Demon Key Read online

  This is a work of fiction. The events and characters described herein are imaginary and are not intended to refer to specific places or living persons. The opinions expressed in this manuscript are solely the opinions of the author and do not represent the opinions or thoughts of the publisher.

  Demon Key

  All Rights Reserved.

  Copyright © 2008 David Brookover

  V2.1

  Cover Photo © 2008 JupiterImages Corporation. All rights reserved - used with permission.

  This book may not be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in whole or in part by any means, including graphic, electronic, or mechanical without the express written consent of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  Outskirts Press, Inc.

  http://www.outskirtspress.com

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2007943699

  Outskirts Press and the “OP” logo are trademarks belonging to Outskirts Press, Inc.

  PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

  Dedication

  To my mom, Dorothy

  And to my mother-in-law,

  Rosemary

  For their loving support.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Chapter 71

  Chapter 72

  Chapter 73

  Chapter 74

  Chapter 75

  Chapter 76

  Chapter 77

  Chapter 78

  Chapter 79

  Chapter 80

  Chapter 81

  Chapter 82

  Chapter 83

  Chapter 84

  Chapter 85

  Chapter 1

  The fierce tropical storm battered the dilapidated shopping strip, ripping away roofing shingles and toppling storefront signs. Elaine Brewster leaned into the squall behind Coen’s Deli in Coral Springs, Florida, hurriedly locked the three deadbolts on the warped door, and armed the alarm pad. The small canopy above the back door provided little shelter from the horizontal rain, and her clothes were instantly drenched. Her chickenshit boss had flown the coop hours ago to secure his home against the powerful storm’s onslaught, leaving her to lock up after dark – alone.

  She turned and squinted through the silvery-black veil at the spot where her battered Neon was parked across the alley, but the naked light bulb above the door failed to illuminate it. She prayed it was still there. She scanned the immediate area for car lights and people, but all the neighboring businesses had closed hours ago and sat silent like ominous hulks.

  Elaine shivered. The deluge came in horrific stinging waves that soaked her to the bone. The blustery winds only heightened her distress.

  A wicked web of horizontal lightning temporarily dispersed the blackness like a crackling neon sign. Thunder shuddered the cracked concrete stoop beneath her feet. Elaine hugged her ample bosom as she waited for a lull in the rain, but it only seemed to get worse. Blowing watery sheets washed away the thin gravel layer of the potholed alley and swelled the bloated sandy rivulets into mini-whitewater rapids.

  The dim light winked above her. Jesus, now the damn power was threatening to go caput! She inhaled deeply. Anxiously. Weighing more than three hundred pounds, Elaine was fully aware that she wasn’t about to dodge many raindrops as she made a mad dash for her Neon. But really, what difference did it make? Her clothes were now dead water weight. She felt like a drowned rat.

  A sudden image of an imagined drowned rat was quickly displaced by a chilling death mask. What if she wasn’t alone in the alley? Paranoia rattled her nerves. Her car was camouflaged in the impenetrable blackness, a perfect place for a murderous carjacker’s ambush. Her breathing came in wheezing gasps as her trembling hand rummaged through her purse for the pepper spray. Her damp chubby fingers located it, but they had trouble grasping the small canister.

  Finally, she triumphantly hoisted the weapon in front of her face, but then another concern materialized. What if the pepper spray didn’t work out in the rain and wind? She gripped the canister close to her heaving chest. God, she was a mess. Worrying about goddammed carjackers on a night like this. What a stupid fool she was. She released a mirthless chortle and wiped her rain-slick pumpkin face.

  A strong gust fluttered her badly stained apron. The heavy fabric flogged the numerous fleshy folds of her hips and tightened the wet knot at her spine. God, she thought, it was now or never. Carjackers be damned!

  Elaine stepped into the maelstrom and waded across the burbling current that raced along the alley. It was surprisingly deep and tugged fiercely at her knees. The torrent nearly toppled her.

  “Thank you, Lord!” she shouted, after safely reaching the parking lot.

  The Neon’s crumpled rear bumper reflected the next horizon-to-horizon lightning display, and Elaine was tempted to hug the old road warrior. Instead, she fished the car keys from her apron pocket and turned the lock. She was about to give the slippery door handle a tug, when she felt a wasp-like prick on the back of her neck. Flying wasps in this storm? Most likely it was a harmless piece of flying debris the television alarmists were always warning viewers about during a tropical storm or hurricane.

  As Elaine’s fingers probed the source of the itchy pain, her thick legs grew rubbery and dull. Her purse slipped from her suddenly numb fingers and splashed into the rising puddle at her feet. She dropped heavily to her knees, but felt little of the slicing pain from the sharp gravel that skinned her kneecaps. Her obese form rolled over, and she lay there, seeing but not feeling. Her muscles refused her commands, including her disabled eyelids that failed to blink away the pelting raindrops.

  The puddle at her feet spread and joined others; they rapidly formed a surging pond. Gusting ripples lapped at her lips like ocean surf, with some sweeping into her gaping mouth. Terror seized her thoughts. Was she having a stroke? Why didn’t her muscles work and her brain did? Was she about to die a lonel
y death behind those dumpy stores?

  Elaine attempted to calm herself, but that was futile. She was scared shitless!

  She was going to drown, and there wasn’t a damn thing she could do to prevent it.

  Suddenly, she sensed she was being moved – up and up – then the world bounced a few times. The turbulent sky and downpour vanished, and she was alone in dry blackness. Who had moved her? And why? This didn’t look like the inside of any ambulance she’d ever seen!

  There was a sudden loud roar. Elaine recognized the sound of a diesel engine starting up. Moments later, the crumpled sky above her began flapping wildly – she guessed it was a tarp. Since when did ambulances begin blanketing their patients with tarps? Then a crazy notion escalated her panic. Maybe she was riding inside a hearse!

  Elaine tried with all her might to force her eyelids down to ease the rising motion sickness that had partnered with her panic, but again, the damn things refused to budge.

  All of a sudden, it hit her.

  She wasn’t inside an ambulance or hearse.

  She was riding in the back of a pick-up truck. Elaine mentally frowned.

  For godsake, why?

  Chapter 2

  The rain hammered the fluttering tarp inches above Elaine Brewster’s face and suppressed the pick-up’s throaty growl. Even the thunderclaps were muted rumbles. She had no concept of time in her comatose state. Unseen hands slid her from the pickup’s sheltered bed into the raging storm. That enigmatic someone dragged her by her armpits through tall wind-bent grass, as quarter-size raindrops stung her eyes and brilliant flashes temporarily erased her vision. And, her eyelids still refused to shut.

  A flashlight clicked on, and Elaine passed through a wide threshold. She was roughly hauled into what appeared to be a boathouse. The ceiling was festooned with mammoth spider webs resembling a road map of downtown Miami, and dark rotting timbers supported a sagging roof that leaked rain like a sprinkling can. Suddenly, she found herself rolling sideways into what she recognized as an airboat. When she came to a bone-jarring stop below the fan motor, the doors at the opposite end of the boathouse slid open, and Elaine watched powerlessly as someone poled the boat out of its shelter.

  Her captor – she finally acknowledged that she was being kidnapped – was a mountain of a man dressed in a black rain slicker with the glistening hood tied close to his face. A slight paunch puckered the material around each metal snap, but he was in decent shape. His powerful hands easily drove the pole into the water’s bottom and pulled it free of the sucking muck for another push.

  Elaine couldn’t see his face – he stood with his back to her – but she didn’t have to see it. He was an evil man, just like the ones Reverend Peters preached about during his weekly sermons. A disciple of Satan. A soulless stranger without a conscience, and without regard for human life.

  Panic seized her thoughts again. Whatever drug the monster had used to rend her completely helpless had left her conscious. Cruelly conscious. Sadistically conscious. She wanted to scream, claw his eyes out, and use his drug on him to see how he liked it! Instead, she subdued her rage and fervently prayed that he wouldn’t rape and torture her. Make her death fast. Make it clean. Please God! Please!

  The man slipped ear protectors over his hood and pressed them tight against his unseen ears. The airboat’s fan engine coughed to life, and its roar was deafening. She was thankful that she was unable to feel the agony from her nearly blown eardrums.

  The airboat rocked and sailed in the strong gusts, and for a while Elaine didn’t think they’d make it to wherever they were headed. But then again, what did she care? Drowning in a swamp was probably a more merciful fate than what her captor had in store for her.

  The fan engine chuffed and sputtered to silence. Her captor beached and moored the airboat before rolling her into the shallow water with a hefty splash. The man grabbed her armpits again and dragged her out of the choking water and through more grass. Her left eye was battered blind from the storm, and the vision in her right eye was reduced to gray shadows. And still, she couldn’t feel a thing.

  The rain abruptly ceased. Elaine was inside again, but where? She had the vague sensation of rising, and then was jolted flat on her back; her head bounced like a deflated basketball. A bed? A table? She wanted to shudder, but her muscles remained useless.

  Elaine was totally blind now. A defenseless piece of meat on a slab, ready for manipulation. Or was it to be mutilation? She shivered inside a dark isolated room inside her mind. Maybe it was better that way. She didn’t really want to see what the bastard was going to do to her. Her blindness was probably a blessing, although a damn small one. A real blessing would be her boss, Mike Cohen, lying here instead of her. The rat-bastard.

  Vague shadows reappeared – first in the right eye, and then in the left. Gradually her focus returned. Then, like a miracle, her eyelids blinked. Blinked! Halleluiah! Hell’s bells and hairy Mary! They friggin’ worked again!

  Her captor was bent over her holding a small vial of eye drops and watching her intently. His face was concealed below his dark eyes by a blue surgical mask; wiry tufts of a gray-black beard curled at the bottom edge of the blue fabric. She was in some kind of enormous outbuilding – maybe a barn. The windows were painted black, and crudely installed florescent tubes dangled from exposed electrical wiring stapled to the overhead loft. Their yellowish glow burned her eyes. She felt it! This time she was able to close her lids and block the tortuous light.

  Elaine cracked her lids open and warily peeked out again. The monstrous man had exchanged the vial for a pruning shears and proceeded to cut her sopping clothes away. Her horrified eyes bulged from their sockets! She now lay completely naked below the stranger’s gaze! She wanted to scream, but that was still an impossibility.

  Her captor moved out of her sight for an instant, and when he returned, he ominously waved a shiny scalpel back and forth above her face. His mask puffed in and out as he laughed.

  “This is one weight loss spa where you will lose weight, honey. Lots of it!” His voice was muted gravel behind the mask, but Elaine understood him just fine. She cringed in the corner of her remote mental room.

  The big man stretched her flabby arms above her head, and folds of loose fat pressed against her cheeks. He shuffled two steps down along her body and leaned over her midsection. He appeared very intent on what he was doing.

  Elaine squeezed her eyes shut again. She didn’t want to witness any more. He was wielding his horrid scalpel, and that suggested that he was operating on her. She didn’t even want to venture a guess about the procedure.

  Lose weight, he’d told her.

  Shut up! She shouted at her curiosity! Give it a rest. I don’t need to know what he’s doing. As long as I can’t feel it or see it, I’ll let it go. What other choice do I have?

  Suddenly, her captor rolled her eyelids back with wooden matchsticks. He straightened when her lids were firmly locked into place, and Elaine found herself back at square one. She was again helpless to block out the sight of the coming horrors. So much for her miracle.

  The tall man turned away to retrieve something beyond her vision. When he pivoted toward her, he held up a thick rectangular piece of bloody cloth; its dimensions looked to be about a foot-and-half by a foot. She strained her eyes and examined it closer, and then mentally screamed for all she was worth!

  It wasn’t a bloody cloth at all. It was a slice of her own flesh!

  Chapter 3

  Dexter Lowe yawned in his office. He hadn’t managed more than a catnap during the past thirty-six hours. As the police chief of Gator Creek, Florida, a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it Everglades town west of Fort Lauderdale, he was accustomed to the long hours during tropical storms and hurricanes; it was just that his fifty-year old body didn’t hold up like it did twenty years ago. Panicked callers bombarded the local 911 lines, reporting everything from stranded cats to fallen trees toppling power lines. He passed the buck to the fire department and Florid
a Power and Light whenever he could, but nevertheless his lone police officer cruised the vicinity to checkout reported damage and respond to life-threatening situations.

  Lowe’s thinning auburn hair was mixed with gray brushstrokes, and sun-brown furrows plowed across his forehead. Radiant creases crinkled at the corners of his mouth and mahogany eyes, and his square face was chiseled tan stoic. He studied the computer printout displaying NOAA’s latest storm properties and projections and massaged his bloodshot eyes. The stubborn storm was stalled over the Everglades, and they had to persevere another six hours until it popped over to Fort Meyers and the Gulf of Mexico.

  But that was the least of his worries at the moment. A two-legged storm was marching toward his office.

  A petite woman in her early thirties opened his wood and glass door and poked her head inside. Her name was Teddi McCoy, and she was FBI. Nosy, nagging FBI.

  “Hey, Dex, I thought this was the Sunshine State,” she remarked wryly. “It hasn’t stopped raining since I got here.”

  “That ought to tell you something,” he retorted. “It might follow you back to Washington.”

  Teddi shot him a withering glance. “Very funny.”

  “Add two weeks to the one you’ve been here, and we’ve got ourselves an atypical monsoon season,” he replied. “Along with an ark load of headaches.”

  “Me included?”

  He merely sighed and stared out the front window. It was still dark outside. The sun had set weeks ago beneath a woolen blanket of clouds.

  Dex considered Teddi a pretty woman, despite the all-business scowl planted on her face 24-7. Short honey blond hair framed her oval face, which was pushed behind her ears. No earrings. No make-up, for that matter. But still, the rose blush on her cheekbones and the naturally long lashes highlighted an eye-pleasing, sculptured face. Her 5’4” figure was filled out in all the right places and in good physical shape, and her green almond eyes regarded him quizzically.