Demon Road

RAIN MINGLED WITH THE tears on her face as Amber got into the SUV.

Milo had parked it round the back of Imelda’s apartment building. They didn’t want Amber in plain view. They didn’t want her walking across the sidewalk for a few seconds because that was a risk they couldn’t afford to take. Their paranoia was affecting Amber. She waited until Milo had the back door open, and then she ran through the heat and the rain, practically dived in. Milo threw a blanket over her and closed the door.

He got in the front, started the engine, and as the SUV was pulling out on to the street Amber realised she hadn’t said goodbye to Imelda, and a sliver of anguish pierced her heart.

She made sure she wasn’t about to cry, and then pulled the blanket back.

The SUV’s exterior may have needed a wash, but the interior was clean and smelled of polish. Milo struck her as the type to maintain his vehicle in perfect running order, and she realised that she wouldn’t have been surprised to learn that the dirt and the dust on the outside were nothing more than camouflage.

They drove without speaking for five minutes. Amber resisted the urge to speak. She wanted Milo to get uncomfortable in the silence. When the clock on the dash showed 8pm, she sat up, but kept the blanket wrapped round her head like a shawl. To her irritation, he looked perfectly comfortable.

“So where are we going?”

Milo moved into another lane. “We’re going to see a friend of mine. He might be able to help.”

“Help how?”

“We’re hoping he’ll have some ideas on how to evade your parents.”

“You’re hoping? Imelda said there was a plan. Hoping for ideas does not sound like a plan. Who is he, this friend of yours?”

“His name’s Edgar Spurrier,” Milo said as they slowed at the lights. “He used to be a journalist. His investigations took him deeper and darker than any respectable news agency was willing to delve, so now he’s a freelance … something.”

“So he’s unemployed, basically.”

They started driving again. “He prefers the term ‘freelance something’.”

She frowned. “Was that a joke?”

Milo shrugged.

“Where does he live?”

“Miami.”

“That’s, like, three or four hours away. Why aren’t you more organised? Why isn’t he here? Or why can’t you call him? I’d loan you my phone only, oh yeah, you destroyed it.”

“No phone calls, if we can help it,” said Milo, totally missing Amber’s subtle jibe.

“I have a new plan,” she said, sitting forward. “Turn around. Take me to Montana. That’s where they film In The Dark Places, so I’d be able to just hang out, watch them film, and I have plenty of money now so I could afford to rent a cabin there until all this dies down.”

Milo glanced at her in the rear-view. “This isn’t going to die down.”

“No, I know that, I just—”

“I don’t think you do,” said Milo. “This isn’t a problem that’s going to go away, Amber. Your parents aren’t going to change their minds. Your life, as you knew it, is over. You have to leave behind your friends and family. There’s no going back.”

“I know that,” she insisted, though even she was aware how unconvincing she sounded.

An accident on the turnpike delayed them, forced them into a slow-moving convoy that crawled through Miami’s sprawl of Art-Deco architecture. The rain was heavier here. Neon lights bounced off the wet blackness of the asphalt. It would have been beautiful if Amber hadn’t shrunk away from every car that passed them, just waiting to see her parents’ faces staring out at her.

By the time they pulled up outside Edgar Spurrier’s crappy condo, it was past twelve and fully dark. The humidity closed in on Amber the moment she left the confines of the SUV. The rain eased off slightly, but the clouds were still heavy. Lightning flickered like a badly placed bulb and in the distance she heard thunder.

Edgar’s condo was not air-conditioned. A large fan hung from the ceiling and threatened to move the warm air around, but couldn’t work up the energy to do so with any degree of conviction.

Edgar himself was a tubby guy with blond hair that hung limply to his shoulders. He had an easy smile and nice twinkling eyes, and beneath his shorts his legs were surprisingly hairless. He handed Amber and Milo a glass of iced tea and took one for himself, then they all sat in his mess of a living room. Books and papers competed for space with notepads bursting with scribbles. No pizza boxes or empty beer bottles, though. Edgar may have been disorganised, but he was no slob.

“Milo has already briefed me on your situation,” Edgar said, settling back into his chair. “You’ve got yourself into what we in the trade call a pickle, Amber. Milo could have taken you to a dozen so-called occult experts around the country and they would have sent you away with useless advice and a headful of mumbo jumbo. Instead, he brought you to me, where deals with the Devil are something of a specialty. The Shining Demon is one of my particular areas of interest.”

He paused, and Amber felt the overwhelming need to fill the silence.

“Okay,” she said.

That seemed to satisfy him. “Now then,” Edgar continued, “your particular quandary is that running isn’t going to work.”

A bead of perspiration trickled down Amber’s spine. “It isn’t?”

“It isn’t,” said Edgar. “Your parents will eventually find you. It’s inevitable. I’m sure Milo will explain this to you later. They will find you and they will kill you. So you need to be proactive, am I right? You need to take the fight to your parents.”

Amber hesitated. “Uh yeah, except, I mean, I don’t want to actually fight them.”

“No, no,” said Edgar, “you don’t want to physically take them on, not at all. I’m not suggesting that for a minute. But you want to take the figurative fight to them, agreed?”

“I guess.”

“You can’t spend the rest of your life running. You can’t spend the rest of your life hiding. Because, if you do, the rest of your life will be very short indeed. So you need an alternative. If I were in your position, what would I do? I’ve given this a lot of thought since Milo approached me. A lot of thought. But only this morning did the obvious course of action occur to me.” He sat forward. “Amber, what you’re going to need to do is talk to the Shining Demon yourself.”

She blinked. “I’m sorry?”

“Not going to happen,” said Milo.

Edgar held up a hand. “Hear me out.”

“Not going to happen, Edgar.”

“Just hear me out, buddy, okay? Keep an open mind about this. There’s nothing we can do to stop her folks from wanting to eat her. There just isn’t. Consuming her flesh is the only way they can grow stronger, and the only way they can pay the tribute they owe. Because, don’t forget, they do owe that tribute.”

“We haven’t forgotten,” said Milo.

“So there’s nothing we can do there,” Edgar said, leaning back in his chair. “If you don’t want to talk to the Shining Demon, what does that leave us with? You could go after them. Take them out. Kill them before they kill you.”

“I don’t want to kill my parents,” Amber said, aghast.

“They want to kill you,” said Edgar. “You’re going to have to reconcile yourself with the facts here, Amber. This is life or death we’re talking about. It’s kill or be killed.”

“She doesn’t want to kill her parents,” Milo said. “So we’re not killing her parents.”

“I figured as much,” said Edgar. “I’m a pretty smart guy, remember? You may have thought I was sitting here looking pretty, but what I was actually doing was going through all the options and throwing out those that were a no-go. I threw out everything except the one I started with – Amber here summoning the Shining Demon, sitting him down and having a chat.”

Amber glanced at Milo. He wasn’t saying anything, but he didn’t look happy.

“So that’s my idea,” said Edgar, talking straight to Amber now. “You explain how unfair all of this is. You didn’t ask for it, after all. You are an innocent party, caught up in your parents’ diabolical machinations.”

“Why would he care?” she asked.

Edgar chuckled. “Good question. And of course you’re right. The Shining Demon isn’t going to give one whit about any of that. He’s a capital D Demon, after all. He likes it when innocent people suffer. That’s kind of his thing.” Edgar sat forward. “But you, my dear girl, hold a special appeal. The Shining Demon is notoriously picky about who he appears to. He’ll only do a deal with someone if they pique his curiosity. But here’s the thing. You, Amber, are enough to pique anyone’s curiosity.”

She suddenly felt uncomfortable. “Why?”

“You’re the demon offspring of demon parents,” Edgar said. “But whereas your folks are demons by circumstance, you are demon by birth. That makes you, technically, a purer form of monster – if you’ll forgive the description. You have also, by virtue of being alive right now, potentially compromised their original deal, which will certainly have got his attention.”

“So summon the Shining Demon and say what?” Amber asked. “‘Hey there, please could you change the terms of my parents’ deal?’”

Edgar shook his head. “The terms are unbreakable, there’s no getting around that. But he could make it so that your parents and their friends never find you. He could make it impossible for them to hurt you. He could do a hundred things that would ruin your parents’ plans and make eating you redundant.”

“What would I have to do in return?”

Edgar shrugged. “Seeing as how your parents and their friends were going to eat you and then give him their supercharged blood, it stands to reason that he’d want to get that same energy some other way. Sending you out to harvest souls is a very common method of payment.”

“I’m not killing anyone. I’m not doing that.”

“Very well. If those are the terms of the deal he offers, you just say no. No harm, no foul. But he might not want you to kill. There might be something else.”

Amber raised her eyebrows. “Could I offer him my demon side? Is that possible?”

“Even if it were, I doubt that would entice him.”

“I’m not going to give him my soul,” she said, a little sharply. “It’s mine and he’s not getting it.”

“Sounds reasonable,” said Edgar. “Not to worry, however – I do have a suggestion of my own. You’re unique enough to summon him and, if you offer him something equally as unique, you might just find yourself with a deal.”

“What do you have in mind?” Milo asked.

“The one that got away,” Edgar said. “It’s a story I was told by a very dangerous man, name of Dacre Shanks. You heard of him?”

Milo shook his head. Amber didn’t bother.

“Dacre Shanks was a particularly nasty serial killer back in the late sixties, early seventies. This small-town Sheriff’s Department eventually tracked him down, in 1974 I think, and went in all guns blazing. Shanks fell in a hail of bullets. Couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy. Anyway, I met him a few years ago, and he told—”

“Wait,” said Amber. “You just said he died in 1974.”

“He did,” Edgar said, nodding. “But before the cops closed in on him, he’d already made his deal with the Shining Demon.”

“He’s still alive?”

“Technically? No. But he’s still around. Last I heard he was in his hometown of Springton, Wisconsin, happily killing a bunch of teenagers, but that was fifteen or so years ago. If you can find him, he might be able to help you.”

“You want us to ask a serial killer for help?”

Edgar shrugged. “It’s a scary world – you got to be prepared to meet scary people. Dacre Shanks qualifies as a scary person. He’s up there with Elias Mauk and Leighton Utt … maybe even the Narrow Man. Outwardly, charming as all heck, but … well. Serial killer, you know? I met him through a mutual acquaintance and arranged an interview of sorts. The man just wanted someone to talk to, and he talked a lot. I got some very graphic descriptions of what he’d done to his victims, some very disturbing insights into his mind … We talked about death, about how it felt when those bullets riddled his body, about what happened after. Milo knows what I’m talking about, right?”

Milo said nothing, and Amber frowned.

“And we talked about the deal he’d made with the Shining Demon,” Edgar continued. “How he summoned him, what the terms were, how he found out about him in the first place. And he told me a story I’d never heard before, and I thought I’d heard all the stories about our shining friend. He told me about a man who’d made a deal – I don’t know the circumstances surrounding it, but it was a deal like any other – and then welched on it. The Shining Demon granted him whatever he wanted, but, instead of paying him back in the agreed-upon fashion, this guy skips town, and the Shining Demon loses him. And the Shining Demon never loses a mark.”

“What does this have to do with me?” Amber asked.

Edgar smiled. “If you can find this guy, you can offer his location to the Shining Demon in exchange for getting your parents off your back.”

“You know where he is?”

“Haven’t a clue,” Edgar said, almost happily. “Shanks wanted to talk, sure, but he was pretty cagey with the things he had to say. You’d have to ask him yourself. You might like him. He’s got some pretty funny stories. They’ll give you nightmares, but they’re still pretty funny.”

“Uh,” said Amber, “I don’t really want to talk to a serial killer.”

Edgar chuckled. “You’ll be perfectly safe. Milo here will look after you.”

Amber glanced at Milo. Just how dangerous was this guy?

“Why don’t you come with us?” Milo asked. “You know him, he knows you, you can make the introductions.”

“I’d love to,” said Edgar, “but he said he’d kill me if he ever saw me again.”

“Why?”

Edgar shrugged. “The conversation turned sour – what can I say? Serial killer, you know?”

EDGAR WENT TO FETCH the paraphernalia Amber would need to summon the Shining Demon, and the moment he was out of the room Amber looked over at Milo.

“I’m doing it now?”

Milo shrugged.

“Imelda said it took days of fasting and loads of preparation.”

“There’s more than one way to summon the Shining Demon,” said Milo. “Sometimes you don’t even have to summon him – he’ll appear right when you’re at your most vulnerable.”

“Milo, I don’t know …”

“If you don’t want to do this, say so. We’ll find some other way.”

“Is there another way?”

Milo didn’t answer.

Amber slowly clasped her face in her hands and dragged her fingers down her cheeks.

Then she sat forward. “So what do I say? How do I greet the Shining Demon? Do I call him sir, or lord, or master?”

“He’s not your lord and not your master, so you don’t have to call him anything. Relax, okay? You don’t have to be so nervous. Talk to him like you’d talk to me, but don’t agree to anything other than the terms you want. Ignore everything he says that isn’t on topic. He’ll try to trick you. Listen to every word he uses, because he uses them for a reason.”

“You’re not making me any less nervous.”

“Sorry.”

“Do you think this is a good idea?”

“It’s the best one we have.”

“That’s not saying a lot, though, is it?”

“No, it’s not.”

Amber sat back. Her insides were in knots. “What do you think Imelda will do when she finds out I actually met the Shining Demon?”

“That all depends on whether this plan works.”

“How do you know her, anyway?” she asked.

“How does anyone know anyone?”

“I don’t know. They meet?”

“There you go,” said Milo. “We met.”

Edgar came back in. Amber didn’t know quite what she had been expecting – maybe a robe, or a ceremonial dagger, or a box full of candles with pentagrams moulded on to their sides. She wasn’t expecting a large leather pouch, shaped like a deflated balloon.

“It’s a gunpowder flask,” Edgar said proudly, handing it over with something approaching reverence. It was heavy, filled to its leather stopper with what felt like sand. “Persian, nineteenth century, made from a camel crotch.”

“Ew.”

Edgar chuckled. “Don’t worry, the camel’s long dead.”

“Still ew.”

“See those engravings on the hide? Those intricate little engravings? I don’t know what they are. Pretty, though, aren’t they?”

“There’s gunpowder in here?” she asked.

He shook his head. “Something far more powerful. Far more valuable, too. The only reason I’m letting you use it is because I couldn’t get it to work myself.”

Milo frowned. “You tried summoning the Shining Demon?”

“Everyone wants something,” Edgar said, a little sadly, “but I just wasn’t interesting enough for him to bother with. Story of my life, huh? But, if this will work for anyone, it’ll work for Amber, and then I can finally find out if it was worth the money I paid for it, or if I was scammed. Y’know, again.”

“How do I use it?” she asked, handing the flask back.

Edgar cleared a space on the coffee table and laid it down, then sat. “You pour the powder in a circle around you, making sure there are no gaps. You put a match to it. It catches fire. That’s it.”

“It’s that easy? And then the Shining Demon will appear?”

Edgar hesitated.

“What?” Milo asked, suspicion in his voice.

“The Shining Demon doesn’t do that anymore,” Edgar said. “Appearing, I mean. You can’t make him come to you. Instead, you go to him.”

Amber went cold. “I what?”

Milo frowned. “She what?”

“I couldn’t get it to work, so I just have to go by what the guy who sold it to me said, all right? You put a match to the circle, and when it’s lit you … arrive.”

“Where?” said Milo.

“Wherever the Shining Demon is,” said Edgar.

“Hell?” Amber asked, her voice small.

“Maybe. But don’t look so scared. It’s absolutely fine. You’ll be perfectly safe.”

“It doesn’t sound perfectly safe,” Milo said.

“It is, though. She’ll be in no danger whatsoever. As long as she doesn’t step outside the circle.”

“I don’t like this,” Amber murmured. “Will you both be with me, at least?”

Edgar made a face. “We’ll have to stay here, I’m afraid. Them’s the rules. But you don’t have to worry about a thing. You’ll meet the Shining Demon. You’ll explain your situation. You’ll offer him the guy who welched on the deal in exchange for a way to protect you from your parents and their friends.”

“And only that,” said Milo. “Do not deviate from the script.”

“That’s a good point,” said Edgar. “The Shining Demon likes to talk, by all accounts, and he might try to get you to agree to something you really shouldn’t be agreeing to. Keep it simple. If he likes the terms, he’ll accept them. If he doesn’t, douse the flames and you’ll come straight back. Do not step out of the circle. I cannot stress that enough.”

“What if he pulls me out?”

“He won’t be able to touch you so long as you stay where you are. Also, for your own wellbeing, it’s probably advisable not to look directly at him.” Edgar got to his feet. “There. I think that’s everything.”

Amber looked up at him. “I still have, like, a billion questions.”

“A little knowledge is a dangerous thing,” said Edgar. “You’ll be fine. Come on, you can do it in the backyard.”

He took the powder flask and walked out to the kitchen. Milo got up, helped Amber stand. Her legs felt weak.

“Am I actually going to do this?” she asked.

“You can change your mind at any time.”

She expelled a long breath. “I can’t believe I’m going to actually do this …”

They went out back. The dark yard was modest, with a small pool that needed a serious skimming. Whether the sweat on Amber’s face was from the humidity or the trepidation, she couldn’t be sure. The rain had stopped, which allowed the cicadas to start singing again. Edgar led Amber to a patch of crabgrass and handed her the powder flask and a battered matchbook with a picture of a staircase on the front.

“All set,” he said.

She looked to Milo for instruction, but he just stood there, cool in the heat. Expecting either of them to correct her at any moment, she undid the stopper on the flask, crouched down, and began to pour.

The opening was small, and the fine black powder came out in a thin, steady stream. The warm breeze made the grasses ripple, but the powder flowed straight down like it was a perfectly still night. Amber turned 360 degrees, making sure not to leave any gaps, and when she finished she stood in the small circle and plugged the flask with the stopper. She held it out to Edgar, but he waved it away.

“Hang on to it until you’re done,” he said, and she hung the strap over her shoulder so that it dropped diagonally across her chest.

She took a match from the matchbook and crouched again. Her mouth was dry. Her hands were shaking. She needed to pee. She looked up at Milo.

“See you when you get back,” he said.

Amber ran the head of the match across the sandpaper strip. The match flared, and with shaking hands she put the flame to the powder. It lit instantly, expelling a stench so violent it made her head turn. The fire spread from the point of contact in both directions, and she stood and watched it surround her. When the flames met and the circle was complete, the flames turned blue and she was indoors now, in a castle, its vast walls constructed of hewn stone, its ceiling too high to see, its thick wooden rafters swallowed by shadows.

In front of her were five arched doorways with corridors like the fingers of a splayed hand. Tapestries hung on the walls, depicting various acts of depravity, their shock value immediately shamed by the even more gruesome images captured in the stained glass of the long windows that sliced through the wall above.

It was cold here. The sweat that had layered her body in the Miami heat was now making her shiver. Her breath crystallised in small clouds. She thought she was alone until she heard the giggle.

Someone was standing in the dark area between the doorways. Lurking.

“Hello?” she called. Her voice didn’t sound like her own. It sounded like the voice of a scared child. “I … I see you. I can see you. Hello?”

The shape didn’t move.

From somewhere, from elsewhere, came the sound of screaming, a chorus of pain carried to her on the wind. It was gone almost before it had registered.

“Hello,” said the shape.

It came forward, into the light. Tall and thin, a genderless thing, wearing a patchwork robe that may have been a gown. Heavy make-up, black and badly applied, rimmed its eyes, while its thin mouth was smeared with red lipstick. The foundation it used covered the entirety of its bald head in a thick grey-white that may have been ash.