Fic: The Family Business - Chapter 6

[rusakko]

Chapter 6: Plague Park

“Ruttopuisto?” Emil’s voice is incredulous. “As in Plague Park? What is it with you Finns and your place names?”

“It’s just a nickname, but we do have a Cholera Basin, too, and I swear I’ll drown you in it if you don’t stop distracting me. In case you haven’t noticed, my brother’s been kidnapped by a demon,” Tuuri snarls.

“Sorry!” Emil blushes, mortified. “I’ll just… make you a drink or something…” His voice trails off, and he quickly disappears into the back room.

Reyniel has his head in his hands. “This has got to be the worst start to any guardian angel’s career ever!” he moans. “Barely a week into the job and I’ve already lost one of the people I’m supposed to be protecting. I’m such an idiot!”

Lalli is inclined to agree with him, but Tuuri snaps: “Stop it! He might still be alive!”

Reyniel stops wailing.

“Oh, he probably is. I’m pretty sure I would’ve felt it if he’d been killed. But the demon’s only going to keep him alive as long as it thinks it can use him as a bait to get to you two.”

“And that’s why we need to save him as soon as we can!” Tuuri exclaims. “Can you sense where he is now?”

Reyniel closes his eyes and his expression turns vacant. After a moment, he blinks. “No, sorry. Wherever the demon’s keeping him, it’s probably warded against angels.”

“Perkele!” Tuuri hisses in frustration. “Then we’ll just have to get to Ruttopuisto tomorrow night –”

Reyniel interrupts her. “I’m sorry, but I can’t allow that. My job is to keep at least one of you alive. I’m not letting you and your cousin get close to that demon.”

“What?” Sigrun’s outraged tone makes everyone jump. She marches up to Reyniel and grabs the baffled angel by the shoulders, shaking him. “I didn’t know angels were this wimpy! Aren’t you supposed to have all kinds of magic powers? How can you be so scared of facing one puny little demon?” She pushes him away from her, hard.

Reyniel stumbles back. “I’m sorry! You’re right, I should be saving him, but I don’t know how! And that demon’s killed four angels before and they were a lot more experienced than me!”

“But they didn’t have Sigrun Eide helping them!” Sigrun declares, displaying such spectacular overconfidence that Lalli almost has to admire her for it. “And we’ve got two other decent hunters and one bomb expert on our team, too. And a demon-killing rifle! And a guy who reads a lot of books, I suppose that can be useful sometimes.”

“Thank you,” Mikkel mutters.

“Anyway, what I’m trying to say is, I think we’ve got a pretty nice setup for a demon hunt here. All we need is a good plan, and I’m great at making plans!”

Lalli and Mikkel groan in unison.

---

The summer night is cloudy, and the air feels still and heavy like before a thunderstorm. The streets leading to Ruttopuisto are eerily deserted. Lalli checks the rifle for the hundredth time. Everything still seems to be in order. His and Tuuri’s footsteps are loud in the oppressive silence.

“Can you see anything?” Tuuri whispers as they approach the gate leading to the park. Lalli squints, but the only thing he can see in the twilit night are maple trees and old tombstones, a remnant from the time the park was still used as a graveyard, looming here and there in the half-darkness. They step through the gate and onto the gravel path.

“Do you think the others –” Tuuri begins to say, but Lalli grabs her shoulder to silence her.

There is someone standing right at the centre of the park, where the gravel paths converge. A familiar, broad-shouldered young man with a mournful expression.

“Onni!” Tuuri exclaims. She starts running towards him, but stops dead as she sees his eyes. Instead of their usual, yellowish-grey colour, they are completely black. The eyes of a demon.

And a little behind him, each pinned against a tombstone by an invisible force, are Sigrun, Mikkel and Emil.

Lalli points the rifle at the demon. It laughs at him with Onni’s mouth.

“You won’t do it,” it whispers. “If you shoot me, he dies with me.”

Lalli doesn’t answer, but he doesn’t shoot, either. The demon chuckles, flicking one of Onni’s fingers carelessly towards Lalli. It feels as if Lalli’s entire body has suddenly turned into stone. He couldn’t squeeze the trigger now even if he wanted to.

“Finally, all the remaining Hotakainens are at my mercy. Did you truly think you could trick me with your pathetic little ambush? I shall kill the three of you first, and then feast upon the blood of your allies as the seal breaks.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Lalli sees Emil struggle uselessly against the force pinning him to the gravestone.

The demon takes a step towards Lalli and Tuuri, a long knife appearing in its hand.

“Let us finish this quickly.”

As the demon stalks towards them, Tuuri falls to her knees. “Onni! I know you’re still in there! Don’t do this! You can stop the demon!”

The demon laughs, advancing at an unhurried pace. “Useless, useless”, it hisses, caressing the knife.

“Remember Grandma!” Tuuri shouts. “And Mom and Dad! They’re all gone. We’ve only got each other now, Onni. You, me and Lalli. Alone against the world.”

“How touching”, the demon sneers. It’s only a few paces away, now. “But he cannot save you. He can only cry on the inside as he watches me cut your throat –”

One perfect tear rolls down Onni’s cheek. Several more follow. The demon pauses mid-step, raising a hand to its face.

“What –”

“Exorcizo te, creatura aquae! In nomine dei patris omnipotentis et in virtute spiritus sancti!” Tuuri yells.

The teardrops, purified into holy water by Tuuri’s blessing, turn into steam as they burn the evil spirit possessing Onni. The demon screams. Reyniel, appearing behind it from thin air, grabs its arms, wresting the knife out of its hand. Lalli feels the power forcing him to stay still waver and vanish.

Behind the struggling angel and demon, Sigrun, Mikkel and Emil have also been freed from the demon’s hold. Running towards them, Mikkel raises his voice: ”Exorcizamus te, omnis immundus spiritus, omnis satanica potestas…”

As the words of the exorcism reach the demon’s ears, Onni’s body stiffens and then convulses in Reyniel’s arms.

“Do you think there will be peace for you when you are done?” the demon screams. “There are thousands of demons in Hell, you can never escape them all!”

“…Ecclesiam tuam secura tibi facias libertate servire, te rogamus, audi nos.”

The demon throws its head back, Onni’s mouth opening into a silent scream. Black smoke pours out, and Onni goes suddenly limp.

“Don’t let it escape!” Sigrun shouts. “We need to reverse-exorcise it into something and shoot it!”

Reyniel vanishes, letting Onni’s apparently lifeless body fall on the ground. Black smoke is still rushing out of Onni’s mouth.

The angel reappears, holding a furiously struggling animal in his hands. Lalli recognizes the characteristic greyish-brown colour of a Helsinki city rabbit.

“Will this do?”

The flow of smoke coming out of Onni’s body has slowed to a trickle, and a black cloud is hanging in the air above them. Mikkel grabs the rabbit, raising his voice again.

“Et Secta Diabolica, Omnis Congregatio, Omnis Legio, Omnis Incursio Infernalis Adversarii, Omnis Spiritus, Exorcizamus!”

For a second, the black smoke hangs in the air. Then it begins to pour into the rabbit’s body at an ever increasing pace. Suddenly, the rabbit sinks its teeth into Mikkel’s hand. Mikkel curses, startled, dropping the animal and pressing his bloodied hand against his body. The rabbit breaks into a desperate run.

“Lalli!” Tuuri screams.

Lalli lifts the rifle, taking aim, and fleetingly remembers that they never got around to testing the power of Häyhä’s rifle after all. Then he squeezes the trigger.

The shot rings out and the demon-rabbit drops to the ground in mid-leap. For a moment, it lies still, a small and pitiful heap. Then grey smoke begins to rise from the wound in its side, and suddenly, flames leap up from the ground, consuming the body. A bloodcurdling scream tears the air. The flames go out.

Then there’s a crack of thunder, and rain begins to pour down, turning the pile of ashes left behind into mud in a matter of moments.

“I think it worked,” Emil says uncertainly.

Sigrun slaps him on the shoulder, making him wince. “Of course it worked! I told you the plan was foolproof.”

“The ‘plan’ collapsed right at the beginning and we barely survived by means of improvising,” Mikkel remarks dryly.

“Oh, don’t be such a nitpick!” Sigrun cheerfully slaps him, too. “The demon’s dead and we’re all alive, that’s all that counts.” She looks around. “Hey, Tuuri, even your brother’s alive!”

Onni is struggling to sit up, wiping mud off his face. Tuuri rushes to his side.

“Tuuri! Where are we? And who are all of these people? Oh God, he’s attacking me!” This last exclamation is referring to Reyniel, who has fallen to his knees and pulled Onni into a rib-crushing hug.

“I’m so glad you’re safe! I promise I’ll never let anyone hurt you again!” the angel is babbling, squeezing the terrified Onni. Lalli suspects that it might have been kinder to leave his cousin to the demon’s mercy.

---

The van is filled with the smell of wet clothes and sweaty people. Still, Lalli is relatively warm and comfortable in the back, squeezed in between Sigrun and Emil. Sigrun is still gloating over their victory, praising what she calls “her team”.

“While I am also glad that this suicide mission turned out to be successful against all the odds, the demon was probably right,” says Mikkel, who is sitting opposite them. “There will be more of them coming after the Hotakainen family.”

Sigrun does not let this dampen her spirits. “Whatever, we’ll deal with them just as easily as we dealt with this one. And in the meantime, we’ve got other monsters to hunt. I heard this rumour about a ghost haunting the old roller coaster at Linnanmäki amusement park...”

Lalli closes his eyes and leans his head against Emil’s shoulder. He’s exhausted, his apartment and all his possessions have turned into a pile of ash, and he is currently being recruited into a crazy ghost-hunting scheme led by a madwoman. Still, he supposes it’s better than being dead. Besides, although the future seems full of danger, he won’t have to face it alone.

And maybe, somewhere along the line, there will even be cookies.