“The great thing about blessed weapons,” I said—God, my head hurt—“is that they can be blessed to have different effects. It all depends on the faith of the clergy blessing them.” And let me tell you, the pope turned out to be holier and humbler than I’d expected. Normally I wouldn’t trust most preachy types farther than I could throw a forklift, but this guy practically radiated holiness.
“This one, you see, will stay with you until the job is done.” The hallway tilted alarmingly. “You’ll see.”
And she did. It began slowly because the succubus was a creature of pure sin and evil; the divine blessing had a lot to fight against. A low hum, almost too low to hear, elicited a grunt, but the effect was electric. She arched her back, arms flying out to both sides with fingers spread as if she’d stepped on a live wire, mouth agape in shock, her gray tongue flailing at the air. The humming grew louder and higher pitched, and soon I could see the Bowie vibrating like a tuning fork, the five inches of exposed blade glowing a subtle blue. Louder and louder, but what was louder still was the shriek from her mouth as foul, black ichor erupted from between her lips to stain the ceiling. It was a fountain of evil, of sin, erupting in an ever mightier torrent. The thick stuff threatened to flood the entire hallway and drown me.
Dang, my head hurts so much. That was my last thought before I slipped away into oblivion.
Chapter Nineteen
Kal
Nine Years Ago
Sweet Home Chicago
“This is more than a simple demonic incursion,” said Brute, a man even bigger than myself, with shoulders so wide he had to enter most doors sideways. If you crudely carved a chunk of granite to represent the stern face of a Greek Titan, you’d come close to his harsh aspect. No one tangled ass with Brute more than once and those who did, assuming they could walk afterward, never wanted to mess with him again. “The fact that the demon didn’t destroy the body is telling. When we get into the museum, we’ll investigate the scene. All security guards have been sent home so we’ll have the place to ourselves. As far as anyone is concerned, we’re the FBI investigating a serial killer.
“I’m sorry you all had to be recalled from vacation, but there is a massive incursion in Yellowstone National Park that’s tying up eight teams, and the ninth, Team Alpha, just returned from a bug hunt in Texas and are shagged out. So it’s up to us to take care of this shindig in Chicago. That’s why this impromptu meeting. For obvious reasons, we couldn’t hold our orientation in O’Hare. Take a look at the pictures.”
As one, the team looked at their Slates, the first-gen tablets available only to the BSI, and stared at the death displayed in garish colors.
Team Epsilon had some new faces now that Mace, Winch, and Canton’s contracts had run out and they’d chosen not to renew. Mouth was still there, however, and still sexy as hell, even though her colorful vocabulary could blister the paint off a house. Alongside were Renee Ledoux (Frenchy) and Archie Gambon (Growler)—our team Sniper and nondenominational cleric, respectively. It’s always good to have a person of cloth when dealing with creatures from the darker corners of the World Under and the Pit.
The Slate showed the body of a young man, early twenties, thin and sporting a shock of wild black hair. There were burn marks on his bare torso, so very dark against the pale flesh. Arlo Teague, security guard at the Field Museum in Chicago, looked as if death had come as a surprise. His mouth gaped open in a howl of either pain or despair. Maybe both.
“Burns look like handprints,” I said.
Mouth grinned. “Thank you, Captain Obvious.”
I gave her a baleful glare, which slipped off the shield of her indifference. She wasn’t rattled by much except spiders and situations that demanded proper social etiquette.
Only Brute’s lips moved when he answered; the rest of his massive face remained still. “That’s why this is a BSI op. The only Supernatural I know of that can leave handprints burned into flesh, besides an afrit, is a demon.”
“Why can’t it be an afrit?” asked Growler, scratching his dark buzz cut.
Brute stretched, taking up most of the van with his near seven-foot frame. “Because an afrit would’ve burned down the museum by now. They have very little self-control when it comes to setting things on fire.” I nodded in agreement. Everyone who’d studied Supernaturals would know that. If it were an afrit, half of Chicago would be a smoking ruin. “So as far as we’re concerned this is a demon hunt. Keep your holy water and crosses at hand and hope for the best. I consider it a stroke of luck that Otto caught wind of this at all.”
Otto was the quasi-intelligent computer program that hunted the Internet and media for clues to Supernatural incursions. Pretty neat to belong to an organization that had the resources to do whatever necessary to combat the Supernatural threat, although Otto seemed more akin to Big Brother than I was comfortable with.
I’d dealt with demons before, and if you came out on the wrong end, the best you could hope for was to be bitten in half by something that had the toothy hardware of an adult great white shark. The worst … well, imagine your worst nightmares. I shook my head slightly as the van rolled to a stop. I hated demons almost as much as I hated vampires. A few seconds later the side door slid open, revealing our team Magician. “Let’s get going, ladies,” Waldo Horner groused around the stub of an ugly cigar resembling a dog turd. The tubby little Magician always seemed to be in a bad mood. Perhaps he was angry with his parents for naming him Waldo. “The great city of Chicago awaits, and the sooner we’re done, the sooner I can get laid.”
“So you did pack your roofies,” cracked Mouth as she gracefully exited, racking her Slate next to the door.
“Hardy-har, Ms. Laugh Riot,” came the response. Even Waldo, a Magician with enough power to shove a lightning bolt up your ass, didn’t have cojones to take on Mouth. There weren’t many who could beat her at hand-to-hand.
I racked my Slate next to hers and exited. Before us lay the stairs that led up to the gargantuan Greco-Roman edifice that was the Field Museum of Natural History.
If Julius Caesar were to walk out of a wormhole in time, he’d probably think he was in Greece, or a palace in Capua, or perhaps Pompeii. That is, until he took a gander at the bright lights of downtown Chicago with its towers of glass and steel, the Shedd Aquarium to the northeast, and the ginormous expanse of Lake Michigan a few hundred feet away, just beyond the aquarium. Not to mention Soldier Field to the south. Somehow I don’t think he would’ve been a Bears fan. Perhaps the Titans.
Banners were hung between the four giant columns out front, proclaiming ‘Jerusalem Exhibit, One Week Only!’ and ‘Mysteries of the Ancient World.’ Hokey, but they piqued my interest. I’m a sucker for history, the creepier and more arcane the better.
In fact, by researching the past I had possibly learned how to kill a god—that is, if I could figure out how to cross its path again.
The five of us gathered around Brute, who proceeded to break us up into pairs. (He’d refused the names Hulk and Fezzik, but grudgingly accepted Brute. He was the Brute Squad.)
“These are your buddies. Stick to each other like glue. Kal, you’re with me.” He loomed over us, appearing even larger in his Kevlar/Titanium black armor that looked like it belonged on some futuristic Knight Templar. “Mr. Teague was killed near the new Jerusalem Exhibit, so we’ll hit that first. We’ll case the place for a while, but after a couple of hours we’ll break up into our pairs and canvass the rest of the museum. From this point on, everything is subvocal, and if I hear different, I’m gonna grind someone’s bones to make my bread. Capisce?”
We capisced.
“Okay, let’s go.” A hand the size of a dinner plate plopped onto my shoulder with enough force to make titanium groan. “Hang back, Kal. I want to talk to you.”
Good grief. When someone says that to me, it usually means some fecal mass is tumbling in my direction on an inclined plane. I’m not saying I got into a lot of trouble, but … well, yeah, I guess I d
id.
I watched the others ascend the steps and wished I could join them. “Sure, boss.” What else could I say?
Brute steered me up the steps, his brow furrowed as he chose his words carefully. “Took a look at your evaluations. Top marks in problem solving, linear thinking, and combat skills. In fact, the Bureau thinks you are the most obsessive Agent in years because you spend more time boning up on Supernaturals than you do anything else.”
“But ….”
“What?”
I gave him a look. “But?” There was always a ‘but.’ A big, hairy one, usually.
He nodded. “It seems the docs think you’re just a gnat’s whisker away from flipping crazy as a bedbug.”
Oh, that. Well, that wasn’t news by a long shot. To say I had anger issues was like saying the sun was of decent size. My rage, a sort of semi-controlled berserking, gave me near inhuman strength and speed, which came in handy when fighting Things That Go Bump In The Night, but could be considered a liability when socializing with others. Fortunately I seemed to be able to control it somewhat and had not yet hurt a fellow Agent.
Yet. That little word worried the Bureau no end and gave me many a sleepless night.
Those huge fingers of his applied what he must’ve thought was gentle pressure, but to me felt like an industrial press squeezing my shoulder into paste. “You don’t have anything to say for yourself?”
One thing about the Bureau—they’re always testing you. Hell, everything is a test because we Agents are in the thick of things, wielding incredible power and often trampling civil liberties to dust in the name of keeping the Straights safe. Many find our actions somewhat reprehensible—the whole ‘ends never justifying the means’ argument and so on—but those people have never been on the wrong side of a rampaging ogre or a praying mantis the size of a locomotive. I never liked bending the Constitution into new and interesting shapes, but then again, technically, I never had. The Straights had never heard of Amendment 5A, the secret clause where for the Bureau and the Bureau alone, due process is suspended in case of Supernatural Incursion. Not something they teach in grade school, but it’s a powerful law enforcement tool when needed.
The look in Brute’s eyes and the more-than-casual way he spoke was the first clue that this was a test, the second being that there is always a test. “What can I say?” I replied, not bothering to defend myself. There can be no defense against the facts, and I had a sneaking suspicion he’d be able to sniff out what came out of the south end of a northbound bull. “I am what I am and the Bureau knows it. The Director chose to keep me employed instead of tossing me out on a Section Eight. Until that time comes, I am going to keep on killing Supernaturals and taking names.”
“Until you find it.”
Uh-oh.
So that’s what this was all about. It. IT. Iku-Turso, the Finnish demigod who killed my sister all those years ago. The memory was still a white-hot splinter of pain in the back of my brain that never failed to raise my blood pressure to the boiling point, and this time was no different. He wanted to know about my obsession with Iku-Turso, if it had limits (it did not) and if I would pursue the demigod’s end. (I would … vigorously and without mercy.)
Every Agent could read their comrades’ files; it was an issue of trust and transparency. You had to know whom you were going to fight side by side with, who had your back and who might not. Needless to say, everyone in the Bureau knew about my brush with a Class Five Supernatural. I held myself in check and gave Brute another honest answer.
“It might take a while, Brute, but I’m going to find a way to kill Iku-Turso, and then I am out of here to turn it into calamari. Nothing and no one is going to stop me. Is that what you wanted to hear?”
The boss slowed, pausing at the midway point on the stairs. At the top, the team waited patiently. I could tell by the way Mouth’s head was cocked that she was concerned. Up in the sky, what stars I could see through the light pollution stared down coldly, indifferent in their celestial sockets, while nearby harsh halogens cast shadows along the stairs, extensions of myself connected at the feet.
“If it was my sister, I’d do the same thing.”
I felt my eyebrow try to become one with my hairline.
He chuckled, a sound like the rumble of rocks in a dry well. “I gotta hand it to you, Hakala, you got balls.” We continued up the stairs, him with a patient, almost kind look on his craggy face and me trying not to pass out from the pressure of his big hand. “For a second I thought you was going to give me some BS, but you didn’t, and that makes you okay in my book.”
Thank God for small favors. “What is this about, boss?”
A sigh, deep and long. “It’s about this being my last op. My contract is done at the end of the month and I am not re-upping.”
“And …?”
“And I’m going to recommend to BB that you become the next leader of Team Epsilon.”
Bowl me over with a feather. Knock me down and call me normal. Holy cats!
More seismic chuckling. “You didn’t see that coming, did you?”
Not at all. I made a gabbling noise that almost conveyed semi-coherent meaning and internally reeled at the smug look on Brute’s face. That visage was meant for scaring children and Supernaturals, not grins of self-satisfaction.
“You may be close to crazy, Kal, but then again, who isn’t? Take a look at your average politician … most of them should be locked up in a room with padded walls, yet they run our country. You’re smarter than any other two Agents, and I know deep down you really care about the BSI and the people who work there.” His grin grew fractionally broader. It looked like the movement of tectonic plates. “Plus, you didn’t try to con me with a phony answer and that counts for a lot.” A finger the size of a stick of dynamite poked me in the chest. I tried not to let my lungs collapse. “You’ll do a good job until you quit or you die—whichever comes first. That’s good enough for me.”
I finally found my voice. “The question is will it be good enough for BB?”
“Doesn’t matter. He’ll listen to me.”
“Pardon me, boss, but that sounds an awful lot like responsibility.” A four-letter word if ever I heard one. Calling the shots, making the tough decisions like who lives and who dies. Not my bailiwick.
“You can handle it.”
“I can handle it, but I don’t know if I want it.”
A small pause as we neared the others, then, “Being a leader might help you find what you’re looking for. Team leaders get to reject or accept assignments based on personal experiences and prejudices. They can even volunteer their teams for assignments … which could lead you to a solution to your Class Five problem.”
“Then I’m in.”
The grin faded slowly. “I had no doubt,” he rumbled. With a soft (for him) pat on my shoulder, he passed me by to join the rest of the team, leaving me to process what I’d just agreed to.
He sure knew the right buttons to push. One mention of finding a way to kill Iku-Turso and I was ready to agree to a colonoscopy with a rusty probe. Mentally I cursed myself for a fool. With a few words, Brute had put me in play as Team Leader (assuming BB went for it, that is) and I’d leapt at the chance. Still, the thought of someday completing my quest sure warmed the cockles of my heart. In fact, they were on fire.
We came in through the south entrance, right into Stanley Field Hall, a large rectangular room so massive it dwarfed the life-sized model of a blue whale suspended overhead. Taxidermist Carl Akeley’s famous Fighting Bull Elephants sat in the middle, beyond the large reception desk, and Sue, the most complete, largest and best-preserved skeleton of a T. rex ever found, loomed beyond. She (or it or he, who knows?) measured forty-two feet from tip to tail and thirteen feet at the hip.
Sue (named after the Paleontologist who discovered her) stood at the end of the enormous room, crouched as she must have been in life, head lowered and tail stretching out behind for balance, ready to attack the nearest herbivor
e. I stared at the massive array of bones. Of all the nasty things that the World Under could vomit forth, a terror like Sue would be one of the worst.
Most people don’t have a good grasp of time because we have so little in this world before we’re gone. Humans as we know it have been around for about a hundred thousand years or so—give or take a few—and evolution has provided us with a couple of awesome adaptive tools: intelligence for problem-solving and the opposable thumb for carrying out the solutions our brains dreamed up. Super powers, for sure. We’ve had about eight million years to develop these tools—not a bad shake at all in the grand scheme of things.
Then consider a humble dinosaur like Sue. Small brain, small forearms for her size, no opposable thumbs. Sounds kinda sad for the big varmint, right?
Wrong.
Dinos like Sue had tens of millions of years to evolve, if not hundreds of millions. Tyrannosaurus rex was one of the last non-avian dinosaurs to exist before the mass extinction called Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event turned all the dinosaurs into fossil fuels.
So, what can nature do to counter a big brain and thumbs used for fine motor skills? Let’s talk size and strength, which Sue had in spades, and speed, which was estimated between twenty-five to forty-five mph—fast enough to run down any hominid, including Jesse Owens. Then there’s high depth perception and a binocular range of fifty-five degrees, which is greater than that of a hawk, and visual acuity thirteen times greater than a human being. Add a sense of smell that could rival a Dalmatian’s and hearing that functioned best with low-frequency sounds and you have a mean-ass critter that replaces the great white shark as the perfect killing machine.
Back in the late ’90s, when the paleontological drama of Sue’s discovery was chewing up the airwaves, I was deep into the story, fascinated by history being made right on cable television. Between watching CNN, dating my girlfriend Carol, and studying, I was lucky to graduate at all.
The Spirit in St. Louis Page 19