Shadow of a Doubt

by Hunter Blain

  Next off the table was a bandolier with thick loops that covered the entirety of the belt. Depweg slid in shotgun shells of varying colors. Some were white, others were blue, while the last ones secured in place were red.

  “What are those?” I asked, pointing at the different colors.

  “Silver slugs, iron pellets, dragon’s breath,” Depweg said, going in order.

  “Um, dragon-what now?” I asked, doing a double take.

  “Dragon’s breath. It will coat anything you point the weapon at with fire.”

  “How is that legal?”

  “Normal dragon’s breath is perfectly legal. These on the other hand,” Depweg said, pulling a red casing out of its loop, “are made with phosphorus.” As he finished the last word, his eyes grew wide with glee.

  “That is the coolest thing I have ever heard. Thank you for sharing that sentence with me,” I said, basically wiping drool from my mouth. Lilith, I wanted to shoot a Shadow fucker with one of those.

  Depweg grabbed a Benelli auto shotty off the wall and handed it to me before grabbing an identical one for himself.

  I watched as he grabbed three shells in his hand and slid them expertly into the breach. He grabbed three shells of a different color and followed suit. Lastly, the dragon’s breath was loaded before he engaged the bolt, chambering a round. The weapon was then slung across his chest, with the sling going over his left shoulder and under his right armpit. It hung loosely, pointing straight down to the ground.

  Instead of the Benelli, Joey chose a Springfield M1A .308, also with a lengthy suppressor at the end of the muzzle. There was a drum magazine attached that looked like it could hold at least thirty or forty rounds.

  The familiar Sig MPXs were next. Sleek rectangle suppressors had been affixed to the muzzles since the last time I had laid eyes upon the fully auto beauties.

  Depweg pulled one down, slapped in a magazine, and pulled on the charging handle before sliding the one-point sling over his right shoulder. Doing this would allow the fully automatic gun to fall to his side as he pulled the shotgun off his chest. He filled the six empty slots on his chest with thirty-round magazines. A quick adjustment of the bandolier, and he was fully equipped with his firearms. Joey and I did the same before moving on to the melee weapons. My silver kukri remained on my lower back, but I slid a five-inch sheathed blade down my boot, securing it with a clip. Depweg and Joey put marine-style KA-BARs on their lower backs, followed by small blades that could fit into a closed fist at the front of their belts.

  I looked up at the wall and froze as a full choir belted out epic a cappella music with lyrics in Latin. My eyes danced sensually over an iron katana etched with silver and recognizable holy markings in the handle. It gleamed in the light and seemed to make a shling sound as I gawked at it. With a tiny titter that escaped my mouth, I smoothly let my trench slide off my arms and land on the table next to me as I picked up the blade. I placed it against my back as Locke secured it against my plate carrier using the MOLLE straps. I replaced the trench coat and willed a pair of bloodsunglasses on my face.

  “Easy there, Blade,” Depweg joked as I posed.

  “Not sure how to feel about that reference.”

  “That’s not the look you are going for?”

  “Ah, damn it. I guess he did corner the market on the swords-poking-out-of-trench-coats-while-wearing-sunglasses look.”

  “Be careful with that blade, Blade,” Depweg remarked with a wry smile.

  “I think I’ll be just fine with it, Lassie.” His smile faded quickly.

  “I mean it isn’t just iron, John. It’s cold iron. Incredibly difficult to make right, but way more effective at canceling magic than regular iron or even silver.”

  “Unless it is blessed silver,” Locke added.

  I noticed Locke wasn’t going for the firearms.

  “Hey,” I said, waving my hand toward him. “What’s with the no-guns thing?”

  “Oh, I don’t need all that you have,” he responded.

  “Why? ’Cause you can’t carry the weight?”

  “Someone has to wield Big Bertha,” Depweg said, motioning to the suppressed Lapua .338 on the wall. I gulped as I looked at the monster.

  “It’s as big as he is!” I called out.

  “Right, but once he has the tripod out, he won’t have any problems,” Depweg explained.

  “Ah, makes sense.”

  “It is surprisingly light,” Locke said, hefting it with relative ease. It looked more like a skeleton of a gun than something that could blow a hole through a brick wall.

  “Just under nine pounds unloaded. Recoil might be a little aggressive, but it’s a fair trade off for the weight,” Depweg said.

  Depweg then handed Locke a few .22 caliber weapons that weighed considerably less than the heavy shit the rest of us were rocking. Lastly, Locke swung a backpack over his shoulders and cinched it in place before Depweg started loading it up with the Lapua-specific, five-round magazines.

  “That’s good,” Locke said once he had reached his comfortable weight limit. Depweg zipped the backpack closed, and we were ready.

  We stepped into the hallway and Depweg pressed a button to secure the bank vault door. Then we made our way outside and to a much larger storage unit that was attached to the parking lot. Depweg followed the unlocking process again, and the door swung open to reveal a truly awesome sight. The choir from before dropped their coffee and donuts and rushed to sing a drawn-out chorus made entirely of “ah” syllables. A fully customized military Hummer was bathed in the light of the facility’s flood lamps. The thick windows—that I assumed were bulletproof—were tinted limo black. All-terrain tires supported a lifted frame with reinforced suspension for traversing off-road. I opened the rear door to see something that made the tip of my Little John tingle—a matte black chain gun was on a platform that could be rotated three-hundred and sixty degrees once the roof was popped open and the weapon was engaged. I followed the belt of the weapon, which contained silver-tipped rounds numbering into the thousands.

  “Merry fucking Christmas to me,” I said to myself before turning to Depweg, who was opening the driver’s side door. “So, this is mine too, right?” I asked half sincerely.

  “No. Get in,” Depweg answered.

  “Not going to call shotgun?” Locke chided as he climbed into the passenger side and closed the door.

  “Nope. I’m breaking my habit in an effort to better myself and calling minigun instead,” I said, climbing into the turret and clapping my hands repeatedly in delight. I could almost hear Locke and Depweg rolling their eyes from way up front.

  Joey silently slid into the seat behind Locke and resigned himself to look out the window. I could feel his pain emanating as if there was a void extending a few feet all around him. It was dark and cold.

  Depweg pressed a button and the car came to life similar to Locke’s Tesla.

  “Wait. Is this an electric Hummer?”

  “Most vehicles are now with the discovery of sodium-ion batteries,” Depweg informed me as we pulled onto the road.

  “You’ll like this,” Locke said, turning in his seat to face me. “They can also be charged while driving by utilizing Wo-Fi signals.”

  “What, like 4G?”

  Depweg and Locke chuckled as they looked at one another. It was pissing me off.

  “Hey, dickheads. Ten years, remember? Fill me in without the assholery, please.”

  “Currently, we are utilizing 6G, which is actually faster than even fiber optics can provide,” Locke said.

  “That doesn’t make sense. A signal produced from towers is stronger than a hardwired, fiber-optic line? Bullshit.”

  “Well, it’s cheaper because the signal is sent directly from satellites, courtesy of Elon Musk. There is nowhere in the world where you can’t stream, well, whatever you want,” Locke said.

  “The signal is coming from space regardless, brother,” Depweg added. “Think of it like cutting out the middle man.
Not only would hard-wiring be a huge expense, it is completely unnecessary. Everything, and I mean everything, is connected to Wo-Fi.”

  “I’m going to go out on a limb here and assume you two meant to say ‘wo’ instead of ‘wi.’”

  “Correct. Wi-fi was limited in range, with the signal dropping drastically as the radius grew. Wo-fi is worldwide. Plus, Elon has a sense of humor about these things. Wi-fi was a trademarked name, so he changed one letter—which is twenty-five percent of the word itself—and avoided the trademark litigation. If that hadn’t worked, he announced on social media that he would have called it ‘Not Wi-Fi.’”

  I barked out a laugh. Lilith, I loved that crazy Mr. Musk.

  After I wiped a tear and breathed out, “Whooo,” from my laughter, the ride became awkward. I think we realized that the useless information we were talking about—though incredibly interesting to me—was to mask how nervous we were about the task ahead of us. Except for me, none of us had ever had to fight without our abilities, and the experience I had would be left off my résumé. Lilith, I hoped I would run into the bridge troll again. How dared he promote the toll troll stereotype. Racist.

  Feeling the tension, Locke turned in his seat and said, “I never asked; when did you first meet Da?”

  “Oh, man, it’s a doozy,” I said, clapping my hands and rubbing them together. “Meeting Da was a turning point in my existence.”

  I closed my eyes and it’s 1965 in Indonesia. I’m standing on a riverbank in the city of Surabaya. The river is clogged with hundreds of bloated bodies with varying degrees of mutilation. Some have gashes in their throats from ear to ear, while others are missing their heads entirely.

  I stare at the carnage with a mixture of emotions. The military were not biased by age or sex. Men, women, and children bob in the rushing waters, their lives taken because of politics. My mind flashes with images of my father on the ground, a knife sticking out of his bleeding thigh.

  Disgust fills my heart as I make my way down the riverbank toward the source of the massacre. The bodies have stopped coming, signaling that the executions are over, but the night is young and more people are going to die tonight; I’m going to make sure of it.

  After a few hours, I come to a bridge on the edge of a town that is covered in thick, viscous blood that has begun drying. The air smells metallic, even to me, as all the life energy in the blood has dissipated, leaving behind dead, useless liquid. Following the path through the layer of blood, I see hundreds of crimson footprints in the sand leading to a nearby building. I begin to approach as a voice comes from behind.

  “Hello, Jonathan,” a cultured British voice says.

  I stop midstride and roll my eyes as I begin to turn around while saying in my native Irish tongue, “It’s jus’ John.” With how much a pale white guy with a reddish beard stands out in Indonesia, there is no reason to mimic the local dialect in an effort to blend in.

  I’m met with a faerie that is floating at eye level a few feet from where I’m standing. I don’t know what to say.

  “What do you plan on doing inside there?” the five-inch faerie asks.

  “Kill ’em all,” I respond coldly. My face is scrunched in confusion as I await the purpose of this visit.

  “Why?”

  “Who the hell are ya, pix?” I demand, crossing my arms.

  “A friend,” the faerie responds, ignoring my crude label.

  I wait for him to continue before figuring out that is all I’m going to get for now. “The shite’s killed innocents an’ must be stopped ’fore they hurt more.”

  “Haven’t you, yourself, caused innumerable harm to mortals all around the world?”

  Anger flares as I uncross my arms and take a step forward to point directly at his smug little face. “Y’know me, faerie?”

  “The vampire who sought revenge for his murdered family,” the faerie answers confidently.

  His knowledge of me is disarming, and I let my hand drop. At that moment, I couldn’t explain why, but I trusted him. “I wan’ to protect the innocent.”

  “Because you couldn’t protect your father, and your mother?”

  When he says the word “mother,” I begin to see red; I struggle to keep my rage in check until I know why this faerie is here and how he knows me.

  “Aye,” I admit slowly, controlling my emotions.

  “Thank you for your honesty, John. I am here to help you.”

  “How’s tha’? Gon’ bite their ankles, then?”

  “By guiding you. For example, you could go into that building and take the life of every soldier in there. But it won’t stop there. They are simply men who are following orders.”

  I look at the building where the soldiers are probably lying down after a successful mass execution. I really really want to punish them.

  “Or, you could focus your attentions on those that give the orders and enact real change,” the floating sage finishes.

  My vision sweeps back and forth between him and the building full of murderers.

  “I wan’ to kill them,” I admit to the faerie, my voice flat and stone-cold.

  “A compromise, then. How about,” he starts, pacing back and forth in midair as he strokes his chin, “we stop their commanding officers and maybe just the soldiers who committed the executions?”

  “Listen here, pix,” I say, lifting my finger to point at him again. “I a’ready have a code for whom I get to eat. An’ these bastards,” I continue, shifting my pointing finger to land squarely on the building full of soldiers, “meet tha’ code fairly. Even those who didn’ wield the blade are guilty for na stopping their comrades.”

  “Every soul deserves a chance at redemption. Wouldn’t you agree?”

  The thought of a clogged river flashes through my mind, and I say through a clenched jaw, “Any man will’n to murder women an’ children deserves me wrath.”

  “Very well. I can concede that in this instance the crimes are egregious. And, I suppose, Rome wasn’t built in a day.”

  “The fook does tha’ mean, faerie?”

  “Please, call me Raziel.”

  “That be an angelic name, faerie. Ya clearly are no angel,” I say, making a point to look between him and the ground and waving at the empty air below him.

  “Then, if I may inquire, what would you call me?”

  “Seems to me tha’ ya’re tryen to talk me out of me actions, like a devil’s advocate. Aye, Devil’s Advocate—Da.” I titter at how clever I think I am. “Your name be Da.”

  “Father help me,” Da says as he exhales. “This will be harder than I thought.”

  “He’s been doing his best to guide me ever since,” I said with respect. “No easy task, I assure you.”

  Both Depweg and Locke laughed at my comment.

  “We know,” Depweg said, pretending to wipe a mirthful tear from his eye.

  “Alright, alright. Enough of that,” I said.

  “Thank you for sharing,” Locke said after a moment of silence. “Da means a great deal to all of us—yes, even me. We were growing close—well, closer—in your absence.” After a pause, he added, “He really loves you, you know.”

  My throat grew tight and I nodded quickly.

  “If he’s alive,” Depweg said, “we’ll find him.”

  We pulled down the street that connected Valenta’s Saloon and the church, and I almost asked Depweg to stop so I could check on Father Thomes. Instead, I opted to focus on the mission at hand, not knowing how much time we had before the hunters were killed.

  The church passed by and I stared at the building that was falling apart with age. I decided right then to hire a crew to restore the church to its rightful glory—if we made it back.

  A minute later and we were pulling into Valenta’s empty parking lot. I was kind of bummed that I hadn’t gotten to use the minigun in our brief ride. Then again, what had I expected? Maybe a rhino demon charging in out of nowhere? Preposterous, I tell you.

  The four of us unload
ed, and my companions followed me through the swinging doors of the saloon. An expecting Valenta sat behind the bar, reading a first edition copy of The Vampire Lestat. I appreciated the subtle irony.

  “Didn’t take you for an Anne Rice fan, Val,” I said in greeting as we approached the bar.

  “Breaks up the monotony of existence, son,” Val drawled. “Can’t be picky with genres when time isn’t a finite, precious resource.” I noticed he had closed the book without a bookmark or even dog-earring the page he had been on. He looked us up and down before nodding. “That’ll do it, alright.”

  “Let’s hope so,” Depweg said.

  “Might you have anything that could aid us in our quest? Say, downstairs?” I asked shamelessly.

  “Mayhaps,” Valenta said as he turned to push the door of the kitchen. “Follow me.”

  We obliged him. No one said anything as Val opened the secret door to his secret basement that held all kinds of secret artifacts that he had attained by secret ways. The four of us filed down the stone stairs after Val, Joey bringing up the rear. The sound of tactical gear rubbing against each other competed with the slap of our rubber soles as we walked down the hallway. The narrow stone walls seemed to amplify the noises we made.

  Val walked to a bay of shelves and pulled the topmost case down, setting it on the ground with a loud thud. He unclasped the lid and opened it to pull out a single pebble that looked like it was made of ivory.

  Val extended his closed hand out to me. I responded by holding my hand out to him, palm up. He dropped the surprisingly heavy pebble into my hand and said, “Dat there is a one-way ticket home. Speak your return words now, and when ya say ’em again, it’ll bring ya right back to this spot.”

  I looked at the white stone in my hand, and only one phrase came to mind. It was from my second favorite Tim Burton movie starring Michael Keaton. “Home home home,” I said as I brought the pebble closer to my mouth. It pulsed a white glow once before returning to normal.

  “Good,” Val said approvingly. “This way.”

  “Is that it?” I asked incredulously. “Not going to give us, like, a holy hand grenade or something?”