Prodigal Son

Prodigal Son

A Demonica Valios Novel

By Ben Higginbotham

Demonica 3: Prodigal Son

Ben Higginbotham

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2014 Ben Higginbotham

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Acknowledgements:

As these books progress, it seems like more and more people become interested in them, with their own input and expectations for the characters. Sometimes it's good, sometimes it's bad, but I promise you, I'm listening to each and every one of you that took the time to say I like this, but here's how it could be better. I'd like to thank several people who always give me good advice.

As always, I would like to give my thanks to my parents, who still support me no matter how foul-mouthed my characters may get.

Of course, my thanks to Alesha Nave (and a big fat Welcome to the World to Lexington Joy Nave and McKenzie Taylor Nave, both born about a week before I finished this sucker up) who helped me hammer out yet another plot for this one. Alesha has long since ceased to be shocked by anything that happens in my books, as she has helped me plan out pretty much everything that's ever happened to these characters.

To Daniel and Siua Tali, for still being my friends after all these years. Also, for still being able to beat my ass at any game I've ever played and still making the best machine gun sounds I've ever heard outside of a James Cameron movie, respectively.

I really can't express my thanks to Charles Totten enough. Charles has taken on the role of Public Relations, Ad Man, and Number 1 Fan in the state of Oregon all at once, none of them with pay. The way I figure it, if you're reading this right now, odds are about one in three that you're doing so because Charles told you to. For that, I really can't thank you enough, Charles.

Which brings me to another point. I would like to thank all the people who participated in the Win A Walk On Role In Demonica 3 contest that I hosted on Facebook, and a special thank you goes out to the winner's of that contest: Charles Totten (again, thank you Charles), Melissa Moon Saffer, and Meghan Sandoval. All three of them are lovely people, and if you don't like their cameos, it's only because they were kind enough to let me take some, *ahem*, liberties with their personalities to fit the story at hand.

To Meghan Sandoval and Jessie Simmons, for their unending hospitality and willingness to play Rock Band most weekends.

To all of my friends at Sam Weller's Bookstore, past and present. An extra special thanks goes out to John Clukey, who allowed me into the store to do a book signing despite giving him no reason to so when I worked under him, and to Bruce Christensen, who acted completely professional the whole time he was dealing with me and my book, despite putting on a (hopefully) fictional stance of hating my guts and livers most days.

And last but certainly not least, the biggest thank you of all goes to any of you who are reading this and following the series. I'll promise to keep them interesting as long as you promise to stay interested.

God's got ten seconds, Bixby thought, and then he's gonna have to deal with me personally. He liked the sound of that. It sounded tough, like he wasn't going to take any shit from anybody, least of all the Supreme Being, the Almighty.

But truthfully, with a gun-sight digging into the roof of his mouth and the barrel of a .45 caliber pistol that he'd bought from the pawnshop a week ago tickling at the back of his throat, Anthony Bixby didn't feel very tough at all. He felt scared, even though he could take the gun out of his mouth at any time. He didn't have to pull the trigger.

But then what?

Sweat ran down his face, and he felt a stinging droplet run into his eye, making him squeeze it shut in pain. Dammit, he thought. Just do it. Then you won't have to worry about sweat running down into your eyes, or alimony payments, or arrest warrants, or even whether you should wear pants or shorts tomorrow.

He squeezed on the trigger slightly, the sweat coming faster now, and then he stopped. No. Big guy's got ten seconds, like I said. Fair's fair.

Bixby started counting down in his head. Ten... nine...

He'd gotten to three when he heard, very clearly, Don't do it, Tony.

His eyes flew open, and he spoke aloud. Whooheah? he asked, the gun in his mouth making a mush of the syllables.

No one's there, Tony. Nobody but me.

He pulled the gun out of his mouth then, his eyes wide. God? he asked the empty room. If there were ever a more unlikely place than this to find God, Bixby couldn't picture it. A rundown double-wide trailer on the outskirts of Roswell, New Mexico, stocked almost to capacity with empty beer bottles and take-out containers, really didn't seem like a fitting place to encounter the Alpha and the Omega.

Yes, my son. Put down the gun. You've got more important things to do before you sleep.

Bixby threw the gun across the room, as though it had suddenly gotten hot.

Don't lose that, Tony. Every soldier needs a weapon. Even a soldier of God.

Bixby stood up without a word and began to look for it.

You can get it later, Tony. It will still be under that dirty magazine when you need it. But for now, I need you to do me a favor.

Do you a favor? Why can't you do it yourself?

Please, you look rather foolish addressing that empty shitbox you call a home. I can hear your thoughts just fine, Tony.

Bixby's eyes widened then, and he opened his mouth to say something else before he caught himself.

Okay, but you still didn't answer my question, he thought. You're all powerful, all knowing, all that shit, so why can't you just do this favor yourself?

There was a pause, and then:

It's very complicated, Tony, and has to do with moral certainty, ethics, and free will. Simply put, I dislike meddling directly in the day to day affairs of man. I sowed my wild oats millenia ago, and I rather hate doing that burning bush jazz nowadays. So, long story short, I prefer it if someone chooses to help me of their own God-given free will. Of course, if you prefer...

There was a long silence, and Bixby found his gaze wandering back over to the general area of the trailer where the gun had landed. He thought he could actually see the magazine that it was hiding under. The girl on the front had apparently decided to wear her cheerleader uniform today, but to her chagrin, must have forgotten to put on underwear. And underneath the pages of that magazine, he could almost see the gun, the single eye of the cold barrel looking at him, judging him, and finding him wanting.

Forgetting himself for a moment, Bixby said aloud, What do you want me to do?

Excellent. I will need you to pack up your things- don't forget that gun- and go to Salt Lake City. You will wait until you see a demon arrive.

A demon? Bixby thought. How will I know her?

She will have bright red hair, Tony. Bright red hair, and a tail. She answers to Monica.

Bixby nodded. And what do I do then?

God laughed in his head, and it was so infectious that Bixby found himself laughing, too.

Why, what you should do with any demon, Tony. Kill the bitch. With the pistol, if you can. But use any means necessary.

Bixby nodded again, and began to pack.

Oh, and Tony?

Bixby stopped for a moment, then said aloud, Yes, my Lord?

Don't fuck this up.

Bixby didn't reply beyond going back to his packing.

***

I got my walking papers today. Not from the prison, mind you. I don't think that the warden's ever gonna give me the rubber stamp on that score. They tend to be a little stingy with the stamp, when you're in prison for brutally beating a man of the cloth to death with your bare hands.

Never mind that he was a wolf in sheep's clothing, a particularly nasty breed of wolf known as a Gambler, whose only purpose in life was to activate people. Never mind that he was threatening my wife of seven years with an ivory rune that would have turned her into a mindless, slavering hell beast that I would have had to put down like a rabid dog. And never mind that I killed him in a vampire den right in the heart of New Orleans, surrounded by dozens of bloodsuckers, all of them for reals dead this time, never mind any of that un bullshit. And never mind that I also had a hand in killing the serial killer that had been stalking the streets for at least a year before he got possessed by Legion and turned really nasty.

Extenuating circumstances, my ass.

The package was from Penelope. She had met another man, some upstanding citizen named Charlie Macoute, and he had proposed to her. Now I was the only thing between her and yes.

But she was safe, and it didn't matter that she was moving on with her life and wanted my permission to marry someone else. It didn't matter that she wanted my John Hancock on the dotted line here, initial here, and then wanted me to mail the dissolution of my marriage back to her lawyer care of the jail house post. None of that mattered.

Because she was safe, because I blew her rune to Hell where it belonged before it could be activated, before I had to go home and find out that my wife wasn't my wife anymore, that the woman I had dived in front of a bullet for wasn't a woman at all anymore.

So I signed the papers, and I sent them on with a prayer and a kiss for good luck.

And then I got another package.

She wasn't safe, anymore. Far from it.

The package came a couple of days ago, unmarked. It had been thoroughly vetted by the guards, I'm sure, tested to make sure that it wasn't a literal or figurative key out of this joint. It wasn't, in case you're curious. In fact, I'm sure that once the guards saw it and figured out that it wasn't explosive or sharp enough to dig my way out of here with, they probably just put it back in the package and sent it through without a second thought.

It wasn't literally explosive, mind you, but it was enough to turn my blood into ice water.

Inside the plain manila envelope was a rune; a small, flat piece of ivory with a particular marking on it.

On the face of the rune was a small, cartoony drawing of an angel. Underneath it, so small as to be nearly indistinct, was written a single word. Monica.

The last time I'd seen a rune like this, I'd wound up in the clink because the bastard holding it was threatening to turn my wife into a demon with it. I beat him into something resembling a bag of garbage from the butcher. And given the chance, I'd probably do it again.

But before I did it, I blew this rune to hell. I'd shot it while he was still holding it, and I saw the slivers of ivory sticking out of his hand, like teeth ringing the bullet hole I'd just made in his palm. But here it was again, like a bad penny turning up.

I could destroy this one, too. But what was the point? Somebody was sending me a message, loud and clear.

Oh, you destroyed that rune? Good job. Here, break another one, if you like. There's plenty more where that came from.

I heard Jacky in my head now, his voice coming from across the misty depths of a decade. I hope your rune's in there, mate, he'd said. Because he's not the only Gambler out there. Not by a long shot.

Or at least that's how I heard it all those years ago, listening to Jacky's last gasp as his body bubbled and collapsed into a stinking gumbo before my eyes. But thinking back on it, I realized that I'd misheard him, or maybe it was just the fact that at the last minute, his words were a little mushier than usual.

What he'd actually said was, I hope your runes are in there, mate. As in plural, runes.

I figured that at the very least, the asshole that sent this had at least one more rune just like it. Which meant that Penelope wasn't safe any more, might never be safe. I had spent all this time assuming that there was just the one rune, but what if there was no set limit? What if some asshole could just blink one out of thin air and roll it on a whim?

I had to get out of here.

***

I was standing at the window again, watching as my son was taken from me. I'd been so close, so goddamned close that I could have reached out and grabbed him, could've taken him in my arms and held him close and never let him go. And now I was watching as he was being taken away, his father's wings beating in a steady rhythm as he carried my boy away from me.

Except...

Chris was still struggling to get free, and I wanted to shout to him, tell him that it was alright, just to let it happen and I would find him someday, if it was the last thing I ever did, and then Chris got his wish. One moment, he was struggling, and the next, he was free, horribly free, tumbling end over end through the air. Even at this distance, I could see the sheer terror on his face as he got closer and closer to the cold, hard cement below. I screamed then, reaching out to grab him even though I was much too far to possibly save him...

...and sat up in bed, sweat-soaked and panting.

Alex was awake almost before I was, holding me in his arms and whispering soothing bits of nonsense to me. Same dream, he said eventually. It wasn't framed as a question, and he didn't need me to nod to know that it was the same dream as I had the night before. It was the same dream every night. I'd had the dream for nearly four years now, almost every day since I'd lost my son to his father. I stood up out of bed and walked into the kitchen to get a glass of water.

I was glad to have Alex, even though he seemed to be a little commitment shy. Four years now and not even a hint of a ring. I wasn't sure what his problem was. Penelope certainly wasn't having that problem. She'd known Charlie for a little over a year now, and already they were planning the wedding. Penelope's little girl, Raimi, was going to be the flower girl. They were still looking for a ring-bearer, though. I think Penelope was holding out hope for finding Chris before the wedding. I was hoping for that too, but we'd tried everything we could think of, and the trail had gone cold.

Things had been tough ever since Mike had been sent to prison, and sometimes it seemed like it would never get any better than it was right now, with my son missing and no hope of Mike getting out of prison before the poison that Legion had pricked him with eventually got the better of him. Death had told me that Mike had fifteen years left to live after he got stuck. That had been four years ago.

A lot had happened four years ago. That was the year that I lost my son to his father, the year that my ex-fiance, a fallen angel named Chris Wilson, came back from Hell with the intention of ruining my life. He'd tried to go about this by having a vampire enclave kidnap my son with the intention of luring me into their lair for use as a supply of high-end, rare blood for some of their more discerning buyers. I managed to escape due to a power struggle between Lylith, an ancient demon who had developed a taste for blood through her dealings with the vampires, and her second in command, a vampire named Roger who let me go as long as I promised to kill Lylith. I did, eventually, although it was more of an act of God than anything I did to kill her.

Lylith couldn't resist good blood when she saw it, and unfortunately for her, she saw the little vial of blood that was nestled into my sword, the Espada de Jesucristo. That translates roughly as The Sword of Jesus Christ, and is so called because the blood in the hilt supposedly belonged to none other than the great JC himself. Lylith had become an addict in the process of selling blood to the vamps, and she just couldn't resist sampling the rarest vintage of all. She got about three steps after drinking it down before she started to melt like a witch in a rainstorm. After a few minutes, all that was left of her was a few puddles and the most god-awful stink you can imagine.

That was also the year that I fell in love with Alex, and the year that Mike went to prison.

I'd met Alex before then, back when he was a homicide detective investigating the death of my father, Steve, after an attack by a group of demons known collectively as the 1,024. I'd been forced to kill Steve after he turned into a demon and tried to kill me. I've regretted it ever since, but I know that it was the right thing to do. Steve himself told me to do it, before he turned fully. I still miss him, every single day.

Alex and I became an item after I enlisted his help to find my son. He didn't normally take on kidnapping cases, but he agreed to help me out when I promised him the truth about what had happened to Steve. As a result, he's one of a few people who know that I'm a sort of half-human, half demon hybrid. I don't look much like a demon, really, other than my bright red hair. Oh, and my tail. I have to tape it down before I go out into public, but it is useful when I'm fighting other demons. It happens more than you think, actually. I can usually manage to dispatch the demons fairly quickly and before they do too much collateral damage. I used to have Steve telling me where to go to find these demons and stop them, but now they just seem to find me no matter what I'm doing.

Mike went to prison because he was trying to protect Penelope. He got involved in Chris' little web because he took a case from the action star, Jonathan Simms. Simms hired Mike to protect him because he'd sold his soul to the devil years ago, and feared that the devil was trying to collect. Simms was a vampire, however, and eventually sold us out to the vampires in exchange for a vial of my blood. He went to the vampire's lair, a fifteen story office building called the Brandtfeld building, to collect his blood at roughly the same time that Mike and Alex were coming to save me from the vampires, with Death in tow.

Simms was eventually killed by the priest that had been dispatched to collect his soul. This was the same priest who Mike was sent up the river for killing. The priest had been a Gambler, a type of entity that uses two dice and a set of runes that correspond to burns, scars, tattoos and other identifying marks on a given person's body. Once the rune with their particular mark is cast, they are activated, turning them into demons. Steve had a six burned into his hand that was used to activate him. The priest had tried to activate Penelope using a tattoo that she had on her wrist.

When I first told her the truth about myself, Penelope had suggested that we get friendship tattoos to commemorate the occasion. As a result, I've got a cute little demon on my wrist that says Penelope. And hers is an angel that says Monica.

Mike and Penelope had been married for seven years when the priest had pulled out the rune. Mike had always been protective of her, even though when they first met Penelope didn't trust him further than she could throw him. That all changed when Mike took a bullet for her. So when the priest threatened to activate Penelope, Mike saw red. He beat the bastard to death with his bare hands, and I can't say that I wouldn't have helped if I had been there. Unfortunately, he was still beating on the corpse by the time the police got there, and he got life without parole.

Alex has been there for me ever since. He helped me through the year immediately afterward, which was the toughest for me. If I hadn't been so busy helping Penelope with her pregnancy, and Alex hadn't been there to keep me sane, I might have just given up.

Alex has been working overtime to find out what he can about where Chris might be. Not only that, but he's been pushing me not to give up on Chris, even though some days it's tough. Even though I still believe he's out there, it's just been so long that some days I find myself wondering if he's still alive.

Right now, I believe. I have to. Otherwise I might just go crazy.

I drank the water and rinsed the glass before going back into the bedroom. Alex was still awake, waiting for me to come back to bed. He was reading, but as soon as he heard me enter he put the book down and looked at me.

I think I might have found a new lead on where Chris is, he said.

I nodded. We'd been through so many new leads on where my son might be that we could both go to Saturn on the frequent flier miles we'd racked up. Round-trip. So I didn't know how much stock I could put in another tip.

It's weird, though.

I nodded. We'd been listening to the grapevine, mostly consisting of