Blood and Beasts

Chapter 10

Jack felt his stomach doing summersaults as he rode in the cab with Gregory. The journey was slow, bumper-to-bumper traffic nearly the whole way. It made him uneasy, the crowds of people passing by on the street beside them. It was impossible to know if anyone was watching.

Yet they had a job to do, and Jack wouldn't leave innocent people to suffer if there was anything he could do to stop it. Gregory seemed confident they could trust his old friend, Trevor Bennings, and if Gregory trusted him, that was good enough for Jack. Gregory said he knew Trevor from before he even started hunting, and now Trevor's wife was possessed. Jack could help with this. He was quite good at dealing with possessions. He felt he understood demons. Hell, he'd been possessed by one himself, many years ago.

They were taking as many precautions as they could. Even though this was an old friend of Gregory's, he had weighed the possibility that somebody had gotten to Trevor, had forced him to make the call. Gregory had requested video proof and Trevor had sent it: a video of himself and his possessed wife in their bedroom. Jack knew as he had watched the unnatural contortions of Mrs. Bennings, and the dark gleam in her eyes, that they were dealing with a viable demonic possession.

Trevor was keeping her locked in their apartment in the downtown core of the city. He was nervous of what she might do if she got out, and Jack couldn't blame him. The building the cab driver brought them to was a reflective monstrosity of an apartment, stretching up thirty stories.

Once they were standing out of the cab, Gregory looked at Jack and motioned to the gun hidden under his coat.

"Be on your guard," he said. Jack nodded; he was. He grabbed his briefcase from the trunk of the cab (the one he kept stocked with tools to perform a successful exorcism). They approached the apartment building and a doorman stepped outside, holding the door open for them, with a smile. Jack thanked him as they walked by.

"Good afternoon gentleman," said the young man with thick spectacles sitting behind the front desk. Jack took in the rest of the room as they walked to the desk. There was a larger set security guard near the front doors as well, who offered them a disinterested glance up from the newspaper he was flipping through. Two men deep in conversation over by the far wall, one in a suit with a briefcase, the other in more casual clothes with a small yapping dog on a leash. And there was a woman sitting on one of the white leather couches that adorned the lobby. She was wearing a business skirt and seemed deeply absorbed in her phone.

"Afternoon," Gregory said gruffly to the man at the front desk, before brushing past on his way to the elevators.

"I'm sorry sir, may I enquire who you're here to visit?" the spectacled man asked, sitting halfway out of his chair. Gregory slowed to a halt, Jack just behind him.

"Trevor Bennings, twenty-eighth floor right?" Gregory said, once again motioning for the elevators.

"Sorry sir, I must buzz up to Mr. Bennings before I allow you access to the elevators. Building policy," he added with an all-too-forced grin. He picked up the phone and started to dial.

Gregory and Jack convened a bit away from the desk. Jack glanced around at the other people in the room. It was subtle, easy to miss at first, but every eye in the room had glanced their way. Jack may not have noticed if there wasn't so much effort put forth to hide it. Jack felt a chill prickle up his spine.

"I don't like this," he said. Gregory nodded, his eyes glancing around at the other faces in the room.

"We'll arrange a meet with Trevor elsewhere." Gregory moved for the door, and after that, everything happened very fast. 

The security guard stepped up to block their way, letting the newspaper fall to the floor; Gregory pulled his gun and fired into the large man's face. Jack felt a bolt of panic, a moment of horrified uncertainty as blood splashed onto the pages of the paper still floating to the ground. He hadn't seen the security guard reaching for his gun like Gregory had. For a moment Jack feared they had just murdered an innocent man, but that thought changed quickly.

No screams followed, which would have made sense after such a scene, but the act was dropped, and they were the targets. The doorman was next in their way and had his gun drawn quickly, but not before Gregory put two in his chest. That was all Gregory had time for though, before a bullet blew out his knee, sending him tumbling to the ground. It might have been the clerk at the desk, or the man in the suit, or the man with the dog. Jack didn't see who fired, only that they all had guns out as he glanced back, reaching for his own pistol at his waist.

A sharp sensation then jolted through his whole body, his muscles tensed and his breath caught in his throat. He collapsed to the floor, limbs twitching out of control. He was able to glance back at the woman standing with a taser gun in her hand, the wires connecting to his back.

Gregory rolled over and fired off one more shot, taking off the top of the dog walker's head. The man in the suit shot Gregory in the shoulder and Gregory lost his grip on the gun. The man in the suit kicked it away and kept the sight of his pistol firmly on Gregory's face as blood pooled on the white tiles around him

Jack felt hands pulling his arms, and then cuffs locking around his wrists. His vision strayed out the front windows, huge glass panels covering the whole front of the building. Surely someone on the street would have noticed the shoot out and authorities would be called in. But he saw an eerie sight instead. There was a large crowd that had gathered around the front of the building, but all were facing away, creating a shield from the public. A group of five more entered the building, guns drawn.

One looked down with a smirk at Gregory and said, "Well look at this, we seem to have caught a big fish today. Brother Abraham will be very pleased about this."

"Yeah, congratu-fucking-lations, you finally caught me," Gregory spat at them. The smirking man, crotched down so he was right over both their heads.

"Funny enough, you weren't even the one we were hoping to catch." He gaze became the toothy smile of a jackal, and it focused right on Jack, who felt fear gripping his insides.