She’d screamed in pain and terror, then passed out cold. She still slept, and to be honest, I was beginning to worry that she’d never wake up. Deacon, however, had assured me that she would regain consciousness soon, albeit with one hell of a headache. I didn’t ask him how he could be so certain about the particulars of demonic possession. That was just one more thing I didn’t want to know.
Add on top of all that the fact that I had, only hours prior, managed to single-handedly facilitate the imminent arrival of Armageddon, and you can probably see why I was a little stressed.
“They’ll start looking for you soon,” Deacon said. “We need a plan.”
The “they” he referred to was actually a “he”: Clarence, in particular. My amphibious handler. A toad-faced little demon who’d run the con on me and whom I despised all the more because I’d actually been starting to like him.
“I have a plan,” I said, stroking Rose’s hair. “I already told you.” For that matter, we’d talked of nothing other than my plan for hours. With me alternating between berating myself for failing both Rose and the world, and fantasizing in glorious detail how I would kill not only Clarence but every other demon I came in contact with.
The fantasy alone was cathartic, but not nearly enough, and I couldn’t wait for the real deal. I wanted the satisfaction of the kill. The strength I gained. And, yeah, I wanted the hit of power. I drew it in when I killed them. The demon’s essence. Its darkness. Its fury.
And, yeah, I was happy to embrace the homicidal happiness. Ironic, I suppose, since without all this demon-assassin prophecy bullshit, I wouldn’t be having warm, fuzzy, murderous thoughts. I wouldn’t be spending every day of my life trying to suppress the demonic essence that got sucked into me with each and every kill.
And here’s an interesting tidbit: You’d think that since I’d been unknowingly working for the bad guys, I would have been out there killing good guys who I’d been duped to whack. If that had been the case, then I’d be filled with goodness and light, about as sweet and charming as they come, because I would have sucked in the essence of a boatload of near-angelic souls.
A nice theory, but not even close to my reality. Because Clarence and crew didn’t want me sweet; they didn’t want me nice. And they’d had me training on real, true, badass demons. Sacrificing their own kind so that I’d become more like them. More badass. More evil.
Apparently, it had worked. Because the darkness writhed within me.
I wanted to be over the top, and I wanted to end them all.
“We can’t simply waltz in and kill Clarence,” Deacon said.
“ ‘We’?” I replied. “No, no, no. This one’s personal. This is all me.”
“Fuck that.”
“Fuck you,” I countered, demonstrating my keen skill at argument. “He’s my handler. I can get close to him. Close enough to shove my blade through his heart.” My plan was to go back to Alice’s apartment, call Clarence, and pretend like I was the good little soldier. It didn’t matter much if he believed me; it only mattered that he came over. But if Deacon was standing there beside me when he walked into the apartment, we lost the element of surprise, and what could have been a nice, clean kill would become a bloodbath.
And as much as the thought of seeing Clarence waste away in a pool of his own blood left a nice warm feeling in my gut, for this job, I preferred the subtle approach. Grab him by the short hairs, and drag my blade across his fat little throat.
“Besides,” I said, “I have to get close to him, and you know it. Unless I get inside his head, this thing’s over before it’s even begun.”
The problem with swearing on all that is holy that you are going to go forth and lock the door to hell is pretty fundamental: Doors require keys. And without knowing where this particular key was, we were pretty much screwed.
Deacon and I both knew damn good and well that there was no way Clarence was going to reveal the incantation for finding the legendary key that would permanently lock tight all of the nine gates to hell.
To be honest, we didn’t even know if Clarence knew the incantation, but I had to poke around and find out. And if he did know it, then we could use the spell to raise a map to the key’s location on my skin. A rather handy but bizarre side effect of being Prophecy Girl.
“The moment he knows you’re poking around in his head, he’s going to gut you like a fish,” Deacon said. “And he may be shaped like a frog, but I’m betting he can move fast. He gets you down and injured, and you might find yourself in pieces or trapped in a tiny pine box forever.”