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Water began to rise around his legs, but the shon:gili churned through it. The hunter was silent now, drifting
through the water with them. He wasn’t stiff yet, and the demon wanted him
alive to feed on the terror and the soul.
A sudden burst of water pushed them back. The shon:gili’s head went under. He clawed at the bricks
while a new
burst of water and mud filled the confines of the sewer.
Faster, Carl shouted. There
has to be an inlet.
The shon:gili came under
a small roar of water and ducked, raking his claws through mossy slime and into
the bricks.
With Carl urging him on, he pushed up into the water and after
clawing a little more broke free into a small flood of debris that swirled
around a hole in the road.
Come on, Chicken, Carl
shouted and crowed a laugh. Yeah, boy.
You’re the best. You’re the hung stud and a half, yaw-hoo!
Crawling out to more or less dry ground, the shon:gili shook the water from his coat. He stopped and spat out a
leg. His victim was gone, and all that remained was the leg. The animal muttered
in the mind while Carl barked a laugh.
Under a lowering sky, the shon:gili
raised his head to howl a cry of outrage and hunger.
With a gentle smile, Henri said, “Why, sir, you are the master
here. I better tell you, though, that when I was in the safe last week, I
removed the battery chip.”
Harrison scowled at the remote. Henri made a lighting stab at
Harrison’s head, clamping a hand over the skull, his fingers bearing in.
“Try anything, and I’ll break your skinny neck, boy.”
“I won’t . . . Hurts.”
“The key?”
“There isn’t one.” The fingers tightened and Harrison
screamed, clawing at the hand. “I swear." Eye bulging, he shrieked. “I
swear it.”
Henri shook the slight man. “Liar,”
he shouted. “They took them off once before and can do it again.”
“New microchips. President le Joie had them implemented. When
you got your plague shots, the new chips were in it.” Eyes rolling up in his
head, Harrison went slack, the remote sliding off his leg to the floor.
Rocked by the answer and the affirmation from another that it was
true, Henri let the judge drop to the floor and kicked the remote away. He
jumped after it and snatched it from the floor.
Henri opened the back of it and took a tiny electronic tool from a
pen in his pocket. He came back to the judge and smiled. A few hard slaps over
the quivering face and Harrison came awake.
“Hey, where do you keep the spare collars?”
Eyes wide and lips trembling, Harrison stared up at him and
whimpered.
The shon:gili’s
stomach heaved. He vomited a gut full of mud and water. The animal coughed and
choked, and more spurted from his nostrils from burning lungs. He collapsed, the
eyes rolling up in his head. The distant boom of the heart faded to silence.
Carl stiffened with his jaw sagging.
It’s dead?
The demon shrugged. He started to slide from the animal. Carl
grabbed it by the neck and punched it in the face.
The demon screamed. A god am
I. Thou art a slave being, a mere human.
A cold rasp in his voice, Carl said, Anna told me I got power over you ‘cause I’m alive. The werewolf’s
heart stopped, jerk. He’s dying. He dies, so do I. Carl dragged the demon
up till the hate-filled red eyes stared directly into his. I go back to hell, you’re part of the package. Got it, you butt punk?
The demon clawed at Carl. It raked dagger nails through Carl’s
face. Carl leaned into a punch that drove the fist right through the other
spirit’s stomach to hit the wall of the shon:gili’s
mind.
Let’s go meet the devil,
you rip. Teeth bared in a death-head grin, Carl roared. He bellowed a laugh,
and the shon:gili’s lips twitched in
a dying response.
Nay, nay!
The demon cowered in Carl’s fist. Carl rapped the demon’s head
on the walls of the shon:gili’s
brain, and the shon:gili tried to
breathe. The man stopped. He grinned and pounded the demon’s head against the
brain until the demon went from shrieks of pain to whimpered moans.
Hey, this is fun. Carl
slapped the spirit around until it was limp in his fists. The heart trembled. It
shuddered, and when Carl rammed the demon into bundles of nerves, sparks flew, and
the demon found he could still shriek. The heart began a feeble beat, hollow and
without hope.
The shon:gili choked and
gagged. He tried to stand only to collapse. A hunter edged up to him, and Carl
saw the man raise an ironbound club. Stars exploded in the brain. Sparks shot
from damaged brain tissue, and Carl screamed, ripping the demon in two. The demon
wailed, and the shon:gili sucked in a
breath that exploded pain through the nerves.
The animal growled. Carl whistled.
Come on, boy; come on, boy,
he chanted. Good boy. Good Killer.
The animal shoved up to stand on shaking legs. One eye dangled
from a shattered socket, but the other registered a slender pistol in the
hunter’s hands.
A Zapper.
Oh, shit, the demon
whispered, and Carl echoed him.
©2004 StoriesByEmail.com
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