The Devil's Gunman

by Philip S Bolger

  Amalfi was welcome to stay in the RV, but she preferred to rest in her Chimera form. She’d rapidly constructed a generous lean-to and slept there. She suggested I join her, in her semi-creepy way of referring to me as an animal, but I’d declined.

  The clearing had an ad-hoc rifle range, although the outer limit was only about 200 meters—well short of long distance. There were a few cheap folding tables and a small shack that contained some ammunition. In addition to the range, there was a lean-to with a small cache of preserved goods and what might’ve been some defensive positions.

  “You shoot out here?” I asked Josiah as we cleared dead branches off the range. “You’re not worried about interference?”

  Josiah chuckled. “This is far enough off the main trails that the only folks who ever come out here are park rangers, and that’s not during their regular patrols.”

  “I have something to help with that,” Lotus said, smiling. “The arcane arts, as usual, have the answer.”

  “What answer would that be?” I asked.

  She kept smiling, the smugness on her face intensifying at an exponential rate. I swear to God that woman could make holding knowledge over your head a fetish.

  “Don’t worry, pup. Don’t worry at all.”

  We spent the rest of the day clearing everything out, and by the time sundown hit, we had something a Congolese rubber farmer might’ve called luxurious.

  “Well,” I said, as we all sat around the campfire, “this seems like a nice gig. We can lay low and relax for a bit.”

  Lotus and Josiah exchanged a glance, suggesting that I’d just said something colossally stupid.

  The next morning, I found out why.

  * * *

  My shot went wide, chipping an oak tree, causing me to groan in frustration.

  “A little slower,” Josiah said, his Minnesota accent carrying singsongingly through the morning air. “You’re rushing your pronunciation. The Nordic languages have many words that sound similar. Should you chant the wrong one, your rune may behave…oddly, especially considering where you got it from.”

  “Man,” I griped. “Why couldn’t they use Latin, like good, honest occultists?”

  The chants he had taught me were much more complex than the simple, one-syllable, near-grunts that activated my VP9. Learning a foreign language while you’re learning new shooting techniques is weird. Not fun-and-interesting weird, shitty weird. Imagine a shooting app for your phone. You have to utter specific words to guide your shot, and if you don’t say the words correctly, your round goes wildly off-course. That’s what I was dealing with.

  Josiah chuckled. “I don’t make the rules for what magic goes where. Blame the history of language, if you want, but pick up the rifle, and try again.”

  I paused to wipe some sweat from my brow and tried hard not to think about how miserable I was. The last few days had been an endless cycle of combat training, manual labor, and mediocre food, accompanied by the constant freezing cold and irritatingly frequent precipitation—a frigid cycle of rain, sleet, and snow.

  “It always seemed so easy, just a few words, now it’s all this shit?” I complained.

  “You’re used to the weapons doing the work for you, bud,” he said as he took a sip from his canteen. “You don’t have Hell’s forges to pull from anymore, so you’ve got to get used to doing more of the work. Besides, this builds character.”

  Character, it turned out, was being consistently soaked and smelly and generally miserable.

  If there was any solace, it was that out here, in the state park, I finally felt safe. I can’t say I felt at home, but I felt…comfortable. Kinship. Bonding, maybe. It was nice to be around people who, when they asked how I was feeling, really meant it, even if their follow-up comment was, “Stop being such a pansy; we’ve got to keep training.”

  If life had turned out the way I wanted it to, I would never have met any of these people, except maybe Collette. I don’t know if I would’ve picked a peace-bonded, former angelic hitman and an idealistic doctor as members of my elite strike team of badass assassins, but unfortunately, real life didn’t give you infinite assets, and I was confident I could trust the two of them—Collette, because of her relationship to Lotus, and Josiah, because of his drive for vengeance against the Lyndale Coven. If anything, I should’ve been suspicious of Amalfi. Our retreat up north was yet another wrinkle in my promise to Vinter to eliminate the patron. Amalfi, however, seemed to be enjoying being along, and had said little about the mission since we fled my burning house. I wondered if she was creeping off somewhere to report on me, but if she was, I wasn’t hearing anything back.

  I hadn’t seen Amalfi since morning. This far removed from humanity, with Lotus guaranteeing prying eyes wouldn’t find us, she’d stayed in her Chimera form and gone hunting.

  Lotus and Collette lounged in Josiah’s RV, occasionally cracking the door and asking if we wanted a drink of chai tea. I very much did, but Josiah stopped me as, apparently, it dehydrates you.

  While I’d slept the first night in exile, Lotus, Josiah, and Amalfi had modified the rifle range. The range’s targets were small steel plates, and they were arranged on obstacles. Lotus and Josiah used a spell to run the range, causing the targets to bob and weave in erratic patterns. Josiah stood at a small table with some runes scribbled on it and appeared to be controlling the targets from there.

  The smell of rain-soaked pine needles permeated the air, accented by the slightly ashy smell of the fire Amalfi had built to cook our breakfast an hour earlier. We’d put it out before we started shooting, and the smell of cordite joined the symphony of scents wafting through the autumn air.

  I was dressed in a t-shirt advertising one of my favorite bars off Hennepin Avenue. Apparently, Josiah liked the bar, too. I had borrowed a pair of Josiah’s pants—digicam stuff, presumably an affinity he’d picked up from his time in the Marines. They were a hair large on me, so I’d used a rigger’s belt to keep them tight, but I still felt a bit billowy, like a pirate.

  The shirt was stained with mud and sweat. Josiah was running me through drill after drill, which reminded me of my training under the specter of Forrest, though there were fewer racial epithets and many more kind words. I wished I had a hoodie, but all of mine had burned with my house, so I shivered a bit and soldiered on.

  Josiah looked much cozier, even in such an austere environment. He wore camouflage pants with hiking boots and a long-sleeve flannel shirt. He was wearing an “IRAQ—I SERVED” cap with some military ribbons I didn’t recognize pinned on it. He grinned as he watched me stumble through the routine task. He was sipping from a worn, olive-drab canteen, and the way he smacked his lips after each drink suggested he knew how thirsty he was making me.

  It wasn’t the shooting that was tiring. It was the constant exercises. Josiah insisted it was easy to learn chants when you were fresh, but remembering a forty-syllable string of Nordic nonsense was a lot more difficult when you were tired. So, he had me doing pushups, burpees, jumping jacks, and squats every time I missed. I hadn’t hit yet. The target was too quick, and I couldn’t get a fix on it. And the number of reps increased for each shot I missed, too, because hey, fuck me, right?

  I shouldered the VHS, and I tried to shoot a target that would poke its head out, then disappear behind a tree. I had a split second for the right shot, but with my rune, Josiah said I could hit it.

  I stood, sweaty, muddy, and cold, in the late autumn, under an endless gray sky, taking potshots at magically manipulated targets.

  “You ready?” Josiah asked. I nodded, and he arranged some of the runes on the table. The targets poked out behind their obstacles, only a sliver of steel poking out at a time. The vulnerability was slim, and it took a lot of concentration to hit. I wasn’t supposed to start with all of them. Josiah had called this “familiarization fire.” Still, I knew if I missed another one, I’d be back in the mud doing grass drills.

  So, I focused. I brought the VHS up and looked down
the sights. That wouldn’t be necessary if the rune worked, but it’s bad to assume that everything’s going to work, all the time, in combat. And, if Josiah saw me shooting from the hip, he’d make me do laps around the clearing. I’d learned that quickly.

  I chanted the words he’d taught me, and as a target poked out from behind one of the trees, I felt a momentary connection and squeezed the trigger.

  The weapon barked, and the target shattered—my round had connected.

  “See?” asked Josiah. “It takes more incantation, but you don’t need the weapon to be enchanted to your rune. The magic can be applied to any weapon. A right-hand accuracy rune is one of the best. If your chants are quick enough to keep the accuracy rune fueled, it can double as a quick draw rune.”

  He told me to start disassembling the weapon.

  “You’re gonna clean it now,” he said. “We’ve been through a couple hundred rounds, and we’ve got more to go.”

  I wasn’t sure I agreed it was necessary to clean the VHS, but I wasn’t stubborn enough to argue with the man training me. I took a seat and broke the rifle down, laying the pieces on a cloth I’d taken from my camo pants. The grey, autumn sky hinted at rain, but it looked like it would hold off so I started cleaning.

  The thing about cleaning weapons is that no matter how necessary it is, it is an inexorably dull task. It requires lubrication, scraping, brushing, bore-snaking, and a lot of elbow grease. I didn’t have anything to listen to or watch, my usual distractions while cleaning, but I did have Josiah.

  He watched me, sipping from his canteen.

  “Did you learn all this stuff about runes in service to the angels?” I asked.

  Josiah nodded. “When I was called upon to wield the weapons of the Lord, I was schooled in the ways of war. Heaven’s combat school is very intensive. I learned everything from how to hold a pike in a phalanx to how to guide a cruise missile.”

  He paused, taking another swig from his canteen. “I’m kind of amazed they didn’t teach you as much. Heaven always warned us that Hell was quick to arms.”

  “The ghosts of a Confederate war criminal and a sadistic bank robber harassed me in Hell until I learned how to shoot,” I said, trying to forget Forrest’s mocking laugh and Nelson’s insults. “That was the extent of my combat training. I guess it worked.”

  Josiah’s eyes sparkled with amusement. “Evil teaches evil. The philosophy I trained under was different…I didn’t meet any ghosts, except on the final exam with Marshal Reeves. Most of my education was classwork and practical stuff taught by a Jesuit operative at the Basilica. What did your Patron tell you about your rune?”

  I decided to omit the fact that he had called the rune a gift as a Svartalfar succubus carved it into my hand with an ebony blade, pain searing through my body.

  “I know it makes me accurate. From the stuff you’ve said about Hell’s forge, I assume most of the guns he gave me, or maybe the bullets, were tied to it.”

  Josiah shook his head. “Damn waste. It’s always a mistake to rely on the equipment, rather than the skill of the shooter. I guess that makes sense, given the way Hell likes to act.”

  He paused to enjoy another gulp of water, and my dry mouth reminded me how badly I wanted some.

  “In a way, Nick, I envy you. You weren’t taught much, but that was their way of controlling you. I had nearly unlimited access to knowledge but was bonded when I left. Good trusts good…but good is always worried about decay and ever-present corruption.”

  His eyes grew dark, distant. “I was surrounded by weapons but could not save my family because of my vows to God.”

  I didn’t speak. I was never good at counseling, so I stood quietly in the chilly breeze and waited for him to refocus on training. I hoped Collette would look out, realize what was wrong, and come to my aid, but the girls were happy to stay in the warm RV and sip tea.

  “Disarming someone never seems good,” I said, offering what I could. “Maybe it’s how I am. I know it’s how you are.”

  He nodded, sadly. “Yeah, Nick, but it wasn’t my choice. At least, not without some coercion. They said I had two options—return to my mortal life but never raise a weapon in anger again or ascend to heaven and work there. I couldn’t leave my family, not with my boys and my missus needing me, so I didn’t have much of a choice. The angels sealed my family’s fate, to prevent me from, well…from becoming you or someone like you.”

  I didn’t know what to say. It was awkward, but I tried my best.

  “You couldn’t have known,” I said. “Those vamps were looking for me.”

  Josiah locked eyes with me. There was sadness in the depths, a sense of remorse and regret woven with a bit of hatred—just enough to fuel the fires of vengeance.

  “Nick, I don’t know how you were raised,” he said. “But the way I was raised, then during my time in the Marines, it was made clear to me—any man worth a damn defends his family. I promised my wife, before cancer took her, that I’d hold to that and use my strength to keep my boys safe. Not all of us are born strong, and not everyone can become strong. So, it’s up to those of us who are strong to defend the weak. When we can’t…”

  He trailed off, no doubt thinking about his shop burning with two of his kids inside, and his eldest son, neck broken, sprawled at the door, Trash looming over his corpse and howling.

  I nodded. Words still failed me. I thought about one of my worst jobs for the Patron. He’d asked me to torch a family of five as they slept. I wish I could say the way the infant cried as flames consumed her body or the way the father pleaded for help haunted me. But they didn’t. It was a job. It was something I had to do, lest I face the wrath of the Patron. I had been, at one time, the same type of person as the vamps responsible for destroying Josiah’s family. I should’ve felt bad. I didn’t.

  I didn’t want to start an awkward conversation, so I said nothing. I reached forward to hug him, and he rebuffed me, politely, by raising his hand.

  “Let’s focus on your shooting,” he said, the emotion leaving his voice as he returned to teaching me. “Vengeance, despite what scripture says, is very satisfying. Having sat at the right hand of a Seraph, I’m comfortable judging.”

  I nodded. “Before we continue, I have to know—you have almost no qualms about teaching me. Why?”

  He shrugged. “Let’s just say, I’m not sure Heaven always gets it right. Violence may not be moral. It may not be good. It is, however, frequently essential. I can’t do this job myself. I want vengeance, so I am teaching you. Nick—why do you think I ran a gun store?”

  “I assumed it was because you love guns,” I said. “Didn’t figure it ran any deeper than that.”

  His eyes faded a bit, the disappointment visible. “I meant what I said, about self-defense being salvation. I love Heaven with all my heart, but the mechanics of heavenly ministrations are far removed from God. Those in charge are well-meaning, but they focus a lot on control, on verifying that the “right” people are doing the things they want. When you look at every major religious pantheon across the world, only a few pass muster. They’re greedy with power, and while they hold on to that power, darkness encroaches. Darkness isn’t discriminating about who it arms and empowers. Any adult with time and access to occult tomes, unusual brothels, or strange sigils can find themselves in the fold of evil.”

  He adjusted where he was sitting and took a deep breath.

  “I’ve already told you,” he continued. “I think everyone with a family should defend it. You are your own salvation in this world, Nick. If you can’t protect yourself and your family, you stand no chance of ever walking a righteous path. There’s a lot of darkness out there, and it’s well-armed. If people like me didn’t exist, that darkness would overwhelm; it would win on all fronts.”

  I thought about that for a second. I could see where he was coming from, but I didn’t think he’d thought it through. I thought about all the guns he’d sold that had likely been used for evil. Some of them probably
ended up in my hands when I worked for the Patron. Some of them might’ve been used for gang slayings or executions.

  On the other hand, I had to agree with him. Of the worst people I’d encountered as a button man, many of them did what they did to try and improve their family’s position. Some acted out of fear. Many preyed on those who had no means of defending themselves.

  “That’s enough philosophy,” Josiah said. “We’ve got to get you shooting. C’mon. I’m going to reset the targets.”

  We passed most of the morning with Josiah teaching me a handful of other Norse chants. They weren’t too hard, once I got the rhythm right. By midday, Amalfi returned with the fresh corpse of a stag. She resumed her human form and cooked for us, using the surprisingly well-stocked spice rack Josiah kept inside the RV. The aroma of spiced venison was so strong, I started losing focus. Josiah realized we weren’t going to get anything done with that kind of distraction, so he called off training.

  I got up and shouldered the VHS, joining the others around the campfire.

  I sat on a log, and Collette and Josiah sat in camp chairs. Lotus, bundled up in a bright blue parka that made her look remarkably like a cartoon Eskimo, was in her wheelchair, but the mud meant she basically had to hop around with it to get anywhere, which seemed to annoy her. Clouds obscured the sun, but it was light, and we were warmer than when we’d woken up. I’d borrowed one of Josiah’s jackets and, for the first time since I’d stepped out of the RV, I felt I was finally equipped to face the weather. Collette was playing some music through a portable speaker—she spared me punk and had on some 80s rock, a genre we could both tolerate.

  Once we were clustered around the fire, Amalfi began portioning out the deer. Collette distributed paper plates, while Josiah spooned out some canned beans. Lotus supervised, alternating between expressions of, “Respect your elders,” and, “I’m too good for menial labor.”