Demon Slayer Read online

  Demon Slayer

  RW Thorn

  Demon Slayer

  By RW Thorn

  Copyright © 2018 RW Thorn, All Rights Reserved.

  This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the author except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Disclaimer: Earlier versions of parts of this book have previously been published in serial format.

  Created with Vellum

  Contents

  1. Amelia

  2. Wight

  3. Lennox

  4. Ducati

  5. Row House

  6. The Singed Grimoire

  7. Deedee

  8. Nathanial’s Toys

  9. Police Cordon

  10. Rear Entrance

  11. Department Store

  12. Hell-beast

  13. Grenade

  14. Injuries

  15. A Cornered Beast

  16. Samuel

  17. Premonition

  18. Frustration and Death

  19. An Unexpected Message

  20. Inner City Labyrinth

  21. Tar Man

  22. Clouds of Putrescence

  23. Demon Blood

  24. The Tar Man’s Return

  25. Mario’s Pizzeria and Bar

  26. Panic

  27. Holy Water

  28. Concrete and Rage

  29. Breaking Out

  30. Apologies

  31. A Ducati in the Night

  32. A Scream in the Darkness

  33. Emporium

  34. Wrenching and Pain

  35. Salts

  36. Tentacles

  37. Glyphs

  38. Lex

  Author’s Note

  Amelia

  “Be careful,” Amelia’s ghost whispered in Jackson Kade’s mind.

  Jack acknowledged the warning even as he pushed the specter of his dead wife aside. His wife had been with him in spirit for years. She was a constant companion, sometimes visible but most often no more than a voice in his head.

  Although he loved her more than life itself, Jack couldn’t afford such distractions just then.

  He stood inside the main pedestrian entrance of Coven Street station with his feet planted firmly, his face twisted into a snarl of hate, and his fists clenched as if ready to punch. The door slid shut behind him, shutting him in, and that suited Jack just fine. It was not in his nature to retreat.

  Jack looked about for whatever loathsome creature of Hell had drawn him there, and his intentions were hostile. He meant to hurt, meant to kill, and was anxious to get started.

  Yet he wouldn’t charge blindly in and hope for the best. The things Jack faced were fearsome beyond words. They would welcome such a naive approach, and would eagerly put his mortality to the test if he tried it.

  Instead, he was careful, as his wife suggested. He took his time to assess.

  “Where are you, vile creature?” he grated to himself, his words full of venom. “Come out, come out, wherever you are.”

  Jack was wiry and looked like a bum. His trenchcoat, shirt, and trousers were rumpled and stained, and his worn, purple sneakers didn’t go with anything else. He looked awful. His hair was greasy and unkempt, he hadn’t shaved for days, and his face had the weathered look of someone who spent too much time in the sun.

  He wouldn’t have looked out of place sitting on the sidewalk with his back to a wall, holding a cup and begging for coins. Yet he might not have done well at that. Jack had a dangerous glint in his eyes, and his expression was typically one of rage or disgust. As well, he had numerous tattoos that peeked out from his shirt at his neck and the ends of his sleeves. The tattoos were occult symbols of protection, but strangers wouldn’t know that at first glance. The tattoos looked menacing, like symbols of hate.

  Only the simple gold band on his ring finger and the pager at his belt made an obvious lie of his destitute look. Not many homeless people kept jewelry when it could so easily be pawned, and even fewer carried pagers. In an age of cellphones and instant contact, there weren’t many who still carried pagers at all. But the pager was mostly hidden under the flap of his trenchcoat and wasn’t easy to view.

  To strangers, Jack appeared intimidating. If he did try his hand at begging, most would have avoided him instead of offering coins. As well they should, for the pager wasn’t the only thing Jack kept hidden beneath his coat.

  He had an assortment of weapons as well, and a pouch full of arcane artifacts and other items he hoped never to need.

  “You’ve been busy, I see,” Jack grumbled to his unseen foe, the loathing in his tone even more pronounced than before. “Made a bit of a mess, haven’t you?”

  Coven Street station wasn’t the biggest or busiest underground station in the city of New Sanctum. Nor was it the smallest. The main foyer where Jack stood was light and airy and open. It reminded him of the grand ballroom of a castle, or perhaps the main gallery of a large museum. It had the same feel and the same beige color-palette. There was even a sculpture in the middle of it.

  At the sight of the sculpture, Jack allowed himself a sardonic grin. It was a gargoyle, a massive, kneeling creature twice Jack’s own height, complete with wings and horns at its temples. Such sculptures were common around New Sanctum, and most of the populace had no clue how scarily appropriate they were.

  “The newsagent,” the ghost of his wife whispered softly.

  A small collection of shops surrounded the statue. A newsagent shared a wall with a florist, beyond which a tiny coffee shop squeezed into the corner. The ticket counter took a place of pride on the far wall next to the stairs that pointed to the subway platform itself, with the toilets and a colorful row of vending machines on the other side.

  It was nothing Jack hadn’t seen a thousand times before. And yet, a station like this should have been bustling. It should have felt like a mall on a Saturday afternoon. There should have been a buzz of excitement mixed with the stench of despair as people embarked on whatever errand they were there to perform. Children scampering eagerly about, those too young for school and with one or other parent in tow. And workers, there to keep everything running smoothly.

  Instead, the station was nearly empty. There were a few people about, crouched low and whimpering in fear, but far fewer than Jack would have predicted if all had been as it should.

  The word had gone out like it does in a terror event. Something vile was happening. Something awful. This was not the place to be.

  There were no police present, and for that, Jack was grateful. Police could make his life unnecessarily difficult. But there was a security guard. An overweight, black man who looked about fifty and would get no older. He was lying on his back near the sculpture, and Jack could see that the guard’s eyes were open and fixed.

  Jack took a deep breath of air that carried the foul stench of sulfur and then nodded to himself. Something Hellish was in the station. The odor would have confirmed it even without the Brotherhood’s page that had directed Jack there.

  Nor was the odor the only indication of what had happened. Ever since Jack had stepped into the station, he had been hearing grunts and shuffling from within the newsagent shop. He couldn’t see into the darkened interior, but judged he would find his quarry, whatever it might be, waiting for him there.

  He would have made the same judgment even without Amelia’s whispers.

  Jack Kade let the hate flow through his veins. He knew what was
to come next and relished it. This was his chance to bring some balance back into the world. To use the rage that lived in his heart and the power that came with it to cast some detestable creature back into the abyss.

  To feel alive as he rarely felt since Amelia’s death.

  He squared his shoulders. For a moment, Jack looked like a remnant from years gone by. A gunfighter squaring up for a duel. Only the lack of a cowboy hat and spurs countered the impression. That, and his purple sneakers and peeking tattoos.

  He took the time to check the weapons under his coat. He passed over the gun at his shoulder and the knives sheathed at his back, and removed a stoppered test tube from an inside pocket. It was the last one he had. It was three-quarters full of holy water, blessed by the Brotherhood. Potent enough for most things he might find.

  As he started to cross the station floor, the pager at his hip buzzed and vibrated both at once.

  “I’m a bit busy at the moment,” he snarled in irritation. He never took his eyes off the newsagent store, but couldn’t help wondering why the Brotherhood sought to contact him then. It was surprising that they would do so, given where he was and what he was doing. Surely, they knew better.

  Jack didn’t check to see what the message might be. Instead, he lengthened his stride, eager to meet whatever horror was in the newsagent.

  “What are you doing?” someone hissed in his direction. It was a plump woman cowering in fear against the wall. Her eyes were wide with shock. “Don’t go in there! It killed that poor man!” she said, her voice high-pitched and filled with anxiety.

  Jack had no use for the woman’s unease. It couldn’t compete with his own sense of outrage that a creature from Hell would walk the streets of New Sanctum. Yet her obvious worry caused him to glance once again at the dead man on the floor.

  The security guard had been a large man, both in girth and height. Much larger than Jack himself. And he had been carrying a gun in a holster at his hip, although the gun was nowhere to be seen. Despite the man’s size and weapon, he had been bludgeoned to death. His skull was misshapen, and blood spread slowly out onto the floor.

  Jack’s visage twisted back into his grimace of hate.

  “I’ll be fine,” he rumbled and kept walking.

  There were things in New Sanctum most people were happy not knowing about. Terrifying, monstrous things. The one that murdered the security guard must have been both powerful and swift to have been able to bludgeon him so.

  It was Jack’s job to deal with it, to cast whatever monster he found back into Hell, regardless of the danger to himself. More than his job, it was his calling. His reason for living. It was what he was on this Earth to do, and he would do it until the day he died.

  No matter how far in the future that might happen to be.

  Wight

  Jack didn’t hesitate. He could see movement through the window and knew the creature within was as far from the door as it was possible to get. Jack’s heart beat steadily, but his hate felt like a flame that burned him up from the inside. He set his jaw and pushed the glass door of the newsagent store open.

  The stench of sulfur and rot almost overwhelmed him. It was nauseating, and Jack might have started to retch if he hadn’t been expecting it. As it was, he wrinkled his nose in revulsion and surveyed the ruin.

  The newsagent had suffered a calamity. An earthquake or a tornado couldn’t have created more of a mess. None of the shelving remained in place. Papers and magazines were strewn over the floor in complete disarray. One of the fluorescent ceiling lights hung at an odd angle. The only other light in the store had been damaged so that it flickered on occasionally. Other than that, the place was mostly dark.

  Jack could hear terrified whimpering from behind the counter and figured the store person could still be alive. He also saw the creature he sought. It was working its way through the chocolates and junk food the newsagent had displayed on the counter.

  It was a wight. A damned soul brought back from Hell and set loose. A repulsive creature that still possessed a humanlike form, but which had lost all humanity. It was elongated, its flesh a disgusting yellow color, and it exuded the vile stench of decay along with the sulfur.

  It was a mindless thing with a shapeless face. Hollows for eyes, no nose, and a toothless, gaping maw.

  “What in all of Hell are you doing here?” Jack demanded. He was surprised. A wight was not his typical foe. It couldn’t escape from Hell by itself like ghouls and changelings and succubi and incubi. It was not a human with demon blood in its veins and a mind for mayhem. Nor was it a revenant, a vampire, poltergeist, or a human possessed.

  Instead, it was a creature that must have been summoned by someone with power. Someone like Amelia, who had been a witch when she lived.

  Jack ground his teeth in fury at the thought. That anyone would consciously bring such as this into his city felt like an insult. As if a cancer had been deliberately introduced to healthy flesh. While she’d had the requisite power, Amelia would never have considered raising a wight. Doing so would have been an offense to everything she and Jack held dear.

  Not that it was completely unique. The lore required to summon such a creature wasn’t hidden, and the power to wield it had become frighteningly common. It was just repugnant to Jack that someone had done so.

  The wight didn’t respond to Jack’s question. It didn’t even acknowledge his presence. Jack would have been surprised if it had. Wights had little thought other than to indulge those vices denied them in Hell. This one was focused on the junk food it consumed, packets and all. A physical manifestation of gluttony. The security guard had probably died while trying to stop it.

  Which was just what Jack intended to do.

  He curled his top lip in disgust. Wights could be dangerous. Out of habit, Jack reached for his Daemon Ocularum, a gold-rimmed monocle that hung from a chain around his neck, and held it up to look through.

  The Daemon Ocularum was a peculiar blend of technology and the arcane. As Jack focused through it to the wight, the creature’s primary attributes appeared within the device’s depths:

  Identity: Wight

  Strength: 16

  Speed: 12

  Awareness: 4

  Intelligence: 3

  As expected. Compared to a human, wights were fast and immensely strong. But Jack had dealt with them before. All he needed to do was shatter the vial of holy water against its flesh, and that would be that. The holy water would act as an acid, boiling and melting the wight’s flesh until it was no more than an awful puddle of yellow putrescence.

  It would stink like the bowels of death itself, but that was a small price to pay for ridding the city of a creature like this.

  Jack’s look of disgust turned into one of anger as he dropped the Daemon Ocularum. “Go back to Hell!” he growled at the creature’s back. Then he hurled the vial with all his strength.

  It was a disaster. Jack’s throw had been good, but the venom in his words was like an alert. The wight was more than seven feet tall with attenuated limbs and long, skinny fingers. For all this, it retained some semblance of self-preservation, and it moved even more quickly than Jack had expected. It spun to face him and ducked beneath the thrown vial, which shattered uselessly against the wall.

  The wight responded in anger. It gave a howl that was like a wail of pain and charged at Jack with a chocolate bar still gripped in its hand. Jack snarled in irritation and reached for his knives, but the creature was too swift. It was on him in less than a heartbeat.

  It was more than just a ravening beast. While most of its brains had likely rotted into sludge during its time in Hell, it still retained some semblance of thought. It still knew how to fight. Before Jack could so much as blink, the wight backhanded him across the face with all of its considerable strength.

  It hurt like being hit in the face with an iron bar. Jack was knocked into the newsagent door.

  The force of the blow rattled him. It felt like the flesh on the side of hi
s face had been burned with acid, and he barely kept his feet. But it was far from the first time he had been hit in a fight, and it wouldn’t be the last. He clung to his focus by sheer force of will and finally managed to bring out one of his knives.

  “My turn,” he muttered, but he didn’t have time to turn his words into actions. The wight was on him, swinging its fists left and right. One blow, whether by chance or design, knocked Jack’s knife hand to the side. A fist caught him flush against the other side of his face. Jack’s head bounced back and forth like a ping-pong ball set on a spring. He had no time to recover before the wight howled at him once again, picked him up by the lapels, and hurled him back into the door.

  Jack crashed through the glass and onto the concrete of the station floor. Such was the force of the wight’s throw that Jack bounced and skidded before coming to a stop near the dead security guard and the gargoyle statue.

  “Get up, Jack. Get up,” urged Amelia in his mind. Jack had no doubt she would have joined in the fight if she had been able.

  A weaker man might not have survived the punishment Jack had already taken. Even if he had, it might have been more than enough to take the fight out of him. But Jack had been battling monsters like this for much of his life, and he was older than he looked. Tougher as well. Where another, if he were still conscious, might have started to fear for his very life, Jack felt his anger harden into fury. At the wight, but also at himself for allowing the creature to gain the advantage.