by Michael Todd
The woman inclined her head. “Understood.”
“Now, go get the van ready.” He handed her a small wallet. “Here is a supply of the drug that will keep the demon sedated. It is to be administered every two hours until we are ready to release him. Make sure you don’t screw this up. It cannot be fixed once the demon has been released.”
She pocketed the wallet. “Then what?”
“Then we wait until we are given the call to move out.”
The others nodded in understanding and moved to complete the task at hand. Several of the stronger men lifted the human and carried him to the underground parking area. The truck was parked and ready. They threw the guy into the back of the van and strapped him in, wrapping cuffs around his arms and ankles. They knew that if the demon awoke they could not hold him for long, but they were the best they had.
“Remember—every two hours,” one of the guys told the other inside the van.
He nodded. “I got it.”
They shut the van doors and tapped the back. The driver took the van to a spot in the shadows, just in case anyone wandered into the parking garage unexpectedly. The man laid inside the van, his breathing shallow from the effect of the drugs on his respiratory system. The human who kept watch inside was not infected, but she had no fear. She wore a pentagram dangling from a rope over her robes and held tightly to a syringe, ready if the man were to unexpectedly stir.
They had planned for months, and she wouldn’t be the one to fail.
Chapter Two
Katie strutted into the police station. She nodded at the cop at the front as she passed him and pulled open the door to the back. It was especially loud in the bullpen that day, with the usual contingent of red-eyed infected handcuffed to the benches to be processed. The cops had really stepped up their game recently. They no longer relied on Katie for every single arrest. That was the whole point of her being there—to teach them how to handle the demon infestation. She wasn’t the least bit worried about running out of work.
There were plenty of demons to go around.
Detective Schultz was standing over one of the desks and Travers was on the phone in his office. Katie milled about, waiting for one of them to be free. The precinct was so used to her being there by that point that no one paid her much notice, which of course pricked Pandora’s vanity no end. Katie liked it. She felt like she was part of something, something she’d lacked since Calvin went on vacation.
After about five minutes Schultz looked up and nodded at Katie. He finished what he was doing and waved for her to follow him into Travers’ office.
She shut the door behind her as Travers hung up the phone. “You would think we were the only precinct in the city. I can’t get a minute to myself with these phone calls about demons.”
Katie snickered. “Yeah, I see you guys have stepped up your game. Before you know it there won’t be any left, and you’ll be back to boredom and donuts.”
Cops eat donuts?
They aren’t aliens, Pandora. And yes, they eat donuts, it’s kind of a running joke.
Oh, hell no, that has to end. Donuts are for the Queen of the Damned, not the fucking Thin Blue Line.
I don’t really think you are going to be able to take that one on and win. Just think of it as a positive thing. You have a connection over fried dough.
Pandora scoffed and grumbled quietly, but Katie went back to her conversation. Travers chuckled and patted a huge stack of papers on his desk.
“I don’t think it’s quite as heroic as you believe. We have been forced to up our game. I don’t know; it’s like they are all congregating out here. Either New York is some sort of demon magnet, or more are coming out of the fiery woodwork.”
Katie frowned. “Connected to the bigger demons?”
Travers shook his head. “Actually, no, or at least not that we can tell. What we’re coming up against out there mostly are the cults of infected demon worshippers. They’re summoning demons and infecting innocent people. None of the incidents appear to be connected.”
A shiver went down Katie’s spine at the memory of her own cult experience. Schultz noticed her discomfort but didn’t say a word.
“So,” Travers pressed, “what can I do for you?”
Katie dragged herself back from the past. “Oh, I wanted to let you know I’ll be out of town on one of my other assignments. Should be gone for about a day, but no more than that.”
“A day? I thought those things were quick and done.”
“Normally they are, but since I made headlines, I’m limited to a certain type of gig. It would usually only take about four hours, but because of the security on this one it’s estimated to take about twelve hours on the outside and then I’ll hitch a ride back on a train.”
“A train? Why not a plane? Don’t you have your own?” Schultz asked.
Katie shook her head. “I can’t fly commercial because I make everyone nervous, and I don’t want to use my company jet for this. It’s not a demon issue that I know of.”
“I know I shouldn’t ask, but...”
Katie smiled and shrugged. “Nothing too crazy, and nothing illegal—that I know of. I’m acting as security for a truckload of historical artifacts and some rare documents being transported by some old really rich family. They have been passed down for generations. Apparently, they are not only business people, but also adventurous types. The file said they have collected these artifacts and papers from all around the world, and don’t ever sell them or loan them to museums.”
“What do they do with all of them?” Schultz asked.
“Play Scrooge McDuck, probably.” Travers laughed. “Keep them all locked up in some vault where they go in to revel in their richness. I know these types. They’ll throw a richest-family-in-the-world party and put them out on display. They’ll say it’s for charity, but it’s really so they can get their ego massaged by showing off all their cool stuff.”
“Ohhhh.” Schultz nodded. “I went to one of those parties once—some family raising money for the commissioner when he was running for office. I rented my tux, and I am pretty sure I was the only one who didn’t have a whole closet full of tuxes at my disposal. I didn’t pay—the ticket was given to me—but if I had, it was ten thousand dollars a plate.”
“Holy crap, I didn’t spend ten grand on a car last year.”
Katie just sat there chuckling as they talked back and forth. They always had this way of getting completely off topic, but she just let them do it. It was the best thing for her to do, and it was amusing.
“What kind of car did you buy, a tractor?”
“No, I bought my sixteen-year-old daughter a used car so when she backs into a light pole or hits the curb and scrapes the sides she isn’t doing it to something that will cost me a ton of money to fix. She, of course, wanted one of those new Teslas, and although thirty grand isn’t bad for a brand-new car these days, I can’t work on an all-electric car. Hell, I can’t even get my Facebook to stop converting to pirate mode.”
“You have Facebook?”
“Yeah, but moving on…Katie, where were we?”
Katie smirked. “The job I have to do.”
Travers nodded. “Oh yeah, rich family, lots of expensive stuff. So, were you just lucky to get the job or did they think there is some reason to be concerned about demons?”
“Well, there are demons out there, and because some of their historical pieces are from religious sources, they want to be careful. There are certain documents they didn’t want to talk too much about. They have information about hunting demons or something along those lines. They don’t know if they are accurate, but they are being transferred to DC for research. The family figured it was better to be safe than sorry.”
Schultz rolled his eyes and threw up his hands in exasperation. “Uh, yeah. What took them so long? Incursion Day was months ago. Then France, not to mention all the smaller but just as destructive incursions since then. I mean, come on, people.”
Katie shrugged. “I have no idea. To be honest, there might not be anything to what they found. At the same time, it might be the opposite of what you are thinking. It could be documents that would help the demons, not us.”
Travers’ expression was thoughtful. “Still, if there were documents out there that could hurt us, they should have been turned over immediately. But that’s the problem with these super-richies—they cling onto their stuff like they can take it with them when they die. They would be real upset if those documents fell into the wrong hands and they ended up on the wrong side of history.”
Schultz nodded in agreement.
Katie shrugged. “Well, let’s just hope that doesn’t happen. I’m crossing my fingers for an easy-peasy night. Drop this stuff off and come home with nary a scratch.”
Katie stood up and shook their hands, and Schultz walked her out to the front. She could tell she’d struck a nerve with him. She could only assume it had something to do with the pictures of his wife and college-age kids he kept on his desk. If Katie hadn’t been infected, she could easily have been right beside his daughter in college.
“Take care of yourself tonight,” Schultz told her as he opened the door to the lobby for her.
“You know I will.” Katie smiled. “And you do the same.”
Schultz nodded, and Katie waved at the cop at the desk and walked out of the building. She looked up at the hotel across the street and smiled. That was where it had all started—her new life in New York. It was still crazy to her how quickly things had changed. She’d come a long way from being just a simple mercenary. The transition from that to running what was left of the team, owning an empire, and starting fresh in life had passed too rapidly for her to even take in. Oh, and then there was the whole thing with angels and wings, but that was a completely different matter.
“Are we close?” one of the infected asked.
“We should be. They are scheduled to be driving this stretch of highway in about ten minutes,” the leader of the cult replied. He glanced in his rearview mirror. “And at this time of night, there won’t be a ton of cars on the road.”
The first speaker laughed. “When did you start caring about the safety of others?”
The leader chuckled. “I don’t. I just want to make sure that we get in and out with those documents. The more people there are, the more likely we are to have issues. You never know who could try to play Joe Save-a-Lot and start blasting at us with those damn demon-killer bullets. If it’s all the same to you, I’d like to get out of here without any bullet holes in me, and I’m damn sure my demon feels the same.”
“I second that,” the guy in the back replied, holding a syringe ready just in case the drugs wore off too soon.
They had put the newly infected in the back seat of the car. He was shaking but out cold from the drugs they had given him. The woman who had been administering the sedative had two needles, one in case the guy woke too soon, and the other a drug that would counteract the sedative; something to give him right before the job had to be completed.
“How you doing back there?” the leader asked.
“So far so good, but I’ll be glad to get this beast out of the car—I am not going to lie. I don’t want to be the first thing it sees when it wakes up, and I definitely don’t want to be a snack.”
“You’ll be fine. It should be any time now. Before you know it, we will have those artifacts, and we can get to work building an even larger gate to hell. They thought Incursion Day and France were huge, wait until they see the entirety of hell coming toward the city! Even those damn mercenaries won’t be able to stop hundreds of thousands of these bad boys.” He grinned. “And we will be at the back of it all, waiting for our well-deserved reward. They will see that we are worthy of running with the big dogs.”
“I wonder if they even know we are planning this?” The woman sighed.
“Doesn’t matter if they know. All that matters is that they know who was behind it all when the gates open.”
“Very true,” she replied, letting out a deep breath. “I can’t even imagine what it will be like to bow to Him. Seriously, after all these years...”
“Don’t count your chickens just yet. We have to get those artifacts first,” the leader replied. He narrowed his eyes and looked at the approaching headlights. “Give me the binoculars.”
He put them up to his face, easing off the gas. Up ahead he could see a truck and two blacked out SUVs, one in front and one in the back. He dropped the binoculars and smiled. “There they are.”
He pushed the accelerator to the floor, going as fast as he could to get as close as possible. The guy in the back started to groan, and the cult member with the syringes jumped back against the window.
“Uh, he’s waking up.”
“Don’t give him that sedative. They are right there.”
The car sped forward a few moments longer, and then the leader slammed on the brakes; veering over to the side of the road, but still moving forward. “Okay, give him the counteragent and push him out.”
The cult member stabbed the guy in the neck with the blue syringe as the woman turned around in the front and threw open the back passenger door. They grabbed the guy by his shoulders and threw him from the moving car, watching as he rolled into the road. The leader drove another hundred feet or so and spun the car around, stopping on the side of the road. They watched as the guy started to twitch and pull at the cuffs around his hands and ankles.
“Come on, come onnn, wakey wakey,” the leader whispered, clutching the steering wheel.
Suddenly the guy’s eyes opened wide, his pupils burning red. He arched his back and screamed as his body blew apart. Pieces of him shot in all directions, and a chunk hit the windshield of the car with a wet slap. The leader turned on the wipers and smeared the pieces of flesh and blood away, staring in awe at the giant demon who unfurled, stretching to his full height. They leaned forward to look out the top of the windshield, amazed by how strong and large the beast had gotten in a matter of hours.
The demon rolled his head from side-to-side, then stretched his arms wide. The beast’s muscles bulged, and he clamped his fists shut and snarled. Hot saliva soaked the ground as he stomped forward, leaving a large indentation in the pavement with every step.
His eyes shifted in all directions, landing on the carload of cult members. They froze, feeling their oncoming death until the demon was distracted by an oncoming car. The beast roared loudly and swiped at the car.
The cultists continued to watch with wide eyes as the car somersaulted a couple of times before landing on its side. The demon stomped over and ripped the roof of the car off. It stuck a clawed hand in and fished out the driver, tossing him into his mouth.
The woman breathed her relief. “Well, at least we weren’t a snack.”
“Yet,” the guy in the back replied.
“He knows what his job is,” the leader replied calmly. “He will find them. Just give him one moment.”
“And if he finds us first?”
“Then we watch from hell.”
Katie rubbed her face and pressed the button to roll down the window. She let the cool night air brush her face, hoping it would wake her up. She was tired—too tired to be on a job—and Pandora wasn't any help at all.
You’re the one who left without dinner. I am just conserving our energy in case anything... Wait, what’s that?
What’s what?
That surge of energy?
Probably indigestion from all the donuts you made me eat this morning.
No, no, I already processed them.
You are just paranoid.
The SUV began to slow down, and Katie looked out of the window. There was a mess; what looked to be some sort of accident. She squinted at the car, which was not only missing the roof but was also on fire. She put her hand to her chest and rubbed it, feeling that all-too-familiar sensation.
Told you.
The driver slammed on his brakes to avoid the d
isaster ahead. The lights over the highway flickered, and Katie tilted her head to the side.
Standing in the center of the road was a huge-ass black-scaled demon, which looked to be finishing up the last few bites of a human body. His eyes glowed bright red, and his lips curled in pleasure as he swallowed the last bit. A tennis shoe fell to the ground, the victim’s foot still inside.
Katie sighed and rolled her eyes. She knew that this was why she got paid the big bucks, but damn! She had really thought she was going to make it through the night without having to deal with any demons. She probably should have known better. At least then she wouldn’t be disappointed.
Are you fucking serious? All I want to do is get to DC, hit up a donut shop, and get back home. But noooo, this fucking nutsack is going to try to stop me from doing that. Seriously, I can’t believe your fucking luck! You are the world’s unluckiest fucking human-angel-demon-infected hybrid bitch ever.
You need to put up or shut up. Either way, stop fucking complaining. What the hell did you think would happen after years now of hunting demons together?
Oh, I don’t know, a fucking night off, maybe? Even Lucifer doesn’t work his staff this hard. They get at least one day to bask in the lava pits of fucking hell.
I can send you back if that’s what you want.
Calm down, sister. Even you can't exorcise yourself.
Yet...
What the hell does that mean?
“Looks like we got company,” the voice on Katie’s walkie shouted. “Katie, you want to take this, and we’ll back you up?”
Katie rolled her eyes. “By all means. That’s what I’m here for, right?”
“10-4. We got your flanks.”
“Just hold tight.” She sighed. “Let me have a go at this asshole first.”
