Roaring Blood (Demon-Hearted Book 2)

by Ambrose Ibsen

  The guy's name was listed as “Agamemnon”.

  “Is this his real name?” I asked, arching a brow. “Because if it is, his parents were assholes. Imagine sending your little tyke off to Necromancer School. No way that a Kindergartener's going to be able to remember how to spell that mess. And what kind of nickname can you come up with for a name like that? 'Hey there, Aggy?' 'How's it hangin', Memnon?' Just doesn't work.”

  Kubo picked up the file and flipped through it. “We don't know his real name. Frankly, we know next to nothing about him. This man surfaced more than twenty years ago. Ended up on the Order's radar for practicing necromancy. Necromancy is, to put it lightly, taboo. It's a forbidden art, and anyone with more than innocent scholarly interest in it ends up on our watch-list. This guy, though, was something of a religious zealot. Got picked up for raising the dead and recruiting them as soldiers for a supposed war in the name of the god of the dead. He got locked up, shuttled away to some dark corner for his agenda.”

  I sniffed the air, standing up and pushing the chair back in. “Right, so why was he in the graveyard tonight?”

  “Because ten years ago,” began Amundsen, “Agamemnon escaped.”

  I chuckled. “For a minute there, I thought you were going to tell me this guy was once on the Veiled Order's payroll. He broke out of the pokey though, huh?”

  “When one escapes into the Beyond, it is difficult to track them. The world of the Beyond is vast, Lucian,” explained Amundsen. “We had feelers out, but he was a low-level criminal. Though a necromancer, the organization had more pressing threats to address. He faded into obscurity, surfacing once every few years but never stirring up enough trouble to warrant a deeper investigation. When bodies turned up missing here in Detroit and the dead were found to walk the Earth, I suspected he might be behind it. Necromancy is an incredibly rare skill. Its forbidden nature makes it a hard thing to learn. Schools of necromancy exist only on the fringe, are hard to access. Somewhere along the line, Agamemnon picked up those skills. And it seems he's been honing them all this time, in the underground. Now he's resurfaced, announced himself, and it's quite possible that his old plans of waging a war with an army of the dead have been put into motion. I can think of no other reason why he might be pillaging the city's graves.”

  Kubo tossed aside the file folder. “Agamemnon's the only practitioner in centuries to bring this sort of death magic to the world of men. The Veiled Order hasn't had to take out a necromancer since before the days of the Inquisition. This is a big deal, and if we aren't careful, word's going to get around about this. Agamemnon could blow our operations wide open and reveal to the general population the existence of a world beyond the one they know. It would be pandemonium. Not to mention the fact that, if he gets his way, he'll have many thousands of powerful zombies to do his bidding. Imagine the havoc he could wreak.” He cracked his knuckles and took to pacing. “Detroit, I'm sure, is only his first stop.”

  I was listening. To be sure, this was all riveting and I love learning about my enemies as much as the next guy. The constant throb in my side was making it really hard to focus, though. My vision was getting a little spotty, and the pain was getting hard to handle. “Good stuff, Chief,” I managed. “Can we... can we do something about this cut now? It hurts like hell. Getting worse, actually.”

  Amundsen rushed for the door. “I'll bring a medic at once.”

  “No,” snapped Kubo. “We'll get him off to Mona's. We're leaving now. Joe, help Lucy along. I'll drive.”

  Joe offered me his arm and I took it like an old lady crossing a busy street. “How sweet of you,” I said. “You're a regular boy scout, Joe. There's a shiny nickel in store for you if you can get me all the way to the SUV.”

  “Shut up and walk, dude,” said Joe, quickening his pace.

  The three of us left Amundsen in the file room and made haste to the parking lot outside. Kubo unlocked one of several parked SUVs and hopped into the driver's seat while Joe loaded me into the back like an invalid. I sprawled out across the seat, feeling dizzy. I blinked, trying to focus on the glowing dome light, but couldn't get my eyes to work. Vision was blurry, doubled, and the pain in my side was getting to be unbearable. My heart was crashing against my ribcage; Gadreel was feeling the full weight of this curse as well.

  As soon as the doors were shut, Kubo tore out of the parking lot and headed for Yao's. “Hang in there, Lucy. We're going to see what Mona can do about this,” said Joe from the passenger seat. He reached back and touched my shoulder.

  That was the last thing I heard. It was at that moment that I lost consciousness.

  ***

  When next I awoke I got an eyeful of Mona.

  A groan left my lips as her withered, stubby hands patted my bare torso. “Oh,” she said, appraising me with beady eyes. “I see you're awake. Quite a lot of trouble you've gotten yourself into this time.”

  I stared up at the ceiling. There was a dim light glowing there. My body was drenched in sweat, and I could feel my bare back sticking to the wooden table. The curious sounds and smells of Mona's workshop teased my senses. From afar came the rattling of a cage and the squawking of something like a bird. I heard something bubbling, too. Acrid smoke reached my nostrils, and I began to cough. “What happened?”

  From somewhere in the room, Kubo chimed in. “Your ass passed out. That wound just about ruined you. Good thing we got you to Mona when we did, else you might've been a goner.”

  I'd only been conscious for a minute or so, but that didn't sound right. “That ain't right. I've got a demon's heart. I can't die.”

  Mona loosed a small chuckle and shook her head. The white shock of hair she wore drooped down against her shoulders. “Oh, you certainly can die. A Demon-Heart is difficult to kill, but you aren't immortal.”

  Well, color me disappointed. This was just about the most unwelcome news I could imagine. Finding out that I was still technically a mortal-- albeit a super-powered one-- was a downer. A real slap in the face. “Wish I'd known that sooner. I thought I was supposed to be unkillable, goddammit.”

  “You're resilient,” explained Mona. “Impervious to most attacks, it's true. Like I said, you're hard to kill, but not invulnerable. And, frankly, there isn't a lot out there that won't die when cut by the Scythe of Thanatos.”

  “The Scythe of what?” I sat up on my elbows, catching a glimpse of my side. When last I'd been conscious there'd been a nasty, aggravated wound there. It was gone now, the flesh pristine. Come to think of it, the pain was gone, too. In a silver bowl near the table I spotted something large and black. It was a mass of flesh, covered in small lumps, and it pulsated as though alive. The bowl was half-filled in what I took to be my blood, and I could only guess that this disgusting thing had been pulled out of me. “What the hell is that?” I asked, positive that I wouldn't care for the answer.

  “Oh,” replied the old witch, picking up the bowl. “It's a tumor of a kind. It's a symptom specific to this particular weapon. The Scythe of Thanatos lays a curse on those who are cut by it. That curse manifests physically as a tumor, which shuts down the body's ability to heal. If the initial cut doesn't kill you, the tumor's rapid growth certainly will-- and it'll make sure you can't heal up the wound, all but ensuring your suffering till the end.”

  “Rad.” I poked my newly-healed flesh with my finger and then swung my legs around, sitting at the edge of Mona's table. “Well, as usual, I owe you one, Mona. Thanks.”

  “It's no problem,” she assured me. “Though, what we really need to be asking ourselves is how someone got ahold of such a weapon in the first place. I don't imagine you met the god of death himself on the battlefield, did you?”

  “Nope,” I replied. “It was a necromancer. Guy named... Aga...mammary? Aganonomous...?” I turned to Kubo. “What the hell was his name?”

  “Agamemnon,” uttered the chief. “A perp who's been on the Veiled Order's watch-list for many years. A practitioner of death magi
c.”

  Mona wasn't one to emote; the drooping, wrinkly skin of her ancient face looked more or less the same whether she smiled or frowned. I did, however, detect a change in her expression when Kubo let that bomb drop. She paused, looking down to the floor, and loosed a great sigh. “A necromancer has the scythe?” She shook her head and slithered off into her workshop, momentarily disappearing from view. “That's very bad news.”

  Joe was posted near the door, tinkering with a bunch of vials. He looked into them, sniffed at the liquids stewing inside, then cringed and set them back down. When he was done, he made his way to the table where I sat and had a look at my side. “I'll be damned. She really patched you up good, Lucy. If not for Mona, we'd have been screwed.”

  Mona had done great work; she always did. But of far more interest at that moment was her talk of the scythe. The weapon belonged to the god of death, Thanatos? How in the hell had Agamemnon gotten ahold of it, then?

  Kubo echoed my thoughts. “It's a formidable weapon, I'm sure, but it can't be the Scythe of Thanatos. How could a lowly necromancer take control of a legendary weapon like that? It's unthinkable. I don't know much about death magic, about this scythe's history, but relics of that caliber don't just turn up at a rummage sale. Surely it's just a knock-off, a cursed blade, Mona.”

  Mona returned with a faded tome in her slight hands. She set it down on the table with a thud, sending up a cloud of smoke that gave me a hacking cough. “I wish it were so, Takeshi, but the fact that it could wound a Demon-Heart so seriously is proof-positive, in my book. Would that the scythe's only power was a deadly curse; the enemy you face has tapped into immense power-- power that mere mortals were never intended to wield.” She cracked the cover of the massive volume, flipping through it till she stumbled upon the passage she sought. “The Scythe of Thanatos allows its wielder to lord over the dead. For a necromancer, it will act like an antenna of sorts, amplifying his spell craft by an order of magnitude. To the best of my knowledge, the weapon hasn't been seen since the days of ancient Greece. It's the weapon of choice of Thanatos.” She looked to me, elaborating further for my benefit. “That is, the character humans often refer to as the 'Grim Reaper'. The god of the dead, who is responsible for claiming the souls of the deceased and ushering them to the Beyond.”

  I chortled, hopping off of the table. “The Grim Reaper? No way... Like, a skeleton in a black cloak? You expect me to believe that?”

  Hands in his pockets, Kubo sidled over to the book and scanned it along with Mona. “The depictions of such a figure throughout the centuries in works of art is no coincidence. I've never seen him, of course, but it's said he does indeed look like that. But that's the thing...” He fixed a steely gaze on Mona. “This is a god we're talking about. A god isn't going to just misplace a legendary weapon. How did he get ahold of it?”

  Mona simply shook her head. She didn't have any guesses.

  I toyed with my earlobe and began to consider everything I'd been told about this necromancer, Agamemnon. He'd been on a watch-list, considered a threat for more than two decades. Then, he broke out of jail and simply dropped out of sight. If I was remembering things correctly, he'd flown under the radar for the past ten years.

  Ten years is a long time. Anything could have happened in that window. Maybe the clever bastard cozied up to the god of death at that time. Maybe he came up with some plan to steal his weapon. There was literally no telling. Curious as I was, I honestly didn't see the point of all this conjecture, though. The fact remained that the necromancer had the scythe, and that was a very bad thing for us.

  “So,” began Kubo, “you mean to say that the scythe could give Agamemnon everything he needs to wage a war against the living? That he'll be able to raise an army of the dead and imbue his soldiers with incredible power? What can we do about it? Is there anything that can counteract the weapon's effects, Mona? Anything that can shut it down?” Kubo seemed desperate for answers; more desperate than I'd ever seen him. I wasn't used to seeing him so out of the loop; nine times out of ten, Kubo was the go-to guy, the one who knew it all. This time, I could see him squirming at the thought of returning to Veiled Order HQ and having to tell Amundsen and his bosses about what Agamemnon had in his possession. And that he didn't have a plan in place to stop it.

  The wise old Mona, talented witch though she was, couldn't offer him much in the way of hope or intel. “My knowledge of the weapon is incomplete. There is an expert I could refer you to, a scholar who specializes in mythical weapons. His name is Germaine Fox, and he operates out of a small book shop in the Underground.”

  Kubo took down the name in a little notepad and tucked it into his breast pocket. Then, taking my arm, he dragged me towards the door and called to Joe. “Thanks, Mona. We're getting out of here. I'll pay this Germaine a visit and see what we can do about this. I have a feeling I'll be in touch again soon.”

  Mona cleared away the supplies she'd used in patching me up and waved weakly. “Do take care, Takeshi. Oh, and Joseph, how's your mother doing? Well, I hope?”

  Joe barely had time to answer as Kubo shoved us out the door. “Fine, thanks for asking! She may not even need her cane much longer!”

  The three of us stepped out of Mona's place, finding ourselves surrounded by majestic pines. Two well-worn footpaths flanked the little house, leading deep into the forest. A pestilential quiet reigned; no birds chirped, no insects buzzed.

  “So,” I chanced as Kubo loosened his grip. “What're we doing, Chief?”

  Kubo spat. “Not sure yet.”

  I eyed the two paths in turn. One of them would lead us back to the real world, to the Detroit alley outside of Yao's. The other, though, led someplace else. Kubo wouldn't tell me just where it went, and it was a source of great curiosity for me. “Hey,” I said, nudging Joe. “Where does that other path lead?”

  “Oh, you're not ready for that,” said Joe with a smirk. He smoothed back his grotty mane, clods of encrusted soil tumbling from his locks.

  Damn it. Everyone knew about that path except for me. I should have been used to being out of the loop, being the team newbie and all, but the feeling of cluelessness still sucked in a big way. “You guys are assholes. How do you expect me to help out if--”

  “Enough,” interrupted Kubo. “No time for that. We're going to race back to HQ.” He gave the two of us a shove down the familiar path, and in the next instant-- literally the blink of an eye-- we were all standing in a dim alleyway behind the Chinese restaurant. One of these days I was going to pick up a physics textbook and figure out how the fuck this little alley could exist in the natural world.

  Kubo was a little pale, his gait less purposeful than was normal. He marched through the alley, leading us back towards the parking lot where the SUV was waiting, occasionally muttering to himself. I hated to see him this way. Kubo was certainly a douche sometimes, but I much preferred to have him act like a confident douche. The stress he was under was kind of catchy; clueless though I was, I couldn't help but get really anxious about what we were up against. If Veiled Order operatives with years of experience were losing their cool over this, then how was a rookie like me supposed to feel?

  The alley opened up into the parking lot. The smell of fried food drifted through the air and visions of sweet and sour chicken danced in my head. “Hey, think we could stop just a minute for a bite? Looks like they're open late tonight, and--”

  One of Kubo's massive palms caught me in the chest, stopping me in my tracks. Joe, too, had gotten pushed backward, nearly falling on his ass. The Chief's eyes were glued to the path ahead, to the SUV.

  To the figures who shambled all around it.

  “Zombies,” he muttered.

  There were five that I could see lingering around the SUV, and every possibility that more existed just beyond it. The creatures didn't seem to have any agenda. They were simply limping through the parking lot, going for a mindless, moonlit stroll as zombies apparently felt compelled
to do from time to time. But when they caught sight of us, there was a marked change in their demeanor. The shadowed figures straightened out, took on something of alertness, and not a moment later I heard the first of several agonized groans.

  A battle-cry.

  Kubo reached into his breast pocket. “Looks like we're going to have to fight our way out.”

  TEN

  The Chief rifled around in his inner pockets but came up empty. “Shit.”

  “What's the matter, Chief?” asked Joe, counting the undead as they approached the alley. He'd switched on his lighter and was ready to start throwing fireballs at the slightest provocation.

  “My seals are in the SUV. I took the damn things out of my pocket earlier.” From his shoulder holster he yanked his big, silver gun. “This will have to do. Not the best option against zombies, though. I'll cover the two of you and try to keep them at bay while you destroy them. Got it?”

  “Sounds good,” said Joe, allowing the flame from his lighter to grow. It surged upward into a pillar of flame. Joe reached into the flame and pinched off a hunk as though he were working with clay. The fireball hovered above his palm, and with a grunt he gave it a toss at the incoming undead. The fiery fastball sizzled as it coursed through the air, eating up a fair bit of the humidity in its wake, and connected with its target.

  Hit square in the chest, the zombie fell to the pavement and began to shriek, limbs splaying out and kicking the ground. Joe's attacks worked fast; I watched him focus on the flames as they spread over the reanimated cadaver. He was manipulating them, causing them to spread quickly so as to consume the body and destroy it with haste.

  The other zombies took this as an invitation to strike, and rushed towards us in a tightly-packed unit.

  I stepped up to the plate while Joe queued up a second fireball. Fighting these things was just like swatting at a swarm of bees. You had to treat the whole cluster as a single organism; focusing on just one was sure to get you stung. Loosing a growl, I jumped to the fore and readied myself for the onslaught. If I hit them just right I could smash them two at a time; a punch from the left, then from the right, would probably get the job done. I planned to kick the stragglers to pieces, and--