“Got something like that in Vancouver?” Rohan asked.
“We do actually. There’s this slice of land down by the water on the east side. Houses both a chicken rendering plant and a waste reduction plant. When the wind blows the wrong way?” I plugged my nose. It smelled like Satan’s sweaty sneakers and death.
I opened Google Maps.
Rohan peered over my shoulder. “Look for places with lots of bamboo planted.”
“Why?”
“They’re excellent for filtering out formaldehyde, which is a byproduct the wreta produce. And they grow tall, allowing for privacy.”
It was extremely slow going but we eventually narrowed down the possibilities to a handful of places. It took a bit of finagling to get the equipment we needed without Ms. Clara here to facilitate everything for us, but she worked her magic from Jerusalem.
The first address we went to had been demolished since its Google Maps images had been taken and the second was home to a sweet old Italian man who shared large juicy cherries right off his tree with us.
The third house had freshly-painted cream trim and stained-glass windows. We drove around back. The man wearing thick garden gloves to protect himself from the salt boxes he was stuffing into the trash aroused our suspicions; the crescent-shaped birthmark on his cheek confirmed them. The wreta didn’t pay any attention to the white van with the pest control logo on the side that slowly cruised by.
We added gloves and face masks with respiratory filters to our yellow chemical suits, piled out of the van and entered through the back gate.
The demon was crouched chanting on the lawn next to a salt circle that ran the perimeter of the fence and continued around the side of the house. He paused at our approach. Big mistake.
“Where’s Aida?” Rohan growled, stabbing the wreta’s shoulder with his finger blades. The blades should have cut through the protective gloves. But that was a part of Rohan’s magic: all of the knives without any of the clothing loss. Much to my dismay.
The demon froze. His body ran slick with his secretion, drops slashing everywhere. We would have been tripping balls if not for these handy dandy protective chemical suits.
When his drug failed to take us out, he burst into a flurry of fists and kicks, wrenching himself loose. I tackled the wreta, but he fought hard, demanding we let him finish the ward. It took both of us to pin him in place.
I elbowed the demon in the face. “Aida. Where is she?”
This just set him off again, thrashing and going on about the stupid ward and how it was coming.
“What’s coming?” I said.
The wreta’s panic escalated into full-blown hysteria. He grabbed Rohan’s hand, using Ro’s index finger blade to slice his own wrist open. Rohan rolled the demon sideways before any blood could hit the salt line and set the ward.
We didn’t know what the ward was meant to do, and we couldn’t be caught in unknown magic, but part of me was certain we’d regret our decision to leave the property exposed.
Rohan leaned his weight on the demon. “Where’s Candyman?”
“Answer him.” I kicked away part of the salt ward line.
The wreta stared helplessly at it, then grabbed Ro’s finger and rammed it into his eyeball. His kill spot. He disappeared, dead, leaving only an oily puddle that seeped into the dirt.
Rohan punched the ground, his expression a feral snarl.
“‘Choose death’ isn’t a popular slogan in the demon lexicon.” I nervously scanned the backyard. “What the fuck is coming?”
Rohan put a finger to his lips and motioned to the back porch. We crept up the stairs and I eased open the kitchen door.
A scuffed navy backpack filled with cash sat on the kitchen counter next to a cell phone with no security code on it. Gotta love demon arrogance. There was no one listed in the contacts, and no data plan to check the browser history, but we found a text chain about some kind of drop in two days’ time, along with a time and place. I tried calling that number but it was disconnected.
I tossed the phone into the backpack and tiptoed down the hallway, grateful that the shag carpet muffled the tread of our heavy work boots. I hit the living room doorway and recoiled, the reek of hot copper and rotting meat thick even through my respiratory filter.
I’d stopped so suddenly that Rohan slammed into my back and I had to grab the doorframe to stop myself from stumbling inside the room.
The floor was slick with blood. Demon viscera glistened under the LED overhead lamp.
Two wreta sat there, unmoving. Or well, one sat there, oblivious to the puddle of piss at his feet. The other one had been ripped apart like a chicken carcass and what was left of the five and a half foot demon was being funneled into a giant gaping maw.
The demon eating the wreta had an amorphous blobby body with skin like an oil spill, and a smaller egg-shaped head that brushed the nine-foot-ceiling. The head was featureless except for that mouth which took up most of the real estate, a massive pit sucking back its victim.
The hungry demon turned, revealing a single, perfectly formed right human arm and hand. Its nails were painted bright red. It popped the wreta’s head in, its throat convulsing, and swallowed the head whole into its body that was expanding to accommodate the meal.
I’d always thought No Face from Spirited Away wasn’t that scary a villain, but this demon was making me reconsider that stance.
Next, the demon grabbed a wreta thigh, like one would a Chickeny Delight drumstick, and feverishly crammed it into its mouth.
We should have let the wreta set the damn ward. I pulled a crackling ball of magic into my palm and Rohan pushed past me, his feet squelching on the bloody tile, but the demon was faster. Slurping down another wreta foot, the demon disappeared.
The remaining wreta slumped over as if released from a trance. He was hyperventilating, repeating the same word over and over again.
Oshk.
Since that was all we could get out of the wreta, we killed him. There were no other demons in the house.
The stench and violence of the kill was pressing in on me, an almost physical presence lingering in the room. I grabbed the backpack and shouldered out the back door. The second I was outside, I ripped off my facial gear, breathing deeply. I itched to rip off my work boots too, because they stank from the blood coating them. Grisly bits were stuck to the soles.
“We have to clean up in there,” Ro said.
Damn. I’d managed to avoid clean-up duty so far and it figured it’d be a bloodbath that broke my lucky streak. I had no problem pulling my weight, so long as I didn’t puke and make things worse.
He’d brought cleaning supplies along in case we’d needed to scour off any wreta secretions. We didn’t want any humans who eventually came around to check out the residents’ disappearance getting hurt. Unlike Sweet Tooth, the wreta’s hallucinogens lasted indefinitely.