by E. A. Copen
Hellbent Halo Boxed Set
Fractured Souls and Smoke & Mirrors
E.A. Copen
The Hellbent Halo Boxed Set is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Sometimes both.
Copyright © 2019 E.A. Copen
Cover copyright © E.A. Copen
LMBPN Publishing supports the right to free expression and the value of copyright. The purpose of copyright is to encourage writers and artists to produce the creative works that enrich our culture.
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First US edition, September 2019
ebook ISBN:978-1-64202-457-9
Contents
Fractured Souls
Smoke & Mirrors
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Fractured Souls
Book One of the Hellbent Halo Series
Chapter One
JOSIAH
Most professionals wouldn’t stop to light a cigarette while being stalked by a demon. I’d never been known for my professionalism, though.
Flame sparked from my fingers, sizzling when the snow flurries struck it. I pressed the end of my cigarette to the fire and inhaled sweet relief while the demon followed me twenty paces behind. He’d been following me since the Saratoga Avenue stop, cap pulled low, hands shoved in his pockets, collar turned up, working too hard at avoiding detection. Conspicuous as a fart in an elevator, really. But that’s demons for you. Not very bright.
If the magic alarmed him, he didn’t show it, nor did he slow his advance when I stopped. I let him close the distance just a little before moving on.
If I’d been in any other city, I’d have turned down an alley and ducked behind a dumpster to wait for him. I’d found Brooklyn surprisingly lacking in accessible alleyways. The buildings were too close together for one thing. You could hardly tell where one left off and the other began. Crammed together like everything else in the damn city, like the need for living space and fresh air was an afterthought. In the rare gaps that did exist, someone went and put up an iron gate, which wouldn’t do. Iron was bad for magic; I’d be asking for it if I climbed over one. Besides, I was more worried about running into an American with a gun than the idiot tailing me. If iron was bad for magic, guns were worse. Guns made me dead. Couldn’t get paid if I was dead.
Graffiti was scrawled over a corrugated metal door under a pink awning to my right, the mark of a budding urban artist. I reached out to brush my fingers over the cool metal as I passed and decided to fill the silence with a whistle. It was late, and the weatherman was calling for a blizzard. For the time being, snow drifted calmly from the sky, blanketing the streets in silence. The shopkeeps had all shut down early to go buy bread and milk for the Snowpocalypse. Iron bars slid by on my right as I passed another darkened window. I wished I had a stick to draw over them. A little music would liven up the chase at least.
At the corner stood an old grocery and another corrugated metal door with more graffiti. I touched the door and moved on, slowing my pace. Had to give the poor bastard a fighting chance, didn’t I?
He closed as I neared the middle of the block. Ahead, a blue sign announcing a transit stop kept a silent and lonely vigil in front of a building with a faded sign advertising a bail bondsman. Yet another business hiding behind a corrugated shell all decked out in urban spray paint scrawl. I walked up to it and stopped short, waiting for the demon to close.
Footsteps stopped at the sidewalk.
“Evenin’, mate,” I said without turning around. “How you goin’?”
The demon stopped and raised his face. It was long and drawn, skin the color of ash. He’d been in that meat suit a while. Maybe too long to have a proper handle on speech.
“If you were tryin’ to tail me, you failed. No worries, mate. Happens to the best of us. Well, not to me. But I don’t follow fuckwit demons about.” I tapped a long column of ash from the cigarette. “What is it then?”
“Huh?” It took me a moment to realize he’d spoken, and the sound wasn’t a simple grunt. So, the bastard was capable of speech after all.
“What’d you want?” I put the cigarette back between my lips and puffed, wishing I’d had the sense to go somewhere warm instead of Brooklyn.
He stared at me without blinking. “I’m to take you to the boss.”
“And if I don’t want to go?”
The demon drew his hands out of his pockets and cracked meaty knuckles. “I make you.”
“Oh, yeah? You and what army?”
“Hell’s army.”
I sighed and flicked the cigarette off into the bushes before turning back to face him. “Look, it’s been a long day. I got bumped to Economy on my flight up from Atlanta and shoved into an exit row. D’ya know how exhausting it is sitting in an exit row? And then the traffic. Christ, don’t get me started. Bloody Americans don’t know how to drive. Don’t suppose you have to worry about that, do ya? Just jump bodies as you please.”
“Are you coming or what, asshole?” the demon demanded.
“How about a counter-proposal?” I lifted my hand and let it hover over the metal door. “You go back to your boss and tell him to fuck off, and I don’t blow the whole block to kingdom come, yeah?”
The demon raised his head, eyes widening. Fear crossed the meat suit’s face. “You’re bluffing. There are still people here. Human souls.”
He was right about that. Fifty-eight thousand people were crammed into just over a square mile that made up the Brownsville neighborhood, some of them sleeping quietly in their beds above the very shops I’d just spent the last hour arming on my stroll around the block. Women, children, young and old. The demolition spell wouldn’t discriminate if I activated it. All I had to do was touch the last charge to begin the countdown.
I raised an eyebrow. “You must be new, so let me give you a quick biography. Name’s Josiah Quinn. I’m Australian, not English. I know, the accent is a bit confusing to most people at first. I like long strolls through empty neighborhoods, general mayhem, loose women, and loud music. Humanity can get fucked for all I care. Your boss wants to torture me? You can pry my lifeless body from the wreckage. Now, what’s it to be?” I pushed my hand closer.
“Don’t!” The demon raised his hands.
That’s what I thought, fuckwit. Like most demons, he wasn’t very bright, but even he was smart enough to know dead souls were worthless. A poor suburb in a high crime area like Brownsville was easy currency for any demon looking to make a quick score. Promise the poor bastards a quick ticket to a better life or even just an afternoon’s distraction, and they’d sell their souls for the idea alone. Never mind how pissed his superiors would be when the God Squad showed up to investigate. Pricks, the lot of them.
He waved his arms animatedly. “He just wants to talk!”
I hesitated. “Who’s he?”
Sweat beaded on the demon’s forehead. I inched my hand closer to the metal door.
“Daniel Monahan!” He squeezed his eyes shut.
The name shocked my heart into double time. Memories of a skinny teenage redhead two years my senior marched through my mind. How long had it been since I heard his name on anyo
ne’s lips? I hadn’t had the heart to utter it myself since that night on the rooftop eighteen years ago. The night everything changed.
No, I could deal with that later. Right now, I had more pressing problems. I shook the memory from my head and focused on the demon in front of me.
He lowered his hands but didn’t take his eyes off the door. “What is it you want me to do? I can’t go back empty-handed.”
“You can go back with a message. You tell Danny this stops. No more tails. Once it does, I’ll find him. We’ll talk. And in the meantime, there’s something else I want.”
Relief touched the corners of his eyes. “What?”
“August Jessup.”
He made a face as if he’d just swallowed a live jellyfish. “What the fuck is an August Jessup?”
“He’s a mate. Specializes in the forgery of official American documents. Identification documents. Word on the street is he cut a deal with one of you idiots. I need to find him.”
It was just like old Augie to sign his life away when the feds came sniffing around. He was the best forger in the city, but a coward and an addict. I always did say he’d sell his soul for a fix. As it turned out, I was right.
“I don’t know anyone by that name, but give me twenty-four hours, and I can find him. But you have to meet with Danny before that as a sign of good faith.”
I pretended to consider it a moment before I withdrew my hand. “Twelve.”
He shook his head. “There’re eight and a half million people in this city, man! I can’t find one guy with the snap of my fingers!”
“Twelve hours or no deal.” When it came to demons, it was best to be firm. They usually caved rather than negotiate. Most didn’t have a sense of what anything was worth. Mindless soldiers, most demons.
The demon sighed and lowered his hands. His shoulders slumped. “Fine, you win. Do you know the Casablanca? It opens at five. I can have him there at opening. Best I can do.”
I offered my hand to the demon instead. “It’s a date.”
He looked uneasy but shook on it anyway. The bastard’s hand was cool and clammy. Nothing worse than shaking a sweaty hand. He tried to pull away.
I held tight. “Suggest you get on it, mate. I don’t like to ask twice.”
A sheen passed over the meat suit’s eyes. His hand went limp in mine, and I released it. He blinked once and looked around with the same shocked expression they all had when the demons cleared out. “What the hell?” His eyes fell on me. “Who the fuck are you?”
I offered my most charming smile and lit another cigarette. “I’m the guy you’re going to pay to go away unless you want to have a very bad day.”
His eyes widened, and he bristled before digging out his wallet.
Easiest fifty bucks I’d ever made.
After the fella stumbled off in a chilled panic to get away from me, I pressed my palm to the corrugated iron door and gave it a pulse of magic, watching the spell fizzle and die in a show of sparks. Good thing the bastard didn’t call my bluff.
The metro back was unusually empty and quiet. I shared the car with a couple of teenagers looking to score for a party before the snow hit, and a man wearing three coats in desperate need of a bath. Stepping out of the subway car and onto the platform left me choking on stifled air. I tapped out another cigarette to light up but paused. Half a pack left. I’d need more just in case we got snowed in and the shops stayed closed.
Snowed in with a succubus, I mused, putting the pack back undisturbed. There were worse ways to spend a long holiday weekend. Then again, she’d been in a foul mood when I left, even though I’d brought her dinner. You’d think she’d be more grateful to the man who rescued her from Hell.
On the way out, I stopped by the line of beggars and listened to a young man play the guitar. He was good, but not great. I’d been in his shoes once, desperate for a dollar and a dream. The twitch in his bloodshot eyes and his rotten teeth might’ve marked him as a tweaker but I dropped him a tenner anyway. If he could find relief from the human condition for that price, more power to him.
I stopped at a twenty-four-hour pharmacy to pick up another pack of smokes and tossed a chocolate bar up on the register. If I was feeding my addiction, might as well get one for her too.
The streets in the heart of Brooklyn were a little busier. People were still rushing about, preparing for the worst with their heads tucked, fear and worry etched on their features. They moved driven by a singular purpose: stock up for the winter. Ensure survival for the pack. Don’t look anyone in the eye; he might take the last six-pack on the shelf before you. Gotta hurry or I’ll miss the footie. Football, I guess it was there. Christ, that wasn’t even the right word, was it? I’d never get the lingo right.
Loaded down with my bag of sins, I rang myself into the flat we’d borrowed from an old mate of mine. He was out of the country at the moment, Honduras or El Salvador or wherever it was he was from. Couldn’t recall. Narrow stairs creaked underfoot as I ascended. Dogs barked behind closed doors while old men shouted at them in quick Spanish. Televisions recited the same weather report that’d been playing all day in muffled tones on the other side of thin walls.
On the landing, I passed the man who had introduced himself as Marv when we first arrived. He was snoring with his hand resting limply on an empty bottle. Poor man lived in the flat above us, but his wife ran the roost. You could set your clock by their evening argument. She’d kick him out, he’d drink himself to sleep on the landing, and she’d take him back tomorrow, sure as the sunrise.
A door slammed open on the next floor and a half-dressed man stumbled out in a hurry. He was too nicely dressed to be slumming it in low-rent apartments like these, but I’d figured my succubus roommate wouldn’t go for any of the locals. Dark hair, expensive suit, in good shape, and no ring. A few drinks, a photo, two hundred dollars, the promise of a good time and he was down for whatever. I’d practically gift-wrapped him for her, so why was the idiot running scared?
He tripped down the first two stars only to keep himself upright by grabbing my shoulders. Recognition sparked as he looked at me. He retracted his hands, dug into his pockets and pulled out three crumpled Benjamins. “Here! Just keep that bitch away from me!”
“I only paid you two, mate.”
“Keep it!” The man ran down the stairs fast enough he knocked over Marv’s bottle.
I watched him go and sighed.
The flat was a mess. On his hurry out, the businessman had knocked over a shelf and all the pictures on it. Glass shards crunched underfoot as I came through the door. “Honey, I’m home.”
A glass smashed into the wall next to me. Maybe all the broken glass wasn’t from the pictures then.
At the end of the hallway stood a woman in a fuzzy white bathrobe. Dark hair sat in a messy bun while darker eyes fumed. Her full lips twisted into an enraged sneer. “You son of a bitch!”
“Am I to take it he wasn’t up to snuff, then?” I nudged aside more glass and closed the door behind me. “You prefer blonds, Khaleda? Is that it?”
“I should rip out your guts and strangle you with them! You selfish prick!”
“Women then? Let’s make a party of it. I don’t mind.”
The succubus screamed and charged to throw a punch. I dropped my bag, grabbed her pathetic attempt at a right hook, and twisted her arm, pressing her against the wall. Had she been at full strength, she could’ve overpowered me easily. Lucky for me, she hadn’t fed in over a week now.
She tried to throw her weight back, but I had too good a hold, and the space was too narrow. “I hate you!”
“No, you don’t. You hate that I’m not letting you sit in here and wallow in your own self-pity until you die.” Her struggling pushed me back a step, and I felt glass crunch. “Stop it or you’ll cut your feet, and I’m not picking glass out of them!”
She rested her forehead against the wall, muscles growing slack. Poor girl, she’d barely even put up a fight. She must’ve been bad
off.
“Khaleda?”
“Let me go, Josiah.”
I did as she asked but kept my hands up in case she decided to renew the fight. She didn’t, choosing instead to turn around and press her back to the wall. Her robe had slid open during our scuffle, leaving it clear she wasn’t wearing anything underneath. Maybe they’d gotten further than I thought. Lucky bastard. She was a beautiful devil.
“Dammit,” Khaleda muttered when she saw me looking and covered up before crossing her arms. “Can’t you even pretend to be a decent person?”
“No.” I picked up the bag and pulled out the chocolate bar, offering it to her. “Truce?”
She squinted, shook her head, and marched off with a disgusted sigh.
“Come on! It’s imported,” I shouted, dragging myself after her.
When I stepped into the living area, I had to pause. Freshly snuffed candles sat in a brass candelabra on the coffee table. On either side of the candelabra stood an empty wine glass. The rest of the bottle was in Khaleda’s hand, draining fast into her mouth while she reclined on a sofa. She’d gone all out trying to seduce the poor bastard too. Must’ve used everything but her magic. If she’d spelled him, he’d never have been able to run. But why didn’t she use her magic?
I sighed and sank into the love seat across from her. “All right, where’d it all go wrong?”
Khaleda pulled the wine bottle from her lips and waved it around. “With me. It’s always me.”
The bottom dropped out from under my heart, letting the icy chunks of whatever was left sink into my stomach. Even I couldn’t help but feel bad for her with what she was going through. I still didn’t know the full extent of what had happened to her while she was in Hell, just that she was tortured by demons at her father’s behest. When your father was Lucifer Morningstar, even stupid demons could be motivated to come up with inventive punishments. Still, it was sometimes the simplest tortures that hurt worst.
