Wrath of the Fallen: The Guild of Deacons, Book 2

by James MacGhil

  “Not bad,” I muttered. “Is this cave some kind of a shadow realm?”

  “Hell no. Shadow realms draw too much attention from the halos. This place is on Earth. A solid three hundred feet underground.”

  “Under what ground?”

  “Ever heard of Oak Island?”

  “No.”

  “Good. Never mind then.”

  And before I was able to delve further into the topic, a peculiar whirring and clicking sound caught my attention. Turning to my left, I was more than a bit surprised to see a metal beer keg with robotic arms and a seventies vintage TV set for a head speeding toward me on miniature tank treads.

  Pulling to a gradual, and rather squeaky, halt before running over my foot, the kegbot proceeded to methodically raise its metallic arm and hand me a chilled mug of beer.

  “Here you are, Deacon Robinson,” it then said, as a pair of digital eyes and a mouth appeared on the TV. “Welcome to our humble abode. Cheers!”

  “Ah, thanks,” I said, carefully accepting the beverage.

  “You’re quite welcome, sir! May your taste buds be tantalized by the first batch of the Great Creator’s latest brewing triumph — the Triple Bastard.”

  “Triple Bastard?” I chuckled.

  “That’s correct, sir,” the almost laughable mechanized man servant happily responded. “It’s a perfectly balanced Belgian style tripel ale inspired by the Great Creator’s heroic efforts in Brussels some three centuries ago. Yielding a delightfully sweet flavor of chocolate malt, the Triple Bastard will dazzle your palate with a full bodied, hoppy taste accompanied by an intense fruity aroma of bananas. I do hope you enjoy it. I certainly would, but unfortunately I have no taste buds, you see. How terribly unfortunate. Perhaps one day the Great Creator will see fit to grace me with some. Oh, to dream.”

  If a robot could sigh, it sure as shit did before quickly pivoting and rolling, at break neck speed, toward the gun rack.

  “You have a brew bot,” I said, turning to MacCawill.

  “That’s Ziggy,” he grumbled, pouring himself a beer from one of the taps. “He runs the joint. And it’s a long story.”

  “He calls you the Great Creator?”

  “I created him. What else would he call me?”

  “Dickhead. Moron. Douche wagon. Asshat. Dumbass. Smart ass. I’m sorry, did I say dickhead already?”

  Blowing a rather impressive smoke ring at me, he grumbled, “Touché.”

  Pulling up a stool next to him at the bar, I said, “So what now?”

  Effortlessly draining his mug in one gulp, he said, “We’ve got a couple minutes to kill which means I’m having another beer — or ten. Tangling with archangels makes me thirsty.”

  Raising my mug, I muttered, “That’s the first smart thing you’ve said since I met you.”

  Taking a healthy pull of the Triple Bastard, I almost had an out of body experience as the frothy, amber goodness slid down my throat.

  “Son of a bitch,” I said, quickly taking another gulp. “You may be a dick-head, but you make one hell of a good beer. This stuff would give RoosterBragh a run for its money.”

  “RoosterBragh?” he scoffed. “Is that what O’Dargan is calling his piss water nowadays?”

  “You know Rooster?”

  “Yeah, I know him.”

  And seeming as that was all he had to offer on the topic, I figured it was best left alone. Seemed he wasn’t a Rooster fan. Interesting.

  “So, this employer of yours — where are we meeting him?”

  “Atlanta.”

  “Why Atlanta?”

  “He’s got some kind of affinity for Georgia. I don’t get it.”

  “Pardon the interruption, sir,” said Ziggy the kegbot as he zipped toward MacCawill holding what looked like a severed human hand. “I believe you’ve broken your hand — again.”

  “Really? I didn’t notice,” MacCawill muttered, holding up his left arm to find his hand all but limp with a visible array of broken fingers. “Sure as shit did. Good catch, Zig.”

  “But of course, sir. I believe it happened when you ever so gracefully sucker punched our guest earlier. I’ve taken the liberty to fetch you a replacement from the morgue. Please be careful with this one as our supplies are becoming disturbingly scant. Perhaps if you’d refrain from hitting people with such great frequency?”

  “I didn’t sucker punch anybody,” MacCawill grumbled, snatching the gruesome ‘spare’ body part and tossing it on the bar.

  “Of course you didn’t, sir.”

  “And if I did, it’s because he had it coming.”

  “Right you are, sir. Of course he did. I only regret that the Great Creator did not sucker punch Deacon Robinson harder — or several more times for that matter.”

  Rolling behind the bar, I heard Ziggy mumble, “Always hitting and shooting people. It’s no wonder we never have any guests…”

  As MacCawill directed a few more snide comments at the kegbot under his breath, I said, “Ah, did he say morgue? Why the hell do you guys have a morgue? And is that a hand? Like a real hand — like somebody’s frigg’n hand?”

  Completely ignoring my question, he then proceeded to take off his raw-hide duster and rip the left sleeve off the black, long sleeve Beastie Boys tee shirt he was wearing underneath. And unfortunately, what I saw next caused me to jump up from my stool and take a step or two backward.

  Although his left arm looked and moved just like a rather muscular, normal arm — it was not an arm. Or maybe it was? But instead of flesh, it was made of metal. Metal?

  A shiny, argent metal with no visible joints or seems like you’d expect on something of a mechanical nature. What the hell?

  To say it was creepy as all hell does not begin to do it justice.

  Making the mental note that I now understood why his left hook had the force of a freight train behind it, I said, “Ah, MacCawill, what the frig is that?”

  “Haven’t you ever seen a barzel infused biological limb before?” He replied, lightly tapping his shiny forearm in a couple places until his broken left hand literally popped free at the wrist and plopped on the wooden floor with a horrid thud.

  “No, Roy. I haven’t.”

  “Clearly you’ve never been to the realms of Fourth Heaven. Smelting accidents are pretty commonplace in the angelic forges.”

  Carefully holding the replacement hand to his shiny stump of a forearm, he muttered something under his breath in Enochian and it attached itself like an arcane magnet. Instantly becoming animated, MacCawill clenched it into a fist and wiggled his fingers a bit to make sure everything worked the way it was supposed to.

  “Good as new. I’m gonna miss the other one though. This one’s a little smaller. Whatever. It’ll work.”

  “Do I even want to know what the hell just happened there?”

  “That depends. You know anything about necromancy?

  “Ah, no.”

  “What about cadaveric allografts?”

  “No.”

  “Then probably not,” he replied, putting his duster back on and producing a fresh cigar. “It’s time to get this party started. We need to make a quick stop before heading to the rendezvous point. You ready to blow this pop stand?”

  “Emphatically,” I replied, slamming home the remnants of my beer. “Like right now.”

  “Hey Zig,” he called out, “We’re leaving. No crazy parties. And quit trolling those seedy internet dating sites. You do know that all those lingerie models you’re chatting up are really fat guys with man tits sitting around in their tighty whities eating microwave nachos, right? Goddamn disgusting.”

  “I was not aware of that, sir. Rest assured that I will take greater care in the management of my online social interactions. Perhaps if the Great Creator would devote his superior intellect to building me an autonomous cybernetic companion in lieu of making, and subsequently consuming, copious amounts of beer, I would not be relegated to conversing with overweight transgendered humans with poor h
ygiene habits.”

  “Whatever.”

  “Yes of course, sir,” the brewbot defeatedly muttered. Rotating toward me, he said, “Farewell, Deacon Robinson. It was an absolute pleasure to meet you. Please do visit us again!”

  “Thanks, Ziggy. Keep it real. Or cybernetic. Or whatever kegbots do — on the internet and stuff.”

  Yep. That was super awkward.

  Chalking up yet another strange and unusual experience that I sincerely hoped to ne’er repeat in all the remaining days of my supernatural existence, I followed the more than peculiar character that was Roy MacCawill through the inter dimensional portal that manifested adjacent the bar. It was time to get some answers.

  Or at least that’s what the plan was. And we all know how brilliantly my plans were panning out as of late.

  Chapter 12

  “We won’t be here long,” MacCawill grumbled, as we emerged from the otherworldly gateway into yet another one of his peculiar abodes. “Don’t touch any of my shit.”

  “This another safe house?” I asked, taking in the eclectic collection of hand crafted wicker furniture and old world artifacts carefully placed throughout an intricate array of ornate shelving that lined the walls of the odd, oblong structure. Lit only by the morning sun peeking through the curtains on the small windows, it looked suspiciously like an outdated mobile home that Roy’s great, great grammy left him in her will.

  “More of a cache site,” he muttered. “Been stashing goodies here for the better part of sixty years.”

  “That would explain why it looks like an antique thrift shop stuffed into the back of an RV.”

  “Blasphemy,” he scoffed, opening a large armoire on the far end of the dwelling. “RVs are for pussies. This is an Airstream, slick. A 1936 Clipper to be precise. One of the four hundred of these babies ever made. Picked it up after World War II.”

  Making the mental note that MacCawill was a few years older than he looked, I muttered, “Airstream, eh? Pretty sure that still makes it an RV.”

  “Is a Lamborghini a freaking car? Is a Rolex a freaking watch? Is the USS freaking Enterprise just a goddamned spaceship?”

  “Yes.”

  “No. No, mancho. They’re not. They’re engineering marvels of precision artistry. So trust me when I tell you that an Airstream is by no goddamn stretch of the imagination — just an RV.”

  Making the mental note to add ‘motor home snob’ to the growing list of MacCawill’s eccentricities, I pulled back one of the off-white farmhouse curtains to take a peek outside. And wouldn’t you know, we were surrounded by several rows of similar sausage shaped, aluminum vehicles parked under carports that were artfully woven into a thickly wooded campsite.

  “And the fact your Winnebago is sitting squarely in the middle of an RV park?”

  “Airstream park,” he snidely corrected me, still buried in the oversized cabinet. “A very private, highly exclusive Airstream park.

  “Really? And they let your sorry ass in here?”

  “I own the place, douche wagon. And should you refer to the Clipper as a Winnebago again — I will hurt you.”

  “Relax, Cousin Eddie,” I grumbled. “Why did we come here?”

  “For this,” he said, producing an obscure piece of jewelry from the drawer he was diligently rooting through. Tossing it to me, he added, “My employer was adamant that you have it. Put it around your neck.”

  Casually snatching it from the air, my hand instinctively jerked backward as a powerful surge of unnatural energy pulsed through my entire body like a jolt of electricity.

  Although, the mysterious object seemed nothing more than a large, tarnished locket of some sort, as I rubbed the dust away with my finger I found myself mesmerized by what laid beneath.

  It was an amulet. An exquisite, almost too perfect for words, amulet. Set flawlessly within a perfect circle of expertly forged gold that was interwoven with overlapping patterns of Enochian glyphs, was a brilliant bluish-white gemstone that radiated an ethereal, spectral glow. Inexplicably, it seemed to oscillate in and out of existence as I intently stared at it. It was amazing and weird and precious. Precious?

  “Better if you don’t look at that thing too long,” MacCawill said, chuckling at my reaction to the befuddling object. “Trust me on that one, ace.”

  “What the hell is it?” I asked, snapping out of the momentary daze.

  “The Talisman of Armaros. Picked it up on a job a few years ago.”

  “Armaros? Never heard of him.”

  “He was a Dominion class angel that went rogue. As the story goes, he had an especially gifted knack for enchantments and bullshit like that. Made this nifty blingage to shield himself from the all-seeing-eye of the Heavens after he told the God squad to suck it and defected to Earth.”

  “How’d you get a hold of it?”

  “Long story,” he muttered. “But the short version is — after a few centuries, the halos finally got tired of looking for him and put a bounty on his head. Rather chunky one as I recall.”

  “And you found him?”

  “Of course I found him, slick. It’s what I do. Tracked that sorry son of a bitch to a high rolling strip club in Montreal. New Year’s Eve. 1983. Let’s just say that little lap dance didn’t have the happy ending he was expecting that night.”

  “What’d you do?”

  “Dropped a Holy Flame hand grenade down his banana hammock,” he proudly chuckled. “Poor bastard squealed like a pig for a solid twenty minutes. Served him right.”

  “I don’t even know what to say to that, Roy.”

  “Anyway, after bagging and tagging his ass, I snagged the talisman. Told the halos it was destroyed in the skirmish. Figured it would come in handy one day.”

  “And why the hell don’t you use it?”

  “Come on, ace. I don’t need some pimped out hood ornament to hide from the Heavens.”

  “Right,” I muttered, again wondering just who the hell Roy MacCawill was.

  “You, on the other hand, are a different story, chiefy. The fact you’ve been touched by the left hand of the great God himself makes you stick out like a blazing beacon on a pitch black night. The wards on the trailer are keeping you veiled for the moment but as soon as you walk out of here, you’re going to bring a shit pot of unwanted attention our way. And then our little clandestine road trip becomes a hell of a lot more interesting.”

  “And this thing will keep me off the supernatural radar.”

  “Yep.”

  “How does it work?”

  “Just hang it around your neck.”

  “That’s it? There’s no dumbass chant to recite or anything?”

  “That’s right, almost forgot about the prayer,” he said, lowering his head. “Oh, great and powerful blingful trinket of Armaros the Dickless — I command thee to hide this jackass Deacon from all the many legions of unnatural sons of bitches that are trying to kill his really dumb, cape wearing ass. Okay, that should do it.”

  “Do I need to start punching you again?”

  “Whatever. Put your freaking necklace on and let’s get moving.”

  “Fine,” I grumbled, hanging the amulet around my neck and tucking it safely under my tee shirt. “What’s next?”

  “In order of importance — I deliver you to my employer. Then I get paid. Then I spend the better part of the next month making bad decisions with women of questionable morality that appreciate the value of disposable cash.”

  “Thanks for a mental picture I’ll never erase from my memory banks.”

  “My pleasure.”

  “How do we get to the rendezvous point?”

  “I set up a portal nearby. It’ll take us straight there. Easy peasy.”

  “Where?”

  “There’s a public shower in the middle of the campsite. Couple hundred meters from here. Portal’s in the third shitter from the right.”

  “You tethered a dimensional gateway to a shitter — in a frigg’n trailer park,” I grumbled. “Awesome.
”

  “Relax, mancho. It’s not like anybody’s in there snapping a yambo.”

  “Doing what?”

  “You know, honking out a dirt snake. Forcing the duck to quack. Filling the pond with brown trout. Dropping wolf bait. Crimping off a length. Baking a hot icicle. Making some trouser chili. Pinching the chimp. Burying the elf.”

  “Burying the elf? Are you talking about taking a shit?”

  “What the hell else would I be talking about?”

  When it was pretty clear I had absolutely nothing to offer in response to his barrage of ass innuendo, MacCawill said, “This place closed down for the winter two months ago. There’s not another soul for a solid ten-mile radius. A short walk in the park and we’ll be out of here before you can say ‘shitter’s full.’ Now let’s go. I’m never late with a delivery.”

  “If you say so,” I grumbled, willing the cloak into being as it manifested in a spectral flash and billowed about my shoulders. Calling for the spatha, I instantly felt the presence of the scabbard on my back.

  “Quit acting so damn jumpy, slick. I’ve taken great precaution over the years to ensure this little cache site is well hidden from any and all other-worldly voyeurs,” he said, opening the door to the peculiar abode and stepping into the chill morning air. “Staying off the grid is one of my specialities.”

  Leaving the shelter of the highfalutin recreation vehicle behind, I stepped outside and got my first good look at the densely wooded campsite. And damn, it was pretty sweet.

  Dominated by an impressive collection of majestic hardwood trees, it seemed to sit on a ridgeline overlooking a plush valley of evergreens. Countless Airstream trailers, secured for winter storage, were tucked neatly in small clearings that were connected by a series of well worn trails. And in the center of Roy’s Red Neck Trailer Park Emporium sat a large log cabin, where I assumed the aforementioned inter dimensional shitter resided.

  “You own this whole place, eh?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” he grumbled, casually strolling toward the cabin while pulling a fresh cigar from his coat. “I bought the land about a hundred and twenty years ago.”