Double-Barreled Devilry

by D Michael Bartsch

  “Our primary mission will be the safe return of Balthazar, alive.”

  Just my luck, the old bastard had managed to stay alive.

  “You’re sure he’s alive?”

  Andrej nodded. He didn’t say anything more on the subject.

  “Well then, what are we wasting time for? We need to find out where he is and get him back before Sartre kills him and calls up a Demonic shit show from Hell. I'm not sure if I made myself clear enough on the phone, but if we don't stop this, a literal Demon Horde will consume this city.”

  I couldn't tell if the lawyers actually believed anything I was saying. There wasn't really a way to tell how insulated they were from Balthazar's actual income sources. They didn't seem shocked at the mention of Demons and Hell. Of course, with what they were probably getting paid, I'm sure they didn't care what their clients talked about if the checks cleared. I sure as hell wouldn't.

  “The facility is close.” Andrej said. He turned back to the lawyers. “You understand what's needed of you?”

  The lawyer in the silver suit nodded.

  “It will all be taken care of. Mr. Reznik is vacationing out of the country and will be returning shortly. Until then, we have been authorized to act and deal on his behalf. Should he fail to live through the events, we will assume control of his assets. The paperwork is all in order, appropriately backdated, of course.”

  Opening a folder, the silver suited lawyer slid an envelope over to Andrej.

  “Inside you'll find the code to the safe containing Mr. Reznik's DNA. It also contains instructions for you if the recovery is not successful.”

  Andrej nodded.

  “Come.” He said to me as he stood and moved to the door.

  Ajax popped to his feet and followed him out, turning towards the elevator. I chose to take my time. They wouldn't leave me behind. Least I didn't think so.

  “Well, it's been a blast gentlemen.” I stood up and headed for the door. I stopped before leaving the room, though.

  “Hey,” I said, turning back. “I don't suppose any of you specialize in property damage, specifically if it was caused by a two-ton Ogre that I may or may not have killed in my apartment. I'm worried my insurance won't cover it.”

  “We can help with that.” The silver suit said.

  He held out a card.

  I took it and left without asking how much that would run me. I was probably better off not knowing.

  Andrej and Ajax were waiting at the elevator. The two tough guys with the MP5's were in there too, looking menacing as ever.

  “How many more of your guys can come with us?” I said, entering the elevator.

  One of the big guys hit the button to take us back to the ground floor.

  “None.”

  I turned to Andrej.

  “What do you mean none?” I asked. “There's four just in this building.”

  “They work for the law firm. The rest of my men have orders that predate the current situation.”

  “More important than keeping Balthazar from getting his dumb ass killed?”

  Andrej turned, a knife materializing in his hand.

  “There are things happening here that supersede Balthazar's immediate safety. We all have our orders, and mine are to make sure that his affairs continue, whether or not he is here at the moment. I will be going with you personally. I trust that you remember enough of your former training to be useful.”

  I looked down at the knife. Andrej's hands were twitching slightly. He was angry, either that or he was scared. I don't know which one I would have preferred at that moment. I looked back up to his eyes. He was practically snarling at me.

  “What has he gotten himself into Andrej?” I asked. “Capturing Hellions, the Eye. Does he even understand what he's dealing with?”

  “Maybe he'll tell you one day. For now, either you go with me, or you run and I'll hunt you down later.”

  “You could try.”

  “Guys.” Ajax said. “This isn't the time to measure dicks. We've got shit to take care of. The boss has already been gone for four hours. We're low on resources after the attacks.”

  “Attacks?” I asked.

  Andrej regarded the small warlock. He nodded his head once and moved his eyes back to me.

  “We get Balthazar back. Then you walk free.”

  “My debt?”

  “Wiped away.”

  It was my turn to nod. Andrej was a son of a bitch, but the Serbian prick wasn't a liar. If he said I would walk after the job, I'd walk. He'd take over the debt himself if he had to.

  I drove us in the Stang to a pretty fancy storage facility just out of downtown. At least it used to be fancy. It was one of those twenty-four-hour deals that was gated with cameras everywhere and all the lockers are inside a giant cube that looks like it should be housing a group of Borg that took over an IKEA.

  When we got there, I saw a half dozen scorched marks, pothole sized footprints in the asphalt and a giant hole in the wall next to the main entrance. There was a section of the gate that was just gone, the concrete ripped and torn where the iron rods had been ripped free.

  I drove right up to the front door and parked on the sidewalk. Getting out, I could still make out the smell of smoke beneath the scent of impending rain.

  Ajax and I followed Andrej through a maze of cramped hallways and sliding-garage style doors. Several sections of flooring had dark splotches on them that couldn't be anything other than blood. Pockmarked concrete walls and empty brass casing told me that there had been a hefty firefight inside the facility.

  I stopped as we came to a section of wall with three deep grooves carved into the concrete wall. I ran my hand along the wall. They were scratch marks, left by heavy claws.

  “This is where you're keeping the Hellions.”

  Andrej turned back to me. “Not anymore.”

  The blood, the smoke, this place got lit up. I knew what Ajax had meant by attacks. Balthazar's people had been hit hard. Between this and the club, he couldn't have had many more men left at all.

  “How many of them escaped?” I asked.

  “Fifteen that we know of.”

  That wasn't good.

  “The guys guarding this place?”

  “Dead or taken. Those I couldn't find I assumed were taken for food.”

  “Or they ran.”

  “No.”

  He spoke with a cold detachment. If he was bothered by the loss of his men, he didn't show it. He showed nothing but Slavic stoicism.

  Andrej turned around and threw open the door of a locker. It proved to be one of the big twenty by twenty footers. It also looked like it would have made any member of law enforcement drop a load in their pants on sight.

  The back and left walls were lined with guns, lots of them. Hunting rifles, sniper rifles, assault rifles, submachine guns, regular machine guns, shotguns, and a ton of handguns hung on the walls from floor to ceiling. Shelving units rose ten feet into the air, every inch of them covered in ammunition boxes and equipment. A box of frag grenades caught my attention.

  The right wall was lined with suits of body armor, the good stuff, military grade. I spied several vests made of the dual layer ceramic plates. There was also a heavy looking safe bolted to the floor underneath a wooden worktable.

  Andrej shuffled us inside and flipped a light switch. He immediately moved over to the safe and dialed in the combination.

  Ajax whistled as he inspected the room.

  “Damn. I knew the guys at the club were strapped, but this is some next-level shit.”

  He was right. I was angry to admit it, but I was completely jealous of the contents of the room. It was enough to go to war with a small country. It was a lot of weaponry, especially for the place where Andrej held Balthazar's DNA. This wasn't a personal stash. Andrej didn't use guns unless he had to. It wasn't just a prison. That room was a staging area, a contingency plan.

  “Balthazar knew something like this may happen.” I said. “That's why y
ou have his DNA here. If he were ever taken, you could come here, arm up, and get him back. This is way too much for one person to use.”

  Not enough for one person to want to try and use at once. It was just impractical.

  “Balthazar had envisioned something like this happening.”

  “He had the Eye. Why couldn't he just use it to predict something like this? It should have kept him safe.”

  “It should have.” He said. “However, Balthazar is a prudent man. I've also been told that they Eye is not as effective if you are involved. The visions that it shows become vague, hazy.”

  “Why bring me in then?” I asked. “If he knew it would limit his ability to see the future, why involve me in the situation?”

  Andrej didn’t say anything. He kept working, dialing in the combo on the safe and pulling it open. There were several test tubes standing in neat racks inside of it. Each one was sealed with a rubber stopper and looked to be dipped in some sort of wax.

  “Those vests aren't to stop gangsters or mercenaries.” I said. “Those are for Hellions. Balthazar's had you all over the city, showing up wherever rifts appear. Why? It can't just be for the money. He clearly doesn't need it.”

  “It doesn't matter.” He said.

  “The hell it doesn't! He got himself into this mess, and now I'm having to get him out of it. He brought me into this knowing that something more was going on. I need to know.”

  Andrej turned to me.

  “You'll be compensated for the job. That's all this is.”

  “No.” I said. “This was personal. There was a reason that Balthazar called me. Tell me, or I walk.”

  “Walk and I'll kill you.”

  “You'll never find me.” I said.

  “We don't have time for this.” Ajax said. “We need to get moving. Balthazar will be dead if we don't hurry.”

  Andrej gave me a level look. I'd seen it before, five years prior when the job to get the Eye had gone south. He wanted to kill me. I suppose I couldn't blame him on that. I sure as hell wanted to kill him, so I couldn't exactly point any fingers.

  Andrej broke the stare down to grab a vial out of the safe. It had a single strand of silver hair in it. He handed it to Ajax.

  “Prepare the spell.” He turned back to me. “We do the job. We get Balthazar out and get the Eye back. Load up.”

  I looked at Ajax and nodded. The little guy nodded back and went to work. I could tell he was shaken. This wasn't exactly his usual cup of tea. Ajax was the guy who went in after the fact and scrubbed the place. He wasn't the one to make the mess, just clean it up.

  I started to get ready.

  My first stop was the armor. I was excited to see that it wasn't just vests. Balthazar had taken my design for the vest and created full tactical suits. I stripped my jacket, boots, and pants and began to pull it all on. The main portion of the suit was made up of what looked to be titanium woven nylon. Thin ropes of the stuff wrapped around the joints and black ceramic plates covered the rest. The vest was a separate piece that was worn over the top of the main suit.

  Several of the vests were equipped with twin Kukri sheaths on the lower back, just like my old vest before the Ogre had beat it to shit. I pulled one of the blades before putting on the vest, testing the weight and balance. The normally matte metal gleamed in the light. I ran a finger over the blade and sniffed.

  “Oil?”

  I turned to see Andrej pulling out a rather nasty looking katana from a sheath. It glistened the same as the machete.

  “The sheaths are lined with anointing oil. The holy water proved to be impractical for coating the blades.”

  I turned back to the machete. I was impressed, and more than a little upset that I hadn't ever thought of that. Coating the blades in oil would mean you could hack apart straight through a Hellion, regardless of how tough its hide was.

  I slipped the kukri back into the vest and strapped it on. There were boxes of electronic hearing protection stacked nearby. I picked up a box.

  The mix of plates and nylon weave would help with flexibility, but the weight would still slow me down. I didn't think it mattered all that much at the time. My body had been manhandled too many times in the previous forty-eight hours to rely on speed. If I was going to have any chance, I needed firepower for this fight. A hell of a lot of it.

  The vest had a built in holster on the front. It was massive, and I looked at Andrej.

  He sheathed the katana and went around a corner to grab something off a wall. He came back with a Smith & Wesson 500. The mammoth revolver is the largest production handgun in the world. There were a couple of bigger revolvers out there, but they all belong to whack jobs with more balls than brains.

  I wasn't a huge fan of the things. Sure, they generally killed whatever was on the other end of the barrel, but you only had five shots and then had to hope you had a speed loader.

  Normal people didn't worry about that. Your average bad guy isn't going anywhere after getting shot with five, fifty caliber rounds. The things I was about to tangle with had a chance of getting back up.

  I holstered the thing on my chest and figured I'd use it as a last resort. I went looking for a decent rifle.

  Rounding the shelves, I began to peruse the walls. I found what I was looking for halfway down.

  The rifle was a Heckler & Koch L85A2. The rifle was a personal favorite. The bullpup design put the action behind the trigger, which allowed for a longer barrel to fit in a relatively short gun.

  The L85A2 was a major overhaul to previous models, and I'd gone into combat with them for years. It was light, accurate, and British. I may not have been back to England in a few centuries but I’m still English.

  I pulled it off the wall and turned to look for the magazines. Thankfully for my thumbs, they were already loaded and ready to go.

  Once I had a rifle, I walked over and found two more Magnum 500's and pushed them into the holsters on each leg of the tac armor. I was capable of a whole hell of a lot of killing. I wasn't one to believe in being over-prepared, though. I grabbed a duffle bag, loaded up an AA12 shotgun, four drum mags, and a half a dozen grenades.

  On the off chance that Moloch was already out of the Rift when we got there, I didn't really know what it would take to kill him, or if we could kill him. Better safe than sorry, or dead.

  I felt something crawl across the back of my neck as magic was pulled through Ajax and focused into the compass in front of him. My body absorbed some of the magic, forcing Ajax to work harder than normal to gather enough juice to power up the spell.

  “I'll wait in the hall.” I said.

  No one responded. Ajax was busy, and Andrej was just being a prick.

  I grabbed my jacket, duffle bag, and rifle and walked into the hallway. Getting the jacket on over the armor wasn't worth the effort. I tucked it through the straps of the duffel instead and slung the rifle's tac-sling over my shoulder, so it fell across my body.

  I kept my hand on the grip, trigger finger running along the stock. I could feel my hands traveling to the brink of shaking. I hadn't had a drink in awhile. My head was killing me, and I didn't know if it was from the lack of alcohol or the mounting level of injury that I had accumulated over the previous day and a half.

  I rubbed at my neck with my left hand and tried to work out whatever knot had to be causing my pain. I thought about Carl. Prufrock had him. Bastard.

  I couldn't leave him to be tortured and put to death because of me. Part of me wanted to, but I couldn't bring myself to do it. Carl was everything that I should have been. He'd lost his wife, and instead of letting it consume him for the rest of his life, he'd become a better man for it. He'd found clarity. When I'd lost Elena, there was no more clarity. There was only anger. Anger and hate.

  I felt another pull of magic rush into the room. Ajax was throwing down some serious hoodoo in there, more than would be needed for the compass. Andrej must have asked him to do something else.

  Ajax was a good kid, but
he wasn't much in a fight. The Ravagers would have his lunch money before he even got out of the car. That left Andrej and I. Andrej was a stone cold killer but were outnumbered and most likely outmatched. The only thing I knew for sure was that we wouldn't be outgunned. I just had to hope that would be enough to make it out alive.

  I rolled my neck out and looked down the hallway. A pay phone was hooked up to the wall at the end of the hall. I stared at it for a moment, an idea forming in my head. I walked to the phone.

  It wasn't a good idea. I spent my entire walk to the phone trying to talk myself out of it. We needed back up. Prufrock would have the connections to do what needed doing. I wasn't about to ask him for anything. I wanted to hurt him, and if I could play this right, I could do it. It all came back to the fundamental rule, break into my house and you get shot in the dick.

  Pulling the phone from the cradle, I pulled the fancy business card out of my jacket's pocket and dialed out collect. They'd accept the charges. As the line rang, I was pretty sure that I was about to make a giant mistake. That had never stopped me before.

  16

  I was in the back seat, Andrej was driving, and Ajax was riding shotgun. He was navigating for us, calling out turns based on the compass he had in his hands. I could feel part of the magic from the compass floating from the front of the car into my body. Eventually, it would run out of juice if I stayed around, but for now it was like a faucet that had a permanent drip.

  It had taken the two of them ten more minutes after I'd made the call. When they left the room, Andrej looked like he'd just got back from a two-week vacation in the Bahamas. Ajax had restored his energy and then some.

  That had explained the larger amount of magic pulled into the room. Andrej had smiled at me as he walked out. Serbian prick. I had half a mind to punch him in his smug face. I don't know if it was more so from anger that I had to work with him, or jealousy that Ajax couldn't use the same magic to rid me of my injuries.

  Regardless of my annoyance, having Andrej at full health was a blessing. He would be able to pull the extra slack that I was getting ready to create.