Tales from the Crypt - Demon Knight (29 page)

Jeryline’s hand flashed up; the knife/fork was in it. Without any heroics, she poked it almost gently into Danny’s other eye. The demon inside Danny Long shrieked. She scurried to the side to avoid the gush of whatever evil thing that had done this to him, to Cordelia, to Uncle Willie.

Brayker worked himself back on his feet as Danny dropped to the floor. His broken arm was a crushing vise of pain, but it would get even worse as the shock wore off and his body began to fully understand what had been done to it. Jeryline had risen also and was menacing the demons with the Swiss Army knife. They seemed remarkably tamer; Brayker had long ago guessed that since they were products of the same Hell, there was a sort of commonality of mind, like one identical twin feeling the pain of the other. Or some such. At this moment he did not give a damn if the slow, stupid bastards felt better when one or all of them took a well-deserved shit. They were backing off and Jeryline was still alive.

He motioned to her. “Come on, quick! We have to get back upstairs!”

She loped toward him. Danny’s kick had left the imprint of the eyelets and shoelaces of his Nikes on her forehead and blood was running from both nostrils, but her nose didn’t seem broken. Together they scrambled over the rubble, coughing in the rising smoke as the fire steadily spread itself. “No, stop,” she panted, pressing the back of her hand to her nose. “If this place keeps burning, we’ll be trapped.”

“We’re trapped anyway,” he said, grunting against the pain. He stuck the butterfly knife in a pocket and held his arm to his chest to keep the bones from grating against each other. “The key’s gone, everybody’s dead, I fucked up royally this time. You go ahead and run, run as fast as you can, the Salesman doesn’t want you anyway.”

“Nuh-uh, Brayker. Maybe he doesn’t want me, but I want him. I hated my life in this dump, but it doesn’t mean I hated the people. He killed the only family I had left, maybe the only real one I’ve ever had. So
you
go,
you
run.”

He put on a bit of a smile. “I don’t think so, Englebert.”

She matched his expression. “Then it’s just you and me, Humperdinck.”

Now, from ahead: clapping. Brayker and Jeryline looked.

“Oh, bravo!” the Salesman said, walking down the stairs, slapping his hands slowly, steadily. He was wearing a tuxedo and a top hat. His cumberbund was a wonderful red, his thin gloves neat and white. Around his neck hung a small set of opera glasses on a black cord. The battered old case for the key was tucked under his arm. “Even Shakespeare would be weeping now,” he said. “Such drama, such heroism, such tragedy, such pathos. I am almost literally in tears. Bravo.”

Jeryline squared her jaw. “You’ve got what you want, you bastard. Now at least be human enough to let us go.”

“Human?” He stopped at the bottom of the stairs, tipped back his head, and laughed. “Human? Mr. Fracture, would you mind telling the young lady that I do not take kindly to such insults?”

“He’s not human,” Brayker said. He groaned and dropped slowly to his knees, cradling his arm, grimacing. “Run, Jeryline,” he rasped. “He only wants me.”

“Wrong,”
the Salesman blared. “You, Brayker, are history that will soon be forgotten. Our little Jeryline, on the other hand, seems the perfect person to continue the line of robbers and thugs who have kept my key from me so long. In fact, Brayker, I’m in such a good mood at squelching this line of thieves, that you may go.”

Brayker widened his eyes. “You’re kidding.”

He made sweeping motions with his fingers. “Beat it before I change my mind, asshole.”

Brayker found the strength to wobble upright again. He looked at Jeryline, took a long, quavering breath, and crossed in front of her.

She watched him with wide eyes. “Silas,” she said, “I can’t do this alone.”

He shrugged his shoulders, his face twisted with pain. “I’m old, Jerry, too old and too tired, Jerry. Forgive me.”

The Salesman wrinkled his nose. “Pathetic, isn’t it?”

Jeryline made fists. “You bastard!” she cried as he limped away. “You brought all this death here and you can just walk away from it? From me?”

He said nothing. The Salesman became interested in the ceiling, tapping his foot impatiently.

“I hate you!” she screamed. “Hate you
bad!”

Brayker said nothing. She turned her attention to the Salesman. “I’ll do whatever you want,” she said in the high, wavering tones of panic. “When I’m cleaned up I’m a real pretty girl, and I know some tricks that’d even make Cordelia blush. I just don’t want to . . . die. Not here, not now.”

He eyed her, his mouth twitching at the edges. “Whiners,” he said disgustedly. “Want some cheese with that whine?”

She moved toward him, lifting her feet high to avoid being burned by the spreading patches of flame.

“Drop that knife!” he demanded.

She let it fall. Brayker was still making his slow, hunchbacked way to the door. “Hold me,” she said to the Salesman. “Please hold me.”

He put a finger under her chin, and smiled at her very fatherly. “You are the worst actress I have ever seen,” he said gently, and moved his hand to clamp it around her throat. “But I know you have the soul of a warrior, the spirit of ten men.” He hoisted her up. “Show me who you really are.”

“I’m a—I’m a—” She could barely push air through her windpipe as he lifted her.

“A warrior,” he said. “Tell me you are a warrior!”

She was able to shake her head slowly back and forth. “I’m a—I’m a—
diversion!”

The Salesman’s eyes grew slightly bigger and his head snapped to her right. In that instant, magically, a small knife punched through his eye and embedded itself into the socket with only the slightest bit of sound: metal grating through bone. The butterfly handle bobbed lazily up and down, clicking.

He dropped her and reeled backward. The old case fell from under his arm and thumped on the floor. She snatched it up as he crashed against the wall. “Upstairs!” Brayker shouted as he ran toward her. “It’s the only place we know for sure is sealed!”

She levered herself dazedly back onto her feet, clutching her throat. She took a step and immediately fell again. The case banged on the floor and jumped from her hand. The Salesman jerked the knife out of his eye with a roar of anger and tottered toward the case with both gloved hands tinted an odd orange color by his blood. Brayker dived for it, landed on it, and rolled over with his broken arm flopping in crazy directions.

“MINE!” the Salesman roared, and slashed out with the knife. Brayker blocked it with the case, nearly losing it as the knife sliced through the old leather, trying to push himself away with his feet while still on his back. The Salesman lumbered another step and hacked at him again. This time the shiny blade punched into his stomach just below his ribcage. Brayker gasped. The Salesman raked it downward a few inches, then became tangled in Brayker’s feet. He fell.

Jeryline rose and ran shakily to Brayker. “Oh, God,” she groaned at the widening oval of blood on his shirt. She helped him get to his feet and together they stumbled to the staircase. The Salesman bellowed indecipherable things, strange words in alien tongues. Jeryline lifted Brayker when he fell, pulled on him when his strength was gone, screamed in his face when his eyes tried to fall shut. Out of weapons, out of time, out of hope, she got him to the landing, and dragged him into the room, not even knowing anymore if it was sealed or not.

But at least, she knew, they had the key.

But she also knew that it was empty.

She heard the Salesman start up the stairs.

22

S
he eased Brayker down on the bed, thinking out of old habit that Irene would kill her for messing up the sheets with all this blood. He lay flat on his back, his broken arm over his chest, his uninjured arm over the gaping slash in his belly. He looked somehow yellow, maybe even green. He seemed to be ageing even as she watched, the skin of his face becoming thin and papery, tightening on the bones of his skull.

The case was still in his left hand. She pulled it away and flipped the crusty old latches that had been made, she had no doubt, more than two thousand years ago. Holding the key up to the light, she looked through the foggy quartz of the orb for a sign that enough blood existed inside to seal at least one more door.

She shook it, slapped it against her palm. Impossible to tell. A shadow blotted the doorway and she looked over. The Salesman stood there, still in high hat and tuxedo. One of his eyes was a crusted slit; the other was large and yellow with a thin pencil-point of a pupil that spoke of many deaths, many crimes.

“You’re going to die, you know,” he said. “And Brayker? Didn’t I show you what would happen to Brayker? Look at him now, and know my power.”

“The only thing powerful about you,” she said, advancing to the doorway, “is your breath.” She shoved the key at his face, making him lurch backward a step. “Sealed or not sealed?” she said. “Shall I pull you through to join me?”

“Give me the key,” he hissed at her. “Give it to me and I will let you live.”

She eyed him incredulously. “You are the biggest fucking liar I have ever met,” she said. “You say one thing and do the other. You promise things, and they never come true.”

“Of course,” he said, touching a gloved finger to his cheek. “That is why I am called the Salesman.”

“Well,” she said, twisting the orb open and grinning at him, “from now on let’s call you dead meat.”

She aimed it in his direction and snapped her hand. A few tiny droplets slipped out of the hole in the orb, two or three of them hitting his face. He squealed and shied away. There was a disappointingly small wisp of smoke here and there, nothing spectacular.

“I’ll burn you out,” he growled. “A key made of iron and quartz don’t burn, Jerry, but human flesh sure as hell does.”

A part of her mind fully expected him to become a bat and fly away. Things were too crazy, everything was unreal. Instead he turned and walked to the stairs, muttering to himself like a disgruntled golfer who’d missed an easy putt. He stepped down and walked out of sight.

Jeryline turned and slumped against the wall. Brayker had been right. Staying in this room is what they all should have done from the beginning. But now, with the fire, even that option was disappearing.

“Jeryline?”

She raised her head. Somehow he had worked himself up to the headboard and was propped against it, looking worse with each passing second. She walked to him on legs that felt bloated and weak. Already a small circle of blood was forming on the threadbare carpet as it dripped from the bedspread with small tapping noises. She sat beside him, not caring about the blood soaking into her jeans. “I scared him off,” she said. “For now, at least.”

“You’re brave,” he said. “You’re just like me—you spit in the bastard’s face and then go someplace alone to wet your pants.”

She laughed a little, but not much. “Is there anything I can do for your, uh, bleeding? To slow it down, I mean?”

He shook his head. Without warning a bright line of blood rolled from the corner of his mouth to his chin. “It’s time,” he said weakly. “You’re ready now.”

She knew, but she did not want to know. He indicated the key in her hand, the stupid, misshapen, king-size key.

“Fill it.”

She whipped her head back and forth. White dust sifted down, her farewell momento of Mission Inn plaster. “Look, Brayker,” she said softly, “I’m not the right person for this. I’m too wild, too irresponsible. And too young.”

“I was nineteen,” he said. “I didn’t want it, either. Give me your hand.”

She frowned. He raised his shattered right arm and held the wrist steady with his left hand. “Your hand,” he said again.

“Aha,” she joked without humor. “Now I get to learn the secret keeper-of-the-key handshake.”

He groaned. “My arm is killing me, but your jokes are worse. Take my hand.”

She took it. It was hot and limp. Sudden pain seared into her palm. Shafts of intense green light dappled the walls. “It’s yours now,” he said, and she pulled away, wagging her hand to cool it, then looked.

The tattoo on his palm had become hers. “But what does it mean?” she cried out. “What does it mean when the stars move? Yours were in a circle and mine are all scattered around.”

“When the stars align again,” he said weakly, “it will be your time to pass the key to someone else. Until then, run and don’t look back.”

“So it
is
true,” she said. “You said our destinies were the same. You came here, you came here and knew . . .”

“Knew that I’d find you, Jeryline. Knew that my time was up. But still I hoped, you know, hoped that maybe I could walk away from the job, live a few years as a free man, be a beach bum, putter around in my garden, collect stamps, do all the mundane things people do when they have no reason to be afraid. And most of all, the very best of all, get a decent night’s sleep. Just one big eight-hour snooze session.” He closed his eyes, his mouth turned up in a bit of a smile. “To sleep, Jeryline. That would be the best.”

She nodded slightly and glanced at the doorway. “As long as that blood seal holds,” she said, “you can sleep all you want. In the morning I’ll get help, we’ll haul your ass to a hospital, and then discuss this key business and how to get rid of the damn thing, melt it down for scrap, tie it to an atomic bomb, whatever. This is the space age. We’ll nuke that sucker into a big stinking pile of atoms.”

She looked down at him. His smile was still in place. One of his eyes was partially open. She touched his eyelash.

“Not now,” she whispered. “Please, Silas, not now.”

The ghostly drip of his blood onto the carpet faltered and quit. She turned away and dropped her head into her hands. The key clunked against her forehead and she almost hurled the thing away with a shout of anger and despair.

Something heavy shifted downstairs; what it could be she had no idea. Though her nose was caked with drying blood the aroma of smoke touched her nostrils, sharp and fresh. The noise repeated itself: burning lumber collapsing? The Salesman standing on a pile of furniture trying to saw a hole in the floor under her feet, like in a cartoon? She raised her head and looked at the key, gripping it fiercely in both hands. “I hate you,” she hissed at it, then checked the position of the orb and pressed it into the thick pool of blood on Brayker’s chest. Slowly, as if as reluctant as she was to continue this ongoing game, it began to fill.