War of the Damned Boxed Set

by Michael Todd

  Probably because she’s terrifying. I mean, you’re going up there all hopeful… You remember what I told you about Lilith. Your dick is at risk, my friend. I’d be nervous too.

  Katie is still a woman underneath the demon and mercenary shit. A woman with needs.

  Well, as long as her needs don’t end with you bleeding out, I’ll keep out of it.

  That’s so generous of you. Nothing to do with what her demon will do to you if you dare object?

  His demon was silent.

  That’s what I thought.

  Brock stood in front of the mirror and ran a hand over his buzzcut. His teal button-up shirt was wrinkle free, and he smelled good from the cologne he had spritzed on. He tilted his head to the side and flexed his chest muscles, realizing that all the action was starting to pump his muscles. The clock beeped again, catching his attention. He grabbed his keys and left the condo. He took the elevator down to her floor and made his way to her door.

  Brock knocked on the door and waited patiently for her to answer the door.

  A moment later he heard soft footsteps. Katie opened the door wearing a flowing, knee-length coat that was totally at odds with her bare feet. “Hi, come in.”

  Brock smiled nervously as he entered her apartment. “Nice coat. Should hide all the weapons nicely.”

  Katie’s mouth lifted at the corner as she pushed the door shut with her foot and dropped the coat. “This? It just hides a lot of skin.”

  Brock’s breathless reply could be heard in the hallway. “Oh wow… Really creamy. Ohhh, mmmm…”

  Chapter Fifteen

  The guys had been left to their own devices for the rest of the night. Brock and Katie hadn’t surfaced for air the whole night. The alarm clock blared, and Katie rolled over to turn it off. Brock groaned when she slapped his bare ass and laughed.

  “Wakey wakey! You’d better get back before they send a search party for you.”

  Brock turned over onto his stomach and wrapped his arms over his head with a groan. “I suppose you’re right, we don’t want any drama like that going on.”

  Katie slapped his ass again and got out of bed. “Go pack, I’ll meet you all in the lobby.”

  Katie sauntered off to the shower and Brock climbed out of bed and threw his clothes on. He couldn’t stop smiling the whole way back to the condo upstairs. He packed his duffel and quickly showered and changed his clothes before he headed downstairs. The other guys were all waiting, takeout coffee in their hands. One of the guys handed Brock a cup, and he nodded in thanks.

  Katie escorted them back to the airport to take her private jet back to base. The other guys thanked Katie and gave her a hug before climbing on. Brock stood smiling sweetly at her at the base of the steps. Katie smiled back, walking over and kissing him on the cheek.

  “Will I see you again soon?” he asked.

  “I’m sure you will,” Katie told him gently. “Just remember who we are. There are no permanent relationships for people like us. We don’t know if we will be dead by tomorrow. What we had last night? That’s the best I can offer.”

  Brock smiled and leaned in to kiss her lips. “And it was fantastic. I get it. Don’t worry, I’ll be okay. I have lots of memories to hold me over—especially that bobcat twisty-leg thing you did.”

  Katie laughed and slapped him on the leg. “Get up there. They are all waiting.”

  “Yeah, yeah. Stay alive, demon angel,” he replied, waving over his shoulder. “That way next time I see you we can have a repeat of last night, but maybe more than just four times.”

  Katie shook her head and laughed, not knowing if she could handle more.

  Pandora scoffed. Please, you think I can sustain you through a twenty-four hour all-out battle but not through more than four times in one night? You are underestimating my abilities, sister. I only let him off at four because he was clearly exhausted by the battle.

  He climbed the steps and walked into the cabin, and all the guys gave him a huge round of applause. He laughed and bowed to them, taking a fresh cup of coffee from the flight attendant and sitting down in his seat. Everyone was in a great mood, so much more relaxed when they had first gotten there, even after a major incursion. He accepted the last high five and buckled in for the long flight back. He took a sip of his coffee and looked out the window, smiling at Katie, who stood there in her shorts and tank top with her hair still damp from the shower, waving them all off. She didn’t even notice that Brock was looking in her direction.

  He realized at that moment that not only had he have a wild night with a Damned, he’d made love to an honest-to-god angel. How many guys could say that? Just as the plane started to taxi down the runway Katie looked up at the window and smiled, a flash of red in her eyes. He chuckled, remembering she might be part angel, but she was a badass chick, which was what had attracted him to her in the first place.

  Nothing may be permanent, nothing may last more than one really hot night, but he was going back with a smile on his face and a group of guys who couldn’t have been happier. That was what the whole trip had been about, and it had been a complete and total success. Now all he had to do was start figuring out how to get gigs in New York and he would be set.

  “You have a good time in New York?” his buddy asked.

  “Hell, yeah, I did. You?”

  “Damn straight, brother. Just with...”

  “Yeah,” Brock replied, thinking of his fallen comrade. “Me too, but we gave the city hell for him, and he is wherever we all go when we die, giving us the fucking finger and laughing his ass off surrounded by a hundred hot French chicks.”

  They both laughed, staring out the windows as the plane took off, leaving New York and KatieDora behind to kick ass and take names.

  Angie leaned back in the office chair and put the end of her pen in her mouth as she listened to Timothy tell her a story about where he had gone shopping a few days before and how he scared the hell out of some rude saleswoman with his red eyes. They both laughed hysterically into the phone, relaxing for a moment before diving into the real conversation.

  “So, I want to first off say you did a fantastic job the other day nailing down that location of the incursion. It was like two seconds and bam, you knew where they were going, the history of the building and even the approximate size of the gate. Now, I’m just learning this stuff, but I was impressed, I won’t lie.”

  “Girl, let me tell you. I was hacking and packing my way through life long before this demon shit. This new life just gave me something better to do with my time than just sit in internet cafes pulling pranks on assholes and building websites in my free time for cash.”

  “Doesn’t mean you aren’t talented at it.”

  “Well, thank you. It’s nice to be appreciated every once in a while.”

  “I hear you.” She chuckled. “Katie is really good at doing that for me, but I know she gets caught up in the battle, so I wanted to say something. On that note, I had an idea.”

  “I like ideas! Girl, give it to me.”

  “I was thinking that maybe we could figure out how to take that and use it for governments all around the world. I mean, seriously if they’d had someone like you in France that day then things might have turned out a hell of a lot differently. I’m not saying you do it for the whole world, but some sort of system that gives off level detections. When the heat starts to rise above a single number we know, and maybe can even be there before the gates fully open.”

  “That’s interesting,” Timothy said thoughtfully. “It would be like a software tapped into a system with my brain. I have always wanted to be a virtual superstar.”

  “I figured as much.” Angie laughed. “But we are hanging over a precipice with the demons. What we have now won’t be enough, and new armor and weapon technology only goes so far. Early warning might be a game changer for us.”

  “The first thing I would have to do is run it like it’s live. So basically, set it up on a small scale and go through every motion
, making a note of everything the system would have to be able to do. Then from there, I could put it together into a format that could be translated into a system or software.”

  Angie’s eyes glazed over. “Right. I think I got you.”

  “The only thing is that the general might have issues with it at some level. I know we are contract workers, but we are a huge team, and I don’t want to piss off the man who signs the paycheck. The government is more than capable of creating something like this, or even having enough hands on deck to do it without a program, but that is a lot of work for other countries.”

  “Yeah, but if it helps the demon problem?”

  “I don’t put anything past the government, sweetie. If this demon problem ever becomes lucrative moneywise for them you will see them doubling down their efforts, trust me. What’s good for the bank account is good for the government. But I will spec out what is needed as far as hardware and figure that part out. You are in charge of getting the General’s go ahead. He likes me and all, but he will need a little sweet-talkin’ from a pretty little thing like yourself. I have no effect on the man in that department. If I did, we would have all kinds of fancy toys to play with. I’m just good that way, if you know what I’m saying.”

  Angie laughed. “Okay, I can do that. I haven’t ever talked to him before but he and Katie are on each other’s speed dial, so I’m sure he would take a call from me.”

  “Good, you do that and I’ll do this, and then, we will take over the world.” Timothy let out a deep evil laugh. “Just kidding. More like save the world from an evil takeover. Lord, I never thought I would say that in my lifetime.”

  “Me either.” Angie sighed. “Until Katie pulled me out of relationship hell, I didn’t even really know the demon problem was that much of an issue. I thought they were overdramatizing on the news.”

  “If anything, they are playing it down. Humans are too fragile for that shit.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  “My beautiful assistant, what can I do for you?” Katie asked, chewing loudly into the receiver.

  “Hey, you busy?”

  “Busy filling my body with something other than donuts while I can. Other than that, no. I was going to check in at the station after this. What’s up? Do we have a call?”

  “No, actually this is more along the lines of a business venture since you haven’t had the time to put into that part of things lately.”

  “Mm, good, let’s hear it.”

  “So, after the last incursion, I started to think about Timothy.”

  “Oh, girl, let me just break it to you now. You don’t have the right anatomy, if you know what I mean.”

  “No, no, that wasn’t what I meant. I meant, because he has some badass skills, and if he hadn’t detected the whereabouts of that gate, things would have been a hell of a lot harder for you and the team. That got the wheels turning, and I thought, what if we could take that—Timothy’s skills—and put them to use? We could create a system of detectors every government in the world could use. They could monitor heat and energy levels, and before a gate even fully formed, they would know about it. We could get men to the scene before a single demon came through. That might help lower casualty rates and keep the cities physically intact.”

  “Look at you, coming up with the master plan. What does Timothy say?”

  “He thinks he can do it, but he wants your and the general’s okay first.”

  “I would agree, but I want him to start with just New York as a test. And it needs to be at a reduced rate, so keep the hardware costs down.”

  “Perfect,” Angie enthused. “I’ll call Timothy right away.”

  “Great, and you can call the general too. I don’t want that headache today.”

  “What is it with this man? No one wants to call him.” Angie sighed. “I will call him right after I get off with Timothy.”

  They hung up and Angie immediately dialed Timothy’s number. “You are fast. Did you talk to Brushwood?”

  “Oh, uh, no not yet,” Angie replied. “I talked to Katie first. She said it sounds great, but she wants you to start with New York only, and she made a point to say that she needs you to not go nuts with new hardware. Keep the cost below reasonable.”

  “How about zero dollars? That’s reasonable right?”

  “Uh, yeah,” Angie chuckled.

  “Good because I looked at everything and I won’t need any new hardware if I am just doing New York twenty-four hours a day. It is not a very big place, and once I get the automation up, it’ll basically run itself with me scanning and pinpointing the specifics.”

  “Perfect,” Angie replied. “Go ahead and start your setup, I’ll give the general a ring and get the final okay.”

  Angie went through the list of numbers Katie had put in her phone in case she was unable to make the call herself. The general was one of those. She took a deep breath and dialed, holding her head high as she waited for him to answer.

  “This is General Brushwood.”

  “General, this is Angie, Katie’s assistant.”

  “Angie, this is a surprise. Is everything okay? Is Katie okay?”

  “Oh, yeah, everything is fine on that front, sure. I wanted to introduce myself so you would know who I am.”

  “Well.” The general chuckled. “We already know all about you. We know who you are, where you’ve been, and even those few…indiscretions, shall we call them? The ones from your younger years.”

  “Oh, you... I see. Hmmm.”

  The general chuckled dryly. “Did I catch you off-guard?”

  “A little, yeah. I mean I didn’t think that a nobody like me would be so interesting to the federal government, especially enough to be researched to the depth you apparently did.”

  “You have to understand, it’s nothing personal. Katie is one of the greatest assets we have. In fact, she is one of the greatest assets that the entire world has. Anyone on Katie’s team is considered a person of extreme interest. It’s kind of our way of protecting Katie, and at the same time, covering our own butts.”

  “Right, and does Katie know you do this?”

  “I’m sure she wouldn’t be shocked. In reality, whoever works with Katie ends up working and communicating with us as well. It’s very hard to separate those two things in the line of work we all do. It’s better for us to dot all the I’s and cross all the T’s before we need to communicate with a person. Otherwise, we would lose valuable time or even compromise everyone’s efforts by confiding secret information to someone who may not be authorized to have that information.”

  “Right,” Angie replied, trying to work through the eerie feeling she had in the pit of her stomach. Knowing that the federal government knew most of the intimate details of her life without consulting with her first made her really uncomfortable. She had to get over that, though. She was in that world now, and things weren’t as simple as she wanted them to be. She pushed the feeling aside to move to more pressing issues.

  “Anyway, I was calling today to talk to you about something. We…no, I guess I should say I, wanted to talk to you about Timothy’s skills, and packaging and marketing those for retail purposes. He is a hell of a tracker, and we believe his program could be useful not only to us, but to the world as a whole, especially with the most recent attacks. The ability to hone in fast on an incursion could be vital to other places, and at the same time save millions of lives.”

  “Hmmm,” the general replied, thinking about what she was saying.

  He had a team right down the hall from him that could do that at the drop of a hat, and they covered most of the US. At the same time, they didn’t have a budget to focus their efforts tight enough to catch it every single time, like Timothy had done with the apartment complex in Brooklyn.

  “I have a team in place in New York City, but I’m thinking that it might do us good to have that additional service, especially if it is approved by the department. On top of that, you are correct, while my job is to focus
on this country unless otherwise directed, the other places around the world desperately need a way to be able to watch the demons, the gates, and be prepared ahead of time for any incursions that might pop up.”

  “Exactly. It’s like backup, but better.” Angie grinned.

  The general laughed. “Now I just have to figure out how Timothy would prove that he was enough for the task, and I love messing with him.”

  “I got that impression from how he talks about you,” Angie replied.

  “None of them would call me, would they?”

  “No, sir.”

  “So you were stuck with the task.”

  “Yes, sir, but I am enjoying the time.”

  “Well, Angie, like Katie, you are a good saleswoman. I will give my stamp of approval on the trial of this, but just in New York. If they need to move outside the state, I will need someone to call me to get confirmation.”

  “Of course, sir. That will absolutely happen.”

  “Good. Now, why don’t you let me call Timothy and give him the good news?”

  “Of course. But sir, don’t get him too riled up. I need him to focus.”

  “Ha! If this old man can push him around, he needs to toughen up a bit.”

  “I won’t lie. You are a little more intimidating than I expected you to be. Just saying.”

  “And you are a lot sharper and a lot more intelligent than I expected you to be. I guess that means I need to start judging people after I meet them, not before, no matter how much intel I read.”

  Angie smiled and chuckled. “That would probably be good. People can surprise you.”

  “Ain’t that the truth.” The general scoffed.

  Angie and the general got off the phone, and Angie put it down on the table, clapping her hands together and smiling. She had actually been able to get something planned out and approved within a twenty-four-hour window. Maybe she wasn’t giving herself enough credit. Maybe she really was good at doing whatever needed to be done. Little did she know, Katie had seen those traits in her before she saved her, which was how she’d known that Angie would fit in perfectly.