The Demon Senders (22 page)

O'Keefe waited, his hot breath charging the cool, damp air. He was like a wolf, reading himself for the kill.

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Jen and Lisa left their Scranton area hotel by seven in the morning and made the six hour drive to Upstate New York beneath clear skies. Every half hour, Lisa's phone would vibrate, alerting her to an incoming text message. All the messages were from Jason. True to his word, he sent Flannigan's precise GPS location to Lisa's phone twice an hour.
 

During the long drive, Jen wanted to tell Lisa about the strange message that she was sure was sent to her via her Kindle reader. It was a message and it was important, that Jen was sure of. But how to tell someone that she was receiving cryptic messages from her Kindle was an entirely different matter. She got close to telling Lisa one time, when she asked, "Ever hear of a 'sender' before?"

"A sender of what?" Lisa asked.

Jen said, "Not really sure. I read it in a book I was reading last night and wasn't sure what a sender might be." She wasn't lying. She did read "sender" in a book the previous night. She just didn't give all the details.

"Use it in context," Lisa said.

" ‘You are a sender.’ That's what the line in the book I was reading last night said."

"I understand that you read it in a book last night," Lisa said, her brow crinkled and her voice a bit too condescending. "You told me that already. As far as what being a sender means, I'd have to read the book to understanding what the author means and you know I'm never going to read a book."

Jen tabled further sender-related conversations.

"Are you sure this is the right place? We're in the middle of a town park."
 

"This is where Jason said Flannigan is," Lisa responded as she pulled into a parking space at New Hartford's Public Park. "Unless he's pulling a fast one on me, I have to believe him."

There were two cars besides Lisa's parked in the snow covered parking lot. Both were clear of any snow. "Look," Lisa said, pointing at the parked cars, "No snow on them means they weren't parked here overnight. I bet one is Flannigan's and the other is the person she's meeting with."

Jen and Lisa followed the footprints in the snow from one of the cars into the woods and onto a path. There was a final message that pinged Lisa's phone. It was from Jason.

Lee,

Target is moving towards pond, 1 mile from the parking lot. Losing her signal. Be careful.

Remember r deal!

Jason

"Looks like we'll be without our eye in the sky from here," Lisa said.

"I'm really thinking this isn't a good idea," Jen said. "We have no idea what we're walking into. Isn't it just a tad strange for Flannigan to be meeting someone in the middle of a forest?"

"Flannigan
is
strange and if she's planning something involving that whole Unit 713…"

"Unit 731."

"Whatever. If she
is
planning some type of an attack, then meeting in the middle of the woods makes sense."

Jen said, "But we're out of our league here. What do we do if we see her meeting with some nefarious looking people? We should have never come."

"Relax, Jen," Lisa said. "All we're going to do is find out if Stacy Pants is in those woods," she pointed a strong arm and finger towards the woods ahead of them, "take some pictures of whomever she's meeting with, then get the hell out of here."

"And if we can't do all that without being seen?"

Lisa patted the right front pocket of her winter coat. "I got us covered. If something bad happens, you run and I'll take care of the bad guys."

"You brought a gun? Jesus, Lisa. What are you expecting to walk into?"

Lisa said, "Nothing, actually, but, as they say, 'I'd rather have a gun and not need one than need one and not have one.' "

"This isn't going to turn out well."

I took no more than two steps when the potential severity of the message I believed I was sent rammed into whatever part of my brain controls the rest of my brain. Now, I'm not sure how long it took for me to put everything together and I'm certainly not suggesting that it went the way I'm about to explain it to you. It may have been a split second or it may have been several seconds, I can't say for sure. What I do know is that if my wise-nagger was right and it was a message that I had put together from unique letters off a bunch of those trail marking signs, and since the only person walking beside me was Rachel, then, you guessed it, Rachel wasn't what she told me she was. And I was probably walking (still slightly buzzed) into an ambush.

I had been setup and when I turned to face Rachel and saw her charging down the hill towards me, both arms held stiffly in front of her, I understood who did the setting up.

She rammed me hard, sending me charging backwards, losing my balance then crashing to the still frozen and snow covered ground. The hill was steeper than I first thought and I ended up sliding on my back for at least twenty feet after I hit the ground. I was way too shocked (and quite honestly, dazed by how hard Rachel had hit me) to even make an attempt to right myself. I simply waited for my slide to stop before scrambling to my feet.
 

The first direction I looked was up the hill at Rachel. She was making her way down the hill, wearing a horrible snicker of a smile. I couldn't believe how something as simple as a smile could radically change someone's appearance. Towards Rachel was the first direction I looked after I got to my feet but I really wished I had chosen to look towards the pond first. Before I could swing my sights away from evil-faced Rachel and towards the pond, I was grabbed from behind.

"We meet again, you little American Nostalgia prick fuck."

Not a name I’ve ever been called before and I was none to excited about hearing it then. I couldn't see his face, what with my neck being in a chokehold and all, but I was pretty sure it was Hazy Face reintroducing himself to me.

"You should have stuck to playing your queer bag shitty music." He started yanking me back towards the pond and he didn't seem at all interested that his grip was making it very difficult for me to breathe. "Now, I'm gonna rip your balls off, break every one of your toes then send you where ain't no one ever gonna find you."

I started to lose consciousness and the Bud that was still in my stomach started to make a triumphant return. But Hazy Face’s chokehold prevented traffic both ways and the acidic regurgitation was forced to bounce between my heaving stomach and the roadblock in my neck.

I started seeing black dots in the periphery of my vision. Those dots started to get bigger and to join together to form larger dots. Just before all the dots joined to form a whole lot of blackness, Hazy Face dropped me to the ground. I reached for my neck (mostly to make sure it was still in the same shape it was in when I last saw it) then started to scramble away. I didn't get very far before I felt a boot—probably a steel-toed one at that—slam into my rib cage. I dropped to the ground in a heaping lump of pain. I rolled onto my back, looked up and saw Rachel standing above me.

"I can't believe how completely and absolutely stupid you are, Mac."

My breathing returned to somewhat normal though the wheezing and rattling I heard in my throat was a bit disconcerting. But I could talk. "What?…Why?…I don't…" I said I could talk, not that I could say anything that made any sense.

"Let me put it all together for you, Mac," Rachel said. "First off, you are a sender. One of only twelve in the world. Well, actually, one of only nine in the world after some recent developments have caused a sudden dwindling of your population. But I am not a spotter here to help you. No, no. I'm a spotter here to help one of my partners eliminate you from the battle. I think I told you about my lover, Henry Winchester? Yes, I’m sure his name came up in conversation. Now that I think about it, we talked about Henry just before you asked me to do you a favor and shared a bit of your precious soul with me.” Rachel bent over at her waist, braced her upper body with arms resting on her knees. Her hair dangled straight down, framing her head and giving me the impression that her face was at the end of a dark tunnel. I felt a few pangs, one right after another as I looked up into her eyes. The first pang hit when she mentioned about me sharing a bit of my soul with her. Not sure how big my soul is but if I really did share some of it with that first demon and another bit with Rachel, I figured I may be running low in my soul reserves.

The second pang struck when, just for a split second, I wanted to ask Rachel if she ever felt anything for me, like I had for her. It would have been a pretty pathetic sight had I actually asked her.
 

What a sorry ass I was. There I was, laying on the ground with two demons, both seemingly ready to rip my head off, and I’m wondering if one of those same demons had feelings for me. Not exactly one of the highlights of my life.

As she stood above me, hair gently swaying in the slight breeze that picked up, Rachel smiled. That sent another pang racing through my body, mind, and soul. It was a gentle smile and appeared to contain at least a hint of compassion. It was the type of smile given as a gift to someone the smiler once cared about. At least, that’s what I thought. Seeing that smile gave me a glimmer of hope. I hoped that Rachel was sending me a message through her smile, that she was still on my side and was actively coming up with a plan to get me out of the situation. The smile gave me hope that she did have actual feelings for me and was saying, “
I’m sorry for all this. If I had a choice, this would have never turned out like this
.”

“I believe you have already met my friend? You call him 'Hazy Face' but, since he is going to kill you, I thought you'd like a proper introduction." Rachel leveled her gaze towards, I assumed, Hazy Face. "Mac, meet Ron Novak. Ron, say hello to Mac."

My hopes were dashed, making me feel even smaller as a person.

Strange what people think about when they're in dire straights. When I was waiting for Hazy Face, hereafter known as Ron Novak, to say hello, I started thinking about that kick I took to my ribs. It was hard and it hurt like nobody's business, and I was pretty sure the kicker was wearing steel-toed boots since there was no "give" to the kicking foot. When Ron stamped his big black boot on my chest, sending every last bit of air from my lungs out into the air, I noticed how perfectly formed the toe box of his boot was and took a bit of comfort in knowing that, despite being in the situation that I was in, that I could still identify a kick from a steel-toed boot. It didn't help me at all, but, hey, in my situation, I had to find something to feel positive about.

Ron was, as I feared, very, very strong. He grabbed a hold of my hair and pulled me straight up to my feet. He held me at arm's length then pummeled me with punches to my kidney area. I tried to get into position to throw a few haymakers his way, but each time I tried to twist my body, Ron just tightened his grip on my hair and snapped my head the opposite way from which I was twisting. A few more punches landed and those black dots made their reappearance.

Rachel walked into my view just as the remaining Budweiser—the same Bud that had already tried to escape my body like rats from a sinking ship—launched out of my mouth. My vomit smacked Rachel directly in the face. That made me happy. But only for a second.

Ron employed his steel-toed boot to kick me on the outside of my right knee. I heard the snap and felt the entire lower part of my leg erupt in fiery pain, ending my short-lived happiness. Ron added a few more jabs to the back of my head before letting me drop to the ground.

I was done and I knew it. There was no way I could get out of this setup alive.

But then I remembered the pond behind me. If I could, somehow, get to my feet quickly and ram myself into Ron, he might lose his balance and stumble into the pond. If that happened, I knew I could summon my strength, jump on top of him, and drown him.

I wasn't worried about drowning but I knew he was. I had done it before. And while anything Rachel told me was now being called into question, she was right about me drowning demons to kill them.

I heard him laughing above and behind me, and I was fairly sure he was laughing at Rachel. She was pretty much covered with my puke. I knew I had one chance. So I took it.

Despite the extreme pain in my knee, ribcage, kidney area, throat and back of my head (so, basically my whole body) I jumped to my feet then charged, shoulder first into Ron. I hit him directly in the chest and heard the air being pounded out of his lungs. I kept driving him back towards the pond. After driving him back a few feet, I heard his feet and legs splashing into the water. I stopped charging and dove headfirst towards him. I can still remember the look of utter shock and amazement in his eyes.
 

Don't ask me how, but I somehow got my body behind his and had his neck in a chokehold. Knowing that he was much stronger than me and that my element of surprise had a time limit (which was about up at that point) I decided to strengthen my chokehold and drop all my weight straight down. I was sure he would either fall backwards into the pond or his knees would collapse. Either way, he'd be in the pond and I'd still have a hold of him.

Remember that I told you a while back three mistakes were the reasons I ended up here? The first was getting that first demon talking. That one got part of my soul scattered all over the demon world. The second mistake was falling for Rachel, which, I'm sure you have figured out was a pretty horrible mistake. The third mistake also involved Rachel. It turned out that I can indeed be drowned when battling with a demon. She also lied about magical sobriety, but I was fortunate enough to know the machine-gun breathing technique so the beer didn't really come into play. In fact, that lie sort of helped me. If I didn't drink so many beers, I probably wouldn't have puked all over Rachel. And if I hadn't puked all over Rachel, Ron wouldn't have taken a laughing break from his beatdown of me and I would have never ended up in the pond with him.