by S T Branton
“You have an awesome operation,” I said. “I’m impressed.”
He looked at me. “Things didn’t take off until the gods came back. First, it was that jackass with the hammer bigger than his head. Up until then, we got by however we could and lived off our wits and the good graces of the outdoors. We could turn and hunt or turn and stay warm if we needed to, so we figured we didn’t need to be tied to a base. We planned to head east to see if we could join a bigger piece of civilization.”
“Why didn’t you?” I asked.
“We heard New York fell, and it wasn’t long before that god came sniffing around to claim his piece of the pie. He looked like an extra in one of those hero movies and called himself Hyrrik. He and his soldiers swarmed the land like a plague, and they brought fire wherever they went. You saw the evidence.”
“We did,” I said and thought of the scorched forest on the way in. “It looked like someone had burned towns for fun.”
“That’s about the long and short of it,” Smitty agreed. “They rounded up all the residents first, though. Anyone who resisted was either restrained or cut down. Everything that couldn’t be stolen was burned.” He adjusted the stem of the pipe between his teeth. “The big boss is gone now, and we’ve done all we can to resist and to collect former prisoners. But it’s hard to make real progress when we don’t have the numbers to press the advantages we get.”
“Simple,” I said and patted the Gladius Solis. “Step one, we find this fucker. He can’t hide forever. Step two, I get in as close as I can. Step three, I end him.”
To me, the blueprint for our attack was clear. But to my chagrin, old Smitty shook his head. “If it were that simple,” he said, “we would’ve done it already. When I say the boss is gone, I mean he’s dead because the first thing I did was lead a team in with the express intention to kill him. The fight was grueling. We lost many great people. But in the end, we got the bastard.” Smitty chuckled wryly. “The rest of them didn’t like that too much.”
“I salute your courage and your success,” Brax spoke up abruptly. He looked directly at Smitty. “Hyrrik was no weak fool. I know because he was the one who enslaved me the first time. He gave me a taste for violence and blood. And when I left, I took his hammer with me.” A smirk tilted the corner of the demon’s lips. “My only regret is that the beast is already dead—I would’ve enjoyed that sweet retribution myself.”
Nobody really knew how to respond to that. I could feel Marcus radiating incorporeal disapproval. Deacon broke the silence by asking Smitty, “Then what?”
Smitty puffed on his pipe. “Well, another god dropped by. A young one, nice looking, but he had a whole slew of monsters like I’d never seen that followed him around. It looked like the forest had come to life almost. But there was something wrong about it all.” The blacksmith leaned back in his chair. “We thought maybe he might be peaceful, or at least nonconfrontational, but no such luck. The rest of the fire guys defaulted to this kid’s command, and he simply picked up where the first left off. And let me tell you, they were hopping mad about us having the gall to challenge one of their own. The very first thing they did was purge a huge number of our forces as retribution. Hundreds, maybe thousands. That was when we ran into the forest and finally set up here.”
I had to keep my jaw from falling open at the end of his story. The gods I had known had been violent and greedy to an extreme, but I had never encountered this kind of wholesale destruction up close. An immediate wave of guilt surged through me. If I’d known that thousands of people struggled to survive on the west coast, I might have come sooner. “Damn it to fucking hell,” I muttered.
“That young guy and his monsters are the ones who make the trees like this,” Smitty continued. “Don’t quote me, but I think every time they kill someone, one of those trees pops up real quick like. They grow like the dickens, too. My guys think they’re haunted. Bad juju, as they say.” He shrugged one shoulder. “I’ll be honest. It caught me by surprise. If you saw this god, you’d know what I mean. He doesn’t look the type.”
“I have seen this behavior from the gods countless times,” Brax said, his voice sour. “The acts of cruelty aren’t without purpose. Most gods will rule through fear if given the choice. They find it to be the most effective tactic—they make themselves into great symbols of terror.”
Abraxzael is correct about this, but I am not sure I believe that Oxylem would have gone this way. His character never harbored such deep darkness.
“It makes sense,” Smitty acknowledged. “But those trees are more than symbolic. They harvest them. You would’ve been too if you’d gone where they wanted you to go.”
The image of the lumber chain-gang flashed through my mind. “That clearing,” I said. “Oxylem is chopping down his own trees.”
“Bingo.” Smitty pointed a finger at me. “They razed the old ones first, mind you. I think there’s something about these trees that he needs or that somebody needs. The men who get captured work until they drop dead. Then a tree sprouts where they fall and a new body comes to do the chopping.”
“What’s the wood for?” Deacon wondered. He had an expression of morbid curiosity on his face like he already understood the answer would be something he didn’t actually want to know.
“Hell if I know,” Smitty replied. “We can’t risk going back in to find out because I’m not sure we’d survive another round of retribution killings. We have to preserve what we’ve got. But the rumor mill’s churned for a while about how this tree god and the fire guy are small potatoes compared to whoever they’re working for.”
“I wonder who that is,” I mused.
“No clue about that either,” the old man said. “But I betcha I know someone who does.” A keen spark lit in his eyes as he pushed himself from the chair. The pipe, still full of the dregs of his smoke, disappeared into the pocket. “Come here. I wanna show you something.”
The four of us walked toward the back of the church into a cold, lonely room tucked away behind the altar at the head of the sanctuary. Its only feature was a heavy boulder in the middle of the floor. A broad-shouldered, beefy male had been chained to the huge rock. His fiery hair fell in ragged clumps over his face. When he saw me, he snarled.
Chapter Twenty-Two
I smiled sweetly at the Viking leader. “You can’t get enough of me, can you?” I asked.
The man growled like a rabid dog, and he almost foamed at the mouth, too. He looked out of his mind with rage and humiliation.
“I’ll handle this.” Brax stepped beside me and cracked each knuckle with quiet deliberation. “You two might want to step outside for a while.”
Deacon and I looked at each other. “Right,” the agent said. “Consider us gone.”
We left as the demon advanced on his helpless prey. The door had barely closed behind us before we heard the first screams.
Smitty coughed. “If you young people will excuse me, I have business to attend to.” He winked. “A revolutionary’s work is never done.”
“See you later, Smitty,” I said. “Thanks again.”
He smiled at me. “After what you did for us, this is the least I could do for you.” He ambled off to another part of the church, his blade arm swinging casually by his side.
I sat down against the wall and leaned my head back on the cold stone. Now that things had calmed down for more than five minutes and we were safe, exhaustion settled deep into my bones. I closed my eyes. Deacon sat beside me as another high-pitched screech emanated from the other side of the door. It was accompanied by an unfamiliar sound that I eventually identified as Brax’s laughter. “At least one of them is having a good time,” I remarked.
Deacon chuckled. “This is not exactly the venue I had in mind for our first date,” he said.
I gave him a look. “We’re on a date? And did you just say ‘venue?’”
He shrugged. “They teach you some five-dollar words at the academy.” He scooted a little closer and put his a
rm around me. “It’s not exactly a date, but considering the days we’ve had, I feel like it’s about as close as we’ll get for now.” More laughter leaked through the wall, accompanied by a sizzling sound. “The experience might be enhanced by some noise-canceling headphones, though.”
“Note to self,” I said. “Next supply run, raid an electronics store.”
Deacon added, “And find a plug that works or some good batteries. It’d be nice to have some other electronics again.”
“What would we use them for? My cell phone’s been dead forever, anyway, and it’s not like there’s much data service left. We might be able to find pockets if we’re lucky, but unless we went to California where Namiko is, I wouldn’t count on it. There are so many nerds out there that they have to have something rigged up.”
He squeezed my shoulder. “I like how you give them enormous amounts of credit and call them nerds in the same sentence.”
“Nerd isn’t a bad word.” I rest my head back against the wall. “And that’s what they are. I’m nothing if not honest.”
“Yeah.” Deacon stretched his long legs. “I always admired that about you, even when we weren’t necessarily on the same side. You might have made me as mad as hell, but there was never any bullshit.” He thought about it. “I mean, not really. You did tie me to a bed that one time. That wasn’t too far from here, actually.”
I glanced at him. “You talk about it so much, I almost think you enjoyed it.”
“Well, maybe, if things had ended differently,” he answered. “Did I ever tell you that the maid who found me called the entire housekeeping crew? She said it was because she didn’t know what to do, but I think it was so they could all laugh together. I had to bribe them not to call the police.”
I snorted. “Did you tell them you were the police?”
“Hell, no. I would never have heard the end of it. As it is, I barely escaped with my life.”
I shrugged. “I think you’re a little dramatic, but I’m sorry, nonetheless. I merely tried to help you build character. And keep you out of my way.”
“Look how that worked out for you,” Deacon replied.
I patted his leg. “Don’t be so hard on yourself. You’re getting better. At least now, you know who’s in charge.”
We both grinned at that, and a warm, companionable silence filled the space between us. Every breath made his chest rise and fall behind my shoulder, and I felt my eyelids grow heavier. I thought he had dozed off too, but his voice roused me out of a pleasant half-sleep. The soundtrack of Brax’s little interrogation session formed a morbid lullaby.
“Hey, Vic.”
I opened my eyes. Deacon looked at me, our faces inches apart. “What’s up?” I asked. “Don’t tell me you want to bust in there and stop him. Something tells me the demon from Hell wouldn’t appreciate that, and I won’t act as anyone’s human shield.”
“No, no.” Deacon smirked. “I wanted to say, about that kiss earlier—”
He was cut off by another shriek and an accompanying bout of gleeful belly laughs from Brax. I placed my hand on his chest and slowly but firmly pushed him away. “Sorry, Romeo. American Psycho in there is kind of killing the mood.”
The FBI agent shook his head. “Damn girl,” he said. “Remind me never to take you out to a horror movie.”
I frowned. “Hey, man. If I have to pay ten bucks to see a movie, you better believe I’ll watch that shit.”
“Let’s say I pay,” Deacon countered. “Hypothetically.”
That made me smile. “Then we can talk.”
Neither of us wanted to interrupt Brax’s session with the Viking leader. The demon took his time, and Deacon and I took comfort in not having to do anything except listen to the information being extracted.
“This is kind of nice,” Deacon remarked. “Except for all the screaming.”
I ran my fingers through my hair. “I only hope the guy doesn’t die before we can talk to him. Brax is okay, but I can see him getting carried away quickly. I think there’s some bad blood there. Did you see how quickly he charged into the fire?”
“Let’s be real,” he said. “With Brax, there’s probably bad blood everywhere.”
I glanced down at my medallion. “No kidding.”
A few more minutes passed until the howling finally died down. Seconds later, Brax yanked the door open. He stepped into the hall, his coat smoking and his face and arms covered in burns.
“Holy hell,” Deacon said.
I raised an eyebrow. “How’s it going?”
The demon grinned more widely than I’d ever seen. His wounds didn’t seem to have any effect on him at all. He beamed at us. “Jerry is ready to talk now,” he said.
Chapter Twenty-Three
I almost choked on air. “Who?”
Deacon stood first and pulled me to my feet. We stared at the demon.
“Jerry?” I asked.
Brax stepped aside and gestured to the open door. The Viking leader slumped against the rock in his chains, surrounded by little pools of fire. Whatever damage had been done to Brax, Jerry had clearly received the brunt of the punishment as evidenced by the cuts and bruises all over his body. He had his head down, and his chin almost scraped his chest. His beard had been burned down to patchy, charred stubble.
“Doesn’t he look like a Jerry?” Brax asked.
He looked like he’d been hit by a truck, although I couldn’t feel too much sympathy for the man who would have killed us all. He’d earned this and more.
Even though Jerry the Viking was in a bad way, I stepped cautiously around him in case he still had some tricks up his sleeve. He didn’t look at me until I got close and then he squinted through the eye that wasn’t swollen shut. A trail of blood trickled from his lower lip.
“Hi, Jerry,” I said.
He sighed so deeply, I thought his lungs were turning inside out. “You win,” he rasped. “I tapped out. I wish my men were half as brutal as this piece of shit.”
“Thank you,” said Brax, with no small amount of pride. “Now talk, or I’ll get back to work.”
Jerry turned his bloodshot eye to me. “What do you want to know?” he asked. A bit grudgingly, he added, “Anything. No secrets.”
I stood in front of him. “First of all, thank you for your cooperation. And for giving Brax something to do for the last forty minutes. We’re not always fighting, see, and he gets bored.” I moved closer to the disgraced Viking and knelt to stare into his face. “Let’s start at the beginning. Tell me about yourself and how the hell you got caught up in this mess.”
He seemed surprised, but he didn’t deny my request. “Okay.” Jerry coughed harshly and sucked in a breath. “Look, I thought I was a pretty bad dude back before all this started. Me and my boys ran with a rough crowd, and we were proud of the bullshit we got up to. Breaking and entering, vandalism, car theft. A couple of armed robberies, a lot of beatdowns on the streets. Real tough guy shit.” He grimaced. “It was a good life for us. We had a lot of fun. Fuck the police, fuck the rules, fuck bitches. You know.” He fidgeted, and the chains jangled. “I guess I always knew I was really on the bottom of the totem pole. There were guys who had stockpiles of money, weapons, fast cars, all that stuff. They could have snapped their fingers and gotten me killed in half a second if I ever stepped out of line. But I never thought about it that much until Hyrrik showed up.”
“What happened then?” I said.
Jerry glared at me. “He told me I was weak. He said I wouldn’t amount to anything unless I got off my ass and seized power from those who kept it for themselves. At first, I was pissed and thought ‘who the fuck does this scumbag think he is?’ But I realized he was right, and I started to have ambitions. I wanted to be the big dog for once, to have people follow my lead instead of the other way around. Hyrrik gave me the power to make it happen.” He paused. “The only thing was, he had a catch. If I didn’t do everything he said from that moment on, he’d take everything away.” He shrugged.
“So what? He made it sound like he and I wanted to do all the same stuff anyway, so I agreed. It wasn’t so bad. Much like the way it had been, but better.”
“And then?” I asked.
“Then he died. I guess I ought to thank those fleabags for killing him because the weeks after that were the best of my life. We ruled this place exactly the way we wanted to. For a while, it was like the old times went into overdrive. Nobody told us what to do, and if they tried, we torched ʼem. Total freedom.” He actually looked wistful as he spoke. “But it didn’t last. The vamps showed up not too long after Hyrrik bit the dust. Since then, we’ve been under their thumb.”
“The vamps?” Deacon interrupted. “I thought you were working for Oxylem.”
Jerry brayed with laughter at the mention of the tree god’s name. “Please. That guy’s a candy-ass. He was so grateful to be rid of Hyrrik that he didn’t dare stand up to us, but the vamps rounded him up just the same. They made him turn his followers into trees, and then they made him sic them on everything else. He cried the whole time, the puny wimp. There was nothing else he could do.”
Brax looked slightly puzzled. “He’s a god,” he said. “He should have at least put up a fight.”
“He’s a peace-loving hippie, is what he is,” Jerry spat contemptuously. “He didn’t have a chance against the vampires. These guys would’ve torn him to shreds if he so much as thought about saying no.”
Deacon glanced at Brax and me. “I don’t get it. I thought the vamps were all scattered now. There’s no one left for them to follow.”
“Don’t look at me,” the demon muttered gruffly. “I’ve never understood those slimy fucks.”
“You don’t know much, do you?” asked Jerry. “The vamps have always had a leader, and what’s more, they fuckin’ worship him. I mean, they treat this dude like the god to end all gods. I heard them talk about him, and Oxylem’s worked his punk ass overtime to get things ready. Supposedly, he’s gonna come calling any day now. That’s what all this destruction is for.”
