“Right,” I said, pointing back to the book. “But paying a little more attention to the possible motive for our murders—Nephilim blood is like Viagra, cocaine, and ecstasy all rolled into one for demons. It heightens all physical sensations, the more extreme the better, apparently. It allows them to ‘perform as though they were human men in their early twenties,’ so I guess it causes huge demon boners, and…oh fuck.”
“Oh fuck what?” Luke asked. “I find the concept of demon erections as distasteful as you do, I’m sure, but that hardly accounts—”
“It opens gates,” I said, pointing at a drawing on the next page of a human-looking wizard opening a portal, obviously to somewhere Very Not Nice because a huge demon was pulling himself through. I was able to specific with the gender because I recognized the demon’s manifestation—Orobas, the same demon that had kicked my ass at Mort’s. “Nephilim blood is blended with Cambion and human blood to create a gate into this world. Somebody has used Nephilim blood to bring Orobas back into this world. And now it looks like our old buddy Oro is planning to create the daddy of all gates.”
“Well,” Uncle Luke said, pulling out a chair and sitting at the table across from me. “Oh fuck, indeed.”
Chapter 8
“That’s not all,” I said.
“That’s enough, don’t you think?” Luke said from his chair.
“Not quite. Aside from its effects on humans, which is to induce psychosis, hallucinations, paranoia, and violent tendencies, Nephilim blood has one more effect on a Cambion. Well, any extraplanar creatures, it seems.”
“And what might that be?” Luke asked.
“A touch of Nephilim blood to the third eye masks the demon from Sight.” The Sight was what I used to see through the illusions mystical creatures cast to hide their appearance. The third eye was a chakra, or focal point for energy in the body. It wasn’t really a physical point, more like an energy node floating just outside the body. I’m not sure how you smear blood on a chakra, but probably dabbing a little on your forehead and focusing your energy on it would be close enough to get you there.
“Are you certain?”
“Well, it’s one of those things that I can’t really be sure of until it’s way too late, so I guess I should just assume that I won’t be able to use my Sight to pick out our bad guy in a crowd.” Unless I found some Nephilim blood myself and figured out a way to use it to level the playing field. Probably not happening since I’ve never spent much time working on chakras or any of that deep-thinking magical stuff. I was always much more the “lob fireballs at bad guys” kind of magic-user.
“Well, that’s too bad, since we’re likely headed to a crowded scene,” came a voice from the door of the library. I stood and spun to the door, drawing my Glock, but Luke was already on his feet and at the door, fangs out and in full vamp mode, something I hadn’t seen in decades.
Not that it mattered. The leggy blonde in the doorway just stuck out her arm and stopped Luke cold. He ran into her outstretched hand and crumpled to the floor like he’d just run headlong into a Mike Tyson uppercut. She looked down at him with a cold look on her face, and I came to the quick realization that, guardian or not, this angel had a badass side to her.
“I will apologize for entering your lair uninvited, vampire, and as you are important to Quincy, who is my charge, I will ask for your forgiveness. But understand this: I am an angel of the Lord, and if you attack me again, even in misunderstanding, I will wipe you from the face of the Earth and leave not even a pile of ash behind.”
Luke lay on the floor looking up at the angel, then very slowly got to his feet. “Your apology is accepted, my dear. But you should understand this: you are not the first angel I have met, and I’m still here. I make no promises about the seraph.”
“If you two are done measuring things that I want to know absolutely nothing about, would you like to tell me why you’re here?” I asked Glory.
“There has been another murder. Another Nephilim was found this morning, and this one was not dumped in a mall parking lot in the middle of the night. This body was found on the front steps of Trinity Presbyterian Church. The police are already on the scene, and your friend Detective Sponholz seems to be in charge.”
“Great,” I grumbled. “That’ll make everything peaches and ice cream. Let’s go.” I started for the door, but Luke’s voice stopped me.
“Quincy, wait.”
I stopped. He sounded worried. Dracula, lord of the friggin’ vampires, sounded worried? Now I was a little nervous. I looked at him, one eyebrow climbing.
“Be careful.”
“Not a chance.” I grinned and walked past Glory and out the door.
*****
Trinity Presbyterian Church is a huge Gothic church in one of Charlotte’s ritziest neighborhoods. There’s a lot of stained glass and stone involved in anything that goes down there, including murder. Our Nephilim this time was a woman, sitting on the top step leaning over like she was just resting her head against the wall. Except for all the blood pooling around her. This was obviously not just a body dump; she was killed right there on the steps, or very nearby.
I walked up to the police line and a tall, thick-necked cop with flinty eyes and a scowl on his face stepped up to meet me. “Move along,” he said in a voice that sounded a lot like someone rubbing two boulders together.
“I’m working with Detective Sponholz on this case. If you could call him over, he’ll badge me through.”
“No can do,” said the cop, who looked a lot like a linebacker run a little bit toto fat. “Detective didn’t tell me anything about a CI.”
“CI? Do I look like a friggin’ CI to you?” I asked. “Don’t answer that. Just go get Sponholz. Tell him his consultant is here.” Somedays I wish I had gone a little more legit with my life choices. It doesn’t happen often, but sometimes. The uniform gave me a suspicious glare, but turned and walked off. I watched him go over to Sponholz, make a few dismissive gestures in my direction, then stiffen as he got a response he wasn’t expecting. He turned and walked back to where I waited, as patiently as I could fake.
“Detective says you’re clear,” he mumbled.
I opened my mouth to say something, but a sharp pain in my ankle reminded me that I was traveling with an angel on my shoulder these days. Or at least with an angel close enough to kick me when I was about to say something smartass. I closed my mouth and ducked under the tape.
“Don’t touch nothing,” the gorilla muttered at me as I walked past. I bit my tongue and walked over to where Sponholz knelt by the body.
“How’d you hear about this?” Sponholz asked, not looking up.
“A little bird told me,” I replied. “What do we know?”
“Why don’t you give me the benefit of your expert eye and tell me what you see, then I’ll think about telling you what we know.”
I cocked an eyebrow at the rotund detective, who just stared back at me, blank-faced. If there was anything nefarious behind his continued testing of me, I couldn’t find it. I shook my head at him and knelt on the stone steps beside the body.
The woman was fit, in her mid-thirties at the most, with auburn hair worn in a low ponytail. Her eyebrows and nails told me she took pride in her appearance, and that regular salon visits were a part of her routine. She wore an expensive-looking blouse and jacket with heels and slacks, but there wasn’t much in the way of jewelry. Not an ostentatious woman, but she didn’t hide her femininity, either. There was a slight smell of animal around her, and a few stray hairs on her pants, so I knew she owned a cat, and there was neither a ring nor a line where it had been removed, so she was likely single.
“No purse?” I asked. Sponholz shook his head. “Wallet?” Shake. “Any ID?” Another shake.
My physical exam finished, I closed my eyes and opened my Sight. When I looked at her again, I could see the faint outline of wings floating from her shoulders, and a rapidly dimming golden aura around her.
“She�
��s definitely Nephilim,” I muttered.
“What’s that?” Sponholz asked, snapping my attention back to the mundane world.
“Nothing, just making some mental notes. Who found her?”
“Lady over there.” He gestured to a woman sitting in the open back of an ambulance with two EMTs tending to her. “She’s the church administrator. Showed up for work early this morning to get some laps in over at the gym and saw her sitting on the steps. She thought the victim was a new member wanting to use the workout facilities, or maybe a neighborhood jogger. The victim was non-responsive, so she gave her a little shake. That’s when she realized that she was standing in a puddle of blood.”
“And that explains the blanket, and the shivering, and the thousand-yard stare,” I said, looking over at the witness. She was a trim fifty-something woman with a few gray roots showing among her dark brown hair, the very picture of a someone who got up early to work out. Standing next to her was a well-dressed young man with a lot of hair gel and a mostly respectable haircut, who I assumed to be the one of the pastors, or ministers, or whatever name the church had come up with for them nowadays.
“Yeah, the youth pastor found her about twenty minutes ago. She hasn’t been able to pull herself together enough to make a statement, but it doesn’t matter. The guy confirmed the victim wasn’t a member of the choir, or the church for that matter. He doesn’t know who she was.” I didn’t either, but I was a lot more concerned with what she was then who she was.
“Have you searched the car?” I asked.
“What car?”
I pointed off to the side of the church. “It’s half past seven. Choir practice is cancelled. There aren’t really many onlookers, and I assume you’ve got somebody photographing the crowd in case the killer come back to gloat.”
“Yeah, but that doesn’t—”
I pointed to the lot again. “There are ten cars in that parking lot for two churchgoers. The Camry’s mine, and the shitty Ford with blackballs is probably yours. That leaves half a dozen cars to search. One of them probably has a purse in it, and that’ll have the victim’s ID.”
Sponholz glared at me. “I don’t like it when you say things I can’t argue with.”
“Here’s another one,” I said with a smile. “You’re fat.”
I ignored his upraised middle finger and turned back to the corpse. I opened my Sight once more and gave the dead Nephilim another look. Her aura was even thinner, but that wasn’t what I was looking for. I searched the area, scanning the surroundings with my third eye, then I found it.
“Gotcha!” I said, hopefully under my breath. There, under the corpse, was the slightest trace of another aura. Human auras are strange enough, but half-angel auras were even tougher to decipher. One thing I did know was that our Cambion left a little tiny trace smeared on the steps behind our Jane Doe. I couldn’t tell if that’s where he stood as he killed her or what, but I knew that there was enough aura transferred that I’d know it if I saw it again.
“Got what?” Sponholz said from my elbow.
“Nothing,” I replied, trying to sound depressed. “I thought I saw a piece of paper in the blood, but it was nothing.” I stood up, both knees popping like rifle shots. I turned and looked at the crowd, my third eye still open to the metaphysical world. Nothing. Not a hint of demon anywhere, and I had to keep Glory in my peripheral vision or she blinded me. I’d have to talk with her about that. I did get a faint golden glow off a car in the lot, a snazzy BMW M-class convertible in cherry red. I pointed to it.
“I bet that’s her car,” I said.
“The Beamer? Why?” Sponholz asked.
“How many church choir directors do you know that can afford a BMW sports car? And how dumb would they have to be to drive it if they could?” I replied.
“Good point. I’ll go check it out. Stay here.” He lumbered off to the car, waving a uniform over as he went. I watched in the distance as the uniform roped off the area around the car with crime scene tape, then Sponholz tried the doors. Locked. I could almost feel the glee roll off him as he realized he was going to get to cause havoc, then I saw him reach into his pocket, pull out his fist with something I couldn’t see clenched in it, then shatter the driver’s side window.
“I really hope that’s the right car,” I said to myself, watching him work. Moments later, Sponholz had the door open and was waving me over. I was at his side in seconds, peering into the car. There were no signs of a disturbance, just a Starbucks cup in the holder and an iPhone plugged into a car charger. I reached for the phone, but the rotund detective elbowed me out of the way and reached into the car himself. He pressed a button on the phone, and the screen came to life. A picture of the victim hugging a gigantic golden retriever filled the screen.
“Well, I guess we found the right car,” I said. Sponholz just grunted. I pushed the unlock button and walked around to the passenger door. I opened the door, leaned in, and popped open the glove compartment, then jerked back and hit my head on the doorframe in surprise.
“Whoa!” I said, rubbing my head. I stared at the black pistol that had fallen to the seat. “Hey Sponholz, our victim was packing.”
“Yeah,” he said, looking at the gun. “Glock 19. Good gun. Dependable, lightweight…good glovebox gun.”
“Who brings a gun to a church?” I asked myself, reaching back into the car and fumbling around in the glove compartment. Inspection receipts, a couple maps (who carries actual paper maps anymore?), a GPS charger, and finally, buried under a roadside flare and a spare set of keys to something, I found what I was looking for—the registration.
“Terese Dover,” I said.
“What’s that?” Sponholz looked up at me, and it was his turn to crack his head on the doorframe.
“Our vic is very likely Terese Dover of Matthews, North Carolina,” I said, passing the vehicle registration across to the grumpy detective.
“Who the hell is Terese Dover, and why did someone want her dead?” Sponholz asked.
I had no idea, but this was the second dead half-angel in as many days, and if experience was any teacher, that meant something bad was brewing, and it was going to be up to me to deal with it.
Chapter 9
“Who the hell is Terese Dover?” Dennis asked, looking up from the slip of paper I handed him.
“A dead woman, and I need to know everything about her,” I said, sitting down in the armless chair beside Dennis’ desk. Dennis Bolton was an informant I hired from time to time, a college kid I’d pulled out of a bad scene on New Year’s Eve at the turn of the millennium when what he thought was a LARP turned into a dark magician’s plan for ritual sacrifice. Dennis survived, but he saw a few things that made him never want to watch a horror movie again. His GM-slash-necromancer didn’t survive to see the dawning of the year 2000, and after a few fire spells and an hour or two of nasty shotgun work, all the zombies were returned to their appropriate level of dead. Ever since that night, Dennis was my go-to guy for all things buried on the internet and the dark web. It’s good to keep a few nerds on call for the tough ones.
“What killed her?”
“In the medical sense, a cut throat. In the perpetrator sense, I don’t know yet. But I think there’s something ugly brewing, and this is almost certainly tied to it.”
“Makes sense, given the date,” Dennis said, typing and clicking away on his souped-up Powerbook.
“What’s the date?” I’ve never been the best in the world at keeping track of crap like dates. One of the many reasons I’ve never had a girlfriend of more than a few weeks. Chicks always want you to remember things like anniversaries, birthdays, and when you promised to meet them for expensive dinners. Or any dinners. Or at all. Monsters aren’t real considerate of personal plans, so I’ve missed a lot of second dates. That means I haven’t had a whole lot of third and fourth dates.
“Tomorrow is the Equinox, Harker. Isn’t that something you wizard-types keep track of? Like Easter, or Christmas?”
“Wizards shop at Walmart?”
“One, I don’t like being called a wizard. It sounds like a douche in a pointy hat and a robe, and I don’t do hats. And two, everybody shops at Walmart. You can’t really help it. Now what about Terese Dover?”
“She works, er…worked for AmeriBank. She was an investment banker, mostly working on financing construction projects. Office buildings, developments, that kind of thing.”
“Construction, huh? Doesn’t sound like the kind of thing that gets somebody killed. See if there’s anything in her personal life that’s out of the ordinary.”
“You mean like fetish club membership, donations to the Church of Satan, subscriptions to freaky S&M magazines?” Dennis had a little bit too much of a gleam in his eyes for my comfort.
“Yeah…sure, pal. All of that, too. But I was thinking more like a relative in prison, some family or school connection to anything shady, too much money or not enough, repeated deposits or withdrawals in the same amount that don’t correspond to a normal payment, that kind of thing.”
His face fell beneath his close-cropped curly hair, and for a moment he looked like a really depressed Bobby Hill, from a King of the Hill cartoon. “Oh. Okay. I’ll look into all that stuff, too. But I wouldn’t ignore the work stuff, Harker. There’s a lot of big money in these developments, and that’s a lot of motive.”
“Fair enough,” I said. “I’m gonna head over to her office and talk to her co-workers. You let me know if you find anything. And keep an ear to the ground on the BlackNet about anything big going down on the Equinox. I don’t think demons are much for email, but maybe some of their human pawns are using the web to communicate.” I stood up and walked to the door. “And Dennis?”
Heaven Sent - a Quincy Harker Novella (Quincy Harker Demon Hunter Book 5) Page 6