Collateral Damage (Demon Squad Book 8)

by Tim Marquitz

  Rahim closed the door behind her, a great stone slab, the sound like a prison gate slamming shut. We were trapped in there with our thoughts. It wasn’t a good thing.

  “Are you okay, Frank?” Katon asked me after Rachelle was gone.

  I shook my head but realized he couldn’t see me. “No, but I will be,” I lied, wanting more than anything for it to be true. Life would go on—I’m not one to commit suicide despite what my past choices might have you believe—but it would never be the same. Life would never be as good as it had been these last four months.

  “Who are these people who attacked us?” Scarlett asked. She knew me well enough to know that the only cure I’d ever known for sadness was fury.

  “They call themselves Trinity,” Rahim answered, stepping in for me. “And we know next to nothing as to what they’re capable of. Without any resources available to our people, I have no idea how we’ll learn more, either. The only certainty is that they are working in conjunction with the head of the Department of Supernatural Investigation.”

  Scarlett growled. “The woman who was trapped with you in the other dimension? What was her name? Shaw?”

  I nodded. “Yup. That’d be the one.”

  “So this is some petty play at revenge for what happened with Azrael?”

  “I think there’s more to it than that,” I answered, measuring my words. They needed to know what I did, but I wanted to keep Poe out of it. They didn’t need to know he was involved. “There’s someone else pulling the strings, but I’ll be damned if I know who or what their purpose is. All I know is that Trinity is an old foe of Lucifer and Longinus, which is all anyone needs to know to understand why they’d be pissed at me and Karra. The DSI simply look to be siding with the team they think is gonna win.” Just the thought of that set my cheeks to boiling. “We need to go play Whac-A-Mole with the DSI folks and find out what the hell they have to do with all this. Maybe that’ll lead back to whoever is standing behind the curtain, yanking our chains.”

  “Now is not a good time for that, Frank.” Rahim gestured to the room, my eyes following his hand.

  Katon sat blind, no hint that he’d really even begun to heal yet. The Grand Canyon yawning across his eyes was a black and red mess that made him look like a bizarro Cyclops from the X-Men comics. Then there was Scarlett. While I’d definitely seen her hurt worse than this, she wasn’t exactly in pristine condition. Her leg still seeped blood and it probably would for a while even after we’d bandaged it up. Wounds inflicted by magical means were a true anathema to our kind. Without some mystical means to counteract the injury, she’d retain it until it healed naturally. She was tough as hell but there was only so much anyone could do with a huge gash ripped in their leg.

  I wasn’t much better off. The little shithead had skewered me through the side as if I were the olive to his martini. The fact that he used Karra’s sword made it feel worse than it was, but there was no way to pretend it wouldn’t impact us moving forward. As much as I wanted to see if my inherited powers were up to the task of healing, I was afraid I’d make things worse. I didn’t have the subtlety for that kind of magical manipulation even if I had the power. Wasn’t sure I even had that after the devourers had taken a bite out of me while I reclaimed my original body.

  “Damn it! Why isn’t there a user’s guide that comes with magic?”

  Rahim chuckled, but he was right. We weren’t ready for another fight yet, but there was one brewing regardless. Hell might be locked down tight but we couldn’t stay there forever. Even if we could, I wouldn’t put it past Trinity to figure out another way to break in. For all my supposed dominion over the place, I was like the weekend janitor who’d been handed a wad of keys. Fuck if I knew what all they went to. I felt pretty confident I’d locked down all the main doors but if there was one hidden away somewhere, I sure as shit didn’t know about it. That made me nervous. There was no certainty we were safe, though I guess there never is in life.

  “As much as I agree, Rahim, I think we need to take it to Shaw, at the very least. If we can put a hurting on her people, maybe that will back them up some and give us room to breathe.”

  “We already have room to breathe,” Rahim said, shaking his head. “And we damn well need it, Frank. Look at us.”

  “I have, and I get your point, but do you see this getting any better?”

  “The longer we can hold out, the more time we have to heal and to learn more about our enemies, learn best how to defeat them. We have no clue who is behind this, but to imagine Trinity is the worst we’ll have to face is sheer foolishness.” He let out a tired groan, rubbing at his bald head. There wasn’t shit to learn and he knew it. All the information DRAC had gathered over the years was tied up in their holdings. Holdings that were now a burning wreck or pounded rubble.

  “So we give them time to coordinate and get all their ducks in a row?” I shouted. “I don’t know how safe we are here. I really don’t, and that scares the crap out of me. What if we’ve done exactly that they wanted us to? What if they lured us here and plan to take us out once we’ve nowhere else to go? They’ve attacked Hell before.”

  “Then we can fight our last here as well as we can anywhere. Better even considering the assistance of the dread fiends and the means to build fortified defenses.” He waved his arms about. “Our enemies have been steps ahead of us this entire time, Frank, and are likely even further than that.”

  “So we just sit here and wait to take it in the ass?”

  “That’s not what I said.”

  “But you implied it. We sit and twiddle our thumbs until we’re stronger knowing damn well that the odds between us aren’t gonna get any better?”

  “We can hold against all of them if we’re prepared.”

  “Hold?” I growled, my anger getting the best of me. “What the fuck are we, the 300 Spartans?” I spun to Scarlett. “And you. What would you do?”

  She looked to Katon sitting uncomfortably in the chair, eyes a line of emptiness, and I knew her answer before she even said it. “We can’t fight them like this, Frank. I know what they did to—”

  “This isn’t all about Karra!” I shouted, but it mostly was, and I wasn’t fooling anyone. I changed tack. “You know sitting here and waiting for them to storm Hell and kill my child the same way is something I can’t accept. You’re part of that blood line they’re gunning for, too.”

  Rahim clasped my shoulder. “Our enemies have set the notes out before us and watched us play each one in turn. To go after them head on is exactly what they want.” He spun me around to face him, eyes furious but desperate. “Shaw has rallied the nation against us, the world for all we know. It was one thing to fight a small group of them to reclaim Karra, but it’s something entirely different to wage an open war on the seat of the DSI’s power. If we aren’t number one on the list of public enemies already, than we most assuredly would be after we assailed the U.S. government. Win or lose, there is no victory there.”

  I shook him loose, snarling. As much as I agreed with the sentiment, Shaw and Trinity had already set that ball in motion. We were on the defensive, and it wasn’t gonna get any better. Nothing we did now would impact it one way or another. They’d set me up to be the bad guy in the eyes of the world, and maybe that was exactly what I needed to be to end all this.

  Without another word I stormed out and made my way to the God-proof room, sealing it tight behind me so none of the others could follow or see what I was doing. There were enough voices in my head that I didn’t need theirs too.

  I sat there for a while, breathing in the silence, letting my anger cool as best as it could. We were gonna have to fight soon enough, I knew that, and I still felt it best to take it to them before they took it to us, but going at it alone would only make Trinity and Shaw’s job easier. Then what would happen to Abby?

  That was the one thing that kept me from rushing off to level Shaw and her cronies. My knuckles popped as I clenched my fists, desperate to lash out, but
there was no one I could hurt that wouldn’t somehow make things worse for us.

  “Damn it!” I screamed, letting the sound echo in the huge chamber until it faded to a whimpering croak.

  If we were gonna hold our ground in Hell, we’d need everyone we could get to help. I sighed at that, the last of our merry band out in the world being better in theory than practice. Still, if nothing else, they’d be safer here with the rest of us.

  At least that’s what I told myself when I pried open a gate and headed back to Earth.

  Eleven

  The best part of having sub-demon lackeys is that you can shove the magical equivalent of a LoJack up their ass and they don’t complain. Just like I’d done with one of the dread fiends I’d sent with Veronica.

  As much as I believed her capable of keeping Rala and Vol off the radar, the paranoid in me—Micro-manager Bob as I like to call him—felt it necessary to keep tabs on the ex-wife. Hmmm, maybe I am capable of learning despite what my therapist or parole officer think.

  To no one’s surprise, especially not mine, the tail led me to Old Town. You can take a succubus out of the ghetto but you can’t… Well, you know the rest. Anyway, while I’d known Veronica would squirrel herself away in Old Town, that didn’t mean she’d be easy to find. She knew the place like the depths of Baalth’s ass, which is to say up close and personal. Here she’d have all the supplies and contacts she’d need to avoid the world at large while still hiding out pretty much exactly where anyone who knew her would start looking.

  It was either genius or stupidity, but it worked for her.

  After making sure I hadn’t been seen by anyone, I dropped down into a dark alley around the corner from where my senses had led me. There was no telling if she’d been found out, and I wanted to be sure I wasn’t screwing things up by popping in. My power reined in tight—a trick I’d practiced living in boring-ass suburbia—I hung in the shadows of the alleyway and stared out at the place she’d chosen to hole up in.

  It was a dump, just one more abandoned piece of Old Town that had forgotten to die alongside its previous owners. Baalth had been quick to secretly buy up every old property that was foreclosed on out here, basically giving him the lion’s share of ownership over everything in Old Town. It was his own little Hell that he’d watched over, at least until he went nuclear. That kind of screwed things up, the area slipping further into decline from there. Azrael’s little escapade hadn’t helped either, though it looked to have drawn in its fair share of the homeless these last several months.

  The telltale signs of occupation had sprung up all over the place, clothes hanging on the business signs, blankets and tin foil covering windows that had been previously boarded up and sealed shut. Folks wandered the streets, doing what homeless people do, whatever that is. They weren’t really my focus there, though. At least not beyond making sure none of them saw me.

  As soon as I was sure I was in the clear, I darted out of the alley and ran across the street and into an alley on the other side. No one to chase them from the streets and stairwells, the alley was empty, for which I was grateful. I made my way to a fire ladder that had long ago given up its duty. The steel from the first floor down had been scavenged and likely sold as scrap long ago. Rust shone on the rest of it as it hung from the side of the building, orange and red in competition against the dull gray. An emergency exit door loomed two floors above, out of reach.

  At least of normals.

  Once I made sure I was alone, I flew onto the tiny parapet of steel. It groaned under my feet as I reached for the door only to find it inched open, the silver bolt engaged to keep it from closing.

  Now that’s not very secure.

  My confidence in Veronica, such as it was, deflated fast. Afraid to let my senses loose for fear of alerting someone to my presence, I pulled one of my guns from its holster and eased the door open. I was gonna have to do this old school.

  The door swung open easily—hinges freshly oiled—about two feet before it met resistance against the warped parapet, but it was wide enough for me to squeeze through. I slid into the darkness and pulled the door back the way I found it. No point in announcing I was there.

  A long hallway met me on the other side, leading off into the dark of the old office building. The floor was laid with a dark gray carpet that matched the dust covering it. There were no obvious footprints showing, which I imagined was one point in Veronica choosing this place. A handful of doors lined both sides of the hall, and from where I stood, they all appeared to be closed.

  I drew in a deep breath, tasting the musk of ages past, and started down the hall, the mental ping of my dread fiend GPS guiding me. As I crept to about halfway down the hall, I heard a voice I recognized despite the tingle from the fiend being a long way further into the building. Knuckles crunched as I tightened my grip on my pistol. The voice drifted to me again, and I slithered up to the door of the room it had come from. Like the one outside, this one was cracked open as well. My gaze charged ahead, running along the wall of the room and around the corner until it landed on the source of the voice. I choked back a growl.

  That motherfucker.

  There, not three feet from Veronica, stood the rotten tree stump that called himself Thud, Shaw’s DSI muscle. He hunched forward, body hunched, and looked ready to lunge. I was just about to put a bullet in his brainpan when Veronica’s voice stopped me, her words freezing me in place, my blood running cold.

  “So, what exactly do I get out of all this?” she asked, her voice like warm honey, in sharp contrast to Thud’s.

  “For starters, you get to live, sugar lips,” he answered, the tone of his voice making it clear he wasn’t under her control. She’d never let him get away with that if he was. “That should be enough.”

  She laughed. “If you thought it would be that easy to kill me, you wouldn’t have come here looking to bargain, demon.”

  He shrugged. “Maybe, maybe not. Don’t matter what you or I think, tits. All that matters is what you do, and we both know you’re going to make the right choice.”

  Veronica’s eyes narrowed as she stared at Thud, her poker face in place. Too bad that didn’t mean shit. Veronica always looked out for the number one; herself.

  “And if I give you him, what then?”

  I swallowed hard as her words hit my ears, their sound echoing through my skull. There was no mistaking the `him’ she was talking about. Right there in front of my very own eyes, Veronica was selling me out. My face warmed, temples throbbing. It took every ounce of self-control I had to keep from stomping into the room and murdering them both. Still, even though my feet never moved, my imagination played out a million different scenarios in an instant, each and every one of them with the two bastards in front of me strung up in the worst way possible.

  “The boss only wants Trigg,” Thud said, only confirming what I’d already realized, that my ex-wife was buying me a trip to shit creek once again without anything resembling a boat or even a paddle. “She knows damn well he’s hiding out in Hell with all his buddies, but none of us can get to him yet, and that ain’t making her happy. She’s like a dog slobbering over a stew bone, if you know what I mean. She wants that shit now, not later, and you’re the chick with the magical golden ticket. Wonka’s fiending for her chocolate, baby.”

  “So you’re saying Shaw will let me and the aliens go free if I hand Frank over? We walk, now and forever without her coming after us?”

  “Shit, that bitch loves her leashes, let me tell you,” Thud said with a laugh. “She won’t ever offer up nothing that open-ended, but if you give her what she wants today, and then keep your pretty little ass out of sight, she’ll let you slip her mind. She don’t give a good goddamn about anything right now but stringing up that dildo Triggaltheron. Give her the toy she wants and you ain’t nothing to her.”

  Veronica walked back and forth in a tight circle, and I continued to fight the urge to kill Thud. I barely managed to hold back, grinding my teeth into stub
s. I so wanted to kill someone right then.

  She rubbed the back of her neck as though her head might pop off, and then finally stopped her frantic pacing. “And Trinity? What do they want from all this”

  Thud shrugged. “Can’t say, if you want me to be honest. Them’s strange shits. Fanatics, even. But if you and them muties ain’t kin to Triggaltheron, you should be all right once they get their hands on him and the baby.”

  It felt as if a mule kicked my chest in right then. Hearing the demon talk so causally about the death of my child was the flame that lit my fuse. My pulse ramped up so quickly that my hands started to shake. There they were discussing the life of Abby as if she meant nothing. My feet started forward of their own volition.

  “Okay,” Veronica told him. Once more her words brought me to a halt. “I’ll help you but I can’t be there for it, can’t be a part of it.”

  My brain ran in circles inside my skull, hoping, begging that what I’d just heard was Veronica talking out her ass just to save it, but I couldn’t make myself believe it. I knew her too well. Everything I saw, her mannerisms, her tells, all said she’d been serious when she offered Abby and me up to Shaw. Her eyes told the truth of it. So she could live, she’d let my child die as a sacrifice.

  I damn near broke the grip of my gun as all that settled over me. Only the shock of her being so callous kept me from entering the room, my feet rooted to the carpet.

  “Then it’s settled.” Thud chuckled. “You bring that asshole to us, and we’ll take care of the rest.” He started to turn, and out of instinct, I ducked further behind the wall, not wanting to be seen. “Call me when you’re ready, tits, but I suggest you make it right soon. Shaw won’t be so cooperative the next time she sends me out.” His heavy footsteps came my direction.