The Complete Protected by the Damned Series

by Michael Todd

  Chapter 4

  The car slowly came to a stop in front of the fancy hotel Damian had booked for them. It went up eight stories, the grey stone etched by history even as a fresh coat of paint tried to liven it up a touch.

  They went inside, checked in, and put their stuff in their rooms. As usual they had adjoining rooms, since Damian was constantly worried that Katie would be attacked.

  He was the only one who knew T’Chezz was Pandora’s brother, and he was aware of the animosity between the two.

  Katie was between the fighting siblings.

  Their rooms were huge, with sleek eclectic furniture, huge jetted tubs, marble everywhere, and comfortable, inviting beds. It was tempting to stay in and sleep their mini-vacation away, and Katie mentioned that fact.

  Damian sighed. “That’s not going to happen.”

  Katie was excited to be a tourist for a little while in the city, especially since the last time she had been there with Calvin the two of them nearly died. She wanted to walk around the town like a normal person, taking pictures at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre, walking on the stars, and shaking Spiderman’s hand. She knew it was stupid, but she wasn’t about to let something like that pass her by.

  She was not used to seeing other places, and she wanted to take full advantage of it while she could.

  When everything was put away in their rooms, Katie met Damian in the hall so they could explore Hollywood.

  She was as excited as if it were Christmas morning. Damian just laughed and shook his head.

  “All right!” She grinned. “We can go on a tour of the stars’ homes, eat amazing sushi, take a picture of the Hollywood sign, and get an autograph from someone famous. My list went goes on and on!”

  And not one spa day here?

  Trust me. Katie snickered. Even you wouldn’t like spa days in this area.

  Why? All gay men?

  No, very little food, and what food they have is nasty. Nothing but pain in order to force you to look pretty by taking away anything you might enjoy.

  What are these people, assholes? Pandora asked.

  Well, the rumor is if they weren’t before they start their spa day, they are by the end. Then, the next day they brag to their friends like they just raced in the Iditarod in Alaska. Then that friend goes through hell…oh.

  She wasn’t sure she would have enough time there to get through her list, but she was hell-bent on giving it a try.

  “So, what do you want for lunch?” Damian asked. “Donuts?”

  “She isn’t asking for donuts, oddly enough,” Katie told him. “I thought it was just her being stubborn at first over the potato ones.”

  “That’s a good thing, though, right?” Damian asked as they made their way through the hotel and outside past the hotel’s doorman.

  “You would think,” Katie replied absently as she looked both left and right before heading left. “But silence usually means something else is up. I just don’t know what it is…yet.”

  “Maybe she is just being nice,” Damian suggested with a smile.

  “Yeah, right.” She scoffed.

  BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA, silly priest. Pandora stopped. Oooh, look, the stars!

  Katie looked down at the stars as they walked over them. There were many of them; some she recognized, and some she didn’t. She wondered what the appeal of having your name on a star was, but then she was not fond of being the center of attention.

  That was one of the few reasons she didn’t like volleyball; when you made a good play or saved the game, everyone wanted to pat you on the back.

  It had occasionally made her want to hide.

  Hmm, Desi Arnaz. Pandora pointed out. From I Love Lucy. He had a serious obsession with Lucy. He used to chase her around wearing her robe and slippers, singing at the top of his lungs. It was a big scandal, but they covered it up.

  Uhm, I don’t think… Katie stopped as Pandora started again.

  Oh, Eve Arden! What a dear. Pandora sighed. She was fabulous in everything she did, but she seriously hated the bigger stars. She was tired of getting supporting actress awards. I heard that she only won the best actress because she threatened the lives of everyone on the board for the Oscars. She had a real serious dark side to her. I am pretty sure she went to my house when she died. And here—the famous Joan Collins, who, by the way, has a seriously loud and obnoxious demon inside her.

  As much as I want to admit that may be true for Joan Collins, I am pretty sure you just made the rest of that shit up. Katie chuckled. Though the vision of Desi Arnaz in Lucy’s robe is pretty entertaining.

  Fine, Pandora grumped. So I lied. Whatever. What does it matter? They are stupid star-shaped stones on the ground. My stories were funny, weren’t they? And probably a hell of a lot more entertaining than their real stick-in-the-mud lives anyway. She paused for a moment. If I was lying.

  You are too much. Katie laughed. Maybe you should write my eulogy when I die. I will either be a psycho, or the most amazing woman who ever lived. Either way, it will be entertaining.

  I would, but when you die I am back in my hellhole…or worse, Pandora griped.

  Oh, yeah. Katie smirked.

  “Oh!” Katie exclaimed, startling Damian. “I know where I want to eat! The Hard Rock Café.”

  Damian looked at her. “Haven’t you been to the one in Las Vegas?”

  “Yeah, but I’ve heard it’s not as cool as this one.” Katie put her hands together in supplication. “Pleeeeease?”

  “Yeah, yeah.” Damian laughed, pulling up the map app on his phone to work out which way they needed to walk. “Hard Rock it is.”

  “Yay.” Katie almost skipped along.

  While Katie and Damian made their way to the restaurant, talking animatedly about the stars and the sights, a couple of cops were walking toward them, discussing past night shifts they had been on.

  The two were on patrol, and it had been relatively quiet up to that point—which was strange for Hollywood. They went through things on-shift that happened nowhere else in the country, except maybe Vegas…or New York. There was a lot of crazy shit in Vegas twenty-four hours a day, and New York was just a clusterfuck of crazy crammed onto a small island.

  “Yeah, so I arrested this chick. Total freak,” the cop on the left explained. “She was in the back of the squad car screaming out lyrics to some old-ass AC/DC song, totally topless.”

  “This place gets weirder and weirder,” the other cop replied, shaking his head. “What did you pick her up for?”

  “That’s the fucking kicker,” he commented, and dipped his hat to a young boy who was pointing at the officer. “I picked her up for spray-painting a sign over on Fifth. She was completely clothed when she got in the car, then started doing Girls Gone Wild. I don’t even know how she got her top open, to be honest.”

  “At least she wasn’t the crazy fat lady from that Halloween bust.” His partner laughed. “Holy shit, that was the scariest thing I’ve ever seen.”

  “Hey, look! Isn’t that….” The cop pointed toward Katie and Damian.

  “Part of the D squad,” his partner whispered. “No fucking way.”

  “This is Officer Chavez,” the first officer murmured quietly into his radio.

  “Go ahead,” the operator replied.

  “I just wanted to know if there was anything strange going down,” he asked. “I just spotted part of the D squad roaming around here in Hollywood.”

  “That’s a negative, Chavez,” the operator told him. “They are just there to enjoy themselves. Out.”

  Chavez shrugged. “Well, I guess everyone needs a bit of a vacation from time to time.”

  As they passed Katie and Damian, a call came over their system. They unintentionally stopped just a few feet away to listen to the voice on the other end. It was a serious call, and not a welcome one.

  “All available units to First Republic Bank. We have a 444 and a 211S in progress,” the operator advised.

  “Chavez and Simon, following up,
” Chavez informed Central.

  “Copy that,” the operator acknowledged. “Be advised that the suspects are armed, and very dangerous. Do not provoke.”

  “Copy,” Chavez said, signing off and popping Simon on his shoulder. “It’s time to get our jog on.”

  Katie glanced up as the cops ran past them. She was thinking about those call identifiers. Damian looked at her, knowing that the call of duty was pulsing through her veins.

  She bit her lip and looked at the shop window.

  “A 444 is an officer-involved shooting,” she whispered to Damian. “And a 211S is a burglar alarm—the silent one. Someone is robbing a bank, and whoever it was took down a cop—which was a terrible move on their part.”

  Damian’s head swiveled to track her as she started walking faster and faster in the direction the cops had gone.

  She was nearly jogging when Damian sighed and ran to catch up.

  She was so bad with things like that. She wanted to save the world, demon-related or not. She would have been one hell of a cop or soldier in her civilian life, that was for sure. Still, they were there to relax, not to chase down every perp on the street.

  That was what the cops were for.

  Damian’s cross bounced against his chest beneath his shirt as he trotted after Katie, and he was out of breath.

  “Got to,” he huffed, “do more cardio!” He dodged between a couple of cars and Katie did something where she put a hand on the hood of a car and vaulted over, managing to accomplish a somersault with full twist in the air. “Oh, that’s so much bullshit!” he grumped when she landed gracefully and kept running.

  Training it was, or he was gonna get fat and sloppy fast. He picked up the pace while looking up to the heavens.

  “Was it too much to ask for a quiet afternoon?”

  Three more cop cars came to a sliding stop at the bank. There were at least a dozen already, and a gaggle of onlookers that was growing larger by the second. The police had the place surrounded, but they weren’t positive what they should do next.

  Chavez and Simon, who had gotten there on foot, bent over, hands on their knees, trying to catch their breath. Katie and Damian were only a few steps behind but were stopped by the ropes. Police crowd control was using the barrier to push the crowd back a little at a time.

  “It’s a bank robbery,” Damian whispered between breaths. “Not really our line of work unless the robber has red eyes and snarls, Katie.”

  “How would we know unless we went in?” Katie asked, watching wide-eyed from the ropes before turning to Damian. “Besides, Korbin said they might need our help on a bunch of different issues.”

  He raised an eyebrow, “I don’t think he meant listening to the speaker on a cop’s vest and then ambulance-chasing them to the scene of the crime,” Damian replied.

  She patted him on the chest before turning back. “All in the details, my friend.”

  “Christ almighty!” a tall detective in a suit exclaimed, throwing his hands into the air and walking toward the cop pushing the people back. “SMITH, you got people creeping the barrier forward, for fuck’s sake. You have got to show some balls here and get them to move back. These people should not be in the middle of this situation.”

  “Yes sir,” the young cop said, walking forward.

  The detective glanced at the crowd and looked away, but before he could take another step he froze.

  Slowly he turned back and stared at Katie and Damian. He knew exactly who they were, but what in the world were they doing at his crime scene? Was there something he didn’t know about what was in that building?

  “You and you.” The detective pointed at Katie and Damian and waved them toward him. “Come with me. The rest of you, push back so that if there’s gunfire we don’t accidently blow your brains all over the sidewalk…please!”

  Katie chuckled at his attempt to be nice by using please at the end of a sentence like that. They ducked under the ropes and followed the detective to his unmarked car, which had a temp light flashing on top. There was a layout of the bank on the trunk, and a pile of cigarette butts on the ground.

  “Look, I don’t know what is going on in there,” he said quietly, looking at the two of them before glancing around to make sure no one was sneaking a listen. “It probably doesn’t have a damn thing to do with your D Squad stuff, but there are a lot of people in that bank—and some of them are children.”

  “What do you know so far?” Katie eyes flitted over to the bank.

  “I was kind of wondering the same thing about the two of you,” he admitted. “Why are you here…at this specific crime scene?”

  “No reason,” Damian answered. “We heard it over the speaker of some cops standing next to us, and we figured maybe you guys could use an extra couple of hands. We know what an ambush looks like, but we also know that in this climate they may kill someone innocent if it takes us too long. We really aren’t sure what to do, though. What is your take on the situation inside?”

  “One officer, who had a second job at the bank, was shot. No idea how severe the injury is, but shot is shot,” the detective answered. “There are a lot of innocent people in there, so we are afraid to barge in and risk lives. For whatever reason, we have two other issues going on the West side, so our negotiators are stuck in those locations right now. I know you guys are trained in tactical and you’ve faced some serious shit, so will you help us?”

  Katie and Damian looked at each other and shrugged, and Damian nodded. Katie smiled and patted him on the shoulder, happy he was going to back her up.

  She turned back to the detective and stuck out her hand. The cop let out a deep breath and shook it, obviously relieved that he wouldn’t have to rely on his underpaid and overworked cops to get all the hostages out of that dangerous situation. He didn’t want to be the one who cost innocent people their lives.

  “We’ll help, but it has to be on our terms,” Katie advised him. “We need a bit of freedom to take care of this.”

  “You got whatever you need; all the freedom in the world,” he assured her. “We don’t need senseless deaths on our hands, and we need to get that injured cop out of there, so we can get him to help.

  “Detective,” the captain began, walking over. “Where are we on this? And who are these two?”

  The detective waited for the man to get closer. “Captain, this is Damian and Katie—part of the D Squad,” he replied. “They’ve agreed to help us out on this.”

  “Oh, shit,” the captain said with wide eyes. “I like the sound of that! Anything you need… We got tactical teams, blueprints of the building… You need it, just ask and we’ll get it for you.”

  “All right,” Katie said, rubbing her hands together. “Let’s come up with a plan.”

  The four of them gathered around the back of the car, and Katie started laying out the plan for them. She didn’t see any difference between these guys and a demon, and for all she knew a demon was behind this.

  The day had started as a vacation, but the adrenaline pumping through her told her this shit was in her blood. With Pandora and Damian on her side, she was fairly sure these assholes didn’t have a chance in…

  Well, hell.

  Chapter 5

  “The layout is simple,” Stephanie told Korbin as she unfolded her blueprints on Korbin’s desk. “There is one large building in the center that has an aboveground floor and an underground location pretty deep below. There is a ventilation system that pumps in good air, and it runs through the entire bottom level. Along the right side of the main ICBM building are barracks, mostly low-grade rooms for the plebes who worked the base. To the left is a larger barracks; maybe ten or twelve rooms, all upstairs. They look like they were officers’ quarters.”

  “Are they livable now?” Korbin asked.

  “Yeah, they are in decent shape, actually,” Stephanie replied. “The barracks also has a basement with a compression chamber that leads to the next main ventilated areas, so if there was an emergenc
y they could go to the underground chambers.”

  “What about medical?” Korbin asked.

  “Across the back here is a long rectangular building that seems to have been the hospital,” Stephanie said, pointing to the map. “Things are still intact, but it was stripped. It needs straightening up and a real good clean, and then you have yourself a hospital. Now, I don’t know about holding facilities for things like demons, but there are radiation rooms.”

  “That’s not a big deal.” Korbin rubbed his jaw, taking a few moments to study the plans. “We can build those. They are specialty places for us, anyway. I just want to make sure there is room for all of us when we move. We can’t wait until the new base is finished, but we can stay aboveground until we are sure the ventilation system is still in tip-top shape.”

  “Right.” Stephanie stood up. “We can test all that stuff in a few hours’ time. I’ve done some exploring, but I haven’t really pushed the envelope too much. I bought the land thinking I’d perhaps turn it into a larger brothel— almost a camp for adults—but never got around to the restoration.”

  “Good for us.” Korbin smiled.

  “Yeah.” She scoffed. “I didn’t like the business anyways, and I’m pretty sure that’s why I never actually got around to it. I didn’t want a bunny ranch, I wanted a life.”

  “Well, now you have one, though it’s not as free as you might be otherwise.” Korbin smiled. “I just need us back up and running, but we can’t go there if we can’t get it into service relatively quickly.”

  “Everything aboveground just needs to be cleaned.” Stephanie tapped a finger on the desk, thinking. “Maybe some light bulbs replaced, bedroom stuff, moving racks out, but all in all it just needs a loving touch—nothing the boys and girls can’t handle. There is also an underground bunker back here that is camouflaged to avoid detection from the sky and at ground-level. I was thinking it might be a good place for the business.”

  “That sounds interesting,” Korbin mused. “We will definitely take a look at that as soon as we get over there.”