Chapter Text
The real cosmic joke, Mike thought, was that nobody knew whether or not God abandoned them. Sure, there were some believers, but they were few and far between. He imagined it put a real strain on one’s relationship with the theoretical almighty God when Earth was crawling with demons.
Literally.
Mike was standing in one’s apartment right now, his shoes creaking the floorboards beneath him as he moved from room to room. Well, ‘room to room’ was quite generous for what the space actually was. There was a small kitchen to the left of the door as soon as he came in, and a couch and coffee table to the right. Further into the room, after passing under a yawning archway that made Mike think this was once a two room apartment, was a mattress on the floor beneath the only window, the sheets on top a tangled mess. The only other door in the whole apartment was to a small bathroom which housed the toilet, a basin sink with exposed pipes and a standing shower just big enough to fit one person.
This gave Mike little room to work but he decided to try and set the trap on the other side of the archway. This way he could hide himself behind the partial wall and be undetected when the demon first walked through the door. He set about dragging the only chair in the apartment over and standing on it before pulling out the sharpie he kept on him. It took a good twenty minutes but when he was finished he stepped back and admired his work. Across the ceiling right behind the brick archway where it would be hidden, Mike had scrawled a banner of symbols and words in latin. It was a demon trap and when the demon crossed through the archway it would essentially have the same effect as a human stepping into a bear trap, snagging the demon in place beneath the span of ceiling Mike had marked.
Now all he had to do was wait for the bastard to come home.
Mike double checked the halo device at his belt, the inscribed cuffs, everything he would need to tag and transport the demon safely back to headquarters where they could perform the exorcism. The halo device was really just a metal inscribed collar. Hunters had given it the name because once it was snapped around a demon’s throat it bound the demon to the body and muted the monster’s power, making them for all intents and purposes, defenselessly human. The inscribed cuffs just reinforced the halo and acted much the same way as they would on a man.
If he tried to take the demon without haloing it, the demon would just flee the human body, it’s real form intangible and dark, it would fly off and possess someone new. That was the most dangerous part about demons, they hid in plain sight. It was nearly impossible to tell whether a human was infected with one or not but there were a few ways to test it. The first was through a person’s eyes, if the demon wanted to show itself it could through there, a demon possessing a human had ink for eyes. But a person only ever saw a demon’s flat black eyes if it wanted them to see it, otherwise their eyes looked perfectly normal, perfectly human.
The other ways, Mike had been surprised to learn, were much like what had been shown on television and in movies, before the mass majority of the world had learned that demons were indeed real. Prayer through latin, greek or the celtic language, pagan protection and banishment symbols had an adverse reaction on the demons. What Mike and other hunters had found easiest was to carve these things into their weapons, into their blades and bullets and then they could be used to make a demon bleed. The only issue with using the weapons was the damage it caused the all too mortal host the demon resided in, which was why hunters used weapons as a last resort. Instead, in an attempt to save the host, they used entrapment spells and their halo devices and cuffs and brought the demon back to special headquarters where they could be safely exorcized and disposed of.
Unfortunately, in Mike’s six years of experience as a demon hunter, almost every exorcism he’d witnessed had left the host in a near vegetative, drooling and unresponsive state. For some reason, when the demons were ripped from the bodies, they were taking something with them, something vitally human. They were saving the human hosts, but at what cost?
The easiest way to save mankind though, was to spread the word on how to avoid a possession in the first place. If the demons had no body to infect they did eventually die, or whatever the demon equivalent to death was. Mike had witnessed it, at headquarters after they’d been pulled from their hosts, they were kept in containment cells. He had seen it happen himself, days and weeks gone by as the shadow of the demon withered and decayed, shrinking in on itself until there was nothing left.
There were theories. Since the way they died was in approximation to a human starving to death, folks had theorized that’s just what was happening. A demon inside a host was feeding off of it, off the person’s life force or blood or brains or, Mike thought, their soul. When they were ripped from that source they simply starved. It also explained why so often what they left behind in their human host was a vacant, dribbling husk of a person, emptied of what they once were.
Mike heard footsteps in the hallway and he pressed his back into the wall, hiding himself from view. His hand hovered over the halo device at his belt, ready to slip it on once the demon was trapped. He didn’t want to take any chances, he’d seen it happen once or twice, a demon able to fight it’s way out of the snare, it was unlikely to happen, but still.
He heard keys jangle, then metal on metal as it slid into the doorknob and the click of a lock release before the handle was turning, door groaning open. He had been tipped off to this address by a paranoid landlord who’d given Mike a set of spare keys to the apartment. The man had claimed to see black eyes in his tenant once, when he’d spoken a bit of prayer.
The door snicked shut behind the demon and Mike felt his heart ticking in his throat as he listened and waited, one hand on the halo, the other hand on the hilt of his weapon, a curved dagger, the steel of the blade inscribed in protective sigils.
He listened to the scuff of shoes on creaking floorboards, keys tossed to clack noisily on the countertop and a tired sigh, so painfully human that Mike had to remind himself that it wasn’t. Then the demon was walking toward him, feet shuffling on the floor and Mike had just gotten a glimpse of a dirty white toe on a pair of Converse All Stars when they stopped. Mike held his breath and kept himself as still and as quiet as a lion waiting in the reeds.
Carefully, the foot retracted from Mike’s sightline and there was a pause, a heartbeat of shifting power and Mike understood the demon knew. This was the moment where everything would fall apart, where the shadow of the monster would rip free and vanish from Mike’s eyes, leaving behind the twitching shell of it’s host. Instead, Mike heard the twist of rubber in the demon’s shoes as he turned and ran, feet thumping the wood flooring and without thought, without preamble, without the slightest concern that this could be a trap, of the human variety, Mike turned and ran too.
He caught sight of the demon as he turned out into the hallway, dark pants, faded jean jacket and a messy head of short black hair, Mike kept that description in the forefront of his mind as he dashed out into the hallway in pursuit. The demon was rounding the stairs, hand thrown out to catch the railing as he descended and again Mike followed. Their shoes smacked the steps and echoed loudly in the stairwell as they went, Mike’s heart in his throat as he jumped the last few steps at every landing in an attempt to close the distance between them. He was on the second floor still when he heard the heavy metal door to the outside bang against the wall, white hot daylight streaking into the hallway. Mike flew through the door just as it was swinging shut and swiveled his head through the parking lot until he caught sight of the demon’s spiky black hair over the roof of a row of cars.
He took off running again, long legs pumping to catch up, and then they were on the straightaway of a sidewalk and Mike knew if they continued like this his lanky ass could close the distance. The human the demon was possessing was on the small side, short and lithe, and Mike briefly wondered again why the demon was even still infecting the guy, why hadn’t he fucked off into another defenseless vessel?
Ahead of him, the demon cut into a corner at an intersection, his face visible for a split second as he glanced back to track Mike still hot on his tail. Mike tried to pick up the pace, arms swinging in time with his legs as his lungs began to ache and he swore to himself he’d never smoke another damn cigarette if he could just catch this fucker. As he came around the corner he felt a stutter of panic run through his chest when the sidewalk was empty, but a quick glance to his right found the demon on the other side of the road, ducking into an alleyway. Mike followed, narrowly avoiding a car as it honked and swerved around him and he was halfway down the dark alleyway before he realized he may have just run into a trap for real this time. His horror was short lived however, as he caught sight of the demon at the end of the alley, shoulders heaving for breath and arms above his head, pulling anxiously at the hair there.
Mike couldn’t believe his own damn luck and he started laughing as soon as he realized.
The demon turned on him then, his face twisted into some mixture of anger and disbelief, his eyes wide and scared. He was trapped. On the dingy brick walls to the left and right of the demon, graffitied there in dripping black spray paint were two devil’s traps and he had run straight into it.
Mike was bent over, hands clutching his knees as he fought for breath in between bouts of laughter. He thanked the damn kids that had tagged these walls and stood up straight, looking the demon square in his eyes. They were staring back at him, wide and wet, a lovely shade of mossy green but as soon as Mike took a step toward him, his hand reaching for the halo on his belt, the demon’s eyes flooded black, snuffing out the white and green that had been there a second before. Mike’s spine tingled at the sight of those eyes, flat and cold like a shark’s, they made him want to take a step back. But he swallowed the feeling down and reached for his most authoritative tone as he spoke sharp and clear, “Turn around. Get on your knees. Hands over your head.”
The last command was pointless, the demon still had his hands gripped into the tufts of black hair at his scalp but at Mike’s words he only hesitated for a moment before he turned and obeyed, knees dropping onto the dirty pavement and hands releasing his hair to link behind his head.
Mike moved quickly and he was half in the trap in two steps, hands swiftly clicking the halo shut around the demon’s throat before he could even think about trying anything on Mike. He snapped the inscribed cuffs around the demon’s wrists next, pulling them down and locking them in place at the small of his back. Reaching out he grabbed the back of the demon’s jacket and hoisted him to his feet. The demon turned to face him and Mike was once again met with the white and emerald eyes of a human.
“Please,” the demon muttered and his voice was so anguished, so human, “ Please , I didn’t do anything.”
“No? What about this poor schmuck you're possessing?” Mike kept his hold on the back of the demon’s jacket collar, “When we take you out he’ll be nothing but a vegetable.” Mike used the heel of his hand to shove the demon toward the mouth of the alley.
But the demon dug his heels into the cracked concrete, twisting in Mike’s grip to look at him again, “I’m not possessing anyone, please , just-”
Mike pushed again, kneed the demon in the back of his legs to get him moving, “That’s a new one. Not possessing anyone? I saw your eyes, you rat , I know you’re in there.” He kept up his manhandling until they were breaching the front of the alley, “I’m gonna rip you out of this poor guy, throw you in a containment cell and watch as you starve to death,” Mike grinned, “Hell, maybe I’ll even make some popcorn.”
“Wait, wait, wait ,” the demon twisted in his grip again, his eyes wet and pleading and Mike was a little surprised by the theatrics of it all, it almost looked like he was about to start crying, “I can find you more of us. More demons. I can track them for you, please-”
Mike halted, the sunlight of the alley cutting a line right in front of the shadows they hid in, and he regarded the demon with a furrowed brow.
“Why?” he said after a pause and before the demon could answer he planted his palm on the thing’s chest, pushing until his back was against the wall, “Why would you snitch on your own kind?” And beneath his hand, Mike felt the warmth of body heat, the rise and fall as he pulled air into his lungs and the rapid, jackhammer of his heart as it knocked against his chest like a cornered animal. Mike ripped his hand away, held the demon there with his eyes instead.
“I don’t want to hurt anyone,” the demon said breathlessly, “Please, let me help you.”