by D V Wolfe
“I thought you had it,” I heard Mick mutter.
I didn’t have time for Dumb and Dumber at the moment. “Hey,” I barked through the door. “How about you just tell me what you want and how you found us before I blow you both away?”
Vince snorted. “Big words from such a little human. You know what we’re here for.”
“Bane,” Stacks said in a low voice. “Who are these guys?”
I rolled my eyes. “They’re hunters. They think I have something that they’re looking for.”
“We know you have something that we’re looking for, Bane,” Mick growled, his voice close to the door.
“What is it?” Stacks asked. “Can’t we just give it to them so they’ll leave? Oh and what the hell, Bane? How did they find us? Here!?”
I blew out a sigh. “When you see them, you’ll understand.”
I leaned on the door and yelled out to them. “Ok, I’m going to open this door but unless you want to spend the rest of your day pulling rock salt out of each other’s snouts and nether regions, I suggest you drop whatever you’re holding that you consider to be a weapon and then come inside.”
There was a pause and then the sound of something heavy hitting the gravel outside. “Alright,” Mick called. “We put them down, now let us in.”
I reached down, turned the lock on the doorknob, twisted the knob, and kicked the door open.
There was a squeal of pain and Mick started laughing. I could see his black and white furry head in sharp contrast to the tattooed and muscled arms sticking out of the t-shirt he’d cut the sleeves off of. His ears were twitching on top of his head and his husky-like blue eyes were wide. I could tell he was having a hard time keeping his tongue in his mouth. The door swung wider and I could see Vince holding his muzzle in both hands. He had the face of a bulldog, squashed and wide with a dark patch of color over one eye. The skin on his arms was a dark brown in comparison to the pale white of Vince’s skin below the neck.
“What the hell, Bane?” Vince growled.
“One more person says that to me, and I’m going to start thinking ‘What-the-hell’, is my first name,” I said.
They shuffled inside and I reached behind them to close the door. I saw a pump-action twelve-gauge and some kind of cobbled-together rifle laying on the concrete outside.
I glanced over at Noah and Stacks who were both staring dumbly at Vince and Mick. “Boys,” I said to Stacks and Noah, “Meet Vince and Mick.”
“What...?” Stacks began.
“How….?” Noah said.
“They’re awfully loquacious individuals, aren’t they?” I said to Vince and Mick.
Mick looked down at my gun. “I thought this would be even playing ground, what with you making us leave our, uh, armaments outdoors.”
“Armaments is a big word for you, Mick,” I said. “Did Vince teach you that?”
“Alright, Bane, just give us what we came for and we’ll be on our way,” Vince growled.
I put the sawed-off on my shoulder. “How many times do I have to tell you numbskulls that I don’t have it?”
“What the hell are these things?!” Stacks finally choked out. Vince, Mick, and I all turned to stare at him.
“As smooth as sandpaper, this one,” Vince grunted.
I turned to Stacks. “Maybe you want to call their moms “female dogs” as well?”
“Yeah man,” Mick said to Stacks. “That’s fucking rude.”
“Vince and Mick are Cynocephali.” When Stacks and Noah continued to stare at them, I added, “Dog-men.”
“But,” Noah sputtered. “How have we never heard of Cyno… dog-men before? I mean…” He was at a loss.
I nodded at Mick and Vince. “You want to show them?”
Vince rolled his eyes. “Fine, but then we get answers Bane, this is a pain in the ass. Fitting though, considering I’m talking to you.”
Both men looked down and there was a rippling in the fur across the sides of their faces. Mick’s black and white hair grew long, curly and silky, his ears disappearing under the mop. Vince’s short brown and black hair seemed to recede into his head leaving a gleaming bald dome, his floppy ears heading south and turning into human ears. Both men looked up to reveal smooth human faces.
“There,” Vince said. “Now that we’ve satisfied your parlor tricks for the day, where is it?”
I shook my head. “Is there some kind of dog language I should learn so I can say this in a way you’ll understand? I. Don’t. Have. It.” Both men started to growl in their throats.
“For god’s sake, Bane!” Stacks said. “What the fuck do they think you have?”
“They think I have this ‘god seal’,” I said with a sigh.
“We don’t think, Bane,” Mick said.
“That much is apparent,” I muttered.
“We know you have it.” Mick finished, glaring at me.
“Maybe he’s got it,” Vince said, stepping up to Noah and sniffing him. He quickly backed away. We’d all showered yesterday in Indianapolis but a lot had happened since then including a car fire, a trailer fire, and demon vomit.
“Well this has been fun and all,” I said to Vince and Mick. “But we really do have better things to do.”
Vince’s expression went stony and his human face flickered, showing a glimpse of his bulldog head beneath. “Every time we divine, it leads us to you. We can smell it on you.”
“Hate to break it to you, but none of us have seen soap in over,” I did some quick calculations in my head. “Seven-hundred miles, so I doubt there’s anything divine about how we smell,” I said.
Vince grunted, “Drop the sarcasm, Bane. If you knew what we were talking about, you’d shut your smart mouth and listen.”
Stacks spoke up, “What is this ‘god seal’ you think she has? What’s so important about it?”
Vince reached behind him and for a second I thought he was going for a gun. I tightened my grip on the sawed-off and took a step towards him.
“Stand down, Bane,” Vince said, raising his hands. In his right, he held a notebook. I lowered the shotgun. He flipped it open and said, “The God Seal is talked about in several of the old texts. It’s something we can use to protect… Well, that’s all you really need to know. We need it though,” he finished, looking up.
“Old texts? Like the Bible?” Noah asked.
Vince shrugged. “Mostly the texts that didn’t make it into the Bible.”
Mick nodded. “I don’t know if you can feel it, Bane, what with having spent so much time downstairs yourself, but the wind has changed. Something is coming. Something big and I think Vince and I have a line on what it is.” The last thing I needed at this moment was another case.
“Guys, I’m kind of in the middle of my own,” I glanced at Stacks and Noah who were both armed and looking at me. “Our own case at the moment. We don’t really have the time for ‘Mysteries of the Unknown’.”
Mick shook his head. “Bane, this isn’t a case. We’re talking about the end of the world.”
I opened my mouth but Vince held his hand up. “And save the snide comments about ‘mermaid dresses, pompadours, big hair, and jelly shoes coming back in style’.” Man. These two knew me way too well. “This is it, Bane,” Vince said, and his human mask slipped away completely. I stared into his bulldog face and knew he meant what he was saying. Now, was it really the end of the world? That was still to be determined.
“Walk us through this,” I said to Vince. Maybe once they had said their piece and searched Lucy and me, we could get rid of them in time for Tags and Rosetta’s arrival. Then, we could get on with our current suicide mission.
“To cut straight to the point. In Revelations, John wrote about God handing out seven bowls of his wrath to his angels to be poured out upon the earth, culminating in Armageddon.”
“So?” I said. “Seven metaphorical bowls of what? Blood and boils and toads hopping backward?”
“Not metaphorical,” Mick said. “Act
ual bowls. Given to actual angelic lines.”
“I may need to sit down for this one,” I muttered. I walked away from them and put the sawed-off on Lucy’s seat through her open driver’s side window.
“I know you don’t believe the legends, Bane, but we think we have one located in St. Louis,” Mick said. His human face was fading back into his husky head.
I turned to look at them. “I thought you were here because you thought I had this ‘seal’ or something?”
Mick shook his head. “You were a bonus. We saw your stupid truck drive by while we were tracking the scent of this angelic line.”
I heard Noah whisper to Stacks behind me, “What are ‘angelic lines’?”
“‘The sons of God, angels, saw that the daughters of men were beautiful and took wives for themselves’,” Vince said. “There are whole families that are descendants of these original unions with angels. We think the actual bowls of wrath have been passed down in these families for centuries.”
“And this has what to do with us?” I asked.
Mick scratched himself behind the ears and I saw his left leg jerk momentarily. “We’re not sure but when we divined the ‘where’ and ‘who’ these bowls might be with, you came up in the mix, somewhere.”
I shook my head. “I can guarantee you I’m not descended from some angel. Otherwise, the bastard that sent me to Hell would probably have been in the penalty box upstairs on my behalf. They told me that’s where the angels get home-court advantage. Well except the big guy downstairs, of course.”
Mick snorted, “Well no shit. You’re definitely not an angelic. I just know you rolled in the stink somewhere along the line, so Vince and I are going to keep tabs on you.”
“To what end?” I asked. “Why do you care about some ancient family heirlooms that someone is probably keeping their pearls or dentures in at this very moment? I mean if these things actually exist.”
“We have research and witnesses.” Vince began turning pages. Mick stuck out a hand to stop him.
“It doesn’t matter right now, Vince,” Mick said. “The fact is, there’s an angelic in St. Louis right now. There’s also a big daddy demon.”
Now they were speaking my language. I nodded, “What do you know about the demon?”
Mick smirked and turned to Vince. “I told you she was here to try to ice the demon. Pay up.” Vince growled and reached into his pocket for his wallet.
“I’m getting downright predictable, aren’t I,” I said.
Mick shrugged. “You’ve always been easy to predict. If there’s a supernatural mess out there, we always take a bet that you’ll be leaping into the mess with both feet. I’ve never met anyone who hated life as much as you do.”
“Anyways,” I said. “So you came to St. Louis to do a welfare check on your angel friend and get ringside seats to see me get road-hauled by a demon?”
“That was just a perk,” Vince said. “The fact is, we found out that the demons are looking for the bowls of wrath.”
“Why?” I asked.
“For being such a smartass, you can be a freakin’ idiot, Bane. The seven bowls of wrath, if they are poured out over the land with a particular Enochian ritual, they will wipe out all life and jumpstart Armageddon. Do you know what happens then? The meek won’t inherit the earth. The demons will eat the meek and turn their hides into throw rugs and blankets for the backs of their couches and the demons will inherit the earth,” Mick said.
I have to admit I was a little slow in following their thinking. The pieces were in place now. And the little task of icing a demon suddenly moved on the scale of difficulty towards scrubbing a stubborn toilet stain when compared to stopping Armageddon.
“Shit,” I said.
“Now she gets it,” Vince said.
We were all quiet for a minute. I saw Noah slide down to a kneeling position next to Stacks. Stacks followed him, squatting down before teetering back and landing on his butt. I felt a wave of nausea wash over me. The end of the world. Well, as long as Mick and Vince hadn’t been misinformed. Either way, in a roundabout way, we were all in town for the same shindig.
“Mick, Vince,” They both looked over at me. “We think we might have a plan to take this demon out. Not just exorcise him.”
“That’s not possible,” Mick said.
I shrugged and looked at Stacks. “We think we’ve found something that will work. It’s a long story, but if you help us, it’ll mean your angelic might still be safe and then you can figure out if they have one of these bowl-things and if so, what you want to do about it. What do you think?”
Mick scratched his neck and looked at Vince. “Joining up with Bane?”
Vince shrugged. “Why not? At the very least it’ll be entertaining.”
“Well that’s settled then,” I said. I turned to Stacks and Noah. “You two want to fill them in? I’m going to go keep watch for any more unexpected visitors. Rosetta and Tags should be along soon.”
I took the handgun from Noah and tucked it into the back of my jeans and headed to the door. When I reached it, I heard Noah behind me asking Vince if he had a tail and I couldn’t keep myself from smiling. I really liked that kid.
22
It was a little after four when Rosetta’s pink Cadillac crunched on the gravel around the side of the warehouse. Thankfully we’d had no other surprise visitors.
“Took your time,” I said, grinning at Rosetta. “Did you two get ‘distracted’?” I asked her, winking at Tags who immediately turned red.
Rosetta glowered at me. “Kindly keep your nose out of wherever it is right now. Here,” she shoved the Cypress branch at me.
I looked down at it. “Kind of puny, isn’t it?”
“That’s what I thought,” Tags said.
“Well we can always test it out,” Rosetta grunted. “Stand still and I’ll run you through.”
I held the warehouse door open for Rosetta, and Tags followed her, carrying a plastic milk crate full of supplies.
“About time,” I heard Stacks call.
I followed them inside and ran into Tags who had stopped short and was staring at Mick and Vince.
“What the hell are those?” He whispered.
“Long story,” I said. “The short answer is they’re on the job too. And they’re going to help us.”
Vince snorted. “As much as you can help someone hellbent on a suicide mission.”
Noah spotted the milkcrate in Tags’ hands and the armload of bags Rosetta was toting and hopped to his feet. He went to a workbench along the wall and started pitching everything sitting on its surface into the metal garbage can next to it. “Here Rosetta,” Noah said, approaching her with hands out, “let me take some of those.”
I opened my mouth to make a comment about Noah’s boy scout behavior but shut it quickly. Surprisingly, Rosetta was grateful to hand over the bags and a quick glance at her face showed how tired she was as well. Usually Rosetta would read me the riot act if I’d tried to help her, but she willingly let Noah give her a hand. Whatever got us through at this point, was just fine with me.
Once they had set out all the items they’d brought with them on the workbench, Rosetta rolled up her sleeves and turned to face the rest of us.