Regal Crest Enterprises Authors

This brings back a fav character, Jade Murphy, from the Jade Murphy Diaries. Anyway, enjoy!
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"You cannot defeat me. I am Legion."

Is there anything worse than a bragging demon? Yeah, a bragging demon that is mostly right.
Mostly.

The first thing Legion got wrong was that I could actually kill him. Wasn't too hard since he'd been hanging in human form for a good seventy years. That's long enough to warp even the best of demons, Legion included. Oh he was strong. Scary even, if you weren't a three-hundred and some-odd year old vampire with a tendancy to hold a grudge. (Me? Hold a grudge? Heh). His neck snapped with a pleasant little crack, just like any other human, and when he thought his demon form could escape in a cloud of noxious fumes, well, I had me a can of demon woop-ass handy, in the form of a sweaty little spell-caster named Castor (seriously. I couldn't make this shit up.)

Castor did his thing the instant Legion's human heart stopped beating. That noxious cloud was sucked into a multidimensional vortex and shot back into one of the many hell dimensions that wasn't Saskatoon, Canada. Pretty simple, I thought. Castor had other ideas, though.

"This isn't over, you know." He wiped the sweat off his forehead. How could a human still sweat out here in the middle of Canada in the fall? On someone else, I'd blame the mojo. On Castor, I knew it was some freak biological thing that made him sweat all the time. Also made him a bit of an outcast amongst his own kind. That's something I could relate to.

"I'm not chasing his vapors through one of your little vortexes," I said. I had enough dimension-hopping problems of my own, thankyouverymuch.

"Not his vapors, his offspring. You cut the head off the beast, but if you don't kill the rest, it will just regenerate."

I didn't actually cut the head, more like snap the top vertebrate, but I won't get picky about semantics. I'd save my picky for whatever the hell Castor was on about. "How many offspring and how do I find them?"

"There's seven."

"Seven? No more, no less? How do you know that?"

Castor picked up his bag of goodies, the incense and other crap that let him do his thing. He dragged out a pink water-stained diary. "Getting in touch with your inner preteen girl?" I asked.

He handed me the diary. "Just turn to the bookmarked page."

Being the dutiful vampire, I ripped out the marked page, ignoring Castor's groan as I started reading. By the end of the page, I was ready for murder. "Legion's responsible for this?"

Castor took a step back, away from me. Smart human. "Yes, it's all Legion's offspring. Some how the girl who owned this diary acted as a magnet for them."

I crushed the paper in my hand, the poem inside already burned into my memory forever. Her memories were mine now. Her revenge, mine. "How do I find them."

"Dimension hop." He took another step back. "Not the trip Legion just took. We'd just bounce to another dimension and then back to this one as a faster way to travel from one place to another. It's the only way we can get to all seven before the night's over."

"And if we don't, Legion is back." I took the crumpled poem and stick it in my back pocket. "What about the girl?"

"She's still in the same area, but she's not a kid and alone anymore. They can't get to her now."

The first dimension hop made me want to vomit, and not from the effects of the hop. We were back in Boston. I had too much unfinished business here. I wasn't ready to be back. I glared at Castor, who stooped beside me, tossing his cookies because humans just weren't cut out for this kind of travel. He knew my history with Boston. That's why he didn't tell me we'd end up here until we ended up here.

I looked up at the old Trinity Church. Copley Square hadn't changed in the past couple of years, nothing had. Except me. "Where to?"

Castor straightened up as best he could, then pointed to an older man hurrying to the train station. I didn't expect Legion's offspring to be as old as he'd been, but then, demons didn't operate by human standards of time and space.

"Which one?" I asked.

"Music instructor."

I wanted to know who each one was before I killed them, which predator was becoming my prey. The old man walked fast, his head bent against the wind, but he didn't walk fast enough. One minute he was alone, the next I was in front of him and he stopped short. When he tried to step around me I grabbed him in a vice grip and dragged him into the shadows. I could smell Legion on him. I whispered the girl's name in his ear.

His eyes registered his recognition of the name, of the life he played with. The scent of fear had just started to spread from him, his mouth just about to open and let out a stream of excuses for why he did it, when I sank my teeth into his neck. His hot blood filled my mouth but I didn't want it. I tore a hole through him and spat out bits of his flesh. He sank to the ground as his life blood deserted him in a flood. I dipped a finger in it and crossed his section of the poem off in crimson. He'd be dead before I made it back to Castor.

The next five offspring ended much like the first. Some where older, some were younger, but their human form didn't matter. Each death terminated a part of Legion in this dimension. Each death retribution for their crimes, and each went to oblivion with that girl's name in their ears. They were her prey now. She worked through me.

Castor was as white as his namesake by the sixth kill. Poor boy just didn't have the stomach for this kind of work. He was also having problems with his mojo-meter. I was running out of time though. It was less than two hours before dawn. "How can Legion be dead for real if there's one left?" The last one in the poem.

"I don't know. I just know I felt him disappear when you ripped the heart out of that last one."

I don't think my little spell-caster approved of my methods, but you know, I hate to kill the same way twice. Diversity is the spice of life, or in this case, death. Anyway, I wasn't in the mood for Castor's waffling. "Just tell me who it is."

He pointed at a house that looked much like all the rest. I could smell two humans in there, female. No Legion. What the hell? I took out the paper from my pocket. Six stanzas were smeared in blood, no longer readable. I scanned the last section. The teacher. Why would someone do what she did to a child? And a human, if my scent didn't decieve me. A human, so twisted she'd fit in with a pack of demon spawn.

"There are two in the house, how do I know which one it was?"

"I don't know." He looked exhausted. He wouldn't be any more help to me.

"Go back to Canada."

His eyes lit up. "What about you? Will you come back with me?"

I looked back at the house. "I'll make my own way back." I wasn't finished here. There were two people in that house, one innocent, one not. I'd find out which was the predator. It was an old old game, but when I saw them I'd know which one it was, we'd recognize one another. Her death wouldn't be as simple as the rest, though. I stood in front of the door, ready to tear it off its hinges, and I smiled. I knew exactly how this one would go. Not here, not in Boston. There was a wolfpack a hundred miles north of Saskatoon. A hungry pack.

The wood splintered when I kicked down the front door. One of the two women screamed. They both backed into a corner. I looked between the two, one tall, one not. I uttered one word, one name, and I saw her flinch. My lips pulled back in a tight grin, my fangs exposed. I wouldn't feed off her though. The stain in her blood was too much. I'd take her with me.

There'd be some happy wolves in Canada in a few nights.

you're my she-ro...

hah! thanks.

Cool! Gross, but cool! Perfect for the "holiday".

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