Forfeit Souls (The Ennead Book 1) (3 page)

“Father had anticipated that you would need somewhere safe to remain until you recover your full strength. That is why he decided that you should stay here with me.” He seemed apologetic. “I am sorry if it is an inconvenience to you, but it is for your protection.”

I appraised him a little more closely now. He was much taller than I was, he looked away from me before I could look too closely at his face again, but it was the same angelic beauty that I had seen in Father’s face, a beauty that was not marred by the emptiness of Father’s eyes.

“You said Father was your boss?” I asked the question as a statement, hoping to learn more.

“I guess that wasn’t the correct term. You could say he is a business partner.” There was no smile on his lips now.

“And what business are you in?” I asked hesitantly

“A business that will still be here when you’re strong enough to take care of yourself.” He said looking suddenly worried. “Please. Lay down.”

“I don’t understand. I feel like I’m back to normal.” I said, feeling a bit petulant.

“Joellen, there is something you need to understand.” The apologetic look had come to Demetrius’ face again. “You are no longer what you used to be. Normal does not apply to you anymore.”

I looked at him as though he was trying to play a joke on me. “I don’t get it.”

His words came slowly, deliberately now, “You did die, Jo.” He looked at the floor. “I don’t know any other way to get around it.”

“What are you talking about?” I laughed. “Father said I wasn’t dead and that this wasn’t Hell, and it’s a little too macabre to be Heaven.”

“I know.” He seemed to shrink away from me and I began to get worried. He truly believed what he was saying. “Sometimes people that die don’t remain dead. This is sort of an in-between.” The way he said it was odd.

“Am I a zombie then?” I laughed at the term. I thought back to
The Night of the Living Dead
and to every other zombie movie I’d seen. I wasn’t walking about lusting for flesh – or brains if you follow the Russo line of thought – in the stereotypical zombie manner.

His face was sullen and I saw that he had no desire to do what he was about to do. He picked something up from the desk that he stood next to, and held it up toward me. A mirror.  I looked at the face in it without a thought.

It was my face, the heart shaped, pale white it had always been, framed by the dark black curls, my nose was still the same, small and straight, and my lips still their full pink.

Everything was the same – except for my eyes. They were the same glittering black as Demetrius’.

I opened my mouth to ask what I was when I saw them; the two cuspids on my upper row of teeth were longer than they had been. I ran my tongue along the upper row of my teeth, wincing as I got to the newly elongated pair.

I saw what little color had been in my face drain from it as I stared through my new eyes at what I had become.

“It’s not so bad.” Demetrius said quietly, trying to soothe me. It wasn’t difficult to tell that I was on the verge of a meltdown.

I sunk to the floor, staring blankly at the carpet in front of me. I couldn’t move for a moment other than to blink.

“The monster that attacked you would have killed you Jo. Father and I got there too late to keep him from biting you.” He lifted my head up. “I’m sorry that your life was not one that we could save.”

“Am I… am I…” I couldn’t say the word. It was wrong, I was not – I could not be – that!

“You were turned by an Asakku.” he confirmed for me. “But Father and I got to you before the change was complete.”

He looked as though this should make me happy. It didn’t. “What am I then?”

“You are something else: a person who is half changed by the Asakku and half by a Lilitu.”

I struggled with my new fate for a moment – what did it mean – and tried to get up. Demetrius helped, me placing one hand under my elbow. He probably could have held me in the air with one hand if I had been in the mood for feats of strength. I had no clue what he – or I – was capable of. I could see in his face that he only wished to comfort me.

I, however, was looking for something else.

And I found it – or at least something similar to it – on his desk. I grabbed the small dagger like letter opener and thrust it into my chest.

I expected pain. But I experienced none. I opened my eyes and moved my hand. Silver dust fell away from my chest where the knife should have plunged into my heart and I saw the shards of shattered metal on the floor. There was not a scratch on the exposed skin of my chest.

“This thing that’s been done, it can’t be undone.” Demetrius placed his hand on my shoulder as I felt sorrow rip through me. “We are no longer living, and so we cannot die.”

I fell limp into his arms and couldn’t will myself to move. I wanted to die.

I barely noticed as he easily lifted me into his arms and carried me to the bed. I couldn’t have told you if the bed was soft, or lumpy, or hard. I just lay there, motionless for – I don’t know how long. Times passage was no longer measurable to me anymore. How long had it been since Demetrius had given me the terrible news: Hours? Days? Months? Years?

Did I care?

The answer to that was simple enough: No, I did not.

Eventually, time wormed its way back into my senses. I had been dimly aware that Demetrius had never left the room. I now wondered, for his sake – my vigilant protector, how long it had been. At some point I was able to differentiate between the light of day and the darkness of night as they filtered beneath the heavy curtains.

I noticed. I did not care.

-Paul-

I felt too weak to open my eyes, and so I just laid there in the street. It felt as though I’d been run over by a truck, or all of the energy in my body was slowly siphoning out onto the wet ground beneath me. Perhaps I should have paid more attention to the unit on osmosis in my secondary school days. But that was a silly thought now.

There was nothing I could do anyway. The man that had grabbed me from behind and driven his knife into my neck was more than likely half way across London with my wallet by now. I would simply wait here in this puddle to die.

It seemed like the easiest solution, but I desperately hoped it wouldn’t rain. Perhaps I could make that my dying wish. It seemed the most reasonable of all of the things that were coming to mind. No, I decided, if I were to receive a dying wish it wouldn’t be for me, it would be for Ellie.

My thoughts were interrupted by the sound of approaching footsteps.

“You failed me, Jack.” A woman’s voice said. The high soprano pitch of her voice rang into the darkness of my dying consciousness.

“Forgive me,” a man, Jack I assumed, replied, “Adam intervened and there was nothing I could do.”

Neither of those standing above me spoke with a British accent, but their voices held no other accent as far as I could tell. Their voices were completely foreign though, they were strangely fierce and crackled like the embers of a fire.

Why weren’t they calling the police? Maybe they were the police, the homicide division, and I was already dead… perhaps when you died your consciousness was trapped in your body. What a horrible thought, trapped in my own mind. It would be like getting halfway through a novel and never learning how it ends.

No, I decided, they could not be police. Perhaps they were angels, sent to collect me from my dying body. That was a laughable thought. I would guess that angels’ voices might be sweeter.

Tourists, that must be it, and they’re so desensitized to violence because of their cinema…. But no, I doubted that I would be able to guess what they were. I discarded these notions. They were silly. Besides, if I were dead I doubt that the knife wound would still be inflicting this much pain on me.

“Don’t fret. There may still be hope.” The female voice said. Her words were slightly tenser than they had been before. “What is that laying at your feet?” Had they only just now noticed me?

“I found us a new recruit.” Jack said as I felt a heavily booted foot kick into my back. “He knew the one that got away.” What on earth did he mean by that? I had been mortally wounded, there was no way that I would be a recruit for anyone.

There was a snickering noise from in front of me and I heard her sigh heavily. “He’ll do.”

“What would you have me do, to redeem myself, Gallu?” Jack said and I felt him kneel behind me. “I seek only to be worthy of being your servant.”

Groveling
. The woman was in charge. Perhaps she was some sort of Mafioso. Well, if they were thieves, they’d find little in my pockets; my killer had undoubtedly cleaned them out. And Gallu? What an odd name. It sounded like it should belong to a mythical Greek beast, not a woman.

“My pet,” Gallu’s words were condescending. “You are worthy of doing my work. I would not keep you if you weren’t. Deal with this situation as we did Demetrius. I will leave the particulars of the task to your discretion.”

“It will be done.” Jack’s voice was close to my ear, as though he had prostrated himself beside me.

A burst of heat brushed against the front of me, but still I did not move or open my eyes, how could I? I was dead. There was no energy left in me.

“Up you get.” The gruff voice said as I was picked up by two massive hands and set on my feet.

I opened my eyes slightly, but couldn’t make sense of what I saw. Jack shook me roughly and I opened my eyes a bit further this time and was met with glowing red eyes. I froze, rigid, every muscle tensing. Had I been a bad enough person in my life to have been sent to Hell?

Feeling my feet sway I realized that I was being raised off the ground by the creature in front of me. He looked human in every respect other than his menacing size and his eyes.

“Fear, good.” He said as he set me down. “It is the correct response when one encounters a demon.” And then with a smile that could easily be described as demonic, he added, “you will come to see it in the faces of many that you encounter in the future.”

I swallowed quite loudly and waited for whatever would come next. He didn’t seem like he was going to be hostile toward me, and I found the courage to speak, though my words came out a little shakier than I would have liked. “Who… who are you?”

“Name’s Jack.” He said as he shrunk into the shadows while the street lamps relit themselves. “I’d suggest you get out of the light before someone sees you.”

“What?” I asked as his massive hand reached out and pulled me into the alcove that he had found refuge in.

I was about to accost him for his rough treatment when I heard whistling. A man in the uniform of a nineteen twenties constable waltzed by the alleyway’s entrance twirling his billy-club as he went.
Odd
, I thought, but then again, what about this night hadn’t been odd?

Jack snarled in the darkness. “Demons… There’s no code anymore…”  He shook his black hair out of the knot at the back of his head and grabbed me roughly around my bicep. “Close your eyes.”

“Why?” I asked too late as everything around me burst into flames and was snuffed.

I patted the front of my coat trying to discern how much damage had been done, but it wasn’t singed, or even warm. Further inspection showed me that there was nothing wrong with it, the flames that surrounded me had not affected my person at all.

“You’re going to want to lie down.” Jack said to me before I could notice my new surroundings.

We were no longer in the alley. The walls that surrounded me looked like a cave, but the stone walls were glassy and I as I looked toward my distorted reflection, the fun-house-mirror effect of it made me extremely dizzy. I suddenly felt my last meal returning to me.

“Told ya. Welcome to the afterlife.” Jack said with a booming laugh. “You really need to at least sit down kid. You’re going to be hurting for a while.”

I looked up at him as I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand. He was beginning to appear distorted and I blinked rapidly trying to make the room stop spinning, but it turned to a kaleidoscope of fractured pieces in front of me.  I sat down on the bed-like cut-out in the rock next to me, and put my head in my hands. “Welcome to Hell,” I said dryly as I blew out a breath of hot air.

“This isn’t Hell,” my new host said with a sardonic bray. “Far from it, lad.”

“But you said you’re a demon.” I managed to get out, still breathing heavily and compelling the room to stop its spinning. My chest was searing, it was quite a bit more painful than heartburn.

“Yes, I’m a demon. Christ kid, you’re a demon now.” He continued to laugh at my ignorance. “But Hell is reserved for those who are no longer able to serve a purpose on Earth. We few, we lucky few, are chosen for the honor of becoming an Asakku. Those of us with a sense of humor about the whole thing refer to it as purgatory.”

At the present moment I didn’t feel particularly lucky or humorous, I was feeling particularly sickly. “I didn’t think that death would be so… nauseating.”

“That’s just the change.” He said, not laughing now. “Just lie back and let it happen.”

I did as I was told and immediately began to feel better. “Let what happen? What exactly is this change?” I wasn’t happy enough about my settled stomach to assuage my curiosity, the room still spun, but it was tolerable now.

“Well… in order to do what you need to do, you’re going to have to get thicker skin.” As he spoke I held my hand up in front of my eyes.

It was, indeed, starting to thicken, the once pliable, pale white flesh that spread across the back of my hand now felt as thick as the rind of a honeydew melon, and it had darkened slightly, to an odd yellow. I rubbed the skin on the back of my hand, the soft, malleable flesh now felt like rubbery latex. The top layer of it crumbled off like dried paint.

I watched it darken further, it reminded me of roasting marshmallows when I was a boy. My skin first turned golden brown and then turned black as the top lay crumpled into a feathery paper like ash.

“You know,” Jack said from my side. “You’ll remember this for the rest of your existence. It’s been over ten centuries and it still gives me goose pimples. Well, it would if we were able to get such things.” He laughed from farther away as the room went dark.

Above my face my hand glowed red. It wasn’t painful, it was mesmerizing. Like a live x-ray I could see through my skin and into my arm, as though it was hollow. I watched the blood that was coursing through my veins as it slowly stopped pumping toward my fingers and drained from my arm.

I realized then, when there stopped being any motion in my body, that I truly was dead. It was a bit difficult to grasp at first. I’ll admit it: I lay there for a few moments with my index and middle finger at my throat trying to find the pulse that I knew wasn’t there. I just continued to look at my arm, it was strange to know that I glowed in the dark. It didn’t seem like it would last, Jack wasn’t as luminescent as I was.

I could hear the roar of a fire somewhere in the distance. Maybe Hell was a little closer than Jack was letting on. It sounded like the kiln in the museum I had once worked in for a summer, only it was much, much louder.

The museum
, I would never work in a museum again. What a waste my Oxford tuition had been…. Money shouldn’t matter to me now, I was not going to need it anymore. You can’t take it with you, right?

I sighed heavily and had to blink when a pillar of fire shot forth from my mouth toward the ceiling. I had to laugh as my mind went directly to those silly children’s cartoons where someone eats a pepper and breathes fire. I inhaled again and blew out another tall stream of fire. It lit up the glassy room around me and turned into small beads of flame that fell in a shower around me.

“Talk about heartburn...” I laughed quietly.

“There will be time to play later.” The room was suddenly lit again and I saw that another of the Asakku had come to get me. His eyes glowed just as red as Jack’s had.

I hadn’t paid too much attention to Jacks skin, but the memory of him was still vivid in my mind, though neither he nor the one who was with me know glowed as I had, they both had black, charcoal like scrape marks on their torso and arms. Jack’s were more abundant, covering most of his body, while the Asakku who stood in front of me had considerably fewer.

“Come on glow boy, time to meet your master.” He said as he turned from me.  “There’s some pants to your left. They’re fireproof,” he said, the last bit with a laugh.

I sat up as he spoke, realizing that my clothes were now ashes that clung to my body, and looked to my left.  Sure enough, there was a pair of black pants, very similar to the pairs that I had seen Jack and my new guide wearing. As my new thicker, glowing skin shifted with my movement, black and grey flecks of burnt skin floated away from me. There was a towel on top of the pants that I quickly used to rub off the remaining blackened patches of burnt-off skin, and shoved my feet through the pant legs. I followed after my guide as I fastened the belt that had been laid with them.

“What’s your name kid?” he asked as I got closer.

“I’m Paul,” I said. I was too busy observing my surroundings to care much about what he was asking me. The hall that he was guiding me down was like a glass tube through the rocks, the walls glimmered with my reflection.

“Name’s Mike and I run this joint.” He said with a New York accent. “Gallu’s the only one I answer to, don’t you let nobody tell you otherwise.”

“I’ll be sure not to.” I assured him. I took a closer look at him as an individual now. He was only about an inch shorter than I was, he seemed to be of Latin descent, and he was certainly no more than ten or fifteen years older than me, but his hands shook and his movements were nervous, like he was agitated by something.

“How old do you think I am, Paul?” He asked suddenly. He spoke quickly, as though he was worried someone was listening.

“I’m sorry?” I said. I was stalling for time; the question had caught me off guard, though not as much as the paranoid behavior.

“How old, Paul, do you think that I am?”  He had stopped and turned to me expectantly.

“Thirty-two?” I had learned long ago that it was always best to guess low if you thought someone was over thirty and I though Mike looked about forty, so I was playing dumb.

“That’s not bad.” He said sticking out his chin as he thought about it. “You’re only off by forty years. I’m actually seventy-two.”

I let out a long whistle. I suppose I might have been surprised if Jack hadn’t let it slip that he was over a thousand. Mike, I’m pretty sure, was nowhere near being in charge. He was most likely just trying to force me into a subordinate role before I had the chance to find out otherwise.

“Yeah, you wouldn’t know it, would ya? I don’t look a day over forty-five.” Mike continued on as he walked down the long corridor with his chest puffed out a little more than it had been before. “That’s one of the perks about this life. You get to stay the age you were when you died. Pretty sweet if you ask me.”