Page 42 - Hunter - The Vigil

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fighting them, or are reduced to curling into a fetal ball while It’s small, leathery, with a sucker for its mouths and horns on

the beast bears down. This obfuscation of memory is hard for its heads. It sniffs the ground, and the hunters watch because they
some hunters, but they have ways of dealing with it and draw- know that where the imp stops to lick the floor, well, that’s where

ing the memories back to the fore. the murder was committed.
She can be everything the teenage boy wants her to be: naugh-
The Possessed ty teacher with librarian glasses, infernal seductress with that outfit

A gang of vagrants with glass marbles for eyes and windows in he saw in his mom’s Victoria’s Secret catalog, and she can even be
their mouths descend upon the crying infant in the dumpster, and Betsy, the girl he likes in his British Literature class. But someday,
they collectively reach in and take the baby, for they will offer it to she’ll want to show him the side she likes, the side with the whip-
the same thing that took them. ping tail and the cloven feet.

An office worker doesn’t know why he keeps scratching those They aren’t shape-changers, strictly speaking. But they
occult symbols into the underside of his desk, but he knows that do seem to wear many faces and forms. Moreover, their iden-
the voice inside his head seems to like it, and keeps making very tity is strictly a mystery to most hunters. They appear to offer
interesting promises. deals. Or they show up as chattering imps serving some inex-
A mother of three knows that a second woman lives within plicable purpose (inexplicable until later, when the purpose
her now, a dead woman, and when she looks in the mirror and lets is revealed, at least). They might sit on the banks of a river,

go of her will, that dead woman’s face emerges: red lipstick, black wailing a cacophony as their sorcerous master’s corpse floats
eyes, a hungry tongue. upon the waters. They might become cats or owls or steal
Hunters don’t always realize it, but sometimes the shape- bodies as part of some hellish pact.

shifter they’re fighting has something inside. That “thing” pos- The origin of the term daimon or daemon has somewhat

sessing them is using that person like a host, and the more it more beneficent roots than what manifests during the Vigil.
lives inside the skin, the more it takes. And the more it takes, A daemon was thought of as an entity capable of delivering
the more its own monstrous nature emerges, often physically. divine knowledge or power. It has since been subverted to
Human beings are vulnerable to all manner of possession: mean something infernal, diabolical, malevolent.
ghosts, demons, rogue souls, infectious parasites or alien entities from And those definitions are true, to a point. Demons are

beyond our own world’s boundaries. When they take over, it’s often selfish entities, which sometimes comes across as “evil.” They
slow. Just a seed, a little voice in the head that maybe pushes the don’t do harm because it thrills them, so it seems; they do
human to give into a sinful urge or plants a terrible thought in his harm because it serves them. Or, worse, it serves whatever
head about how his wife’s mysterious absence this morning means- beast holds their leash.
she must be cheating on him. And as the parasite gains dominance Who does hold a demon’s leash, if any? Is it Lucifer, as the
over the man’s will, the parasite’s own nature emerges and changes Lucifuge would have any hunter believe? Are lesser demons
the man physically. in thrall to greater demons who are held as slaves to truly un-

A sewer worker infested by otherworldly worms finds knowable beings? Do they serve vampires, sorcerers or Devil-
that the worms now peek out of his irises or rise from beneath cursed wolfmen? Could they be rogue agents, free from some
loose, corroded fi ngernails. An entity so pure that it compris- spirit world, or released perhaps from a broken Hell itself?
es little more than murderous energies manifests as a bloody Even the Lucifuge, which holds truck with such creatures
cleaver in its host’s hand or as the names of a hundred murder and sometimes even holds the leashes (however temporarily),

victims rising upon the victim’s flesh as scars or brands. A doesn’t have good answers, though it tells compelling lies.

child possessed by the ghost of a neighborhood pederast finds And what does a demon want? Demons generally seem
that strange lusts and vices rise within him, and starts to ex- to serve vice: they enjoy urging others to the services of their
perience a paranormally early pubescence. most basic desires. They seem to gain from this in some fash-
What do hunters cells do with the possessed? Quick-to-judge ion, feeding on it like a vampire does blood. To stir such im-

hunters destroy them. They look horrific. They exhibit monstrous proper passions, demons can take on varying shapes and faces
traits. Put them down. More judicious and investigative cells will to “encourage” desired behaviors. One demon might strike a
do some research, uncovering just what it is that acts as possessor bargain to encourage a man to go back to the heroin needle,

and perhaps how it got there in the first place. Hunters with an eye while another pact might be something more simple and
to rehabilitation see the possessed as a prime target for a “cure” — seemingly more innocuous, like engaging in a one-night stand
the parasite may somehow be ushered from the body, though some or stealing something from a grocery shelf. Some demons pre-
cells handle this differently than others (some accept that an exor- fer to create great chains of urges, making a deal with one
cism will do the trick, while others go for outright physical torture, individual who will then go to tempt another, who may then
ruining the vessel to the point where the invasive entity leaves it, go on to tempt someone else.

like rats fleeing a sinking ship). And what do the tempted gain? That’s where their
nomenclature comes into play: demons still seem to be
The Demonic
the keepers of knowledge. How they got this knowledge
He wears a white suit, a white tie, white shoes and a white smile.
remains unknown (whether they know it as part of their
And he offers you just what you want, and you say you’ll take it no mat-
very being or whether they gained it through pacts), but
ter the price, and that’s just the sort of thing he wants to hear.
they have it, and they’re willing to share. They don’t share
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