Descent

by Phil Maxey

  I rushed at the attacker and slammed my fist into his jaw causing him to stagger back, and tried to continue with another blow, but something smashed into the back of my skull knocking me to the ground. As stars danced before my eyes, I tried to pivot and stop the inevitable when wind escaped my lungs from an impact of a boot to my stomach. As blows rained down upon me, I saw Frome holding the professor like a rag doll. He grinned at me again and smashed another fist across the old man’s face, rendering him unconscious.

  As my world begun to turn dark, Frome smashed the watch onto a table, removed something from it, then turned and started to walk back to the exit.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  I opened my eyes to white walls and beeping. Outside to what I recognized as a hospital room, nurses walked past. I went to sit up when the walls and ceiling moved independent of my skull and I slumped back down on the pillow.

  I got my ass kicked. So much for being a scary demon…

  The memory of the professor rushed back to me, and I sat bolt upright. The room continued its spin but then slowed. Throwing the sheet back revealed a gown, but I quickly located my clothes nearby on the room’s only chair. Pulling a heart monitor from my chest, I removed the gown and was back to how I was dressed in the library, but with more blood stains across my pants and coat. I grabbed my hat, stuffing it in my pocket, and felt something inside. I reached in and pulled out my watch in a few different pieces. Whatever the seal was, it wasn’t my grandfather’s watch. I dropped the parts back into my pocket and moved to the door just as a nurse opened it.

  She looked shocked. “How are you walking? You have severe concussion and we counted at least two broken ribs.”

  My lower chest ached in reply.

  “The old man, his name is Fortacan, did you bring him in too?”

  She nodded but seemed reluctant to talk further.

  “Is he alive?” The words came out with more force than I intended, but she did not flinch, probably being used to similar emotions from others.

  “He’s in a bad way. His daughter is with him now, but you really should go back and lie down.”

  I walked out into the corridor. “Where is he? What room?”

  She looked around. “I’m not sure you can leave. The police wanted to talk to you.”

  “What room!”

  This time she leaned back, the throaty intent in my voice starting to scare her. “The next floor up, room twenty-nine.”

  I swept past towards the stairwell. “Thank you.” As I climbed the stairs the pains across my body begun to sing in harmony and energy started to drain from me, but I pushed on regardless, bursting out into a long corridor. Alyssa had her back to me. I jogged forward, trying to shake the dizziness and went to speak when I got close to her, but instead my attention was drawn to the black and blue bruised man in a hospital bed, behind a large glass window. The professor was buried beneath gauze and tubes.

  Alyssa threw her arms around me, making me wince a little, then backed off. “What happened?”

  “Umm… they were at the library. They attacked us.”

  She whirled around, her face becoming full of rage. “I’ll kill every one of them.” She looked back at me. “Do you know who they were?”

  I reached into my pocket and pulled out a crumpled up piece of card, and handed it to her.

  “Octavian Media…” She looked between me and the gold stenciled writing. “Who’s Caspian Frome?”

  I looked at Fortacan. “The asshole that did that.”

  Anger swept across her face again and she scrunched the card up and dropped it to the floor, but just as soon as the emotion came, it was replaced with sadness and then tears. She looked back at the withered old man. “I won’t lose him… I can’t lose him…”

  I shook my head, which I immediately regretted as the corridor started to swim again. “We’ll find these Octavian people and get it back.” I immediately knew I had made a mistake.

  She turned to me. “Back? What did they take?” I hesitated in answering. “And where’s your watch? I noticed it wasn’t on your wrist.”

  I looked down. “Yeah about that… My watch… I think… I mean, I know… was my family’s seal…”

  “What?”

  I looked into her eyes and suddenly she understood. Dagger like fingernails pushed into my shoulder driving me backwards to the wall. “You had it all along? And you knew!” she screamed.

  “I didn’t know what to do! I had just met you, and Fortacan. It was my watch!” I shouted.

  “He trusted you! Thinks you are some kind of savior! Now look at him!” She let go but not before dragging me back again in front of the window which allowed a full view of the old guy’s room. She turned away, hiding her face from me. “All this time, and you had it. And now they do.” She turned back to me. “Do you not understand? He’s been looking for the seals for decades!”

  I walked to the chair and sat, my limbs becoming too heavy.

  Silence fell between us, only been broken by the distant sound of beeps.

  “There still might be time,” she said.

  “For what?”

  “The translated passage said it is almost impossible to destroy a seal, but for the dark powers that wish to do so, there is only one day that it can be attempted. October the thirty-first.”

  “Halloween?”

  “Yup, nine days away. And if they succeed, we will be closer to the end.”

  “End of what?”

  “Everything…”

  *****

  I looked at the vending machine’s choices. The only thing which looked vaguely appetizing was the jalapeño laced meat stick. Hardly two words had passed between the angry vamp and I since my revelation. Not that I blamed her. I had lost the one thing I was born to protect.

  She had shoved a few dollars in my hand, with an order to buy something she wouldn’t hate. Behind me, I was being watched by an elderly couple, a guy with a small dog and a woman who looked as if she wanted to be anywhere else other than a hospital waiting room.

  I placed the notes where they needed to be and retrieved dinner, as I did, anger kept threatening to bubble up, but rather than the scene from earlier in the day, a memory from when I was a kid kept pushing its way into my mind. I’m sitting on a therapists sofa telling her about something that happened months earlier. I remember her nodding, smiling and writing down notes, but for some reason I couldn’t recall why I was there, other than something scared me… and it had to do with my family’s—

  The dog barked, an animal reaction I was getting used to. I guess man’s best friend had a demon detector along with the other thousands of receptors in its wet nose. I frowned at it as I walked past and it started to snarl. As I made my way back to the upper floor, I couldn’t shake the guilt of what had transpired. I had majorly screwed up. I wasn’t just born into money, I was born into a world of demons and knights, only problem, no one told me.

  I walked out onto the professor’s floor and immediately stopped. Two tall men in suits were talking to Alyssa. My first reaction was to sprint forward, but then their odor reached me, and it wasn’t of the demon variety.

  One spotted me and waved me over. I sighed and walked to them.

  “You’re the guy that came in with the Mr. Groves correct?” Confusion washed across the bald-headed guy’s face. “They said you were pretty banged up?”

  “They got it wrong.”

  The smaller guy’s eyes were scanning me. “I’m detective Haver, and this is detective Jenkins. You came in as a John Doe. So what’s your real name?”

  “S… Sean… Knight…”

  He wrote the name down. “Okay, Mr. Knight. And your address?”

  “Umm…”

  I heard the strong heartbeat before the clatter of five-inch heels. “My clients will not be answering any questions at this time, gentlemen,” said Fletcher from ten feet away. She was dressed in her usual light gray power pantsuit.

  “I just want to know where he resi
des,” said Haver.

  Fletcher smiled, then looked at me. “Mr…”

  “Knight.” I thought I caught the start of an eye roll.

  “Mr. Knight has been through a horrible ordeal, and as you can see Mr. Groves came off even worse. They need to recover, but Mr. Knight will be happy to give you a statement tomorrow.”

  The cop looked back at me. “Just tell me how many—”

  “Tomorrow…” she said the word with enough force to deter any more questions.

  He sighed, shaking his head. “Make sure it’s before noon.”

  Fletcher didn’t have to look at Alyssa’s reaction to know the problem with that. “We won’t be able to get to you until early evening at the earliest.”

  The detectives looked at each other, frowned then walked away. “Just make sure its tomorrow!” The taller one shouted as they moved into the elevator.

  The lawyer walked straight to the glass window. “What’s his condition?” she said without turning around.

  Alyssa had already filled me in. “Multiple broken bones, but they are more worried about the bleed on his brain, so they put him into a temporary coma,” Suddenly an idea came to me. I turned back to the vamp. “Can’t you help him with your blood?”

  Fletcher answered for her, evidently well versed in the rules of paranormals. “Even if he was in perfect health. He’s old, his body won’t be able to take the change.”

  I guess that explained why you never saw geriatric vampires in the movies.

  “They got a seal,” said Alyssa.

  Fletcher remained looking through the glass window. “You know I don’t believe in any of that stuff. Alyssa.”

  “You’ll believe if they manage to destroy it.”

  “And where is this seal now?”

  “Octavian has it,” I said.

  She turned around. “Octavian Media Enterprises?”

  I nodded.

  “Their people attacked you?” She briefly looked back into the small nearby room. “They did this?”

  Alyssa sprung up from her chair. “Yes! Now do you believe me when I say the seals are real? Why would a corporation do this, unless it was like, a big deal?”

  I could see the lawyer thinking despite her silence. She looked at me. “I don’t know about that, but they know who you are? Your real identity?”

  I nodded and she sighed. Then I remembered the old photo in my jacket pocket. I had removed the frame back at the bunker. I handed it to her. “This is all we could manage to get from my old home. It was full of… things.”

  She looked at Alyssa, who nodded. “The Hell-Lock house was full of paranormals, including a ghoul, we only just managed to get out.”

  The lawyer raised one eyebrow, then slipped the photo away somewhere safe and pulled out a cell phone. After a quick tap, she mentioned one word to whoever was on the other end. “Come now.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  I stood, surrounded by weapons. The pointy and exploding kind. The walls of a room roughly fifteen-foot square were covered in modern and what appeared ancient killing devices. Spears with axes on their ends sat above various swords, daggers, hammers and other things that glinted in the low lighting. On the opposite walls were racks of the latest military hardware, all the M assault rifles, handguns and what looked like a missile launcher.

  “How did you get all of this?”

  Alyssa looked over the older weapons, picking up a dagger. “Online.”

  “Really?”

  “No idiot, we got it through Fortacan’s contacts. He’s helped a lot of people over the years.”

  “Oh…” I reached forward towards a particular cool looking mini machine gun.

  “Hands off the UZI’s!”

  I pulled my hand back.

  She turned and walked slowly towards me, her newly acquired dagger pointing in my direction. “Do you know how to use a firearm?”

  A memory came back to me of my grandfather wanting to teach me how to use his rifle, but my father refused. I shook my head.

  She flipped the dagger over in her hand and offered it to me. “Why don’t we start with something that won’t end up killing you, or me.”

  “I thought you could only be killed by a crucifix or garlic bread?”

  “I wear one and eat the other.” She laid a finger on one temple. “A bullet though here, that will do the trick for a lot of the more physical paranormals. Destroy the brain and most paranormals aren’t getting back up.”

  I looked down at the gleaming blade and intricately woven gold and silver hilt in her hand.

  “Belonged to a king. Damascus steel,” she said.

  “Great…” I looked at the more modern weapons, then placed the blade in my coat pocket, which it promptly tore straight through landing with a clatter on the stone floor. “Shit.”

  She frowned, turned and grabbed a scabbard from where she got the blade, then tossed it to me. “That’s why we use these.”

  “Yeah, I knew that.” I attached the leather sheath to my belt, as my thoughts returned to the hospital. “You sure you can trust the lawyer?”

  “No, but that’s still more than I trust you.”

  Now it was my turn to frown. “Right…”

  She shook her head. She’d been doing a lot of that since we had returned. Fletcher arranged for two people she knew to stand guard over the professor even though none of us thought Frome and his demonic henchmen would return. But better safe than sorry. “And we’re just going to scout the Octavian NYC headquarters, nothing more right?” I wasn’t ready for a round two with the demon wrestlers.

  “Yes.”

  She was lying. I wasn’t sure if being able to tell that was also a demon skill, or I just had come to know her tell’s, either way I wasn’t letting her go alone. She said the old man thought I was some kind of savior, which was literally the last thing I was, but maybe there was a chance of undoing some of the damage I had caused.

  We had already viewed the Octavian headquarters online. Unlike the Hell-Lock corporation’s building, it was modern and constructed of black and silver materials. A glittering shard of onyx reaching to the clouds and dominating the banks and investment firms around it. The website mentioned a slew of celebrities and shows I’d never heard of, which they ‘handled.’ No matter how many staff profiles we scrolled through there was no mention of security let alone a group of demons headed up by a guy called Frome.

  Alyssa threw a backpack over her shoulder and we left the bunker moving upwards, but not completely to the surface as we walked along other tunnels I hadn’t seen before. “There’s a whole world down here that everyone above doesn’t know about…” I said.

  “These are smuggling tunnels going back to before the civil war. You won’t find them on the internet or any modern maps.”

  We climbed a rickety rusting staircase to an equally old looking door. She laid her gloved hand on it and waited. “Move quick and keep up. We can’t be seen in this section.” She pulled the door open to a rush of warm air. I looked out upon a large curved tunnel and subway lines.

  She broke into a jog along a narrow ledge, then a run. I tried to keep up, but she became a blur, moving off along the tracks and being lost to the shadows.

  “Come on!” Her words echoed off the curved walls. In the distance I could hear the screeching of breaks.

  I wanted to move faster, but my joints and chest screamed to do the opposite. A light appeared up ahead as a door in the tunnel wall opened and Alyssa disappeared inside. I followed her and noticed the drop in temperature in a narrow corridor.

  “These are service tunnels for the subway, they lead under the Octavian building.”

  We walked along tunnels which despite the bricks and plaster being clearly more recent were covered in smears of dark green grime. It clung to the walls and ceiling. A single bulb along each stretch did its best to illuminate our path, until we came to a black door and some graffitti scrawled across it. I moved forward to open it when her arm shot out bloc
king me.

  “You see that symbol?”

  I saw a mass of spray-painted circles and dashes. “What symbol?”

  She pointed. “This? If we weren’t paranormals this door would never open for us. Its a ward to keep humans out.”

  I leaned forward and held the handle, “Good thing we’re the bad guys then,” turned and pushed it open. I wasn’t sure what I expected. A parking lot maybe? Instead we had stumbled onto a horror movie set, accept it wasn’t a movie, it was real. Metal drums sat, filled with pools of blood and the walls were covered in more occult graffiti, but much larger, accompanied with bones and a collection of items which belonged in a serial killer’s yard sell. Parts of dolls were nailed to books, rotting plants and pieces of jewelry hung over them. The scents were almost overwhelming.

  Alyssa frowned. “You want to see how our kind usually live? Here’s your chance.”

  ‘Our kind’ The club I never asked to be a member of. We walked forward, both pushing our senses as far as we could and closed the door quietly behind.

  I gestured towards the organized refuse around us. “What is all this?”

  “Magic, but not the fluffy bunny kind, unless the magician ends up eating it.”

  “Magic’s real?” My moment of surprise was brief. I looked back at the vats of bodily liquids. “Of course it is.”

  As we made our way through the nightmare, I looked at the crimson liquid and felt my stomach rumble. It had been over a week since I had tasted blood, the last time being some asshole who thought it was a good idea to kick a homeless guy. I only took what I needed before I sent him on his way, him screaming of all the diseases he must now have. There was something different though about the pools around us, I could smell this wasn’t your garden variety blood, but something that had been changed, corrupted…