Demid: A Fallen Angel Novel

By Sean P. Martin

Still reeling from the death of his daughter, Fallen Demon Demid E'mon finds his past affecting the present. An ancient gift proves to be a curse, and in the hands of his enemies, could spell the end for all of his kind - Angel and Demon alike.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Sean P. Martin
• Release date: Jan 23, 2015
• ISBN: 9781311721150

Sean P. Martin

Sean P. Martin lives in Dunedin, New Zealand (not Florida), with his wife, his kids, his animals, and his gadgets. In his day job, he works with children and families. He has never managed to grasp the concept of relaxation, choosing to spend his free hours slaving over a keyboard.

Book preview

DEMID:

A Fallen Angel Novel

Smashwords Edition

Sean P. Martin

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com or your favorite retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Copyright © 2015 Sean P Martin

All rights reserved.

DEDICATION

For all the ‘bit players’ and ‘background characters’. We are all the central figure in our own lives; each of us has our own story to tell.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

As always, this book would not have come about were it not for the support of my wife and children. They keep me grounded, motivated, busy and frustrated, often all at the same time!

Credit for the stock images used on the covers must go to Camaryn, Dutchystock and Tigg at DeviantArt.

DISCLAIMER: This ebook is a work of fiction. Names, places, dates etc. are fictitious or have been used fictitiously. Any resemblance to real people, events, Angels or Demons is purely coincidence.

1

My name is Demid E’mon. I am what is known as a Fallen Demon, and a fine figure of a man if I do say so myself, despite what some have called my ‘weight issue’. I don’t have an issue with my weight, and if you know what’s good for you, neither will you. Now, demons Fall (or perhaps that should be ‘rise’) for a variety of reasons. Some don’t have the guts for the job, some get demoted, and some are too ‘good’ for it. I am not one of those. I was bored, frankly. Maiming, torturing and interfering with people in painful and inventive ways just lost its sparkle after a few hundred years. Trust me – there are only so many ways you can remove a limb or internal organ without repeating yourself, and after that it’s just mindless drudgery.

Spending time here on Earth has given me lots of opportunity to just do things my own way, and experience things I never would have had the chance to, had I stayed in Hell. Like movies, fast cars, Taco Bell. And yes, even love.

Her name was Candy. We met when she was twelve years old, and was a prostitute working the streets in Winters Hill.

It was the end of another day, and I had decided to take the Olds out for a spin. I often played a sort of game with myself on my evening drives, taking random turns to see where I would end up and then having to navigate back home again. This was in the days before everyone had GPS, of course. There was actually some degree of challenge to it. But I digress.

The sun had set, the streetlights were shedding their watery yellow glow on everyday objects, casting them half in shadow, and the neon advertisements had not long come to life, when I saw her. It sounds cheesy, and maybe it is, but the way the light shone down seemed to cast a halo around her. That’s what drew my attention, and made me slow down. I’m not a prude, and I have no objection to paying ladies for their services, but I have never felt the urge to engage in sexual congress with children. And a child she most definitely was, as were ninety percent of the others working the corners on this street.

I slowed, and like a flock of seagulls descending on an unwary sandwich, an army of pre- and early-teen workers stepped out from the shadows and displayed their ‘attractiveness’ to compete for my money. I hardly noticed; I was captivated by Candy. Of all the children here, she was the only one who didn’t step forward. I pulled up right in front of her and lowered the window. She leaned down, her cleavage enhanced by the sparkling pink boob tube she wore, and cracked her gum as she spoke.

Name’s Candy. Whaddaya afta? Straight, oral, backdoor? Bareback’s extra.

I was speechless. To hear someone that young, saying things like that without flinching, really galled me. It was an unusual feeling. We talked further about prices and services for a couple of minutes, and with every sentence she spoke, I felt a change occurring deep within me. The general urge to cause mayhem that I harbored became something more… focused. It was weird. I made some excuses to her and drove off. The Olds seemed to want to drive incredibly fast on the way home, so I let it. The squeal of tires and angry gestures from other drivers distracted me temporarily from the disquieting emotions I was feeling.

*

Chez E’mon was nothing like what you’re probably picturing. No dark, imposing hedges, no turrets or towers, no bronze doorknocker shaped like a gargoyle. No butler named Igor, either. Instead, it was a plain white, wooden structure that was basically indistinguishable from its neighbors on either side. Small front lawn, kept trimmed. Small backyard, kept clear. Tiny garden, kept free of weeds. Single-car garage, just big enough for the Olds. Welcome mat at the front door. Boring, boring, boring. On the outside, anyway.

Inside was a different matter. Still no obvious signs that I was different to anyone else, just a subtle feeling that something wasn’t quite right. Well, that’s what my infrequent visitors had said over the years, anyway. In between screams, usually. What? That’s what you get when you try to sell Jesus door-to-door to a Demon.

I’d had the basement dug and fitted out specially, to give me a place in which to indulge my darker side. It was completely soundproofed, and I kept a full range of power tools and their non-powered counterparts secured in a cupboard. The floors were concreted, with a gentle slope that allowed…fluids… to drain easily. There area was divided into four rooms, each of roughly the same 6x6 dimensions. Connecting walls were barred, like prison cells, but I had also installed heavy curtains so that if I chose, whomever was inside would be unable to see out. This was a place I felt at peace. It was somewhere I could just be myself. I liked it.

As I parked the Olds and walked inside, I still could not quiet the emotion swimming heavily in my gut. It was disturbing, to say the least. I walked slowly through the house to the basement, the repetitive thumping sound of my feet striking the floor helping me to focus. I must admit, though, that I was still a little distracted as I descended the stairs to the basement.

My latest ‘guest’, Lance Edwards, was still in residence, a foul-smelling, yellow-toothed burglar. He’d had the exceedingly stupid idea to enter my house during the hours of darkness, looking for valuables or other easily-fenced items. What he’d found was a very light-sleeping Fallen Demon who didn’t really believe in leaving things to law enforcement. When he did find me, he made the exceedingly stupid decision to attempt homicide. He stabbed me twelve times, and then went back to ransacking my abode. The look on his face when I caught up with him in the kitchen was priceless. As were the fine Egyptian cotton sheets he’d ruined with my blood. Forgiveness was a very long way from my mind.

For such a scrawny man, his pain tolerance and recuperative powers surprised me; so far, he’d been here three days, and was still mostly lucid and fever-free.

I opened the cell door and stepped inside. Lance was asleep, unconscious or had finally died. Using my foot, I poked the stump that had until recently been his left arm. No response. I poked harder. Lance whimpered and drew the stump closer in to his trunk. Now that I knew he was still alive, I opted for increasing levels of discomfort to encourage wakefulness. I began by fetching some salted water and a razor blade. Then, completely without hurry, I began to cut him and salt each wound. The score marks varied in length, depth and location on his body, although I was fast running out of untouched areas on which to work.

Lance stubbornly clung to unconsciousness, despite twice jerking himself almost awake with the pain, and I found myself getting bored. I actually played a game of tic-tac-toe with myself, carving the game board and little crosses and circles into his right eyelid. I still couldn’t get Candy out of my mind. I found myself conducting both sides of a conversation with my still insensate victim.

What is it about her? What quality does she possess that has turned a simple meet and greet into a full-fledged emotional clusterfuck?

Her innocence.

Innocence? How can that be? She’s a fucking prostitute, for the Prince’s sake. How can she be innocent?

"I don’t know how, I’m just your subconscious. And I’m telling it like it is: it’s the innocence that exists in spite of what she does that’s captivated you."

I paused. ‘Subconscious’ me was right - even in our brief meeting I had detected a …purity in Candy. Something that I never would have expected to find in a teenaged prostitute who’d most likely experienced a life similar to the last three days of poor dead Lance’s miserable existence.

Ah. Yes. Lance had died while I was conducting the conversation with myself. Now, before you start getting all weirded out, I’d like to make it perfectly clear that I was not sitting in a basement with a corpse, acting out both sides of a dialogue; I had removed Lance’s head from his body, and the role of ‘subconscious’ me was played by Lance’s skull with my right hand wedged inside, somewhat like a Muppet. Or perhaps that image is not actually any better. Anyway, after the realization hit me, I felt… better. More settled, or something. I actually found myself humming as I picked up and hosed down Lance’s Earthly remains. I floated back upstairs on a cloud, took myself off to bed and had a great night’s sleep.

2

I spent the following day wallowing in the mire that is daytime television. I have to admit that I got a good laugh from the messes that people make of their lives (I slept with my sister and now my mom hates me!). I’ve never really enjoyed being sedentary; preferring an active role in things, but every now and again I find it is good to stop and really take a look at the world around you. Or just laugh at others’ misfortune, and by comparison, feel better about your own life.

The day did what days do, and trickled past, until finally night set in. I gave it an extra hour or so to maximize the chance that the boys and girls would be out to play, and then I clambered into the Olds and drove back to where I’d seen her.

I saw her in the exact same place she’d been before, same street, same light casting the same halo around her head. She was dressed the same as well. A blue Honda was resting against the curb in front of her. As I approached the corner, she approached the car. Candy had a brief conversation through the open passenger window, then opened the door and climbed in. The Honda cruised off at a reasonable speed, and the Olds followed.

As I drove, I wondered what I was doing; it was highly unlike me to go into any situation without a fully-formed plan, or at least a goal of some sort. The closest I came to rationalizing anything was admitting that I felt some sort of primal protective urge towards Candy. That didn’t help much, as it went completely against my Demonic nature (Demons are abandoned once spawned, in order that only the fittest survive), and on top of that, it was insane that I should have developed such strong feelings for someone I’d barely spoken to. Insane it was, but also true.

The neighborhood we’d started in hadn’t been much, but it was Beverly Hills compared to the place we ended up in. Only every third or fourth streetlight worked; the buildings were ramshackle, full of holes, and no doubt let in more rain than they kept out; even the air smelled fetid and diseased. Lights off, I drove slowly around an unmoving human figure that had inconsiderately passed out in the road. As I passed, I noticed something gnawing on the figure’s face. It was a rat, probably as big as a housecat, and it glared at me as I drove past, as if expecting me to steal its meal.

Up ahead, the Honda pulled over. I parked where I was, turned off the ignition, cracked the window, and waited. The Honda driver had parked under one of the few working lights, so I had an excellent view (as if I needed one to work out what was going on).

I watched some sort of financial transaction take place, and then saw Candy’s head slide down the driver’s body, presumably to his groin. Not much else happened for the next few minutes, until Candy’s blonde tresses once more appeared in view. She conversed with the driver for a moment, and then I saw her head rock back. I heard the sound it made as it connected with the window, a loud crack similar to breaking fingers. By the time he struck her