Demon Exorcism Volunteers for Interplana Law: IV - The DEVIL in the Details

Ring. Ring. Ring. Kenichi's head was ringing. He lifted it off the back seat of the Golf, crumbs of chips stuck to his face. He sat up. His head was still ringing. No, that wasn't it. It was a phone.

He crawled out of the car. It was parked on the curb, next to a payphone. The phone was ringing. Everyday was crouched on the sidewalk, feeding bits of apples to the antlered rabbit. She looked up when he got out of the car.

“Good,” she said. “You're alive.”

“What happened?” he said.

She shrugged. “But I don't get paid if everybody else dies.” The phone kept ringing. She looked up at him. “You going to answer that?”

Kenichi rubbed his forehead. He staggered over to the phone. The sun sat directly overhead, giving everything an uncanny, shadowless look, like somebody forgot to draw them in. He picked the phone off the receiver. “Hello?” he said.

“Hello,” said the voice on the other line. It sounded familiar. “This is Mr. Katz. How did it go?”

“We lost Ma--” he started. Caught himself. “Noodles. And Scrivener. And I don't know if you know, but LaPlace and Pascal are gone too.” He looked over at Everyday. “It's just Everyday and me, Seltzer, the new guy.”

“This really complicates things,” said Katz. “We may just have to abandon this operation altogether. There will be others.”

“But what about Noodles?” Kenichi asked. “Fiddles captured her. Can't we save her?”

Katz laughed. It was devoid of humor. “We might be better off without her. I wasn't entirely sure what side she was playing for. We'll build up a new team and find another evil entity to eradicate.”

Kenichi's breath caught in his throat. He could not imagine abandoning anybody, let alone Noodles. “I can't do that,” he said. “We have to go back for her.”

Katz said something about that being impossible and not feasible and that he'd really just like for them to come back to HQ so they could come up with the next phase of their plan, but Kenichi dropped the phone. It dangled from its metal coil as Katz spoke to nobody and anybody who would listen.

Kenichi looked at Everyday. She sliced up an apple with a bowie knife she had tucked into her boot, and fed the slices to the little rabbit. The apple and its slices were blue, glowing, transparent. Kenichi walked over to her. “Where did you get those?” he asked.

She looked up at him. “My boots?” she said.

“The apples,” he said.

“I brought them with me,” she said.

“Really,” Kenichi said. “Where did you get them?”

Everyday sighed. “I guess you're not as much of a stickler as Noodles and Scrivener were.” She pointed with the knife into the distance, past the buildings, into a dark forest Kenichi hadn't noticed before. “There,” she said.

“Thanks,” he said.

“No problem,” she said. She doffed her pork pie hat to him, showing a pair of horns beneath. The phone disconnected, playing the dialtone.

He turned and left Everyday and the rabbit and went to the dark forest. It looked just like the one from his adventures in Tenrai. He entered where it was darkest, and walked past trees as white as skeletons. Cobwebs lay between trees, and Kenichi had to weave his way though without getting stuck. In the middle of the forest was a clearing, and there, in the middle of the clearing, was the ghost apple tree. He stepped up to it, but the apples were entangles in spider webs, and glassy spiders scampered through the branches.

He reached for one of the apples.

“Halt,” said a voice behind him.

He turned and looked. Several men dressed like SWAT troopers stood there, interspersed between the trees. Their chests armor and helmets had the word SPIDER written across them. The one who had spoken had a gun leveled at Kenichi.

“We're taking you in,” he said. “Don't resist and we'll make it easy.”

Kenichi raised his hands slowly. The SPIDER police approached him like a phalanx. The one who had spoken still had his gun leveled. As they got closer, Kenichi could see that their faces were inhuman. They had the faces of tarantulas. It was unsettling, but still, he let them bind his hands using a sticky web-like substance. They carried him through the forest until they came to a van. They tossed him in the back and shut the door.

“Target acquired,” he heard one of them say. He sat in the darkness while the van roared to life and started plodding its way out through the forest.

In the darkness he saw two purple eyes glow. Maybe this was the turnover point here. He focused on them, but they only shut, disappeared, as if they were done with him.