Chapter Text
“Hey, Vinny!” Tommy said, bumping his elbow into Vincent’s arm and pointing at the strange book sitting crooked on the bar top. “Ten bucks says you won’t.”
Vincent didn’t even bother lowering his glass.
“Won’t what, exactly?” His eyes flicked toward the book before back to Tommy. “Read that thing some woman talked you outta twenty dollars for?”
Tommy scoffed. “It’s legit.”
He hesitated.
“Least it better be, for what I paid.”
Vincent huffed a laugh and finished what was left in his glass.
“Uh-huh.”
He set it down a little harder than he meant to.
“If it’s real,” he said, nudging the edge of the book with two fingers, “why’re you so dead set on makin’ me test it?”
“What’s the matter with you, Vin?” Eddie asked from beside him, leaning an elbow against the bar. His grin had that lazy, half-drunk look to it. “Don’t tell me you’re gettin’ chicken on us now.”
Vincent snorted. “I’m just tryin’ to understand why I’m suddenly the poor bastard volunteered to waste his evenin’ on Tommy’s mystery scam book.”
He tapped the bar once for another whiskey before really stopping to think about whether he needed it.
Tommy pointed at him.
“Cause,” he said, grinning too wide now, “you’re the most skeptical. That’s what makes it perfect.”
“Mm.” Vincent raised a brow as the barkeep slid over another glass. “You actually believe this bull?”
He tapped his knuckle against the leather cover. Solid. Old. Smelled vaguely like dust and smoke. Weirdly expensive, if nothing else.
“Makes sense to me,” Eddie piped up, leaning in closer to squint at the thing like he expected it to blink at him. “We got a God. Ain’t exactly crazy to think maybe somebody could summon Satan.”
“Suppose,” Vincent muttered, then took a slow sip.
Though if God was really watchin’, He had a funny way of showin’ it. Folks tried doin’ right their whole lives and still wound up broke, miserable, or stuck someplace worse.
Didn’t seem like there was much fairness to any of it. Felt rigged, if anything.
Tommy bumped Vincent's shoulder with his own.
"C'mon. Ten bucks. If nothin' happens, nothin' happens."
Vincent eyed the book for a second, taking another long sip of his drink.
This was stupid. Ain't no way this thing actually worked.
He lowered his glass and sighed.
"Fine."
In hindsight, Vincent should've known better.
In front of him, on his living room floor, was a pentagram drawn in chalk. It was crooked, sloppy, and very clearly the work of someone who'd had too much to drink.
Vincent sat just outside of it, the book in his lap as he looked over the chant he was supposed to say.
“How the hell am I supposed to say this?” he muttered, adjusting his glasses as if that might turn the words into something legible.
“Just say it how it looks,” Tommy suggested from nearby, crouched beside the circle arranging the so-called “ingredients” like he had any idea what he was doing.
Vincent slowly looked up at him, then flipped the book around.
“And how, exactly,” he asked flatly, “do you think this looks, Thomas?”
Tommy squinted at the page.
"Latin right?" he said after a moment. "Ain't that what demons and shit speak?"
Vincent just stared at him for a long moment. Then sighed.
He was hopeless.
“I made whatever ‘jambalaya’ is!” Eddie announced, walking into the living room holding a plate of aggressively orange food. It smelled burnt.
Vincent raised a brow, looking between Eddie and the plate.
"You figure out what it is yet?"
Eddie shook his head.
“Nope. But I’ll tell ya this much, whatever it is, it takes a ridiculous amount of spices.”
He glanced at the plate.
“Had to improvise.”
Vincent shook his head. If this ritual somehow worked after everything they'd managed to screw up, he'd be genuinely impressed.
“Alright,” he muttered, already tired of the whole thing. “Let’s get this over with.”
Eddie set the jambalaya beside the radio on the table, close enough to the pentagram that it’d hopefully count, but not actually on the floor.
It was still food after all.
Vincent stood with the book, walking to the center of the pentagram, and stood. Tommy and Eddie stood outside it on either side of him.
Vincent took a breath and adjusted his glasses as if that would somehow help him make sense of what he was looking at.
Then he started reading.
“Ad ultraterras entia, daemones Inferorum, invoco…”
The words came out clumsy.
Wrong.
Like his mouth wasn’t meant to form the sounds he was trying to make.
Yeah. He was definitely butcherin’ this.
“…Quicumque respondere possit…”
He frowned.
What on earth was he even saying?
“Audi preces meas et me in terra viventium convenite…”
Radio static suddenly crackled through the room, causing all of them to jump.
Vincent looked up from the book in his hands, glancing at the radio with furrowed brows.
The thing had been playing fine just a second ago.
He stared at it a moment longer, like he was waiting for someone to tell him they were screwing with him.
No one did.
Vincent shook his head and forced his eyes back to the pages.
The sooner he finished this, the sooner they could get back to their night.
"De pacto, pacto quo impleamur, colloquamur,"
That one was actually easier compared to the other lines of this ridiculous chant.
Vincent swore he saw the candles flicker, but ignored it. Probably just his eyes playing tricks on him. He was almost done reading.
"Peracto, ad quietem tuam redire potes, et ego cadebo cum tempus meum advenerit." He finished.
He exhaled.
Done.
Vincent looked up from the book to see if anything had happened.
Nothing.
Just the dim light of candles and the steady hiss of radio static.
He frowned, then looked at Tommy.
His stupid grin was nowhere to be found, instead, his mouth was pressed into a thin line. His body was tense like he'd forgotten how to relax.
Eddie wasn't any better.
He was pale, noticeably so, and his eyes had widened, fixed somewhere behind Vincent.
The candles went out, plunging the room into darkness.
The radio static spiked dramatically.
Vincent cursed, hands flying to his ears as the sharp shriek cut through the room. The book slipped from his grasp, landing somewhere at his feet.
Something settled in the dark.
Tommy inhaled sharply.
Eddie muttered a curse under his breath.
Then—
“Hello, gentlemen.”
The voice came from behind him.
Warm. Pleasant even.
Wrong.
Vincent turned slowly.
He was met with a chest.
Red with brighter red pinstripes. Too sharp to make sense in the dark.
His gaze lifted to a smile.
Far too wide to be natural.
Yellow teeth, pointed enough to make his stomach drop.
Then the eyes.
Red. Bright red irises.
Not the trick of candlelight either, because the candles were gone.
His eyes went higher.
Antlers. Honest-to-God antlers.
And ears. The same red as his hair with some black at the ends.
Vincent felt the blood drain from his face. That was not a man.
Behind him, Tommy sounded strangled.
“Vincent…”
Eddie's voice cracked.
“What the fuck is that?!”