I came to in Interview #1, appreciating the upgrade to the bigger room this time. I wasn’t handcuffed to anything, and there was a bottle of water in front of me, so I drank it to try and get the taste of demon smoke out of my mouth. Even three-day-old grocery store sushi can’t hold a candle to the nasty that is demon funk.
I downed the water in a long pull, squeezing the sides flat as I went. I held it up and shook it at the camera in the corner of the room, then turned it upside down in the universal sign for “more?” No dice. I set the empty bottle on the table, turned to the big two-way mirror in one wall that served as an observation window and waved, then pointed at the empty bottle again.
“Service in this restaurant sucks. I’ll have you know that my review will reflect as much,” I said, pushing my chair away from the table. I’d just put my feet up and leaned back when the door opened and Detective Flynn stomped in. She strode across the room, knocked my feet off the table, and sat down across from me. I sat up and scooted my chair forward, putting my elbows on the table and situating myself directly in front of the microphone. I fully intended to blow it up, but I wanted to make it look good for the observers.
“What the fuck happened in there, Harker?” Flynn asked.
I raised an eyebrow. “Why Detective, such language is unbecoming a professional like yourself. I don’t know that I will ever be able to repair my image of you.”
“Go fuck yourself. Now what happened in that cell?”
“Why should I bother telling you? You won’t believe me.”
“Try me.”
“I’ve been trying you for three years now. Every time you haul me in, I start off with the truth and have to go further and further afield of it to find something you’ll believe. Why don’t you just tell me what you want to think happened in there and I’ll agree to it?”
“I don’t know how you did it, but somehow you managed to goad a man in custody for shoplifting into fighting with you in a holding cell, and then you set off some kind of smoke bomb, filling the jail with smoke and obscuring exactly what was going on in there, while for some reason the shoplifter and a low-level pot and Adderall dealer got into an altercation, leaving the dealer dead, and the shoplifter attacking you, of all ridiculous people. Those are things that I know happened. Now I want to know why.”
“I told you, I can’t explain it in any way that you will believe.”
“And I told you to try me.”
“I’m tired of wasting my breath, Detective. And I’m tired of being here. So why don’t you either put me back in holding, or show me to the door?”
“Why don’t I just fast-track an arraignment on murder charges, hold you here until that happens, and then throw away the key? I’m tired of this, Harker. I’m tired of all the weird shit happening when you’re around, I’m tired of not being able to explain anything to anyone, and I’m tired of the goddamn mess you leave behind!” Flynn was standing with her hands on the table, sweat staining the neck of her dark purple blouse, and her hair falling from the usually neat ponytail. Her jaw was clenching and unclenching rapidly, and a vein had popped out a little on her forehead. My expert analysis revealed that she was pissed.
Unfortunately for Detective Flynn, any electronics in the room, and my own chances of getting out of jail that night, I was in pretty shite mood myself. I stood up slowly, doing that twitchy thing I know I do with my fingers when I’m about to lose my shit, where I tap each finger in succession off my thumbs, faster and faster until I just make a fist and really get the shitshow started. It goes back to when I was younger and tried to keep my temper by counting to ten. Usually I lost interest in counting along about the fifth language, and just hit whatever was pissing me off. I was really hoping I could keep my shit together enough not to punch Detective Flynn. I kinda liked her, and really didn’t need the drama that punching cops brings in America.
“Detective Flynn,” I began slowly. “If you think it’s tough being around me, having to occasionally clean up some of the mess when I leave, being thrust into the middle of pieces of my strange and cursedly interesting life, please take a second and think how it must feel to fucking live it. I don’t get to go home after filling out paperwork about the man who died in the cell tonight, I get to go home and see his face in my dreams. I don’t get to put a neat little label on the fire and smoke that billowed through your precinct tonight, I have to live with the fucking scars.” I rolled up my sleeves and showed my tattoos.
Usually they aren’t visible, being applied with a magically enhanced UV ink. But when I call upon the power stored there, they burn out the ink, the hard way, by setting the ink on fire while it’s still in my skin. That leaves a nasty set of burns that takes weeks to heal. Then I have to go back in to a mystical tattoo artist and have the work redone. In UV ink again. With spells entwined into the design. Spells that take a piece of my soul to fuse to my body and my being. It takes about three weeks to be healed enough to get the tattoos done, then about another four weeks to heal from the tattooing. So I don’t burn those up lightly. Also, having second-degree burns running the length of both arms and down each finger hurts like a son of a bitch.
I went on. “Now I’m going to tell you what happened in that cell. And I’m going to make sure that everyone behind that glass can hear it this time. But there will be no recording. Are we clear?”
“What do you intend to do about that, Mr. Harker?” A voice came through the grill under the window.
“This.” I replied. I held my arms out toward the ceiling, spread out from my shoulders in a “Y.” “Futue te ipsum!” I said at the top of my lungs and pushed my power out through my fingertips. The camera on the wall exploded in a shower of sparks, the table recorder in the center of the table flew six inches into the air and landed on its back, smoking. The two-way mirror shattered, and three very surprised men in suits stood staring at me from the other side. One man sitting at a computer suddenly jerked a set of headphones off his head and threw them to the ground, cursing as sparks flew from his laptop. A high-pitched squeal came from Detective Flynn’s pocket, and she jumped up, reached into her pants, and threw her smoldering cell phone onto the ground. I smirked as all the men in the observation room did the same.
“Now that we can chat undisturbed by all these electronic toys, let me give you all the lowdown on what happened here tonight. If there’s anyone in that room that you don’t think is high enough in the food chain to hear what I’m about to tell you, now’s your chance to send them home.” The suits looked at each other, then at the technician, who was still rubbing his scorched ear. After a couple of seconds of silent consultation, one of the suits with a square jaw and air of authority tapped the tech on the shoulder and pointed at the door. The skinny tech pouted for a second, but then looked at me and apparently decided that he wasn’t that interested in finding out the truth if I had anything to do with it.
“Good,” I said. “Now let’s be clear about this—there are things in this world that men and women aren’t meant to understand. We aren’t supposed to know these things exist, much less how to fight them. The things that go bump in the night, the monsters in the closet, the shadow out of the corner of your eye—that’s where I live. These are the things I deal with every fucking day, and neither your gun, nor your badge, nor that little medal of St. Jude you wear on a silver chain around your neck will protect you from the shit that is going down in our fair city these days. Nice choice, by the way, St. Jude. I’ve always tossed an extra coin his way when I make an offering. I figure if anybody’s gonna look after me, it’ll be him.”
“Why don’t you tell us exactly what it is that’s got you so scared, Harker?” Flynn asked. She was back in her chair, burning pants forgotten as she pretended to be having just another normal day at the office. Her left hand trailed up to trace the medal under her shirt, but she caught herself and with a visible effort pulled it back to the table.
“Jacob Marlack,” I said.
“Yeah, he�
��s the one who filed the most recent complaint against you,” Flynn replied.
“Like I give a fuck about his complaint. I’m much more concerned about the fact that he’s summoning demons. Actually, it’s worse than that. He’s letting his fratboy son summon demons and use them to seduce and rape underage girls.”
Flynn looked at me for a long moment and then sat back down, leaning on the table. “Why is it never just drugs? Other detectives get meth heads flipping out and shooting their wives and children over a fucked up batch of bastardized cold medicine. I get an overgrown Harry fucking Potter and his evil wizards.”
“I guess you’re just lucky, Detective,” I said.
“That’s not exactly what I’d call it.” She turned to where the mirror used to be and spoke to the three men standing there. “I assume since you haven’t called for the men in white suits with the jacket that buckles in the back that you’re taking this seriously?”
The men looked at each other, then the one with the square jaw walked out of the room. A few seconds later the door to the interview room opened and he stepped in. He walked like twenty years of military, and had a “don’t fuck with me” set to his jaw. He pulled a chair from the wall over to the table and sat down, sliding a badge holder over to me. I opened it, and staring back at me was a picture of Crew Cut with the name “John A. Smith” under it in blue block letters. Written over the picture were the words “US Department of Homeland Security” and on a line right below that, in much smaller print, “Paranormal Division.” A gold badge on the facing side displayed the Homeland Security logo with an assortment of the world’s major religions’ holy symbols arranged in a circle on the shield the eagle was holding.
“Pleased to meet you, Mr. Smith,” I said, sliding the badge back over to him. “Looks like we’re in the same line of work.”
“And what do you call your line of work, Mr. Harker?” Smith asked. He didn’t return my smile. I decided not to feel hurt.
“I call myself a security specialist.”
“You lying sack of shit, you call yourself a demon hunter.” Flynn leaned back in her chair, arms crossed across her chest.
“Same thing, Detective. Same thing.”
“What can you tell us about Marlack?” Smith asked.
“What else do you want to know? He summons demons, lets them screw little girls, and then casts them aside like so much garbage,” I said. “Now are you going to help me kill this motherfucker, or what?”
Chapter 10
I gave Crew Cut my most charming smile, which I’ve been told reminds people of Anthony Hopkins from Silence of the Lambs, but he didn’t even blink. In fact, he stared at me so long without blinking I started to wonder if he had eyelids. Finally, he nodded a little and waved to the other two men.
One came into the room and Smith said, “Bring us some more water. I think we’re going to be able to work with Mr. Harker here.”
“Are you fucking insane?” Flynn asked. “Because he is. You heard what he was babbling about, right? Demons, monsters, things that go bump in the night? What the fuck, Smith? You can’t possibly believe in this shit.” Flynn stood up and started pacing around the interview room muttering to herself.
“Detective, you’re still in this room as a courtesy,” Smith said. Flynn froze in her pacing and turned slowly to stare at the back of the agent’s head. “Now if you’d like to sit down and contribute to the discussion, that’s fine. If you’d like to sit down and keep your goddamn mouth shut, that’s also fine. But you will sit the fuck down, right the fuck now, or you will leave this room. Do you understand me?”
Smith never raised his voice. He never changed the cadence of his speech one bit, and didn’t even turn to look at the stunned detective. But there was no question in my mind that he was not a man to fuck with. And I am not widely regarded as someone who knows many boundaries. Flynn stood there gaping for several seconds until the door opened and the other suit came back with three bottles of water. He set the water on the table and stood there, awaiting further instruction. Smith waved a hand, and the suit in the room with us and the suit still in the room behind what used to be the two-way mirror both left and made themselves scarce.
“They’ll take up positions outside the doors to make sure we aren’t disturbed. Now, Detective, we have a problem to deal with. Are you part of the solution?” He motioned toward Flynn’s chair, and she sat.
I unscrewed the cap on a bottle of water and sucked it down, still trying to get the taste of exorcism out of my mouth. “So what can I do for you, Agent Smith?” I asked.
“Just exactly what you intended to do before meeting me—kill Jacob Marlack.”
Flynn’s head whipped back and forth between Smith and me. “What? Are you serious? We can’t just—” Smith held up a hand, and Flynn cut her words off like a spigot.
“He kicked my ass the last time I tried. You got something to help even the odds?” I asked.
“Information,” Smith replied.
“You want to elaborate on that, pal, or are we going to play cat and mouse all night?” I downed the last of my water and reached out for another. Smith gave me a little “go ahead” with his hand, and I took another drink. Rate I was going, I supposed I could drown Marlack in piss if nothing else came to mind.
“We think Marlack has been at this game for quite a while, and may have some enemies that could come in handy.” He pushed a piece of paper across the table at me. I took it, and looked at the names written there. My eyes widened at the third name on the list.
“These are some of Hell’s heaviest hitters. You’re telling me that Marlack double-crossed these guys and lived to tell the tale?” I asked.
“Somehow that’s exactly what he’s done. And along the way he’s done a lot worse than just giving a few teenaged girls over to be demon meat. He’s engineered mass killings all over the world, with his fingers in pies from Cambodia to Haiti. For about the last century and a half, if there’s been incredible bloodshed and suffering, he’s been involved.
“But never the front-page stuff, only the stuff where the ‘civilized’ world won’t pay attention,” Smith continued.
“You mean he only kills brown and yellow people,” I translated.
“Pretty much. That keeps him off the radar of the people with the resources to root him out and take care of him once and for all.”
“Until now. What’s different now?” I leaned back and put my feet up on the table and sipped my water while studying Smith. He was a white guy, late forties but still looked like he could kick a normal human’s ass pretty well. He probably ran, did calisthenics, took target practice three or four times a week, that kind of thing. He wasn’t a golf course and gym kind of lean, he was the walk into the woods for a week with a bandana and pocketknife kind of whipcord muscle. But there was something in his eyes that held me. This was a man that had seen some serious shit, and walked away from it, but not without leaving some pieces of himself behind.
“I’m different now. We have a very small department, but we have the full force and authority of the Department of Homeland Security at our disposal.”
“Like the boys in those Mission:Impossible movies. All the toys, but none of the backup. If we fuck up, we’re on our own. Right, Agent ‘Smith?’” I put a little extra emphasis on the name to let him know that I knew it was fake. He smiled a little half-smile that was as close as I’d seen him come to a grin.
“That pretty much sums it up. Now I’ve given you some valuable information about our friend Jacob Marlack. Do you know what to do with it?”
Then it clicked. “You can’t do it yourself. That’s why you want me. You don’t have enough magic to light a fucking candle, do you?”
“Not even the tiniest bit,” Smith confirmed.
“So I get to be the sword.”
“And I’m the arm. Exactly.”
“Well loosen your grip on my johnson. I’ve got this.”
“And where do I fit into this little
magical Justice League?” Flynn asked.
“Do you want in, Detective?” Smith asked her, and something in his tone told me he was asking a lot bigger question that his words would indicate.
Flynn must have heard the same thing, because she didn’t answer right away. She looked at Smith, then at me, then at the shards of glass on the floor. “This is one of those moments that no matter what I say, I’m probably going to look back on it in twenty years and regret my decision, isn’t it? If I say yes, I go down the rabbit hole with you lunatics and my career stalls at Detective. I’m done with any kind of real career advancement, and any good things that happen to me in my job, I don’t get to tell anyone about. If I say no, I spend the rest of my life working cases and saying, ‘What if?’”
“If it makes you feel any better, the odds of you living twenty years in this line of work are pretty slim,” I said. That’s my idea of being helpful. I kinda liked Flynn. She was a pain in my ass, but she was a constant, something steady that I could count on. I wasn’t sure I wanted her involved in my world, not really.
“I’m in.” I was afraid of that. No detective worth a damn could turn down something like this, and Flynn was one of the best I’d ever met.
“Fine, then. Let’s get Mr. Harker out of here and see what can be done about our friend Marlack. Mr. Harker—”
“Call me Q. Looks like I’m stuck with you for a little while, no need to stand on formalities. Right, Smitty?”
“Sure,” the agent replied. I’m sure he gave not a single shit what I called him, as long as I killed what he wanted killed and didn’t rack up too big a civilian body count in the process.
“And what would you like me to call you, darlin’?” I looked at Detective Flynn. “Becky? Gail?”
“Flynn will do just fine. And if you don’t mind horribly, I’ll keep calling you fucknuts. At least in my head.” She stepped to the door and opened it. “Let’s go. I’ll have to do some fast talking to get your release paperwork processed, but—”
Raising Hell - a Quincy Harker, Demon Hunter Novella Page 7