Heaven's Door (Quincy Harker, Demon Hunter Book 6)

by John G. Hartness

  “Flynn. Harker.” He nodded to each of us in turn. “Where are we?”

  I drew a breath to respond with something like “the parking lot,” but Rebecca elbowed me in the gut. The air whooshed out of me, and I shut up.

  “We have an unidentified victim, staked to the ground inside what appears to be a pentagram, with Harker’s name written in entrails around the perimeter of the circle.”

  “Entrails?”

  “Yes, sir. The victim’s intestines were used to write Harker’s name on the outside of the circle.”

  “That’s nasty, even for a demon.”

  “There’s a reason they make lousy interior decorators, Smitty.” I couldn’t help it.

  “Do you know her, Harker?” Smith asked, turning his blue-grey eyes on me.

  “The victim? No, never seen her before. At least, not that I can remember. And there was no specific aura or signature around the circle or the body. But this is Orobas. I know it.”

  “How can you be sure?” Smith asked.

  “I talked to Mort today. He confirmed that Orobas is still in the city, and actually never left. He’s just been waiting until the right moment, with the right minion, apparently.”

  “You trust that hitchhiking little fuckwit?” Smith and Mort didn’t get along. To the point that Mort put him on the very short list of people that the laws of Sanctuary didn’t apply to. I never heard a straight answer as to why they hated each other, just that Smith didn’t set foot inside Mort’s, and Mort didn’t step outside.”

  “He’s never steered me wrong yet,” I replied.

  “So what’s next?” Smith asked. I looked over his shoulder and watched as a couple of men in Tyvek suits loaded a stretcher into the back of the Sprinter van. They stepped out, closed the back doors, and pulled away.

  “Well, our initial plan was for Flynn to go back and oversee the autopsy and see what the crime scene guys turned up, but since your boys just loaded the body into a van and drove off with it, I guess part of that is off the table.”

  “What?!?” Becks exclaimed, starting to move after the departing van.

  I grabbed her arm. For the second time in one morning. At least this time, she didn’t put a gun under my jaw. “Hold up, Flynn. You can’t catch them on foot, and it’s not like Smitty here won’t tell us where he’s taking the body. Right, Smith?”

  “Of course I will. They’re just going to the county morgue. All the ME vans were out, so I had a couple of my guys lend a hand. We grabbed a stretcher from the morgue, then came over here. The body will be waiting on you when you get downtown.”

  Flynn’s shoulders relaxed, and she looked back to Smith. “Okay. That’s fine. I just wish you would have mentioned that first.”

  A silence hung in the air. I figured if she was waiting for an apology from Smith, we might all be white-haired before that happened. So I stepped in. “So now what’s next? I was heading over to Luke’s to do some research on Orobas and see if I can come up with any other ways of identifying Cambion. Orobas has managed to stay hidden for seven years, so I bet his new half-demon lapdog is using Nephilim blood to mask its identity.”

  “Maybe you should come with me instead,” Smith said. “We’ve got a pretty extensive library at my office, including a few books picked up when a certain Alexander Marlack disappeared last year. Not that you’d know anything about that, of course.”

  “Of course,” I replied, somehow keeping the grin off my face. Marlack was an asshole lawyer whose privileged asshole son summoned a demon last fall and let it rape and impregnate a teenage girl. I had to burn down the girl’s house with her in it before she gave birth to a demon that could walk both planes. Then I went after the son, which led me to the father, which led me to summoning a demon myself to deal with those assholes.

  I hate demons, but sometimes when you need to pound a nail, you have to have a hammer. And sometimes you need a really big, flesh-rending, life-devouring hammer that besmirches your immortal soul just by being in the same room with it. But killing that particular dickwhistle was totally worth it.

  Chapter 6

  We sped along Independence Boulevard in Smith’s Suburban, strip malls and car dealerships whizzing by our windows. We rode in silence for a few minutes, until Smith looked over at me.

  “So, you and Flynn finally got some things sorted out, huh?”

  “Not even close. But what makes you say that?” I asked.

  “The way you two were being very careful not to look at each other for very long, no touching, not even accidental, that kind of thing.”

  “You’re pretty observant, Smitty. That’s a little more than the typical human would pick up on.” It was kind of a game by this point—I try to figure out exactly what Smith was, and he tries to hide his real identity from me. He was just a little bit off. He didn’t quite smell right for a full human, and he didn’t quite move right, either. He wasn’t a were-something, I’d figured that much out, but I couldn’t get him to even admit he was more than human, much less tell me what he was. So I kept poking at it, and he kept obfuscating.

  I opened my mouth for another guess, but just then Smith’s cell phone rang. He pressed the screen on his dash, and a voice came over the car speakers.

  “Agent Smith?”

  “Speaking. I have Quincy Harker with me, so nothing classified.”

  “You take all the fun out of espionage, Smitty,” I said with a grin. He replied with the same stoic look he always wore. Sometimes I wondered if the man knew how to smile.

  “Sir, this is Sergeant Jade from Dispatch. You asked me to relay any calls that came in that I thought were odd, and this one seemed to fit.”

  “What is it, Sergeant?”

  “We just got a call about a disturbance at Freedom Park. Some folks protesting construction or widening roads or something are raising hell out there.”

  Smith looked exasperated, and it showed in his voice. “That’s not exactly what I was thinking about when I told you to call me with anything unusual. I’d say a bunch of hippies bitching about something is pretty normal.”

  “So would I, sir. Except for the reports of a giant plant monster tossing huge rocks around the park and destroying the bandshell.”

  “What?” The bored and frustrated look was gone from Smith’s face.

  “The report said something about a giant tree-thing walking around and throwing shit at people. Park benches, trash cans, boulders, that kind of thing. I’ve got a couple squad cars on the way. I’ll let you know what they say.”

  “Never mind, we’re on our way.” He tapped the screen to end the call, then turned to me. “I’m going to drop you off at the entrance to the park, then I’ll head to the station and get started on our research.”

  “You’re not going to back me up?”

  “Harker, it sounds like you’re going to fight an Ent. I don’t even have a can of weed killer on me, and I bet bullets won’t do much to something made of wood and grass, or whatever this thing is made of.”

  He was right, but I wasn’t ready to admit it. I drew my Glock and checked the magazine, then made sure my spare mags were in my back pocket and topped off.

  “You think you’re going to shoot the plant monster, Harker? I didn’t hire you for your marksmanship.”

  “Good thing since I’m not a great shot,” I replied. “No, I just want to make sure I can shoot out your tires if you really do try to leave me there.”

  Smith didn’t respond, just flipped a switch on his steering column to turn on his flashing blue and red lights, then started passing people like they were sitting still. I suppose the giant engine is another reason the feds like their Suburbans. It can’t all be to compensate for tiny penises, right?

  Ten minutes later, Smith pulled off to the side of Princeton Avenue and looked at me. “Try not to get turned into fertilizer, Harker. I need you on this serial case. If it’s anything like that mess you were in seven years ago, it’s going to take everything we have to stop whatever
this guy has planned.”

  I didn’t bother asking how he knew about my run-in with Orobas seven years ago. Even if the most interesting bits weren’t in any official records, Smith had good sources. Better than mine, sometimes, and one of my sources was a friggin’ angel.

  “Thanks, Smitty. I’m sure your only concern is for my well-being,” I said as I stepped out of the SUV.

  “Nah, I just don’t want to deal with the paperwork if you’re on one of my cases and get killed. So if you’re going to die, try to do it off the clock.”

  I just shook my head and slammed the door, then turned to see what kind of shitstorm I was walking into. A steady stream of people cascaded out of the gates of Freedom Park, and a fair number were just hauling ass down the greenways and ungated exits, too. I didn’t see any sign of a giant plant monster, so I did what every sane, well-adjusted human being does when faced with hundreds of people running in terror from something.

  I ran right in.

  Good thing for me I’ve never been accused of being sane or well-adjusted, and reports of my humanity are muddled at best. I hopped the low fence around the parking lot by the softball field with one easy bounce and ran toward the bandshell. The sergeant had mentioned destroying the bandshell, and that part of the park was popular with protestors, so it all fit. It took me a couple minutes to jog there, and when I arrived, the waterfall of escapees had slowed to a trickle.

  When I crested a small hill, I got a good look at the lawn area across the small pond from the bandshell. Sure enough, what I saw fit into the category of “giant plant monster” pretty well. It was a good ten or twelve feet tall, covered in chunks of grass, flowering plants, and hunks of sod. What I could see of whatever constituted its muscles and bones looked like tree branches, roots, and thick vines. From somewhere inside its head, a reddish-orange glow emanated, like there was a pissed off fire inside the thing. Which, frankly, would piss me off, too, if I were made of sticks.

  The plant-thing was chucking rocks the size of my head at a couple of Charlotte cops who were trying to take cover behind a two-wheeled ice cream cart. I guess any port in a storm, but if I were a normal human, I would have stayed right the fuck away from that thing.

  As previously stated, I am far from a normal human. Step one was to get the cops to stop shooting long enough for me to get close and try to take out the beastie. It just wouldn’t do to get shot in the ass trying to save the city. Or at least the park. Let’s just accept the fact that I don’t want to get shot in the ass and leave it at that.

  I ran over to where the cops huddled behind the cart and crouched behind them. “You guys know that thing can totally see over this cart, right?” As if to prove my point, a basketball-sized rock arced high over the cart and sunk itself a foot into the ground behind us.

  “We know, but we got no place else to be,” one of the cops said. He was young, nowhere close to out of his twenties. A young, good-looking African-American kid who really didn’t need to get his brains splattered all over the park.

  “You do now. This is now officially federal government business. I’m Agent Harker from Homeland Security.” I even pulled out my badge.

  “We know you, dickhead. You’re that moron who thinks he’s a wizard that’s banging Detective Flynn,” the other cop, a fat guy in his forties, grumbled at me. He was white, fat, and stupid. If he wanted to put his head in the way of a falling rock, I didn’t have a problem with that.

  I glared at Fat Cop and said, “First, don’t call me dickhead, fuckwit. Second, I don’t think I’m a wizard. I do magic, that’s all. No funny hat, no robes, no hobbits. And third, keep your fucking bullshit speculation about my and Detective Flynn’s personal interactions to yourself, or I’ll have your ass busted back down to parking lot traffic monitor at Carowinds.”

  “You don’t have that kind of juice,” Fat Cop replied.

  “I have a badge that says Federal Motherfucking Government on it. You want to see how fast the department budget gets cut when I pull a few strings? Just keep annoying me, greaseball. Now if you two fine gentlemen would like to live to see tomorrow, how about you stand up, run like holy hell, and stay the fuck out of here until I get shit sorted. How does that sound?”

  Black Cop nodded, then got up and ran like there was a two-for-one sale at Krispy Kreme. Fat Cop sat there glaring at me for a few more seconds, then stood up and ran to his car. Well, it was more like a fast waddle, but he still moved with some purpose at least. I stood up, then reached out and snatched the big umbrella off the top of the cart. It came free with a snap, and I folded it shut. I reared back and chunked that folded umbrella like a javelin, channeling all my former Olympian ancestors with my mighty throw.

  Okay, more like I used my vampire-infused blood to hurl it like Ahab chunking a harpoon, but I’ll take that, too. The umbrella expanded a little in flight, which is the excuse I’m sticking with for why I buried it into the monster’s chest instead of its eye like I planned. But I hit it, which is some level of triumph. And I pissed it off, which wasn’t the best idea I’d ever had.

  The plant monster turned to me, the fleeing cops completely forgotten. It plucked the umbrella from its chest, snapped all the ribs and the fabric off it with a quick swipe of one hand, and hurled it back at me. The plant’s aim was dead on. The spear whizzed just a little over my head and buried itself two feet into the ground. I got the distinct feeling that even if the spear went through me, it was thrown with enough force to bury itself at least a foot in the dirt.

  “Okay, Plan B,” I muttered, wondering to myself exactly what Plans A, C, and hopefully D were. I reached down and picked up the ice cream cart high above my head, then took a couple of running steps and chunked that at the monster.

  It caught the cart in midair. It staggered back a step but didn’t go down. And of course, because playing catch with a forest elemental is exactly what I want to be doing with my morning, I opened my Sight, looking for any mystical trace that meant the creature was being controlled by someone nearby, but there was nothing. No strands of magic linking it to anything around, no traces of dark magic, just the rich verdant glow of nature magic. Yup, I was about to be squished by a real-life giant flower child. My life sucks sometimes.

  Chapter 7

  I couldn’t see any ties between the monster and its surroundings. But I also didn’t find anything tying it to another plane, either. So I was kinda at a loss about how to deal with the thing. I dodged a couple of big rocks, then hauled ass to hide in a nearby copse of trees when the giant tree came at me directly.

  I hid behind a couple of small maples, and almost immediately vines crept along the ground and twined around my feet. “Infernos!” I shouted, pointing at the vines. A small stream of fire flew from my fingertips and burned the vines away, but more slithered toward me. I retreated to the sidewalk, but nature’s assault pursued.

  The giant fern-covered bastard wasn’t chasing me, just sending vines, so I figured I could deal with those. I took a couple of running steps, then leapt for a nearby light pole. I scurried up the side, using speed as my leverage, then swung around so I was perched on the light fixture like a demented superhero, or a skinny gargoyle. That broke my contact with the ground and confounded the creature for a few seconds. I had to use them wisely, or I was screwed.

  “INFERNOS!” I bellowed, pulling in power from the nearby electrical lines and converting it to magic. That hurts like a sonofabitch, by the way. A fireball bigger than my head flew from my hands and crashed into the elemental’s chest, only to burst into about a bajillion pieces and scatter sparks all over the ground.

  Yup. I was screwed.

  By now the vines were back and climbing the pole, so I decided that moderate insanity was better than sitting there getting strangled by kudzu, so I jumped off the top of the light pole. I hit the ground rolling and was really glad for my oddball ancestry. If I were just human, I probably would have broken both legs, but since Dracula and his wives all took a bite out of my pa
rents at different times, it left me a little more human than human, as the song goes.

  I sprinted across the grass to a small concession stand and jumped up on the roof, wracking my brain for ideas. A tree-monster that was immune to fire? That was just totally unfair. A thought hit me, so I stopped, picked up one of the big-ass rocks lying around everywhere, and chunked it at the creature like a shotput. It flew true, arcing high in the air and coming down to smack into the elemental’s shoulder. Kinda. Except instead of breaking off the monster’s arm, like I’d expect when a basketball-sized rock hits something in the shoulder, it bounced off onto the grass. No effect. It was like I’d hit the monster with a balled-up piece of newspaper.

  I opened my Sight again, this time focusing on the creature, not whether or not it was tied to another plane. Most of the creature was surrounded by green pulsating magic, the magic of life, of the earth and nature, but the core of the thing, deep in its center, glowed bright crimson red. It was like someone put a very bright light behind a pool of blood, that kind of dark, roiling red. Even for a giant tree monster, that wasn’t normal. I scanned the area with my Sight, looking for anything similar, and saw a flicker of red light from the water just in front of the bandshell.

  Great, I thought. I find what I’m looking for, and of course it’s underwater. I kicked off my boots, carefully set them aside, put my pistol in one and spare ammunition in the other, and jumped off the roof. Good Doc Martens are expensive, and the last thing I wanted to do was fuck up my boots if this thing went sideways. Well, more sideways. My days and nights are pretty odd, but fighting an honest-to-God Ent in the middle of Charlotte is weird even for me.

  About five seconds after I hit the ground running, I regretted leaving my boots on the roof. The plant-monster, obviously tired of throwing things at me, decided to take a less direct approach, this time making the entire lawn erupt in thorny root growth. I ran on because stopping would have let the razor-sharp spiked vines and roots twine around me and give me the old iron maiden treatment, but every step was excruciating. I put a foot down and brought it back bloody. I stepped again and pierced my sole on more thorns. Lather, rinse, repeat the bloody process for every step. Eventually, I sacrificed the small pains for fewer, larger agonies as I started to jump across the grass ten feet at a time, still racing for the water. I finally reached the edge of the pond, took a deep breath, and dove in headfirst.