Infernal Affairs

Home > Thriller > Infernal Affairs > Page 14
Infernal Affairs Page 14

by Declan Finn


  He ground his teeth and started forcing me back. “No. I would sooner face the endless fires of damnation than give you anything.”

  I growled, reared back, and struck him in the face with an open palm. “I.” And again. “Said.” Thud “Repent.” Crunch. “Dumb ass.”

  Outside, more cars skidded to a stop outside.

  Oh crap. These can’t be on our side.

  “Now!” I screamed for the microphones Alex and I had spent the day placing all over the house. “Now! Now! Now!”

  This is where our real trap began.

  Within seconds, the world filled with sirens and lights and gunfire. Helicopters swarmed in. Over at the shoreline, four coast guard cutters pulled up filled with armed men in full tactical gear.

  You see, we had taken ADA William Carlton’s advice. We had gone above the Mayor’s head. We had called the state police and the Feds. And we didn’t call on just the FBI. MS-13 wanted to kill me, so that brought in ICE and the DEA. Even though the higher-ups in Washington and Albany were as corrupt as you can get without being in New Jersey or New Orleans, the officers with boots on the grounds were always willing and able to arrest some bad guys and crack some heads. We had coordinated through the Staties and the Feds to come down at the last minute and close the trap on all of the hired guns the Mayor had brought after us.

  Did I mention that, since the death cult had been shuttered, the surrounding homes in the cul-de-sac had been evacuated, sold off, and everyone had moved out? That’s where the county and state SWAT teams had set up sniping positions. FBI’s Special Tactics team had elected to move in from the opening of the cul-de-sac to cork the bottle.

  In short, we had called in the cavalry.

  Between the lights and sirens, and me having Rene Ormeno pinned, Bokor Baracus tossed Alex aside like a used handkerchief.

  In two bounding leaps, Baracus slammed into me, knocking me off Ormeno. He grabbed Ormeno by the arm, hauled him to his feet, and promptly ignored him. Baracus’ eyes were locked directly on me.

  He reached into his billowing coat and drew forth a machete. “It is time for you to truly become a saint.”

  I reached back to the katana strapped over my shoulder and drew it out. “Bring it, necrophiliac.”

  “That is necromancer.”

  “I don’t care if you take them out for dinner and flowers first.”

  Behind him, Ormeno smiled and circled to my left. It was obvious this wouldn’t be a fair fight.

  A gun rang out. Ormeno torqued around and dropped. The bokor took a step back and looked to where the gunfire came from.

  Alex stopped a few feet away, gun in one hand, paint bucket in the other. I had recognized the paint can. It was strangely made out of steel instead of the usual aluminum. And Alex had insisted on keeping it in a cooler filled with ice. “We weren’t done, voodoo man.”

  I ran at Alex—okay, I ran past Alex—as he threw the paint can.

  Baracas tried to bat the paint can away with his machete. It opened, spilling the green liquid contents all over him.

  There is a chemical called chlorine trifluoride. To say that it is volatile would be like saying that Hiroshima endured high-speed urban renewal. It corrodes platinum and gold. It will ignite sand, glass; it will even set asbestos on fire. In the 1950s, there was a one-ton spill of chlorine trifluoride. It burned through a foot of concrete and another meter of sand and gravel below that.

  It literally ignites with air.

  Bokor Baracus, necromancer and Voodoo priest, went up in a ball of fire that filled the kitchen. It ripped through the oven, the sink, and the refrigerator.

  The “smoke” coming off of him looked nasty, and I had a bad feeling about this. It was confirmed by Alex, who grabbed my arm and said, “Outside, now.”

  I didn’t know why, but I didn’t hesitate. We ran out through the living room as the walls, floor and ceiling started to bubble and smoke as well.

  We made it outside, into the warm night air as the inside of the house turned into an inferno. I looked at my partner. “What the Hell was that?”

  “As I said earlier, chlorine trifluoride—”

  I shook my head and pointed at the inferno inside. The vapors coming off of Baracus had ignited the panes of glass in the windows. “No. I mean the smoke.”

  “Oh. That’s not smoke. More like a cloud.”

  This had gotten frustrating. “Of. What?”

  “Hot hydrofluoric acid. We should stay up here for a while.”

  “No kidding.”

  The world erupted in gunfire, and we hit the ground. The feds had hit the assassins, and the party had started without us. It was a good thing that we had called in back up because the cul-de-sac turnaround had turned into an armed camp while we were busy inside.

  The various and sundry killers opened fire on the feds—with, among other things, literal fire. There were fireballs and lightning thrown around like hand grenades and footballs. There were RPGs from the street going for the helicopters. The helicopter had opened fire with a machine gun. The boats had opened up with machine guns. The state and county police had brought SWAT teams, and a pitched battle in the cul-de-sac had opened fire as well.

  Alex looked on and winced as a helicopter took a fireball to the rear propeller. “Think we can help them?”

  I grimaced. “Only if I bi-located into a SWAT team. I don’t think I can do that. I could try, but—”

  I smelled him before I heard him. The booming voice, like thunder, rocked the cul-de-sac, shook the ground beneath us, and rattled the surrounding windows.

  “Enough!” it roared.

  A wall of pressure slapped the helicopters out of the air and over the water. The swarm of assassins, sorcerers, gunmen, and whatever else had been parked in the cul-de-sac were pushed out of the street, through a house, and into the water.

  Coming down the street, stomping like Raging Bull, came the warlock.

  The team in the street spun around and open fired on him. He kept walking. The air thickened around him and bullets stopped, as though caught in foam, and fell to the ground. He kicked the used bullets out of the way and waved at the assault team. They all went flying into the bushes in someone’s front yard.

  The other homes in the area opened fire on him, and the warlock didn’t even pay attention to them. He didn’t care or didn’t notice. The bullets kept stopping in the air near him. They were petty annoyances. He was unstoppable, and he knew it. He wouldn’t let anything or anyone get in his way. Tonight was the night he paid his debts to his friends on the other side.

  The warlock strode up to the part of the house that was on fire…and he leaped through the wall, into the kitchen, which was still a raging inferno.

  He leaned forward and breathed in, sucking in all of the flames and all of the toxic fumes of steaming acid. The fire and acid were visibly sucked in through his mouth and nostrils like he was taking a breath of fresh air.

  And then he laughed.

  “Come in, Detective. It’s safe now. We need to talk.”

  Mayor Ricardo Hoynes had arrived and had brought all Hell with him.

  Chapter 22

  Saints are Dead

  I slowly rose from the ground. Now that the night had gone from a firefight to dead silent, I felt a little silly still being face-planted in the dirt. I still had the katana in one hand. That also felt a little ridiculous. I sheathed it again but took the sheath off of my shoulder. I held it in my left fist and figured that I was going to need it.

  I still had my sidearm in my holster, as well as my backup piece, but bullets hadn’t done anything to him thus far. The gun might help if I went melee with him. It was hard to block a bullet when the muzzle is against the skin.

  Alex grabbed my arm. I stopped long enough to look back.

  Alex shook his head. “Don’t go.”

  I smiled at him. I knew this was going to suck. And by suck, I meant hurt like a bastard. Since this began, every villain had called me a saint, and al
l of my friends and family hadn’t doubted the assessment.

  But as I noted before, there is no such thing as a living saint. A saint, by definition, was someone who had made it into Heaven. All saints were dead.

  As I walked to the French doors, one of the smoldering lumps on the floor near the Mayor changed color. It had gone from charcoal black to blood red. The color continued to shift back to a pinkish color before consolidating in a dark complexion.

  It was Rene Ormeno. The powers the mayor had given him had allowed him to survive a fluoride fire and clouds of hydrofluoric acid.

  This is going to suck.

  I stood in the living room, just inside the doors. The mayor was in the kitchen there was a foyer between the two of us. I didn’t think that was nearly enough distance. “So, Mayor Hoynes, what can I do for you?”

  Hoynes smiled. “You can die.”

  I shrugged. I kept myself at parade ground rest, only with my hands on the sheath and the grip of the katana. “I’ll have to get back to you on that.”

  Hoynes gave an oily politician’s smile and stepped forward casually, easily. “What can I do to change your mind?”

  “How about you tie something together for me,” I told him. He stopped and blinked, confused. “I get that you have a death cult as a mechanism to feed your powers and pay off your debts to friends from the Other Side. But I don’t get the whole thing with Rikers. Why would you unleash thousands of possessed inmates on the city?”

  Hoynes threw his head back and laughed. It was a great belly laugh that shook the foundations of the house, and that wasn’t metaphorical.

  “That’s easy! In fact, I’m surprised it wasn’t immediately apparent once you knew what I was.” He shook his head, as though he had heard a funny pun that was still horrible. “Part of it would be to tie up the NYPD and wreck the fire department. But most of all, power.”

  I arched a brow. “Power over a wrecked city?”

  He shook his head. “No no no. It would never get that bad. But the threat would be never-ending. I would guarantee that. After all, 20% of the population are already dependents of the state. None of them will ever vote Republican—they might insist that fraudulent dependents actually go out and get jobs.

  “Right now, this minute, the average street cop could close every store on any given city block, given all the petty laws that are outdated but never repealed. That isn’t an accident but designed to give me control over what I can shut down—which is everything.” He stepped forward, his face…contorting in strange ways.

  “Through emissions standards, we control what kind of car you drive.” He stepped forward again. “We control what you eat, because it’s good for you. Via taxes, we control your money. We control what you drive, what guns we allow you. Your dogs. Your healthcare. How you raise your kids. Their education. We even control what type of light bulbs you can use.”

  He laughed again. “Ha! Medieval kings took a mere 10% in taxes and called it a tithe. Sales tax alone is nearly 10%, and income tax is so much more. Even term limits don’t affect me. After all, there are so many useful idiots in the City’s administration, the media, and the what did you call it? The Demoncratic party? Making it a Sanctuary city means that we have 20% of the population who are afraid to leave our protection.

  “But I’m the good guy because I provide forms of gentle enslavement. Imagine the Hispanic ghettos, dependent on the government and unable to talk to anyone outside of your neighbors or unable to leave. A free people who can leave is antithetical to our control. And the word is control. Now, just imagine an entire city where everyone is scared to go outside after thousands of demon-possessed criminals are unleashed. Everyone is scared to go outside. Everyone depends on my good graces to stay alive.”

  I scoffed. I laughed. “Power? That’s it? That’s all this has been about? Petty political power over one city?”

  “And seven million souls,” Hoynes interjected. “You underestimate the lure of power. And power is the name of the game. My entire party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power. Pure power.”

  I rolled my eyes, not impressed. I managed to ignore how bad the smell was. “Just like every other thousand-year Reich.”

  Hoynes’ eyes flared, burning red with literal fire. “No. Not like them. We know what we’re doing. All the others were cowards and hypocrites. The Nazis and the old Communists came very close to us in their methods, but they never had the courage to recognize their own motives. They pretended, perhaps even believed, that they had seized power unwillingly. They continued to claim that there was paradise just around the corner.

  “Bullshit. We know that no one ever seizes power and intends to relinquish it. Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship to safeguard a revolution; one makes revolution to establish dictatorship. The object of power? Is power.”

  I realized, whether he knew it or not, that he had more or less just quoted 1984. “And killing me will allow you to keep this power?”

  Hoynes smiled. “And so much more. You know why I’m telling you all this?”

  “Because it doesn’t matter, since you’re going to kill me?”

  Hoynes grinned. “Oh, more like if you don’t die, nothing else will matter. Besides. I was just a distraction.”

  Rene Ormeno tackled me from the right like a deranged quarterback. His grip had wrapped around my arm, pinning it to my side. I couldn’t swing the sword, never mind draw it.

  However, I drew the sheath from the sword and swung it like a club, smashing it against the side of Ormeno’s skull. It rattled him only a little. His hand wrapped around the sword I held as he drove me against the wall. He swung his forehead for my nose, but I cocked it to one side. He barely missed. It looked like the world’s most awkward hug with his chin on my shoulder.

  “Let go of the sword, jefe,” he whispered.

  I blinked and let go of it. There was no good reason for me to do so. I wasn’t even conscious of doing it. I did it purely on reflex. He asked. I answered.

  “Now, shove.”

  I did, pushing him away, and adding an additional kick to his chest. He fell back against a couch, rolled backwards over it.

  Hoynes however, had levitated a couch and hurled it at me. Crap.

  I ducked down and dove forward, rolling under the piece of furniture as it flew into the wall. Hoynes cackled and flicked his fingers at me. Pipes exposed by the fire in the kitchen ripped from the walls and came at me like spears. I waited a moment for them to come at me, praying my timing would be right, then dropped. They sailed over me and embedded themselves in the wall.

  Hoynes bared his teeth and spread his arms wide…

  The shadows moved.

  Hoynes’ shadow moved first, stretching out behind him like the unfurling of bat’s wings. Then the shadow twisted and grew tentacles, spreading out along the walls.

  “I am the darkness, boy,” Hoynes crowed, the fire in his eyes bright enough to cast even more shows along the room. A shadow speared out from the floor and came for me. I twisted out of the way, striking it with the sheath. It wrapped around the sheath and snapped it. It batted me away, slamming me against the French doors.

  “You can’t defeat me!” he bellowed. The fire in his eyes flared so much, I feared they would shoot fireballs next.

  A shadow tentacle spit out from the ceiling, peppering the area around me with shards of wood. I rolled away, my coat taking most of the damage. Three of them slashed open my forehead, ripping the skin from above my right eye down to my temple.

  Guided by experience (like a demon shooting telekinetic projectiles at me relentlessly without stop), I didn’t get to my feet but pushed off in a random jump. I was in motion, twisting in the air, as another shadow punched through a wall and speared me in the right shoulder. To my surprise, it didn’t spin around and play in my internal organs like a laparoscopic tool but disappeared after striking.
<
br />   Maybe they’re only good for one shot? I pondered.

  Behind Hoynes, Ormeno rose up and charged …

  For Hoynes.

  The Mayor barely looked behind him. His hand shot out and grabbed Ormeno by the wrist. He raised Ormeno off the ground. “You fool. What do you think you’re doing?”

  Ormeno didn’t even hesitate but struck out with his left hand, driving a fist for Hoynes’ face.

  Hoynes caught the fist without thinking.

  Still Ormeno fought, striking out with a knee. It actually connected, but weakly, more of a tap than a hit. “If I go to Hell, I bring you with me.”

  “Silly, pathetic little man. I gave you your powers. I gave you your strength. I can take them away.” The shadows came for Ormeno and took him by the wrists and ankles.

  I got off the floor and scrambled for Hoynes, but more shadows spiked out of the floor, turning the rug into a sea of bear traps.

  Hoynes growled more ferociously than any bear. “You want eternal damnation now instead of later, Rene? Fine,” he spat. “It’s yours.”

  Darkness came for me even as the shadows played make a wish with Ormeno’s limbs. More shadows came for Ormeno, spearing down his throat and up between his legs. He gave the most horrific shriek I’ve ever heard, and I have literally heard the cries of demons. The shadows crawled along his skin, peeling his clothes off, peeling his skin off.

  All the while, I kept dodging crap from the floor walls and ceilings.

  Darkness. Shadows. I need light… You, Lord, keep my lamp burning; my God turns my darkness into light. With Your help I can advance against a troop; with my God I can scale a wall.

  I leaped for the back of the couch and pushed off of it, diving for Hoynes, thirty feet away.

  I reached the apogee of my arc … and kept flying, the levitation kicking in like I somehow knew it would.

  Hoynes whirled around and slashed at me, his fingers outstretched. Shadow darts flew at me, slapping against my chest, but I didn’t feel them penetrate. I didn’t care. I smashed into Hoynes, elbow first. My elbow snapped his head back, my two hundred pounds plus focused in one square inch of sharp bone met the soft fragile bone and cartilage of his nose. He reared back and shoved at me but merely twisted my body as I fell past him. I dropped into a roll, coming up at the shadow cocoon that had wrapped itself around Ormeno. He was now a black writhing mass of darkness that wailed and gurgled.

 

‹ Prev