by LW Herndon
“It’s a mix, a cross between nutmeg, allspice, and fresh pine.”
One long swallow later, she’d stemmed her shock. “The baking aisle and mulch? Suppose that’s better than puke and pee.”
Glass half empty. I shook my head. “More like Christmas. It’s also how I can tell you’re lying to me, Julie.”
Her initial confusion at my reference and the startled twitch of her arm as she looked at the floorboard didn’t give me much hope of breaking through her tough shell. “I’m not the police. I don’t intend to send you back to somewhere you’ve tried so hard to hide from.”
She gave a quick nod, but her gaze stayed fixed on her filthy sneakers.
“When did they first get a hold of your brother?”
Her head whipped up and she scrutinized me. I glanced over and then back to the road. “Let me guess. You left him somewhere you considered safe. Met up later and he was high.” I turned off on a smaller, paved two-lane road. “Then it happened again, maybe even when he tried to stay clear of them and out of public view.”
Another glance—her eyes had gotten bigger, but her posture remained frozen as she stared at me.
“How long?” I heard her swallow, the sound an uncomfortable, dry combination of thirst and fear.
“Four weeks. Maybe five.”
“You’ve moved him around to keep them off his trail.” It wasn’t a question. I knew what I would have done when people were after me. I had been lucky to find a place to go. One no human predator could follow. “Somehow they always found him.”
She shifted in the seat.
“You don’t have to believe me or trust me, but you and your brother will be safer where I’m taking you. Those men won’t expect this, and there are…defenses we can use.”
“You live there?”
“No.” I glanced over again, not sure whether I saw fear or reassurance flicker across her face. “This place belongs to someone long on faith and heavy on firepower.”
That and a few well-placed magical wards should keep the Consortium from finding the kids. At least for the few days it would take me to get some better safeguards in place.
***
I turned down a long dirt lane. The dead end curved in front of a modest but older ranch-style house, shrouded in large sprays of ornamental grasses and palm trees.
With the car in park, I turned to the girl. “Raymond Caulder is a retired navy chaplain. If you and your brother are lucky, he’ll take you in.” I glanced into the backseat. “He’s a pretty effective defense against things that go bump in the night. It doesn’t have to be forever, but it will give you both a fighting chance.”
She looked toward the house and passed a worried glance over her brother’s unconscious form. We both knew she had no options. Still, she played it close to the vest. “Are you going to make us stay?”
God, she was stubborn. I held up my hands. “If you don’t feel safe here once you’ve talked to Ray, I’ll take you both back downtown. I can’t guarantee I won’t call Social Services the minute I drop you off.” I shrugged. “But you’ll get a head start.”
The glare she gave was now so familiar, I don’t honestly know what I would do if the kid smiled. I wouldn’t recognize her.
“Fine.”
I turned off the car. The warrior teen pushed open her door and stood with her arms crossed while I hauled her brother over my shoulder.
“Shouldn’t we leave him in the car, just in case?”
“Not a chance. Those men can track him. They’ve proven that. Inside will be harder. Ray has protection in place. Your brother will be better off with someone to watch him. All the time.”
She pursed her lips silently acknowledging my peanut of wisdom. Finally, concurrence.
The front door cracked open. The inside light silhouetted a large man cradling a shotgun in the crook of one arm.
“Ray, I’ve brought you some trouble.”
“So what else is new?” The brief, deep chuckle crackled with vestiges of years of cigarette smoking.
“You’re kidding, right?” The girl turned to me, fury on her face, as she hissed in a loud whisper, “You can’t believe he can protect us?”
“You’re not as smart as I gave you credit for,” I muttered, and stepped around her to head toward the well-armed giant in the wheelchair. She had no choice but to follow.
Ray waved me to put the boy on his couch and closed the door behind us. He locked three dead bolts, braced a security bar into the notch in the floor and the wedge under the door handle. Then he slid the sawed-off Winchester into a holster attached to the chair. Right next to a small pouch I knew held the King James Version of the Bible and a second waterproof pouch for his buckshot shells. While not a deadly deterrent for a demon, the specialized buckshot would hurt enough to make them think twice. The distraction would give Ray a chance to go for the Glock G20 he kept tucked beneath the seat of his chair. That ammunition was lethal.
He rolled over to the boy, checked the neck below the jaw for a pulse, timing it with an old diving watch on his arm. “What’s he taking?”
I leaned back against the wall and nodded to the girl to say something.
“I don’t know what they keep shooting into him.” She crossed her arms, mouth pursed, her brows drawn tight, and the sullen look back in spades. “Marco doesn’t take drugs.”
Ray lifted one of the boy’s eyelids. “He does now.”
“Fentanyl,” I replied to his unanswered request. “Not sure what else.”
He shook his head once and looked to me. “Get me the unit from the dining room. I’ll need to hook him up.”
The girl shifted forward, glancing with a flash of alarm from Ray to me, her hazel eyes wide as saucers. “What are you going to do to him?”
“Nothing that will hurt your boyfriend.” Ray plucked a throw from the back of the couch and tucked it around the boy’s torso, leaving one arm free and his chest accessible. “The stuff he’s on has his heart racing too fast. Not to mention he’s nothing but bones. I’m going to monitor his heart. Make sure he doesn’t go into shock or cardiac arrest.”
Ray opened the large briefcase-style box I’d retrieved, extracted some thin cables, and gestured for me to set up the unit on the coffee table. With slow, measured movements, intended more for the girl’s peace of mind than his own process, he opened a package of small adhesive snaps and pulled up the boy’s ratty T-shirt. He affixed the snaps to the skin, snapped the wires to counterparts on the boy’s chest and the unit. The machine burped and whizzed in conjunction with the pale green light on the readout and then simmered into a low-grade soft beep as it warmed up.
“He’s my brother.”
Ray watched the monitor for a second and then shifted to assess the girl.
I let him take the lead with her. I wanted her to trust me, but it was more important she trust Ray. I couldn’t stay with these kids twenty-four seven. He was their first line of defense.
Even in the wheelchair, Ray was a big man with a large chest, thick biceps, and a big head with a sprinkle of white. Gray showed in the crew cut but was more clearly visible in the beard and mustache. Grizzled and tough on the outside with a heart of gold on the inside. Standing, he would’ve towered over my six two by several inches.
“What’s your name, little girl?”
“I’m not a little girl.” She threw the words out in a rush of courage but took a step back and clenched her fists, reconsidering prudence too late.
He waited a second, then two. The girl fidgeted and shifted her feet. “Let’s get this straight right out, little lady.” If you heard Ray’s strong, deep voice in a war zone, you’d think Superman had arrived. Inside this small room, it rang out like judgment. “You and your brother are here by the grace of my goodwill. I can throw you both out right now. I don’t have to help him. I don’t have to believe you. I’ve helped people in worse situations than yours, and I don’t have to help anybody. But if I do help you both, I have rules here. Follow
those rules, and everything goes smoothly.”
He paused a second. I had to give her credit. She didn’t blink and held his gaze, though more likely from fear than obedience.
“There is no rudeness in my home. There is no taking the Lord’s name in vain in my home. You will do what I say, when I say it, because it will mean the difference between you and your brother living, and you getting your stupid selves killed. I refuse to protect stupid people.”
He waited to ten, by my count. “Do I make myself clear?”
She swallowed hard.
He upped his ante with a raised eyebrow.
“Aisha.” It was barely audible, but she mustered up again. “My name’s Aisha. His name is Marco.”
Ray one. Aisha zero. To be fair, I’d given her several points for the balls she had demonstrated keeping herself and Marco alive. If only just barely. For a slight teenage girl, she’d taken on Ray, who was no cream puff either, wheelchair or not.
He pointed to the machine’s monitor. “I want you to come over here, sit with your brother, and watch that screen. If the line starts jumping or does anything erratic, if it gets faster—you shout for me. Ray. You understand?”
Aisha nodded.
“I’m going into the kitchen to fix you something to eat.” His gaze shifted to me. “Kane is coming with me to explain what trouble to expect.”
Aisha nodded again and waited for Ray to move his chair. With the caution of a beaten stray, she sidled to the couch and chose a spot near Marco’s feet. She curled up in an awkward ball of thin legs and gangly arms, her hand over her brother’s leg, her eyes glued to the monitor.
I followed Ray and let out a deep breath. He might seem big and threatening, but there was a measure of confidence in the size and presence of the man. His image of vulnerability and strength was a good option for these kids. My only option.
I don’t have any trust of clergy or religion. Human beings do worse things to each other in the name of their gods than demons or monsters could do in a lifespan. I’ve experienced it firsthand, so maybe I’m a little biased. My reason for bringing these kids here was Ray. The faith thing aside, not that he didn’t have heaps, his honor and skills classified him as a good guardian for these two. To call our relationship a friendship would have been too easy, similar to saying Shalim and I had a partnership. It just wasn’t that simple.
Nothing in my life ever was.
I had run into Ray in a tiny reclusive church high in the hills of the Philippines. A location as far away from an urban city like L.A., or even Manila, as one could get.
I wasn’t there to commune with God. I’d ridden the fault lines and portals to retrieve an object for Shalim. My job, relieving the local politico of an ancient Catholic relic. Commissioned some two hundred years before, the reliquary had been a way to cover the export of gold to the Spanish homeland. The locals hadn’t warmed to the removal of the reliquary or their gold. They’d slaughtered the Catholic priests and, even years later, the three-foot-long gold jeweled cross provided the local focal point for good luck and blessings.
A relic of such worship and adoration served up just the proper level of emotional energy for Shalim.
Demons don’t experience their lives, with discrete exceptions. They’re vicarious storage batteries of the emotions and actions of others. Each clan has a focus, a specialty.
Emotional succubae constituted the majority of Shalim’s clan, feeding on the range of human emotions. Sexual succubae were the most prevalent in the group, though feeding from teenage rebellion ranked a strong second, with fear a distant third. He got his satisfaction from relieving people of their precious artifacts. The older, the greater the owner’s dependency, the more emotion invested in the artifact, the better his charge. Always, Shalim was subtle and particular in his selections.
I have no theory behind Shalim’s choices to appease his compulsion, but given that his fascination curbed his appetite for violence, a trait prevalent in his ancient counterparts in the demon infrastructure, I had no trouble separating people from their treasured gifts so others might live.
The relic in custody and my mission completed, I’d arrived at the church to ride the portals home. However I wasn’t the only one riding that night.
The screams echoed a hundred yards away. I have no doubt the people in the village heard them as well. Yet no lights turned on and no armed villagers headed out to help, revealing terror as a common experience. Some demons cultivate familiar stomping grounds. The locals had enacted the heads-down, ignore-it-and-it-will-go-away approach. They had learned, the hard way, what it meant to live close to a fault line, prey to those from the netherworld.
My path to the church aligned behind the only person to respond. One navy lieutenant, Raymond Caulder, running at full speed, weapon gripped in his hand. Not that there was a military base anywhere nearby.
I’d found out later Caulder had promised a dock worker from this village, one who attended weekend services in Manila, that he’d hand deliver a message.
A female demon, her talons curled over the back of the last pew, watched as her two incubi took turns terrorizing an elderly woman. The incubi’s claws slashed, fine daggers tearing through the helpless victim’s flesh. Curled in a ball on the stone floor, the woman covered her face with her scratched arms, but given the ruby varnish of blood expanding beneath her, the screams would be the last cries of her life.
I couldn’t save her. Neither could Caulder. Even given his size, there are no odds for one human against three demons. Not even bad odds.
Whether I would have passed into the portals had he not been there, I don’t know. I never got the chance to consider the option.
The demon heard Caulder and caught a whiff of me. She turned her scarlet razor-scaled body to face us and howled to her minions. The two incubi attacked Ray with a vigor they’d spared the old woman. He was down before he had a chance to fire a shot, his body twisted in an impossible angle, his lower spine incapacitated.
I had no choice but to fight. They stood between me and the portal.
From the floor, Caulder watched as I did battle with the members of a violent, bloodthirsty clan. Watched as I decapitated one incubus and made a eunuch of the second. Then he watched as I turned toward the female demon, determined to inflict a permanent memento before she took me down.
Fortunately, her interest in me vanished at the cries of the approaching villagers, and she disappeared.
For me to shield during full battle hadn’t been an option. It’s hard, and frankly, I wasn’t good at it back then. I didn’t have the skills to wipe Caulder’s mind either. I slid the gun, wrenched from his grasp during the fight, across the stone floor to him and left through the portal.
He survived the night of the demon attack.
I had hoped he would credit the violence he’d seen to a confused nightmare. My luck, he’d gotten over the horror with full recall.
I ran into Raymond Caulder again a couple of years later. He’d received an honorable discharge and spent his time working with the shelters in downtown L.A.
My stomping grounds.
His reconciliation of the events had a lot more to do with faith and rescue with help of yours truly than I was comfortable with. He considered me an extension of that faith. He thinks I’m one of the good guys. I’m not above using that.
“She’s scared and she has every right to be.” I broke the silence while I considered ways to avoid the sorcerer, kidnap, and demon issues.
Ray shut the fridge door and put a tray with bread and cheese slices on the kitchen table. He grabbed the bread with one hand and started assembling sandwiches, then held up a slice to me in question as he flicked on the stove.
I shook my head. “Someone selected this boy, drugged him into compliance. They took their time before they tried to abduct him.”
“Why him?”
My glance back to the living room gave me a full view of Aisha and Marco. Neither had moved, but the girl’s bod
y was strung bow-tight as she listened to every word we spoke. Pussyfooting around the truth wouldn’t help her any more than it would Ray.
“I think he’s only one of several.”
Ray paused, frowned, and delivered a long exaggerated swipe of butter to the bread. “What they want them for?”
I glanced away, debating how much of this story would be enough.
“Kane.” Ray laid the butter knife down.
Resolved to give him the truth, I looked him right in the eye. “Some of them are used for ritual sacrifice. Others are killed outright.”
The muscles in his jaw twitched under his gray beard. “How many?”
“I’ve run across two more with similarities to Marco.” I didn’t mention the scent of the boys or that another boy in the psych ward was barely alive after an attack by the same group. “Two others have a different genetic profile but same age range. Perhaps more before those.”
Ray flipped the sandwiches on the griddle. The sizzle filled the dead space for a few seconds. The salty combination of butter and cheese supplied comfort to an unpalatable situation.
“Drugs don’t seem to be something your folks would need to mess with.”
My folks. Everything out of the ordinary got lumped in my general demonic direction. “Men are targeting these kids. Not other creatures. Two men tried to get Marco, and I would assume there are more stooges where they came from. They’re slick, with cool toys, but not mentally adept.”
“What’s the endgame?”
“Still figuring that out. They bleed out some of these kids, but I only smell drugs on Marco. None of the physical degradation exists in him that I found in some of the others.”
Ray looked away at that and busied himself with cooking for a minute. “Taking time to set up the kidnap is a big investment to grab a runaway. Why not just snatch him?” He slid the toasted sandwich onto a plate with two others. “Someone’s not going to be pleased you got in the middle of this, Kane.”
“I’m counting on it.”
He swiveled his chair around, plate in one hand, shotgun handle at his elbow, his face a combination of severity and wrinkles. He looked like some strange Marvel Comics avenger. “And when they find you?”