by Tim Marquitz
Beyond the Veil
Book Five in the Demon Squad Series
Tim Marquitz
© 2013
www.tmarquitz.com
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Edited by Tyson Mauermann
Cover design by Carter Reid
(Check out his amazing art at: www.carterillustration.com/ and www.thezombienation.com/)
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Created in the United States of America
Worldwide Rights
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any form, including digital, electronic, or mechanical, to include photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the prior written consent of the author, except for brief quotes used in reviews.
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This book is a work of fiction. All characters, names, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events or locales, is entirely coincidental.
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Beyond the Veil
Demon Squad 5
Also Available from Tim Marquitz
The Demon Squad Series
From Hell (Novella)
DS1 - Armageddon Bound
DS2 - Resurrection
Betrayal (Intro short to At the Gates)
DS3 - At the Gates
DS4 - Echoes of the Past
DS5 - Beyond the Veil
DS6 - The Best of Enemies
DS7 - Exit Wounds
DS8 - Collateral Damage
DS9 - Aftermath
To Hell and Back - A Demon Squad Collection (books 1-3)
The Blood War Trilogy
Dawn of War
Embers of an Age
Requiem
Clandestine Daze Series
Eyes Deep (novella)
Influx
Standalone Fantasy
Dirge
Witch Bane
War God Rising
Dead West
Those Poor, Poor Bastards
The Ten Thousand Things
Omnibus 1
Horror
Prey
Serial
Skulls
Heir to the Blood Throne: Inheritance
Collections
Tales of Magic and Misery
Non-Fiction
Memoirs of a Machine – w/John MACHINE Lober
Grunt Style: The Blue Collar Guide to Writing Genre Fiction
Anthologies
Blackguards (Ragnarok Publications)
Unbound (Grim Oak Press)
SNAFU: Survival of the Fittest (Cohesion Press)
SNAFU: Hunters (Cohesion Press)
SNAFU: Future Warfare (Cohesion Press)
SNAFU: Black Ops (Cohesion Press)
In the Shadow of the Towers (Night Shade)
Neverland’s Library (Ragnarok Publications)
At Hell’s Gates 1&3 (Charity)
American Nightmare (Kraken Press)
Corrupts Absolutely? (Ragnarok Publications)
Widowmakers (Charity)
That Hoodoo Voodoo, That You Do (Ragnarok Publications)
"Trigg isn't just a breath of fresh air, he is a damn hurricane, and he certainly swept me off my feet. It didn't take long for him to become my favorite underdog ever, despite all his flaws." –The Nocturnal Library
"Witty, sarcastic and hilarious.” –Michelle at Publisher’s Weekly
"Inevitably, I end up comparing this series to the Dresden Files and it really does make sense. Both are first person, both have a down-on-his-luck protagonist who's always the worse for wear in pretty much any situation and both tend to be humorous. But, for my money, the Demon Squad series beats the Dresden Files any day." –Only the Best Sci-fi and Fantasy
"We need more books like this one, bringing a fresh voice to the urban fantasy genre…” –Bastard Books and Other Crap
"I can't imagine getting tired of this series, because the stories are smart and the characters completely addictive. This entire series has become a keeper for me, and I can't wait to see what kind of trouble Frank lands in next." –BookWenches
"Tim Marquitz again shows why the Demon Squad series is his best work…” –Fantasy Book Critic
"Half anti-hero, half asshole, Frank is simply a great character to have tell a story." –Wag the Fox
Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Epilogue
Bonus Short Story
One
“Tell me where she is.”
Mihheer grinned, his mouthful of piranha teeth glistening for the wideness of it. He was seated comfortably in a chair just a few feet out of reach. Katon lurked to my right and Rahim hovered off to my left. The alien’s smugness was salt in the wound his master had inflicted by kidnapping Karra. He crossed his arms and settled back, unrestrained for the power dampener that had been injected into his spinal column. The hamburger meat of his cheery face was healing nicely after the beating I’d given him, though it didn’t look like the horn was ever gonna grow back. Can’t say I cared.
DRAC had been holding him for a week now, and it was clear they’d been treating him pretty damn good. It was far kinder than I would have, which was why dark and darker were up my ass deeper than a TSA agent on a hunt for bomb residue. They knew me too well.
Mihheer gave a little snort of a laugh, his lip curling into a sneer. Up to then, I’d been calm, under control. I drew a deep breath and let it sink into my lungs. Rahim made me promise I wouldn’t do anything stupid, wouldn’t go after the alien shit no matter what he said or did to provoke me. When I agreed, we all knew I was lying, but they let me in anyway.
I exhaled and my shoulders slumped, my chin drooping, but there was nothing I could do to hide the fury that seared my cheeks. My knuckles sang out like Snap, Crackle, and Pop when I forced my fists open and turned my back on Mihheer. He’d been asked that same question about Karra a thousand times and wasn’t talking. Nothing DRAC had done had broken him, but I knew there was a line they wouldn’t cross…not for Karra, at least. Not for me, either, it seemed. That was why I was there.
“Okay, I’m done with his ass.” The words chiseled their way through gnashed teeth while I took a step toward the door. The tension left the room with an almost audible whoosh, Rahim and Katon shifting to follow after me, probably proud of me for doing what I promised.
That was what I was waiting for.
Unlike the Pantera song, I didn’t need five minutes alone with Mihheer to get what I needed out of him…I only needed five seconds.
My fingers on the knob, I yanked the door open with a pissed off grunt I didn’t have to fake. For just an instant, Katon disappeared behind the steel of the door. I couldn’t see him, and he couldn’t see me. It was my one chance.
I spun and dropped low, diving across the room at Mihheer before Rahim realized what I’d don
e. The alien’s eyes went wide and he cursed while trying to get up. His feet scrabbled for purchase, but they just slid on the slick tile floor. Both he and the chair toppled to the ground with a crash.
“Damn it, Frank!” Katon growled at my back. He’d be on me in a second, but there was no stopping what I came here to do.
Mihheer squawked like a prison-raised chicken when I got ahold of him, my hands pawing at his face. The terror in his eyes set them to swirling, yellowish-orange kaleidoscopes in their blackened wells. My fingers sunk into cold flesh and grabbed hold, the tips clawing at his wide eyes. He opened his mouth and screamed, which was just what I wanted.
I felt Katon at my back, but he was too late. I forced my thumb into Mihheer’s mouth. Sharp teeth tore open the flesh as I forced the digit deeper and deeper into the jagged maw. He gulped hard and swallowed, instinct taking over at the warm gush of fluid hitting his throat. Katon’s hands locked about my waist and yanked me back. I didn’t bother resisting. We tumbled to the floor in a mass of entangled limbs, but there weren’t any weapons in the mix. Despite it all, Katon wasn’t trying to hurt me.
“Enough,” he growled in my ear, and I nodded, raising my hands in meek compliance.
Katon rolled me to the side, away from the alien, and stood between us, keeping a restraining hand on my shoulder. My gaze crossed the room to where Mihheer crouched in the corner. He wiped at the blood, which stained his chin and teeth, spreading the mess across the back of his hand and down his wrist. His lips quivered, and he huffed to catch his breath. I could see the subtle flickers of his arrogance resurfacing. His eyes flared with it, certain now that Rahim and Katon would keep him from harm. I choked back a laugh.
I got to my feet with deliberate slowness, not giving Katon any reason to think I was gonna go after the little shit again. The enforcer hung over me, and I couldn’t blame him. Rahim was in my face a heartbeat later.
“What the hell was that?” He stood tall, forcing me to look up at him, jabbing a long finger into my chest. “I know his master took Karra, but do you really think some pathetic attempt at hurting him will help you get her back?”
Behind the anger that darkened his cheeks was a disappointment I remembered seeing on Abe’s face a couple of times in the distant past. It was a swift kick in the balls to spot it now, having thought those days long over. I’d expected to feel guilty when I came to DRAC’s headquarters for the sole purpose of confronting Mihheer, but I thought I could handle it. I was clearly wrong.
In spite of the alien scuzzbag having helped his boss to kidnap my woman, the inferno of my anger sputtered and fizzled out under Rahim’s frigid gaze. Though it wasn’t the first time I’d let him down, it looked as though he’d pinned some miraculous hope on the off chance I wouldn’t do it this time. A ragged sigh slipped loose as I realized that. His hope never stood a chance.
“I’m sorry.”
He drew a deep breath at my words, a father believing his child’s penance as nothing more than reactionary training, an effort to mitigate its losses, but there was more to my apology than that. I wasn’t sorry for what I’d done to Mihheer. That was nothing. He deserved every bit of the agony that came his way, but my little outburst was only the very tip of what I’d have to atone for later.
“I’m sorry,” I repeated, turning to make sure Katon knew I was speaking to him, as well. His dark eyes narrowed as he assessed me, widening suddenly as he caught on.
“Oh shit. What have you done, Frank?” His gaze shifted to Mihheer who went still under his intense scrutiny, realizing perhaps that things weren’t as cut and dry as he believed.
“Only what I had to.”
Rahim looked to Katon, and then to me, and finally back to the alien. Just then, Mihheer twitched, his body shuddering as though he were suffering a seizure. He gasped, a drowning fish out of water, and was gone, only the vague outline of his form still visible before it faded into nothingness. Katon and Rahim spun to glare at me, spears of accusation hurled from their eyes. A bitter sickness welled in my throat as time ground to a halt; it was the sour taste of betrayal.
“This is the only way to find her.” The words fell from my tongue like shards of glass, broken and brittle, tumbling hollow into the space between us. These were my friends, and I’d not only let them down, but I’d stabbed them in the back, the pre-meditation of it obvious even to Stevie Wonder. I’d come into their home and took a big ol’ Taco Bell dump on their kindness and smeared it into the carpet and drapes for good measure. That stink wasn’t coming out.
I sighed as I felt the subtle tingle of magic wash over me. The twin of the transportation gem I’d snuck into DRAC embedded in the tip of my thumb—the same one I forced down Mihheer’s throat—warmed inside my guts as its energy took hold. In a moment, I’d be gone, too. I muttered one last apology before the magic whipped me away. Their crestfallen expressions lingered on my retinas long after I was gone.
Two
With a quick tap of my heels, I was in Hell, both literally and figuratively, though decidedly more the former. “There’s no place like home. There’s no place like home.” Even if it was just a rundown double-wide in the infernal trailer park of my new domain.
Venom’s “Welcome to Hell” sounded in my skull, and for just a moment I was in my happy place. Mihheer’s panicked scramble pulled me back to reality before I’d even gotten to the damn chorus. Chatterbox would have been so pissed. I missed the stinky bastard.
The alien lay on the rocky ground just outside the God-proof room the Almighty had been kind enough to gift the Morning Star, Daddy Warbucks himself, Lucifer: my own personal sperm donor and the hero to metal bands everywhere. The alien squirmed as soon as he realized his nice, plush accommodations at DRAC had poofed into thin air, and his would-be protectors along with them. He was alone with me and didn’t like that one bit.
“There’s nothing you can do to make me betray my master,” he sputtered as convincingly as he could muster. “You will not break me, demon.”
I shrugged. “While I’m no slouch in the foot in ass department, it’s not me you need to worry about.”
He stiffened and followed my gaze over his shoulder. A meaty hand dropped down on it and I heard the creak of bone grinding in the joint as the fingers clasped tight. There was a whiplash of motion and the little alien was granted the gift of flight. His breath whistled from his lungs as he was flung backward, through the newly created archway and into the God-proof room beyond. There was a meaty thud a moment later, followed by a pained groan. I scored the somersault a “4.” Such potential, but he clearly flubbed the landing.
“Come inside before your friends realize where you’ve gone,” Longinus told me.
Friends? I laughed. How cute of him to think I hadn’t just napalmed the fuck out of that bridge. He spun about and stormed into the room, unconcerned with my shattered relationships or moral failings. His massive shoulders filled the doorway as he strode through with intent, his hair dancing in the breeze of his momentum. I followed after without saying a word. Now certainly wasn’t the time to rattle his cage, not that any time was real good.
As worried as I was for Karra, and desperate to bring her home, my feelings paled before Longinus’ desire to have his daughter back. He’d been dead for four hundred some-odd years and had only just recently been reunited with her after she conned me into helping her bring him back to life. There was nothing in this world, or the next, that was gonna keep him from her. We both wanted the same thing, but I wasn’t gonna lie to myself and pretend Longinus wouldn’t mow me down as quickly as anyone else who stood in his way, intentionally or otherwise.
My eyes drifted to Mihheer at that thought. He scrambled to his feet before Longinus, but there was nowhere to go. We’d prepared the room beforehand, shifting its proportions and sealing off a tiny section where Longinus could get the answers we were after without having to worry Mihheer might escape. He was trapped in a twenty-by-twenty foot space, which stood at the end of a sho
rt hallway, the ceiling just high enough that Longinus didn’t have to duck. Magical torches fluttered to life along the wall when I sealed the first door to the chamber, adding a wonderful dungeon ambiance to the bare room. The closing of the second door, the one sealing the room off from the exit hall with five feet of stone, did nothing to detract from that joyous atmosphere.
Mihheer took in the whole room in an instant. Shudders wracked his frame as he realized he was in a tomb of stone and there was nothing between him and Longinus. The ex-Anti-Christ’s mood only added to the oppressive gloom. He left his power off the leash, and I could feel waves of it peppering my skin. It felt like I was getting a colonoscopy from a belt sander. Mihheer stumbled backward until he hit the wall, trying to escape the onslaught. His hands dug at the stone behind him, unconsciously seeking another way out. He wasn’t gonna find one. Not so much as a mouse fart could squeak out now that both doors were shut. I know that because I tested it.
It needed to be that way. DRAC would know where I’d taken the alien even before they put Rachelle on the case. She’d track the fluctuations of the dimensions and realize I’d dropped off the radar, only confirming I’d either popped into the God-proof room or Limbo, and they’d come here first. I also wouldn’t put it past them to have installed a homing device of some sort into the power dampener they’d plugged into Mihheer, just in case he managed to slip loose. They couldn’t track it into the room, so that wasn’t a concern, but it could point them in the right direction. It also couldn’t be used to lead anyone to his master. Mihheer was stuck on Earth without his boss.