Hell, In a Troy (Lopez Time Book 2)

by Phillip S. Power

  He opened the package as he spoke.

  “I don’t know. I have something like forty million from line walking work, just from my people. More than that by about ten times from the public work that I’ve done for Zack. Will is The Messenger. I’d guess he’s worth a lot more than that. He goes… Everywhere that a person can, if you want him to. I’ve never really met him before. One of those things where we seem to cross paths but a few minutes late?”

  There was a pause, and Detective Tran narrowed her eyes.

  “Wait. The Messenger. Is he one of those nickname people then? Like the greater demons? Or The Snowflake?”

  “Hmm…” He was looking at the package, which, inside, was filled with data about the Children of Baphomet. The data was clearly from The Cleric, and the Vatican files. The writing on the outside of the package was his own, as far as he could tell. As in Troy’s. The scent was right for that as well, as soon as he parsed for the others. So, it had really come from the human version of him but was originally from a greater demon on his own world. Why that was, he didn’t know. It was a fantastic way to hide where a thing had come from but seemed a bit too clever for anyone to bother with.

  The Children were a mage cult group but they weren’t going to mess with the Vatican, at a guess. Mainly because doing so would probably put them up against Gregor, The Cleric, directly. People, even mages, didn’t live when they went up against demons. Vampires would pussy out and run, faced with the weakest of that kind. It was a brilliant plan, in the main.

  Thinking of earlier, he faked a wince.

  “I shouldn’t think about pussying out. Females don’t do that, do they? I mean, they wimp out a lot, like everyone else but they don’t call it that, right?”

  Denise shook her head.

  “I do it all the time. I think that means you get a pass on it? What’s in the envelope? Nude pictures? No… No one would try to blackmail you that way. You wouldn’t care.”

  Which was true, he honestly wouldn’t. If the pics had been of him being done up the behind by a famous actor, he wouldn’t have cared at all. Tasteful naked things would probably be put up on his web-page. Which would mean making one, so it was just as well they weren’t anything like that. It would be extra work. Not that he didn’t have the skills and the tools.

  Computers weren’t that hard for him to grasp. He’d grown up with them, after all.

  “Nothing that… Actually, from the look of it, this might be that good. It’s data on The Children of Baphomet. It looks like a copy of everything the Vatican has on them. I need to read it all but… Yeah, this is pretty good. They’re led by Cheyenne Strobmier. This… has almost everything about her, it looks like. Her real name, Danica Strobmier…” He froze then, wrinkling his brow.

  After a moment he stared at his partner.

  “There has to be a story there. Who would change their name from Danica to Cheyenne? I mean, both are a little odd but it would be like changing your name from Mark to Dave. You could do it but why?”

  It was a bit of a joke but his partner shrugged and acted like she was actually thinking about it.

  “To hide from the law? That would work better with the last name as well. Um… Religious reasons? She hated a girl named Danica in the third grade and didn’t want to share a name with that little bitch? It could be anything. Never underestimate the pettiness of the human mind, Tonto.”

  Troy grinned at her.

  “You just called me a crazy fool in Spanish, thinking I wouldn’t get it, didn’t you? I speak five languages, thank you.” It had really helped in his line walking. Even in America, other worlds spoke different languages half the time. German and Spanish were the most common. He could also work out pidgin Standard. He tended to think of it as Trollienkeine but it had worked in about a dozen places.

  Having no apparent shame when it came to Troy teasing, his partner just nodded. Then she moved to his desk and sat on it, so she could grab each page from him as he finished it. The reading was kind of predictable, at first. The story told, in documents and transcripts of telephone calls was almost the one that he would have made up for the woman and her organization.

  She came from a poor family. There had been a real struggle as she grew up. Probably sexual abuse from her mother’s live in boyfriend. Then the man had died in an accident that clearly wasn’t one if you knew that magic was an option. The mages, getting that, had bound her powers for a year and a day, when she was fourteen. After that, she refused to have anything to do with them. To the point of threatening officials with death when they’d tried to visit her when she turned sixteen. There had been a gun, as well as magic, involved.

  Then she drifted for a while. Mainly moving from commune to commune. Some of the less savory ones. The kinds that practiced things that weren’t strictly allowed by the guild. Then, in her late twenties, she’d started to collect people to her, and had popped out a kid per year. That had been about twenty years before. Of those children, three were believed to have survived. The rest had died or simply vanished.

  One of the survivors had died the day before, which hadn’t been updated in the paperwork, yet.

  Then, almost as if she’d gone insane, the woman had claimed to have made contact with a god. Baphomet. Troy had been thinking of it kind of like a lesser demon. A thing made of thought. The collective wishes and fears of a long-ago people. From what the papers said, that didn't seem to be the case at all. No, old Bapho was a physical being. A true immortal. Thankfully it was locked away at the moment, in a magical containment. That part wasn’t too clear, as to how it worked. From the sound of it, the Vatican spies weren’t up on that either.

  Each time they spoke of getting close enough to the compound to find out, they vanished.

  They were almost certainly being used to feed something. Possibly physically. That was taken as shocking and appalling in the papers but Troy had to shrug. Half the things that existed thought of any flesh as being fair game, as far as food went. Beings had to eat. It wasn’t fun when it was your turn on the plate but claiming to be appalled over it wasn’t being honest.

  No one worried about the apple they’d put in the pie. Few worried about the pig that was made into sausage. Claiming that you and yours, of all creatures, were too good to be lunch, was just living in denial of reality. What they really meant was that they feared it would be their turn next. So, a lot of the information dried up that way. No one was willing to go in now.

  Even though they knew the location of the place and everything.

  He got it, from the reading. The entire place, which was a large and sprawling farm, was loaded with traps. If you went there and weren’t invited, you’d last for about seven seconds before one of the hundreds of traps took you. Even if you could beat one or two, you’d eventually run out of energy and vanish. The human investigators had pictures of the place but only from a distance. Satellites and the like.

  When Denise stood up and stretched, she smiled.

  “It isn’t going to help us a lot but now we know. My reading here is… Creepy mage cult. Possibly with a minor god stuck in the basement. From the hints, there might be more than one of those involved. Gods aplenty. We can finish this up later? We should get to the school early. Sign in and all that so they don’t think we came to corrupt their students. Little do they know…” She didn’t seem like she was teasing at all.

  Troy could get behind that. Not that he was going to be party to getting students to do bad things. They had a summer party though, so suggesting they show up to the free concert wasn’t the worst idea ever. They had a date for it now.

  He locked the papers up in his desk. It would stop a thief for about ten seconds but might prevent the janitor from accidently spilling coffee on them before they were read. He really needed to make copies of them, for his own files at home. Splitting things up made sense, after all. That way it would be less likely to be lost.

  The way that it had been sent to him presented a bit of a mystery. The e
asiest way to work that out would be to call up The Cleric and ask. It would show he was too stupid to work with but so would not asking if he couldn’t work it out.

  The trick then, he decided, would be to take a stab at figuring that part out.

  Tran turned to him and closed one eye, screwing up her whole face at the same time. It was nearly cute seeming. Like a cartoon character though, not an adult woman flirting with him.

  “You know, when I graduated from high school, it never occurred to me that I’d be coming back some day. Well, not outside of dreams where they made me go back, because I hadn’t graduated properly and I had to finish my last year. That followed me all through college.”

  Getting out of the car, he nodded. It was somber. Because he understood.

  “I hear you on that one. I don’t have them now… But I also don’t dream. No sleep, no problems? I didn’t go to college. I probably should some time. Maybe after I finish the whole police thing? I’m figuring ten years for that. Possibly less. This… I guess we’re fighting the good fight?” He wanted her to tell him they were.

  Instead she snickered like the school was forcing her to be a teen with its presence.

  “Ah, Officer Lopez… That’s probably what your vampire leaders want you to go through. The tedium and boredom of a real job. Though… From what Roy told me, his contact on that side figured that it would be four years, like a military stint. That’s the plan I’ve been working off of. Then, I’m out of here in eighteen months. I was, anyway. That will be thirty years on the force for me, so I get the good retirement package. Not that it’s great. I have a few properties though, that I got at auction and rent out, so it isn’t that bad. If I need more cash, I just get with you, right? My millionaire buddy?”

  “Hehe. Riiight. I’ve known the paperboy longer than you and I don’t even get that thing. If you want millions of dollars, you’re going to have to be more clever than that. I bet we can figure something out. Do special work for the shifters or something. Though really, you’re healthy now, so can probably put in another thirty years, if you want. That sounds boring though. Do you think the division will be shut down when you go?” That made the most sense to him.

  As he moved to walk inside, a squad car, which was blue and white, with a nice rack of lights on the top and police written on the side, pulled up. Parking next to them. Santos waved and got out, arranging her weapons and tools of the trade first. It became a habit, after a while. Even his shoulder holster had to be moved around by force half the time.

  Most days he didn’t even think about it.

  “Officer Santos! Ready to face the pimpled hordes?”

  “Lopez. Detective Tran… What’s this about? I was told to show up before one, twelve-forty. I made it on time but…”

  Denise smiled then.

  “We have a kid coming out at an assembly today. Shifter. The Chief wanted a small army to show up to enforce the no segregation policy but Lopez figured that you’d be more than enough to stop them from attacking. You have a speech ready, right? It’s you or Lopez doing it. I get stage fright.”

  That didn’t sound right. The fact was, he didn’t. Even as a human that hadn’t been a huge issue for him. People were your friends. As long as they didn’t want to shoot you, or hit you with a supermassive spell that would destroy part of the world. That part… He understood a lot of it. How three mages could collect that kind of power and set that kind of thing in motion but it seemed out of scale. They’d killed a boy to make a killer kami to try and take him out. That had been the life energy of a human being, turned toward a singular purpose. To consume totally.

  The blowing up thing was just them, sitting in a car. Throwing personal energy into one single, deadly, idea. That they might be impressive that way, say building something that would have been like a hand grenade. Maybe enough to rip open a single building.

  He’d been assured that a much, much larger area had been in danger. More, when he’d shunted the energy away, it had really felt like that was possible. It hadn’t been quick or easy to do. The thing there was that he kind of had to figure that any small group of mages could do the same thing. Sure, they might not survive it, which would be a big deal but they had fanatics in their ranks like everyone else. He’d met some.

  Troy led them in.

  “The school will have a plan. We can just stand there, off to the side and be supportive. Morgan… Well, the one time I met him wasn’t his best day, maybe. Hopefully. It wasn’t brilliant. He was the one that put up the graffiti about the principal and the secretary on the outside gym wall last week?” Not that there had been another time that had happened.

  Santos rolled her eyes.

  “Those two have been going at it since I went here. It wasn’t that big of a secret. Still, this is a first for the area. A shifter? What does he turn into?” She kept walking but gave Troy a look. “Is that rude? What are the protocols on things like that?”

  It was a question he had an answer for.

  “Most of them will tell you first thing. They all will if you ask about it. Unless they’re in hiding but that’s everyone, regardless of their group. Shifters aren’t shy about it. If they turn into a lama, then they do. Morgan Bauer is a bat. His cousin is the President of his people. It was decided that he could either come out to the school like this, or go sit on a small island alone for several months. For the spray painting. Instead he gets this and is helping us with the community outreach thing in a few weeks. We should do an announcement for that. I guess I’ll do it? Or you, Santos? You were a cheerleader here, right?” She didn’t have the looks for it, truly but was perky enough and fit.

  When he’d been in high school that had been enough for about half the squad.

  She actually stuck her tongue out.

  “With the little miss perfection crew hogging the whole thing? Us regular girls didn’t stand a chance. They were like this… Ridiculous collection of super models or something.” The office right to the left inside the door. Santos led the way. Not that he or Denise couldn’t have found the thing. She went on as she moved.

  “It was this… I swear, it was weird, now that I think about it. Like a television program on the WB. You know, always cast in Pretty Valley? Darla Gibson, she was in my year. She took the whole squad over, then found these perfect girls. Hally, Eve and Barb. There were a few others but those… They were all incredible. Even their non-cheering friends were hot. Worse, they wouldn’t even be bitchy. Like, if you were in the bathroom crying because the girl you liked wasn’t gay, they’d all stay with you and make sure you were all right. Even if you were just some little girl with teeth that had to be held in with headgear.”

  They got into the office, the secretary Mrs. Johansen, looked concerned when they walked up.

  “Is everything all right?”

  Troy managed a credibly happy look.

  “Yep. We heard that there was an assembly today? We’re the moral support.”

  She seemed happier then, and glanced at Santos.

  “Maria… Gonzales, isn’t it?”

  That got a nod.

  “Santos now. I’m married.” She didn’t make a big deal out of having taken her wife’s name or anything. Then, Jainy didn’t seem a lot like a Santos really. It took all kinds, Troy had to suppose.

  There was a nod, as well as three visitor’s badges being made up. The woman clearly had a good memory, since she didn’t have to ask for his or Denise’s names. Their full names, as well. Just as he was slipping the stupid laminated card over his head, on a blue string that was basically yarn, the principal came out of his office.

  The man seemed ready to face the world, being clean and if not made up for a crowd, pretty well appointed for a man on a civil service salary. His suit was off the rack, and an ugly brown color but wrinkle free and not frayed at the edges at all. He smelled of coffee and some kind of baked good but wasn’t wearing it on his front.

  Santos waved at him.

  “Here for th
e assembly. Do you have time for Troy here to make an announcement? It’s just about a picnic. Nothing that big. We’ll try to get people signed up to pick up trash or whatever. We can skip it, if there isn’t time.” She said it like it wasn’t a big deal.

  Which was right. Troy was still figuring that they’d be lucky to have the people working it show up. Maybe some families of different police and Morgan’s mother and human dad. Not a lot more than that.

  They were led down to the gym, which he was familiar with from their last trip there. This time the place was different, having large bleachers pulled out on either side. Things that showed a lot of wear, being about fifty years old. Some obvious repairs had been made over time. Boards replaced that didn’t exactly match the rest of the thing. Kids were already filling in.

  They were…

  Nearly identical to the ones that he’d gone to school with. It was sort of oppressive really. He even thought that the girl he used to like was there. It wasn’t her, of course, thankfully. That would be awkward. Troy wouldn’t know what to say, just like he hadn’t back in the day. The whole thing brought back memories. For a moment he was caught up in a wash of things.

  Leaning over, he whispered to the others.

  “Remember, we’re the adults now. The power is ours.”

  Little redheaded Morgan was off to the side. Dressed like a slightly nerdy school boy. He had running shoes on his feet, with tan slacks and a white button up shirt. The idea seemed simple enough to Troy but instead of putting the kid up to speak, or the man in charge doing a warm up, the band played the school theme song first. When it got to a certain part of the instrumental, everyone, including Santos, yelled in unison.

  “Raintree forever!” They did it several times.

  It was really cult like and oppressive. Very similar to the things that his own school used to do.

  Then the principal went up to the front.

  “The world is changing. We have to change with it. Morgan Bauer has an announcement, then we have a brief message from the local police.”