by John Conroe
“Eight days ago, police responded to a 911 call in the Bronx. Domestic disturbance in a third-floor apartment. When they got there, they found three dead bodies and a crazed woman with a knife who they had to shoot in self-defense. But when they checked with other residents in the building, they found more bodies and at least one more crazy, this one male. That one they Tasered into submission, but it took two cops with two Tasers to do it. Twenty-four hours later, he had chewed the veins in his wrists open and committed suicide.
“There were eight apartments in that building. One family was away, traveling. Another was barricaded in place and only came out when officers could convince them it was safe. Several other people were at work and missed the fun. But everyone else in the building was dead—butchered by their fellow residents. As near as we can tell, it started with the basement apartment, where a young artist killed his boyfriend and then himself. Two days later, his upstairs neighbor smelled decay and broke in. Shortly after that, we think that neighbor went crazy and killed his girlfriend. It seemed to spread, with one or two of the inhabitants attacking and brutally killing the others. The investigating cops started to feel nauseous, so we cleared the building and sent hazmat crews in. They got sick as well. But everyone who felt it got better as soon as they left the building,” Rielly said.
“That’s when the Church got involved,” Cardinal Kellan said. “One of my priests is what you might call sensitive. He was drawn to the crowd of onlookers, and when he got close enough to the building, he got a vibe. A bad vibe, if you get my drift.”
“Demonic?” I asked, intrigued and more than a bit horrified.
“Exactly. He reported up his line of authority, and it got to me. Rielly and I have known each other for several decades, so I felt he might listen to me. He didn’t.”
“Not until I experienced it myself!” Rielly said quickly. “All the hazmat tests came back negative, so I went in with a small team which included two of the Cardinal’s experts. Felt it instantly.”
“Dispair? Hopelessness? Feelings of worthlessness?” I asked.
The Commissioner looked startled, then nodded slowly. “Yes, although those words don’t do the emotions justice.”
“Yeah, it’s like nothing will ever be right again and, in fact, there is no reason to even hope it could be.”
The Commissioner blinked at me for a second, then turned to the dark-haired Gina. “Okay, so he understands. But can he do this?”
“He has been doing this his whole life, and he is standing right here,” I said, immediately annoyed.
Everyone looked at me like I had three heads. Okay, so maybe I jumped into angry mode a bit quick, but I was frustrated with everyone treating me… well, like they had been treating me.
Tanya, who was standing very close—a fact I had been intensely aware of—touched my left hand with her right. I instantly felt better. And slightly embarassed.
“Chris, this sounds like more than one,” Gina said carefully.
“He handled three at once a couple of days ago and closed a major gate the day after that,” Stacia said.
“You closed a Gate?” Gina asked. Tanya and the other two vampires were staring daggers at Stacia, which distracted me. It also raised my blood pressure enough that I moved two steps away from Tanya, whose attention shifted instantly from the wolf girl to me. I met her gaze for a couple of seconds before answering Gina with a nod. I didn’t remember any of it, but a lot of werewolves had told me I had, so I had to go with that.
“It was as big as that wall,” Stacia said, directing her comments to Gina and the men while ignoring the vampires.
Awesome. Hey campers, today’s conditions point to a high potential for getting caught in the middle of supernatural catfight.
Gina, the Cardinal, and Commissioner Rielly were all contemplating the big wall of awards and photos that the blonde girl had indicated. Gina turned back to me, although I saw her read the tension among the women in a single glance. She looked thoughtful. This Gina impressed me. She was calm as a cucumber in the midst of vampires, werewolves, Police Commissioners, and the Archbishop of New York. She radiated intelligence and perception. It made me wonder how well I knew her—you know—before I lost my mind, or at least a big chunk of it.
“So, Mr. Gordon, it seems you can help us. The question, therefore, is will you help us?” Cardinal Kellan asked.
I reflected on that for a moment, just a moment, and realized I had a choice. I could just walk away. In fact, I had no idea how I had closed the Hellgate down south, so maybe I should skip this one. Something squirmed in my brain, down by my left ear. It wasn’t a physical squirm like some parasite but a roiling of the synapses. A chunk of information ready to be used. I thought of Hellgates and it did it again, that little writhing feeling.
I got the impression that everything I needed for closing the gate was still there, so that wasn’t an excuse. And I thought about my family… dead for fifteen, no, seventeen years at the hands of a Hellbourne.
“Yeah, let’s do it,” I said. Instant relief flooded the faces of the Cardinal, Commissioner, and the other men. Stacia just nodded once, and the vampires stayed poker faced. Gina studied me, a flicker of something like surprise crossing her features.
Chapter 27
They drove us there late in the evening in a hazardous materials van, complete with police escort. The cover story had to do with chemicals spilled in an illegal basement lab or something equally implausible.
We had the back of the van to ourselves: the three vamps, Gina, myself, the wolf girl, and my woolly masta-dog. It occurred to me that I hadn’t been this close to this many beautiful women ever… that I could remember.
No sooner had the van doors closed and Gina was asking for the sorry details. Which meant Stacia did most of the speaking. She explained our entire trip south. I listened carefully, hoping something would trigger a memory or two. Nothing.
“So Chris,” Gina began when Stacia had finished, “what’s the most recent thing you can remember?”
I had spent a lot of hours on the trip north working on that very puzzle.
“I remember testing for the NYPD Academy and getting in. I remember talking about it with Gramps, er, my grandfather, that is.”
“We know your Gramps, Chris. Quite well,” Gina said with a gentle smile.
“You do?” I asked, truly shocked at the thought of him meeting this particular group of women.
“Nika has only met him once or so, but Lydia and I talk to him somewhat regularly. I’ve stayed at the farm many times. In your room. The one with the mounted stuffed moose on the wall,” Tanya said softly.
She had seen my stuffed moose trophy? It wasn’t a real moose head, but a blatant toy, a stuffed animal moose. A silly gift from my father. Dad and I had been reading Call of the Wild together at bedtime and I had told him that he and I and Marcus, my brother, should all go moose hunting in Alaska someday. It was two weeks before my seventh birthday and when I opened all my presents, there was the moose.
I stared at her, shocked that she knew all about my moose while I didn’t have a single complete memory of her. Of any of them. It was like a bad dream. The kind where you don’t know anyone around you or what you’re supposed to be doing, but everyone knows you.
I felt a pit open in my stomach, a hollow feeling. What had I lost?
A slim, white hand covered my own, bringing me back to the present. “We’re all still here. You’ll get it back. It’ll take time, but I know you will get it back,” she said firmly.
“Can you read my mind? To know what I’m thinking?” I asked her.
“Feelings mostly, but I’ve gotten to know you well enough that I can usually interpret what’s driving them. You do much of the same with me. Nika, here, is the only true mindreader in our group.”
“You can read minds?” I asked the blonde vampire. She nodded. I had my doubts.
“The number four, a mountain under blue sky, a tropical beach complete with cocon
uts, and all of us in bikinis”, she said suddenly, reading the stream of thoughts I had run through my head as a test. I was speechless.
“Bikinis? What colors?” the little goth vamp, Lydia, asked.
“Mine was red, yours and Gina’s black, Tanya’s blue, of course, and hers was white,” Nika answered with a nod a Stacia. Which had the unfortunate result of bringing attention back to the wolf girl they all seemed to hate. Except Gina, who was watching everyone and everything.
“I would know what you left out about the Asheville trip?” Tanya asked Stacia, who looked sullen and angry, just shaking her head without answering.
“She left out something about a witch girl from Michigan. Erika? She had some kind of spell on Chris. Oh! A love spell? Had one of his hairs, only he’s resistant to magic, so it didn’t fully take. Some of the spell transferred to her!” Nika said.
“What?” Tanya came up off her seat, eyes flashing.
“Stay the fuck out of my head!” the weregirl said in almost a growl. After a tense second, she turned back and explained, “Some teenage witch you two met in Michigan. She had been casting a love spell on Chris with a hair. Apparently she’s blonde and he doesn’t respond to magic well. We figured it out and he removed it.”
“What’s this about transferring to you? Did you sleep with my Chosen?” Tanya asked in a deadly quiet voice. Stacia didn’t answer, just turned away and folded her arms. Tanya started to move, but Nika’s voice stopped her. “No, she didn’t. She’s the one that figured out there was a problem and found out how he could stop it.”
Tanya went from kill mode to puzzled in a split second. I was getting whiplash from trying to keep up.
“Explain,” my vampire said. “About this transference.”
Stacia didn’t answer, and everyone sat frozen for a moment. Then she spoke. “He started to stare at me, a lot, which is unusual for him. He got flustered if I joked with him, you know in a flirty way. It wasn’t normal. Then we found the book and he called the mother witch, Quin or Quincy, or something.”
“Quinby,” Tanya supplied.
“Yeah, Quinby. Only this Erika answered, almost like she expected him to call. She was blatantly coming on to him. She knew things he was thinking about,” Stacia said.
“Like reading his mind?” Lydia asked. Stacia shook her head. “Like she had planted the image or idea. I suggested that he left a hair or fingernail behind and then he scanned himself and found a connection to her. My witch friend told me how he could get rid of it and he did. End of story.”
“You chose not to take advantage of his misdirected interest?” Gina asked.
“It would be like taking advantage of a drunk guy. Easy to do but artificial and it would ultimately end badly,” Stacia said, examining her nails.
“Yes… it would have,” Tanya said softly. “But you seem to have honor… and integrity.”
The van stopped, and so did our conversation. The same detective who took us to the Comish opened the back doors. “Grab a suit and cover up. We want to keep our cover story intact. You can take them off inside if you prefer.”
We each grabbed a hazmat suit from the assortment hanging on the front wall of the van and climbed into them. The van’s driver and his partner helped us figure out the complicated connections and hoses. They were like kids in a candy store with five beautiful women to help. Me, I just did the best I could. I made Awasos stay with the van.
The building was old but looked okay from the outside. A four-story with brick exterior and parking in the back. The rest of the street looked much the same: smaller, older apartment buildings on a quiet little street. Further up the road, big white letters were painted on the asphalt indicating a school crossing zone. Normal stuff.
But the building felt off. Corrupted, like it was ready to ooze blood and filth. I started forward and the five women tramped after me, their svelte figures hidden by the spacesuit-like hazmat outfits. They looked like dumpy little spacemen as we passed the cops and emergency service people posted outside. That was amusing till I realized they were going with me—into the building—where there were demons.
“Hey, where do you all think you’re going?”
“We all have our necklaces. We’ll be fine,” Tanya said.
Necklaces? I waited till we were inside the front door way and out of view of the people outside. Then I popped my helmet off. The others followed suit.
A quick scan showed nothing demonic around us, but the creepy vibe had increased tenfold.
“What’s all this about necklaces?” I asked the suit-shucking women.
Lydia kicked her feet free and pulled several necklaces free of her shirt. Gina, Nika, and Stacia all did the same. Tanya just unzipped the half zipper on her green performance shirt and pulled it apart enough to show me an unmistakable arrowhead and eagle feather necklace nestled in her cleavage.
Seeing that necklace was yet another shock. I should have been immune by now, but the shocks just kept coming.
I opened my Sight and looked them all over. Five bubbles of violet surrounded them completely, each sphere a powerful protection from demonkind.
“I gave you those?” I asked. Everyone nodded. “And you’ve been with me on exorcisms before?”
“Lydia and I have,” Tanya said.
“I helped you with the possessed were children and closing the Hellgate,” Stacia said, earning herself sharp looks from the vampires and a respectful nod from Gina.
“It’ll be my first,” Gina said.
“Mine as well,” Nika added.
“Be mindful of attack, especially from behind,” I warned them, as it appeared they were hellbent on coming. “They’ll fling things at you, say stuff to you, mess with your heads, but only if they know where you are. Those nifty necklaces should hide you as long as you stay quiet. Watch each other’s backs.”
“What about you?” Gina asked.
“I’m gonna draw their attention… make myself a target,” I answered. It was the only thing I was certain of, the only part of my life that I was confident I could handle. I still remembered how to handle demons. “All right, let’s go.”
Chapter 28
The building was a pit on the inside. Equal parts slaughterhouse and outhouse, at least according to my nose. Blood, piss, and feces everywhere. Smeared on the walls and floors, even bloody handprints on the ceilings. It was deadly silent, save for the sounds of our careful footsteps and the beating heartbeats of Gina, Stacia, and myself. The vampires’ hearts were almost silent, even to my uber-hearing. Just an occasional thump, about one per minute or so.
Gina was scared, her fear scenting the air around us, which could have been a real problem. Vampires and weres get excited by the scent of fear, their inner predators rising to the prospect of prey. Somehow, I knew that fact without having any memory of learning it.
But this group became protective rather than predatory. Gina was one of theirs, and her fear made them angry. They pushed her into the middle of the group, behind Tanya—who was behind me—and followed by Lydia, then Nika. Even Stacia, who had taken the rearmost position, kept a close eye on her, which seemed odd until I remembered Stacia’s tale of becoming a were. Gina had been there when she met the New York pack and had smoothed over those oh-so-important introductions.
As we moved deeper into the building, I let my senses expand, feeling rather than seeing. I felt a pull, downward, toward the basement, so naturally I went up, to the top floor. The stairwell bore testimony to a running battle, the sheetrock smashed in many places and various makeshift weapons lying about. An empty fire extinguisher lay on the first landing, one corner of its base crusted with blood. A broken kitchen knife and a red-stained shard of railing bannister occupied two of the steps leading to the second floor.
Blood smears on the floor and boot prints in the dust showed where the cops had hauled away bodies, rushing to complete the job without regard for crime scene procedure or evidence collection. Terror scented the air along with an
undertone of rage.
Demons are like people in that no two are the same. Sure, they share common traits, like an insatiable appetite for fear, despair, and terror, but they have distinct personalities. The one that came for me from the basement was aggressive, hopped up on its recent successes with both the building tenants and driving off the cops and EMS personnel. It came from behind, rushing up the stairs from below. I felt its approach long before it got there, long enough to turn and move myself to the back of the line, which, with my absurd speed, took no time at all. It was projecting evil, using the essence of its own nature as a weapon.
Behind me, I heard Stacia catch her breath, just for a second, while Gina’s heart rate went high enough to be in danger of seizing up completely. I heard Lydia’s soft voice reassure her human friend but kept my attention focused on the incoming Hellspawn. Invisible to human eyes, the greasy blob of blackness came swarming up from below, riding an overpowering wave of vile, evil soul rot—which slammed to a halt as it hit my left hand and stuck like a fly on a spider’s web. Shrieking angrily, it tried to pull itself free while simultaneously pulling projectiles from the floor and throwing them at me. The extinguisher and knife launched themselves, but both were grabbed in midflight, snagged by the supernaturally quick reflexes of the were girl and telepathic vampire immediately behind me.
