Dealing with Devils

Chapter Five

Another month has rolled by slowly as usual, another month of not enough action.

I bound down the stairs and practically skip into the kitchen. “Morning!” I chime flicking the coffee maker to ‘on’.

“Marty’s outside having a smoke.” Izzy informs me looking over the top of her paper.

“Oi! Gay Boy! Get in here now!” I shout as I pull two cups off the rack on the side.

The door opens and I hold out a cup behind me, he takes it without a word.

“How many times do I have to tell you that this is a smoking house?” I ask after taking a large gulp of heavenly coffee.

“I know, I just feel weird doing it with… Izzy around.” The pause in his sentence indicating that he almost called her my mother again.

I sit down at the table and spark up my own cigarette. “You bring all the stuff for tonight?” I ask whilst rocking on the back two legs of my chair.

“Chair.” Izzy says almost robotically without looking away from her paper. I fall back onto all four legs with a thud.

“Yeah got it all. I put it in the window seat.” He says motioning in the direction of the living room.

I get up and walk towards into the living room and sit in the middle of the floor, Marty follows me placing his half full cup of coffee on the table. I pull the map off the table and open it out onto the floor in front of me, it covers most of the floor.

“Dust!” I say holding out my hand like a surgeon waiting for a scalpel. Marty pours some of the blue dust into my hand. I shake it over the map and then hold out my hand once more. “Glitter!” Marty then pours what looks like multi coloured glitter into my hand, I do the same as I did with the dust.

I look over the map and whisper the words “ostendo sum bestia” immediately some parts of the map have large green lights emitting from it.

“Looks like Brum this month.” Marty says sitting back on his hands.

“Yeah seems really concentrated.” I say. “Looks like there’s a party in town.”

“Yeah it’s gonna be a howler.” Marty retorts.

“Did you get your wit from Scooby Doo?” I ask with a sweet smile. Marty then proceeds to throw a cushion at me and so the morning’s work is done.

The first two woods we hit provide us with nothing. “Where the hell are they?” Marty asks me still holding his gun out in front of him.

“I knew we should have done a magic search when it got dark.” I say walking towards the opening to the woods.

We stop in the small clearing outside of the wood; I stand for a moment to get my bearings. I look around then decide on a direction.

“There should be another wood over this way… next to that graveyard where I nabbed that 500 year old V.” Marty follows me keeping as quiet as we can.

I find a few V’s in the woods along with one Howler who we unfortunately had to shoot since he decided that talking wasn’t an option and that me and Marty would make a rather tasty snack.

“Time’s almost up, got about another fifth teen minutes.” Marty remarks looking at his watch.

“Yeah, I just got one more place to check out, I’m getting this really weird vibe from over in the graveyard somewhere.”

We walk into the graveyard and I let my head lead the way, right around the first mausoleum then straight ahead past the second and third then left after the next. Then finally past the small clump of trees to the largest mausoleum situated in the farthest corner of the graveyard.

“You really want to go in there?” Marty asks me as I push open the old oak door.

“Looks like.” I say holding the door open for him. “There’s defiantly something in here… I just don’t know where.”

“Why do they have to make these things so big? Damn 17th century with all the Catholics making such big families.”

I walk into the centre of the room and look around, nothing sticking out here, I search for a while until Marty discovers the predictable trap door that we go down slowly.

“Holy shit.” I say dropping my sports bag on the floor.

“Okay I don’t get it.” Marty says with a look of puzzlement.

I examine the situation, I am down in a secret hiding place of some sort. In front of me is a large wrought iron cage that looks like it could hold a large elephant without breaking. Inside is a large lump of what looks like hair but I know it isn’t, it is all curled up against the cold. Next to the lump is a neat pile of clothing, black jeans and a black top. The lump is chained many times, around the neck, around the ankles and around the wrists.

The wolf stirs then looks up at me, it looks me in the eyes with its bright gold glare, and slowly the eyes change from the golden glow to deep blue.

“Oh… Bollocks…”