“I don’t think it mattered. As long as they got an innocent, which innocent they got was irrelevant.”
“So this little girl just drew the short straw?” Even with everything I’d seen, that didn’t sit right with me.
“Pretty much.” Greg was still sitting there on the roof, looking at the circle and shaking his head. I reached down to him and pulled him to his feet.
“Come on.” I said, walking toward the edge of the roof.
“Where are we going?” He asked, falling into step beside me.
“Back to the playground. I smelled something funky, and we might be able to trace this thing by the scent.”
“And I’m important to this operation how, exactly?”
“You’ve got a better nose than me, so I need you to take a whiff, tell me if it’s important, and if it is, you need to track the whatever it is to wherever it went.”
“Alright, I’ll play bloodhound, but if you try to put me in one of those stupid doggy Christmas sweaters again, I’m gonna stake you in your sleep.”
Chapter 18
We circled around the playground a couple of times before I caught the scent again. I waved Greg over to where I had smelled it, and he took a deep breath. “Smell that?” I asked.
“Yeah, dude. Smells like vindaloo.”
“Who’s that?”
“It’s a what, not a who, moron. Chicken vindaloo, it’s an Indian dish with a lot of curry. Should be pretty easy to follow in this white-bread part of town.” Greg took off towards the fence and I followed, trying to hold the scent while still keeping an eye peeled for the cops. This kind of stuff was always so much easier on Buffy. Of course, she was usually trying to kill guys like us, but you get the picture.
We hopped the fence and followed the trail of Indian cuisine into a patch of woods separating the school from the neighborhood where Marjorie lived. Our night vision is pretty much impeccable, so we had no problems navigating the woods, at least no more problems than we would have had in the daytime. So really I guess I’m saying that we went stumbling through the woods like a pair of drunken rhinoceroses. We’d been following the trail for about ten minutes when Greg held up one hand. Since I was looking at my feet and not at his hand, I walked right into his back.
“Dammit, Jimmy, would you watch where you’re going?” He said, picking himself up off the ground and brushing twigs and leaves off his knees.
“I think the problem was that I wasn’t watching where you were going. Or where you were stopping, more precisely. But what is it? Why are we stopping?” I helped him up, figuring it was the least I could do.
“I heard something. It sounded like someone trying to be stealthy in the woods.”
“So it sounded nothing like us?” I quipped.
“Yeah, pretty much. Now shut up and let me try to hear it again. What we heard next was about the exact opposite of someone trying to be stealthy, since it was several loud gunshots coming from about a hundred yards in front of us. Greg and I looked at each other and then bolted towards the sound of the shots.
I know, that’s either brave or stupid for most people, but let’s look at it realistically. We can’t be killed by bullets, unless they manage to completely destroy our hearts or somehow can sever our heads. Since those kinds of bullets are pretty rare, and since we both wear Kevlar liners under our shirts when we’re working, running towards the sound of gunshots is probably going to be much worse for anyone doing the shooting than it is for us.
So we high-tailed it through the woods, miraculously not tripping on anything and accidentally staking ourselves in the process, only to draw up short at the edge of a clearing. Detective Law was in the clearing, and she was apparently the source of the shots. I say “apparently” because she was no longer holding her gun, and as a matter of fact seemed to be barely holding on to consciousness. She was lying on the ground in a circle of little girls, none of them older than nine, and they were beating the crap out of her.
I’ll admit to not being the sharpest knife in the drawer, but I figured out pretty quickly that these were not ordinary little girls. The giveaway was when one of them picked Law up and threw her across the clearing at a huge tree. Greg and I looked at each other, and he jumped over to intercept the flying detective before her head became one with the splinters.
I stepped into the clearing, and did what I do best. I tried to be funny. “Now I don’t like curfew any more than you girls do, but that’s no reason to beat up a cop,” I said, leaning against a pine tree in what I thought was a jaunty fashion. I felt far less jaunty when a bunch of little girls, all sporting glowing eyes a la Children of the Corn, all turned to me and started walking in my direction.
I thought for a second about what it had taken to subdue the last one of these possessed super-brats and decided discretion was the better part of valor. I waited until the first couple of them were close enough to almost reach me, and then I jumped straight up into the tree. I cleared a good fifteen feet and swung up onto a branch, looking down to see the girls surrounding the base of the tree like little pigtailed bloodhounds.
“Greg, you got any brilliant ideas, now would be the time to send ‘em my way!” I yelled across the clearing.
“I was thinking run like hell sounded like a plan.” He shouted back.
“I don’t think that is an option, gentlemen.” This voice came out of the darkness on the edge of the clearing. A middle-aged woman with her hair in a bun stepped into the circle of trees and said, “Come to me, my children.” The little girls with the creepy eyes formed a double rank in front of the woman and just stood there, so silent that I couldn’t tell if they were breathing, even with my heightened senses.
“Okay, lady. We don’t have any quarrel with you. Let the kids go and we can all be on our merry way.” I tried to hold my voice steady, and really hoped that my coat had enough drape in it to hide the fact that my knees were shaking to a marimba beat. Greg looked up at me like I was nuts, and mouthed something at me, but he was too far away for me to read his lips. And I don’t read lips. And at that point I didn’t really care what he had to say. I was too busy trying to figure out how not to get ripped to pieces by the My Little Pony Brigade.
All hope of getting out of the woods without a serious fight, and probably a serious beating, went out the window when the bun-head opened her mouth again. “I don’t think you’re going anywhere, little vampire. You got lucky the last time we met, but I don’t see any automobiles around for you to hit me with tonight.”
Crap. Just crap. The middle-aged woman was possessed by whatever had possessed the little girl that threatened Tommy, which was what had gotten us into this mess in the first place. I looked down from the tree and took stock of the situation. I was facing a bunch of possessed little girls and what looked like one really pissed-off cafeteria lady. Greg was trying to help Detective Law to her feet, and I had no random automobiles to throw at the rugrats from hell.
So I decided to try and talk my way out of trouble. It used to work with principals, so why not crazed demons? “So what’s the plan? You’ve gotten one step closer to your quota tonight, and then what? You turn in the box tops for an iPod?”
“Fool!” Shouted the old woman. “Do you have any idea the forces you are tampering with?”
“None whatsoever. Why don’t you enlighten me” The longer I kept her talking, the better the chances of Greg thinking of something brilliant. I hoped. Boy, did I ever hope. And anyway, in the movies the bad guy is always willing to stop the successful killing of the hero to provide a soliloquy on their plans and motives. I just hoped that this curry-scented psycho had seen all the same movies I had.
“Little vampire, the world as you know it is coming to an end! The reign of mankind is over! When I complete my ritual and bring my father forth, all will kneel before the Dark Lord, and Belial shall be favored among all the Host!” I had no idea what the “Host” was, and the very sound of “Dark Lord” made
me more than a little uncomfortable. And she was yelling. In my experience, supernatural bad guys yell right before they hit you very hard, or at least try to kill you in some unpleasant fashion. So I thought I’d pre-empt her hitting me and take the fight to the Bun-head.
I hopped down from the tree with a nice cape-billowing move, and drew my weapons. With a pistol in one hand and a knife in the other I felt marginally better about my chances for surviving the next thirty seconds. All that good feeling went away when Detective Law spoke from behind me.
“Drop the gun, Black.” I heard her chamber a round, and sighed.
“Greg, why is she pointing a gun at me?” I asked without turning around.
“Because I don’t like people threatening little old ladies on my shift. Now drop the gun.” Detective Law repeated.
“No.” I said, never taking my eyes off the little old lady, who was the source of much greater concern than the cop with a gun pointed at my back.
“No?” She sounded surprised. I suppose people don’t typically just decline when she points a weapon at them and orders them to disarm, but I didn’t have a lot of room for verbal sparring.
“No. Greg, get the nice police lady out of here before she gets killed.” I raised my pistol and took aim at the bun-lady’s head. “Last chance, Mrs. Butterworth. Let the kids go and I won’t ventilate your forehead.”
“You won’t shoot, fool. This body is innocent, and you still have too many of your idiotic human ideals.” I hate it when the bad guys have a good read on me. Maybe I should start wearing a mask or something.
“Children,” the bun-lady/demon called. “Kill them all.” She waved one hand dismissively at the three of us, and the entire cast of Annie rushed us at once.
Chapter 19
Usually I have qualms about hitting kids, but this wasn’t that night. I holstered my weapons and kicked the first brat all the way across the clearing. The second one to get within arm’s reach ended up as a projectile, too. The two of them hit a tree and slumped to the ground, momentarily stunned. That only left about eight attacking the three of us for the moment, but I had a sneaking suspicion that Detective Law wasn’t going to be much use in this fight.
A glance behind me confirmed my suspicions, as several of the brats had her down on the ground and were beating the crap out of her. Again. I couldn’t concentrate on her plight for long, though, because there were three of the little ankle-biters swarming me, and the two I’d incapacitated earlier didn’t have the courtesy to stay down for long.
“I really hope you’ve got a good idea, bro!” I heard Greg yell from behind me, then I heard a loud “oof!” and a thud that let me know he was off his feet. I jumped back into my tree to get a second’s breathing room, only to have company on my branch almost immediately.
“Not fair!” I yelled. “No fair chasing me when I’m trying to figure out how to kick your aaaaa!!!!” I was trying to say something witty (and failing) when the branch broke and dumped me and the kid who had jumped after me fifteen feet onto the forest floor. I could have been hurt if I’d landed wrong, but at the last minute I twisted and landed on the kid instead. Cut me some slack, will you? I eat people. It’s not like I’m interviewing to be your niece’s babysitter. The kid I landed on puked a little, and seeing that gave me an idea. It also made me a little nauseous; but that’s beside the point.
Seeing her vomit shook loose something I’d read once, and I had to get free for a second to remember it clearly. I picked the girl up by her ankles, and twirled in a circle, swinging her like a hammer toss in high school track & field. After I’d leveled the three other kids surrounding me, I tossed her at the bun-demon and yelled over to Greg.
“Dude!”
“Yeah?” He croaked. He had a kid in each hand by the scruff of the neck, and one was on his back choking him with one hand and hitting him in the head with the other. I would have laughed if I hadn’t seen four crumb-snatchers running back towards me full tilt.
“What was that I read about salt breaking spells?”
“Salt – urk – disrupts the flow of magical energies. It’ll break almost any spell.” He managed to throw off all three kids of a second, but there were still two more he hadn’t seen that dropped on him from a tree.
“Will it screw up stuff like summoning and possession?” I asked, jumping and weaving as the little girls closed on me once again. I needed to end this quick, before one of them decided that a broken branch would serve as a stake, or just beat the helpless Detective to death.
“I think so!” Was the response from under the pile of bodies where I thought Greg was still laying.
“This would be a good time for you to – ooof – tell me you’re got some in your utility belt!” See, Greg was the biggest salt-aholic I’d ever met. He’d never met a potato chip he couldn’t re-salt, and I was betting my life that he had some stashed in that stupid belt. And judging by the way the pile of bodies blew apart as he jumped to his feet, I was right. He reached into a pouch on his belt and tossed white powder into the faces of the girls attacking him, and they immediately slumped to the ground unconscious. Right at that moment I felt a tremendous pain in my left knee, and looked down to see one of the brats had actually locked her teeth into my hamstring!
“Oh, that is it!” I bellowed. “Biting is my gig, you little urchin!” I snatched her off my leg and threw her over to Greg. “Salinate this little brat, please!”
“I don’t think that’s a word, Jimmy.”
“I don’t have time to call Webster’s, man, just make with the salting!”
“Happy to help, bro.” He called back. A few minutes later we were panting in a clearing surrounded by eleven unconscious, and salty, little girls. Apparently all it took was a good dousing with sodium chloride to toss the demons out and turn them back into normal children. It was probably going to take a lot more work to get Detective Law back to normal. She was sitting with her back to a tree and her gun in both hands. The slide was back and the gun was obviously empty, but that didn’t stop her from pointing the weapon at us and dry firing frantically as we approached.
“Shhhh….It’s okay. We’re the good guys. We’re not going to hurt you, I promise.” I kept my voice low and slowly moved to sit down next to her. All I really had to work with was a little experience working with frightened animals, and reruns of Dog Whisperer on Animal Planet, so I thought it might be a good idea to try and get down to her level and look as non-threatening as possible. That was a little tough, since I was fairly bloody, but at least it was all mine.
After a minute I reached out and very gently took the gun from her hand. She resisted for a second, but eventually let go, and I ejected the magazine and put the empty weapon in my coat pocket. “Are you okay?” I asked.
“I don’t think so.” She said very quietly.
“I’m not surprised. Most people have a little adjustment to go through their first time dealing with something like this.”
She looked over at me, and I could see shock hovering just on the outer edges of her voice. “The first time? Exactly how often does crap like this happen?”
“Unfortunately,” Greg said as he slid down to sit on the other side of her, “this sort of thing happens all too often. And we’ve observed that once the barriers to belief are removed, that you may find yourself seeing more and more of it. You see, our society erects so many roadblocks to any understanding or analysis of the paranormal that it is almost impossible to truly investigate anything that happens outside the ordinary.” I’m sure he said a lot more, and that it made perfect sense to anyone that would care, but I’m most certainly not in that camp, so I did what I’ve done for the past two decades whenever Greg started one of his rambles, I had a drink.
Lucky for me, my flask had made it through the fight without any major structural damage, so I had a belt of Glenfiddich and passed it over to Detective Law. “Want a belt?” I asked.
She took the flask and turned it
up for a long slug. “Nice. What is this?”
“Scotch. You think you can stand?
“Probably.”
“Good, because we should be moving along before your comrades in arms show up.”
“Why?” She looked around at the unconscious little girls scattered around the clearing. “And I can’t just leave them lying here.”
“If experience serves as any guide, and what good are the bruises if it doesn’t, they’ll be out for a couple more hours at least.” I said, getting to my feet and brushing the worst of the dirt off of my jeans and coat. I reached down and help her to her feet and returned her sidearm to her. “And in case you hadn’t noticed, we’re still missing one grumpy old lady.”
“Oh crap! Where did she go?” She put a fresh magazine into the pistol, chambered a round, and holstered her gun.
“If I knew that, I wouldn’t be missing her. Now come on, we’ve gotta go after her and we don’t need to get tangled up in a bunch of…well, crap, here comes the parade.” All hope of getting out of the woods without a few hours of questions evaporated as the bulk of Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department’s SWAT team surrounded us, assault rifles at the ready. “I hope you have a satisfactory method of dealing with this.”
Hard Day's Knight Page 10
