by Tim Marquitz
I nearly fell over as his words struck home for the first time, cutting through my grief. They knew where I lived, knew well enough to lay waste to my old house even though I hadn’t been there in months. They knew who Karra was, who her father had been, whose power I’d taken on. Whoever these guys were, they had enough insight to carry out their mission of murder and mayhem. And judging by the wreck of my house, they’d started their campaign of destruction before they’d even attacked us. Who else had they targeted already?
Abby was safe at DRAC headquarters or Michael Li, their resident telepath, would have contacted me, and they’d have to be fools to go after the rest of DRAC or Scarlett. That only left…
“Oh…shit!”
Three
Blood was everywhere.
The gate rippled closed behind me, sealed to all but me now, but it was clear I hadn’t left the war on the other side like I’d believed. The killers had tracked me all the way to Hell. It wasn’t me they’d found, though.
Pieces of dread fiends littered the walls and floor. The stench of copper filled my nose, its smell barely rising above the sordid stench of sub-demon innards that were strung up like gory streamers. My boots slipped in the inch-thick pool of crimson that coated the ground, and I had barely caught my balance when a horde of live fiends tore around the corner and came barreling my direction. Yellowed teeth and ragged claws led the charge. They hissed and howled with no signs of slowing.
“Whoa! Whoa!” I shouted, waving my hands. “Heel you big hairy rodent sons of bitches. Heel!”
It took them a moment to realize it was me, riled up as they were, but the last little bit of love seemed to sink through their cavernous skulls and land somewhere near their catfish brains. They skittered to a clumsy stop a few feet in front of me, limbs cleaving the air comically, fanning their funk my direction. It was like a thousand cows had crop-dusted me. I coughed and waved my hand in front of my face so I could breathe without going into cardiac arrest, and then pressed into the fiends and moved them aside.
“Where’s Rala?” I asked, not really expecting an answer that didn’t end in a rumbled grunt.
“Right where you left her…to die.”
And I was not disappointed.
I slipped past the wall of fiends to see Veronica standing at the end of the corridor, her hands on her shapely hips. Dressed in a wife-beater, the bright colors of her Asian-themed tattoos stood out boldly on her arms. I followed their trail up to her collarbones, and then up her narrow neck to where a very pissed off face met my gaze. Angry blue eyes slashed at me like razors, the start of a bruise beneath one of them. She brushed a strand of dark hair from her face and bared her teeth.
“Always the last to arrive,” she started, “unless we’re talking sex, that is.”
“Har-de-fuckin’-har. Where’s the kid?”
My patience for Veronica was at an all-time low even before everything else that had happened that day. She was the last person I wanted to see, and I wasn’t in the mood to play our usual game.
She stared at me for a quiet moment, taking in my mood. For all our storied history and battered track record, she knew me better than anyone. Well, maybe not better than Karra, but at least she knew where the line was drawn. She was toeing it right now.
Veronica raised her hands to placate me. “She’s fine. I have her packing a bag so we can—”
“I didn’t ask you anything but where she was, did I?” I said, closing the distance between us and violating her personal space in a big way. She held her ground, and I could feel my temper rising up from the depths, my cheeks likely steaming. She met my eyes but there was fear behind the swirl of defiance. “Now, tell me where she is.”
She let out a sigh a few seconds later and took a step back before pointing down the corridor. “She’s in her room, with the old man.”
I didn’t even offer her so much as a conciliatory nod when I started off in the direction she pointed. Her glare followed me, little dots of spite that seared my back, but they could fuck right off.
“You think you can keep her safe?”
Her unexpected question brought me to a halt.
Could I?
Veronica pounced at my hesitation. “These people, whoever they were, wanted her dead because of you. If there hadn’t been a thousand cannon fodder fiends to throw at them, they would have succeeded,” she told me. “They damn near did, anyway. We were down to the last handful of dread fiends we had on hand when the revenant just stopped fighting and dragged the other two out of Hell with her. The old one spit some bible quote at us, and they vanished, vowing to return for Rala.”
If there’d been any question as to who had beaten up my furry security forces, Veronica’s description clinched it.
“They say anything else?” I asked, turning to face her.
She shook her head. “They were too busy slaughtering everything that moved to be chatty.”
I glanced at the swelling at her cheek, then back to her eyes. She didn’t look too bad off. “If it was all that, why aren’t you dead then?”
She laughed, the sound both amusing and cruel. “Not like I went tit for tat with them, Frank. We weren’t exactly playing in the same league, you know.” Her smile slipped then, oozing from her lips. “I took my shot, and they shrugged me aside like I was nothing.” She paused for a moment, drawing in a slow, deliberate breath, her hands tightening into fists. “They didn’t give a damn about me. I hit the dirt and they kept on going. All they wanted was the girl, and they were going to butcher everyone to get to her.”
I swallowed hard at hearing that. Rala was no threat to them. She had nothing to do with me except for being on the receiving end of my kindness in bringing her and Vol, her blind mentor, back to Earth with me. And now these bastards wanted to kill her for it, just like they had Karra. They would have done it, too, had they not suddenly found something better to do. That thought sickened me.
My eyes moistening, I said, “I can’t lock this place down quickly enough for it to be secure right now. Do you have someplace off the radar you can take Rala and the old blind fucker?”
Veronica stiffened, probably thinking I was still being a jackass or setting her up for something.
“Seriously,” I told her. “You said they didn’t want you, right?”
She nodded, a weird mix of relief and frustration washing across her features. No doubt her ego was flaring up like a good case of hemorrhoids.
“Well, they sure as shit want me.” I spun in a circle with my arms wide, gesturing to the whole of Hell. “And it damn well looks as if they know my every hidey hole like the back of their scripture.”
Her eyes narrowed into crystalline slits.
“Here’s where I say you were right, Veronica,” I told her, though not very graciously. “You asked if I could keep Rala safe, yeah? Well, I don’t know. There’s your answer.” Heart pounding in my chest, I walked back to Veronica, this time keeping some distance between us so as to not come off as too threatening. “Look, you said they ignored you. If you’re not on their holy list of victims to be, then Rala and the old man will be safer with you than they are with me.” Thoughts of Karra swarmed me, a million wasps with sorrow for stingers. I bit back a sob and let it out as a choked growl. “Look, do you have someplace to hole up or not?”
Veronica nodded, her expression shifting into neutral. I had no idea what she knew about what had happened, though I was certain she hadn’t heard about Karra, but it was clear she saw something peeking out from behind my ghetto-façade. I wasn’t gonna give her the satisfaction of hearing it from me, though.
“I have someplace,” she said. “I can take them to—”
I cut her off. “It’s best I don’t know in case the holy rollers come a knockin’ again, but I want you to take some of the dread fiends with you, just in case.”
“Okay,” she agreed without argument. “I’ll go get Rala.”
I nodded. “I’ll gather the hounds.”
&n
bsp; She stared at me for a moment, doing nothing, before finally saying what was on her mind. “You sure about this?”
“Nope, but if they find me first, there won’t be any reason for them to hunt any of you down after the fact. I’d rather the kid not be there when they catch up to me.”
“You expecting this to be soon?” There was a hint of…something, suspicion maybe, in her tone.
I shrugged. “I certainly don’t plan on making it easy for them, but they wanted a reckoning. They’re gonna get just that, though it sure as hell won’t be the one they’re expecting.”
She started to say something else, but stopped herself, saying instead, “I’ll get them.” Veronica spun on her heels and marched off down the corridor.
I watched her go, struck by the realization that it wasn’t her ass I was keeping track of. It was, however, what I was thinking of, but not like that. No, I was thinking just how much I didn’t trust her ass but there sure as hell weren’t a bunch of options lining up. It was gonna take time before Hell was safe again.
“C’mere, Fido,” I called out to the closest of the dread fiends. “I’ve got a mission for you and your friends.” The fiend stumbled up to me, and I latched my hand to its biceps, willing my power to bear. The sub-demon grunted as my magic spilled through my palm and sunk into the meat of his arm. “Watch the kid and the old guy, and keep them safe, no matter what.” I glanced around the room quickly to make sure Veronica wasn’t spying on us before leaning in close to the fiend’s ear. “If the succubus tries to hurt either of them…kill her, otherwise play nice and do what she asks.”
The fiend nodded, and I let him go, turning to the others. “The rest of you, stick close to Fido here. And you,” I separated one from the group, “round up a posse and search the caverns. Eat anyone who doesn’t belong.”
As much as I trusted my ability to lock down Hell and keep it safe from intrusion—which I hadn’t done initially given Veronica’s penchant for visiting the little alien—there was no way for me to know if someone had slipped in before I’d shut the gates. The Pope, or whoever the fuck that guy was, had warned I’d find no safe haven. He might have said it just to make me paranoid, but I was already sufficiently paranoid, fuck you very much. Until the fiends had cleared Lucifer’s old quarters and sealed them off from the rest of Hell, I couldn’t trust that they were any safer there than anywhere else. And that would take time.
Speaking of which…
A cold chill crept along my spine as I questioned just how safe Abby was at DRAC. If these guys were so bold as to raid Hell without knowing what safeguards were in place, they clearly didn’t lack for testicular fortitude. Would they be ballsy enough to go after the organization’s headquarters? Sadly, I didn’t know anymore.
“Go find her majesty,” I told the fiends, “and get all of them out of here before we have any more visitors.” They hustled off, and I did the same, gating back to Earth, questioning my choice to leave Rala with Veronica all the way back.
#
Back at DRAC headquarters, Rahim met me in Abe’s old office. Though the place had been cleaned up and organized since I’d last been there, the bittersweet scent of old knowledge still lingered in the air. I’d spent a lot of time in the room, and the memories of Abe were so thick as to weigh me down. I breathed it all in as I stepped inside, going over and dropping down into one of the leather chairs on my side of the massive desk. I sighed when even the sweaty leather fart sound didn’t make me giggle. Times were rough when butt humor flopped.
The wizard sat in Abe’s old chair out of deference to the former leader of DRAC. It clearly wasn’t because it was comfortable. The chair creaked in complaint with every tiny movement Rahim made. I feared for his safety for a moment there, but it was clear he’d been using the chair for a while now and it had held up valiantly. As much as he didn’t fit the chair’s proportions, he certainly fit the role.
“Want to tell me what happened?” He got straight to business, having heard from Rachelle that something was wrong.
Not really, but I was gonna anyway. We’d had too many moments between us where secrecy and lies had led us astray, and I couldn’t afford to put DRAC in any more danger than they already were. They’d suffered more than their fair share of bullshit on my behalf lately.
“They…uh, I…” the words trickled out of me, unwilling to be spoken. At last I just blurted them out. “Karra is dead.”
Rahim stiffened, his hands going to the face of the desk. Despite my sorrow, I was glad to see he had them both, his werebear regeneration able to grow it back for him once he could transform again after we’d made it out of God’s prison realm. “How?” he asked.
I forced a sad grin. “Because of me, of course.”
The wizard peeled himself loose of the chair and circled around the desk, dropping into the other chair beside me. “Tell me, Frank. What happened?”
I did, even with every word tasting like rancid shit.
When I finished, Rahim sat back and drew in a long, deep breath. His emotions played within the depths of his eyes, one moment sparkling with rage, the next drowning in compassion. For all our battles of will, Rahim cared. There was no denying that.
“And you believe they will come for us?” he asked after a few quiet moments, slipping back into the role of leader.
I nodded. “These bastards are zealots, quoting the bible as just cause for killing anyone who stands in their way.” I swallowed hard, fury welling up in my throat. “They tried to kill Abby, man.” The confession burned my lips as it slipped out.
A low growl slipped from Rahim. “Then you’re right to worry. We’ve already set our people on high alert, but we’ll make ready for whatever these people throw at us.” He grunted and glanced at the computer on Abe’s desk as though it might bite. “Do you know anything more about them than you’ve told me?”
The question was innocuous enough but my rattled brain picked it apart just so I could be offended. I clambered to my feet and bit back the frustrated comment wanting to leap from my mouth. Rahim had every right to distrust me, and I was simply being too damn sensitive. I shook my head. “No, only what I’ve said. I wish I knew more.”
“I’ll get our people working to see what they can find.” He tapped the monitor, ignoring my outburst. “This was always Abraham’s forte.”
The mention of Abe was like a summer’s breeze. It washed over me, reminding me of better days and brushed aside the resentment I’d been clinging to. The barest of smiles crept to my lips. Unfortunately, Rahim’s next words knocked it from its perch.
“I’ll inform Katon of what’s going on once he checks in. I’m certain—”
“What do you mean, `checks in?’”
“Given our latest adventure, he felt he needed some time off,” he answered. “He’s been out of touch for the last three weeks but is due to touch base with us in a few days.”
My crazy Spidey-sense tingled like a motherfucker. “So you haven’t heard from him?”
Rahim shook his head. “I reached out as soon as I spoke with Rachelle after you’d dropped Abby off but haven’t heard back yet.”
“Shit.” While I was likely being paranoid, hearing that Katon was not only unavailable should something happen, but out of touch as well, sent shivers down my spine. I’d grown so used to him always being there. We were gonna need him to deal with these supernatural psychos, and his not being around made me nervous. What if they had found him already? “Where is he?”
“He went on a vacation with…Scarlett.” Rahim shrugged, appearing uncertain as to how I would respond to the news that Katon was canoodling with my cousin. “I didn’t ask where they planned to go.”
I sighed, not the least bit concerned with their extracurricular activities. They were together, and that was all I cared about. Wasn’t much in this world that could take those two on at once, but if they were living it up, their focus on each other, there was always the chance that these batshit bible-thumpers could get
the drop on them.
“Keep Abby safe a little longer, please,” I told Rahim and headed for the door.
“What are you going to do, Frank?”
“I’ve a honeymoon to ruin.”
Four
Given that Katon and Scarlett had the means to go anywhere in the world on a whim, there wasn’t much hope in me finding them if they didn’t want to be found—a circumstance I hoped applied to the holy rollers, too. I did know one thing for certain; the couple weren’t going to be snuggled up at Scarlett’s place up in Heaven. That place was locked down tight since Azrael’s little coup to take over my body and powers. Even with Scarlett vouching for Katon, the ever compassionate Uriel would kick the vampire to the curb before he could set one foot inside Eden. That eliminated one location. Only a billion more to scratch off the list.
No clue what the pair had planned for their little getaway, I decided to start with the most obvious: Katon’s home in the hills of El Paseo. I’d only been to the place maybe five times that I could recall since Katon spent all his time at DRAC. Oh, and we tended to butt heads more often than get along over the years. Wasn’t like he was gonna invite me over to watch a game or anything.
Well, at least not after that one time. Who knew ball jokes would get old?
Fortunately I remembered where he lived. I hovered a good distance above his house so I could case the joint without being seen. It was a fancy, two-story place that looked like a mansion compared to my old house. Parked alone at the end of a quiet cul-de-sac, Katon had clearly paid a king’s ransom for the property. His closest neighbors were over a block away and around the corner on either side of the street, the space between filled with so much foliage as to appear wooded. An Olympic-sized swimming pool shimmered in the backyard while the breeze played across its surface. From the air, the house looked untouched. That only partially mollified me. It could mean everything was okay or that the pair were dead inside and the proselytizing assholes hadn’t felt the need to wipe the place out afterward.