Original Fiction Sneek Peek: Black Chaos, Chapter 1
NOTE: This is the story that spawned from my apocalypse drabble I posted a while back.
Title: Black Chaos
Rating: PG-13
Fandom: Original
World: Present Day with a Twist and a slice of Demons
Summary: Demons exist. They walk the earth and can interact with those who choose to interact with them. Those that can't see them are off limits. And when something done by a mortal the demons can't touch scares them, they ask for the help of a man they once held under their thumb. But all he wants to do is run his book shop and read Shakespeare...
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The bell above the door jingled and I leaned back further in my chair, carefully flipping a yellowed page in my book. My left cheek tingled mildly and I glanced up at the newcomer, recognizing her as one of several budding magic-users that frequented my bookshop. She smiled slightly at me then darted off into the stacks to her right, heading for the group of her fellow practitioners that tended to camp out for hours. They came with their books and settled in that corner, talking about spells and occasionally borrowing a few books from the shelves.
I smiled slightly at her then turned my eye back on my book as I reached up to rub at my eyebrows. My fingertips brushed against the patch that covered the empty socket of my right eye as I brought the hand back down to turn another page. I heard a giggle from the group behind the stacks then and the sudden hiss of fire. Sighing, I folded my book around one finger and leaned my head back against the big leather chair I sat in.
“You all set my books on fire and I’ll be taking it out of your hides,” I growled at them in a casual voice that carried easily through the shop.
There was a yelp followed by more giggles before the sound of the fire faded. A young man’s quavering treble rose up then, breaking slightly from nervousness and puberty.
“Sorry, Mister Athan!”
I chuckled at that. That one was the youngest member of the group and freshly new to his powers. So I couldn’t really fault the boy for summoning up a fireball - that’s what nearly every new practitioner does.
“Just don’t do it again, Eric.”
“Yes, sir!”
The girls giggled again then the group settled back down at a mutter from the only other boy, an older teen. I’d personally helped pull him back from drifting into the darker side of magic. I took those kids as my responsibility since they sat in my shop for hours and I had seen what the Black Arts could do to a person too often. If I could help it, I wasn’t about to let them fall into that.
I’d already failed one kid in my life on that score.
With the group settled, I opened my book and easily found my place to continue reading. The day continued pretty much as it usually did after that. People wandered into the shop and drifted between the six book stacks that stood on either side of a large aisle that led straight to my desk-slash-cash register before wandering back out. A few of them just came in to use the bathroom that huddled in one corner and I gave a few the Evil Eye as they sized up the stairs that led up to my apartment and the closed door to the old office that was partially hidden under said stairs. Practitioners and those in the know also wandered in though only a handle of the magic-users bought anything. An old woman came in around noon and called me the Devil, snarling curses and quoting the Bible at the young practitioners as they returned from getting lunch. All of them ignored her scathing remarks but for Eric, for whom this was his first experience with her.
I shooed the woman away with a glare - which is hard to do with only one working eye - and she left spitting more curses at me, accusing me of fraternizing with demons. Funnily she was right in one respect; I used to work exclusively for demons. But I haven’t worked that job in almost three years and I’m pretty determined not to do so ever again.
Things settled down to nothingness about Crazy Betty left - that’s her name around the neighborhood, mind you, not something I call her. Nobody came into the shop and it was just the little practitioners and I sitting in the quiet.
It was when I started ushering the kids out that things decided to get iffy.
My left cheek seemed to catch fire and I hissed at the pain, clapping one hand over it. It had been a long time since something had set off the run tattooed on that cheek like that. And the list of things that could do that were filed under Powerful, Demonic, and Fuckin’ Scary As Shit.
“Go get in the office,” I said to the kids as I tugged one of the girls back inside. Digging out a set of keys, I flicked them at the eldest boy Jacob, who I’d taught to take down the wards I had in certain places of my shop-slash-apartment. “Get everyone in there. Something bad is coming.”
The kid knew better than to question me and he got the group moving, my keys jingling in his hand. They all followed him muttering to themselves and I waited until I heard the office door close and felt the wards around it go up before I moved. The old office is basically a bomb shelter; mainly there to protect my rare books but also for situations like this one.
Before I went outside, I walked back to my desk and leaned over to open the bottom drawer on the left side. The .45 Glock 21 I pulled from out of the it felt heavier than usual in my hand and I checked to make sure there was a full clip in it. Armed now, I strode back towards the front door and leaned out of it with the gun behind me. My cheek still burned furiously and I took a step outside just as a shadow coalesced into a huge, hulking being that resembled a Komodo Dragon given human form and somewhat squashed. The thing was covered in thick, plate scales of luminescent green and had narrow white eyes set over its blunt jaw filled with two rows of jagged fangs. It was five hundred pounds and seven feet of monstrosity and I gave it my best smile like it was one of the neighbors.
“Hiya, Jogesh,” I greeted at the best snarled at me. “How are the mate and the runts?”
The demon shifted and growled, “This isn’t a social call, Sius.”
I smiled coldly at that and let the arm with the gun fall to my side so it was visible to him. “Sure it is. I don’t work for demons anymore.” A scowl touched my face as I added, “So tell your masters to kiss my ass.”
“Sius,” growled Jogesh. “There are things going wrong. They want you to look into it.”
“They want me to look into demonic affairs?” At his silence, I hissed, “Sonovabitch. There’s something spawned by a mortal that has the ethereals in a twist? That’s why they can’t do shit?”
The big demon nodded and I cursed under my breath. Demon’s can walk on the earth and interact with those mortals that choose to see them. Anyone else was off limits and couldn’t be touched. If they wanted me to go after this person then it had to be someone they couldn’t touch.
Big question was…what sort of mortal that the ethereals couldn’t touch could summon up something that scared them?
I looked back up at Jogesh and said, “So there’s no info on this thing?”
“No,” he replied. “Only that it is here, hiding under human guise. Or human magic.” He shrugged his huge boulder sized shoulders and flashed his fangs at me in a grin. “Sorry, Sius. That is all I was told.”
I sighed and nodded at that, my grip relaxing a bit on the Glock.
“Yeah, I remember how choosy your masters can be with their words.”
Jogesh frowned then said softly, “They are still your masters too, Sius.”
My lips drew back into a feral snarl at that and my hand clenched on the gun. I kept myself from threatening the big demon with it as I growled, “No one is my master anymore, Jogesh.”
“Sius…you now that is not true.”
“Go,” I snarled at that, my face twisting into a mask of fury. I lifted the gun on him and spat, “Get the hell out of my sight, Jogesh. Before I kill you for saying that.”
He blinked at me then bowed his huge reptilian head as he sank back into the shadows.
“Very well, Sius,” he growled in a low voice. “But you know I speak true. So long as you wear that rune…you are as much a slave as I.”
He was gone then, leaving me standing in the street threatening the air with my Glock and my breath coming in sharp, harsh gasps. I just couldn’t believe his gall. Demons had had me serve them since I was thirteen, which was scarily as far back as my memory went. The rune tattooed on my cheek had been placed there by the group of demons that had trained me. It burned to varying degrees when certain supernatural things were around and what was what allowed me to be such a good hunter for my old masters.
I had fought for a year to get my freedom from my older masters - that was three years ago. Fought long, hard battles that I should not have come back from let alone have won.
I had been promised my freedom if I won those battles. And when I had won, I’d had that promise sworn in blood to make sure no demon would go back on their word. My old masters had at least had some semblance of humor but others…not so much.
Slowly I lifted a hand to touch my cheek, fingertips tracing the lines of the rune. I knew its shape well enough that I could follow the lines without seeing them.
My masters had been honorable but the demons that had turned me into a killer weren’t. I don’t know how they got their claws in me and bypassed the rules that they could touch mortals that didn’t willingly interact with them. But if they had been the ones Jogesh had been referring to, things might get very bad fast.
Though it didn’t matter who Jogesh had been talking about. My old masters and those that made me could kiss my ass. I was not going back to that life. Not now, not ever so long as I could live and breathe.
Sighing, I let my hand fall back to my side and turned to walk back into the shop. I went to the office door first and knocked on it in a pattern of notes from an old song, my signal to Jacob that all was all right. As the protective wards went down, I moved to my desk and sank heavily into the big chair, placing the Glock in front of me. I dropped my head into my hands as the kids came out and just listened as Jacob ushered them out the door to their homes. Then he walked slowly back to stand in front of my desk and my cheek twinged in response to his magic.
“Athan?” he said, voice trembling somewhat. “Athan, what was that?”
I lifted my head slowly to look at the teenager, who shifted nervously from one foot to the other. In my panic I had forgotten that out of all of the young practitioners, he would sense a demon. Once you touched the Black Arts, they touched you back. You feel it reaching out to you forever after the fact, even if you turn completely away form it. And the presence of demons plays havoc on your senses, having the tempting feel of the Black and like your brain is being crushed all at the same time.
“A demon,” I replied in a low voice. At Jacob’s quick intake of breath, I added, “We are friends of a sort. He came to give me a warning. And a job offer.”
The youth frowned. “A job?”
“You know very little about me, Jacob. And it’s better that way.”
“But…”
I lifted a hand, cutting him off with the motion. Sighing, I said, “Its best you and the rest find somewhere else to meet up for the next month or two. Things are about to get hectic around me, I think, and I don’t want you all dragged into it.”
Jacob’s expression showed that he didn’t like the idea but I knew that he would respect my wishes. The boy’s loyal to me if he’s anything and I know he’d be willing to walk into Hell itself if I asked him to because of what I did for him. But I could never do that to a kid; most especially not one I’d kept under my own wing.
His eyes, brown as mud, flicked down to the gun and he sighed.
“Be careful, Athan. Please.”
I smiled reassuringly but I’m not too certain I pulled it off well. Standing up, I leaned over and ruffled his shaggy crop of blonde hair.
“I’ll be fine, kid,” I assured him as I walked around the desk to steer him towards the door. “Try not to worry too much.”
“Can’t,” he said, smiling. He looked up at me then and added in a low voice, “You’re the closet thing I’ve got to a father, Athan. Don’t die. I…I don’t want to think about what I’d do to the one’s that killed you.”
He was gone then, slamming the door open as he fled in the wake of what he’d said. I just stood there in stunned silence, his words echoing in my ears. There had never been any indication that he thought of me that way and it was definitely something new.
It was a good feeling. Felt really good to know that there was still somebody in the world that would miss me if I died. And for that kid I’d definitely do my best not to go off and die.
I didn’t want him turning into the monster I knew he could become from using the Black Arts to avenge me.
Shaking worries and new revelations from my head, I locked the front door and headed towards the stairs behind my desk. I picked up the Glock as I went and put it back in its drawer before mounting the stairs up into my apartment. Its really nothing but a big room - dunno what the previous owners of my building used it for. There was a tiny bathroom in one corner with an ancient shower and a newer model toilet, which were the only things that had been up here when I’d moved in. I’d built in the tiny kitchen that was across from the bathroom, moving in the fridge, stove, and building the two counters that surrounded the tiny space. Three bookshelves stood on opposing sides of the room and between them were a coffee table sitting with two comfy secondhand chairs on a big rug and my monstrosity of a bed. An ancient steamer trunk sat at the end of the bed and there were enough wards on it to blow up however tried to touch it that wasn’t me. The last bits of the room were the old, claw-footed couch that sat near the stairs and my black and white TV.
Things tend to get broken around me so I try to keep my possessions old and secondhand. Makes them cheaper to replace later.
I didn’t bother turning on the lights as I got upstairs and trusted my memory of the room to lead me to my bed. Shoving off my heavy hiking boots, I let them drop next to the bed before collapsing onto it. I didn’t bother to get under the sheets - sleep wasn’t going to come to me this night. Not with everything that I had swirling through my head.
Staring at the ceiling, I muttered, “Now is the winter of our discontent.” Then I closed my eyes and tried to figure out just what the hell I was going to do next.
Title: Black Chaos
Rating: PG-13
Fandom: Original
World: Present Day with a Twist and a slice of Demons
Summary: Demons exist. They walk the earth and can interact with those who choose to interact with them. Those that can't see them are off limits. And when something done by a mortal the demons can't touch scares them, they ask for the help of a man they once held under their thumb. But all he wants to do is run his book shop and read Shakespeare...
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The bell above the door jingled and I leaned back further in my chair, carefully flipping a yellowed page in my book. My left cheek tingled mildly and I glanced up at the newcomer, recognizing her as one of several budding magic-users that frequented my bookshop. She smiled slightly at me then darted off into the stacks to her right, heading for the group of her fellow practitioners that tended to camp out for hours. They came with their books and settled in that corner, talking about spells and occasionally borrowing a few books from the shelves.
I smiled slightly at her then turned my eye back on my book as I reached up to rub at my eyebrows. My fingertips brushed against the patch that covered the empty socket of my right eye as I brought the hand back down to turn another page. I heard a giggle from the group behind the stacks then and the sudden hiss of fire. Sighing, I folded my book around one finger and leaned my head back against the big leather chair I sat in.
“You all set my books on fire and I’ll be taking it out of your hides,” I growled at them in a casual voice that carried easily through the shop.
There was a yelp followed by more giggles before the sound of the fire faded. A young man’s quavering treble rose up then, breaking slightly from nervousness and puberty.
“Sorry, Mister Athan!”
I chuckled at that. That one was the youngest member of the group and freshly new to his powers. So I couldn’t really fault the boy for summoning up a fireball - that’s what nearly every new practitioner does.
“Just don’t do it again, Eric.”
“Yes, sir!”
The girls giggled again then the group settled back down at a mutter from the only other boy, an older teen. I’d personally helped pull him back from drifting into the darker side of magic. I took those kids as my responsibility since they sat in my shop for hours and I had seen what the Black Arts could do to a person too often. If I could help it, I wasn’t about to let them fall into that.
I’d already failed one kid in my life on that score.
With the group settled, I opened my book and easily found my place to continue reading. The day continued pretty much as it usually did after that. People wandered into the shop and drifted between the six book stacks that stood on either side of a large aisle that led straight to my desk-slash-cash register before wandering back out. A few of them just came in to use the bathroom that huddled in one corner and I gave a few the Evil Eye as they sized up the stairs that led up to my apartment and the closed door to the old office that was partially hidden under said stairs. Practitioners and those in the know also wandered in though only a handle of the magic-users bought anything. An old woman came in around noon and called me the Devil, snarling curses and quoting the Bible at the young practitioners as they returned from getting lunch. All of them ignored her scathing remarks but for Eric, for whom this was his first experience with her.
I shooed the woman away with a glare - which is hard to do with only one working eye - and she left spitting more curses at me, accusing me of fraternizing with demons. Funnily she was right in one respect; I used to work exclusively for demons. But I haven’t worked that job in almost three years and I’m pretty determined not to do so ever again.
Things settled down to nothingness about Crazy Betty left - that’s her name around the neighborhood, mind you, not something I call her. Nobody came into the shop and it was just the little practitioners and I sitting in the quiet.
It was when I started ushering the kids out that things decided to get iffy.
My left cheek seemed to catch fire and I hissed at the pain, clapping one hand over it. It had been a long time since something had set off the run tattooed on that cheek like that. And the list of things that could do that were filed under Powerful, Demonic, and Fuckin’ Scary As Shit.
“Go get in the office,” I said to the kids as I tugged one of the girls back inside. Digging out a set of keys, I flicked them at the eldest boy Jacob, who I’d taught to take down the wards I had in certain places of my shop-slash-apartment. “Get everyone in there. Something bad is coming.”
The kid knew better than to question me and he got the group moving, my keys jingling in his hand. They all followed him muttering to themselves and I waited until I heard the office door close and felt the wards around it go up before I moved. The old office is basically a bomb shelter; mainly there to protect my rare books but also for situations like this one.
Before I went outside, I walked back to my desk and leaned over to open the bottom drawer on the left side. The .45 Glock 21 I pulled from out of the it felt heavier than usual in my hand and I checked to make sure there was a full clip in it. Armed now, I strode back towards the front door and leaned out of it with the gun behind me. My cheek still burned furiously and I took a step outside just as a shadow coalesced into a huge, hulking being that resembled a Komodo Dragon given human form and somewhat squashed. The thing was covered in thick, plate scales of luminescent green and had narrow white eyes set over its blunt jaw filled with two rows of jagged fangs. It was five hundred pounds and seven feet of monstrosity and I gave it my best smile like it was one of the neighbors.
“Hiya, Jogesh,” I greeted at the best snarled at me. “How are the mate and the runts?”
The demon shifted and growled, “This isn’t a social call, Sius.”
I smiled coldly at that and let the arm with the gun fall to my side so it was visible to him. “Sure it is. I don’t work for demons anymore.” A scowl touched my face as I added, “So tell your masters to kiss my ass.”
“Sius,” growled Jogesh. “There are things going wrong. They want you to look into it.”
“They want me to look into demonic affairs?” At his silence, I hissed, “Sonovabitch. There’s something spawned by a mortal that has the ethereals in a twist? That’s why they can’t do shit?”
The big demon nodded and I cursed under my breath. Demon’s can walk on the earth and interact with those mortals that choose to see them. Anyone else was off limits and couldn’t be touched. If they wanted me to go after this person then it had to be someone they couldn’t touch.
Big question was…what sort of mortal that the ethereals couldn’t touch could summon up something that scared them?
I looked back up at Jogesh and said, “So there’s no info on this thing?”
“No,” he replied. “Only that it is here, hiding under human guise. Or human magic.” He shrugged his huge boulder sized shoulders and flashed his fangs at me in a grin. “Sorry, Sius. That is all I was told.”
I sighed and nodded at that, my grip relaxing a bit on the Glock.
“Yeah, I remember how choosy your masters can be with their words.”
Jogesh frowned then said softly, “They are still your masters too, Sius.”
My lips drew back into a feral snarl at that and my hand clenched on the gun. I kept myself from threatening the big demon with it as I growled, “No one is my master anymore, Jogesh.”
“Sius…you now that is not true.”
“Go,” I snarled at that, my face twisting into a mask of fury. I lifted the gun on him and spat, “Get the hell out of my sight, Jogesh. Before I kill you for saying that.”
He blinked at me then bowed his huge reptilian head as he sank back into the shadows.
“Very well, Sius,” he growled in a low voice. “But you know I speak true. So long as you wear that rune…you are as much a slave as I.”
He was gone then, leaving me standing in the street threatening the air with my Glock and my breath coming in sharp, harsh gasps. I just couldn’t believe his gall. Demons had had me serve them since I was thirteen, which was scarily as far back as my memory went. The rune tattooed on my cheek had been placed there by the group of demons that had trained me. It burned to varying degrees when certain supernatural things were around and what was what allowed me to be such a good hunter for my old masters.
I had fought for a year to get my freedom from my older masters - that was three years ago. Fought long, hard battles that I should not have come back from let alone have won.
I had been promised my freedom if I won those battles. And when I had won, I’d had that promise sworn in blood to make sure no demon would go back on their word. My old masters had at least had some semblance of humor but others…not so much.
Slowly I lifted a hand to touch my cheek, fingertips tracing the lines of the rune. I knew its shape well enough that I could follow the lines without seeing them.
My masters had been honorable but the demons that had turned me into a killer weren’t. I don’t know how they got their claws in me and bypassed the rules that they could touch mortals that didn’t willingly interact with them. But if they had been the ones Jogesh had been referring to, things might get very bad fast.
Though it didn’t matter who Jogesh had been talking about. My old masters and those that made me could kiss my ass. I was not going back to that life. Not now, not ever so long as I could live and breathe.
Sighing, I let my hand fall back to my side and turned to walk back into the shop. I went to the office door first and knocked on it in a pattern of notes from an old song, my signal to Jacob that all was all right. As the protective wards went down, I moved to my desk and sank heavily into the big chair, placing the Glock in front of me. I dropped my head into my hands as the kids came out and just listened as Jacob ushered them out the door to their homes. Then he walked slowly back to stand in front of my desk and my cheek twinged in response to his magic.
“Athan?” he said, voice trembling somewhat. “Athan, what was that?”
I lifted my head slowly to look at the teenager, who shifted nervously from one foot to the other. In my panic I had forgotten that out of all of the young practitioners, he would sense a demon. Once you touched the Black Arts, they touched you back. You feel it reaching out to you forever after the fact, even if you turn completely away form it. And the presence of demons plays havoc on your senses, having the tempting feel of the Black and like your brain is being crushed all at the same time.
“A demon,” I replied in a low voice. At Jacob’s quick intake of breath, I added, “We are friends of a sort. He came to give me a warning. And a job offer.”
The youth frowned. “A job?”
“You know very little about me, Jacob. And it’s better that way.”
“But…”
I lifted a hand, cutting him off with the motion. Sighing, I said, “Its best you and the rest find somewhere else to meet up for the next month or two. Things are about to get hectic around me, I think, and I don’t want you all dragged into it.”
Jacob’s expression showed that he didn’t like the idea but I knew that he would respect my wishes. The boy’s loyal to me if he’s anything and I know he’d be willing to walk into Hell itself if I asked him to because of what I did for him. But I could never do that to a kid; most especially not one I’d kept under my own wing.
His eyes, brown as mud, flicked down to the gun and he sighed.
“Be careful, Athan. Please.”
I smiled reassuringly but I’m not too certain I pulled it off well. Standing up, I leaned over and ruffled his shaggy crop of blonde hair.
“I’ll be fine, kid,” I assured him as I walked around the desk to steer him towards the door. “Try not to worry too much.”
“Can’t,” he said, smiling. He looked up at me then and added in a low voice, “You’re the closet thing I’ve got to a father, Athan. Don’t die. I…I don’t want to think about what I’d do to the one’s that killed you.”
He was gone then, slamming the door open as he fled in the wake of what he’d said. I just stood there in stunned silence, his words echoing in my ears. There had never been any indication that he thought of me that way and it was definitely something new.
It was a good feeling. Felt really good to know that there was still somebody in the world that would miss me if I died. And for that kid I’d definitely do my best not to go off and die.
I didn’t want him turning into the monster I knew he could become from using the Black Arts to avenge me.
Shaking worries and new revelations from my head, I locked the front door and headed towards the stairs behind my desk. I picked up the Glock as I went and put it back in its drawer before mounting the stairs up into my apartment. Its really nothing but a big room - dunno what the previous owners of my building used it for. There was a tiny bathroom in one corner with an ancient shower and a newer model toilet, which were the only things that had been up here when I’d moved in. I’d built in the tiny kitchen that was across from the bathroom, moving in the fridge, stove, and building the two counters that surrounded the tiny space. Three bookshelves stood on opposing sides of the room and between them were a coffee table sitting with two comfy secondhand chairs on a big rug and my monstrosity of a bed. An ancient steamer trunk sat at the end of the bed and there were enough wards on it to blow up however tried to touch it that wasn’t me. The last bits of the room were the old, claw-footed couch that sat near the stairs and my black and white TV.
Things tend to get broken around me so I try to keep my possessions old and secondhand. Makes them cheaper to replace later.
I didn’t bother turning on the lights as I got upstairs and trusted my memory of the room to lead me to my bed. Shoving off my heavy hiking boots, I let them drop next to the bed before collapsing onto it. I didn’t bother to get under the sheets - sleep wasn’t going to come to me this night. Not with everything that I had swirling through my head.
Staring at the ceiling, I muttered, “Now is the winter of our discontent.” Then I closed my eyes and tried to figure out just what the hell I was going to do next.