The Demons of King Solomon

by Aaron J. French

  “Does he?” I shrugged. “I kinda wonder which candidate would better his goals more.”

  Bo shook his head. “Pa, it’s obvious who needs Buer to win. It ain’t like that racist Cheeto could actually win on his own. Right?”

  The way he said right… not a rhetorical question, a child looking for reassurance. My middle son had a smile on his face more often than he didn’t. Now, though—he wore an expression of controlled anger, perhaps just a few notches below those protestor kids we’d seen at the convention center.

  Bo’s my son. Sometimes, believe it or not, that makes me forget the color of his skin, and forget that his reaction to certain events might be more… magnified… than my own.

  He wanted comfort from his Pa, but false comfort wasn’t the Hunterson way.

  “No one thought he could win the nomination,” I said. “Remember when the debates began? He was the butt of all jokes, the laughing stock of smart people who knew about such things—pundits, experts, talk-show hosts, movie stars, late-night comedians. Turns out those people maybe don’t know as much as they’d like to think.”

  And yet, even now, when the grand prize was down to two contestants, when so many people had been proven wrong and should have been eating their words, those same people continued to mock the candidate at every turn.

  Not only him, but anyone they thought might vote for him.

  I thought back to what Betty Lou had said while we were in line at the Moscone Center—these protester thugs have no idea their actions will make more people vote for that asshole.

  Of course, anyone who would consider voting for him was in the basket of deplorables and could be easily dismissed, right? I knew how these supposed deplorables thought, how they lived, how they breathed. This is America—you tell an American what he or she should do, and their reaction is more often to tell you to go fuck yourself.

  Except now people weren’t saying that out loud. They weren’t talking at all, because, as a nation, so many people had learned that you do not speak up against the orthodox view. Not unless you wanted to be publicly shamed, your name splattered across the Internet so people who had never met you—people who knew nothing about you—could declare you evil not just for speaking your mind, but for asking a question, for daring to do anything but go along with the established groupthink.

  No, people weren’t saying things out loud. They weren’t saying anything at all, and that was what worried me—the Internet kids seemed to be a unified body, but the silent majority was both silent and the majority. Come November 8th, which way would that majority vote?

  That question lurked at the back of my mind, made me worry. More and more I was starting to think that Bo was wrong—maybe the product of the establishment who preached against the establishment could actually win it all.

  Luke stopped typing. The absence of sound drew everyone’s attention to him as if he’d started screaming at the top of his lungs.

  “Uh-oh,” he said.

  Sometimes that boy is disrespectful. Sometimes he’s rebellious. He says a lot of things that piss me off, but very few things that make me worried. Uh-oh was one of those things.

  “What is it, son?” I asked.

  “A couple of things,” Luke said. “First, we didn’t meet Buer himself. We saw his projection. He can only physically enter the world when the sun is in Sagittarius—this year that happens November 16, a week after the election.”

  The kid was confusing the hell out of me.

  “So lesser demons can’t enter without permission, and major demons can, but only sometimes?”

  “Demonic rules are complicated and can contradict themselves,” Luke said. “Kind of like girls.”

  “Sexist,” Sunshine said.

  Luke giggled at getting a rise out of his sister.

  Buer’s involvement with the election, and the timing of whatever the hell horoscope thingee Luke was talking about… just a coincidence?

  “Maybe Buer has a deal with the candidate,” Betty Lou said. “But if Buer can enter the physical world on a specific day, what could someone offer him in exchange for manipulating the election? It’s not like he needs an invitation to walk the plane of the living.”

  “He can enter without permission,” Luke said, “but his legions can’t. Pa, we’ve been looking for that new fault line—what if it’s on property controlled by the US government? Once the election is over, the president-elect is the defacto owner of that land.”

  Sunshine shook her head, crossed her arms.

  “Wait a minute,” she said. “I’m taking a civics class. The owner of government land is the people, not the president.”

  Bo huffed. “Sure, Sis—you try going somewhere the government says you can’t, and you’ll find out how much ownership you have.”

  Bo did most of his communicating with fists rather than words, but this time he’d hit the nail right on the head.

  “The president can go anywhere he wants,” I said.

  “Or she,” Betty Lou and Sunshine said in unison, glowering at me like I was trying to banish them to the Eternal Barefoot Kitchen of Endless Pregnancy.

  “Or her,” I said. “My bad. If Luke’s right, it means Buer could be helping one of the two candidates in exchange for permission for his legions to enter our plane.”

  It did seem a little too connected to be a coincidence—a new fault in San Francisco, Buer showing himself (or at least his projection) here in the city… many possible explanations fit what we’d observed, but Luke’s conjecture about getting permission from a “land owner” qualified as one of those explanations.

  “What about one of the federal buildings in the city?” Betty Lou said. “Those are government-owned. Could the fault be in one of those?”

  I thought about the various supernatch we’d seen recently. A one-eyed, one-legged, mad-as-hell umbrella in an office building would have caught people’s attention much sooner. Even if it had slipped into this plane at night, the federal buildings were still in the heart of a major city. We’d bagged that baddie in Golden Gate Park, and the other two in the Presidio.

  “Has to be somewhere less developed,” I said. “Luke, what parks are there in San Francisco? Not state parks, but National parks, that a president might have sway over?”

  His fingers beat on the keyboard, continued to pound away even as he answered.

  “Muir Woods,” he said. “Alcatraz Island, Golden Gate Recreational Area, the Presidio and… Fort Point, the old Civil War fort under the Golden Gate Bridge.” He looked up at me. “Ain’t no one in Fort Point at night, Pa. Any supernatch originating there could spread through the Presidio’s woods, and in the dark it wouldn’t be that hard to reach Golden Gate Park without being seen.”

  Couldn’t be Alcatraz; the ‘natch hate open water. Which also left out Muir Woods as a possibility, unless the deaders crossed the Gold-en Gate Bridge, which has traffic all night long. Not impossible for something to cross it unseen, but pretty improbable. If the fault line was on federal land, that made the Presidio the most likely spot.

  “I’ll get Ing to put his people on it,” I said. “They can start searching the Presidio. In the meantime, y’all gear up—we’ll start at Fort Point.”

  ***

  We’d lived in San Francisco for only six months. I hadn’t visited Fort Point before. I wish I’d done so, during the day, to get a little familiarity, because at night the damn thing was spooky as hell.

  We didn’t know for sure if the fault was in there or not. But I felt that tingle I often feel when we butt heads with the dead.

  “Pa,” Bo said, “how come faults are always in places that look haunted?”

  That tingle runs in the family, maybe, even family that ain’t genetically mine.

  “Don’t know, son. I honestly don’t know.”

  Quite a sight, that Fort Point. A redbrick, Civil War-era fort, three tall stories, with bigger, paler blocks running up the corners. The Golden Gate Bridge towered above it. Quite th
e metaphor for progress, I suppose—at one point in history, the fort was probably the tallest building for miles around. Now? It was tucked under a modern marvel of rust-colored steel that made the fort look like a child’s toy. Floodlights lit up spots of the redbrick wall, and some light from the tall bridge tower filtered down as well, making the corner blocks seem to glow with ethereal dimness.

  The old-school wooden doors were shut tight. Maybe there was security around here, somewhere, but we’d deal with that if it came up. No one around. Not even any cars. Water on three sides, a rock wall opposite the fourth—any supernatch that came out of a fault around here, at night, wouldn’t be seen. Golden Gate Bridge traffic hummed along high above, creating a steady state of white noise that melded with the burble of small waves crashing against the piled rocks and concrete that passed for a shore. No one would see the supernatch, no one would hear them, either. And then there was the location—at the top of the Presidio, meaning a supernatch could go unseen to dozens of areas of the city at the Presidio’s southern and eastern boundaries. If the fault line was here, it explained the dispersal pattern we’d seen over the past few weeks.

  The fam had gussied up for battle. Bo wore his long, black leather trench coat, the inside of which holstered his silver baseball bat. Luke had taken to wearing black combat fatigues like he was some kind of action hero, complete with a silver sword and a Mossberg 500 loaded with silver buckshot crisscross holstered on his back. Sunshine, thankfully, had traded in her daisy dukes for jeans, combat boots, and a no-nonsense long-sleeve shirt patterned in urban camo, quiver across her back, bow in hand.

  As for Betty Lou and I? We hadn’t bothered to change clothes; we’re always ready for a dust-up. She’s got her bag of goodies; I’ve got a huge repeating crossbow—ten shots in about fifteen seconds. Power is for shit and accuracy ain’t that great, but each bolt is tipped with a charmed-up point that can fuck up a low-level deader’s world. Sometimes it works, sometimes it don’t.

  When it don’t? That’s okay, because I’ve got Old Glory ready to go.

  “Fort Point was built in 1853,” Luke said. “Decommissioned in 1970. Did you know they knocked down a cliff to build it? They wanted it closer to the waterline, so cannonballs could skip off the surface and increase range. And then—”

  “Ain’t the time for random facts,” I said. “Tell me something useful.”

  Luke frowned. He hates being interrupted, but I swear, that kid has diarrhea of the mouth.

  “Well, the center of the fort is open to the sky,” Luke said. “There’s rooms in the walls, but they’re kind of narrow. The interior of the fort is a big open space.”

  So we didn’t have to go through a door, which would make noise, draw attention.

  “Betty Lou,” I said, “can you get us over that wall?”

  She dug through her gym bag of a purse. She pulled out a necklace: a black owl, wings spread, its eyes and outline done up in garnets.

  “We’re going airborne,” she said. “Everyone, get close to me.”

  We did as we were told. I chose not to mention the last time we “went airborne,” her magic petered out and we fell on our asses. My tailbone still aches from that if the weather is right.

  Betty Lou mumbled some magical gibberish talk. I always wonder if she and her kind just make that shit up as they go along. Maybe the talismans have an activation button and all you have to do is press it, but a mishmash of syllables just seems more impressive.

  A disc of pale red light formed beneath our feet. Seconds later, we were, indeed, airborne.

  The disc rose up. Bo made a whining noise—he hates heights—but Sunshine and Luke laughed, enjoying every minute of the flight.

  Betty Lou took us up a hundred feet or so, then over the wall. Sure enough, the space inside was wide open. On the outside, the walls were smooth brick, but on the inside each story had a deck that ran all the way around, dotted with brick archways. It reminded me of New Orleans architecture. That or a prison, cells opening to catwalks that overlooked the common area.

  She set us down in the middle of the fort on the cracked, patched concrete floor. Walls soared up on all sides, tall, but diminutive compared to the long mass that was the Golden Gate.

  At ground level, alcoves were set into the base of the wall. Inside each, an old civil war cannon or wagon, black masses that were more part of the shadows than hidden by them.

  No movement. The place was still.

  “Don’t see nothing,” Sunshine said.

  Luke tugged at my sleeve. “Pa, should we split up and search?”

  “Of course not,” I said. “This look like the Sunday matinee to you? This is real life—we don’t do dumb shit.”

  Luke’s eyes widened with embarrassment. He looked down. Well, he should be embarrassed for asking such a stupid question.

  When you see monster hunters on TV or in the movies, they are dumber than ten pounds of shit stuffed into a five-pound bag. We need to split up and get a look around, they say. Well, in real life, that don’t happen. Once we’re in a hot zone we never split up. Want to take out one of us? Good luck, you sumbitch, because all of us will gang up to stomp your ass.

  “Give me a minute,” Betty Lou said. “I think I sense a presence.”

  I kept my head on a swivel as she looked in her oversized bag. I couldn’t see anything, but I felt the presence of evil. Supernatural spider sense—natchsense, I call it—is a trait you develop early in this business, because if you don’t, you ain’t around to do it later.

  “Feels creepy,” Bo said.

  “Real creepy,” Luke said.

  Betty Lou pulled a bracelet out of her bag. I’d seen the like before: a fault-closer. She slid it onto her wrist, where it joined a dozen other clinking bangles. She slung the bag over her head, then spread her hands.

  “Lux lucis nihil mali,” she said.

  Her hands glowed with static white.

  Not fifteen feet from us, something in the old concrete floor began to glow. The same white as Betty Lou’s hands, at first, but as it brightened in intensity the hue darkened, took on color.

  The color of electric blood.

  From the alcove shadows, a familiar voice rang out, echoing off the brick walls and up into the night.

  “Step away from the fault, and you won’t be hurt.”

  Cop Shades was here.

  Turned out there were guards—just not the human variety.

  They came out of the alcoves. Five of them, from all directions. The same demons who’d corralled us at the rally. They looked human, since we hadn’t gone all Cory Hart and worn our sunglasses at night, but I’d seen their true faces and that was something one couldn’t unsee.

  “Howdy, boys,” I said. “Moonlighting? Sad to see Buer ain’t paying you enough as bodyguards.”

  Cop Shades smiled.

  “The President thought you might be up to no good and come >poking around,” he said. “So he had us wait here. I’m glad he did, too, because this time there’s no binding spell.” A wide smile. “We’re going to feast on your souls.”

  I nodded. “Hate to disappoint you, numb-nuts, but this ain’t the first time we’ve looked down the barrel of a gun. You want to dance? Then come and dance.”

  My family made a tight circle, facing out, each of us staring down one of the demons. Bo pulled his silver baseball bat from his black trench coat. Sunshine knocked an arrow. Betty Lou fished in her purse. Luke—God, please keep my baby boy from harm—drew his shotgun.

  The demons advanced.

  I didn’t think my crossbow bolts would do much against Cop Shades, but I tried anyway. Great gadget, my crossbow—fire by pushing the top lever forward, cock it by pulling the lever back. I ripped off all ten shots—Cop Shades brushed them aside with casual waves of his hands. One hit him, and he winced, but on he came.

  Oh well.

  I dropped it and slid my hand into my pants pocket, felt the weight of Old Glory. The cool metal around my fingers felt a
s comforting as a thump on the back from a lifelong friend.

  Old Glory in place, I put up my dukes.

  I heard the twang of Sunshine’s bow and the roar of Luke’s shotgun. Hopefully they’d have better luck than I did.

  Cop Shades closed in, as did his four demon pals—five against five.

  In a blink, they shed their human appearance. Wrinkled, red skin oozing pus. Clothes burned away in wisps of smoke, the smell of burned polyester hitting us before the demons did. The two huge lobster demons shambled toward us, one centering on Luke, the other on Sunshine.

  “Tamen Daemones,” Betty Lou shouted. She whirled a golden necklace, spinning it so fast it looked like a disc of translucent metal. We’d seen her use that necklace before—at its end, an enameled birdcage lined in green and blue stones. We all knew what to do next.

  The air electrified, making my hair stand on end; a cage of light formed around us, just outside our perimeter.

  The demons smashed into the cage and were instantly thrown back in a shower of eldritch energy.

  I took advantage of the moment to get a good, fast look at all five demons. Two arrows stuck out of Sunshine’s lobster—and it looked to be in pain—but Luke’s shotgun hadn’t done jack shit to his shelled foe.

  We’d have to settle this the old-fashioned way.

  “Knuckle up, family,” I said. “Get ‘em!”

  Betty Lou stopped her swing—the cage crackled, vanished.

  Bo strode forward like the man he was, brought his bat down in a big, powerful arc that smashed in a yellow demon’s skull.

  Sunshine’s bow twanged and twanged again; damn, but that girl can fire fast. A howl of pain followed each shot, but I couldn’t see how my baby girl had done because Cop Shades closed in on me.

  He lashed out with a taloned hand. I stepped in and blocked it with my right, drove Old Glory into his belly with a body blow that Ali would have admired. The shit-eater stumbled back, surprised.

  Maybe these demons had never met seasoned stompers before.

  Well, too bad for them.

  We had the situation well in hand—and then the fault started to glow with the burnished maroon of the damned.