“My money not good enough for this joint?” I pull my arm free and take a step back.
“What money?” I hear a laugh from behind me. This must be the black guy from earlier. The amazing thing about bouncers is that they are the guys you expect to be tough enough to go toe to toe with about anyone they come across. Yet, when you see them in action, they work together like a pack of wolves. Lucky for me that this pack is only two members strong, and they seem to be leading me to the front door.
Too bad I’ve been a bad boy. I need to get these guys to lead me out the back.
I dig my heels into the ground which brings on another shove by Cletus behind me. “Takes both of you to handle little ole me? I guess you guys aren’t as tough as you look.”
“Whatever, buddy. If you can’t handle your alcohol, you can just stay out.”
“You’re scared. I get it. When you grow some balls I’ll be back at the stage.” I sidestep past Mr. Clean and walk towards the stage. I get about three steps before Cletus puts me in a full nelson.
“I’ve never met someone who wanted his ass kicked so bad.” Mr. Clean walks in front of me. “I’ll give you one last chance. Walk to the front door and leave, or get carried out to the back.”
“I’ll take the back.”
Mr. Clean grabs my legs to go with Cletus having my arms. I’ve managed to cause quite a scene in Gemstones, it seems. All around the club the other patrons are standing around in amazement as I get carried out back. I look up to the stage and notice Cindy being escorted from the stage, looking back at me every few steps.
Don’t worry Cindy. I’ll be there in two shakes.
We exit out the back and the two bouncers throw me against the wall. The bash brothers then start kicking the living shit out of me. I curl up into the fetal position, trying to protect my face more than anything. In between blows I happen to notice my salvation leaning up against the side of the building. A college regulation sized aluminum baseball bat. I could almost smile if my back didn’t hurt so damn bad.
The beating last about thirty seconds before it comes to a stop.
“If we catch you here again, it is going to be worse.”
I hear the door open.
“Pussy.” I say, staggering to my feet. Not the most original word that I could come up with, that’s for sure. But, sometimes it is the simple things in life that throw people over the edge.
“Need another lesson?” The door shuts and the pair move in my direction.
“No, you do.” I pull the bat to my hands and take a swing at Cletus. It is a thing of beauty. I’m not a Phillies fan, but you could fall in love with the homerun stroke of Ryan Howard.
Unless you are Cletus and just took it to your chin.
Blood sprays from his mouth along with a pair of teeth. Something tells me he is going to want to invest in a batch of straws since I surely broke his jaw.
Mr. Clean takes a step back for a moment and looks me over. He has his hands up like he is prepared to fight, but he keeps looking around like he is about to run.
I can’t afford for him to come after me when I go back in the club, so I need to take him down now. I hold the bat in my right hand and make a Bruce Lee gesture with my left.
He takes a step back before charging at me like a rhino. If I get pinned under him and lose the bat, there is no way I can come out of this alive. I could pull out the knife, but I hate to kill someone for doing their job.
I do the logical thing and sidestep to my left and hit him across the leg with the bat. It doesn’t have the power of my swing against Cletus, but it was enough to bring him to the ground with a bone shattering crunch.
“You broke my leg, asshole.”
“It’s nothing personal. I just can’t have you two coming up from behind.” I walk up behind him and give him a firm tap to the back of his head. His head drops lifelessly to the ground.
Now it’s time to head back inside and really cause a scene.
-13-
When I walk in the back door the scene instantly shifts. Before this was a place where you would have struggled to have a conversation with the person sitting right next to you. Now you could whisper on one side and the someone on the opposite side could hand you detailed notes about it.
“Where can I find the guy who runs this place.” I slap the bat down in my hands. I already know the answer to this. I just want to give him a fair chance to stand up himself.
I look towards the back table and notice the three men talking amongst themselves for a moment before the man with the cigar stands up.
“This is my place. What’s it to ya?”
“I didn’t ask who owns the place. Who runs it?” Cigar here may be the moneybags that financed the operation, but doesn’t call the shots. That little conversation a moment ago proves that.
“What’s the difference. This is my bar. I make the rules here.”
“In that case, where did you get the last girl. I believe you call her Kirstie.” I walk up towards Cigar, tapping the bat on the ground as I walk. “And for the record, if you lie to me you will end up like your boy Cletus out back.”
Sweat starts to pour from Cigar’s head and his skin starts to pale. This is the sign of a man who is about to make a very important life decision soon. His mouth opens and shuts a few times, the sign of a man who doesn’t know what to say. I know he kicked me out of the place earlier, because I knew who she was.
“The truth isn’t hard.” I swirl the bat in the air. “The answer should have taken two seconds to spit out. You don’t know where she came from any more than you run the place.” I point my bat towards Blue Suit in the back. “You, however, do.”
Blue suit steps up and claps his hands. “Very observant. I like that in a man.” He looks around the room and shouts. “If you value your lives, you will leave here now. If you are here in two more minutes I can’t promise your… safety.”
Like a herd of sheep being led back to the safety of the pasture, the people in the bar rush out of the exits. People are no different than animals when put into a deadly situation. Given another option, they will take the path that spares their life. In our natural state, we will generally opt to avoid pain than to seek out pleasure.
It is funny that these men sought out pleasure only to flee from pain. Only in a strip club.
There is, however, one exception to that rule. If put into a position where the only apparent result is death, an animal can be pushed into fighting back much harder than it would have been capable of otherwise. I had an old basset hound as a kid that learned that lesson the hard way when he found a family of raccoons under the house.
I would like to think that I am that animal in the corner, but I know better. I don’t really have a reason to be here. Do I really care about Cindy, or the mayor? I know all about the bombing, I could have just taken Sara and made sure we got as far away from the city as we could before it blew.
In the end I really only want the one thing I can’t have. I gave them up years ago when I decided to play house with a demon in exchange for a few extra years with my wife. It seems so foolish now, but it was the only decision I could have made back then.
“So tell me. What is it you want with Kirstie?”
“I want to take her back to her husband, where she belongs.”
“Her husband is not long for this world, Mitchell Butler. She will be taken care of here.”
“How the hell do you know who I am?”
“I know a lot about you.” He stands up and walks my way. “I know you are here for the mayor’s wife. I know all about your beautiful wife Sylvia and your son Trevor that you lost. You work for a crime boss named Roman Nalar, and I know you have been doing dirty work for some angels.”
My face must show my surprise because Suit here is starting to do one of those laughs that villains do in the old movies, completely with his head tilting back exposing a silver necklace with an upside down cross.
I’ll be damned. I can’t see the bot
tom of the necklace to be sure, but it looks like this bastard has Herod’s amulet.
“I still have a few surprises.” I put everything into pushing the bat towards his head. I want to crack this asshole’s skull wide open to the maggots can feed on his remains.
He puts one hand up and the bat stops feet from his head. “You thought I didn’t know about this?” I roll quickly to avoid being hit by the bat he flings at me.
I pull my demon killing knife out of my boot and square up to this punk. Some times you just have to do things the hard way.
“You don’t think you can poke me with that, do you?” His eyes change from his natural brown to a yellow-orange color.
The knife gets hot in my hand. I drop it on the ground and notice that it is the color of his eyes. That’s a neat trick, too bad he just nullified all of my tricks in ten seconds flat. Unless one of my angel friends is close by, this fight is going to be over quickly.
“Tell me, Mitchell. What is it you fight for?”
“I’m mostly the selfish type.”
“Then why are you here? There is nothing here for you. Cindy means as much to you as the drunks I sent out of here minutes ago.” His eyes start to change again, this time creating a ring of fire around me. “Tell me. What makes Mitchell Butler tick?”
Inside the circle it is hot, somewhere along the lines of being on the middle of an asphalt parking lot in late August. To make it worse, it is getting hotter. I need to find a way out now.
“You want to know what makes me tick? I get off on making life hell for people like you.”
“I thought there was more than that to you. Perhaps if he just turned up the heat a bit.”
The temperature starts to rise rapidly. If I was uncomfortable before, I feel like I am being roasted alive now. I want to get out of here, but I don’t have an answer for him.
Irony is a sick and twisted mistress. Just minutes ago I was chastising Cigar for not having a fast answer, and here I am doing the same. He was slow with his answer because he was trying to come up with a lie, but that isn’t my problem.
Or is it?
I want to come off as this hard-ass who can go into any situation, guns blazing, and walk out with everything. When I walk into a situation, there is only one acceptable solution. The one where I win. Losing is never an option because it would mean someone else also loses. If I didn’t come here, I might as well have killed Cindy myself. I knew she wouldn’t last a week in here after the mayor dies. I’ve never really admitted why I did these things before, because I masked it under other things.
“I care. That’s what makes me tick. You ask me what I fight for? I fight for the people who can’t fight on their own. Every one of you assholes I kill is one less asshole to hurt someone else.”
“Ahh, now the truth.” He lets the fire wane slightly. “Of course, you leave me in a bad position. If I let you live, you will just find me again. I don’t like being the fox.”
“You will always be the fox. Others will take my place.”
“None of the others will have your special gifts.”
“Mitchell Butler. I truly wish we met under different circumstances. You are a remarkable man.” His eyes turn to a deep shade of orange, almost red. “But it is time for you to die.”
The heat is very intense. My clothes are smoking and my shoelaces are on fire. I have seconds, at best. I always said that if I am going to go down, I’m going to go down swinging. Well, I’m sitting on an 0-2 count. It’s time to swing.
I put my focus on the bat on the ground. I flick my fingers and send it towards Suit. He waves his hands and it goes flying to the wall.
That may have looked foolish, given what happened earlier, but that is not my play. When he starts to laugh again I put everything into his necklace and pull it back to me. The chain breaks from around his neck and it flies to my fingertips. Once the amulet is in my control the flames die off, though the circle is still smoking.
“Aaaoooooo.” I know my basset hound impression needs some work, but I wanted symbolism there. I focus on the knife at my feet and send it into his skull. The force of the impact sends him back to the wall. His body convulses for a few moments before it falls to the floor. Blood oozes out of the wound and starts to boil as it pools around his open eyes.
I pull my blade from his head and clean it off on his beautiful jacket. “One more asshole off the street.”
-14-
“You’re sure nothing left his eyes?” Azrael inspects the amulet.
“Positive.” I admit that I was more interested in how his eyes were boiling his blood than I was in watching for the spirit to leave the body, but the reaction is usually quick. If Suit was hiding a demon, it managed to evacuate before Suit died. It isn’t unheard of if the demon had a moment to do it, but that was a bang-bang play. There is no way he got out that fast.
But without seeing the spirit leave, I have to wonder.
Azrael hands the necklace back. “He did have the amulet, as I suspected. I searched the cathedral at least three times before realizing that it was gone.”
I smile. “You knew he had it the whole time.”
“Suspected. It won’t get rid of your problem, but it should help you control your abilities more.”
“As long as it gets rid of the outbreaks, I’ll be happy.”
“It should.”
“So what’s next for you?”
“I have a lead on Balthazel up in upstate Minnesota, near the Canadian border.” Balthazel is one of the nasty ones.
Torture.
Dismemberment.
Slavery.
Pretty much every nasty thing you can do to a person, he does in spades. Just the type of target that needs to get taken down ASAP.
“What about you?”
“I got a private invitation to a fireworks display later this afternoon.” Nal’s guys managed to barricade a four block area surrounding the convention center. Nothing like hundreds of men with guns to persuade the masses to avoid the building. He didn’t believe that all the points were marked on the map and decided to set his own charges to bring down the place while it is empty.
“Roman is probably happy about that, isn’t he?”
“I can’t say it hurts his feelings.” Nal decided that he would be the one to get the rest of the city on the grid. He says he is doing it for the good of the community, but I know better. He wouldn’t make a move unless he was going to profit from it. It wouldn’t be much of a change from how it was before. I don’t think people will complain too bad at the chance to get back to the way things were.
“You enjoy your show, and take care of Sara. If you find yourself in the north in the next few months, look me up.” He reaches out and shakes my hand.
“It’s been fun.”
I get back in the driver’s seat of my Expedition. I managed to find it sitting in the back of the club. Nal told me that he would send someone for the Impala later.
I sit back in the seat and take a deep breath. The realities of the past few days hits me like a ton of bricks. Finally, I have the means to control Eunie and perhaps even use more of his power. It doesn’t help me with Michael, but it gives me something extra against demonkind.
In the end that is all that matters. If Michael can’t tell that we are on the same time, then he is going to have to take me out. But I’m going to make sure that I give him one hell of a fight.
I put the car in drive and head down towards the convention center. Uriel and Zeke are going to meet me there with Sara. Apparently this is going to be the show to end all shows. If the angels are coming in for it, it must be.
Some people may consider the demolition symbolizing the collapse of our civilization. Instead, I believe it to be a symbol of our rebirth.
The area directly outside of the building is still blocked off. I approach one of the roadblocks and get waved through. Most of the people are going to have to settle with watching the show from this far away. My seat is the best in the hous
e. I’m not stupid enough to sit close enough to get hit by the debris, but instead we are going to be up on the top floor of one of the buildings close by.
I park my ride on the back side of the building, hoping to keep it in one piece. I’d hate to lose it now after I just got it back.
As I walk through the entrance, Sara rushes me to give me a big hug. I wince in pain from my beating the night before as I lift her in the air. I hold her tight and take it all in. This was her victory as much as it was mine.
“I hope they didn’t hurt you too bad.” She smiles devilishly.
“Nothing a shot of whiskey and a few Ibuprofen can’t handle.” I take her hand and we take the stairs to the top floor.
From the top I can see the crowds of people gathered around the building. We haven’t had much of a reason to celebrate the last few years. Humanity is just itching for a reason to celebrate. Something tells me that tonight will be a night to remember.
“So you found the necklace?” Uriel walks up from behind.
“Yep, and took down another high demon.”
“I’m surprised. He was very powerful. We may have to expand the ones we send you after.”
“Even after five thousand years, humanity still finds a way to surprise me.” Zeke walks up and shakes my hand.
“We know a few tricks.”
“Your kind was blessed with one trait that the rest of creation could use more of. Perseverance. The harder things get, the more humanity just digs in and fights through it. Even now, when you should be cowering at what is happening in the world. Yet, you fight.”
“I always wanted to be that little kid who fought the bullies. I was too scared back then to do it.” I grab a Coke off of the table. “I wish I wasn’t. It feels good to stand up for what you believe in.”
“And what is it you believe in?” Uriel asks.
“I believe that we are worth saving. That we deserve to exist.”
“I think you may be right.” She walks up to the large window.
Fireworks fill the night sky for the next few minutes. It amazes me how much I missed them. I can remember the last time I saw them like it was only yesterday. I took my son to the riverfront to watch them up close. Sure, you can enjoy the show from far way. But nothing beats being up close.
Fallen: The Demontouched Saga (Book 2) Page 7
