Demon Accords 6: Forced Ascent

by John Conroe

  She bowed her head for a moment, then climbed back down.

  Tanya turned to me and moved her eyes, but before I could get to the ladder, someone else was already on it. Stacia. She climbed the ladder with sureness and ease, reaching out and patting the top of Trent’s head.

  “I’m not a part of you… not part of your extended family. Weres and vampires don’t usually mix much. But in the last six or so months, I’ve been part of the same team as Trent. At first, he was aloof and standoffish. But then he began to accept me. Treated me as not an outsider, but a valued comrade. And sometimes like a little sister. He was quiet, but very thoughtful, approaching every task, every challenge with calm and cool. Studying everything and anything that could help him help the team. He was… exceedingly professional, and when the time came, he acted without hesitation, without fear, without a sense of self. His gift cannot be repaid, but it can be honored and his example can be followed. I will, from this day forward, seek to emulate his professionalism and honor.”

  She pulled a necklace off, over her head, and held it up. “I carry a platinum cross, a gift from my mother to replace my grandmother’s silver one when I was Turned. Trenton asked me about it, interested because it didn’t burn us when I showed it to him. I’m going to leave it with him; he’s more than earned it.” She laid the shiny necklace on his upper chest, just above the point of the knife, then slid smoothly to the ground. My turn.

  I climbed slowly, thinking about the vampire who lay above me.

  Then, lightly touching his body, I turned to the assembled vampires and humans. Nika, in the front row, caught my eye and nodded.

  “I have some memory issues,” I started. A slight chuckle moved through the crowd, a very small counterpoint to the solemn mood. “But I remember him. He was there when I first met Tanya, one of many who looked at me like something tasty.” Another laugh. Look at me, a regular standup comedian these days.

  “Trenton has been there the whole time. And always, as the others have said, a professional Guardian, with great spirit and a deep sense of what he was all about. I don’t always know what I’m doing–” more laughs “—but Trent did. He may, as Lydia suggested, have wondered about the greater meaning of life and death, but he never, not ever, wavered in his conviction about his role in this life. As Stacia said, he was and most importantly, continues to be, a role model. Trenton, wherever you are up there, you’ve shown me what it is to be certain… to truly understand our own place in the scheme of things. I’ll follow your lead.”

  I jumped lightly to the ground and Tanya climbed the ladder and studied her bodyguard’s still form for a moment. Turning, she gazed out at her people.

  “On the day I met Christian, he told us he could see souls. Not just human, but Darkkin souls as well. That he could see mine. That our souls shine bright. I didn’t believe him. Couldn’t believe him, despite the knowledge, through our bond, that he wasn’t lying. He could have simply believed it and therefore been telling his own truth. But every day I’m with him, I see proof of his words. And today, I saw the greatest evidence I could ever witness—an angel of God, leading a Darkkin soldier up to Heaven, to a place he’d earned by sacrificing himself for another. Our histories tell us that we’re damned—souls lost. Trenton showed us otherwise.

  “The others have pointed to Trenton as an example of a Guardian, a professional, a spiritual friend, an individual understanding his own role and place. I, also, see him as an example. An example of how Darkkin souls can be saved and returned to God. An example of how we, who are saddled with the drives and desires that lead most to Hell, can earn our way to Heaven. So I too will honor Trenton for his exemplar selflessness and leadership, showing us the way back to our Father.”

  She turned and kissed him on his forehead, then stepped off the ladder, Lightening herself to float gently down to the ground. Plucking the torch by the ladder free, she lit the fire in four places before tossing the torch into a fifth spot and stepping back near us. The flames caught quickly among the dry tinder and kindling at the bottom, spreading next to the pitchy lengths of pine and spruce, then the denser maple and oak rounds that made up the last three layers of the wood sandwich.

  With deceptive speed, the fire grew, engulfing the structure in a few tens of seconds till the inferno obscured the wrapped figure on the bier, until the platform itself was impossible to see in the yellow, orange, and red flames.

  The crowd of vampires and the few humans among them were silent, the fire’s pop and crackle the only noise. My other half, the dark one, noted a very muted hum at a great distance. My senses reached out and found the little quad drone two hundred and sixty yards away, hovering seventy-five feet off the ground. The media had found us. I watched it and when it started to creep forward, Grim shoved it back. It tried again and Grim twitched a micro burst of focused aura at it, enough to make its electronics falter briefly, a stutter in its functioning. The operator got the message and stopped trying to get closer. I let it stay as the fire consumed our friend, and ignored it and the other two drones that joined it as we left Trenton and returned to our cars. It was time to take Trent’s example to heart and find our places.

  We pulled away into the night, the buildings of Trent’s farm glowing in the light of his fire, inky smoke streaking up into a starlit sky.

  Chapter 28

  The vision hit a mile outside the airport. My hands clutched paper and pencil, drawing the scene in crisp, clear strokes. The first target of the night became clear and it wasn’t New York or Miami, but a spot in the city we had just left—Washington, DC. But when I showed the others the drawings and then pinpointed the spot on a table using a Google map of the city, most of them looked at me blankly.

  “Looks like hotel,” Arkady commented, glancing at the drawing of what arguably looked like a hotel lobby before turning back to his driving. In the first scene, a demon was crouched on the floor in the center of the lobby, a horrified woman standing against the wall behind it.

  “Why a hotel in downtown Washington?” Lydia asked. I shrugged.

  “Because it is almost at the center of the Pentagram of Washington,” Nika said, taking possession of the tablet with the map of the city. She fiddled with the controls and then started to draw on it with a stylus. Finished, she held up the map. A red pentagram had been drawn on the tablet, exactly fitting the street layout. The pentagram was upside down and its southernmost tip was the White House. Three major traffic circles made up the west, northwest, and northeast points, the eastern one a traffic square.

  “Okay, how come I never got a memo that a giant pentagram was built into the city plan of Washington?” I asked. “It seems like it might be important.”

  “How did you know that?” Tanya asked Nika, ignoring my comment.

  “I’ve been studying occult history and stuff ever since you guys went full time on the demon busting tour. There’s quite a bit of information about how the designers of the nation’s capital built all kinds of occult symbology into the street plan, buildings, and architecture. I’m absolutely sure it’s why that demon prince wanted to make a bloodbath at the White House. It would have fueled this huge gate, right in the heart of the nation’s capital. Devastating.”

  “How soon will it open?” Tanya asked me, even as she patted Arkady’s shoulder to go faster. He was already a touch over the speed limit, but as soon as he went over it, a siren sounded and the gloom of the night was lit by flashing lights.

  “Pull over and let’s deal with this,” I said, looking back at the cop car that was behind our line of SUVs and cars.

  Arkady immediately pulled to the shoulder and like well-drilled soldiers, the follow-on cars did, too. The cop car flashed passed all of them, pulling up alongside our vehicle and stopping right next to us. The officer in the passenger side powered down his window at the same time Arkady lowered ours.

  “You’re the demon hunter people, right?” the grizzled trooper asked.

  “Yes, we are,” Arkady answer
ed. I was sitting directly behind Arkady and as he spoke, I lowered my window. The cop was nodding at Arkady’s words, looking stern, but when he saw my face, he blinked a few times.

  “Ah, Mr. Gordon, sir. Can I assume from your speed that you and your people need to be somewhere fast?”

  “Yes, Officer. We need to get back to the airport and then to Washington. We’ve got a lead on a major outbreak.”

  “Right, follow me then, sir. We’ll escort you. It’ll prevent accidents if we go first,” he said.

  “Thank you, Officer,” I replied.

  “Just try to keep up, Sir,” he said with a nod, putting up his window and motioning to the young cop driving to go ahead.

  Our police escort quickly sped up, blasting past the speed limit and running his lights and siren at full bore. Other cop cars joined in, blocking off side streets and holding open intersections, obviously coordinated by the veteran in the lead vehicle. We made it to the airport in fifteen minutes and were cleared right to the planes, which were already spooling up their engines.

  All of the vampires and humans in our group exited the vehicles and started toward the planes. I veered over to the lead cop car and thanked the officer. As I did so, a number of reporters from the media trucks jumped forward and started yelling questions.

  “Did you bury your dead?”

  “Where are you headed?”

  “Do you know where the demons will be?”

  “Can you protect the American people?”

  I turned to face them, walking backward toward the planes. “We’re headed back to Washington and yes, that’s where all Hell with try and break loose. As for the American people, well, we’re going to do our part, but the American citizen has always been a pretty capable, independent sort. I think Americans can do a lot to protect themselves. That’s all I can say, fellas, gotta go,” I said, then turned and put some real speed into my motions. Arriving at the steps to the plane, I found one of the flight crew waiting for me, as I was the last to board. He had a pilot uniform on and he gave me a small smile and nod, even as he held his hat in place at the gust of air my arrival kicked up. “All set, sir? As soon as you’re on, I’ll button us up.”

  I got out of his way and let him swing the big door shut as I moved to the seating area where Nika had commandeered a computer and was bringing up information on the flatscreen monitor about Washington’s occult history. The plane started to move as she began.

  “There are countless rumors and myths about Washington being designed by the Freemasons with occult symbols built in to pave the way for Satan’s control of the New World Order through the new country,” Nika began.

  “Is that true?” Stacia asked with a note of disbelief.

  Nika glanced at her and smiled. “No. It was designed by a Frenchman, Pierre Charles L'Enfant. I believe your mother met him, Tanya. But despite that, the Dupont Circle, Scott Circle, and Logan Circle all provide points of a pentagram, as does the Mount Vernon Square. The fifth point, the southernmost, is the White House. It’s not perfect; there aren’t connecting streets in all cases, but it’s close.”

  “Close enough if enough people believe the story,” I said.

  “You mean like believing in something can make it real?” Stacia asked me.

  “Yes, particularly in religion. All religion is built on belief.”

  “And a lot of people are believing in the Devil now, since we sorta showed them proof on global television,” Lydia said.

  “But we also proved the other side as well… God and angels,” Stacia countered.

  Everyone looked at me. I nodded. “I don’t know this stuff real well, but I do know about the power of belief. That’s what starts most of my cases, people believing in calling upon evil or demons to solve their problems. The belief in God is what churches use to dispel demonic. And we showed the world a fight between good and evil.”

  “And good won,” Arkady rumbled.

  “Yes, yes it did,” I answered. “So the center of this big street pentagram, designed deliberately or not, in the city where more deals have been made with the devil than even LA, will open with a gateway. Can we have cars lined up, and will the police let us get there?”

  “The cars are already waiting and we’ll actually have a police escort,” Tanya said.

  “Ah, what?” I asked. “Police escort?”

  “It’s kind of like the Pennsylvania troopers back there. People aren’t dumb, Chris. They know their best bet is you,” she said.

  “Us. Their best bet is us,” I said, waving at the whole group. She smiled and nodded. The jet was lifting off, so we all either quieted down for the ride or got busy with minor details.

  The return trip was maybe even a bit faster and before ‘Sos and I could finish emptying the galley’s food supply, we were on the ground and taxiing up to our vehicles. Sure enough, two police cars and two motorcycle units were waiting to whisk us through the streets to a hotel on 16th Street whose name I missed because I was too busy staring at the mass of official cars and SUVs around its entrance. Wondering at our reception, I stepped out of the Toyota Tahoe pickup truck as ‘Sos jumped down from the truck’s bed. Then I breathed a tiny breath of relief as I recognized the white-haired man moving forward to greet me, a young teen girl by his side.

  “Hi, Nathan. What brings you to this part of town?” I greeted Director Stewart. He walked briskly despite a slight limp. His leg had been bitten by a wereverine in Alaska during the same attack that had resulted in his assistant, Adine, becoming infected as well. Adine’s father was a tribal shaman and had used his skills to try and arrest the virus. He had been successful with Nathan, but not his own daughter. The result was that Adine was a wereverine, but she was stable with the help of Nathan, and he was the only individual I had ever met or heard of who was living with the LV virus inside him but had never changed or died from the bite. I think a bond had been formed between them, and it allowed her to keep from going rogue and him from Changing.

  “This young lady here. Ariel, meet Chris Gordon. Chris, this is Ariel, whom I might have mentioned to you a time or two,” Stewart said. The young, brown-haired girl beside him shot him a glance before looking back at me and accepting my hand for a shake.

  “Ah, Ariel, it’s nice to meet you. This is Awasos, Tanya, Lydia, Stacia, Nika, and Arkady,” I said, listing them as they arrived behind me. Ariel looked younger than sixteen, slender, and maybe a bit below average height. She had enormous brown eyes that were her best feature, large pools the color of milk chocolate. She was dressed in jeans, calf-high boots, and a leather jacket. Eyes wide, she was visibly overawed by our group and kept looking at the ground—or maybe at all the designer shoes the women were wearing—mumbling quiet little hellos with each shake.

  “So what’s happening inside?” I asked Nathan.

  “There’s an open Gate in the floor of the lobby. We’re going to close it with our new tech. Nothing’s come through yet,” he said.

  Someone screamed inside the hotel, a full auto weapon fired two short bursts then suddenly stopped, and a wereverine screeched in anger. I was inside the door and standing in the lobby before Nathan had processed the sounds.

  A six-foot-tall monster of fur and muscle wearing Adine Benally’s torn clothes flew past me and slammed into the registration desk of the hotel. A uniformed body lay in several parts in a gigantic pool of blood, and a six-legged insectile horror was climbing toward a trio of technicians clustered around a squat high-tech-looking piece of machinery with a digital panel that showed numbers counting down.

  Grim whipped a braided lash of twisted aura and vampire energy around the bug demon’s thorax and yanked it back. It had a vaguely antlike body, but the head was human-shaped and the front two legs had hands with claws instead of just claws. My aura had little chance of hurting the demon while it was wearing its own form, but the mix of vampire energies, a churning unstable blend of Cling, Push, and Pull varieties twisted, tore, and crushed its black and red flesh. The
demon screamed in anger and pain, spinning in mid-air to bring its six clawed feet around to meet me. I wasn’t there. The beauty of a skillfully used whip is that the wielder gets to control what goes where. I got to step aside while the demon was still turning around, letting its sulfurous form flash by and getting a wicked left hook into the back of its neck as it went by.

  The demon reached the end of my energy whip and the lash tightened against its form as I Posted in place, the two braided energies cutting deep into Hell flesh. One of its six limbs was completely severed, falling twitching and kicking to the floor of the lobby.

  I released my Post and started toward the violently screeching monster, my glance to the side finding the rest of my team lined up and watching.

  Even Grim makes mistakes. Taking my eyes off the demon was one. Not Clinging or Posting to the floor was number two. With a final scream, the monster shot sideways across the room faster than a middle-aged vampire and dove into the Gate. That was okay, but the energy leash I had wrapped around it and left connected to my body wasn’t. My feet left the ground as the whip yanked. Spinning through the air, Grim simultaneously reached out with power, attempting to Push or Pull me away from the hole I was now over while releasing the aural energy whip. Nothing connected. It was like I was in a different place, that spot directly over the Hell gate, a place where the physics of this world ceased and another’s began. The demon disappeared through the inky blackness of the gate and I hung for a brief moment above it, just a tiny millisecond. Long enough to see Tanya’s horrified expression and see them all begin to move. To see the red digital numbers on Stewart’s machine go from double digits to singles.