Excerpt:

She fell.

A hundred years later, he rose.

 

The night was glacial and blue lit by the unforgiving blind, white stare of the moon. The demon, Mastema burst forth from Hell onto the frozen, empty street. Hot, rotten blood bubbled out of the hole around him, glowing deep red, hissing and steaming like lava on the icy asphalt. Bright orange embers faded to fly’s wing green then black as they cooled into the shape of claws on the pavement.

 

But Mastema was only half way out.

 

The closing portal was starting to cut a deep and vicious ring around his massive chest. As sure as he had been expelled, Lucifer would ensure he found Hell—even after all that had transpired—on Earth.

 

Ramming his needle-sharp talons into the blacktop causing white sparks to erupt into the night’s frigid breath, the demon, Mastema, used his thick and powerful arms to drag himself the rest of the way out of the closing portal. Angered, it grew diamond-spiked teeth that rotated around him faster and faster, grinding and ripping his reborn flesh. Mastema did not bother to moan. An eternity of pain in Hell dulled his senses to any pain he could feel in this, the human realm. And, with each forward movement his skin and muscles and fatty tissue folded, sealed, and sewed themselves back together. Mastema dragged himself further out and razors sliced into his belly.

 

The saw edges of the portal started to boil over in sick green-brown fluid. Fire licked at the flesh beneath his skin poisoning him, giving hope when there should have been none.

 

Hell had never willingly let go.

 

*****

 

When Rahmi arrived home from work around six pm, she smiled sweetly at her neighbor, Grace who was leaving for a dinner date. Grace was a slim, older woman with pretty copper skin and closely shorn, silky silver hair. She watched Rahmi with a kind and maternal eye, and Rahmi let her. For years she had missed the feeling of someone caring. Grace was a poor substitute for the love Rahmi had once known, still it helped with the emptiness.

 

After waving her off, Rahmi grabbed her mail from the box and sighed as she flipped through the stack of envelopes. Bills. She was tired and didn’t really feel like writing out checks. Maybe tomorrow. There were also a ton of advertisements which would go directly into the recycle bin. Pain was starting in her forehead. Tonight she was exhausted, in a way that she hadn’t been for many, many years. A chill wind whispered over her skin even in her clothes. She shuddered.

 

When Rahmi reached for her door knob, static electricity vibrated through her fingertips, her palms. Tiny white sparks arced out to her in useless warning. She touched the warm metal globe. Time elapsed or passed, or stood still. Electricity went through and she blinked with it. Where there had been light, now there was only dark. Where she had merely been chilled, she was now frozen to the bone. Where she had been tired, now she was… something else entirely.

 

Rahmi pushed open the door and entered her house. She turned the locks on the doorknob and deadbolt then, absently, set the alarm. Her mail and purse and shoes and keys all dropped from her slender fingers. The items may have clattered loudly against lacquered hard wood, but Rahmi could not hear. They may have made a mess. Her eyes saw nothing. She licked her lips and sniffed. She scented nothing, tasted nothing. Her senses had died.

 

Near floating across the floor of her bedroom, the largest room in the tiny house in Eden Prairie, Rahmi unbuttoned and removed her jacket, her pencil skirt, her silk blouse. She reached for her bra and barely noticed it ripping from her body. She scraped her skin with her nails as she tore her hose and panties away though her flesh felt nothing.

 

In the bedroom, Rahmi lifted the Harp. Normally, she could not lift it with one hand. This time she picked it effortlessly from its easel. Her hand and arm registered it as weightless. Blind, she found the taut metal strings. Her fingers, long pale thin, utterly human, flitted over the magnificent instrument, barely strong enough to test the strings. Deaf, she started to pluck out the notes that would return her senses and slice ruthlessly through the mist. Rahmi would have to play this night. A vision was upon her, her true nature was upon her. Death and souls that could not find their way… were upon her.

 

Lilting and hypnotic notes tripped from the Harp, they spun energy into royal blue and yellow gold light calling for Rahmi’s hearing, sight, taste, sense of smell and touch to return. Finally, she could register that she was no longer inside of her house. Rahmi was in the frigid, abandoned, paved alley behind it. Dawn was not even an hour away. The air was its iciest in the bitter Midwest winter and sent crystal-cold shards through her as her ability to feel finally assaulted her fragile form. A smell, metallic and rancid, caused saliva to pool in her mouth.

 

Demon’s blood.

 

“You should not be here.”