War Pigs

by D V Wolfe

  He started patting at himself, little shrieks of pain erupting from him. He snapped his fingers but nothing happened. He was still being engulfed in flames. He dropped the sword and started trying to take the flaming clothes off. The force of energy holding me in place dropped and I fell forward on to my hands and knees. I turned to look at Noah. He was still laying on the floor, curled into a ball, but he wasn’t crying or puking anymore. His face was screwed up in concentration and his eyes were a blazing orange. Not just the irises. The whole eye, whites, and everything. Griffith was starting to peel off more than his clothes. Something that looked like black razor blades were slicing through the skin at his now shirtless torso. It was something inside, trying to get out. Griffith’s true form. The skin was ripping around the human arms as pale skin, almost ash-tinged emerged. I lunged for the sword and I swung it as hard as I could, hitting the thing in the back of the neck.

  22

  The blade went through, but it vibrated up my arm like hitting a metal pipe with a baseball bat. Almost as if I’d hit something it wasn’t meant to go through. The office shook around us, the TV fell off the wall and hit me on the back, knocking me forward. The glass-framed map crashed down, showering Noah with glass shards and a blinding green light flashed through the room.

  Just as quickly as it had started, the shaking stopped. I was laying on top of what was left of Griffith. At this point, he was only half-Griffith. The other half was something I’d only ever heard whispers of in the purgatory cells. The smell of sulfur was overwhelming and I fought to free my legs out from under the fallen TV. It had broken when it fell and I could feel shards of plastic and glass digging into the backs of my legs.

  “Noah,” I called. I couldn’t see him. The map had fallen out after the glass and there was just a bump under it, indicating where he was. The bump stirred slightly and I felt my heart start beating again. I made myself stand up rather than crawling across the carpet like I’d have rather done. There was so much glass everywhere that I’d be stitching myself up for hours if I crawled. I grabbed the map and whipped it back. Noah’s face was cut, but it looked like his suit had protected most of him.

  “Are we professional, or what?” I groaned as I helped him to his feet. Noah stood still, staring at the remains of Griffith’s body. Thankfully, his eyes were back to normal. I was numb. There was a huge exclamation mark floating around in my head telling me I needed to process what had just happened, but right now, I just needed to get us out of here before Griffith’s loyal mob army caught up to us.

  As soon as I was sure Noah could stand on his own, I went back and grabbed the sword. I resheathed it and turned back to Noah. For the first time since I’d known him, he looked completely lost. He was the homeless kid I’d once met at the train station in New York, wandering around, looking for his only possession, the stuffed bear that someone had taken from him.

  “Let’s get the hell out of here,” I said softly to Noah. He didn’t move. I came up next to him and put a hand on his arm, getting him to turn with me. I cracked the office door open and I was relieved to see that the reception area was empty. I got Noah to the elevator with me and I had it stop on three so that we could sneak out through the fire exit and have as little chance as possible of running into any more demons. I pulled out my cell phone.

  “Luke, we need a pick up,” I said, helping Noah navigate around the two piles of black puss and ashes, still wearing suits that were security guards an hour ago.

  “Oh my god, are you two ok?” Luke asked.

  “We’re alive,” I said. “How’s June?”

  “She’ll be ok. She’s with me.”

  “I’d say ‘we all live to fight another day’ but I don’t want to jinx it. Noah and I are still here, straddling the bandsaw. How long before you can get here?”

  “En route now,” Luke said. “About five minutes?”

  Noah and I moved down the stairs as quickly as we could. When we hurried past the landing to the second floor, some kind of alarm went off. It didn’t sound like the fire alarm, but the door banged open above us and the shouts of confused workers echoed off the concrete. We picked up our speed as much as we could. Noah was bleeding through his shirt from a piece of glass that had fallen at just the right angle and my knee was pissed. We pushed through the door on the first floor and I dragged us through the double glass doors, into the tour showroom.

  “He had to be lying,” Noah was muttering. “He had to be.”

  “That is one of the things they’re known for,” I said, pulling him with me to hug the doorway and the shadows. People were rushing past the glass doors and I was praying that none of them decided to come this way. Something was coming together in my head. “But maybe not,” I added.

  Noah pulled away and turned to stare at me. “What are you saying?”

  “Maybe that’s where your powers came from,” I said.

  “I can’t be,” Noah said, his voice growing weaker. “I can’t be the son of a demon.” He was just standing there, raw guilt and sadness washing over him, and this new burden of his past. And for a second, I saw me. Ashamed of my dad’s drinking. Of being poor and knowing that his weaknesses were probably passed down to me too. I leaned back against the door frame and I felt the tell-tale bump of the Ukkin sword on my back. No. I wasn’t weak. Not like he’d been. I had been at one time when I was drinking too much and just feeling sorry for myself, but then Noah had come along and I hadn’t had time for either of those. Keeping him alive was a full-time job and suddenly, Dad’s weaknesses weren’t the only thing on my mind. Survival. I had to survive to keep Noah alive. And that was the opposite of Dad. Somewhere, I’d done a one-eighty. I looked at Noah.

  “Noah,” I said it a little harsher than I had meant, but I hoped he understood I was mad at our bullshit fathers, not him. “If the demon isn’t lying, it’s no big deal. That’s who your father is, that’s not you.”

  Noah was shaking his head. “First the mind thing and now this. Bane, you should just run me through with the sword and end this before it gets to where I can’t control it. I’d rather be dead then…” I put a hand over Noah’s mouth.

  “Hey,” I said, and then I lowered my voice as the alarm outside the room cut out, but people still poured out of the stairwell door. “You are still the exact same person. The possibility that your dad is a demon, doesn’t change anything. You’re still Noah. You’re still a hunter. And you’re still my friend.” I’d never said this last phrase out loud, but at that moment, I realized that for at least the last month, I’d been thinking of Noah as all three of these things.

  Noah looked, if anything, more shocked.

  A one-tap on a horn outside sounded and I cracked the exit door. The black Crown Vic was at the curb and I shoved the door open. June was in the backseat and she grabbed Noah and pulled him to her. I yanked open the passenger’s side door and climbed in.

  “Hit it,” I shouted to Luke as soon as my ass was on the seat. Luke gunned it and we laid rubber. He got us out of the lot and I looked in the side mirror. The lot was empty. No people milling around. Just cars. Where had all the employees gone if they weren’t coming outside? An involuntary shiver slid down my spine.

  “You ok?” Luke asked. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.” I cut my eyes to Luke. “Or a demon,” he said.

  “A couple,” I said, with a nod. “But no, I’m more worried about the employees. They…” I caught a glimpse of what June and Noah were doing in the back seat and I looked at Luke.

  “Teenagers,” he muttered. We both started clearing our throats loudly. They didn’t even slow down. Noah raised a middle finger so that I could see it in the rearview mirror.

  Yep. Definitely still Noah.

  23

  Luke wound through side streets, slowing in places so that we could see if we had a tail. It was almost more unsettling that no one seemed to be following us. We drove past the motel twice, looking for strange cars near or around our room. Everything looked a
s it had that morning except for the green dually being gone. Barreling down the road on its way back to Texas, no doubt. I jammed the key into the knob and shoved the room door open. June and Noah bounced in right behind Luke and I. Noah was a little slower than June and she sat down beside him on the bed, tugging at his shirt where it was sticking to the wound in his side. I hobbled back outside and moved Lucy back around to park in front of the room in case we needed to make a quick exit.

  Luke closed and locked the door behind us and I sat down in one of the chairs by the small table so I could peek out through the blinds in case we got company. Luke sat down on the other bed and we all let out a collective sigh.

  “So,” June said finally. “You killed him?” I turned to look at her. “The demon, Griffith, you killed him, right?”

  I nodded. “He’s dead.”

  “I thought he had to be,” June said. She paused, looking at us. “Otherwise you two wouldn’t have made it out, right?’ I nodded slowly. “So what happened?’

  I let Noah lead the story re-telling. He withheld the part about what Griffith had said about being his father. He locked eyes with me when he skipped that part and I nodded in understanding. He was holding June’s hand as he talked and June was riveted. He told her about lighting Griffith on fire and then how Griffith had started to transform.

  “Then Bane ran him through and killed him,” Noah said. June turned to me, letting go of Noah’s hand.

  “Then what happened?” June asked on the edge of the bed. I looked over and saw Luke was leaning forward, elbows on knees.

  “The earth shook and there was a flash of bright green light,” I said. My stomach twisted itself into knots at the memory. The light and the earth-shaking. It was exactly what had happened at Messina. But this light had seemed green. Maybe I was just remembering it wrong.

  June leaped to her feet now and the three of us just stared at her as she did a little dance.

  “It worked! The rite actually worked! I mean, I had my doubts, and to be honest, if it had been up to me, I wouldn’t have done it this way,” June said.

  “What are you talking about?” Noah asked. “June, you’re not making any sense.”

  She was still dancing around and pacing back and forth in front of us. “I mean, do you have any idea how tedious it’s been to lead you humans around by the nose to make this happen?”

  Noah was on his feet now. “Junie, come on, what are you talking about, ‘you humans’?” Noah tried to pull her into his arms.

  She turned to Noah and shoved him away from her. His legs hit the bed and he fell back on it, grabbing his side.

  “And you,” June spat at Noah. “You’re fucking exhausting. You’re so needy and having to pretend that I’m interested in everything you say. My gods, you’re a chore and having to constantly moon over you…”

  For the third time today, I felt like all the air had been sucked out of my lungs. What the hell was going on? Had June been a demon the whole time too?

  “I’m going to enjoy this,” June said, twisting her wrists. Her skin began to stretch. It didn’t rip away like Griffith’s had it just stretched and she shot up to over six feet tall, her face reshaping, her blonde hair growing dark like clouds on a horizon and she rolled her wrists, two spears forming in her hands. She drew one back, her twisted smile fixed on Noah. He hadn’t moved. He was looking at her, resigned to his fate.

  I was moving before I realized what I was doing. I drew the sword and swung it forward. Her scream broke the mirror next to the TV and the mirror over the sink. The sound of ripping carpet and crumbling concrete filled the air while the ground under my feet jolted and shook for the second time that day. A blinding white light seared my corneas and I could feel my lids closing despite the sudden feeling that I was now blind. Still, that was nothing to the feeling in my gut as the earth relaxed beneath me.

  24

  “Bane!” Luke’s voice cut through the aftermath of silence, making me jump.

  “Here,” I groaned, pushing myself up from the floor. My vision was starting to come back and a flickering light in front of me answered the question as to why the smoke detector was suddenly going off. The carpet was melting and the remaining puddle of what had been June or whoever she was, was on fire and sending up noxious smoke.

  “Here,” Noah coughed and two pillows hit me in the side of the head. “Sorry, I can’t see.”

  I grabbed a pillow in each hand and tried to pat the fire out. Luke stumbled up and pushed past me, slipping on one of the pillows on his way to the door. He threw it open and the smoke started to pour outside. Once the flames were out, I rolled to my side and tried to breathe.

  We were all quiet. It was too much. Too much to process, too much to feel, too much to know. I squinted through the smoke and my hazy vision at Noah. He looked completely shell-shocked. I couldn’t say I blamed him. He had the most to process. I looked at him, mentally standing on the edge of something. The expression on his face was scaring me and I didn’t know what to think.

  Then I heard Gabe’s voice in my head; “Don’t think. Just do.”

  Smoke was pouring out of our motel room. We’d killed the head of the biggest industry in Bellum. The angry mob was going to find out and they were going to come after us for it, at least they would if we were still in town. Maybe someone would keep the plant going and they would eventually forget about us, but sticking around wasn’t a good idea. And then there was the question as to what the hell June had been. I had an idea, but it sounded insane in my head. There was a spearhead, blackened and warped laying on the edge of the carpet burn with the scorched entrails. I crawled over and picked it up. There were markings on one side of the blade. I sure as hell didn’t know what they were, but I knew someone who might. A plan started to form in my head and I sighed inwardly. Probably another “shit plan” but so far, my “shit plan” batting average was better than normal.

  Don’t think. Just do.

  “Let’s get the hell out of here,” I groaned getting to my feet. “Everything in the truck.”

  Noah looked up at me and I saw the wheels turning as he closed a door on something in his head and got to his feet. He grabbed his backpack off the floor and started yanking clothes out of it and pulling his suit off. I looked at Luke.

  “What about you?”

  Luke shrugged. “It’s been too long since I checked in. I’m probably considered the bureaucratic equivalent of AWOL.” Luke sat down on the edge of the bed again and shook his head, coughing slightly. “Not that I think I could go back. After this...I don’t think I can just go back to investigating regular humans. Not when I know that there are things so much worse out there.” I had a sharp memory of Noah saying almost the exact same thing after St. Louis.

  Luke really couldn’t go back. He’d been exposed. The demons knew his face now and he was associated with me. They’d hunt him down and torture him just for the fun of it. I needed to get him to a safe house until this was over.

  “Glad you feel that way,” I said. “I’m afraid you’re not going to be safe now. Not only have you seen what’s behind the curtain, but it’s seen you. Do you want to come with us? I think I have somewhere we can keep you safe. It might be a little annoying though.”

  Luke’s face broke into a hesitant smile. “Are you sure?”

  “That you’ll be safe?” I asked. “Reasonably. That it’ll be annoying? Without a doubt.”

  We had everything from the Crown Vic transferred into Lucy and the room emptied and into the toolbox and cab in ten minutes. I scribbled. “Sorry about the carpet” on a piece of motel stationery and left it on the bed with two hundred dollars. I’d needed to sit and breathe for a solid three minutes after that payout before I could stand. The three of us crammed into the truck cab and we booked it out of town and onto the highway.

  We were an hour down the road before any of us could speak.

  “What the…” Luke started.

  “Yeah,” Noah and I said.


  “I mean, what the…,” Luke tried again.

  “Hell,” Noah said.

  We were quiet for another minute.

  “Oh,” I said, a random realization bobbing to the top on my brain. “I think I know why those five brawlers were trying to kill each other. Griffith put the whammy on me for a moment while we were up in his office.”

  “What do you mean?” Luke asked.

  “He poked me in the chest and my vision just went red and I wanted to kill everyone.”

  “Shit,” Luke said. I nodded. “But that’s not what happened to the brawlers,” Luke said.

  Noah and I both turned to look at him. “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “I talked to them,” Luke said. “I called the station while I was waiting on June...or whatever her name was, at the E.R. Parker let me talk to them. Each of the five had been connected to Douglas Meeker in one way or another and there was circumstantial evidence tying each of them to his disappearance. Carl was his neighbor and worked with him and he was reportedly the last person to see Meeker, despite what his missing person report says. Moses was seen by several witnesses, having a screaming match in the parking lot with Meeker the day before he disappeared. Devon was Meeker’s ex-roommate and he knew about his valuable collection of coins that were missing from Meeker’s house. Meeker had apparently called Ernie out at work about a corner he cut, embarrassing him in front of everyone, and Bert was seen in the woods outside of town on the night they determined Meeker had been killed.”