by Michael Todd
At least his ass will be worth something in my lifetime, Katie grumped. He can pay me back for the car with his fucking life.
That’s morbid, Pandora responded, waiting a moment before adding, “I like it.”
Katie pulled up to the gate at the house and rolled down the window. She reached out and pressed the call button, waiting for someone to answer.
She looked down at her nails and sighed, figuring there was no point in a manicure if she was constantly punching demons in the face.
“Hello?” the girl on the other end answered.
“Hey, it’s Katie,” she said.
“Come on up,” the girl said cheerfully.
The gates slowly opened, and Katie pulled through and around the circle to the front of the house. She sat there for a second, still stewing over her car. She just couldn’t stop being so bitter about it.
You sure have gotten comfortable with this place, Pandora told her. Am I finally getting you comfortable with your sexuality?
No, Katie said flatly. But we kicked ass together, and I won’t disrespect them by thinking of them as anything less than equals.
You sure? Pandora picked at her. Not even the slightest bit? You never think about big dic—
Stop, please God, Katie groaned, getting out of the car.
Well, I’m not the Big Guy, but if you want to pray to me… No? I thought I would try it. It’s the least I can do.
When Katie got to the front door one of the girls, Alice, was already opening the front door.
She smiled and gave Katie a big hug. Katie wasn’t really a hugger, but she knew the girls had been through a lot. She wasn’t going to be that person who acted like an ass about a hug.
Katie walked inside and looked around, noticing that the place was very empty.
“Where is everyone?” Katie asked.
“Oh, most of the girls are at the hospital visiting the two who got hurt,” she said sadly. “And Mamacita will be back in a few minutes. She went out to do something.”
“How are the girls?” Katie asked.
“They are both doing okay,” she said. “Battered, bruised, and stitched up, but nothing any of us haven’t been through before with our own personal brand of demons.”
Katie smiled sadly. “I’m sorry. I wish you guys had been protected.”
“We chose to fight,” the girl shot back. “We wanted to stand up and be strong.”
“Well, you did. Now, you said she won’t be home for a couple of minutes?”
“Yeah,” Alice replied.
“Okay, that’s perfect. It will allow us to find what we need.”
About ten minutes later, Katie heard Mamacita coming in the front door. She popped her head out and smiled, watching her carrying a couple of shopping bags into the house. She was wearing new clothes, ones that fit her a lot better than before.
She was dressed in wide-legged black dress pants, black and white Chuck Taylors, a sleeveless black shirt, and a pair of rimmed sunglasses with large lenses. Her tats were visible, too. She didn’t seem to have anything left of the old her at all.
She smiled as Katie walked around the corner. “Hey, Katie! What are you doing here?”
“I came at Korbin’s request, and I need to speak with you privately, if you don’t mind,” Katie answered.
“Sure, come on back to my old office,” she said, nodding toward the back.
Everything looked different; even the sitting area was sleeker and less Victorian. Katie felt a lot more comfortable with it like this.
She sat down across from Stephanie, who had chosen to sit on her couch and put her hands in her lap.
“So, I came to talk to you about what being Damned means,” Katie said. “I know that it looks all glamorous and stuff, but it’s tough.”
Stephanie snorted.
“Ok, maybe not ‘glamorous.’ You have to give up your whole life, you train your ass off every day, you have to go when called, you may or may not have a responsive demon in you, and there is always a chance that your demon could take control, which means you would have to be killed.”
“Okay,” she said with a small laugh. “So sunshiny and bright you always are, my dear Katie.”
“Beyond the fact that you have to give up your life and everyone in it, there is a rule,” Katie said. “When you become infected, you are given one of three choices: death, research, or exorcism—or of course the team. I guess that’s four choices, really.”
Stephanie pondered her words for a moment.
“Research?”
“You are the research, so it really isn’t much of an option. That puts us back to three… Kinda one, if I think about it. Who is going to choose death?”
Stephanie thought about it a moment before responding, “You know what I really hate? I hate the fact that Korbin is having any damn say in this at all. It should be completely my choice, whether I am Damned or not. Seriously, it should be mine. I guess I can’t do anything about that, so if it’s going to be a man making my choices, I suppose it’s not too bad that Korbin is that man.”
Katie smiled. “I suppose not. If you choose to do this, what will happen to the house and the girls?”
Stephanie looked around. “Oh, I’m not in the prostitution business anymore. I closed that down as soon as I got back,” she admitted. “In reality, we have been tapering down ever since you started that company and we helped out over there. I signed a contract this morning for an organization to turn this place into a halfway house. I put a clause in the contract that gives the house to the organization if I should randomly die, so whether I change or not, that is going to happen.”
Katie stared at her for a moment with her mouth open before her mind caught up and she closed it. “Wow, that’s really…wow…generous of you,” Katie said. “What about the girls? Where will they go?”
“Well, Joshua has offered everyone a job,” she replied. “Most are actually taking him up on it, and the ones that aren’t, they are moving back with their families. I checked if those girls had good home lives and they do, so I am satisfied with all of that. That means if I change I still get to see most of my girls, which was the majority of my life anyway.”
“So, is that your choice?” Katie asked. “Do you want to be infected?”
“Well, when you put it that way…” She smiled, her eyes a bit distant before she focused on Katie. “Yes, I do.”
Katie nodded, cocking her head to the right. “Did you know that there are a couple of succubi living in this house?” she asked scooting up in her chair to get closer to Stephanie.
“No. What do they do?” she asked, her eyes narrowing.
“Well, they use whatever sexual energy they need, and then they send all sorts of energy back into the house to keep everyone aroused,” Katie explained.
Stephanie laughed. “No wonder I had such a good business here.”
“I caught the strongest one, and figured it was time to put her to some real work,” Katie said.
Katie leaned forward, opened her mouth, and blew in Stephanie’s direction. The succubus came out, screaming in fear at having spent the last twenty minutes with Pandora.
Katie shook her head and laughed.
That succubus is a serious PRUDE, Pandora bitched. Hell, I was teaching her shit!
Pandora let go of her and the succubus sped forward, slamming into Mamacita. She gasped and looked at Katie, who was smiling widely. Mamacita tilted her head from side to side in confusion.
“Welcome to the Damned,” Katie said as her new teammate fell over on the couch, out cold. “As Damian would say, ‘It gets them every time.’”
Yeah, it does, Pandora chuckled. It’s cute. Really, it is.
Okay, I need you to give me some extra strength, Katie said. I’m kind of sore, and I need to carry her out to the car.
You got it, Mama, Pandora said.
And please don’t make me a giant again. It worked for that situation, but it’s overkill for this one, Katie requeste
d.
Okay, she griped.
Katie took a moment to let Alice know she was taking Mamacita with her before returning to the office.
She leaned down and picked Stephanie up off the couch and sighed. She didn’t remember passing out when she’d gotten Pandora, but then again, she had been chained in an old parking garage.
It hadn’t really been a good situation in which to fall unconscious.
She remembered Garrett’s face as he’d wheeled her out to the SUV and taken her back to the base. It had been the beginning of some really good things, and now Katie was getting to do that for Stephanie.
She opened the side door of the SUV and put her in the seat, buckling her in for safety. She pulled the straps tight and leaned her head back.
“Welcome to Korbin’s Killers, Stephanie,” she whispered, closing the door, walking around the front of the vehicle, and hopping in the driver’s seat.
The crowd was rowdy at the bar Torn Asunder, laughing, talking, and reconnecting since the last special night they’d had. Katie was going to start off the night again by talking about Jeremy and reading what they had now dubbed as “the Damned Creed.”
She didn’t know how she had become the spokesperson, but she didn’t mind doing it. It let her pay tribute to her friends and family when they didn’t make it through.
Katie looked down at her watch and winked at Damian as she stood up and made her way to the stage. She tapped the mic to get everyone’s attention, and smiled as several people cheered for her.
“Thanks for joining us, as always,” Katie began, pulling that old wrinkled piece of paper out of her pocket and unfolding it.
“Before I read the Creed, I want to start off by paying tribute to our fallen brother, Jeremy Croft. He was an FBI agent in his human life, or so I like to call it. In his Damned life he was a hell of a fighter, a friend, and a member of our family. We will miss him, and we hope that wherever he is now, he is having one hell of a time.”
Katie raised her glass in the air.
“To Jeremy,” she toasted, and everyone repeated his name. “And because I am a person of few words, I will just end this with the Damned Creed.
We are the chosen.
The infected,
battling our demons night and day.
Protecting the uninformed from reality.
We fight where the stupid meet the clueless to
perform the asinine for our
teammates every day.
We are cops, military, special forces, and SWAT,
medical techs, priests, and clergy.
We are the dimensional derelicts,
the legion, the host, the forgotten.
The feared.
The sheep can sleep at night because we don’t.
We fight for humanity—yours—and for our own.
We are the Damned, and death is our enemy,
our escape,
and our tribute.”
Everyone clapped and cheered, raising their glasses as Katie stepped down off the stage and made her way to the table to join the rest of her team. Stephanie nodded at her and smiled, and the others patted her on the shoulder. Derek handed her a shot.
She held it up in the air.
“To Jeremy,” Eric offered.
“To Jeremy,” the group replied.
After that they switched up the mood, and had some fun, laughter, and good conversation.
About an hour into it, though, they heard a commotion behind them and Stephanie turned around to check it out. Everyone at the table picked up their food, but Stephanie was too busy watching the fight, commenting on their lack of proper balance as she critiqued their form.
Her eyes grew big as one guy picked the other up and tossed him straight at their table.
Stephanie slid her chair back immediately, putting her arms up in the air as the guy hit the table and it smashed into a pile on the floor—along with her food.
She looked down at the guy and pushed him with her toe, narrowing her eyes at the cheese fries sticking out from under his back. The bartender waved to two others, who moved quickly to grab a table and set it atop the passed-out guy.
Stephanie realized the others had their food in their hands, and they were all staring at her with smiles on their face.
“And that,” Korbin told her, setting his food back down. “is why the furniture is in such horrible condition.”
Welcome To The Jungle
Protected by the Damned, Book 5
Chapter 1
T’Chezz smashed back into hell, rolling before slamming a fist on the ground. His hands clenched and his legs trembled. Slowly he stood up, growling, his teeth dripping saliva.
The ground shook as the portal closed and he was left right back where he had started, only this time with a gift.
He cursed and grabbed the car with both hands, crushing it into a ball, then yelled in anger and slammed it to the ground like a basketball. This ball didn’t bounce, though. Instead, shards of twisted metal bounced off and rattled across the ground.
T’Chezz let out a deep breath and stomped around for a few moments, finally grabbing the hunk of metal and bitching as he moved toward his castle. He issued commands to the sycophants on his way in. When he entered his office, he walked over to a corner and tossed the new artwork on the floor.
In fact, T’Chezz had expensive taste, always lifting something historical or precious before returning to hell. Last time it was Michelangelo’s “Leda and the Swan,” which Italians were still searching for last time he had gone aboveground, and Johannes Vermeer’s “The Concert" which he had read was thought to have been stolen.
Either way, that ball of metal was the most important thing on his mind at that moment. He picked the car up, set it on the pedestal, and stood back to stare at it, seething in anger at the fact that he hadn’t even set foot onto that desert before being sent back down. He couldn’t just stand by; he knew that things were going to get complicated if he didn’t get control of these damn demon hunters. He needed someone on the inside; someone who could give him details and knowledge of where these hunters were and how to destroy them.
He had been on Earth often enough to know that the human conscience was flexible, so there would definitely be someone in the Damned willing to do a deal with him.
There always was.
“Your Grace,” one of the sniveling servants said, bowing. “You requested the one who calls himself ‘the Ivy.’”
“Stupid name,” T’Chezz growled under his breath. “Yes. Is he here?”
“Yes.” He bowed and opened the door.
One of the more powerful demons entered. His walk was more human-like than the normal scuttling most demons did. He bowed his head to T’Chezz and took a seat. The demon leader walked over to the window and ran his hand across the weapons sitting on the table underneath it. He was tired of losing, and at this point he would try anything to get to the Killers.
“I have a job for you,” T’Chezz growled quietly. “You owe me a favor, so I figure this is the perfect time. I need you to go to Earth, find a host, and infiltrate the Damned. I need one of them to make a deal with me; give up the whereabouts of the Killers and their toys. That team is the only thing standing in the way of my taking over. I am choosing you for this because, though you are boring as hell, you always get the job done.”
“I’m fastidious and driven,” the demon replied. “I am not mischievous. It is a downfall of so many of our kind and humans, T’Chezz. It is why our kind have problems, and why humans suffer our advances.”
“Uh huh.” T’Chezz rolled his eyes. “Report back when you’ve gotten me something.”
The demon nodded, got up from the chair, and walked out of the room. T’Chezz’s servant went to close the door, but he stopped him.
“Do something for me,” T’Chezz requested, rubbing his chin.
“Yes, sir,” he replied.
“I want you to speak with Zallot for me. Make sure that asshole Iv
y is taken care of when he is finished,” T’Chezz told him, rubbing his hands together. “His usefulness to me is at an end. I won’t miss him for a few hundred years.”
“I will make sure it is done, and report back as soon as he has completed the task, sir,” the servant replied, nodding.
“Good.” T’Chezz laughed evilly. “And leave the car there for now. It’s a nice addition, don’t you think?”
“Very nice, sir,” the demon agreed fearfully.
“Right.” T’Chezz looked at the servant with distaste. “That will be all.”
He walked to the window again, this time feeling a lot better about his plans. The one thing that has always been true was that humans could be bought with the promise of a good life…and this was the perfect opportunity to exploit that.
He was going to get Korbin’s Killers and bring his sister back down to hell, squashing her little human in the process.
No one hit T’Chezz with a car and lived to tell about it.
Korbin, Calvin, Katie, and Damian sat around the large table in the conference room, staring at each other. There was a lot to talk about between the move, the changes in Katie with Pandora, and the fact that they weren’t going to be able to keep the weapons hidden much longer.
Katie hated when they had to talk about her abilities, but it was a conversation that needed to be had so everyone was on the same page. Korbin shuffled through the report of the last fight and took off his thin-rimmed reading glasses, tossing them on the papers and leaning back.
“So, how about it?” Calvin asked. “Do you think it’s time to come clean about Katie and Pandora with the others? Are they ready to accept something like that?”
“My first instinct is to be honest,” Korbin said. “But I fear that in this case honesty will ultimately lead to an inability for me to protect Katie to my full ability. When you see her in action you get it, but when it’s explained it seems a lot dicier. And none of them know her like we do.”
“I’m right here,” Katie reminded him.
“I know,” Korbin replied. “I’m sorry, I’m not used to having this conversation with you instead of about you.”
