Page 73 of Burn for the Devil

“Tick tock, tick tock,” the man sang in a high-pitched voice, swinging a gold pocket watch back and forth. He shoved it back inside his vest and a walking cane seemed to materialize in his other hand. My eyes couldn’t process what I was seeing, unable to determine if he’d moved too fast, I was unobservant, or if he was a magician. All three options were highly possible at this point.

“Samantha,” the man said, lifting his cane toward me. “You’re as fresh as a newborn baby.” I glanced at Ramone before returning my gaze to the person several feet in front of me.

“Father. What are you doing?” Ramone said. I could feel the fear and anger in his voice.

“This is interesting.” His father stepped closer to me and took a deep breath. I gasped when I felt an intrusion, as if something sharp had entered my head and heard Ramone hiss.

“You’re not very magical,” the man sneered. “Completely, utterly, devoid of any meaning or advantage. You should be ashamed of yourself.” He spit on my shoe. Not only was he disgusting, but he almost appeared younger than the man who’d called him “father” and I wasn’t certain what to think of the discrepancy.

“Julian...” Ramone warned, a calm coming over him as he slid a knife from his sleeve.

Watching the two men square off, I watched the orange fog slowly grow in the far corner of the room. It was interesting to me that my companion referred to his parent by their first name although seeing how Julian treated others, I understood. I’d never been called such names before—or spit on, for that matter. The wet glob sat on my shoe, immoveable, and there was nothing nearby with which to clean it.

Julian looked down his nose at me. “Perhaps birthing hips? But alas, you fail to possess the capability to birth demon seed, don’t you? Your breasts are, shall we say... lacking as well. C cup. Pathetic.”

Horrified, my mouth dropped open. “What? Ramone?” Was he really going to let this man speak to me this way? I pulled my arm away from Ramone as Julian started laughing, his amusement resounding maniacally through the room.

My boyfriend appeared almost as shocked as I felt, as if this was a new level of grotesque behavior from his father. “Do not speak to her this way. Do not speak to her at all,” he growled.

I spun on my heel, intent on leaving the room and getting away from Julian; Ramone could just find me later.

After only one step, I walked into an invisible wall. I shook Ramone’s hand from me and threw my hands up. I was faced with the same type of barrier I’d dealt with in my nightmares, a prison undetectable to the naked eye. Turning back around, I asked, “What are you doing?”

Julian snickered. “You’re a distraction. Am I repeating myself? No, I don’t think I am.” He clapped his hands together, a grin spreading across his face. Whoever this man really was, he had some serious issues.

Peering around the room, I hoped to see Ramone's friends somewhere, coming to our aid and was left disappointed. Of all the people he’d killed, it surprised me his supposed fatherremained alive. He didn’t seem to be the type he’d let suffer to live.

Ramone stalked toward the man, the air appearing to shimmer around him. “I expect you to apologize to her. Now.”

“Hee hee.” Julian giggled, making me cringe. “No apology forthcoming. However,youshould apologize tome.”

He raised his knife. “For what?” He stopped directly in front of his father.

Julian smiled and bit his thumb, squeezing his eyes while bringing his shoulders up to his ears. “For giving you a great puzzle game which you failed. I would’ve been so proud of you, but you ruined everything. Consider yourself dethroned.” Julian raised a hand in the air dismissively and rolled his eyes.

“You gave me a game? What were the rules? You know no more sources of magic exist. You created a game with no viable pieces or choices for your own perverse pleasure.”

His father tapped a shoe on the ground as I felt something behind me. “You drank the wine, dumbass,” his father intoned, losing his chaotic manner of speaking.

A slimy feeling crawled up my spine as I watched the scene before me. My heart began thudding in my chest, and the urge to turn around weighed down on me as I felt something approaching.

“You cursed the wine? Why in the hell would you do that?” he boomed.

His outburst caused me to back up a step as I watched him attempt to stab his father in the neck. Horrified, I saw Ramone being lifted into the air without his father touching him and at the same time, something grabbed me.

When I twisted around, I was faced with the same beings I’d run into on the side of the road, only this time I had a better view. They were nearly translucent, their skin thin and papery with an odd sheen, their eyes nearly as yellow as their greasystrands of hair. Letting out a scream, I shrugged my shoulder, hoping to remove the oily-looking hand but it grabbed me. Boney fingers curled around my upper arm before another being glided across the floor and took my other arm in its cold grasp.

My ankle twisted when I resisted being tugged forward and the action dropped me to my knees. The creatures wouldn’t relent and began to drag me across the floor, my legs kicking as I tried to right myself. In no hurry, they casually pulled me along the cold marble floor, giving me a front row seat to the spectacle of Ramone fighting whatever hold his father had over him.

36

Samantha

Watching the man I was inexplicably drawn to be abused by his own flesh and blood filled me with almost as much rage as the foreign creatures did. Ramone was still suspended off the floor and was now held against a wall, his jaw twitching while his father mimicked an old-style dance from the nineteen seventies, jutting his hip and pointing at the ceiling. I was having a hard time believing the two men were related, between Julian’s younger appearance and the widely diverting personalities. It was as if I were trapped in a nightmare carnival, full of deceptions and trickery where no one got out alive.

As if he felt my eyes on him, Julian whirled around and started sauntering toward me, still copying the same dance. “Stayin’ alive is not in your future,” he sang to me. “Not in my wayward son’s either.”

The dragging stopped, but not my restrictions. “What is wrong with you? Let him go,” I whimpered.