lengthwise, at me. Milsap gulped in air, trembling.
“It’s your contract. I
told
you he stole it.” She plunged his face back into the sink.
told
you he stole it.” She plunged his face back into the sink.
“Okay, you got it back. Stop.”
I went to the sink and unblocked the drain, then untangled Tina’s hand from Milsap’s hair. He coughed and gasped, and I waved Tina back a few steps.
“Damn it, he broke my nail with his head,” she said, inspecting her hand. “It won’t grow back, you know. I’ll have to get acrylic. Add it to his bill, Vicky.”
I ignored her. You can’t fight demons if you’re worried about breaking a nail.
Milsap braced both hands on the sink, then raised his dripping head. Hunched over, he peered into the mirror. He looked terrible. His bloodshot eyes blinked above bags you could pack groceries in, scratches crisscrossed his cheeks and neck, and a faint purple stain blotched his face like a birthmark. His wild Einstein mane, matted and streaked with purple, looked like a costume-shop fright wig someone had left out in the rain.
“What
was
that thing?” he rasped, fingering a purple strand of hair.
was
that thing?” he rasped, fingering a purple strand of hair.
“The Glitch? You know what it was. You hired me to kill it.”
“Professor Milsap doesn’t believe in demons.” Tina stepped forward, and Milsap cringed. “He doesn’t believe in me, either.”
“I do, I do!” He ducked like he wanted to hide under the sink. “Keep away from me! You’ve more than proved your existence.”
“Tina, grab me some paper towels,” I said. “Hang on, Professor. We’re almost done.”
Tina yanked hard enough on the towels to pull the dispenser off the wall. It landed with a crash, making Milsap duck again, his arms protecting his head. She stomped across the room and threw the towels at the professor. They fluttered around him like autumn leaves.
“He said everyone in Deadtown is either a psycho or a fraud.” Deadtown was Boston’s paranormal zone. All zombies, werewolves, vampires, and other assorted creatures of the night—including shapeshifters like me—were required by law to live there. Tina scooped up some paper towels and threw them at Milsap again. “Look at me! Does this look like something I’d fake?” She raised her arms to shoulder height, palms up.
Not what you’d call a pretty sight. Like all zombies, Tina had spongy, gray-green skin and bloodred eyes. But the rest of her—the lashes gummy with mascara, the Barbie fashion sense, the double ponytails sprouting from the top of her head—that was 100 percent Tina. Her point was obvious: She’d rather be a normal teenager than a monster. Who wouldn’t?
Milsap straightened; he’d decided it was time to regain some of his dignity. “I never called you a fraud, young lady.
Your
condition is the result of a virus. It’s been documented, even if we don’t yet understand it completely. What I said was that Boston’s so-called ‘werewolves’ and ‘vampires’ were either charlatans or deluded.” He turned to me, lifting his eyebrows with earnestness. “I am a man of science, Ms. Vaughn. It is
not possible
for a corpse to return from the grave and survive on human blood. It is
not possible
for a human being to transform into a wolf for three nights each month. The laws of physics, not to mention biology, proscribe it. Whatever psychological aberration these people suffer does not—
cannot
—affect their physical reality.”
Your
condition is the result of a virus. It’s been documented, even if we don’t yet understand it completely. What I said was that Boston’s so-called ‘werewolves’ and ‘vampires’ were either charlatans or deluded.” He turned to me, lifting his eyebrows with earnestness. “I am a man of science, Ms. Vaughn. It is
not possible
for a corpse to return from the grave and survive on human blood. It is
not possible
for a human being to transform into a wolf for three nights each month. The laws of physics, not to mention biology, proscribe it. Whatever psychological aberration these people suffer does not—
cannot
—affect their physical reality.”
Psychological aberration, huh? I was starting to feel like dunking the guy’s head myself. I’m not a werewolf, but I do change form. As one of the Cerddorion, a race of shapeshifting demon fighters that stretches all the way back to the Welsh goddess Ceridwen, I can change into any creature, three shifts per lunar cycle—the laws of physics and biology be damned. Maybe there were some things science hadn’t caught up with yet.
“You saw the demon,” I pointed out, bending over to gather some paper towels. I crumpled the towels into a ball and wet them at another sink.
“I don’t know what I saw. Some kind of animal, perhaps, that escaped from one of the biological research labs.” His expression turned defiant. “I do know, however, that demons do not exist. I opposed the trustees’ decision to hire you. I only volunteered to be your contact because I didn’t trust you. I fully expected you’d crash around the computer room for a while, causing untold damage, and then claim you’d driven out the ‘demon’ ”—his voice went all sarcastic with the word—“after you’d wreaked so much destruction that the so-called Glitch would be moot. So tonight I left this young lady in my office—”
“
Locked
me in, you mean.”
Locked
me in, you mean.”
“—and I went to the security surveillance station to see what you were up to. The officer was sprawled across the desk, and snoring. I woke him, and we both saw you disable the camera. We rushed to the lab before you could do worse.” His glare was just this side of murderous.
“Whoa, Professor.” I held out both hands in a calm-down gesture. “I didn’t disable anything. That was the Glitch. I sprayed the camera to pull it out of your surveillance system. It fried the camera when it came out.”
“That’s impossible.”
“You are so lame!” sputtered Tina. “That Glitch zapped you halfway into next week, it clawed your face all to hell, you’ve got Glitch spit gooping up your hair—and you keep saying there’s no such thing. How can you be so
stupid
?”
stupid
?”
Milsap gaped at her, his face a mixture of dumbfounded dropped-jaw and angry furrowed-forehead. As if never in his whole life had anyone called him stupid before.
“Whatever.” Tina dismissed him with a wave of her hand. “I saw a vending machine back there, Vicky. I’m getting something to eat.” She’d have slammed the door behind her if it wasn’t the self-closing kind.
Zombies are always hungry. Now that I thought of it, I’d never seen Tina go so long without a snack—or twelve. It’d be good for her to work off her emotions by chomping down twenty or thirty chocolate bars.
Milsap stared after her. “Next, you people will be telling me the library is haunted by the ghost of some undergraduate who perished in the stacks.”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Professor.” He blinked at me like a purple-spotted owl. “Everyone knows there’s no such thing as ghosts.”
He kept blinking, like he couldn’t tell whether I was kidding or not.
I approached him with the sodden mass of paper towels. “Let me get a look at you.” He leaned over the sink again, turning his head so the spit-covered side was toward me. I used the paper towels to scrub more of the gunk from his face. I can’t say I was all that gentle—I mean, the guy had tried to rip me off
and
have me arrested. He winced, but he didn’t complain. I inspected the slashes on his cheek where the Glitch had clawed him, checking the broken skin for specks of venom. I dabbed at a couple of spots with the paper towels, lifting the poison out, then rubbed in more soap. Milsap flinched as the soap stung him. Another rinse, and I checked again.
and
have me arrested. He winced, but he didn’t complain. I inspected the slashes on his cheek where the Glitch had clawed him, checking the broken skin for specks of venom. I dabbed at a couple of spots with the paper towels, lifting the poison out, then rubbed in more soap. Milsap flinched as the soap stung him. Another rinse, and I checked again.
“That’s the best we can do for now,” I said. “I cleaned the venom out of the cuts, but keep scrubbing your face until there’s no trace of purple left. It’ll take a day or two to get rid of it, but you should be okay as long as it’s completely gone in a week. It takes about that long for the poison to work.”
He straightened again and glanced in the mirror. “And my hair?”
“Wash it a hundred times, shave it off, whatever. You could even leave it in for a new look—if you can stand the smell. The stuff in your hair won’t hurt you. But get it off your skin.”
A tremendous crash shuddered the bathroom door. Tina must have been awfully hungry—it sounded like she’d torn the front off the vending machine and hurled it down the hallway. Well, why not? Like I said, zombies are always hungry. And she’d already wrecked her manicure.
2
“I DON’T SEE WHY YOU WOULDN’T LET ME DRIVE.” TINA SAT sideways in an upholstered chair in the lounge of the group home she shared with other zombified teens. A sofa and some chairs formed a semicircle in front of a thirty-two-inch TV mounted on the wall. Behind the chairs stood a battered Ping-Pong table, its net sagging. Bookshelves lined the far wall. An audio system took up more shelf space than any books did.
Tina lay back against one arm of the chair; her legs stuck out over the other, showing off her ripped-knee jeans. Her legs didn’t exactly dangle, thanks to her undead stiffness, but it was as close to lounging as a zombie could get. Empty chip bags and donut boxes littered the floor.
“Why didn’t I let you drive? Hmm. Well, for starters, you don’t have a driver’s license.”
“So? I know how. I almost had my learner’s permit when the stupid plague came along.”
“You were fifteen,” I reminded her. “You need to be sixteen to get a permit.”
She picked at her baby-pink nail polish. “I said
almost
. Anyway, who’d teach me? My dad promised he would, but he and Mom couldn’t dump me fast enough once they realized I was gonna be stuck this way forever.”
almost
. Anyway, who’d teach me? My dad promised he would, but he and Mom couldn’t dump me fast enough once they realized I was gonna be stuck this way forever.”
It was true. And I felt for the kid, really—but nobody besides me would ever drive that car. A 1964 E-type Jaguar in classic racing green, Dad had shipped it over from Wales when he and Mom moved to Massachusetts in the 1970s. Now, the Jag was all I had left of him—and Tina would not be wrapping it around a lamppost.
“Enough. Let’s talk about tonight’s job.” Tina was getting work-study credit at her high school for being my apprentice. “What did you know about Glitches going in?”
She swung around in the chair so she was sitting up straight—more or less. She tore open a bag of pretzels and stuffed handfuls into her mouth between sentences. “Anti-technology demons. Glitches are really old—like, older than cavemen. Back in the day, they didn’t bother the norms. They lived in storm clouds, eating electricity. But the Bronze Age dawned, and humans discovered that bronze weapons kill demons. Glitches declared war, attacking any new kind of technology.”
“Right.” I nodded. “That’s why I have to go after them with low-tech weapons like knives and axes. Anything more advanced, and they gum up the weapon itself. You saw what happened when the security guard fired his gun.”
“That was awesome.” She sent me a sidelong glance. “Are you mad at me for busting out of that professor’s office? I know you said I have to stay away from the job site, but—”
“It’s okay. This time.” Back in October, Tina had wreaked all kinds of havoc when she’d followed me into a client’s dream and accidentally torched his dreamscape. “You’re supposed to stay with the client, yes, but this client wouldn’t stay put. It was an unusual situation.”
We went over other info about Glitches—their habits, their habitat, the effects of Glitch venom on humans and other species.
“Would that stuff hurt zombies?”
“That’s a good question, Tina. I don’t know. Probably not.” Boston’s zombies, like their horror-movie counterparts, were hard to kill. Direct exposure to sunlight made their skin deteriorate—a “zombie sunburn” caused orange, pitted, permanently damaged skin—but it didn’t kill them. A zombie could fall off a building, walk through a raging fire, be riddled with bullets, chug a gallon of drain cleaner, and then go out for pizza. Zombies didn’t feel pain, but neither did they heal. A burned or bullet-riddled zombie would survive, but the flesh would remain charred, the holes always open. A couple of things were known to kill zombies, like cutting off the head or using special exploding bullets available only to cops. Maybe setting off a nuclear bomb under the bed of a sleeping zombie would do it, but as far as I knew no one had tried that yet.
“Okay,” I said. “Write a report on Glitches for your portfolio. We’re meeting tomorrow night at seven thirty before school, right?” She nodded. “Finish Russom’s chapter on water demons.”
Russom’s Demoniacal Taxonomy
was the textbook my aunt Mab had started me on. I’d trained with Mab every summer for seven years at her remote estate in north Wales. The book was every bit as dry as its title promised, but there was no better resource on demons.
Russom’s Demoniacal Taxonomy
was the textbook my aunt Mab had started me on. I’d trained with Mab every summer for seven years at her remote estate in north Wales. The book was every bit as dry as its title promised, but there was no better resource on demons.
I was pulling on my jacket when the door to the lounge flew open, banging against the wall. Through it flew Jenna, Tina’s zombie BFF. With long, straight, straw-colored hair, Jenna was a little shorter and a little chubbier than her friend. She wore jeans and an oversized black T-shirt that read HUG A ZOMBIE in white letters.
“Omigod! Turn on the TV—now.
Now!
” Jenna didn’t wait for Tina to move; she snatched the remote from the coffee table and pressed the Power button. She flipped through the channels until she found PNN—the Paranormal News Network—then fell onto the sofa. The station showed a press conference with the Council of Three: the vampire, werewolf, and zombie who (in name, anyway) were Deadtown’s elected leaders. The Council was just a trio of figureheads, as anyone could tell by the topic of their press conference. Hadrian, the vampire councilor, was announcing a resolution declaring February 2 Paranormal Appreciation Day.
Now!
” Jenna didn’t wait for Tina to move; she snatched the remote from the coffee table and pressed the Power button. She flipped through the channels until she found PNN—the Paranormal News Network—then fell onto the sofa. The station showed a press conference with the Council of Three: the vampire, werewolf, and zombie who (in name, anyway) were Deadtown’s elected leaders. The Council was just a trio of figureheads, as anyone could tell by the topic of their press conference. Hadrian, the vampire councilor, was announcing a resolution declaring February 2 Paranormal Appreciation Day.
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