Balomik stood over me, munching on the dead teacher's heart like he was eating an apple. I shook my head to clear the stars from my vision and tried to rise, only to find a cloven hoof planted square in the center of my chest.
"Stay," the demon said. "Let me be very clear, Quincy Harker. I know you planned to double-cross me and send me back to the Pits. But I left something out of my little origin story. When I first got to Lockton, I got a message. It showed up on my doorstep one day. Just a plain white envelope with a typed letter inside. The letter said, ‘No one touches the Reaper.’ I don’t know who sent it, but they had enough juice to let me out of Hell and keep tabs on me through my best magical disguises.
“So you get to live, Quincy Harker. But so do I. And I don't just get to live in Hell, I get to live right here on Earth. You can chase me, and you can maybe even catch me. But you can't chase me and hunt down your old pal Orobas, who I hear has something big planned in Atlanta in a couple weeks. So you make the call, Reaper. Let a low-level demon loose on Middle America, or let Orobas do whatever he wants in the biggest city in the Southeast. Take your time. Think it over."
I didn't miss the clue. Orobas was in Atlanta, or he would be soon. I looked up at the demon, weighing my options. I had time. He was going to terrorize Middle America for a while, but I'd eventually chase him down. After all, I'm Quincy Harker, it's what I do.
I nodded at him. "You've got a deal, dickhead. You get away, today. But I'll find you again. And when that happens, it'll be your heart served for dinner." I didn't know who in the world would eat a demon's heart, but it was still a good line.
Balomik smiled down at me. "I look forward to our next meeting, Quincy Harker." Then he pulled his cloven foot off my chest and snapped a kick upward into my chin, slamming my head into the remains of the wooden cabinet I was tangled in. My vision went all starry, and the last thing I heard before I passed out was the clip-clop of hooves on the front sidewalk and the taunting laugh of a very self-satisfied demon.
16
So there I was, in the middle of a country bar, staring down an Agent of Chaos, whatever that really was, with a gun pointed at his head to keep him from de-limbing my newfound partner in the magical Super Friends.
Some days I really hate my life.
Terry, the neatly groomed aforementioned Agent of Chaos, stared at me for an interminable moment, then broke out into a laugh. I had a lot of ideas in my head about the way I was going to die, most of them involving alternately a junkie in a liquor store holdup or a nursing home out of my mind with dementia, but none of them ever included a magical Asian man in an expensive suit laughing in my face as he killed me.
"You are one hilarious human," Terry said.
"I'm glad I amuse you," I said, working to keep my gun steady. Holding a gun on somebody looks really easy in the movies, but after the first minute, keeping your arms extended with a couple of pounds of plastic, metal, and ammunition in your hands is exhausting.
The purple glow around his hands winked out and Terry glanced over his shoulder at Watson. "You should thank your friend, Dr. Watson. She just saved your life."
"So you're not going to kill Watson," I said. "That's good. I don't know how to kill Chaos Agents, or whatever you call yourself, but if you'd made meat out of my lawyer, I would have been honor-bound to try."
"Well, good," Terry replied. "That saves all of us disappointment and annoyance. You would have been disappointed because I can't be killed, and I would have been annoyed because getting blood out of hardwoods is annoying."
I looked over at the splattered brains of the demon I'd shot in the face earlier. "Sorry about that, then."
"Well, we all have our off days, Detective. Now would you all please leave so I can clean my club before we have to open?"
"No," Mort said. "I'm not leaving without Oro's location. I'm sorry, Terry, but he has to pay for what he did to me."
"And I'm sorry, Mort, but Orobas is too useful to me. He sows chaos in his wake like a little demonic Johnny Appleseed, and that's very valuable to me. Unless..." Terry's face took on a thoughtful expression. "No, you wouldn't do that. Not even for revenge."
"Do what?" Mort asked. "I'm willing to do almost anything."
"But only almost," Terry said.
"Well, even demons have our limits. What did you have in mind?" Mort asked.
"Take Orobas's place."
"What?"
"Become my new agent. Work for Chaos. Sow discord, foment revolution, spread disinformation, convince terrible candidates to run for high elected office, that kind of thing." Terry walked back over to his table and took a sip from his drink. The same one Watson had been drinking from a few minutes before. I guess if you can't die to a bullet in the brain, germs aren't exactly a concern either. He smiled at Mort. "Come on, Mortivoid. It'll be fun. It'll at least be interesting."
"What would the Morningstar have to say about that?" Mort asked. "I'm intrigued, but Lucifer still scares the shit out of me."
"As well he should," Terry said. "But we have an arrangement. As long as you don't start rescuing kittens from trees, Lucifer is fine with his people working for me. After all, you lot are the original unruly children, aren't you?"
Mort fell silent for a moment, seeming to consider the idea before finally nodding. "You're not wrong, Terry. We did sort of invent the rebellious teenager stereotype. Fine, give me Oro's location, and as soon as I have things sorted with that bastard to my satisfaction, I'll add sower of chaos to my list of duties and accomplishments."
Terry stepped closer to Mort and held his hand out, pressing it to his borrowed forehead. "Mortivoid, demon of the Pit, do you so solemnly swear to sow discord where there is none, bring war to the peaceful, peace to the contentious, and become the true random element in every situation?"
"Fuck you, I do what I want," Mort replied, and instead of a refusal, that seemed to be the acceptance of the pledge to chaos because the demon's body was bathed in that same purple light, only this time it strobed with random intensity and time, pulsing crazily as it washed over Mort, eventually spilling out his eyes, nose, and ears like chaos was simply pouring out of him.
"Your term of employment begins once you have extracted your revenge from Orobas. Until then, you are still wholly Lucifer's man. Once you come into my employ, however, the Dawnbringer shall have to share dominion over your wretched soul," Terry said. The purple lightshow went dark, and I blinked to get the afterimage out of my vision. I felt like I'd been to a Prince concert, without the amazing guitar solos.
Mort looked at his new boss and said, "Okay, now that's done. Where's the bastard that killed my daughter?"
"Oh, that," Terry said. "Oro is at the airport. He's flying out of here in an hour. Said something about Charlotte losing its luster." Mort didn't say a word, just turned and hauled ass out of the bar. Seconds later, I heard his motorcycle roar to life.
I sighed. "Great, now we get to chase a demon and probably a bunch of hellspawn Homeland Security agents through airport security. I'm totally going to end up on a no-fly list after this."
On the way to the door, I called Captain Herr to fill him in on what was up. "Captain, I've got a lead on—"
He cut me off. "Bad news, Flynn."
"What?"
"You need to come in to the station."
"Captain, I've got a hot lead on the asshole that’s behind—"
"Did I stutter, Detective?" He cut me off again.
"No sir, but...sir, what's going on?"
"I will discuss this with you back at the station, where you are coming right now. I will expect you to wrap up that arrest and be back here within the hour. Is that understood, Detective?" I got it. There was someone there with him, and if I showed my face at the station, I was screwed. He was probably under orders from someone to take my badge and gun. But I had an hour, maybe two if he could stall, before they put out an APB for me and considered me a fugitive.
"Yes, sir. I understand. I'm all the way down
in Pineville near the mall, and you know what 485 is like in the afternoon, so it might be more like an hour and a half or two hours before I get there."
"Fine, two hours," he said. "But if you aren't here by shift change, Detective, it'll be your ass." He hung up, and I walked faster.
"What was that all about?" Jo asked.
"Somebody's pressuring my captain to get me off the case, or arrest me, or suspend me, or something. I have two hours before I'm out of any kind of official juice. Good thing the airport's just a couple minutes from here because I'm now on a serious clock."
I pulled into the airport and glanced over at Jo, who was staring at her cell. "Any idea where we're going?"
"Just got a text from Sparkles. Looks like Buprof used his Homeland credentials to request special clearance for a flight from Charlotte to Atlanta on a private jet. The hangar is over by the aviation museum."
"I got it," I said, turning right and heading that way. "How are we going to know when we find the right place?"
"I think the sight of burning automobiles may be a sign that demons are trying to cover their tracks," Watson said from the back seat.
I looked around and saw pillars of smoke off to the left. "Nobody likes a smartass, Watson," I said, turning the car in the direction of the smoke. We pulled up in front of Mona Lisa Air, a small charter jet company. A small Lear Jet was pulling out of the hangar as I parked the car and jumped out.
"Watson, go to the office and tell the tower there's a terrorist on that plane and he's going to fly it into the White House!" I sprinted in the direction of the plane, but the whine of a bullet and the flat crack of a revolver sent me diving behind the nearest car. Watson peeled out toward the tower in my car, and I heard a couple of bullets smack into the pavement behind him as he went.
"Hello, Detective," Buprof's voice rang out across the tarmac. "You should have run with your boyfriend. Now you're going to die, just like he will when I catch up to him."
"I'm not dead yet, you hellspawn son of a bitch!" I yelled back at him. I looked over at my car, where Gabby and Jo were hiding behind the engine block. Jo's hammer wasn't going to do much good at a distance, but I had high hopes for Gabby's marksmanship. She crawled on the ground along the side of the car to the back, then took up a position by the back wheel on her belly, giving her a decent vantage point to light up Buprof. All I had to do was get him to poke his head up.
So I stood up, hoping my battered Kevlar vest still had plenty of stopping power, and that Buprof wasn't going to try to manage a headshot from fifty yards. He popped up from behind a toolbox in the hangar, and sure enough, the bastard squeezed off three rounds, all of them spang-ing off the car in front of me. He was trying for body shots, good. I could probably live through one of those.
Gabby opened up on Buprof the second he was visible, but all her shots either went wide or ricocheted off the toolbox. So much for counting on the sniper skills of a psychopath. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Jo running in a crouch from her car toward the hangar, weaving from car to fuel truck to a random prop plane to a black SUV near the hangar doors.
I stuck my head out from the front bumper and let loose a few more random shots at the last place I saw Buprof. There was no return fire, just a high-pitched whine of a jet engine spinning up. Fuck.
"The plane just started up!" I yelled to Gabby.
"What do you want me to do about that?" she asked.
"I don't know, shoot something!" I poked my head back up above the hood, only to be met with a hail of bullets. I dove for cover, then peeked around a tire to see if I could spot where he was shooting from.
"He's at your ten o'clock," Gabby said from my shoulder. "And moving left. He's trying to get enough of an angle on us to shoot around the car."
"We should make sure that doesn't happen," I said. "Any ideas?"
"I thought you said I was a psycho."
"I did. Still think you're nuts. But right now, you're the psycho that's been in more shootouts than me."
"Good point. Okay, when I give the signal, run like hell away from the car."
"Which direction?" I asked.
"It won't matter." Gabby smiled at me, and I felt strangely like I just had a bonding moment with Charles Manson. She laid down on the asphalt and slid under the car for a few seconds, then scooted back out, trailing a small plastic battery holder with two wires running from it. She pulled a battery out of her pocket and pressed one end of it into the holder, making very sure not to let the other end touch the other contact and complete the circuit.
"Gabby, are you going to blow up this car?" I asked.
"I sure hope so," she said. "Now shut up and let me listen." She didn't have to listen for long. I popped up into Buprof's view, then dropped straight down again. He fired half a dozen shots at where my head was, but I was long gone.
"Run!" Gabby said, then slammed the battery home. A loud beep came from under the car, and we sprinted away from the vehicle, trying to use the car to shield us from Buprof's view. That part didn't work for shit because he opened up on us before I took my second step.
Gabby's bomb, however, worked just fine. We each covered about twenty yards before a loud WHOMP came from under the car, and it flew several feet into the air before crashing to the ground engulfed in flames. The burning wreckage gave us a few seconds of distraction to find cover, and I even had a couple seconds to look for Buprof and put a few ounces of lead in his general direction. Nothing hit the asshole, of course, but I reminded him that I was there.
Until the plane pulled out of the hangar and made all of us completely irrelevant. The sleek little private jet rolled onto the tarmac, and priorities shifted in a big way. The door to the plane was still open, and I caught glimpses of motion inside, then Mort's body came flying out to crash onto the asphalt. He rolled over two or three times, then came to his knees, beating at the pavement with his fists.
"OROBAS!" Mort screamed, and the pain and fury in his voice was terrible to behold.
"Sorry to shoot and run, Flynn, but dear old dad and I have somewhere much more interesting to be," Buprof shouted. He darted out from behind the sedan he was hiding behind and hauled ass toward the accelerating aircraft. He made it to within about ten yards of the plane before something whirled out at him from his right, hit him around the knees, and he went down like a sack of really ugly potatoes.
Jo ran to the downed Deputy Director's side, and brass knuckles flashed in the sun as she knocked him unconscious. Gabby and I ran over to her, our pistols trained on the fallen Cambion. There was no point; he was out cold. I holstered my weapon and looked over at Jo, who had retrieved her hammer and stood over Buprof with a little smile on her face.
"Fond memories?" I asked.
Jo looked up at me and a shadow flickered over her face. "Not really. Okay, not at all. I hate demons, and all demonspawn. It's a long story." I decided it was definitely one I wanted to hear, but this wasn't the time.
We turned and watched as the plane taxied onto the runway and took off, with Orobas and our best lead to the investigation locked safely aboard. I heard a car pull up behind us and turned to see Watson stepping out of my car.
"I couldn't stop the plane, I'm sorry." He sounded about as beaten down as I felt.
"You tried. We couldn't stop him, either. But we got a consolation prize." I pointed down at the unconscious demonspawn. "Maybe he can tell us where the plane was going."
"Oh, I can tell you that," Watson said. "I couldn't stop it from taking off, but I got the flight manifest and the owner of record from the airport. The plane belongs to one Reginald Barton, a tech billionaire and art speculator from Atlanta. It's headed home."
"So Orobas is headed to Atlanta?" I asked.
"It certainly appears so," Watson concurred.
"Well done, old chap!" I said in my worst British accent. He actually winced.
"Please don't ever call me that again," Watson said, but there was a little smile on his face that belied his grumpy
tone.
"So we're going to Atlanta to stop Orobas once and for all?" Gabby said. "Good deal. I love Atlanta. Great food, good shopping, plenty of nasty things to shoot. It's my kind of town."
I looked at her. "Have you ever considered therapy? Like, lots of it?"
"Nah. I'm crazy, but it's a really fun crazy. Kinda like Harley Quinn, without the abusive relationship. So when do we leave? I'm ready to head to the ATL and kick some demon ass!"
A groggy Buprof chuckled from the ground at our feet. "Foolish bitch, Daddy dearest will eat your soul for breakfast, then he will take dominion over this worthless plane of existence!"
"Oops, sorry about that," Jo said, standing above Buprof at his ribcage.
"Sorry about what, you worthless piece of human waste."
"This," Jo said, then dropped her hammer squarely on the half-demon's crotch. He doubled over and rolled around on the pavement in agony, spewing out a steady stream of profanity as Watson zip-tied his wrists together and dumped him into the trunk of my car.
"Now what?” Jo asked. “It's a good four hours to Atlanta, and we can't leave until it gets dark. So what do we do until then?"
"We take Director Buprof back to the condos and let Mort and Luke take turns ripping off limps. Sound like a plan?" I looked at the others.
"At least a decent way to waste a couple hours," Gabby said, then hopped into the back seat.
We gathered up Mort and drove off into the welcome sunset, with a half-demon in the trunk and a loose idea of a destination in mind. This was going to be the strangest road trip in history.
Epilogue
"Harker, you sure know how to make a goddamn mess." The voice was low, gravelly, and familiar. Way too familiar. And nothing like what I imagined either Rebecca Romijn or Heidi Klum sounded like, so I guess my very pleasant dream of pillow fights and back rubs was over.
Heaven Help Us (Quincy Harker, Demon Hunter Book 7) Page 11
