Devil Inside (11 page)

“Sorry to leave while you were sleeping,” he apologized, setting the bags on the dining table while she locked the door back behind him.  “I wanted to get stuff that you might need and figured you would like to have it when you woke up.”

“It’s OK.  I saw your note.”  She found she was oddly comfortable with the potential madman and it made her question her own sanity.

They both began unloading the few essential grocery items he had brought.  When Levi began unloading weapons from the duffel bag Harley watched him silently.  She knew enough about guns to recognize the shotgun he pulled out.  It was a 12-gauge with a pistol grip.  He also pulled out two large swords and several large knives.  Harley raised her eyebrows and whistled softly.

Levi looked over his shoulder, “I don’t expect them to show up here, but it’s better to be prepared.  I got this stuff from a storage unit I have.  The rest is still at my rental.”

“Why only the one gun?”  If it had been her picking weapons she would have packed as many guns as she could fit in the bag.

“Guns really don’t do much against Burners.  The bullets don’t normally do enough damage.  Small holes in skin, arteries and organs heal too quickly.”  He held up both swords, “But if you make a big slice it takes longer to heal especially if the cut comes from silver.  Really there are only a few sure-fire ways to kill them.  Cut off their head, destroy their heart or burn them up completely for starters.”

“Good to know,” Harley said sufficiently impressed.  “Why does it always have to be silver?” she wondered out loud.

Levi shrugged, “I don’t really know.  Something about the makeup of the metal, I guess.  Silver is supposed to be really pure.”

  “But why bring a gun at all if it’s pretty useless against them?”

“Do you know how to use a sword?” Levi asked simply.  Without waiting for an answer he continued, “I figured if they did attack you would have a better shot at defending yourself with a gun than with a sword or knife.  A shotgun makes a big hole.  If you got a good shot off it would at least slow them down enough for you to run.”

Harley swallowed and nodded, “Makes sense,” she said.

“I thought you might need this stuff,” he held one of the large shopping bags out to her.  Looking inside she could see that it contained clothes and some grooming essentials.  “Thanks.”

She left Levi to sort out the supplies that he had brought.  She took the bag into the bedroom and dumped the contents out onto the bed.  He had bought her a couple of pairs of jeans, a couple of tee-shirts and hooded jacket, some boots, socks and several pairs of underwear and even a sports bra.  Amazingly everything fit—even if it wasn’t a perfect fit. 
Either someone has had a lot of practice with women and their clothing or someone is really observant
Harley thought slightly amused.  After she dressed she went back into the bathroom and brushed her teeth with the brush he had bought for her and pulled her hair into a messy ponytail.

Coming back into the main room Harley found Levi sitting on the couch.  He had made a small fire in the fireplace and was staring at it intently.  She took a deep breath, no more stalling.  It was time to get the whole story.  Harley’s brain had recovered from its shock and was ready to devise a plan—after understanding everything.  But before she began this endeavor she needed fortifying.  She found the bottle of
Jack
that was only half empty, retrieved two glasses from the cupboard and flopped down on the couch next to Levi.  Without speaking she poured half a glass for each of them and slid one to Levi.  She had decided that to hear him out.  On some level she believed him already, but she needed the whole story before she could really form any real opinion of the state of her life at the moment.

“OK.  I’m ready to ask questions now.”  When she spoke he tore his gaze away from the fire to look at her and took a deep breath.  He picked up his glass, took a long swallow and set it back on the table in front of him.  He angled himself in the corner of the couch facing her and nodded.  She looked him over.  His body seemed relaxed.  One ankle crossed over the other knee.  His arm spread behind him on the back of the couch.  His long hair looked clean but in its usual careless state.  But his dark blue eyes were steady and strong and defied the casual posture the rest of his body gave off.

Harley arranged herself in the corner of the couch opposite Levi but she knew she wasn’t giving off a casual look.  Her arms were crossed over her chest and she crossed her legs underneath herself.   Levi watched her arrange herself, waiting for her questions to begin.  She still wasn’t comfortable, but she refused to squirm in front of him.

“OK.  So are you…a demon or something?”

Levi thought for a moment before answering, “No, not in the classic, Biblical sense.  There is some connection though.  The Church used to believe that we were—some still do I guess.  They believed that the Lux and Nocte were angels and that the Ignis were demons. “

“But you aren’t?”

“No.  I’m pretty sure we aren’t.  That’s just how the original discoverers understood us.  The theory is that when contact was first made that’s how people made sense of the creatures.  Thousands of years ago people had powerful superstitions—some still do.  The Lux aren’t glorious beings of love and light—not by a long shot.  And the Nocte aren’t avenging angels of darkness.   The summation of Ignis as demons—well—that’s actually not a bad way of thinking about them.”

“And you’re Nocte?”  Harley asked, needing to hear it out loud again.

“Yep.”

“Why don’t you seem to know more?  If you—what?  Have another being inside you--shouldn't you know more about it?”

Levi seemed to be trying to find a way to answer.  “The Nocte inside isn’t really a conscious presence.” 

Harley tilted her head to the side, “But it’s a living being that crossed dimensions to get here?”  She could barely believe she was seriously having this conversation.

“They are living creatures.  But when they bond with humans—the two kind of become one.  It’s kind of like a subconscious.  The Nocte makes us stronger, makes us more agile—better fighters.   It can influence our behavior to some degree.  It has needs—sleeping, eating.  But it’s not a voice in our head or anything like that.”

“Sleeping and eating?”

Levi looked hesitate for the first time, “Yeah.  During the day it “sleeps.”  That’s why we are weaker then.  The eating—we can go into that later.”

Harley raised her eyebrows but decided to let that one go for now.  “I still don’t really get it.  Is it some sort of parasite?”

Levi scratched his head thoughtfully, “It’s not invasion of the body snatchers.  It’s more like being superhuman with a really strong devil on your shoulder.  A devil that sleeps during the day and…drinks…blood…”  Levi trailed off but held steady eye contact.

Harley scoffed.  “What the fuck?”  When she realized that Levi wasn’t laughing stared at him.  “OK, seriously?  Are you saying you are a vampire?  Cause if so, I’m out of here.  I don’t do sparkles,” she chuckled ruefully.

Levi didn’t look amused.  “I don’t sparkle.  But vampire really isn’t a bad way to think of it.”

Harley gaped at him.  “So vampires are real.  And you are a vampire?”

“The Nocte, Lux and Ignis are the source of the vampire legend more or less—but we aren’t vampires,” Levi looked annoyed and defensive.

Harley rubbed at her eyes, feeling tired again, “Wow.”

Levi didn’t respond, letting her think things through.  Her brain didn’t want to believe what she was hearing, but she had decided that if she believed part of the story, that she had to believe the whole thing.  He couldn’t only be part crazy and she would be entirely crazy to believe only some crazy.

“So are there any famous people—killers or anything—that were Ignis that I have heard of?” Harley finally asked.

“Sure, there have been some, but it doesn’t pay for them to have a lot of attention on them.  So, generally, they try to stay out of the public eye.”

“What about—?”

Levi interrupted her, “No.”

“How do you know what I was going to ask?”

“Hitler was not a Burner.  Sadly, he was just one twisted, evil human.  Plenty of his SS officers were Ignis though.  They flocked to him like vultures to a dying animal.”

Harley was disappointed, not for the first time in her life, by the human capacity for evil.  “Well who might I have heard of then?”

Levi thought for a moment.  “Jack the Ripper was a Burner.”

“Really!  That’s not surprising at all I guess,” Harley pondered that for a moment.

“Ever hear of the Zodiac killer?”

Harley flipped through her serial killer trivia.  “Yeah, the guy from the 70s, right?”

“Yeah.  He was Ignis.  A major pain in my ass too

Harley’s jaw fell open.  “You hunted the Zodiac killer?”

“Yeah.  I came across him by complete accident,” Levi laughed softly.  His eyes focused in the past as he remembered.  “He shot me twice before I finally got him.”

“That’s right,” Harley remembered.  “The police never caught him, did they?”

“Nope.  The POLICE did not ever catch him.”

“Wow,” was all Harley could think to say.  She continued to watch Levi as he stared into the fire.  He was so still—she hadn’t thought much about it before, but it wasn’t hard to imagine him as some sort of other worldly being.  The way that he carried himself—always on the alert.  With such purpose; it always seemed like each movement was planned out ahead of time.  She still wasn’t entirely sure how she felt about Levi.  She was still a bundle of confusion.

“So are you dead?” Harley finally resumed the questioning.

It was Levi’s turn to scoff, “Do I look dead?”

She rolled her eyes, “How the hell should I know?  I don’t know what’s real at all anymore.”

“You do,” he said simply.  She couldn’t disagree with him.  It might mean that she had lost her mind—but she believed him.

“Why don’t you know more about where you come from?”

“The creatures don’t communicate with us.  When you bond with one of them you don’t have a conversation first.  And once you are bonded you don’t communicate in literal ways.  You know things, you feel things—it’s more on an instinct level.  The other changes you as they become you.”

“So the names of these things—what you do know about them.  That all comes from human understanding and interpretation?  Humans making guesses and assumptions about something they don’t really understand all that well.”

“Exactly.”

“Well that sounds vague and confused enough to be about right then,” Harley determined.  Levi smiled and held his hands out in a “there you have it” kind of way.  “So, when was the first of you…created?  Bonded?  Whatever?”

“The first records that we know of came from western Alchemist records from ancient Egypt.”  Harley’s eyes widened but she let him finish.  “Alchemy is mostly a false science.  But there were some discoveries.  The ‘vampires’ being the biggest”

“So how exactly does one ‘bond’ with these things?”

“It’s a complicated process.  I only know part of it.  Not all of us know how to do it.  That information is guarded.”

“By who”

“The Praesidio.”

“So…you like, have a boss?”

Levi chuckled, “Everyone answers to someone.  But I don’t have a boss in the normal sense that you are familiar with.  I don’t punch a time clock or anything.”

“Security consultant,” Harley said, recalling Levi’s cover story.

“Yes.  I travel around.  I hunt.  But my main purpose is to evaluate the need for Nocte.  I evaluate the balance.

“The balance?”

“We need to make sure that there are enough Nocte to combat the Turba.  And we also maintain a balance between the Lux and the Nocte.”

“Why?  Don’t both groups have the same goal?”

“Yes.  But there must be a balance of power.”

Harley’s brow furrowed.  “I don’t get it.”

“The Ignis sense the Lux and the Nocte, just like we sense them.  There is some protection in not having too much of either.  When one stands out more than the other, it attracts Ignis.  If the Lux and the Nocte are balanced they kind of cancel each other out.”

“That actually kind of makes sense,” Harley responded thoughtfully.  “What happens if there are too many Burners?”

Levi raised an eyebrow at her.  “I told you.  Ignis love to cause pain and suffering.  They feed off misery.  Hitler may not have been a Burner himself.  But do you think he could have caused such atrocities without the support, the encouragement, of so many Ignis?”

Harley nodded, not knowing what to say.  She stopped trying to comprehend the global implications of a world in which misery loving monsters were allowed to roam free.  “So—what do you know about the bonding process?”

Levi narrowed his eyes at Harley wondering where she was going.  “You have to reach the point of death and then the Nocte is called.  When it comes—you have to choose to accept it.  And before you ask, I don’t know how to call the Nocte.”

“Is it the same for the Lux and the Ignis?”

“I think it is for the Lux—the basics anyway.  But not the Ignis,” he stated evenly.