Descent

by Phil Maxey

  I picked her up again and followed the accountant down one flight, and into a small hallway. He felt around the nearby wall, discovering a key, and unlocked the door and ran inside. Not stopping I ran all the way to the bathroom, and laid her in the bath. I pulled the blind closed then turned on the shower. The water started to wash away the soot revealing reddened skin. I felt her pulse, which thankfully was strong. “Alyssa!”

  She murmured something and Jacob came in with a glass of what I immediately smelled was blood. I took it from him and held it to her lips.

  A trickle ran into her mouth and she grabbed the glass, then gulped the rest. “More!” She growled, her fangs showing.

  “Oh, okay… wait there,” said Jacob.

  I smiled and fell back against the wall, my own injuries making themselves heard.

  Ten minutes later she dropped the fifth glass to the carpeted floor. Jacob immediately scooped it up. “Hey, we don’t get blood on the rugs.”

  I looked up at him. “Thanks for this.”

  He nodded. “Okay, I’ll let you two have some privacy then…” He closed the door. I wondered if his mind reading abilities penetrated wood or steel.

  Alyssa had her head back in the bath, the redness of her skin now coming from the hot water, not the sunlight. She hadn’t spoken while devouring Jacobs blood supplies and I hadn’t either. But now I had too. “We need to talk.”

  “Yeah…”

  “Salazar double crossed us.”

  “No shit.”

  “Do you know where they took the professor?”

  “I fought to try and get him out of there, but failed… No, I don’t know where he is. I woke up in the hospital basement, chained to a wall…” Hurt and anger rose from her like the steam from the shower. She looked over to me. “Is the book safe?”

  “Yeah… not sure we’ll be getting it back, but it’s safe from Octavian.”

  “What do you mean?”

  I spent the next few minutes describing the last day.

  “Shit,” she said. “I always knew the Praesidium didn’t have much time for paranormals, but I didn’t know they had gone all Dr. Frankenstein on us.”

  “I would have been in one of those cells if I had stayed any longer. At least I found Dexter.”

  She nodded towards the bathroom door. “What about… You trust him?”

  I smirked. “He’s probably doing his mind reading thing right now. Isn’t that so, Jacob?” There was only silence on the other side of the door, but I could hear the faint double tap of a heartbeat not far off.

  “So now we got the Praesidium and a corporation ran by a corrupt family of demon knights after us,” said Alyssa, then sighed.

  I smiled. “But we got a gargoyle!”

  She sniggered. “You’re going to tell me once all of this is over how you did that. They are famously bad tempered… Right. You need to get out. Time for me to have a proper shower.”

  “I could stay…”

  She pointed at the door.

  *****

  I sat on a large white leather sofa in a well decorated living room, with large windows and dead houseplants. Jacob had been lost to another of the rooms for the past twenty minutes, and Alyssa was still enjoying her shower.

  I laid back wondering what would happen if Jacob’s neighbors spotted a few tons of gargoyle on the roof, but that was a bridge I’ll cross if I came to it. Right now I just wanted to sit on something soft and not worry whether a demon or vampire was going to attack me.

  A door opened somewhere and the accountant appeared, wearing clean pants and a light gray shirt. “How long she going to be in there?” he said.

  “I got no idea. But don’t worry, we’ll be out of here once the sun’s gone down. Any of your neighbors likely to take trips up to the roof?”

  “Well as long as none of them walk into your pet, it should be fine.”

  “You don’t think they will spot a giant winged demon?”

  He looked confused. “Oh… you don’t know.”

  “What don’t I know?”

  “Humans can’t see gargoyles. At least not normally. They need to use infrared.”

  “I did not know that.”

  “How long you been a demon? Because, no offence, you seem kind of… green.”

  “Not long. How long you been defrauding people out of money?”

  He smirked and walked into the kitchen.

  “How did you get caught up with the Praesidium…” A memory popped into my mind. He had been the man that I had seen walking out of Fletchers office, the first time I met her. “I saw you that day, at Fletcher’s office.”

  “Yup. She hired me to do her taxes, or at least that’s what I thought. Turns out they had been investigating me for some time, and that was their ‘honey-trap’, which I fell right into. Wasn’t long after I woke up in that damn cell.” He reappeared with a plastic bottle and started spraying his long dead plants.

  I looked back at the hallway, hoping Alyssa would make an appearance.

  “Don’t worry about the sun and these windows. Had them all replaced with UV blocking glass years ago. We don’t go up in flames like the vamps do, but I can do without getting burned during the summer months. It does make keeping plants kind of hard though. So where you going to go after this? You know where your professor friend is?”

  “That’s still a work in progress. What about you? Won’t be long before the Praesidium return here.”

  “Oh, they don’t know about this place. They know about the other one, which I’m sure has a black SUV parked outside of, as I speak, but not this one. Anyway, I’m booked on the red-eye to Florida, at which point I will head further south, and good luck to those bunch of crazy humans trying to find me.”

  I looked at the expensive apartment, with the over-the-top fake paintings and antiques. “You mind if we stay here a while?”

  He paused his efforts to resuscitate the flora and looked at me. “The Praesidium still might find this place. They got eyes everywhere.”

  “I know, I’ve seen their tech, but if they don’t find it, then… maybe you want someone looking after the place?” He looked unsure. “Hey, you can read my mind. I’m not going to trash the place and it will be a big help for me and Alyssa.”

  He continued his spraying. “Not seeing the upside for me.”

  “My name is Sebastian Hell-Lock…”

  He froze, just as Alyssa appeared, wearing nothing but a white towel.

  “I’m hungry. What you got?” she said, then sauntered into the kitchen.

  “Err… you might find something in the freezer.” He looked back at me. “Hell-Lock? You died. You’re dead.” He put the bottle down. “I saw that rich kid in the newspapers, you’re not him.”

  I sat forward. “When I changed, I literally changed. Every part of me. Made me look different. But I’m him. That’s what all this is about. My family’s legacy, and those that oppose it…”

  I heard the sound of an oven turning on then Alyssa reappeared, walking through the room, while stretching. Her curves just did enough to hold her towel aloft. I hated and loved in equal measure how she teased me, then looked back at Jacob. “I’m telling you this, because I mean to get my company back, and when I do… well you won’t need to mess with financial crime anymore. Actually I can’t think of a better person to hire as my chief accountant. What you say?”

  He shook his head, and sat on the end of the sofa, then looked at me directly. “You… really are him. I can see your memories. Wow… that must have been some paranormal change. I’ve never heard of anything like that. You might grow a horn or two, but complete DNA mutation? Wow…”

  I frowned. “Yeah, I’m a real freak. So we got a deal? You let us stay here, and in return I give you a job. A very well-paying job.”

  He got back up. “Like I said I can read your mind. Saying you’re going to get your company back, and actually achieving it. Two different things. And lets not forget you got a whole lot of powerful enemies.
Human and paranormals.”

  “Then stay. Help—”

  Alyssa reappeared wearing pants and another of Jacob’s shirts. He frowned as she smiled and walked past him into the kitchen.

  “— Help me, to help you!”

  “I watch films too, you know!” he said.

  “That was a terrible impression,” shouted Alyssa.

  He sighed and joined her in the kitchen. “I know you’re a vamp and all that, but it doesn’t have to be that rare.”

  She came out with a chicken leg in her hand. “Yeah it does.”

  Jacob followed and leaned against the doorframe. “If I agree to do this thing, which I can’t quite believe I’m seriously thinking about, then you have to do what I say. Otherwise I’m re-booking that flight to Florida. Agreed?”

  “Sure…”

  He looked at Alyssa, who shrugged her shoulders between chews. “You gotta help us find our friend. That’s part of the deal as well.”

  “Fine. I’ll do what I can. But if you’re getting your company back, I got a lot of reading to do, and a flight to cancel.” He disappeared down the hall.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  The old Victorian school was draped in darkness but looked innocent enough from our view from the rooftop across the street. There wasn’t even any black vehicles parked below us. No one was paying any attention to the main entrance to the bunker.

  Yeah right.

  “They got cameras down there, on both sides of the forecourt,” said Alyssa looking through a small set of binoculars she ‘borrowed’ from Jacob. “Bound to have more inside. We’re not getting in through the front. Don’t suppose you can remember the route you took through the underground river?”

  “Nope. You’re sure its worth going back down there?”

  “Yes! There are supplies, weapons, things we need…”

  “And landing the gargoyle on the roof is not an option?”

  She frowned beneath the binoculars, then shook her head. “We’ll go in through the subway. Just gotta hope they haven’t put their human tech down there too.”

  “And what about Octavian?”

  She moved back towards the stairwell. “One problem at a time.”

  It wasn’t long before we were sprinting along the tracks, jumping onto a ledge, and hiding in a recess when a train rumbled past. Alyssa examined the entrance to the tunnel beneath the school, and couldn’t see any sign of tampering, and moments later we entered the bunker. Due to the depth in the ground of her home, even our enhanced sight couldn’t make out much in the shadows, so we were both armed with flashlights.

  The ruin was just as bad as I remembered it. Manuscripts torn, together with heaps of misshapen furniture, and smashed ornaments. A life reduced to fragments.

  She moved to the back of the room and bent down, quickly dislodging something from a crack beneath a pipe. The top of her blade in its sheath glinted in our beams. She then quickly moved into the corridor, with me following, and after a few turns, pushed open the door to her room, which I had never seen before.

  Compared to the other sparse rooms, hers actually looked comfortable. A single bed was on a far wall, with a few filled bookshelves, and posters, and on the floor a rug, with an old wooden chest nearby. She flung it open, rummaged through some clothes and pulled out a leather bound album, which I quickly realized was full of photos.

  I turned away. “I’ll let you have some privacy.”

  She flicked through the thick pages. “It’s okay…” She gently placed her hand on one of the photos of two adults and a young girl, then snapped it shut. She pulled out a backpack from beneath her bed and placed the album within it, along with some clothes, except the cape she had been wearing the first time I met her, which she placed around her shoulders. “Lets see if they cleaned the armory out.”

  Of course they had. Only empty racks and pulled out empty drawers filled the room, but she didn’t seem as bothered, and walked to one of the racks, pressing the edges of a small panel and a five foot square area fell forward revealing another layer, and more weapons.

  “Your secret weapons room has a secret stash of secret weapons,” I said.

  She started pulling everything down and placing it in her pack. “You always need two redundancies.”

  “Who taught you that?” I said, helping her. “Fortacan?”

  “No… my mother, Helen.” She swallowed, then continued packing the handguns and boxes of ammo.

  Finally, there was only one item left on the back wall, and it didn’t require a trigger. A sword which looked like it had been pulled from a stone. “Excalibur!” I said.

  She frowned, reaching forward, placing the long blade immediately in an accompanying sheath, then placed it with its strap across her back. “You’re no Pendragon.” She then handed me the pack.

  After a visit to the kitchen, where she grabbed some contents from various jars, we stood near the entrance, the remains of the front door at our feet.

  “This has been my home for most of my life...” She noticed a slight look of confusion on my face. “Vampires say they have two lives. A previous human, and then their new paranormal existence. For most of that, I had lived here. We should have known it would end like this. Should have been better prepared.”

  “Some things you can’t be ready for. You just have to ride the wave until you’re back on the beach.” I wanted to say she’ll return one day, and with the professor, but something in my gut told me she wouldn’t.

  She took a final look at the bunker then with a sigh, flicked her hood up and we left.

  Not long after we were sat in Jacob’s apartment, the man himself in a chair, his laptop lighting his face amongst the single lamp he had on. The coffee table in front of him was covered in printouts and scribbled notes. He had been murmuring to himself for the past twenty minutes.

  “So…” I said finally.

  “Yeah, you got a plan or not?” said Alyssa.

  He held his hand up, while moving his other finger on his mouse pad. “Just, hold on.”

  “No, no more holding on. We got places to be, Octavian family members to kill,” she said.

  “I’m almost done…”

  The frustrated vamp next to me threw her arms up in the air, when she froze. “Someone’s approaching your door!” She went to get up, when Jacob raised his own hand, waving her back down.

  “That’s just Twist.” He got to his feet, pulling a piece of paper from the table and walked into the hallway. We went with him. “I don’t need bodyguards,” he said.

  “Just making sure,” I said.

  He looked through the spy-hole, then pulled the door open. An individual wearing a hoody, with the hood up, and about the same height as the diminutive accountant walked inside. The door was quickly closed.

  “Who are these two?” The young guy said looking up at both of us.

  “Don’t worry about them. Can you do the job?”

  He smirked. “You got the fifty grand?”

  “I got something better!” Jacob looked at me. “I give you Sebastian Hell-Lock!”

  The young man scrunched his face, then reached for the door.

  I looked at Jacob, not understanding what his plan was, but spoke up anyway. “I am Sebastian.”

  “I seen Hell-Lock before. He’s dead. Died in—”

  “I didn’t die in Monaco. I changed. I’m a demon.”

  He tried for the door handle again. “Let me the fuck out. You ain’t got shit.”

  “Look!” said Jacob. He shoved an image of my wrist from one of few photoshoots I’d been talked into, below the chest of the teenager.

  “A picture of a watch, so what?”

  I realized the plan, and pulled my shirt cuff back, exposing the real watch.

  Twist looked between the printout and my arm a few times. “So you got the same watch, yours is busted anyway.”

  “Oh for Petes sake!” Jacob grabbed my arm and the newcomer. My mind exploded into images, a torrent of memories,
some were mine, others definitely not. Unless I had forgotten I had grown up in Chinatown. After a few seconds I had had enough, but Jacob let us both go anyway.

  Twist fell back against the door, looking at all of us, then focusing on myself. “You really are him.”

  “He is,” said Jacob who was grinning. “And he’s going to make you rich.”

  Twist also smiled. “Then I need to get to work.”

  *****

  An hour had passed after being weighed, measured and photographed. I had never been the most patient of people, and Halloween was now only four days away. Each hour felt like a minute. I had no idea if what I had been told about the seals was real. Were there really apocalyptical demon horsemen out there? And breaking my family’s seal would bring forth another? Despite all I had seen it felt… too magical. I could kind of understand the Praesidium’s approach to the whole paranormal world, it definitely had the potential to drive a man insane.

  Jacob had been going back and forth on some kind of plan, while the young man did his hacker thing on his own laptop which he had brought with him, along with some other boxes which blinked and flashed. Alyssa had almost worn out one of the expensive rugs, pacing back and forth, but at least she hadn’t ditched all of us, not yet anyway. Since we had returned from the bunker I noticed moments where she seemed disconnected from the world around her. I wondered if she was remembering a past or making revenge plans for the future. There were also moments where she would turn away, plunging her face into shadow.

  “It’s done,” said Twist.

  “What’s done?” said Alyssa and I at almost the same time.

  Jacob leaned forward as Twist swung his laptop around on the table to face all of us.

  My mouth fell open. “Is that what I think it is?”

  “Yup, all new ID’s with an updated photo, height and other details. You’re sure your DNA isn’t on record anywhere?”

  I shook my head, still shocked to see my new face in a photo along with my other social security numbers. “I don’t think so…”

  He tapped his keyboard and the screen changed, showing passport details. I suddenly regretted all the grief I gave to geeks in high-school. “That’s—”