by D V Wolfe
I snorted and held up a hand. “Joel, we’re good. Glad we could help, glad we’re all ok. I still hate faeries.”
Joel laughed. “I’d truly be worried if you started taking a liking to them.” I thought of Sprig and Vix. I guess I didn’t really hate them, but these bugbears could fuck right off.
Nya and Noah climbed back into Joel’s Subaru and I looked at the backseat. I grabbed the blanket from the back that had been covering our weapons and draped it over the seat. Joel opened his mouth to protest and I held up a hand. “It’s dark, the cop has already pulled us over once and if you don’t let me sit on this blanket, your backseat is going to look like someone gave birth back there,” I said, motioning to the frosting and cake smeared all over my back and ass. “Definitely might kill the mood for your ladies.” Joel didn’t have anything to say after that. I grinned and slid onto the blanket next to Nya.
“Hey, hit the radio,” I said after Joel climbed in and turned the engine over. “Let’s see if Walter felt this current disturbance in the force.”
Nya groaned. “I think you spent too much time watching TV when you first came back topside.”
Joel switched the radio on and the speakers blasted Van Halen. Joel turned the volume down. “Maybe he’s just on a break.”
Or still on a break and hasn’t seen shit.
Joel motored us back past the school where we waved to the cop in the cop car before moving past him and returning to Lucy.
“Well this was fun,” Nya said, climbing out.
We all followed and I turned to look at Joel. “It was nice to have something to do. Even if it was with fairy a-holes.”
Joel nodded. “Thanks for your help. Call me if I can ever return the favor.”
He gave me a careful hug to avoid the frosting and cake, patted Noah on the shoulder, and nodded at Nya.
“Good hunting,” he said to Nya.
“Same to you,” she said and she even managed a small smile.
I’d tell them both to get over whatever crap they’re still hanging onto between them, but I knew that would just make them both turn it on me. I pushed back the sudden rush of panic that hit me when I realized that this might be the last time I saw Joel before the end. I did my best to wave as Joel got into the Subaru and pulled away from the curb. I was trying to keep that line of thinking at arm’s length, but Joel usually stuck to the west coast unless he was coming inland for a lady or a specific case and I didn’t see him much anymore.
I gritted my teeth. Stop thinking, Bane. Stop thinking. But it was too late. My mind was a runaway train and my heart was pounding in my ears. In less than five months, I was going to Hell and I wasn’t coming back. And I wouldn’t be in the rubber room this time. I’d be downstairs proper and from everything I’d been told by the demons guarding the rubber room, it made purgatory look like a day spa. I was scared. Terrified actually. I felt the cold shakes starting to ripple over me and the weakness in my legs. I had to stop this. I had a job to do. I couldn’t fall apart, not yet. I looked up at Nya and Noah. Nya looked like she knew what had just been on my mind. I think that’s why we’re so close; Nya can read me. I don’t have to say it out loud to her, she can read it on my face and in my body language, like a real sister. She moved without saying anything and put a hand on my arm. She stared me in the eyes, breathing slowly and I felt my heartbeat begin to slow down as I breathed with her. Finally, when I was starting to feel normal again, Nya patted me on the arm and let her hand fall back to her side.
“This was a stupid job to take,” Nya began. “Joel should have been able to take out those bugbears.”
I shook my head. “I don’t know, six of them to one hunter? And Joel told me that he’s not messed with the fae much. Usually, they don’t turn into homicidal dick bags and they can just be left to their own, whatever.” I shook my head. “No, something’s going on. I think Kess is right and something is trying to control the fae.”
I pulled out a clean shirt and pair of jeans and changed before we loaded up into Lucy. Noah got in first and scooted over so that Nya didn’t have to ride in the middle. Noah had apparently been taking lessons from Stacks, however, because his elbow had found Stacks’ old haunt, resting between two of my ribs. We turned on the radio, and ten minutes later as I eased into a spot behind Nya’s S10, we still hadn’t heard a report from Walter.
“Maybe he’s in the can,” Nya said.
I hit the six on my cell phone speed dial and waited for Walter to answer. It rang and rang. I made eye contact with Nya and she got out of the truck, coming around to the driver’s side. I kicked my door open and got out to stand next to her.
“I’m assuming he’s either not answering or he’s tearing you a new one and you just can’t get a word in edgewise,” Nya said.
I shook my head. “No answer. I think it’s time to make a house call.”
Nya looked skeptical. “What if it’s a trap? What if the demon has risen now and he’s waiting for you to go to Walter’s? It would be perfect. They know you need to hunt and the Harbinger is where you go shopping for your hunts.”
Something Joel had said, echoed in my head. Something close to Walter was blocking him. Like someone standing in the lighthouse, covering the light.
“I think you might be right,” I said to Nya. She looked surprised. “We have to go. If it is the demon, now’s the chance to take it out.”
“What?” Nya said. “No, that’s not what I meant. We’re not ready.”
“Yes, we are,” I said. “We have the Solomon’s Spice stakes. They killed seven demons.”
“Seven low-level demons,” Nya said. “You don’t fight Godzilla with mouse traps.”
“Nya, there’s no proof that the stakes won’t work on all demons,” I said.
“And you think a Duke of Hell is going to what, just stand still and let you stab him with a toothpick?” Nya asked.
I felt frustration and heat crawling up the back of my neck, making my scalp itch. “We have to do something! Maybe if we surprise attack…”
Nya put her hands on my shoulders and looked me square in the face. “You don’t know demons like I do, Bane.” She squeezed my shoulders and let her hands fall to her sides.“I’ve been studying them, trying to hunt them down for information. The ones who survive to be promoted, don’t take chances. They let lower demons do their dirty work in the beginning so that they can test you, see what kind of a fight you’ll put up. They wait until you are at your lowest in energy and reserves, distracted and beaten down, and then they will eviscerate you.”
Whether intentional or not, Nya’s words were sending a cold chill down my back.
“Bane,” Noah said quietly. “Nya’s right. Forget St. Louis. What if Vix and the Bugbears and the cannibals are all attempts by the demon to kill you?”
I turned to look at him. He was pale, but his expression was more confident than I’d seen it in the last week. I shook my head. “Then they’ve been piss-poor attempts as I’m still breathing.”
“Because he’s not going for the jugular yet,” Nya said.
“Right,” Noah said, glancing at Nya. “The cannibals killed your accountant. How are you supposed to be able to know your number now? I’ve been watching you since we left the campground. You’re not ok. And since leaving Stacks’, after what we saw, you’re fucking scary at moments.”
“He’s depleting your reserves,” Nya said. “Beating you down. Distracting and frustrating you.”
“What about Vix?” I asked, looking from Nya to Noah. “She had the opportunity to attack me and she didn’t. She kept attacking herself.”
“A one in a million chance of throwing off whatever is controlling her,” Nya said, shaking her head. “And do we even need to talk about the bugbear just now?”
I shook my head. “No. I think we’re reaching. How could this demon control fae and cannibals?”
“I told you,” Nya said gently. “This isn’t some pissant demon. He’s major league and demons deal. It�
��s the literal underworld down there, and they will make deals with anyone. Gods, angels, supers, humans, or otherwise. “
I still thought they were both being stupid. It felt far-fetched, but I had to admit that a demon using other parties to do his dirty work, did seem right on par. It was the first thing, in fact, that seemed ‘on par’ when compared to the events of the last two days.
“Well,” I said. “If that’s the case, then big daddy demon isn’t likely to be at Walter’s himself, is he?”
Nya looked annoyed. “That’s not what I meant. It could still be a trap.”
I held up a hand. “And us thinking it’s a trap, could be a trap. Frankly, I’d rather walk into a trap, knowing that if it all goes well, Walter will be back to giving weather reports, than hang back and hope for a hunt to fall in my lap while the clock runs down. So, unless you two have some clairvoyance as to whether the demon is going to haunt some pixies and send those after us along the way, I suggest we swing by Walter’s while we’re waiting for ‘divine intervention’. The only thing I’m sure of at the moment is that something is blocking Walter, and I’m no spiritual plumber, but I’m itching to see if my sawed-off can snake his drain.”
Nya wrinkled her nose. “Not in love with the imagery, but I catch your meaning. So, onto Vigil?” I nodded. “You know it’s about a thirteen, fourteen-hour drive from here, right?
“Yeah,” I said. “You know the way?”
She nodded and headed for her S10. Noah and I loaded up in Lucy and I waited for her to pull out in front of me.
“Vigil?” Noah asked.
“Walter lives in Vigil, Nebraska,” I said. I handed him the cell phone. “Keep calling the six on speed dial and let me know if you hear anything.”
I had sudden deja vu, remembering that about two weeks ago when Noah and I had just met, I had asked him to do the same thing while we were trying to get to Rosetta before the poltergeist got her.
I shifted into gear and I couldn’t help a grin at the sight of Nya’s Goose Grease BBQ bumper sticker in front of me. I took a deep, shaky breath, Nya was with us this time and that made things a little better. Just a little.
13
We stopped to fuel up a couple of times and it was just after eight in the morning when we rolled into Vigil, Nebraska. It was a mid-sized town, hosting a religious four-year college and the largest ball of wax in the continental U.S., or so the single billboard on the way into town read. I’d been to see Walter in person once before, but I’d never had much time for sight-seeing. We drove through town and followed the blacktop road out the other side, to the north until it forked and we headed down the sand and gravel side road towards the radio tower in the distance. Walter was surrounded by summer wheat fields on all sides, but his little house had a yard in front and back and the yards did their best to push back against the fields. They had been landscaped and orderly at one time, but the flower beds were overgrown now, and full of weeds. Rosetta’s head would have done a full exorcism-type rotation if she’d been there. We pulled up on either side of Walter’s beat-up, old Rabbit and Nya and I were the first ones out.
“At least we know he’s home,” I said, nodding at the car.
“Unless someone took him,” Nya said. I immediately began looking around, hoping I wouldn’t find a bloody smiley face painted on anything. Nothing caught my eye and we decided to circle the house. We had no idea what we expected to find so we were loaded up with guns and ammo and my machete. We decided to split up and I sent Noah with Nya on one side of the house, not waiting for either of them to protest. Moving around the house by myself was terrifying but also a relief. If something clobbered me, at least it would just be me taking the brunt of it. I knew Nya would protect Noah if it found them first, but if Nya’s and Noah’s assumptions were right, and the demon himself was sitting in the backyard, picking his teeth with Walter’s bones and waiting for me to show up, I didn’t want to have any potential collateral damage near me.
I reached the backyard first and poked my head around the side of the house. The backyard was overgrown as well, badly in need of a mowing. I scanned the sight before me. No evidence of a disturbance, no bloody smiley face.
Just one, very white, very naked Walter, wearing sunglasses and a smile, stretched out on a lawn chair on the back porch.
“Walter!” I shouted, relief gripping my chest. He jumped, almost levitating inches off the chair, and reached down to cover himself.
“Fuck!” He shouted. “Who the hell is that?”
“Bane,” I called back.
“Oh hell,” he muttered. “Hang on.”
I stared at the ground to avoid seeing him pulling on a t-shirt and a pair of shorts from the ground beside his chair.
“Shit!” I heard Nya screech from the other side of the house. “I think I’m blind.”
“Who invited you?!” Walter spat. “What the hell are you all doing at my house?!”
I stomped into the backyard and climbed his porch steps to glare at him. Walter only stood about five feet and four inches tall and he was built sturdy, everything from his head and face to his feet in his flip flops was square. The three of us towered over him, hands on hips, the annoyance on our faces mirrored on his.
“You didn’t answer your phone,” I said.
“Because I didn’t want to talk to you,” Walter said. “That ever cross your mind?”
I shook my head. “Not for a second. I’m a delight to hold a conversation with. We were worried. You haven’t made any weather reports in, what has it been, almost three days now?”
Walter nodded and dropped his head. “I’ve been trying to convince myself that everything is fine out there and that hunters were just covering all the bases. But now, even I have to admit that something is wrong.”
“Well that’s why we’re here,” I said. “There’s a…,” I glanced over at Nya and Noah. “Slight possibility that something is blocking your abilities. So besides doing a welfare check on you, we wanted to take a look around to see if there were any signs of what it could be.”
Walter shrugged. “Knock yourself out. I haven’t seen or heard anything, but like you said, it could just be blocking me.”
“I’ll start in the house,” Nya said and she patted Walter on the back as she passed him and pulled open his back door.
Walter sat down on his lawn chair and put his head in his hands. “Ever since I was seven and I found out that all the vivid and bloody dreams I was having meant that I was a Harbinger, I’ve never had a single day where I didn’t see something coming.”
“Geez, seven years old?” Noah asked.
Walter nodded. “Seven is the age that Harbingers present. It’s a perfect number and occultists call it the ‘power age’.”
Noah shook his head. “I can’t imagine being seven and already being stuck with a career for the rest of your life.”
Walter shrugged. “Not really a ‘career’. I taught woodshop at the high school for ten years before the visions started happening so often that I couldn’t get through a class. My wife….” He was still for a moment, composing himself. “My wife taught and supported both of us after that. I was put on medical leave and then with her and her father’s help, we were able to get a loan for this old radio station.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. From what I could remember of the stories the hunters at Pitch’s liked to tell, Walter’s wife had passed away about two years ago. I think it was a heart attack, or maybe a stroke. There was an echo in Walter’s eyes when he looked up at me, an echo of what I’d seen in my dad’s eyes after my ma had passed. Haunted. They were haunted by their loss.
There was a crash of glass from the kitchen and a scream. We were all on our feet and moving for the back door when it banged open and Nya stumbled out, a cut on her face bleeding down her cheek.