by N. P. Martin
When I got outside, it seemed to have stopped raining, though the sky was still dull and overcast. There was also a definite tension in the air, which was to be expected, given what happened. The Little Tokyo residents would be on edge now, knowing that the Yakuza would be on the warpath, threatening information out of people, spreading fear in their efforts to find out who had hit one of their own. It was a selfish act on Hannah’s part, killing the Yakuza guy. I understood why she did it, but I was annoyed that she had given no thought to the consequences. Her revenge trip, despite what she believed, didn’t just affect her. Her actions would ripple out, causing unseen problems for other people who had nothing to do with anything. Pretty soon, the clan would be marching through Little Tokyo and beyond, rattling business owners, other criminals, drug dealers and whoever else they thought would have information on who killed their man, and they wouldn’t stop until they found out what they wanted to know. Sooner or later, they would find their way to Hannah, if she didn’t find her way to them first, that is. Either way, the times just got more dangerous.
I was about to get into the car when someone called my name, and I looked to see Haedemus come wandering out of an alley. He walked slowly, seeming depressed as he stood by the front of the car. “What’s up with you?” I asked him.
“Oh nothing,” he said, shaking his massive black head slightly. “I just feel like I’m in the midst of an existential crisis.”
“Are you serious?”
“Why wouldn’t I be? Honestly, Ethan, you need to stop thinking of me as some dumb animal. As I keep telling you, I’ve been around for millennia. I’ve seen things, I’ve done—”
“Yeah, yeah. Do you want to go to the beach?”
Haedemus almost froze as he stared at me with his red eyes. “Are you serious?”
“I just said so, didn’t I?”
“You better not be fucking with me, Ethan. If you are, I’ll—”
Closing the car door, I cut him off. “I’m not fucking with you.” I locked the car up and walked over to him, grabbing his mane before mounting him. “Let’s go before I change my mind.”
“Oh, Ethan, you’ve made me so happy. I feel like crying here.”
“Please don’t.”
“Should we bring a picnic?”
“What? No, we’re not bringing a fucking picnic. What are you going to bring anyway, intestine salad? Pickled brains?”
“Okay, maybe I’ll grab a bite while we’re there. I’m sure there’ll be a beach bum around somewhere.”
“You still have bodies stashed in the scrapyard. You don’t need to eat any beach bums.”
“The bodies you speak off are a little ripe at this stage. I prefer fresher meat.”
“Beggars can’t be choosers.”
“Is that what you said before you fucked my Mistress?” He laughed like he found this hilarious.
“Jesus, really?”
“Come on. You don’t know a joke when you hear it?” He snorted to himself as he started walking down the street, both of us oblivious to the people and traffic surrounding us, invisible to it all.
“Some joke.”
“God, you humans are so sensitive. I’m actually glad you two are together, you know. I’m hoping it will stop her from becoming Xaglath again. I take it you know what she did?”
“Yeah, I saw. Were you there?”
“Obviously. I helped her do it.”
“Of course you did.”
“Don’t judge me. I was only doing what I was told. I suppose you have a problem with it, do you?”
“I don’t know yet. Maybe.”
“You’re afraid of her losing her newfound humanity, aren’t you?”
“Something like that.”
“Not long ago I wouldn’t have cared. But now—”
“Now, you do?”
“I’m almost ashamed to admit I’m beginning to like it here. I don’t want to end up back in Hell again. And if Xaglath takes over, we’ll inevitably both end up in Shitsville once more.”
“I guess we’ll have to make sure Hannah stays as Hannah then.”
“How do we do that?” he said. “I mean, you’re fucking her, so what should I do? Be the voice of reason? Whisper positive affirmations in her ear? Like, ‘You are no longer a bad demon, you are a kind and gentle soul at peace with yourself and the universe.’ Isn’t that the kind of bullshit you humans like to come out with to each other? I tell you, there wasn’t much of that talk in Hell. It was more like, ‘Dear God make it stop, and ‘What did I do to deserve this?’” He snorted with some derision. “I’ll tell you asshole; you pissed off God, that’s what. I mean, duh!”
“Yeah,” I said, lighting a cigarette. “We’re a pathetic bunch at times.”
“All the fucking time, you mean. Though you are not without your good points on rare occasions. Like now, with you taking me to the beach. It’s a genuinely kind and considerate gesture.”
“I guess that’s something you aren’t used to.”
“No, not really. In Hell, kind and considerate means not stepping on some damned soul’s head as you walk by, or just calling them a bastard instead of a shit-eating cunt.”
I stifled a laugh as I shook my head. “You know, Haedemus, for a creature that hates humans so much, you’re very like one yourself.”
“Well, you know, Ethan…hang around scum for long enough, and you become scum.”
“You think we’re all scum?”
“Don’t you?”
“Maybe, as a species. As individual souls…”
“Ahhhh,” he cooed. “You think some humans are special little snowflakes, don’t you? Oh, Ethan, you’re so adorable at times.”
“Fuck off.”
Haedemus chuckled to himself as he trotted out of Little Tokyo, leaving the neon pagodas behind. “I’ll say this. My stay here thus far would’ve been far less tolerable without you, Ethan. You keep me entertained.”
“Gee, thanks, Haedemus,” I said. “It’s like my whole life has been leading up to this moment; the moment you tell me I’m just here to keep you entertained.”
“Screw you. I was trying to be nice.”
“Just speed it up. I haven’t got all day.”
Haedemus broke into a gallop, and before long, the city and its people were no more than a blur as we sped by, with me doing my best to hold on as Haedemus swerved this way and that to avoid vehicles and pedestrians who inevitably got in our way sometimes.
A while later, as we were heading into Bayside, Haedemus slowed to a trot as we made our way through the middle of a long line of traffic heading into the nearby Industrial Zone. The rain was coming down heavy again, and I was soaked to the skin. “What the fuck are we playing at going to the beach on a day like this?” I said.
“It was your idea,” Haedemus said. “Don’t even think about backing out now. I don’t care if it’s raining or not. I still want to breathe in the ocean air.”
I was about to argue that we should turn back when something to the left caught my eye. A man had jumped up onto the roof of one of the cars in the line of traffic. It was raining so hard now that I could barely make the man out, dressed as he was in dark clothing.
As Haedemus started to pick up speed again, the man raced across the roofs of the parked cars with a speed and dexterity that almost belied belief, causing my Infernal Itch to go haywire, the tattoo ink racing excitedly across my skin, the back of my neck burning with warning.
But before I could pull on Haedemus’ mane to slow him down, the racing figure launched himself off one of the cars and flew through the air toward me, timing his attack with perfect precision, his body impacting mine just as Haedemus rode by.
My attacker grabbed onto me in mid-air, taking me down as Haedemus carried on down the street. As my attacker and I both fell, I bounced off a parked car and landed on the wet asphalt, my skull cracking off the ground as I fell into a momentary daze.
My attacker was on his feet straight away, standing ove
r me as the rain continued to pound down. Doing my best to focus, I could make out a young guy, no more than twenty, dressed in a dark suit with blond hair and blue eyes that were cold and calculating. As I went to reach for my pistol, my assailant stamped on my arm, pinning it to the ground, causing me to shout in frustration. “Who the fuck are you? What do you want?”
Still with his foot on my arm, the dark-suited man crouched down, rain dripping off him as he stared down at me, a look of mild curiosity on his face rather than the aggression or arrogance that I expected. In my dazed state, I thought there was something weird about the guy, as he seemed to be completely lacking in emotion, his movements almost robotic in their precision. As he crouched down, he put his other knee on my solar plexus, pressing the wind out of me, making sure I couldn’t get up. “Drop your investigation, or there will be consequences,” he said, his voice free from inflection, sounding flat and matter of fact.
“What investigation?” I barely said as he put more of his weight on my solar plexus, forcing most of the air out of my lungs.
“The one involving the pregnant girl.”
Now I realized that this male model wannabe must be part of the cult that Clare was talking about. Maybe he was even one of the grown-up offspring of the demon the cult worshipped. Given what Clare had said about them, he seemed to fit the bill. “Go…fuck yourself.”
As soon as I said it, I balled my fist and punched the guy in the balls as hard as I could, but incredibly, he never flinched. He just smiled instead.
Then another voice sounded from behind him. “Hey fuckpot,” Haedemus said, now standing behind the hellot, or whatever the hell he was. “Get off my friend right now before I stick my horn right up your fucking asshole, and believe me, that’s not something you want.”
My assailant never even looked at Haedemus. Instead, he kept his gaze on me. “Drop the case,” he said, and then slammed his knee down onto my ribs, causing me to cry out as at least one of them cracked. “Or suffer the consequences.”
He leaped off me then onto the hood of the car I was squashed up against. When I got up to look for him, he had gone, the rain and the gathering crowd making it difficult to see anything. Taking out my badge, I flashed it at the rubberneckers and told them to move it along, which they soon did once they realized there was nothing to see.
“I suppose this means we’re not going to the beach now?” Haedemus said.
“No,” I said, holding my ribs and wincing. “We’re not.”
Haedemus raised his head to the darkened sky as if addressing God himself. “I suppose you think this is funny, do you? Well, fuck you. Ethan and I will have our beach trip, you’ll see.”
“You can just go on your own, you know,” I said. “You don’t need me to hold your horn for you.”
“It wouldn’t be the same,” Haedemus said, turning his head away slightly as if to hide his upset. “I wanted us to share a nice moment to feel a little connection for once.”
I patted his side, my hand almost slipping into a gaping hole in his flesh. “The stars will align at some point, buddy, don’t worry.”
“Thank you, Ethan,” he said. “Your sarcasm is really appreciated. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”
“Don’t mention it, buddy.”
14
After a painful journey back to Little Tokyo, I told Haedemus to hang around and keep an eye on Hannah, just in case her demon self decided to go walkies again. And while I was at it, I called Hannah herself and told her about the guy that attacked me and to stay alert just in case the cult sent someone after her as well.
Sitting now in the Dodge, I took a double dose of Mud to dampen the pain in my ribs, which I didn’t think were broken thankfully, but at least one was fractured, so I wouldn’t be sneezing properly for a while.
Taking out my phone, I called Salem Hospital to find out how Clare was doing, thinking the cult might send someone after her too. But it was too late, for they already had by the sound of it. The hospital front desk told me that Clare was gone, along with her newly born child. No one saw her leave or knew where she might be. She had vanished, and so had her baby.
“Fuck,” I said after hanging up the phone, sinking back in my seat as the Mud hit me hard, turning the rain running down the windshield into something like a shimmering portal, that if I fell into it, would take me far away from here, perhaps to oblivion where nothing could ever bother me again. A bullet to the head would do the same thing, but there was a reason I hadn’t gone down that road.
Reaching into my trench pocket, I took out Callie’s locket and stared at it in my hand, moving the delicate silver chain around with one finger. “Callie, sweetheart…”
As soon as I said her name, I heard her voice in my head; listened to her joy-filled laughter, followed by an image of her smiling face, her bright blue eyes filled with so much love and affection…
Clenching my fist over the locket, I wiped away a single tear that was running down my cheek. Putting the necklace back in my pocket, I started the car and sped off toward the precinct, my jaw set as I stared straight ahead at nothing.
Thanks to the Mud and the isolation of the precinct subbasement, I felt like the only person alive as I sat at my desk going through police reports from 2001 as I tried to find any that referenced an infant found at the scene.
As I read through the reports, my vision occasionally blurring out as I stared at the computer screen, a twinge of pain in my side would remind me of the assault I’d suffered from my assailant earlier, who was apparently a member of the cult Hannah and I were investigating. And going by the guy’s physical abilities and strange emotionless detachment, I also figured he was one of the demon/human hybrids that Clare had talked about—a super hellot if you will. I hoped the bastard was there when we got around to raiding the cult headquarters at the old boarding school.
It was tempting to get a team together now and hit it after dark, but I didn’t want to make a move until Hannah was ready to come back to work. If she walked into the precinct looking like she’d gone a few rounds with knife-wielding maniac, awkward questions would be asked. And Routman, being who he is, would probably try to connect Hannah to the murder of the Yakuza because of it. So the raid on the boarding school would have to wait.
In the meantime, I carried on my search for Charlotte Hood’s birth parents, hoping I would find some reference to them in the reports I was going through.
After a while, I came across a report that seemed to be what I was looking for. Detectives were sent to an address in the Eden gated community to investigate reports of possible kidnapping and torture. The report didn’t mention where the initial information came from, but when detectives got to the house, they came across the bodies of multiple women, as well as several dead infants. According to the report, the basement had been turned into a makeshift laboratory, though to what end, the report didn’t say. Detectives also found a recently born baby in the house, apparently being looked after by the main suspect, whose name I didn’t know because it was redacted in the report, along with other information it seemed, including what happened to the baby after it was taken away, though I already knew what happened to it thanks to Artemis.
What wasn’t redacted, however, were the names of the two detectives who conducted the investigation. Detective Brian Philips was one.
And Detective Jim Routman, the other.
“Son of a bitch.”
I found Routman in the bullpen sitting at his desk drinking coffee from a stained FPD mug as he spoke to one of the other Homicide detectives about the murdered Yakuza soldier. “Go through the video footage,” Routman said to the much younger detective, a new guy I didn’t know, obviously having just transferred over from somewhere. “There has to be something on there.”
The younger detective nodded, throwing me a mild look of disdain before walking away as if Routman had told him all about me. “You have video footage?” I said as I perched on the edge of Routman’s desk.
“No, I came to speak to you about something.”
“If it’s about the Yakuza case, I’m not at liberty to talk about it.”
“Don’t be an asshole, Jim. What footage did you get your hands on?”
“Why are you so interested?” he asked, staring at me.
I shrugged like it didn’t matter. “I’m not, I was just wondering, that’s all. I’m still a cop, you know.”
“You could’ve fooled me.”
Letting his comment slide, I asked him about the case from 2001. “You and Philips went to a house in the Eden gated community and found multiple bodies, and a newborn baby. Do you remember that?”
Routman looked surprised for a second, and then uncomfortable as he slid forward in his seat and started to read over some report on his desk. “Not really. That was a long time ago.” He tapped his temple with his finger. “The old memory isn’t what it used to be. You know how it is.”
“Not really,” I said. “Come on, Jim. This is important. I need to know about the suspect whose name is redacted on the official report.”
Routman continued to stare at the report in front of him like he was reading it, even though I knew he wasn’t. “I’m kinda busy here, Ethan. I got a murder to solve, so I don’t have time to discuss old cases with you.”
“Why was the name redacted, Jim?” I said, continuing to press him. “Who killed those women and infants? What was going on in that house?”
Sighing, Routman shook his head and put the report down on his desk. “What does this have to do with anything?”
“It relates to another case I’m working on.”
“How?”
“I’m trying to find a missing girl, and I think she’s the same girl you and Philips found at that house.”
