Page 13 of Demons & Damnation

The tearing of muscle and tendons filled the air as Azazel inched his fingers through his brother’s neck. Blood poured over both of them as if Balthazar’s neck were a sponge being squeezed dry of water.

“But I guess there’s one thing I’m grateful of,” Azazel said, sneering in his brother’s face. “And that’s knowing she’d rather stab herself in the gut than bear your child.”

Before Balthazar could even make sense of what he’d just heard, the sickening crunch of his neck being snapped rang through the empty night.

Chapter 7

Azazel took off after killing his younger brother for the thousandth time. Luckily for Mildred, Balthazar, and the rest of the village, the pub grounds still belonged to the Worthington estate, meaning Mildred could hide the evidence of the horror that just took place in The Phantom Horse car park.

Being a ghost had its advantages, but also its disadvantages. In order for Mildred to remain what humans call an ‘intelligent haunting’ as opposed to a ‘residual haunting,’ she had to bind her soul to one place in order to use its physical presence as an anchor for her existence.

Having worked all her life serving the respected Worthington family, it made sense to Mildred to remain within its boundaries. At least the extent of the estate stretched over many acres, so she wasn’t confined to the house.

Using some brown sugar and strawberry jam, Mildred summoned an army of ants to her aide. Seeing Balthazar’s bulk floating millimetres off the ground as her small soldiers carried him to the house made Mildred smile. She could have used a simple levitation spell or cast some blue-flower petal powder to make the entire scene invisible, but years of boredom and loneliness had led Mildred to turn her attention to means outside of spells. Perhaps the casting of a complicated spell to enable her to interact with nature had helped, but aside from that, her spell usage these days was becoming as decayed as her physical body in the local graveyard.

With the thought in her mind of where she wanted Balthazar’s broken body putting, the ants marched into the house, down the hallway, and into the huge living room. In front of the open fireplace, which housed a small, active fire, Balthazar’s limp mass came to rest on the carpet, head first, with each ant then working its way backwards so as not to be crushed under his deadweight limbs.

Like a synchronised human army, the troop of ants moved across the red carpet and onto the dark wooden floor in the hallway like a living shadow sweeping through the old house. They stopped in unison at Mildred’s feet, waiting for their payment.

A sheet of greaseproof paper lay on the floor, covered in pea-sized balls of brown sugar mixed with strawberry jam. Each ant took one tiny ball, before scurrying out of the door and back into the surrounding grounds. Mildred mentally thanked them all again for their help before closing the door and heading to Balthazar’s side.

From the mess Azazel had made, she roughly calculated how long it would take the younger brother to re-awaken. Judging from the re-aligned bones, and connective tissue re-working itself into place, she estimated around thirty more minutes before Balthazar would be awake again. By then, he would be hungry. Perhaps she should sort him out a little dinner.

***

AZAZEL SAT AT THE EDGE of the lake in the local nature reserve. Shrouded with tall reeds and covered in hundreds of frogbit, the only thing that gave away the demon’s presence was the splash that happened every minute or so from the loose dirt he threw into the water.

He hated bringing up the past, picking over old scabs and re-opening wounds. But somewhere deep down inside him, he just couldn’t quite completely forgive his brother for what he’d done.

Allowing himself to drift back into memories of Cassia, his heart became weighted like a ships anchor when he pictured her deep copper coloured hair, vibrant blue eyes that would rival any Egyptian shade of blue, and the dazzling smile she always gave when he walked through the door.

A ghost of a kiss tickled his lips as he remained locked inside his world with his former wife. Behind closed eyes and a soft heart, Azazel barely kept his fractured soul together. He didn’t permit himself many moments like this, but his brother’s persistent whining of wanting to find himself a woman had scratched deeper than Azazel had realised.

Over the years, he’d tried thousands of times to step into Cassia’s world; a world where she knew nothing of Lucius or Octavio, but each time he attempted to follow every moment of the life she lived, he was kicked out like it was some sort of bucking bronco and he was the failed cowboy trying to tame it.

Desperation had risen and fallen in swells over the first millennia, but as time went by, the ability to live with the past became easier. As far as he and Balthazar were concerned, well, that was a curse both were damned to for eternity. They’d struggled along this far, trapped in a concurrent pattern of one drowning the other in a river of dark emotion before allowing him up for air and then sinking himself into the murky depths.

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