"I think that as long as you guys have all your shots and nobody tries to hump my leg, we oughta be able to get along fine. I don't have a problem with lycanthropes as a rule, I just get nervous when any supernatural critter shows up that I didn't know about," I said. I took another drink of my beer, so I wouldn't waste too much if I had to smash the bottle across somebody's head.
The big one they called Rocco growled at me again, but Drew waved a hand at him. Drew stood up and stuck out his hand. I got out of my chair and shook it, feeling the power in his grip that he wasn't even trying to impress me with. That's what was impressive about it, that he wasn't trying.
"Welcome to Lockton, Mr. Harker. I hope we don't ever have to find out the answer."
I didn't ask the question. We both knew what the other one was thinking, and I was glad I wouldn't have to find out who was the bigger badass tonight.
"Now, since you're here..."
Oh shit, here it comes. I knew it the second he opened his mouth.
"There's something we could use your help with."
Yup. Right into the shit again. I will never fucking learn.
4
I walked through the door of Harker's condo, expecting him to pop out from behind a door and tell me that it was all some kind of joke, some magical illusion bullshit of his and we could go back to the way things were a few days ago. Before we found out that Agent Smith was a half-demon serial killer, before Smith murdered Renfield, before Harker put a bullet in Smith's face and had to go on the lam.
But no, nobody jumped out from behind a door. There were a lot of people in Harker's living room, though, and I only recognized two of them. Luke was there, which made sense since his house was currently a pile of rubble. The other one had me draw my sidearm and level the Sig Sauer .40 pistol right at her face.
"What the fuck are you doing here, Van Helsing?"
Gabby Van Helsing was good in a fight, but she wasn't one of my favorite people. The first time we met, she almost killed Harker, then drew down on Luke. Now she was sitting in Quincy's living room, drinking his beer, and chatting with Luke like they were old friends.
Gabby stood and held her hands up. "I'm unarmed, Detective. Please don't shoot me."
"I don't believe you. No way do you sit in an unfamiliar room without a weapon or three somewhere around you."
An athletic black woman laughed from the couch. "She knows you, Gabs. Might as well come clean."
Van Helsing shrugged. "There is a pistol in an ankle holster, a pair of knives in the back of my belt, and four small stakes strapped to my forearms. I'll strip down if you really want me to, but I've got to let you know, I'm not into chicks."
Luke stood up and put himself between my gun and Van Helsing. "Detective...Rebecca, please put away the gun.” Luke looked like hammered shit, and that was even taking into account that he was buried alive just the night before. His eyes were sunken into his skull, his cheeks were drawn, and he was pale, even for a guy that hadn’t seen the sun since well before the American Revolution. He looked around the room, took a deep breath, and continued. “Gabriella is one of us. She is here to help clear Quincy's name and bring the real perpetrator to justice."
I raised an eyebrow at the Vampire Lord. "The real perpetrator was brought to justice, Luke. Harker killed him. That's why he had to run, remember?"
Watson slipped past me into the apartment and walked over to the kitchen area. "We believe that your Agent Smith was merely one cog in the machine, Detective. He had resources significantly beyond his normal capacity either as an agent of Homeland Security or a Cambion, and we feel that the conspiracy must go higher within the government."
I looked at the trim British dude who stood at Harker's kitchen counter pouring a drink. "Are you serious? You're talking to me about some kind of Illuminati shit?"
"We are a secret organization of powerful beings hidden from society for over a hundred years. It only stands to reason that there might be another one or two out there," Watson said, his voice mild, but his eyes serious. "Drink?"
"I'll take a Coke. Harker keeps them in the door of the fridge."
"He's out," the woman on the couch called from the den. I looked at her and she raised a familiar red-and-white striped can at me with a smile.
"And who the hell are you, lady? Besides the bitch who drank the last Coke, that is."
She laughed again, a bright, tinkling sound that felt somehow out of place in this room full of grim faces and serious demeanors. I liked her in spite of myself, and in spite of her drinking the last soda.
"I'm Jo," she said, and walked over to me, her hand out. We shook, and her grip was very strong. This was a woman who'd seen hard work and wasn't afraid of it. She was short and stocky, with broad shoulders and the no-bullshit stride of an athletic woman. Her hair was cropped short, and her brown eyes sparkled with amusement. "This is some fucked-up shit, right?"
"You can say that again," I muttered.
"Oh, please don't," Watson sighed, walking behind me to head to the living room and sit on the arm of the couch. "Let's move forward into the problem at hand. Countless rehashing of how 'fucked up' the situation is moves us no closer to a resolution."
"Well, can I at least get a handle on who everyone is before I dive right into hunting down a demon boss?" I asked, poking my head into the fridge. Empty. These fuckers had devoured the normally meager stores in Harker's refrigerator. I took a glass down from the cabinet and poured water from the tap over some ice cubes, then went into the living room with everyone else. I grabbed a chair and sat between Harker's two sofas facing the door.
I looked around the room. Luke was there, looking like ten miles of bad road. Watson sat on the couch next to him, all perfect posture, trimmed beard and piercing intellect burning behind his eyes. Gabby sat across from him, keeping one eye on me and the other on Luke. Apparently there was still a little distrust there. The black woman sat beside Gabby, looking around the gathered people and giving me the occasional small smile.
"So who the fuck are you people? Luke I know, and Gabby I've met, but this dude walks into police headquarters introducing himself as Dr. Watson's great-great-grandson, and I've got no idea who you are, lady. No offense."
"None taken," the unidentified woman said. "I'm Jo. For the purposes of this gathering, Jo Henry. It's actually Jo Marinton, but it's easier to remember why I'm involved in all this mess if I just go by Granddaddy's name."
"Your grandfather's name was Henry?" I asked, starting to put things together in my head but not sure I was going in the right direction.
"Yup," she confirmed. "John Henry. Steel-driving man, hero of the battle of the railroad man versus the steam engine, all that. That was Granddaddy. Great-great-granddaddy, technically, but I figure we can let that slide."
"I thought he died after that whole thing with the steam engine." I was pretty impressed that I managed to dredge that little bit of history up on demand.
"Nah. He had a heart attack, and he almost died, but he really was as strong as the legends say. Old man was way harder to kill than anyone should have been back then. He lived to be almost eighty, even after that whole mess with the steam engine when he was a young man."
"Impressive. So what do you do?" I asked.
"For the Council, or for a living?"
"I dunno, whichever. Does working for the Council not pay much?"
She laughed, a musical sound that made me smile. Out of all these weirdos, she seemed the most real, like somebody I could have a beer and talk politics with, or sports, or just hang out. The rest of them were either a little terrifying, like Luke; a little psychotic, like Gabby; or a little too British, like Jack. But Jo seemed fun. I was relaxing a little around her, which was nice. There hadn't been a lot of relaxation in my life the past few days.
"Working for the Council doesn't pay shit," Jo said. "Like, literally, it's a volunteer gig. Some of us come from money, or are at least old enough to have some stashed, like Luke here." The Lord
of the Vampires tipped an imaginary hat. "Or we kill things that are old and have a lot of money stashed, like Gabby."
"They don't need money after I burn them to ash." The sweet smile she gave me when she said that definitely pushed the needle on her well into “psycho” territory.
"Or they get royalty money off books written by and about their family." Jo pointed at Jack, who held up a glass of whiskey.
"I am also an attorney, and a rather good one at that," he offered up in a token protest. "But the fact that Old Doyle promised half the revenue from the Holmes character to my father doesn't hurt."
"Yeah, helped you afford that posh Oxford education, right old chap?" Gabby needled him in a terrible Cockney accent.
"Cambridge, thank you very much, and yes, it was very posh, and yes, Doyle's money definitely paid for it. Too bad I didn't go there straight out of high school, instead of spending a few years in the Army first." He reached down and knocked on his left leg, which gave off an odd metallic sound. I just looked at him, and he raised the hem of his pants to show a prosthetic leg. "Courtesy of an IED outside Kabul. I'm accustomed to it now, but it does cause certain challenges with airport security here in the States."
"So I'm one of the few members of the Council that actually has a day job. I'm a freelance editor, mostly nonfiction books. Self-help books, career guides, that kind of thing. It gives me the freedom I need to drop everything and come running whenever these guys call."
"And how many of these guys are there? Is this everybody? Or are there more Shadow People that I'll run into later?"
You know that feeling when a room gets uncomfortably quiet, like when the awkward guy from work tells a racist joke that he thinks will be funny and it's anything but funny? Yeah, that happened. Everybody kinda looked at each other, or their drinks, or the carpet, or basically anywhere but at me.
After giving the pause long enough to become truly uncomfortable, I clapped my hands. "Okay, that's fine. You can't tell me anything about the Council because I'm not on the Council. That's cool. I get operational security and partitioning information. I've done my fair share of interagency partnerships in my time. So I guess all I need to know this—are there any more Council members here, and do I need to know anything else before we get to work?"
"No," Luke said, standing up and walking over to me. "To both of those things. We are the sum total of the Council that is currently here and working on this problem. There are more Councilors, but they are handling other issues at the moment."
"Okay, so what's the plan?" I asked, finishing up my water and walking over to the liquor cabinet. Harker always kept at least one bottle of Macallan tucked away behind the swill of a tequila selection in the bar, so I fished around behind bottles until I found the good stuff. Only a third of the bottle remained, but it was enough. I poured myself a generous slug and left the bottle out where the others could see it. I returned to my seat and looked around the room.
"What? There's no plan?" I asked.
"We just got here, Detective," Jo protested.
"Call me Flynn, or I suppose Rebecca if you have to," I replied. "Alright, since we don't have a plan, I guess that's Step One—make a plan."
"We need to figure out how high this problem goes within Homeland Security," Watson said. "Right now we aren't sure if Smith was an isolated mole, or if there's a widespread conspiracy."
"Assume he wasn't working alone," I said.
"Why's that?" Gabby asked. "You need to make some justification for your boyfriend shooting a federal agent in the face?"
"Not that one," I said. "He deserved everything he got and then some. But no way was he acting alone. He had organization, and he managed to kill four people right under our noses and get away with it. That takes help, and a ton of resources."
"So do you think his accomplice is someone inside Homeland Security?" Jo asked.
"Worse," I said. "I'm pretty sure that someone inside Homeland Security is his boss."
5
"Tell me again how we're not going to jail for this? I did mention that little disagreement with Homeland Security, right?" I whispered to Drew the next night as we stepped into the deserted hallway of Lockton High School. It smelled of disinfectant layered over years of teen spirit, that miasma of body odor, gym shoes, and hormones that just rolls off teenagers like cheap perfume off a stripper's ass.
"Rocco is the strength and conditioning coach for the football team. He gave me the keys," Drew said in a normal voice.
"And that gets us out of jail how exactly?" I didn't bother hiding my "I'm not convinced" voice.
"Because Billy is a dispatcher for the county 911 service and he's on duty tonight. So nothing about this is going to get reported. So as long as Chief Clark doesn't happen to ride by the school, we're good. And Chief Clark hasn't been out of the house after ten o'clock without a good reason for at least two years."
I couldn't argue with the man. He knew his town, after all. "Fine, then what are we looking for?"
"I don't want to influence your impressions. Just tell me what you sense, or however you do that shit."
I opened my Sight and almost fell down as I was overwhelmed by the magic thrown around in that hallway. I quickly shifted back to the mundane spectrum and turned on Drew. "What the ever-loving fuck was that?"
He held up both hands and took a step back, then seemed to catch himself and stepped back up to meet me. "That's what I wanted to know. What did you see?"
"I saw so much shit I could barely sort it all out. You seriously need to warn a motherfucker before you pull something like that. It's like if I shoved smelling salts and cayenne pepper right up your super-sniffer, Lassie."
He bristled at the dog joke, but didn't push it. "Alright, sorry. I didn't know it would be that bad. But you'll agree there's something fucked up going on around here?"
"That's putting it mildly. There is serious demonic influence all over this place. It's like somebody has been...oh no."
"Oh no, what?"
"Somebody's been playing with demons here, haven't they?" I should have known. It's not like they call me Quincy Harker, driveway repairman. Anytime somebody wants me to take a good look at something, odds are there's a demon involved.
"We think so. I told you Rocco is an assistant football coach, right?" Drew started walking down the hall without bothering to turn on a light or his flashlight. Not being a werewolf, I called up a floating ball of light and set it over my shoulder so I didn't trip over anything left in the hall by a lazy janitor or asshole teenager.
"Yeah. What about it?"
"Well, the team is really good this year. They haven't lost a game."
"Good for them," I said. I didn't hear a problem yet.
"Yeah, it's great. School spirit is up, the town is behind the team, there are even talks about forming a booster club for the first time in years."
"So what's the problem?"
We turned down another hallway, this one marked "Gym." "The problem is, they shouldn't be."
"Shouldn't be what?"
"Good," Drew said. "They didn't lose very many players to graduation, so most of the players from last year are back. And they weren't very good last year. Rocco's been amazed at the gains they've made in the weight room—he says that you can't make gains like that even with steroids. He's talking about some kids packing on twenty or thirty pounds of muscle just since school started."
"That's only been a couple of months," I pointed out.
"That's what I'm saying," Drew agreed. "Rocco says that there's something funky with these kids, and they don't play like normal, either. They run their routes perfectly, make throws like Tom Brady. It's like all of a sudden they're the Green Bay Packers instead of the Lockton Lions."
"Are you sure all this is legit? I mean, no offense to Rocco, but..."
"I know, he doesn’t look like the brightest bulb in the box, but he knows football, and he knows jocks. So if he says this shit ain't natural, then it ain't natural. And no
w you're telling me there's a demon running around the school, too."
"Yeah, there's definitely something here. Let me take another look." I opened my Sight again, this time shielding myself a little instead of throwing my supernatural vision wide open. The athletic wing was even more covered in demonic essence than the first hallway we were in, so whatever was hanging around the school, it was more active down there. I looked past the glare of the demon taint but couldn't get any real hints on what type of hellspawn we were dealing with from the trail of badness it left in its wake. But there was a door on the far left side of the hallway that radiated evil like a homing beacon.
I motioned to Drew. "If you can do that half-way change thing where you get really big and scary, this might be a good time to do it." I pointed to the door. "There's something behind that door, and it's not very nice at all."
"I can do that." Drew started stripping down in the hallway. I gaped at him. "What? You think my clothes just magically disappear? I've ruined more jeans trying to transform while wearing clothes than I care to count. And I really like these shoes." I looked at his feet. They were nice hiking boots, so I kinda understood him. He got naked, then shifted into his half-wolf form.
If you've never seen a human turn into a werewolf, then good for you. It's not pretty and usually incredibly painful. The benefit to having an Alpha wolf with you is he's way too macho to scream as his bones realign themselves and his body miraculously packs on another fifty percent of its muscle mass.
I asked Luke once where the extra matter came from, because laws of nature and all that. His response—"it's magic, you idiot." I shut up at that point. No point debating physics with a guy who lives on human blood with no working digestive system. Especially coming from a wizard who makes fireballs with his mind and throws them at people.
Heaven Help Us (Quincy Harker, Demon Hunter Book 7) Page 3
