by John Conroe
Shaping my aura into a mirror of the mental image, I shoved my right hand into the chest of the hound as its blocky black body flew over my crouching form. There was no resistance as my bladed hand slid into the dog’s torso and cut straight through to its groin. The partially bisected beast slammed into the ground beyond me and I leapt on it, chopping my ax hand through its neck. The head and body separated, starting to dissolve as they fell to the dirt.
I turned to my bear, finding his rippling, transparent form covered in giant dog forms. Each hellhound had expanded to the size of a Shetland pony, and one hung from where each front paw would be, with two clinging to his back with long retractable claws. The hounds seemed to be writhing around in empty air, but the air shimmered in a bear-shaped outline. I acted by instinct, projecting indigo-purple bands of power out from each hand, one band to either side of a dog on his back. Then I slammed my hands together in the mother of all claps, and my targeted hound on Okwari’s back imploded into black, red and purple dust. Again on instinct, I called out mentally – Kirby!
The shadow form of God’s Hawk swooped onto the dog remaining on Okwari’s back, the smoke talons gripping the hellhound and pulling it off. Apparently, it was too heavy for the spirit hawk, who slipped back out of our world with a keening cry. The dog slammed into the ground and bounced to its feet, just in time to get hit with the hound that got flung from Okwari’s right paw. The remaining dog received all of the giant spirit bear’s attention and apparently didn’t like it. That one hung in empty air for a moment before it came apart with a wet ripping sound, the individual chunks vaporizing as they fell to the ground. There were just two now, and they stumbled toward the witch, Mary, who was just finishing a crude circle in the dirt around her and Colin. Her face twisted with pain, fear and hate, she looked me in the eyes as she spoke a guttural phrase and all four of them were sucked into a swirling column of greasy air the color of thunder clouds. The swirl corkscrewed into the ground and was gone, leaving Okwari and I standing in an empty park.
I looked at my right hand, a faint gleam running all around the outside edge of my bladed palm.
Okwari had once cut some handcuffs apart for me with a single claw. Bear claws are like meat hooks, pointed but not sharp in the inside curve. Chet Aikens had analyzed the cut links and theorized that they had been cut with a monomolecular edge. That somehow, Okwari could form his claws with edges a single molecule in width. Such an edge, Chet told me, could cut through pretty much anything.
I pulled my aura back into my hand and the silvery line disappeared. Whether Okwari had sent me that image or some part of myself had figured it out, I couldn’t tell.
I Sighted my bear and found his normally smooth mixture of purple, red and green to be rent and shredded on his back. Once before I had healed him with projections of my aura and by concentrating on maintaining a very light violet color, my projected energy had the same effect this time. At least until my aura sputtered and faded.
The times I have been bone weary tired since taking Tanya’s blood could be counted on one hand. Today was the worst. I dragged myself home, slugged down a six pack of protein shakes and collapsed into bed.
Chapter 17
I woke the next morning to find a large visitor on the apartment floor. Okwari sometimes stayed with me, especially in the evenings. At such times, he somehow compresses his form to the size of a mere inland grizzly, say six or seven hundred pounds. Even then he has to stay curled up on the floor or it’s impossible to move around my tiny studio apartment. This was the first time he had spent the night.
I threaded my way around his invisible bulk till I could get to the kitchenette and the coffee machine. Once the java was dripping, I turned my attention to the object sitting on my kitchen table. Flat, light-sucking black, crudely cut, the witch’s gem was the size of a child’s fist. It was set into a ring of gold, the edges of which were carved with glyphs and runes that hurt to look at. The whole combination raised the hair on my neck and made my stomach turn. At the same time, the blackness inside me was fascinated by it, wanted me to touch it and hold it close. Which I didn’t, thank you very much!
I needed to get rid of it or destroy this thing, but I didn’t know the first thing about it.
There was really only one source of information, but I wasn’t up to that conversation today. The witch and warlock battle had left me drained.
We spent the day hanging out, me eating non-stop and him sleeping. I placed one call to a friend in data entry, looking for some information to help me with my plan. She promised to see what she could do.
I splurged on a Movies-on-Demand order of Transformers, thinking the giant robots would be as far away from vampires and weres, hellhounds and warlocks as possible. Tiny problem…Megan Fox looks a little too much like a certain vampire princess I know.
My bear went back to wherever he goes and I went to bed early, but sleep evaded me for hours, blue eyes accusing each time my eyelids closed.
* * *
The day was warm, sunny and smelled of growing things. My fellow New Yorkers were springing with every step, yet I couldn’t shake the feeling of gloom and depression that clung to me. It emanated from the black jewel, and it didn’t just affect me; people that got too close cringed without knowing why, shying away from my presence without conscious thought.
The Church of All Saints loomed ahead, the largest building in sight. The giant stone saints sculpted at the top of its outer walls looked down at me, their granite eyes seeming to follow my every move.
I entered the front and found my way to the sanctuary, sliding into the last pew. The room was lighted but empty.
“WHAT is that stench?” Barbiel asked from my right side.
I had promised myself that I wouldn’t jump this time, but damn! He just came out of nowhere!
I hefted the plastic bag in my lap and opened the top.
“I suspect that it’s this, ’cause I showered today!” I said.
He peered warily at the silk-wrapped bundle I pulled from the Walmart bag. Not owning any silk myself, I had borrowed it from my neighbor, Paige. She had looked at me oddly when I asked to borrow an old silk scarf that I would replace with a new one. Somehow I didn’t think she would want this one back after it touched the gem.
Barbiel sucked in sharply when the flat black jewel appeared.
“Oh my! Oh! Where did you get that?” he asked.
I explained my encounter with the witch, the warlock and the five hounds of hell. It sounded like a children’s book title. But my angel liaison looked grim when I was done.
“It is a Tear of God. Yahweh shed them when Lucifer betrayed him,” he said.
“A tear?”
“Yes. Yahweh’s tears are filled with the despair, grief, disillusionment, anger, and fear that he felt when his best and most loved angel attempted to wrest Heaven from him. The tears fell with Lucifer Morningstar as he crashed down to Hell. They are powerful. This one has been used to enslave and damn countless souls and spirits. I can feel it!”
“Well, can you take it and destroy it?” I asked, not wanting to be near it.
“No! It can’t be destroyed! And I cannot touch it!” he said, his expression panicky.
“Well, what do I do with it?” I asked.
He paused for a moment, for once thinking before answering.
“I’ll be right back. I need to ask the others about this.”
He blinked out of existence before I could protest, leaving me sitting there alone, a stupid expression no doubt gracing my face.
But he was back a second later.
“Okay, we have to take it out of its setting. You’ll need to pry it free,” he instructed, like we were baking brownies.
I pulled out my Emerson CQC tactical knife and flicked the blade open one-handed. Gingerly, I slipped the tip into the tiny gap between the jewel and the crude gold setting.
“What are you doing?” he asked, just as my favorite knife snapped into two pieces. “You
can’t pry it out with tools!”
“Why didn’t you tell me that before I broke my knife?” I asked. I had barely touched blade to gem when the high quality stainless steel had shattered like ice.
“I didn’t know what you were doing,” he said.
“So tell me, oh angelic one, just how am I supposed to pry this thing free?”
“With your aura, of course!” he said, like it was the most obvious thing in the world.
“My aura? Riiight! How the he…heck do I dig it out with my aura?”
He looked at me like I was the slowest student in the class.
“You really don’t remember any of this?” he asked, exasperated.
“See, this is exactly the point in our conversations when I get completely lost! How could I remember something I never knew?”
He sighed, then pointed at the necklace.
“Hold it in your right hand … ” he instructed. “Good! Now put your left hand over the top of it….that’s it! Now, push up through your right hand and pull aura with your left, visualizing it popping out of that setting.”
I did as instructed. The ugly gold setting felt somehow foul and unclean. Nothing happened, so I upped the amperage, and then upped it again.
The jewel came free from the ugly gold setting with an audible pop, driving up into my left hand. I quickly dropped the old setting back into the Walmart bag, then looked at the plump jewel in my hand. My skin tingled where it touched the gem, which seemed to vibrate at some superfast, ultrasonic frequency. It was black, black, black, the light in the room just sinking into it without effect. Like holding a black hole in your hand.
“Now what?” I asked.
“Now we make a new setting!” he looked around the sanctuary, for what I have no idea. “Hmmm, I’ll be right back!”
I expected him to disappear again, but he just got up and walked into the side room where the priest pops out at the start of Mass. The sounds of intense rummaging came a moment later. It sounded like he was ransacking the place. The noises stopped and he came back into the sanctuary, a wide smile on his face. He was clutching a silver cross, about seven or eight inches high, in his right hand.
“What are you gonna do with that?” I asked.
“Make a new setting!” he said, puzzled.
“We can’t use that! It belongs to the church!” I protested.
“Actually, I believe it belongs to God. It has been consecrated in his name.”
“But the church will miss it!”
He frowned at me like I was simple, then started to shake his head.
“No, it will be as if it was never here,” he said.
Sitting next to me, he held the cross on his lap and began to just kind of run his hands across it. The solid piece of silver started to sort of slump, then flow into new shapes. First a long chain formed, the ends connected to a lump of formless silver. He held the lump in both hands for a moment, his head down, lips forming words that seemed familiar but unintelligible at the same time.
“Okay, now hold the silver in your left hand, and press the gem into it with your right,” he instructed.
Doing as he said, I felt the gem vibrating against the palm of my right hand. He covered my hands with his own and spoke a word. A flash of light blinded me for a moment, and I could feel intense heat flow through my hands. The sparkles gradually vanished from my eyes and I looked down expecting to find black char marks where my palms used to be. They were fine, but I didn’t waste much time looking at them, ‘cause the black jewel was now centered in a tear shaped setting of gleaming silver, slightly smaller than a playing card.
Looking at it now evoked a sense of something lost, not the skin-crawling revulsion it had before.
The chain links were tiny drops of silver, somehow flowing from one to the next. Try as I might, I couldn’t quite see how they linked together, they just did.
“Okay, now what do we do with it?” I asked.
“We don’t do anything with it. You, however, keep it with you. It will come in handy, I’m sure,” Barbiel answered.
“You just told me that this was used to enslave beings and now it’s somehow okay to have around?”
“The Tear is neither good nor bad. It just is. Within it resides a small measure of Yahweh’s grief, disappointment, anger and despair. The demons used the despair and the depression brought on by it to enslave others. You can use the anger and loss to help you in your fight.”
“How? Point it at someone and make them angry?” I asked, thoroughly confused.
“You misunderstand. I mean the fight with yourself … your dark side. This jewel, as we have set it, can help you stay … yourself. To not become that which you fight. Do you understand?” he asked.
“But won’t the depression part hit me too?” I asked.
“In its old setting it projected those emotions. This setting enhances the need to prevent loss, and will strengthen your resolve. Now put it on, please,” he directed.
I hesitated. Fighting a rogue werewolf, banishing a demon, sparring with a vampire – easy. Putting on the Tear of God – scary as anything I’ve ever done. But I did it, and the links seemed to weight a ton, the pendant with its galactic black gem was like a Buick, sitting on my chest. Then, after a moment, the weight evaporated, to the point where I had to check to make sure it was still there. I stood up and walked, checking how it carried. It was as if it wasn’t there. I looked a question at Barbiel.
“It is adjusting to you, and given time, it will become useful.”
“How?”
“Each is different; each forms a unique relationship with its user.”
“You mean like the witch?”
“Well, that was with the old setting. Think of the jewel as a kind of …..battery? Yes, that is the word, battery. The setting is like a machine of sorts, the Tear is the source of its power. You will see,” he said.
Chapter 18
I left him a short time later, and headed toward Manhattan, my new bauble feather-light around my neck. I checked my phone and found a text message from Sharra, a data entry specialist in Police Plaza that I had gotten to know during my time with the Squad. I had asked her for a favor and she was responding.
S: I have what you asked for, but it will cost you.
C: What is your price?
S: Lunch at Steiner’s.
C: Done!
Steiner’s was a popular deli near Police Plaza and a favorite of many officers and Plaza administrators. Entering the German deli about an hour later, I spotted Sharra sitting with two other data specialists that I had seen around. From their nervous glances at one another, I figured out that the real cost of my information wasn’t just paying for lunch.
I greeted her. She smiled nervously.
“Hi Chris,…ah, meet Leia and Tara. They work with me in the data center.”
Sharra was of Mediterranean descent, with thick curly dark hair and dark eyes. Her features were not so much pretty as strong and she had a confident presence. Her skin was beautiful, a dusky olive hue. Her friend Leia was a tall, shapely girl with dark mahogany skin and almond shaped eyes. Tara was average height, average looks, mousey brown hair, and a touch on the plump side. All three were giggly and nervous, in that high school kind of way that girls get when their around a guy they find attractive. It wasn’t lost on me that I was that guy, but it made me kind of sad, because they obviously had some mental image of who I was, and whatever it was, it couldn’t be remotely near the truth. I was absolutely certain that I didn’t measure up to it.
“So Chris…word is, you’ve been suspended and your group was shut down?” Sharra asked as I got settled at the table. The waitress was on me before I could answer, asking for my drink order. I went with chocolate milk, which had the girls exchanging a glance and smirk. They seemed to think it was cute, but I just wanted whatever had the most calories. Wait till they got a load of my lunch order.
“Yeah, that’s all true. Broke up a domestic squabble and got a
complaint, got attacked by some Dominican gang members and had a charge of assault,” I explained as nonchalantly as I could.
“Word around the Plaza is that IA was gunning for you and the Commish was looking for excuses,” Tara said, excitedly. When I looked her in the eye, she got shy and looked down, quickly.
Damned violet eyes!
“Well, that’s most likely all true,” I agreed.
“But with your squad gone and you out, who’s gonna take care of the … ah … cases that you guys worked on?” Sharra said, her eyes big.
“Does it matter?” I said, wondering just what she knew or thought she knew about the squad.
She nodded, the other two nodding along with her.
“Of course it matters! Who else can handle the mon…..the cases that you guys handle?” she answered.
I was certain she had stopped herself from saying the word ‘monsters’.
“And just what kind of cases do we … er … did we handle?” I asked.
She paused and glanced at the others, suddenly a little uncertain.
“They call you guys the Monster Squad,” Leia said suddenly.
“Who? Who calls us that?”
“Pretty much everyone. We all know that you guys handle the occult stuff, the vampire wannabes, the freaks that think they’re something else. And some cops say that you handle things that are real, things that regular cops can’t!” she finished, her voice more confident, her glance daring me to disagree.
