Axes and Angels: A Snarky Urban Fantasy Novel (Better Demons Series Book 1)

by Matthew Herrmann

  Thud! Cr-unch!

  Too late. Lucy floored the accelerator but well …

  “We’re not moving!” I yelled, stating the obvious.

  “I know!” Lucy yelled back.

  The screeching of the car’s paneling told me that the Minotaur was lifting the car’s back end with his hooves. I felt absently at my back where his hoof had smacked me earlier, knowing that would smart even worse in the morning.

  If there was a morning.

  With my right hand I lowered the passenger side window while I picked up a handful of change in my left hand from the car’s cupholder.

  “Hey!” Lucy protested. “Those are priceless Spanish doubloons!”

  “They’re weapons.” I twisted my body out the window and angled myself backward, lining up my shot. See, in my college days I was a hustler when it came to flicking beer caps. I hadn’t practiced much since then, but if I could flick a doubloon down one of the Minotaur’s flaring nostrils …

  I let fly but my first shot bounced off the Minotaur’s snout.

  “Theo!” Simon screamed.

  I missed with my second shot too and this time it was Lucy who yelled at me. I took a deep breath and concentrated before flicking my last doubloon. It was a beautiful shot.

  The Minotaur inhaled and twitched his massive head as both his hooves went to his snout.

  “OWW!”

  Bingo! Still got it …

  The car’s back end slammed down with another crunch and the car shot forward like a cannonball down the alley.

  “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together”

  Ten minutes later, Lucy’s sudden laughter interrupted a local radio station playing pop hits over the car’s speakers. “I still can’t believe what went down at that club. I mean, guns. Knives. Fists … There was even fire. That fight was epic!”

  “Typhon’s trying to kill us both!” I said.

  “So?”

  “And people could have gotten hurt.”

  “But they didn’t—well some of the gang members did.” Lucy let out another giggle before adding, “We still make a great team.”

  I turned to Lucy as we sat at a stop light, my jaw hanging open. “What movie were you watching? I barely even saw you after our little bathroom talk.”

  “It’s called fighting in the shadows. All I’m saying is we were on the same team. Our team. Staying alive. Kind of like old times—”

  “Lookit here,” I said, raising a finger. “I’m working with you this one last time because Orion’s life depends on it. Don’t be getting any crazy notions in your head. We are never, ever getting back together again.”

  The stop light changed and Lucy smiled, as she accelerated down the road. “Theo, word of advice: never say never. It will almost always come back to bite you in the ass.”

  A news bulletin interrupted the softly playing radio station in Lucy’s car and I turned up the volume.

  “… what is being called a ‘gang clash’ resulting in the total destruction of the building. Police arrived on the scene just as members of two of the city’s most notorious gangs were wrapping up their violence, taking several into custody after being treated for smoke inhalation and minor wounds. It appears no club goers were seriously harmed …”

  I let out a sigh. Beside me, Lucy tapped nonchalantly at the steering wheel as she drove on.

  “… This after a confrontation in the club’s bathroom where a four-armed Other assaulted and battered a human girl. A club goer caught it on her camera phone and posted it to social media where it instantly went viral. Police are asking if you know this dangerous Other’s whereabouts to call …”

  Lucy changed the station with a smirk. “Hey we’re famous.”

  “This isn’t funny,” I said. “This is serious. Not only do we have two gangs after us, now the police want us too!”

  “Loosen up, Theo. We’ll be fine.”

  I was about to reply (confrontationally) when I saw where Lucy was driving. “Where are we going?” I asked, stiffening as we entered the Holland Tunnel, thus crossing the Hudson River and passing into New Jersey. “You’re driving to the Pine Barrens, aren’t you?”

  “Well, duh. We’re kind of in what you humans would call a ‘time crunch—’ ”

  “We’ve got to find some place to lay low,” I all but screamed. “Contact Typhon’s people and figure out our next move.”

  Lucy waved a dismissive hand at me. “Chill. We get that artifact and Typhon will call off his goons. Probably.” She reached out and nudged me gently on the elbow, gave me a look she used to give back when we were partners. “Trust me.”

  I didn’t trust her, but part of me wanted to. Deep down, I didn’t think Lucy was a bad person. I got the feeling that before the GrandExodus when she served as the bodyguard to an Indian goddess, she was loyal to a fault. But then all the gods left without warning and Lucy had been cast down to Earth and treated as a monster by a bunch of scared humans.

  As fate would have it, I’d been the first human to actually give her a chance in this GoneGod World, and I thought I’d helped her acclimate to it, thought I’d phased out most of her aggression. But I guess the sting of being abandoned by her goddess ran too deep. I wanted to help her, but I was no psychiatrist and she eventually grew to be too big of a liability for me to handle.

  And after what she’d done on our last mission together … let’s just say I no longer felt bad for her.

  Some people were just lost causes.

  “I’ll trust you as far as I can throw you,” I said honestly.

  Lucy grinned. “There’s the Theo I know and love.” She hesitated, maybe reading my expression. “You’re worried about Orion, I get that. But you asked for proof of life and the Minotaur gave his word that your partner was fine.”

  We came out of the tunnel and Lucy navigated onto an exit ramp.

  “I know,” I said. “But we’re still no closer to rescuing him. My friends and I had a plan … emphasis on had … and then the Zeus gang …” I let my words fade as I glanced down at the magic tattoo AKA tracking sigil on my arm. It still glowed faintly; Blue Rag and his spider-faced Number Two were probably tracking us right now, close on our heels, er tailpipe. I turned to my familiars sitting on my shoulders. “Simon. You know of any way to get rid of this?”

  “No,” Simon said in a sad voice, twiddling his tiny thumbs. “I think it’s permanent.”

  “Grr. There’s got to be a way to remove it. It’s a tattoo.”

  “However …” Simon continued, “you might be able to break the connection between you and the large man with the scary spider tattoo on his face.”

  I made a small triumphant fist. “OK, let’s do that.”

  “I don’t know how to.”

  Great … I massaged my temples and glanced out the window.

  Lucy raised her brow as she kept her eyes on the road. “You wanna remove that tattoo?”

  I turned to her. “Apparently it can’t be removed—it’s magic. I need to break its connection to the Zeus gang though so they can’t track me anymore.”

  Lucy shrugged. “I know someone. My new partner at camp. An arcane specialist. She’ll get you fixed up.”

  I raised an eye. “New partner?”

  “Yep. One of them. Seems it took two new partners to replace one of you.” She laughed nervously.

  If she was expecting me to take it as a compliment, I didn’t. Dealing with Lucy was one variable too many to begin with. But contending with two other unknowns …

  “They’re good people,” Lucy said. “You’ll like them.”

  I scoffed. Who only knew what sort of company Lucy was keeping these days without my positive influence to guide her …

  We drove in relative silence for a couple hours with only the radio and the incessant bantering of my familiars (“Are we there yet? Are we there yet? Are we there yet?”) to keep me company as we passed lots of trees with yellow and red leaves, and the occasional farmhouse. Occasionally I glanced o
ut my side window up at the stars above.

  My stomach rumbled and I realized how hungry I was. Arachne, LK and I had planned to celebrate a successful first DJ gig and mission after the club closed down, but that wasn’t happening.

  Speaking of which, I really needed to get a hold of Arachne to make sure they’d gotten away alright … Too bad my phone was currently lying on the floor of a drenched, burnt-out, ruined club (overkill much?).

  My eyes wandered to my ex-partner behind the wheel. She had to have a phone and while I didn’t know Arachne’s phone number, I could just hit her up on social media. “Can I borrow your phone?”

  Lucy squirmed in her seat and fished a flip phone from her pants pocket. A flip phone. Ugh.

  “What?” Lucy said.

  “I need to get a hold of my tech friend but I don’t know her number.”

  Lucy squinted. “Then why do you require my phone?”

  “She’s big on social media. I thought I could message her on Facebook.”

  “I have heard of the Facebook.” Lucy tapped the steering wheel. “Although I do not understand the fascination with faces in a book.”

  Crap. There had to be a way I could reach Arachne but my head was starting to ache and I couldn’t think.

  Getting hangry, I thought as my stomach rumbled again.

  Lucy tossed me a granola bar from the center console with a nod.

  “These are my favorite …” I said. “How’d you—”

  Lucy grinned. “Don’t think you’re special. You got me hooked on them back in the day and now they are my favorite too.”

  I tore into the granola bar, devouring it before my familiars could complain that they were hungry too. Besides, they had their own secret stashes in their shoulder pads (mini Goldfish crackers for Simon and a chocolate smudge that might’ve been mini M&Ms for Garfunkel).

  When I was finished, I wiped my mouth. “Thanks, I needed that.”

  Lucy shrugged. “It’s what partners are for …” She must’ve caught my stern reaction to the word “partner” and didn’t say anything else.

  Suddenly, I had an idea. Others tended to be old-school and didn’t always get along with technology AKA smartphones (except for Arachne of course).

  I sent my hand along the inside of the car door and found a phone book. Wow, hadn’t flipped through one of those in a while. The pages were faded, but I found Pop Amir’s number in the business section. Pop Amir’s—the bodega on the ground floor of my apartment—the basement of which Arachne made her abode. The night clerk would be able to yell down the steps for Arachne.

  Without wasting any time, I called the bodega but the night clerk had no luck when he shouted down for Arachne. He hadn’t seen her come in either, and he said he’d have noticed if a half-girl-half-spider had wandered through the door.

  Crap. Where was she? Had something happened to her and LK?

  “Something wrong?” Lucy asked.

  I handed back her phone. “I hope not. Are we almost there?”

  “Getting closer,” she said.

  A few minutes later, Lucy turned onto a nearly hidden dirt road and from then on I had to clutch the hand grip above the passenger door as Lucy’s hatchback jolted and jounced over the washboards. Somehow Lucy managed to avoid the ditches.

  Simon, who’d fallen asleep in his shoulder pad peeked out and said, “Are we there yet?”

  “Go back to sleep,” I said.

  “Are we there yet?” Garfunkel mimed in Simon’s voice.

  “No.”

  Seconds passed and Garfunkel said, “How bout now?”

  “No.”

  “How bout now?”

  “No. No. No!”

  I think I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. I am never having kids.

  We drove on, winding in and out of dense tree cover, passing more farmhouses as well as some cranberry bogs and dirt roads with names like Apple Hill Road and Little Dutch Lane.

  Eventually the radio signal petered out and I found myself wondering what people who lived out here did for fun without any WiFi. Wade in the berry bogs? Chase chickens? Throw shindigs?

  Orion would love being out here …

  The thought was so unexpected it caught me off guard. Here I was, riding with my former partner trying to obtain an ancient mortar and pestle from a haunted mine while on the run from the Zeus gang, Typhon’s gang and the police.

  Just another day in the life of Theo.

  I just wished that Orion was with me. His level-headedness always tempered my impatience. Sometimes I felt like I couldn’t find my way without him.

  My hands started shaking; I needed something to do with them.

  Luckily a few moments later we pulled to a stop in a clearing in the middle of nowhere and Lucy announced unceremoniously, “We’re here.”

  “The Fellowship of the Mortar and Pestle”

  Of course, we weren’t really there. We were just to some random clearing in the woods where Lucy had decided to park her car. With the Zeus gang tracking us, we couldn’t be too careful, now could we?

  We got out and Lucy fumbled with the car’s smashed-in rear hatch while I took in the stars above us through the clearing in the tree branches. They twinkled brightly and after all these years, I still found it odd that there were no longer any constellations up there. It seemed that when the gods left, the stars composing the constellations simply … vanished.

  The constellations still existed though; they now walked the earth, assuming they survived the fall after the GrandExodus. I should know—I had a constellation living on my shoulders and another as a partner.

  Being outdoors at night reminded me of my childhood when my dad and I hiked to some of Greece’s lesser known archaeology sites near where my grandma lived. At night we would sit outside discussing what we’d seen that day. Often, we lost track of the time. Aside from inspiring my interest in archaeology, what I remember most about those nights was how beautiful the stars were as my father pointed out the constellations for me.

  But that was back when my father and I were on good terms …

  I shuddered, and it had nothing to do with the cool breeze blowing against my wet clothes or the warm memories of simpler times now gone.

  “I brought a spare change of clothes and a pair of running shoes for you,” Lucy said, slamming the rear hatch and tossing me a duffel bag. “Fit might be a little off, but I know how you hate dresses.”

  I was a little surprised at Lucy’s thoughtfulness (but not her preparedness—that I was suspicious of) and couldn’t help but wonder if Lucy’s being nice to me was to get on my good side and further her agenda. After what she did on our last job together, it’d take a hell of a lot.

  It didn’t really matter. I wouldn’t be caught dead exploring a haunted mine in a dress—so impractical—so I stepped behind some trees and changed.

  The clothes fit better than expected although the shirt had two extra armholes I didn’t know what to do with. Luckily Lucy and I wore the same shoe size so my feet were comfortable, and the pants were stretchy jeans so my flexibility wouldn’t be hampered. Although Lucy had more … style than me, it was uncanny how alike and practical our minds tended to think. I attributed it to my military training and Lucy’s goddess-bodyguard training. Completing my wardrobe was the spare leather jacket Orion had given me before our ill-fated mission at the Arena. It still smelled of him, reminding me why I was currently working with Lucy.

  I yawned. Exhaustion hung over me like a shawl, and my body was aching from my bout with the Minotaur and Dickie Man. Hopefully Lucy had planned to tackle the mine first thing in the morning and not right now.

  I was about to head back to the car when a twig snapped off in the woods behind me. I spun but saw only trees.

  “What’s wrong?” Garfunkel asked.

  “That sound,” I said. “Did you hear it?”

  Simon peeked out from his shoulder pad, nibbling at his tiny fingernails.

  Garfunkel shrugged. �
��Probably a squirrel.”

  Hoot-hoot! A-wooo!

  “That a squirrel too?”

  “Nah. That was an owl. And probably a coyote. What? Besides horror flicks and He-Man, I happen to enjoy the National Geographic channel.”

  “I did like that penguin documentary,” Simon said thoughtfully, easing out of his shoulder pad.

  Garfunkel picked at a fingernail. “That one was alright. I liked the part with the seals when they were hunting—”

  I flashed Garfunkel a stern look as Simon shot back into the safety of his shoulder pad.

  “Gee, Theo,” Garfunkel said. “This isn’t your first time in the woods at night. You’re never this scared when Orion’s around.”

  I bit my lip, debating whether or not to tell them. “It’s nothing,” I said. “Just some campfire story my dad used to tell me. It’s stupid. You wouldn’t want to hear it.”

  “Oh yes I would!” Garfunkel said.

  Simon covered his eyes. “Oh no we wouldn’t!”

  “Hush you two,” I said as another twig snapped, this time much closer.

  The bushes shook immediately in front of me and I caught the red reflective glare of a pair of gleaming eyes. “Beware the night devils,” my dad’s voice echoed spookily in my mind. Simon nearly choked on his breath atop his shoulder pad.

  My eyes flitted to each side of me in search of anything that might be used as a weapon. A tree branch? But in the two seconds it took to snap it and arm myself, the night devil could spring out and sink its canines into my jugular.

  Simon was now frantically gulping in breaths, threatening to hyperventilate. “It’s a seal!” he gulped.

  After a final rustle, the figure emerged from the brush.

  “Is that a …” I started.

  “Dwarf,” Lucy finished, stepping up beside me and looking utterly unconcerned in a fresh, more breathable attire similar to mine, a duffel bag slung over her shoulder.

  “Hullo,” said the short, bulging man before me, the two rubies set into his pointy iron helmet above his eyes glinting as he bowed. “Daryl the Dwarf at your service.”