The Demon Senders (27 page)

“So you’re saying if we just focus on sending demons back that the other senders will show up?” Jen asked.

“You’re right, there wasn’t anything on the pillow case about an Idiots Guide To Finding Senders, and I wrote nothing about it. So, unless you have any other ideas, I guess I am saying that.”

“Drown them and they will come?”

“That’s one way of looking at it I suppose.”

The two sat on separate beds and grew quiet. Both thinking about their lives, their families and the lives they had to leave behind. Jen spoke first. “I need to tell my parents about what is going on. They are probably living a nightmare right now.”

“Mine, too,” Mac said. “But remember what that one line said about ‘the called will be called from their mothers and their fathers.’ I don’t think we are supposed to let anyone know we are alive and what we are doing.”

Jen’s eyes grew heavy with tears. “This isn’t fair,” she sobbed. “This isn’t fair for you or me, or our parents; it isn’t fair for anyone.”

“I think my beer idea sounds better than ever.”

Jen laughed. The sound of her laughter sounded so foreign to her. How long had it been since she smiled, laughed, felt good? “I drink IPA’s, not that lager crap you like.”

“Girl after my own heart.”

The next morning, Jen and Mac climbed into Mac’s van, filled the van up with gas, bought enough food to last them a week, and headed south. “I know a place in Pennsylvania that might work for us. There’s a small lake, plenty of woods and a hill that leads directly to the water’s edge. I’m thinking up a plan.”
 

“How far is it from civilization?” Jen asked.
 

“Far enough that Henry, and whatever other demons that tag along with him, won’t be nervous about drawing too much attention.”

“Sounds better than any place I can think of in the D.C. area. What’s your plan?”

“Divide, conquer and take the high ground.”

<<<<>>>>

Henry could stay still no longer. There was a hunger raging inside of him. A hunger to kill, to destroy, to exact his revenge on the senders that dared to interfere. He avoided any comfort but did allow his curiosity some leverage. He left the small hunting cabin, jumped in his car and turned on the radio. He only wanted to hear news of the plague, its spread and how the morons were devising plans to negate the spread. He listened and smiled.

“An estimated one and a half million people were directly exposed to the weaponized bacteria,” one of the morons was saying. “We estimate that less than fifteen percent, or two hundred and twenty-five thousand, are at serious risk of contracting the plague. However,” the idiot continued, “since the bacteria was airborne for over twenty-four hours before we were notified of the vicious and cowardly attack, another million people may have been exposed to one or more of those two hundred and twenty-five thousand and are also considered to be at risk of contracting the bubonic plague.”

“Can you give us the worst case and best case scenarios?” some imbecile from the audience to whom the moron was addressing asked.

“Worst case, five hundred thousand will contract the bubonic plague and will need to be treated and quarantined immediately. Also, in a worst case scenario, we won’t be able to quarantine all. Some will either refuse to inform local health officials that they are experiencing symptoms or live on the margins of society and, unfortunately, are completely unaware of recent events.”

“We’d like to hear your best case scenario as well.”

Henry listened to the long, pregnant pause. The silence poured through the car radio’s speakers in glorious harmony.

“I’m afraid the worst case I told you about is the best case. I’d love to be able to tell you that very few will actually show symptoms, but the fact that the bacteria used was not only weaponized, but had also undergone its own evolutionary mutation, prevents me from saying that. What we are dealing with, I’m afraid to say, is a strain of the bubonic plague that we have never seen before. We have our best minds working around the clock to develop a vaccine.”

“Best case for a timeframe?”

“Best case? Four weeks.”

“Wonderful,” Henry said.

He closed his eyes and called for his agents. When they arrived, announcing themselves with a frigid breeze and foul odor, he demanded that they find the senders.

“Find the senders that caused me this anger, but let no other spirit know their location. Come back to me and tell me where I will find them.”

His agents went on their hunt.

<<<<>>>>

They were thankful for the early spring-like weather conditions. Though the fire they had built was pouring out heat, had the temperatures kept to their recent trend of mid-forties during the day and high twenties at night, they would have had to sleep so close to the fire to ward off freezing to death that they would have been vulnerable to a surprise attack.
 

“Temps are supposed to stay in the mid-forties overnight and reach high fifties or even low sixties during the next few days,” Henry said. “I have no idea how long we will be here waiting for Henry, but at least we won’t freeze to death.”

“Staying warm while waiting to be attacked by a demon isn’t as comforting as I thought it would be.” Again, Jen found herself laughing.
 

“You have a great laugh,” Mac said. “Looking forward to hearing it more often once this part of our mission is completed.”

“Seems strange to be laughing. It’s like for me to laugh I have to ignore the pain my parents must be feeling. I feel like I’m disrespecting Lisa whenever I feel like smiling. I hate this, Trevor. I really, really hate this whole thing.”

“Can’t say that I’m much of a fan, either. But, here we are. Just you and me…”

“And demon makes three.”

They both laughed, unconcerned that their laughter may reveal their position. It was a release of all the stress, fear and sorrow they both had experienced over their recent past. As he laughed, Mac couldn’t help but remember how Rachel’s laugh sounded: Full, meaningful and without concern of how others may judge the unusual tone of her laugh. His thoughts stole him away from the moment, back to the conflict between his heart and his mind. The conflict between reality and his desire.

Jen noticed that Mac’s laugh drifted away too quickly and could see the stretch of pain and remorse in his eyes. It wasn’t the pain of loss, of fear or of sorrow. It was a pain that only a troubled and confused heart can create. And somehow, Jen knew what was at the heart of Mac’s pain. She forced hers to dissipate, then said, “I know you probably don’t want to talk about Rachel, but…”

“It’s not that I don’t want to talk about her,” Mac said. “I’m actually embarrassed about how I felt about her. How I still feel,” he admitted. “It’s like she still holds a part of my heart. A part of my soul.” His face grew instantly still. His eyes filled with dread. “Oh my God. I asked her to do me a favor.” He turned to Jen, who was sitting less than two feet from him. “I never told her what the favor was. She just… Oh my God.”

“What?” Jen said, concern filling her voice. “What about the favor? What favor? What?”

“She told me that if a demon does you a favor, he takes a piece of your soul in payment. I never told her what I was going to ask as a favor, but she just started kissing me.”

“Mac. What happened?” Jen’s voice was stern, dripping with suspicion, with an unwanted fear. And, somewhere, with her own sense of loss.

“She just assumed I was going to ask her to sleep with me, as a favor, which I wasn’t. I would never ask a woman for a favor like that. But she did, I mean, we did. We slept together the night before we went to the pond. She has a piece of my soul. She stole part of my soul.”

Jen found herself torn. She wanted to comfort Mac, tell him that, one way or another, that they would find all the pieces of his soul. That he would find rest one day. But knowing that Mac, someone she hardly knew, had been fooled, manipulated to such a personal and disturbing degree, made her cringe.

“I didn’t know she was what she was,” Mac pleaded. “You have to believe me.”

“I do. And,” she struggled to find words, “we’ll figure it out.”

Jen felt instantly distant from Mac, like a chasm suddenly tore open the diminishing space between them, leaving an impassable canyon. She questioned everything, again. In her thoughts and in her soul, she felt both pity and horror for the man sitting right beside her. The two shared something so unique: An experience, a miracle, a calling, and something much greater and much more unknown. Her eyes had been opened when the world was ripped apart the day at the pond. She saw things, truths, that she had never before recognized. Things she could not, would not, ever allow herself to see. Her doubts and questions evaporated like vapor from the sea and she knew, as deeply as she knew her own breath, that evil was real. It had its cause, its origins. And the man sitting beside her next to the fire, the man with whom she believed she would spend the rest of her days, the man had slept with a demon.

As the two sat, both lost in their own thoughts and fears, a strong, chilling, foul smelling breeze stoked the flames setting a chorus of sparks swirling around their heads. The breeze came from a still sky, a still night where even the trees stood in pregnant abeyance. The swirling, fetid smelling breeze lasted for just a few seconds, then all was calm again.

“He’s coming.”

After the whirlwind of sparks left them alone, Mac and Jen agreed to take turns keeping watch. Mac took the first watch while Jen struggled to fall asleep. She knew it was going to be a long night and that her sleep would be troubled. She also feared that the next day could be her last. There were so many questions and fears charging through her mind as she closed her eyes. As much as she wanted to sleep, images of Lisa, of Stacy Flannigan, of O’Keefe, Rachel and Novak filled her mind’s eye. She’d snap her eyes open, half expecting to see one of the imagined people sitting in front of her, watching her not falling asleep. But each eye-snap only brought her the vision of a warm, glowing fire and Trevor Mac pacing in circles around it.

As she watched him, she began to feel sorrow for Mac. His life, like hers, had been abruptly altered. He was pulled from his passion, his family, friends and dreams. A smile played on the corners of her mouth when she saw him stumble for the second time—in the exact same location—over a rock or raised root. Though she never had any expectations of what a demon sender would look like, act like, be like, if she had, Mac didn’t fit the bill. He wasn’t an imposing figure but he did hold himself well. It was obvious that he had spent more time holding a guitar than a barbell, but still, Jen noticed a certain fullness to his chest and shoulders.
 

As she continued watching him, shutting her eyes only when he glanced her way, she began to feel guilty about how she had been feeling about him. He had, after all, told her that he had had sex with a demon. That’s got to say something about his character, right? But Jen knew he was tricked. Rachel deceived him in order to steal a bit of his soul, perhaps as a trophy or maybe for leverage. Mac was hurt and was still hurting. Jen could sense that Mac was struggling with his continued feelings for Rachel and she was sure he felt a strange loss when he assumed Rachel had been killed.

And Jen had fired the bullets that probably killed her. She killed a demon, yes, but she had also killed the woman Mac had feelings for. Jen didn’t worry about Mac blaming Rachel’s death on her, but she did wonder if she and Mac would ever truly become trusted partners. She hoped they would. She felt they needed to. She needed him and, she hoped, Mac knew that he needed her.

Jen gave up trying to sleep thirty minutes into Mac’s first watch. “How long do you figure we have till company arrives?”

“Well,” Mac said, “if I were a demon bent on revenging the deaths of two of my fellow demons, I’d probably wouldn’t rush right into battle. I’d probably gather intel about where I’d most likely be facing my adversaries, maybe do a little recognizance, and maybe even grab a few of my buddies, you know, in case things get out of hand.”

Jen said, “You seem awful relaxed, considering.”

“I don’t know how else to be,” he said. “These few weeks, they’ve either prepared me to survive anything or have prepared me to die. I can’t believe that everything that has happened was done all for nothing, so that leaves me believing that these weeks have gotten me prepared to survive. For us to survive.”

Jen said, “You mentioned that if you were a demon, you’d do some recognizance. Think that was Henry spinning around the fire a little bit ago? Sure smelled like how a demon should smell.”

“I’m not sure. What I’m thinking is this Henry character must not be as powerful as I was thinking he is. I mean, he’s got, or at least, he had, a whole team of other stink-pots doing stuff for him. If he was so powerful, he wouldn’t need any assistants. What I’m thinking is that whatever it was that stunk up our fire, was sent from Henry to find us. Like his own invisible private eye. I’m pretty certain he knows where we are, of that I am very confident. But I don’t think he’s so powerful that he’s not at least worried about what we may be able to do to him.”

“Think he knows we still have the gun?”

“Well,” Mac said as he scratched his chin, “I wouldn’t be surprised that his invisible private eye is keeping watch over us and is reporting back to Henry from time to time. So, I’d suggest that we keep our planning conversations, as well as any talk about whether or not we have any weapons, very quiet.”

“Sorry about that,” Jen said. “Wasn’t thinking, I guess.”

“No worries. It’s just a paranoid theory of mine, that’s all.”

“One thing I wanted to ask you about, something that I can’t figure out.”

“Shoot,” Mac said. “Not with your gun, of course. That is,” Mac began to slowly raise his voice, climbing it up to the point of yelling, “if you actually have a gun which I highly doubt you do.”

“Nice. Nothing suspicious with that bit of acting.”