The Brimstone Series

by Robert McKinney

  “Hold still.” he says, he walks across the room to me briskly and I feel a brush of new metal, this one light and sharp as a razor’s edge, graze over the exposed skin of my ankle near my zip tied feet.

  The man makes three, quick, careful cuts at my bindings, letting my legs and wrists free. I flex my legs for a moment, but stop when he leans in close and breathes a warning into my ear.

  “Make me regret this, and I’ll have my friend send you to Hell the old-fashioned way. Understand?”

  “Got you. Like, thoroughly so.” I say.

  I bend down a little to rub the feeling back into my legs, and straighten up in time to see a hand, bloody, and clad in a suit jacket, smash through the window next to Three Letter Agency’s head.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Glass explodes inwards, and despite being seated more than five yards away, I see broken pellets of glass patter against the floor at my feet.

  Someone in the darkness outside of the window is trying, one handed, to pull Three Letter Agency into the night. Judging from the revolver in one of her hands, and the knife in the other, it’s a presumption that she doesn’t take lightly.

  Carnage, in the form of close quarters fights, comes next. It’s the kind of violence that I’ve only seen on rare occasion before. The kind that happens in the most base and desperate situations, when the enemy is nose to nose. Knuckles crack on bone, and the sound of meat thudding into meat echoes through the high ceilinged room.

  Neither Three Letter Agency nor whoever’s fighting her have enough space to use a weapon effectively. The woman grunts as she struggles, dropping her weapons in favor of fists, but her breathing stays even. The expression on her face is calm, maybe even beatific, despite the strain going on. Experienced killers are sometimes like that, even when caught by surprise.

  In the end, which comes no more than five seconds after the struggle began, the woman’s training isn’t enough to bring her out on top. I hear a loud, ugly crack, like a tree branch snapping, and she lets out a clenched hiss of pain.

  The driver in front of me abandons his position, launching himself towards the wounded woman at the window. He runs up at an angle and slams into her with a tackle that yanks her out of the attacker’s grasp and sends both of them onto the floor.

  There’s a familiar pop, click, hiss of a holster clasp coming undone about a heartbeat before the driver lifts his own pistol, a simple Glock, and fires into the night. I hear a gunshot, two gunshots, three, from a few yards away. The shock of the gunfire flows out through the room, making my ears ring with pain. I’ve got good enough hearing to pick up the new stillness in the building, though. The struggles between the mercenaries and the attacker have stopped. The fighting, sudden and fierce as it was, is over.

  “You good?” the woman asks the driver. Her voice comes out surprisingly calm, as if having her arm broken was a regular and boring experience.

  I can hear the driver breathing deep as he inspects the woman’s wound.

  He gasps, sucking in air. “Yeah, I’m good.” He says. “Your arm’s broken, though.”

  “It’s fine.” says the woman. “I’ve got a spare.”

  “Hold on.” says the driver, before coming back towards me. He bends low and digs into a bag in the corner that I hadn’t noticed before. I see weapons inside, including a KSG shotgun. He takes it out, checks the chamber, then loops the bag’s stap over one of his shoulders. Three Letter Agency comes over to my chair while he does. She doesn’t quite point her gun at me, but it’s clear that she wants me where she can see, and shoot, me easily if need be.

  “You ready?” asks the driver, the question obviously not directed at me.

  “Almost.” says the woman, before coming closer and bending down towards me.

  “I’m going to cut you loose.” she says. I look down, and see a revolver held firm in one of her hands. “Stay put while we take care of this shit and I won’t have to put a bullet in your head.”

  I nod at her, silently promising to do as she says. I honestly can’t tell if I’m telling her the truth. Can’t tell if I’ll have the guts to sprint for an opening if I see it. The night is oppressive, dark, and maybe teeming with beings even worse than these three mercs.

  There could be others out there in the darkness. People looking for me. At least the mercenaries haven’t taken the luxury of beating or otherwise torturing me. There’s a few opponents out there who wouldn’t be so accommodating. For now, I think, I’ll be staying put.

  The woman nods to me then stands up and walks closer to the driver, carrying on as though she wasn’t harboring a broken arm. Damn, she’s seriously tough. The driver, to his credit, refuses to put down his shotgun and fiddles, one handed, with the light he’d used to blind me earlier. It takes him a moment, but eventually he has it turned back on and angled to shine light out of the now broken window.

  A man’s shape is standing outside, not five feet away from the building. Blood and gore covers so much of his face that it’s impossible to make out his features, save for a smile. The image is the stuff of nightmares and horror movie fodder.

  It’s also a clear silhouette in plain sight of two mercenaries who have no qualms with shooting first and asking questions never. Three Letter Agency and the driver open up on the man, pumping shots into him as fast as the recoil of their weapons will let them. The driver even goes so far as to run his shotgun dry before switching to his sidearm, which I can now see is a Glock 19 identical to those I’ve stashed in safe houses and supply caches from here to Timbuktu. He throws another thirteen rounds of 9mm into the man before his pistol locks back, empty. Only then does the man in the window slump and fall down to the ground.

  The driver doesn’t waste time trying to reload his shotgun. KSG’s can be finicky things to fill up, and a trained man like him can replace Glock magazines in about the time it takes for me to blink.

  “Moving.” he says a moment before he starts approaching the window. His steps are careful, but manage to cover the ground at some speed. In no time he’s at the window, peering out and over the edge.

  “Jesus.” he says once he gets there.

  “Moving.” says the woman, about ten feet away from me. She covers the thirty feet or so separating herself from the window, and takes up position no more than five feet away from the driver. She looks down in the direction that the driver is looking. A moment later she steps back, her eyes wide.

  “Jesus.” she says, repeating the driver.

  I can’t see what they see, but at least I can move. My legs, though still stiff from being tied up so long, work fine enough.

  “Moving.” I say, picking up their lingo, as I walk around to the space between the two mercenaries. I don’t know the specifics of how these two have been trained, or what combination of techniques they’ve developed together, but I have a feeling that any kind of unannounced movement behind them would be a good way to get accidentally shot. I’ve dealt with enough gunfire today, so the last thing that I’ll ask for now is taking a bullet by mistake.

  Neither the driver nor the woman look up at me as I come around, but the man gives a half nod of acknowledgement in my direction. They’re both too busy looking at whatever it is on the ground. When I finally catch a glimpse outside the window, I see why.

  Lying on the ground is the body of a man, his chest punctured by three large, wet looking holes. I recognize him. He has a long, scarred face, a narrow nose, and thin fingers splayed atop one of the wounds. It’s fucking Tom, still wearing his suit and tie from our meeting at the diner before.

  “Jesus fucking shit.” I say forcefully, my heart rate picking up. A bad feeling sweeps over me from toe tips to sternum. I start backing away from the window, moving slowly, my hands raised.

  My reaction is strong enough to make the driver look at me. By the time he does, I’m already five or six steps away.

  “Wh
at the fuck is this?” he says. His gun isn’t pointed at the body through the window anymore. His hips are now turned at a new angle. My way.

  I recognize the stance. Low ready position. One of the best ways to prepare for a snap shot at close range. While he isn’t quite aiming at me, it’s close.

  “What the fuck is this?” he repeats, and I notice the shimmer of tears in his eyes. His eyes are fixed on me, and when I glance at the woman standing next to him, I see that she’s trained her eyes on me as well.

  Neither of them notice the movement starting up where the figure lay. But I do, which is why I’m not surprised when a voice answers him loudly enough to carry across the divide.

  “Tom isn’t here right now.” said a voice, the tone mocking and cruel.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  The driver’s eyes go wide and he snaps his gun back towards the window. By the time his barrel comes in line with his original target, it’s too late.

  The devil riding Tom shot through the broken window almost too fast for me to see in the darkness. He reached down and grabbed the driver’s kneecap, fingers spread wide, and squeezed tight. For the second time tonight there’s that ugly tree branch cracking sound. The driver falls, his mouth jammed open in a silent howl of pain.

  The woman only hesitates for a second, which is fast considering the situation, before she fires her revolver from the hip at close range. The blast hits Tom in the chest, just under his collarbone and blows a dark spray of fluid and flesh out into the night.

  It doesn’t matter though, because the devil is still moving. First climbing to his feet, then dashing away from us, gone.

  The woman flicks on a small flashlight attached to the bottom of her revolver and moves closer to the window - she swings it in fast controlled arc that methodically paints the darkness outside the warehouse with white. She doesn’t find the devil though. He’s nowhere to be seen.

  The woman keeps the revolver raised, and the sights even with her eyeline. She turns in more circles, the barrel kept in line with whatever direction she looks in from moment to moment. After another sweep of the darkness, she starts backing up towards the window covered wall until her back bumps into the frame and her feet come in line with the driver, shaking and gritting his teeth at her feet.

  “What’s the call, chief?” she whispers down to the driver at her feet. Her voice is no longer under unyielding control, and takes on a shaking quality that I doubt she’s experienced in using. The driver answers her with little more than moaning, his control broken.

  The woman squints out into the darkness, then calls out, changing tactics.

  “It’s me, Tom!” she calls out. “It’s Janie! We’ve been looking for you!”

  No sounds answer her beyond the moans from her friend.

  The woman shakes her head and again aims left and right with the shotgun, this time pointing in my direction for a bit. I flinch, worrying that in her panic she’ll open fire on me.

  The one bright side is that the woman responds like a professional once she catches sight of me. Acting by what seems like a reflex, she lowers the weapon down to a 30 degree angle a moment before it can come level with me.

  Whatever silver linings I see in that are short lived, because the devil chooses that moment to come back to us. I hear something shuffle in the night, and turn away from the woman just in time to see the devil wearing Tom sprinting at us at full speed.

  No, I realize in a moment of horror. More than full speed. Full speed for an Olympian is 100 meters in ten seconds. The devil wearing Tom, however, is running so fast that he could probably cover the same distance in half that time.

  Using his hands to vault over the window frame, he launches himself into the air, then lands, knees first, onto the back of the woman. She lets out a grunt, hits the ground, and tumbles across the ground until she slams into a wall. Her weapon knocked out of her hand in the process. It clatters to the ground and spins away from her, towards me.

  I look down at the revolver, feeling something, elation maybe, leap in my chest. For hours I’ve been helpless. Not just outgunned, but completely disarmed, useless. With a weapon, I could at least try to defend myself.

  I’m not facing some carjacker though. This thing is a devil, and the people it’s attacking are trained killers. Against that, a lone gun would be nearly useless to me.

  Nearly, isn’t the same thing as wholly, though, so I bend down, quietly to grab the revolver anyway.

  The fight is almost over by the time I get the weapon in my hands. Three Letter Agency is flat on her back, grappling one handed at insane speed. She struggles hard, and uses joint locks and ground fighting that looks custom made to break bones and maim.

  The devil for the most part, just ignores her attempts to cause pain, even when his own wrist gets snapped in the fight. He’s single minded, trying nothing more than to reach both of his hands down and wrap them around the woman’s neck.

  “Tom, please don’t do this.” she gasps while sliding from one joint lock to the next. “We’re your family.”

  For a moment, I could have sworn that her pleas for mercy worked. The devil wearing Tom goes still for a moment, ceasing his attempts to crush the woman’s neck. He leans back from the woman and tilts his head to the side.

  I can see his expression in the glare from the light still aimed at the window. There’s a look on his face. Excitement, but on a level far above anything that I’ve seen before. Reckless as a frat boy on the Las Vegas Strip and as unabashed as a child licking away melted ice cream. In that moment, I catch a glimpse of the depths of his cruelty. He’s enjoying this, the kill. More than anything I’ve ever seen.

  “Tom. Isn’t. Here.” he says. “I am, because of the woman you so rudely kidnapped. She took your friend Tom to my hometown, and once there, he gave his body to me. It’s a vacation for me. But it does get lonely.”

  I see the woman shift a little under the devil, but he doesn’t seem to notice.

  “I have other friends downstairs who would love to meet you. Love to visit up here. And with the little imp’s help, I can arrange the meeting.” The devil wearing Tom flicks his eyes over to me. “So how about it? How badly do you want to keep breathing?”

  Truth be told, I can’t tell if he’s honestly speaking to the woman, or me.

  There’s a silence for a bit, but it ends when the woman beneath the devil lets out a shout. It’s sharp, but not one of terror. More like one of those yells sometimes heard while passing close to a Karate dojo. She moves her hips sharply and does something else with her legs as she screams, and the next thing I know, the devil wearing Tom is again flying through the air.

  He slams into the nearby window frame, hitting hard enough to dent the edge of the awning, before bouncing off and falling to the ground.

  Not that that phases him. I watch dumbstruck as the devil is back on his feet in the time it takes me to blink.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  The woman is smart, though, and isn’t waiting for him to recover. Instead, she’s running, brushing past me, and pausing only to dip down and grab up her shotgun with one hand before disappearing into the night.

  Jesus fucking shit. Why the Hell aren’t I running? This whole time I’d been standing here instead of booking it as fast as I could in the opposite direction from these people. I’ve got a gun now and haven’t even had the slightest impulse to aim it. Why had I just stood here? Why hadn’t I done something?

  The answer comes to me in the form of an emotion that now fills my belly. An emotion that grows stronger as I listen to the sound of Three Letter Agency’s panicked flight away.

  Satisfaction. Ugly, vindictive, thoroughly enjoyable satisfaction.

  I’d never considered myself to be a bad person, even after making my first deal with Ole Beeze. I’d done bad things to be sure, but in a world as ugly as the one that I’ve seen, bad things were
often the only way to survive, let alone thrive.

  I’m not a good person, though. Not when it comes down to the wire. From the moment I’d seen that devil wearing Tom lying outside of the window, I’d known that he’d come for the assholes who took me from the diner.

  I hadn’t run because these mercenaries had hurt me, and I wanted to see them bleed.

  The devil turns to face me, looking disappointed.

  “That is certainly vexing.” He sighs. “I’ve been downstairs for too long. Thoroughly off my game.”

  He inhales deep as if bracing himself, then turns back towards the driver, who’d used the chaos earlier to crawl away from the window.

  “No use worrying about it, though.” he says. “After all, I still have something left to play with.”

  His eyes have a particular look to them. Predatory, like a cat playing with its food, intent on stretching out the misery. He takes his time with the driver, and for a while I try not to look away. There are limits, though. Not for the devil, but definitely for me.

  I walk outside of the abandoned building to the two vehicles outside. One of them is the van, parked near the side of the industrial building. The other car is a newer model Honda Civic Coupe. The vehicle’s bumper is dented, but it’s not otherwise much worse for the wear. An hour passes before I’m joined by the devil wearing Tom. He looks horrible. Every inch of his skin is stained a deep shade of red.

  “Ah, little imp, I have definitely missed nights like this.” He says, looking up at the stars.

  “This hasn’t been what I’d typically call fun.” I glance up as well, before turning look down the roadway. I’ve dealt with more roads in the past day that I’d used in my last half dozen years of memory. I miss the old lighter I’d once carried, despite it now being useless given the state of my drops.

  “And even if it was, I’m not in the mood for fun.” I continued. “I’ve got real work to do, but my bargain’s not working. I can’t drop like I used to anymore.”