Valcour Enchanted by a Demon

Chapter 7

Behind the counter where she and Jake were hiding there was a small television screen displaying four shots from security cameras around the business. Three of them were views from inside the store. She could see her and Jake in one of them that was pointed at the register. The fourth view was from outside, centered on the gas pumps.

The sedan had stopped at a sharp angle in front of the pumps. Two men got out of the front, one from each side. And, although the grainy black-and-white security image wasn’t the greatest, Brianna could tell that the men were the same two that had chased them into the library.

Brianna tried to look down at her right shoulder, where a dull ache was growing into an intense pain even worse than the one in her left wrist. “Did they shoot me?”

“Yes, they did.” Jake risked another look over the counter.

“With a bullet? Seriously? Demons use bullets?” She could feel beads of perspiration standing out on her forehead and running down the back of her neck.

“You’d be surprised how effective bullets can be.”

Brianna had no argument about how effective this one had been. Jake took his sweater off and wrapped it around her shoulder, under her armpit and up again, using the sleeves to tie it tightly in place as a make-shift tourniquet. Under his sweater, his black t-shirt hugged his muscles like a second skin.

“You’re bleeding,” he said to her. “This should stop it. But even if it does, we need to get out of here as soon as possible.”

She laughed, but it turned into a choke. “That’s what I’ve been telling you.”

“Jake Valcour!” the deep, resonant voice she remembered from the library called out to them now. “We know it is Jake now, yes? Or did you change your name again?”

Brianna looked up at Jake, questions in her eyes. He leaned his head against the side of the counter. “There’s a lot to explain, Brianna. Add that one to the list.”

She did. It was a long list, growing longer by the second. But on the top of the list right now was how they were going to get out of here.

“Where’s the clerk?” Jake asked suddenly. “There should be someone working here, right? Are they in the back or something?”

“They…stepped out,” she said. Easier to say that, than to say the guy disappeared.

“Jake Valcour!” The man called again. Or maybe it was the other one this time. Hard to tell, with the twin thing they had going on. “We would like you to step out, Jake. Please do not make it necessary for us come in for you.”

The very politely framed question was punctuated by several small objects zipping around the store. More glass broke, items on shelves exploded and fell to the floor, and bottles of soda blew up spreading dark liquid everywhere. More bullets, Brianna realized, and she watched the men shooting from the edge of the security image they starred in. But she couldn’t hear the shots, just the damage that the bullets were doing when they struck.

“Silencers,” Jake answered her unspoken question. “And just to let you know, these will be very special bullets. The one that hit you looks like it grazed through the top of your shoulder. You’re lucky. If it had stayed in your body, it would have started eating your flesh from the inside.”

She grimaced. What a pleasant picture.

“If you wish to make this tough on yourself, then so be it. But why make the girl suffer?”

The muscles in Jake’s jaw flexed. She could see the anger rising in him. But still he squatted defensively over her, and said nothing.

“Then so be it,” both men said at once, a stereo of identical voices. Brianna watched the men outside on the monitor. They walked toward the building, moving out of the camera’s angle.

Silence. No bullets. No talking. Nothing moving.

“Is it over?” Brianna asked hopefully.

“Not by a long shot.”

“You could have lied to me to make me feel better,” she grumbled.

He looked down at her, reached a hand out to her cheek. “No. I don’t think I could.”

His touch again made her briefly forget the danger that was assaulting them. It felt like every skin particle on her cheek was suddenly in tune with the touch of his fingers

The little bell above the entrance dinged and jolted her back the reality of the situation.

“Oh, hell,” Jake swore, peeking up over the counter quickly before covering her body with his. “Get down!”

Fire rushed in a thick sheet over their heads, bright orange with black plumes streaking through it. Brianna screamed as the flames struck the walls above her and around her and clung wetly, burning into everything it touched.

“My God,” she breathed.

Flames dripped down the walls to the floor. Some of them landed very closely to her. Jake went berserk when he saw them, growling incoherently and tramping on the errant little tufts of fire with his boots until they went out.

“We need to get out of this building,” he said in a near shout, over the roar of the burning fires.

“Well, since the building’s on fire, I’d say so!”

“You don’t understand! This isn’t regular fire. This is Hellfire!”

Which, Brianna assumed, was a far worse kind of fire than regular fire. Either way, she was inside a burning building. Time to go.

She was struggling to get up, but her right arm hug limply now and she still couldn’t bear any weight on her left. Jake slid his arm around her waist and pulled her on her feet. Together they went further into the store, away from the demons standing outside the front. More silent impacts struck the walls and display racks near them as they moved; bullets coming way too close for Brianna’s comfort.

“Where are we going?” she breathed out between huffs. Her heart was pounding so hard that the raging fire sounded more distant and her vision began to narrow. She vaguely remembered hearing that adrenaline had this effect on people. Somehow it didn’t sound quite so dramatic before, but now that she was experiencing it, it was extremely overwhelming.

“I’m going to put you in the beer cooler until its safe. The cooler should be lined with metal. Good enough place as any to keep you safe from a fire.”

“And what are you going to do?”

They found the lever-handled door of the cooler inside a back office, and Jake opened it, putting her down gently on boxes of wine coolers and light beers. “Stay here.” He whispered lightly in her ear.

“Wait, Jake!” She leaned against the metal-lined wall, soaking in the welcome coolness. “You didn’t answer me. What are you going to do?”

He stood, the door half-closed. “I’m going to stop them.”

He shut the door behind him, and the overhead light went out. She was alone in the dark cooler. “I can’t even see to find a decent bottle of beer.”

She couldn’t even laugh at her bad joke as she sat there, scared and waiting in the dark, fighting the urge to open the door to see what was going on. He had told her to stay here, that she would be safe here, but she didn’t feel safe. Confined spaced bothered her, and so did the dark.

The cooler rocked violently. Boxes fell over, bottles breaking and splashing alcohol everywhere. She was bounced to the cold, hard floor and left wondering what had just happened as her shoulder screamed in pain.

Complete silence fell. There was no sound except her own rapid breathing and the rushing of blood in her ears. She listened for anything else. But there was nothing.

She rolled up onto her knees, and from there she used the wall of the cooler as leverage to push herself to her feet. The door opened from this side by pushing a plunger in. She found it in the dark and rammed her hip against it. The door swung farther outward

Brianna couldn’t believe what she was seeing.

There wasn’t much left of the store. The front of it had been ripped open, jagged pieces of wall and ceiling surrounding a gaping hole, debris strewn everywhere, wood and steel and roofing tiles mixing with bags of chips and canned goods. Back here where she stood, the place had fared better, with the display racks still standing and a soda fountain still in place.

Everything was on fire.

Flames licked at everything. The walls, the ceiling, the coolers of milk, the soda, and the energy drinks. She picked her way carefully to the front of the store. What was left of it, anyway.

“Jake?” she called out. “Jake!”

Then she stopped dead in her tracks. “Oh my God.”

The parking lot was a seething, living mass of fire. Orange and red flames stood tall and bright against the night; burning everything. The gas pumps were blown apart, so much twisted metal and melted plastic. The overhang above the pumps was crumpled over to one side, burning along with everything else. A charred skeleton of the black sedan had been tossed several dozen feet from where she had seen it last and landed on its side. Flames danced along its remains.

In the middle of the fires stood Jake Valcour.

As she got as close as she dared, he turned toward her. He was standing in the flames themselves, but he was not burned. His skin was untouched. His black hair blew wildly in the hot winds of the fire that parted and coiled around him. His arms were outstretched, as though he was welcoming the conflagration, supporting it, inviting it to him. His clothes weren’t even singed.

But his eyes were very changed. They were no longer the pale green with streaks of gold. Now they burned brightly, gold throughout, from corner to corner. Even the whites blazed gold as they reflected the harsh light of the burning flames. The visual effect was stunning and terrifying at the same time.

“You should not be here,” he said to her, in a voice not his own.

“Jake? Oh, Jake. What did you do?”

“I burned them. I sent them back to the Hell where they came from.”

His voice was booming and forceful, yet melodic. It captivated her and held her in place. She wasn’t sure if she stood frozen out of awe or out of fear. Every syllable was crisp and powerful. In that moment, as she saw him like this, her understanding of him changed. He was something more than what she had known him as. Something amazing. Something undefinable.

He was extraordinary, in every sense of the word.

He was beautiful.

She watched him come back to himself with a sigh and a hard shake of his head. His whole body began to visibly shake and for a moment it seemed as though he would pass out as he lowered his arms and hung his head for a brief moment. Stepping toward her, away from the roaring flames, he slowly made his way over. The fires parted from his steps, and another shake took the gold tint out of his eyes. When he reached her side, he was Jake again. Brianna could not help but feel relieved to have him back. In his other form, she was more afraid of him than the fire or the demons.

Brianna looked around once more at the devastation, at the destruction of this place. The two men or demons or whatever they had been were nowhere to be seen. They were simply gone as if they had never existed.

Brianna knew they must be dead, or some form of dead. She didn’t know if demons could even die or not.

“But…how?” she asked him.

“They were going to kill you,” he answered.

“Okay. I…I understand that. But, Jake…how?”

He closed his eyes and breathed in deeply, holding the breath for a moment before blowing it out. As he did, a streamer of flame followed the exhalation from his mouth.

His eyes opened, and he was looking straight at her.

“Simple,” he answered her. “Because I am a demon, too.”

“No. Oh, no. No no no,” she whispered. It couldn’t be. Demons were evil. They were nasty. They were…well, they were ugly. Jake wasn’t any of those things. She knew he was not human, of course. But somehow she expected him to be some sort of angel or something, not a demon.

“I told you I’m complicated.” He looked around them, at what he had done, and winced. Brianna didn’t understand his reaction at first. But then she got it.

He was embarrassed and probably afraid she would take off running again.

“Jake, I—”

“No. It’s all right, Brianna. I understand. Believe me, I do. I’m a lot of things. At heart, I’m not a bad guy. But I am what I was born as. I am a demon. I wanted you to know. I just wish I could have told you some other way; preferably one that did not involve destroying everything, locking you in a cooler, and scaring the wits out of you.”

She didn’t know what to say to that. If she hadn’t been standing where she was right now, hurt, shot, and surrounded by the remains of a burning building, she would have labeled Jake as a man to run from without a second thought.

But knowing what she knew now, having seen all of this, she knew Jake wasn’t crazy. And that left only one possibility. The truth.

Jake was a demon.

Did that mean he was evil? Brianna realized that she really knew nothing about demons, and the stories she had heard probably weren’t even close to the truth. For example, Jake had said that the two creepy twin demons could “hear” them. That was something she’d never heard of before. Obviously she had a lot to learn, and she found herself eager to do so against her better judgment.

He nodded as he took in the mix of emotions that crossed her face. Fear. Pain. Wonder. Shock. After observing her, he offered her his hand. “Come with me.”

It had been more of a question than a demand, and it certainly hadn’t been one of his attempts to mind rape her. It had been an offer of help. From a friend. Being asked, rather than told, to go with him somehow helped diminish some of the anxiety she was feeling about letting herself trust him.

Brianna was ready and willing to accept his help.

He smiled back at her as she stepped closer and let him slip an arm around her waist. Turning, he held his hand out in a straight line from his body. The fires around them peeled away from where they stood, creating a path for them to the edge of the street where the flames had stopped as if obeying Jake’s every command. In fact, looking now, Brianna saw that the fires were contained to the square bit of land that the gas station and store had sat on. They hadn’t spread to any of the nearby buildings or anywhere else at all.

She’d call it a miracle, except she didn’t think demons did miracles.

Looking around at the destruction again, she thought she might have to revise her way of thinking. Completely.

Jake led her carefully through the path and away. She wasn’t afraid to be alone with him now. They had a lot to talk about before they could get started on their trip to New York.

Brianna had already decided she was going to bring Jake with her.