Heaven Help Us
A Quincy Harker, Demon Hunter Novella
John G. Hartness
Edited by
Melissa Gilbert
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Epilogue
Get More Harker - Free!
Falstaff Books
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Also by John G. Hartness
Copyright © 2016 by John G. Hartness
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
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1
"Welcome to the Breakfast Dish, I’m Alma. What can I get you, stranger?" The hefty woman with a graying bun smiled at me and her voice cut through the chatter of the diner as the bell over the door announced my entrance.
"Two eggs, fried, bacon, toast, and enough coffee so I don't sleep for a week," I said from the door.
"Good enough," she said with a smile. "Sit anywhere you like and I'll bring it right out to you. You heard the man, Jarrod, get them eggs cracking!"
I crossed the scuffed tile floor to sit at the counter. The cracked red vinyl seat groaned under my weight and spun a little as I settled onto it. I nodded to the man sitting at the corner and pulled a folded newspaper out of my back pocket.
I spent a quiet few minutes reading the box scores, listening to the reed-thin man, who the waitress called Herman, pontificate to anyone who would listen, and anyone who wouldn't, about how miserable the Reds' pitching was this year, then turned to the classified ads. I had a fleeting thought about trying to pick up a used washer and dryer, then decided that I didn't plan on staying in Lockton that long. Just that morning I had secured a small apartment over one of the shops on Main Street on a month-to-month agreement. I flipped to the job listings and gave a quick scan, more to kill time than anything else. I hoped I wouldn’t be there long enough to need the second month, and I certainly didn’t plan on getting a day job at this point in my long life.
"Anything interesting in there, stranger?" Jarrod asked from the grill.
"Not so you'd notice, friend," I replied, folding the paper and putting it back in my pocket as Jarrod scooped a pair of fried eggs onto a plate, slapped a couple of strips of perfectly crispy bacon down beside them, and slid the plate under my nose. The smell of fresh breakfast cleared the last of the cobwebs from my brain and I dug in.
"So what brings you to Lockton, buddy? We don't get too many strangers around here." The man called Herman turned his attention to me.
"I'm a software developer working on a new mobile app for off-interstate travel, highlighting local eateries and points of interest off the beaten path. I'm here taking some photos and working on the graphical user interface. The first draft of the software is in beta right now. Once that gets all the testing completed, we'll work on the micro-payment side of things, then we'll get the launch site optimized and be good to go. Maybe another four months, maybe six, and we'll be out for sale." Herman's eyes glazed over after the second disconnected buzzword, and I called it a job well done. I pretty much had no idea what I'd just said, but I figured Herm didn't either, so my cover was going to survive at least through breakfast.
I finished my eggs and bacon in peace, having successfully bored Herman. The food was delicious, but the lights were a little too bright and my shoes pinched. The bright red Flash t-shirt was so not my style, but I was trying to be inconspicuous, so my usual black leather coat and Doc Martens were out of the question for now.
I dropped a ten on the counter and turned to leave, then froze as a big wall of trouble strolled in. The man was tall, broad, and thickly muscled, and he sniffed the air as he stepped into the diner. The bell over the door dinged his arrival, and all heads turned to him. He preened a little, enjoying the attention. I stood motionless as the newcomer paused in the doorway, looking around the room.
"Mornin' hon," Alma called out, her voice cheerful. "Just sit anywhere you like."
His eyes scanned the room, then landed on me. One eyebrows went up, and I almost felt the challenge in his gaze. His eyes were brown, with flecks of gold that I could see from across the room. He could look me in the eye, as tall as me, but much broader, with a thick beard trimmed close and wiry dark hair covering his arms. He rolled his shoulders and cocked his head to one side, taking me in with a glance. My t-shirt, jeans, and sneakers weren't exactly made for intimidation, but he recognized another predator as quickly as I had. Great, not forty-eight hours out of one frying pan, and here I am right back into the fire.
Werewolf. The word came into my head without any prompting, and the second I had the thought, I knew it was correct. Everything I'd ever known about werewolves fell into place at once, and it all made sense. Big, dark, hairy, arrogant as fuck—he looked every bit the alpha dog. That meant there was a pack in Lockton. No rogue wolf carried himself with that kind of confidence. They always had an air of whipped cur about them, like they were expecting somebody to come around and kick the shit of them. Which usually happened sooner rather than later.
The big wolf looked me up and down, then locked eyes with me again. He nodded, and I nodded back. A pair of predators acknowledging each other, and then moving on. I didn't feel the need to piss on my territory, and I hoped he wouldn't either. I'd been in enough fights in the last week, and I needed time to heal, recharge, and let the world forget about Quincy Harker for a little while. I was very happy hiding out in a small town in the guise of Harold Quinn for as long as I needed to, or at least until Flynn and Luke could clear my name.
I walked to the door, and the werewolf slid out of my way, allowing me to pass without ceding the appearance of dominance. I stepped out into the street, knowing that my time in Lockton just got a lot more complicated.
I walked down the sidewalk, my Sight open to overlay the Otherworld onto my view of the ordinary world. Nothing looked out of place, but that didn't mean anything. I'd made a couple of quick laps through the town before I rented my stay-by-the-month apartment and didn't see any monsters, magicians, or werewolves then. But they were there, and now I had to deal with them.
I turned right past Lucky's Pawn Shop and walked down the narrow alley. I stepped into the back parking lot, then walked up the stairs to the studio "loft" above, really just a big room with a small bathroom hastily built out in a corner. I unlocked the door, then drew a pair of runes in the air along the doorjamb at eye level. The wards I had protecting the apartment dropped, and I turned the knob.
"Be pretty damned embarrassing to get dropped by my own magic," I muttered as I closed the door behind me and re-activated the protections spells. I didn’t take down the wards when I left that morning, just opened a portal in them to let me or any visitors through. Except I didn't expect to have any visitors. Not here, not in this life.
I opened the fridge, took out a Stella Artois, popped the top off with a thumb, and drained half the beer in one long draught.
"Fuck," I muttered. "That's all I need. Goddamn werewolves."
I slipped
out into the night, muttering an incantation of cloaking then resetting the wards on the door. It wouldn't make me invisible, but it would help me blend into the shadows and disguise my features from a distance. Anyone looking at me from more than ten feet away or so would only remember a tall guy in a long coat. A little dab of vinegar behind each ear to hide my scent, and I was ready to hunt some wolves.
In my pocket I carried a folded printout of home sales within the past five years, with two houses circled. The wolf was young, so I assumed the pack had moved in fairly recently, but everyone seemed to know him when he walked in, so he wasn't a complete stranger. I didn't remember hearing a car door slam before he came in, and the engines in the parking lot were all stone-cold when I left the diner, so I assumed he lived within walking distance. That helped narrow my search. I headed east to the first house on my list, dodging the very few streetlights and keeping out of sight the best I could without looking like a burglar.
A tricycle on the lawn of the first place pretty much marked it off my list, but I walked around the side of the house and hopped the fence regardless. A backyard full of toys and little piles of dog poop confirmed that this was a were-free zone. Werewolves don't like their domesticated cousins, especially the yippy little variety, so the dachshund going apeshit through the sliding glass door at me would have been a snack if there were any bipedal furballs hanging around.
Back on the sidewalk, I revisited my poor life choices while I walked across town. It's not that big of a town, so I didn't get very far. I basically only made it through the past few days, where I landed in Lockton, Ohio, after killing a federal agent who happened to be a half-demon serial murderer trying to open a portal to Hell in North Carolina. It's not the first time I've had to stop that sort of thing, but it is the first time I had to go on the lam afterwards.
The second house on my list was at a cul-de-sac with open lots on either side of it and a patch of woods behind it. In other words, exactly the kind of place you would expect to find a pack of werewolves. Dogs aren't terribly creative, and they don't get any better just because they walk on two legs some of the time.
I didn't even have to sneak around to confirm my suspicions; there was a wolf on the front porch smoking a cigarette. He wasn't one of the guys from the diner, but his thick chest and shoulders, his posture, and the aura around him all cried "wolf!"
Sticking to the shadows, I slipped between two houses about fifty yards out from the wolf den and slipped through the woods to reach the back of the house in question. The yard dropped off in a steep incline in back, and a big wooden deck stuck out over the grass. I crept under the deck, keeping an ear out for feet or paws around me, but the place seemed silent.
I stepped out into the yard, bunched my legs, and jumped ten feet to vault over the railing and land on the deck. It's really handy sometimes to have Dracula's DNA mixed up in yours. Other times it's a huge pain in the ass, but at that particular moment, it was a bonus. I crouched on the deck and peeked into a nearby window, the shadows and my spell masking me from the occupants.
The lights from the living room blazed out onto the porch, and three werewolves sat around the screen, pointing and laughing. All the laughing stopped when I tapped on their sliding glass door. The biggest wolf, the one I'd seen in the diner that morning, walked over to the sliding glass door and opened it. He stepped out onto the deck, then slid the door closed behind him.
"I figured I'd be seeing you sometime," he drawled. "You wanna fight, or you wanna talk?"
"I guess that's your call, isn't it?" I asked. I held my hands out to my sides and summoned glowing orbs of energy to float above the palms. "Are you sure I'm somebody you want to throw down with?"
"I don't want to throw down with anybody, wizard, but I also don't like people skulking around my property in the middle of the night."
"I'm too tall to skulk. Sneak maybe, but not skulk."
"Whatever. You want to talk, come on in and grab a beer. You want to fight, throw those little glowballs at my ass and we'll throw down. But I'm going back inside. Arrow is on and I haven't seen this one."
2
"I don't give a shit what you have to say, Detective. Now what do you have to say for yourself?" The red-faced pudgy man bellowed in my face. Again. He'd been alternating between screaming at me and cajoling me for two hours, playing both sides of the Good Cop/Bad Cop routine, and it was starting to wear very thin.
I was tired of this shit. I'd been dealing with all goddamn night, and I was over it. My partner/maybe fiancée/wizard/demon hunter/whatever else he was, Quincy Harker, was MIA. My immediate supervisor within Homeland Security was dead at Harker's hand. I had a pissed-off Lord of the Vampires to deal with, and I was really jonesing for a decent cup of coffee. Not to mention I needed to use the bathroom. I decided to lead with the easy one.
"I have to pee."
Homeland Security Deputy Director, Southeastern Region, Peter Buprof backed up a little. That was a bonus. The look on his face was priceless, too. It was kinda like you'd expect a dog to look when it finally caught the car it had chased for years. He looked so confused it was all I could do not to giggle, which I felt would be highly inappropriate, given the circumstances. Not to mention the evening's body count.
"What the fucking fuck did you say, Flynn?"
I stood up and walked to the door. "I said, I have to pee. And I'm going to go pee. Then I'm going to go to my office, and I'm going to fire up the very nice Keurig single-cup coffee maker that my Uncle Morris gave me for Christmas last year, and I'm going to make myself some real coffee, not like the shit they keep in the squad room. I’d offer you some, but you’re being a dick, so drink the swill. Then I'll come back, and you can keep asking me the same questions you've been asking me for the past two hours."
Buprof moved to get between me and the door. "The fuck you will. You aren't going anywhere until I say you are."
"Am I under arrest, Deputy Director Buprof?"
His eyes got wide at my formal tone. "What?"
"I'm sorry, did I suddenly develop a stutter, or have you lost your comprehension of English since you've been yelling at me in mostly monosyllables and profanity since we got here? I asked if I was under arrest. Should I repeat the question? In Spanish? How about French? My Mandarin isn't very good, but I've got a pretty functional grasp of Farsi, if that works better for you."
He looked at the floor, his nostrils flaring as his forehead flushed an even deeper crimson. The way the vein in his left temple was throbbing, I was afraid he might stroke out right there in the interview room. Then I'd be blamed for two Homeland Security deaths in one week. And this one wouldn't be a half-demon serial murderer, so I might even feel bad about it.
After a solid fifteen seconds of staring at the floor, Buprof raised his bloodshot eyes to mine. "No, you are not under arrest, Detective. You are answering my questions completely voluntarily."
"Then I am voluntarily going to the bathroom and to get a cup of coffee. I'll be back in ten minutes or so. Why don't you take a minute to go wash your face? You're looking a little flushed." I reached past the Director and pulled the door open.
I stepped out into the hall and walked to the ladies' room, ignoring the stares from the squad room and the offices around the floor as I passed. I walked into the stall farthest from the door, sat down, and buried my head in my hands, thinking back to the events of the past few days, including being betrayed by someone I trusted, getting stabbed, and finding out a friend died at the hands of my ex-boss. This wasn't the worst week of my life, that was reserved for the time right after my dad died, but this was definitely number two with a bullet.
I felt something pull in my side, then something warm on my belly, and yanked off my jacket. I probed my black t-shirt and felt dampness under my fingers. "Fucking hell," I muttered, standing up and taking the shirt off. The small dressing I had taped over my belly wound was soaked through with blood, and now was nothing more than a sopping red square on my torso. I p
eeled the tape from around the gauze and stepped out of the stall.
A patrolwoman stood at the sink washing her hands. She looked up as I stepped out, starting to give me that little smile that women give one another when they find someone else working in the boys' club, kind of a solidarity thing that we can only express when no guys are around to see it and get threatened. But the smile faded as she recognized me, then her eyes widened as she saw the knife wound on my belly. The staples in my belly weren’t going to do me any favors in bikini season, but that wouldn’t matter much if I didn’t figure out how to stop the world from ending before it got warm again.
"Detective, are you..." She was torn. I could see it on her face. Part of her wanted to shun the accused cop-killer, or girlfriend of a cop-killer, or agent-killer, or whatever Harker was supposed to be. But part of her was still a cop, and we protect and serve, and I was standing in front of her bleeding. And another part of her was a female cop, and there aren't many of us, and we try to look out for one another.
I gave her a little smile. "It's just a flesh wound, Santos. You don't need to bandage me up. I just need to wash the wound a little and dry it before I put my shirt back on and get back to my interrogation."
"I hate to...I mean, is it...I mean...Never mind, Detective. I'm sorry, I'll go."
I stepped in front of her. "Don't apologize. You're better than that. Ask me what you want to ask."
She straightened up and nodded. She looked me in the eye and asked, "Is it true? Are you dating Harker? And did he kill Agent Smith?"
"Yeah to both," I said. "But here's the other part. The part that hasn't gotten out in the whisper-mill yet. Smith was dirty. He was the serial killer we were chasing, and Harker and I knew it. But most of the evidence burned up along with Smith's body in that fire, so it's gonna be a bitch to prove it. So yeah, I'm dating Harker. And yeah, he killed Smith. But he saved a lot more lives in the process, and the real bad guy is dead, so now I have to patch up my shit and get back to proving his innocence."
Heaven Help Us (Quincy Harker, Demon Hunter Book 7) Page 1