The Brimstone Series

by Robert McKinney

  The devil’s smile fades as the burns start to return, and in moments her face is contorted into a grimace of pain. She takes it out on me, shaking my leg even harder. Her hand feels like a branding iron on my skin - the pain growing more and more by the second. It’s only then that I realize, for the first time in all my travels downstairs, that the oppressive heat of this place doesn’t come from the air.

  It comes from them. The devils - burning up from the inside.

  For a moment, I almost feel sorry for the monster, but that ends the moment it tries to pull me in closer.

  I rear back with the leg not clutched in its grasp and kick the damned thing in its face. My boot lands hard, crunching something under my heel. The devil doesn’t seem to like this much, and starts swiping at me with its free hand then, after a moment, with its fucking wings as well.

  The blows knock me around more as we keep falling through the endless space of the pit downstairs. It hurts but more than that it pisses me off, so I keep kicking at the fucker harder and harder. The strength of its grip, and the heat there as well, never wavers, though. No matter how much I struggle. What’s worse, I can see the hem of my pants leg start to smolder in its hand, ready to take to a full flame.

  God damnit. I’ve been downstairs enough to know something about flame. At the speed we’re falling, with this much wind and air rushing over us, any open flame that comes to life will spread far and fast. Once that happens, a tight grip and burned calf will be the least of my worries if I let this thing keep a grip on me. The thought of that really starts to undo me, finally cracking through the forced feeling of competence and calm that I’d been keeping between me and the goddamn thing on my leg. I look down at the devil again, and see her still smiling up at me, her lips stretched wide beneath the dark, smudged boot marks that I’ve left on her face.

  Wait a minute. Looking closer, I see that those boot marks are more than simple smudges left from the rubber of my footwear. They’re too thick, too dark, and downright too clumpy for that to be all that it is. I aim another kick down at the devil’s smiling face, and as my foot bounces off of its skull, I notice something strange, something odd and black, stretching between it’s face and my boot.

  Rubber. The marks on its face are melted rubber. It must has been burning so hot from the inside, that the damn rubber on my boots was melting off on its face. I look down at the bastard and think of how I could use that. Pain doesn’t seem to phase it, but maybe something else will.

  My left pants leg, still clutched in the devil’s grip, chooses that moment to finally catch fire. The flame starts so small that it’s barely a glow, but expands a second later into a goddamn torch on the side of my leg. The devil actually starts laughing at that, and with my leg on fire and an idea in mind, I raise my free leg back for one last attempt.

  I hammer down on the devil’s face with one final kick. I must be getting tired, because it hits more weakly than the other. The aim, however, is still good enough

  My boot heel digs into the devil’s face, but I don’t let it rebound again. This time, I instead hold it down hard on his head, and drag the shoe up and across his brow, my boots crossing in a line across both of his eyes. The rubber of my boot melts on contact with his body, and sticks to him and his eyes in thick, streaky chunks.

  That does the trick. In one moment, the devil is smiling at me. In the next, he’s clutching at his eyes and frantically trying to scoop the melting rubber free. I don’t wait around for witty banter or a backhand in revenge. I just close my own eyes, focus on my drop, and land, clothes smoking, on the tile floor of my kitchen.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  My emergency landing back in creation comes harder than usual. And by that, I mean I find myself sliding across the floor with enough speed to trigger airbags if I’d been riding in a car. The slide sends me sideways along the cold, hard tile until I crash into a table leg and set of folding chairs that Mary and I had squashed into one of the small room’s corners.

  The chairs flip over with a loud, jangling clatter. The table leg I hit along the way, however, decides to stay firmly in place. The impact knocks the wind out of me, or at least the wind I had left after my prolonged trip downstairs. Nothing feels broken, though, so I pull myself to my feet and try to start thinking.

  Despite the burning in my throat and the agony in my leg, it doesn’t take me long to realize how my landing had gone so badly. The momentum you pick up while falling downstairs after making a drop doesn’t follow you to your landing, for the most part at least. I was down there for a lot longer than usual this time. That means that even if I’d only kept a small fraction of the speed I’d built up while falling downstairs, it was still enough to give me a rough time when making my landing back in creation. I’ll have to remember that “for the most part” can still be enough to kill me if I ever find myself in the same situation again.

  One thing is for sure, though. Whatever surprise I’d been hoping to gain by dropping through hell instead of taking the front door was lost the moment I’d crash landed in my kitchen. The extra good news is that the surprise is not needed, because no one is in here except for me.

  Looking around my kitchen, though, I can see that the good news dries up about there.

  The place is a mess. Not the kind that happens when you try a new recipe for bundt cake or hot wings and are less than careful with where the wet and dry mixes end up.

  No, my kitchen, which I’d sacrificed sweat and tears to afford for me and Mary, is practically shredded from end to end by bullet hole scars. One wall, the one across from me and facing the interior of the house has been practically sawed in half by a pattern that I recognize as machine gun fire.

  I do notice that none of the bullet holes carry all the way through any of the walls, which means that either my architect hadn’t cheaped out when he’d installed the defensive upgrades that I’d asked for, or that whoever was here had been using soft, disintegrating rounds. I hope that it’s the former for two, admittedly selfish, reasons. The first is that I’ll be depending on these walls if there’s a shooter inside who’s been too deaf or dumb to show up after hearing my arrival. The second is because disintegrating bullets tend to damage organs than their more standard, fully metal jacketed brethren. That may not sound like much for anyone who’s never tried to help out someone who’s been shot, but it will matter to me if I have to patch up anyone that I may find inside. Especially if that anyone happens to be Mary.

  There’s only one way to tell if I’m in here alone for sure, and that’s to get up and go see for myself.

  I climb to my feet as fast as my aching bones will let me, and move over to the solid block of the kitchen island at the center of the room. From there, I move over to the doorframe leading to the rest of the house. No one is in view when I lean out a little and peek around the corner, so I move on to the next doorway. Then the next. Then the next.

  I repeat the process, running from doorway to doorway and peeking out around corners until I’ve inspected both floors of my house. I see nothing save for more broken furniture and more bullet holes. The damage is excessive, as is the expanded firepower. Enough bullets have shot here to see an Afghan platoon through two weeks in the mountains.

  Each of the rooms I go to are unlit, but not dark, as the light from the afternoon still shines in from the windows. When I’m sure that the house is indeed empty, I take the time to do another, more careful sweep of the house. This time I confirm that none of the lights, and none of my scattered electronic devices, are working at all, save for for the discounted TV pinned to the wall in Mary’s bedroom.

  I press the power button on her remote, expecting nothing to happen, and am startled when the screen starts glowing with a news feed. I recognize it as the same refugee camp from before, nestled on the edges of swamp lands which keep expanding on the coast. I frown when I see the overly lethal equipment used by security on the location,
because it’s supposed to be charity, not a warzone. That thought, though, isn’t helping me with the problem at hand, so I turn off the TV and sit on the bed.

  Mary is missing. Not under a bed or hiding in a closet. She’s been taken by someone. And judging from what I’ve seen, someone pretty bad.

  The house is too trashed for this to have been the work of just a professional doing a job. There’s a special kind of malice in the damage done here. Whoever’s come for me, they did it because of something personal.

  I try not to make enemies when doing my job, but that doesn’t mean that I’m always liked, or that I’m always polite. Less than an hour ago, I’d insulted someone with the resources to do something like this. The only thing unconfirmed is if he has an ego big enough, and bruised enough, to set this bullshit into motion.

  I look up at the TV screen and see that I must have mindlessly turned it back on, because it’s still showing the news feed that I’d seen my buyer watching in the Philippines before. If he did this, there’s a chance that he’s still at that patio bar with his umbrella-less drink.

  If he didn’t, there’s still a chance he could be there anyway. He said he had money, and money comes with resources that could maybe help me find Mary.

  I grab a spare phone charger, get some distance, and drop back to the Philippines because there’s no use in me sitting still, wondering if this man is guilty or innocent. The buyer either did it, or he didn’t, and I’m going to find out which. God help him if he’s done anything to Mary.

  CHAPTER SIX

  This time, I remember to get some distance away from my house before making another drop. Devils tend to stake out places that are the site of too many trips back to back. It’s something I’d forgotten in my rush to get inside of the house. Trying to make one from my front porch was a mistake, and one I’d rather not make again.

  I jog over about an acre’s worth of farmland before I decide that I’ve gone far enough, then flick my lighter in one hand with my phone in the other. I land a block away from the hotel in the Philippines, and rush over to the place as fast as my bruised and burned ankle will let me.

  My progress is fast, but when I arrive it’s plain to see that I’m not the first to get there. The place seems a lot less ritzy this time, because there are a lot of people screaming, no, crying outside of the hotel. That alone would be bad enough, but the place is also crawling with what looks like Army infantry in black combat fatigues.

  One of those soldiers comes over to me, and when he approaches I see that he’s not military after all. His shoulder carries the badge of the Philippine National Police. He speaks in accented but perfectly clear English, and asks me if I’m in need of medical assistance. I don’t get why he’s so adamant that I get help until I look down and see the burn marks on my jeans and the seeping stains from my burns underneath.

  I thank him for his help and take him up on his offer. There’s an ambulance parked near the hotel’s entrance. It’s close enough that I’ll be able to take a good hard look at the scene without attracting more attention. The police officer helps me over to the vehicle, partly because I’m playing up the injury and partly because it really fucking stings. I sit down in the open back of the ambulance and try to see what I can see.

  I can see blood stains by the front entrance, and the body of … yeah. The bellboy from earlier was definitely a fighter. Though his chest is riddled with a tight grouping of bullet holes, that hadn’t kept him from bloodying his knuckles before going down.

  There are other bodies nearby. All guards, by the look of them. After a minute or two, a pair of medics comes out of the main entryway. They’re pushing a gurney, and though the body is bloodied and burned well past easy recognition, I’m still able to make out a pale hand clad in a red jeweled college class ring.

  Fuck. I was hoping to get something out of this guy one way or another. With Todd the buyer dead, things are even less clear than before. I’m also not too slow to notice the timing of his demise. Whoever hit this place did so with speed that’s almost completely unseen, even in the circle of rebels, smugglers, and spies that I often trade in.

  I wait around, but no other bodies save for two or three more guards are rolled out of the place. That’s a miracle in itself, because “tourists,” “died,” and “crossfire” are words that usually go together when a hotel this big takes a hit.

  The crew that did this isn’t just fast. They were also unusually precise. Unusually clean. They’d been able to take down a man rich enough to spend a half million in a day, while he was inside a fortress that’d given pause even to someone like me. Whoever they are, I’ll need to come at them hard, in addition to fast. To do that, I’m going to need my own team.

  Fortunately for me, and for Mary as well, I don’t do all of my work in this world alone. I have people I can call on and chips to cash in. They may not be the same kind of people who hit the hotel recently, but for Mary’s sake, I hope they’ll be enough.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  I make a drop and land in one of my favorite places for this kind of thing. Central park is big enough for a person like me to land in a different spot each day of the week and still have enough space to not attract any attention while passing downstairs. There’s also enough trees and bushes in the place to let me do so without defying the laws of physics and creation in front of soccer moms and picnic lovers. On the rare occasion that someone sees me disappear into thin air, they can always convince themselves that I walked behind some shrubbery after the fact.

  There’s also another advantage to the place. The traffic there is extremely congested, and I’m not talking about the cars, either. In any given day, literally thousands of people make phone calls, send texts and stream Netflix while catching shade under the tree cover. Picking a lone signal, my signal, out of the thousands here would be so hard that any analyst assigned to my case would beg for the relief of picking needles out of haystacks. When combined with the encryption already on my phone, it’s the safest place to make a phone call in my profession.

  I lean hard on that extra comfort in the hour that follows, because I call every single contact of worth that I’ve ever done business with. Retired Army Rangers on permanent vacation in Bangkok. An old insurgent-turned-priest in the jungles of Vietnam. Bad guys. Good guys. I call them all and bribe, cajole, and on occasion, even beg, until I’ve got a crew of hard cases so tough they’d make a devil blush.

  My last call is the most important out of all of them though. I have a man, my secretary, who helps me with my work. I don’t know his real name and I don’t fucking want to, because I’m pretty sure that the information is worth more than my life. He’s always been very clear on how he should be addressed or mentioned when speaking to others about him. Always “my secretary,” “your secretary,” and never “the secretary.” When it comes to wiretaps, he’s the only person I’ve ever met who’s even more paranoid than me.

  I give him a phone call and keep it short and simple, as I’d been instructed to do so before.

  “I need to talk.” I say, then shut up and wait.

  For a minute, nothing answers me on the other side of the line. But then a voice speaks up.

  “Thirty minutes.” it says. The line goes quiet.

  I start moving the moment the silence takes over the phone. It’ll take me at least five minutes to get far enough away from where I’d landed to make a safe drop, and maybe more than that once I’m close to my secretary’s office building. I put some hustle in my step, my newly bandaged leg throbbing the whole time. Thirty minutes to see the secretary. Maybe a few hours for my crew to scrounge up useful answers. Too much time for my nerves to handle unshaken, but not too much, I hope, for getting to Mary.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  I hate Luanda. It’s not the heat, which is bearable for someone raised amid red Georgia clay. It’s not even the people, who are nice in the way that pretty much ever
yone on the planet is nice, and shit in much the same ways as well.

  It’s the smell, like sea salt with a hint of raw sewage, blanketed in a healthy layer of diesel smoke and smog. That and privilege, the stench of which practically wafts off of the high rises that tower over the homeless, and the fortified expatriate compounds that butt heads and push out on the edges of slums.

  The reek of all the above is pretty strong today when I land on a sidewalk a block south of my secretary’s office tower. The street running alongside me is choked with rush hour traffic, and I’m close enough to the central business district that at least half of the cars on the road are either limos or a lexus. Each sits in back to back traffic, belching exhaust. The fumes from that many cars jammed together gives me a headache before I’ve walked half a block. I ignore it and keep walking ahead.

  What I don’t ignore, however, is the problem brewing nearby.

  On the other side of the stalled Luanda traffic is a man on the sidewalk opposite from me. Dark skinned and tall, he stands with his back hunched and leaning down to the right, as if carrying something heavy underneath the armpit. The weight he carries isn’t what triggers my attention, though. It’s his jacket, hanging down to just above his mid thigh. The garment looks like it’s been made from thin, breathable cotton, and probably won’t be murder to wear despite the hot evening air.

  But still.

  It’s a jacket.

  In the summer.

  In Luanda.

  My bet is that he’s a carjacker, or at least this town’s local approximation of that. Annoyance, and a sliver of caution, starts to slither through me. I’m far from an expert on crime in this country, but I do know that carjackers in Angola occasionally shoot first and ask for iPads later. I’m pretty sure that I can avoid any action he gives me, but that will draw the kind of attention I don’t want to deal with and take time that I don’t have to spare. Avoiding this guy would be best, so I duck my eyes down and start walking towards a crossing point further down the road from them.