- 29 -
Bodies were laid out side by side in the makeshift morgue car. Most were uncovered only because the sheets were needed for the wounded. Some bodies were demons from the earlier attack. Sister Catherine drew the sign of the cross on their foreheads and said a prayer over them the same as if they were human. After a few bodies, the bowl of water had a pink tinge and was starting to tremble in her hand. Bishop stepped forward to take it from her so she’d have both hands free to do her work. She was almost finished when she got to a large body covered by a ragged piece of tarp. As she leaned over it, a gnarled hand shot out and grabbed her by the throat. The demon started to sit up. Bishop dropped the bowl of water and grabbed for his Glock. He shot the demon twice, then a third time just to be sure. He had to pry the creature’s fingers off Sister Catherine, breaking a couple in the process. The nun was unconscious.
“Help!” he yelled. “Need a little help in here!”
Mouser, Starr and a Deeper helped him move Sister Catherine to the next car. It was one of the plush ones with upholstered benches and overstuffed chairs. The bar had already been raided for alcohol and water for the infirmary.
“Frank?”
“Right here Catie. You’re okay. He just knocked you out. You need to rest.”
“But . . .”
“If you haven’t been formally introduced, this is Mouser and this is his friend Starr. They’re going to sit with you while me and a couple of my pals make sure there are no more surprises in the morgue.”
Just as he stepped out of the car he heard another shot. Two Deepers jumped out of the morgue car.
“Just makin’ sure,” one of them said. “I guess if we get more demons down here we’ll need to assign a watch dog to guard their dead.”
There was another explosion overhead. A huge cloud of smoke, dirt and dust blew down the subway stairs onto the platform. The lights over the tracks blinked and swayed. Tiles fell out of the ceiling and broke when they hit the ground. People were coughing and pulling their shirts over their mouths and noses until the worst of it settled.
“Whoa!” somebody said.
“Zaki has officially left the building,” Bishop announced. “He must have planted a few bombs as a farewell present.”
“What about our people upstairs?”
“This stairway’s blocked,” somebody yelled. “We might be able to get a couple people through the rubble if we had to, hard to tell.”
“The fight is pretty much outside now. Do you know if there‘s another way out of this tunnel besides up the stairs or back the way we came?”
“The plans say the tracks dead end up ahead.” Mouser offered.
“Let’s hope the plans are wrong. I’ll need flashlights and a couple of guys.”
* * *
The light and the track ended a scant ten feet from the engine of Zaki’s train. The tunnel beyond looked like a gaping black hole in space, one that promised to suck you into its darkest heart and never let go.
Bishop and the two armed Deepers pulled Infra-red goggles into place. Mouser and Starr and the other Rats seemed to have no problem negotiating the dark. Bishop had given up on trying to keep Mouser or the Rats out of danger; they were probably better equipped to deal with what was going on than he was.
Bishop adjusted the strap on his goggles. All they seemed to do was show him a dim green hole instead of a totally black one. The platform seemed to continue into it, hopefully right to the end. He much preferred to be three feet above the track than down on the cinders where god-knew-what was waiting. Behind him he heard one of the Deepers trip over something and curse.
“I see something up ahead,” Mouser called over his shoulder.
The tunnel ended at some sort of iron scaffold. Bishop was trying to puzzle out its use when he was blinded by a sudden explosion of light.
“Aaagh!”
“Sorry.” When all the flashing purple spots cleared Bishop could see Mouser standing next to a panel of buttons mounted to the wall. “I think it’s an elevator,” he said. He pushed another button and a flat platform with a railing on two sides began to rise to the level of the train platform where it stopped.
Bishop stepped onto it. It was solid and its surface was gouged and scratched as if heavy objects had been rolled over it. He looked up and could see metal doors set in a stone ceiling about twenty feet in the air.
“Is there a button labeled doors?” he asked. “Don’t push it until . . .”
The doors in the ceiling started to open.
“. . . I tell you to. Turn off the lights!”
The tunnel went dark. The group stood and watched as the night sky appeared overhead.
“Where do you think this comes out?” Mouser asked.
One of the Deepers shrugged. “Near the parking lot? If they move things in and out this way they’d need a hard surface for the trucks.”
Bishop motioned everyone onto the platform. “Might as well take a look,” he said. “Let’s hope nobody noticed the doors opening.”
The first thing Bishop saw was that the fighting had stopped. There were still Raptors in the air, but most of the bodies on the ground weren’t moving. Off to one side, a pyre was blazing with blue-white flames. There was no smoke, no crackling of wood or flight of ash and no matter how high the flames reached, they were unaffected by the breeze that was starting to come up off the water.
There was very little sound. The large stone knights seemed focused on gathering up dead demons and the occasional lizard and adding them to the pyre. Raptors were flying to and fro above the rolling lawn and woods. They were searching out and bringing in their own wounded and dead.
“It’s over.” A familiar voice said behind Bishop. Bishop turned to see Cassius standing behind him.
“I thought you had things to do.”
“I did,” he answered. “And I guess this was one of them.”
The small group moved forward. They received a few glances but no one really paid them much attention.
“Get our medics up here with stretchers,” Cassius said to one of the Rats. “We’ll take the living first and then our dead.”
A group of Raptors and two or three wolves were moving from body to body, separating the wounded from the dead. Dead demons were being toted to the pyre and tossed in. Dead humans and wolves were moved to one side and laid carefully on their backs with eyes closed. Raptors were being laid out side by side, arms crossed on their chests, their bodies carefully wrapped in their wings creating a chrysalis from which no butterfly would ever emerge.
Mouser broke into a run. He didn’t want to look at the dead. He wanted to find Ariel. A living, breathing Ariel. Hurt, unconscious, he didn’t care. But alive.
He darted over and around the yet unsorted bodies covering the ground yelling “El!” “El!” A wounded demon grabbed for his foot. Mouser kicked it away.
Bishop found himself right behind Mouser. He was looking for any familiar face, Ez, Dingo, Juke, Old Bill. A figure stepped out from a crowd of Raptors and Deepers gathered around something in the middle of the battle field. It was Dingo. Bishop headed straight for him. Dingo was upright, but still furry. He tried to catch Bishop’s arm, but Bishop spun away from him. He followed Mouser who burrowed through the arms and legs to see what was being blocked from view.
“El!” Mouser screamed. His voice had a note of anguish that turned Bishop’s blood cold.
“Stop, boy!” A furry arm grabbed Mouser around the waist and held him until he stopped struggling.
Tomas was on his knees on the ground. He’d dropped his sword and the bottoms of his wings were dragging in the dirt. He was torn and battered but not nearly to the degree of the fallen Raptor he was holding in his arms.
Ariel had spiraled to the ground as she fell. Her legs were twisted together, arms splayed out on her open, bloody wings. Her face was still as death, bruised and swollen in some places, tight and pale blue as fine porcelain in others. Her body was bleeding from multiple wounds. Twenty feet awa
y from her lay an unmoving yellow demon dressed in House of Eight armor. Ariel’s sword was buried to the hilt in her chest.
The Guardian stood at the edge of the circle. His face had no expression.
“Get Ham,” Tomas pleaded. “He’ll know what to do!” He put his fingers on the artery at Ariel’s throat.
Dingo literally tossed Mouser to Bishop and took off at a run.
“She’s still alive!” Tomas yelled.
“It’s too late, Tomas,” The Guardian said. Brother Gregory, dressed in his usual brown robe and carrying a canvas satchel over one shoulder scuttled up to The Guardian and said something in a whisper. The Guardian shook his head. Gregory said something again, but more insistently. The Guardian waved him off.
Ham arrived. He took one look, knelt down and started pulling boxes and packets out of his medic bag. He lifted one eye lid, then the other. He ripped Ariel’s bloody pant leg up to her waist with a large knife, tore open her shirt and started packing the wounds with white powder. He yelled for water and a stretcher.
Mouser’s body relaxed. “You can let go of me now,” he said. Bishop’s fingers felt cramped and numb when he relaxed his hands. He’d had no idea how tightly he’d been hanging on to the boy.
“We’re taking her back to the train,” Cassius announced. In the confusion, and the transfer of a winged Ariel from ground to stretcher, Bishop might have been the only one to see Brother Gregory slip something from his bag into Ham’s furry paw.
Cassius took one handle of the stretcher, Tomas took the other. A Deeper and Dingo took the other end. Tomas wasn’t looking very good himself. He stumbled once but refused to relinquish his hold on the stretcher.
“You okay, son?” Cassius asked him.
“We can’t let her die,” Tomas said. “You have all that stuff in your lab. You can give her something, right?”
“I swear I’ll do everything in my power to keep you and your friend alive and safe.” Cassius said. “Everything.”
* * *
The trains were loaded as quickly as possible. The Deepers took their wounded and took the worst of the wounded Raptors. They took the freed prisoners, including the Rats and the young demon who’d been stuck with knives. On the last trip they took their dead.
The Guardian had offered to burn their dead, but Cassius said no. There were goodbyes to be said and they had their own ways in the Deeps.
Cassius left Ariel with Sister Catherine and returned to the lift and rode it to the top to find Bishop. The knights had set flame to the arena and the lab building. The structures burned white hot with no noise or smoke until they were nothing but ash.
“What will the police think happened here?” Bishop asked him.
Cassius shrugged. “A devastating lab accident? Science is so weird and dangerous to most people, it could have been anything, especially with no traces left behind.”
The remaining Raptors rose into the air. It was time to get wherever they were going before dawn. Brother Gregory stopped by to tell Cassius that The Guardian would be interested in speaking with him after all this inconvenience was over and done with. Cassius waved him off. Bishop gave the monk a nod. Brother Gregory just tucked his head and scurried away.
The two men stood and watched the stone knights lift the corners of a golden net. Its contents flopped and heaved like caught fish. The knights rose in unison carrying the net full of live demons out over the lake until they were a mere speck on the horizon.
“Let’s go,” Cassius said. “I think we’re through here.”
“It’s not over is it?” Bishop asked.
“Not even close.”
- 30 -
The sound of birds and the rays of early morning light woke the little man. He was lying on sand, half-in, half-out of the water in a patch of reeds on a deserted beach. He was wet and his suit was burned black in some places and torn in others. He was missing a shoe and half the hair on one side of his head. Both eyebrows had been burned totally away. He managed to crawl onto his knees and staggered from there to his feet. The last thing he remembered was being in a boat going really fast, running for his life, then nothing. He looked around. There was no one else in the water or on the beach, alive or dead, but he could hear the sound of cars so there must be a road nearby. He felt his inner vest pocket. His knives were safe. But the most important thing was he was alive and everyone else in the boat was obviously dead.
His survival could be nothing less than a sign, an omen. Unlike his stupid brothers, he had always been lucky. He had always been the one destined by fate to be rich and famous. Otherwise he would be dead too. He started to walk toward the road. He would hitchhike into town, he decided. He would get money and buy new clothes. He would sharpen his knives and he would practice until he was better than he’d ever been. Then he would find the man Bishop who was responsible for all the things that had happened to him and he would finally take what was his. He would take his revenge.
# # #
Thank you for reading my novel. I hope you enjoyed it. If you did, I would appreciate it if you posted a review.
Raptor is the first book in a trilogy. Here is a preview of Book Two.
Biters
Bishop leaned back in his squeaky wooden desk chair, lifted his feet onto his desk and crossed his ankles. If he’d owned a fedora he would have tilted it down over his eyes for a brief nap. If this had been the 1930s and he was Sam Spade, this would have been the cue for the tall, bombshell blonde to walk into his office and beg for help. When he heard the door open he raised one eyelid hoping to see the babe of his dreams, but all he got was his old partner, Vice Detective First Class Ray (Rain) Mann, and the smell of takeout Chinese.
Rain gave Bishop’s office the once-over. Bishop couldn’t blame him. The last time Rain had been inside the office it had just been trashed by a homicidal, knife throwing circus gypsy whose calling card was a severed goat head stuffed with a curse. Bishop had to replace everything except his desk, which was solid oak and must have weighed a hundred and fifty pounds.
“I’d say you redecorated the place, except it looks exactly the same as it always has.” Rain dropped a newspaper and a brown paper bag on Bishop’s desk. The newspaper covered a deep triangular hole in the surface of the desk that Bishop had never bothered to fix. “Do you still have the Maltese Falcon in your bottom drawer?”
“You never learn,” Bishop said. “The Maltese Falcon goes in the file cabinet. I have a fifth of whiskey in the bottom drawer of my desk.”
“You got a laptop too. Isn’t modern technology again the rules of the Ancient Gumshoe Brotherhood?”
“I’m not a fanatic.” Bishop pulled the newspaper toward him with one finger. The headline read ‘Dumpster Killer Strikes Again’. He minimized the solitaire game he’d been playing and closed the lid of the computer. It had cost 600 dollars, plus tax and software, and he had no idea how to use most of its functions but it was a lot easier to type reports on it than on his 1940’s manual Underwood that now sat in a place of honor on his bookcase. His old, faithful PC had been tossed out his office window during the trashing. Luckily he’d been insured.
Bishop swung his feet off the desk as Rain pulled up a chair. His old partner was elegantly dressed as usual: his pale blue shirt and Navy pinstripe suit set off his mocha skin and unusual blue eyes. Bishop eyed the white cartons Rain began to set out on the edge of the desk. He inhaled the odor of exotic, stir-fried grease and spices.
“My momma always told me I should beware of policemen bearing gifts, especially Chinese food from Kung Foo Garden and Laundry Emporium, which just happens to be one of my personal favorites.” Bishop said.
“Your momma had wisdom.”
“She was the terror of our neighborhood and you know it. The parish priest crossed to the other side of the street when she was out on the porch. What’s up?”
“Well, first off, I‘ve been promoted.”
“Out of the Seventeenth?” Bishop was shocked.
&n
bsp; “Naw, I’m not that lucky. Out of Vice into Homicide.”
“Congratulations?” It was more of a question than a statement.
“Yeah. Thanks.” Rain was rubbing his disposable wooden chopsticks together to get rid of the splinters before he attacked his carton of Pineapple Prawn Chow Fun. Bishop had always found that particular dish too sweet for his taste, plus, he had a hard time keeping the noodles from falling off his chopsticks into his lap, which was embarrassing. “But I think the Captain’s happier to have me counting dead bodies than having my Vice snitches telling me who’s paying off what to whom and how much.”
Bishop had pushed his laptop to the side of the desk to make room for the food. He began to help himself to rice and the Garden’s Special Kung Foo Pork with Szechwan red pepper sauce and walnuts.
“The Captain’s still on the take? What a surprise.”
“Other than being a weasely coward and backstabbing son-of-a-bitch...” Rain delicately fished a prawn, a noodle and piece of pineapple from the carton and moved them into his mouth without difficulty. He chewed and swallowed. “...the Captain also has a serious gambling problem and a lot of bad, bad luck. The big boys have him firmly in their pocket. He does whatever they tell him. In just two months, three of my Vice busts have just evaporated into thin air like piss on a griddle, and they smelled just as bad. Evidence disappeared, witnesses recanted, the District Attorney refused to file charges. Screw it, I’m much happier in Homicide . . . up ‘til lately that is.”
Bishop used his chopsticks to pull over the third carton of food. “Red Snapper in Lobster sauce.” He was impressed. “You must want something.”
“Hey, you owe me one.”
“More than one bro, so stop beating around the twice cooked pork and tell me what you need.”
“Okay, just to catch up on recent events so we’re both on the same page. You were involved in whatever happened with Zaki Kiriyenko, right? Dude dopes his race horse and starts running the fight club from hell on his estate, then he just totally disappears along with most of the buildings on the property. Only thing left by the time the police and FD got there is a big pile of ash. And two days later, you show up like the Pied Piper of the Apocalypse with a bunch of missin’ kids that Zaki allegedly kidnapped for evil purposes.”
Raptor: Urban Fantasy Noir Page 39