by Bruce Talmas
It was a close call though: I felt the bullet whiz by my face and saw a lock of my hair float to the floor, cloven cleanly by the bullet. Grabbing Third Bodyguard’s wrist before he could fire a second time, I brought my left shoulder into the back of his elbow as hard as I could. It responded with a satisfying crack while also serving to pop my bum shoulder back into place. The shoulder hurt enough to take my breath away for a moment, but I still had work to do.
I turned back to finish off Jumbo’s little brother—who was now Shrimp in my mind—only to find him on his knees clutching his chest. For a ridiculous moment, I thought he was having a heart attack. Right on the heels of that thought was an even more ridiculous thought: I didn’t know how to give C.P.R. Then I remembered, Oh yeah, I’m trying to kill him.
He moved his hand from his chest and I saw a nice neat hole where the bullet that had given me a haircut had entered him. I almost laughed, but now wasn’t the time to gloat. I simply pushed him over and let him bleed out on the floor.
That left just me and Jeung. All the theatrics had given him time to go to his desk and retrieve his gun. It was a dainty little .38. No surprise there. He aimed it at my chest, but I didn’t care. It was all over but the crying. I almost let him shoot me, but didn’t feel like going digging for the bullet afterwards. Instead, I knocked the gun out of his hand and gave him a gentle push backwards.
He fell into his chair. It was a nice high-backed executive number made out of brown leather that would have looked nice in my library, if only it hadn’t already been defiled by Jeung’s foppish ass. The fight went out of him instantaneously. He held his hands up in surrender as I came around the desk.
“We can negotiate.”
I laughed in spite of myself. I looked around the office at the carnage I’d just unleashed and wondered what this man must be thinking. I also realized that I’d incapacitated everyone in the room with one workable arm. I didn’t even have to use one of his swords. I felt like I’d cheated myself.
“Where’s the girl?” I asked.
“What girl?” His eyes flicked toward the far wall of his office. It was a split-second, instinctual reaction, but it was enough. I followed the movement. I’d figured he would keep her close. No reason to draw attention by having her coming and going from the building, especially when that building was a bar and she was a sixteen year old girl. He probably had a smuggler’s hole installed in the office when he safeguarded it. A man could only have so many hiding places when he spent most of his life in a single room, no matter how luxurious he made that room.
“I can torture you if you’d like, but frankly I’m tired and just want to go home.”
“I assure you I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Charles Silva’s daughter. You kidnapped her. He hired me to get her back.”
“Charles Silva? Why would I take his daughter?”
“I don’t know. Because you’re a sick fuck? Because you have a thing for little girls? How should I know? More than likely, it’s because you’re moving in on his territory and you want some collateral so he won’t move against you.”
No answer.
“I’m just spitballing here,” I said. “I don’t care. The ‘why’ isn’t my business. I’m more concerned with the ‘who’ and ‘how.’”
“Who and how what?” he mimicked, sounding nonsensical. It was like a conversation between an owl and an Indian.
“Yeah. Who I’m supposed to kill, and how I’m going to make it hurt as much as possible.”
That did the trick. He started yammering away immediately:
“She’s in the closet.” Apparently he didn’t have much of a tolerance for pain. Or even the threat of it. “Over there.” He pointed to the place he’d looked when I asked about the girl in the first place. If there was a door there, it was well hidden. “I didn’t touch her…I mean, I hit her a few times, but I didn’t fuck her. She was business, that’s all.”
I was only half listening to him. I couldn’t help but look around at his sword collection. It really was quite impressive. I saw what I was sure was a Kamakura sword that had to be six hundred years old in a display case.
“Is this a Masamune?”
Jeung perked up at the question. A spark of hope flickered to life in his weaselly little eyes. “It is.” He seemed almost relieved. “You know your swords,” he said with approval. Suddenly we were best friends.
“I do,” I said, grabbing it from the display case. I turned and flashed him a smile. “Let’s see how it cuts.”
And suddenly we weren’t friends anymore.
Chapter 2
After I got done working on Jeung, I went over and stabbed the two still-breathing bodyguards with the Masamune. I liked to be thorough, and leaving enemies alive on the battlefield went against that. Masamune would have understood: the bodyguards chose to work for the sick fuck, so they got what was coming to them. Plus, they’d beaten the shit out of me. I wasn’t one to hold grudges; I always liked to take my revenge as I went. After finishing off the guards, I went to the far wall to see if the girl was still alive.
Jeung had confessed to me how to get into his secret room, but I wouldn’t have needed the information. Every sword in his collection was worth well over a hundred grand. All except for one: a red-sheathed replica in the far corner of the room. It was a nice replica, but worth significantly less than any other sword in the room. I went over to it and pulled it off the wall. As I did so, I heard a click. A razor thin crack appeared in the wall.
I pushed it open the rest of the way and peeked inside. A girl was crouched in the far corner of a room no bigger than a bathroom stall. There was no light in the room. She looked about eighteen or nineteen, but I knew from her father that she was still two months shy of her seventeenth birthday. Her hands and feet were bound, and she was gagged with a bandanna. I looked her over, but she seemed okay—at least physically. A bit bruised, and she was obviously terrified, but she wasn’t in shock. That was good: I was in no mood to deal with an hysterical sixteen-year-old for the hour drive back to the Silva Estate.
“Are you Katie? Katie Silva?”
She nodded, so I bent down to take off the gag and undo the ropes around her wrists and ankles.
“Your dad sent me.”
I finished the ropes and turned away to leave. I got to the security door before I realized she wasn’t following. She was just sitting on the floor, staring at me. It was unnerving.
“Can you walk?”
She nodded.
“Then get up,” I said, a bit harsher than I intended. “I don’t have all day,” I added in a milder tone.
Nothing. Usually people listened when I spoke. Maybe she was in shock after all.
I followed her gaze and saw that she was looking at Jeung's body.
“He’s dead,” I said unnecessarily. All that was left was a bloody pile of pulpy meat.
Slowly. Ever…so…slowly…she crawled out of the smuggler’s hole. But she didn’t move towards the door. Instead, she went over and looked at the body. It wasn’t a pretty sight; I had promised her father I’d make him hurt. She took it all in like a champ. Just stood there staring. After about thirty seconds, she let out a scream and starting punching him in the face. It wasn’t much of a face after what I’d done to him, but she continued on like that for quite a while. She moved on to the groin and kicked him a few times, which made me think he might have been lying when he said he hadn’t touched her.
None of my business, I thought. Let her work it out for herself.
I lit a cigarette. I was itching to get out of there, but even I could recognize this was something she needed to do. This was therapeutic. I let her revel in her psychotic breakdown for a few minutes before I came over and physically stopped her from abusing the corpse any further.
Once she got it all out of her system, she looked up at me and nodded. Just like that, she regained her composure. I had to admit I was impressed.
“Sorry I ye
lled at you,” I said. I gave her my jacket as we descended the steps and headed toward the exit. It may have been the first time I’d ever apologized to anyone in my life.
********
Night in New York City. You couldn’t handpick a better place for a demon assassin to operate. I hated cities, and New York more than most, but the sheer number of people that needed killing in one three-hundred-square-mile patch of land was astonishing. Business took me there quite often.
After everything that had gone down inside, I was eager to breathe in the foul stench of the city as opposed to the foul stench of the bar. I took about three steps outside before I changed my mind about that. I stopped in my tracks. Katie bumped into me and looked up. “What’s wrong?” she asked.
“It’s raining.”
She held out her hand for a second. “No it’s not.”
“I know,” I said. “That’s the problem.”
She looked at me quizzically, and I realized I wasn’t making any sense. I wasn’t used to talking to people, especially teenaged girls. Explaining myself seemed like way more trouble than it was worth, so I simply shook my head and nudged her into the shadows of the building.
“Stay here.”
She did as she was told. I walked into the middle of the street. It was deserted, but that was to be expected. This was a bad part of town. Never could tell what was lurking in the shadows.
I wasn’t that concerned, of course. Ninety-nine percent of the time, I was the thing lurking in the shadows. Tonight, however, that wasn’t the case.
I felt like I was walking into the final showdown of a spaghetti western. All that was missing was a clock tower to let me know when to draw…and of course someone to draw on. But it wasn’t rapists or muggers or even wild-west gunfighters that I was concerned with. It was something much worse.
I looked toward Katie to verify she was staying in the doorway. She was looking up at the black sky. She could sense it, but her human sight couldn’t see what I saw. Along with my other demonic abilities, my night vision was far better than a human’s. I could see the leathery wings of the Hellspawn flapping high above; she could only hear their wings. I whispered a little revealing spell under my breath and waited for my visitor to make his presence known.
“Hello Jacob,” I heard from somewhere far behind me, although the words sounded like they were whispered in my ear.
“Just what I fucking need,” I said under my breath. He undoubtedly heard me anyway, but that was kind of the point.
Azazel stepped out from the shadows at the opposite end of the building from which we’d just exited. Or maybe he stayed still and the shadows pulled back to reveal him; it was tough to tell since I never actually saw him move.
“What do you want, Azazel?”
He walked toward me with long, impossibly smooth strides. He seemed to cover the fifty or so feet between us in a couple of steps. Angel parlor tricks. Annoying as hell.
When he got to me, he looked at Katie still waiting in the doorway. “Hmm. Very nice,” he said as he admired her.
“Keep it in your pants, Azazel. Isn’t that why you’re stuck here in the first place?”
He flashed a wicked grin. It looked like a shark’s smile. “One of the reasons. There were several.”
The girl instinctively shrunk back further into the shelter of the doorway. I didn’t blame her. Angels made my skin crawl too.
“What’s with the color guard?” I asked, lifting my chin toward the roiling sky overhead.
“Oh, don’t mind them. They follow me around like little lost puppies. Can’t get a moment’s peace down here.”
‘Down here’ meant Earth for Azazel and his ilk. He was still a little sore about being tossed out of Heaven like a drunk who got grabby at a bar; which, ironically, is exactly what happened. Banging the wrong chick had been the downfall of many a drunkard—be they man or angel—throughout history.
“Could you throw a stick for them to fetch or something?” I asked. “They’re distracting.”
He made a clicking sound with his tongue, not unlike the sound a dog trainer would make to get a mutt’s attention. It seemed to do the trick. A few loud flaps and a little bit of screeching marked his entourage’s exit. As they withdrew, the rain began to fall again. Large raindrops plopped down onto the cement and landed on my forehead in irritating globules. It was like God was spitting loogies at me. Given our history, I couldn’t discount the possibility.
“Thanks,” I said sarcastically. “Now what do you want?”
Azazel laughed. As the raindrops fell around him, the ground hissed like angry snakes. He spread his hands, palms up, in what was supposed to be a placating gesture.
“Do I need an agenda to visit with an old friend?”
“No, but you always have an agenda. And we’re not friends. So what do you want?”
“I’m just watching Jacob. It’s what we Watchers do, you know.”
Azazel was a member of the Grigori, a Heavenly host of..well, Watchers. They had originally been sent to Earth to watch over humanity. As any long-term recon unit will attest, though, if you spend enough time somewhere, you're gonna go native. That's what happened to most of the Grigori. They weren’t really good or evil but, like most things, fell somewhere in between. I didn’t judge them by how good or evil they were, but by whether or not they were dicks. Azazel was a huge one.
“The question is,” I said, “who watches the Watchers?”
He laughed. It sounded like the rasp of a knife across the sharpening stone.
“I could just as easily ask you who kills the Killers.”
I smiled. “I’ll let you know when I find someone who can.”
He nodded solemnly, like I just said something profound. “Nice blade, by the way.”
I’d forgotten about the Masamune I’d taken from Jeung’s collection. I figured he wouldn’t be needing it. It was slung across my back for easy reach over the shoulder.
“I stole it.”
“Of course you did. Not that you couldn’t afford it. I hear business has been very good for you lately.”
I didn’t like that Azazel knew anything about my business, or that he was keeping tabs on me at all, but I didn’t say anything. I’d learned to pick my battles with angels. Getting into an argument with one was never a good idea. They’re immortal, so they have no problem wearing you down over time. It was just one of their many irritating qualities.
“It pays the bills,” I responded. There was a drawn-out silence after that. Finally, I said, “Do I have to ask you again?”
He sighed. “If you must know, I’m here to observe. I really wasn’t lying. We’ve been getting a lot of emanations that something big is about to happen, and you seem to be intimately involved with the proceedings.”
This was nothing new. I’d been alive in my present form for either twenty or thirty-three years—depending on how you defined “present form”—and everything always seemed to revolve around me from the moment of my “birth.” I was kind of like a hellish Harry Potter. By all the known laws of Heaven and Hell, I should not be alive. Yet here I was: a celebrity simply for being. Like Paris Hilton of the Underworld.
Quite simply, I was unique. There were lots of demons out there, but they were either Full-Bloods brought through by accomplished magicians or they were the run-of-the-mill demonic possessions. Full-Bloods were rare, largely because accomplished magicians were rare. And even rarer were the accomplished magicians with big enough cojones to Summon a demon. Possessions, on the other hand, were a dime a dozen. Most of the demons that thought it was a good idea to possess a human were so low on the food chain that they didn’t know enough to even keep the body alive. They would forget to breathe or couldn’t figure out how to make the heart beat. Usually, they tried to possess either a child or an elderly person since they were too weak to resist, and nine times out of ten they would kill the host body within minutes of possessing it. It was a running joke in Hell:
Oh look,
Tabaet is going for it again. What is this, his ten thousandth attempt? Who’s the host? Geez, she looks like she’s already dead. She’s gotta be a hundred years old. What’s the over/under? I’ve got three minutes. Who’s keeping time? No, not Mammon. He always cheats. Uh oh, the heart stopped. Come on Tabaet, we’ve got faith in you! Or not.. Don’t worry, you’ll get ‘em next time.
“I don’t know what to tell you, Azazel,” I said. “I’m not involved in anything. It’s business as usual for me.”
“Make no mistake, Jacob, you’re most definitely involved. And I’ve seen how you operate. Your business is never usual.”
“Well then, I guess that’s that.” I wasn’t going to get sucked into this insipid argument.
He pursed his lips so hard that they disappeared. “Let it be known that I have plans for getting off this rock. If you do anything to fuck that up for me, I will destroy you and everything you care about.”
“Well why don’t you just tell me what your plans are, and I’ll do my best to stay out of your way?”
“Careful Jacob. You do not want to get involved with the Watchers.”
I didn’t respond well to threats. Never had. It was a character flaw. “I’ve never killed an angel before, Azazel, but I’m always willing to try new things. You want to watch something, watch your own ass. And watch your mouth. It’s going to get you in trouble one of these days.”
I was about to tell him to watch his step, but I figured I’d beaten the wordplay into the ground.
“The emanations are never wrong, Jacob.”
Emanations. I fucking hated that word. It was the angelic equivalent of “LOL” or “synergy.” One of those buzzwords that angels liked to use. I still didn’t understand exactly what they were, but emanations were some sort of sixth sense for angels. Actually, it was their eighth sense, but I didn’t know enough about angelic physiology to name the sixth and seventh ones, and I didn't care enough to learn them. Emanations essentially allow them to see the future, or at least what the future was likely to be. It also allowed them to communicate across great distances. I didn’t know any more than that. All I knew was that I cringed every time I heard the word…and they used the word a lot.