Jennie Janes, the Pistol Packing, Wheelchair Rolling, Licensed Demon Hunter

By Stephen Crane Davidson

A small girl played croquet, a solitary figure on a wide expanse of lawn. I drove my Harley through the gate and down the driveway to the house. The scene looked idyllic, far too calm for the call that summoned me.

I looked back at the lawn to reassure myself and the breath froze hard in my chest. The croquet ball had turned into a person's head severed below the chin, brains and blood leaking and trailing behind it.

The skull disappeared, replaced by a small round ball with a red stripe. I looked again, blinked a couple of times and shook my head. Must have been an odd angle of the sun. I reached for and fingered the three triangular shaped teeth that hung from a gold necklace around my neck.

Parking the bike in the circle, I pulled the lever that unlatched my wheelchair from the bike's platform, took off my helmet, rolled my chair down the now tilted platform and then up to the front door. I hadn't even rung the doorbell when the doord to reveal a tall, blond woman wearing three and a half inch pumps and a skirt slit to the waist. I wasn't quite expecting what I saw. The woman frowned at me, apparently not expecting what she saw, either.

"Can I help you," she said.

"Yes, I'm Jennie Janes. You called me."

The blond shook her head, but beckoned me inside. I followed her into a huge, window lit room with a grand piano at the far end. On the near side, sat a smaller woman, curled up on an ornate, imitation Victorian style couch. Dressed in translucent tights and a silk tunic cut deep in the front, the woman startled as if awaking from a dream when I rolled up in front of her. The tall woman left. I stuck my hand out.

"Jennie Janes. You must be the Ms. Serene who called."

"Y-yes," the woman said, sat up and brushed the front of her tunic as if it might have crumbs on it.

"Why don't you tell me about the demon problem you're having," I said in my most soothing voice while my brain tried to make sense of the seductive dress of the women, the staid neighborhood smelling of new mowed grass and the little croquet player.

Serene looked around the room. "I was afraid they'd get worse if they knew she'd called you."

"Worse than what?" I said.

"Start killing people."

I sighed. "Have they? Killed anybody?"

"Oh, no. Well, maybe...I don't know. They've ruined our business. You've got to help. Everybody's leaving."

"Ah. Who does lives here, then?" I said.

"Well, I do and the other women of course."

"The little girl I saw outside?" I said.

"No little girls here."

I looked out the window--no little girl. I pulled a notepad from my waist pouch, checked the demon hunter residential permit I'd obtained before coming and started writing notes. The permit was required by the U.S. Parliament's Act 449 passed in 2011. The croquet player would have been a demon visual. "Just what business do you do here?" I said.

"Any pleasure a man or woman wants to buy," Serene said.

Now the dress made sense. The place was a house of prostitution--high class given the neighborhood. "How long have you been infested with demons?"

The woman looked around again. "Two weeks. First some of our customers started seeing "bloody ghosts," then it got worse. A monster would appear at the end of the bed right when the customer was about to...."

"Yes, of course, no sense of decency. Go on," I said.

"Monsters. The customers left screaming. The things have appeared in every guest room in the house and the cottage is worse. Two of the girls left. That only left ten and I've cancelled all the appointments--you've got to help us."

"Certainly. Do all the woman live in this building?

"Yes, the entertainment rooms are here too, except for the 10K. It's a sound proof suite in the guest cottage."

"Sound proof?"

"Yeah, leather, boots, that sort of stuff.

"O-kay. You said you've been seeing all types of apparitions. Has anyone seen the same visage more than once?"

Serene curled her upper lip. "Yes, there's a huge male monster with oozing scales all over him."

I made a note. "Probably the demon's real shape. Not a good sign. The ghosts were forms the thing took at the beginning of the infestation or during the daylight hours like the girl I saw playing croquet.

"Has the demon ever done any damage, torn anything up?" I leaned forward. If the demon could obtain flesh and blood here, we were in for a serious fight.

Serene frowned a minute and then shook her head. "I don't think so, but--I'm not Serene," the woman said. "I'm Teddy and we haven't seen Serene since she called you, and Chrystal walked past the monitoring station and she heard screams and--"

"Monitoring station?" I interrupted.

"Yes, well there are always screams, but there aren't any customers here today."

"I see. You're afraid it was Serene?"

"Yes, except she never would use the room with a customer. Said it wasn't worth the money."

"Then why would you think it was her down there?"

"Well," Teddy said and brushed at her ample chest again.

"Serene used to go down there every afternoon and hang upside down from the rings. Said it made her back quit hurting."

"Uh-huh. Did anybody go and look?"

Teddy bit in on her lower lip, looked down and then shook her head. "No. We decided to wait for you."

"Hmm. Do you record this monitoring?"

Teddy looked away and then stared down again. "Yeah, we do. We've never used it against anybody, ever. We just--"

"I want to hear the tape," I said interrupting.

"Oh, well let's go then." Apparently relieved by my response, she abruptly stood up. We went to one of those old fashioned elevators with bronze sliding doors and rode up quietly, both looking at where the floor numbers might have been if there'd been any. Then I followed her down a hall covered with murals of various mythical creatures engaged in activities I'd never considered, through a locked door into another hallway and finally to a monitoring room with half a dozen vid screens and speakers facing a desk.

"Is there someone always monitoring this?" I said.

Teddy shook her head. "Emmanuel only monitors when someone is paying to use the 10K room."

I rolled into the room, while Teddy settled herself in a chair and moved another to make room for me. Any thoughts I had stopped immediately at the sound of a woman shrieking in intense pain. The sound faded to gasps and then back to screams. I motioned for Teddy to turn the recording off.

"How long does it go on like that?" I said.

Teddy looked down again. "About two hours."

"And nobody heard it?"

"Well, yes, I guess most of the way through it, Chrystal heard and she ran out and told me and we...."

"Were afraid to go look?" I ended her sentence for her. I didn't blame her. Demons were no laughing matter.

She nodded.

"Nobody's been down since?"

"No," she said and her face turned a delicate red.

"Don't blame you." I rolled back out of the room. "How about taking me to this room?"

"Yes, but how are you...."

I'd heard that question before. How are you, some wheelchair bound woman, going to defend yourself against something that apparently destroyed a fully abled woman. I lifted up the wooden left armrest of my chair and pulled out my semi-automatic. "If you hit them enough times, you can actually kill them before they transfer back to non-material. Problem is, if you don't hit them enough, they'll keep coming back trying to get you and they usually succeed and don't even think about trying those charms you get over the television prayer hour for only a one hundred dollar donation."

Id up the right side armrest of the chair and pulled out an amplified laser pointer and flicked it on. "But if you can get this in their eyes for about ten seconds, they usually don't ever return."

"What if you miss?" Teddy hugged herself.

"Then you hope you can hit 'em with enough bullets to make them go away or you die a very unhappy death. If that was Serene in there, she probably found a male demon. The females take four hours usually--not so quick as the males."

Teddy moved further away from me. I started back toward the elevator. No point in telling her the female demons took their time in torture--a bite here, a scratch there--a long time. The males weren't different in terms of violence. They just didn't last as long before they got hungry.

Morbid business I'm in, I thought as the elevator door clanged shut in front of me. I placed the gun in the chair arm with its handle out for easy retrieval. The laser I laid across my lap. The elevator started downward.

Teddy hugged herself tighter. Then she looked up at the ceiling of the elevator. "Emmanuel, meet me at the front door please." She turned and looked at me. "Emmanuel and I will take you to the door of the cottage. I'm not going inside."

At the front door, we met a tall, well-built man wearing tight cut-offs and a muscle shirt that showed off numerous sets of well-defined muscles. Very attractive, I might add, if you go in for that indefatigable look in a male. I do.

We followed a flower-lined, stone path that ran beside a small brook. Scattered amidst the honeysuckle scented blooms were anatomically correct, white plaster statues.

After a minute of bumping over grass and rocks as Emmanuel pushed my chair, we rounded a corner and looked at a large house that would have made many people a happy home.

Emmanuel and Teddy stayed at the doorway, giving me a card key to let me inside. The door closed behind me, the lights on automatically. I rolled in, sniffed the air and drew the gun. Definite acrid smell, the kind that burns your nose, but it was weak. Rectangular with a high ceiling, wallpapered walls and deep carpet, the room I entered held a complete complement of bar and living room type furniture.

Two of the walls had doors with signs above them. The one on the left said Victorian. I rolled over and holding the gun in front of me, I pushed the door

A four-poster bed dominated the room. Ornately carved, red leather furniture centered around a fieldstone fireplace. Long and short silk scarves hung from a rack to the side of the bed. Everything you needed to have a romantic evening of tying your 'entertainer' to the bed, but no demon.

I left the four-poster room and went to the other doorway. Above it was a sign that said--DUNGEON.

Heart pounding, I shoved the doorand pointed the gun inside. The acrid stench of terror and death stopped me.

A chandelier mounted high in the ceiling came on and lit the cavernous room. The walls and floor were of rock. Items for use covered the walls. A stone table dominated the far side of the room. I rolled towards it. Small pieces of cloth littered the floor around the table. I picked up a piece and then rolled around the table, looking for blood. Dark stains formed in the cracks of the rocks. I felt several. Nothing came up on my fingers--not unusual--after a major demon feasts, the imps will follow, cleaning up whatever was left. Rock was perfect for them, nothing seeped in.

I had started picking up the rest of the cloth when I looked up to see Emmanuel in the doorway. "As you can see," I said. "No demon and no Serene. Just pieces of cloth."

The man nodded and then backed away. In a moment, he returned with Teddy walking behind him. She peered around him before walking forward enough to look around, her mouthd in the form of an O. "W-where is she?"

"Dead."

"But whe--"

"Demons consume their victims."

Her face turned bright red and then lost all color.

A half-hour later, I sat in the room with the piano facing the assembled "staff" of the house. The names swirled around: Brittany, Buffy, Chrystal, Tiffany. Any one of the woman could have graced any magazine cover I'd ever seen.

Chrystal, Teddy and Emmanuel sat closest to me. The rest hovered near the far corners of the furniture setting.

"There's no turning back," I said. "By now, it's likely the demon can identify each one of your auras in his own plane so he can come back and haunt you anywhere. Believe me, his appetite is only wetted."

"He'd kill us, too?" said a tall, slender woman with stunningly red, curly hair.

I nodded. "They can only come in body to places that they've been to a great deal as a vision first." I noted the woman's sigh of relief. "Doesn't mean you can run," I said.

"All he's got to do is go where you're going and appear there enough times until he's able to adjust his body to that moment in time and place. You can't get away."

"We're paying you good money," Teddy said.

"Not enough," I said. "The bid I gave was for an apparition only, not for a demon that had fed. I can get rid of the demon, but it'll cost you another five hundred."

"Too much," Teddy said. "The church I called said they'd come and say some prayers, spray holy water and nail up a couple icons for only three hundred."

I shrugged. "Suit yourself. All I can tell you is that the Consumer Daily Nadir rated the churches as fifty percent effective in preventing infestations before they occurred and not at all effective in treating existing problems."

"Oh," Teddy said and brushed at her chest.

"You can look it up on the net." I said.

"I, guess. But that'll be it? You'll get rid of them--guaranteed."

"Satisfaction or your money back. There is one thing I've got to know first. Did one of you summon the demon?"

"No," came a chorus of voices. I studied the sound, studied the faces. "Okay, then," I said. "Has any of you been dabbling in the arts, so to speak?"

Again the same replies.

"Then the job will be easier. Unless someone is summoning him, the demon will reappear in your 10K room. I'll spend the night there and see what I can do. In the meantime, keep a gun beside you and shoot to kill if you see one. You might get lucky."

"Shouldn't we get someone to stay with us?" said a small woman with blond hair. Brittany, I think.

"You could," I said. "But the more people in a room, the more tasty to the demon. Stay away from anything that produces strong emotions. The demons are most attracted to pain and fear, but they're also attracted by say--sex.

"Is all that clear?" I said.

All the heads nodded agreement until I looked at Teddy.

"What do we do about Serene?" Teddy said.

"You can call the police, but they won't want to believe you, and they will want to investigate as if it was a murder. They want everyone to believe demons don't infest "nice" neighborhoods like this," I said.

"Investigate here? Uh, well," Teddy said. "I guess if anyone asks, we'll tell them she left. I don't think she had any family."

I shrugged. "All I have is your word for it that she existed. A pile of shredded cloth doesn't a murder make."

After a few more questions, they drifted off to their rooms. Outside darkness had fallen. Teddy did not leave.

She stayed in her chair, her arms wrapped around herself.

"Aren't you scared?" she said.

"Sure," I said. "But it's what I get paid for. Any job's got its dangers."

She frowned. "I guess. Well, here's the key."

I took the card from her and watched her as she walked away. "Teddy?" I said.

She turned back toward me.

"You sure nobody is messing with black magic, drawing circles, that kind of stuff? It's real important I know."

"Don't know" she said. "Any one of them could. Maybe even Chrystal. She's pretty new. Don't know her that well."

"Watch yourself," I said.

Teddy smiled, a wan, drawn smile.

The yard lights illuminating the path in front of me, I rolled over to the cottage,d the door and went inside.

I almost wished the lock had jammed. I'd rarely had to confront a demon that had already gorged on flesh.

I settled myself in a corner of the "Dungeon" room.

Above me, I attached my portable motion detector to a pair of handcuffs that hung from the ceiling. Even if I fell asleep, the motion detector would wake me if anything happened. The thought didn't console me. If the demon came back, it would return because of hunger. I put the demon's rights statement in my lap where I could get it and read it out loud quickly--damn the Supreme Court and those pointy-nosed lawyers, too.

Just as I added another curse for lawyers, half-hidden in shadows, something moved on the other side of the room.

Laser in one hand and wheeling the chair with the other, I rolled closer. The motion detector started beeping.

Another set of handcuffs hung from the ceiling and moved slightly in a breeze. I looked at the wall behind, and there was an air register framed by dark paneling rather than the rock, apparently to allow the placement of the duct. I made a mental note to check the paneling in the morning. I had been trained to check out anything different. It might lead somewhere. For now, I needed my vantage point in the other corner, and I wheeled back to my position.

At least the room wasn't cold and damp like a real dungeon, I decided, settled myself into my chair and shifted the little derringer in my pocket so it didn't stick into my thigh. The night wore onward, a slow progression of fears.

By five AM, it started to be hard to stay awake. I kept startling myself when my chin hit my chest. To stay awake, I started fantasizing being held and caressed in Emmanuel's strong arms.

I woke with a jolt to the motion detector beeping and a woman screaming.

"They got her," the voice screamed.

I blinked and put the laser down. Teddy stood in the doorway screaming.

"Calm down," I said and wheeled toward her.

"They got her and Jim, oh please stop it, stop it."

"Who got who, Teddy," I said in as quiet a voice as I could use and be heard over the woman's screams and sobs.

"Tiffany, she must have snuck out, went down to the motel over past the end of the property and met her boyfriend."

I looked at the round, fear contorted face and decided on a different tactic. "Come here and sit down. Tell me what happened just as it happened."

"Emmanuel heard an ambulance and police sirens down there about an hour ago. He called a friend of ours in the department and when the guy finally called back, he said they found a room full of blood stains everywhere and fragments of clothes--men's and women's. I went around and checked all the rooms in the house. Tiffany's room was empty. Jim was her...friend. Buffy said she saw them together."

"How close is the motel," I asked.

"The other side of the woods from this building, maybe a hundred yards. But the woods are thick and you can't see it."

"Do you use the motel for customers?"

"No. Don't even know the people who own it."

"Have the police come here to ask questions?"

"No, probably won't either. We have a deal and Emmanuel already told them that we don't know anything and were closed for business all week--everybody on vacation."

I scratched at the back of my head. "How did they discover the...situation?"

"The maid came in the morning, knocked and when nobody answered, she went inside."

"Strange, there must have been screams. I'd think somebody would have heard."

Teddy shook her head. "It's a ma and pa place and the cop said pa is close to deaf."

I fingered the right flap on the arm of my wheel chair, pulling it up and letting it spring back repeatedly. "I have to believe that someone here is calling the demon for it to be able to just appear in physical form somewhere nearby.

"Somebody is lying."

Teddy stared at me.

"I'll need to go in everyone's rooms and look. Gather everyone together and get their key cards so you and I can go in the rooms and search."

Chrystal complained loudly about having her room searched. All the other woman acquiesced, huddling together as if the demon might appear right then and there. It came as no surprise to me that I found a thick, black, half-burnt candle and incense in Chrystal's room. Not guilt per-se, but it sure made me suspicious. Suspicious enough to ask Chrystal to stay with me that night in the dungeon room. At first, she refused. Then, oddly, she agreed without any other comments.

By nine that night, Chrystal, now dressed in jeans and a sweatshirt, sat next to me in the Dungeon room. Between us on the floor sat a thermos of coffee and a couple of cups. I had determined that I would not fall asleep this time.

Chrystal curled up into the shape of a just unwound ball and appeared to be trying to read. Every minute or two she would look up and gaze quickly around the room, then return to her reading. I noticed she rarely turned the page.

Time passed slowly. I didn't attempt to talk to Chrystal. She had yet to be friendly since she'dd the door for me the other day.

By one in the morning, Chrystal's head lay on the chair arm. She snored. I poured myself another cup of coffee.

The grotesque creature appeared slowly, beginning as a vague but growing haze on the opposite side of the room. I put down the coffee, pulled the laser pointer out of my wheel chair arm and then waited until the last moment that the thing had any transparency left to its body before I switched the laser beam on and shot it straight at the beast's eyes as I calmly read the brute its rights.

I had it and I knew it, a perfect trap. Though my heart pumped heavy in my chest and sweat beaded on my forehead, still, I knew.

The monster screamed in agony and its body shook with contortions, but he could not move, could not even so much as blink, such is the effect of a strong light beam directly pointed on a demon's eyes.

Chrystal screamed. I ignored her, kept my gaze focused on the demon. If my hand wavered the least the creature would be free to attack instead of writhing in agony. With relief, I could see the beast's form starting to dematerialize.

Chrystal kept screaming, and I wished she'd quit. Damn, we'd won, couldn't she see it?

A huge, clawed hand suddenly appeared in the side of my vision just before it batted my wheelchair and sent me flying. Chrystal had been screaming because she'd seen another demon, I thought just before I slammed torso first into the rock wall.

I tried to pull myself up and slumped back down with my head spinning too fast to move. Had to get up, I told myself. I tried again. I could see a huge dark shape lumbering toward me.

CRACK--the sound pierced my ears, and I flattened myself to the floor--crack, crack. My gun--Chrystal.

I reached around blindly trying to find the laser. My fingers scraped bare rock. The light around me dimmed. I stopped searching for the laser and levered myself up on my elbows. My eyes focused and to my horror, the dark mass in front of me took on the form of a giant female demon. The thing grabbed at the bullet holes in its stomach and side. Green ochre spewed from the wounds.

The beast screamed in torment and then reached down and snatched for me. I rolled and tried to twist away but its blunt, ragged nails caught in my blouse, tearing it off me and raking searing cuts across my back.

It lunged forward again. The claws barely missed as I launched myself backwards on my hands and hit the cold of the rock wall, cornered.

The beast lurched forward with a slight stagger, bullet after bullet hitting its body. So close now its foul ochre streamed over me and I could smell the sewer of its breath, the demon stood back upright, screamed and started to fade, to return to its home in another time and place.

The male demon charged from behind it, went straight through the dissolving body of the female and into a hail of bullets. It flailed its arms, the nails coming within inches of my bare flesh.

Click, click, I heard the sound, knew the sound of an empty clip.

Not fast enough, I rolled to the side and the immense claws scraped me across the ribs. Despite myself, I screamed. Ochre spewed over my back and burned like acid in my wounds. The clawed hands reached down and grabbed me. I struggled, fought, bit at the stinking body. Picking me up with one paw, it crushed me against its slimy body and started to back away from Chrystal, heading to the other side of the room.

The monster threw me down on the rock table at the other end of the room. My legs fell useless to the side. I gasped for breath, tried to crawl off and get away, but with my first movement a huge paw slammed me down on the rock of the table.

Chrystal screamed.

The thing clawed at my pants, shredding them to ribbons. I squirmed, tried to move from under the heavy paw that pinned me. The beast screamed. The weight lifted and I bolted upright, only to be grabbed around the stomach and lifted into the air above the beast's head and then lowered to its eye level. I struggled fruitlessly as it shifted me back and forth, eyeing my body with its beady red eyes.

Utter terror emptied my lungs of air. The blood pounded in bursts against my skull. The beast's huge mouthd, the front teeth jagged, sharp and long. It turned me so that I faced its drooling jaws. Burning hot breath scathed across my chest. Frantically, I tried to arch my body back from those teeth, to push it away with one hand while trying to squirm my other hand toward my pants pocket. Twisting and shoving away from it, I succeeded enough to only feel its teeth graze my ribs with its first bite.

Enraged, it squeezed my stomach so hard my mouth popped Maintaining that grip, the beast lowered me down to its mouth. Its teeth planted against my flesh just as I freed the derringer from my pocket and shot the beast in the neck.

Bellowing with rage, the creature dropped me to the table.

Its paws grabbed at the bullet wound in its neck.

Screaming again with frustration, the male started to fade. He'd been hit too many times, the pain too much. The monstrous body disappeared and just in time. If it had taken just one bite and swallowed, it would have never stopped, even with a hole in the throat.

My breath came in huge gulps. My heart pounded so hard it rattled. The light in the room faded in and out with my breaths. Chrystal appeared beside me, her face an ashen pale.

"I'm, sorry...didn't believe...thought you were ripping us off while some wierdo...oh God," she said and buried her face in her hands.

Still not able to sit up, I caught enough of my breath to speak. "Okay. Is there water here?"

"Water?" Chrystal said her eyes still too wide to have understood.

"Water."

"Yes, ah, they use it sometimes for...."

I closed my eyes to the pain and took a deep breath.

"Chrystal, strip the rest of the clothes off me and rinse me down with water, now, quick, please."

"Strip--"

"Now, Chrystal," I said interrupting. "The blood of the thing will eat the flesh off me."

"Oh," she said and with the same speed she'd manage to shoot two demons with, she soon had me naked and washed down. Using salve they kept in the cottage, I was treated and not much later dressed again in a new and highly revealing set of clothes. I didn't care. I wouldn't have cared if I'd been nude in front of the town gossip and woke up to find I really was. I was alive and though stunned at first, the numbness soon changed to anger. I'd get that demon. I didn't bother telling Chrystal she'd violated the female demon's rights by not reading the warning.

With Chrystal beside me, I checked the dungeon room, knocking on walls. Given that Chrystal had defended me, I couldn't believe she had summoned the demon. Therefore, there had to have been a way for the demon or demons to get from the 10K room to the motel. That was the first problem.

The wall by the air register reverberated with a hollow sound. The wall had to be fake. I knocked on the rest of the walls--solid stone and I began to wonder--perhaps the fake wall hid a tunnel to the hotel, a tunnel that the demons had traveled. Having a choice of attacking me or going down the tunnel to the motel, they'd chosen the couple instead of me that night, probably because the couple had been having sex and drew the beasts with that act. Made sense. One problem solved. No one had summoned the demons.

After checking the room completely, we went to the house and called another meeting. Soon, Teddy sat on one side of me and Chrystal on the other as we told the frightened group of the night's events. When I completed the story, I asked the question that had been bothering me since finding the fake wall. I turned to Teddy. "Did you buy this house as is?"

"Yes," she said, her eyebrows down in an uncertain frown.

"The dungeon room was here before you bought the place?"

"Yes," she said.

"Didn't you think that was strange, to have a rock room like that?"

Teddy shook her head. "The man that owned the house disappeared. We bought on auction about three years later."

I smiled, the first relief I'd felt all night. "I'll bet he did disappear. And I'd bet this place has been on and off infested with demons for some time. The previous owner must have attracted them. Probably made sacrifices to them down there. Might have used the tunnel to the hotel room to get his victims. Likely a misguided devil worshipper. Finally, the demons got too hungry and ate their benefactor, too."

"But what can we--"

"There is something," I interrupted Teddy. "It'll cost a little extra and we'll have to start now."

It wasn't until the morning that we were able to buy the cameras, speaker, mike and projectors. All the woman and Emmanuel worked at setting it up. Happily, somewhere Emmanuel had some background in munitions. That part turned out to be easy. By midnight we had set up. Chrystal volunteered, bless her. It wasn't something I would have wanted to do.

On the rock floor a pool of blood glistened ominously. Cuffs around her wrists and her ankles tied together, Chrystal dangled from the ceiling.

Stripped of clothing except a silk chemise, red smears striped her legs, making her look the victim of torture. In places, the chemise was ripped and the cloth, stained with red, stuck to her skin. She wiggled and squirmed as if trying to escape. Her eyes stayed wide, her breath so fast you could hear it, rasping, echoing against the stone walls.

On the walls on either side of Chrystal were large posters with signs warning demons to stay away or be killed and one poster with the demon right's to warning before undue search, seizure or annihilation printed on it. Not that anyone thought demons could read, but the law's the law.

Occasionally, Chrystal moaned and kicked around causing her to sway back and forth. Her gaze stayed riveted to the other side of the room.

At two AM, the creature appeared. The female's form materialized, became solid. She looked at Chrystal and started approaching. Chrystal gasped and tried to swing away. I kept my finger on the trigger, waiting, we needed both of the demons there in the flesh.

The demon closed on Chrystal and the woman's screams pierced the room. The male appeared, its form still transparent.

The female lunged forward to run a claw down Chrystal's body, but Chrystal arched her body away, just out of reach.

The male became more solid, but not enough.

The female stood still a moment, watching Chrystal swing back and forth and then casually sauntered closer to the woman. The creature's claws extended, gleamed. Suddenly, a huge paw struck out, raking down Chrystal's side.

The beast screamed in rage. The male solidified.

I pushed the button and the room turned into a fiery explosion that melted the camera we observed from.

"Can you let me down, now?" Chrystal said, her voice sounding plaintiff.

Teddy took a chair, put it under Chrystal's feet and then using another chair to stand on, she undid the cuffs. Rubbing her wrists, Chrystal bent down, untied the strap around her ankles and stepping carefully around the camera's, she came to look at the screen where we all sat staring at snow. Too bad about the projectors. Holograph projectors are expensive and the four we'd used surely died in the explosions and flame.

"Think it worked?" Chrystal said as she rubbed at the catsup staining her body.

I nodded, though it wasn't until the next day when I checked and gathered teeth to add to my necklace that I could verify. The room itself was gutted and I had to search to find the teeth. There were definitely two sets.

My necklace looks a lot better now with the additions of my new trophies. Chrystal and I have stayed friends, and from her, I learned Teddy and the others decided to close the 10K service not wanting to attract any new demonic guests.

Chrystal even said she might want to join me--be an apprentice. Says she's getting bored with entertaining.

I think she's nuts.