by Declan Finn
She had slept through the entire shootout.
She’s used to the sound of gunfire already? That’s interesting.
I went down stairs, Grace asleep in my arms. I figured having the big burly man with the badge, gun, magic ring and magic helmet cuddling the perfect little bundle of joy would probably make Minniva feel safer.
The moment he saw me on the stairs, Alex said from the table, “Okay, Tommy. Now that you’ve gathered us all together, what exactly do you want to do?”
I sat down at the opposite end of the round table from Minniva. “My name is Detective Thomas Nolan. For lack of a better term, I am a…”
I didn’t want to use the usual slang.
“Thaumaturge,” Pearson filled in. “like a candidate for heaven who isn’t quite there yet but asks god for help… and gets answered prayers. Some people call that a saint.”
“But I’m not dead yet,” I added.
I went back to the beginning, and everyone who had been at my side through every supernatural event was there to chime in and fill in the blanks. I started with Anthony Young and my first charism—bi-location into a clothes-line. I discussed how I could smell the evil coming off of a possessed criminal named Hayes. Alex could testify to our investigation of Christopher Curran, who had been the next person possessed by the same demons who had possessed Hayes.
Then we talked about the prison riot of Rikers Island.
Minniva’s eyes opened as she stared at me. “Rikers Island. That’s why they hate you?”
I shrugged. “Wait. We’ve barely started.”
We went into the “Women’s Health Corps,” which was a death cult that took all of the body parts from their day job to offer up as human sacrifice to Moloch. But the cult was partially a payment system for a warlock in the mayor’s office. We discussed how there had been a Dark Web bounty put out on my head by the warlock. That bounty had summoned Hell Hounds and scryers and vampires to come and get me. After the warlock had been put down, I had been transferred to “intelligence abroad” for the NYPD, connected to the Vatican.
We went into the complete story of the Soul Stone—a story that Alex Packard and Sinead Holland hadn’t heard yet. It was a story about how two British Atheists named Fowler and Toynbee had conspired to use an ancient artifact to level London, Indiana Jones style. Fowler and Toynbee had allied themselves with a collection of Jihadis who had other plans in motion. The Jihadis had been led by an Imam Kozbar, who also had a sex slave network operating on the European continent. That led to a succubus named Jayden who tried to raise an army of demons in the name of Moloch. However, we had an army of golems made by the Rabbi of Prague and his son’s construction company, as well as the Soul Ring, a chip off the old Soul Stone. So that sorted out the mess. Lena had been held prisoner by the slavery ring, which is where I found her.
Grace woke up part of the way through Germany.
Alex pointed at Pearson. “This was supposed to be a vacation until this guy showed up.”
Pearson shrugged. “Sorry.”
Alex sighed and leaned back in his seat. “Whatever. Hell, as long as we don’t have to deal with the bokor again.”
I winced. I didn’t say anything about Bokor Baracus. Telling Alex that the dark Voodoo necromancer was still alive, despite everything that Alex had done to him, was not a conversation I wanted to have.
“And while he was gone,” Alex continued. “I had a little fun with a coven.” He smiled at Sinead. “Didn’t we?”
Sinead rolled her eyes. “Let’s pretend that never happened, okay?”
Minniva looked around the table. “No wonder you weren’t impressed by everything that happened today.”
I smiled at Grace and touched my nose to hers. “No, we aren’t. Who’s afraid of the big bad demons? Not us. Not us.”
Alex sighed and shook his head. “Dang. Just when I think that it couldn’t get any stranger around here, you guys think of something.”
Pearson frowned. “Tell us a bit about Matchett?”
Minniva shrugged. “No idea. I know he’s European. He’s Jewish, if that helps.”
Mariel cocked her head. “Odd last name.”
Minniva blinked, then thought it over. “I think he changed it? Growing up? He’s originally German.”
Mariel rose next to me and took Grace. “Okay, I think we’ve done enough storytelling now. Minniva, after I put Grace to bed, Sinead and I can find and make up a place for you tonight. Father Pearson?”
He smiled. “I don’t even know if we’re done for the night.”
“What else are you going to do?” Mariel asked. “Visit the VP for HR?”
Sinead looked up from her smartphone. She held it up so we could clearly see the results from the most useful investigative search tools in the world—DuckDuckGo. “There is no such person as a VP HR Herbert West in the entire state. If he owns property under that name, it’s unlisted.”
Alex snapped his fingers. “That’s right. The Reanimator movies.”
Everyone looked at him like he had broken out into word salad. “Herbert West? Reanimator? I think they were based on books?”
Mariel ignored Alex and looked at me. “You know I was joking, right? Do you really want to confront something else after dark?”
I looked at Pearson and Alex and shrugged. “Does anyone think that we can get the real address for VP West by talking to someone at Matchett Industrial when they open up in the morning?”
Alex scoffed. “If they did, I’d assume it was a trap.”
Pearson frowned, then nodded. “I’d agree with Detective Packard. The only way to get any reliable data from the company might be to go in through the back door. Is there any way to break in?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. I think I can think of at least two ways to get in.” I looked at Jeremy. He had nodded off during the storytelling somewhere in the middle of Germany. His arm cradled his head. “He can probably think of at least one, even in his sleep.”
Without lifting his head or opening his eyes, Jeremy muttered, “Levitate up to the office and go in through the window. Bilocate into the office. Or use the power armor to scale the side of the building.” He settled into his arms and went back to sleep.
I shrugged and looked at Pearson. “Told you.”
Alex sighed and shook his head. “Kids and their superhero movies. In my day, we had to actually read the comics. And they were comics, not ‘graphic novels.’”
I stood in the corner of CEO George Matchett’s office, looking around the creepy room. It was a large corner office that could have doubled as a conference room with the right furniture. The lights were motion-sensitive, turning on when I moved. But the light didn’t illuminate the edges of the room. The corners were so dark that it was like the lights weren’t even on. The office was so high there was no lighting from the street—no street lights, no illumination from other buildings or signs. The moonlight from outside was deeply muted. I looked out. The moon was visible, but it didn’t really add to the lighting.
To my complete lack of surprise, the room smelled like death, Hell, sin, and plain evil. My solution was the cotton ball–holy water filters up my nose once more.
The main desk was up against the massive windows. It was a large right-angle desk. The windows behind the desk made for the last two sides of a box. In the center of the room sat enough furniture for a living room. It had two black leather couches around a large coffee table. Two plush armchairs closed the box on either side.
One of the walls in the office was nothing but books. The bookcases went from floor to extremely high ceiling and wall-to-wall. It caught my attention. Instead of going to the main desk and the main computer, I went over to the bookshelves.
The first thing I noticed was that there were a lot of old books. Many of them were in German. One of the books was eerily more familiar than the rest. It was bigger than the average coffee table book and needed to be laid down on the side. The binding was black and in very wrinkled l
eather. The book had no title, and the cover looked like the wrinkles formed eyes and a wide mouth.
I described the book to Father Pearson as he sat on the couch back at the house. He cringed. “Necronomicon. Grimoire. It’s bound in human leather. Don’t touch it. Don’t look at it too long. Don’t even breathe too close to it.”
I backpedaled and sidestepped, moving away from the evil book. I started looking at the others, and read them to Pearson. He sat back in his seat and closed his eyes. He searched his memory as I read the titles. Half of the time, I struggled with the German.
With every title, Pearson winced. His face became darker and darker. He took Alex’s glass of scotch and took a healthy sip. “Grimoire. Book of Shadows. Oh gawd, Sixth and Seventh Books of Moses! Pseudo-Hebraic mystical symbols, spirit conjurations, and founded Rastafarians. Probably because you have to be high to believe it.”
I cringed and read another book. “The … The Clavicule of Solomon. Did they mean the collar bone?”
Pearson groaned. “Probably the first grimoire on record.”
“Petit Albert.”
“Enlightenment magic textbook,” Pearson explained. “Don’t even ask about the Hand of Glory. Keep going.”
I stumbled over an entire shelf of German, then tripped over trying to pronounce them. Pearson sighed and shook his head. “Just stop. I think you’ve stumbled upon the first editions of the Nazi occult section of the library.”
“How can you tell they’re first editions?” I asked him.
Pearson rolled his eyes as he slammed his head against the back of the couch. “Because every attempt to make a second edition drove the copier insane or destroyed the copy machine.”
“Ah, good reason.”
A quick skittering sounded behind me. I whirled around, reaching for my handgun, but nothing was there. Nothing except for the shadows.
Because those are just so comforting.
I stared into the darkness, waiting for something to stare back. When I finally detected some movement, I couldn’t tell if the shadows were actually moving or if I had just stared at it too long.
Time to make this a rush job. Our Father…
I continued praying as I darted over to the computer. I booted it up, and the lights flickered. The computer asked me for a thumbprint. I looked over at the print reader and smiled. I sprinkled a little holy salt on the print reader, then gently blew it off. The oils from previous fingerprints had not been wiped away. I pressed down with a sheet of white paper, and the scanner acknowledged the fingerprint. I was in.
The lights in the office flickered again. The room dimmed. I typed faster. The first thing I did was call up the address for Herbert West, VP HR. The file didn’t even give us his photo. But it had his home address and his other contact information, and that was enough.
I shut down the folders on screen and was close to shutting down the computer and getting out of there.
The sound of big, booming footsteps suddenly filled the hallway. I reached for my gun and took a step back, ready to draw down and open fire.
My foot came down, and something crunched underneath.
I looked down. I had stepped on a cockroach. But there were five more nearly on my heel.
I nearly bolted forward into the computer.
On the main screen was an open folder that had already been open before I turned on the computer. It was named “Recent Documents.”
“Cold Spring Harbor?” I read aloud.
Back at the ranch, safe in the dining room, Pearson said, “American Eugenics program, mid-20s, I believe. Not quite Nazi-level bad, but they were all horrific. Why?”
A rat darted through the dimming light in the main room, coming straight for me. Roaches crawled onto my shoe and worked their way up the desk.
“It’s a file on the computer,” I told him as I clicked it open. More rats appeared from the shadows and skittered my way. The footsteps in the hallway boomed closer.
I wished I had my armor on as I continued praying. The Cold Spring Harbor file was a list of donations. Some were projects to Watson, of DNA fame, as he worked on his own, updated eugenics projects. There were a score of them.
A roach crawled onto my hand as I scrolled further. I flicked my wrist and pounded my fist down onto the bug. Six more jumped for my hand, and I pulled it away.
Rats crawled onto the front of the desk. One leaped for me. I batted it away with my free hand. Bugs crawled up my pants leg. I slammed it up against the desk to crush them, but I kept reading through the list.
The booms came closer, rocking the door.
Nearer the bottom of the list, my eyes locked on in disgust and repulsion. “Donations–the Women’s Health Corps Nationwide and Mayor Ricardo Hoynes.”
Back home, Alex groaned. “Seriously? Why is it always a Demoncrat donor?”
A rat jumped for me. I punched it out of the air and sent it into another rodent. They fell into a fight among themselves. That didn’t matter, a dozen more closing in. The bugs bit me. I swept down the inside of my leg, crushing them all.
The fighting rats rolled over the keyboard. The file skipped to a most recent donation.
“More recently. There is also a substantial endowment to a Professor Noah Whateley of Dunwich University.”
Pearson grunted. “He makes Peter Singer look like Mother Theresa.”
Alex said, “Who?”
I ignored them both. “All of these donations? Prompted by the VP of HR. West.”
Another rat jumped for me. I backed away from the computer, stepping on more roaches. The rat landed on my shirt. I grabbed it by the neck and hurled it across the room.
Time to leave.
The door burst open. Furniture between the door and the desk went flying. Something unseen slammed into me, slashing at my chest, ripping into my flesh and rending bone. I slammed up against the windows as the rats and the bugs had unfettered access to me as the blood flowed.
I screamed as I was eaten alive.
13 The Dreams in the Summer House
It was not the first time that I had technically cheated death by bilocation. I say technically because every time I had been more than one place at a time, the double died. I ended up with inexplicable scars that would eventually confuse the funeral home director that processed my body. The scars on my hands, feet, and sides only looked like stigmata. But like the holes in my chest, they had been remnants of previous deaths of my doubles. And while I had felt every moment of my previous deaths, and retain almost perfect recall of the agony, I could usually tune out the pain of one death in my other-self.
This time, no such luck.
And unfortunately, as with the Soul Ring, the golem armor had not come with me when I bilocated.
I screamed in pain as I fell off the couch in Sinead’s living room. Alex and Pearson came to my side as I writhed on the floor. I flailed and kicked out uncontrollably. It was like a seizure combined with being on the rack. Pearson and Alex grabbed my arms and pinned me down. I kicked out, breaking the leg on the coffee table.
My roars of pain shook the house so much, Sinead, Mariel, Minniva, and the kids all came down. The two women grabbed my left leg, Lena reached out with her mind and pinned down the other. Jeremy hopped onto my right leg like he was helping.
After ten minutes of screaming agony, I mercifully passed out.
As I went limp, everyone looked at Alex and Pearson. Mariel’s mouth was a tight line of tension. “We were gone five minutes. What the—” She glanced to Jeremy and Lena, and said, “heck happened?”
Jeremy coughed politely. “I think you mean ‘Hell,’ Mom. It’s only accurate.”
Mariel opened her mouth to scold him. She paused, thought better of it, then glared at my two partners.
Pearson held his hands up as if to say don’t shoot. “He thought he would give bilocation a spin. He figured that if that didn’t work from here, then we’d have to plan out a raid on Matchett Industries with levitation or the armor. Levitation
would need tools, and smashing through with the armor would need timing. Tommy thought that if he could sit on the couch and pray, if God wanted, then He would allow Tommy to bilocate straight into George Matchett’s office.”
Mariel pointed to my motionless form as Sinead took my pulse. “Then what happened?”
Alex shrugged. “No idea. He said something about roaches and rats, then … this.”
Sinead frowned at the sight of blood coming out my nose. “How about he not do this again,” she stated.
Mariel leaned over and knocked on my chest. “What about the armor? Why didn’t he use it?”
Pearson shrugged. “Neither the armor nor his ring bilocate with him. It seems that it’s one of the few things that ability cannot duplicate.”
Mariel’s eyes narrowed. “A simple breaking and entering, and it still turns into a nightmare.”
I groaned as I awoke and tried to move. The most motion I could make was to lift my arm a few inches, and my index finger after that. Mariel was at my side, grabbing my hand. “Tommy, are you okay?”
I cracked one eye open. “I plead…” I took a deep breath. “The fifth.”
Mariel laughed reflexively. “What happened?”
I tried to shift so I could get more comfortable, but I felt like I had gone through all five beaches of Normandy on D-Day. Every part of my body felt like I had been beaten with a metal bat. “Rats. Bugs. Eaten alive. It sucked.” I paused to focus on breathing. It hurt. “And something else. I didn’t see it, but I felt it. All over.”
I tried to squeeze Mariel’s hand. It was a feeble effort, but she felt it.
“Back up a second,” I said.
She placed my hand on my chest. I thought at my golem armor. The sheets of clay slid out from the chest piece, down my arms and legs. I skipped the helmet. The animating power of God flowed through the armor and into me. It absorbed a lot of my pain. Strangely enough, that made it ache more. But I breathed better. After a moment, I used it to get into a sitting position.
I groaned. “Ugh. That sucked.”
