Tag Archives: Eric Avedissian

Newlyweds Armand and Vonnie are traveling to Armenia, where Armand hopes
to reconnect with his estranged culture and investigate his family’s
troubled history. But when a sadistic oligarch kidnaps them, their honeymoon
spirals into a living nightmare.

Chapter 1

PANIC IN THE STRIP CLUB

The stripper wraps her toned leg around the metal pole and flashes me a dead-eyed stare. 

Platinum blonde hair tumbles over her bare shoulders as she gyrates to a hip-hop song, a titillating dance in the spotlight-splashed club.  

Turning her shapely butt towards me, the amount of one dollar bills tucked between her G-string makes her look like a peacock proudly displaying its colorful plumage. I sheepishly remove a dollar from my pocket and gently toss it at her. She smiles, scoops it up with manicured fingers, and places it with the rest.

In a flat voice, the stripper says, “Hey, Armand.” 

“Hey, Crystal,” I reply, avoiding eye contact. 

“How’s Vonnie?” The woman removes her bikini top, revealing two pert breasts. 

“She’s good. We’re getting married,” I ignore the bikini top she drapes around my bald head. 

“Oh? Congratulations.” Crystal spreads her legs. “I knew you two had chemistry.” 

My heart skips a beat and perspiration slicks my forehead. I absent-mindedly wipe my brow with the bikini top like it’s a monogrammed handkerchief. 

“Yeah. That’s what people say…” I tell her.

The other strip club patrons give me the hairy eyeball because the woman they’re ogling is chatting with me. One acne-scarred brute clutching a dollar bill pushes his way around me. Crystal crawls on her hands and knees, snatches the bill between her teeth, and growls at him. The patron melts in his chair, apparently satisfied.

Crystal winks at me and sends the bill down below with the others. 

“Tell Vonnie I said hi.” Crystal grinds her pelvis against the pole. The crowd goes wild. My stomach plummets, and I slink away from the stage as fast as I can.

I haven’t visited the Neon Oasis, Fresno’s swankiest strip club, ever since I met Vonnie Hudgens, a former stripper and now my fiancé. Watching other women perform on the same stage Vonnie did is a disquieting déjà vu. 

Now I’m here reluctantly because my brothers at the Legion of the Lamb thought hosting a bachelor party for me would be the ultimate boy’s night out. 

But all it did was dredge up memories. 

A hand claps my back. 

“Hey, Tark!” 

A wiry man, pale skin, military-style buzzcut, bushy pornstache covering his upper lip, holds his beer aloft. 

“Hey, Reece,” I say, my voice somewhere between tired and jaded.

“What’s wrong, brother? It’s your party. Your last night of freedom as a single guy.” Reece gulps his beer and belches loudly. “Enjoy!”

“I am.” 

“Look, between you, me, and the wall, I despise these kind of places. But we’re here, Hank’s bankrolling the whole thing, so let’s try and unwind. Okay, bro?” Reece says, too old to say “bro” but ironically blends in with the mostly younger, mostly sleazy crowd. 

“I need a drink. Excuse me, Reece.” I slip away towards the bar. 

I ease myself onto a barstool, take out my wallet, and place it on the bar, indicating I’m ready for business. The bartender, an attractive blonde with piercing, cold eyes notices me. 

She does a double-take. 

“Armand? It’s been a while,” she says.

“Hey, Vee. Yes, it has,” I reply. 

“Seen Vonnie lately?”

“Uh huh. We’re getting married.”

Vee smiles. “No shit? Congratulations, man. She really liked you when she worked here. That deserves a drink on the house.” Vee pours me a beer and slides it over. “What’ve you been up to?”

The condensation on the glass is cool and sweaty in my palm. 

“Oh, this and that,” I take a tentative sip. The beer slides down smooth like a dream. “I’m in the consultation business.”

I don’t tell her what I consult on, or that I hunt the things that go bump in the night. 

“Hey, man! What’re you doing over here?” the man with dark brown skin and handlebar mustache asks me. 

He’s wall-to-wall muscles and sporting a Legion of the Lamb leather vest. 

“Just getting a drink, Big Earl.” I hold up my beer as proof. 

Big Earl’s brows furrow. “Naw, man! Come over and sit with us. It’s your bachelor party.”

“So it is.”

“You seem down, Tark. What’s up?”

I sift through my feelings about Vonnie, marriage, and the Legion. My life took a wild ride over the past few years and I guess everything is catching up to me. 

“I’m getting married,” I reply meekly.

“Yeah.” Big Earl searches my face. “You getting cold feet, brother?”

“No. I don’t think so. It’s just that…” I trail off. What’s bothering me isn’t the wedding, it’s that the Armenian death goddess Spandaramet marked me and Hell’s legions are coming for me. That’s what happens when you hunt too many demons. 

“Whatever it is, let it go. We got you. Plus, it’s your night,” Big Earl tells me. “Now come on.”

I follow him to a table where the rest of the Legion awaits. Reece, Muskrat, and Hank are already there, drinking and staring at the strippers. 

“Uh, hey, Tark! Where, uh, were you?” says an overweight goofus who has barbecue sauce on his beard. Muskrat clutches a chicken wing in his thick fingers and devours it in front of us. “You, uh, try the wings?”

“While the idea of strip club chicken wings sounds tempting, I’ll pass,” I say.

“Come on, brother. This is your party. Last night of freedom.” The crotchety biker grandpa clutches his cane. His scraggily beard hangs down and his wrinkled face belies his seasoned age. 

“This place brings back memories, Hank,” I tell him. “Memories I’d sooner forget.”

Hank nods like he gets me. 

“Uh-huh. This is where Vonnie worked. Where her former boss Stuart was murdered,” Hank says. 

I didn’t think about Stuart Newkin’s worm-riddled corpse until Hank brings it up. The image flashes in my mind, the wriggling white worms in his eye sockets, his open mouth, his mummified skin. 

“This place certainly has its ghosts,” I mumble. 

If you can channel the dead, the ghosts won’t leave you alone. I’ve witnessed plenty of spirits thanks to my bloodline curse, and I don’t want to see any more, especially during my bachelor party. 

Reece stands up and hoists his beer. 

“A toast to our brother Tark!” he shouts. “Come on, my dudes! Raise those beers!”

Big Earl, Hank, Bill, and Muskrat all lift their glasses and offer a toast to my health and wish me a happy marriage.

“Congrats to you and Vonnie,” says Bill, a rugged Asian man with scars on his cheeks. “May you both have a harmonious union for a hundred years.” 

The Legion drinks to Bill’s traditional Chinese wedding blessing, but I’m not paying attention.

A lone figure in a black trench coat distracts me. He’s by himself near the stage, eyeing a stripper named Topaz, whose gravity-defying act involves shimmying around the pole. The stranger’s long hair hangs in oily locks and sweeps across his acne-scarred forehead. Long fingernails scrape across the table as he mutters a guttural language I can’t understand but have heard before. 

This dude couldn’t be more suspicious here if he wore an orange neon jumpsuit and a blue wig. 

“What’s that guy doing?” I nudge Big Earl.

Hearing that particular sentence, Big Earl’s head whips around faster than that girl from The Exorcist.  

“It’s like…a ritual,” Big Earl says. 

“Oh, yeah. Now I see it. But what’s he doing?” 

We get our answer a few seconds later when a crimson light bursts from the stranger’s hands and strikes Topaz. The woman flies out of her high heels and across the room before landing in a lifeless heap on the floor. Everyone in the club freezes. 

Reece pulls Crystal from his lap and takes a few tentative steps towards the stranger. Big Earl and Muskrat bolt upright.

“What the hell was that?” Hank drops his beer and points at Topaz. “Check on her. See if she’s okay.” 

I jump out of my seat and rush towards the incapacitated woman, while one of the bouncers, a sinewy young man with a shaved head, makes a beeline for the stranger. 

The stripper’s limbs twitch as if a powerful energy courses through her. Her eyes snap open. They’re full-on jet black. 

The bouncer advances towards the cackling stranger. 

“Stay away from him,” I warn the bouncer. 

With one fluid motion the bouncer grabs the interloper with both hands and is immediately repelled by a powerful blast of energy, sending him through the air and into the wall. The twitching bouncer strikes the floor with his full weight.

Topaz’s hand seizes my throat. My reflexes kick in and I hurl myself backwards to escape her, but she pulls herself up. A tentacle, covered in viscous drool, extends from her mouth towards my face. My fist makes sharp contact with the side of her head. It rattles her, but not enough. She still has me.

The bouncer’s body convulses and he hauls himself to his feet. He surveys the club through all-black eyes. 

“I’m on it!” Big Earl rushes through the club as the patrons head for the exit. 

Big Earl raises his hands and cautiously approaches the bouncer. 

“Come on, man. Settle down,” Big Earl says. “Nice and easy.” 

The bouncer – or whatever it is now – isn’t in the mood for conversation. He lunges at Big Earl, an inhuman howl escaping from his mouth. Big Earl swings and connects, but the punch does nothing. The bouncer shakes it off and smiles, his opal eyes black and soulless. Whatever the stranger unleashed isn’t good. 

Muskrat grabs Topaz by the waist and pulls her off me. My hands instinctively go to my throat. Whatever she did is gonna leave a mark. 

“Muskrat, wait,” I rasp.

The stripper wheels around and her neck grows several inches. A disturbing cracking sound, like sinew and bone splintering, emanates from her. Two obsidian horns push through her forehead. 

“A demon,” I whisper. “He put a demon inside her.”

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