Nightside 08 - The Unnatural Inquirer

said. “Where is the power coming from to let him do something like this?”
    I fired up my gift, and looked at Pen Donavon through my third eye, my private eye. And I found the hidden source of his unnatural power. I could See the thing, inside his body, tucked away under the sternum and over the heart. It must have come to his little shop as just another piece of interdimensional flotsam and jetsam; and he probably hadn’t realised how powerful it was until he accidentally activated it. Probably hadn’t even realised it was alive until it forced its way inside him. Now it was attached to him, a part of him, with long tendrils reaching into his heart and gut and brain. A mystical parasite, living off him while feeding him power in return.
    I couldn’t tear it out of him without killing him in the process. And I didn’t want to kill Pen Donavon, even after all the trouble he’d caused. None of this was really his fault. I doubt he’d had a free and uninfluenced thought of his own since the parasite took up residence inside him.
    Demons emerged from the shadows around us. Hunched and horned, with scarlet skin; medieval devils all with distorted versions of Donavon’s face. They smiled to show their jagged teeth and flexed their clawed hands hungrily. Alex had his cricket bat out again. Cathy had the shotgun. Betty and Lucy Coltrane stood back-to-back, ready to take on all comers. Bettie looked at me. I looked at Pen Donavon.
    “Why Hell?” I said bluntly. “Why are you so convinced of your own damnation? What could a small and insignificant little man like you have possibly done that could be so bad that all you ever think about is Hell?”
    For a long moment I thought he wasn’t going to answer me. The demons were getting very close. And then he sighed deeply, staring into his glass.
    “I had a dog,” he said. “Called him Prince. He was a good dog. Had him for years. Then I got married. She never took to Prince. Just wasn’t a dog person. We all got along well enough…until the marriage hit problems. We started arguing over small things and worked our way up. She said she was going to leave me. I still loved her. Begged her to stay; said I’d do anything. She said I had to prove my love for her. Get rid of the dog. I loved my dog, but she was my wife. So I said I’d give Prince up. Find him a good home somewhere else. But no, that wasn’t good enough. She said I had to prove she was more important to me than the dog, by killing him.
    “Have Prince put down. Or she’d leave me. My choice, she said.
    “I killed my dog. Took him to the vet’s, said good-bye, held his paw while the vet gave him the injection. Took my dog home. Buried him.
    “And she left me anyway. Prince was my dog. He was the best dog in the world. And I killed him.” He looked slowly round the bar, at the Hell he’d made. Slow tears were running down his cheeks. “I deserve this. All of it.”
    The fires blazed up all around us. My bare skin smarted painfully from the heat. The air was thick with the stench of blood and brimstone. The demons were almost within reach. In his need to be punished, to make atonement for his sin, Pen Donavon had brought Hell to Earth; or something close enough to do the job. He could burn up the whole bar and everyone in it…but the parasite inside him would make sure he survived. To go on suffering. Suddenly I knew what the parasite fed on.
    I got angry then. I could kill Donavon, rip the parasite right out of him. But he didn’t deserve that. Not when there was a better way. I’m John Taylor, and I find things. Things, and people, and just sometimes, a way out of Hell for those who need it.
    I raised my gift and forced my inner eye all the way open, making it look in a direction I normally had sense enough to avoid. I concentrated, drawing on every resource I had, and I Saw beyond this world and into the Next. I found who I was looking for and called his name; and he came. A great door opened up in the middle of the bar, spilling a bright and brilliant light into the crimson glare, forcing it back. All the demons stopped and looked round, as a great mongrel dog with a shaggy head and drooping ears bounded out of the door and into the bar. He went straight for the demons nearest Donavon, and tore right through them, gripping them with his powerful jaws and shaking them back and forth like a terrier with a rat. The demons cried out miserably, and fell apart. Donavon looked at the dog, and