by Bruce Talmas
Rose looked like he just woke up from a coma. “What?”
“Could you leave the room for a little while?”
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” he said, sounding more present and aware than he had at any point since meeting Cassandra. “You’re joking, right?!!”
I just looked at him. He sighed. I shoved him gently, and he headed for the door, only turning back when he was in the hallway.
“This was not what I had in mind when I agreed to come along,” he said.
“It’ll only be a half hour or so,” I said. I looked at Cass, who’d begun to masturbate again.
“One hour, tops.”
An hour and a half later, I found Rose in the main lounge that we had first walked into. He was reading a People magazine and studiously avoiding watching the couple on the couch next to him having sex. It was the most uncomfortable I’d ever seen anyone look. I wondered absently where he got the magazine.
He glared at me with a mixture of anger and relief that made him look constipated. If I’d have known he was having such a bad time waiting for me, I’d have taken a little longer. I was still pulling on my shirt from my ‘session’ with Cassandra when he stood up and threw the magazine on the chair behind him. He continued to ignore the couple next to him.
“It took you long enough,” he said.
“Sorry. I went as quickly as I could.”
He was looking at my chest. It was a roadmap of pain. Old scars crisscrossed my torso, intermingling with the new scars that Cassandra had just applied. Healed gunshot wounds bloomed from my navel to my neck. There was also a fresh bite mark on my shoulder. “Maybe if you would have skipped the roughhousing you’d have been done quicker.”
I scoffed. “You probably leave sporting events early to avoid the traffic, don’t you?”
We reconvened in the same room, except this time Rose and I sat at the desk while Cass sat behind it. She now donned a flowery summer dress with a white sweater draped over her shoulders. It would have almost been wholesome on anyone else.
“So you’re hunting Belial?” she asked me, all business now that she’d been satiated.
I nodded.
“You always did like a challenge.”
I shrugged. “Go big or go home, I always say. And I don’t really have a choice on this one. If I don’t find him, he’ll find me.”
She was nibbling on the tip of her pen. A gesture that would normally come across as a nervous tic came across as obscenely erotic from her. I looked at Rose and could tell he felt the same way.
“Nonsense. This excites you. You can lie to the humans if you want; you can even lie to yourself, but I know better. I’m the same as you, remember? You feed on killing just as much as I feed on sex, no matter how much you try to downplay it. And Belial, wow, that would be one huge orgasm, taking him down.”
“It’s not exactly the same,” I told her, uncomfortable with the analogy. I looked over at Rose. “It’s not,” I repeated, for good measure.
“Close enough,” she said.
Rose, who was still a little surly, spoke up for the first time: “I don’t care who this guy is. If he took my son, I’m going to rip his heart out of his chest.”
Cassandra looked at him as if seeing him for the first time. Maybe she was. I suspected she was under the effect of some kind of drug when we arrived. Only after our little romp did she truly seem like the Cassandra of old. Maybe I’d cleared her head. I know she’d cleared mine.
“That statement only proves how little you know about this situation, Mr. Rose,” she said. I noticed he didn’t correct her about being called ‘detective.’ “I sympathize with you, but you are out of your element here. This guy, as you so cavalierly call him, is more dangerous that anyone you’ve ever met—No offense, Jacob.”
I shook my head, “None taken.”
“And,” she added, “it’s yet to be seen if he even has a heart that you can rip out…or a chest to rip it from, for that matter.”
She had a point. No Full-Blood anywhere near Belial’s stature had ever been brought across. We had no idea what we were dealing with. He could be twenty feet tall and made of adamantium: a possibility I chose not to think about.
“What have you heard about him?” I asked Cass.
“No more than anyone else. I stopped getting reports the day the emanations stopped. At this point, the only ones who know anything about the Summoning are the ones who brought him across. And Belial himself, of course.”
Cassandra wasn’t a fallen angel; she was straight up demon. Which meant she didn’t have access to the emanations. I wondered if she kept Mike on staff for more than just his good looks. She was clever in the ways of espionage and politics. Of course she was. They were all different forms of seduction.
We all sat in silence, each of us thinking of a way around this dead end. Rose was stewing. Hearing that the man he’d recently dedicated his life to tracking down was possibly invincible—and not really a man at all—was disheartening, to be sure. I couldn’t blame him, but we couldn’t dwell on things we had no power over anyway.
“What about the magician that brought him over?” I asked. If I couldn’t get a bead on Belial, I’d have to find another way to him.
“All I have is anecdotal at this point,” she said. Using big words and wearing the conservative dress were bringing forth naughty librarian fantasies in me. I found myself wishing she was wearing a pair of horn-rimmed glasses. I shook my head to clear it of the images.
“What have you heard?”
“There was a girl that used to dance upstairs for me,” she said. “Cute little thing. From Germany. Her name was Missy Haught—”
“—Missy Hot?” Rose repeated. “Now that’s a good stripper name.”
Cass shook her head with only a hint of amused disapproval. “Her stage name was Celeste. Missy Haught was her real name. Spelled H-A-U-G-H-T. Like I said, she’s German.”
“German’s not exactly a romantic language,” I said.
“Ha ha,” Cass said sarcastically. “Could we focus please?” Rose and I regained our composure. Cass waited a moment to make sure we weren’t just waiting for another punchline. “Anyway, she did some moonlighting on the side.”
“How do you moonlight from being a stripper? I thought stripping was what women did as moonlighting?”
“Can I tell the fucking story please?” Cass asked. She didn’t raise her voice or sound angry. If anything, she sounded happier than normal. I sensed that despite all the sex, she was lonely. Rose and I were probably giving her the first real conversation she’d had in a long time.
“Anyway,” she said again, “Celeste was into the occult scene. Considered herself a witch. I always wondered what she would do if she knew she’d been working for a demon straight out of Hell. Probably would have asked for my autograph…”
I cleared my throat. “Now you’re interrupting yourself,” I said.
“Sorry. Anyway,” she said for the third time, “she was called in by a private client to act as a stand-in for a ritual. They even offered her as a fake sacrifice and mimicked cutting her throat as she lay on an altar.”
“They were probably a couple of D&D geeks that have never quite outgrown the robes and magic,” I said. “One of them probably had some money to throw around and thought it would be a turn-on to see a woman paid to be a sacrifice.”
“Possibly. But Missy knew enough about black magic to recognize parts of the incantation. She was freaked out by it. Said it sounded like a Summoning. They even had a pentagram and circle of protection drawn in chalk on the floor.”
Now that was interesting. I looked over at Rose, and I could tell we were both envisioning the scorched markings on the floorboards of my family’s barn.
“Did she tell you anything about the person who performed the ritual?” I asked.
Cass nodded. “A little. I didn’t ask too many questions because I wasn’t all that interested at the time, but I remember her saying that it was a young man, no o
lder than twenty, and that he was gorgeous.”
“You mean like me?” I joked.
“From the way she talked, even better than you,” she licked her lips. “Not that I believed her, Sweetie.”
“Good recovery,” I said. “But there’s no way someone that young could Summon Belial. A magician would have to be at least in his forties to have that kind of facility with magic.”
“I agree,” Cass said, “but you never know for sure. Maybe there’s some kind of Magical Rain Man out there somewhere that can just do it naturally. Besides, you asked me what I heard, not what I believed.”
“Do you believe it, then?”
“No, but I can’t discount it. I haven’t heard of a lot of things that are nonetheless true. And if this magician is for real, then he could be every bit as dangerous as Belial.”
Fucking great, I thought. A demon, a powerful magician, and possibly an Angel. I was beginning to think I gave Volkov a hell of a deal on my rates for this one.
Chapter 26
After she made me promise to come see her before I got myself killed, Cassandra gave us Missy’s aka Celeste’s phone number and address. It was three in the morning by the time we got out of Trinity, so there was a decent chance Celeste would be at her house. She lived in Bridgeville, which was a good twenty minutes away, but I wasn’t willing to bank on a moonlighting stripper being at her house even if it was a Sunday night.
I was going to take Rose home and set up a meeting with her for the next night, but he told me he was fine if we met with her that night. He called his wife and left a message on her voice mail telling her he might not be home until morning. He failed to mention it was because he’d just left an underground sex club and was hopefully going to meet a stripper/prostitute.
As we sat in the parking lot of Trinity, I called the number Cass had given me and got Celeste’s voicemail. The voice on the other end sounded young and attractive. No surprise there. I left a message with my name and number. I also mentioned Cassandra and that I wanted to meet with her. I gave no indication why I was calling. Let her assume I was interested in hiring her. The chance at a big payday would garner a callback quicker than the threat of interrogation.
We weren’t in the car for more than two minutes before my phone rang. I answered.
“Is this Jacob?” The same voice as on the machine.
“It is.”
“This is Celeste. You wanted to see me?”
“Yes. I was really looking forward to meeting you, actually.”
“Really?” She practically purred. Cassandra had taught her well.
“Really. Do you think maybe we could set something up?”
“Absolutely. Any friend of Cassandra’s is a friend of mine. I’m booked through the week, but maybe we could do something…” she trailed off. She was smooth. Professional. But the pause was just a little too long. Enough to set me on edge. “Wait…you’re not that Jacob, are you?”
Experience told me to never admit I’m that Jacob. Chances were better than even that someone would try to kill me shortly after that admission. I couldn’t see Cassandra saying anything really bad about me, so I took a chance.
“The one and only.” I tried to sound confident as I said it. I was greeted by nothing but silence. Shit.
“What are you doing right now?” she finally asked.
“I’m in the car driving around the city, looking for a good time.” I felt like an extra in Swingers using that line, but it did the trick.
“Well honey, you find a hotel near you and I can be there within an hour.”
“How does the Marriott sound?” I offered. It was only a few blocks away.
“Great. I’ll have the room booked by the time you get there.”
“No need. I’m nearly there. Just give them your name when you get to the front desk.”
Two minutes later, I swung into the parking garage of the hotel and took the escalator to the lobby rather than wait for the valet. Since I planned on being upfront with Celeste from the get-go that I didn’t want sex, Rose joined me and we went up to the room together. We got a couple of looks from the staff, but I figured they were just wondering why I was with Rose when I could obviously do so much better.
The room was small but clean. The bed was extremely comfortable, and I was a little bit sad I wouldn’t be able to test it out. Cassandra’s spell still hung over me, and I realized I was horny as hell. Not the right frame of mind to be in while hunting a Lord of Hell. Belial was my priority. I couldn’t put him on hold every time I had a chance to bang a stripper. Besides, I have a rule about human chicks, and Cass would have probably mentioned if Celeste were anything other than human.
“I just want you to know I’m not real comfortable with this,” Rose said as we got into the room.
Poor guy. “Relax. You haven’t done anything wrong.”
“I can’t even count the number of crimes I’ve either witnessed or been party to tonight.”
“I’m sorry the world isn’t the well-behaved little child you thought it was. I would have thought you’d’ve figured that out by now.”
It was a low blow, and I knew it as soon as I said it. I hadn’t taken into account that Alexander’s disappearance was still an open wound for Detective Rose.
If he took my words that way, he didn’t show it. “I just mean, I’m way out of my element here. I feel like Dante being dragged deeper and deeper into the bowels of Hell, and I know absolutely nothing about my traveling companion.”
I lay back on the bed and tried to make myself comfortable. I seriously doubted Celeste would be there when she said she would. I’d be impressed if she arrived within the hour. “What do you want to know?” I asked.
“Who are you? What do you do? How are you involved with this whole mess?”
Jesus. A lot of questions, and not a lot of answers that would satisfy him. Even so, I tried to speak as plainly as I could. I distilled it as much as possible: “My name is Jacob Cain. I’m a semi-reformed serial killer who now works as a contract killer. I’m part demon. I’m not sure why I’m in this mess, except that these things just kind of happen to me. Anything else?”
He just stared at me, his expression unreadable. He seemed unsatisfied with my answers, so he chose a different tack: “How’d you know about the symbols in the barn?”
“Because I used to live there. In the farmhouse, not the barn.”
He gave that some thought. “Why were you there yesterday?”
“Because I had to go there eventually. The attorney who was murdered there was my adoptive brother. He was also an evil little prick, but that’s beside the point. I believe he was killed to get my attention. The same with The Ferryman killings.”
That one shook him. “How did you know about that? We haven’t told the media anything.”
“I have my own independent sources,” I told him. I tried to keep it as vague as possible. Telling him about Volkov and his weird contingent wasn’t going to get me anywhere, and would open up a whole other jar of craziness.
“Who are these—” He was cut off by a demure knock on the door. We both looked at each other in surprise.
I got up from the bed and opened it. An attractive girl with too many tattoos and six shades of hair color was framed in the doorway, hips casually cocked to one side, in a skirt that barely covered her ass cheeks.
“Celeste?”
“Jacob?”
I nodded and opened the door for her to come inside. She stepped inside and headed to the bed. She halted as soon as she saw Rose sitting in the chair.
“Who’s he?” she asked.
“He’s a friend of mine.”
“You didn’t say anything about another guy. That’s gonna cost you extra.”
I laughed. “Don’t worry. He just likes to watch.”
Rose started to protest, but I raised a hand. There was something about the girl’s reaction that was off. I could understand a hooker being concerned with two men in a hotel room whe
n she only expected one, but that wasn’t the sort of fear I was picking up from her.
I came around and sat on the bed in front of her. I patted the mattress next to me and she sat down, but still she kept a wary eye on Rose.
“So who did you talk to?” I asked her in my gentle voice.
“What?” she asked.
“Who did you call before you came here?”
“No one. What do you mean?”
I slid in closer to her. “Let me spell it out for you. You were given instructions to let someone know if I ever got in contact with you, right?” I nodded to Rose as I spoke. His eyes went straight to the door and he put his hand on his service pistol, but he didn’t draw just yet.
“No.” If she was lying, she was good. I couldn’t feel deceit, but I felt something. She was nervous, and nervous people talk. They don’t give one-word answers unless they’re afraid of revealing something.
I grabbed her purse too quickly for her to stop me. With the dress she was wearing, I knew she didn’t have any weapons on her person. Or at least if she was, it wasn’t anywhere she was going to get at very quickly. That meant that her weapon was in her purse. I pulled out a .44 Magnum.
“Jesus Christ,” I said. “I’m surprised a little thing like you can carry this thing strapped around your shoulder all day.”
At the sight of the hand cannon, Rose got up to check the door. I waved him off. Peepholes were never a good idea.
“Who knows we’re here?” I asked her. My voice wasn’t so gentle this time.
“Just some guy. I don’t even know if he knows yet. I called and left a message at the number he gave me.”
“Who was he?”
“Just some guy.”
I grabbed her by the throat. “Who was he?”
“He hired me about a month ago. He was into some weird shit. Him and his buddies acted like they were sacrificing me to the gods or something. I thought they were going to kill me. It freaked me out.”
“And what did he say about me.”
“He said that if Jacob Cain ever calls on me, to call a number. I called it after I talked to you.”