Bad Company

by D V Wolfe

  “What’s next?” Gabe asked, and he raised a hand to stop me before I could answer. “And no more of the, ‘just waiting around for a call from Nya’.”

  I shrugged. “But that’s what we were doing when Roy mentioned this ‘haunting’. Obviously a trap. Damn demon.”

  Gabe was still. “Do you think it was the demon?”

  Something the demon had said through Roy came back to me. “I don’t know,” I said to Gabe. “But he did seem to have it out for me. Maybe? Or maybe it was his BFF that Nya was talking about.”

  Gabe shook his head. “This sucks. You’re being hunted and I’m being sent to the middle of nowhere.”

  “Where are you being sent?” I asked.

  Gabe looked sorry he’d said anything. “I can’t...say.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Yet you have the sack to ask me to tell you everything about what I’m up to?”

  Gabe sighed. “It’s Order business. I’m under vow not to say.”

  “Your Order sounds like a pain in the ass,” I muttered as I pushed past him and went to open Lucy’s driver side door. Standing close to Gabe for extended periods of time wasn’t a best practice, I’d learned. Not if I wanted to keep my wits about me.

  “Please promise me you’ll be careful,” Gabe said, covering the hand that I had resting on Lucy’s door frame.

  “I will if you will,” I said, doing my best to not show him what the warmth from his hand was doing to me.

  Gabe nodded. “Deal. And call me after you talk to Nya so I know what’s happening?” Gabe must have read in my expression that I was seriously considering not doing that because he leaned in a little and I could feel his warm breath on my ear as he softly added. “Please?”

  “Geez, get a room, you two,” Noah said from the passenger side.

  I raised an eyebrow at Noah and he sighed and turned his head away to look out his window.

  “Fine,” I said, looking back at Gabe. “But I may only speak in sarcasm and swear words.”

  “When do you not?” Gabe asked.

  16

  Gabe had parked in the spot next to Lucy and I wandered over towards his bike.

  “So would you tell me what your Order mission was if I guessed it?” I asked.

  Gabe rolled his eyes. “The chances of you guessing it are ridiculously slim, but even so, I couldn’t tell you if you were right.” Gabe came over to join me and started undoing one of the leather straps on his saddlebag. “I almost forgot. I happened to stop through Messina just before you called me and I have a delivery from Stacks.” He pulled out a cardboard box and handed it over. It was heavy. I flipped the top open. Shotgun shells. Ten and twelve gauge.

  “Thanks,” I said. “You just saved us about sixteen hours of drive time.” I looked up and met his gaze. “How did you ‘just happen’ to be going through Messina before I called you?”

  Gabe scratched his neck and broke eye contact. “Oh, I might have gotten a call...from Stacks.”

  “That rat bastard,” I muttered, more to myself than to Gabe. Stacks had probably told Gabe we were on our way to K.C. first. And Gabe had already been planning on coming when I’d called him. My stomach was twisting itself in knots. I closed the box and tucked it under my arm. I could feel his gaze on me. I turned away from him. “Thanks, by the way,” I said.

  “For what?” Gabe asked and I could almost hear the hint of his smug smile.

  “For being an ass and making it so that I don’t have to thank you,” I said.

  I felt a warm hand on my shoulder and I looked up like an idiot, right into that bearded, blue-eyed face. He was smiling with something so soft in his gaze that I felt myself falling forward, eyes closing, and I could feel his breath against my lips, hear a soft groan from him.

  “Bane!” Noah barked. I jerked back. I turned to yell back at him, my heart racing.

  “What?” I yelled.

  “Your phone is ringing. The ID says ‘public’.”

  I couldn’t meet Gabe’s gaze again. “That’s Nya,” I said. “I better get it.”

  “Be careful,” Gabe said. His voice was so tender I couldn’t resist looking up at him. He kissed the pad of his thumb and reached slowly towards me. I felt my traitorous feet carry me forward an inch until his thumb met my lips.

  “You too,” I said, drawing back.

  He kicked his bike to life as I hurried back to Lucy’s open driver’s side door.

  “Yeah, she’s swapping spit with Gabe,” Noah was saying into the phone. I lunged for it and snatched it away from him.

  I glared at Noah and he chuckled to himself. “Well you were, weren’t you?”

  I gave Noah the finger and put the phone to my ear. “Hi, Nya.” Gabe was backing out of the spot next to me. He winked at me and put the visor on his helmet down before lurching forward and steering his bike out of the lot.

  “Why is Gabe in Kansas City?” Nya asked. “And what are you doing, Bane? He’s just going to hurt you.” Or vice versa, I thought.

  “Noah was just being a dick,” I said. “He helped us out with a hunt.” More like a trap. “That we were doing while we were waiting for your call,” I said. “What’s happening in Denver?”

  Nya sounded as strung out and disheartened as I felt. “Huge bust. Nothing here but Broncos fans and monster truck rallies.”

  I nodded. “Kansas City is pretty quiet too.”

  “Wait, did you say you were on a hunt just now?” Nya asked.

  “Yeah, met a hunter who ended up being possessed. It’s a long story.” I didn’t think it would be a good idea to tell her about the demon that was possessing Roy or the fact that it might have been a near-death brush with the demon that was hunting me. Gabe had exorcised this demon, but he couldn’t have been more than a mouthpiece for the demon.

  “Shit,” Nya said. “Are you and Noah ok?”

  “A few scrapes and bruises,” I said. “But other than that, pretty good. Gabe showed up and exorcised him.”

  “How did Gabe know where you were?” Nya asked.

  “He called when we hit Kansas City. After that, he basically tracked us like he would a super. He showed up in time to pull the demon off of me.”

  “Good to know he’s useful for something,” Nya muttered. I could hear in her voice that Nya was remembering the old Gabe. The womanizer, the party boy who hunted when he felt like it. Nya was always good at reminding me of what Gabe had been. She’d known him or at least known about him longer than I had. I didn’t feel like being reminded about the fact that Gabe and I would never work, and so I pressed on.

  “So not K.C. and not Denver,” I said.

  “Yeah,” Nya heaved a frustrated sigh. “As dumb as it sounds, I think this asshole must be in Station, Wyoming.”

  I climbed behind Lucy’s wheel and closed my door. I turned the key over and said. “We’ll meet you there. I think it’s about a nine-hour drive to Cheyenne from here. How much further is Station from Cheyenne.”

  “Station is about two hours north of Cheyenne,” Nya said. “I’m about three and a half hours south but I need to check in with a source in Boulder before I head that way. I’ll call you from Boulder.”

  “Promises, promises,” I groaned. “I wish to hell you’d carry a damn phone.”

  “And I wish you’d stop bitching about it, but we can’t always get what we want,” Nya said.

  Noah and I grabbed truckstop food while we refueled in Nebraska and we were about five hours down the road when Nya called.

  “I’ve finally fucking got a fucking name!” She all but shouted in my ear.

  “Too bad I won’t be able to hear it,” I said, “what with my eardrum being blown out.”

  “Oh blow it out your ass,” Nya said and it was the happiest I’d heard her sound in months. “I know the name of the dickbag demon!”

  “Please tell me it’s Melvin or something,” I said.

  “Bane, shut it. The bastard’s name is Ornias. Now we can summon him. We just need the sword and this
whole shit storm can be over!”

  “Ornias?” I asked. “How much did his mother hate him.”

  “As opposed to ‘Melvin’s mother?” Nya asked.

  “Fair enough,” I said. “So what do you know about him?”

  “He’s a demon, being commanded by our friend the Duke who is still comfortably down south. It seems that since St. Louis, ole Dukey decided to stay put and send his BFF, this Ornias instead. He’s the one that’s trying to kill you. And I know his fucking name now,” Nya said.

  “What else? What about the lore about him?”

  “Bane,” Nya said. “What lore? He’s the fucking demon. I’m at a chicken joint in Boulder with a name. I don’t have a mobile library stashed in my S10.”

  “I’ll call Stacks,” I said.

  “For what?” Nya asked.

  “Just to see if he can find anything. Last time we looked up the Duke, and it told us what his job in Hell was and what he was associated with…”

  “...and his favorite Molly Ringwald movie?” Nya asked. “Who gives a shit. We go to Station, we get the sword, we summon the bastard and we kill him. Thank you and goodnight. It’s that simple.”

  I nodded. “You’re right.”

  “I’ll call you with directions on where to come as soon as I hit town. Should be an hour or two before you.”

  “Thanks.” A thought hit me and I cleared my throat. “And hey Nya?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Thank you. For all of this. You’ve made hunting this thing down a top priority, even more so than me. And...I can’t tell you how much that…”

  “Bane,” Nya said softly. “You’re my sister. Not in blood, but in everything else. You know that I would do anything to protect you.”

  “Well,” I said, feeling my throat tightening in a way that had nothing to do with my bruises. “Thank-”

  “Don’t!” Nya barked. “Don’t thank me, just head to Station. I’ll call soon.”

  “Be careful,” I said.

  “You too.”

  We hung up and I blew out a sigh.

  “So who’s this ‘Ornias’?” Noah asked.

  “It’s apparently the name of the demon that’s coming after me,” I said. I ignored the look of panic on Noah’s face and looked off at the horizon through the windshield. There was a storm front ahead and we were driving right into it.

  “It has a name?” Noah asked. “I thought you said Nya said it wasn’t a Duke or President or whatever. Aren’t they the only ones who have actual names?”

  I rolled my eyes. “Uh, Festus? You didn’t really think they all went around downstairs just calling each other ‘demon one’ and ‘demon two’, did you? Of course, they have names, but we just know about the big hitters in the Lesser Key.” An idea struck me and I snatched the phone off the seat and flipped it open.

  “What are you doing?” Noah asked.

  “Calling Stacks,” I said. “Even if it’s not in the Lesser Key, he might know of another piece of lore out there that might tell us something about this demon.”

  Stacks answered on the third ring. “Hello?”

  “What’s eating you?” I asked, noting the dismay in his voice.

  “Oh,” Stacks said on a sigh. “Nothing. Everything is peachy.”

  “It sounds like it,” I said. “Where are you?”

  “Standing,” Stacks said, drawing out the dramatic. “On the threshold of unfamiliarity. It’s a feeling like being erased from one place and now a stranger to four bare walls.”

  I sighed. “You’re standing in your new trailer, aren’t you?”

  “Yes,” he said. “It’s all wrong. The carpet is too new and it smells like a car at a dealership.”

  I decided to stow my comments about Stacks’ neurosis and press on. “I have a perfect plan that will have you feeling at home in no time,” I said.

  “Bane, you never have perfect plans. You always have shit plans,” Stacks said.

  “But,” I said quickly. “Think about how many ‘shit plans’ I’ve hatched while in your old trailer? Huh? Nothing says christening a new trailer like following a shit plan. What do you say?”

  Stacks groaned. “Why do I know that I’m going to hate this?”

  “Because you know me,” I said. “So I need a piece of lore, anything you’ve got about a demon named Ornias and a sword that can kill demons.”

  There was silence on the other end of the line. “Stacks?”

  “Bane, are you high?” Stacks asked.

  “What? No,” I said. “Don’t you still have a lot of the lore books from your old place? I seem to remember stacking shit tons of milk crates full of books in the back of Tags’ Scout and in Lucy’s bed too. I left them all at Rosetta’s when you were staying with her.”

  “They’re here,” Stacks said. “But Bane, there’s no such thing as a sword that can kill demons. We’ve talked about this.”

  “Can you just look?” I asked. “Nya has some source that says this incubus has a sword that can kill demons and we’re on our way to Station, Wyoming to get it back and then go after Ornias. Please, Stacks, anything you can turn up on Ornias or this sword and I swear that I will help you trash your new trailer to look exactly like the old one, the next time I’m in Messina.”

  “Fine,” Stacks said. “But I make no promises on finding anything.”

  “Looking,” I said. “That’s all I’m asking for.”

  “Aaannd,” Stacks said and I felt my jaw tighten as I recognized Stacks exploiting the upper hand when I needed a favor. “You have to set up a dinner with me and Nya so that she can tell me about these contacts of hers and how she became such a skilled and...talented hunter.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I’ll get right on that.”

  “Somehow,” Stacks said. “I don’t believe you.”

  “Only one way to find out,” I said.

  Stacks sighed and hung up.

  17

  We’d been driving through three hours of hard-wind and horizontal rain when the turn off for Station came up on the right side of the road. Noah’s hair was starting to stand on end with the electricity that was surging through the air and he was getting stir-crazy.

  “Are we there yet?” Noah asked.

  I nodded at the sign. “Read the sign and close your mouth. Ten miles.”

  “What is with this freaking weather?” Noah asked.

  I snorted. “Oh, I don’t know. Maybe it’s because we’re heading towards impending doom.”

  “Just make me feel better about it, why don’t you?” Noah asked, trying to pat his hair down.

  “Love the new ‘do by the way,” I said.

  “Every time there’s a thunderstorm, I swear, I turn into Sideshow Bob.” I thought about asking him who that was. There were still gaps in my pop culture knowledge.

  There was a crack of thunder and the sky ripped open, turning the rain up to eleven as it beat down on us.

  “Um, what does this remind you of?” I asked, glancing up at the sky.

  I turned to look at Noah and our eyes met.

  “Shit,” Noah said. “The storm barrier that the cannibals were using?”

  I shrugged. “Chances are good that they aren’t the only ones who know about the storm barrier spell.”

  Noah looked at me, horror etched on his face. “The demon?”

  “Well,” I said. “I wouldn’t rule it out.”

  “Shit,” Noah muttered.

  We took the final curve into the tiny Wyoming town and just as suddenly as it started, the rain stopped.

  “Damn it,” Noah groaned.

  “That’s not a good sign,” I said.

  The weather situation was so similar to Sicily’s that it was unnerving. Had this been something the demon had been doing to protect Sister Smile’s tribe and wasn’t actually a part of the ritual? Was the demon in Station, just waiting for us?

  I followed the directions that Nya had given us over the phone about where to meet her and we found the Stati
on Coach Inn on the far side of town. I scanned the parking lot and found Nya’s S10. I parked next to it and climbed out. Noah was right behind me as we headed across the pavement to find room 110.

  “Hey,” Noah said, hustling to match my pace. “How’s my hair?”

  I grinned. “I thought you were hot for Tiffany.”

  Noah scowled and continued trying to flatten the frizz against his head. I knocked on the door and I heard Nya crashing around inside. Nya was a badass hunter and when she was in a bad mood, you didn’t cross her. Out on hunts, she was perfectly poised and put together. But when Nya bedded down for the night, let her guard down and acted like a normal person, she was the most accident-prone person I’d ever met. Once, she almost blew up a hotel room where she was staying because she lunged to get the phone and knocked her open bottle of nail polish remover onto the incense she was burning and then while she was trying to put the flames out, she knocked the bowl into her bag full of grenades.

  “Yeah, hang on,” Nya yelled, followed by a slew of cursing.

  “She’s having a good day,” I said.

  “What do you mean?” Noah asked.

  I shrugged. “She’s only dropped three f-bombs on her way to the door. Usually, it’s like, triple that.”

  Nya opened the door and looked out at us. “Well, you don’t look too worse for wear. Get your asses in here.”

  “You either,” I said. “So Denver was a snooze?”

  Noah and I both plopped down on the end of the bed nearest the door. Nya was digging through one of the bags piled on the other bed.

  “Ugh, don’t talk to me about Denver. What a waste of time.”

  I nodded. “We were almost in the same boat.” I took a breath, but I knew I had to tell her. “I think we had a run-in with one of the demon’s minions.”

  Nya stopped her search and turned to look at me, a newspaper clutched in one hand. “What do you mean? How do you know it was working for the demon?”