Demon Jack Read Online Free PDF Page A

and I could see a few spots where teeth had been moments before through his parted lips. He was facing me, eyes opening and closing with a slow, dazed fascination.
    “Jack,” Alice said, flickering into view on the street, just outside my now shattered window. She was seated Indian style, and seemed completely uninterested in my shitty state of affairs. “I’m glad you’re not dead.”
    “I can tell how absolutely excited you are Alice. Really. I can,” I muttered.
    Holding myself up with one arm, I undid the seat belt and flopped over onto my side, as opposed to my head. I lay there for a moment, fighting off a wave of nausea. Once I was sure I wasn’t going to vomit all over myself, I began to worm my way out through the shattered window.
    “I’m glad you can acknowledge that,” she said.
    I glared at her. Behind her, I could see the van skid to a stop. Thankfully traffic was almost non-existent this late, or else we’d have gotten run over while this whole fucked up scene played itself out. A woman jumped out of the side door, the motion one of quick feline grace. She was taller than me, with thick red hair and a body built out of compact muscle. She wore a simple green tank top and black jeans over heavy boots. She walked towards me, chanting quietly to her self. There were small, bleeding cuts on the inside of her forearms, the blood running down over her hands and dripping from her fingertips to the pavement.
    I made out the words “Goddess” and “Cleanse” a moment before Alice’s face registered a look of total surprise and the little demon vanished.
    Weakness washed over me. Everything went fuzzy, slowly shifting in and out of focus. My stomach heaved and emptied itself on the asphalt in a thick, lurching retch. I tried to fight my way to my feet but my muscles failed me. I collapsed in a broken heap at the redhead's feet.
    It took me a minute to realize I couldn’t understand what language the woman was speaking. Because of Alice, I was able to understand any spoken language on the planet, and some that weren’t. I should have been able to understand what she was saying as easily as if I was hearing English.
    I couldn’t understand a damned word of it.
    It finally dawned on me what she had done and the copper taste of fear replaced the taste of bile in my mouth. There are only two things that can really hurt me. I mean really and truly do me harm that I can't recover from. One was holy objects, those things infused with faith over time. Not the symbol, but the pure faith that’s put into them by their owner through years of prayer and turmoil and hope. A rosary, for example, held and prayed over for years would be able to burn my skin like a branding iron. The other thing was blessed earth, be it Christian, Buddhist, Wiccan whatever. As long as someone with pure, true faith had consecrated the ground, it was anathema to everything that Alice was and left me cut off from her power.
    The redhead had just blessed the patch of road we were all standing on, and she had done it in less than a minute flat.
    Because of it, I was just another average human. Alice kept me exactly as I was the moment I had sold my soul and my spirit had returned to my body. I didn’t get sick. My body didn't age at the same rate as a normal person. I’d pretty much keep on trucking until I met whatever it was that ended up doing me in or I managed to get a few centuries under my belt. That said, I had been a heroin addict when I died. When my soul returned to my body, I'd been in a coma for days without heroin. Without Alice to stave it off, I was going to going to come down with a serious case of dope sick in rather short order.
     
     

Chapter 3
     
    “Nice ta’ see yer still breathin’,” the redhead said, standing over me. She had a thick Cockney British accent. “I was really ‘opin I wasn’t gonna ‘ave to carry you.”
    I stood up weakly, using the overturned patrol car for support. I pulled the hood of