Fallen Stars (The Demon Accords)

by John Conroe

  “Stacia and I retrieved an important book that you found. It was in a temporary hiding spot and we grabbed it last night while you were sleeping and re-growing your brain and what have you,” Katrina said.

  “You keep the book in water? And re-growing a brain isn’t easy you know, but at least it shows I had one to begin with,” I said.

  “Salt water – it hides this books magical scent or whatever. And about your brain? Let’s hope the new one is actually functional, okay?”

  “Let’s go you two. The sun will be up and you’ll be in a coma soon Katrina, so you might not want to antagonize him. There are at least three permanent markers in the glove compartment. Hate to have you wake up with a mustache,” Stacia said from the driver’s door.

  “I better not wake up with any additions or deletions, you hear me half-wit?” Katrina said.

  “We’ll see,” I said, but my heart wasn’t in it. I was studying the Volvo and wondering what had happened to my 4x4 SUV. Stacia laughed at the look on my face.

  “It’s not yours. It belongs to the Pack.”

  We piled into the car and took off, just missing the early morning Asheville business traffic.

  Awasos took up most of the cargo area and Katrina hid herself in a lightweight mummy sleeping bag on the back seat, apparently not bothered by the heat and humidity of North Carolina but needing protection from the sun. She closed down the hood of the bag after delivering dire threats of revenge on any and all transgressions I might make, but her words cut off in mid-sentence as the sun peeked over the mountains. I heard her breathing all but stop, and there was blessed peace in the car.

  Stacia drove well but seemed a little tense on some of the busier sections of road. I offered to drive, but she shook her head. “You’re a very good driver, Chris, but I prefer to wait until your brain injuries are a bit more fully healed. You might not notice, but you freeze up here and there like an odd memory or thought has occurred to you. I don’t want that to happen at seventy-five miles an hour.”

  That stung a little. It would be different if I had a physical injury to my leg or arm that prevented me from doing something. I wouldn’t like it, but it would make sense. But when your very brain is considered suspect, well, that creates a whole different level of self-esteem issues.

  She must have sensed my mood, maybe she smelled it or something, because she said, “Hey, it’s just temporary. You’ll be good in no time.”

  “Except for the fact that I left part of my brain and a big chunk of my life spattered on the Grangers’ doorframe.”

  “Doctor Peterson thinks you may recover your memories over time. He said something about cellular memories.”

  “Stacia, if the part of a computer that holds information is blasted out of existence, it’s not coming back.”

  “But if that information had left copies of itself in other places around the computer, it can be retrieved. He said that there is evidence that supernaturals record a lot of information at the cellular level. There’s doubt that humans do it, but sups are different. The thing is, it just takes time for the information to get found and reorganized again.”

  Katrina had an iPad with cellular connectivity tucked in the back seat with her. I grabbed it and started to research cellular memories and the theories behind them. That kept me busy for a few hours till Stacia pulled off the highway and parked outside a restaurant in Virginia. It was a little place, JC’s Bar and Grill, with the emphasis more on the bar and less on the grill, but it was open for lunch and I was starving despite the half box of granola bars that had vanished down my throat. The other half box had disappeared into my furry friend in the back. I let him out to stretch his legs and water the scruffy vegetation on the edge of the parking lot. I left the tail gate slightly ajar for him, and Stacia and I headed into the food joint. Plank wood floors and walls, a big beat up bar, and a ceiling full of business cards, cut off neckties, and not a few pairs of women’s underwear. The bar area held a handful of tables, but the designated eating area was in a separate section. An older couple was seated further down, and beyond them were two booths of guys who looked to be on lunch break from a construction job. Dirty jeans, heavy workboots, and stained ball caps made up most of their uniform. They all paused in mid-banter to check us out, virtually all of them dismissing me and focusing on Stacia. We grabbed a table near the doorway, as far from them as possible. A thirty-something waitress brought us menus, not saying too much after taking in my eyes and Stacia’s movie-star looks.

  She brought us drinks and then took our rather large order. I got two cheeseburgers (the bacon special and the mushroom burger), both with fries. Stacia ordered a pulled pork sandwich and sweet potato fries and asked for three orders of chicken strips to go for Awasos. The waitress left to place our order, and I headed to the men’s room.

  Four minutes later, I came back to find my seat and the other two all occupied by the construction guys, who were trying their luck with Stacia. The big guy occupying my chair didn’t bother to look up when I hovered next to him, but his two companions both eyed me with expectant grins.

  “Buddy, you’re in my chair.”

  He glanced at me, then turned back to Stacia. Something flared inside me and I got immediately angry. Grabbing the back of his chair, I pulled it out smoothly. That caught at least one guy’s attention, as the man in the chair weighed well over two hundred pounds, but the guy himself just surged to his feet as if he was actually hoping I would start trouble. He put his hand on me and shoved, but I failed to move.

  “Chris!” Stacia’s voice held a warning mixed in with exasperation. I turned to look at her, but part of me felt the guy start another move. When I turned my head back, the something in my chest made me freeze solid, letting his fist crash into my cheekbone. He must have been an angry individual, frustrated with life and his lot in it. Every one of his actions had been geared to starting trouble and now he was throwing a punch that wound up from the floor and aimed for the roof. Every ounce of weight, every erg of energy he had was in this punch. I heard bones snap and crunch under the force of it. They were all in his hand. My head, held in place by the thing inside me, didn’t even quiver, which should have been impossible. I felt the touch of his knuckles but no pain, none at all.

  He, however, felt something. Apparently, it wasn’t good because he dropped to his knees like he’d been kicked from behind, clutching his hand silently while both his eyes widened. He looked shocked for a moment, a brief span of frozen time, till the pain fully hit him. His head went back and he screamed at the ceiling, his voice hitting octaves in ranges that it hadn’t likely seen since puberty.

  His buddies at the table with him just stumbled back for a moment, till their own anger surfaced. One moved to help the broke-fisted guy while the other started toward me with murderous intent. The other guys back at the other two tables—who had been highly entertained till this point—started to get up.

  A deep growl stopped them all like a herd of deer frozen in headlights.

  Everybody in the restaurant: the construction guys, the old couple, the alarmed waitress, and the guy in the cook’s apron with the Louisville slugger coming from the kitchen door, all looked to the bar archway. The wolf that filled it stood as tall as any of the tables and had to be over six feet long standing on all fours. His feet were braced, his shaking jaws gaped open, and he didn’t look very happy, not happy at all. He looked three seconds from a blood bath.

  Stacia sighed and turned to the waitress. “We’ll take that order to go.”

  The cook with the baseball bat turned and glanced at her, not really looking away from the wolf. “You’ll leave right now or I’ll call the sheriff.”

  She shook her platinum locks and grimaced. “We came in for lunch. Your customers attacked my partner and harassed me. Now you’re threatening us with deadly force. Our canine is trained to defend us from all threats. You currently fit that bill as do these products of incest,” she said, waving a hand at the worker guys.
“Wanna see how he responds? No? Then how about this? Get our orders done, we’ll pay and leave, and you all can go about your days. Or we can get all excited and mix it up. See what happens. I’ll leave it to you, but if we end up in a… discussion, you should probably call the ambulances first, before the cops. Those extra moments of medical attention may make a world of difference.”

  The whole group waited on his response. He glanced from the giant wolf to the broke-fisted guy crying on the floor and then at my eyes before looking quickly back to her. “The food’s almost done anyway,” he grumbled, lowering the bat.

  “Good. Chris, why don’t you go with him to get the stuff and I’ll pay our bill,” Stacia said.

  I followed the cook into the kitchen. He refused to look my way, dropping the bat behind the door and heading over to the grill, where he flipped the burgers, stirred the pork, and then got the buns ready. A few minutes later, he pulled the baskets of chicken and potatoes from the fryers, slapped the burgers and pork roughly into the buns and wrapped it all up. Bagging it all, he shoved it in my direction with a rough, “Now get the fuck out!”

  I took the food and headed out of the kitchen, finding Stacia waiting by the door with one hand casually draped on Awasos’s massive neck. The workers were huddled around their friend, watching us with hate-filled eyes but otherwise not moving as we left the joint. The old couple sipped their coffee and watched us warily but overall didn’t look too put out. In fact, I’d hazard a bet that it was the most entertaining lunch they’d had in a long time.

  “Next time you see men hitting on me,” Stacia said in a frosty tone as we climbed into the car, “—why don’t you just sit the hell back and let me handle it! That was almost a major cluster fuck!”

  “They were all over you, and he had my chair,” I said, opening the bags and passing chicken back to ‘Sos.

  “Do you think that was the first time some guys hit on me? Or do you think I’m helpless?” she asked in a dangerous tone. Warning bells were going crazy in my head as I realized I was standing in a minefield without a map.

  “Well, they just ignored me. I couldn’t let them dominate like that!” I said.

  “If they were weres, then I’d agree with you. But they were only human, and I’ve been handling men since puberty! You are not a werewolf, Chris! You don’t have to live and die by the whole macho dominance bullshit that they do! He –" she poked a thumb over her shoulder at the wolf chomping chicken in the back, “will kill anything that threatens you, especially now that you’re not fully yourself.”

  “All I did was yank the chair back! I didn’t even move when he hit me,” I said.

  “Why is that, Chris? Why didn’t you move?” she asked. I could tell by the way she asked it that she already had a pretty good idea of the answer. Which was more than I had.

  “I don’t know. Something sort of froze me,” I answered quietly, thinking about the dark pressure in my chest when it happened.

  “Something else sort of took control? Is that it?”

  I looked sharply in her direction, nodding at her words. How did she know that?

  “Remember when we talked about your other personality? The one you likened to Anthony Hopkins mixed with Hugh Jackman?”

  “I said Hannibal Lector mixed with Wolverine, with a little Chuck Norris,” I corrected.

  “Whatever. I always remember actors not characters, especially Hugh,” she said a bit wistfully. “But the point is, that whole freezing up thing? That was your other self, Grim, tweaking the fight a bit. Oh, he didn’t do much, just a little lockup of the muscles for a moment, but it resulted in Burt back there with a completely smashed hand, one he won’t be able to work with. How’s he going to support his family?”

  “Family? Burt? How the hell do I know? He threw the punch—doesn’t he get to live with the consequences? What if I’d been normal and he landed that punch? I’d be in the hospital and he’d be in jail!”

  She took a deep breath, letting it out slowly. “Look, of course you’re right. He overreacted to you objecting to his taking your seat. He threw the punch and if it ended up hurting him, then so be it. My point is that you reacted with anger—emotion. Instead of swallowing your ego, you escalated something that I had under control. You failed to trust me to handle it, you couldn’t control your alter ego, and all that brought ‘Sos to protect you. It could have been real bad. You need to think before jumping in, that’s my point—and you need to trust that I can handle stuff!”

  I thought about that. I hadn’t thought, just reacted. Physically, we had been under no real threat. His fist had done nothing to me. What if I had punched him? He’d be dead or so badly damaged, it wouldn’t be much different from death. I hadn’t controlled any part of the equation. That wasn’t how I had been trained growing up. Gramps would be disappointed by that performance. I ran through the whole scene, right up to the point where Stacia paid for the food. I couldn’t even handle that part—paying for stuff.

  I pulled out my wallet and went through it, not recognizing much except my driver’s license, pistol permit, and diving certification. Even the hunting license was the wrong color, with an unfamiliar address in New York City on it. There was a debit card for a big bank, one I didn’t remember ever visiting. I did find my old ATM card for the little bank where I’d opened my first savings and checking accounts, which made me feel better.

  “I need to go home,” I said softly.

  “That’s where we’re headed,” she replied.

  “No—I mean home-home. Back to the farm. Back to my grandfather.”

  She glanced my way a bunch of times, trying to read me, but I wasn’t feeling very much like sharing emotions right then. I threw my wallet on the dash and stared out the window.

  “Chris, it’ll be okay,” she said.

  “Okay? Why? Because I will never age, never get sick, always heal? Because I have a killer inside me that can wipe out entire gangs? I don’t even know what I am. The most important memories I have are gone, Stacia… spattered on someone’s house. I don’t think it’ll ever be alright.”

  She didn’t say anything to that, which was good, because there really wasn’t anything to say.

  Chapter 23

  We actually didn’t much further down the road before they hit us. Lunch was done and bagged up and we were just settling into food coma when it happened.

  I-81 crosses the New River just outside of Radford, Virginia. Over five hundred feet of suspended highway bridging the river sixty feet below.

  A third of the way over the bridge, we both noticed a big tractor trailer in front of us shudder as shreds of heavy black rubber exploded from its front left tire. The driver fought the tractor into a jackknife that swung the trailer across to block the entire forty-foot width of the highway. Brake lights lit up in front of us as the other seven cars ahead tried to go from seventy miles per hour to zero. They did remarkably well, with only two cars briefly sideswiping each other before breaking apart and coming to a stop.

  Stacia’s werewolf reflexes were more than adequate for the job. She jumped us from the right lane to the left to avoid rear-ending a family in a minivan that must have had exceptional brakes. We slid to a stop, and Katrina rolled off the back seats and banged into the back of us. She didn’t make a sound.

  I climbed out of the car, the darkness in my chest feeling like it was a split second from bursting out. Behind us, cars were stopping in waves and ahead, other people were climbing out like I had. The driver of the tractor trailer opened his cab door and started to step out, only to look suddenly out his passenger side window at something or someone at the other end of the bridge who we couldn't see. A second later, he was flying backward toward us like a bomb had gone off. A figure climbed up on top of the trailer, a man wearing black pants, a black shirt, and a black cape, of all things.

  “That’s Cooper… Sam Cooper!” Stacia said, like I was supposed to know who that was. Two other individuals climbed up on the trailer and the roof of
the tractor’s cab—a man and a woman, both wearing the snazzy black capes.

  “Chris, he’s a warlock we met last night, and he wants the book! He must have brought his whole Circle with him.”

  The black bulk in my chest burst forth, and my body was no longer my own. A mental image of the surrounding terrain popped up like something the Terminator would have in his CPU. Six figures ranged the bank of the river behind us, all with good views of the bridge. Besides the three on the top of the semi, there were three more on the far shore.

  “Listen, magic doesn’t work well over moving water, so they will want to stay on the banks. My witch friend said that a strong circle of witches can transfer power among themselves,” Stacia instructed as she got out on her side. My body didn’t answer her, just reached back into the car to the center console, grabbing a fistful of coins from the toll money we kept there. I was completely puzzled by that move, but Stacia just took it in and gave a short sharp nod. I think she knew more about what was happening to me than I did.