War Demons: An Urban Fantasy Thriller (The Prodigal Son Book 1)

by Russell Newquist

  “You sure?” the friar asked, indicating Jim’s cane.

  The billionaire set his jaw.

  “I’m sure.”

  “What time is kickoff?” Conor asked.

  “Six forty-five,” Jim answered.

  “That’s after sunset,” Stefan noted. “That means hitting them in the dark.”

  “Call me silly, but isn’t that the worst time to take on a den of vampires?” Michael asked, incredulous.

  “Pretty much, yeah,” Gabriel answered. “Ordinarily, when faced with a nest of vampires we’d just grab some explosives, blow the building at high noon, and make s’mores.”

  “I’d prefer it if you didn’t blow up my daughter,” Covington interjected.

  “Exactly,” Conor responded. “We can’t demo the building with hostages inside. And that means we have to go in.”

  “So no flamethrower?” Michael asked, genuinely disappointed.

  “No flamethrower,” Conor answered.

  “Remind me again why going in after dark isn’t a terrible idea.” Peter requested.

  “The same reason we can’t just flood the place with holy water,” Stefan answered. “They’re not actually vampires. They’re some kind of animated construct. Daylight won’t help. But the night vision goggles we pulled out of Jim’s emergency stash will even the odds.”

  “But aren’t they behaving like vampires? I mean, stakes and decapitation kill them pretty well.”

  “Stakes and decapitation pretty much kill everything.”

  “Faith’s holy water didn’t hurt them, either,” Jim informed them.

  “What holy water?” Peter asked, confused.

  “She was covered in the stuff.”

  “What are you talking about?” Gabriel asked.

  “I fill the pool with it.”

  Michael guffawed.

  “It still seems like we’d be better off in the daylight,” Peter grumbled.

  “I’m not leaving Abby in there overnight,” Covington informed them all. “I’m going in – alone if I have to.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Conor declared. “We have to go tonight. We need to delay the police. They’re not equipped for this. If they show up, innocents will get hurt. And we have to hit it before Abrash does.”

  “What if they come in at the same time?” Peter asked. “Kickoff might make sense to them, too.”

  “I doubt it.” A harsh tone underlay Jim’s voice. “They seemed too busy to come get my little girl.”

  “If they do, then we try to stay out of their way,” Michael answered. “And announce ourselves. Loudly.”

  Everyone nodded.

  “The kidnappers won’t expect us at night, so we might get an extra element of surprise,” Conor explained. “But be wary. They might have vampires’ vision, if not all of their strengths.”

  “Whoever’s controlling them probably won’t have night vision, though,” Michael noted. “And the night was our friend in the special forces.”

  “It rarely is in this business,” Gabriel muttered. “Don’t expect the dark to work in our favor. The warlock might have night vision, too. At best, it’s probably a wash. But since we have these goggles, there’s no point in waiting until morning.”

  “So what’s the plan?” Jim asked.

  “Stealth, speed, and violence. We put a team here at the front door and another here at the back door.” Conor pointed at the map as he spoke. “Ordinarily we’d blow the doors with breaching charges, but we don’t have any.”

  “Sorry,” Jim mumbled. “I was afraid of being a hostage, not planning to rescue them.”

  “It’s ok,” Michael told them. “We can use shotguns to blow the hinges off. Follow it up with a few flash-bang grenades – loud and bright, but usually not lethal. We want to make as much noise and confusion as possible. The front team goes up these stairs here and clears the top. The back team clears the basement. One room at a time, cover each other as we go through.”

  Conor stared at him.

  “That’s how we did it in Afghanistan, anyway.”

  “It’s a good plan,” the Irishman conceded. “There’s only one small problem. We don’t have enough people for two teams.

  “I’ll get us backup,” Michael announced. He stepped into the kitchen and lifted the phone receiver off the wall.

  “Not that one. Task Force 13 will probably have a tap on it by now. No reason to clue them in yet.” Covington fished in his pocket and withdrew a small cell phone. “This one’s a burner. Disposable, no registration on it. They won’t even know to tap it.”

  “What’s to stop them from just sending a unit over here to check on us?” Michael asked.

  “Nothing, really,” Conor answered.

  “They’re probably too busy,” Covington answered. “For now. But that’s just one more reason to hurry. The longer we wait, the higher the odds that Abrash crashes this party.”

  “Maybe that’s a good thing,” Peter noted. “We do seem to be undermanned for this – and this does seem to be their kind of thing.”

  “And put ourselves back under house arrest?” Conor asked. “Thanks but no thanks. Our organization has a thousand years of history fighting the occult. I’m not sitting on the sidelines while some arrogant American upstarts muck it all up.”

  He looked around the room for a minute as what he’d just said caught up with him. “No offense meant.”

  “None taken,” Covington replied. “Besides, Task Force 13 has bigger fish to fry.”

  “Bigger than a dragon?”

  “Exactly like a dragon. It won’t be at the frat house,” Gabriel pointed out. “How would you hide it?”

  “Point taken,” Peter allowed.

  “Let Thirteen chase the dragon. We’ll focus on the girls.”

  “They’ll need their own weapons,” Conor reminded him. “Jim armed us great, but we barely had enough for ourselves. There aren’t enough to share.”

  Michael nodded as he stepped into his bedroom for some quiet. Conor, Gabriel, and Jim argued over minutia of the plan while Stefan found a quiet corner to pray. Some time later, Michael returned. All eyes turned toward him.

  “Well?” Conor asked.

  “Backup is on the way.”

  The Irishman nodded at him.

  “Even with a fleshed out team, this isn’t going to be easy. There’s a lot of room for mistakes in this plan.”

  “You have a better one?” Jim asked.

  “Not really. Not with what we have here. I mean, if only we had a wheelbarrow, that would be something.”

  Peter and Jim cracked a smile at him. The others stared in a stupor. Michael shook his head.

  “Nobody appreciates the classics,” he mumbled.

  “He’s right, though,” Jim agreed. “This plan carries a lot of risk.”

  “Do we have anything else that can give us an edge?” Michael asked.

  Gabriel, Conor and Stefan traded a look.

  “There just might be,” Conor allowed.

  “You could say it’s why we’re here,” Gabriel added.

  Conor turned a solemn gaze to the friar.

  “Stefan, show him.”

  “Show me what?” Michael asked.

  “We have something for you.”

  Chapter Thirty-One

  “Should I pull it out of a stone?” Michael quipped.

  Stefan’s package lay open on the table before them. Inside it sat a sheathed sword.

  “Are you the one, true King of the Britons?” Conor asked him.

  Michael searched his face for hints of humor. He found none, and decided to answer the question honestly.

  “Lord I hope not,” he answered.

  The Irishman gave him a serious nod.

  “You can relax. Excalibur lies safely hidden by the Lady of the Lake. And Arthur yet rests in Avalon, awaiting Britain’s hour of greatest need.”

  “And Lancelot with him, I hear.”

  “Don’t be an idiot,” Conor told him. “Lan
celot died of old age, six weeks after Guinevere. American schools,” he harrumphed.

  They actually believe it. Michael found himself at a legitimate loss for words.

  “Right, then.” Somehow, he made it come out nonchalantly. “This one is merely the sword of an archangel?”

  “The archangel.” Gabriel chimed in. “St Michael, Supreme Commander of the Heavenly Hosts, angel of death, Prince of Israel. He defeated the Prince of Lies with this very blade. There is nothing mere about it.”

  “Why me?”

  “Hell if I know,” Stefan answered. “I just get the visions. I never claimed to understand them.”

  “You wouldn’t have been my choice, that’s for sure,” Conor told him.

  “What, you don’t like giving it to an injured soldier?” Michael shot back at him.

  “I don’t like giving it to a bloody Yank is what.”

  “I’m no more Yank than Jim is,” the young soldier responded coldly.

  “Why do you even have it?” Peter asked. “Michael the Archangel just left it lying around, did he?”

  “We honestly don’t know,” Gabriel answered. “It’s been passed down, Knight to Knight, in a chain for nearly two thousand years.”

  Michael furrowed his brow. “Sir Richard was the last Knight?”

  Conor nodded.

  “What happened to him?”

  The members of the Order avoided his gaze. Finally Gabriel found his voice.

  “Sir Richard fell to the forces of evil in Afghanistan.”

  “Abrash dropped that bomb on him, didn’t he?”

  “Yes,” Gabriel answered simply.

  Jim gasped. Peter crossed himself and said a prayer for the dead man.

  “So the Sword has collected dust for five years now?”

  “The Lord chooses the Knight, not us,” Gabriel answered. “And He is far more patient than we are.”

  “Right.”

  Michael drew the Sword. He’d pictured something akin to a medieval broadsword. It didn’t look anything like that at all. The blade in his hand began as a straight sword where it left the pommel. But about six inches out it abruptly curved. Curves at either end of the hook gave it a wicked, sickle shaped look. An inscription lined the blade in blocky Roman letters. It looked like Latin to Michael.

  “Not quite what I expected,” he allowed.

  “The blade changes to suit its bearer,” Conor explained. “Sir Richard was a bit old fashioned. He believed that a sword that old should look that old, so it did. It’s a Sumerian sickle sword, one of the oldest known designs. In the 1980s it looked like a katana. Antonio was a bit obsessed with samurai.” He shrugged.

  “So, what happens now?”

  “In the heat of battle, it will choose,” Gabriel told him.

  “Why can’t it choose now?”

  “The Sword belongs to the commander of the Lord’s army. It only chooses one who uses it to battle evil.”

  “But that could be any of us, right?”

  “No. It will choose only the right bearer. It will choose you... or it won’t. It’s as simple as that.”

  “How will I know?”

  “You’ll know. We’ll all know.”

  “What happens if it doesn’t choose him?” Peter asked. “Will he die?”

  Stefan laughed.

  “For the rest of us, it’s just a regular sword. The blade disappeared once in the early second century. The church elders feared it was lost for good. Evidently a Roman centurion picked it up as a trophy. It passed down from father to son for generations, forgotten. Nearly two hundred years later it reappeared in the hands of St. George.”

  “As in George and the Dragon?” Peter asked.

  Gabriel nodded.

  “Dragons do not die easily. Yet neither can they match the power of the Lord.”

  “Dragons,” Michael muttered. “Before last night, I wouldn’t have believed a word of this, you know.”

  “Prudent,” Gabriel agreed.

  “And after last night?” the friar asked him.

  Michael traded a questioning glance with Peter.

  “What if I don’t accept it? What if I walk away right now?”

  “For if thou altogether holdest thy peace at this time, then shall there enlargement and deliverance arise to the Jews from another place; but thou and thy father’s house shall be destroyed: and who knoweth whether thou art come to the kingdom for such a time as this?”

  All eyes turned to the friar.

  “Esther,” he informed them. The Lord’s will shall be done. But he doesn’t need you to accomplish it, and woe unto you if you shirk your duty.”

  Duty. Michael understood that all too well.

  The ringing doorbell changed the subject. Gabriel moved toward the window and took a quick look outside.

  “Are we expecting peasants with pitchforks?” he asked.

  Michael slid beside him and took a look.

  “Backup is here.”

  Denzel strode in wearing a t-shirt that read, “My Giant.” As Conor looked up at the man from his own six-foot-six height, he decided the boy had picked the right shirt. He nodded approvingly at the chainsaw slung over the big boy’s shoulder.

  Pale and scrawny, George sneezed twice as he stepped in behind his friend. His glasses threatened to fall off his nose. He pushed them back up against his face with his left hand. In his right, he carried a crude construct that appeared to be made of yard tools.

  “I said bring weapons,” Michael chided him.

  “Hey man, don’t knock my hoe-saw,” George whined.

  “What the hell kind of weapon is a hoe-saw?” Conor asked.

  “I saw it in a movie once and... well, it’s all I had.”

  “It’s not even yours,” Denzel chided him.

  “OK, it’s all Denzel had. Other than the chainsaw. And he claimed that one for himself.”

  “And it was a bad movie, too,” Denzel chided him.

  “It wasn’t that bad.”

  “It most definitely was.”

  “OK,” George allowed, “it was a pretty bad movie. But it was a cool weapon.”

  “Not a very useful one.”

  The saw blade, loosely duct taped to the end of the hoe, rattled. Stefan lowered his head into his hands and shook it.

  “We’re doomed,” Conor declared.

  “We’ve seen worse,” Gabriel reminded him.

  “When?” he snapped back.

  “Baghdad, ‘93,” Gabriel answered. Conor’s face softened.

  “Beg your pardon, sir,” Denzel cut in, “but is it true that Faith and Abby are in trouble?”

  “Yes.” Conor acknowledged.

  “Then you couldn’t keep us out of this,” the giant told them. “They’re our friends.”

  “We need them.” All eyes turned to the friar.

  “What did you see?” Conor asked.

  “Next to nothing, like always.”

  “Typical,” Conor snorted. He looked up at the ceiling, shaking his head. But he trusted the friar’s visions.

  “Fine, the kids can tag along,” the Irishman relented.

  “Do we have a plan?” the giant asked. “Or are we just winging it?”

  Conor filled them in.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  “I’m not leaving the flamethrower behind,” Michael insisted.

  “You’re not taking it.” Conor wouldn’t budge. “If you let loose with that thing inside the frat house, it’ll kill us all.”

  “I won’t use it inside the house.”

  “Because you’re not taking it inside the house.”

  “Fine. I’ll leave it in the car.”

  “You can’t leave it in the car,” Conor answered.

  “Gabriel got to bring a water gun.”

  “What are you, like four?” Peter ribbed his friend.

  “Why does he have a water gun?” George asked.

  “Bring the flamethrower,” Jim cut in. “But leave it in the car.”

&nbs
p; “What?” Conor couldn’t hide his frustration.

  “Don’t encourage him,” Peter chided.

  “You never know when it might come in handy. We saved a whole platoon once just because we happened to have one in inventory. The VC hated them.”

  Conor stared at him incredulously. Covington met his gaze evenly.

  “They’re also extremely effective against vampires.”

  Conor snorted. “You know this from personal experience?” he asked sarcastically.

  “Yes,” Jim answered seriously.

  It took Conor a moment to realize the eccentric billionaire meant it seriously.

  “Fine!” the redhead threw up his arms and stormed off with a grumble.

  “Thanks, Jim.” Michael grinned, as he picked up his toy.

  “Thank me when we get out of this alive.” Michael’s grin faded. “And do try not to burn the frat house down.”

  “Where did you even get a flamethrower?” George asked.

  “Bureau of Land Management,” Denzel answered. His friends stared at him. “They use them for clearing brush.” He got nothing. “We go to one of the biggest agricultural schools the country. Don’t y’all pay attention?”

  “He’s right,” Covington nodded. “I picked it up surplus.”

  “Besides,” their large friend allowed, “it says so right there.” He pointed at a small square sticker placed prominently on the back of the tank. Sure enough, it listed the BLM, along with an address, phone number, and bar code.

  “So you’re, like, the Jim Covington, right? The billionaire?” George asked. Jim confirmed the allegation.

  “Abby’s dad is a billionaire?” Denzel asked, awestruck.

  “Wait, he’s Abby’s dad?” George asked.

  “Don’t be daft, of course he is.” Denzel thwacked him across the back of the head.

  A ringing phone snapped them all out of their reverie. They all glanced at each other, each trying to identify the source.

  Michael fished his cell phone out of his pocket.

  “Don’t answer it,” Conor told him. “They’ll trace it.”

  “It’s too late,” Jim noted. “They’ll have already traced it just by it ringing.”

  Michael ignored them both. He recognized the number.

  “Hello?” he answered tentatively.

  “Michael!” came the raspy, feminine voice.