Rolling out of bed this evening was troublesome. At first I thought maybe one of those Sleep Paralysis demons were real, and were sitting on my chest, but no. It was the soreness.


    Flinging myself off the bed, I stumbled across my messy bedroom to the alarm clock that I kept at the other side of it, so I got up an hour or three before sunset. I figured I needed a drop or two of vitamin D to keep me alive... So a little bit of late-afternoon sun would do that for me.


    Somewhere in the mess I found my tacs, red string, and scratch notes. Eventually I found myself a pen as well, and set to work lining things up.


    Victim: Stacy, didn''t get her last name.


    Witnesses: Possibly her neighbor? Maybe a few bystanders? Gotta talk to Charlie about that.


    Murderers: Easy, the Russian mob. Nah, too easy, and it makes no sense. Probably has something to do with these Wotanists I keep hearing about.


    Demons: Where the fuck is Lass?


    Should check the black book and see if there is anyone else I could call.


    Small group, gotta be, too small a faith to have a big Supremacist group. Also if it is the Wotanists, why was the victim white?


    The only reason the victim would have been targeted is if they knew Stacy had someone watching them. But why would they lash out so suddenly? Unless they knew I wasn''t an ordinary private investigator, but I''m like, the joke number in the phone book, even some of the Pagan''s thought I was joking, until I literally punched the demons off of them.


    Does this have something to do with me? I added it to the board...


    A blast of sudden wind lashed across the room, reeking with sulfur, two candles were blown out in an instant. Something was wrong, I rushed to the blowtorch and started lighting candles as quickly as I could. A form rose from the center of my circle, blasting me with the scent of hell, rotten eggs and ammonia.


    You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.


    Fuck... Fuck, this was bad, this was really really bad. I would just send her back but I don''t know her name! I don''t even know who the hell she is! And my latin has always been shit so it''s not like I can exorcise her normally. If I don''t get her out of here soon my defences are going to crumble, and she could tear me apart in ways I would enjoy...


    No! NO! Focus Rodney!


    deliciously awful to someone innocent, ruin just the right family''s lives and ensure we get a very bad man to go to the very bad place with me..."


    I suspect he is growing a bit too much of a fondness for humanity, he is starting to like it up here, and he has outright refused to try any... Extracirricular activities, while up here."


    She was talking about taking someones soul, someone unbaptized or otherwise inoculated against demons taking the soul from the unwilling, stealing it from under the nose of Death Angels. It was the main reason I called Lass and only Lass in the first place, any other demon might try to take too many opportunities to get ahead. Sure they almost always died trying, Angels of Death don''t carry those scythes for nothing, but anything to get out of the dreaded "0th layer" Lass was always talking about.


    The demon of Lust looked me up and down, held an arm out to the side as she spoke. "Challenges don''t get me souls, challenges get me a one-night-stand or two that can be taken away with a prayer or confession. We need sinners who are much too far gone. People who are so utterly wicked that an angel might hesitate to forgive them. In short, we need monsters, not horny jocks."


    "I get that demons tell lies, its kinda your schtick, but at least make your tells less obvious, impatiently glaring at candles only reminds me of the stressful fucking situation I am in.


    What do you want Demon?" I said, swapping out the slightly squashed candle for a fresh one, the smell of cinnamon and clove from the cheap red candles were starting to get cloying in here.


    When she said crush, she tapped a heeled shoe against the ground, and one of the candles was pounded flat into the ground. I replaced it, lit it, and looked horrified at the other candles as each flame was nearly completely out, just barely puttering against this demon''s strength of will.


    "Why the hell would you tell me anyway? You could just kill him now without my permission."


    "Oh, I could. But then I wouldn''t get to find out any of the reasons why."


    "What keeps me from denying you Human? I could crush this circle and end you here and now!" All the honey and sweetness was gone from her voice now.


    "Then do it." I said flatly, and I felt a wave of agony as she slammed against the wall, the candles melting into pools of wax around the floor, but the flames somehow remaining in place, holding their positions in the air around each point of the star.


    "How?!? Still, you can''t sit here and hold against me forever, that righteous fury will die out eventually, and I will make you enjoy every second I pry your fucking heart from your chest!"


    She wasn''t wrong, whatever I was doing, it was fading quickly, and it felt like I was losing something for every second that passed.


    The last part was not sweet, not bitter, it was cold, flavorless, a promise made in a pool of crimson, wax or blood, it mattered little. Damn she was better at this Shakespeare stuff than I was.