by John Conroe
That was all the time it got because I tossed it up and called for Kirby. The reassuring otherworldly bulk of God’s holy raptor flashed into existence, plucking the lump of hellspew from the air and disappearing.
Standing there, breathing the rotten-egg stench of demon, I smiled, absurdly happy at the familiar sighting of the Collector of lost demons. I smiled at the stunned group of women around me.
“How fucked up is it that I finally feel like something is right in my life? That the sight of a supernatural ghost bird makes me feel like I’m back from the shadowlands?”
My voice, spoken at normal tones, made Gina jump, just a little. But my words reached her inner psychologist. “You’re doing something that you remember well, as unholy strange as it is. It’s completely familiar to you. Feeling good about it is normal. It’s the fact that you’ve been doing it your whole life that’s fucked up,” Gina said.
The others gaped at her like she’d grown tentacles out her ears. “You swore!” Lydia said, completely shocked. “You never swear!”
Gina’s expression was mild exasperation. She wiped a sheen of sweat from her brow and glanced nervously around. “There are times, Lydia, when a good, healthy f-bomb is not only appropriate but damn near mandatory.”
They all chuckled, but their laughs were soft, the atmosphere still feeling like a hostile warzone.
I opened my senses back up, probing the building around me with techniques I had been using since middle school. The pull toward the basement was still there, but something also waited above.
Pausing at each floor to feel things out, I kept us climbing till we reached the top of the building. A sense of foreboding and doom crept up on my little group, increasing the higher we went. Like suspenseful music in a horror flick. Gina’s fear had increased and Nika acted uncomfortable. Stacia was afraid but controlling it. She smelled increasingly of wolf, and she growled softly to herself as she continued to check behind us.
“Think how hard this would be without those nifty necklaces,” I said in a normal voice, making almost everyone jump. They all glared at me. “What? You think they can’t hear whispers? Besides, I want it to come to me. That’s always easier than chasing them down.”
“You’re actually comfortable with this, aren’t you?” Lydia asked, amazed and slightly pissed off by my attitude.
“Yeah, I guess I am. It’s the first thing that makes sense to me. The first situation where I actually understand what’s going on.”
“Are we really going to have to hunt this thing down?” Stacia asked, her attention on the area behind us. She was doing an excellent job of rear guard, something most people suck at. The average human wants to see what’s in front, where they’re headed. But a good tail-end Charlie needs to keep all their attention on the vulnerable space behind their group. I guess having an Army ranger for a father added a whole different layer of childhood skills.
Wait, how did I know her father was a ranger? It was just a little piece of information that popped up.
We were now on the top floor, walking down the hallway toward the last apartment.
“Chris? I asked you a question?”
“He’s just had a memory flash,” Nika said.
“Stop that,” I said to the mind reader. “And no, Stacia, we won’t need to hunt it down.”
“Why not, Christian?” Tanya asked, her voice wrapping itself around my name. “Can it not hear our conversation? Won’t it understand our plan?”
“Ah, well, yeah. But you see, demons are like sharks. Once a shark gets a snoutful of blood scent, it almost can’t stop itself. That’s why fishermen use chum.”
“But what do demons scent?” Tanya asked.
“Fear. They can’t stay away from fear,” I said, slowing my approach to the last apartment on the right. Something was stirring behind the partially open door. A wave of hopelessness rolled over my little group. Gina sucked in a sharp breath, her heartbeat pounding loudly in her chest. Tanya, Lydia, Nika, and Stacia all glanced at Gina, then me. I nodded. “It can’t stay away from her terror.”
The apartment door slammed open and a horror show face of fang, rotten flesh, and burning eyes flashed out into the hallway and turned, screaming, at us.
Only really well fed or naturally strong demons can manage a visible display like that. It froze up the little group behind me, which was part of its desired effect. But it didn’t bother me; no, it just felt like old times. Familiar ground. What wasn’t familiar was the speed at which I moved down the hall and right into its midst. Unfamiliar but very welcome. The squishy sack of demon goo never had a chance. It was in the middle of a blood-curdling scream when I shoved my left arm into its face and swirled it around like a paper funnel in a cotton candy machine. The mess of black sputum that wrapped tightly about my arm smelled of brimstone and rot. Horrid stuff, but it made me smile like a kid at the county fair. My hand went up, Kirby flashed by and snagged the pile of hell crap, giant wings flapped, and then the God Raptor was gone.
I dusted off my hands and smiled at the little group of shocked females standing openmouthed in the hall. I was thinking a snack might go good, but then I noticed the pull downward was still present and I stopped in mid-smile.
“What?” Tanya asked.
“There is still something going on in the basement.”
The bottom-most level of the building took the horror movie vibe to a new level. From what the Commissioner had told us, it had started here. I could believe it.
Blood, lots of blood, along with several body parts that the cops had missed in their rush to get out of the demon-infested building. Someone’s right hand, hacked off at the wrist, was lying on the broken kitchen table in the one and only apartment, and an ear, or at least most of an ear, was on the bedside table in the single bedroom. It was sitting next to the bed like it was the last thing to take off before bedtime.
I noticed all that, but my focus was centered on the wall at the head of the bed and the grapefruit-sized hole that appeared to look directly into outer space.
Its outlines weren’t even or symmetrical, but rather jagged and irregular, and closer inspection showed it wasn’t a peephole into the galaxy but rather one that looked into a swirling, greasy blackness that smelled of sulfur and felt like the end of all things. Things moved under the cloak of black, things that sent shudders down my spine. In other words, it looked into Hell.
The others crowded around me, studying the deceptively small opening.
“That’s tiny compared to the one in Asheville,” Stacia noted. “Maybe that’s why only a few demons got through?” she directed at me.
I shrugged. It might have only been a day ago, but I might as well have never been there for all the memory I had of it. For all intents, this was my first time seeing one. The God Tear hanging around my neck warmed noticeably as I looked at the breach in our reality.
“Can you close it?” Tanya asked after giving Stacia an annoyed glance.
I opened my mouth to answer no, then shut it with a snap. I did know how to close it. The technique was just sort of sitting there in my mind, laid out like clean clothes on a bedspread.
Moving closer, I touched the edge of the hole with my right hand and sent a stream of aura around the opening. My own eyes widened involuntarily at the strength of the aura flow that poured effortlessly from my fingers. The God Tear on my chest warmed again.
What the hell had I been up to for the last two years?
When the irregular opening was cleanly outlined in purple, I switched hands, my left now beginning to draw the ropey tendril of power like a drawstring. The edges of the hole first smoothed out, then began to shrink. From grapefruit to baseball to fifty-cent piece. The blackness bulged suddenly, pressing out of the opening in some horrific parody of a child blowing a black gum bubble. The bubble popped and a scaly tentacle shot out, wrapping around my fingers and constricting tight. I jumped but didn’t let go or stop drawing the circle shut, even as I felt a burning pain in my ha
nd. Acrid fumes rose off my hand as whatever hell acid the tentacle was excreting began to eat away my flesh. Intense pain shot up my arm, but instead of making me let go, it spurred me to yank the rest of the aura rope into me and iris the hole shut with a sharp camera-shutter snap. The demon tentacle was severed and I yanked it off, throwing it down on the crumpled pillow directly under where the hole had been.
The pillow began to smoke but stopped as the hellish flesh melted into stinky green goo.
Tanya grabbed my arm and towed me to the kitchen, where she shoved my hand under the faucet and liberally doused it with cold water. After a couple of minutes, the burning stopped and I got brave enough to inspect my fingers. The flesh had been eaten away, but as I watched, the ravaged flesh began to knit itself back together. Within moments, the angry wounds were fleshed over and merely red. By the time the two of us had walked back to the bedroom, it was completely healed. Tanya just patted my arm and smiled at my amazement before turning to the others. Gina was standing back, watching avidly but cautiously as the other three pressed and probed the wall where the hole had been.
“Something’s been carved into the sheetrock,” Lydia noted, both hands feeling the wall as she kneeled on the bed.
“There’s other carvings over here,” Stacia added from her position two feet to Lydia’s right and leaning over the ear-covered bed table to trace one hand across the wall.
“I see pentagrams and some runes, but they look poorly drawn. Like bad copies,” Lydia commented.
“Yeah, the hole was right in the middle of this pentagram, but you’re right. It looks like a child drew it.”
“Some witch wannabe?” Nika asked, leaning close to the wall but keeping both arms crossed in front of her.
“The big hole in Asheville was caused by a witch’s grimoire. Maybe someone triggered another here by practicing witchcraft?” Stacia wondered.
“It was the size of the wall?” Nika asked.
“Yeah. The things that came through were… tough,” Stacia said, shuddering slightly.
“Let’s get out of here,” Gina suggested. “I, for one, would like some fresh air.”
“Agreed,” Tanya said, turning me toward the door. We headed back to up to the first floor although Lydia hung back a bit, still checking things out, finally catching up as we approached the front door. I glanced at her, wondering why she would hang back.
She must have read my expression. “We’re vampires. We don’t run out of haunted buildings. There’s a reputation to keep up.”
I laughed, caught off guard by the mini-vampire who could pass for Tinkerbell’s dark twin.
Chapter 29
We pulled our hazard suits back on and tromped back outside. I left my helmet off, while the ladies kept theirs on. It would be too weird if any media got pictures of me with a half-dozen model look-alikes.
We marched over to the van we had arrived in, the Commissioner and a small posse of police brass waiting impatiently for us. Standing just behind the Commissioner were two suits, both large, one with a really bad combover. They both tensed as I approached, faces hostile and tight.
“It’s clear,” I told him. The six women started to strip off their suits, but this time, they had about seven eager helpers instead of two. Nobody helped me.
“You’re sure it’s safe?” Rielly asked me. The Cardinal, now wearing a nice suit and tie, appeared from the group of brass and leaned close to listen. I directed my comments to both of them.
“There were two demons and a rift or hole that seemed to be their point of origin. I got rid of both of them and shut the hole. The building’s a mess, though. I can’t tell you if anything else came through and left the building before we got here.”
“What do you mean by anything else?” Rielly asked me.
“If someone in the building was particularly weak or depressed and despondent, their soul could be pushed out entirely. Just a shell with a demon inside. Hellbourne. Mobile chaos.”
“Great!” he said. “How do we know?”
“Check the building's residents. See if anyone is missing,” I said.
Commissioner Rielly turned and nodded to another high-ranking officer, who made a sharp hand gesture to a waiting squad of cops. The team immediately moved into the apartment building with more cops following.
“Mr. Gordon, I’ve been talking to some of my people—ones that already know about you—and I think you and I should talk,” Cardinal Kellan said.
“That’s probably a good idea, Cardinal, but Chris has had a really long, tiring day. Why don’t you have your people call mine and we’ll see what we can arrange,” Tanya said, suddenly by my side.
The Cardinal accepted the business card she handed him, a surprised look on his face. He looked around as if to figure out how she had appeared like that, his surprise turning to a frown as an apparent answer occurred to him. I heard his heart rate almost double at the same time.
“T-that would be fine,” he stuttered briefly. “I’ll do just that,” he finished, his voice firmer as he regained himself.
“Gordon, I want to thank you for taking care of this for me,” Rielly said.
“I didn’t do it for you. In fact, I don’t like you much,” I replied evenly. The big guys behind him moved forward a step.
Rielly’s expression became closed and guarded. “I’d be careful there, Gordon. I’m a much better friend than an enemy. You don’t want me as an enemy.”
I slid forward fast. Leaned in close so I was in his face. “Is that what we are? Enemies? I hadn’t gotten there yet, but it’s a short trip. But the thing is, you’ve got so very much to lose and I, well, I have already lost enough to make the rest hardly worthwhile. So let me know if you want to do that enemy thing full on, Rielly.”
The thing others called Grim was peeking out of my eyes as I delivered my quiet message, and his glance took in the two muscleheads behind the Commissioner. I must have known them because they sure knew me—only now, they were nervous, really nervous. Rielly paled as he got a glimpse of my dark side.
Officers manning radios interrupted us to report, which created enough distraction for us to withdraw, although Rielly kept his eyes on me as we moved away.
“Maybe a cop will drive us home… wherever that is?” I suggested.
“Don’t be silly. Arkady is here with the limo,” Lydia said.
Limo? They traveled by limo?
Sure enough, a huge Mercedes limo was parked as close to the police tape as you could get. The giant from the parking garage was standing outside it, ignoring the stares he was getting from the curious onlookers.
“Stacia, why don’t you get out at my place? I think Afina mentioned that she and Brock were attending a function near my house. You could meet up with them and their security team.”
“Oh, I’m not sure we have enough room in the limo for everyone,” Lydia said suddenly and blatantly.
I stopped dead in my tracks. I had heard far more than my quota of words like that delivered in just that tone in my high school years. And my memories of high school were about all I had left.
“Then you all go on. Stacia and I can catch a cab,” I said, frowning at the small vampire. Awasos woofed at me. “And 'Sos.”
Caught off guard by my response, she started to speak but stopped at Nika’s light touch on her arm. A light touch on my arm brought me around to the blue-eyed vampire who had stayed within a foot of me for most of the evening. “Lydia’s wrong. There is plenty of room in the limo,” Tanya said to me, with a nod at Stacia.
“Okay then.”
We piled into the giant car, finding enough room for ten people and a wolf-bear. Lydia was frowning, obviously in thought about what had occurred, her eyes glancing my way when I wasn’t watching.
I ended up in the forward-facing passenger seat with Tanya on one side and Nika on the other. I felt weird, like this was supposed to be normal for me, but it wasn’t, not even a little bit. My stomach rumbled and Tanya spoke, in a quiet voice, d
irecting her words to the driver and Arkady in the front. “We need to grab some takeout for Chris.”
“I’ve already ordered a sub platter from one of our delis, Young Queen,” Arkady rumbled back.
Young queen? Our delis? I knew the Coven was immensely wealthy, but it was just a vague concept. Now, seeing and hearing example after example, it made me wonder just how much money did they have?