“Which you probably will be,” I added.
“I will be if you interrupt me,” she fired back. “But Q was the best I could come up with on short notice. Unless you’d like me to use one of your other names. Like Holmwood, maybe?”
“No thanks,” I said, finally noticing my green light and turning onto College. I drove for a couple blocks and pulled left into my building’s parking garage. The condo boom in the 80s and 90s had hit Charlotte with a vengeance, but the recession in the early 2000s put a lot of luxury places on the market for ridiculously low prices. With a little financial backing from Uncle Luke, I bought my condo for well under market value. Not to mention the deal I got for the rest of the building. I had the top floor to myself; was just a couple blocks from good restaurants, the library, and Spirit Square—a great place to see a play or a concert; and I had a view of the city in all directions from twenty-five floors up. As far as lairs went, I’d had worse. Northern California in the early sixties was particularly unfortunate.
I pulled my car into my reserved spot and got out. I walked around to the trunk and pulled out a black backpack, slung it over one shoulder, and walked toward the elevator. I clicked the lock button on my remote twice and got the chirp of my alarm engaging, then pulled open the door to the elevator lobby to find Glory standing there.
“That’s really annoying,” I said.
“So is leaving me in the car without a word.”
“Fair enough.” I slid my keys into the pocket of my jeans and pulled out my wallet. I withdrew a plastic key card and inserted it into a slot on the elevator panel just above the buttons. Then I pushed the “up” button and pulled out my card.
“What does that do?” Glory asked.
“It tells the elevator to ignore all other call buttons and come straight down to the garage without stopping. It does the same thing on the inside of the elevator, too.”
“Isn’t that kind of rude to the people waiting for the elevator?”
“There are four elevators, so only a little. And if they don’t like it, they can buy their own building.” I gave her my best “devil-may-care” grin and stepped through the opening elevator doors. She didn’t grin back. I guess “devil-may-care” might be the wrong attitude to wear around angels. The doors slid shut with her on the other side, but I managed not to jump when her voice came from right beside me.
“Tell me more about this feeling that dragged you from the presumably warm embrace of a half-dressed twenty-something young lady out into the pouring rain in the middle of the night.”
“I can’t really describe it, if we’re being honest.”
“I’m an angel, Q. We are incapable of telling a lie. So please, feel free to be honest.”
Well, that’s an interesting little tidbit. Angels can’t lie. But earlier she was definitely hiding something, so they don’t have to tell the whole truth. “I just suddenly felt like something was wrong, like something in my world had shifted somehow, like there was…”
“A disturbance in the Force?” the angel supplied, somewhat less than helpfully.
“Yeah, frankly, that’s pretty much exactly what it was like. There was something fucked up in the universe, and I had to go try to deal with it. And that’s what got me out of the Champagne Room with Olivia and Lili and out into the cold-ass rain. Speaking of which, I should have done this a long time ago.” I focused my will and muttered “inflammo” in a low voice. I slowly released my will into the spell, and my clothes began to steam. A few seconds and I was completely dry. I released the energy I’d taken in and looked at Glory. “That’s better.”
“Why didn’t you do that before now?” she asked.
“Well, I probably would have, except somebody materialized out of friggin’ thin air into my car and scared the shit out me!”
I stared at her for a moment, and eventually Glory blushed and said, “Oh, you mean me? I really am sorry about that. But tell me more about this compulsion. How did you know where to go?”
“Why are you so interested in how I got to the crime scene? If you’re supposed to be my guardian angel, what does it matter? You just need to keep me from getting killed, right?”
“I suppose so, but it would be easier if I understood you a little more, knew why you were drawn to trouble in the first place. Maybe I could be more useful.”
“It’s not that I’m drawn to trouble, gorgeous, trouble sometimes finds me,” I said, peeling off my t-shirt and tossing it on the floor of my bedroom. I raised my voice to yell to Glory in the living room, but I didn’t need to. When I turned around, she was right in front of me, standing in the entrance to my bathroom. I pushed past her, then turned and shoved her gently out the door and closed it. I relieved myself, then opened the door.
She was sitting on my bed now. I don’t care if you’re some kind of monk, and I’m pretty much the furthest thing from one, but the sight of a gorgeous blonde sitting on your bed in the middle of the night is going to stir some pretty unholy thoughts, angel or not. I stood there staring at her for a few seconds, then shook my head like a disturbed Labrador or something.
“That’s a little disgusting, you know. I’m an angel, Q.”
“Yeah, but I’m not,” I replied, then paused. “Wait a minute, how did you know what I was thinking?”
“I’ve dealt with human males for centuries. You’re always thinking the same thing. Why should tonight be any different?”
“Good point,” I conceded. “Now what? Are you just going to sit on my bed like some Playboy centerfold while I take a shower, then watch over me while I sleep?”
She thought for a moment, then nodded. “Yep, that’s exactly what I’m going to do. Why are you showering, anyway? You just stood in the rain for half an hour looking at a corpse.”
“Yeah, but that got me wet, it didn’t get me clean. Besides I need to wash off the stripper perfume and glitter. I can’t go to bed smelling like lilacs and regret. I’ll never get to sleep.”
Chapter 3
Glory was gone when I woke up, but I have to admit, I slept like a baby. I don’t know if it was having an angel watching over me, or if it was getting home barely two hours before sunrise, but I woke up feeling refreshed and ready to take on the world. Or at least ready to take on whatever killed Lincoln Baxter. I made myself some coffee, grabbed a yogurt out of the fridge, and fired up the laptop. Turns out Mr. Baxter was a well-loved member of the community, which I knew, who left behind a teenage daughter from his first marriage and twin sons from his second. I wrote down “teenage daughter” and “two wives” on a legal pad by the computer.
An hour of internet searching gave me a list longer than my arm of people who wanted Baxter dead. As an assistant DA, Baxter prosecuted a lot of bad guys. Some of them, like the Mexican gang MS-13, still had friends on the outside. Some, like David Patton, aka The Park Road Strangler, managed to get their cases overturned on a technicality and got loose. And then there were the white collar guys like Bill Montgomery, who watched his net worth turn to net worthless when Baxter indicted him on a host of charges related to a Ponzi scheme he was running on North Carolina’s elderly. So there were a few people who wanted our boy dead. My job was to find out who made it happen and what they did that was so powerful it jacked up the whole city’s energy. There were a couple of places to find that kind of information, but only one open during mundane business hours. Good thing for me Christy made the best Bloody Marys in town.
My Camry stood out in the parking lot of Mort’s Bar not because it was the best car in the lot, or the worst, but because it was the only car in the lot. I looked around a barren expanse of cracked asphalt, crushed beer cans, discarded cigarettes, and used fast food wrappers, but the only sign of life at the place was the tattered “OPEN” sign stuck in one window. I walked across the parking lot past the two Harley-Davidson Fatboys pulled right up to the front of the building. I banged on the door, and a panel slid open revealing a pair of yellow eyes rimmed in red.
�
�Password?” a gravelly voice asked. I could smell the brimstone on his breath from several feet away.
“Fuck off right back to the sixth circle, you repugnant cockweasel,” I replied.
“Good to see you again, too, Harker. You know, one of these days I’m going to take offense at that and—” Doug the Door Demon started to say, but the second I heard the lock click open, I shoved the door into his face and cut him off.
“Owwww! What was that for?” The four-foot demon whined as he jumped backward off his stool and tried to keep the heavy metal-clad door from squishing him like a bug against the wall. “Come on, Harker, I thought were pals?”
“Pals?” I turned toward Doug. He was a spite demon, a prankster type that got his rocks off flattening tires and tying people’s shoelaces together, but he was far from harmless. In the past he’d been known to cut brake lines, switch medications, jam up traffic signals, and otherwise do those nasty little things that can result in someone getting annoyed, or getting dead. I didn’t like Doug, and never had. “You thought we were pals, you bottom-feeding little sulfur-sniffer? You’re not fit to lick the dogshit off my boots, you worthless little fucktard.
“The only reason I haven’t boiled your blood from the inside is that you haven’t crossed the line from being an irritating little fuck to being a real threat. But if you ever do decide to move up in weight class, you worthless pile of Satan’s jizz-drippings, just call me. I’ll send you back to Hell so fast Lucifer himself will wonder if he installed an express elevator. Now fuck off, I’m going to see Christy.”
I pushed through the inner door into Mort’s, the only agreed-upon Sanctuary in the city of Charlotte. There are some places where humans are safe, and there are some places where monsters are safe, but Mort’s is the only place where the two can mingle without anyone trying to eat the other. On premises, at least. What happens outside the parking lot is not something Christy is worried about.
Christy is the bartender/manager/peacekeeper/den mother of Mort’s. As far as anyone can tell from a glance, she’s human. She’s a cute little Asian woman about five-two, curvy, with a ready smile and an ear to listen with. She’s provided bartender services for me ever since I landed in Charlotte back in the 80s. Come to think of it, she hadn’t changed any more than I had in the past couple decades, which spoke to something a little more than human in her DNA, too. She was pouring a scotch when I barged through the door, and as I watched her, she took one ice cube from behind the bar, deposited it into the drink, then set it on the bar in front of her.
I walked over, picked up the glass, and drained the scotch in one long swallow, then set the glass down on the bar. I waved at it in the universal sign for “Please, by all that is holy, give me more booze.” Christy repeated her pour, then deposited that in my hand.
“Not much holy here, Harker,” Christy said with a smile. “Now what do you want?”
“Can’t I just want some company and a drink?” I put on my best “innocent” face. My innocent face looks kinda like a cross between Hannibal Lecter at a wine tasting and Uncle Luke at a Red Cross fundraiser. But it did get a chuckle out of Christy, which was all I wanted anyway.
“Sure you can. Just not at one in the afternoon. In case you missed it, we’re barely open.”
“Yeah, but you’re never closed. Which is a little odd, if you think about it. Do you sleep, Christy?”
“You know I don’t answer personal questions, Harker. It’s one of the rules.” She pointed to a sheet taped up behind the bar. It had a list of rules, most of them boiling down to “Don’t start shit in here, or I’ll fuck you up.” But right there at number eight was “Bartender doesn’t answer personal questions. Ever.”
“Yeah, but I’ve gotten a lot of people to break a lot of rules in my day,” I said with a grin.
“Who ever said I was a person?” She grinned right back. Dammit, she got me again. One day I’d trip her up into admitting something about herself. Or maybe I’d just actually investigate. But as long as she stayed neutral, I didn’t need to go digging around in Christy’s secrets.
“So, you here to meet your buddy?” Christy asked. Something in my expression must have told her I had no idea who she was talking about. Maybe it was the way my hand dropped to the butt of my Glock, riding on my hip mostly masked by my long coat. Maybe it was the way I snapped open my Sight and gathered my will, making the ring on my left middle finger glow a little. Or maybe it was the way I looked at her with one eyebrow climbing for the sky.
Her face turned sober. “There’s a guy here looking for you. He’s been here since early last night. He asked a few people what you looked like, then he took the corner booth by the bathroom and just waited. He orders a beer every half hour or so to keep me from throwing him out, but no food, no guests, and no interest in the girls.” Christy motioned at two succubi meandering through the empty tables cleaning ashtrays and bussing drinks. In busier times, they were cocktail waitresses. With only two customers, though, they were just ambulatory furniture. Or collateral damage, if this next conversation went sideways.
I thought for a second, then held up two fingers to Christy. She stared at me for a minute, then nodded slowly. I held up one finger and pointed to the back. She nodded again.
“Well, I guess I shouldn’t keep my old buddy waiting any longer, should I?” I asked. I held up one finger and pointed straight down at the bar. She nodded. So the owner of the other motorcycle wasn’t waiting with his buddy in the back corner; he was crouching under the bar waiting to take a shot at my exposed back.
I pressed a hand to the front of the bar, gathered my will, and muttered “debilitato.” I released my will, and I heard a strangled gasp from under the bar, then a soft thump as my would-be assassin toppled over, paralyzed.
“Now I think I’ll go have a conversation with my friend at the back table,” I said. “Christy, is Sanctuary revoked for these guys?”
“Oh yeah,” she replied. “Hide under my bar and point a gun at my belly? Fuck yeah, their Sanctuary is revoked. Paint the ceiling with their brains if you want. I’ve got cleaners on speed dial.”
I walked back toward the restrooms, then slid into a booth just between the bathrooms and the emergency exit. I had it on good authority that emergency exit did not lead out on Wilkinson Blvd., but someplace much farther away.
“I understand you’re looking for me,” I said to the man in the booth. He was tall, taller than me, even, and lean to the point of being gaunt. He had deep-set eyes that looked blue, then gray, then purple, depending on how the light struck, and a trim beard along his jawline. He was dressed in biker chic, but the elbows of his leather jacket showed no signs of him ever laying a bike down. His hands were folded in front of him on the table, and they were huge. He had preternaturally long fingers, with clipped nails and no dirt or grease ground into his knuckles. This man was no biker, and we both knew it.
“Yes, Mr. Harker. I am indeed.” Even without the sibilant letters, I got the impression that he was much more comfortable speaking in a hiss.
“Well, you found me. And I found your little friend up front, so let’s have a private conversation, shall we?”
“Very well, I will be…succinct. You have no reason to care about Lincoln Baxter, or his death. This affair has no bearing on you, unless you wish it to. And trust me, Mr. Harker, you do not wish it to.” He leaned forward, and those shifting eyes turned the color of thunderclouds. He reached out and grabbed my wrist with his right hand, and his fingers wrapped all the way around my wrist almost twice, and I’m not a little guy. “Do you understand me?”
He gave me a hard glare, and I felt a presence pushing on my mind, like someone trying to control me. I tried to behave, I really did. But behaving myself has never been my strong suit, and I only respond in two ways when I’m threatened: I either break whoever is threatening me into many small pieces, or I laugh like a jackass. This time my lizard brain decided that “laugh like a jackass” was the proper response to be
ing threatened by some mystical whatchamacallit in a dive bar barely after luncthime. So I did. I laughed in his face. Brayed, really, just like a donkey.
He jerked back and let go of my wrist, and then my lizard brain let the switch flip to “fight.” I reached out and grabbed him by the hair and pulled, slamming his face into the table. Then I shoved the table into him, effectively pinning him into the booth by his skinny midsection. I slid out of the booth and nailed him with a right cross to the jaw that spun his head around, then I put both hands on the back of his skull and slammed it into the table again.
Now that I had him disoriented, I yanked him out of the booth by the back of his collar, grabbed his belt in my other hand, and bum-rushed him out into the middle of the bar. I needed a little more room than the back hallway provided for the biblical ass-kicking I planned to unleash on this fuckwit.
“Not my affair, huh?” I punctuated that by throwing him to the floor. I’m pretty sure I heard something crack when he hit the hardwood.
“I don’t wish it to, huh?” This time I capped my sentence with a kick to the ribs, and I know I heard something crack under the toe of my Doc Martens.
“No reason to—” I didn’t get to finish that sentence because as I reached down to pick his assclown up and continue beating him bloody, he reached up with a hand and swatted me away. Yeah, he didn’t punch me. He didn’t throw me, toss me, or fling me. He kinda flicked one hand out, and when that hand hit me in the chest, I flew fifteen feet straight back and crashed through a table before collapsing in a pile of splinters and former restaurant furniture.
Chapter 4
Once I decided that I hurt too much to be dead, I shook my head, which was a bad idea because the room didn’t stop wobbling when my head did, but I managed to clear enough cobwebs to stagger to my feet. The skinny man was standing right where I’d tossed him, perfectly still. He didn’t look like I’d bounced his head off a table a couple of times, then kicked the shit out of him wearing my heaviest ass-kicking boots. He looked more like he was waiting for something.
Heaven Sent - a Quincy Harker Novella (Quincy Harker Demon Hunter Book 5) Page 2