Hard Case (Quentin Case Book 1)

by John Hook

  It was hard to notice in all the confusion of black purple light and arcing tongues of energy, but on the hand that held the blade, the purple glow on Janovic's body ended at the wrist of the hand that held the knife. It confused me for a moment, but then I realized that it made sense. The knife could not cut if it was being protected in an energy field and he clearly either chose not to or could not include Rox in the energy field around him.

  Time snapped into normal speed. I bounded the remaining distance. Janovic was momentarily startled, but more puzzled than concerned as he assumed he was untouchable. In a single fluid motion I had drawn my blade and severed his knife hand at the wrist. He howled in pain and anger, but his other hand dropped Rox. I grabbed her just as a lash of force sent us tumbling. I rolled up and stood facing Janovic. Even pushing down the pain and lacking a hand, he was formidable. And now he was completely contained in the energy field.

  "I will break your bones and then I will force you to watch what I do to her."

  "I don't have any bones. This body is a glamour."

  "But you can't imagine a body without bones and you can't imagine broken bones not causing pain.”

  He was right. I did not know if I would survive long. I had to follow the plan while I could and hope for the best. I thrust my sword up in the air.

  "Let's get it over with, Janovic."

  Janovic didn't even bother coming over to me. He just projected force again, tossing me roughly onto some rocks. I lost the blade, but I didn't much care. Kyo had never had a chance to train me. He would have likely taken it from me and used it on me. Aching everywhere, I stood up. I ran at Janovic and leapt. As I did I could hear shafts whisking through the air. The demons started shrieking, but most of the rapidly fired arrows were hitting humans. A few shattered the skulls of humans.

  Leaping at Janovic accomplished little. I just stopped dead when I hit the energy field, like hitting a brick wall. Janovic reached around me, essentially enfolding me in the field, pulling it tight. It was getting hard to breathe as he began using the field's resistive force to crush me.

  "Oh, come on, Janovic, this can't be any fun. Alien powers against a lesser foe...” Surprisingly, he stepped back and I dropped to the ground.

  Behind us, a rain of arrows was hitting the square. Demons were panicking as human protos began to rise, lashing out immediately at the demons, crushing their skulls, ripping open their throats.

  I scrambled up. Janovic stood there with an odd smile on his face. Several arrows slammed into him, showing that he was still protected by the black purplish glow. He stepped up to me, reminding me of his greater height. I hauled back with my fist, but he grabbed it as I was raising it and smiled more. I felt like I was held in a vise. He turned and dragged me with him. I kicked at him but it didn't penetrate. He walked straight towards the mayhem of arrows raining down and protos crushing demons.

  "I know I can walk through a volley of arrows without getting hurt. How about you, Mr. Case?"

  I tried to pull away, but I couldn't. I couldn't break his grip, which was heightened by the properties of the field. We just walked straight for the square. I knew, the way he was dragging me, and with his great size, the others would only notice him. They wouldn’t notice me. They would have no reason to hold their fire. Nor, in fact, would I want them to.

  Suddenly a blinding bolt of energy hit him. I fell from his grip and, on instinct, rolled away and came up on my knees. I had failed to notice dark, even black storm clouds rolling in and a sharp wind which hit me full in the face as I looked back to see where the bolt came from. It was still light, mostly. The storm clouds circled only a limited area over the ridge above Rockvale. Bolts of lightning arced down, striking around a single figure who was caught in a miasma of energy. I couldn’t see the figure clearly, but I didn’t need to. I watched as another bolt shot out and hit Janovic.

  Saripha.

  This was not a part of the plan she had shared with me. I would have said no. If anything backfired, she would die and no proto would replace her.

  Janovic was in pain and confused. He was not expecting a foe with this kind of power. He shrieked and then focused his field to blocking and trying to push back the raw energy of the bolts that were striking him. He was straining with all his power, but making only a little progress. Then there was an explosion of purple-black light. Janovic staggered away and the lightning stopped. I saw Saripha collapse on the hill. It must have been a strain for her too. At first I thought that Janovic had won. I turned to him. He no longer had the slight aura. He was vulnerable. He was still bigger and maybe stronger than I was, but he did not have his energy field for the moment.

  There was no time to figure the next step. The chaos was upon us. I pushed aside protos and punched and kicked demons, snapping their necks when I could. Janovic was pulling away from the melee and I dug through the crowd, not even noticing as I was clawed and hit. I broke free of the crowd and threw myself at Janovic. This time I had the satisfaction of having him fall in the dirt with me. We traded a few punches and rolled around in the dirt rather ignominiously, but neither of us were skilled in hand-to-hand combat. He had always set things up so that he was more powerful than his victims. He was not a fighter. However, he got a lucky rabbit punch in that put me on the ground again. Never one to be shy about taking cheap shots, he kicked hard at my ribs. I could hear the crack before I felt the pain. He grabbed a rock and hoisted it over his head, ready to throw it down with all his strength. The worst part was knowing that unless it smashed my head, it probably wouldn't kill me, just further incapacitate me and bring terrible agony.

  And then it was there. I didn't know what it was at first. Something appeared to be coming out of his chest. Red washed over it and fell off in beads. Red sprayed from his chest and up over his face. Painful as it was, I forced myself to roll as the rock thudded off to the side of me. I looked up and understood. It was Rox. She had found the blade I had dropped. There was an odd expression on her face. There was darkness in those eyes, like before but not like before. It was the same dark element that had fed her evil. The evil itself wasn't there.

  She pulled the blade slowly back out of him and held it, emotionless. Janovic crumpled to the ground. The ground turned black around him and he disappeared into the ground. Whatever he had been, he was not like us. He would not just become another proto.

  I pulled myself up and almost collapsed again. Izzy caught me. "Easy there, Quentin. You've got to let your glamour abilities catch up to the damage.”

  "You are saying this is all in my head?”

  "Yes and no. The glamour bodies are something real, even if we don't understand them. But, as they are partially created from our minds, the healing also emanates from within. If it is too overwhelming, some mechanism initiates the proto process."

  "Maybe the proto process would be easier. Ouch."

  Izzy allowed me to put most of my weight on him. Everything was basically over. The town square was a mess of blood and bone. Most demons had been killed, rent by protos lashing out. A few had escaped. The protos had not run off just simply because of the confines of the square and the fact that wherever they turned there were other bodies in their way. protos didn't attack each other because they were just trying to get away and would push each other aside. The demons made the mistake of trying to fight back and stop the protos. Now the protos were settling down, no longer panicked , id-driven raging creatures. They were human again, features becoming better formed, not knowing who they were or what they were supposed to be doing.

  Kyo stepped up beside me. She clearly had been involved in the melee.

  "I thought you were up with the big gun." I said as I grimaced, taking weight off the side of my body with the cracked ribs.

  "Taka handled that. I wish I had gotten down here sooner."

  "Thanks, but I'll be fine. Someone needs to get up the hill and help Saripha."

  Kyo put a hand on my shoulder, reassuring me. Luckily she picked the right
one. "Sidney and Zeon are up there with her. She'll recover—using that much power takes a lot out of her, though."

  "It might also bring attention to her."

  Izzy smiled. "I expect we've more than drawn attention to ourselves."

  "Yeah, guess I wasn't very subtle this time."

  Now Kyo smiled. "This time?"

  "I don't like what I did to these people, turning them into living weapons for our cause. We are going to have a lot of work to re-civilize them and turn them into thinking people who can make choices whether to stand with us or to move on."

  We turned and Izzy helped me over to Rox. She sat quietly on her knees, staring at where Janovic had been. She took a breath and handed the blade to me. There was such a strange and uncomfortable mix of emotions stirring in me. What I did manage to say was oddly ordinary and distant. "You saved me. Thanks."

  Rox, or rather the woman I had known as Rox, didn’t say anything for a long time. She couldn’t take her eyes off the spot on the ground where Janovic had fallen.

  "I hated him. I was his slave. He kept me afraid. He caused me pain."

  "Do you remember anything before him?"

  Rox looked at me, puzzled. "I have been with him since I became. There was nothing else in my life. "

  "Do you have a name?" I asked.

  "He called me Katrina.” She paused, then she added, mostly to herself, “What will I do now?"

  It was as if she only just now had this thought, how she was to be now that all she had known, as horrible as it had been, was gone. I nodded. I had no answer for her. I knew she was Katrina, not Rox. It would have been that fairy tale ending if I could take her in my arms and love her for the first time in her new life. I did still love her in a small isolated place inside me. But I could not forget as she had. I could not forget that ultimate betrayal. I could not be with her. Being with her was, for me, my personal hell, a pain greater than the crushed ribs I suffered now, a pain no amount of glamour could cover.

  I turned away without answering, Izzy moving with me. Kyo stayed behind and comforted Katrina.

  We had won the day. It was impossible to know yet at what cost. But we had won one battle.

  18.

  It had been a busy few days. I had missed most of it, recovering, not just from the battle of Rockvale but from the extreme amount of wear and tear my glamour had been put through. Saripha had prepared herbal concoctions that mostly kept me under for deep healing before she left for the tower to recover herself. Izzy, who seemed to enjoy a little violent action more than most would guess, Kyo and Taka, had scoured nearby caves and found the birthing caverns of the local demon tribe. This is why we had never seen female demons. There were few of them and their sole purpose was to bear endless numbers of demons in screaming pain. Kyo knew our peace would be short-lived if the local demon tribe could replenish its numbers. Using clay-and-lava bombs, archery and our two short blades, they had effectively wiped out the next generation of local demons. There would be other tribes over the next hills, but this would buy us some time.

  Paul, on the other hand, had made himself mayor of Rockvale and seemed to have a way with things. He did a lot of meeting and greeting of the calmed-down protos, even giving them names, showing them to a dwelling and writing it all down with tree bark and charcoal. He was planning on having town records. Sidney and Zeon would help them settle in, since Paul couldn't be everywhere at once. Kyo also took them out in the mornings and had tai chi sessions in the park.

  Our little corner in Hell.

  I decided I needed an office. I wasn't quite sure why. Writer's instinct, I suppose, though I didn't think I was planning on starting up any writing projects anytime soon. I could have had any of the various houses that hadn't been assigned yet, but instead picked one of the storefronts on Main Street. I think I just liked the idea of a storefront office. In the back was a storage room and stairs that led to an apartment upstairs with a small main room, kitchenette and bath. Okay, there wasn’t really a kitchenette, there was a wood stove in the corner. It was already furnished, though it didn't look like anyone had lived in it recently. The store was mostly empty, but it had shelves and an old wooden desk and chair. There were also a couple of spare chairs. So I had a place to sit and a place to put my feet up and I could have a couple of guests to watch me thinking with my feet up. Who could ask for more?

  Part of it was, of course, I hadn't had a space of my own since coming here. How long had it been? While my memory was okay—I even still retained memories of New York—my time sense was beginning to get a bit fuzzy. Probably wandering around and letting various entities try to kill me wasn't enough of a routine. I also had no idea anymore what month we would have been in or what day of the week it was since those notions didn't have much relevance anymore. Paul had actually instituted a new calendar for everyone to learn, but that was way too “high school principal” for me.

  I had been keeping to myself. Izzy visited me after the hunting expedition, but I hadn't seen much at all of the others. Therefore, most of what I knew came from Izzy. Saripha had taken Rox—I still thought of her as Rox—up with her to the tower. Kyo had gone up with them for security. For some reason Saripha and Kyo both seemed to feel sympathy with her. It was good, I supposed. It was not good to feel abandoned after such a traumatic beginning to life. On the other hand, Rox had been a human. She chose to be evil. I wasn't sure that not remembering that choice mattered. Then again, maybe I was feeling less than magnanimous for being made such a complete fool, which nearly resulted in all of us being wiped out.

  So, I was sitting in my office with my feet up on the desk thinking, wondering why no one had come in to sit in my chairs and watch me. I was restless. I watched people going by now and again through the front windows. They looked healthier, a little more vibrant than they used to, but it wasn't like they were knocking things over to start a revolution against being stuck in Hell. The truth of the matter was, I wasn't sure where we went from here. This wasn't like a clerical error we could file a grievance for. I had gotten rid of Janovic, had been a party to the slaughtering of the local demon tribe, but I was still mad and not a whole lot had changed about the big picture situation I was in. If we were going to fight, what were we going to fight against? For right now, it seemed like the next in line was the regional manitor. However, at some point, weren't we just going to run up against magic or something that our meager abilities and toughness would be no match for? I kicked the desk out of frustration.

  "That'll show 'em.” I looked up. Izzy was grinning in the doorway. His tee-shirt for today was a picture of a demon with a red circle and a diagonal line over it.

  "I don't suppose you have gotten any closer to inventing a still yet?"

  "No, but I might have something even better."

  “I'm skeptical."

  "Always a good idea in a place like this."

  I followed Izzy out, locking the door behind me with a key I had found. The absence of metallurgy here was profound. Even keys were hard stone, the locks simple interlocking rings of wood that any dolt could pick.

  "Ever notice there aren't any kids here? Us ex-people, I mean."

  "Yeah. I asked Kyo about that once. She says she really doesn't see them. We aren't sure whether that means kids don't get sent to Hell when they die or if they take on adult glamours."

  "Maybe there's juvee Hell somewhere."

  Izzy smiled and shook his head. He was distracted by whatever was exciting him. Izzy had moved into a bungalow-style house on one of the side streets. There was a big but scraggly looking tree in the yard, thorny vines crawling up the posts on the porch. His living room had become his lab. As Izzy liked to point out, there was no good TV here. His kitchen and dining room he kept for guests, but the living room had several large tables strewn with arrow makings, lava bowls and crude tools. Taka was waiting for us when we arrived. Taka lived less on the surface than Izzy did, but the excitement in his eyes, mirroring Izzy, was clear.

 
On the table next to Taka was the source of their excitement. It was a small platform similar to the one Janovic had been floating on. It was a small dingy blue square, just large enough to stand on with your feet close together, which seemed odd. You had to balance on the thing while it floated. At least a surfboard gave you room to adjust your center of gravity. Then again, having seen the platform in use, it didn't seem intended for fast or sudden movement.

  "Where did you find this?"

  “It was locked away in a chamber in the same building where they held you the first time. “

  “So it couldn’t be Janovic’s?”

  “I don’t see how as he had it when we battled him. On the other hand, we have no idea what became of his. No one kept track in the confusion of the battle and it’s just gone.”

  "Any idea how to turn it on?"

  Izzy shook his head. "It seems to be completely inert."

  I picked it up. It was very light, maybe two to three pounds. I had no idea what material it was made out of but it most resembled plastic, though it felt more like countertop material. There was nothing but smooth surface. There were no controls, no detectable seams indicating a panel that could be opened, no vents or openings of any kind. I shook it. No sound, no sense of anything being inside the round cornered platform. I set it down and lay my palm down on it.

  "It feels warm.” I was a little surprised.

  Izzy also seemed surprised. He came over and felt it. "You're right, there’s residual heat emanating from it.” He looked over at Taka.

  "It wasn't warm before. I would have noticed.”

  Izzy frowned. "Something's changed.” Then he smiled. "Cool, something's changed."

  I looked at the platform more carefully. "What are these scratches? Were you trying to test the surface or are they scuff marks from standing on it?"

  Izzy looked closer. "Those are new too."

  "So, what now?"

  "We need to figure this out. The trouble is, so far, there doesn't seem to be any reasonable access to this thing. I haven't found a way to turn it on, much less figure out propulsion, guidance and control. It's like nothing we've seen here in Hell before."