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Scream of the Butterfly
Part 2
By: T.G. Browning
Kevin manufactured a confidence, an overweening pride in his supposed strength and cleverness and prayed that the demon wouldn’t be suspicious. The hook Kevin used had been baited with the faintest hint of a human mistake. One the demon would be able to capitalize upon, if he fulfilled the order exactly as Kevin had ordered it. It all depended upon the greed and confidence of the demon.
You can’t over-estimate the power of greed. Keep telling yourself that, Kev, keep thinking it. Maybe it will be as true for a demon as it is for a human.
It was.
Kevin could see that it had worked. The demon snarled furiously and seemed to struggle with renewed strength but Kevin could feel the gloating behind the façade. After a moment, Kev added one more stricture, one that would assure one thing — that the demon would be unable to touch his soul, either to possess or devour it. For a moment, the demon really did rage, disappointed that the ultimate prize, a soul, should be denied it. Then Kevin could feel it mentally shrug almost fatalistically as it settled for killing him. That cemented the illusion that Kevin had made a stupid mistake. He’d added a bit more control, one more stricture after the mistake and the demon was now positive that Kevin hadn’t realized his error.
It finally acknowledged the pact, an agreement signed in blood that couldn’t be broken, only twisted and warped, or so the creature thought. It disappeared, leaving Kevin weak and nearly fainting.
He’d done it.
Pam would be free.
And Kevin would die.
One demon down, and now, one almost demonically put-out partner to go. Kevin wasn’t sure which was the greater test.
4: Build-up
Pam was in the process of grilling Kevin when the call came. For a moment, she glared at him, suspicious that he might have been jiggering things but shook her head when she realized her annoyance was getting the upper hand.
“Whitby & McKinley. Pam speaking.”
“Pam, you guys better get down here. I just discovered a burglary and it looks like some of your stuff was tripped. Maybe you can figure out what happened.”
Pam sucked in a breath and then replied. “On our way. Don’t mess with our stuff. Kevin’s got some booby traps on it and only half of what you see is actually anything at all. The rest of our stuff is hidden — but you might mess up some of the data if you monkey with it. Have you called the police?”
“No, but I — ”
“Don’t Not yet. Let us get up there and look things over first. I doubt if the cops could do anything immediately and we need to have a free hand for now. Okay?” From the expression on Pam’s face, Kevin could tell that the caller probably didn’t think so, but that that was their standard operating procedure.
Kevin was already headed for the door to the garage. From the look on Pam’s face and what little he heard, he knew that Sam Dawson had to have been the caller. Dawson Dynamics was a start-up firm working with organo-luminescent LED and quantum nanotube CPU’s; it was their biggest client at the moment. Only three clients knew their home number and neither of the other two had had covert set-ups at all.
He grabbed a backup kit that weighed about three times what it looked to weigh, dumped it into the rear seat of their Jeep Wrangler and took shotgun while Pam locked up the house and grabbed her own stuff. He did a double take when he realized she had donned a shoulder holster before her jacket and when she got in, regarded her. Sometimes she acted on hunches that she didn’t even know she had.
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