Breaking Deluce (4 page)

Damon scooted away from the giant hole in the house. He rose to his feet, his eyes darting between the unconscious Jason and the ruined wall, and drew his blade. It began to glow a bright blue, and he waited, poised to attack the doctor the moment he walked through the gap. Damon would sever his head if he could.

After a couple of minutes, Damon wondered why the doctor hadn’t come through the hole yet. He slowly inched towards the hole, his blade at the ready. When he could finally see into the hole, he noticed the basement was empty. “Where did you go?” he whispered.

Damon’s question answered itself; he heard the doctor’s voice coming from down the stairs, “Go grab my worthless son and get to work fixing the hole in my house.”

About half a dozen imps came running down the stairs when one of them screamed, “Master—intruder! It’s a hunt…”

A silver throwing-knife silenced the imp as it pierced the imps face, pinning it against the wall. Damon threw three more knives, pinning three more imps. The two remaining imps charged forward as they reached into their bellies pulling out knives. They leapt at Damon. He swung his sword forward and its blue aura flew forward in an arc. The imps were cut in half as they hit the blue aura, and screamed when they hit the ground. Then they went silent. Slowly, they slowly disintegrated into piles of ash. The blue aura faded out of the air.

Damon looked at the doctor and said, “Your turn.”

“I think not,” the doctor retorted as he charged at Damon.

Damon braced himself and held his sword ready to strike. He smiled; he couldn’t believe how easy this was going to be, thrusting his sword forward into the doctor’s heart. The doctor didn’t stop until he hit the swords hilt. He just smiled back at Damon as a knife appeared in the doctor’s hand.

The doctor thrust the knife into Damon’s ribs. Damon coughed blood onto the doctor’s face. “Ugh, disgusting waste of good genetic material,” the doctor said as he lifted Damon into the air.

Damon held on tightly to his blade as the doctor effortlessly lifted him, slowly withdrawing the blade from where his heart should have been. The blue aura flickered as the doctor threw him like a rag doll into the yard. He was just turning to head back inside when he heard, “You ain’t won yet.”

Spinning around, the doctor was hit by three throwing knives, one landing right between the eyes and the other two hitting him in the chest. He ripped the throwing star out of his face. “You are starting to piss me off!” the doctor screamed.

Damon whipped out his pistol and unloaded .45 caliber rounds into the doctor as he charged forward. They barely slowed him down, shrugging off every round as he picked up speed. He was moving so fast that Damon couldn’t even defend himself as he ran out of bullets. The doctor threw a hard right cross into Damon’s chest, cracking his sternum and sending him crashing through the bush fence. He could barely move as he tried to sit up. His left hand was still glued to his blade when he felt a hand grab his ankle and rip him back through the hole in the fence.

The doctor stood over him, taunting, “I am going to choke the life out of you and turn your body into my slave.”

He grabbed Damon’s throat and lifted him into the air. Damon struggled to breathe as the doctor began to squeeze. He tried to raise his sword but the doctor grabbed his arm, squeezing until the blade fell from his hand. The blue aura of the blade faded out as it hit the ground. Damon tried in vain to fight, but he felt his last remaining breath dwindling, and everything was fading fast.

A blur flashed by and Damon felt his airway open back up as he fell to the ground. He was coughing hard as he tried to find his breath. As his vision returned, he saw Jason had come to his rescue and was now fighting the doctor.

Damon felt helpless as he watched the oversized Jason being outmatched by the stronger faster doctor. The doctor hit Jason hard. He flew backward, bouncing off the ground before finally coming to a stop near Damon. “Run if you want to live,” he croaked out.

“What about you?” Damon protested.

“I’ll be fine. I’m his son.”

Damon grabbed his sword, hesitating to leave his savior behind, but Jason stood up and taunted his father, “Let’s go dad! Is that all you got?”

Damon took this as his cue to exit. Grabbing his side, he struggled to crawl through the hole in the fence. He could feel the blood flowing from his wound as he rose to his feet and begun to limp towards his car.

Arriving at his car, he fumbled with his keys. As soon as he got the key into the door Damon fell into the front seat. He could feel the warm sticky blood pouring down his side onto his car seat. “This is going to suck to clean later,” he laughed as he started his hemi engine. Dropping his car into gear, he stepped on the gas and took off like a rocket.

Speeding down the road, the lights and colors all blurred together as Damon drifted in and out of consciousness. He slapped himself across the face as he put the pedal to the floor, shifting into second as he sped down the country road. He knew if he didn’t get to the hotel, he was a dead man.

Shifting into third gear, Damon felt the car jerk as he continued accelerating. He could see a blur of light in the distance; figuring it was town, he prayed there weren’t any cops as he ran the first street light he came across. He weaved in and out of traffic and he narrowly avoided hitting a car that pulled out in front of him. He could just barely make out the neon sign of his hotel in the distance and breathed a sigh of relief. For the first time, he knew he was going to make it as he continued flying along the slow arterial road. He pulled into the hotel parking lot and yanked the emergency brake as he slid sideways into the three parking spots in front of his hotel room.

Falling out of his car onto his hands and knees, Damon tried to climb to his feet as his blood dripped onto the concrete. Limping along, he reached the door and clumsily felt for the card key, but it wasn’t in his pocket. He grabbed the handle, hoping for a miracle, but no luck there. Standing back, he looked at the door, the only thing standing between him and staying alive. Feeling very weak, he mustered all of his strength as he charged forward. He threw his shoulder into the door. The door loudly cracked as he cried out in pain. He fell against the door and wondered if he should just give up. But the doctor’s voiced filled his mind— “The girl must die before the week ends.”

Damon realized that if he died here then the girl would die too. He had to stop the doctor or he would never stop killing. He rose to his feet, took one step back, and kicked the door as hard as he could. The door flew open.

Damon limped into his hotel room. “Now where did I put that bag,” he said to himself.

He scanned the room for his bag but it was nowhere in sight. Falling against the wall, he dragged himself into the bathroom. When he got into the bathroom he fell to his knees. The room spun as he searched the bathroom for his bag. When he didn’t see the bag in the bathroom, he grabbed the door to the cabinet. In his distress, he ripped the door clean off, revealing the black bag he was looking for. He pulled the bag out and set it on the counter. Ripping off his shirt, he rifled through the bag until he found what he was looking for—a black vial of blood. Demons’ blood, while dangerous in large quantities, had been found to regenerate even the most fatal of wounds in hours when taken in small doses.

Damon looked at the vial, worried about what could happen. His brother was never the same after he drank the blood. He stared into the vial as his side ached. It was this or death. He threw his head back and drank the blood. “Blech!”

He cringed. The blood tasted like wet baking soda but he knew he had to hurry—demon blood could heat the body up to deadly levels. He dropped his pants as he ran naked into the living room. Ripping open the small ice chest, he grabbed out the four bags of ice he had put in the fridge. He felt his heart begin to burn and he was already sweating everywhere as he flew back into the bathroom. He cranked on the coldest water and filled the tub with ice. He climbed in as the blood from his wound turned the water red as he passed out.

Mona slept soundly as the sun crawled through her curtains and into her room. It slowly filled her room with light and crept up and across her body, almost as if it was tickling her. She wiggled and squirmed as the sunlight covered her body. By the time it reached her face, she was already opening her eyes. It blinded her as she sat up in her bed. She wiped her eyes and surveyed her room. Normally on a Saturday, she’d know exactly what to do, but today was different. She flopped back on her bed and stared at the ceiling.

Mona hadn’t realized how long it had been since she had done nothing. Her entire life had been planned out since middle school, and now she was detouring from that plan to go on a date. She couldn’t believe herself. She was changing for a boy right before her own eyes and she wasn’t sure if she liked it. She grabbed her phone. She was about to call and cancel when memories of yesterday began to fill her head. A smile lit up her face and her heart beat a little bit faster. She dropped her cell down and headed for the shower.

Mona reached into the shower and turned on the hot water. As it was heating, she glimpsed herself in the mirror. Something made her turn. There was something funny on her shoulder running up her neck. Pulling back her hair she looked closer. She had a long scratch that went almost to her ear. “Odd… must have been from those imps yesterday,” she said to herself.

Keeping calm, Mona reached under her sink to grab hydrogen peroxide and a cotton ball. As she dabbed a bit of peroxide on the cotton ball and began cleaning out the scratch. Her curiosity got the best of her as she cleaned the wound. She wanted to know more about these imps. She finished cleaning her scratch quickly, turned off the shower, threw a towel on, and headed back to her room to research on her computer.

Mona flipped her laptop open and tried running a search for “imp,” but the results only netted a wiki page and other sites about mythical creatures. Reading through the pages, she didn’t find much of anything that was useful, so she clicked back to the search page, thinking that it wouldn’t hurt to try something a little ridiculous—“real occurrences of imps.” The results were less than useless, so she tried “real imp attacks.” Skimming through the results, which were mostly video game references, she came across a website that was called Magical Maddy’s House of the Weird and Unexplained. “Monsters are real!” boasted the link. “Click here to find out more.”

Mona scanned the page until she found something she liked—“real life monster sightings.” The page was full of newspaper clippings all detailing brutal killings, most of which were eventually linked to animal attacks or left unexplained. There were captions under the pictures of newspaper clippings. She read them as they were what the author thought, was really responsible and what proof they had. The horrible pictures were too much for her and she went back to the main page. Another link caught her eye—“Monsters we know exist and how to kill them.”

Mona followed the link to a page that was filled with pictures of monsters. She looked through them all. Some monsters she recognized, like vampires, werewolves, and ghosts. Some she didn’t recognize or didn’t realize were considered monsters, like fairies, golems, and a demonic Scottish water horse. When she got to the bottom, there they were—imps.

Mona clicked and whispered as she read, “The imp’s history is long and mysterious. Originally thought to be the servants of demons, they have been found serving human monsters as early as the 1600s. They are blindly obedient to their master’s wishes.”

“I don’t need the history of these creatures, I need to know how to kill them,” Mona said to her computer.

She skimmed the page until she found a section titled, “How to kill or incapacitate.”

Mona stopped and read this section carefully. “While imps may look like they are solid creatures, they are in fact made of some sort of slime or goo. This makes them immortal and allows them to store things inside their bodies, but it also makes incapacitating them easy. If hit with a lot of blunt force they will go to pieces and will slowly try to reform as the goo is still alive. The only known weakness they have is silver. When pierced with something silver, their bodies harden and become immobile. When it comes to killing them, while they are technically immortal—they can be killed by destroying the one that summoned them.

A buzzing noise distracted Mona and she began to look around trying, to figure out what it was. Lifting her pillow, she found her cell phone. She had received a text message from Damon— “Hey I need your address so I can pick you up.”