Redcap #1

1

Scall stalked the demon like a shadow.

He sat in a small coffee shop on the sixth floor of a London shopping centre, watching the six foot something, brown haired, blue eyed demon. It moved about like it was human. It slithered from store to store, it wore their clothes, spoke their language.

Not for long.

A cute little waitress handed him a black coffee. He sipped and noted it was as bitter as wormwood. He winked at the waitress to show his approval, glancing only briefly at her chest, before returning to his watch.

He fumbled in his pocket and took out a pile of cigarettes and a box of matches. He lit one up and sucked at its nib, breathing out with pleasure. He flicked ash all over the bright red “No Smoking” placard on his table before taking another few drags. Through the mist he spied his demon walk into a stationers and browse the shelves. For what? For books? He laughed a little as he imagined a demon on a sun lounge, flicking through a new Terry Pratchett novel.

He stood up, gathering his smoking kit, and straightened his Yankees baseball cap. He kept the cigarette in the corner of his mouth as he strolled over to the stationers.

“Excuse me... you forgot to pay.”

He turned his head and flashed her a glance. She fell silent and returned to her work as if nothing had happened at all.

He nodded to the cashier as he entered the stationary store, and moved over to the isle where the demon was lurking. Art supplies. He sucked his cigarette again before putting it out on the floor. No one looked, no one said a thing. When around humans, Scall felt immortal.

“Say Damien,” he said in a broad American accent, “fancy a smoke?”

The demon turned and simply stared. Not a muscle moved on his boyish face. Scall returned the stare and winked at him, taking out another cigarette and lighting it casually.

“Do I know you, sir?”

Scall smoothed his grey hair underneath his cap. He fumbled in his pocket again and grasped the hilt of a knife. He took it out and let it flicker in the clinical store-light.

“Sir, don’t try anything,” the demon said.

“So arrogant, aren’t you? So fucking arrogant.” He twirled the knife in his hand, feeling its power, feeling its magic. He rubbed his thumb on the metal, it was warm to the light, feeding on its energy. It was a powerful weapon, and it felt like one. An extension of his own self, the perfect size and hold, the perfect weight. When he acquired it he was told the knife was forged in the recesses of space and time, in absolute darkness. He didn’t belief that crap but loved his weapon, and its strange, ethereal properties. It was a hunter’s knife. A demon-hunter’s knife.

They both continued to look at the art equipment like nothing had been said or done between them. “Posing as an artist, Damien?” Scall smiled.

“I am an artist, mister. I paint and sell portraits.”

He had to stop himself from striking there and then, instead he whispered, “That’s a human profession, Damien. For humans. Humans paint, not demons.”

“What did you call me?”

“A demon.”

“I’m not a demon. Perhaps we can straighten some things out over coffee?”

He grabbed Damien’s shirt and held the knife against his throat. “Don’t ever patronise me again.” The people in the shop continued about their every day business, as if hypnotised to ignore them. Scall felt his tongue loll from his mouth as he pressured the knife on the demon’s skin and made the most shallow of cuts. A few drops of blood trickled onto the knife’s metal. He held it to the light, “have you ever seen your own blood before, demon?”

“How did--”

“--Yes, you got it. Im not some fucked up old bastard with Alzheimer’s. I know about you, demon. I fucking know.” With his fingers, he smeared the blood over the demon’s face. He felt that familiar sensation of power fill him up and egg him on to push and push and push. He looked into the demon’s eyes and saw the innocent tears of a twenty-something artist. Then, he saw something else - an energy, a force trying to break out. But Scall suppressed Damien’s powers easily. The knife gave him the upper hand.

“Don’t. Try. Anything.” He pressed the knife in harder, opening the cut to a bloody gash. “As long as I have this,” his eyes flicked to the knife, “,your powers are servile to my more ancient ones.”

He released the knife and threw Damien to the floor, watching him nurse his neck wound, unable to instantly heal as he had been so easily able to do before with his demonic powers. He took his cigarette lighter from his pocket and flicked the gas switch three times. Scall and Damien vanished from the stationers, leaving the customers to complete their weekly shopping.

#

Damien had never seen a demon before, nor had he ever been called one. But the mad American who had attacked him had been right about one thing. He did have gifts. And now they were useless.

He had been strapped to a bed in a dark room. A thick belt across his naked wrapped him to the underside of the bed-frame. Both hands were handcuffed, onto to the bedpost. The other... to something else. He heaved thinking about it.

He had felt it in the darkness. Something warm and sticky, but not dead. A body. It felt bloody and smelled rotten. Damien had almost vomited at the sour smell when he woke. But after a while his nose learned to ignore it.

“Hello,” he whispered after hours of silence. His voice echoed quite a bit. They were in a big room. A big, dark room. He closed his eyes and lulled himself into a familiar trance. He felt his power their, his gifts. They were simmering beneath his skin. He summoned some of it to break his bounds. He writhed from a shock of pain sent through his back. He had tried using his gifts a few hours ago, something was stopping him and punishing him for trying to break free.

And all the while he was getting weaker. The last time he had eaten had been at his mum’s house. Life had been so normal then. So routine. He had been a freelance artist, working for magazines sometimes. Sometimes painting in the streets. He had a cat, Lizzy and lived at home with his parents. Boring, dull, tedious life. Apart from the fact he had gifts...

“Hello,” he said, louder this time. “Hello, hello, hello, a hello.” His echoes produced a cacophony of ghostly sound, reverberating off the high ceiling.

And answering laughter.

“Who is it? Who’s there?”

Damien fought against the belt, feeling it slacken slightly but it was pressed down on him again. He tugged on his handcuff but he only felt the wreaking body he was chained to like a dead weight, moving towards him.

Am I in hell? Is this where demons go?

There was a grinding sound, he strained his head upwards then closed his eyes as a flood of light entered the room.

“Hiya Damien. Feelin’ better?” The-Man-With-A-Cap walked towards him. He was still dressed in his long black coat, with his New York Yankee’s baseball cap firmly on his head. Damien felt his spine prickle as he moved closer, he looked away, not wanting to look at his smirking, haggard face. He was face to face with the corpse that he was handcuffed to. A white face, bald all over. He couldn’t make out whether it was male or female. He winced at the scars, red marks were hatched across its face, and still oozing blood.

“Say Damien, feelin’ better?” The Yankee fan was bawling in his ear now. Damien was silent until he felt the warm blade of the knife against his skin.

“Feeling. Better?”

He did not have to speak because the body inhaled deeply and flicked its eyes open. For a moment Damien and the corpse looked deeply at one another. He hoped, perhaps they were in a similar situation. That perhaps he was not alone at the whim of a lethal American. Perhaps the corpse had gifts too...Perhaps...Perhaps...His sight was dimming and his energy failing. It was almost as if he was powering the other body. He glanced down at the handcuffs, it was a strange metal, the same metal as the knife. And it was getting warmer in the light.

#

“Ah,” Scall said, quickly moving to his new creation. His hands moved over the naked flesh of his puppet.

“Do you like her, Damien? She’s really somethin’ aint she?” He looked at the handcuffs. Such a wonderful device. Transferring Damien’s demon energy to a new entity. Damien’s gifts would charge a thousand corpses. A thousand. The body moved under his grip. “Shhh...”, he stroked the puppet, calming its movements. “Let your energy build.”

Scall noticed Damien had become unconscious, he touched the handcuffs which stopped the energy transfer. The puppet’s cuff clicked open sharply. He moved away from the bed and watched his new creation stand up in front of him. His eyes widened and his tongue started flicking from his mouth again. He was salivating like a dog who had just made a dirt mound.

The puppet stood six feet high and must have weighed over one hundred pounds. It was like any other human body but somehow modified. The flab had been trimmed from it, all the hair follicles removed. Scall had even enhanced the skeletal structure to make it more agile, speedy and strong. He approached it carefully and placed a hand on the puppet’s feminine chest, feeling the supple muscle beneath the skin.

“You really are somethin’.”

He put both hands on its face and looked into its electric green eyes. He reached out with his magic and touched the puppet’s soul. He could move it. Control it. At a whim the puppet started walking and moving.

Shaking his head with disbelief he moved to an armchair in the huge warehouse, still making his puppet move like a performing monkey. Then made it stop and stand erect, ready for the next order. He took a cigarette from his coat pocket and lit up again.

“Scall, you are a genius,” he told himself, watching the puppet with a strange fascination, a lust. After he had finished his cigarette he flicked the nib over his shoulder where it fell into the shadow of a hanging corpse, not dissimilar from the one that had just been energised into Scall’s drone. Next to it was another, and another, and another. There were in fact around seven hundred naked corpses hooked onto meat hangers in the warehouse. All of them silently watched a mad man play God while they swung in the spectral breeze.