Tales from the Crypt - Demon Knight (24 page)

It was Brayker. The scene shut down instantly.

“That is his future,” the Salesman said. “And yours if you follow him.”

She was sweating hard, her hair sticking to her face, her lungs wheezing. “You can’t be in here,” she croaked. “The blood seal . . .”

“Nice of you to take care of it,” he said, and glanced at her feet. She shoved an arm onto the wall for balance and inspected the bottom of her right shoe. Nothing unusual. The tread marks were worn slick by overuse, no late-breaking news in that. She shifted and checked the other one.

Something like a scab was stuck to her heel.

“You’ll be hearing from me again real soon,” he said. “And you can scream now if you want to.”

As she gaped at him his clothing changed. She thought of
Bewitched,
of Samantha, the fast way she could cast her spells. The Salesman was now wearing shapeless white clothes, sandals, and had a colorful blanket tossed over one shoulder. Best of all, a huge sombrero was parked on his head.

“Adios, amiga,”
he said, and was gone.

Muttering, eventually crying, she ripped her Paris posters down from the walls and shredded them between her hands.

17

T
he search for Danny Long was over in less than two minutes. Brayker found no surprise in the fact that it failed. It was just another notch in the Salesman’s pistol, and he had carved many notches there over the years. Neither Uncle Willie nor Jeryline were back yet, another cause for concern. He went to the door and looked out: still no demons, and no Willie or Jeryline. Just as he was drawing back, the door of Jeryline’s room wafted slowly open and she came out. A rush of relief charged through his veins. With Jeryline dead the whole war was lost.

If she truly were to be the next keeper of the key. For all he knew, it might well be Martel, or even Irene. His duties had come without an instruction manual.

His mind jumped back to his own initiation into the club. It was a moment he wished had never happened. He had not asked for the key and the duties it entailed. He was just a private in the army trying to keep from getting his ass blown off. His commanding officer had been Lieutenant Stephen Harrison, who had found life in the military to be the best way to keep the Salesman away. He had not known he would be shot in the trenches of World War One; he probably had not known who the next keeper of the key would be at all. But Silas Brayker had been there to watch him die.

The assault had failed. It was summertime but the fog was thick and cold. Harrison had caught a bullet just as he and Brayker dived into a shallow, unfinished trench. French flares were wafting down on their little parachutes, creating a fantastic moonscape of shattered trees and cratered earth. Brayker and Harrison were caught between the lines, doomed to wait for the next attack to jump up and rejoin their unit, or to die under the next hail of artillery fire.

In that ungodly light, Harrison had taken the key out of its pouch and begun filling the orb with the blood that was bubbling out of the huge hole in his guts. As he did so he told Brayker the history of the key, of a man in biblical times named Sirach who made the orb and filled it with Christ’s blood. As a last act Harrison had pressed Brayker’s palm against his. If Brayker had doubts about the story, he lost them in a hurry. Intense pain stabbed his hand. Green light shot between the creases of his skin. It was only when Harrison’s strength was gone that his hand fell away at last, and Brayker had inherited the tattoo.

On-the-job training followed swiftly. A huge, curious rustling grew over the battlefield. The flares swung and danced in the sky, pushed by a sudden, unnatural wind. Silhouetted against them were creatures with broad flapping wings and bloated, hideous bodies the size of a very fat man.

“You’d better run now,” Harrison said. He pulled the pouch out of his uniform and put the key inside, then hooked it over Brayker’s neck. “Run now and never stop.”

Those were his last words. Confused and terrified, Brayker had scrambled out of the hole as the creatures alighted and began to tear Harrison apart. One of them swooped down and fastened its claws into Brayker’s back. A machine gun somewhere chattered, then another. The winged demon fell away and began to flounder about with its wings in shreds. Artillery opened up on both sides. The war kicked back into full swing, and in the chaos Brayker made it back to his own lines.

What a happy ending. Brayker had never been so surprised to be alive. It was only later, during periods of depression as the years ground on, that he wished a bullet or bomb had ended his life that night. He had been nineteen years old, the same age as so many millions of boys on both sides who died in a war that made no sense, and only led to another.

Now Brayker tapped his forehead with his fist, knocking the memories aside, memories he had rehashed thousands of times that brought only grief with no solution. Even with the power of the key he could not change the past, only the future.

People were looking at him. “Uncle Willie’s missing,” he said. “Anybody know why?”

Irene plopped herself down on the bed. “Probably passed out somewhere.”

Brayker shook his head. “He’s not that drunk. Which room is he searching?”

Martel looked smug. “Should have let me assign numbers after all, huh?”

“He went into Wally’s room,” Jeryline said. Brayker eyed her for a brief second, wondering. She looked as if she’d stuck a finger into a light socket, all windblown and disoriented.

“I’ll check it,” Martel said, and hurried out.

Brayker rubbed his forehead as if to massage the troubling thoughts away. The need for sleep was wooing him again with promises of needed rest and dreams that would not be remembered. The shotgun felt slick and oily in his hand, reminding him that most men who go to war do not have to carry guns after the war is over. He had been given the gift of an extended life, but at a terrible price.

Martel, the dirtiest deputy in the west, charged back in with a grin and eyes that spoke of late-breaking news. “I know where he’s at,” he said. “Irene, you’re gonna shit about eighteen bricks. There’s a big trapdoor in the ceiling of that room. It must go up to the attic, and that’s where old Willie went.”

Irene frowned and moved her head slowly from side to side. “I know how to get into the attic,” she said. “There’s a panel at the end of the hall that you push up. I thought about getting insulation blown up there and decided not to. It never gets very cold, and air conditioning is out of the question.”

“You better think again,” Martel said, and smacked his hands together. “This old place is just plain stuffed with trick doors. Come on, everybody.”

The two tromped out. Brayker ran a hand through his hair, which contained no hint of gray at all. At his age, he often thought, and with what he’d been through in his life, he should be gray to the roots and bald as an egg, both at the same time. Not to mention being in an insane asylum.

Jeryline had decided not to follow and sat instead on the bed, visibly weirding out. “You okay?” he asked her. “I’ve seen you better.”

She turned her head. “How does the Salesman do what he did to Cordelia? How does he take over a soul?”

Brayker moved closer to her, hovering at the edge of sitting down beside her, deciding not to. “He seduces the person. It’s kind of like mental rape, I guess, but gentle in its own way. He makes a proposal, and you either accept it, or you don’t. If that doesn’t work, he scares you. Shows you scenes from your family, threatens to hurt them if you don’t accept his offer.”

She brightened a tone or two. “So it’s all bluff? He really wouldn’t do something like that?”

Brayker did sit beside her. “Oh, no bluff at all. He can do anything he wants to do, and usually does.”

She faced him. “Then why hasn’t he gotten you yet? For the key he could offer anything you want.”

“True,” Brayker said. In spite of the dismal hour of the night, in spite of the crazy series of events, he was entranced by the smell of her. She had worked in the kitchen untold hours, had cooked a supper for him—and a pretty damned strange one, pudding for supper—had run around with him as they fought to stay alive, and still she smelled nice, although she did look like a piece of warmed-over dogshit right now.

“Have you ever just listened to him?” she asked. “Listened to his pitch, I guess you’d call it. He’s a salesman, and he has a good pitch.”

Brayker laid the shotgun on the bed and touched her hand. “What did he pitch to you?”

She rubbed her eyes, then dragged her fingers down to her chin, making monster faces on the way. “Paris. I would kill to go to Paris.”

Brayker bobbed his head up and down. “It is a very nice city.”

“You’ve been there?”

“Yep. Been there, seen it, moved on.”

“To Wormwood, New Mexico.”

“An undiscovered tourist haven. Why else would Irene open a hotel in the middle of Cactustown? She’s a very shrewd businesswoman.”

Jeryline drew back from him. “You have got to be kidding.”

He drew away from her, and blinked both eyes at once. “You’re right, I have got to be kidding. What was I thinking?”

She laughed. When she leaned back toward him their shoulders touched, but she did not draw away; instead, she seemed to lean on him slightly. Unusual thoughts buzzed through his mind, but he stamped them out. “So he was in your room just now? You erased the blood seal for him?”

“Are you nuts? No way—at least not on purpose. The drop of blood dried up and scraped off on my shoe when I walked in.”

He took a deep breath. “It’s gotten too old,” he said. “Fresh hot blood soaks in, you can’t get rid of it without a knife or some scrubbing. The old stuff just sits there and hardens like a scab, it comes off too easy.”

“Exactly,” she said.

Silence fell between them. Brayker let his eyes slide shut, thinking of sleep, thinking of Jeryline, thinking of the things that would never happen between them because an oversized key made out of iron and silver and quartz stood in the way. And his age, don’t forget that. It was a mismatch made in heaven.

He touched his throat. “Uh, Jeryline?”

Her response was delayed, as if she were drowsing as well. “Yeah?”

“You and I, um, it’s too bad that we, um . . .”

It was no use. He had spent his life on the run and his time was drawing to an end; this he could feel.

“Never mind,” he said softly.

She rested her head on his shoulder, and took his big clumsy hand in her small, calloused one. “It’s always that way,” she murmured. “Everybody I hate at first, winds up being a really good person.”

He smiled. “We did have a rocky start, didn’t we?”

“Two hardheads with an attitude.”

“Sorry. Really.”

It occurred to him to kiss her. Simply lift a hand and use a curled finger to slowly raise her head, gaze deeply into her eyes, find the permission that surely was inside them, and press his lips to hers. Nothing could be easier.

Or harder. He groaned inside. He was ninety-seven years old. She was young—worse than young, she was a minor. But somehow, he felt, somehow, he was still the same nineteen years old he had been when Harrison passed the key to him.

The point became unimportant as Martel appeared in the doorway. “It’s a pull-down stairway up to the attic. Me and Irene’s going up now, and I’ll need the shotgun.”

Brayker picked it up. “I don’t see how anything could get up there,” he said. “Besides, we’ll all be safe in here.” He looked down at the deputy’s scuffed and dirty boots, but he was standing outside the perimeter of the door—a use, finally, for his favorite word and thing, the perimeter-minded fool. “Why don’t you step in here first, Deputy?”

Martel scowled and started to tap his foot. “Our mission at this point is to save the kid, Brayker, and sitting around isn’t going to make it happen.” He motioned with a finger whose nail was still crusted with dry mud. “The shotgun, and I mean now.”

Brayker growled under his breath. Since the war he had not liked taking orders from anyone, especially young officers who thought themselves duty-bound to send soldiers to die in hopeless battles. “Deputy,” he said evenly, “if you insist on roving around in the attic you may have this weapon with all my blessings, but please be careful not to blow your own stupid ass off. Now come in and get it yourself.”

Martel stepped inside, chuckling into his own throat. “Mister,” he said as he pulled the shotgun into his hands, “you can forget the easy treatment in my official police report. From this point on, consider yourself a wanted man.”

He stalked away, grabbed the edge of the door, and slammed it hard on the way out. Brayker hung his head, shook it. “Dipshit,” he said softly. “Such a small world, so many dipshits. At least he made it through the door without sizzling.”

“Actually,” Jeryline said, “he’s better than most cops. Stupider, but better.”

Brayker could only shrug.

“I wonder if Danny made it back to his mom and dad,” she said. She was silent for a time, then sighed and touched her forehead. “What am I thinking? They’re no better than the guys in the cheap rubber monster suits.”

Brayker raised his head. “Huh?”

“The demons. At first I thought they were just some jerks in costumes. Then I realized they were actors in costumes. Things became so real, I decided they were demons in fake costumes. Eventually, though, I had to recognize the truth.”

“It does take a while.”

“It does. Now I realize what they really, really are. Has-been TV stars from the Seventies. Criminals never booked by Dan-O on ‘Hawaii Five-O.’ Unloved passengers on ‘The Love Boat.’ Ugly girls who never made it to ‘Charlie’s Angels.’ That’s the daytime shows they piped in for us to watch in prison.”

He found himself on the verge of laughing. His life had been hell, this night was hell, Jeryline looked like hell just now, and so did he. About eight minutes ago he had laughed like a hyena when Martel broke all the jars of jelly and preserves on the floor in his attempt to keep the trapdoor to the basement closed. Now Martel was about to investigate the attic armed with a gun that was probably empty, an attitude that was overblown, and a burning desire to be a hero. He would not make it much farther into the night.