by Keller, Tom
"I don’t buy it," I said. "You're saying the kid conjured a Demon up from just a screenshot?" I motioned my arms around the room. "This guy's been working at this for what? At least fifty years? If he could have summoned it that simply, we'd have heard about it long before now. No, he planned this somehow."
"That is most likely the case," Browne agreed. "But we don’t work on hunches. Until it's proven otherwise, we have to go on the assumption that yours is not the only one. There may be others out there with similar spells that do not know what they are carrying."
"So do we have any idea who this guy is?" I asked, changing the subject.
"His name was Frank Stockton," I heard someone from behind me say. "He was part of what you might call the old Vegas crowd. Built a place on Fremont Street back in the 40s, not far from the Boulder Club. He was active in the community until about 1960, when it was said he retired from the business to follow other pursuits." It was Agent Hoade.
"We have no record of him in our files other than his name, a few news reports, and the fact that he hasn't been seen since. Local agencies assumed he'd fled the country, or had been the victim of foul play. It seems he withdrew a large sum of money before he disappeared, but no one ever reported anything that could be followed up on."
"It looks like we now know what his other pursuits were," Michael said. "But that still doesn’t tell us what his actual goal was."
"Revenge is a possibility," Hoade said. "We do know that he was forced out when others moved into the market."
"Forced out by who?" Michael asked.
"Some might say it was the Mob," Hoade replied. "But the Fae were making moves of their own during that period. We do not yet know who, specifically, but we will in time."
"You'll share that with us when you find out?" I asked.
"Of course," Hoade said. "That is why you are here, after all. We had hoped that we would capture someone alive, but we must work with what he have."
"What will you do now?" I asked.
"Process the scene," he replied. "We will document everything found and then recreate it at a more secure location. Once that is done, we will destroy what is left and remove any traces from the area. Since there is nothing more you can do here, Agent Browne will drive you back. Sergeant McDaniel will join you when he is done here. Probably in a few hours. I understand you have been tasked with hunting the Demon and he will be assisting you in that matter."
"So I've been told," I replied.
"Then I wish you luck." He turned to Browne and nodded.
"All right," Browne said. "Unless there's something else that you think will help, let's get you back."
When no one spoke up, Browne led us upstairs, back through the living room to the front door. When we were halfway there, something caught my eye. I veered away, walking toward the fireplace. It was the portrait. Well, I'll be a son of a bitch! As if I have time for more problems. Where the hell did she fit in all this?
It was a classical style painting of a gentleman and his lady. A 40 something year old man was sitting in a high back chair; the woman standing to the side and behind him, her hands on the back of the chair. They were dressed formally. He in a black tuxedo, with a thin bow tie and narrow, silk lapels. She was wearing an evening dress, also black, with ruffles and sequins. Her necklace was silver with a blood red stone. It must have been the dress that threw me off. She wasn't wearing one last time I saw her, nor did she strike me as the type. But I did know that she wasn't shy about using more than just magic to get what she wanted.
I glanced around the room to look for the chair but didn’t see one that matched. As I turned back to the painting, I studied her. She looked to be in her 30s. Tall, with dark brown hair that was braided and thrown over the shoulder, so that it draped her breast and fell down to her waist. In the painting, she was almost smiling, but her blue eyes were cold. If I had to guess, whatever she was thinking probably wouldn’t match my version of happiness. Not exactly the image I would have wanted to portray had I commissioned it.
"Agent Browne," I said, pointing to the painting. "Can you find out if this is Stockton?
He got on the radio and a moment later, Hoade came up the stairs. He walked over to me and looked up at the painting. Pulling out a phone he tapped a few commands and then turned the screen toward me.
"Looks like it," he said.
It was a black and white image of a man in a light colored suit and hat holding a shovel. The backdrop was Fremont Street. He was younger in the picture, but it was definitely the same man.
"Any idea who the woman is?" I asked.
Hoade scrolled through some documents on his phone.
"There's a reference to someone named Mary Aiken in one of the news reports. Inherited a cattle ranch close to Alamo when her parents died. She was noted attending a few events with him. Why?"
"It's a good guess she pointed him in the direction he was going," I said. "Or was at least the one he turned to for advice." I told them what I knew about her, and promised to pass along anything else I might find that could help.
I guess I shouldn't have been surprised that she was involved in this in some way. That's the problem with unfinished business. You may not have to deal with it every day, but it comes back to haunt you, usually when you least expect it. Then it hit me. I may not know what spells this Stockton fellow had used to bring the Demons here, but I bet I knew why.
****
"You think it was a mistake?" Browne asked, disbelief evident in his voice. He was driving us back to my house first, before continuing on with Michael.
"I do," I replied. "I think he was trying to open up a gateway to Hell, all right. Just not the Hell he tapped into."
"He spent half his life at this for her?" Browne asked. "I know she was a Fae, but still."
"Marissa's not just any Fae," I replied. "She's a High Fae, and a master manipulator. She's also well versed in magic. I know there's a lot more that we don’t know, but it makes sense."
"What about the boy's Demon? Where does that fit in?"
"Look," I replied. "When I fought her followers before, they used some kind of spell to transport between places. Symbols written in whatever language the spell needed, infused in elements of the Earth, like stone. But what if you could modernize it? Create a transportation spell electronically. If a powerful Mage can do it with incantations and the right symbols and ingredients, why not electronically. An object is an object, right?"
"It is possible," he said. "We have toyed with similar magic before, and modern phones contain a multitude of rare earths. But it is inherently unreliable and, unfortunately, the boy's phone was too destroyed to make examination feasible."
"I agree," Michael said. "We have Mages that can do something similar to a computer program. They're mostly used to protect the contents of a file, or sometimes for surveillance, but when you get too complicated; technology and magic, well... it's not something I'd want to bet my life on."
"I'll pass it along to someone better versed in such a thing," Browne said. "Perhaps they can figure out if he was doing that from the other evidence we collect."
"I'll talk to Chris and see what he thinks as well," Michael said as we pulled in front of my house.
Chapter 9
"Are we in agreement?" I asked Martin a few hours later. There were several of us at my kitchen table, having spent the last half hour going over my plans to confront the Demon later tonight.
"I would prefer another way," he said. "But I will concede that we cannot face this Demon alone. But I still do not understand why you feel the need to confront the creature first. It would be wiser to just kill it and be done with it."
"Safer too," McDaniel agreed.
"You're right," I replied. "But I think it's worth the risk. My sources say that this thing is intelligent. Maybe we can learn something before we kill it."
My source was Alf, someone I'd neglected to mention to McDaniel, or anyone from the government. He had insisted no one f
rom the EAB know that he was here. Martin knew, of course, as did a few of the others. I wasn't sure what they had on him, but he'd helped save my life, so I owed him, and I wasn't one to forget a debt. He'd also gone to a lot of trouble to find out everything he could about the Demon, and it seemed worth the risk.
"If it does not kill you first," Martin said.
"There's always that," I said with a laugh. "But then I'll die satisfied, knowing that you'll avenge my death by blowing the bastard back to Hell."
"Roger that," McDaniel said. "But let's try to avoid that, shall we? Do you know how much paperwork I'll be stuck with if a Fae Lord gets killed on my watch?"
You gotta love cop humor, even if McDaniel was military. It was always like this in the old days. Humor kept you sane, even if it was sick. Especially when there was a good chance someone wouldn’t come back from an op. It wasn't always pretty, and a lot of people don't understand it, but then most folks have never spent their days facing opponents that wanted to kill them, either.
"Ok, then," I said. "Let's do this. We don’t have much time before sunset and we have a lot of things to put in place."
My plan was simple. Make the Demon come to me, see if I could find out anything else, and then kill him. The execution, however, was as complicated as one could expect. It involved a lot of coordination, not to mention a little theatrics.
Since I wasn't trying to appease him, just get his attention, I had decided that sacrificing a live goat or lamb was out of the question. But a burnt offering, well... That was just a barbecue; so I was doing that instead. Jay had called earlier, and after some discussion, we'd located a Greek restaurant that specialized in that kind of thing. So here I was, sitting in the middle of the desert, watching the sunset. I had my makeshift altar prepared. It also doubled as the grill. Making a few adjustments from one I'd seen at a pig roast, I had a slotted metal grate propped up by cinderblocks on each side. A small pit held 50 pounds of charcoal, already burning. Cecil B. DeMille I wasn't, but it'd do.
Several of Browne's people, with some help from our local Fae contact at the LVMPD, had cordoned off the roadway between the Mt. Charleston and upper Cold Creek access roads. The cover for the road delay was a small plane crash. McDaniel was out here somewhere as well, carrying the next best thing to a Hellfire missile, a S.M.A.W.
The Shoulder Launched Multi-Purpose Assault Weapon, or S.M.A.W., had first been developed for the U.S. Marine Corps over thirty years ago and had seen a number of improvements in design since then. McDaniel's hadn't volunteered what kind of payload this model carried, but whatever it was, he was convinced it would do the job. We'd already gone over the problems associated with the back blast and blast radius, not to mention the concussive force when it hit its target. I'd asked for a hammer and he'd brought the biggest one he could find.
My six Fae archers were spaced out around the area. Four of them were covering the corners, with the other two roving to herd the Demon when it appeared, should it be necessary. The Weres were roving as well. They were acting as bait and they knew it. Martin had insisted, and they all agreed. They wouldn’t have it any other way. If they couldn’t kill it themselves, they wanted to make damn sure they played their part. As for my Fae, they were warriors and knew what was at stake. McDaniel and I carried radios so we could coordinate his shot when it was time. With everything in place, and Sendy watching from above, Charlie and I made our move right after sunset.
After some discussion, and further information from Michael, we'd come to the conclusion that it wasn't just the magic alone that drew the Demon. The individual that possessed the most became its prey. Hoping that was right, I had decided to let it know I was here.
Martin was already in Wolf form, waiting some 50 yards behind me. Switching to my Fae persona, I willed my magic outward. I raised my sword and sent a burst of lightning into the sky, letting every magical creature within a hundred miles know I was here. At the same time, I threw the dressed lamb on the grill. It soon began to smoke and the scent of searing meat filled the air.
"It has come," Sendy said, appearing at my shoulder a minute later. Then she disappeared again.
I let Martin know. Then there was nothing to do but wait.
I finally saw the Demon It was walking toward me from the south, flickering in and out. Appearing and disappearing with every step. Each time it was closer. One of the Fae must have caught its attention, because suddenly it shifted right and appeared some 50 feet from where it had last been walking. The Fae was batted aside like an insect. A Wolf leapt at it, but it batted it with its hand as well, tossing it in the air. I thought I saw it get up, limping away.
"Get him out of there," I called out to Sendy.
Jen was standing by at the house for casualties, along with Askel, a Fae healer. Sendy had been tasked with getting in and out as fast as possible to avoid the creature, while rescuing any that were still alive, if she could do so safely.
Its next step was some 20 feet closer. I saw Sendy whisk in and hug the injured Were before disappearing again. It didn’t seem to notice, because two steps later, it was here. It stood and watched me for a moment, then turned to Charlie. The huge bull styled head studied him for a moment.
"You... I... recognize...Ur-Gi," it said slowly, as if testing the words before speaking. "Of... the... seven... you... are... descended."
Now that was interesting. I'd spent a little time going over Sumerian history and myths before we set up. It was said that the Goddess Innana, also known as Ishtar, often traveled with seven hunting dogs. What had interested me further was a reference to Demeter, as in some mythology, the two were closely associated with each other.
"But... you... are... not... of ... the... people...," it said. "Nor... of... the... Gods... You... should... be ... dead..." It swiveled its head, then eyed my sword. There was a shimmer and it flicked out of sight momentarily. When it reappeared, its speech became normal. "You carry a thunder sword. Who are you?"
"I am Robert of the Dryad," I replied. "Son of Gabriele, daughter of Maria, heir to the Goddess Demeter. Who are you?"
"I know not of which Goddess you speak," it replied. "I am Urbat. What have you done with the people?"
"I hate to be the one to break this to you, big guy," I said, using a huge BBQ fork to flip the lamb over. "But many years have passed since your kind last roamed the earth. Thousands, actually. I'm afraid you just don’t belong here anymore."
The Demon raised its head and began to laugh. It sounded like a slowed down version of a hyena I might have heard on Wild Kingdom when I was a kid. When it was done, its eyes returned their gaze to me.
"It matters not," it said, raising and sweeping its huge, spiny arms around. "Think you that these petty beasts and lesser beings can defeat me? You are less than nothing and I will drink your magic as I have from thousands before you. When I am done, it will be upon your bones I feast. Your offering is rejected." Then it disappeared and reappeared behind me. Lunging at me, it roared when Charlie ran between its legs, nipping at the barbed tail that had begun its swing toward where I was standing.
I turned around, my sword flashing, and took a swing at the momentarily distracted beast. The electricity arced as I cut into the flesh where its tail and body met. The Demon dissolved, reappearing a moment later, 20 feet in front of me. I heard the arrows as they struck its hide. It didn't even flinch. The bladed spear appeared in its hand and it swung out, cutting into a Were that had been trying to stalk it.
I heard Martin growl as he and Charlie lunged toward the thing. It swatted both of them aside as it stepped forward and grabbed the Were that it had injured. Holding it by the throat, its tail lashed out and around, the stinger burying itself in the Wolf's spine. The Demon then turned to Martin, who was just getting back to his feet, and threw the carcass at him.
Sending a command out to Sendy, I ordered her to wait until the Demon was gone before returning, not willing to risk her being injured herself.
"You gotta get him to
stand still," I heard McDaniel say on the radio, the earpiece blaring.
"Hey, asshole!" I yelled. The Demon turned and looked at me, then spun around and threw its bladed spear. One of my Fae went down, then the spear returned to its hand.
I raised my sword and lashed out; willing electricity from the blade in the form of lightning. It hit the Demon at its center, forcing him up into the air and throwing him some 10 feet back. It was stunned, but only for a moment.
"I tire of this," it said as it got back up. It threw its spear at me, the blade aimed at my chest. I was just able to turn my body. I swung my sword, but missed. I felt the blade slice my side as it went by. I twirled and fired another round of lightning at the Demon. This time he was prepared for it, twisting aside as I had, the beam just grazing him. But it was enough to throw him off balance and make him angry, as if he wasn't mad enough already.
It picked itself up and summoned its spear. Raising it above its head it began to chant. Clouds formed and swirled. Then I heard a voice in the earpiece.
"Fire in...!" was all I heard as the rocket ignited.
I had a brief glimpse of a red dot on the Demon's chest, when a blazing plume of smoke and fire lit up the sky from behind me. I could feel the intense heat as it passed. My clothes ignited. There was a massive explosion as it hit the Demon. The concussive force threw me backward. I landed a distance away and tried to sit up. My ears rang and I saw smoke. Realizing it was me, I rolled, then patted at my smoking clothes before ripping my shirt off.
"You ok?" I saw McDaniel mouth as he offered me his hand. He'd told me about the risk of being too close when he fired, but I'd said it didn't matter. He needed to take the shot when he could, once we determined talking wasn’t productive.