by Peter Glenn
“Crazy, right?” Rick said. He let out a nervous chuckle. “I mean, I know magic and demons are real and all, but who would be stupid enough to actually want to… Wait, what did you say?”
“I said I believe it. I was thinking the same thing, too, actually.”
His tone changed completely. “Wait, how? What have you found? Show me!”
I let out another sigh. “Okay, Rick. Just let me figure out how to get the video camera and the phone working at the same time.”
Technology was not one of my friends. Don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t like one of those eighty-year-old stodgy grandpas that couldn’t work a computer. But some of the more complicated tasks like video sharing were still new to me.
“Sure, sure. I’ll wait,” Rick assured me.
I fumbled with the phone controls for a moment and finally gave up. Pictures would have to suffice. Those I could do without too much trouble.
“Here,” I said, snapping a pic of the book’s cover and sending it to him. “And wait, there’s more where that came from.” I snapped a pic of the marked page I had been reading and sent that too. “Let me know when you get them.”
“Okay, hang on, I’m just going to put you on speaker.”
“No problem.”
I waited for a few seconds, and then Rick’s voice came on again. “Okay, can you still hear me?” His voice was a little tinny and sounded distant, but it was still good old Rick.
“Yeah, I got you. You see the pictures?”
“Oh, wow,” Rick replied. “That’s really something there. It lines up with what I was seeing.”
“Yeah?”
“Uh huh.” I got the distinct impression that he was pacing the floor of his office. “The blood spatters, the writing on the bodies, it led me to one thing—an ancient summoning ritual for demons from the underworld. It’s said to bring about the end of mankind if it succeeds. Fancy that, right?”
My expression soured as a sinking feeling washed over me. “Huh. Right.”
Great. Just great. We were dealing with another world-ending nut job. Just how many of those was I going to encounter in my line of work, anyway? I’d never had any of them before I’d come across Grax’thor. Well, World War II was close, I guess, but everyone got in on that…
“I know,” Rick continued. “I could hardly believe it myself. But the good news is the guy would need a lot more blood to succeed at this, so there’s no way he’s done it yet.”
“More blood?” My heart started to race. “How much more are we talking about?”
Rick hummed slightly. “I’m not really sure, Damian. A hundred people’s worth? Maybe two hundred? This is ancient magic we’re talking about here. It’s not really that specific on the details, but that book you found makes it sound like you’d need a lot.”
“So… what you’re telling me is that something big is going to go down soon when this dude we’re chasing finally builds up the guts to try it for real?”
“I… I guess so.”
Fantastic. Just what I needed.
I groaned. “Anything else I should know about Rick?”
There was a pause, then finally, Rick spoke again in a reverent tone. “Well, whatever it is, it’s likely to go down soon. Magic like this requires a lot of spiritual energy to pull off, so trying it on a night like Halloween when the spirits are already roaming a bit freer than normal would make a lot of sense.”
“Halloween? You mean like, the day that begins in about ten minutes?”
“Is it that late already?” Rick sounded a bit confused. And tired. Couldn’t blame him. I wanted a nap myself, but it didn’t look like I’d be getting one anytime soon.
“Yeah, Rick. It’s almost midnight.”
“Well, yes, then. If he’s going to try anything, it’ll likely be tomorrow.”
“Gee, the hits just keep on coming, don’t they, Rick?”
“I guess?” Rick let out an exasperated breath. “Look, I’m just the messenger here, okay? I can only tell you what my best guess is. You’ll have to find the guy and pin him down to know for sure.”
“Ugh. Fair enough.”
I set down the summoning book and started heading for the door to the apartment. Time was of the essence, and I still needed to find this Tom Hardy bloke before things got dodgy.
“So, is that it, then? Any last words of sage advice from the great Rick Veinne?” I mispronounced his last name on purpose and heard him wince.
“You know it’s Veinne, like pen, right?”
“Course I do, Rick. Go get some sleep. I’ve got a world to save.”
“Night, Damian. And good luck. Let me know if you need me to help at all.”
“Oh, I will.”
I said my goodbyes and hung up the phone. My fingers were trembling a little, and I almost lost my grip on the phone, but I recovered. I took a few deep breaths to calm my nerves. There was a big difference between solo killings and killing a whole group of people. I had no reason to believe he was ready to do that.
And yet, I couldn’t discount it, either.
I shook my head to clear my thoughts. Something big was definitely going to go down soon. And Rick and I were the only ones that even knew about it.
Well, Tom did, too, I suppose, but that didn’t count. He was the one doing it, after all.
Charmaine’s cheery visage greeted me as I came out of Tom’s bedroom. At the sight of me, she gave me a big, bright smile.
“So? How was it?” She asked.
My face paled, and I fought back the urge to vomit.
Charmaine’s eyes narrowed. “What did you find, exactly?”
I pulled on my face and let out another sigh. “Heh. You’re probably going to want to sit down for this.”
14
And here I thought there were a lot of Tom Hardys. But he had nothing on Piper Williams. There were fourteen Piper Williamses in the Seattle Metro area. Fourteen! I could hardly believe it. And with how young she’d looked, it was possible she still lived with her parents, which would make it impossible to find her.
But I had to take that chance. She was the only one who might know where Tom was, and we needed to find him fast. Rick had made that much apparent.
So here we were, at three in the morning, running all around the town trying desperately to find the right Piper. It was a longshot, sure, but I loved a good longshot. We’d checked five of the addresses so far and had no luck. We were now about thirty seconds away from the door to number six.
“You really think we’ll find her like this?” Charmaine asked.
I glanced over at her. Her eyes were sullen and filled with worry. Not just for Daequan at this point, but for everyone. I shrugged. “I hope so. Not sure what else to do, really.”
“Yeah I guess…” Her voice trailed off as we pulled up to the address. It was a small house on the outskirts of Kent.
The house looked like it had seen better days, and it probably had. The front door was hanging at a slight angle, and one of the windows had tape over it, like it had recently been cracked. There was a light-up pumpkin in the brown yard, but it wasn’t currently lit up, so it just sat there in an unsightly puddle of orange plastic. There was no other evidence that someone might actually live there.
Kent wasn’t exactly known as a ritzy place, so it really wasn’t all that out of the ordinary. The surrounding houses didn’t look to be faring much better, though one had gone over the top with a twelve-foot-tall skeleton fighting a light-up dragon in the yard that blew smoke out of its nose. I kind of wished we were visiting that house, but nope. Not that lucky.
This house gave me the creeps. It looked haunted.
I bit my lip gently and took in a deep breath. “Now or never, I suppose,” I said, more to myself than Charmaine.
She nodded, and we exited the car. “We won’t be long, so just stay there,” she told the driver.
He nodded and gave her a wave but said nothing. It had been the same routine at every house we’d visited,
so I wasn’t sure why she kept saying it. But whatever. It made her happy.
I picked my way through the gravel driveway. It, too, had seen better days, as several tufts of dying grasses and dandelions had forced their way through in several spots, determined to live against all odds.
On the bright side, I was pretty sure I saw a car in the carport that was tucked away against the side of the house. Point two for someone actually living here.
The front steps creaked and moaned as we made our way up to the door, like they weren’t sure they could hold our combined weight. But they managed, and we made it up. The door itself consisted of an outer metal screen door that was dented in a few spots, and an inner blue wooden door that looked to be about as sturdy as a piece of balsa wood.
I couldn’t find a doorbell, so I knocked hard on the wooden frame several times.
“Come on, Piper, be home,” I muttered.
I glanced over at Charmaine. She was standing next to me, taking everything in and looking about as uncomfortable as I did.
There was no answer. I knocked again three more times, hoping it would jar whoever was inside awake.
We waited several more seconds, but there was still no answer. Not even the sound of feet scuffling along the wood or a dog barking. Just silence.
“Piper!” I shouted at the wooden frame as loud as I could. “Piper, this is Damian. If you’re in there, we need you!” I knocked a few more times as well for good measure.
I had no idea if my attempts to rouse her would work or not. Heck, I didn’t even know if it was the right house. But I was desperate.
“Go away!” the muffled shout came from within. It was hard to tell, but I was pretty sure it was the right Piper’s voice.
My heart soared, and I renewed my knocking, trying to be as obnoxious as I could. “Come on, Piper. We need your help! It’s an emergency!”
“I don’t care! I’m not helping any further. Just go away!”
Yep, it was my Piper all right. I was sure of it. Now I just needed to convince her to get down here.
What to do, what to do? Ah yes. The friend angle. An oldy but a goodie.
“It’s Tom, Piper. We think he might be in trouble!”
I waited several seconds after that, saying and doing nothing, just letting the message sink in. My patience was rewarded. Several sounds alerted my ears in quick succession—feet scuffling down stairs, a muffled groan as Piper ran into something, and the metallic clack of a bolt coming undone.
A second or two later, Piper was there, eyes blinking in the harsh moonlight, clutching onto her bathrobe to keep it wound tight around her. Likely to ward off the chill.
“What do you want?” she scowled, glaring at Charmaine.
Heh. At least she was predictable. I turned my attention to Charmaine. “Maybe it’d be better if you waited in the car for this bit.”
“Say no more,” Charmaine replied, holding her hands up. She glided back down the steps and headed for the waiting car.
Part of me envied her. It was warm in that car. Out here, it was bitter cold, and even with a jacket, I was starting to shiver a little.
“Mind if I come in?” I asked Piper, my teeth chattering.
“No,” she said curtly. “No way am I letting a vampire lover in here. You get to freeze.”
There was an evil, slightly satisfied glint in her eyes, like she’d scored a victory there. I was a little saddened. I’d really thought we’d shared a good moment back at the police station, and she was starting to warm up to me. I guess I was wrong.
I let the slight go anyway. I didn’t have time to play petty games with her. Not with humanity at stake. This was far too important.
“So what do you need at this ungodly hour?” Piper growled.
“Ah, yes.” I flashed her a worried look. “It’s about your friend Tom.”
“Did you find him?”
I shook my head. “No, sorry. No such luck. We found his apartment, but he wasn’t there.”
“Too bad.” Piper’s expression soured. “I was hoping he was just sulking or something.”
“Fair enough.” I tsked and rocked back on my heels. Keeping moving was helping to ward off the worst of the chill. “But no, no such luck I’m afraid.”
“Damn,” Piper replied, frowning.
She let out a big yawn, and it was all I could do not to follow suit. How long had I been awake now? And how much longer would I have to be? Saving the world could be such exhausting work sometimes. As much as I hated to think it, I’d have to rest at least a little soon, or I wouldn’t be up for stopping a demon invasion.
Just a little longer, Damian. Just hold out a little bit longer.
“I know. Look, I know it’s hard, but we found some stuff in his apartment that makes me think maybe he’s in a little over his head. I desperately want to talk to him and sort it all out, but I can’t find him anywhere. Are you sure you don’t know where he was headed?”
Piper grimaced. “Like I said, I don’t know.” She looked slightly away from me as she spoke.
Ah ha. That was it. A surefire sign that she was holding something back. She did know where he was. I just had to get the information out of her somehow.
“That’s too bad,” I said, tsking. “I just… I’m afraid he’s going to get himself hurt if someone doesn’t stop him. I’d hate to see it come to that.”
“Yeah,” Piper replied. Another curt answer. Her eyes darted about for a second and settled back on me. She stifled another yawn. “Look, it’s late, and I want to get back to bed. Is there anything else?”
I pulled on my face. I was running out of time. Should I show her what I found at Tom’s apartment? I wasn’t sure. On the one hand, it might help coax the information out of her. But if it spooked her, I’d have a shut door in my face and no answers.
“Well, if that’s it, I’m going back to bed.”
Piper yawned again and started retreating back into her house. Her door started to close. At the last minute, I jammed my hand into the space between the door and the frame. Piper didn’t seem to notice, and she tried to shut the door anyway. The door slammed into my hand, and I winced and yelped at the sudden, intense pain of my hand getting smushed.
“Sorry,” Piper muttered. She pulled the door back open a bit. “Didn’t see your hand there.”
“No, it’s my fault.”
I’d won a few more seconds with her, but that was all I had. Time to pull out the trump card. “Look, could you just take a glance at the stuff we found at Tom’s place? Maybe it’d jar a memory.”
Piper’s frown deepened and she crossed her arms over her chest. “I’m not sure, Damian. I really don’t want anything to do with–”
“Just please,” I begged.
I got out my phone with my injured hand, wincing another time or two and pulled up the camera app. “Just please. Two minutes, that’s all. If it doesn’t help, then I’ll leave and never bother you again.”
Piper eyed me cautiously, but she did lean a little closer to the phone’s screen. “Okay, but just a quick look. I really should be getting to bed, I have work in the morning.”
“Of course. Just please.”
I shoved the phone closer to her as another wave of pain coursed through my palm. That door slamming was going to leave a mark. I was sure of it.
Piper craned her head, and I saw a look of confusion mixed with horror cross her face as she took in the contents of the photo. It was the page on summoning demons.
“What on earth is…?” Piper’s face paled.
“Yeah, I wasn’t quite sure, either.” I shook my head again.
She thumbed through a few photos, her eyes glued to the screen. “And you’re positive this was in Tom’s place?”
“Uh huh. Here.” I took control, bringing another image up for her. This one was zoomed in on the part of the summoning spell that explained the amount of blood required. “Does it help at all?”
“Look, Damian,” Piper started. “I’m n
ot sure if I should be telling you this, but…”
“But what?” I gave her a dour look. “I promise, I just want to help Tom. If he’s really going to attempt something like this, he’s going to get hurt. I don’t want that. You don’t want that. Just please, what do you know?”
Piper let out a long sigh and uncrossed her arms. “I’m not sure if it’ll help or not, but I did overhear something else Tom said the other day.”
My heart sped up, and I looked up at her with eager eyes. “Yeah?”
Piper nodded. “He was talking about some metal concert down at The Gorge amphitheater. Which struck me as odd, because he’s not that into metal. But he said he had tickets and was really looking forward to the show.”
She let out a sigh, stifling another yawn in the process. “At the time, I figured maybe he was just trying to impress some goth girl or something, but now I’m not so sure.”
“Thank you, Piper,” I said. I took my phone back and put it away, then slid my injured hand underneath my armpit. The added warmth provided a little comfort.
“But promise me you won’t hurt him. Not if you can help it.”
“I promise, Piper. If there’s any way I can stop this thing without hurting anyone, I’ll do it.” I gave her my most solemn expression, and it seemed to soften her a little bit.
“Th-thank you, Damian.” She put her hand on the door again. “Now, I really should be getting back to sleep.”
“Of course.” I nodded and flashed her a smile, then headed for the car while she shut the door and re-locked it.
A few moments later, I was back in the car, teeth rattling and shivering up a storm as I let the heat wash over me and make me feel whole again.
“Learn anything interesting?” Charmaine asked.
“You could say that. How far away is The Gorge from here?” The question was more to the driver than to Charmaine.
I saw him shrug his shoulders. “Not too far. A few hours, maybe.”
“Good.” I smiled again. “I need to make a quick stop off at my apartment, then let’s go. I’ll explain on the way. After I get a quick nap, of course.”