by Sam Cheever
The she-devil raised her arms and I steeled myself, stiffening my legs for the attack. I clasped the cross in my right hand and wrapped my other hand around the belt of crosses. If I was going down I would take a few of them with me.
Turns out I didn’t need to show how tough I was just yet. Dialle reached out a hand and touched her arm just as I felt the first signs of weakness in my traitorous limbs.
“What about him? What do we tell the King?”
She lowered her arms a notch but didn’t take her riveting black eyes from me. Shrugging she said, “What of him? He refuses to help us, even for his queen.”
“Yes, he does appear disinterested. But is he?” Dialle’s voice was a warm caress that made both of us squirm a little. She squirmed less than me, dammit. “I wouldn’t want his wrath to touch you, my love.”
At last she turned her face to him and met his velvety black gaze with deep, midnight pools of her own. I watched her body melt toward his, her arms move around his long, hard body and I found myself licking my own lips as their bodies merged into a seemingly undivided column of gorgeous devilry.
Where their bodies met, sparks snapped and spat and shot away from them in streams of pulsing light. The angels pulled away in fear, straining against the bonds that held them captive to their devils, while every devil in the room moved toward the sparks as if they were being pulled by an invisible thread to join in the mating. The court at the table all stood and moved to encircle the couple, reaching their hands toward the sparks, reveling in their sting. A low murmur of excitement filled the room and began to grow until it became a chant.
I wasn’t sure what was going on but I thought this might be a good time to make my exit. As my mind formed the thought the voice in my head said, Go. I will contact you later.
Although it pissed me off that he kept jumping into my head, I wasn’t as stupid as they believed me to be and I decided to get the Hades out of there.
As I backed quickly toward the door, my eyes scanning the room to make sure no one noticed, I rammed into something very solid and immediately felt claws digging into my arm. I turned to look into a set of unintelligent black eyes. Unfortunately for me, the stupid-looking eyes lived in a very ugly head with long, saliva coated fangs and the ugly head topped off a very squat, nearly purple red body. I realized immediately that I was not dealing with great intelligence and that gave me hope that I could get past the lesser devil without anyone noticing.
I smiled at him and began nodding my head. Like chicken hypnotism, this tactic works pretty well on the lowest class of devil, because they have such limited intelligence that they are often reduced to mimicry. After a moment, the devil’s wide mouth opened in a wet, fangy grin and his broad head began nodding back at me as I sidestepped his wide body and started to pull my arm gently from his iron grasp.
The tactic seemed to be working for a moment, but then an explosion from the front of the room and a burst of louder chanting pulled his limited attention away from me and the trance snapped.
I braced myself with both legs and quickly swung my right leg up into his groin. He snarled in pain and let go of my arm to grab the breached area. I used the momentum of my kick to launch myself over his head and onto my hands behind him. As he turned to come after me, I sprang away from the floor and landed in front of the door on my feet again.
He followed me through the door. I was waiting for him just to one side of it as he lumbered through with a spit-filled snarl. My hand whipped through the air and the belt of crosses swung around his thick, scaly red neck. It began burning him as I reached to grab the ends that were crossed behind his neck and pulled as hard as I could. He howled in terror and pain, while the hundreds of tiny, platinum crosses seared through his leathery skin and embedded themselves into the flesh beneath. “To Hades with you, fool. For God hath tired of you.”
One final cry sounded on the quiet air and I quickly pulled the belt away from his neck and ran for the Viper. I felt the first tendrils of cold as I lowered myself into the Viper and screamed, “Secure and climb.”
Although I hadn’t logged any directional information into the Viper’s information unit, it lifted straight into the air, through the open door in the ceiling of the warehouse and kept climbing as I began to pray. The hair on my arms stood up as my fear-thickened fingers jabbed instructions into the directional panel.
* * * * *
Mx. Deaver was probably waiting for me in that empty church somewhere in the city. But Hades if I knew where. The Viper had continued to climb until my stiff fingers managed to pound the address of the Church of the Twined Hands into the directional information unit but I wasn’t sure it would even find the church since we didn’t know where the hell we were.
Fortunately for me, the Viper was equipped with a directional system that didn’t need visual information to function. I felt it turn sharply and smoothly to my left, which I judged to be south of where we were and take off on silent wings of air. The screens came up after about ten minutes and I could see the lighted skyline of Angel City in the distance.
I sighed my relief. Apparently the thing in the warehouse hadn’t been told to come after me, though it had obviously been waiting for my return. I had felt the cold, electric presence as I’d jumped into the Viper. I glanced at my watch and smiled. It was a few minutes before nine. I wouldn’t even be very late.
The Church of the Twined Hands was in an upscale part of town that had been an abandoned hellhole until about eighteen months earlier. That was when the city decided to orchestrate a comeback for the beaten down area and the mayor had created encouragement, in the form of tax breaks and low-interest loans, for people to purchase and rehabilitate the battered buildings.
The renovated area now sported the latest in modern architecture. The stainless steel and glass structures that predominated on Bridge Street looked cold and sterile in the bright light of day. At night, with no sunlight to burnish their sterile faces, they were downright dingy looking.
However, even the street’s older buildings were a magnet for the wealthy, childless, people who seemed drawn to the area. They apparently thought the crooked walls and mildewed brick of the rehabbed buildings were “quaint” and had “personality”. I preferred my living space to be clean and square. I just thought the Bridge Street area was old and mildewed. It’s all in how you look at things I guess.
The Church of the Twined Hands was located in a squat, stone building that sat forlornly in the shadow of the two ten- or twelve-story buildings of stark stainless steel on either side of it.
In sharp contrast, the church was built of timeworn golden rock and was only about three stories high, with a tower that rose above the church, extending another three stories. Its windows were round, in the architectural style of churches from the early nineteenth century and filled with golden glass. Like lace on a hemline, gargoyles of various shapes and sizes banded the entire roofline. Some of the ugly, little creatures had dark, static eyes and didn’t look like they’d moved in centuries. Some of them, however, had roving eyes of red fire. Most of the creatures had claws the length of my hand and teeth that could rip the Viper apart with little effort. I was glad they slept soundly on their assigned perches that night and prayed they’d stay that way. Like rats, gargoyles are not my favorite things.
As I pulled open the heavy, iron-studded front door of the church, I thought I caught movement along the roofline and my eyes shot heavenward even as I threw out my sensing power. As my power came back to me laden with raw, frigid evil, my hand tightened on the carved, iron handle of the door and my spine stiffened with fear.
Somewhere out there evil watched me. A deepening sense of cold filled me as I closed my eyes and concentrated hard on trying to identify the source of the evil. With the gathering cold, I became aware of the foul odor of rot, like putrefying flesh on a decaying corpse and I knew that, whatever it was, I didn’t want to meet up with it.
Just as suddenly as I’d sensed the evil forc
e it disappeared. I hoped that meant that it had gone away, rather than the all too possible alternative. Which was that it had somehow sensed my probing power and had cloaked itself.
I continued into the church and closed the door firmly behind me. Closing out the darkness and entering a world of warmth and soft, golden light.
Deaver had promised to meet me in the church office and the only direction he’d given me was that it was located on the second floor. Looking around in the semi-darkness, I spied a wide stone staircase built into the wall just to the right of the entrance. I climbed the stairs to the dimly lit hallway of the second floor.
As I reached the second floor, I noticed that the staircase continued to climb into the darkness above and I briefly wondered what secrets the darkness held there. A cold, musty breeze flowed downward from the shadowed space above, caressing my skin and pulling my hair back from my face. The whispery breeze was filled with magic and left me feeling as if I’d like to keep ascending those stone stairs to see what was waiting for me in the darkness beyond that muted landing. Shaking my head finally, I turned away very determinedly and started down the dimly lit hallway. But I decided I would ask Deaver what lay beyond the second floor when I spoke to him. It might bear checking out in the near future.
There was only one office space on the floor that appeared to be occupied and, as I walked toward that well-lighted room, my ears picked up an unidentifiable clicking noise that seemed to be coming from inside. Aside from this gentle, unidentified sound, the entire floor felt deserted and was eerily quiet.
My nose wrinkled in self-defense as I neared the church office. I quickly realized that the sulfurous odor I was picking up was coated with another, sickly sweet smell I couldn’t identify. The small hairs on the back of my neck rose to attention and I fought off a chill of apprehension as I reached to knock on the doorframe of the open door to announce my presence.
As soon as my eyes entered the room, I realized why I’d felt death nearby. I also realized what the sickly-sweet odor was I’d been smelling and was able to identify the clicking noise I’d been hearing.
His body rotating slowly from an antique contraption called a ceiling fan, which hung above his desk, Deaver smiled gruesomely down at me, his lips spread wide in a death-induced distortion borne of the last terror-filled moments of his life.
What was left of his body dripped blood and other, more disgusting fluids as it twirled gently with the motion of the fan. He was dead, dead, most certainly dead. And I was too late to help him with his problem.
Oh the clicking noise? Each time Deaver’s naked, mangled body made the circle around the fan, one unprotected, blood-covered foot ticked against the metal shade that covered the room’s only window, tapping out an SOS that nobody had heard.
Against my will my head turned toward the open door behind me and I realized that, outside, before entering the church my senses had been true. The evil I’d sensed had been there and from what I was sensing around me, it had also been in this very room not too long ago.
I cast my sensing power around me like a protective cloak and reached to grab the knife I’d replenished my thigh sheath with while riding over in the Viper. I held it out in front of my body with both hands. Then I moved to the televisual and called the murder in to the Strange Death Department of the police.
As I spoke to a very disinterested dispatcher, my eyes continued to scan the room around me and I kept my sensing power up. I was intensely aware of the tinge of malevolence that burned into the outer edges of my power, touching me with tiny jolts of electricity as I fought to keep it at bay. A wicked, bloodthirsty force of some kind had been in that room very recently, I knew that for sure. What I wasn’t sure of was, had it left?
As I waited for the police I couldn’t help feeling that it was still there, skulking amongst the thick, strangling shadows of the dark, deserted church. Watching me patiently for a chance to strike.
Chapter Six
Things WORSE Than an Advocate?
It stalked the preacher every hour and every minute knew,
That it would suck away his soul and rip his form in two.
Where Deaver’s foot ticked against the shade, a growing smear of blood joined with the larger splatters that told the story of his brutal death.
I flicked several switches on the wall next to the door before I found the one for the fan. As Deaver’s body wound down slowly and finally stopped spinning, I moved to stand next to the body. I took a deep breath behind my hand and swallowed the bile that had risen into my throat. Reluctantly, I realized I would have to try some holy water on the wounds, to see if it would tell me who, or what, had hung this poor man from the ceiling and ripped him savagely to death.
I reached into my pocket for the vial I’d placed there before leaving home and my hand came away empty. I suddenly remembered that the vial was probably a drying pool on the floor of that devil-filled warehouse by now. As I had the thought, I glanced at the spot on my finger that had been sliced by the breaking vial and, though it throbbed in remembered pain, the small but deep slice was no longer visible. “Shit.”
I’d healed again in an amazingly short time. How had it happened? I hadn’t used my power to heal it. My traitorous mind flashed the memory of Dialle’s soft, hot tongue caressing away the blood from the wound and I pushed the picture in my brain away quickly, feeling my face flush and my body warm to the unwanted memory.
My eyes searched the office for another holy water source and I was relieved to see a covered baptismal font off to one side of the desk. I prayed it wasn’t in dry dock as I lifted the lid. My luck, for once, was good. Reaching into the cool, clear liquid, I gathered up a small amount in the palm of my hand and flung it on the gruesome mess that used to be Deaver. The water spattered Deaver in the area of his the largest wound, which was located in the spot where his stomach should have been. I wrinkled my nose and stepped back as the liquid popped and sputtered and ate into the flesh around the wound. The smell of cooking flesh assailed me as a thick, black carboniferous smoke rose from the place where the holy water had touched the wound. The heavy smoke stung my eyes and coated my airways.
No doubt about it, my preacher wasn’t killed by any human. That narrowed it down a bit for me, but still left a short list of about a dozen possibilities. I forced myself to step closer to Deaver and examine the wounds on his body more closely.
His torso, which appeared to have borne the brunt of the damage, was torn from just under his chin to just above his groin. The rips appeared random, crisscrossing his unfortunate, white flesh with brutal efficiency but with no apparent plan. They could have been inflicted by an animal with large claws, except that I knew they were not the result of any natural predator.
My mind unwillingly returned to the gargoyles on the roof and I shivered as I again thought about the malevolent spirit I’d felt outside the church. I suddenly realized that I had sensed the very creature that had hacked Deaver to pieces. And that I’d been just a few steps behind it as it completed its gruesome task.
* * * * *
The Strange Death Department of the police hadn’t been too surprised when I’d called them. They’d dealt with me before. They weren’t wild about the kind of business I always brought to them, but aside from the occasional verbal attack from a cynical rookie, I was generally left alone now. Though it had been a different story once. I guess even the cops couldn’t believe that I’d be stupid enough to kill all those people and then keep calling them to show them what I’d done. Besides, in the larger scheme of things we kind of worked for the same boss didn’t we?
With a grimace on his face, Death Detective Raoul stood over the mess that had once been my client. He shook his head with its short, brown curls. Deaver’s body had been cut down and was lying in an unappealing puddle on the floor. I watched the Death Detective’s square, masculine features twist with disgust before he turned back to me. “Phelps, you have got to get a different career assignment.”
I forced a smile. “Hey, we don’t get to choose what we do, DD. You know that.”
He grimaced again and nodded. “Damned shame. I knew this man. My aunt’s sister’s brother’s wife used to come to this church.” He grinned a little guiltily and leaned closer, speaking softly so that only I could hear him. “My aunt asked me to check him out before the woman joined. Don’t tell anybody, I’m not supposed to run those kind of checks for my personal use.”
I grinned and drew a zipper across my lips.
“Anyway…” he straightened up and spoke in a normal tone again, “I checked Deaver out and he was clean. Better than that, he’s been strangely successful against the devils. Helped a lot of people out with what he could do for them.”
A young, female cop handed Raoul a vacuum-sealed, clear bag that contained the rope which had been around Deaver’s throat. She threw me a frigid look as she handed it over. “This is the last of the physical evidence, sir. We’ll get the body wrapped up and send it off to the lab for a full sweep.” Once again her dark eyes swung my way and her pretty, pink lips twisted. “You want me to escort this…person out of here?”
Raoul looked up from the bag and met my gaze. Being a death detective, of considerable rank in the Strange Deaths department, he was no stranger to the bigotry of others. Civilians and cops from the other departments didn’t seem to understand the importance of the Strange Deaths squad. Many of these cops liked to joke about dealing with fairy tale monsters and the boogeyman and went about their lives thinking that, because they were armed with street smarts, knowledge of the oriental fighting arts and laser canister weapons, they had control over their own survival. By denying the existence of all things spiritual and boogey, they could tell themselves that they were on equal footing with the bad guys. What they didn’t know, they somehow reasoned, couldn’t hurt them. Ironically, it had been just this narrow type of thinking that had been the catalyst for creation of the Strange Deaths Department of the police in the first place.
