by Tom Keller
"Simon was an egotistical and selfish prick," she said, chuckling. "His spells and powers were questionable at best. Of course, he did have the occasional moment of brilliance, even if his creation myth was bullshit. But if he wrote a Grimoire, I wasn't aware of it, and he wasn't the type to share his spells. Most of his works were considered heresy, and dealt with his views on creation itself. He did have a following that lasted for few centuries. Perhaps it was they who created this book. Any followers that worshipped us before Lucifer and the others were sent to Hell are long gone. If Beelzebub is so desperate to grasp at such straws, then I've given him more credit than he deserves. As to your convent, I wrote them off as just another cult."
"You've heard of them?"
"They claimed to be a Catholic order, but I had my doubts. Not that it was unusual. Human beliefs are a curious thing."
She peered over my shoulder. Our three friends had started to climb the trail that led to our location. They were moving slowly, probably thinking that they would surprise us. Just amateurs, by the way they were acting, not even ex-cops or military. But that gave her time to finish.
"It was after the war," she explained. "The Civil War, that is. I was travelling through Texas and stopped at their Mission to water the horses. I was travelling in the guise of a human. I had servants in those days. The church looked empty, and as one I didn’t recognize, I went in to see what they were about. There was no one in the chapel, so I wandered. Quite frankly, the place wasn't much more than a barn, but that wasn't strange either. The Fort Worth area hadn’t fared very well. It barely survived the war." Her lips curled into a twisted smile.
"Perhaps this will be if interest to you. There were three paintings displayed on a wall in a back room. Two were based on the Book of Enoch, which is an ancient text, but could be considered an apocryphal work. Hence, my doubt of their true faith. But I was interrupted before I could examine them. By a nun who seemed quite upset that I'd stumbled into her quarters. She tried to explain them away as works of art by patrons of her church, but I wasn't convinced."
"You didn't buy her explanation?" I asked. "Why? Did you investigate further?
"Jay, please," she said. "There was no need. Paintings of Devils and their fall from grace were quite popular in those days, and long before, and churches are not the kind of place I normally seek out. This occasion was happenstance. But if it matters, the quality of the artwork was too good to have come from anyone less than a master. I assumed they lied to protect what little treasure they possessed, and if they did worship such things, they were no threat to me. But if they were protecting a book as the one you say was stolen, perhaps there was more to them than I first believed." She stood and looked down the trail. " I'm afraid our time is up."
"Wait," I said. Something about her answers seemed off, or better put, incomplete. "What about the third painting?"
"It was a young man astride a horse," she replied, unfurling her wings. "With a veiled woman behind him. " She looked me over before continuing. "Much like you in looks and build. But again, painters are fond of such things. Seek me out if you learn more, or wish to speak again."
I turned as she flew away, then looked to see how the climbers sneaking up the hill were progressing. I still had a few minutes, so I took my phone out of my pocket and made a call.
"Slater," Jim said as he answered. "Did you learn anything worthwhile?"
"Maybe," I replied, then gave him the nickel version of what she'd told me, before asking him to send out a team. It was still an hour or so before sunrise, but I was going to need three body bags and some clean up by the time false dawn appeared.
I got tired of waiting and started paralleling the trail to meet them. Subjugates weren't what you'd call truly possessed, so superhuman strength wasn't an issue. At best, enhanced speed and senses would give them an edge over other humans, but even idiots wouldn’t have come up here without something they believed was powerful enough to kill or capture Rael, so that was my only concern. If they'd come armed to kill a Demon, then all bets were off. The glowing dagger the middle guy was holding identified that issue easily enough. He didn't even try to hide it. Amateurs then. They were probably supposed to notify someone if she showed up. Instead, they decided to try and claim the bounty themselves.
I dropped down from above, knocking the blade out of his hands and burying my Fae sword in his back to the hilt. I didn't like to think of myself as an assassin, but these guys had made their choice, and I wasn't in the mood to play fair. The guy on the left scrambled for the knife, but was intercepted by a certain Werewolf before he could reach it. That left guy number three.
He'd listened to the adage, never bring a knife to a gunfight, but unfortunately, he hadn’t expected Fae armor under my clothes. I'd give him credit. He was faster than I expected. The first two bullets grazed me as I twisted aside. A sword strike ended that threat, and I followed up with a thrust to the chest before the gun hit the ground.
"You know, you could have just shot them," Jazzy said, after she switched back to human form. "Would have been easier."
"You can’t always trust bullets with this kind of thing," I replied, kicking number three's gun to the side. "Human adrenaline's a funny thing, especially when it's jacked up by black magic. Swords work better if you have one. Lop off a head and it's over. It also makes an impression. Let's their master know we're not afraid to get up close and personal. Now if I'd thought to bring a machine gun, that would have been different."
"I always get up close and personal," she said. I bent down to see if they had any other weapons. "You gonna try that blood thing on them?
Although I wasn't as good at as he was, I'd inherited that trait from my father. The ability to delve into someone's past by reading the magic in their blood. It worked best if they were still alive, as it tended it dissipate quickly at death. It also gave me one helluva headache.
"Not worth the effort," I replied. "And yes, you do. But these are just stupid, half-ass bounty hunters. According to Rael, this is all Beelzebub's doing, so there's nothing worth following up here."
"Then I'm going back to get my clothes," she said, as I moved over to examine the knife the first one had been carrying. "Want me to call it in?"
"I already took care of it," I said, watching as the dagger began to smoke. Gotta love a Demon made blade. Once the being that it had been keyed to was dead, it returned to the hellfire where it was forged, most likely along with his soul. I didn’t envy that reunion.
I left the dead to the clean-up team that arrived shortly thereafter, then headed back to the Jeep. Jazzy was taking her cellphone from her ear when I returned.
"That was Jesse," she said, as I walked up.
"He's up early," I jested.
"He's heading back up north with a few Wizards and Mages to finish cleaning up the site. I guess his father wanted him there to supervise the removal of any residual magic. He'll be back tomorrow. He said to call the office if we need him, and someone would let him know."
"I'm sure he did," I said with a laugh. "That can’t be an exciting job.
"Where to next?" Jazzy asked, as we got into the Jeep.
"Drop me off at my sister's," I replied. "I need a few hours' sleep before I go see Malcolm and hit a couple other places."
"You want any company?"
"No. You've got the pack meeting to deal with. I'll be fine," I said. "We'll hook up in the morning with Jesse and compare notes, then decide where to go from there."
"That'll work," she said, then changed the subject. "Don’t forget to call Iris."
"I was thinking about dropping by when I was finished with everything else. Would that be too much?"
"I think she'd like that," Jazzy said, then shook her index finger. "But no flowers. She'll think you're getting too serious too fast. You should call her first. She's gets pretty busy some days."
"Got it," I replied.
Jazzy dropped me off at Nikki's and I grabbed a quick nap before throwin
g on a suit and heading back out. Although the case was now tagged a priority, there was only so much I could do to generate leads. In addition to just wanting to see her, Iris was on my list because she was a High Priestess, but I had another source I wanted to follow up with as well.
I pulled into the rear parking lot of Mal's downtown office, then knocked on the back door to get his attention.
"About time you got here," he said, letting me in. "Let me show you what I've found."
I followed him into his office and he pointed at two monitors above the large work desk.
"Most of this stuff is just trash," he began. "He was using normal email and blogging tools, as well as search engines to look for just about everything, except this." He pointed to a list of message topics that were displayed on the screen. Most of the subjects related to purported ancient manuscripts and religious icons.
"Are those from a newsgroup?" I asked, looking over the titles.
"Something like that," he replied. "He was logged into cufnet. It's a decentralized peer-to-peer type anonymous service located on the dark side of the web. It's not stored on the standard webservers and much of it is encrypted. Without getting into the technical aspects, you need specialized software to access it. The interesting part here was that he was using a hacked version of darkproxy. That means whoever gave it to him was monitoring the sites he visited, and his searches. All of which, as you can see, relate to the buying and selling of unique relics. I didn't check them all, but the ones I did are all reasonably high dollar, and a few are definitely stolen."
"Was he advertising anything?"
"Not that I found," Mal replied. "But the ones he saved all listed titles and prices. I found a few other documents that mention old books and religious artifacts. Like I said, most of what you see here was encrypted. I'm running some programs to try and break the rest on another machine, but I doubt that's going to happen. I only recovered this because I got lucky and found a few documents he'd cut and pasted to."
"You said his software was hacked. Why is that interesting? I thought most of that criminal stuff was usually infected."
"Not necessarily," he replied. "And it's not really criminal software. A lot of these programs are used by folks who are just afraid of big brother, and like most, they use hash values as fingerprints so that you can verify a program's authenticity; not that he would have necessarily known that, or that it even mattered. He didn’t find this program on the web, someone gave it to him."
"How do you know?"
"I found a link file identifying the flash drive it came from. The hack was designed to send whatever he accessed to someone using the moniker of Mystika. I can’t give any other useful details. The mail service used encrypted and anonymous routes. Best I can give you is that it's probably in the Ukraine. But I can tell you the serial number of the flash drive used if you find it. Of course, that doesn’t mean that whoever gave it to him hacked it, but it's something."
"I appreciate it," I said.
"Here's your hard drive back," he said. He picked up a flash drive and held them both out to me, along with an envelope. "Everything I just told you is on there, plus a list of programs and all his photos, documents and email, along with a chain of custody record you need to sign, if this is official. If not, you have it anyway."
"This one's on the books," I replied, as he handed them to me. "Go ahead and do a report and bill us for the job, standard EAB expert rate. Call the office for a runner when it's ready for pick up."
"You got it. Oh, I included a document that lists the most recent files accessed on the drive. You only asked me to do a recovery, not an analysis, but I had the program index it all and generate a spreadsheet by file and folder name. Maybe your folks will find something in there that helps."
"Thanks, Mal," I said, standing. We shot the breeze for a few minutes before I left.
I put a call in to Slater to give him an update, and found out that one of our agents was just leaving the Federal Courthouse. Slater patched me through, and I asked him to meet me on Sixth Street to pass over the drives, and sign the chain of custody. I still had things to do and that saved me a trip to the office. Knowing the data was safely on its way to Slater, I turned onto the Boulevard and headed toward my next destination.
Chapter 11
The 13th Candle Magic Shoppe was tucked away in a little corner of an old strip mall off Charleston Boulevard. The city had grown in leaps and bounds since the place had opened in the '50s, but unlike many of its neighbors, it had done well enough to still be around. The credit went to the owner, a guy named Lucky Martine. He was a white Witch, or so he claimed, but when it came to his business dealings, the only color that mattered was green. The shop sold herbs and oils, and other paraphernalia, all related to magic and witchcraft. Most of what he sold was legal, but if a spell required something dark or unusual, if he didn't have it in stock, he'd find it. Assuming the price was right, of course. But that type of business did give him tendrils throughout the entire magical community, and that was something I needed to exploit at the moment.
His associate, Steve, was at the herb counter when I opened the door. He hastily pulled some items from a shelf and placed them under a cabinet. A few seconds later, Lucky came out from the back.
"Agent Hoskins," he said, walking up, and shaking my hand. "What brings you here?" He paused for a moment before continuing. "Not that you aren’t welcome. Always glad to see a representative of the EAB."
"I'm sure you are," I replied. "Relax, Lucky. I just came by to chat for a minute." I turned to the counter. "And Steve, next time, why don’t you hide that shit before I walk into the store. That's what the window's for."
"Yes, sir," he said, nervously.
"Let's talk in private," I said, and he reluctantly led me into his office.
The problem with gathering information is that sometimes you have to give up a little to get it. That was my issue here. Even though I was under orders to keep things confidential, there was no way to dig without spilling some dirt. Lucky was a source. A good one, I'll admit. But he had his own agenda, as most of them do.
"What can I do for you today, Agent Hoskins?" Lucky asked, taking a seat behind his desk as I sat down in the chair in front of it. It wasn't hard to see he was nervous. He wiped the sweat off his brow before clenching his hands and laying them on the desktop.
"What do you know about Demons, Lucky?" I asked, in general.
"Demons? What kind of Demons?" he replied. "You know that's not my thing, right?"
"I do," I agreed. "But you know people whose thing it is. And I'm trying to figure out who was dumb enough to summon a Duke of Hell and let him loose in downtown Vegas."
"There's a Duke of Hell in downtown Vegas?" he asked, taken aback. "Where? No! Don’t tell me! I swear Agent Hoskins. I don’t know anything about that." He leaned back in his chair and looked me in the eyes. "You know me better. Sure, I deal in a little bit of dark magic, if the price is right. Summoning a minor Demon? Okay, maybe. I'll admit it. I've known people wanting to do that. But a Duke? I don’t think so. I might cross the line now and then, but none of that's worth the price they'd want, not to mention that it's out of my league."
"You had to have heard something," I said, pressing him a bit. I doubted that something like that was out of his league, even if I agreed that the price wouldn’t be worth it.
"No," he affirmed, raising his hands. "Not a peep. I swear. Most of my dealings on that side have been little things. Potions mostly. Spells for revenge, money, power… sure, but nothing that requires a summoning of that level."
"What about special requests?" I asked, almost believing him. Hell, the guy was actually relaxing a little bit. Which, while unusual, sort of made sense. Lucky was a lot of things, but I didn’t take him for the kind of guy that'd barter his soul. I hated to admit it, but he was smarter than that. "Spell books, unusual commissions, that sort of thing."
"No. Not even that." He stood for a moment, then calle
d out to his associate. "Steve," he yelled. "Bring me the request log."
Steve came in a moment later and placed a black spiral bound notebook on the desk. Lucky picked it up and started going down the list with his index finger.
"Mojo bags, bones of a criminal," he said, sheepishly. "I ordered these from across the border. Some assorted runes… three books of potions and spells, two Grimoires… traditionally published editions, nothing too powerful. A few orders for personal charms, custom athames… the usual stuff. Here, look for yourself." He pushed the notebook toward me.
I scanned the list. He was right. There was nothing that looked particularly interesting.
"How about unusual stock?" I asked. "Maybe something not available to the general public."
"Just to my regulars, and I can vouch for them." he replied, then winced. "At least, for the most part. I don’t get many walk-ins that aren't Witches, or at least something from the community. Maybe the occasional tourist, but all they want is a picture. We are the oldest shop in Nevada, you know." Lucky looked over at his employee. "Steve?"
"No, sir," he said. "Everyone's been a regular customer. The only thing I sold to anyone else was a book about history a month ago, and that went to that prospector guy we met at Tule Springs last year."
Tule Springs Fossil Beds National Monument was north of the city and was the site of Floyd Lamb State Park. Remembered by older locals simply as Tule Springs, it was a popular place for outdoor gatherings.
"Prospector guy?" I asked, trying not to sound too interested. "Who was that?"
"Him?" Lucky said, acting surprised. "That's just Tom Harris, but he's not one of us. He's an amateur archeologist, or something like that. Wandered into a party we were having at the last Solstice and we started talking about ancient pagans, so we kind of adopted him. Nice guy. Comes in now and then to say hi."
"What book did he buy?" I asked.
"A History Of Religious Beliefs In Nevada, by Abigail Cadish," Steve said, looking up from the other notebook he'd been carrying. "From Ancient Puebloans To The Mormons. It's from Northern Nevada Press. It's out of print though. The one we sold had been on the shelf for a long time."
