The Stars Never Rise (The Midnight Defenders Book 2)

by Joey Ruff

  “What are you gonna do?” Ape asked.

  “I’m gonna take the wanker home before he puts one of his homuncuthings in Nadia’s sac.”

  “That’s a disturbing image.”

  I charged past Ape into the kitchen, and Nadia and DeNobb both turned to me. Nadia’s smile didn’t waiver, but the weatherman’s soured slightly.

  “You didn’t tell me we were expecting company,” Nadia said. She was still in her jeans and t-shirt from earlier, and her hair was up and sticking out in places. She smelled a little like ash.

  “He was just leaving, actually,” I said, eyeing DeNobb coldly. “You ready to go?”

  “Uh, I. Umm, sure?”

  He fumbled to his feet, and I picked up the shoebox off the counter.

  “Actually,” Ape said, “you can leave that.” Then he looked at DeNobb. “If that’s okay.”

  “Uh, yeah. I don’t want that thing in my house, it creeps me out, man.”

  “Zip up your jacket,” I said.

  He did, quickly, and as I moved to the door, I noticed him reaching for Nadia’s hand and saying, “It was really nice to meet you.”

  “Yeah,” she said. She didn’t just shake his hand, she held it, and her cheeks flushed. “Maybe we’ll…see each other again?”

  “Maybe,” DeNobb said, and he sounded a little too interested.

  I cleared my throat.

  “Right,” he said. “Umm, later, I guess.”

  He let go of Nadia’s hand and moved to my side. I looked at him and said, “Go wait at the car.”

  “The, uh…”

  “What are you, retarded? The El Camino.”

  “Right,” he said, pointing at me. The door opened and closed, and when he was outside, I looked at Nadia and said, “No!”

  “What?!” she snapped.

  “You’re not allowed. He’s gross.”

  “That’s not exactly the word I’d use to describe him.”

  I sighed. “You don’t want him, trust me. You’d have little versions of him running around everywhere before you knew it.”

  “Jono, please. Give me a little more credit than that. I’ve never even had sex. It’s not like I’m just gonna jump into bed…”

  “You don’t get it. Ape, explain it to her?”

  “What do you mean? We had that talk when I was like ten. Remember? Stay away from boys, Nadia. If you let them put their snake inside you, it’ll eat all your organs and chew up your bones.” She followed that with an ugly look. “I was terrified!”

  I smiled at her and then turned to Ape and gave him a serious look. “Handle this? I’m gonna take our friend home.”

  “This conversation isn’t over,” she said as I opened the door.

  “Stay away from him,” I said. “He’s not your type.”

  I walked outside, and the weatherman was leaning against my car. He looked even more dour than before.

  “You okay?” I asked. He didn’t say anything, but nodded. “Good. Get in the car.”

  13

  “What the hell is happening to me?” DeNobb asked after a while. We’d driven most of the way in silence. “Am I some kind of freak?”

  I didn’t look at him. I kept my eyes on the road. “It’s possible.”

  “Shit. This can’t be happening. I’m on television. I can’t have all of these bumps and little…things popping out of me all the time. How am I supposed to…you know, pick up chicks with little…well, me’s popping out? And your partner called them ‘wombs’? It’s like, ‘hey baby, don’t worry, I’ll be the one getting pregnant, not you…’”

  “Didn’t look like you were having any trouble earlier.” Huxley’s first rule as a hunter, well…one of many first rules…was to always appear confident. Regardless how fucked up the situation. Appearing confident meant others around you didn’t panic as easily. It meant you controlled the situation for a little longer. This kid had that in spades – at least where pretty ladies were concerned. It was maybe part of his frat boy training. It also made me want to punch him in the face.

  “What? Oh. Yeah.”

  I glanced at him. “Listen to me, DeNobb, because I’m not gonna say this again. Stay the fuck away from my daughter.”

  “That…Nadia’s your…” He thought for a moment, and then quietly, he said, “She must look like her mother.”

  I didn’t say anything at first. After a mile or so, I said, “Look, I’ll take you home, but that’s it. Case is closed. Don’t keep showing up at my place. Understand?”

  He was silent another minute before he said, “Do you hate everybody, Swyftt, or just me?”

  I laughed at that. “Hate’s a strong word, kid.”

  “I’m not a kid,” he said. “I’m twenty-two. I’m the youngest weatherman Channel 5 has had on their morning program for almost twenty years. I’m a professional. A pillar of the community. People respect me. I don’t have to take this from you.”

  “You’re a pillar of something,” I said. “And to answer your question, no, I don’t like you. You’re a punk who has it better than he realizes and takes it all for granted. Maybe daddy left you some entitlement or legacy or some other bullshit, but that attitude works for shit around me.”

  The way he stared at me, I could feel fumes coming off of him. Slowly, he said, “You don’t know anything about my father. If you talk about him again, I will fucking attack you.”

  I glanced over at him with a shrug. “Whatever you say, Sport.”

  The last few blocks were really awkward after that, but then I pulled up at his building, ready to drop him off at the curb. He looked at me. “You’re not gonna walk me up?”

  “I don’t kiss on the first date.”

  “Look,” he said. “My place creeps the hell out of me. These things inside of me creep the hell out of me. At least just come up, take a quick look around and make sure everything’s okay.”

  “You want a bedtime story, too? I can tuck you in, kiss you on the forehead?” I didn’t wait for him to answer. “Get the fuck out of my car.”

  “Would it kill you to be nice for a change? Maybe – I don’t know – treat me like a human being for once?” He scowled at me. “You don’t always have to be an ass.”

  “I’m not a fucking manservant,” I said. “And this isn’t TV, where talking to me like that forces me into some magical, gooey moment where we exchange feelings and hug.”

  “Fuck you.”

  He unbuckled his seatbelt and reached for the door handle, but stopped and just stared off out the windshield.

  “What if I hire you for something else? Like…I don’t know. A bodyguard or something. Would you come inside then?”

  “I ain’t bloody cheap.”

  He was quiet for a second before he said, “Fine. I’m due for a bonus anyway. It won’t do me any good if I’m dead, right?”

  “That seems a little melodramatic.”

  “Okay, so maybe not death…”

  “The death part, the part about needing a bodyguard from your little zit buddies.”

  “I’m freaked out, man. I just…”

  “Forget it. It’s your money.” Not to mention, if I’m working a case, Ape and Nadia stay off my arse. “Let’s do this.”

  He nodded, seemed a little relieved. With a sigh, I pulled into the entrance of the underground parking ramp. DeNobb gave me his pin as I entered it into the keypad. There was a whine as the gate opened. After I’d found a parking spot, I pulled Grace out from under my seat.

  “What are you doing?!” DeNobb asked, his voice growing excited. “You can’t bring that thing in here. This is where people live, man. This is where I live. Do you even have a permit?”

  “I’m a bodyguard,” I said. “Bodyguards have guns.”

  “Some of them,” he conceded. “But they have like…little pistols and stuff. That thing’s a beast.” He looked around to make sure nobody was watching as I strapped her to my leg. “Is it even legal?”

  I shrugged. “Probably not. You
can’t just pick one up at the pawn shop.”

  “They have cameras,” he said, looking around, paranoid. “They’ll see you. Maybe they’ll call the cops. If not, there’s at least a good chance I’ll get fined.”

  I ignored him. “You want to feel safe, yet you don’t like guns?” I hopped into the bed of the car and popped open the heavy, plastic tool box that sat behind the cab. “Don’t look in here, then.”

  On instinct, he looked. “Oh, God! You’re a terrorist, aren’t you?”

  He was talking about Glory, my SG 550 5.6mm assault rifle. Naturally, I didn’t take Glory. She was only for confirmed threats, but I loaded my pockets with specialty shotgun shells for Grace, a few flares, some bolos, and some buckshot. A girl was only as flashy as her jewelry.

  I shut the toolbox and turned to DeNobb. He stared at me. “You scare me,” he said. “Who carries that stuff?”

  I looked at him. “You think the worst I face are tiny little weathermen?”

  “What, like vampires and shit?”

  I smiled. “You watch too many movies.”

  We went up the elevator to the thirtieth floor, and he got his keys out as we approached the door.

  “Just so we’re clear,” I said. “I’ll sweep the place once. We don’t hear anything, we don’t see anything, I’m gone.”

  He nodded. “Sure,” he said. “And thanks.” He eyed Grace cautiously.

  “I think the gun makes you more nervous than the little homunculies.”

  He nodded, turned back to the door, and opened it.

  When we stepped in, the first thing I noticed was the charge in the atmosphere. Something was off, and immediately I could tell we weren’t alone. The first thing DeNobb noticed was the smell: sulfur, limestone, and wet earthy, mildew. It was overpowering.

  “Oh my God,” he said, bringing his arm up to shield his nose. “I swear it didn’t smell like this when I left.”

  “Quiet,” I hissed. I nodded my head towards the end of the hallway and motioned with my eyes. That didn’t seem to register with him, but the second I unsnapped my holster and wrapped my fingers firmly around Grace’s handle, his face lit up with alarm.

  “What is it?” he asked in a panicked whisper. “Do you sense something?”

  I put a finger to his lips and mouthed the words, “Stay here.” As I moved quietly along the hallway, I made sure Grace was loaded and ready to party.

  The half-bath on my left was empty. So was the kitchen, on the right. As I neared the entrance to the living room on the left, the smell grew stronger, the air grew colder, and I could feel a rather peculiar breeze.

  I stopped just before the entrance and peeked my head around. I didn’t know what to expect, but the best I could hope for was to catch whatever it was by surprise. If it didn’t know we were here, so much the better.

  The first thing I noticed was the wall. Where the picture window had stood (and afforded DeNobb’s high-rise apartment one of the better views in the city), there stood only a giant, gaping hole.

  The floor of the living room was littered with glass shards of all sizes, pieces of the window frame, chunks of brick and panels of drywall the size of dinner plates. DeNobb’s furniture had been torn apart as well, chairs knocked over and broken, the sofa capsized on the coffee table, small electronic boxes and a digital clock broken open like coconuts and multicolored wires vomited from their husks, spilling out of the entertainment cabinet with naked wires. Holes as large as basketballs had been punched in the walls.

  Standing in the midst of it all, holding either end of a sixty-inch flat screen television in a massive, clawed hand, stood a hulking, apish form. It stood on its back legs, and its long, snaking tail swept across the glass and debris without care. Had it not been hunched over, its head would have been touching the ceiling. Its rippling, muscled arms were coated in yellow and grey armored scales, and a pair of wings the size of a hang glider grew proudly out of its shoulder blades and rested somewhat folded at its sides, the tops rubbing against the ceiling.

  I ducked back around the corner, realizing it hadn’t seen me, and took a breath. I opened Grace one more time, and felt my heart beating loudly in my ears. I snapped her shut, kissed the top of her barrel, and said, “You ready, love?”

  I moved into the doorway and fired both flares at once. They sparked against the creature’s back and bounced off. The creature spun at me in a hiss, its tail sweeping through the glass of the entertainment center, throwing rubble against my legs and biting into my arm. Its eyes shone red in the dimness, and its beaklike mouth snapped open and hissed at me over rows of shark-like fangs.

  In the next instant, I threw myself to the floor as the television shattered against the wall above me. DeNobb screamed and ran forward. He skidded to a halt in the doorway and backpedaled quickly, planting his back against the wall.

  “What the hell is that?!” he screamed in a high-pitched voice.

  I came up on one knee and fired Grace’s rifle barrel, hitting the creature in the left arm. It screamed and leapt away, not through the open window as I’d been hoping, but further inside, forcing the door frame to the back bedroom two feet wider.

  I emptied my spent shells and chambered fresh, standing against the wall as I did. DeNobb was at my side, his eyes about to pop out of his head and roll around in the rubble. “What the fuck!” he squeaked.

  “It’s a gargoyle.”

  “A what?”

  “It’s an earth dragon.”

  His face paled, and he sagged against the wall. “This is not happening.”

  “We have one thing going for us at the moment.”

  He laughed nervously. “Yeah? What’s that?”

  “It hates fire.”

  I slapped Grace shut, aimed her through the bedroom door, and two more flares sparked through the darkness, one of them hitting the mirror behind his dresser and casting an odd light on the reflected mass. The other flare hit the synthetic fibers of the bedspread and in a matter of seconds, the entire room had kindled to a slow, simmering blaze.

  DeNobb screamed out behind me. At first, I thought it was anguish over the sight of his shit being destroyed, but as I looked at him, I noticed he’d doubled over in pain, clutching his gut with both arms.

  He fell to his knees as the gargoyle charged from the bedroom, the canvas-looking flaps of its wings and the tips of its ears lit like birthday candles, and smoke rolled off its back and chest as if from an industrial smoke stack.

  It was the size of a grizzly bear, and it bounded for me. I threw myself forward, hitting the side of the sofa and rolling into the corner. The gargoyle turned, its eyes scanning the room, looking for me, no doubt, and they stopped on DeNobb. The thing threw its head back fiercely, roared, and charged.

  “Jamie, get up!” I screamed. I managed to bring Grace up and fire her rifle shell from the hip, nicking the thing on the neck, but not deterring it.

  DeNobb staggered to his feet and stumbled backwards into the hallway, but as he did so, something fell from him. Before he’d disappeared completely from view, something else fell also. Then both of the things began to move, standing like people, and I realized they must be more of his tiny homunculillies.

  The two forms stood, and as the gargoyle charged DeNobb, the two things charged the gargoyle. The dragon stopped, spun its tail, and knocked one of the forms away, batting it over the sofa and splattering him like gelatin against the wall behind me. I felt a wet substance that I didn’t want to think about splash against my arm.

  Emerald light surrounded the other form, and then shot from it towards the glass shards around it like lasers in some horrible science fiction movie. Each piece of glass that was hit took on a green aura and shot like a rocket into the side, the arm, the thigh of the gargoyle.

  It shook its head, shambled backwards a few ragged steps, and refocused its attention on the lightshow at its feet.

  As I chambered fresh flares, I heard DeNobb scream out in agony again, louder this time. Then t
hrough the pain, I heard, “Swyyyyyyyyftt!”

  “Hang in there, mate,” I called.

  I hurtled the sofa, pulled the trigger, and aimed a burning cinder between the gargoyle’s eyes. It didn’t connect, as the wings swept up and deflected the flare, scorching the tip of its wing. It howled and backpedaled into what remained of the entertainment center.

  Behind me, the bedroom had gone from simmer to a roiling boil of flames that were climbing the walls and painting the ceiling. “DeNobb!” I called. “The place is going up! We need to get the bloody hell out!” The flames were licking up the doorframe and trickling along the walls of the living room. “Now!!”

  As I moved to the hallway, I heard DeNobb breathing heavily as if in labor. The green and red flickers of light from the center of the room distracted me for a moment, and the miniature fireworks display continued to charge out of the second replicant like flickering sparks from a flint lighter. I heard the thing cry out in a muffled groan and then it collapsed.

  “Get out!” I called to DeNobb, but rather than follow after him, curiosity overtook me. I moved for the fallen homunculus. As I scooped it up in one hand and glanced down at its almost feminine curves, its dark hair and tanned body as detailed and shaped as Barbie’s African cousin, I was haunted by the too familiar face of Nadia.

  While I heard the gargoyle’s angry call, I was so spellbound that I didn’t see it pull itself from the hole in the wall. I didn’t see it approach.

  Suddenly, it was too close for comfort, but before I could move, its tail struck me with the blinding pain of a lion tamer’s whip and the brute force of a charging linebacker. Had I been standing anywhere else or been hit from any other angle, I would have collided very painfully into the wall. But from the direction I was hit, the direction I was thrown didn’t have any walls, only a large open hole where glass had stood and a beautiful aerial view of downtown Seattle.

  There was a moment where all I could see were the darkening city streets and the cars with their headlamps glowing thirty stories below and the lights of the Space Needle in the distance, and I thought how beautiful it all was.