“Ain’t that the truth,” I agreed. “Now let’s get back into town and find this demonic fuckwit before he annexes all of Georgia into the Fifth Circle of Hell.”
“If you think we’re not already in Hell, Harker, then you’ve never driven through rush hour on I-285,” Flynn said, walking off down the hill to the truck.
5
Luke hadn’t just rented a few rooms at the Westin Peachtree downtown. In his typical European royalty fashion, he’d rented the entire top floor. I walked into the room he and his band of merry people had converted into their war room, and I had to say, I was impressed. All the furniture was gone, and heavy blackout fabric masked all the windows. That left enough space in the center of the floor for a conference table with a bunch of decent desk chairs, no doubt carted in from the surrounding rooms.
The rest of the crew was already there, and Sparkles’ face was up on the wall-mounted TV. I’ll admit, even when you’re as old as I am, there’s something a little unnerving about walking into a room and seeing a giant unicorn staring at you from the television. I walked over to one end of the table and gave Luke a hug. He stiffened because we aren’t usually the hugging type, but it had been a strange couple of weeks.
“How you doing, Luke?” I asked, pulling back. I kept my voice low. The room wasn’t big enough to lose any of our words, but at least folks could pretend to let us have a moment.
“I have had better months, Quincy. My house was destroyed, my manservant slain, and now I am forced to reside in a hotel and dine upon supplies garnered from a local blood bank. It is altogether a barely tenable situation, and I sincerely desire to resolve this unpleasantness and return home as soon as possible.”
“Yeah, I’m right there with you. Let’s get these goofballs in line and save the world.” I started to turn, but Luke put a hand on my arm. I turned back to him. “Yeah?”
“Did he suffer, Quincy?” Luke’s voice was thick with emotion, and the look on his face would put the lie to all those years of people calling him “monster.” This was not the King of the Vampires, the Impaler, the source of so many nightmares and horrific stories across the centuries. This was just a man who’d lost one of the very few people in the world he thought of as a friend, and he wanted some reassurance.
I remembered the scene. I remembered Smith grinning at me as I tried without success to break through his protective circles. I remembered the dazed look in Renfield’s eyes as he came out of his drug-induced stupor. I remembered the knife in Smith’s hand, then flashing down and burying itself in Ren’s chest. I remembered the blood, the gore as Smith cut open my friend’s chest in front of me and pulled out his heart, as if to prove to me that Renfield was really dead. I saw all of that in an instant while Luke stared back at me.
“No,” I said. “It was quick. He didn’t suffer.” Neither did Smith, much to my chagrin. I shot him in the head, and he dropped like a stone. I wanted him to suffer, wanted him to feel a shred of the pain he inflicted on me, on Luke, on the families of the other men and women he murdered. But I didn’t take him alive, or even torture him. I just dropped him in his tracks. I thought that was the end, but it turned out to be just the beginning.
I turned from Luke to look at the rest of the team. Adam and Becks had taken seats on one side of the table with Watson, Jo, and Gabby on the other. The foot of the table had no chair, presumably so we could all see and hear Sparkles. I took the empty seat next to Flynn, and Luke sat at the head of the table. I wanted to make some joke about carving the turkey, but between a couple of demon fights in one afternoon, plus reliving Renfield’s last moments with Luke, my sense of humor was seriously lacking.
“What do we know?” I asked.
“We know the demons in the park were a distraction, that whatever Orobas was after, it was hidden at Stone Mountain,” Watson said.
“Yeah, under ten feet of rock,” Flynn added. “Solid rock, too. Orobas used a spell to blast the rock away and get to what he was after. That smacks of serious magic to me.”
“You’re not wrong,” I said. “And not only was there some serious magic being thrown around up there, whatever was hidden there was pretty serious all on its own.”
“What makes you say that?” Jo asked. I looked over at her, but there was no challenge in her eyes, only curiosity. I still wasn’t sure where I stood with all these people, but she didn’t look like she wanted to get into a pissing match. Which was good. I didn’t know what exactly was going on in Atlanta, but it sure felt like we were going to be on a tight schedule.
“The magical blast had the force of several sticks of dynamite. For whatever was in the hole to survive that, it wasn’t just a run of the mill magic wand,” I replied.
“Is that even a thing, or are you just using magic wand as like an example,” Gabby asked from her seat to my left. She leaned back, feet on the table and a beer in her hand.
I decided to make an example of my own. I stood up, using some of my enhanced speed to go faster than normal, and grabbed one of Gabby’s feet. I pulled up, dumping her on her ass against the wall. “Pay attention, Gabby,” I growled at her. “This isn’t fucking playtime. Orobas is the real fucking deal, and we don’t have any idea what he’s up to yet. If we fuck this up, all of Atlanta could go up in smoke, so sit up straight, shut your mouth, and focus.” I never raised my voice, but I didn’t have to. Everybody could see where my head was.
“I don’t think that’s quite correct, Harker,” Sparkles’ voice came from the screen.
I sat down and turned to face him. “You know it’s pretty hard to take you seriously when you’re wearing that face.”
The unicorn face frowned, which is even stranger than you would expect it to be, and the image on the screen shifted to a round-faced young man with short curly hair and freckles. “Is this better, asshole?” he asked.
“Much,” I replied. “You want to introduce yourself to the nice people, or should I?”
“I got this,” Sparkles said. “My real name is Dennis Bolton.”
I heard Flynn gasp from beside me. Good to know she’d been listening when I told her about the first set of Orobas’s sacrifices I encountered.
Dennis turned to look at her. “You’ve heard of me? Probably from your asshat boyfriend there. Well, it’s all true. He got me killed. Well, mostly killed, but there was enough of me left to magically transfer my soul into the internet.”
Flynn sat there, gaping. Jo leaned forward and said what I figure everyone else was thinking. “What the fuck?”
Dennis laughed. “Yeah, exactly. What. The. Fuck? So there I was, deader than shit on stage at the theatre, when Harker casts a binding spell to trap my soul.”
“He stuck you back in your body?” Gabby asked.
Dennis laughed again. “Yah, not exactly. Orobas has a bad tendency to leave big holes in bodies when he’s finished with them, so there wasn’t enough of my body to hold the soul in. So Harker put me in the next best place. At least that’s what he thought at the time.”
“Where was that?” Flynn asked. I didn’t answer. To be honest, it was a little embarrassing. I couldn’t think of anything better at the time, but looking back on it, it wasn’t my most shining magical moment.
“Come on, Quincy, spill it. Where did you put your fine horned friend?” Watson asked, and I could almost hear the ration of shit he was preparing to give me.
“I put him in my cell phone,” I said.
“What?” “How the…?” “Where?” I let the explosion of questions go on for a few seconds until I raised my hand for quiet.
“I had a new phone with a big hard drive. I cast a binding spell to tie Dennis’ soul to the phone, hoping it had enough memory to hold all of him.”
“But he missed one small detail,” Dennis added.
“I forgot that the phone was tied to the internet. So as soon as I put Dennis into the phone…”
“I left,” the face on the screen said. “I got pulled into the phone, then dove right ba
ck out along the nation’s most powerful wireless network, and suddenly I could hear everything now.”
“I think that’s two different commercials,” Jo said.
“I’m allowed,” Dennis replied.
“Fair enough,” Jo said with a nod. “So then what?”
“Well,” Dennis said. “I kinda surfed on the web for a little while, figuring out how to reconstitute myself, at least my consciousness, figured out how to interact with Harker via text message, then later on Skype, then FaceTime and other video chat apps. But I stay away from Chatroulette. That’s some fucked up shit right there.”
“So now you’re alive on the internet?” Gabby asked.
“Let’s not get out of hand with the whole ‘alive’ thing,” Dennis said. “But I’m conscious at least.”
“And very useful,” I said.
“Don’t patronize, Harker. I know I’m a badass cyber-ninja. You don’t have to tell me.” Dennis glared at me from the wall.
I held up both hands in surrender. “Okay, Bruce Lee, what do you have for us?”
“I think I know what Orobas is up to. At least what his eventual plan is. And I think I have an idea how he plans to do it, but it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.”
“He’s a demon, dude,” Gabby said, leaning back in her chair again. She started to move her feet toward the table, but Jo reached out and smacked her knee. She gave me a guilty glance and sat up straight. “They don’t make sense.”
“That’s where you are incorrect, Gabriella,” Luke said. “There are certain aspects of a demon’s personality that will always bleed through, no matter what type of disguise or subterfuge they attempt.”
“So what is he up to?” I asked, looking at the screen.
“He wants to open a doorway to Hell,” Sparkles said.
“We stopped that plan, bud,” I replied.
“No, you stopped one version of that plan,” my disembodied friend countered.
“What do you mean?” Flynn asked. “Harker killed Smith and disrupted the spell. They missed the date for the ritual. We should be good until the spring, at least.”
“If I’m right, Orobas isn’t planning a ritual. He’s just planning to rip the fabric of the universe apart with brute force,” Sparkles said.
You could have heard a pin drop on the carpet as everyone sat there trying to digest that little bombshell. After almost a full minute of silence, Watson looked at me, face pale and a little bead of sweat on his forehead and asked, “Can he do that?”
I thought about it for a second. Frankly, I’d been thinking about it ever since Dennis made his proclamation, but I didn’t like the conclusion I kept coming to. “Yeah,” I said. “Yeah, I think he probably can. It would take the release of an incredible amount of magical energy, and it would have to be concentrated in one spot, but I think it could be done.”
“How?” Jo asked. “I mean, I know I’m the least magically inclined of anyone here, probably, but that just doesn’t make any sense to me.” There were nods and murmurs of agreement from around the table as everyone tried to wrap their heads around the concept.
“Okay.” I stood up and held up my hands for quiet. “I’ll try to explain it as best I can. Think of Earth, Heaven, and Hell not so much as up, down, and center, but more like just adjacent dimensions. There are a few more, as I understand it, but I don’t have the ability or interest in trans-dimensional travel, so I haven’t spent a lot of time studying it.”
I started to pace, trying to put my thoughts into coherent sentences. Luke caught my eye and gave me a nod, so I just took a deep breath and pushed on. “The dimensions all touch each other, pretty much at all points, like a weird Venn diagram. When someone summons a demon or an angel, or an angel travels to Earth, they basically use their magic to open a tiny hole between the dimensions, called a Gate. These Gates take a shitload of energy to open, and even more energy to hold open.”
“That’s why you always use a ritual for summoning, because you have to focus your energy more than with most of the magical shit you do?” Gabby asked. She was leaning forward on her elbows now, her pose of calculated indifference completely forgotten.
“Yeah, exactly. I also try to tap into a ley line if I can, kind of a network of magical energy that crisscrosses the world. Whenever I can draw from a line, it’s less of my own energy I have to use. So, I can create manageable Gates for a limited time with just my own energy. If I have a group of people working together, lending me their energy, then I can open a bigger Gate, and for a longer time.”
“That’s what Smith was doing back in Charlotte,” Flynn said, making the jump.
“Again, there’s a reason you’re the detective, Becks,” I agreed. “Smith was doing exactly that. The only difference was that the people lending their energy to his ritual weren’t willing participants, and he was using every drop of their life force so he didn’t have to use any of his own.”
“The bastard,” Luke muttered. I didn’t acknowledge him with words, just gave him a short nod.
“So, what is he saying about making a rip in the dimensional fabric?” Watson asked.
“A Gate is a managed portal between two places, and it takes a lot of power to keep it open for longer than a few seconds. The dimensions are always shifting, and the natural order of things is to keep them tangential but separate. So, a permanent Gate between Heaven and Earth, for example, would take such a constant stream of power as to be almost impossible to maintain,” I said.
“So what’s the problem?” Gabby asked. “If you can’t keep it open, then we just kill anything that comes through, and when it closes, no problem, right?”
“I wish,” Sparkles said. “That’s true about a managed Gate between two places. But that’s not what I think Orobas is trying to do.”
“Oh fuck me sideways,” I said as the full enormity of what he was saying hit me.
“Yup, you got it.” Sparkles gave me a wry grin. “That’s exactly what I’m thinking.”
“Would you care to let us mere mortals in on the secret?” Watson asked, then glanced at Luke and Adam. “Mortals and et cetera, of course.”
“He’s not trying to just open a doorway between Earth and Hell anymore,” I said. “He wants to blow open a hole in the fabric of every dimension that touches ours. A rip in the fabric of reality that wouldn’t be a link between two specific places, but a hole that would stay open forever between Earth and every other realm of existence.”
“But wouldn’t that mean…” Flynn’s voice trailed off as she tried to process it.
“Yeah,” I said. “Not only could Orobas and all his demonic buddies take over the Earth, they could storm Heaven, too.”
6
“Two questions,” Flynn said, standing up and waving everybody silent. She was looking at Sparkles’ image on the screen, but also around the table at me, Luke, and the rest of the team. “First, how does one go about tearing a hole between dimensions? And second, how do we stop him?”
“I think the idea is to destroy a bunch of magical artifacts at one time, releasing all their stored energy into one focused blast,” Dennis said.
“That fits with what we’ve heard about the Barton character that rescued Orobas from Charlotte,” Watson said. “He has a reputation as an avid collector of occult objects and magical instruments.”
“That also explains why they were digging around Luke’s place,” Jo added. “There’s something magical about the sword, we just don’t know what it is. They wanted to add it to their mystical bonfire.”
“More like mystical pipe bomb,” Gabby said. “I like a good explosion as much as the next girl—”
“More,” Flynn piped in. “For the record, Gabs, most ‘next girls’ don’t actually like blowing things up.”
“Their loss,” Gabby said, then went on. “But even setting aside my love for things that go boom, blasting open a hole between Heaven and Hell sounds like a terrible idea. Most of the stuff in Hell is there because it do
esn’t deserve Heaven, right?”
“Or because they were there once and tried to take it over,” Adam’s rumbling voice chimed in.
“Even worse, there wouldn’t be a direct link from Hell to Heaven,” I said. “They’d have to pass through our dimension to get upstairs.”
“And I’m guessing that most demons aren’t the type to just casually pass through, leaving things unmolested,” Watson said.
“Yeah, not so much,” I agreed.
“So back to Question Number Two—how do we stop it?” Flynn spoke over the rest of us, and we settled down.
All eyes turned to the screen, and Dennis shifted his image back to the unicorn. “Sorry, kids, I have no fucking idea.”
“Neither do I,” Luke admitted with a rueful shake of his head. “Despite magic being the force that keeps me alive and sentient, I have very little experience with its actual performance.”
“Well, I suppose that’s my department,” I said. “But I have no clue, either. I’ve never even heard of a ritual with this kind of power, much less any kind of counterspell or way to undo it.”
“So what do we do? Just run like hell and hope that the demons leave something left of the world to live in?” Jo said. “Fuck that. There’s got to be a way. There’s always a way, if we just fight hard enough.”
“Your namesake would be proud,” Luke said, and I saw just the slightest blush on Jo’s dark skin.
“She’s right,” I said. “There’s got to be a way to stop, or worst case, reverse what Orobas is trying to do. I’ll get to work researching the most powerful spells and artifacts I can find to see about coming up with a reversal or blocking spell.”
“I’ll help,” Watson said. “I’m good with research. Got to put that posh Cambridge education to use, right?”
“Nightfall is still a few hours away, so I will assist the two of you until such a time as any of my contacts in the city will be available, then Adam and I will go have a few quiet meetings.”
Heaven Can wait: A Quincy Harker, Demon Hunter Novella Page 4
