Heaven Help Us (Quincy Harker, Demon Hunter Book 7)

by John G. Hartness

  Yup, he was saying exactly what I thought he was saying. Mort, the demon bar proprietor, just volunteered to join the Super-Friends. Fuck me running.

  "I like this guy," Gabby said from behind me. "He's got my kind of style."

  Of course she likes him. He makes her look sane.

  7

  I turned to the door, and there stood the stereotypical high school football coach. About six feet tall and two-twenty, with a little bit of a gut, brown mullet going gray at the temples, and a hell of a farmer's tan. He was even wearing the tall white socks, short shorts, and polo shirt version of the uniform, complete with a whistle around his neck.

  "Who the fuck are you supposed to be, Varsity Football Barbie?" I asked, drawing in my will and starting to mutter an incantation under my breath.

  "My name is immaterial, mortal. All that should concern you is my displeasure, which is great. You have banished or destroyed two of my favorite minions, and that has made me wroth."

  I ignored his stupid archaic language, focusing on finishing the ritual of banishment I'd begun. I shouted "Amen!" and flung a ball of energy at him, only to watch in dismay as he held up a hand and caught my spell in midair. I didn't know that could happen. It's not that I couldn't do it, I literally had never heard of anyone even attempting it.

  The demon coach turned the glowing orb of light over and over in his hands, looking at it with a little smile playing across his lips. He looked up at me and clapped his hands together, dispersing the spell in a flash of light. A wave of magical backlash blew through me and dropped me on my ass, leaving me with a sore butt and ringing ears.

  I shook my head to clear the sparkles from my eyes and heard a tremendous roar from the far side of the room. I pulled myself upright and saw Drew, transformed again into his giant half-wolf form, slam into the coach from the side and send him clattering through a row of desks, ending up under the blackboard in a heap of fur, flesh, and twisted metal.

  My Glock was going to be no use against that thing, and the one vial of holy water I had left felt pretty inadequate as well. I took a quick inventory of what I had on me and found my arsenal very wanting in the demon-slaying equipment department. I had a couple of silver-edged daggers on my belt and a pouch full of wolfsbane, since I expected to tussle with werewolves. I even had a couple of flash-bangs loaded with powdered silver nitrate, great for immobilizing weres and completely fucking useless against a demon. All I had was my wits, my magic, and a big goddamn werewolf for a partner. Nothing about this screamed "easy" to me.

  Drew and the demon were going toe to toe, throwing haymakers and generally knocking the ever-loving shit out of each other. While the bad guy was occupied, at least for a few seconds, I looked around for anything in this classroom that might be useful. My eyes landed on an overturned desk, with one leg bent at an odd angle, and I got an idea.

  I ripped the leg off the desk and swung it through the air a couple of times, testing it for balance and heft. It was just a two-and-a-half-foot aluminum tube, so it wasn't going to be worth a shit as a club, but I only needed it to work for a few seconds. I focused my will on the desk leg, imagining it in my head to be the flaming sword of the archangel Uriel, who stood guard at the gates of the Garden of Eden after Adam and Eve were kicked out.

  "Apparatio," I whispered, letting my will flow into the aluminum in a slow trickle. As the spell took hold, the makeshift club began to shimmer in my hand, transforming into a flaming three-foot blade.

  I turned toward the scuffle and shouted, "Hey, dickhead!"

  The demon turned to me and jerked backward at the sight of the flaming sword. "Where did you get that?" it hissed.

  "I called in a favor with an archangel," I said, charging the demon with the flaming sword. "Uriel sends his regards!" I swung the flaming blade at the demon's head, and when it brought its hands up to block the strike, I popped the cap off the vial of holy water concealed in my left hand and splashed it all over the demon's face. It screamed as the sanctified liquid burned its eyes and clapped its palms over its face.

  "Begone, unclean thing!" I shouted. "In the name of the Father, I banish thee! In the name of the Son, I banish thee! In the name of the Spirit, I banish thee!" I threw as much will as I could muster quickly into the incantation and ripped open a small Gate behind the demon. I dropped the chair leg and the empty vial and shoved the demon into the Gate. It plunged through the rip in dimensions, and I pulled all my power back out of the rift, sealing it shut before anything on the ugly side of the universe noticed it and came through to our side.

  The illusion I cast on the desk leg vanished the second I let go of it, and it clattered to the floor, just another piece of scrap metal. I dropped to my knees, every ounce of energy gone, and pulled the teacher's wastebasket over to me. I puked into the trash can for several moments, and after the second round of revisiting breakfast, Drew padded out into the hall and came back human and dressed again.

  He sat on the teacher's desk while I vomited up my last month's worth of meals and looked down at me with curiosity written all over his face. Finally empty, I just lay flat on my back on the floor, the cool tile feeling good against my sweat-soaked head.

  "That seems to have sucked," he said after a minute or two, apparently deciding that I was done.

  I waited a few seconds to make sure he was right before I answered. "Yeah, that wasn't the best."

  "What the fuck happened? You had a sword, then it was a piece of scrap. Then we were fighting a demon, then the demon was gone. Did I miss something?"

  "I cast an illusion on the leg of the desk to make it look like something a demon would be afraid of—an archangel's sword. Then I opened a portal to Hell, shoved the demon through it, and closed the door on it."

  "That sounds like a really good thing."

  "It's about as good an outcome as I could have hoped for."

  "Then why the puking?"

  "There are two ways that I know of to open a Gate. One involves a protective circle, an involved ritual, a safe space, and about four hours of spellcasting. It's extremely difficult, but if you follow all the steps and take the time to create a circle within a circle to contain whatever you summon through the Gate, then you can perform the spell without any real danger to yourself or the rest of the world."

  "That's not what you did here."

  "The other," I went on, "involves basically taking all of my personal stores of magical energy and a decent chunk of my physical energy, and using those to rip a hole in the universe. It's exceedingly dangerous, borderline suicidal, and frankly completely fucking stupid. It leaves you drained of all magical energy, and you feel like you've got been run over by a truck for about a week. Not to mention the fact that you have a completely unprotected doorway between Earth and Hell for the time that the Gate is open."

  "And that's what you just did."

  "It seemed like a good idea at the time," I said, then promptly passed out.

  The next day about noon, after half a dozen Advil and three bottles of the red Gatorade, I stepped through the doors of Lockton High. Only this time, I went in through the front door like I belonged there. Because I did. Or at least the persona I wore belonged there. I followed the signs to the main office and stepped into the barely-controlled chaos that is a high school office half an hour before school starts in the morning.

  "Can I help you?" The harried woman behind the desk barely looked up from her computer as she held up a finger to the student she was talking to.

  "I'm Harold Quinn. I'm the emergency substitute for Mr...." I let my words trail off like I forgot the name of who I was supposed to be subbing for. I remembered, but I remembered him more as Ashkaranoth, the demon I sent back to Hell less than twelve hours before. A couple hours of research between bouts of the chills and more vomiting turned up his name, but not really anything else about him. He was a low-level lieutenant, traded back and forth between higher level demons depending on mood and who lost at cards that week or whatever gambling
games demons played. He didn't have the power or the brains to get himself to this plane, and he didn't have anywhere near the juice to corrupt the school to the degree that I felt while walking the halls.

  So now I was wearing fake glasses, khaki pants, and a polo shirt, working for seventy-five bucks a day as a substitute Social Studies teacher for a bunch of middle America teenagers who cared less about Social Studies than I did, if that was possible. Rocco got me in as the sub for the banished coach/teacher, proving once again that he was more than just an empty head on top of a pile of muscles, but I had to figure out exactly what constituted "Social Studies" on my own. Education in England in the beginning of the twentieth century was a little different than Ohio in the early twenty-first, but as far as I could tell, it was kinda like world history mixed with civics.

  I stepped into the room and the noise level didn't just increase, it blossomed.

  "We got a sub!" one kid yelled.

  "Fresh meat!" bellowed another.

  "Where'd they find this asshole, working the express lane at Walmart?" a girl in the front row muttered to her neighbor.

  I held up a hand and stood in the front of the room, waiting for silence. After a couple of minutes of shouts and muttered aspersions toward my manhood and my ability to control the horde, the class quieted down. I figured they would. I could afford to play the long game—I wasn't going to age, and they weren't going to leave unless I let them. And if it really got ugly, I'd just turn one or two of them into toads.

  "My name is Mr. Quinn. I will be your substitute teacher today, and for the rest of this week. Coach Karan had an emergency and had to leave town unexpectedly." And this plane of existence, I didn't add. "He didn't leave any lesson plans for me to follow, so we'll be making this up as we go along. As long as you treat me and your classmates with the respect we all deserve, we'll get along fine. And who knows, you might even learn something."

  "Fuck this noise, I'm going to the weight room."

  I was expecting this. In any group, there's always one person that has to push the envelope, has to determine exactly who's going to be the lead dog. I know, because it's usually me. This time it was a meathead sophomore with more muscle than brains. He had a Mohawk haircut that looked like something out of a bad 80s movie, a sprinkling of zits across his cheeks, and a sneer on his face that told me he was probably a big deal jock at this school. The black and red letter jacket helped with that, too. He started for the door, and I stepped in front of him.

  "Get out of my way," he snarled.

  He was almost tall enough to look me in the eye and outweighed me by a good thirty or forty pounds, all of it muscle and bad attitude. If I was a normal human, he would have worried me a little. I've never been accused of being normal.

  "Get back to your desk," I said. I looked down the couple of inches at him and kept my voice very even. No point in my getting angry, I was going to win this debate no matter how poorly it went.

  "I don't think so, pencil-neck. I can go lift any time I want." He pulled a crinkled piece of paper out of his pocket and shoved it into my chest.

  I took the piece of paper, looked at it, then folded it into neat quarters and handed it back to him. "This says you have permission to be in the weight room during lunch, before and after school, during study hall, and during any class where the teacher excuses you from class."

  "Yeah, that's right. So excuse me." He gave me the nasty grin of a shitty kid who's used to getting his way from all the adults in his life. I never liked those kids.

  "You're not excused. Go sit down."

  "I don't want to."

  "I don't give a shit."

  "You can't cuss at me. You're a teacher!" The outrage in his eyes made it clear that he didn't expect anyone to ever turn any tables on him and treat him like he treated other people.

  I reached down with one hand and grabbed his belt buckle. I held onto the lapels of his jacket with the other to steady him, and I picked him up until he was directly at my eye level. His eyes widened, and I heard a gasp or two from the other students in the class.

  "Listen here, shitball. I'm not a teacher. I'm a substitute. I didn't go to college for this crap. I don't want to make a career out of pretending to care whether or not you ever turn into anything more than a used car salesman at your daddy's Chevy dealership on the outskirts of town. I don't even want to be in this fucking town, so if you think you can intimidate me by threatening the seventy-five dollar a day gig I've got babysitting you fuckwits, you've got another think coming. Now you have two choices. You can go sit down and pretend not to be a total goddamn douchenozzle, or you can keep pushing me and find out how close to the principal's office I can get when I throw your ass down the hallway face-first."

  I set him back down on his feet and took my hands off of him. "What's it gonna be, pal? You want to sit down and pretend to learn something, or you want to dance?"

  He looked around like he was waiting for a buddy to step up and back his play, but everybody else wearing a letter jacket was very conspicuously staring at their textbooks. He gave me one last glaring squint that probably intimidated a lot of freshmen and middle school kids, then stomped back to his seat and dragged a book out of his backpack.

  I turned to the rest of the class. "Now, what chapter were you on?"

  8

  The parking lot of Harker's building was full of moving vans and contractor trucks when we got back there, me in my car and Mort a little wobbly on his body's Harley. I will admit that he looked pretty intimidating walking through the marble lobby with his engineer boots clumping across the polished floors. We got out of the elevator on the top floor, and I stopped dead in my tracks. The once-quiet top floor of Harker’s building was bustling with activity, as his full-floor apartment was turned into a construction site. Hammering and the sounds of machinery echoed through the halls. Workmen hurried every which way, weaving around each other as they carried toolboxes and paint cans through doorways.

  Mort, Gabby, and I slipped into the main living room and closed the door behind us, cutting the noise down to an almost bearable level.

  "What the hell is going on out there?" I asked.

  "Renovations," Watson replied from one of the sofas. "Once Luke realized exactly how many of us were likely to be working out of this space for the foreseeable future, he took a few steps to guarantee a little more space and privacy for all of us."

  "In other words, he’s building out some extra bedrooms so we don’t all have to cuddle in Harker’s bed or bunk with him in a light-tight safe room," Jo said from the table. She sat behind her laptop, hair pulled back in a ponytail. "What's with the demon?" she added.

  At the word "demon" the room exploded into activity. Watson rolled off the couch and sprang to his feet, drawing a pistol from somewhere as he stood. The door to the bedroom flew open, and Luke dashed into the room, only to stop short when he saw it was Mort standing in the living room.

  "Oh," the vampire said. "Hello, Mortivoid."

  "Hello, Vlad," Mort replied with a nod of his head. "Would you please tell your minion to lower his weapon? I just got this suit, and I don't want to have to go search for another one."

  Luke turned to Watson and motioned for him to put the gun away. Watson gave Mort a skeptical eyeball but tucked the gun into the back of his pants and sat down on the arm of the couch. "Mort, I must offer condolences on Christy's death. She was a fine woman and a very capable bartender. Her Bloody Mary was a true work of art. She shall be missed."

  "Thank you, Vlad. I appreciate the sentiment."

  I looked from Mort to Luke and back again. I didn't know if Luke knew that Christy was Mort's half-human daughter, and I sure as hell wasn't going to bring it up. I remembered the look on Mort's face when he rolled up on Orobas during the fracas at Luke’s place, and it scared me. I didn't need to see that again anytime soon. I had a bad feeling I'd be seeing it in my dreams regardless.

  "Now what are you doing here, Mortivoid? We have an arrang
ement. I don't eat your customers, and you don't stick your nose in my business."

  "Your business became my business when Orobas killed my daughter. I want his head for a soup tureen. I want to send his soul back to Hell a torn and shredded thing, a scrap of consciousness so wisp-thin that demons will use him for toilet paper. I want to—"

  "We get it. You're pissed. Moving right along." Gabby shouldered her way past Mort and I en route to the fridge. She opened the door and stuck her head inside. "Did nobody go grocery shopping? We're out of beer."

  "Can we not freeload on all of Harker's food and drinks and instead figure out how we're going to clear his name and get him back to Charlotte?"

  "Missing your half-vamp booty call, Detective?" Gabby asked as she walked past me to the liquor cabinet with a glass of soda water over ice. I watched as she poured the last of Harker's vodka into her drink and sat down on the sofa next to Watson.

  "One, he's not half-vampire," I said as I walked over to where Gabby sat. I leaned over and plucked the vodka and soda from her hand. "Two, he's my fiancée, not my booty call. And three, if you think I'm going to sit here and let you insult Harker while you drink his booze in his living room and I won't slap the taste out of your mouth, you've got another think coming." I took a step back and handed the drink to Mort. "Hold this."

  Gabby stood up and got in my face. "You wanna go, Miss Cop? We can go. I don't know what your problem is with me, but we can solve it right now if you want to."

  "My problem with you is that I think you're a goddamn psychopath, and I can't handle any more crazy in my life right now. So if you're determined to keep being part of the problem, then would you please get the fuck out of my city before I shoot you right between the fucking eyes? Or if you want to be part of the solution, then please stop being such a pain in my ass!"

  Gabby stared up at me for a long moment, her dark eyes boring into mine. "I like you, cop. You got stones. But you ever touch my drink again, we're going to have problems." She reached around me and reclaimed her drink from Mort. "And I'm a sociopath, not a psychopath," she said, sitting back down on the sofa.