Ink

Jake was pissed. “What do you mean he doesn’t want to see me? I’m his fucking brother!”

“He’s afraid he will hurt you if it happens again.”

Jake shook his head. “I don’t give a fuck! I’m not leaving. So you can tell Cam that I want to talk to him.”

Cam appeared at the door behind Aimon. “Jake, go home and look after mom. She’ll be worried about the two of us, and you can tell her I’m okay.”

“And leave you alone with a demon while another one is trying to find you?” He waved a hand at Aimon. “What if he just fucking up and disappears again, and you have an episode? People could get hurt.”

“I’m not going to leave him again,” Aimon said. “We are just going to have to wait until the demon finds us. I can’t hunt for him when Cam might be a danger to innocent people.”

“Yeah,” Jake challenged, “You said yourself that the demon is going to be more interested in Cam than fighting you. You can’t fight him and keep my brother safe can you?”

Aimon hesitated for a moment. Then he said, “There are ways. It’s going to be much harder, but it can be done.”

“How?”

“I could place him between the worlds.”

“But you said---“

“I know what I said,” Aimon cut in, “but your brother can’t stay here. The lives of people and the secrecy of The Order are at risk, with each moment Cam resides in this world. Do you think the demon is not out there feeding off people right now?!”

“But Cit---“

“Bah! Do not speak his name. How do you think I knew you were in trouble?”

It dawned on Jake that he had called Aimon’s name when his brother had attacked him. He blanched at his almost blunder. He could have called Cithru right to them. Aimon was right. Cam was in danger, and so was everybody else. “I could go with you.”

Aimon shook his head. “Mortals were not meant to go between the worlds. Taking Cam is already risky enough. The Order, however, will understand. They will not understand why I brought you Jake. We must go, but you must stay here.”

Jake appealed to his brother. “Cam?”

“Go Jake.” Cam turned back toward the hotel room, but not before Jake saw the tears trailing down his cheeks.

Jake heard a soft clinking sound. Aimon pressed the keys to the Lexus in his hands. They had fallen out during his skirmish with Cam. Aimon had gone back and retrieved them.“ I will do everything in my power to keep Cam safe.”

Jake thought about refusing to leave or at least trying to reason with Aimon, but in the very short time he’d known Aimon Jake had come to realize two things. The demon showed little to no emotion, and his word was final. There was no give in this Demon King. None at all.

Jake just stood there as Aimon closed the door quietly in his face. There was a flash of light under the door, as if someone had taken a picture. Jake knew Aimon had summoned a vortex.

Soon the light blinked out.

His brother was gone.

****





Billy Zant’s day was ruined. Instead of going down to the track to race his four-wheeler with his friends, he was at a stupid museum, with his mother and baby cousin.

“Don’t wonder off.” Billy’s mother had warned him, in which Billy promptly walked away while she was busy looking at spearheads from some Ancient tribe in Africa. He intended to get as lost as possible. Served them right for messing up my weekend. Why couldn’t Trevor and his mom have come alone and dropped him off at the track?

Speaking of the devil. Billy’s wide-eyed, eight-year-old cousin came running down the hall in his direction. Just great! Trevor seemed to have some sort of radar on him.

Trevor skidded to a halt next to his cousin, panting hard. “Billy, man, you gotta SEE this! Its so freakin’ cool!”

Billy frowned and shook his head. “No, the track is cool. Racing a four-wheeler is cool. This sucks ass!”

His cousin gasped. “Hey! You aren’t supposed to swear.”

“So what is it you wanted to show me?” He shrugged.

Trevor forgot about his cussing, just that fast. “Come see,” he said, pushing a fall of brown hair out of his face.

Judging from his cousin’s excitement, Billy really was curious as to what made the kid’s eyes gleam like that. “Alright, show me.”

Trevor grinned. He grabbed his cousin’s hand and tugged Billy behind him. Trevor led him down a maze of hallways and then into a circular room. “There.” He pointed.

Billy looked to where his cousin was pointing. There was a glass case, circular like the room so that you could walk around the entire display. A steel railing cut off the display itself. Billy could see the red lights from motion detectors forming red bars around the case, and reflecting off the exotic sword inside the case. The blade was the coolest thing Billy had ever seen.


The steel seemed to glimmer with some unnatural light, drawing attention to the intricate pattern of swirls that seemed to form some ancient language Billy couldn’t even begin to fathom. The pattern appeared to be etched into the blade, but it was filled with what Billy imagined to be ‘red paint’? The hilt of the sword was made of a material Billy couldn’t identity, but looked eerily like stained bone. The sword itself was encased in a block of clear plaster, so that it appeared suspended in the air.

“SEE. I told you!” Trevor said smugly.

Billy was about to reply, when the cousins heard a crackling noise. They both spun around in time to see a vortex of crackling electricity appear. A dark boot stepped out, followed by the rest of a large body.

Hair as black as pitch, swung around an inhumanly sculpted face as he straightened. Black eyes looked down at Billy and then Trevor, making them both shudder with fear.

They were ignored, the tall, handsome man walking over to the display. Billy watched in fascinated horror as the locked gate surrounding the display swung open, all on its own. The man stepped foward, regarded the glass casing for all of a second, before he reached out his hand –it slid right through the glass—and for a moment it was if time itself had stopped. Then the glass shattered, raining noisily to the floor in tiny glittering pebbles.

The man’s hand kept moving forward, as if he hadn’t even noticed what just happened. He bypassed the red laser rays, and Billy had one moment to think that security must have been alerted when the stranger touched the plastic cast.

It melted: falling away from the sword in steaming globs. The stranger then grabbed the sword, which oddly remained clean. Billy thought he heard the man say something about ‘Agony,” but he couldn’t be sure.


“Hey! What in the hell are you two kids doing in here?! This is a restricted area!” Billy and Trevor hadn’t even heard the security guard approaching. They stood frozen, caught between fear of getting into trouble, and the shock of seeing a man appear out of thin air, and perform tricks that were inhumanly possible.

The security guard seemed to finally notice the stranger. When he saw what he was holding he exploded, “Sonofabitch!” The guard grabbed for his radio and pressed the speaker button. Loud static crackled over the radio. “Kevin?!” he yelled into the radio. “Kevin? Some asshole just tried stealing one of the museum’s artifacts.” The security guard got no response. “Shit.” He looked back at the stranger still standing next to the case, noting how smug the man looked.

“Don’t fucking move asshole.” To that, the stranger started walking in his direction.

The security guard, whose name was Ray, fumbled for his can of mace. He started backing up at the same time. The man was huge, and he wanted to avoid a physical confrontation if he could help it. His fingers fumbled on his small case of mace. The latch was sticking on the pouch that held his spray. “Fuck.” Then louder as the big man balled a fist into his shirt and yanked him forward. “Fuck!”

The next few moments seemed a blur of movement to Billy, who was too petrified by what he was seeing to move. He felt like prey, and a part of his brain rationalized that if he didn’t draw attention to himself he might survive this horror unscathed. As it were, he watched the security guard being pulled forward onto the tip of the sword. It slid through his chest like his insides were made of butter. The blade came out through his back, and it seemed as if the security guard too was stunned, because it took him a full three seconds before he started screeching at the top of his lungs. His body wiggled on the sword like a hooked worm.

The nauseating scent of burning flesh soon choked the air from Billy’s lungs. Blood gurgled up in the man’s mouth, and spewed in a crimson spray as he continued to scream bloody murder. The sound was almost inhuman in its pain. Billy thought his brain couldn’t take it, that his eardrums would simply explode. Before this moment he had never known that such agony could have existed.

The security guard began to convulse as blood began to swell in his eye sockets, pouring down his cheeks in red tears. Blood erupted from every poor on his body, making him look as if he had the pox.

Finally. Mercifully. The stranger pulled the blade out of the guard’s body. It should have been impossible without him having to shove the man off his sword, but he did it anyway. The guard crumpled to the ground in a convulsing heap.

The stranger lifted his sword. The etched swirls in the blade were now glowing with the gift of fresh blood to renew its coating. He brought the sword to his mouth, and slowly licked the blood from the edge of the blade. His eyes closed as he savored the taste. Then, as if he had suddenly decided he had plans elsewhere, he turned around and began walking away.

A vortex crackled into existence in the path he took, and he stepped through it. It snapped closed behind him.

For several minutes Billy couldn’t move. He felt as if he had stood outside himself and watched these things happen to another person. His mind wanted to cower in a corner and never come out. It would be safe there and he wouldn’t have to think . . .

Trevor was screaming. He didn’t know how long his cousin had been hollering at the top of his lungs, but suddenly security guards, and a few curious spectators flooded the room.

The body on the floor stopped twitching and went still.

Trevor kept on screaming.

A/N: Thanks for the reviews guys, it made me write alot faster because I didn't want to leave you guys hanging. In this chapter you meet Agon, which is latin for Agony and Cithru's sword. He's strong enough now to hold human form. I've got some ideas for later chapters and *hint* they involve the demon-dead. Tell me what ya'll think.