“You better secure these pieces,” Skulick said. “There might be latent traces of power here.”
I nodded. The mark of the demon on my chest had been mildly irritated during my drive back, giving credence to Skulick’s concerns. The broken relic still posed a potential threat.
“I’ll take care of it right now.”
With these words, I turned away from my mentor and headed for the spiral staircase that led to the warehouse’s top floor. Upstairs, a massive steel door inscribed with wards greeted me. The vault-like chamber behind the door contained a vast collection of the most dangerous magical relics known to mankind. We used the vault to secure black magic items that we’d come across over the years. Only once the remnants of the cauldron were safely locked away would I be able to fully relax.
I tapped a secret code into a keypad and the magic-protected steel door rumbled open. I stepped inside the windowless chamber, which was reinforced by silver. The room felt like a museum with its occult relics neatly lined up on a variety of tables and shelves. The items hummed with a seductive, evil energy.
It took a certain amount of mental discipline to be in this room for more than a few minutes. The collection of haunted items called out to me, a steady, incessant whisper urging me to remove them from the chamber. It had taken years of apprenticeship under Skulick’s careful guidance before he allowed me to set foot inside the vault. I had to earn the right to handle these dangerous relics.
Tapping into my training, I blocked out the various voices pulling at my thoughts like a chorus of the damned and placed the shards of the cauldron on one of the empty shelves.
My task complete, I cut a hasty retreat. As the blast-resistant door slammed shut behind me, I let out a sigh of relief. The concentrated evil trapped within the chamber’s walls made my skin crawl and stomach tighten up with existential terror. No wonder Skulick had nicknamed the vault “The Waiting Room to Hell.”
I returned to the living area, where Skulick now faced his bank of computer monitors and big-screen TVs. The heart of our command center was his personal window to the world.
I glanced at the screens. “Anything happening that I should be aware of?”
“You could say that. We have a new client.”
Skulick tapped a key, and a picture of a striking young woman appeared onscreen. She wore black lipstick and eyeliner, her hair dyed blue and styled in a mohawk. Both her upper lip and nose were pierced, heightening her sense of dangerous sexuality and punk rock disaffection. She looked like trouble.
“Who is she?” I asked.
“Meet Celeste Solos.”
I took a step toward the computers and leaned forward, studying her face.
“Your type?” Skulick asked with a grin.
I shook my head a little too quickly and said, “You know me. I like nice girls. Nurses, accountants.”
“Accountants don’t date men who hunt demons for a living.”
The man had a point. This life wasn’t for anyone who cherished stability and normalcy. I came with a ton of baggage.
“I’m not interested, anyway,” I snapped. “I see enough weird shit out there without going on a date with some wannabe demon groupie.”
Skulick leveled his gaze at me. “Considering your chosen line of work, kid, you shouldn’t be so judgmental. For all you know, this girl is a perfect angel. And regardless, she’s our client.”
I sighed. The woman onscreen sure didn’t look like an angel. Well, maybe a fallen angel. Most of my relationships were of the one-night variety, and girls like Celeste were the ones I tended to end up with after a long night of knocking back shots at the local dive bar. They were fun and they didn’t seem to mind my pentagram ring, vintage muscle car and lack of a traditional corporate job.
Hunting monsters just wasn’t compatible with romance, and over the years I’d come to accept that a real relationship wasn’t in the cards for me. I wasn’t exactly the type of guy to settle down and start a family. It wouldn’t be fair to them. As a result, I’d become pretty good at avoiding women with any serious long-term potential.
Skulick worried about my lone wolf lifestyle despite being guilty of it himself. Talk about the pot calling the kettle black. I guess in Skulick’s mind, he’d at least had a real life up until his early thirties, before tragedy set him on his current path. A vampire turned his fiancée into a creature of the night, transforming the former homicide detective into a professional monster hunter.
I’d never had a chance. When most young men were dating and falling in love for the first time, I was battling monsters that wanted to wear my face and devour my soul.
Eager to get back to the business at hand, I stopped weighing the challenges of my personal life and said, “Tell me about the case. What’s her problem?”
“Two words: daddy issues.”
This statement earned Skulick a long look from me. “Seriously?”
“Her father sold her soul to a demon on the day she was born. And Hell is getting ready to collect their prize.”