Axes and Angels: A Snarky Urban Fantasy Novel (Better Demons Series Book 1)

by Matthew Herrmann

  The lock clicked and I pushed open the metal door, wincing at the prolonged rusty squeal.

  “Orion!”

  Orion managed to get off another shot before edging through the door and together we threw our backs against the door to close it.

  The lion slammed into the door, reaching the largest paw I had ever seen through the gap, pawing to get at us, and damned if Orion didn’t burn just a little more time so that he could shove the door back like Hercules. The effort must have drained him because he collapsed, and I started slamming bolts home—there were five of them.

  And try as the lion did, the door held firm.

  I glanced down at Orion and patted his shoulder. “Thank you.” I glanced to my right shoulder. “Simon. Relax. We’re good. We’re good.”

  And then I saw all the cages surrounding us and thought, Maybe we’re not …

  “A Shocking Discovery”

  If I thought our situation was bad—trapped in a cursed tunnel with a giant lion on our tail and a stolen cursed object strapped to my leg … well, shit.

  I played Orion’s flashlight over the interior of a cramped utility tunnel. I say cramped, because it was already a narrow passageway to begin with. But with cages of all sizes and shapes stacked against both sides of the wall, it left only a two-foot-wide pathway down the middle. Also, there was moldy straw everywhere and it smelled like a zoo.

  “The walls are closing in!” Simon wailed with both eyes shut. “The walls!”

  I expected Garfunkel to say something rude, but he sat hunched down on my shoulder with his head in his hands like he was about to barf. I had a feeling it had something to do with being confined to a cage in the back room of an exotic Others pet shop I had rescued them from. I didn’t know how long they’d been caged—to this day, they didn’t want to talk about their experience.

  And seeing cages just like theirs stacked to either side like the parted Dead Sea … I didn’t blame them.

  Soft bleating and weak ululations came forth from the various-sized cages, some no larger than birdhouses, others as big as chest freezers, and yet others tall and wide enough to contain even Big Foot. Most, it seemed, were much too small for their occupants.

  We squeezed our way past them as furry arms extended out at us as if reaching for a handout while curved beaks and taloned claws scraped against the rusty iron bars like rasps. In one cage a birdlike creature cawed, and in another a gnome played a sad dirge on a contraband harmonica.

  Some of the other caged Others I recognized included: will-o’-the-wisps, tooth fairies (yes, they’re real), a crone-like baba yaga looking totally out of place without her chicken-legged hut to hide in, a couple of dopey-eyed lotus-eaters, and even a yellow-headed Bandersnatch.

  I turned to Orion. “Back in the tunnel when you smelled that lion and the Minotaur … You smelled these guys too, didn’t you?”

  My partner nodded solemnly.

  I ran a hand through my hair and sighed. The illegal trafficking of Others … I hadn’t realized what I was getting into when I signed up for this job. I’d taken it mostly out of desperation—and because Orion had been on board with it. Besides, Typhon was a criminal—and was it really stealing if you were taking something from someone who had stolen it in the first place?

  But I’d underestimated Typhon’s evil empire. The man mostly kept to the shadows, hiding behind various shell corporations that exported, among other items, bananas from Colombia, laptop parts from China, and Zambian copper from South Africa. Basically, he had fingers in all seven pies of this world—and by pies, I mean continents.

  Yes, even Antarctica.

  And why? Because even the Arctic contained rare and mythical beasts ready for exploiting.

  It really wasn’t fair to Others, who even after all these years were still acclimating to life among the mortals—us—which only makes them that much easier to be lured into cages or tricked into signing their freedom away for the promise of work and a better life in a foreign land.

  Others trafficking had been gaining exposure in global news as of late, but no one could really estimate the severity and extent of it. This I knew because I lost count after seventy cages—and that was just in the thirty-yard stretch of dimly lit tunnel before me.

  And the fact that no one aboveground even realized these tunnel systems existed anymore …

  The depravity of the situation was almost too much for me. I try not to get emotionally invested to the jobs I take. Ever since I realized there was corruption in the Army I’d served in, I’d lost some major faith in human organizations.

  That’s why I was now a freelancer, sometimes enlisting the aid of a partner or two, like Orion, who by the way looked as if he’d just taken an anvil to the face, his eyebrows and mustache drooping. I almost felt like giving him a hug—or placing a hand on his shoulder, at the least.

  But I didn’t. There were too many creatures here to help. Even if we were to unlock their cages, where would these creatures go? They’d only hinder our own escape and probably be tortured when their captors found them again.

  “We have to help them,” Simon said.

  Garfunkel finally stirred from his funk. “No, we can’t. Life is cruel. Survival of the fittest and all—”

  “You can’t honestly mean—” Simon interrupted, his voice raised louder and with more passion than I’d ever heard him use.

  “We can’t help them. If we try, we’ll just get caught and end up in cages right beside them. Remember when we were them …?” Garfunkel crossed his arms in finality, spat off to the side like some escaped convict. “Well, I ain’t ever goin back!”

  Simon turned to me for a decision.

  “Simon, as much as it pains me to say so, Garfunkel is right. If we try, you’re in a cage and I’m in a casket—” I stopped, catching my blurred reflection in Simon’s tiny, glazed-over eyes. “We just can’t.”

  “But Theo!” Simon pleaded. “These creatures need our help!”

  “Enough,” I said, dismissing the issue. Glancing over at Orion, I caught him slowly shaking his head. At me?

  “You’re a cold one,” he said.

  I breathed out sharply as I thrust a finger against his chest. “We can’t help them and you know it. We’re too unprepared, and we’re running out of time. I’ve got to get this bundle to our employer, or we’re dead.”

  Orion shuffled his boot. “We could try.”

  I have a motto. Do or do not. There is no try. I know—not original, but I do believe in it with all my being. I’m a soldier. I get things done. And right then we needed to be gone from that place. The hungry lion prowling the tunnels had our scent, and it was only a matter of time before the golems reported the artifact stolen and our escape routes were flooded by guards.

  I shook my head. “Maybe another time.” Truth was, I had no intention of ever stepping foot in this place again. It would be too dangerous.

  Orion just looked at me, and I hated him for it. “You know what? Under all that shielding, you have a good heart, Theo. Maybe you should listen to it every now and then.”

  Grrr. This man …

  I could have left it at that.

  But I didn’t.

  “Hey didn’t you used to hunt Others? Wasn’t it your self-proclaimed life’s mission to kill one of each creature on Gaia’s green earth until—” I stopped.

  I’d expected Orion’s face to morph into something feral. Instead, it had grown soft. Remorseful. Ashamed.

  “That was another life.”

  And that’s all he said. It was all he had to say.

  I threw my hair back. “I’m getting out of here. Are you coming or not?”

  Simon shuddered, Garfunkel grinned and Orion … was Orion. He nodded dolefully and trudged on after me.

  “Good.”

  As I led us deeper down the tunnel, the sounds of mortal combat reverberated through the wall just to the side. The arena … It was so loud now, it had to be just on the other side. Just great, Orion ha
d led us in a circle. The entire tunnel shook as if wracked by a magnitude-7 earthquake with every blow. I could only imagine what it would be like to witness the battle in person.

  There came a sudden sickening crunch, and I winced. I continued on.

  Up ahead some rectangular fish tanks set against the wall caught my attention. They were quite large, containing several different types of exotic Others I’d never seen before. They resembled thick, muscular eels with rainbow-colored skin like an oil slick. Nothing out of the ordinary here …

  Except for the heavy-duty jumper cables clamped to their tails and the scruffs of their neck.

  “What are those?” I asked.

  Simon cleared his throat. “Abaia. From Melanesian mythology. They gave mankind the gift of coconuts.”

  OK … but what did the jumper cables have to do with them?

  I watched as one of the eels writhed and hopped above the water’s surface, electrical shocks sparking and running along the length of its slimy body.

  “They have a positively charged head and a negatively charged tail,” Simon continued.

  I took a step closer to the glass tanks for a better look. But before I could even touch the glass, another eel leapt upward, sending shocks along its charged body and surging along the jumper cables to a bulky generator sitting next to the wall. Wires snaking out of the generator led to the ceiling and the wall, but what did they power?

  A moment later I found out, as my presence sent the rest of the eels into a jumping frenzy. And suddenly, the overhead lights grew in luminescence until I had to shield my eyes. Wow these guys really knew how to light up a room … (Sorry.)

  With the way the lighting system was set up down in these tunnels, they probably generated more than enough power.

  Giant sparks started shooting up from the other side of the tunnel, and I saw what looked like a wolf comprised of pure lightning, its static-y canines chomping at the warded iron bars of its cage.

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  Orion folded his arms over his chest. “Raiju.”

  “Raichu?”

  “No. Raiju. The lightning companion of Raijin, the Shinto god of lightning.”

  “Well damn,” I said. “I don’t think it likes me.”

  Orion shook his head. “It’s not you. It’s me.”

  I scoffed.

  “I killed it back in my day,” he said. “And Raijin never forgave me for the slight.”

  “Why’d you kill it?”

  “Raijin and I got into a pissing match, something about me trespassing on his land. We had an archery tournament to settle who was right. And when I won … Let’s just say Raijin is a sore loser.” Orion pulled back the sleeve of his leather jacket, revealing a blackened scorch mark. “Sicced his lightning dog on me.”

  “Ouch. That had to hurt.”

  A gentle smile crossed his lips. “The more interesting the scar, the better the story.”

  That we could agree on. He’d never shared that with me before. I smiled too, but only half-heartedly.

  I wanted to help these creatures. I really did. But I’d already stated my arguments, and without a good pair of rubber-insulated leather gloves, there was nothing we could do for these poor creatures. I turned back one last time as a curious abaia pressed up against the glass for a better look at me.

  I dropped my shoulders in disgust. Siphoning off electricity from electrical Others? Clever.

  But demented. Typhon had descended to an even lower level of criminal in my mind, and I really wished there was something I could do to put a dent in his operations. It’s just that right then we needed to get out of that house of horrors before our presence was detected …

  And that’s when the feathery monstrosity of a thunderbird next to the caged Raiju started to beat its massive turkey wings, whipping up sonic booms and, well, thunder in the confined space of the subway tunnel.

  Crap.

  Doors started opening from somewhere down a connecting tunnel. Frantic male grunts and cursing preceded the boot falls of fifteen or so of what I can only describe as beast tamers. They wore long leather gloves and aprons, and their faces were masked by Plexiglas visors.

  In their gloved hands were massive, sparking cattle prods, and some of them brandished long leather whips.

  I knew in that moment that we were grossly outnumbered, but I assumed a fighting stance regardless.

  Orion looked at me like I was crazy. “You’re good. But you’re not that good.”

  I popped my neck to the side and grinned. “That’s debatable.”

  The lightning wolf Raiju growled and I noticed the padlock on its cage was hanging open. Odd …

  An idea flickered in my head. I dashed toward the cage and—electrocution be damned—kicked the lock up and out of the cage’s grooves. The lock fell to the floor but still Raiju cowered in his iron prison. I didn’t understand …

  “The iron of the cage,” Orion said as a beast tamer rushed him. Orion dodged a thrust and threw his fist into the man’s jaw, sending his protective visor to the ground and spinning like a top. Orion kneed the man in the gut and took possession of the cattle prod. He flashed me a harried look. “Open the cage door. Raiju can’t touch iron!”

  Orion ducked the jousting of a second cattle prod and shoved the tip of his prod into his attacker’s neck.

  Zzzt!

  The guard fell backward like a tipped over sumo wrestler. Then a third beast tamer lashed out with his whip, stole Orion’s cattle prod as a fourth man stepped forward and pressed his prod against Orion’s side. Orion gasped and fell to the floor.

  I meanwhile gripped the iron cage door. “Just remember, I’m freeing you. I have no association with those mean men with the weapons.” The lightning wolf’s staticy canines flashed in its jaws. Here goes nothing … I jerked open the door and spun to the side.

  The wolf immediately sought out the nearest beast tamer and leapt upon it like a neon-lit German shepherd, its claws and teeth searing right through the leathered gloves and aprons.

  “Ahhh!”

  Raiju leapt from his current target to his next, his jagged movements akin to teleportation as he landed on the chest of the next attacker.

  I rushed to Orion’s side, held spellbound as two more beast tamers closed in on Raiju from both sides. The beast gave a howl like an overloaded wall outlet fit to explode before shedding two mirror images of itself that sprang out in both directions, charging at both attackers like chain lightning.

  Twin howls rent the static-charged air of the room and I dragged Orion to his feet.

  “Let’s go!”

  “Rejuvenating the Stone”

  Orion and I rushed past the remaining guards while Raiju did his thing. Maybe he’d be subdued and maybe not. I’ve got to say, though, it was an exhilarating feeling releasing it and watching it open a can of whoop-ass on Typhon’s guards. Served them right …

  We ran down a corridor toward the solid-looking door at the end. A beast tamer sprang through it, his eyes growing wide as I drop kicked him in the neck. He spilled to the floor and Orion caught the door before it closed. We darted inside and Orion made sure it closed behind him.

  Thunder boomed from directly above us and I glanced up at the dark rocky ceiling of the large circular room we now found ourselves in.

  “We’re right under the arena!”

  There was a muted crunch and the crowd erupted into a throng of fiery cheers. Spread out along the open floorplan were a series of giant glass circular vats with cables connecting them to a large portable generator.

  Bright greenish liquid swirled in the vats, and all were empty except for one.

  “What the …”

  I didn’t know what I was looking at. I would say some kind of dinosaur but instead of claws it had fins. And it was more amorphous, like an eel, with dark bluish scales. Some scales were missing in jagged swipes as if large claws had ravaged its side. And edging around the vat’s curved glass wall, I saw some chunks of f
lesh missing from its body, the wounds still red and raw, but as I watched, I swear some of the sinewy flesh and tendons stitched themselves up in real time. I blinked but I knew what I saw. This creature, which had to be dead, considering the extent of its injuries, was slowly being brought back to life.

  I was about to ask Simon if he knew what this massive, dead (but soon-to-be-alive) creature was, but he beat me to it.

  “Brother, Pisces …”

  There was a sad longing to Simon’s words I’d never heard before. I could actually feel his anguish, and it felt like part of my heart was being ripped out.

  I glanced over at Garfunkel who was pummeling his fist into his palm. “That bastard, Typhon …”

  I arched an eyebrow. “Whoa whoa whoa. What is going on here? Simon, you said brother? What do you mean? And what is this place.”

  “The Plane of Rejuvenation.”

  I turned toward the new voice. It was old and feeble and belonged to a crippled man hiding in the shadows against the wall. He was encased in a box of bulletproof glass lined with breathing holes in it.

  “Who are you?” I asked.

  He mumbled something like a mad man. The glass wall separating us didn’t help either.

  “Prometheus,” Orion said. “This man is Prometheus.”

  “How do you know?”

  Orion gave me a look that said, ‘How do you think I know?’

  I nodded, waiting for Simon to recite something like “Prometheus, fire-bringer. This Titan was sentenced to having his liver eaten by an eagle every day for eternity for teaching humans how to use fire …” but my two familiars were still oddly silent.

  I stepped closer to the man. “What are you doing in there? Under Typhon’s arena?”

  As I edged closer, I saw the medical patches stuck to his scrawny chest and bony arms. He looked like the patient of some hospital wing housing the critically and chronically afflicted. And the wires coming off the patches on his bare skin ran and connected to a generator with cables running to each vat.