by D V Wolfe
“That’s right,” Stacks said, getting to his feet and putting a hand on Gabe’s shoulder. “We kind of owe him already.”
“Join me, Stacks?” Gabe asked. Stacks grinned and Gabe put a hand on his shoulder too. “We shall be the Butt Avengers!”
“What? No!” Stacks said, dropping his hand from Gabe’s shoulder. “Come on man, be cool.” Stacks shook his head and bent down to pick up one of the books he’d been reading. He carefully stepped over the books and files that littered the floor, coming over to me. “Look at this,” he said, thrusting the book at me. I released the hammer on the .45 and flicked the safety back on. I lowered it to my side and felt Rosetta jerk it out of my hand from behind me. I turned to glare at her.
“No homicides before dinner,” Rosetta said, moving away into the kitchen.
“Hey,” I said, suddenly realizing our entrance route. “What happened to not wanting us to use the door because you were under surveillance?” I asked Stacks.
Stacks turned his head to glare at Rosetta. “Rosetta told me that there was no way in hell she was crawling through the tunnel, so I better do something about the camera before she got here. I was in the process of installing some new encryption hardware to work on stealthily hacking it when Old Lady Oakley over there,” a can of peas came sailing across the room and Stacks and I both ducked. It hit the wall and we stood back up. “Drove up and just shot the damn thing with that monster of a gun,” Stacks continued as if nothing had happened. “So now, whoever is watching is pissed, knows I’m home, and armed apparently. They’ll probably be out to install a new one any time now.”
“Well two can play at that game,” Gabe said, moving over to us. The smell of leather and pine and the stupid beard product he used invaded my nose. My stomach cramped and I took a step back.
“What do you mean?” Stacks asked.
Gabe shrugged. “Just set up your own camera to watch and see who comes out to install a replacement. I’d expect you to have that kind of a set up already.”
“I used to,” Stacks said, glaring at me. “In my old trailer.”
I rolled my eyes. “Are you ever going to stop beating that dead horse?”
Stacks crossed his arms. “The dead horse that was my trailer before you brought all hell down on me?”
“Technically,” Noah said from the couch. “It was Yolanda that blew your trailer up.”
“Who’s Yolanda?” Gabe asked.
“His snake. Don’t ask,” I said, finally taking the book from Stacks. “What am I looking at?”
Stacks reached over and flipped back a page. “Is that…” I said, staring at the sketch on the page.
“The church’s symbol,” Stacks said. “Gabe called me after I hung up with Rosetta…” His explanation slowed as he realized he had just told on himself.
“Geez, how many phone calls from the can did you make last night?” I asked.
“You were in the can?” Gabe said. “I mean, come on.”
“I wasn’t...going... when I called you,” Stacks said, his voice pitching up an octave.
“You better not have been ‘going’ when you called me!” Rosetta said from the stove.
“You couldn’t even pee when I was in the shower,” I said, remembering Indianapolis. “What, you called Rosetta to discuss a hunt while you were dropping a deuce?” Stacks’ face was turning red.
“Look!” Stacks shouted. “Not the point! Rosetta told me she was on her way and Gabe was coming too and so I thought I’d take a chance that Gabe might be able to help and I called him after hanging up with her.”
“Why didn’t you just have me hand the phone over to him?” Rosetta shouted. I was looking around for my gun. Now I wanted to shoot Stacks too.
“Because!” Stacks roared. “I didn’t think about it until we hung up. Not the point of the story! Everyone just shut up and let me finish!” We all crossed our arms and glared at Stacks, though Gabe was the last to cross them and I suspected he was only doing it because Rosetta and I were. I glanced over at Noah and saw he was also sitting with his arms crossed, but he wasn’t glaring at Stacks. He was glaring at Gabe. At least I knew Noah was on my side. I winced inwardly, remembering that Noah had been in the kitchen at Rosetta’s while Gabe and I were fighting in the backyard.
“The point is,” Stacks said, trying to return his voice to its normal volume and pitch. “We were talking about the church and the name was so generic, I was having a hard time giving Gabe specifics. So I took a picture of that flier Bane brought back from the pizzeria last night and sent it to his phone. And so Gabe showed up with this book that has the symbol in it.” Stacks said. He took a deep breath and exhaled before looking at all of us. “Happy now?”
“No,” I said. “Why didn’t you tell me you were calling these clowns last night?”
“Because you would have killed me in my sleep,” Stacks said.
“She probably would have killed you in your bathroom,” Noah muttered.
“Not a bad way to go,” Gabe said. “I mean it’s the way of kings; Elvis, Morrison, Redenbacher.”
“The popcorn guy?” Noah asked.
“The king of popcorn,” Gabe said.
I ignored them. “So you thought I wouldn’t notice them in your living room when I got back?”
Stacks threw his hands in the air. “Look, Bane, be pissed at me and shoot me or whatever later, ok? Just read what’s under the symbol.”
I turned my glare towards the book and read. “The Gerasene Legio.” I glanced up at Stacks. “Awesome. Some Latin symbol. Great work all around.”
“Gerasene was the place where Jesus sent the demons into a herd of pigs. The way it reads in the Bible, the demon’s name was Legion, but they made a mistake when they translated it. The original text says, “We are a legion.” An actual gathered force of demons.”
“For we are many,” Rosetta said.
“So the symbol they’re using just means…” I started, looking down at the symbol in the book that was so close to the symbol on the necklace.
“Demons gather here,” Gabe said.
“It’s like a homing signal of its own,” Stacks said. “Drawing demons together for a single purpose.”
“Which is?” Noah asked.
“That’s the million-dollar question,” Stacks said.
Something clicked into place for me. I stepped over and around the books, loose papers, and open pizza boxes and sat down on the couch next to Noah, resting the book on my lap.
“What is it?” Gabe asked.
I shook my head. “Nothing good.” I looked over at Stacks. “Stacks, did you fill him in on what happened on our little field trip yesterday?”
Stacks nodded. “Yeah about the demon who had us compelled and was digging in your arm with that scary knife like a granny looking for a Werther's at the bottom of her purse?”
I nodded. “That about sums it up.”
“Speaking of being filled in,” Stacks said, taking in my appearance for the first time since I’d gotten back. “What the hell happened to you?”
“Let’s see, bluffing, being spotted by a demon, being caught by a neighbor, two cover stories, a change of clothes, eight exploding imp skulls, a dumpster fire, and a clove cigarette.”
“And a partridge in a pear tree,” Noah said, his eyes wide. “You leave me out of the hunt for one day and all of that goes down?”
I sighed and filled them in on my day’s adventure. Rosetta came in from the kitchen to listen for a while and Gabe and Stacks had had to sit down when I got to the imps.
“So this janitor thought you were a fed who was investigating the church for fraud,” Gabe said. “But then you killed eight imps in his back alley…”
“He helped,” I said, quickly.
“And,” Gabe continued. “He now knows about imps and that the guys running the church are some kind of 'monsters'. But, he’s not going to say anything to anyone because he doesn’t like them? Are we hoping for too much from this guy?”
I ignored Gabe and focused on Stacks. “Nigel said there was a book that all the members sign when they become new members to ‘prove they are serious’ or something, about becoming new members of the ‘covenant’.”
“That sounds like…” Stacks said, horror filling his eyes.
I nodded. “I know.”
“Shit,” I heard Rosetta and Gabe say.
“What?” Noah asked.
“A deal,” Stacks said. “It sounds like the whole church is signing a deal with these demons.”
“Looks like this ‘legion’ of demons has been moved to the sales department downstairs,” I added. When Noah still looked confused I said. “They sold their souls. Like me.”
No one spoke for a moment. The horror of what they were doing without knowing what it meant was making me light-headed. I leaned back on the couch and closed my eyes, thinking. I was bummed that the New Covenant symbol wasn’t the same one the demons who wanted my head were using. I needed to find Sister Smile and Joel and I needed to hunt, but right now, all I could think about were all these souls. Just like the souls from Ashley, they had no idea what was ahead for them.
“There has to be a way to break this ‘covenant’,” I said.
“Probably not a way for us mortals to break it, unfortunately,” Gabe said.
I frowned without opening my eyes. “Well I guess there’s nothing for you to do then, so we’ll understand if you want to hit the road.”
I heard Gabe chuckle low in his throat and the arm of the couch squeaked next to me under his weight as he sat down. His scent was too close again. His voice was low and I could feel heat crawling up my chest as he said, “I wouldn’t want to miss the brilliant plan you come up with to pull this one out of the hat.”
“More like out of her ass,” I heard Stacks mutter. I opened my eyes and stood up, bumping into Noah as I got to my feet, doing my best to lean away from Gabe.
“I’d be happy to miss Bane’s plan,” Stacks said. “They always suck.”
I turned to him and my own annoyance was mirrored in his face as he threw his hands in the air again. “Well, they do!”
“No they don’t, not always,” I said.
“St. Louis-” Noah coughed. I swung around and pinned him to the sofa with my gaze until he looked back down at his lap.
“Sicily,” Stacks coughed. I turned to glare at him.
“Back to the problem at hand,” I said. “Since this isn’t the symbol on the necklace the cannibals were carrying around, which means it isn’t the symbol of the demon behind...everything.” I felt my throat close at the thought of Nya. I pressed on. “Besides the demon’s name, is this symbol of any further use? I mean, does it give us any kind of advantage?”
“Tough to say,” Stacks said, leaning down to pick up another book. “I’ve been cross-referencing it with the only other place I could find it. It seems like it hasn’t been seen in something like a thousand years or more. So no one put two and two together, except Gabe.”
I frowned at Gabe. “Why is that?” I asked. “Spend a lot of time staring at random symbols or something?”
“Does it matter?” Gabe asked, his smile faltering. “The question is what do we do now.”
“The symbol is called the Mark of the Gerasene in Tolliver’s Compendium,” Stacks said, holding up the other book. “It was said to double the power of the gathered demons. Once they saw it, they would be drawn to it and if they gave their allegiance, it’s said that the Mark of the Gerasene would be a symbol of protection...or providence…”
I rolled my eyes. “Here we go again with the translations.”
Stacks raised an eyebrow. “You want to have a go at ancient Sumerian? Be my guest.” He waved his hand at the text in front of him, glaring at me. He finally returned his attention to the book and turned back a page. “The word literally means ‘a part of’ but it doesn’t make sense in the context of the singular mark.”
“Maybe it just means ‘a part of the group’,” Noah said.
Stacks shrugged. “Sure, at least no pressure on my translation being the difference between life and death.”
“Ok,” I said. “We get it. They’re all Mouseketeers. Maybe the demon spirits are doubled in strength, but the bodies they’re wearing don’t seem to be. Nigel confirmed our friend from yesterday is dead, so yay to us taking a two-flusher to his vessel.”
“I guess it’s not surprising that we killed him,” Noah said. “I mean, you jumped on his head and I turned his windpipe into a Dodger dog.”
“A what?” Stacks asked, staring at Noah.
“It’s a sports thing,” I said. I’d gone to a couple of baseball games with Andi. There was a momentary high of actually knowing something Stacks didn’t, but then I saw the look on Noah’s face.
“So how do we stop them?” Noah asked.
“Well, what do we know for sure?” I asked. “We know they’re demons. We know they’re using a symbol to unite them which is so old, that it’s Biblical. Bully for us, by the way, for picking yet another fight with a double-powered mob of demons. At least now, we have some weapons in our arsenal.”
“Solomon’s Spice stakes,” Rosetta said.
“And Nya’s sword,” I said.
We were quiet for a moment.
Stacks stared around at the files and books scattered across the floor. “So what is the best outcome here we’re hoping for?” Stacks asked.
“Save the innocents, kill the baddies,” I said.
“So what’s our next step to make that happen?” Gabe asked.
“Setting up some folding tables and putting food in your faces,” Rosetta grumbled, dragging a six-foot folding table out of Stacks’ second bedroom.
“Rosetta!” Stacks shrieked. “I had a computer sitting on that!”
“Well it’s sitting on the floor now,” Rosetta said. “Where are we supposed to eat and where am I supposed to set up for the seance? Did you think about that?” Stacks sighed and went to help her. “Besides, it only sparked a little when I dropped it.”
After talking Stacks down from a coronary and getting the table set up, we ran into the next problem.
“What kind of a fool doesn’t have any chairs in his house?” Rosetta snapped, moving from room to room.
“I have bar stools,” Stacks said. “They’re better because they can double as tables and they don’t take up as much space.”
“Stools aren’t chairs. It makes everyone almost too tall for the table. We’ll all be hunched over our plates like a bunch of apes.” I went to help Rosetta dish spaghetti onto plates and dole them out. I was the last one to sit and I paused, looking at all the faces that were ignoring me and ignoring the one face that was grinning at me, patting the stool next to him. Stacks and Noah sat on one side of the table, Rosetta set at one end and Gabe sat next to the only other empty spot. I had two choices. I could make a big deal out of it, drag the stool to the end of the table and give the three stooges more to torture me with, or I could pretend it wasn’t a big deal, sit down and eat. I wondered vaguely if anyone would notice if I stuck meatballs up my nose to block Gabe’s scent from getting to me.
“So after dinner,” I said, ignoring Gabe entirely and keeping my face as neutral as I could while I looked around at the rest of them and picked up my fork. “Rosetta, which one of the victims are you going to call?”
“Barbara,” Rosetta said, holding up a napkin to cover her mouth. “She feels the most rational about her death.”
I raised an eyebrow at Rosetta. “Come again?”
Rosetta swallowed and set her napkin back, primly in her lap. “Her energy, I can feel it on her Bible. She accepted the fact that death would be a natural part of her life. She had her things in order more or less when she died. She has no irrational anger in her pre-death signature.”
“K,” I said. “And the other two did?”
“Royson had a defiance, some kind of suppressed emotion that had made him tense during life. Maybe he had t
o hide another part of himself away, forget it, push it down to appear to others the way he wanted to. His death will have given him great anxiety, worrying that that hidden part of himself will be discovered and change how everyone saw him,” Rosetta said.
“Royson was ex-military. Maybe he loved to paint with watercolors or play the banjo or something. What about Ellie?” I asked.
Rosetta bowed her head. “Ellie’s spirit is too raw, too painful. She loved those boys so much. The shock of not being a mother to them anymore, at least physically, will most likely drive her mad. Her energy is so powerful, I don’t know that any good would come from trying to talk to her.”