Snake Eyes: A novel of the Demon Accords

by John Conroe

  “She’s with the wounded. Plus, I’m kind of in the doghouse,” he said, grinning even wider. She froze up, struggling with a response. “I know, right? So much to work with in one little sentence,” he said.

  “I can’t believe you said doghouse. She’s gonna kill you,” Brystol said. He shrugged it off.

  “What did you do?” she asked, microphone out for his response.

  He didn’t answer, so I did. “He takes risks that he shouldn’t—or at least she doesn’t think he should,” I said.

  “Not much choice with that one,” he said, now defensive.

  “Really? No other spells at your disposal?” I asked.

  He looked at me like I’m a traitor. I gave him a tight smile.

  “There were three possibilities, but none have been tested and none were a sure thing,” he said, voice colder.

  “Well then, there’s your answer. It’s a good one, too, but if I were you, I’d explore those possibilities in the really, really near future so you can answer the inevitable question that comes your way,” I said.

  He processed my words, then nodded, tight expression clearing slightly.

  “So, Mr. Gordon. What exactly happened here? That was a werewolf?” Brystol asked.

  “A demon-werewolf hybrid,” I said.

  “Ah, that’s kinda new, isn’t it? Never heard of it before?” she asked, glancing at Declan.

  “Never been one before,” he said. “Not easy to make them. And before you ask, we already broke the mold and the mold maker.”

  “So let’s go back to my original question. Babies? Did Tatiana give birth?” she asked.

  I could feel the frown form on my face. The pregnancy was never confirmed to the the media despite the rumors. Her smug look faltered a bit.

  “We gotta get going, Brystol. We got more things to do before our day is done,” Declan said.

  She studied him for a moment, glancing my way, then quickly averting her eyes, not liking whatever she saw.

  “I’m not thrown off that easy, O’Carroll,” she said.

  “Oh look, Chris, there’s our ride,” Declan said as a sleek Tesla pulled up. He grabbed the driver’s door while I moved around to the passenger side, still watching Brystol. The entire crowd of media was observing us, recording everything, but not a one was asking questions. I climbed in the car. It was empty except for Declan.

  As soon as I closed the door, the car accelerated smoothly away, jumping into traffic. Declan wasn’t touching the steering wheel… or any other controls.

  “Omega’s driving?” I asked, already knowing the answer.

  “Yes, Chris. The heat signature is moving under Utah. We will intercept it somewhere mid-state off I-15,” Omega said.

  Declan had taken my stolen blue backpack and was carefully studying the contents. After looking in it for a moment, he cautiously put his portion of the fossil into the pack, closed the mouth, and set it in the backseat.

  Our car navigated the streets of Vegas with ease, never meeting a single red light. We turned into a McDonald’s, pulled through the drive-thru, and picked up three huge bags of takeout that were already waiting for us, prepaid.

  “Where’d you get the car?” I asked around a Big Mac that was trying to cram itself into my mouth.

  “Human-sized bites, Chris. The poor burger can’t outrun you,” Declan said. “We borrowed it from the local dealership.”

  “You stole it?” I asked, appalled.

  “We’ll bring it back tomorrow,” he said with a shrug. “We needed a car that Omega could drive with the range and speed to get us where we need to be.”

  “It’s electric. How we gonna charge it to get back, and do we even have enough juice to get where we need to be?” I asked, disturbed that they just took the damned thing.

  He held up one hand, fingers spread, and blue arcs of electricity ran up to his fingertips, like Frankenstein’s mini-lab. He couldn’t answer out loud because his mouth was full of French fries.

  The car pulled onto Interstate 15 and accelerated up to a solid hundred miles an hour.

  “What about cops?” I asked, but this time, I pretty much knew the answer.

  “I am tracking all law enforcement along our pathway. I will black out any that cross our path, but that is unlikely, as I am currently moving them away from our course of travel,” Omega said.

  “Moving them?” I asked, drinking half a chocolate shake before moving on to my third Big Mac.

  “Simple use of the 911 system creates calls that keep them out of the way. Before you ask, Chris, I am placing the calls at locations that I have determined have a high probability of needing a police presence in the near future,” Omega said.

  “How big of an area are you monitoring?” I asked, watching Declan pull an iPad from his bag.

  “Northern Nevada and the southern half of Utah.”

  Of course. Half of two different states. Probably could watch all of both states. Hell, probably every state all at once. I glanced at Declan. He smiled as if he understood my train of thought and handed me the iPad.

  “FaceTime call for you,” he said, leaning back.

  The screen lit up with my vampire in bed, two slumbering bundles snuggled on her chest.

  “Hey, zayka, how is it going?” she asked. Declan had closed his eyes and was settling into a comfortable sleeping position while the car drove itself.

  “I think I’m being managed,” I said. Declan smirked without opening his eyes.

  “Good. You always need cool-down time after action,” she said. “Are you eating enough?”

  I held up a fist full of Golden Arch goodness. “Speaking of eating, did they eat?” I asked.

  “Yes,” she smiled, very satisfied and almost smug.

  “What… did they eat?” I asked. The subject of the babies’ physical needs and diet had been one of endless speculation for months now. We had no way of knowing. I had been a normal baby, and Tanya had fed on blood from birth.

  “They nursed, like babies do,” she said, smiling. Yup, definitely smug.

  “Breast fed? Milk?” I asked.

  “Yes,” she said. After a tortuous pause, she put me out of my suspense. “It seems my milk came in right after they were born.”

  “Is it… unique?” I asked.

  “It is. A mixture of mother’s milk and blood. Dr. Singh says it’s about sixty-five percent milk, thirty-five blood,” she said.

  Declan’s breathing evened out and I knew he was asleep. Tanya told me of our children, moving the camera around to show me my son and daughter. Suddenly, a rather large portion of the room’s floor got up and turned in a circle before settling back down. It was black and tan, about the size of a VW bug, and it was clearly on baby and mommy guard duty. A part of me, a part that I didn’t know was clenched, relaxed. My family was safe and guarded, fed and watched over. My young companion and I were free to see this ordeal finished and should we survive it, I could be with my family before another night fell.

  The car sped through the desert night, passing every vehicle on the road with consummate ease, while I chatted with my wife and Declan caught a nap.

  The car’s touchscreen lit up, a map of Utah front and center. Our car was a blue diamond icon moving steadily north. On the top of the screen was an orange circle heading south straight at us.

  In a few hours, this thing was going to be done. One way or another.

  Chapter 29

  The car’s readout said the overall trip was two hundred seventy miles. Estimated time was originally three hours, forty-two minutes. We did it in two hours, twenty-seven minutes, our average cruising speed one hundred and ten miles an hour. We didn’t see any cops and we didn’t stop.

  Once, just outside of St. George, Utah, Declan stuck his finger in the twelve-volt socket and the car’s power gauge shot up from three eighths to three quarters in the space of twenty seconds.

  “Where did you get the energy?” I asked, always curious about his magic.

 
“I’ve been recapturing some of the tire and road energy as we’ve driven. Plus, I was still topped up from Vegas. That city pumps out energy in the megawatt range night and day,” he said. “Once the sun is fully up, I’ll just use the thermal heat coming off the desert, plus, you know, fire elemental and all that.”

  Dawn was breaking to the east, the sky lightening from deep purple to azure blue, as the car steered itself off an exit labeled for Meadow. It looked like it was going to be a beautiful day. There was a high probability it would be our last. How do you fight a super volcano? Declan felt we couldn’t. He thought we could give the fossilized name to old Yellowstone and back the fuck up, cross fingers and hope he went his own way. “What’s your plan B?” I asked him.

  “You gird up in your angel armor and break out the Holy sword of doom,” he said.

  “Great. Assuming I can actually remember how to do all that, then what?” I asked. “How do you stab fire?”

  “Wait, can’t you just spin like Wonder Woman and be all like armored up? Or use a briefcase like Tony Stark?”

  “The armor is a projection of my aura. Grim handles that. But I’m never certain about the sword,” I said. He eyed me, suddenly uncertain. “What can you do?” I asked him.

  “I can channel heat like a mofo, but I’m not certain about a whole volcano’s worth. But I don’t think we’re facing the whole volcano, anyway. That thing doesn’t just up and move. No, that’s like its house. The elemental will be a lot less,” he said.

  “Supervolcano. One of the biggest ever, right?” I asked, and he nodded. “So he’s like, what? Five percent the size of his house? So what’s five percent of the biggest volcano?”

  His eyes went wide and he shook his head. “Maybe just a small nuclear reactor’s worth? Or a couple of foundries, perhaps.”

  “Awesome.”

  Meadow, Utah is tiny. Take a postage stamp and cut it into quarters. It’s about half of that. Yeah, I know, that’s called an eighth. Bite me. I’m facing a situation here, okay?

  Omega drove the car through the community, which took about a minute of time and three turns. Then we were driving toward some distant mountains and the area around was flat, scrubby desert. Our pavement suddenly ended and the road was just dirt. The car kept going for another half mile, then suddenly stopped.

  “I estimate this to be almost directly in the projected path of the heat bloom. I have drones inbound in five minutes,” Omega said.

  “What kind of drones?” Declan asked.

  “Prototype forest firefighters. They carry powdered extinguisher.”

  “How many?” the kid asked.

  “Twenty-three. Two are down for maintenance.”

  “Okay, so we got that going for us,” Declan said.

  “Sure. What’s our first step?” I asked.

  “I need to put this mess back together. You should pick out the spot where we place it. He’s gonna burn the shit outta wherever we leave it,” he said, pulling the backpack from the rear seat along with a metallic survival space blanket from his magic bag.

  Moving out into the desert to study the terrain, I glanced back at him. He’d taken the biggest pieces out and fit them together like a stone puzzle. Then he carefully sprinkled every bit of powder and dust from the pack onto his puzzle.

  The ground here was rock and sand, with small, hardy desert plants sporadically growing in clumps and bunches. Sixty or so feet away was a small rock upthrust.

  Another glance back at Declan. He was making a circle around his craft project. Kid’s always making circles. Says they’re a basic building block in magic. I looked at the open expanse in front of me, a thought forming.

  “Omega, does the car have any tools on board?”

  “There is a small tire changing kit in the trunk, Chris,” the supercomputer said.

  “Nevermind. I’ll use this,” I said, snapping off a small road sign that said we were on W 3500 S, whatever that meant. Dirt road number 3500?

  “You got any rope or cord?” I asked Boy Wonder.

  He did look up from the stone that was clicking together and the cracks that were sealing themselves, but just pointed at his bag three feet away.

  “Blue zipper bag, says Ace Hardware on it. Should be a fifty-foot coil of parachute cord,” he said.

  This was the first time I’d ever been inside his secret bag of tricks. It was way more organized than I would have guessed. Little bundles, bags, pouches, and ziploc bags of black fabric that I realized were spare clothes for his girlfriend, who has a habit of bursting outta her threads. They were all folded and compressed into freezer bags. It was a surprise. He always looked a bit disheveled, so I just kinda thought the inside of his gear bag would be a jumble. For some reason, this discovery left me pleased. We were about to face down an ancient being who could incinerate a city, but I was excited that my surrogate kid brother wasn’t a slob. Weird.

  Taking the paracord and the sign, I headed back out into the scrub. I planted the sign and tied the cord to it, shaking out the rest as I backed out to about forty-five or so feet. Then I closed my eyes and tried to empty my head. Lydia would say that was redundant. I shook thoughts of my friends and family out and thought of blackness. When it was nice and inky black, I pictured a sword. Not just any sword, but my sword. The one shown to me by Barbiel, one I’ve apparently held for eons, one that was made when I was made. It shone bright in the blackness of my mind. I reached for it. I hadn’t done this much, mostly because I was always afraid it wouldn’t work. That I wouldn’t be able to get a hold of it… that I’m not worthy to hold it anymore.

  But I suddenly felt it in my hand and when I opened my eyes, it was shining bright in the early morning sun. It sang to me, a song of divine creation and hope. The God Tear necklace round my neck sang back to it.

  That was the easiest I’ve ever retrieved it from its pocket dimension sheath. Of course, things are easier when you don’t have a multi-ton demon charging down on you.

  Declan was watching, frozen in place, but he blinked when he saw me notice him. “Ah, that’s freaking awesome!”

  “I know, right?” I responded. Then I tied the cord to the hilt and used the pointy part to scribe a circle in the dirt.

  “Ah, don’t you think it’s like disrespectful or something to dig your Angel sword in the dirt?” Declan asked, raw disbelief in his voice.

  “Well, let’s see,” I said, still walking the arc, still digging the line. “He made the earth and dirt, right? And He made the sword and me also? So what’s the big deal?” I asked, not telling him that it just felt like the correct thing to do.

  “The object that you and Father are calling a sword is showing up too blurry to see on the optical lenses of the Kobalt-M,” Omega said over both our phones simultaneously. “Onboard particle detectors are indicating high levels of neutrino activity.”

  “I’m not sure it’s actually a sword, or at least a metal one. I think it might be more quantummy than that,” I said, almost finished with the circle.

  “Not a word, but I get your point. Wait, don’t close it yet!” Declan said, standing up. “Damn. That’s cool,” he said, head tilted slightly sideways.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Use your Angel vision or aura eyes or whatever you do,” he said, walking toward me but still looking at the circle.

  I used my Sight. The clumsy circle of furrowed dirt I made glowed with a silver light.

  “I was going to do three of them like you did with the demon,” I said, surprised and yet not, by the sword’s effect.

  “Yeah, there is power in threes. Make them like two or three feet apart. I’ve got some ideas of runes I can put between the circles. They might actually give us a break from the heat of the thing,” he said. He came walking over, carrying the repaired disc of stone. Walking through the gap in the circle, he took the stone to the center and set it by my sign-slash-compass anchor. He then made three more circles around the signpost and name fossil, one with his kevlar cord, one
with some powder stuff, and the last one with some light-colored sand he dug with his hands from a spot ten feet away.

  “I’ve got a little piece to put in it to make it whole—at least as whole as it can get. When I do, I think it might get louder,” he said, looking at me. The stone has always made an odd tone, but at my nod, he slipped a pebble into place and the tone changed pitch and got much louder. In my head, an image of bubbling, primordial magma forms all on its own. Is that its name? Lava guy? Magma man?

  He stood up and walked back out of the circle, then pulled an old silver spoon from his bag and squatted down, drawing runes in the dirt around the outside edge of my circle. “You can go ahead and close that one and start another a couple of feet further out,” he said.