“She’s here to work. She gets asked out at least once a day while she’s here. I’m not going to bother her.”
“She ever say yes to any of those guys?” I asked.
Carl shrugged. “Don’t think so.”
“Cause she’s waiting for you to ask!” I said, doing my best shouting whisper.
A red-headed guy with a matching beard and thick-framed glasses looked over at me. I stared back, making deep and meaningful eye contact until he looked away, digging something out of his hemp messenger bag.
“I’m not having this conversation,” Carl said.
“Coward.”
“Look who’s talking.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked.
“You mean to tell me you haven’t noticed Jules looking at you every time you come in here. She made your coffee and practically knocked me over on her way over here, which she discounted for you by the way.”
“I thought you did,” I said.
“I was going to, but she made it and delivered it. She does every time you come in.”
I looked back at the blue-haired girl behind the bar. She was talking to Skinny Jeans. He was one of the regulars who was always wearing skinny jeans rolled up at the ankles, denim jackets and scarves. She laughed, snorting while she did it.
“She can’t be more than twenty-five, twenty-seven tops,” I said.
“She’s twenty-nine. She has a masters degree and is writing her fourth novel.” Carl said.
“Twenty-nine?” I asked. “That girl?” I pointed as I asked.
Carl slapped my hand. Coffee slopped out of the mug in my other hand and spilled onto my lap. The steaming liquid punched through my jeans and burned my frozen thighs.
“Son of a bitch!” I said, slapping at my legs like that would do anything for the burns.
“Serves you right.” He said. “Don’t embarrass the poor girl.”
“I’m not.”
“If you want me to ask out Rebecca, you need to do the same thing. Ask out Jules.”
“She’s twenty-nine.”
“And?”
I leaned in closer to him. “She’s a year away from turning thirty. I turned thirty about three hundred years ago. That’s way outside the scope of cradle robbing.”
My age is a tricky thing. I was born in 1705, when people used to tack on things like ‘in the year of our Lord’ when they told you the date. That’s if they even knew what year it was. Most people couldn’t read, which didn’t make them stupid, but it sure as hell didn’t help either. I spent the first hundred and fifty years of my life as a Knight in the Venatori. Anyone calling bullshit would be justified. I didn’t do it alone. I spent those years bonded to an Angel, a Seraphim to be exact. The bond gave me power, and it reduced the flow of time on my body to a leaky faucet.
After that, I spent a hundred and fifty some odd years in Purgatory. I got thrown in there by the Venatori after I sold my soul to a Demon Lord. Purgatory is the opposite of all reality. It’s a void where time itself doesn’t even really exist. I escaped about twenty years ago. Don’t ask me how. I don’t have a clue. Since then, I’d aged normally as far as I could tell. Which meant that depending on how much effort I put into my personal appearance I could pass for late thirties to early fifties.
“I mean, I would say you probably don’t want to lead off with that,” Carl said.
“You think!”
He smiled. “I’m just saying. It’s been over a century since Elena died. You can’t keep punishing yourself for that.”
The sound that came out of me at the mention of Elena’s name was guttural. It was an animalistic snarl. Carl flinched, pulling away like I was a rabid dog. Instinctual fear flashed across his face, the briefest moment of it, but it was enough for me to realize that I’d moved my hand, the tiniest bit, towards my gun. I don’t know if Carl had seen it, I doubt that he did, but I knew I’d done it. He’d brought up Elena, and some part of me had lashed out. That part was willing to gun down Carl right then and there. It scared me enough to quench the fiery anger.
I forced myself to relax my body; I felt the tension ease as individual muscles started to relax. I grabbed the coffee and gulped. Carl reacted and seemed to calm down. I set the mug down and looked him in the eyes. I was done thinking about Elena for the day. Hell, I was done thinking about her for the rest of my miserable life if I could manage it.
“I appreciate that you care,” I said. “But I can’t just let it go. It’s not as simple as that.”
Carl shrugged. “It could be.”
“You have a whole city of sinners all around you. Quit wasting your time on the one that can’t be saved.”
“You know I don’t believe that’s true.”
I couldn’t keep track of how many times Carl and I had had this conversation within the last year. He was dead set on finding a way to save me and nothing I said or did could convince him that it was a lost cause. I’d sold my soul to a Demon. You don’t just say a couple thousand hail Mary’s for that.
Carl sensed the argument coming and changed the subject.
“I’m off in thirty minutes. Let’s go to the range after. I need the practice, and you always feel better when you get to shoot stuff.”
He wasn’t wrong. Though, I preferred to shoot living things. A paper target would do in a pinch though.
“Fine. You do need the practice.”
Carl had been given a grand entrance into the world of Hell. He’d been with me when I’d killed an Ogre. That’s a hell of a thing to see. To his credit, it hadn’t broken him. It also hadn’t broken his faith, which I still couldn’t figure out. It had shaken his beliefs, but now he was determined to save souls by day and kill Hellions by night. I’d been teaching him the basics of a hundred different things. Shooting and general gunplay was a must. Hellions are almost always stronger and faster than humans. That means you need something to turn the odds in your favor.
He wasn’t anywhere near where he’d need to be to be of any real use. Hell, I wouldn’t even be comfortable being near him if he was carrying, open or concealed. He’d accidentally shot me in the back three months prior when we’d been running drills in the desert. Thankfully, I’d had my vest on. Still hurt like a bitch.
There was only one way to change that though, and that was trigger time and practice. I already had him dry frying every day. I preferred to go out into the desert where we could set up steel and run through some more practical drills. It was twenty degrees and snowing out. I wasn’t about to freeze my balls off in the snow. The range would do just fine. Plus, you don’t talk at the gun range, not conversationally anyway. It’s probably my favorite thing about the place, other than getting to shoot stuff.
I knocked back the rest of the coffee without burning my mouth and closed my eyes. I didn’t feel like walking back to the apartment or my car in the snow. I’d wait for Carl, and he could take us back in his truck. It had a heater, and that was more than enough reason to wait patiently.
“Did you want another one?”
I opened my eyes. Blue hair and spider webs filled my vision. I looked at the empty mug next to me and then back at her. Now that Carl had said something, I was feeling self-conscious. The poor girl had no idea who or what I really was. If she did, she’d run the other way. All she knew was that Carl was a damned saint, and I was his friend. Ordinary people would take that to mean that I can’t be that bad. Shit out of luck on that one, both of us.
“Why not,” I said.
“I’ll get it for you.”
“Thanks. Ah, Jules right?” I asked.
She nodded. “Yea. Jules, that’s me. You’re Deckland right? Carl always talks about you.”
“I wouldn’t believe him. Whatever he says about me, it’s all lies.”
“He actually said you’re kind of a jerk.”
I snorted and sat back. Carl had apparently been trying to lay some groundwork.
Meddling bastard.
7
&
nbsp; I breathed in the smell of burned powder. Shots rang out all around me, each one concussing in my chest. The electronic earplugs I wore blocked out most of the noise, but shooting a gun in an enclosed space isn’t just noise, it’s a force. The guy next to me was cranking off rounds from a Winchester 45-70 lever action rifle that I was jealous as hell of. The thing looked damn near vintage as they come. All I’d need is a horse and a cowboy hat, and I could hit the ole dusty trail with that bad boy.
A barrage of noise came from the lane on the far end of the room. Some jackass had come in and decided to rent anything with the word fully-automatic in the description. He had his hands on a Glock 18. With a cyclic rate of over a thousand rounds per minute, he ripped through the thirty-three round mag in about a second and a half. He let out a whoop of excitement afterward. I couldn’t understand why. As I glanced over, I could see pieces of ceiling tile raining down. I don’t think he’d hit the target once.
“That’s my shit right there!” He screamed. “I need to do that again!”
“Jackass,” I muttered.
“What?” Carl asked, standing behind me.
“Nothing.”
I turned to the digital screen beside me and plugged in the program I wanted to run. The paper target raced out to twenty-five yards. It flipped around and stayed there, the back of the paper facing me. The indoor range was fancier than I would have generally cared for. Everything was electronic, well lit, ventilated, and under constant safety supervision. I silently wished for the hundredth time that the weather had been nice enough to shoot outside. I wasn’t going to freeze to death. Plus, shooting in the cold in damn miserable.
I held my Sig P320 in my hands, muzzle angled down at the floor. 320s are known for their level of hassle-free customization, and I’d Frankenstein’d the polymer gun half to death. I’d taken the grip and the seventeen round mag from the larger full sized 9mm version and attached them to the compact slide and swapped out a p250 threaded barrel. They said they weren’t the same, but who are we kidding. From there I’d chopped off the excess frame and what was left was a shorter weapon, somewhere between a compact and a full-size handgun with seventeen plus one at any given time.
I’d almost swapped out to .40 S&W when I’d been playing around with the thing, but I’m not made of money these days. 9mm would have to do. I had a shotgun for everything else.
The target moved, and my heart rate spiked. My eyes tracked it as the paper raced forward five yards. It spun three times and stopped with the back of the paper facing me. I held perfectly still, hands tense, finger resting just outside the trigger guard.
Five seconds later the target moved again, this time it raced forward and stopped three yards away from me. It spun twice, and the black silhouette appeared. My hands punched out in front of me, the sights coming up to eye level, my finger moving onto the trigger. I unloaded. I fired eight shots in quick succession. Green rimmed holes appeared in the target as the rounds punched through the paper.
The target flipped around, and I lowered the weapon. It raced back out to fifteen yards, and the silhouette appeared again. I fired nine more rounds, and the slide locked back. I dumped it, flinging it to the side with a flick of the wrist, and slid another mag free from my belt. I slapped it in and dropped the slide, ready for the target to make its next move.
The program was a friend or foe drill meant to work on speed and trigger control, as well as judgment under simulated pressure. If the back of the target showed up, you didn’t shoot. If you saw the front of the paper, you fired. Most people would fire three times, two to the chest and one to the head. If you are training to defend yourself against another person, that’s usually plenty. I have a habit of shooting things that shrug off gunshot wounds. That means I want to put as many rounds on target as quickly as possible every single time it showed up.
The range worker nodded appreciatively as he watched me work. I’m pretty sure they all thought I was some sort of former black ops trigger puller. I knew my way around just about every kind of gun put in front of me. I had speed, accuracy, and I didn’t mess around. The range wasn’t a place to be taken lightly. I don’t care if you’re on a practice range or in a real firefight, any time you have people with guns, it has potential to be life and death. You don’t hoot and holler. You put rounds on target, and you go home safe.
I emptied the second mag before the drill ended, and the paper came back to the stall. It was littered with holes. There was a small section of red bullseye hanging to life by a few shreds of paper. I laid the Sig on the table. I took down my target and put up a fresh one for Carl. I stepped back and let him walk up to the table.
He started loading the magazines, pushing rounds in one at a time with his thumb. I had a speed loader, but I refused to let him use it. I’d loaded more rounds into magazines than there are people on Earth, well maybe not quite that many. I’d done it a lot though. Carl hadn’t. He needed to get used to it. He needed some of the nerves in his thumbs to dull and die so that he could push round after round into a magazine without stopping.
I watched as he loaded both mags. He slid one into the Sig and tapped the bottom of it. It wasn’t the way I’d have done it, but he was his own man. He had to learn what worked best for him. All I could do was show him what worked for me and let him figure it out.
Carl grabbed the slide with his left hand and dropped it, chambering a round. With that, he started the program. The target raced out to the end of the range and put its back to us. Carl took the gun in both hands. I checked his grip, happy to see that he hadn’t wrapped his left thumb over his right hand. It was getting to the point where I was considering letting him do it and having the slide rip half the skin off his thumb. I hadn’t done it, mostly cause I hadn’t wanted to clean blood and skin off the gun.
The target jumped, racing forward fifteen yards and turning around. The silhouette faced us, and Carl moved. He raised the gun, took a moment to sight in and fired twice with a second gap between. I looked down range. Two holes appeared in the left side of the paper. Only one of them was in the target zone. The other was at the top left edge of the paper. He’d at least hit it. That was more than he’d been able to do for a long time firing that quickly. It was still too slow, slow and sloppy. He wouldn’t be taking down Hellions anytime soon, not if I had anything to say about it.
The paper twisted and raced forward to five yards, spun twice and ended with its back to us. I saw Carl twitch, moving the gun up a fraction of an inch.
It wasn’t for him. I could get him to the point where he wouldn’t be a threat to himself or anyone around him. He wouldn’t be accidentally lethal, but from what I could see, Carl just didn’t have it in him. There was an anxious nature to him, not only that, but he hesitated. That hesitation may have only been a second here or there, but that was an eternity when it came to a firefight.
You can’t hold back. You have to lash out and attack without hesitation. Carl didn’t have that in him.
I didn’t say any of that though. It was good that he wanted to learn, and if nothing else, he wouldn’t be getting mugged anytime soon. Not only could he shoot, but I’d been teaching him the basics of disarming opponents and fighting up close with a knife. It didn’t do you good against Ogres, but not every threat to your life will be otherworldly. Most times, it’s just an asshole with a gun or a knife.
The slide locked back on the gun. Carl didn’t notice. He stood there for a second, focused entirely on the target. It spun, and he tried to fire. Nothing but a click. He jumped to reload. It wasn’t graceful. He pressed the mag release, letting it fall straight down on the table. From there he picked up the spare mag, stopped to make sure it was facing the right way and slammed it in. He patted it once, grabbed the slide, and dropped it. Definitely not graceful. It was slow and filled with unnecessary movement, wasting time and energy.
He didn’t move by muscle memory yet. He didn’t dump the mag and pull a new one at the same time. He didn’t use his thumb to hi
t the slide release. All of it added up to precious moments lost in the process. He needed to spend hours practicing just that.
Carl finished the drill, and the target came floating back. He hadn’t emptied the second mag. By my count, he still had four rounds left. When the paper stopped in front of the station, I looked at the damage. To his credit, almost every single round had it the paper. There was also a hole dead center on the silhouette’s forehead. I had a feeling that had been a lucky shot more than anything else because the rest of the target was littered with rounds that weren’t in any real grouping.
“Well,” I said. “What do you think?”
He was silent for a moment. The guy two lanes down fired a Dirty Harry style .44 magnum. Carl blinked, flinching at the sound. I didn’t say anything, but I knew he knew what I was thinking.
“I’m getting better.” He said.
I nodded. He wasn’t wrong. It just wasn’t enough.
“I think I’m still jerking the trigger.”
I looked at the target. Still not wrong. “You’re anticipating it. You are trying to compensate for the recoil before there is any. You can’t fight it. You have to pull gentle and straight, let it surprise you. You have to ride it, let it roll through you and move with it.”
“Easy for you to say.”
“Carl, how long have we been coming here?” I asked.
He paused, thinking.
“I dunno. Six months or so.”
“Six months and we’ve maybe come twice a month. That’s twelve times. Twelve times you’ve come in here and actually practiced shooting, and that’s just the shooting part. We’ve spent hours going over dry fire drills, reloading drills, drawing from a holster. There’s a whole world of things to learn, and you’ve been here twelve times.”
He looked down at the ground, nodding. He wanted to be better; I could see that. It took time, and it took something else that I just didn’t think Carl had.
I moved past him and picked up the 320. I dumped the mag and racked the slide. I caught the 9mm round as it shot up and tumbled through the air.
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