Monstrous- The Complete Collection

by Sawyer Black

  Francesco waddled to the back, but Henry didn’t wait. He opened the door and stepped out, buttoning his jacket over the bulging bags in his pocket.

  Francesco held the door for Mandyel. “I’ll be honest, gents. I don’t like this one bit, and if any shit goes down whatsoever, you ain’t gonna find me and my car anywhere near here. You got me?”

  Mandyel laid his hand on the driver's shoulder. “I will bear with you and remember no more.”

  Francesco nodded in relief. “Thanks, Mandy. Appreciate that.”

  Mandyel smoothed his overcoat and adjusted his hat. Francesco shut the door and slid back behind the wheel. Henry watched him drive off. “Wait a minute. The fuck is he going?”

  “I told him to leave.”

  “That’s not what I heard.”

  “That’s some of the cost of wearing the ring, pal. You are numb to the turning wheel.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You can’t feel it, but something is in the air. Your senses have been dulled. Your demonic powers muted. All for my benefit.”

  “Why can’t you people just say what you mean?”

  “Ah, but that’s the point, Henry. We have.”

  A light sprang on in the mansion’s front window. Next to the ornate entry still lit by the remains of the sun. Mandyel slung his arm over Henry’s shoulder. Alcohol rolled from his breath and Henry flinched away. “You ready, pal?”

  “I don’t even know what the fuck I’m doing?”

  “You want to know a secret?” Mandyel ascended the grand steps to the front door, dragging Henry with him. He raised his fist to knock. “I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing, either.”

  “Wait, what?”

  His knuckles fell on the front door, and instead of signaling their arrival, they slid down the door as it opened on a squeal of hinges.

  A grand hallway stretched out in front of them to the rear of the house. Impenetrable shadows in contrast with the light from the open room to the light washing the parquet floor. A sprawling staircase disappeared into the gloom to the left. Mandyel dropped his arm from Henry’s shoulders and entered.

  “Peace be to this house,” the angel whispered.

  Henry pushed on the opening door to keep it swinging, then he and Mandyel turned to face the light.

  Peterson sat in an easy chair with his legs crossed. Canary yellow suit and bow tie over a black shirt. Black shoes with yellow laces. His round lenses opaque with reflected light. He held a tea cup and saucer perched on his knee. He lifted the cup and took a sip, his mouth curling into a smile over the rim.

  A small table with a Tiffany lamp sat at his side, between the easy chair and a hospice bed. An array of prescription bottles circled the lamp like supplicants of an incandescent god. A withered man in a red satin robe was stretched on the bed. His hands held with Velcro cuffs. A hissing oxygen line clipped to his nose.

  Peterson set the saucer on the table, pushing the vials and bottles aside to make room. He placed the cup on the saucer and turned back, smoothing his pant leg before looking into Henry’s eyes. “Mr. Serafino. Thanks so much for accepting the Purveyor’s invitation.”

  “Don’t mention it,” Henry said, relieved that what with the Trackers coming and interrupting the child sex murder orgy that Peterson hadn’t figured out that Henry went and murdered a bunch of his shady friends.

  “Who’s your detective friend?”

  “Mandy? He’s actually from the Fashion Division.”

  Mandyel stepped around from behind Henry to stand at his shoulder. “That’s right, pal. And I see a lot of violations.”

  “Mr. Serafino, please.” Peterson leaned back and tipped his head back to look down his nose. “You made a right mess at Prince Hill. Shut the portal down to the Grand. But bringing a Tracker? That was not nice.”

  So much for not being blamed.

  The door clicked shut behind them, and Henry twisted his neck to look. A brute with a spider web tattoo on his face moved his hand from the door knob as a sawed-off shotgun in his other hand centered on Henry.

  The steps creaked, and a line of hardcore biker types filed into the hallway from upstairs, spreading out and brandishing an array of weapons. All leather, beards, and attitude.

  “But I forgive you, Mr. Serafino. After all, you brought us to the Purveyor. And to the horn.”

  “Well, that’s nice of you.”

  “I thought so.” Peterson removed his black pocket square. He leaned over the rail of the hospital bed and snatched the oxygen tube off the wrinkled face with a look of disgust twisting his lips. He stuffed the silk into the old man’s mouth, and pressed his hand over the wad of cloth, covering the Purveyor’s nose.

  The old man’s wasted frame strained against the restraints. Pushed into Peterson’s hand. His eyes rolled to every corner of the room, heels beating into the sheets beneath him.

  “Motherfucker!” Henry stepped forward with his fists balled at his side, and Peterson’s horde stepped forward to meet him.

  Mandyel grabbed Henry’s shoulder and dragged him back in line.

  The old man bucked. His eyes squeezed shut, tears running into the folds and creases of his cheeks. Peterson grinned with a lion’s mouth, and the Purveyor died with a feeble kick.

  “Henry, old pal,” Mandyel said. “Could you put your ring on the other hand, please?”

  “Fuck yeah.” Henry transferred the ring and burst out of Boothe’s suit in a tornado of luxury fabric. Tatters stretched across his heaving chest and hung in strips at his calves. The line of thugs seemed unimpressed, even when Henry split the entry with his most bestial roar.

  The air cracked with the lightning of Mandyel’s spreading wings, and the goons took a terrified step back as righteous light smeared across their faces.

  That’ll do it.

  Henry squinted into the dazzle revealing the true forms of Petersons’ demons. The man himself sat with shocked awe hanging from his slack face, shielding his eyes from Mandyel’s fire.

  Why wait for an invitation?

  Henry jumped forward and took the face off a man transformed into a slavering beast.

  Mandyel whirled, and shafts of light speared out from his gleaming armor. Henry moved to the next guy up for a beating, and his world narrowed to a blur of movement and pain.

  Claws dug a chunk of meat from his thigh. His leg collapsed and dumped him to the floor. On his way down, Henry dug his claws into the guts of a bear aiming a shotgun. Covered in filth and blood, Henry continued his fall. The gun roared, and most of the right side of Henry’s face disappeared in a haze of agony and noise.

  His vision went dark, a flap of skin hung over his remaining eye. A fresh spike of agony dug into his guts when a knife pierced his side above his hip, twisting and grating against bone.

  The horrified screams of Mandyel’s victims barely covered his own pain-soaked bellow, and Henry reached up to rip the skin out of his eyes. He flared, and Mandyel’s light dimmed as an omni-directional wave of demonic energy spread from Henry’s center.

  It laid the survivors flat, blowing into Mandyel, who flapped his wings in a thundering answer to keep himself stable against it.

  Henry’s pain dulled to a deep heat. In the wake of his flare, he tasted the remains of the Purveyor’s life force swirling away in wispy flutters. He sent a silent apology to the old man and pulled the energy into himself, breathing the sorrow deep into his chest. The sweet pain of the old man’s passing lit his palate like a rare liquor, and he rose to his knees.

  A searing heat spiked into his cheek as his eye regenerated. The wound in his side knitted itself closed.

  Fresh light registered in his healed vision, and Henry rose to stand under Mandyel’s buffeting wings.

  A demon in a leather jacket pushed to his feet with a snarl. He lifted a club studded with nails over his head, and Henry let him charge.

  They collided under the angel’s feet, and Henry ducked under the demon’s swing to grab him in a ri
b-cracking hug.

  Henry sunk his teeth into the demon’s thrashing neck, and the flesh under its chin tore free in a torrent of black blood, filling Henry's mouth and eyes with stinging salt.

  He let the demon’s gurgling body slide to the floor, and Mandyel struck with a fist that split its head open in a blinding flash.

  Blood pattered to the floor like the end of a spring rain, and Henry and Mandyel turned to Peterson as the final two demons cowered in the hallway.

  “Where’s the fucking horn, Peterson?” Henry growled.

  “I did not expect that, truth be told.” Peterson swallowed, his pale eyes round behind his glasses. He cast his eyes aside to avoid the angel’s holy light. “But I’m not going to tell you where the horn is.”

  Henry stood straight, confusion etched into his face. “What? But why not? We won.”

  He looked up at Mandyel for support, but the angel was looking down the hall with narrowed eyes.

  Henry turned back to Peterson. “We won, right?”

  Peterson stood and buttoned his jacket. Straightened his tie. “I said I didn’t expect it, old son. That doesn’t mean I wasn’t prepared.”

  Music flooded Henry’s ears. Beautiful. Terrible and sad, it filled his mind with a desire to sit. To give up with a knife to his throat, watching his life bleed out onto his chest.

  A Tracker’s song, twisted with bitterness and hate.

  Light swelled from the back of the house. Gold glittering through the staircase balusters, spreading the shadows in a twinkling haze.

  The Tracker from under Prince Hill floated around the corner into the hallway, his wings folded to clear the walls. His wrists were chained to his waist with silver links as thick as Henry’s ankle. His hollow eyes blazed with sparkling light. He lifted a black sword in both hands, veins tracked up his forearms like pulsing tree roots made of shadow.

  Who will release me?

  His voice exploded in Henry’s mind, the query’s weight driving him down to his knees.

  Mandyel rose to the Tracker's level, his arms out in cruciform.

  I will, little brother.

  The Tracker slid into the grand foyer, and their combined light filled every corner with a dazzling that pierced into Henry’s brain. The skin on his face tightened as it burned, but he couldn’t look away.

  The Tracker spread his arms to match Mandyel’s, his sword digging into the ceiling.

  Then come.

  They flew at each other, and their clash filled Henry’s body with electricity. His jaw clenched, his body jittering as he fell.

  He looked up at the angels in holy combat and found that they’d all somehow moved from inside the house to outside in the dark. He was on a flat plain of stone. Wind rushed by, carrying the sound of their struggle under storm clouds, roiling with their effort.

  Peterson stepped forward with his hand inside his jacket, his jaw slack with terror and wonder. Dirt swirled at his ankles.

  A leather-clad demon hid behind an outcropping of rock. The remaining thug hunkered in the shadow cast by his buddy. Both faces were turned to the sky, light playing in their wide eyes.

  Henry staggered to his feet, the remains of his suit flapping around him in the cold wind.

  How the fuck did we get here?

  Not just this plateau of stone, but also the this situation. This true comedy of misfortune.

  Light blossomed as the clouds parted, and Mandyel rode the Tracker’s plummeting body to the ground. One hand held the Tracker’s throat, and the other held the wrist to keep the black sword at bay.

  Mandyel’s face flinched away from the dark power emanating from the blade. The Tracker’s teeth were bared, his eyes squeezed shut.

  They crashed into the stone like a fallen star. Dirt and rock flew from their crater in a hanging cloud that rolled into Henry’s eyes and nose.

  The Tracker’s light dimmed beneath the radiant glow of Mandyel’s glory. The angel stood with his foot planted on the Tracker’s wrist.

  Henry stepped away from the raw emotion etched across the angel’s face and bumped into Peterson behind him. Agony laced through his chest from a white-hot point over his left shoulder. He twisted away with a scream, and Peterson stood with a blood-stained hand held up in front of him, red spots making a warped smiley face on his yellow suit.

  He pawed at the pain in his shoulder, drawing in another breath to scream into the wind. A black blade jutted from the muscle at the base of Henry’s neck. It burned when he touched it, and his knees folded.

  He crumbled to the ground, tumbling out of his demonic form to land on his side as plain old Henry. Fat and pale, bleeding to death on an angelic battlefield far above the earth. The boiling agony of the onyx knife in his shoulder radiated into his body, and with every wave of pain, Henry split his lungs with another scream.

  HENRY!

  Mandyel’s voice rippled through Henry’s mind, images of golden clouds played across his sight with every echo.

  Amélie reached for him from the end of a dark hallway in his mind, her eyes filled with fear, her mouth open in a silent wail.

  Samantha looking into the eyes of Mike Stone as he climbed on top of her in Henry’s bed.

  Nadia smirking at him through her smoke.

  Mandyel turned and stretched out his hand. His beautiful face filled with panic and loss. Stepping from the Tracker, he kicked the blade buried in Henry.

  It tore free, flipping through the air, humming as it flew.

  Henry gasped and the demon rose back up within him, twisting his bones, stretching his skin to fit his true form.

  Blood pouring from the ragged wound slowed, and Henry pressed his hand to the cold stone to lift himself up.

  He noticed that in helping Henry, Mandyel had lost track of the Tracker, who had slipped behind him.

  Henry tried to shout a warning, but he was too late.

  The black sword burst through Mandyel’s breast, squealing against the golden armor as it passed through. The angel’s wings wilted, and a geyser of black blood shot from Mandyel’s mouth in a scream that dwarfed Henry’s pain in both volume and length.

  The clouds disappeared, and Henry slid through his own blood on the slick wood floor, back in the Purveyor’s foyer, as the outside and inside became a single knot of surreal architecture and chaos of swirling debris and rain.

  Mandyel’s face twisted as he dragged another breath past the smoking sword in his chest.

  Henry dug into the floor, and charged through the angel’s waning light. He launched into a drop kick that hit the Tracker in the face, slinging him to his back and slashing blood from his torn cheeks.

  The blade slid from Mandyel’s body, and the angel collapsed in a gurgling heap, blood gushing from the split in his armor.

  Henry fetched up against the bottom of the stairs, spinning to right himself as a wave of dizziness rocked his brain, spinning the house all around him.

  The Tracker gasped in pain, and his light dimmed. Mandyel’s light winked out. NO!

  The Tiffany lamp next to the dead man in the front room was the only light to banish shadows from the scene. Henry froze. Shadows.

  The Tracker groaned, and Henry shook his head. His thoughts cleared.

  Peterson stood from the corner with the black knife sizzling in his hand, and Henry launched himself into Mandyel’s back. He dragged the angel into the darkness, and the swirling shadows that glowed in Henry’s mind like a darkened theater’s EXIT sign.

  Pulling Mandyel into the escape tore the power out of Henry in a crippling wave of agony, nearly as sharp as Peterson’s blade. But he held on. Without Mandyel, he’d never see Amélie again.

  He somehow found the door in the swirling clash of interior and exterior structures. The door flickered in and out of existence, sometimes a crop of rocks, and other times the solid door that would — with any luck — lead them back to the real world outside.

  He timed his leap from one shadow to the door to coincide with the exact moment the ro
cks became the door, and he rushed at it, carrying the dying angel back out into the night, and out of the house of whatever the hell was going on.

  It was the perfect time to pray, but he’d be damned if he asked for God’s help now.

  He’d leave it to the professionals, and Henry happened to know just the guy.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Henry burst out of the shadows in front of the Burg Spires Church of Hope. All the windows were dark, but the front door opened under his hand.

  He fell into the entry with Mandyel tangled in his arms, landing on top of him and driving the breath from his lungs. He struggled out from under the angel’s flopping weight and stood with Mandyel’s arm slung over his shoulder. Back in his Sam Spade costume, bright blood spread across his white dress shirt, dripping onto the floor.

  The wound in Henry’s shoulder had torn open during his flight to the church. Blood dripped from his fingers to mix with the angel’s. When they met, there was a sizzling and a puff of smoke.

  Where the fuck is everybody?

  Henry dragged the wheezing detective down the side of the pews toward Pastor Owen’s office, sliding in blood, fighting against Mandyel’s dragging weight.

  It was nearly pitch black inside the church.

  That’s right. Fucking bingo night.

  He hitched Mandyel higher on his shoulder and reached for the door handle, freezing in confusion. No wait. Bingo night was yesterday, right?

  “Henry?”

  He spun, heart in his chest.

  Mandyel slid to the floor with a wet thud. Pastor Owen stood in the front door, silhouetted by the street lights outside.

  “You’re not supposed to be here.”

  Henry sagged in relief. A passing car sent a shaft of light through the stained glass, and colored reflections across the opposite wall. Henry dropped to his ass next to Mandyel, chin to his chest. “Yeah, sorry about that. How was bingo?”

  Another set of headlights splashed through the window, and the colors bloomed into a sparkling kaleidoscope caroming across the room.

  The Tracker’s song filled Henry’s ears. He fought his exhaustion to look up at the religious images of redemption depicted in colored glass, and the window exploded in a shower of twinkling shards and blazing golden light.