Hell Freezes Over - A Quincy Harker, Demon Hunter Novella

by John G. Hartness

  Smith stood up. “Don’t do this, Quincy. I’d hate for us to end up on opposite sides of this thing.”

  “Yeah, so would I. So stay out of my way,” I said.

  “That’s not how this works,” Smith said, leaning forward onto his fists.

  He opened his mouth to continue, but Flynn flung the door open. “We’ve got another one,” she said, gesturing to me.

  “Another what?” I asked, standing.

  “Another family slaughtered in their home. Let’s go.”

  I turned back to Smith. “We’ll continue this later.” I followed Flynn out the door and down the hallway. “How long were you standing out there?” I asked as we stepped into the parking garage elevator.

  Flynn gave me her best “innocent” look, which sucked. “I just heard the last few minutes. I felt the tension rising in you and wanted to be able to interrupt if things got stupid. I felt them moving toward stupid, so I interrupted. But we do have a case.”

  “Same M.O.?”

  “Oh yeah. Bring a spare pair of shoes. This one’s even worse.”

  Chapter 8

  It was a good twenty-minute ride from downtown to the University area where the Nettles family home stood in a nice suburban neighborhood named Whispering Falls, or Rambling Brook, or Fallen Spruce, or whatever stupid collection of nouns the developed pulled out of the hat this time. Flynn parked in the driveway, right behind the crime scene van. I pulled my car in beside hers, then got out and jerked my head toward the CSI van. Those guys have been known to do nasty science-type things to people who get in their way.

  “Don’t worry,” Flynn said as she opened the door and slid out of the car. “If this is anything like the Standish place, they won’t be leaving anytime soon.” Good point. When there’s twenty liters of blood scattered around a house, it takes a while to process a crime scene.

  I got out of the car and took a look around, first with my eyes, then with my Sight. In the normal spectrum, it looked like any other house on the street. Brick two-story, white shutters, white siding for the eaves, small front porch, large back deck that extended far enough out to be seen a little from the front of the house. An attached two-car garage sat off to the left with the doors closed, a sidewalk leading up to the front door, where half a dozen cops milled around. The perimeter was set for two houses back on each side, but that did nothing to stop the crowd of lookie-loos from gathering, phones at the ready, trying to get a gruesome or sad photo for their internet profile.

  I walked up to a uniform taking photos of the outside of the house. He was noting placement of the kids’ bicycles, tire tracks, things like that. “Hey, Officer…” I let the pause drag on so he’d hopefully take the bait and supply his name.

  No such luck. I had to read his nametag. “Officer Aguirre, could you make sure you get photos of everyone along the tape as well?”

  “Sure…” he trailed off as he took in my long coat, black t-shirt, no visible badge.

  “He’s with me, Aguirre. Just do as he asks,” Flynn said, shooting me a look. I opened my Sight and scanned the crowd. Nobody stood out as a bad guy, but I wondered if the homeowner’s association knew that one of their neighbors was an elf.

  I followed Flynn into the house, and my nose was immediately assaulted by the coppery smell of blood, the salty tang of fear-sweat and other, less savory smells of death. I wandered through the downstairs, poking around the kitchen, checking the channels on the television, doing all the things I could think of to keep me out of the upstairs. Finally, out of excuses, I put on two pair of booties over my shoes and climbed to the second floor.

  Flynn was right, it was worse than the Standish place. She was waiting for me at the top of the stairs. A pair of crime scene techs were visible in the master bedroom off to the left, so I turned right to look at the children’s rooms. Just going from the decoration on the doors, they had a boy and a girl, just like the Standishes.

  “Are we seeing a pattern, here, Flynn? Two kids, boy and a girl? Is that significant?” I asked, my hand on the door to the little boy’s room.

  “It could be,” Flynn replied. “It’s honestly too early to tell. We can’t build a dependable pattern off just two crime scenes. To get a real pattern we need more data points, which means either—”

  “This fucker has to kill again,” I supplied.

  “That,” Flynn agreed, “or we find cold cases with the same M.O., either locally or nationwide. I contacted the FBI and sent them the details of the case. They’re running everything we have through their database, so hopefully today we’ll hear if there are any other cases like this in the U.S.”

  “Let’s hope the answer is no,” I said.

  “Why is that?” Flynn asked. “I mean, I understand it on a human level. We don’t want anyone else to have gone through this, ever. But that’s not what you meant, was it?”

  “No, it wasn’t. If this is local, then it’s probably something I can deal with. If this is a demon that’s been traveling for years, with no significant weaknesses and a long history of getting away with this shit, there’s a good possibility that it’s either too strong or too smart for me to handle, which is not only bad for yours truly, but severely reduces our chances of stopping this thing before it’s eaten its fill.”

  I turned the knob and stepped into the Nettles boy’s room. If ever there was a stereotypical American boy’s room, I was standing in it. A Cam Newton poster hung in place of pride over his bed, Cam in his “Superman” pose after scoring a touchdown. A huge Carolina Panthers head hung over a small desk with a stack of Chronicles of Narnia and Harry Potter books on it. Framed on the desk was a picture of the kid, Carey, I remembered his name finally, with a smiling Luke Kuechly in the picture with him. A single bed sat under a window, a military-style footlocker at the end of the bed. In the middle of the bed, tangled in the covers like he was sleeping with it, was a football. This was a kid who loved his Panthers.

  I knelt to open the footlocker and felt a rush of cold across my arms. I looked around and drew back as Carey Nettles appeared, sitting on the footlocker with a somber expression on his face. I reached for the footlocker again, and Ghost Carey shook his head at me, putting his hands over mine. I felt the grave-chill again and drew my hands back.

  “Hi Carey,” I said, looking right at the boy. He started a little, obviously used to being ignored. I went on. “Most people can’t see you, can they?”

  He shook his head.

  “Well, most people don’t know how to look. My name is Quincy, and I’m one of the good guys. I know how to talk to people like you, and a lot of times I can help them move along on their journey. Do you know what I mean?”

  He looked at me, sadness filling his deep eyes. He nodded slowly, then looked around the room.

  “I know, it’s a little scary, leaving behind everything we’re familiar with. But it can be exciting, too, getting to see new things, right?”

  He nodded again, a little less pain in his eyes.

  “Carey?” I asked. “Can you answer a few questions for me before you go?”

  He nodded.

  “I know you can’t speak to me, but I’ll ask yes or no questions, and you can just nod, okay?”

  He nodded again.

  I took a deep breath. “Did someone hurt your family, Carey?”

  The ghost sat on the edge of the bed, just looking up at me. After a long moment, he nodded.

  “Was it someone you know?”

  Nod.

  “Was it someone who lives here?”

  Nod.

  “Carey, did your daddy hurt you and your mommy?”

  Long pause, then nodded. A single shiny tear streaked down his face. I reached out without thinking to wipe it away, but my hand passed right into his face, startling us both.

  “I’m sorry, Carey. I didn’t mean to scare you.” The irony of my words was not lost on me, as I apologized to a ghost for me scaring him, but this wasn’t a haunting in the real sense, this was a lost litt
le boy who didn’t know how to find his mommy and daddy. “I just have one more question, then I’ll help you find your mom and dad.” Or at least your mom, I thought. I only had a little bit of faith in his mother and father sharing an afterlife, but this wasn’t the time or place to discuss that.

  Carey looked up at me, trust shining on his ethereal face. He nodded once, telling me that he could be brave a little while longer.

  I took a deep breath. “Carey, when your daddy hurt your mommy and you, was it really your daddy, or was there something else with him?”

  I saw the boy try to say something and shook my head. I hadn’t asked a yes or no question, and the mute spirit couldn’t answer anything. I held up a hand.

  “Hold on, buddy, I’ve got it. Let’s try this—was it really your daddy who hurt you?”

  Carey shook his head.

  “So somebody else was with him?”

  Another head shake. Well, that didn’t make any sense. If he wasn’t being controlled by something…wait a minute.

  “Carey, was somebody else in your daddy?”

  A vigorous nod. He grinned and gave me a “thumbs up.” So it was as I suspected—his father wasn’t evil, he was possessed. That gave me some direction, at least. Now to send this kid on his merry way.

  “Carey, are you ready to go find your mom and dad?” The little ghost boy nodded.

  I sketched a quick circle on the floor with a piece of chalk I found in the kid’s desk. It wouldn’t hold much, but I didn’t expect Carey to try and jump into my skin suit, either.

  “Step inside the circle, Carey.” He hopped down off the bed and stepped into the circle. I spun out a little of my energy to invoke the circle, and a glowing white light snapped into being all around the edge of the circle.

  Carey drew back, frightened.

  “Don’t worry buddy. I won’t let anything hurt you anymore.” I focused my mind and called, “Glory! Get your yoga-firm ass down here. I need your help.”

  “You know I can’t get involved in this fight, Q. And stop checking out my ass, it’s perverted.”

  “It’s a nice ass, and what do you mean you can’t help me?”

  “We’ve talked about this. I can’t help you on this case.”

  “This is different. All I need you to do is open a door to Heaven and let this kid in to find his parents. And I kinda need to know if they’re in there.” I talked fast, but it’s really hard to confuse an angel. They’re otherworldly smart and can tell when I’m lying. I didn’t really expect Glory to do it, but when she sighed, I knew I had her.

  A fair number of my most successful interactions with women over the decades have been preceded by a resigned sigh on their part. I’ll take it. Glory waved her hands in the air, spoke some Latin phrases, and the fabric of reality split wide open. Searing white light spilled into the room, and I had to avert my eyes. I also had to cover them with both hands, and a second later I pulled a pillow off Carey’s bed and pressed it to my face to save my sight. Heaven isn’t something mortals get to peek into and keep their Earthly vision.

  I heard Glory speaking more Enochian, then the light around me dimmed considerably. I put the pillow down and looked past Glory to see a couple in their early thirties standing in a pool of light. Carey’s face lit up when he saw his parents, and I looked over at Glory.

  “We all good?” I asked. She nodded, and I dropped the circle around Carey. He ran to his parents, who looked up at me with a smile. The mom held a preteen girl by the hand, presumably Carey’s sister, and his father looked at me with a grateful smile. Whatever this man had done, it wasn’t by his hand, and left no stain on his soul, or he’d never be allowed near the soul of an innocent child. Carey and his family vanished, leaving more questions behind than they answered.

  “That was bold, Q,” Glory said, waving a hand and sealing her portal. I reached out with a toe and scrubbed out the edge of the circle, dispersing the magical energy into the world and erasing any trace of me from the room.

  “Didn’t have to be, Glory. If you’d give me the info I need.”

  “I can’t, Q. I really, really want to, but I can’t. It’s not my decision, and I don’t get to contradict my bosses. You know that.”

  “Yeah, I know. That whole war in Heaven thing. Whatever, thanks for helping with that. I couldn’t send him on myself because if I just banished him, there’s no guarantee where he would have ended up.”

  “Thanks for doing that. I couldn’t stand the thought of that little boy just wandering the Earth forever.”

  “Don’t tell anybody about it, Glory. I’ve got a reputation to uphold. Which I will ruin forever if I stay in this room talking to nobody any longer. Get out of here, I’ve got a crime scene to investigate.”

  “Later, Q. I hope you figure it out. I really do.” I could see in her eyes that she wasn’t lying. Well, that and the fact that angels can’t lie. They can’t. Neither can demons. Both of them can obfuscate like motherfuckers, but they can’t lie. The trick is getting either bunch to give you a straight answer, so you know what they really mean. This time I felt like Glory was being straight with me. She couldn’t tell me what was going on, but that didn’t mean she didn’t want me to put a stop to it.

  Chapter 9

  The rest of the house was spirit-free, thank God. I spent a little time checking out the daughter’s room, but there was nothing there. Just a preteen girl’s room with posters of musicians I’d never heard of and actors that I couldn’t tell apart. A stack of Ms. Marvel comics spoke to a budding love of geekdom and good writing, and my heart pulled a little at the pictures of Elizabeth Nettles riding a horse at some kind of camp, her kayaking with a huge grin, accepting some award at a school function. I couldn’t find anything to indicate she was anything other than a well-adjusted twelve-year-old girl. Still no computer in the kids’ rooms, so I’d have to check the family PC down in the dining room for anything dangerous, but I was pretty sure I felt a strikeout coming there, too.

  I pulled the door closed to the daughter’s room and turned to go into the parents’ room and murder scene. The blood had soaked all the way across the threshold into the hallway, making me grateful for double-bagging the booties. The room looked almost like someone had rollered the walls in reddish brown paint, there was so much blood splatter. Where the Standish scene had been contained mostly to the bed area, this room showed signs of a struggle with overturned furniture and bodies scattered all over the floor and bed.

  Carey and Elizabeth were in the bed, and that’s where most of the blood on those walls came from. It looked like the kids were stood up on the bed, their throats slit, and the spray directed around the room for maximum coverage. Sandy Nettles was lying on the floor at the foot of the bed, barefoot and bare-legged. Dressed in an oversized t-shirt and panties for bed, she’d obviously come awake when her husband brought the kids into the room.

  She put up a fight, too. She was away from the bed, and there was a shattered lamp and alarm clock lying on the floor against one wall. Looked like she threw things at her husband to try and get him to stop. My guess was, she could have thrown a tank at him and nothing would have stopped what was going to happen here. Whatever was doing this shit had more power than almost anything I’d ever run across, and that had me plenty worried.

  Sandy lay in a pool of blood so deep the carpet couldn’t hold it all, so there were literal puddles of her blood on either side of her head. Her throat was slit deep enough I could see her spine through her throat, and every other major artery had been opened, too. It wasn’t overkill in the classic sense—it was too clinical, too cold. There was no rage here, just the need for a huge volume of blood. That was reminiscent of blood magic, but there was no other hint of magic anywhere in the room, not even on the husband’s body.

  Jim Nettles lay facedown on the carpet, most of his body’s blood streaking out from his legs and wrists. I felt a second’s relief that I didn’t have to see his empty eyes staring up at me, accusing, demanding answ
ers, screaming for justice that I couldn’t provide. I gave myself a shake and snapped out of my pity party, remembering that I wasn’t the dead one in the room, so I had it pretty good.

  I opened my Sight and scanned the room quickly. It had the same clean energy as the Standish scene, an almost sterile feeling in the magical spectrum, which was really odd for a place where so much blood had been shed. I filed that away on my list of things to poke Glory about and kept looking around the room. I turned slowly in place, scanning the walls, ceiling and floor with my Sight, but nothing leapt out at me as demonic or even supernatural in nature. For all I could tell with my third eye, this was committed by a completely unassisted human.

  If there hadn’t been an identical murder/suicide less than a day ago, and if I hadn’t been haunted by the ghost of a cherubic second-grader ever since, I would have walked away from this one, too. But I was being haunted by sweet little Emily Standish, who stared at me from the Nettles’ closet door with her big, blue, accusing eyes. So I kept looking. There had to be something here, something I missed at the Standish home…there. There was just a glimmer of light coming from the dresser. I dropped my Sight and walked across the room. A jewelry box, a stack of folded clothes waiting to be put away, a wallet and change dish, and a couple of framed photos sat on the polished wood surface. Here we go, I thought. I opened the jewelry box and pawed through it, dumping the contents onto the dresser.

  “Hey, you can’t do that!” One of the crime scene techs rushed toward me all in a tizzy.

  “Calm down, Chow Yun Fat, I’m working here.” The Asian man stopped in his tracks, his jaw agape.

  “Who the fuck are you? I’m totally reporting you. You can’t just come in here while I’m working and make racist comments. I’ll have your fucking badge, you asshole. I’ll make sure you—”