by N. P. Martin
“I’m not coming to work with you,” I told him. “We’ve been over this.”
“I don’t mean work for me, Creed. I mean work with me. There’s plenty of Mr Black types out there who need neutralizing.”
Neutralizing? One way to put it.
“I hope not,” I said. “One Mr Black was enough.”
One insane father was enough.
“Unfortunately Creed, there’s always some power or other out there looking to cause murder and mayhem. In fact—” He paused for a second while he looked from me to Leona and back to me again, and I thought, Shit, here we go. “—right now there’s a group of them out there, a cult actually, who—”
I held up a hand. "I'll stop you right there, Brentwood. No offense, but I've had my fill for one night. I'm knackered, and I just want to go sit in a bar with Leona here and do something normal for a while. Then I might sleep for a day or so. After that, we can talk."
Brentwood wasn't the kind of man who liked being interrupted. Normally when I would do that to him, he would take a step towards me and give me his battlefield death stare to let me know he didn't appreciate my insubordination, as he saw it. This time, though, he didn't do that, and after a moment, he nodded and even cracked a smile. “Alright. Get out of here then.” He looked at Leona. “Both of you.”
As we walked away, Blaez tagging along by my side, Brentwood called to me. “Creed?”
Rolling my eyes, I stopped and turned around. “Yes?”
“That thing I just mentioned. It’s serious.”
Shaking my head, I said, “When is it ever anything else?”
“I expect to hear from you, Creed.”
“You will,” I said, already walking away.
59
Happy Hour
FOR SOMEONE WHO didn't drink anymore, Leona could hold her whiskey. We were sitting in a little Irish pub called The Wonky Shamrock which was only a block away from the Sanctum. Initially, it had been packed with people who thought the best place to go when the world was ending was the pub. Then, when they all realized that the world wasn't going to end, after all, most of them shuffled home as if it was just another strange day in Blackham. A few stragglers remained, along with Leona and I, who sat in one of the secluded booths in the back of the pub, the two of us firing back shots of whiskey like they were going out of style. Even though we had matched each other drink for drink, I was feeling the effects a lot more than she was.
"I'm disappointed in you, Creed," she said, a relaxed grin on her face after she had downed another shot. "I thought that you could at least hold your drink against a woman, especially since you're Irish."
"My dalliance with Mr Black has taken it out of me," I replied, slurring my words slightly, slumped back in the cushioned seat like I had no intention of moving anywhere ever again. "Besides, you're a soldier. Holding your drink is as much a requirement of any soldier as being able to shoot."
She chuckled and shook her head. “Light-weight. That’s all you are, Creed.”
I laughed back, too drunk and too exhausted to argue with her.
The big screen TV on the wall across from us was showing the local news. The top story was obviously the mysterious "storm" that threatened to engulf the whole city at one point, but which then inexplicably went away as if it were never there in the first place. The storm itself, however, was secondary to what came out of it. The giant black tentacle that scores of people had filmed on their phones and posted to social media so the images of that writhing, monstrous thing were on screens all over the world right then. Many people were saying it proved the existence of aliens and that we just averted an alien invasion. Some talked about a new military weapon being tested, a weapon built using advanced biotechnology. A lot of other people believed that Satan had tried to break into this world from Hell.
“You think people will forget about this eventually?” Leona asked, slumped in beside me, her head on my shoulder.
“It was a giant black tentacle poking out of the sky,” I said. “What do you think?”
"I think Sleepwalkers are Sleepwalkers. For the sake of their own sanity, they'll forget, or put it down to something else."
I nodded sagely, my eyes half closed. “I think you’re right. What do you think, Blaez?”
The Garra Wolf lay on the floor, visible only to Leona and I. It opened one eye to look at me for a second before going back to sleep again. Clearly, getting speared by a trident and dying had taken it out of Blaez.
“He’s exhausted,” Leona said.
“He’s not the only one,” I said. “We can’t all have your endless energy.”
“Hey,” Leona said, pressing her head into my neck. “I’m tired, believe me. I just don’t show it the way you do.”
“Military grit?”
“Something like that.”
The curly haired waitress who’d been serving us since we arrived (Jenna was her name) came to our table and lifted our empties. “One more round for the road,” I said to her.
"By the looks of you, Creed," Jenna said. "One more round is all it's going to take before you end up on the ground."
Leona chuckled beside me, and I made some stupid face at Jenna before she smiled and walked off. Then I lapsed into drunken silence as I found myself thinking about my mother and brother and sister who had appeared to me earlier. It was good to know that their souls hadn't ended up in some hellish part of the Underworld, although I was annoyed they didn't tell me where they resided now. If they had, I could have taken steps to contact them again. As it was, they could have been anywhere in the damn universe, which made trying to pinpoint them like trying to find a particular needle in a huge stack of needles.
“You’ve gone quiet,” Leona said.
“Just thinking about my family.”
"You should be grateful you got to see them again. I'd give anything to see my brother again."
I put my arm around her and squeezed her gently. “I know. I am grateful. Course I am. I just wish they could have stuck around a bit longer.”
“Doesn’t work that way, Creed. You know that better than anyone.”
“It’s a cruel world at times.”
Leona said nothing as she pulled away and reached into her pocket to get her ringing phone. “God…” she said when she looked at the screen.
I didn’t need to ask who it was. “Jesus, the man is incorrigible. I don’t know how you put up with him. If it was me—”
Raising a hand in front of my face, Leona cut me off before I could say anymore, which was probably just as well given the stream of drunken nonsense that was about to spew out of my mouth. “Yes?” she said into the phone, unable to conceal her weariness, bless her. Even hardened soldier badasses like Leona got tired sometimes.
While Leona talked on the phone (or rather listened, as it seemed Brentwood was the one doing all the talking), my eyes drifted to the front of the pub when the double doors opened and an unusually tall man wearing dark brown corduroys and a beige shirt with the sleeves rolled up walked in. There was a slightly strange, placid smile on the man’s face as he went and stood at the bar and waited to be served. As I continued staring at the guy, I couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something about him, but I just couldn’t put my finger on what it was (the drink wasn’t helping in that regard). He looked normal enough in a bookish sort of way. With his light beard and short, mousy hair, he reminded me of an English Lit teacher or a book store owner, someone who didn’t look remotely threatening, and yet, there was still something about him that made a tight knot form in the pit of my stomach. When he had given the barman his order, the tall man started casually looking around the pub until his eyes finally stopped on me for a second. A slight smirk creased his still placid face as he stared at me as if he knew me.
Who the hell is that guy? I kept wondering, unsettled now by the fact that he appeared to recognize me from somewhere.
Before I could think about it any more, however, I felt Leona nudge me w
ith her elbow. “What are you staring at?” she asked.
I shook my head. “Nothing. What did Brentwood want?”
Leona gave a small sigh before answering. “He wants me to go to New York.”
“New York? When?”
“Now.”
I stared at her in amazement. “Are you fucking kidding me?”
“Unfortunately not.”
“What’s so urgent?”
"He never said much. A few bodies have turned up, and The Division thinks it might be something to do with an out of control Adept. That's all I know."
I slumped back into my seat like a huffy child. “Can’t someone else handle it? You deserve a rest at least.”
She laid her warm hand on my cheek and kissed me softly on the lips, which only made me feel worse because it reminded me of what I would be missing when she left. “I’m sorry,” she said in a low, husky voice that stirred up feelings of desire in me, a desire which I knew would go unfulfilled. "You know the job. It never stops."
“Then maybe we should stop.”
She kissed me again, longer this time, then said, “You couldn’t if you tried.”
“And neither could you. Yeah, I know. Just saying, though."
“I tell you what. When I get back, we’ll go somewhere. How about that cabin of yours, in the mountains? We had fun there last time, right?” She smiled and kissed me again.
“I’m holding you to that.”
"I know you will." She got up, and I grabbed her hand to stop her from going, giving her the doe eyes in the vain hope that she would forget about going to New York and stay with me instead. But no suck luck.
“I love you,” I said as she walked away.
Leona looked over her shoulder and gave me another smile, but she didn’t say I love you back.
She never did.
60
No Rest For The Wicked
MILDLY DEPRESSED NOW by Leona's unexpected departure, I drained what was left in my glass and slammed it back on the table, a little too hard perhaps, but I was pissed off. Not at Leona so much as with Brentwood. The stern-assed son of a bitch thought he owned Leona sometimes, the way he expected her to follow his every order like they were both still in the Army. It wasn't fair on Leona as far as I was concerned, even though it didn't seem to bother her much. The idea of her leaving The Division and partnering up with me properly had come up before, but she never seemed keen on the idea, despite my enthusiasm. Maybe it was time to broach the subject again? When she got back from New York that is, whenever that would be.
She can’t even tell me she loves me. Why would I think she would leave the Division to come work with me?
Honestly, I didn’t.
“You look like you could use a drink,” a voice said, startling me out of my drunken reverie.
When I looked up, the tall man from the bar was standing there, his weirdly serene face looking down at me as he held a shot of whiskey in each hand. “Do I know you, Mister?” I asked him, taken aback slightly by the aggression coming through in my voice.
The tall man smiled, appearing not to be put out in the slightest by my hostility towards him. “May I?” He didn’t wait for an answer as he came and sat beside me, placing the two shot glasses carefully on the table like they contained nitroglycerin instead of whiskey.
Shifting away slightly, I stared hard at the guy. “Why do you seem familiar?”
The man turned his head slowly, and I saw that his eyes were now a deep orange color as if infernal hellfires burned within them. “Maybe because I am familiar to you.”
“Baal,” I said, suddenly realizing who he was. I would have been more put out by the demon’s presence if I hadn’t of been so drunk. As it was, I was too drunk to care, and besides, I’d been expecting him anyway. Just not so soon. “You found yourself another body then?”
The demon nodded. “I did. This man stopped to help me as I lay on the ground in that necrotic hunk of meat you last saw me in.”
“And for being a good Samaritan, you stole the dude’s body?”
He nodded. “Yes.”
“No good deed ever goes unpunished, eh Baal?”
“Thankfully not.” The demon grinned broadly at me, the hellfire gone from his dark blue eyes, his complete lack of any goodness showing all the more in his new face. His delight in evil and casual sadism seemed to bubble just behind his new gaunt features and unflappable calm, a delight that came through even in the way he seemed to be talking in that weirdly particular manner as he paused and emphasized at odd times. Baal was scarier now than he had been as a full-fledged monster. If I weren't so drunk, I would have been a lot more nervous about the fact that he was sitting comfortably beside me like we were just a couple of friends having a drink together.
“By the way,” Baal said. “Do not call me by my true name again. If you do I’ll be forced to rip your tongue out.” He smiled at me then, all too casually like a father gently correcting their child. “You can call me Gabriel.”
“Gabriel?”
He nodded. “For my own amusement. The real Gabriel has no sense of humor whatever. None of those winged automatons do.”
“You’re referring to angels?”
“Angels, yes. Narrow-minded automatons to a man…or something else.”
“I’ve never met one, so I couldn’t comment.”
“Thank yourself lucky you have yet to put up with their insufferable presence.”
“Yet not so lucky as to escape your presence.”
Baal, or Gabriel, made a slight growling noise in the back of his throat. “You summoned me here.”
I couldn’t argue with him there, so I let it go. “So let me guess,” I said, aware that Blaez was wide awake now, his eyes firmly on the demon. “You’re here to call in your debt, right?”
“Correctamundo,” the demon said, grinning again.
"I didn't know they spoke dude in the Underworld.”
“It was a favorite expression of this man.”
"Before you pitched his soul into the Underworld like you were tossing away a piece of rubbish, you mean?"
“Speaking of souls. I believe you owe me your father’s.”
“About that,” I said shifting uncomfortably in my seat. “His soul was destroyed. I couldn’t save it.” Not that I would have saved my father’s soul, even if I could have, though I wasn’t about to tell Baal, or bloody Gabriel that.
As it was, the demon didn’t seem too concerned at my lack of offering. “That’s okay. If you find who I’m looking for, that will more than make up for your empty hands.”
“This person must be pretty important to you.”
Gabriel focused his stare in front of him for a moment as if deep in thought. “They are.”
He reached down then and lifted the shots of whiskey off the table, handing one to me, which I took resignedly, knowing I didn't have a choice. Then he grinned at me as he held his glass up, waiting for me to do the same. With a sigh, I clinked my glass against his. “To your success in finding who I’m looking for,” he said. “I sincerely hope you do not disappoint.”
I downed my whiskey as I wondered what fresh hell awaited me around the next corner.
Gabriel lifted his own glass slowly to his mouth and poured in the whiskey in a weirdly deliberate manner, closing his eyes for a second as he swallowed and then stared right at me.
All I could think of was that it might as well have been my soul in the demon’s glass. For he owned me now, at least until I managed to get him what he wanted.
If I managed to get him what he wanted.
Either way, I knew I would come to regret ever dealing with the demon in the first place.
Of that, I had no doubt.
Thanks For Reading
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Books By N. P. Martin
BLOOD SACRIFICE
CRIMSON CROW
*MORE TO COME*
The Watchers Series
HELL IS COMING
HELL IS HERE
HELL AND BACK
HELL TO PAY
BAD GRACE
LUCAS
About The Author
I’m N. P. Martin and I’m a lover of dark fantasy and horror. Writing stories about magick, the occult, monsters and kickass characters has always been my idea of a dream job, and these days, I get to live that dream. I have tried many things in my life (professional martial arts instructor, bouncer, plasterer, salesman…to name a few), but only the writing hat seems to fit. When I’m not writing, I’m spending time with my wife and daughters at our home in Northern Ireland.
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