War Pigs

by D V Wolfe

  “For what it’s worth,” Festus said, sounding like he was already regretting saying anything. “This last time I was downstairs, I didn’t see the Duke in his office.”

  I jerked my head up to look at him. “So he’s topside right now? Do you know where he is? Did he find and use the Wolftamanus thing to drill his way out? Did some of his demon pals summon him? How did they keep it hidden from the Harbinger?”

  Festus looked utterly defeated. “I have no idea. And I don’t want one, either. His secretary is pretending he’s still there, but someone screwed up and reported to his office for punishment and she said he was too busy.”

  I gave Festus a confused look. “It’s Hell, Bane. No one is ever too busy for punishment. He’s not there. His office door didn’t open once the entire time I was down there.”

  “How do you know?” I asked.

  “Because I spent the entire time I was down there, since Garnett, staking out his office,” Festus said quietly.

  “You were staking him out?” I asked. “For me?”

  “There wasn’t any good torture happening,” Festus said with a shrug. “And Hell TV only shows sitcoms. And you can imagine what those are like. I was just bored.”

  “Thank you,” I said, meeting his gaze.

  He rolled his eyes and flicked his cigarette butt. “Don’t get all choked up. I didn’t get much in the way of info, besides the fact that he’s not there.”

  I shrugged. “That’s more than we had before.”

  “Bully,” Festus said. “Well, I’ve got better places to be.”

  And he headed off into the darkness. A few feet beyond the reach of the truckstop’s floodlights, we saw a few scattered sparks, like a second cigarette cherry, and I knew he was gone.

  “He’s going soft,” Noah said.

  “Like the Pillsbury doughboy,” I said with a smile. I pushed off of Lucy and opened the driver’s side door. “Let’s hit the road.”

  3

  I started Lucy and pulled us back onto the highway heading for Rosetta’s. The radio was playing a Slayer song and when it faded out, Walter came on.

  “The storm front over northern Kentucky has broken up and clear skies are expected for the rest of the week. So good news for the Bluegrass State.”

  I grinned over at Noah. “Oh stop, Walter, you’re making us blush.”

  “Sadly,” Walter continued, “the same can’t be said further east. Lightning storms are moving in over Bellum, Pennsylvania.”

  Noah shifted in his seat and I reached over to turn up the volume.

  “This is due to a cold front moving in from the west, interrupting the high eighties temperatures in the area. Travel is discouraged as this storm develops and if you have to pass through the area, make sure to buckle up.”

  “Sounds like fun,” I said to Noah as I started searching in the seat for the cell phone. Noah didn’t say anything. I knew he was pouting. I couldn’t blame him. There hadn’t been much rest for him in the last week. And maybe he was more shaken by the run-in with the Hidebehind than he let on. It had been kind of shitty of me to leave him as bait while I got trashed and swung an axe.

  “Hey Walter,” I said when I heard his croaky “hello” on the other end of the phone.

  “Oh hey, Bane,” Walter said. “Nice job in Kentucky. Was it really a ‘Hidebehind’?”

  “Yep,” I said, “and we have the putrid head to prove it.”

  “That’s...nice…,” Walter said.

  “Yeah,” I said. “So what’s happening in Pennsylvania?”

  “Oh Bane,” Walter said, “that was a warning.”

  “I know,” I said. “I heard the code phrase, which Walter, it really isn’t much of a code. I mean, ‘buckle up’?”

  “What?” Walter said. “It’s a good code phrase. And if you’re smart, which I know is hit or miss with you, you’ll listen and not dive into that shit show. I’m serious Bane, this is a bad mama jama.”

  “Oh, Walter,” I said. “You can stop selling it. You had me at ‘shit show’.”

  “Damnit, Bane,” Walter grumbled.

  “So what are we talking about here,” I asked. “Demons? Ghouls? Rakshasas?”

  Walter sighed. “There’s definitely something demonic there. It’s strong and its hiding from me.”

  “You mean, it’s blocking you, again?”

  “No,” Walter said quickly. “No, I can see that something is there, it’s just out of focus. Like a blurred face on a camera feed.”

  “Ok,” I said, “so checking the box for demonic forces. Anything else?”

  “I don’t know,” Walter said. “There’s something else there. It’s old and it’s strong. There’s a lot of power radiating from it. Enough to push back supers in the surrounding area.”

  “Ok,” I said, “and it's in Bellum, right?”

  “Yeah,” Walter said, “about an hour southwest of Scranton.”

  “Any landmarks,” I asked. “Extra points if there’s a ‘biggest ball of something’ involved.”

  “Sorry, no biggest balls of anything other than shit you don’t want to step in,” Walter said. “But since I know that’s not what you want to hear, there’s a new building involved. Sorry I can’t be more specific.”

  “No worries,” I said. “I mean how big can Bellum be?”

  “Population of four thousand,” Walter said.

  “Can’t be too many new buildings, right?” I asked.

  “Bane, can’t you just...sit this one out?”

  “Sorry Walter,” I started.

  “I know,” he interrupted. “Fine. Just...be safe.”

  “Will do,” I said and I hung up. I tossed the phone in the seat and started looking for a road sign that would tell us how far until we could turn east. “Well, Noah, what do you say to a little demonic day camp in Pennsylvania?” Noah didn’t say anything. He was still pouting. I sighed. “Noah, I can take you to Rosetta’s for a rest if you want.”

  “No,” Noah said. “I’m fine.”

  “I know we’ve been running hard and you’ve hardly had any time to breathe, let alone sleep. I can leave you at Rosetta’s for a day and I’ll go check out whatever is going down in Bellum town and…”

  “No,” Noah said louder. I paused and looked at him. “It’s just...Bellum. That’s my hometown.”

  4

  “Oh,” I said. That was probably the last thing I expected Noah to say. “Well, what are the odds of that.” I turned to look at Noah. He was pale. “Hey, it’s been a couple of months. Maybe they’ve moved on.” Noah’s expression didn’t change. Shit. From what he’d told me, he’d been through hell in that town. “Maybe we should skip this one.” Even as I said it, I felt the weight sliding into my stomach. If Walter was right, this could be Berith. This could finally be justice for Nya. But it did kind of feel like a lateral move, trading vengeance for one person I loved with hell for another. “I’m sure Walter will have more…,” I started to say.

  “No,” Noah said. I looked at him. He was still pale but his jaw had a determined set to it. “Let’s go.”

  I was trying to work out if this was another one of the “hotel room” things where Noah was just pushing himself, fighting me on stopping to get a hotel room for the night because he didn’t want to appear weak. “Noah, we don’t have to…” I started again.

  Noah shook his head. “I...I can handle it. Besides,” he turned and met my gaze. “I want to see my mom.”

  The knife in my gut was back. She hadn’t seen or even heard from Noah for months. I couldn’t even imagine that kind of agony. We were quiet for a while and the sun was just starting to creep over the dashboard when Noah’s stomach broke the silence with more of a roar than a grumble.

  “Let’s get some grub,” I said. There was a travel menu of restaurants coming up on the right. I saw the logo for IHOP and moved over to take the exit. Noah perked up considerably when I pulled into the parking lot and drove by a window-sized picture of a stack of pancakes on our
way to the back of the lot.

  We got a table by the window and in ten minutes our orders of waffles and pancakes had been sent into the kitchen. Noah was staring out the window, apparently deep in thought. I shoved the salt and pepper shakers around with my finger while I gave him a moment to collect himself.

  “Anything rattling around up there that might sound better out here?” I asked him.

  Noah shook his head. “I just never thought I’d go back.”

  I opened my mouth to tell him that he didn’t have to, but Noah narrowed his eyes at me and I decided against it. “Tell me,” I said. “What’s the town like?” I thought that might be the safest place to start in getting him to talk.

  Noah shrugged. “What do you say about the town you lived in your whole life? I can’t compare it to anywhere, I guess. I mean, I’ve been to a lot of places with you now, but we didn’t really live there. I guess it’s like a snooty version of Rosetta’s town.”

  “So probably not a lot of people unintentionally lighting their asses on fire on the fourth of July?”

  Noah almost smiled. “No, but I’d rather have that than the constant feeling like you’re being judged.”

  I nodded. “Kind of puts drunks with Roman candles into a more positive light.”

  Noah sighed. “I’m not even sure my mom will want to see me.”

  “But it’s been months.”

  “Even so,” Noah said, “she was so angry. She looked at me like she didn’t know who I was.”

  I shook my head. I couldn’t imagine a mother treating her son like that. Especially Noah. He was so innocent and trusting. This horrible thing had happened to him and he didn’t understand it. Then to turn him away...to turn away from him? There was no way the woman who raised him could be so hateful.

  “She was probably just scared, Noah. I mean, most kids’ puberty stages don’t include flaming hands of fiery doom.”

  Noah didn’t seem convinced, but he looked like he was on the verge of clamming up again, so I decided to try to get him talking about something else. “What about your house and your neighborhood? What were they like?”

  Noah’s face brightened. “Oh man, Mom and I lived in this little cul de sac of brick houses and I used to mow the lawns for all our neighbors, which is how I made all my money in the summertime. We were only about a ten-minute walk to the pool, so I spent a lot of time there. I was a lifeguard last summer. I was going to do it again this year…” He faded off, his face falling at the memory.

  “So you’re a big swimmer?” I asked.

  Noah nodded and then he looked a little embarrassed as he said, “I wasn’t too shabby. I made varsity on the swim team both my junior and senior years. We were going to the state competition the week after homecoming…” He started to fade off again and so I changed tactics again.

  “So Walter said that the big hoopla in Bellum is revolving around a new building in town, but he couldn’t see much more detail than that. Do you remember any new buildings going up or planned to go up before you left?” I asked.

  Noah paused and I could see him mentally pushing away a line of thought to consider the question. He shook his head. “Not that I can think of. I mean, they’d just finished an apartment complex on one side of town last fall, but that would hardly be ‘new’ now.”

  I nodded. “Did anything strange ever happen in Bellum while you were growing up?”

  “You mean ‘supernatural monsters’ strange?” Noah asked. I nodded and he shook his head. “Nothing ever happened in Bellum. There was once a three-car fender bender at the movie theater and it made the paper for three weeks in a row. At first, Mom and I thought it was a new crash every week, but then we realized that business was just slow for the paper and they just retold the same story from each car’s perspective one week after another. I think that was the first time I ever saw a ‘Letter to the Editor’ in the paper. Everyone was cranky about the extended coverage over the accident. And the movie theater was pissed because they lost business. People avoided the place thinking they were going to get in a car accident if they went there.”

  I was holding in the snort and Noah caught me. “See? Boring. Bellum is boring. That should be the town’s slogan.”

  “Well, it sounds like some excitement has moved to town,” I said.

  “And we can’t have that,” Noah said, a faint smile forming on his lips. “The whole town would shit their khakis.”

  “That is a disgusting visual,” I said. “I’m so proud.”

  The waitress came by and dropped our food in front of us.

  “You sure you’re going to be ok with this?” I asked. I knew he’d said it before, but something inside me told me to make damn sure. The last thing I wanted to do was make Noah relive his worst memories. I had that disease and I knew how much it sucked.

  “I’m sure,” Noah said. He was eating, but not with his usual fervor. I watched his face, turned down, focusing on cutting up his waffles. The small smile reformed on his lips. “Plus, I want a front-row seat to the khaki browning when Mitch Wells sees you and me, with guns drawn, and your freaking sword, killing demons. A varsity letter in football means precisely, dick, to a demon.”

  “You’ve been holding onto that for a long time, haven’t you,” I said.

  Noah shrugged. “Couple of years. He was always a dick to me. Amy had been his girlfriend in middle school, but he cheated on her with other girls all the time and they’d broken up by freshman year. She and I started dating sophomore year and Mitch started being a dick.”

  “You think he wasn’t over her?” I asked.

  Noah snorted. “No, Mitch doesn’t think like that. He just didn’t want to think his ex could be happy with anyone else but him. And I was the weird kid, so I guess he took it as a personal insult.” Noah’s expression went stony, no doubt thinking the same thing I was. Amy had died. It had been an accident and not Noah’s fault, but she had still died when they were together. Did this douchebag kid, Mitch, now go around telling everyone “I told you so” about Noah? I hoped not. I’m not one for beating up innocents, especially minors. But if Mitch was now eighteen, like Noah, that would remove one of my scruples, and for Noah, I would gladly throw the other one out the window.

  We were quiet for a moment while he ate and I forked off a piece of pancake and tried to choke it down, thinking about kids being jerks. There’d been a couple in school with me, but we’d been so young. It was mostly kids calling me poor and dirty. I’d gone home in tears and my dad would sit down on the front porch next to me, pat my back and say, “The world is full of assholes and their opinions are just farts.” After that, I started seeing all the kids at school as walking butts and every time they made fun of me, I’d laugh at their farts. Childish, but effective. Then I was the crazy kid who just laughed all the time. I missed a lot of school, working on the farm and I think I knew from an early age that school wasn’t my forte.

  “Middle school wasn’t so bad,” Noah said. “I had a lot of friends back then. I was the tall kid.”

  “I’ll bet,” I said.

  Noah sighed and looked out the window. “Maybe it won’t be so bad. I really do miss my mom.” He realized that he said that out loud and I saw him visibly tense as if he was expecting a snide comment from me. I kicked myself for conditioning him with my sarcasm. I needed to tell him my dad’s saying about farts.

  “I miss my mom sometimes, too,” I said softly. From what little I could remember of her, she had been a kind woman. She hadn’t taken crap from dad or me. She’d loved practical jokes and hard work. And I’m pretty sure she was the only one who ever changed the light bulbs behind my dad’s eyes because when she died, they burned out and they stayed that way. If only he could have told his own brain to stop being a farting asshole…

  “Hey,” I said, “maybe if there’s time we could go egg Mitch’s house.” I paused and then asked, “Do kids still egg people’s houses these days?”

  Noah was full-on grinning now as he nodded
, pouring more syrup on his waffles. I could feel the normal flow of Noah energy and I inwardly breathed a sigh of relief. I had to go to Bellum and there was no way Noah would sit this one out. In fact, I’d learned that trying to get Noah to “sit this one out” was almost always an act of futility, so I was just thankful he was on board and feeling fine about Bellum. Now, I just hoped we didn’t run into anything too far left of the unexpected.

  “Hey,” Noah said, “is that Gabe?”

  I followed Noah’s gaze out the window and my eyes locked onto a dark green Triumph cruising into the parking lot.

  5

  I didn’t have time to do a gut check about how seeing Gabe again so soon would make me feel. We hadn’t really talked before he’d left Garnett. That was probably for the best. We were trying to keep things professional between us. At least, I was. Still, what Jo had said to me in that almost non-existent park in that tiny Ohio town had been echoing in my ears every time I thought about Gabe since then. Which was annoyingly often considering how recently I’d seen him.

  The bell rang over the front door and he was standing there, beard wild from god knew how many miles on his bike, hair disheveled and sticking up on one side from his helmet. He looked exhausted, but he still gave the hostess a genuine smile. It was probably my imagination but I could swear I smelled his leather and his pine beard stuff from where I sat. The bacon smell kind of got lost in the standard IHOP fumes. Logically, I knew there was no way that I was actually smelling his leather and pine stuff from here, but the brain can have stellar recall abilities whenever it damn chooses, apparently, and this was one of those times. His gaze scanned the restaurant and I thought about making a dive for the restroom just to avoid being speared by those blue eyes. Too late. His eyes locked onto mine and he was moving towards us before a new expression had formed on his face. He was halfway to the table before his face caught up with his movement and his expression became relief mixed with something happier, or so it seemed. But, there was still a layer of worry over the whole thing. For a man who almost always seemed to smell like crispy bacon, he could be a pretty complicated guy.