by Tim Marquitz
“Of course.” I patted the sidewalk alongside me, the world still spinning just enough that I didn’t dare get to my feet. I thought about what Scarlett had said, but I’d felt fine up until right then.
Forcalor shook his head, choosing to stand. He stood stiffly, almost as if he were at attention, a drill sergeant’s crispness to his posture, his fingers interlaced before him. His gaze met mine for an instant before drifting away. I could sense his hesitance as though it were something palpable.
“What is it?”
He sighed, a sad smile gracing his lips. “I never imagined I would find myself in this situation, young Trigg.”
My heart pounded in my chest. I’d known the duke my entire life. He’d been my mentor, the man who’d trained me in the ways of the Demonarch, taught me all I knew that hadn’t come from the end of a fist. I watched him swallow hard and realized what Scarlett had warned me about had come to pass.
“Is it Heaven?” I asked.
He nodded. “I sent your cousin to warn you, but I fear Metatron has little faith she can turn you toward the path of the righteous.”
“Little late for that, don’t ya think?”
“I would say so,” he answered with a hint of a smile, “but your redemption isn’t Heaven’s primary concern.” He dropped into a squat in front of me, which was good. I was getting tired of staring up at him. “Circumstances have changed, Frank, and you know more than most how volatile our existence has become since God’s departure. Gabriel’s betrayal has Heaven on edge. Now with your sudden…” he trailed off.
I waited a moment for him to continue, but he seemed reluctant to do so. “Just spit it out, Forcalor. I’m still me.”
“That has yet to be determined, Trigg.”
And there it was, all the cards laid out onto the table. I stiffened as I felt the coals of my anger ignite.
Forcalor must have seen it because he raised his hands and took a short step back. “I’m not here to challenge you, young Trigg. In fact, Metatron doesn’t even know I’ve come. He would be furious to learn I was here, but I needed to see for myself.”
“See what exactly?” I was losing my patience.
“If there is still hope for you.”
The words were a slap to the face. “You’ve written me off.” It was a sour realization to know my mentor, someone I’d looked up to my entire life, had already scratched me off the Christmas list because of some bullshit lateral move in my family tree. I stood, the duke rising with me. “Sure, it turns out I’m Lucifer’s son and not some beloved nephew like we all thought, and yeah, maybe I am carting around Longinus’ magic, but that doesn’t change who I am…who I’ve always been.” My pulse raced.
“Metatron would disagree,” he answered. “And I believe Scarlett might, as well. She is worried about you, and I believe it is for just cause.”
I stared at him, wondering what everyone saw that I didn’t. I’d done nothing to threaten Heaven or even Earth. All I’d done was stake my claim to Old Town against a vampire rival and chase the tail of Lucifer’s magical book.
“There is a sense of—”
“Triggaltheron!”
Forcalor’s face appeared out of the darkness before me. His hands gripped my shoulders tight. I shrugged him off and stepped back, his somber expression swimming in my vision. My skin tingled where he’d touched me, spider-like tickles running down the length of my arms, radiating into my fingers. Bile seared the back of my throat, its bitter aftertaste stinging my tongue.
“Are you all right?” the duke asked, and I wondered if I’d dreamed the last few minutes, our conversation circling back around to the beginning.
“I’m fine,” I told him, though for the first time since I’d come back to Earth, I had to admit, if only to myself, that maybe I wasn’t. “I’m tired, is all. Dimensional travel is rough on a guy, you know?”
Forcalor stood rigid, no hint of his thoughts bleeding through to his expression. “I pray that’s all it is, Trigg, but I fear there might be more to it than that.” The intensity of his stare bored into my skull, and I felt as though I were a teenager again. I didn’t like it.
“Don’t worry about me, Forcalor, I’m good,” I told him, forcing a smile while waving him off. “Look, I was kind of in the middle of something I need to get back to, so if you don’t mind…”
“Of course.” He sighed, nodding. “Of course, Trigg, but please, be careful.” The duke glanced to the sky. “Metatron has tasked Uriel with the guardianship of Earth. It is his duty to ensure nothing like Gabriel’s rebellion occurs ever again.”
My eyes followed Forcalor’s, the threat buried in his innocuous phrase sinking in as dawn crept over the horizon. Metatron had given Uriel the authority to take matters into his own hands if he believed Heaven was in danger. He might as well have given a book of matches to a pyro. Shit was gonna get real hot, real soon.
Uriel hated me because of who I was, because of what Lucifer had done to Heaven and the Tree of Life. Now that is was confirmed that I was the Devil’s son and not some off-to-the-side relative like everyone had been led to believe, I had a pretty good idea Uriel would find it in himself to hate me even more. It was also likely that ol’ Mister Flamesword would muster up probable cause and pay me visit in the near future. If the duke was busting my balls playing good cop, I could only imagine Uriel’s bad cop routine would involve a cavity search elbows deep. Even with Longinus’ power, I didn’t stand a chance of warding off the archangel. He would kick my ass on my best day.
“Lay low and be smart,” Forcalor told me. “Uriel has a fantastic view from up there.”
I nodded and thanked the duke for the warning. He was gone a moment later, returning to Heaven with a flash of celestial light.
I turned toward the asylum and started back. If Uriel was looking for a fight, it was pretty much a guarantee that opening some alien portal passed on to me by Lucifer would set his happy ass on kill mode. I still had no idea why Lucifer had given the book to me or what lay on the other side of the doorway, but Uriel wasn’t someone I wanted to cross. Suicide by angel isn’t my thing.
My footsteps matched the beat of my heart as I hurried back to Gailbraith to stop Rala before she got any further along with the translation. Now that Uriel was watching Earth, I couldn’t risk any more of the alien critters sneaking out of the portal. We’d have to shut all that down until I was certain I could shield it from Heaven. It sucked, but I hadn’t been given much of an option. The duke made it clear Uriel’s finger was on the trigger, ready to nuke me from orbit. I couldn’t take that chance.
I’d have to be content with a win over Hobbs.
Fifteen
The walk back was slow going. My thoughts swirled, a murder of crows pecking my eyes out from the inside. My head had been one big pincushion since I’d come back from Feluris, and I couldn’t help but wonder if maybe I’d picked up some kind of mutant superbug or something while I was there. Rala probably had fleas. Alien fleas.
Demons aren’t known for getting sick, only the rarest, most vicious of diseases able to get even the slightest foothold before our immune systems hammer the cooties into submission. There’s no telling, though, what God might have thought up over the course of his multi-verse experiment. What had once been hard and fast rules about how things worked were now just guesses. It was possible I’d caught something, which might explain the lack of sleep and general blah feeling. The thing, whatever it was, hadn’t really impacted my magic, the power as strong as it was in Rala’s dimension, but there was no doubt I was wearing down physically. I didn’t imagine all the stress helped, either. It had been a rough homecoming, and I certainly hadn’t stuck the landing.
I had DRAC breathing down my neck, the DSI, Heaven even, not to mention what was going on with Karra and the baby, which certainly wasn’t making me feel any better. A quick shake of the head knocked that last thought loose. I didn’t want to go there; not now. There was nothing happy down that road.
So far, the return trip to Earth had been one big kick in the rectum with a pointy boot, and I’d accomplished nothing more than bringing down a two-bit opportunist with pointy teeth. And even that wasn’t a real win since he’d managed to hold back some piece of information that was obviously important to his master plan. Worse still, if I wanted to find out what that was, I’d have to go back and face Veronica.
There was something about all that which disturbed the hell out of me, made me queasy. I couldn’t put my finger on it, but the thought of seeing her with Hobbs made my stomach churn. It was unnatural. Every time the image crept into my head, I felt this strange, almost oppressive, virulence flowing through me like I’d been given a hot flu enema. It made me want to gag. My insides felt mushy and, if you can believe it, violated. I shook off the encroaching chill as tiny explosions warmed my torso.
The last bit had less to do with my mental state than it did the rounds of machine gun fire that slammed into my chest.
My head so far up my ass I could lick my tonsils, I hadn’t even noticed the guy standing in the middle of the sidewalk, AK-47 at the ready. He’d hit me ten times before my body and brain synced up and I staggered back around the corner to escape the hail of bullets, clutching at my wounds. Smoke spilled from the holes and blood followed. They were like red hot pokers buried in my flesh. Pain flared from each, blending to become a single agony, but I hadn’t even needed to see the red spill from my body to realize the bullets hadn’t been anything special. There was none of the black ooze that accompanied magical weaponry, and my body was already pushing the slugs out, the holes stitching together from the inside. The first of the spent rounds plinked to the pavement as the machine gunner turned the corner.
I’m not sure what he expected, but I sincerely doubted he thought he’d find me standing there with a grin on my face like he’d dropped the soap.
Before he could react, I ripped the rifle out of his arms and spun it around, driving the barrel up under his ribs. I depressed the trigger as the gun sunk into his guts with a wet sputter, blood and all sorts of fragrant juices gushed out of him at top and bottom. His neck and shoulders were obliterated, bits of flesh and blood spewing into the air like a morbid sprinkler.
Baalth always told me blood makes the grass grow, but there wouldn’t be any greenery springing up on the asphalt today.
Using what was left of the merc’s body as a temporary shield, I bolted back the way I’d come. There was no way he was alone, and I wanted to get a good view of what I was up against before it all came down on my head. Turned out, I didn’t even need my meat shield or a magical one. I dropped the mercenary as soon as I’d made it around the corner, the opposition doing nothing to disguise their presence. They sprawled out before me, a legion of were-whatevers showing me their teeth. It was an orthodontist’s wet dream.
“Oh, look, a furry convention.”
There must have been a handful of different were-varieties staring at me with red eyes gleaming in the early morning darkness. Werewolves made up the majority of the group, dark snouts filling the air with more than enough grunts to backtrack the gay porn industry. Silvered claws were arrayed across the lines. I spotted a weretiger crouched near the edge of the critter parade and a werepanther near the rear, its sleek blue-black fur standing out in sharp contrast to the lighter colors that abounded. There weren’t any of the bigger breeds like bears or gorillas, but there were plenty of werehounds, which were smaller and less fearsome than their werewolf cousins that occupied the more common spectrum of the canine litter. They yipped and barked and acted pretty much like you’d expect of a bunch of strung out Chihuahuas.
Up front, and impossible to miss, was a werepanda, razored fangs jutting out beneath its dark nose. Its round face, tubby body, and black-circled eyes lent it a cuteness that was unfortunately overridden by its annoying battle cry.
“Wu Tang, motherfucker!”
“You’re not even from China, are you?”
The panda hissed at me as one of the larger werewolves stepped forward, apparently asserting his dominance.
“Hobbs sends his regards.”
Which was pretty impressive considering he was strung up in Gailbraith with an electrical cord wedgie. Semantics aside, this was either retaliation for my snatching the vampire, his were-allies looking for a little retribution, or they had no clue I’d already scooped his ass up and were still running on plan A. Not that it mattered. They were volunteering to be punched in the face, which was pretty much all the motivation I needed
“Come get some,” I said, wiggling my fingers to call them on.
The pack responded with enthusiasm. I like that in an enemy.
The werehounds charged as if they were a part of a Kibbles N’ Bits commercial. I kept expecting to see the chuck wagon as they came at my heels. The werewolves flooded forward right behind them, and I waited a couple seconds to let them get close. Just a few feet separating us, I willed my magic to life, peeling back a chunk of the street as though it were a banana. The weres howled and cursed as they slammed into the three feet thick blockade, momentum and their buddies at their back pushing them forward. I cut the slab loose of the ground and put my foot into it, pouring power into the kick so the impact struck the makeshift wall even across its width. A massive boom echoed through the night as asphalt and were-critters went flying, their screams and complaints mowed down the slab of street that careened through their ranks. Those that I’d missed spilled around the edges and came at me.
The panda leaped over the mass of wolves and hurtled toward me, all teeth and flashy claws. I envisioned a bamboo shoot propped up at my back and slipped some energy into its creation, blocking the view of it by standing my ground and waving the cute little bastard on. Just as the panda closed, I sidestepped.
“Wu Tang, mother—”
“Yeah, yeah,” I said, watching his eyes nearly explode with surprise. “Heard you the first time.”
The panda shrieked but there was nowhere to go but down. The sharpened end of the shoot pierced his guts, bursting from his back. Gravity took care of the rest. The panda slumped as he slid down the length of the shoot until his face hit the ground. That was when I released my magic. He stayed put, a dark puddle forming around him.
Hopefully he wasn’t on the endangered species list, but there wasn’t time to worry about it as the other were-critters were on me. Claws slashed at my back and gouged out grooves of flesh. An amused chuckle slipped out. The pain only motivated me. A paw flashed in front of my face, and I leaned back, slipping the attack, a silver blur filling my vision. In close, I could do something to gain some space or get down and dirty.
I laughed. It wasn’t much of a choice.
With nothing more than a casual thought, swords of pure energy appeared in my hands. I spun and put them to work. The blades cleaved through everything and anything. Weres screamed as I cut them in half, severed limbs, and decapitated more than a couple. The stink of wet-were mingled with the aromatic funk of gooey blood, the air thick with it. The weres faltered as those closest reeled back in neatly shorn pieces. Ginsu would be proud.
One of the hounds bit into my ankle as another went after my hamstring. I cut away the lower one, leaving his twitching head still attached to my leg and knocked the other to the ground with the back of my hand. He hit with a muffled thump, scrambling to get his feet beneath him. Before he could, I put my boot to his ass. He yipped and flew over the heads of his buddies, trailing a golden stream of his disappointment.
The werepanther streaked at me low to the ground, only the deeper darkness of his coat alerting me to his approach. I spun away, lashing out at the flash of claws seeking my throat. He grunted as my sword and his paw collided, all the odds in my favor. His paw bounced away, cut clean at the wrist. The panther hit the street and, in an impressive display of rubbery spine and intent, he pivoted on his back legs and swung his other paw at me. I put my foot in his ribs and knocked him into a nearby lamppost, his skull ringing out agai
nst the steel.
“Luke, I am your father…” The panther stared at me, eyes swirling in their sockets. Poor Luke.
It’s hard to be a geek sometimes.
I turned back to the others only to find a few still willing to engage. A few seconds of sword work and that number had dropped dramatically, bits and pieces of them scattered across the street like a broken piñata. Most of the pack had only just begun to pull themselves free of the asphalt slab as I strolled over to them, dispersing one of my swords. I snatched one of the werewolves up.
“Quick question, Teen Wolf. What does Hobbs have planned for Old Town?”
The wolf growled, and I cut his snout off, tossing him aside to grab another
“Same question.” I got the same answer, so I drove my sword into his gut and set it on puree.
I hadn’t really expected any of them to know anything seeing how the were-critters were mostly used as enforcers by the vampires, but I could hope. A few more met untimely ends choosing to snarl at me rather than answer my question, but by the time I was finished with those ones, the rest had scattered, disappearing into the night with their tails between their legs.
The cold chill of satisfaction oozed over me as I watched them run. I let my other sword fade as the dying weres moaned and groaned around me. Severed limbs twitched, still imbued with the remnants of lycanthropy and memories of life.
“Old Town is mine,” I shouted, my voice washing over the neighborhood as though I’d used a bullhorn.
As the sound died away, and I realized I was standing in the middle of a bloody street with my arms and legs spread like some B-grade movie villain, I shuffled off through the red sea of were-parts. By now, Veronica had done what she needed to do and would have some answers for me. She’d once claimed she could charm any sentient creature as long as she could have her way with them. Well, she’d had that and more with Hobbs so it was time to figure out what he knew. Bile tickled the back of my throat at the thought.
