I sat on the other desk and rested my feet on the large belly of the still-unconscious tourist. “Okay, grumpy hooves. I’ll give you those five minutes. Better yet, I’ll actually listen to you instead of killing you during them, because I’m sweet as cotton candy that way.” I checked my watch again and snapped my own fingers. “Go.”
And go he did. It wasn’t fifty demons who had died. It wasn’t even a hundred. That wouldn’t be that unusual. Demons killed pa?en for sport and tricksters killed demons because of it. All pa?en weren’t tricksters. There were vampires, wolves (werewolves to the fictionally inclined), nymphs, sprites, boggles, revenants, trolls, chubacabra, pukas, and thousands more. Some could take a demon and some couldn’t. So, if a hundred demons died in the past few years, that would be normal.
Nine hundred and fifty-six in six months was not normal.
I tapped my feet on the unconscious man’s belly and watched it ripple for a second while I processed the information. “All right. I see your point. Someone has been eating their Wheaties, taking their vitamins, and chugging a whole lot of Red Bull on top of that.” Inside I had more of a “holy shit, the sky is falling—don’t let the demon see you sweat” attitude going on. Something that could do that... “Maybe Upstairs has decided to do some old-fashioned smiting of the wicked and wanton. Let’s face it, you are both.”
His teeth became human again as the smile became smug. “True. Wicked and wanton and I stand by my record placing in the top ten in my particular region of Hell. But, no. Not even in the War—or the Sacred Scuffle, Police Action, Hallowed Hoedown, take your pick—we didn’t lose a third so many. Who do you think was most likely to rebel? The holiest of the holy? The Precious Moments Angels? The simpering weaklings who were no better than fluffy baby ducks with halos?” He snorted. “No. We were the warriors. God’s Righteous Fury. The Smiters, sweetheart, not the Smitees. Granted, we did pick up a slew of messenger angels, watcher angels—the minimum-wage pigeons who just did what they were told to do. And at that moment Lucifer was talking the loudest and God was letting the angels make their own choice. So we ended up with some weak-minded fluffy ducks after all. Like him.” He jerked his head at the stain on the floor. “But even Daffy there, to lose more than nine hundred of him in six months? That is...” He shook his head and slid on a pair of sunglasses. “I don’t know what that is. No one seems to.”
I still kept my gun out as he slid down from the desk and headed for the door. Demons, higher-level demons like Eligos, moved faster than humans did. While I’d given myself an Olympic-conditioned human body when creating it, Olympic or not, it was still human . . . and five pounds heavier. “It’s odd, impressive, and, all right, a little more than freaky, but why should I care? Whatever this is could kill every demon in Hell and it’s not going to get my ovaries in a twist. There’s a huge amount of ‘I don’t care’ in this general area.” I waved my free hand around me. “You kill my kind. I kill yours. This seems like a good thing for me and mine.” I wasn’t that stupid. If someone or something out there could do what Eli said, it was bad, bad news, because who knew when your kind might be . . .
“Next,” Eli finished for me as he opened the door, a few blond hairs glittering in the dark brown of his hair, and looked back over his shoulder. Posed rather. Demons did like the hot rides they’d created to be admired. “I don’t need to be an angel. I don’t need telepathy to read that thought. I only have to know how smart you are. And that’s almost as smart as you think.” He grinned. “Nice T-shirt, by the way. Can’t wait to prove it wrong.”
The door closed and I slowly holstered my gun. Almost a thousand demons in six months.
Not in my best year ever. While I didn’t care about the dead demons—no crying over spilt sociopaths—I did wonder what this thing might do if demons started to bore it. I made a mental list of anything and everything I knew of throughout history, mine and the world’s, that could do something like this.
It was a very short list.
I went on to my workout. Dead demons didn’t make exercise and conditioning unnecessary. An unknown creature making those dead demons made it only more necessary. Afterward I ran home to take a shower. I’d come to find out that some humans had the capacity to tolerate more annoyance and flat-out brutal torture than I’d ever given them credit for. . . . Having to genuinely earn your muscle—that was probably one of the most annoying things that I’d come across.