Chapter Two: The Revenant

Jacob flinched at the feeling of an unnatural, evil cold, and his grip on Agent Mann’s collar weakened unintentionally.

It was this accidental action that saved Jacob’s life.

The revenant wriggled free, disappeared, and reappeared behind the high schooler with a silver sword, three feet long and sporting a red leather grip. It gleamed as though enchanted, shedding light into the hellish darkness. Jacob’s eyes glared in the unexpected brightness, and he was forced to blink spots away from his pupils. When his vision was normal again, he was at last able to see the source of all this new strangeness.

A massive monster, humanoid in stature but decidedly inhuman, towered over Jacob Davidson and Agent Skul Mann.

Wings sharp as sawblades, batlike and leathery, flapped on the monster’s back, keeping it hovering in air. Its body was the color of blood circulating in one’s body, not the darkened, reddish-black of dried blood scabbing on a wound. Small and beady, its eyes were blacker than the deepest depths of space. (Jacob’s mother had often joked that if something was darker in color than even his skin, it was definitely evil and not to be trusted.) Most disturbingly of all, however, were the shiny scales that covered much of its body, and the long tongue, thin and snakelike, which flicked out of its mouth.

In a fluid motion that was so fast, Jacob was rendered entirely unable to see it, the demon swept its arms down at Agent Mann, who swung up with his sword just as quickly. Both supernatural creatures’ attacks connected and suddenly stopped, and Jacob finally saw what had been going on.

The demon carried a trident red as its own skin, at least two yards long, and had attempted to slam down an overhead strike at Jacob. The revenant had blocked, however, the trident’s middle prong quivering mere centers away from Agent Mann’s top hat. Red metal trembled against glowing silver, both combatants tense and refusing to give. They glared at each other as though daring the other to make the first move.

“What’s going on!?” Jacob demanded, his voice breaking. Even though he was no longer afraid of ghosts, this level of craziness was entirely out of his league of comprehension. He’d spotted the occasional vampire, and had even killed a pack of what had appeared to be Stymphalian birds from Greek mythology, but not even that could have possibly prepared him for this. “What the hell is that thing!?”

“That, my dear son,” said the revenant suavely (Jacob noticed for the first time that it had an English accent, “is a demon. Straight from Hell itself. It’s unusual for one to be as powerful as our little playmate, though, not while using its true form on Earth. It must be feeding off of some supernatural energy; a Mystery Spot, perhaps, or some kind of holy weapon imbued with the power of a human soul. Souls would potentially be able to charge a demon’s true form.”

“A soul…?” Jacob frowned. He still did not believe he was actually looking at a demon—a real, honest-to-God (honest-to-Satan?)—demon, but an idea was gnawing at the side of his brain. Or maybe that was just the insanity of it all. “There was a ghost here, a strong poltergeist. It said that a demon had killed it and was keeping it from passing on. I exorcised it, though. Er… the ghost, I mean.”

“I’m right here!” the demon exploded, and the revenant glanced up at it as though seeing it for the first time.

“Eh? You are? Well, would you look at that, you are! I’m sorry. Were you getting lonely? Because if you want, I’ll happily play with you. Honestly, really, I’m going to play with you whether you want me to or not… you might not like the game, though. It involves me juggling you around and you dying.”

That didn’t seem to amuse the demon. “What are you, a skeleton, or a clown?”

“A skeleton of a clown, if you must know,” Agent Mann said brightly, “although that doesn’t quite sum it up very well.” Slowly, the strength of his bony hand was beginning to win against the demon’s power, and the silver sword pushed the trident up by just a hair. “I! Am! A! Revenant!”

With a triumphant roar, Agent Mann threw all his light weight into his arm and pushed. The demon’s red trident fell away harmlessly to the side, and Agent Mann’s free finger bones grasped Jacob’s arm.

“I’m getting you out of the way of the crossfire from this fight,” Mann whispered quickly in the still-living teen’s ear. “Watch carefully, and when you can see our movements slow down enough for you to react to them, go in for the kill. This holy sword I have can kill the bastard, but not for good; if I land the finishing blow, we’ll be lucky if it takes two centuries for this guy to return.”

“DAMN YOU!” the demon shouted, and awkwardly regained its balance. “DAMN YOU TO HELL!”

“Sorry, hellspawn,” Agent Mann replied, regarding it with an unimpressed gaze, “but only God and His angels have that power.”

“GRARGH!”

“I think you’re just making it madder,” Jacob pointed out, shivering as the demon blew into the air and another burst of demon-darkness was released into the air.

The revenant grinned at him. “Good! Then it’ll only make more mistakes!” He disappeared, and Jacob with him. When they reappeared, they were in the room which Mann had been thrown out of. Jacob noticed that it looked like it had once been a storage room, but all the cabinets and wardrobes were smashed, and there was a fresh-looking hole in the north-east corner of the ceiling.

Taken aback by the sudden teleportation, Jacob stumbled back a few steps before regaining his balance. “Whoa!” he exclaimed. “How did you do that?”

Agent Mann grinned a toothy grin. His left eye socket flashed a deep blue. “Perks of being a revenant,” he said, and somehow managed to wink despite having no eyelids. “We’re naturally faster than almost every other creature, but with some training and our increased healing factor, the strongest of us can amp it up to the point where it almost seems like we’re teleporting. Hell, some revenants like me are even able to use our soul power to actually teleport.”

“…Hot damn,” Jacob said eloquently.

“Sums it up about right.”

Agent Mann then flashed away from Jacob as the demon growled and turned to them. There was a ruffle of fur coat, and then the walking skeleton was right behind the demon. The silver sword already sliced through the air. The red-skinned monster stiffened and swiveled around faster than Jacob’s human eye could see. Its trident flung up to meet Agent Mann’s holy silver sword, but the revenant was gone again. Instead of being in front of it now, Mann was already behind the demon, his sword’s motion just as fast as it had been before teleporting.

Silver bit into a fleshy part of the demon’s hip, and black ectoplasm spilled from the wound like a gruesome fountain.

“Stay still, you damn insect!” the demon snarled, pain twinging in its voice.

“Hmmmm, let me think about that…” Mann pulled his sword out of the demon’s side, jumped up, and swung upwards. He then teleported to safety as the demon turned to try and attack him again. None of this was Jacob able to see, except for very brief flashes and blurs; not until a red trident pierced thin air, and Mann reappeared behind the demon again. His sword lodged itself underneath a scale, only for the skeleton to thrust upward and yank the scale clean off.

The demon howled in pain. Mann shrugged. “How about no?” the FBI operative suggested.

“I will ensure you are locked in the deepest pit Hell can offer!” the demon promised. It slammed its elbow backwards, no doubt hoping to catch the agent midair, but to no avail.

Agent Mann teleported above and in front of the demon. He flipped once, twice, and used the extra velocity to land a deadly blow on the unprotected crown of his opponent’s head. Unfortunately, the hellspawn seemed to have predicted this, and blocked with the rod part of his long trident. For a few seconds, as Mann fell to the ground, they appeared to be entering another lock. But then Mann disappeared again, and reappeared as he hit the floor next to the demon’s foot. There, he stabbed his holy sword ruthlessly into the blood red foot.

“Why don’t you take a walk?” Agent Mann taunted. That earned him another roar of rage and attempt at skewering. “Walking relieves a lot of stress, and, forgive me if I’m wrong, but you seem to be really stressed for some reason.”

“FUCK YOU!” The demon’s voice was so loud and angry, the mansion’s nearby windows shattered like bones in a car crusher. Jacob clapped his hands over his ears for protection, but it still felt like he stood right next to an exploding firework. “I WILL USE YOUR ROTTING INNARDS FROM YOUR GRAVE AS YOUR CHAINS IN HELL! YOU WILL BATHE IN YOUR OWN BOILING HOT PISS AND TEARS FOR EONS AT A TIME! I WILL FEED YOU TO THE CROWS!”

“Hey!” Mann gasped, hurt. “You take that back! I taste terrible, and besides, some of my best friends are crows! They’d never eat me!”

Jacob gaped. “I hope you’re not literally friends with crows,” he deadpanned.

The fur-coated skeleton turned to shrug at him. “I’ve been to some pretty low places,” he said flatly, and the teen wilted. Life was never going to be the same again, wasn’t it?

Agent Mann teleported away again, and the fight started up even more intensely. Despite this, however, Jacob noticed that the demon grew slower and slower each second. Its reaction time to Mann’s attacks decreased ever so gradually. Most of the battle was still too fast for him to see, but he was observing more and more glimpses of it, and less and less blurs of color.

“This isn’t working,” the demon rumbled at last, and with a nasty grin like a predator finding its prey, it turned to Jacob. “Since I can’t catch you, skeleton, I’ll just have to make you go where I want you to!”

Its wings flapped, it pointed its body horizontally at Jacob, and then it blasted at him as though shot from a canon. The rushing air coming off its wings as it flew sounded strangely like a swan singing. It soared at him with remarkable speed for such a huge creature, but all of it, Jacob could see; their plan was working and the demon was weakening!

But he was also about to die.

Jacob, really not liking that idea, yelped and leaped back.

Fire-red fingers curled into a fist that punched through the air like a cannonball. The scales on its fingers gleamed in the demon-darkness.

“OI! STRAWBERRY-LOOKING BASTARD! YOU BATHE IN TOO MUCH KETCHUP, AND YOUR FIGHT IS WITH ME!”

Jacob had time to think, That was a strange insult… before silver flashed through the demon-darkness, cutting back against Jacob’s imposing death. With a squeak of dress shoes sliding against a mildewed floor, Agent Mann blinked into vision, blocking the demon’s attempted punch with the flat of his blade.

The evil monster’s sick grin grew even wider and more twisted.

“Gooooood.”

Then it twirled its other hand, wielding the trident clutched within like a baton, and stabbed forward. Agent Mann’s eyes widened in horror. He couldn’t release the lock of his holy sword against the demon’s fist scales, because then Jacob, who was frozen in fear and in the path of the punch, would die. He couldn’t dodge the spear because the demon was still too quick for him to physically do so without teleporting, and again putting Jacob in danger.

This was it. He was done.

He closed his eyes and smiled. A single regretful tear fell from his eye socket.

“DAMMIT, NO ONE’S DYING ON MY WATCH!” Jacob bellowed, and suddenly, there he was, dashing forward and flinging himself in the trident’s path. He had no plan, no surefire way to both save this clearly innocent skeleton as well as survive. He hadn’t even meant to use himself as a human shield, really. His feet and mouth had just moved on their own accord, his white Vans pounding on the floor.

Agent Mann stared in horror as the black teen hung in space between him and the demon’s trident. “NO!” he shouted desperately. He reached out, terrified. Not again! I can’t afford to let anyone else die to a demon on my watch! If I can just touch him…!

Red metal, forged in the very flames of Hell, pierced black skin like tongues of fire licking up at a cross on a funeral pyre. An agonized scream rose into the air, strangled and dying like the very mansion itself.

The ancient house of the late George McArthur claimed another victim.

The demon stared in mild surprise at the limp body of Jacob Davidson hanging on the arrow-like spokes of his oversized weapon. He raised his black eyebrow and snorted. “Well, I can’t say I planned that, but that just makes things easier on me.” He regarded Mann with a terrible grin. “Now I only have to focus on killing you, and I can use this kid’s soul to regain my former strength. Then I’ll enjoy torturing both of you for an eternity!”

Rage, simple and unbridled, swept through every bone and joint of Agent Mann’s skeleton. His right eye glowed a furious blue.

“YOU BASTARD!” he roared, and immediately flashed away, letting the demon punch through empty space. But even as he reappeared behind his hellish opponent, a wispy white, gaslike substance lifted out of Jacob’s corpse. It tried to rise up to the rotting rafters, but a wave of fresh darkness blew out from the demon’s mouth. The demon-darkness mixed with the spirit of Jacob Davidson and turned it from its pure white to the same shade of periwinkle as George McArthur’s ghost had been. It stopped rising up.

Then, having no other use for Jacob’s empty corpse, the demon shrugged and simply swept his trident roughly to the side. The corpse dislodged from the prongs and tumbled back into the entrance hall.

All of this happened in a split second.

Agent Mann watched, horrified.

“No…” he gasped, shaking his skull and steadying his silver blade. The need for revenge and his bloodlust raged within him, each new action taken by the demon only fueling it. He desperately tried to quell it, to calm it down and keep him from being taken over by it. His right eye glowed even more intensely blue. “No, no, no, no, no, no, NO!”

He jumped up into the air in a tight front flip. Halfway through the flip, he teleported to a spot just above and in front of the now cruelly laughing demon’s mouth. With a furious snarl like a tiger, Agent Mann jabbed his sword backwards into the fleshy, exposed roof of the demon’s mouth. His holy blade cut straight up through the bastard’s head and clanged against its skull.

Ectoplasm dribbled out of the demon’s mouth, and it choked once, twice.

Then its blood red body faded into shadow. The demon-darkness in the room dissipated. Moonlight crept through the boarded-up windows of the entrance hall and connecting hallways once more. The supernatural chill in the air vanished, replaced by the slight breeze wafting through the broken glass.

It was over. Perhaps not forever, but it was over.

Trembling, panting, Agent Mann dashed from the storage room to where Jacob’s body lay in the once-more normal entrance hall. He knelt down next to it sadly. All of his rage washed away from him, leaving him with a crushing emptiness. He’d failed to protect this innocent life.

Red blood poured in small rivers out of the soulless body. Three deep puncture wounds marred the corpse and the black Bi the Way shirt it wore. They were so deep, Mann could see the smashed ribs and mangled innards. The FBI operative regarded the corpse with melancholy. This poor kid had had a good heart, and was even a wielder of the Right Hand of God; he could’ve saved many more lives if he’d only survived the night. And not only that; he’d saved the revenant’s own life.

He’d earned a special place in Mann’s heart.

“You could’ve done so much good,” Agent Mann said softly. He made to stand up, paused a moment, then closed the corpse’s eyes. It seemed like the right thing to do. He then fully stood up and frowned at his silver sword, which dripped with disgusting ectoplasm. It didn’t seem right to purify a soul with a blade dirtied by the blood of said soul’s killer, but Mann didn’t have much of a choice. If he waited any longer, Jacob’s soul, trapped on Earth, risked becoming a vengeful spirit.

Sighing, the skeleton agent turned to Jacob’s floating soul.

He gaped.

The periwinkle, wispy spirit glowed purpled and flicked about in the stale air of the McArthurs’ crypt-like mansion. Parts of it billowed outwards, then swung back in with the rest of the writhing soul. It looked as though it were desperately fighting something. Agent Mann watched, unsure of what to do; he’d never seen a freshly released soul act like this before, even after being trapped by demon-darkness.

“What on Earth…?” he breathed as he watched, leaning forward in utter amazement.

The soul writhed and wriggled, bucking like a bull that some poor sap had decided to ride. Its purple glow brightened but was occasionally snuffed out, only to return twice as brighter. And whatever it was doing seemed to be working. It slowly, painfully slowly, turned from the depressing periwinkle of a ghost unable to pass on (be it from personal or external issues), to a lighter blue; then from that to a pale white.

Agent Mann’s eye sockets widened in comprehension. “Incredible! This kid’s soul is instinctively using its Right Hand of God as an immune system, fighting back against the demon-darkness… Simply incredible!”

At last, after five desperate minutes, it again achieved the pure white of a purified soul. Mann’s skull broke out into a wide, impressed smile, but the night’s surprises didn’t end there. Even as the soul once more began to rise up to the heavens, it jerked down purposefully, struggling downwards to its fallen body. Like a swimmer in molasses, it gradually drew closer to its destination. It fought the almost gravitational force that pulled it upwards and inched further and further down.

Finally, one white wisp of a soul touched a mangled body, and Jacob Davidson’s eyes shot open as he drew in a ragged breath. Even the three bloody wounds on his chest closed up as his breathing returned to a heavy, labored pace. Something was off, though. He still looked pale, though, his dark skin a lighter-than-normal shade of brown. And instead of having two dark brown eyes, only his left one retained its usual color; the other shone in a rich, dangerous blue.

Jacob flipped over, propped himself up on weak limbs, and heaved. Blood oozed from his mouth and splattered against the floorboards. But the blood wasn’t red; it was an inky black.

Agent Mann’s mind caught up to his eye sockets, and his jaw hit the floor as he finally connected the dots.

Jacob Davidson, user of the Right Hand of God, had become a revenant.