God Touched - 01

by John Conroe

  After the meeting, Chet pulled me into his workspace and started my orientation.

  “Okay, this is my hub, my web. The place from which all good information flows.” he said, gesturing at the multiple monitors, keyboards, computers and a lot of things I couldn't identify..

  “From here, I monitor all the news feeds, as well as the NYPD and federal crime reporting systems. I also, have programs to monitor various occult based forums and chat rooms for key phrases. I run all that data through filters to drill down on the most likely stories and crimes that we need to look into, as well as information that we might be interested in.”

  “Like, Damnedthings?” I asked.

  “Yup. Did you know there's a very old short story by a man named Ambrose Bierce called 'The Damned Thing'? Popped up during my search.”

  “Er. no. Never heard of it. Anything to do with our Damnedthing?”

  “Well it has a number of similar details. Invisible monster, animal based, violent, and of course the name of the creature itself. “

  “So you're saying the author might have been exposed to the real deal?” I asked.

  “Possible, but anyway let’s talk about the one we're interested in. You said it was originally a short faced bear?” he asked as his fingers flew over one of the keyboards. Pictures and descriptions popped up on several different monitors. Chet read from the Wikipedia listing.

  “Arctodus simus, short-faced bear, died out twelve thousand, five hundred years ago. Largest bear, six to seven feet at the shoulder, over eleven feet standing upright, and approximately two thousand pounds. That sound like your monster?”

  “Those are averages right? 'Cause my bear is a bit bigger than that.” I said.

  “Well of course there is always variation along the bell curve in any species, some bigger, some smaller. The thing that interests me is that the species died out over twelve millenia ago. If your Damned Thing originated from one of those than it is very, very old.”

  “What does that mean?” I asked.

  “Well, generally speaking, we seem to find that among the paranormal, older is stronger.”

  I thought about the vampires that I knew and Chet's theory fit in pretty well there.

  “So, you're saying this one could be strong?” I asked.

  “Based on what we witnessed in the lab, and based on what you tell me, plus the physical size of this thing when it's solid, then hell yeah I think it's powerful!”

  “So what's the whole demigod thing?” I asked.

  “Well, demigods are by definition, half god, half human. Think Hercules, son of Zeus and a human mother. We, the fed team and the other Special Situation squads around the country, have agreed on a standardized language to describe and compare the things we run into. Demigods are at the upper end of what we might run into.”

  I looked at him for a moment, letting all the information just sort of gel.

  “See, I woulda thought a dude like you would have an easier time believing all this shit, but you look like your trippin,” Chet said.

  “Well, I think I'm more bugged by the idea that the federal government and the largest police departments in the country have teams to deal with this.”

  He laughed and then started to hand me books to read.

  “There are a few more, but you'll have to read them here. I don't let anyone take them outta my library, if ya know what I mean.”

  Next, I was scheduled to sit with Gina. She was on the phone when she waved me into her office so I took a moment to look over the plaques on the wall. She had a Masters in psychology from Columbia, as well as certificates of completion from various profiling courses at the FBI Academy at Quantico. She also had a certificate of completion in Facial Action Coding System signed by a Dr. Paul Ekman.

  Next to that was a framed diploma from The Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research group. As I finished the last title, she hung up the phone and looked at me for a moment. Then she spoke.

  “So, by now you'll have figured out that I am a psychologist as well the group's parapsychologist. I'm also the profiler for our little squad.”

  “That's a lot of hats you wear.” I said.

  She smiled. “Yes, but we all wear many hats here. Fran is our medium, but she is also our Case Manager. Steve is our weapons expert, but assists Chet with technology, while acting as one half of our own little spec ops team. Brian is the other half of that team and our close combat trainer. Fighting with stronger, faster opponents takes skill, you know.”

  Oh, how very well I knew that lesson.

  “Brian also has Crime Scene Technician training, as does Chet. Inspector Roma is our leader, but he is also the team Medic, although I am backup medic. And even Olivia is more than she seems, acting as our logistics coordinator, and dispatcher. So that brings us to you. What hats do you see yourself wearing?”

  “Well, despite living in the Big Apple, my favorite hat is a Red Sox ball cap, followed closely by a Springfield Armory hat.”

  She didn't laugh. “Your humor tells me a lot about you, you know.”

  She was under my skin, just that quick.

  “Tell me, by all means, about myself,” I said.

  So she did, in a calm even voice. “You are angry and lonely, but you cover it with humor. You feel set upon by God, perhaps cursed by Him.”

  “Anything else?” I said through clenched teeth.

  “Just one more thing. You feel that you are a coward at heart.”

  I exploded to my feet, my chair flying back, clattering to the floor. In my peripheral vision, I could see Brian and Steve moving into the central conference room, but Gina's face remained calm and un-alarmed, and she spoke again before I could start yelling at her.

  “And despite all those feelings, you still put your life in danger daily to protect others. Why is that?”

  Her statement and question deflated the rawest part of my anger.

  “What the hell do you mean?”

  “Why do you continue to help others? After all that God has done to you? Why haven't you just walked away? Why did you help that little girl?”

  “What kind of questions are those? Are you saying I shouldn't help people?”

  “It's a very reasonable question. If God has cursed you and taken from you, why should you do His Will?”

  “I don't! I do what I do because I choose to! My will, not His. And how could I not help people, how could I stand by and let others go through what I had to. To lose what I lost.”

  “But isn't it easier and safer to just avoid the demons?”

  My anger had bled away, replaced now, by cold calm and a stubborn resolve to keep from responding to her ploy. I hadn't been prepared, hadn't been ready for her button pushing. A tiny part of me was admiring her skill, while the lion's share resented her manipulation. I righted my chair and sat, before answering. “Sure, you’re right. That would be easier.” I agreed.

  “Then why not take that route.” She persisted.

  “Maybe I will, at some point. Hell, maybe I'll join them.” I said.

  She surprised me by smiling. My cell buzzed.

  T: ?

  C: I'm fine. Mind games with a shrink.

  T: O.K. See u later?

  C: Yes.

  T: Can u come here? They are fussy.

  C: Sure.

  I really didn't want to go to Galina's house, but after meeting Senka, and hearing about last night's trouble, I understood why they didn't want her traveling about.

  “That the girl who isn't your girlfriend?” Gina asked.

  I refused to get caught in her games again, so I just nodded coldly.

  She looked at me levelly for a moment, then continued in a different direction.

  “Chris, has anyone ever told you what it's like when you exorcise a demon?”

  Damn, she was confusing. “What? No one is ever with me when I exorcise demons.”

  “I'm talking about the people outside, the ones waiting.” She said.

  “Detective Vel
asquez , I don't have the foggiest idea what you're talking about.”

  “When you exorcised that little girl's home, everyone outside felt it. We all knew that you had banished it. Didn't you know that people could sense what you do?”

  I shook my head. No one had ever mentioned it before.

  “Well, let me tell you about it. Every time I had been to that house right up till you went in, it felt wrong. Evil. It made my skin crawl. Then you walked in and after a minute, I felt a...vibration. Like the thrum of a guitar or a note on a harp. Crystal-clear, pure. It wasn't a sound, but a feeling. Then a sharp snap or a pop. Like pressure released. And the wrongness was gone. I looked around and I could tell that everyone else held felt it. I could read it in their faces. But no one said a thing, reluctant to speak, like we were not supposed to talk about it. Like we shouldn't. It wasn't something you could put into words and even now, I haven't done a good job of it. But I'll tell you this, every one of us felt instantly better. I, for one, felt like God was nearby and watching over us.” She said.

  For once I had nothing to say, dumbfounded at this revelation.

  “Now, I have a lot of work to do, so if you'll excuse me, I believe you are scheduled to meet next with Brian.”

  And just like that she ushered me out of her office and shut the door.

  My time with Brian was much more straightforward. He hadn't said a word about my outburst in Gina's office, but took me into his little dojo and asked me about my martial arts background.

  So I gave him my background, but he surprised me by asking for details, instructor’s names, years of study, belt rank, dojo names. I had never thought about my training in that manner and it made me defensive. I hadn't studied for belt rank, but for survival.

  Next he had me change into sweatpants and a tee shirt and he began to test my knowledge, by sparring. I held my speed and strength back for a couple of reasons. First, the team was just starting to accept me a little. Being more of a freak than I already was wouldn't help that. The second reason was my promise to Dr. Singh and third, Brian Takata knew a lot more about practical technique than anyone I had ever met. I figured the best way to learn was to push him enough to make it a challenge and see what he brought to the mat. He didn't disappoint. I learned more in twenty minutes than I had in the last year. I also learned that had I exerted my full strength and speed, I could have beaten him. He showed me a flying arm bar I hadn't come across before, a version that was purely functional, stripped of all glitz. Arm bars are basic joint locks that work by exerting leverage on frail human joints. A flying arm bar uses the body weight of the person employing it to bring down the person who is the recipient of this less than gentle treatment. Had I chosen, I was certain I could have held his full bodyweight and flexed my arm through the lock. While that gave me confidence, it also told me that many of these techniques would be worthless against vampires, weres and other supernaturally strong critters.

  After an hour with Brian, Steve Sommers, who had watched much of the sparring, laid claim to me and we were off to the range. Located in the same vast building but seemingly half a county away, the range was mostly empty and we had one end all to ourselves.

  “First, let's see how you handle your issue sidearm,” he said.

  So I drew my Glock 19 and worked through a couple of qualification targets. It had been awhile since I had been to a range, but my enhanced vision and reflexes handed me perfect scores.

  “Excellent shooting! Let me guess, you've been shooting long before the academy?”

  “Actually, since I was twelve.” I filled him in on my teenage training years.

  He just looked at me for a moment, then grinned. “We're gonna skip all the basic crap and get right to the good stuff!” he said with enthusiasm. He pulled out a molded plastic handgun case and opened it up. Inside was another Glock, this one looking almost identical to a Glock 17, the larger service model of my 19. But this gun had a small circular switch on the left side of the rear slide, and that one difference told me all I needed.

  “That's a Glock 18!” I said, as excited as he was. He nodded and pulled a loaded thirty-three round magazine from another bag. Locking the extended mag into the gun's grip, he racked a round into the chamber and handed it to me. “The selector is on full auto. Show me what you can do.” he said.

  The Glock 18 is a select fire full automatic pistol originally developed for Austrian counter terrorist forces. In semi auto mode it fires just like the model 17, but in full auto mode it will fire at rates of up to twelve hundred rounds per minute. A two second pull of the trigger will empty a thirty-three round magazine. I'm pretty sure that's what Steve expected me to do. But my childhood instructors had given me a good grounding in full auto technique. Instead of spraying the mag empty, I tapped the trigger for a series of five-and ten-round bursts, keeping all the rounds on target. The gun was ridiculously easy to control and I had a huge grin on my face when the slide locked back on an empty chamber. Seeing the results of my first attempt, Sommers took the gun back, placed it back in its case, packed up his stuff and said simply, “Come on!”. He led me through short series of doors till we came to another range, this one open without shooting lanes. A control panel sat on a desk at the back and as he powered up the range systems he instructed me to retrieve the Glock and several mags of ammo. Shooting glasses and earmuffs on and I was on the firing line. What followed was a full hour of action shooting on automated popup targets. It was the most fun I'd had at work since I started with the NYPD. When we finished, I cleaned the 18 to his satisfaction, packed it away and we headed back to the squad's offices.

  Roma greeted us as we entered. “How he do?” he asked.

  “He cleared the first four simulations almost perfectly. We ran outta time for the other two, but I'm ready to issue him the 18 right now!” Sommers answered.

  “Really? Well, by all means proceed. Chris, when you’re done I’d like to see you.”

  “Sure thing Inspector.”

  Sommers had a small forest worth of papers for me to sign, formally issuing the Glock 18 to me. He pulled out a kydex holster, double mag carrier, three twenty round mags and three thirty-three round mags. Then he went to closet door next to his gun safe, unlocked it and pulled out a metal GI ammo can. Popping it open, he showed me the contents, six fifty round blocks of nine millimeter ammunition. He plucked a round out of its individual slot and offered it to me for inspection. Viewed from the side, it looked like a standard hollowpoint round. A look at the business end revealed that the hollow cavity was filled with silver. “Silver itself is hard enough to make a decent bullet, but casting them is a bitch. The melting point is ridiculously high, and the metal cools so fast that there are almost always serious flaws with the finished bullet. So, we’ve opted to fill standard copper jackets with silver instead. They fly true and are quite effective on impact. They behave more like a flatnose solid, with little expansion, but penetrating heavy muscle is usually of more concern than anything else.” He said.

  “So silver really is effective against weres?” I asked.

  “Yes, as well as on vamps and most other supernaturals. Something about the metal is poisonous to them.”

  I knew from personal experience that silver worked on vampires -- my introduction to Tatiana had demonstrated that. I was also aware that silver killed most viruses and bacteria on contact as well.

  “Conventional rounds will eventually kill weres and vamps too. Just takes a ton of them on target to get the job done. Not likely with the speed they both can move at. As it is, we have to shoot the crap out of them with the silver. They’re friggin’ tough!”

  “How many have you shot?” I asked.

  “I shot one vamp in Dallas. I used to be a feddie, but Roma recruited me. But shootings happen very rarely. Mostly, they take care of their own problems for us. We just sometimes have to show them that we’re aware of an issue.” He said. “Tomorrow, we’ll run the other two scenarios. Both are run at a much faster speed tha
n the four you did today. I’ll be interested to see how you handle them. You pretty much cleaned house today!”

  I thanked Steve, grabbed the gun bag he had given me and headed out to find Roma.

  The Inspector was in his office with the door open, when I knocked.

  “Come in Chris.” He said.

  He pushed a small, tidy stack of files across his desk top to me as I took a chair.

  “It occurred to me that we come from very different backgrounds and experiences in the supernatural world. Gina helped me understand that you deal with the worst of the worst – the demons. As such, it’s natural for you to view the others as more…benign, maybe?”

  Not sure where he was going, I just nodded my head.

  “Right, well, as you indicated the last night, they’re not all the same. Some might be relatively okay—“ He frowned as he spoke, “ and others are very, very malignant indeed.”

  I opened the first file and found a table listing missing person statistics for the United States over the past decade. A second table showed unsolved murder statistics in the U.S. for the same time frame. The files that followed were all homicide cases that a quick glance showed to be horrifically violent. Roma continued when I looked back up at him.

  “Each year well over one hundred thousand people go missing without being found. Each year there are thousands of murder cases that go unsolved. Those are just the reported cases. It is fairly safe to assume that thousands of other missing person cases go unreported. That first file works through the numbers and you’ll see a close correspondence with the kill ratios that scientists have observed in natural predator prey relationships. Some are the work of humans, but, as you’ll see from the rest of the files, some are the work of supernatural predators, vampires and weres.” He rubbed his temples for a moment before continuing.

  “Chris, I want you to read through these files tonight with an open mind. My goal is to make sure you have the proper….respect for these predators. We run various shifts as needed here, but why don’t you come in tomorrow at nine. That way, you can make it to that important party tomorrow night. Good night.” He said, in obvious dismissal.