Rusty Nails (The Dade Gibson Case Files)

by Jason Brannon

  ******

  Dade tried to hold on to the .45 for a few more seconds as he heard Lilith shriek, but the pain made it nearly impossible. After seeing the effect that the fire had on the darkness, he held out some hope that he might still be able to regain control of the situation. But it seemed unlikely, given the fact that his fingers were slowly losing their grip on the handle of the gun. That was when Midael made his move, pushing the barrel of the pistol out of his mouth, grabbing Dade by the shoulder and twisting until he heard the shoulder dislocate.

  Dade howled in pain and eagerly dropped the pistol. In that split second before Midael made his move, Dade couldn’t help but think what a tragedy it was that his family had just been snatched away from eternity and here he was rushing headlong toward it. But Midael never threw the stiletto that he had fished out of his jacket. He was too distracted by the fire in the other room and Lilith’s screaming. Dade knew that this was his only chance and sprinted for the door, his right arm still stinging from the shadows’ bite, his shoulder aching profusely from the dislocation. Midael, however, came out of his shock quick enough and had the stiletto at Dade’s throat before he could take his next breath.

  ******

  Leon wasn’t about to die with a table on top of him. Although he had owned The Black Cat for almost two years now, he didn’t think enough of the place to take his last breath there. Using the last of his strength he pushed the splintered piece of furniture off of him and managed to roll back onto his stomach. That was when he saw Lilith, aflame in the center of a fiery gin-and-tonic puddle like a modern day witch that has been convicted for her heresy and sentenced to burn.

  She ran around the room like a beheaded chicken, frantic and directionless, desperate to extinguish the flames. Wherever she went the shadows fled like scared children. Leon knew that it was only a matter of time before the fire reached the bar and everything went up in an orange ball of flame. He crawled toward the bottles of whiskey like an injured crab and prayed that he was faster than the fire.

  “Dade,” he screamed with what little air he had left. “Dade, can you hear me?”

  “Answer him,” Midael replied, holding the stiletto fast to Gibson’s throat as the flames crept closer.

  “Yeah, Leon, I can hear you.”

  “Then duck.”

  Before Midael had time to react, Dade had hit the floor and was scurrying like a rat through the doorway. He looked up just in time to see a bottle of Chivas Regal sail over his head and braced himself for the gusts of heat and wind that were sure to follow.

  Lilith shrieked and raced by Dade, unsure of where she was, knowing only the pain of third degree burns. And then the bottle of Chivas exploded. Dade scurried toward safety as he felt the heat at his back. He helped Leon to his feet and both of them staggered out as the place went up in smoke.

  Chapter 43

  Abbadon knew that time was running out and someone needed to do something. So he slipped away from Pyriel, Liz, and the spirits of Jack and Jane Gibson so he could search for Samael and the boy.

  Like a bloodhound, he wound his way through the maze of streets, sometimes running into dead ends and other times needing to backtrack until Rush’s scent was strong enough to follow. He tried to reason where Samael might be holding the boy and what sort of secrets might be revealed if the angel in the boy’s skin decided to cast off his costume.

  When he exited the city limits of Crowley’s Point and breathed in the noxious stench of motor oil that was tinged with the ozone smell of blood, Abbadon had a sneaking suspicion where Samael had been hiding. And it seemed like a fitting place for an angel of death to while away his hours, surrounded by rusting metal and dirty glass and dull chrome. The sign above the gates leading into Reznick’s Junkyard had been replaced with a sign that read “Welcome to Hell.” As gatekeeper of the pit, Abbadon was the seraph who remained closest to the fire, and he knew that most of these poor, misguided angels didn’t have a clue what the abyss was about. But if he had his way, they would find out soon enough.

  Like pieces in some giant’s game, the automobiles were stacked three and four high. As Abbadon stepped through the opening in the chain-link gate, he could feel the oppressive weight of the machines, teetering and tottering on flattened tires, on the verge of toppling over. And while most of the cars were little more than rusty heaps of useless scrap, there was an organization about them that any laboratory rat would have understood.

  In the waning sunlight, shadows poured into backseats, pooled beneath undercarriages, and settled in the empty cabs of every car and truck in the scrap yard. It looked like a dam holding back darkness had burst, sending forth a flood of shadows that twisted and turned at every corner of the automobile maze, filling the place completely with a flowing, churning black river. Abbadon kept his eyes open, keenly scanning his surroundings for any sign of movement, sniffing at the wind for any trace of seraphim. Luckily the only thing his nose picked up was the heavy stench of burned motor oil and kerosene.

  A few times he thought he saw movement high up in the uppermost automobiles, strange glints of light that may or may not have had anything to do with the sun. But he tried not to acknowledge what he had seen. He didn’t turn his head, didn’t let his eyes wander, and forced himself not to walk any faster or slower than he had before seeing the scintillations of light that were probably reflections of war sabers. As he walked, he pushed his coat aside and let his taloned hand rest on the mace that hung from a loop on his belt. If there was any doubt among the dissidents why he was here, then he wanted to clear that up first thing.

  Chapter 44

  Leon was weak and bleeding, but the cut wasn’t as deep as he had first thought. Under normal circumstances, Dade would have insisted that they wait for an ambulance, but he knew that time didn’t allow for that right now. Leon didn’t argue the point. He realized the score too.

  “We’ve got to get our hands on some Rusty Nails,” Dade said. “That seems to be the key to everything. Samael’s searching for it. Louise Hartwell is searching for it. An angelic war is going on because of it. It seems to me like we could increase our leverage with a few syringes of angel smack. Do you have any idea where we could get some?”

  “Not really,” Leon said.

  “You seemed to know quite a bit about Louise Hartwell the first time I brought her name up,” Dade said. “And she obviously knows where to get the drug.”

  “She’s a dealer,” Leon hissed. “I’ve had to score a few bags of goodies before for rich-types that wander in to The Black Cat from time to time. She deals out of that motel room at The Briarwood.”

  Dade nodded and smiled. “I think we might need to pay a little visit to that room of hers.”

  Leon stayed in the car and tended to his wounds while Dade picked the lock to Louise Hartwell’s room. The motel room looked the same as it had a few days earlier. Try as he might, Dade couldn’t forget the way angel’s blood had splattered against the walls like an abstract painting.

  Immediately, he began to ransack the room, breaking everything he could get his hands on that might have been used as a hiding place. He started with a lamp. Then, he tore the bed pillows into shreds. That was followed by the systematic dismantling of the dresser, the television set, the telephone, the toilet tank and bowl, the mattress and box springs. When none of those searches proved fruitful, he began kicking in the sheet rock. After making quite a few holes in the walls, he noticed a place that had been recently patched with joint compound. He kicked it in without question and then calmly reached in and pulled out a silver thermos.

  “Jackpot,” he said with a smile.

  Chapter 45

  “We’ve sat here long enough,” Liz sighed as she thought of all the potential trouble Dade was probably getting himself into.

  “I was just thinking the same thing,” Pyriel added.

  “How are we ever going to find out where Dade and Leon went?” Jack Gibson asked, flickering like a candle flame.

 
“And what can we possibly do to help Dade once we figure that out?” Jane chimed, glimmering in and out of focus like a poorly received television station.

  “Those are both good questions,” Pyriel said. “But I’ve got a better one. Where’s Abbadon? He seems to have slipped away.”

  Everyone looked at each other and knew that there was no good explanation as to why none of them had noticed the angel’s departure. They had each been too wrapped up in their own problems, too deep in thought to mark the absence of one of their group.

  “I should have noticed,” Pyriel sighed. “But my senses aren’t as keen as they used to be before the nails.”

  “Well, can you still catch Abbadon’s scent?” Liz asked.

  “I’m not a bloodhound,” Pyriel replied, obviously a little offended. “But, yes, I can still track his scent.”

  “Then let’s follow it. I have a feeling that we’ll find Dade and Leon if we can find Abbadon.”

  “You heard the lady,” Jack Gibson shouted. “Let’s go and find my boy.”

  Pyriel nodded grimly and followed the smell of absinthe.

  Chapter 46

  The angels sat inside an old limousine that had been balanced atop two stacks of Toyotas. The boy that wasn’t really a boy sat on the floor in the middle of them.

  “You know more about what’s going on here than you’re letting on,” the angel of death remarked. Rush looked up at the angel, his eyes not seeming as innocent or as confused as they had on the day that Father Benjamin pulled him out of that dark alley.

  “I know lots of things.”

  “And you’re going to tell them to me.”

  “I doubt that,” Rush said with a boyish smile.

  “I don’t,” Samael laughed. “Once I’ve finished with you, you will wish that you had handled things differently.”

  “I doubt that,” Rush said in a singsong voice.

  “You should stop saying that,” Samael growled.

  “I doubt that.”

  Samael glared at the boy. Rush stared back at him balefully, daring him to act. Samael’s hand was around the boy’s throat before he could react.

  “I think you might want to reconsider who you’re dealing with here,” Samael growled. Rush didn’t cough or gasp for air. Instead, he laughed, taunting Samael.

  “When you find out what’s been going on around you,” the boy said, “you might want to reconsider who you’re dealing with.”

  Samael threw the boy against the backseat with a soft thud. Rush kept that same smile plastered to his face like a well-placed mask.

  “There are other angels who are far more capable of overthrowing heaven than you.”

  Samael’s eyes burned with rage, and he smashed one taloned fist through a side window, spilling small shards of glass on the floorboard of the Cadillac.

  “Like who?” he said through clenched teeth. “Uziel? Michael? Abbadon? None of them understand why we’re fighting. None of them have felt what’s it’s like to be free from guilt every time we indulge ourselves in some foreign pleasure. And Lucifer certainly couldn’t do any better. After all, he’s tried this before and look where it got him.”

  “I still don’t understand why you’re wasting your time,” the boy said with a trace of the old smile. Samael snarled and lunged at the boy, grabbing him by the shoulders and forcing their faces together.

  “You really want to know?” the death angel said, running his tongue over the tip of one sharpened incisor. “I’m sure that Darael would be more than happy to explain the whole thing to you.” The angel whose flesh was pierced innumerable times by tiny silver needles looked surprised and delighted, like a child that has been given an unexpected gift.

  “We’ve sort of grown attached to the pitfalls of human living,” Darael said, smirking and fiddling with the large spike that pierced the skin over his right eye. “We need the drugs. The Johnny Walker. The women to give birth to our nephilim children. We need the human way of life because it is what we’ve grown accustomed to, and God wants to wipe it all away like scribbling on a blackboard. That’s why we’re trying to bring about a few changes. We like the way it is now and don’t want to see the things we love go away.”

  “How quaint,” Rush replied. “A nice little Hallmark answer.”

  Darael’s smile fell like a poorly baked cake. Samael hardly seemed to notice the boy’s sarcastic remark. “Someone’s here,” the death angel said, sniffing the air like a dog in the midst of a manhunt. “We’ve got company.”

  Darael shifted a little in his seat, anxious to go out and have a look for himself. Samael held him in place with an upheld hand.

  “Not yet,” he replied. “You may have a little work to do here.”

  Darael’s face lit up like a neon sign at an all-night bar, and for the life of him, Samael couldn’t ever remember seeing anyone get so excited at the prospect of torture.

  “You’d really better go and see who it is,” the boy said to Samael. “We wouldn’t want someone jeopardizing your plot to overthrow heaven.”

  “Not yet,” the death angel replied. “You haven’t answered the question that’s gnawing at me the most. Who are you really?”

  “The reincarnation of Jim Morrison,” the boy replied smartly.

  “Not a good choice of answers,” the death angel remarked. “Darael, would you care to change his mind for him?”

  Darael didn’t need to be asked twice.

  “Now hold still, boy,” he ordered as he slipped one of the needles out of his flesh and used it to puncture one of Rush’s ears. The thin piece of metal slipped effortlessly into the cartilage without eliciting so much as a grunt of discomfort from the child. Darael’s eyes went wide at the sight of a smile on the boy’s face.

  “Let’s try again, shall we?” Samael said, trying hard not to seem shocked. “Who are you really?”

  “The Pope.”

  “Wrong,” Darael replied as he jammed a needle into the back of Rush’s arm. The boy never flinched.

  “Next answer please,” Samael requested, hardly believing what he was seeing.

  “Ronald Reagan.”

  The needle bit deep into Rush’s right cheek. And yet the smile never faltered.

  “Care to try once more?”

  “Bruce Springsteen.”

  Darael had run out of needles above his eyebrows which left those in his upper and lower lips. He graciously pulled three out with a sick, wet pop, sticking one in each of the boy’s lips and the other in the soft tip of his nose.

  “He’ll be ready to talk to us in a minute,” Darael remarked, amazed that the boy wasn’t showing any sign of pain

  “I doubt that,” Rush replied, his eyes burning with rage and fire.

  “You’ve got one more chance to answer correctly,” Samael offered. The boy coughed up a wad of spit that sizzled and burned as it ran down the death angel’s face.

  Samael exploded, grabbing Rush by the hair of the head and jerking him off of the seat like a marionette that responds to pain instead of a movement of strings. For some reason, he felt hot being so close to the child, as if he was standing too near a blazing furnace, and inexplicably, that made him a little uneasy. Tired of the games, he nodded to Darael and watched as, one by one, Darael began to insert the needles underneath each of the fingernails on the boy’s right hand.

  “Still not going to break, are you?” Darael said smartly. “Well, you’ve got another hand, and I’ve got a cigarette lighter.” Rush’s eyes narrowed as the angel began to heat the needles until the tips glowed a bright orange-red.

  “The other hand, Samael?”

  “Of course.”

  This time the needles made a slight hissing sound as they touched the cool flesh beneath his nail bed. Much to Samael’s surprise, the flesh on the child’s hand began to shrink away from the heat, revealing scaly flesh beneath that stank of sulfur.

  “I’ve had just about enough of this,” Lucifer said, tearing away the fake skin like a Halloween costum
e made of cheap plastic. The angels’ eyes grew wide as the Prince of Darkness spread his wings inside the crowded limousine, knocking both doors off of the hinges and standing up to tear away the roof. The Cadillac teetered and tottered uncertainly.

  Chapter 47

  Abbadon heard the shouting and knew that he should be moving faster. Up ahead, he could see some of the rebels circling in the sky like hungry vultures, and he suspected that that was where they were holding the boy captive. With every step he took, the shouting got a little bit louder, and at last, Abbadon couldn’t restrain himself any longer. Yet, the minute he started running toward the lamentations, was the moment that the circling angels overhead started to dive. The best he could tell there were only two of them, and he fully expected them to attack him head on. What he didn’t expect them to do was to pull up just before landing and take to the air again. It wasn’t long before he saw what they were planning, and his blood ran cold at the thought.

  He recognized the two angels on sight, Raziel and Muriel, and had even considered them friends once before the war broke out. They didn’t seem very friendly now, however, when they tipped one of the uppermost cars in the myriad stacks off of its rusty Chevrolet pedestal. Abbadon watched in amazement as the automobile rolled and toppled end over end toward him, hurdling in his direction at breakneck speed. He managed to jump out of the way just as another car was being thrown at him.

  No sooner had the second automobile crashed harmlessly to his left than he had his leather jacket off, letting his wings stretch out on either side of him. The only place he would be safe in this mechanic’s Eden would be in the air. Or at least he thought so until he saw at least another handful of angels take to the skies.