To start with, there’s no way of confusing the sensation with floating. You’re falling, and the sound and sensation of all the wind flying by leaves your brain with no doubt of what’s happening.
There’s also nothing visible to land on once you enter downstairs. No ground. No ocean. Just an endless, throbbing miasma of cloud and burning ash. There are colors, mostly red, and a whole lot of sulfurous smoke - so much of it that it’s best to hold your breath if you don’t want to end up choking.
Last but not least is the heat - it is Hell, after all. Most of my drops, no matter how short, tend to flash dry whatever sweat is covering my skin before bearing down on my flesh, with a nagging little sting that wastes no time in unfolding into naked agony. My clothes, quite often, will even start to smolder as well. For some reason, though, this isn’t one of those times.
I’ve barely had enough time to register what’s off about this drop when my fall changes abruptly. It’s an odd sensation, one that I’ve never experienced before. The closest thing to it that I can think of is the whole-body feeling of being jerked back in a seatbelt after smashing into something. I feel my legs go sideways and my inner ear lose its mind, followed by the feeling of slamming hard into gravel.
I blink the shock from my eyes and look around to see that I’m splayed out, not on a roadway, but the gravel parking lot of the diner I’d just left behind. The car is still burning a few feet from me, and when the light of it starts to dazzle my eyes, I realize that out here, where almost everything else is surrounded by growing darkness, I’m probably by far the easiest thing to see.
Tiiiiiiime to start moving. Being easy to see is a good way to get shot in a gunfight, so I claw my way to my feet and start sprinting before anyone can start shooting at me. Sure enough, about two seconds after I start pounding the pavement, I hear a gunshot, then another, not too far from me.
I still have the lighter clutched in my hand, and as abrupt and unexpected as my landing had been, I figure that trying a second time beats the prospect of being riddled with lead.
I flick the lighter again while running and start another drop. The sensation of falling down is even shorter this time, because I’m interrupted by another strange jerk, which throws me into another unplanned landing.
My knees slam into the ground again, the impact sending a wide spray of gravel. My eyes had already adjusted to the light from the car fire before, and as a result, I’m half blind in the relative darkness now around me. I can still see well enough to recognize the gravel under me. It’s more of the parking lot that surrounds the diner, and when I look up, I see that I’m now close to the backside of the building.
Oh shit. Shit. I’ve barely gone anywhere. My drops, the tool I’ve spent more than a decade relying on, aren’t working. Realizing that terrifies me. More than the gunfire, more than the bloodshed, more than the prospect of taking on Ole Beeze. Without my drops I’ll just be slightly scrappier than average unarmed woman on foot being chased by multiple trained men with guns. A flutter of panic tries to settle in, but I refuse to let it take hold. I know that somehow, someway, I’m getting out of here. Giving up is out of the question, not if I want to get to Ole Beeze.
I start to rise to my feet, then wince as pain laces up my knees. A few shards of rock have punched straight through my jeans and into the skin underneath. My first instinct is to let out hiss or a curse, but there’s still gunmen out there, and I need to be quiet.
My caution is pointless. A moment later I hear the growl of an engine behind me, followed by the crushed popcorn sound of tires over gravel. Turning around with my near useless lighter in hand, I see a moving van skid to a stop less than 10 feet away. Two figures with guns, one of the the mercenary from before, hop out of the sliding door before the shock absorbers finish bobbing.
Both of the gunslingers, the young one from the diner and a woman I haven’t seen before, are wearing variations of mercenary chic. Hiking boots, blue jeans, and flannel jackets over t-shirts. It’s the kind of look that could be mistaken for a hunter’s outfit, which in this part of the world is entirely the point. The shooters’ gloves and fracture resistant glasses on their noses point them out as definite mercenaries to me. The identical, short barreled shotguns in their grips are also a clue, in case I’d needed on more.
Something about the shotguns they carried draws a second look from me. They’re custom jobs that started their lives as short barrel Kel-Tec KSGs.
I’ve never sold a Kel-Tec to a client, but I’ve known one company in particular that used them. The group was, unsurprisingly, co-led by Tom before I’d dragged him down to Hell with me. Considering what I’d done to their friends, it makes sense that they’d have a vendetta with me. Considering who they’d helped, I still regret nothing.
The seconds I lose assessing those weapons screws me over. I’m so busy staring at them, so busy realizing that these were the same fuckers who came after me and Mary, that I miss whatever chance I’d have had to flick my lighter and try another drop, however unpredictable, to anywhere else but here.
The new mercenary from before snaps her shotgun up to her shoulder and aims at something strange. Not my chest, but my hand.
“Drop the lighter,” she shouts. “or lose the arm.”
The mercenaries aiming shotguns at me from less than ten feet away know more than just who I am. They what I am, what I can do, and how I can do it.
“Shit.” I say. “This night really hasn’t been going my way.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Surprise, speed, and violence of action are the basic components of winning any given fight. It was something that I’d been told by an Army Ranger down in Bangkok. According to him, the best ways to win without getting killed yourself was to work your way through that trio in order of importance. It’s always a good idea to sneak up on an opponent, because if you succeed, you’ll almost always get to attack first. Moving fast was a second choice if surprise wasn’t possible, and if for any reason you found yourself being slowed down, be ready to fall back on overwhelming force as a last, shaky option.
Surprise is out of the question right now, because the two assholes aiming at me apparently know about drop. Speed is going to be a hard sell as well, because while I’m kind of fast, I’m not itchy trigger finger fast. The last choice, overwhelming force, is the most pathetic of all, because, well, shotguns.
Out of options, I decide that staying alive long enough to kill the devil bastard and so, I cooperate with the not-so-nice people carrying guns. I drop the lighter, and in an instant, the duo is on me. They shove me down hard into the gravel covered ground and zip-tie both of my hands behind my back. I don’t even notice the specific part where they take the lighter. There’s just too much to track, and they move too quickly for me to tell.
Being handcuffed has never been a thing I enjoyed, even under more casual and less-clothed circumstances. My discomfort gets worse when a third, middle aged male mercenary gets out from behind the driver’s seat. He moves slow, unhurried now that I’m fully restrained, and carries a thick canvas hood in his hands. From how he’s walking towards me, he intends to put it over my head.
Handcuffs may be annoying, but blindness is intolerable. Even when in hell, there’s still firelight to see by. Darkness has a way of making you meek. My agitation grows, my heartbeat picks up, and before I know it, I’m panting for air even before the man comes close enough to place the suffocating hood on me.
A voice in the back of my head starts whispering to me. Not in words, but in knowledge and surety. It says that if I allow myself to break now, if I sink down into fear, there’ll be no one waiting to pull my back up. I have to keep myself strong to get through this. I need to focus on something.
In the last few seconds before the man with the hood makes it to me, I use my eyes to drink in all the details I can find. The younger mercenary from before, who’d scoped out the diner, isn’t the only on
e among the three to sport a USMC tattoo. The woman has one too, though hers is a bit smaller, being placed on the inside of her wrist instead of the meat of her arm. I turn my head, but fail to get a better look at the third man, the hood carrying driver, before he arrives, bends down, and places the canvas over my head.
While the driver took his sweet time in walking over to me, the two others are quick to grab me by the elbows, lift my torso off the ground, and drag me, tip-toes digging through gravel, over to the van a few feet away. They both grunt, swing, and throw me inside, without so much as a token effort made to cushion my landing.
I smack hard on the bare metal flooring of the van and bounce my forehead off something made of steel. Dazed, I can do little more than wiggle around as one of them shoves my feet, which had still been jutting out of the cab, deeper inside the vehicle.
It stinks in here, and not just of the sweating adults that pile into the close metal box after me. I smell vomit, cigarettes and the sour cat-piss smell that I’ve noticed once or twice on an amphetamine addict. All the smells, fresh sweat excluded, are coming from the van. These mercs either bought it cheap from some meth heads or plain lack the common decency to take care of their gear.
I know that the latter option is little more than wishful thinking. People who are too lazy to take care of even simple maintenance will eventually be lazy when it comes to the task of guarding me. Thing is, mercenaries, like most soldiers, do not last long if they fall into the bad habit of ignoring their kit. These people aren’t the reason this van is such a sty. They’re just borrowing it for the moment - to be discarded later. Like me.
For a moment, I can feel an anxious panic pressing on my chest again. I’d known that surrendering to my kidnappers would put me in a bad situation. Knowing in my head, however, is a far cry from feeling it in my bones as the sour smell of the van surrounds me. I’m ashamed of it, but I just wallowed in that feeling, that gaping well of hopelessness, for a moment before another thought comes to me.
I’m not the first person that mercenaries have abducted this way. When Tom’s people took Mary, I’d found my home shattered, and the walls scarred with gunfire. Mary had endured just as much, if not more, than me in the time it took me to track her down and try a rescue. She’d been strong when I’d found her. She’d kept her shit together, for me. But it wasn’t enough.
I can’t save Mary anymore, but I can stay solid long enough to get her revenge.
I put my mind to something useful - namely listening to the people and things nearby.
After a minute of eavesdropping, I start to form a mental picture of where things are in the van. The youngest mercenary, the one from inside of the diner, is crouched or sitting somewhere near the double doors at the end of the van behind me. The woman is up front next to the older mercenary who serves as the trio’s apparent leader and driver. IDing him as the brains, or at least chief, of this kidnapping isn’t hard. His voice carries the hard tones of a man used to being obeyed, and the others always quiet down when he has something to say.
The woman is harder to figure out. The tattoo I’d seen earlier marks her as another Marine, but something about the cold, blank way she speaks makes me think of the spooks I’d bumped into while plying my old trade. My guess is that she’d been loaned from the Marines to at least one three letter agency. The kind that leave people hollow and numb once the work comes to an end.
That thought makes me shudder under the hood. I’d done my fair share of business with spy agencies, but always tried to make each of those deals a one time thing. Complex is too kind of a word for the webs those people weave. Whenever I get around to making my escape, I may need to take the unusual, for me at least, step of putting her down before I leave. She doesn’t sound like the kind of loose thread that I’d like to have training after me.
The trio wait until we’ve made it a few dozen miles down the road before one of them, the first mercenary that I now call Diner Boy in my head, scoots over and starts the process of attaching new restraints to my legs. They feel like the zip-ties already holding my wrists together, and are attached at my ankles, calves, and just above my knees. It feels like overkill to me, but then again, these guys hadn’t been surprised when I’d landed from my drop behind them at the diner. I guess overkill is just enough when dealing with special cases who take meals with demons.
When I think on it a bit longer, I can see the sense of their actions. They’d made a whole lot of noise at that diner. If they’d stopped to fully tie me right there in the parking lot, there’s a chance that some rescue in the form of a highway patrolman could have shown up and complicated their day.
Once again, that tells me something. These guys are apparently used to improvising, maybe as used to it as me, but also seem to have no trouble in switching back to a plan once the complications of real life had been taken care of on the fly. All in all, that makes them a dangerous bunch, even without their guns. I’ll have to be careful once it comes time to make an escape. Anything less will just be a fast route to bleeding out at their feet.
The woman says something to the driver in a smooth contralto that barely rises over a whisper. Her murmurs are almost swallowed by the wheezing sound of the van’s ill maintained engine, but I can still catch a hint of satisfaction in it. The driver responds to her in a similar tone. Moments later, I hear the clear sound of him dialing numbers into a cell.
The phone rings for a moment before a voice answers on the other side.
“Status?” says the voice. Another woman’s, sounding tired.
“We’ve got her.” the driver replies. “No unforeseen costs paid on the way.”
The man’s voice is surprisingly warm when he speaks. Familiar, but lacking that extra edge of flirtation I often hear from people in his line of work when talking to the opposite sex.
I hear a noncommittal grunt on the other side of the line. The sound is casual, unselfconscious. Whoever these two are, I’m not their first rodeo. They’re comfortable with each other, even with a kidnapped woman in the back of their van.
“Don’t pat yourselves on the back until she’s delivered.” The woman on the phone says. She pauses, then after a moment returns. “Tom and the others are depending on you. We’ve got no other way to find our people without her.”
The line clicks dead from the other end, and for the first time, I’m almost grateful for the hood covering my face. If it hadn’t been there, the whole van would have seen that my eyes had gone wide.
This whole time, I’d assumed that the devil wearing Tom was the one who’d hired these guys; that his opportune appearance the moment I woke up was a part of this. It made at least some kind of sense given the body he was wearing, and the rules which protected devil dogs like me from others like him and Ole Beeze. From the sound of the phone call that I’d just overheard, though, this wasn’t business. This was personal.
Considering the things I had done to Tom and the rest of his men, personal wasn’t going to be a good thing for me.
CHAPTER EIGHT
The inside of the van stays mostly quiet after that. After a few minutes riding in silence, I can feel a series of cramps starting to settle in, and start wiggling a little to relieve some of the strain. Diner Boy puts his authority voice on whenever I move. His orders are direct and with few variations beyond “show your hands” or “stop moving your feet.” I ignore him for the most part, until twenty minutes into the drive, when he suddenly stiffens, grabs my neck, and presses me down even harder to the floor of the van.
Bags over your head do a pretty decent job of obscuring what’s going on around yourself. They’re not perfect, though, because it’s hard to block out all flickers of sight that a hooded person may catch without being blindfolded. It’s something that even I would do, and I’ve never even considered organizing a kidnapping.
The last bits of sunlight, which initially penetrated the canvas sack with a vag
ue, featureless glow, weakened until I was left in sporadic, near darkness. On occasion, I can still see brief light that seep in from the edges of the bag. Most of what’s been passing me by has been the plain and uneventful flashes of passing car headlights. What I see now, however, is a flickering splash of blue and red - police cruisers in the distance and, judging by the growing wail of their sirens, approaching fast.
The lights coming closer are a new option for me. It’s a long shot, but if I can rise up high enough to draw even with a window, the cops outside may take notice of the not very common sight of a hooded woman being held at gunpoint in a car.
I tense my legs in anticipation of raising myself upright. The flickers of light are growing brighter, closer. Almost there.
A very loud and very hard to mistake sound interrupts my planned leap. I recognize the metallic double click as the sound a double action revolver makes when the hammer is cocked back less than a foot from my head.
CHAPTER NINE
That sound freezes me in my tracks for a moment. It’s not a long one, but even that’s enough for the glowing lights of the passing cop car to fade out of my limited view. A hope that I hadn’t been aware of harboring dims along with the glowing red and blue. Dwelling on the missed opportunity won’t get me anywhere, and besides, I have more pressing matters to deal with in this particular moment.
Moving slowly, I turn my head in the direction of the gun, and tilt my head to the side as if asking a question. “Don’t mind me,” is the impression I try to project. Just wiggling through my cramps.
The Three Letter Agency woman’s voice answers me, this time pitched loud enough to carry over the engine noise and the screech of the police sirens blaring nearby.
“I’m here to bring you to the boss. She’d prefer your arrival in a state that’s somewhat more lively than dead. That said, if you make trouble, I’ll put a magnum slug in your arm. If you try to get me arrested, like just now, I’ll add another to your head.”
The Brimstone Series Page 11
