The Boyfriend from Hell
Amanda could feel it happening again.
The acrid smell from the gunshot still hung in the air and she tasted lead and copper in the back of her throat. She couldn’t hear anything but a muted rushing, so she assumed that her eardrums had ruptured. Her consciousness was held by the smallest thread to this world, and she longed for that thread to snap.
She could’ve done without the pain, though.
Through unfocused eyes, she saw the room pitch to the side as her limp body slid off her chair; the ragged green carpet that protected her parent’s precious hardwood floors rushing towards her before she was brusquely caught and turned around.
The strong hands that gripped her felt like molten steel on her skin and if her jaw had worked, if it hadn’t been hanging in tatters from her face after she had placed her father’s .45 in her mouth and pulled the trigger, she would have screamed.
She felt herself coming together again, bone knitting, flesh regenerating and she suddenly found her voice as she was unceremoniously dropped on her bottom on the faded green carpet next to the chair she’d fallen from.
“Ow!” she exclaimed, more annoyed than anything at this point. Feeling returned to her body as she raised her head to look at the hulking mass that stood over her.
If her ex-boyfriend Hannibal had been big before, the dark gray armor that now seemed to protrude from his shoulder blades made him seem larger still. The helmet he wore was pitted and rusted, and seemed a tad too small for his head. All along his forearms, which were now larger and longer than before and almost reached the floor, razor sharp blades stood out at odd angles, seemingly piercing his skin from the inside out; some appeared to be bleeding, but the blackish ichor that oozed from the wounds never quite seemed to form drops heavy enough to fall.
His hands were huge, hairy and clawed things that seemed blood-red in the dim light that peeked through the curtains of her childhood sanctuary. His spine was bent in the shape of a question mark, his hips further in front of his chest, and his hairy legs seemed like tree trunks that sprouted from his swiveled pelvis and ended in large hooves.
Being a Duke of Hell wasn’t a pretty sight.
Hannibal threw the gun at her feet, looking almost hurt. His face had never been what you might call classically handsome, but being a former rugby player, broken nose and all, had lent it an innate masculinity that had initially drawn her to him when they met in college.
Now, the skin around his eyes had shrunk so that only the iris remained, and he seemed to have no eyelids. Where they had previously been a light greenish-gray color, they now blazed with an internal light that made the effect, and the fact that he never blinked, very unsettling. His cheeks seemed hollowed out and the nose that had been broken more than thrice was now a charred lump in the middle of his grayish face.
His lips parted as he opened his mouth, revealing broken, jagged and uneven teeth that seemed to cut into the adjacent gums when his mouth was closed. More black goo swirled around his reptilian lips as he chided her.
“You’re not getting out of this that easily, Mandy!” he growled.
He knew she hated it when he called her that.
It had been one of the many, many reasons she had broken up with him. Granted, maybe she shouldn’t have done it in front of his family, and maybe she could have reacted better when he got down on one knee at the restaurant during his parent’s anniversary party, in the middle of the dance floor, no less.
But really! What kind of a creepy, stalking jerk comes back from Hell just to torment you? He won’t even let me kill myself to get away!
She got to her feet slowly, on shaking legs, and plopped down on her old armchair. She could still see the stitching on the left armrest that she’d picked off over years of sitting at her desk, doing homework. For a second she expected to hear her mother’s voice calling her down to dinner.
She could see blood and pieces of her jaw on the floor, a few teeth and the gun by her feet. She was sad that her favorite shirt was now ruined, all gory and goopy. She had been hoping to wear it in the afterlife.
It had been a gamble, she knew. The past months had been one attempt after another, trying to figure out a way to shake the past that had crept up on her.
She leaned over the desk and put her face in her hands. She tried to cry, but all she felt was emptiness and disappointment.
“You know I’m never going to let you go, Mandy.” Hannibal’s hoarse, guttural whisper made her teeth grind. “You’re mine, again. You should’ve been mine forever, and now you are.”
She knew without looking at him that he was shaking his head. Even after death, he hadn’t changed a bit. The same annoying mannerisms, the same high and mighty attitude and overblown sense of superiority.
She could feel a headache coming on, but she’d be damned if she asked him to take it from her.
The range of his powers was still something of an unknown, even to him, but this was the ninth time he’d brought her back. Her ninth suicide attempt. He really wasn’t going to let her go.
“God, you are such a loser.” She whispered, knowing he could hear her. “You’re pathetic.”
He growled behind her.
Amanda bent down and retrieved the gun, her father’s favorite toy. It felt strange in her hand, after all these years. It was a family heirloom, handed down from her great-great-grandfather, who’d carried it all over Europe, then his son, who’d done the same, before eventually belonging to her dad.
She’d learned to shoot when she was twelve. My little Annie Oakley, grandpa Jim had called her. Her dad had always whispered afterwards. No, you’re my little Sarah Connor.
Even back then, she’d known she was neither. She wasn’t a fan of the gun. It brought back painful memories.
As she stared at the burnished metal in her hands, tuning out Hannibal’s platitudes, she could smell the musty air and feel the emptiness of her childhood home. It had been years since she’d been there. Since the funeral.
The service she’d hired to come in once a month and clean was good, though. There was very little dust visible, and everything seemed to be in its proper place. When she’d walked into her old room, half an hour earlier, she’d been immediately transported back to a simpler time, when she hadn’t been tormented by an ex-boyfriend from Hell.
Hannibal kept rambling as he always did after he brought her back, going on and on about how they were meant to be together, and how stupid she was that she couldn’t see that. It was getting easier to ignore him with every passing day.
The first time he’d appeared, of course, she’d been scared speechless. Not a fun sight to wake up to at three in the morning.
Sighing, she turned towards him, raised the gun, and fired.
Her eardrums must have ruptured again, because the wave of dizziness that assailed her almost made her fall off her old chair. The sharp stab of pain and incessant buzzing certainly didn’t help the migraine that had been developing. It wasn’t worth it, really.
She saw the hole where Hannibal’s nose had been beginning to stitch back together, luckily —thanks to her renewed deafness— without the disgusting squelching and rending noises that regenerating flesh made. She wasn’t surprised to see the hole in the wall behind him. She wouldn’t have expected any resistance to trap the bullet in his head.
She laughed internally, her perpetually elevated frustration reaching heavenly heights. She was so tired of him.
He shuffled over to her, his massive hooves scuffing the floor her parents had carefully laid themselves when they moved in. He placed his massive, clawed paw on her head, in a ridiculously gentle way, and her hearing came back.
Her headache was gone, too. She’d rather have kept it.
“Will you stop!” His eyes flared like furnaces when he screamed, and flecks of black spittle landed on her face. Amanda wiped them away with disgust.
“Will you?” She screamed back.
He spun away from her, kicking her bed in rage, pulverizing the frame and sending the mattress bouncing against the wall.
“I don’t know what I’m going to do with you.” He stood with his back to her, bowling-ball-sized fists tightening at his side. “Why can’t you see?”
“Why don’t you just get the hell out of here? Get out of my life. I hate you—no, scratch that— I don’t even hate you at this point. You’re nothing to me. I. Don’t. Care. About. You!” She bit off each word, seeing his shoulders hunch as heat began to radiate in waves from him.
She hoped that would do the trick. That she would drive him so mad that he killed her himself, and allow her to finally slip into oblivion.
She was disheartened when she saw him regain his composure, though. He breathed in and out a dozen times before turning back to her. His disturbing features cracked in a grim smile.
“I’m not going to kill you, Mandy. You’re one of us, now. Your soul is ours, and once you accept that, you’ll be better off.”
He grabbed the gun from her hands in a snapping motion and flame engulfed his forearm as he closed his fist around it. He dropped the steaming hunk of metal on the floor with bang, further scratching up the hardwood.
She sighed.
“Don’t make me come back here to put you back together, Mandy. My finger is wrapped up inside your soul, so I’ll always know when you’re trying something.” He loomed over her. His unblinking eyes burned into her own.
“Just accept that you’re mine. Now and forever.”
With a bluish flash that left the smell of sulfur permeating the room, he disappeared.
“God, I hate that stupid song.” She grumbled.
She stayed at her parent’s house for a couple of hours, trying to clean up some of the mess in her room, went into the garage and got some wood polish and rags to try to remove the scratches from the floor before giving up and going downstairs into her dad’s office. She’d have to let the cleaning company know that there’d been an incident, so they didn’t call the cops.
There were pictures everywhere in her dad’s old office. Hanging from the walls, framed on his desk, under a transparent desk cover. He almost hadn’t had any room to actually work, there. He had been a present figure throughout her childhood. Her dad who worked from home, who was always there when she came back from school, who had been the one who took her to and picked her up from swimming lessons. They’d spent many an afternoon locked away in his office, playing when they should’ve both been doing more responsible things.
It was difficult for her; feeling so close to him again, in this place where so many happy memories had taken place, it still made her heart ache. Every single time her mother would walk in, tired from her nine-to-five office job and pretend to scold them, before laughing and joining in the fun.
Five years wasn’t enough. A hundred years would never be enough. She missed her parents so much.
At least they knew, she thought. At least they knew how much I loved them.
When she couldn’t bear it any longer, she locked up and headed back to the city.
Her apartment wasn’t very large, and she could’ve afforded a bigger place if she sold her parent’s house, but she wasn’t ready for that, yet. Still, it was a cozy, some might call snug, one-bedroom that was suitable for her needs.
High speed internet and surrounded by good food delivery options.
She took a shower, washing away the blood and gore that gummed up her hair and neck. Picking up her discarded top, she gave it one last glimpse before dropping it into the garbage with a sigh. It had been the best concert ever, a punk rock revival festival that had lasted for two days, and besides the great music, it was the first time she’d ever kissed a boy.
She couldn’t help but check herself out in the mirror. She knew that the healing was perfect, but despite herself, it still amazed her.
Her face was just like it had always been, no tattered jaw, no hole in the back of her head. All her teeth were there. The small jewel on her nose, the only piercing subtle enough to pass without comment at her job, glinted in the mirror’s light. She turned her head one way and the other, dark hair cascading in wet ringlets around her shoulders.
Nothing. No scars, no marks of any kind.
“I should rob a bank.” She said out loud. She found her habit of talking to herself had gotten worse ever since Hannibal had come back into her life.
“That idiot would probably help me out if they put me in jail.” She hoped he heard her, somehow. The creep always seemed to know everything else she thought.
Getting dressed, she bemoaned the fact that it was a Sunday. A second, slightly frivolous reason for offing herself had crossed her mind as she’d pulled the trigger. She’d been looking forward to not having to go into the office the next day.
The frustrated suicide had left her hungry, though, so she dialed up an order of sesame chicken and settled into her couch, laptop booted up and handing her a brief escape from reality.
Which was a lie, because the first thing she did was log into her blog and post an update.
“Still here…” She typed fitfully. Her few followers thought that she was writing some sort of book or play, and would follow along when she said that her hellish ex-boyfriend had visited her again. They probably thought she was speaking in metaphors.
When she was done, she continued browsing through the research she’d been digging through for the past months. She couldn’t help herself. If there was one thing her parents had always told her, it was that she should follow her instincts. Of course, they’d been talking about choosing a career path, not digging through information on Heaven, Hell and everything in between. She had a feeling that she was bound to stumble upon something useful, eventually.
The religious texts she’d pored over had been mostly useless. All were full of moral lessons, antiquated ones, with no real substance, no modern, real life applications. She’d delved into the occult, into the famous forbidden and controversial books, finding nothing an overactive imagination couldn’t come up with.
There were hints, here and there of course. Passages that made her hair stand on end when reading about demons and their interactions with people, but nothing that really described her situation. Texts about the architecture of hell, the levels and different departments –she couldn’t help but compare it to her job— the hierarchies within the legions of the netherworld, all were very informative and gave her more tidbits than she ever wanted.
Yet nothing told her what she could try to get rid of Hannibal.
Sure, there were plenty of other things out there, wiccan stuff, druids, witches and warlocks, seers, and people who actually thought they were vampires. They all claimed to be able to help her get a handle on her situation, but inevitably stuttered and failed when she calmly laid out what was happening to her.
Still browsing, she was closing tab after tab when she came across one that she’d opened with a laugh, a couple of days earlier. She couldn’t believe such a thing actually existed.
Chuckling, she typed into the message pane and hit send.
“Hi, I need some help.”
The reply was surprisingly fast.
“Buongiorno, welcome to the Vatican Online Helpdesk. How may I assist you today?”
Luca seemed like a nice guy, for a priest.
“So, when your boyfriend…” Even though he had a very marked Italian accent, his English was flawless.
“EX-boyfriend.” She corrected him. They’d switched to video chatting once she’d apparently gotten past the initial screening of crazies and weirdos their helpdesk usually got.
She saw him raise his hand apologetically, as if he were to make the sign of the cross. He seemed to do that a lot.
“Ex-boyfriend, of course. When he passed away, he committed suicide?”
There was only one thing that made Amanda feel bad about breaking things off with Hannibal. Not bad in a truly regretful kind of way, since she’d probably still do everything she did again if she had to, but bad in the sense that so much grief might’ve been avoided if she’d been willing to put up with him for a day or two more than she had.
“Yes, he got drunk and started a fight. Left a guy in the hospital, then just kept on drinking until he lost his mind. He was belligerent when the police came looking for him. Took a few hostages in a diner. We call it suicide by cop.”
It had been an awful time in her life, not only having to deal with the fallout of any personal guilt she felt because of what dumping him may have led him to, but also the slander that his family had thrown her way in interviews; trying to paint her as some sort of wicked, heart breaking harlot that drove their favorite son insane.
She’d declined all the interviews that had been offered at the time, expecting the fifteen minutes of tragedy to blow over as soon as the next garish story came along. It had only taken three days, but the uproar had died down. She’d only had to move out of the city and back to her hometown for a few months to get away from it all. It had been the only time she’d been glad her parents had been dead. They hadn’t had to put up with nosy and sensationalistic reporters.
“Suicide by cop. Got it.” He wrote something down into a small notebook. “And the man he put in the hospital?”
It made her feel strange that she never thought of that poor man. This priest had heard about him once and immediately asked about his health.
“He died. He never woke up from his wounds. I think he was bleeding into his brain.” An uncomfortable tightness caught her throat.
“Ah. Unfortunate. And the policemen who were involved in the shooting?” His tone was matter of fact, but no matter how friendly he seemed, it irked her that he seemed to be taking his sweet time to tell her what he knew.
“Why does that matter?” She might have sounded a tad more unfriendly than she’d meant.
Luca looked up across an ocean and a couple of thousand miles. There was a window behind him, with the rays of morning light creeping in. He looked to be in his late twenties, like her, and despite the collar she would’ve thought he was cute except for the huge nose that straddled his face. It was gargantuan. She was sure that his upper lip barely saw the sun under that shadow.
He had kind eyes, though. Even through the video application they were using, pixelated and with a sluggish connection, she could see compassion there. He had a lock of hair that kept falling over his eyes as he spoke.
Maybe his nose wasn’t really that bad. It suited him, in a way. He was a bit scrawny, though.
God, I’m lonely… she mused. I must be, if I’m checking out a priest.
“Well, Amanda, creatures who come into our world are almost never good. Demons and their like are monsters full of emotions like hate, envy and jealousy, which fuels their ability to cross over. If he has sought you out, I can be almost certain that he has tormented others he might hold… responsible for his condition.”
The amount of information made her raise her eyebrows involuntarily. Finally, she felt that she was getting somewhere. Luca didn’t seem to be shying away from the problem.
“I don’t know about them, really.” She shook her head. “Never met them or anything.”
“That is alright. I think I have enough information to look them up. In the meantime, could you please tell me a bit more about how this monster first appeared to you?”
“Isn’t that in the questionnaire you made me fill out?” She teased, referencing the webpage that popped up after the initial contact in the chat.
Luca smiled. “Yes, it is. But as you can imagine, we have several measures to distinguish between people with actual problems that we can help, and those who we cannot.”
“Fair enough…” She grumbled. She didn’t like rehashing old memories, but figured she didn’t really have a choice.
She didn’t know what had woken her up, but she had a terrible feeling of foreboding in the pit of her stomach. She sat up with a gasp, trembling.
Glancing groggily across her bedroom, she felt Shiva, her cat, shift with annoyance at her changing position. Out of habit, she placed her hand on his head, and he nuzzled her fingers. He forgave her for daring to pull him out of his slumber.
Her heart was beating too fast. She felt as if she’d been out running, and she was covered in sweat.
What’s this feeling of dread, all of a sudden? She couldn’t understand it, but she felt like crying. Shiva seemed to catch her mood and stretched before silently padding over her legs and sitting on her lap. He looked up at her with his luminous eyes, inquiringly, it seemed.
She’d never considered herself a cat person but it made more sense, living in such a small apartment, than a puppy. Even though she loved dogs, when she saw him peering up at her from his box in the shelter she’d had to take him with her.
Luckily, Shiva was apparently one of those cats that were lovable family members and not frigid roommates. He loved to cuddle, and looking into his eyes, feeling his smooth coat, hearing the low hum of his purr as she petted him, her apprehension and tension began to fade.
There was a bluish flash of light that blinded her, and she heard Shiva hiss and leap away as she raised her hands reflexively to cover her eyes. A loud thunk came from one corner of her small bedroom, near the closet, and she wrung her eyes desperately as she drew her legs up to her chest underneath the blankets.
“Mandy…” A horribly harsh growl called to her form the dark. She was still blinded by the flash, spots dancing before her eyes, but her heart leapt into her throat and she scrambled away from the sound, reaching the wall and huddling against it.
There was someone in the room with her. She didn’t know how, but the oppressive sensation and heaviness in the air was quickly becoming stifling. She dashed across her bed towards the window, her vision slowly coming back, but not fast enough.
She felt something grab her leg and pull her across the bed, away from her escape. Whatever it was, it felt like a boiling band of iron had clamped on her ankle. She kicked desperately, but felt a terrible stabbing on her foot, and recoiled. At least, she tried to.
She could make out a hulking mass towering over her, still swathed in shadows, but her stomach turned to jelly as she made out a pair of horrendous, flaring red eyes looking down at her. She could barely whimper as she froze. Whatever it was, she was no longer sure it was human.
Her rational mind went into overflow. In a microsecond, Amanda began to doubt everything she’d ever accepted as truth. Everything that helped define the world she lived in. The only truth that mattered at that moment overshadowed any other.
There was a monster in her room.
Finally, she found her voice and screamed.
For some reason, this seemed to confuse the monster. It let go of her leg, and she was able to scramble back against the wall once more. Her sight had returned, and she could make out the sharp spikes that protruded from the thing’s arms.
She looked at her feet and despaired. She was in shock, apparently, because she couldn’t feel the pain that should’ve overwhelmed her. Her feet were a mess. The right one, where the thing had grabbed her, was a blackened mass of charred skin, she could see right down to the bone in places. Her shin was covered in blisters all the way up to her knee. Her left foot, which she’d used to kick at her attacker, was mangled and gory. It was bleeding profusely, resting in a widening pool of darkness on her sheets and was nearly cloven in two. She was missing her toe.
Amanda felt hysteria begin to take over. She was still screaming.
Her hands found the bookshelf that hung on her wall, and she grabbed at the first thing that came to hand. A snow globe her grandmother had given her. It was heavy and comforting in her hand as she heaved it towards the monster’s head.
It might as well have been a ball of paper. The globe shattered on the thing’s forehead, and the glistening wetness that was caught in the light from the window let her see that the monster was wearing some sort of helmet.
She continued screaming. She found her safety box, what she’d been hoping to find, where she kept the gun her father had given her so long ago. She kept the Colt loaded, being a single girl in the city, living in a third story apartment that had a fire escape by her window. Amanda ripped the gun from its enclosure and drew a bead on the beast’s eyes.
Her scream finally petered out with a hoarse croak. That’s when the pain hit her, finally. She was going to pass out, but before the dizziness that threatened to overwhelm her could shut her down, she put three slugs into the monster’s face. The flashing light from the gunfire threw terrifying shadows across the walls. Darkness crept over her vision, but she felt a small thrill at hearing the thing scream in pain, and one of those hellish, glowing red eyes disappeared.
She didn’t know how long she was out for, but she was surprised that there was no pain. Without opening her eyes, she pleaded to the god she’d forgotten that she’d been dreaming. That it had all been a nightmare.
“Open your eyes, Mandy. I know you’re awake.”
The guttural rasp made her skin crawl.
She opened her eyes slowly, trying to remain calm, but her stomach was doing backflips as she felt terror seize her spine. Even so, she found that she could move, so she sat up and backed away as much as she could from the thing that was standing in her room.
Words failed her as she tried to come to grips with the thing. She barely noticed that her feet were back to normal.
“I’m not here to hurt you. It’s me, baby. I’ve come back for you.”
The hideously deformed face hadn’t rung a bell, but combined with the large build, and the thing’s insistence on calling her Mandy, it finally clicked.
“Hannibal?”
The young priest had remained quiet during her story.
“I am so sorry you had to go through that, Amanda.”
She shrugged, uncomfortable with having those memories dredged up to the surface again. The feeling of helplessness that she remembered from that night had never really gone away, and it shamed her, even though she knew it shouldn’t. It wasn’t her fault her ex-boyfriend was such a jerk.
“Now, am I correct in assuming that you do not subscribe to any particular faith?” She could find no judgement in his tone, merely curiosity.
“Well, my parents were pretty relaxed about it. We’d go to church sometimes, but not religiously.”
Lame joke… she thought. Her mom had loved saying it.
Luca surprised her by chuckling.
“Alright. I ask because the way we can attempt to counteract these creatures, at least the way we know how to do it, is through faith.” He held up a hand so she wouldn’t interrupt.
“Now, this does not mean it necessarily has to be the Catholic faith, mind you.”
Something must’ve shown on her expression, because he barked a quick laugh.
“Amanda, the Church has been going through some… modernization… in recent times. There are new schools of thought that have come to be prevalent among our society, particularly because of recent events.”
He stopped suddenly, as if he’d said too much.
“What events?”
He hesitated. “I am afraid that at this moment I cannot really talk about it. I apologize. I should not have said anything.”
Well, that’s weird. She thought.
“Suffice to say that I believe that I—we – can help you. All I ask is that you keep an open mind.”
Amanda didn’t think that her mind could be more open, to be honest.
“Luca, I’m literally being visited by my biggest regret every few days. He says he has a claim on my soul, which I don’t really know if it’s true or not, but believe me, I’m pretty much open to suggestions at this point.”
He nodded.
“I understand. I just needed you to be aware that our charter implies certain rituals and procedures which have shown favorable results, and these are of course, framed around our beliefs.”
She nodded back. It made sense, she supposed.
“Exorcism?”
He smiled, but shook his head.
“No, not in your case, but there will be some symbolic gestures we will make, and if you are uncomfortable in participating in them, I’m afraid that their effectiveness will be reduced. My own faith can only take us so far. It must be matched or exceeded, by your own.”
This frankness made her pause. Basically, he was saying that she had to buy into it in order for whatever they were going to do to work.
“Sounds an awful lot like a placebo, Luke.” She couldn’t help being snarky when she was annoyed.
Luca smirked and shook his head.
“It works, though, Amanda. It can really work, if you believe it will.”
She sighed.
Nine suicide attempts had gotten her nothing. She’d shot Hannibal on multiple occasions, impaled him with a wooden stake, had even managed to douse him in liquid nitrogen the last time, and nothing had worked.
She couldn’t kill him, and he wouldn’t let her die. Why not give faith a chance? she supposed.
“OK. Tell me what we’re going to do.”
Turns out, getting rid of a demonic ex involved a lot of waiting around.
Hannibal visited twice during that time. Both times when she was conveniently getting dressed for work. He simply appeared, startling poor Shiva as usual. She was lucky that the cat didn’t seem to hold it against her that the monster visited incessantly.
She did her best to give him the silent treatment, pretending as if he wasn’t crouching there in the corner leering at her. She ignored all his attempts to engage. It usually took about half an hour, but he’d eventually tire and disappear again.
“Mandy, Mandy, Mandy…” He made the disgusting sound of his lips smacking together. “Why don’t you just stay here with me, today? You can make me pancakes like you used to.”
She ignored him, humming a tuneless song and trying not to rush in getting changed. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of knowing he made her itch.
“You should start working out, really. All that take out is making you rounder than you should be.”
Son of a… No, she wasn’t going to respond.
“I’d still hit it, though.” He laughed boisterously, his unearthly voice like sandpaper over gravel.
She’d been afraid, at first, that he would take advantage of her. He was too powerful to fight convincingly, and if he chose to have his way with her, there would probably be nothing she could do about it.
For some reason, though he kept expressing his salacious intentions, he never went beyond that. She was grateful for small miracles, at least. Just imagining feeling his touch made her skin crawl.
“You’re covered in goosebumps. What’re you thinking about, baby?”
Of separating your head from your shoulders, you piece of crap. She didn’t respond, though. She went into the bathroom and close the door.
“Is it number one or number two? I know you already showered… I was a bit late for the show, but I caught the last of it.”
She grabbed a hand towel and wrung it furiously, wishing it was his neck.
“That’s OK, I’ve got things to take care of anyway. Just popped in to say hi.”
Shiva’s mewling let her know that he’d gone. The poor guy’s fur had been falling out in patches from the stress. She’d thought several times about returning him to the shelter so another family could take care of him, but the thought of letting him go was too much. Sometimes he was her anchor.
It was another two weeks before she heard the knock on her door. When she opened up, she saw a burly mountain of a man with a military style haircut standing there. He introduced himself as Daniel, and was apparently part of the Pontifical Swiss Guard. He wore a simple black suit that must’ve been custom ordered to fit him, no tie. He had glasses with a purplish tinge to them. Peering from behind and to one side of him, around one massive, suit-enclosed bicep, Luca waved.
He was a bit taller than her, but about half as skinny. His priest’s cassock was kind of old school, but it fit him well. He was also wearing a pair of glasses that perched on his unsettlingly large nose. He shook her hand firmly and asked permission to enter the apartment.
“Daniel, he also requires your permission.” He made a motion with his thumb.
The large soldier, who towered over both of them, met her eyes with a level gaze, completely expressionless while she extended the invitation. Once he entered the small living area, he stood with his back to the wall, right next to the door, seeming to be looking everywhere at once.
Shiva walked over and began rubbing against his leg. The man looked down and the faintest shade of a smile seemed to flit across his somber expression before resuming his watch.
“He comes across as a little intense, perhaps, but he is a good man. He’s been working with me for about a year now.”
“Fourteen months.” Daniel corrected in a clipped tone.
“Well, there you go. Fourteen long months.” He said it with a frown, but there was a smile hidden in it. “He’s saved my life on a couple of occasions.”
Amanda would’ve asked what a priest needed saving from that he needed a soldier bodyguard, then she realized.
“You really have done this sort of thing before, haven’t you?” Her face must’ve betrayed her surprise.
Luca blinked, taken aback for a moment, before answering. “Well, yes.” He shared an unreadable glance with Daniel. “This is what we do, Amanda.”
Daniel snorted and said something in Italian.
The priest shook his head at him. “Of course she told the truth. Only people who have seen hellfire can properly describe it.”
“So you came here, without knowing if I was telling the truth?”
Luca made a calming gesture. “Of course, we did our own research, after our interview. The signs were there, even when some considered the leads to be rather sparse.” He rolled his eyes in his partner’s direction.
Amanda remembered herself enough to offer them something to drink, and she and the priest sat down in the cramped living room. Daniel remained standing by the door.
“I am afraid that we found evidence that the police officers who were involved in Hannibal’s death have died, as well.” He took a sip from his water. “In rather strange circumstances.”
She waited as patiently as she could for him to elaborate. He took his sweet time drinking his water again, though.
“The three members of the SWAT team that were involved were all diagnosed as a danger to themselves and put on administrative leave in the past year.” He sighed. “They were all committed into treatment programs but the measures, I am afraid, only hastened their demises.”
Daniel shifted in the doorway, drawing her attention. He was shaking his head as if in disapproval.
“All three men took their own lives, within days from each other.” Luca crossed himself.
Amanda didn’t know what to say.
“The officers all reported seeing apparitions. Particularly one of a demon who claimed to be a man they had killed.”
She shivered and closed her eyes. Through her closed eyes, she saw the bright flash of blue fire.
Oh no… She snapped her eyes open, frightened.
Shiva mewled and hissed. Daniel seemed to snap to attention, looking over her shoulder with a grimace. Luca froze, the glass of water halfway to his lips.
“Mmm… Mandy.” Hannibal’s horrible voice made her feel sick. “Who are these losers? Are you two timing me?”
The priest remained sitting, placing the glass of water on the coffee table. Daniel stretched his neck from one side to the other with an audible crack in each direction.
She turned and looked at the monster. Anger and sadness filled her. She’d brought these two men here. Hannibal would never let them go. Their deaths would be on her conscience, now.
She stood and walked towards the window, hoping to figure out a way to deflect his attention from them. After hearing what they’d told her about the cops, she was sure that they’d just placed themselves in mortal danger. She knew she was exempt. There was something Hannibal wanted from her, and until he got it, he would never leave her be. But these two, capable as they might seem, couldn’t possibly face the creature that haunted her.
Hannibal had changed.
Since she’d taken to ignoring him, she’d missed his continuing transformation. He was well over eight feet tall now, and greyish, slime-covered scales seemed to be sprouting all over what exposed skin remained visible.
He had also grown horns.
Small and curved but sharp horns had pushed three or four inches through the pitted helmet. His jagged teeth had grown into tusks that protruded from his cracked and bleeding lips; the fire in his eyes had seemingly intensified until they were no longer glowing embers, but actual flames dancing in his sockets.
“How many times do I have to tell you Mandy, that you’re mine?” He flexed his massive arms and the spikes there seemed to quiver like quills on a porcupine.
Amanda cast a quick glance at the priest, who was still sitting, looking at her ex-boyfriend. He seemed to be speaking under his breath. Probably praying. There was a strange stillness to him.
She saw Daniel step forward, around the couch, placing himself between the monster and his partner. At some point, from somewhere, he’d slipped a pair of medieval looking gauntlets around his massive fists. He adopted a relaxed stance, one leg in front of the other, and raised his hands slightly. He cut a very strange figure in his suit, wearing gauntlets.
He looked to be ready for a fight, and if Hannibal hadn’t been in the room, the soldier would’ve been an intimidating and impressive sight. As it was, he looked small and frail next to the monstrosity that took a step closer to him, spreading snakelike jaws wide and letting a blackish tongue hang loose, dripping with spittle.
“Hannibal, let them go.” She surprised herself when her voice didn’t shake. She wasn’t afraid of him.
Never taking his eyes off of Daniel, the demon grunted.
“You shouldn’t have invited your friends into things that weren’t their business.”
She was going to jump between the two, but Hannibal struck before she could react. One moment he was standing still, the next he was on top of Daniel, monstrous claws raking down like scythes simultaneously, aiming to tear the soldier in half.
By some sort of miracle, Daniel had managed to raise his gauntlets quickly enough to deflect the blows, sparks flying as the claws and spikes glanced off the metal. Hannibal was thrown back, and he roared with venomous hatred.
There were strips of cloth hanging in tatters from Daniel’s sleeves where either claws or spikes had gotten past his guard. Something metallic glinted in between the torn pieces of his suit.
“So… figlio di troia… you are not at full strength, yet. And I thought you would at least put up a fight.” Daniel’s voice had changed, becoming more clipped and harsh, yet mocking at the same time.
If there had been one thing that Hannibal hadn’t been able to deal with when they’d been dating, it was being made fun of. It was the classic situation where he could dish it out, but couldn’t take it. For the millionth time, Amanda asked herself why it had taken her so long to see him for the bully that he was.
The soldier’s taunting enraged Hannibal even further. He shook with anger, and the sallow skin on his deformed face seemed to crack and stretch as the bones underneath shifted, his jaw and cheeks pushing further forward into what seemed like a wolf’s muzzle. Rending and tearing sounds as his body shifted echoed in her living room.
His horns grew about three inches more, beginning to curve back like a ram’s. The spikes in his arms sharpened, if possible, and his claws extended at the end of his monstrous fingers. There was a groaning of metal and from his twisted back more spikes broke through the armor that was fused to his body like a beetle’s carapace.
In the space of a few seconds, his body had grown even more grotesque. The matted hair of his goat legs was pushed aside in patches, scaly skin underneath. A tail, like a grey, slimy worm now twisted behind him, curling and twitching spasmodically.
The transformation sickened Amanda, but if the priest or the soldier were affected, neither showed it.
“You know that your appearance is dictated by your own thoughts, right?” Daniel’s tone had become even more sardonic. He moved towards the opposite wall, after pulling Luca up behind him and pushing him towards Amanda, away from him. “You don’t have to look like something you flush down a toilet.”
Hannibal’s roar was deafening as he threw himself at the soldier, crunching into the man and crashing into the wall by the door to the apartment. The drywall gave with a sharp crack and they tumbled out into the hall. A cloud of dust hovered over the gaping hole and the sounds of a fierce fight came through it.
Amanda was about to run out and follow when she felt Luca’s hand on her arm.
“Please, let Daniel do his part.” With that he continued muttering under his breath. He was holding on to the rosary around his neck with his other hand, his fist tight around the crucifix at the end of it. His eyes never left the hole in the wall.
The sounds of struggling were coming closer, she realized. A heart-stopping roar sounded again and Daniel crashed back into the apartment, through the door this time. The wood splintered and flew everywhere as he slid all the way across to them, pushing the couch and coffee table to the side.
There was blood on his face form a cut above his right eye, and his teeth were clenched in a grimace. The whole front of his suit was torn, and she could now make out some sort of metallic mesh underneath his clothes. It was scored with dozens of gashes, but nothing appeared to have gotten through. He took a dazed look around and started to get up. Amanda helped him, and he nodded to her with a grunt, before pushing off and striding shakily away from them.
A massive, bloodied paw gripped the door frame, clawed fingers crushing the wood underneath them as a hoof kicked the remains of the door away. Hannibal ducked through the entrance, the fires in his eyes furnaces that threw off a palpable heat. He was growling an incomprehensible, guttural noise that made her feel physically ill, feeling the vibration in the pit of her stomach. She found herself unable to breathe underneath that gaze.
From the corner of her eye, she saw Luca take his rosary off his neck and begin to wind it around his closed fist.
“You know, codardo…” Daniel, even though he seemed a little winded, was still intent on keeping Hannibal’s attention on himself.
“It says a lot about you that you gave away your soul because your heart was broken by a woman…”
The monster’s fiery eyes, which had been focusing on her, shifted towards the soldier.
“She told us all about your story, you know? It really is…” He made a motion of snapping fingers, impossible with the metal gauntlets, and turned to look at her. “What is the word you used?”
Amanda had been frozen with fear. Fear like she hadn’t felt since the first time Hannibal had appeared again, and yet the almost playful, confident tone the soldier used disarmed her. Her chest thawed and she found her voice.
“Pathetic. That’s what I said.” She felt the burning eyes on her again, but confidence was seeping back into her. She didn’t know what made her feel that way, but hope fluttered.
Hannibal was going to kill her, now. She felt it. He was done waiting around, and the insults she threw at him, coming from others, had finally put him on the spot.
He was so predictable, it was ridiculous.
And they know it… She realized.
The scene shifted in her mind and she felt goosebumps across her skin as a flush coursed up her spine. She got the distinct impression, she didn’t know how or from where, that Hannibal had fallen into some sort of trap.
“Insecure men are often the first ones that are tempted by Hell.” Daniel continued poking the bear. “A real man would have simply moved on with his life.” He spat at Hannibal’s feet.
That did it.
Hannibal was flying through the air, claws extended, jaws gaping wide aimed at Daniel’s throat. The soldier had been expecting it and had dropped on his back, hands clamping around the demon’s wrists, sparks flying when metal met spikes. His leg came up and drove into Hannibal’s stomach, using his own momentum to flip him up and over, sending the hulking mass crashing into the wall that separated her bedroom from the living room.
Her apartment was now just one open space, since the wall disintegrated as her hell-spawned ex-boyfriend barreled through it, landing upside down on her bed, shattering the frame and sending poor Shiva, who’d been hiding underneath it, scrambling out and into her small bathroom.
There goes my security deposit…
It dawned on her that even though most people were probably at work, someone had surely heard the racket and called 911. She could only think about that for a second, though.
Hannibal was getting up slowly, eyes fixed on Daniel. He was growling that bowel-loosening rumble again, but it only made her queasy this time. That spring of hope that had welled in her was stronger now.
This time Hannibal didn’t jump. He realized that the soldier was too fast and nimble, so he walked deliberately closer, as Daniel gave ground slowly, feinting and jabbing at the monster, until with a dash he managed to pin the soldier to the wall with a clawed paw. Daniel struggled, but it was all he could do to twist his head away from the spikes that were dancing close to his face.
Hannibal pushed him up against the brick wall until his feet left the ground.
Amanda’s throat closed up.
No.
It can’t end like this now.
They can beat him. She believed they could.
Hannibal was opening his jaws, looking to close his jagged fangs over Daniel’s face when the soldier smiled.
“You should know, stronzo, that I am only here to look pretty. The muscle is actually behind you.”
Luca had stepped out from behind Amanda with a determined look in his eyes. He began chanting something in what she assumed was Latin at the top of his lungs. Hannibal turned at the sound, still holding Daniel pinned.
Amanda couldn’t see Luca’s face as he quickened his pace and threw himself at the monster, but his voice only got louder as he raised the fist that clenched the rosary around it. The flames in Hannibal’s eyes seemed to flare with surprise, and he threw up a claw to intercept the young priest.
A blinding flash exploded in the room.
Through a haze, Amanda thought that she could still make out an afterimage that was burned into her eyes. Two glowing figures, one large and one small. The small one was punching the larger one.
No, not punching. The small one was reaching into the larger one, as if it was made of mist.
A dreadful keening permeated everything, and she felt a heat flash across her in a wave that threw her back against the window, breaking through it, dumping her unceremoniously outside her apartment; she was resting her cheek on the cool metal of the fire escape when she came to.
Sitting up, she was glad to see she hadn’t cut herself on the glass, and even more glad that she only had a few bruised ribs where the railing had saved her from falling three stories down into the alleyway next to her building.
She saw a spectacled face peek through the window, and had to think for a second before it all came flooding back.
“Amanda!” Luca’s voice dripped with worry. “Are you alright?”
“What is she doing out there?” Daniel’s voice from inside sounded nonchalant.
Luca picked his way over the broken glass and helped her up to her feet. She noticed his cassock was steaming, tendrils of smoke billowing from the front, and his face appeared to have suffered a nasty sunburn.
He rolled his eyes at her as he helped her through the window back into the disaster zone her apartment had turned into.
“I was thrown out when whatever Luca did blew Hannibal up.” She said it with a carefree tone, imitating the soldier.
She could play it cool, too.
She saw him cast an appraising look at her and stifled a blush. He gave her a wink and the first genuine smile since they met.
She could’ve laughed. She felt like crying out in happiness.
They’d done it.
She didn’t know how, but Hannibal was gone.
When Luca stepped into the apartment he was dabbing at his face with a handkerchief.
“You would not happen to have some lotion, would you? Aloe vera, perhaps?
He really did look like he’d been out in the sun much too long. She went into the medicine cabinet in the bathroom and got some moisturizer, and Shiva.
She handed the lotion to the priest as she hugged her cat close.
“Best I can do, sorry.”
Luca nodded gratefully and sat down on the upturned couch, applying a generous amount of cream to his cheeks and forehead. He looked so funny, at that moment, that she couldn’t stifle a giggle. He chuckled along with her.
“So is it done? Is he gone forever?”
Luca’s mirth dried out, and he winced as he applied the lotion to his nose.
“I am afraid that there is no way to be one hundred percent certain of that.” He said morosely.
“Demons are not of this world.” Daniel pitched in. “Most of the times, dispelling them once is enough, but there have been cases where they have returned.” He said it with a frown, as if offended.
“A strong emotional link is often the way back, not just for demons… whether it is love or hatred…” Luca left the rest unsaid. She could fill in the blanks.
“So there’s a chance that he’ll come back.” She breathed evenly. It wasn’t what she’d hoped to hear, but she wasn’t disheartened.
“He said something to me a couple of times.” She hesitated. “He said that my soul was theirs. That I was one of them.”
The young priest and the soldier shared a glance. Daniel shrugged.
“Demons lie all the time.”
“Is it because I tried to kill myself?”
They remained quiet for a second, looking at her.
“I told you when we met that you do not necessarily have to be a Catholic, or even a Christian, to be able to fight him.” Luca met her eyes with an open expression. She nodded.
“We are merely one facet of the force that fights the monsters that invade this world,” he continued. “there are other organizations that do things differently. We try to cooperate, and respect each other’s beliefs…”
It began to make a certain kind of sense to Amanda.
“You don’t have a monopoly on salvation.” She tried to keep her tone light, and was glad when they didn’t seem to take offense. Daniel smirked and Luca grinned.
“Ecco, appunto!” the priest laughed.
“You can believe what you want to believe,” Daniel added, “just remember that faith in all its forms is powerful.”
He placed a hand on Luca’s shoulder, like a big brother would.
“Otherwise, how would this little twig of a man have been able to defeat your monster?”
Luca batted the hand away and punched him in the ribs. The soldier looked down as if a gnat had bit him.
Amanda laughed. It felt good to laugh again. She kept laughing even as she looked around her at the utter destruction of her apartment.
Her life was back in her hands, again. Nothing else mattered.
She turned back to them, stroking Shiva softly.
“So, boys. I don’t plan on being helpless again.” She met their gaze levelly. “Any spots on your team open?”
----------------------------------
The acrid smell from the gunshot still hung in the air and she tasted lead and copper in the back of her throat. She couldn’t hear anything but a muted rushing, so she assumed that her eardrums had ruptured. Her consciousness was held by the smallest thread to this world, and she longed for that thread to snap.
She could’ve done without the pain, though.
Through unfocused eyes, she saw the room pitch to the side as her limp body slid off her chair; the ragged green carpet that protected her parent’s precious hardwood floors rushing towards her before she was brusquely caught and turned around.
The strong hands that gripped her felt like molten steel on her skin and if her jaw had worked, if it hadn’t been hanging in tatters from her face after she had placed her father’s .45 in her mouth and pulled the trigger, she would have screamed.
She felt herself coming together again, bone knitting, flesh regenerating and she suddenly found her voice as she was unceremoniously dropped on her bottom on the faded green carpet next to the chair she’d fallen from.
“Ow!” she exclaimed, more annoyed than anything at this point. Feeling returned to her body as she raised her head to look at the hulking mass that stood over her.
If her ex-boyfriend Hannibal had been big before, the dark gray armor that now seemed to protrude from his shoulder blades made him seem larger still. The helmet he wore was pitted and rusted, and seemed a tad too small for his head. All along his forearms, which were now larger and longer than before and almost reached the floor, razor sharp blades stood out at odd angles, seemingly piercing his skin from the inside out; some appeared to be bleeding, but the blackish ichor that oozed from the wounds never quite seemed to form drops heavy enough to fall.
His hands were huge, hairy and clawed things that seemed blood-red in the dim light that peeked through the curtains of her childhood sanctuary. His spine was bent in the shape of a question mark, his hips further in front of his chest, and his hairy legs seemed like tree trunks that sprouted from his swiveled pelvis and ended in large hooves.
Being a Duke of Hell wasn’t a pretty sight.
Hannibal threw the gun at her feet, looking almost hurt. His face had never been what you might call classically handsome, but being a former rugby player, broken nose and all, had lent it an innate masculinity that had initially drawn her to him when they met in college.
Now, the skin around his eyes had shrunk so that only the iris remained, and he seemed to have no eyelids. Where they had previously been a light greenish-gray color, they now blazed with an internal light that made the effect, and the fact that he never blinked, very unsettling. His cheeks seemed hollowed out and the nose that had been broken more than thrice was now a charred lump in the middle of his grayish face.
His lips parted as he opened his mouth, revealing broken, jagged and uneven teeth that seemed to cut into the adjacent gums when his mouth was closed. More black goo swirled around his reptilian lips as he chided her.
“You’re not getting out of this that easily, Mandy!” he growled.
He knew she hated it when he called her that.
It had been one of the many, many reasons she had broken up with him. Granted, maybe she shouldn’t have done it in front of his family, and maybe she could have reacted better when he got down on one knee at the restaurant during his parent’s anniversary party, in the middle of the dance floor, no less.
But really! What kind of a creepy, stalking jerk comes back from Hell just to torment you? He won’t even let me kill myself to get away!
She got to her feet slowly, on shaking legs, and plopped down on her old armchair. She could still see the stitching on the left armrest that she’d picked off over years of sitting at her desk, doing homework. For a second she expected to hear her mother’s voice calling her down to dinner.
She could see blood and pieces of her jaw on the floor, a few teeth and the gun by her feet. She was sad that her favorite shirt was now ruined, all gory and goopy. She had been hoping to wear it in the afterlife.
It had been a gamble, she knew. The past months had been one attempt after another, trying to figure out a way to shake the past that had crept up on her.
She leaned over the desk and put her face in her hands. She tried to cry, but all she felt was emptiness and disappointment.
“You know I’m never going to let you go, Mandy.” Hannibal’s hoarse, guttural whisper made her teeth grind. “You’re mine, again. You should’ve been mine forever, and now you are.”
She knew without looking at him that he was shaking his head. Even after death, he hadn’t changed a bit. The same annoying mannerisms, the same high and mighty attitude and overblown sense of superiority.
She could feel a headache coming on, but she’d be damned if she asked him to take it from her.
The range of his powers was still something of an unknown, even to him, but this was the ninth time he’d brought her back. Her ninth suicide attempt. He really wasn’t going to let her go.
“God, you are such a loser.” She whispered, knowing he could hear her. “You’re pathetic.”
He growled behind her.
Amanda bent down and retrieved the gun, her father’s favorite toy. It felt strange in her hand, after all these years. It was a family heirloom, handed down from her great-great-grandfather, who’d carried it all over Europe, then his son, who’d done the same, before eventually belonging to her dad.
She’d learned to shoot when she was twelve. My little Annie Oakley, grandpa Jim had called her. Her dad had always whispered afterwards. No, you’re my little Sarah Connor.
Even back then, she’d known she was neither. She wasn’t a fan of the gun. It brought back painful memories.
As she stared at the burnished metal in her hands, tuning out Hannibal’s platitudes, she could smell the musty air and feel the emptiness of her childhood home. It had been years since she’d been there. Since the funeral.
The service she’d hired to come in once a month and clean was good, though. There was very little dust visible, and everything seemed to be in its proper place. When she’d walked into her old room, half an hour earlier, she’d been immediately transported back to a simpler time, when she hadn’t been tormented by an ex-boyfriend from Hell.
Hannibal kept rambling as he always did after he brought her back, going on and on about how they were meant to be together, and how stupid she was that she couldn’t see that. It was getting easier to ignore him with every passing day.
The first time he’d appeared, of course, she’d been scared speechless. Not a fun sight to wake up to at three in the morning.
Sighing, she turned towards him, raised the gun, and fired.
Her eardrums must have ruptured again, because the wave of dizziness that assailed her almost made her fall off her old chair. The sharp stab of pain and incessant buzzing certainly didn’t help the migraine that had been developing. It wasn’t worth it, really.
She saw the hole where Hannibal’s nose had been beginning to stitch back together, luckily —thanks to her renewed deafness— without the disgusting squelching and rending noises that regenerating flesh made. She wasn’t surprised to see the hole in the wall behind him. She wouldn’t have expected any resistance to trap the bullet in his head.
She laughed internally, her perpetually elevated frustration reaching heavenly heights. She was so tired of him.
He shuffled over to her, his massive hooves scuffing the floor her parents had carefully laid themselves when they moved in. He placed his massive, clawed paw on her head, in a ridiculously gentle way, and her hearing came back.
Her headache was gone, too. She’d rather have kept it.
“Will you stop!” His eyes flared like furnaces when he screamed, and flecks of black spittle landed on her face. Amanda wiped them away with disgust.
“Will you?” She screamed back.
He spun away from her, kicking her bed in rage, pulverizing the frame and sending the mattress bouncing against the wall.
“I don’t know what I’m going to do with you.” He stood with his back to her, bowling-ball-sized fists tightening at his side. “Why can’t you see?”
“Why don’t you just get the hell out of here? Get out of my life. I hate you—no, scratch that— I don’t even hate you at this point. You’re nothing to me. I. Don’t. Care. About. You!” She bit off each word, seeing his shoulders hunch as heat began to radiate in waves from him.
She hoped that would do the trick. That she would drive him so mad that he killed her himself, and allow her to finally slip into oblivion.
She was disheartened when she saw him regain his composure, though. He breathed in and out a dozen times before turning back to her. His disturbing features cracked in a grim smile.
“I’m not going to kill you, Mandy. You’re one of us, now. Your soul is ours, and once you accept that, you’ll be better off.”
He grabbed the gun from her hands in a snapping motion and flame engulfed his forearm as he closed his fist around it. He dropped the steaming hunk of metal on the floor with bang, further scratching up the hardwood.
She sighed.
“Don’t make me come back here to put you back together, Mandy. My finger is wrapped up inside your soul, so I’ll always know when you’re trying something.” He loomed over her. His unblinking eyes burned into her own.
“Just accept that you’re mine. Now and forever.”
With a bluish flash that left the smell of sulfur permeating the room, he disappeared.
“God, I hate that stupid song.” She grumbled.
—0—
She stayed at her parent’s house for a couple of hours, trying to clean up some of the mess in her room, went into the garage and got some wood polish and rags to try to remove the scratches from the floor before giving up and going downstairs into her dad’s office. She’d have to let the cleaning company know that there’d been an incident, so they didn’t call the cops.
There were pictures everywhere in her dad’s old office. Hanging from the walls, framed on his desk, under a transparent desk cover. He almost hadn’t had any room to actually work, there. He had been a present figure throughout her childhood. Her dad who worked from home, who was always there when she came back from school, who had been the one who took her to and picked her up from swimming lessons. They’d spent many an afternoon locked away in his office, playing when they should’ve both been doing more responsible things.
It was difficult for her; feeling so close to him again, in this place where so many happy memories had taken place, it still made her heart ache. Every single time her mother would walk in, tired from her nine-to-five office job and pretend to scold them, before laughing and joining in the fun.
Five years wasn’t enough. A hundred years would never be enough. She missed her parents so much.
At least they knew, she thought. At least they knew how much I loved them.
When she couldn’t bear it any longer, she locked up and headed back to the city.
Her apartment wasn’t very large, and she could’ve afforded a bigger place if she sold her parent’s house, but she wasn’t ready for that, yet. Still, it was a cozy, some might call snug, one-bedroom that was suitable for her needs.
High speed internet and surrounded by good food delivery options.
She took a shower, washing away the blood and gore that gummed up her hair and neck. Picking up her discarded top, she gave it one last glimpse before dropping it into the garbage with a sigh. It had been the best concert ever, a punk rock revival festival that had lasted for two days, and besides the great music, it was the first time she’d ever kissed a boy.
She couldn’t help but check herself out in the mirror. She knew that the healing was perfect, but despite herself, it still amazed her.
Her face was just like it had always been, no tattered jaw, no hole in the back of her head. All her teeth were there. The small jewel on her nose, the only piercing subtle enough to pass without comment at her job, glinted in the mirror’s light. She turned her head one way and the other, dark hair cascading in wet ringlets around her shoulders.
Nothing. No scars, no marks of any kind.
“I should rob a bank.” She said out loud. She found her habit of talking to herself had gotten worse ever since Hannibal had come back into her life.
“That idiot would probably help me out if they put me in jail.” She hoped he heard her, somehow. The creep always seemed to know everything else she thought.
Getting dressed, she bemoaned the fact that it was a Sunday. A second, slightly frivolous reason for offing herself had crossed her mind as she’d pulled the trigger. She’d been looking forward to not having to go into the office the next day.
The frustrated suicide had left her hungry, though, so she dialed up an order of sesame chicken and settled into her couch, laptop booted up and handing her a brief escape from reality.
Which was a lie, because the first thing she did was log into her blog and post an update.
“Still here…” She typed fitfully. Her few followers thought that she was writing some sort of book or play, and would follow along when she said that her hellish ex-boyfriend had visited her again. They probably thought she was speaking in metaphors.
When she was done, she continued browsing through the research she’d been digging through for the past months. She couldn’t help herself. If there was one thing her parents had always told her, it was that she should follow her instincts. Of course, they’d been talking about choosing a career path, not digging through information on Heaven, Hell and everything in between. She had a feeling that she was bound to stumble upon something useful, eventually.
The religious texts she’d pored over had been mostly useless. All were full of moral lessons, antiquated ones, with no real substance, no modern, real life applications. She’d delved into the occult, into the famous forbidden and controversial books, finding nothing an overactive imagination couldn’t come up with.
There were hints, here and there of course. Passages that made her hair stand on end when reading about demons and their interactions with people, but nothing that really described her situation. Texts about the architecture of hell, the levels and different departments –she couldn’t help but compare it to her job— the hierarchies within the legions of the netherworld, all were very informative and gave her more tidbits than she ever wanted.
Yet nothing told her what she could try to get rid of Hannibal.
Sure, there were plenty of other things out there, wiccan stuff, druids, witches and warlocks, seers, and people who actually thought they were vampires. They all claimed to be able to help her get a handle on her situation, but inevitably stuttered and failed when she calmly laid out what was happening to her.
Still browsing, she was closing tab after tab when she came across one that she’d opened with a laugh, a couple of days earlier. She couldn’t believe such a thing actually existed.
Chuckling, she typed into the message pane and hit send.
“Hi, I need some help.”
The reply was surprisingly fast.
“Buongiorno, welcome to the Vatican Online Helpdesk. How may I assist you today?”
—0—
Luca seemed like a nice guy, for a priest.
“So, when your boyfriend…” Even though he had a very marked Italian accent, his English was flawless.
“EX-boyfriend.” She corrected him. They’d switched to video chatting once she’d apparently gotten past the initial screening of crazies and weirdos their helpdesk usually got.
She saw him raise his hand apologetically, as if he were to make the sign of the cross. He seemed to do that a lot.
“Ex-boyfriend, of course. When he passed away, he committed suicide?”
There was only one thing that made Amanda feel bad about breaking things off with Hannibal. Not bad in a truly regretful kind of way, since she’d probably still do everything she did again if she had to, but bad in the sense that so much grief might’ve been avoided if she’d been willing to put up with him for a day or two more than she had.
“Yes, he got drunk and started a fight. Left a guy in the hospital, then just kept on drinking until he lost his mind. He was belligerent when the police came looking for him. Took a few hostages in a diner. We call it suicide by cop.”
It had been an awful time in her life, not only having to deal with the fallout of any personal guilt she felt because of what dumping him may have led him to, but also the slander that his family had thrown her way in interviews; trying to paint her as some sort of wicked, heart breaking harlot that drove their favorite son insane.
She’d declined all the interviews that had been offered at the time, expecting the fifteen minutes of tragedy to blow over as soon as the next garish story came along. It had only taken three days, but the uproar had died down. She’d only had to move out of the city and back to her hometown for a few months to get away from it all. It had been the only time she’d been glad her parents had been dead. They hadn’t had to put up with nosy and sensationalistic reporters.
“Suicide by cop. Got it.” He wrote something down into a small notebook. “And the man he put in the hospital?”
It made her feel strange that she never thought of that poor man. This priest had heard about him once and immediately asked about his health.
“He died. He never woke up from his wounds. I think he was bleeding into his brain.” An uncomfortable tightness caught her throat.
“Ah. Unfortunate. And the policemen who were involved in the shooting?” His tone was matter of fact, but no matter how friendly he seemed, it irked her that he seemed to be taking his sweet time to tell her what he knew.
“Why does that matter?” She might have sounded a tad more unfriendly than she’d meant.
Luca looked up across an ocean and a couple of thousand miles. There was a window behind him, with the rays of morning light creeping in. He looked to be in his late twenties, like her, and despite the collar she would’ve thought he was cute except for the huge nose that straddled his face. It was gargantuan. She was sure that his upper lip barely saw the sun under that shadow.
He had kind eyes, though. Even through the video application they were using, pixelated and with a sluggish connection, she could see compassion there. He had a lock of hair that kept falling over his eyes as he spoke.
Maybe his nose wasn’t really that bad. It suited him, in a way. He was a bit scrawny, though.
God, I’m lonely… she mused. I must be, if I’m checking out a priest.
“Well, Amanda, creatures who come into our world are almost never good. Demons and their like are monsters full of emotions like hate, envy and jealousy, which fuels their ability to cross over. If he has sought you out, I can be almost certain that he has tormented others he might hold… responsible for his condition.”
The amount of information made her raise her eyebrows involuntarily. Finally, she felt that she was getting somewhere. Luca didn’t seem to be shying away from the problem.
“I don’t know about them, really.” She shook her head. “Never met them or anything.”
“That is alright. I think I have enough information to look them up. In the meantime, could you please tell me a bit more about how this monster first appeared to you?”
“Isn’t that in the questionnaire you made me fill out?” She teased, referencing the webpage that popped up after the initial contact in the chat.
Luca smiled. “Yes, it is. But as you can imagine, we have several measures to distinguish between people with actual problems that we can help, and those who we cannot.”
“Fair enough…” She grumbled. She didn’t like rehashing old memories, but figured she didn’t really have a choice.
—0—
She didn’t know what had woken her up, but she had a terrible feeling of foreboding in the pit of her stomach. She sat up with a gasp, trembling.
Glancing groggily across her bedroom, she felt Shiva, her cat, shift with annoyance at her changing position. Out of habit, she placed her hand on his head, and he nuzzled her fingers. He forgave her for daring to pull him out of his slumber.
Her heart was beating too fast. She felt as if she’d been out running, and she was covered in sweat.
What’s this feeling of dread, all of a sudden? She couldn’t understand it, but she felt like crying. Shiva seemed to catch her mood and stretched before silently padding over her legs and sitting on her lap. He looked up at her with his luminous eyes, inquiringly, it seemed.
She’d never considered herself a cat person but it made more sense, living in such a small apartment, than a puppy. Even though she loved dogs, when she saw him peering up at her from his box in the shelter she’d had to take him with her.
Luckily, Shiva was apparently one of those cats that were lovable family members and not frigid roommates. He loved to cuddle, and looking into his eyes, feeling his smooth coat, hearing the low hum of his purr as she petted him, her apprehension and tension began to fade.
There was a bluish flash of light that blinded her, and she heard Shiva hiss and leap away as she raised her hands reflexively to cover her eyes. A loud thunk came from one corner of her small bedroom, near the closet, and she wrung her eyes desperately as she drew her legs up to her chest underneath the blankets.
“Mandy…” A horribly harsh growl called to her form the dark. She was still blinded by the flash, spots dancing before her eyes, but her heart leapt into her throat and she scrambled away from the sound, reaching the wall and huddling against it.
There was someone in the room with her. She didn’t know how, but the oppressive sensation and heaviness in the air was quickly becoming stifling. She dashed across her bed towards the window, her vision slowly coming back, but not fast enough.
She felt something grab her leg and pull her across the bed, away from her escape. Whatever it was, it felt like a boiling band of iron had clamped on her ankle. She kicked desperately, but felt a terrible stabbing on her foot, and recoiled. At least, she tried to.
She could make out a hulking mass towering over her, still swathed in shadows, but her stomach turned to jelly as she made out a pair of horrendous, flaring red eyes looking down at her. She could barely whimper as she froze. Whatever it was, she was no longer sure it was human.
Her rational mind went into overflow. In a microsecond, Amanda began to doubt everything she’d ever accepted as truth. Everything that helped define the world she lived in. The only truth that mattered at that moment overshadowed any other.
There was a monster in her room.
Finally, she found her voice and screamed.
For some reason, this seemed to confuse the monster. It let go of her leg, and she was able to scramble back against the wall once more. Her sight had returned, and she could make out the sharp spikes that protruded from the thing’s arms.
She looked at her feet and despaired. She was in shock, apparently, because she couldn’t feel the pain that should’ve overwhelmed her. Her feet were a mess. The right one, where the thing had grabbed her, was a blackened mass of charred skin, she could see right down to the bone in places. Her shin was covered in blisters all the way up to her knee. Her left foot, which she’d used to kick at her attacker, was mangled and gory. It was bleeding profusely, resting in a widening pool of darkness on her sheets and was nearly cloven in two. She was missing her toe.
Amanda felt hysteria begin to take over. She was still screaming.
Her hands found the bookshelf that hung on her wall, and she grabbed at the first thing that came to hand. A snow globe her grandmother had given her. It was heavy and comforting in her hand as she heaved it towards the monster’s head.
It might as well have been a ball of paper. The globe shattered on the thing’s forehead, and the glistening wetness that was caught in the light from the window let her see that the monster was wearing some sort of helmet.
She continued screaming. She found her safety box, what she’d been hoping to find, where she kept the gun her father had given her so long ago. She kept the Colt loaded, being a single girl in the city, living in a third story apartment that had a fire escape by her window. Amanda ripped the gun from its enclosure and drew a bead on the beast’s eyes.
Her scream finally petered out with a hoarse croak. That’s when the pain hit her, finally. She was going to pass out, but before the dizziness that threatened to overwhelm her could shut her down, she put three slugs into the monster’s face. The flashing light from the gunfire threw terrifying shadows across the walls. Darkness crept over her vision, but she felt a small thrill at hearing the thing scream in pain, and one of those hellish, glowing red eyes disappeared.
She didn’t know how long she was out for, but she was surprised that there was no pain. Without opening her eyes, she pleaded to the god she’d forgotten that she’d been dreaming. That it had all been a nightmare.
“Open your eyes, Mandy. I know you’re awake.”
The guttural rasp made her skin crawl.
She opened her eyes slowly, trying to remain calm, but her stomach was doing backflips as she felt terror seize her spine. Even so, she found that she could move, so she sat up and backed away as much as she could from the thing that was standing in her room.
Words failed her as she tried to come to grips with the thing. She barely noticed that her feet were back to normal.
“I’m not here to hurt you. It’s me, baby. I’ve come back for you.”
The hideously deformed face hadn’t rung a bell, but combined with the large build, and the thing’s insistence on calling her Mandy, it finally clicked.
“Hannibal?”
—0—
The young priest had remained quiet during her story.
“I am so sorry you had to go through that, Amanda.”
She shrugged, uncomfortable with having those memories dredged up to the surface again. The feeling of helplessness that she remembered from that night had never really gone away, and it shamed her, even though she knew it shouldn’t. It wasn’t her fault her ex-boyfriend was such a jerk.
“Now, am I correct in assuming that you do not subscribe to any particular faith?” She could find no judgement in his tone, merely curiosity.
“Well, my parents were pretty relaxed about it. We’d go to church sometimes, but not religiously.”
Lame joke… she thought. Her mom had loved saying it.
Luca surprised her by chuckling.
“Alright. I ask because the way we can attempt to counteract these creatures, at least the way we know how to do it, is through faith.” He held up a hand so she wouldn’t interrupt.
“Now, this does not mean it necessarily has to be the Catholic faith, mind you.”
Something must’ve shown on her expression, because he barked a quick laugh.
“Amanda, the Church has been going through some… modernization… in recent times. There are new schools of thought that have come to be prevalent among our society, particularly because of recent events.”
He stopped suddenly, as if he’d said too much.
“What events?”
He hesitated. “I am afraid that at this moment I cannot really talk about it. I apologize. I should not have said anything.”
Well, that’s weird. She thought.
“Suffice to say that I believe that I—we – can help you. All I ask is that you keep an open mind.”
Amanda didn’t think that her mind could be more open, to be honest.
“Luca, I’m literally being visited by my biggest regret every few days. He says he has a claim on my soul, which I don’t really know if it’s true or not, but believe me, I’m pretty much open to suggestions at this point.”
He nodded.
“I understand. I just needed you to be aware that our charter implies certain rituals and procedures which have shown favorable results, and these are of course, framed around our beliefs.”
She nodded back. It made sense, she supposed.
“Exorcism?”
He smiled, but shook his head.
“No, not in your case, but there will be some symbolic gestures we will make, and if you are uncomfortable in participating in them, I’m afraid that their effectiveness will be reduced. My own faith can only take us so far. It must be matched or exceeded, by your own.”
This frankness made her pause. Basically, he was saying that she had to buy into it in order for whatever they were going to do to work.
“Sounds an awful lot like a placebo, Luke.” She couldn’t help being snarky when she was annoyed.
Luca smirked and shook his head.
“It works, though, Amanda. It can really work, if you believe it will.”
She sighed.
Nine suicide attempts had gotten her nothing. She’d shot Hannibal on multiple occasions, impaled him with a wooden stake, had even managed to douse him in liquid nitrogen the last time, and nothing had worked.
She couldn’t kill him, and he wouldn’t let her die. Why not give faith a chance? she supposed.
“OK. Tell me what we’re going to do.”
—0—
Turns out, getting rid of a demonic ex involved a lot of waiting around.
Hannibal visited twice during that time. Both times when she was conveniently getting dressed for work. He simply appeared, startling poor Shiva as usual. She was lucky that the cat didn’t seem to hold it against her that the monster visited incessantly.
She did her best to give him the silent treatment, pretending as if he wasn’t crouching there in the corner leering at her. She ignored all his attempts to engage. It usually took about half an hour, but he’d eventually tire and disappear again.
“Mandy, Mandy, Mandy…” He made the disgusting sound of his lips smacking together. “Why don’t you just stay here with me, today? You can make me pancakes like you used to.”
She ignored him, humming a tuneless song and trying not to rush in getting changed. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of knowing he made her itch.
“You should start working out, really. All that take out is making you rounder than you should be.”
Son of a… No, she wasn’t going to respond.
“I’d still hit it, though.” He laughed boisterously, his unearthly voice like sandpaper over gravel.
She’d been afraid, at first, that he would take advantage of her. He was too powerful to fight convincingly, and if he chose to have his way with her, there would probably be nothing she could do about it.
For some reason, though he kept expressing his salacious intentions, he never went beyond that. She was grateful for small miracles, at least. Just imagining feeling his touch made her skin crawl.
“You’re covered in goosebumps. What’re you thinking about, baby?”
Of separating your head from your shoulders, you piece of crap. She didn’t respond, though. She went into the bathroom and close the door.
“Is it number one or number two? I know you already showered… I was a bit late for the show, but I caught the last of it.”
She grabbed a hand towel and wrung it furiously, wishing it was his neck.
“That’s OK, I’ve got things to take care of anyway. Just popped in to say hi.”
Shiva’s mewling let her know that he’d gone. The poor guy’s fur had been falling out in patches from the stress. She’d thought several times about returning him to the shelter so another family could take care of him, but the thought of letting him go was too much. Sometimes he was her anchor.
It was another two weeks before she heard the knock on her door. When she opened up, she saw a burly mountain of a man with a military style haircut standing there. He introduced himself as Daniel, and was apparently part of the Pontifical Swiss Guard. He wore a simple black suit that must’ve been custom ordered to fit him, no tie. He had glasses with a purplish tinge to them. Peering from behind and to one side of him, around one massive, suit-enclosed bicep, Luca waved.
He was a bit taller than her, but about half as skinny. His priest’s cassock was kind of old school, but it fit him well. He was also wearing a pair of glasses that perched on his unsettlingly large nose. He shook her hand firmly and asked permission to enter the apartment.
“Daniel, he also requires your permission.” He made a motion with his thumb.
The large soldier, who towered over both of them, met her eyes with a level gaze, completely expressionless while she extended the invitation. Once he entered the small living area, he stood with his back to the wall, right next to the door, seeming to be looking everywhere at once.
Shiva walked over and began rubbing against his leg. The man looked down and the faintest shade of a smile seemed to flit across his somber expression before resuming his watch.
“He comes across as a little intense, perhaps, but he is a good man. He’s been working with me for about a year now.”
“Fourteen months.” Daniel corrected in a clipped tone.
“Well, there you go. Fourteen long months.” He said it with a frown, but there was a smile hidden in it. “He’s saved my life on a couple of occasions.”
Amanda would’ve asked what a priest needed saving from that he needed a soldier bodyguard, then she realized.
“You really have done this sort of thing before, haven’t you?” Her face must’ve betrayed her surprise.
Luca blinked, taken aback for a moment, before answering. “Well, yes.” He shared an unreadable glance with Daniel. “This is what we do, Amanda.”
Daniel snorted and said something in Italian.
The priest shook his head at him. “Of course she told the truth. Only people who have seen hellfire can properly describe it.”
“So you came here, without knowing if I was telling the truth?”
Luca made a calming gesture. “Of course, we did our own research, after our interview. The signs were there, even when some considered the leads to be rather sparse.” He rolled his eyes in his partner’s direction.
Amanda remembered herself enough to offer them something to drink, and she and the priest sat down in the cramped living room. Daniel remained standing by the door.
“I am afraid that we found evidence that the police officers who were involved in Hannibal’s death have died, as well.” He took a sip from his water. “In rather strange circumstances.”
She waited as patiently as she could for him to elaborate. He took his sweet time drinking his water again, though.
“The three members of the SWAT team that were involved were all diagnosed as a danger to themselves and put on administrative leave in the past year.” He sighed. “They were all committed into treatment programs but the measures, I am afraid, only hastened their demises.”
Daniel shifted in the doorway, drawing her attention. He was shaking his head as if in disapproval.
“All three men took their own lives, within days from each other.” Luca crossed himself.
Amanda didn’t know what to say.
“The officers all reported seeing apparitions. Particularly one of a demon who claimed to be a man they had killed.”
She shivered and closed her eyes. Through her closed eyes, she saw the bright flash of blue fire.
Oh no… She snapped her eyes open, frightened.
Shiva mewled and hissed. Daniel seemed to snap to attention, looking over her shoulder with a grimace. Luca froze, the glass of water halfway to his lips.
“Mmm… Mandy.” Hannibal’s horrible voice made her feel sick. “Who are these losers? Are you two timing me?”
The priest remained sitting, placing the glass of water on the coffee table. Daniel stretched his neck from one side to the other with an audible crack in each direction.
She turned and looked at the monster. Anger and sadness filled her. She’d brought these two men here. Hannibal would never let them go. Their deaths would be on her conscience, now.
She stood and walked towards the window, hoping to figure out a way to deflect his attention from them. After hearing what they’d told her about the cops, she was sure that they’d just placed themselves in mortal danger. She knew she was exempt. There was something Hannibal wanted from her, and until he got it, he would never leave her be. But these two, capable as they might seem, couldn’t possibly face the creature that haunted her.
Hannibal had changed.
Since she’d taken to ignoring him, she’d missed his continuing transformation. He was well over eight feet tall now, and greyish, slime-covered scales seemed to be sprouting all over what exposed skin remained visible.
He had also grown horns.
Small and curved but sharp horns had pushed three or four inches through the pitted helmet. His jagged teeth had grown into tusks that protruded from his cracked and bleeding lips; the fire in his eyes had seemingly intensified until they were no longer glowing embers, but actual flames dancing in his sockets.
“How many times do I have to tell you Mandy, that you’re mine?” He flexed his massive arms and the spikes there seemed to quiver like quills on a porcupine.
Amanda cast a quick glance at the priest, who was still sitting, looking at her ex-boyfriend. He seemed to be speaking under his breath. Probably praying. There was a strange stillness to him.
She saw Daniel step forward, around the couch, placing himself between the monster and his partner. At some point, from somewhere, he’d slipped a pair of medieval looking gauntlets around his massive fists. He adopted a relaxed stance, one leg in front of the other, and raised his hands slightly. He cut a very strange figure in his suit, wearing gauntlets.
He looked to be ready for a fight, and if Hannibal hadn’t been in the room, the soldier would’ve been an intimidating and impressive sight. As it was, he looked small and frail next to the monstrosity that took a step closer to him, spreading snakelike jaws wide and letting a blackish tongue hang loose, dripping with spittle.
“Hannibal, let them go.” She surprised herself when her voice didn’t shake. She wasn’t afraid of him.
Never taking his eyes off of Daniel, the demon grunted.
“You shouldn’t have invited your friends into things that weren’t their business.”
She was going to jump between the two, but Hannibal struck before she could react. One moment he was standing still, the next he was on top of Daniel, monstrous claws raking down like scythes simultaneously, aiming to tear the soldier in half.
By some sort of miracle, Daniel had managed to raise his gauntlets quickly enough to deflect the blows, sparks flying as the claws and spikes glanced off the metal. Hannibal was thrown back, and he roared with venomous hatred.
There were strips of cloth hanging in tatters from Daniel’s sleeves where either claws or spikes had gotten past his guard. Something metallic glinted in between the torn pieces of his suit.
“So… figlio di troia… you are not at full strength, yet. And I thought you would at least put up a fight.” Daniel’s voice had changed, becoming more clipped and harsh, yet mocking at the same time.
If there had been one thing that Hannibal hadn’t been able to deal with when they’d been dating, it was being made fun of. It was the classic situation where he could dish it out, but couldn’t take it. For the millionth time, Amanda asked herself why it had taken her so long to see him for the bully that he was.
The soldier’s taunting enraged Hannibal even further. He shook with anger, and the sallow skin on his deformed face seemed to crack and stretch as the bones underneath shifted, his jaw and cheeks pushing further forward into what seemed like a wolf’s muzzle. Rending and tearing sounds as his body shifted echoed in her living room.
His horns grew about three inches more, beginning to curve back like a ram’s. The spikes in his arms sharpened, if possible, and his claws extended at the end of his monstrous fingers. There was a groaning of metal and from his twisted back more spikes broke through the armor that was fused to his body like a beetle’s carapace.
In the space of a few seconds, his body had grown even more grotesque. The matted hair of his goat legs was pushed aside in patches, scaly skin underneath. A tail, like a grey, slimy worm now twisted behind him, curling and twitching spasmodically.
The transformation sickened Amanda, but if the priest or the soldier were affected, neither showed it.
“You know that your appearance is dictated by your own thoughts, right?” Daniel’s tone had become even more sardonic. He moved towards the opposite wall, after pulling Luca up behind him and pushing him towards Amanda, away from him. “You don’t have to look like something you flush down a toilet.”
Hannibal’s roar was deafening as he threw himself at the soldier, crunching into the man and crashing into the wall by the door to the apartment. The drywall gave with a sharp crack and they tumbled out into the hall. A cloud of dust hovered over the gaping hole and the sounds of a fierce fight came through it.
Amanda was about to run out and follow when she felt Luca’s hand on her arm.
“Please, let Daniel do his part.” With that he continued muttering under his breath. He was holding on to the rosary around his neck with his other hand, his fist tight around the crucifix at the end of it. His eyes never left the hole in the wall.
The sounds of struggling were coming closer, she realized. A heart-stopping roar sounded again and Daniel crashed back into the apartment, through the door this time. The wood splintered and flew everywhere as he slid all the way across to them, pushing the couch and coffee table to the side.
There was blood on his face form a cut above his right eye, and his teeth were clenched in a grimace. The whole front of his suit was torn, and she could now make out some sort of metallic mesh underneath his clothes. It was scored with dozens of gashes, but nothing appeared to have gotten through. He took a dazed look around and started to get up. Amanda helped him, and he nodded to her with a grunt, before pushing off and striding shakily away from them.
A massive, bloodied paw gripped the door frame, clawed fingers crushing the wood underneath them as a hoof kicked the remains of the door away. Hannibal ducked through the entrance, the fires in his eyes furnaces that threw off a palpable heat. He was growling an incomprehensible, guttural noise that made her feel physically ill, feeling the vibration in the pit of her stomach. She found herself unable to breathe underneath that gaze.
From the corner of her eye, she saw Luca take his rosary off his neck and begin to wind it around his closed fist.
“You know, codardo…” Daniel, even though he seemed a little winded, was still intent on keeping Hannibal’s attention on himself.
“It says a lot about you that you gave away your soul because your heart was broken by a woman…”
The monster’s fiery eyes, which had been focusing on her, shifted towards the soldier.
“She told us all about your story, you know? It really is…” He made a motion of snapping fingers, impossible with the metal gauntlets, and turned to look at her. “What is the word you used?”
Amanda had been frozen with fear. Fear like she hadn’t felt since the first time Hannibal had appeared again, and yet the almost playful, confident tone the soldier used disarmed her. Her chest thawed and she found her voice.
“Pathetic. That’s what I said.” She felt the burning eyes on her again, but confidence was seeping back into her. She didn’t know what made her feel that way, but hope fluttered.
Hannibal was going to kill her, now. She felt it. He was done waiting around, and the insults she threw at him, coming from others, had finally put him on the spot.
He was so predictable, it was ridiculous.
And they know it… She realized.
The scene shifted in her mind and she felt goosebumps across her skin as a flush coursed up her spine. She got the distinct impression, she didn’t know how or from where, that Hannibal had fallen into some sort of trap.
“Insecure men are often the first ones that are tempted by Hell.” Daniel continued poking the bear. “A real man would have simply moved on with his life.” He spat at Hannibal’s feet.
That did it.
Hannibal was flying through the air, claws extended, jaws gaping wide aimed at Daniel’s throat. The soldier had been expecting it and had dropped on his back, hands clamping around the demon’s wrists, sparks flying when metal met spikes. His leg came up and drove into Hannibal’s stomach, using his own momentum to flip him up and over, sending the hulking mass crashing into the wall that separated her bedroom from the living room.
Her apartment was now just one open space, since the wall disintegrated as her hell-spawned ex-boyfriend barreled through it, landing upside down on her bed, shattering the frame and sending poor Shiva, who’d been hiding underneath it, scrambling out and into her small bathroom.
There goes my security deposit…
It dawned on her that even though most people were probably at work, someone had surely heard the racket and called 911. She could only think about that for a second, though.
Hannibal was getting up slowly, eyes fixed on Daniel. He was growling that bowel-loosening rumble again, but it only made her queasy this time. That spring of hope that had welled in her was stronger now.
This time Hannibal didn’t jump. He realized that the soldier was too fast and nimble, so he walked deliberately closer, as Daniel gave ground slowly, feinting and jabbing at the monster, until with a dash he managed to pin the soldier to the wall with a clawed paw. Daniel struggled, but it was all he could do to twist his head away from the spikes that were dancing close to his face.
Hannibal pushed him up against the brick wall until his feet left the ground.
Amanda’s throat closed up.
No.
It can’t end like this now.
They can beat him. She believed they could.
Hannibal was opening his jaws, looking to close his jagged fangs over Daniel’s face when the soldier smiled.
“You should know, stronzo, that I am only here to look pretty. The muscle is actually behind you.”
Luca had stepped out from behind Amanda with a determined look in his eyes. He began chanting something in what she assumed was Latin at the top of his lungs. Hannibal turned at the sound, still holding Daniel pinned.
Amanda couldn’t see Luca’s face as he quickened his pace and threw himself at the monster, but his voice only got louder as he raised the fist that clenched the rosary around it. The flames in Hannibal’s eyes seemed to flare with surprise, and he threw up a claw to intercept the young priest.
A blinding flash exploded in the room.
Through a haze, Amanda thought that she could still make out an afterimage that was burned into her eyes. Two glowing figures, one large and one small. The small one was punching the larger one.
No, not punching. The small one was reaching into the larger one, as if it was made of mist.
A dreadful keening permeated everything, and she felt a heat flash across her in a wave that threw her back against the window, breaking through it, dumping her unceremoniously outside her apartment; she was resting her cheek on the cool metal of the fire escape when she came to.
Sitting up, she was glad to see she hadn’t cut herself on the glass, and even more glad that she only had a few bruised ribs where the railing had saved her from falling three stories down into the alleyway next to her building.
She saw a spectacled face peek through the window, and had to think for a second before it all came flooding back.
“Amanda!” Luca’s voice dripped with worry. “Are you alright?”
“What is she doing out there?” Daniel’s voice from inside sounded nonchalant.
Luca picked his way over the broken glass and helped her up to her feet. She noticed his cassock was steaming, tendrils of smoke billowing from the front, and his face appeared to have suffered a nasty sunburn.
He rolled his eyes at her as he helped her through the window back into the disaster zone her apartment had turned into.
“I was thrown out when whatever Luca did blew Hannibal up.” She said it with a carefree tone, imitating the soldier.
She could play it cool, too.
She saw him cast an appraising look at her and stifled a blush. He gave her a wink and the first genuine smile since they met.
She could’ve laughed. She felt like crying out in happiness.
They’d done it.
She didn’t know how, but Hannibal was gone.
When Luca stepped into the apartment he was dabbing at his face with a handkerchief.
“You would not happen to have some lotion, would you? Aloe vera, perhaps?
He really did look like he’d been out in the sun much too long. She went into the medicine cabinet in the bathroom and got some moisturizer, and Shiva.
She handed the lotion to the priest as she hugged her cat close.
“Best I can do, sorry.”
Luca nodded gratefully and sat down on the upturned couch, applying a generous amount of cream to his cheeks and forehead. He looked so funny, at that moment, that she couldn’t stifle a giggle. He chuckled along with her.
“So is it done? Is he gone forever?”
Luca’s mirth dried out, and he winced as he applied the lotion to his nose.
“I am afraid that there is no way to be one hundred percent certain of that.” He said morosely.
“Demons are not of this world.” Daniel pitched in. “Most of the times, dispelling them once is enough, but there have been cases where they have returned.” He said it with a frown, as if offended.
“A strong emotional link is often the way back, not just for demons… whether it is love or hatred…” Luca left the rest unsaid. She could fill in the blanks.
“So there’s a chance that he’ll come back.” She breathed evenly. It wasn’t what she’d hoped to hear, but she wasn’t disheartened.
“He said something to me a couple of times.” She hesitated. “He said that my soul was theirs. That I was one of them.”
The young priest and the soldier shared a glance. Daniel shrugged.
“Demons lie all the time.”
“Is it because I tried to kill myself?”
They remained quiet for a second, looking at her.
“I told you when we met that you do not necessarily have to be a Catholic, or even a Christian, to be able to fight him.” Luca met her eyes with an open expression. She nodded.
“We are merely one facet of the force that fights the monsters that invade this world,” he continued. “there are other organizations that do things differently. We try to cooperate, and respect each other’s beliefs…”
It began to make a certain kind of sense to Amanda.
“You don’t have a monopoly on salvation.” She tried to keep her tone light, and was glad when they didn’t seem to take offense. Daniel smirked and Luca grinned.
“Ecco, appunto!” the priest laughed.
“You can believe what you want to believe,” Daniel added, “just remember that faith in all its forms is powerful.”
He placed a hand on Luca’s shoulder, like a big brother would.
“Otherwise, how would this little twig of a man have been able to defeat your monster?”
Luca batted the hand away and punched him in the ribs. The soldier looked down as if a gnat had bit him.
Amanda laughed. It felt good to laugh again. She kept laughing even as she looked around her at the utter destruction of her apartment.
Her life was back in her hands, again. Nothing else mattered.
She turned back to them, stroking Shiva softly.
“So, boys. I don’t plan on being helpless again.” She met their gaze levelly. “Any spots on your team open?”
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