April looked at the caged demon. Its attitude had changed. It now stared back at her with something approaching awe, as if she was the creature that couldn’t possibly exist.
She nodded and said, “I’ll stay.”
Talbot hugged her and smiled. “That’s great,” he said. “If you want to rest, we’ll have a room made up for you—”
“Let’s start with the training,” April said.
“Really? Well, okay, great,” Talbot said. “First we’re going to open your eyes to the hidden things in the world, so that you can see more than just ghosts.”
“Are you my teacher?” April asked.
“No, he is,” Talbot said.
Talbot pointed at Haagenti.
The demon smiled.
Chapter Nine
The demon Haagenti said the Battle of Normandy was overrated. “Lots of guys killing other guys in vaguely different uniforms gets old after a while, I don’t care what they say,” the demon ranted. “But I loved Saving Private Ryan.”
Haagenti also told April about the meaning of life, which he said was to find a meaning to your life. “Simple enough,” he added with a shrug.
He said that God had lost His voice somewhere along the way and the Devil was doing his best to fill in the gaps of silence.
Haagenti said that videogames, movies, and pop culture in general were not the cause for kids killing each other, but rather that it was natural for kids to be cruel. “Humans are born evil,” he said, “it’s only after years of training them with a big enough stick do they learn to be good.”
Then Haagenti claimed that he knew the demon that had killed the dinosaurs. “Great guy, but he gets a little carried away sometimes.”
At last the actual lesson began and Haagenti told April about what demons are, how they hid in plain sight, and the reason they were here.
“Most of them are fallen angels, such as I,” Haagenti said. “Some lesser demons were created by Satan to serve his will. They’re slaves, easily created and just as easily wiped out when their job is done. In Hell the demons run the show.” He picked his teeth with a knife. “We keep the human souls in labor camps if they’re good, and we kill them repeatedly in the pits if they’re bad. I didn’t make things worse for the humans, but I can’t say that I ever stepped up to defend any of them either. You could say that I worked beside it all, acting something like Hell’s National Treasurer.” He proudly ran his hands over his golden armor.
“What use is gold in Hell?” April asked.
Haagenti snorted. “The demons know there’s no worth to gold,” he said, “but it gives the pathetic humans something to strive for, I suppose. Gold is the carrot at the end of the stick. Work hard, get the gold prize, and we’ll kill your friends instead of killing you.”
“Barbaric,” April said.
“It’s Hell, human. It’s not supposed to be fun. Even I didn’t like it there.”
“Why do demons come to walk among us?” April asked. She was seated outside of the demon’s cell in an uncomfortable folding chair, feeling a bit too much like Clarice Starling.
“We all need a little vacation sometimes.”
April glared at the monster behind the glass, all the while feeling terrified that she had the bravery to even look at him at all.
Haagenti nodded. “Yes, sometimes it’s more than that,” he said. “Mischief, evil, spreading the word of Satan, whatever; there’s a lot of bad eggs in Hell.”
“I’m not surprised.”
“The Devil’s minions mean to break the spirits of the living one soul at a time. But you humans are so sentimental. You make our work easy. If we break one person we break that person’s family, too. Doubt spreads among you like a virus. The more you doubt, the more powerful we become. We were the first discovered disease but your doctors have spent centuries trying to discredit our existence. We are here among you now and our numbers are multiplying.”
“How can we stop it?” April asked.
Haagenti sneered at her with a crocodile’s smile. “You can’t stop a cancer by wishing it away, little woman. But just look at you.” His smile widened, revealing row after row of teeth. “An hour ago you were looking for the door and now you’re wondering how to combat the legions of darkness.”
“You’ve opened my eyes,” April said.
“I can open other parts, too.” He licked his bumpy lips and blew her a kiss.
“Don’t be ugly.”
“I was born ugly, now I’m just being uncivilized.”
“Well, stop.”
“If you wish.”
“Talbot said you’re the one demon everyone can see. How can I learn to see the others?”
Haagenti looked away from her. He got up and moved to the back of his cell, where he slouched and started picking at his toes.
“You’ve told me a lot but you haven’t taught me anything,” April said. She got up from her chair and stood close to the glass. “Tell me what I need to know.”
“I despise this lesson,” Haagenti said with his back to her.
“Why?”
“My curse is that I am abiding to all curious minds,” Haagenti said. “Ask me your questions and I will reveal to you all that I know, but I do not do it willingly. You think I enjoy telling you people how to find my brothers so that you may slay them?” He snorted. “I am not a rat by choice but it is my character.”
“Are you treated so badly in return for your information?”
“They cage me,” Haagenti said and slammed a fist into the glass. “But yes, I suppose it could be worse. If they were in my domain, I would treat them far worse than they have treated me. And the human Jameson Talbot is kind enough to give me extra chickens when I ask.”
“Teach me what you know and I’ll leave you be.”
“Hmmph.” Haagenti turned to face her once more. “To see a demon is to know that they exist and wish they didn’t. They turn up, like bad pennies and the vile, human pimple growths. From here on it’s easy. We exist and you wish it could be any other way. The more you wish it, the more visible we make ourselves.”
“What stops millions of the faithful from seeing them every day?”
“That’s faith, not certainty—no matter how much those people would like to argue otherwise. You have certainty, Lady April. It will now haunt you to your dying day.”
“There must be more,” April said.
“There’s always more. . .”
Chapter Ten
The FBI agents nodded respectfully to the men in gray suits and then cleared out of the room. Lights in nearby offices went dark, Ward B of the insane asylum grew quiet, and Lime was alone with his new visitors.
Lime was chained to a chair in a doctor’s office. X-rays of the broken ribs he’d given a nurse still clung to the wall, backlit and displaying his good work for anyone who cared to look. It was definitely art, he decided, and far better than the puked up paint on the other walls, showing sailboats and sunflowers, the stuff comas are made of.
His new visitors talked amongst themselves outside the open office door before entering.
One of them was an old, black priest with snow white hair. His buddy was a big bruiser and looked too serious to breathe. Leading them was a confident man of about forty years, with good breeding and a wonderfully expensive looking haircut.
They entered Lime’s room one at a time, surrounding him in a half-circle.
The rich man spoke. He had a French accent.
“My name is Jean-Paul Perrot. Do you know me?”
Lime’s brain worked differently now, accessing memories that were not his own. He questioned if he spoke with his true voice anymore or if it was someone else working his tongue. He worried that none of these questions caused any semblance of concern.
“I killed your ancestors,” Lime said. His nostrils flared. “I still smell their blood underneath my fingernails some days. They smell like cowardice, not atypical for the French, I think, but noteworthy nonetheless.”
Perrot the Frenchman took a seat opposite Lime and the priest stepped up with a crucifix aimed at Lime’s heart.
“What is your name?” the priest asked.
“You’ll put someone’s eye out with that thing,” Lime said.
The priest said, “Speak your name, foul spirit.”
Lime rolled his eyes. “Bored now.”
The priest pressed the crucifix between Lime’s eyes and thumped his chest with the Bible, as if expecting to use it as a defibrillator.
“I command you, demon, to exit this pitiful man’s soul and—”
Lime spat a glob of red paste into the priest’s face.
The priest fell backwards as the glob grew outwards, enveloping his face and choking him.
Perrot and the bruiser rushed to help the priest. They put their fingers into the red goo and tried to pry it off but to no avail.
The priest was suffocating. He needed to breathe despite the glop attached to his face—and so breathe he did.
He breathed in and sucked the red slime inside him in one big slurp.
Perrot and the muscle man stepped back as the priest sat up, his eyes now aglow with new, vibrant life.
Lime laughed as the priest started to pull his own hair out in big, bloody clumps.
“What’d you do to him?” the burly man asked.
“I’m just spreading the good word,” Lime said. “If he can’t take it, he can’t take it.”
The big man got down next to the priest and said, “Father, it’s going to be okay. They got good doctors here and they can help you. I’ll call Father Maguire and he can help, too.”
The priest smiled at his friend and sank his teeth into the man’s left eye.
The man screamed and tried to fight the priest off, but despite his larger size, he was quickly overwhelmed. The priest got on top of him and chewed a bloody path from his eye down to his throat.
Blood sprayed like a geyser. The priest stopped chewing long enough to bathe in it.
Perrot drew a revolver and put a hole through the priest’s head.
Lime admired the brains on the wall but still thought his x-ray art was superior.
Perrot put the gun to Lime’s forehead. Lime could feel his skin sizzling beneath the hot metal.
“They were good men,” Perrot said.
Lime lowered his head and stared upwards at Perrot with a sickly grin.
“You’re no ordinary demon,” Perrot said. He nodded to the priest. “No regular demon can spread their essence while still possessing the original host.”
“I am not ordinary. I am the King,” Lime said.
“Lucifer.”
“I’ve so many names, it’s tough to keep track.”
Perrot anxiously gripped the pistol in his hand. “You’re a liar. What use would Lucifer have for an ordinary college student?”
“Lime is not ordinary either.”
“His name?”
“Ronald Lime. He was going to change the world for the better with inventions both grand and impossible to imagine—but not anymore.” The smile grew wider, revealing more of the red substance, stuck like festering plaque between his teeth.
“I work with the Gatekeepers,” Perrot said.
“Did you think I didn’t know that? I knew that. It makes little difference what resources you have, because I have Lime and I’m not letting him go.”
“We have the very best exorcists—”
“And yet, I’m not afraid,” Lime said.
The chains that held him melted away, turning into boiling, hot metal on the floor. Lime stood up from his chair, the gun barrel still pressed to his head, and glared at Perrot with eyes that slowly turned to flame.
Lime asked, “Are you afraid?”
“Yes.”
Lime nodded. “That’s a good place to start.”
“I can’t let you go,” Perrot said.
Lime’s eyes pulsed with a flash of fire, momentarily blinding Perrot. He used the distraction to snatch the gun from Perrot’s hands and throw it into the disposal unit for used needles.
Lime said, “Try to stop me.”
Perrot came at him with surprising intensity. Trained strikes flew past Lime’s head and then Perrot switched to leg attacks.
Lime played with him for a while to avoid ruining the man’s increasingly fragile confidence.
When Perrot landed a knee to Lime’s stomach, the Devil decided that playtime was over.
Lime grabbed Perrot about the throat and threw him with such power that Perrot broke through the locked door.
Lime stepped over Perrot’s unconscious body and started searching his pockets. He came up with three forms of currency, a driver’s license, and most importantly, a home address.
For a fleeting moment Lime considered passing his gift onto Perrot, but decided it was best that Perrot suffer the deaths of his loved ones with his mind intact.
Chapter Eleven
The demon Haagenti was in the middle of telling April about the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse when he was interrupted by Talbot.
“We have to go,” Talbot said.
“We were talking,” Haagenti said and released a low growl.
“You’ve been talking for seven hours,” Talbot said.
April checked her watch. Talbot was right, somehow seven hours had passed by in a blur. Her eyes were tired but her mind was racing with the new information that kept pouring in. She didn’t want to go yet.
“We’re not done here,” April said. She looked at the caged monster for verification. “The lesson’s not over yet, right?”
“The little woman is right,” Haagenti said, nodding his great horned head. “Even if I give her only the most important information, the lesson shall continue for eight more days.”
Talbot looked at April and said, “Do you plan to stay with us?”
April took a deep breath. “I can’t imagine leaving, knowing what I know now.”
“Good,” Talbot said. “If you’re with us, you have certain responsibilities. It’s time for your first field mission.”
Haagenti stood up quickly and pressed his face to the Plexiglas. “No,” he said, using an unfamiliar tone. It set the guards on edge, who reached instinctively for their weapons. Haagenti said, “Lady April is not ready yet. She needs more study.”
April got up from her chair nervously. “What’s going to happen?”
“It’ll be fine,” Talbot said. “It’ll be good training.”
“She must stay,” Haagenti said.
“If I’m going, I want you to go with me,” Talbot said, putting a reassuring hand on April’s shoulder.
“Do I have a choice?” April asked.
“You always have a choice,” Talbot said.
Haagenti barked a mocking laugh and Talbot glared at him from beyond the glass.
April nodded, trying to summon the same courage she found when she started her conversation with the demon.
“I’ll go with you,” she said, “but I want to know where we’re going.”
Talbot said, “France.”
Chapter Twelve
Lime killed one man in the restroom at Paris’ Charles de Gaulle Aiport and possessed two women on the flight. It was fun, but if he had too much of it he was bound to get caught.
He left the French businessman with his decapitated head in the toilet. He didn’t bother locking the stall.
Lime brazenly washed blood from his hands and fixed his hair. Nobody noticed a thing. He left the restroom seconds before the first screams.
He hailed a taxi and ordered the driver to take him to Perrot Manor, some two hours away. Lime enjoyed a pleasurable conversation with the driver, all the while speaking excellent French, a language he did not know just one week before.
When the taxi pulled up outside the gate to Perrot Manor, Lime tipped him well and said farewell.
Before letting Lime walk away, the driver said to him, “I’m sorry, I’ve been trying to figure it ou
t this whole time and I just can’t. Do I know you from somewhere?”
Lime smiled and said, “Everyone knows me.”
The taxi drove off and Lime admired the great mansion beyond the steel gate. It looked like a castle and exuded old money and manners. Set to one side of the mansion was a lush garden full of life—on the opposite side was a vast vineyard, long since dead and dry.
Lime climbed the gate with ease and started up the drive. He adjusted his suit and tie, taken from the dead man in the toilet, and slicked his eyebrows with saliva.
The garage door opened and a gray man in a jumpsuit stepped out, cleaning grime off a wrench with a dirty cloth. He called out to Lime, asked him what he was doing here.
“I’ve been summoned,” Lime said.
The mechanic moved away from the garage. “I know every visitor that comes around here,” he said. “I don’t know you.”
“I come at the request of Mr. Perrot,” Lime said.
The mechanic blocked his path to the mansion’s front entrance. “Mr. Perrot’s not here.”
“I know.”
Lime took the wrench from the gray mechanic’s rough hands and swung it across the man’s jaw.
The mechanic went down hard. He mumbled something from his broken jaw and started to crawl off the path, into the garden, through the thorns of rose bushes.
Lime took a look around to make sure no one else was watching then put his foot to the back of the mechanic’s neck. He pressed hard and twisted. There was a pop and the mechanic stopped crawling.
Lime dropped the wrench next to the body and continued up to the front doors.
The Perrot family was not unfamiliar to him. Even before his opposition took to calling themselves the Gatekeepers, the Perrot family was right in the thick of it. They used money and influence to aid the church and keep certain powerful relics out of his reach. The Perrots also weren’t above rigging elections for their allies or framing their enemies that they could not buy off.
This newest patriarch of the Perrot family thought himself an agent of change. Perhaps Jean-Paul Perrot had not known what Lime truly was, but he should have learned from his ancestors that if one means to meddle, they should do it from a distance.
Possessing Ronald Lime had changed the future. All the great technological advances that he would have given to the world now would not be created for decades longer, not until some other bright innovator of the future stepped up to the task.