The Angel of the Abyss

by Hank Schwaeble

  “By all means, set me straight.”

  She took another drag, set the cigarette down in the ashtray. “You think we're all one, big happy demonic family? You and the rest of humanity live in a world of competing interests, of backstabbing and betrayal, of shifting alliances and double-crosses. And that's supposed to be the place where good people live. Why would you think the dark side is some monolithic machine of united purpose operating in perfect harmony? Like we're nothing but an obedient ant colony.”

  “If you're saying I can't trust Raum, that's not exactly what I'd call a stunner.”

  “You're not listening to me. You can't trust anyone. You, of all people, should know that by now.”

  He mopped his face with his hand, squeezed his eyes shut. “I have to get her out, Deborah.”

  “Ooh, hearing you say my name just makes me melt.” She dipped her head and swung her chin like a pendulum. “You're such a boy scout. That's what he offered you? Her soul?”

  “Yes. He said he had authority. From his boss. I'm guessing that means the guy at the top. Or the bottom.”

  “And we know how well deals with the devil work out.”

  “Are you on the opposite side of this thing? Is that what's going on?”

  “If you knew anything about me, about us, Hatcher, you'd know we don't pick sides. It's like asking whether Fortune 500 companies favor Republicans or Democrats. They favor whoever is in power. And they always hedge their bets.”

  “In that case, there's no reason you can't just point me in the right direction and I'll be on my way.”

  “So, you want to know who represents a threat to the Throne of Hell, do you? Who's mounting a campaign for the job? Let's say I were to help you. I would need something in return.”

  “What kind of something?”

  “A favor. Not exactly a small one, either. You do this something for me, I'll do something for you.”

  He cocked his head, clenched his brow.

  “Don't flatter yourself,” she said. “Not that kind of favor. Unless you'd prefer...”

  “Tell me what you want.”

  “Your friend, General Bartlett.”

  “What about him?” He almost said, he's not my friend, but didn't.

  “He's causing a lot of trouble. Trouble that's directly affecting me. Seems he and his band of merry para-fanatics have been conducting raids on various locations, disrupting profitable activities. Put a stop to him, and I'll help you.”

  “I've only got a few days to complete that other deal.”

  “Then you'd better hurry.”

  Hatcher thought about it. “I'm not sure what I could do. He's got a small private army, last I saw. And he's not exactly the type to listen to someone like me.”

  “You're a resourceful man. I don't care how you do it. Just put a stop to his antics. His raids, his shoot-em-ups.”

  “For me to agree, I'd have to have a show of good faith. I can't even be sure you have anything worthwhile to give me.”

  “I'm hurt. Okay, how about this. What if I were to tell you the good General is not so good?”

  Hatcher looked at her. “I would gasp.”

  “I don't simply mean he has a nasty temper and loud table manners. Remember the young woman you encountered a few moments ago? The one who scared you silly? Did she look familiar?” Hatcher pictured her again. She had looked somewhat familiar. A definite resemblance to Vivian, though he was certain it wasn't her. More than just a resemblance.

  Deborah bent her mouth into a wry smile. “Favor a certain waitress, perhaps?”

  He felt his face slacken, his jaw slide open. Lori. She'd been at The Liar's Den. Her decapitated body had turned up in a hotel room, set up to make Hatcher think it had been Vivian. He'd always figured she'd been planted at the bar to get him thinking of Vivian in the first place, and to snoop on him. A pawn, put to a better use as a corpse when the time came.

  “What about her?” he asked, though he had a sense of what was coming.

  “You assumed she was Valentine's doing, blame for her death placed at his feet. His and, of course, ours, since you'd never extend someone like me the benefit of the doubt. What if I were to tell you that's only partially right? That not only was it Bartlett who hired her to spy on you, but that he was the one who sent her on an errand knowing she'd be killed?”

  “I'd say it's an easy claim to make, a harder one to prove.”

  “Oh, don't get me wrong. Having her walk unwittingly into a situation she wouldn't likely survive wasn't his idea. Men like Bartlett never let themselves be the ones to suggest such things, no matter how much they encourage that thinking in others. But his flunky Edgar...” She bounced her eyebrows and shrugged. “Suppose I were to tell you Edgar proposed they use her as bait, sending her somewhere to find you, knowing full well there was a psychotic killer in the mix. Want to know what his reaction was when Edgar reported she'd been brutally murdered?”

  Hatcher said nothing.

  “Calculated attrition,” she said, adopting a mock-serious tone and cartoonish frown.

  “Look, you don't have to convince me not to like the guy. That's not the point.”

  “I'm not quite finished. Do you know why he sent Ms Peroxide and not a certain other someone? Because he'd already let Vivian be taken by Valentine. On purpose. Without giving her so much of a peep of warning, let alone any say in the matter.”

  “Why would he do that?”

  “So he could follow, find out where enemy headquarters was or however it is you military guys think. Didn't quite work out that way, so he went to plan B.”

  Hatcher felt himself flush. “Let's not pretend here. You were there, Deborah. You were part of the plan, you facilitated what happened to her. You could have stopped it. None of this makes you look any better.”

  “That part about stopping it is debatable. And really, by now you should realize we don't get down in the mud like that, not unless there is an awful lot of something in it for us involved. Besides, you can't compare the two.”

  “And why is that?”

  She circled the bed and stopped in front of him. “We don't have souls. What's his excuse?” She looked up at him with those eyes. They were the color of a rain cloud on a summer evening. Why did she have to stand so close? Why couldn't he stop wishing she'd move closer?

  “Let's say I get him to stop harassing you. How do I know what you have to tell me is worth all that?”

  “I'll put it this way. I can't say I know who's trying out to be the next Prince of Darkness, the new Angel of the Abyss.” She paused, smiling and inching closer, closer, closer, until her scent was causing his extremities to tingle. “But I might be able to find out where the audition is going to be held.”

  She touched a finger to his lips, then let herself drop back onto the bed, stretching out like a cat. “Get Bartlett to back off. Then we'll talk.”

  A loud ding sounded from behind him, he looked over his shoulder to see a bright rectangle of light stretch open. He had to shield his eyes. “Hatcher?”

  He squinted, saw the backlit figure in the entrance to the elevator. Realized it was Amy. “Thank God,” she said, sagging in relief. “I was sort of freaking out. Are you okay?”

  “I'm fine,” he said. He glanced around. Shapes and shadows. Boxes, crates, canisters, old furniture, various objects visible in the wash of light. Exposed pipes crossed and cornered overhead. A basement. Dark, cramped, but unremarkable. He looked back to where the bed had been. An old mattress lay on the ground. He gazed into the shadows next to it. He could barely make out the glowing ember of something, a loose rope of smoke just catching a few stray rays of light. The curve of an ashtray.

  There was something on the mattress. An envelope. He leaned forward until he could make out the writing on it. Two letters. JH.

  “Uh, would you please hurry up and
get back here,” Amy said, leaning out as she kept a hand on the doors to keep them from shutting. She swung her head from one side to the other. “This place is giving me the creeps.”

  Chapter 8

  Amy padded across the room, a large white towel clinging to her torso, leaving a trail of water on the hotel carpet. She retrieved something from her suitcase, rummaged for something else through her purse. Hatcher watched her, let his eyes pet those legs. Those same legs that had just been wrapped around his hips, her feet caressing his hamstrings.

  “You're pissed,” he said.

  Amy didn't respond. She gathered what she'd been looking for and headed back to the bathroom.

  “Look,” he said, a little more loudly, accounting for the distance. “It will just be a day or two. I don't exactly know what I'll be walking into.”

  A moment passed, then she stuck her head around the corner and glared. “That's supposed to make me feel better? I thought we were in this together.”

  Hatcher took a breath. Something told him to choose his words carefully. He didn't consider himself an expert on women, but it didn't take a weatherman to know which way the wind blew. And if he wasn't cautious, it was about to blow pretty damn hard.

  “Don't be that way,” he said, immediately regretting it. The words had sounded less lame in his head.

  “I'm supposed to just sit around... where? Here? At the house? And do what? Wait for you to call? Is that how much you think of me? How much you think I contribute?”

  “Amy, I told you about Bartlett. He's got a paramilitary unit, probably bigger now than what I saw before, from how it sounds. All men. Heavily armed. I'm not sure what they're capable of. The way I'd have to approach him... your presence would complicate things.”

  She dropped the towel and slipped a long nightshirt over her head. “I swear, you can be so dense sometimes.”

  Hatcher laid his palm on his scalp and scratched his forehead as Amy went back into the bathroom. She was barely gone thirty seconds when she stepped out again.

  “Do you really think I'm that dumb? That I don't know there are certain ways you take care of things that I would just get in the way of? Haven't I always let you do what you need to and stayed clear if you needed me to?”

  Hatcher wasn't sure how to respond. He couldn't deny any of it.

  “So why the hell would this time be any different?” she added.

  “According to the map, we're talking the middle of nowhere. Probably some ghost town or abandoned mine or something he's turned into a fortress. All I'm saying is, I should probably go myself. There wouldn't be anywhere for you to, you know, stay out of sight.”

  “You're still not listening. Yes, of course, I think it's a bad idea for you to go, and an even worse idea for you to go alone. But I know better than to try to stop you. And as much as I worry, I also know it's just what you do. Charge the objective and all that, yelling Ooh-ra.”

  “That's more the Marine Corps.”

  “Then my apologies to the Marines. What I'm saying is, it wouldn't kill you to give me some credit here. I'm not out to cramp your style. But what the hell, Hatcher? Are we a team or not? Or am I just your girl, someone you slap on the butt when it's time for man-talk?”

  “You know the answer to that. And I thought you liked it when I spanked you.”

  “I'm being serious here, you big jerk.”

  “We're a team.”

  “Then act like we are! You have to run off and have a testosterone contest, fine. I don't like it, but I'll trust your judgment. What I won't simply do is nod my head and smile at the idea that any time I'm not accompanying you somewhere, I'm supposed to just sit around and watch TV.”

  “You could read.”

  She slid him a look. “Hatcher.”

  “What do you want me to say?”

  “Tell me what I can do! You're feeding me spoonfuls of information and treating it like everything is for my own good. Knock it off. If you have to go out to the desert or the mountains or whatever for a couple of days, let me know how I can help. Act like you understand what I'm capable of. I was a detective, for Christ's sake. With commendations. And in the top ten percent of the department in marksmanship, I might add. I'm not made of glass.”

  “You want me to set you up with a sniper rifle?”

  She grabbed a pillow and swatted him with it. “No, dork. I want you to let me help, and not treat me like I'm someone allowed to tag along when you think it's convenient.”

  He grabbed her around the waist and pulled her close, rolling her over and spooning against her. She didn't pull away.

  “I just want you to know you can trust me,” she said. “That I'm capable of helping.”

  He pressed his face against her wet hair and breathed in. She was right. He'd never fully let her be involved, always keeping her on the periphery. He'd have her perform research here and there, make some calls when it seemed the easiest way to find something, use her police contacts when the opportunity was there, but he hadn't let her take any initiative, hadn't respected her abilities the way he should have. Part of it was a desire to protect her, but he also knew it wasn't all that, and wasn't always in the way she necessarily thought.

  “Maybe you could go back to that psychic and do some digging while I'm gone,” she said.

  “Why?”

  “Because Deborah indicated I shouldn't trust her.”

  “And you trust that demonic little harlot enough to tell you who to trust?”

  “Of course not. But I made the mistake of not paying enough attention to that kind of thing in the past. They like to throw out bits of truth to keep you off balance, try to lead you in the opposite direction by pointing to the correct one, that kind of thing. One of our intel guys used to call it briar-patching.”

  “And you think that's what's going on here?”

  “Maybe. I don't know. But I would certainly like to find out.”

  Amy rolled onto her back and propped herself on her elbows, looking at him. “Is this something you really think matters? Something you'd take the time to do yourself? Or are you just sending me on an errand to keep me occupied?”

  “I don't know if it matters. But it's definitely something I'd do myself if I had the time. I was thinking about doing it before tracking down Bartlett, but I decided getting Deborah's info as soon as possible was a higher percentage play. I just can't do both.”

  Amy swiveled away and pushed herself off the bed. “I'll think about it,” she said. But he could almost hear the smile as the words passed through her lips.

  She circled to the table where her purse was and retrieved her phone. She looked down at the printed section of map on the hotel desk. “I'll route us through Vegas. You can either connect to Tuscon or rent a Jeep or something there and drive where you need. If I have to leave Vegas before you get back, I'll let you know.”

  “Sounds like a plan.”

  She turned to him, not exactly grinning but with a definite hint of satisfaction to her expression. A brighter focus to her eyes, a more motivated set to her jaw.

  “And if you end up getting yourself killed while you're off gallivanting around without me I will make you live to regret it,” she said.

  Hatcher started to speak and stopped. He sat up, listened. He thought he'd heard something, a scrape at the door. Now there was a thump, unmistakable. Before he could move, the door burst inward, ripping the security bar off the frame. Three men flooded in, black balaclavas over their heads. Black BDU pants under black longsleeve tactical shirts. Weapons at the ready-fire position.

  White tennis shoes. Sloppy, but Hatcher didn't have the chance to ponder it.

  Once clear of the entry, the first two parted to allow the third to step forward between them. He leveled a shotgun at Amy's midsection from just a few feet away and fired.

  Hatcher yelled and lunged forwar
d, leaping from the bed toward her. Amy stumbled backward and doubled over. Her eyes were wide at first, then she collapsed onto the floor, squeezing them shut.

  Hatcher dropped onto his knees and tried to roll her over. She gasped a few times. He looked down at the carpet. The beanbag that struck her lay there, conspicuous.

  He let out the longest breath he could ever recall. “You're okay,” he whispered.

  She struggled to breathe. Tears were cutting paths down her face, dripping from her clenched eyes. She finally gasped and her body loosened. She was out. Hatcher told himself not to lose his cool. Lack of oxygen from having the wind knocked out of her, that's all it was. Being unconscious would help her breath, at least.

  His fist was balled so tightly it started to shake. He twisted his head to look back at the men, each training a weapon on him. The one in the middle had switched to a pistol.

  Hatcher stood, straightening slowly. He was wearing nothing but a pair of boxer briefs. No weapon in reach, not even a makeshift one. But he was certain if these men had wanted to kill him, it would have already happened. Almost certain.

  Deep breath. Another. He had to engage them, distract them. That meant controlling his anger, not the other way around. He forced himself to let the muscles in his face loosen, let the scowl fade.

  “Tell Bartlett he's going to pay for—”

  The one in the middle pointed the pistol and pulled the trigger. Hatcher heard the muted burst, felt the slap in his gut, the same instant he realized it wasn't a regular pistol at all. He looked down at the splatter of liquid on his abdomen. He recognized the sound, had experienced the sting before, and part of his brain was expecting to see some kind of bright color, a starburst pattern, but this stuff was just clear and a bit sticky. Not nearly as thick as it should have been. Then a putrid feeling constricted his throat, the room upended, and he felt himself careen off the end of the bed and slam against the carpet.