Demon Accords 6: Forced Ascent Read online

  I could hear all their heartbeats and outside of a Zumba class, I don’t recall ever hearing any beat quite as fast.

  The tension was almost touchable, stretched taut like a bowstring. After what seemed to be minutes, but was really just a few really painful seconds, Nathan Stewart looked across the table at General Creek and said, “As I said—she would be here.”

  Creek looked pained as he looked from Stewart to Tanya at my side, but after a moment he reached into his hip pocket—slowly, with his other palm up toward my vampire—and pulled out his wallet. He slipped out a crisp twenty and handed it to Senator Gleeson, with a brusque wave to indicate that Gleeson should pass it down. The bill traveled down the table to McFeeney and next to Alexis Bishop, who blinked rapidly several times before putting a semblance of her former poker face in place. She handed the twenty spot to Nathan Stewart, who added it to a fat roll of bills from his pocket. Even as it left her hand, Alexis was turning her attention to me, the wheels almost visibly moving behind her mask.

  “Do you agree with her?” she asked me.

  I paused for a moment, thinking about the whole situation, studying my hands that were flat on the table. As I started to answer her question, I picked up one of the plain water glasses in front of me.

  “Ms. Bishop, what none of you seem to grasp is that this whole thing we’re doing right here doesn’t matter,” I said, waving a hand at them and the unconscious bodyguards and the whole room. “I’ve been fighting demons since I was prepubescent. That’s demons as in the denizens of Hell. All this political crap is meaningless unless it results in giving them a free hand. Then it will mean the end of everything and everyone.” She started to speak, but I held up my right hand. “I’m not done. What you all need to understand is that there is a treaty of sorts between Heaven and Hell—an Accord. Demons have always been allowed on this plane as long as their visitation was non-corporeal. Just their spirit or elemental essence or what have you. If invited into a person, they could take over the body. Likewise, they could inhabit a location or place. Humans could fight back with religion and faith or they could fall and fail. It’s always been our choice. Free will. On the other side of the Accord, God would select a representative warrior—a policeman of sorts.” I ran one finger around the circumference of the glass, down near the thick bottom. The half-inch-thick base fell off the glass. “That warrior would have the ability to exorcise any demon on this plane. In case you folks have missed it, the current holder of that title is I. It’s a tough job—the average lifespan of my predecessors was pretty short, I’ve been told. Maybe fifteen or twenty years from the time they first manifested their abilities, tops. It’s been a losing battle. Till me.” Using the same finger, I cut the base into a sort of rectangular shape. “But now we have this whole manmade wear and tear on the barriers of space and time thing. The Large Hadron Collider. Our never-ending search for information and power has finally impacted the fence that keeps the demons of Hell at bay. Now they can come through in physical form—complete in their unholy glory.” The little block of glass was now roughly humanoid shaped. I set it down and picked up the open-ended cylinder that had been a glass. “And guess what? Halloween is approaching. A friend recently pointed out that the barriers naturally thin at that time of year. How do you think that’s gonna go?” I traced an arched triangle into the glass—sort of a dolphin fin shape. It fell out of the cylinder. “My business is about to see its busy season—possibly the first and last at the same time.” Turning the glass, I cut the same shape out of the other side. Holding the first one up to the little glass man, I focused my aura on a spot on his back, pressing the triangle against it. The glass flowed together.

  “So to answer your question, I’m okay with it. I’d prefer to go about my business without civilians knowing any different. I’d prefer you to leave my friends and family alone. If you choose to take this route, be aware it will flow both ways. None of you will survive unscathed. If it gets too crazy, we’ll leave. My charge is really the whole planet, not just the United States. At some point, I need to travel anyway. Tanya is right: China and Russia will absorb us without a second’s thought. Did you know that I have a grandmother of sorts in China? Me either. She’s one of the vampire Elders and she wields enormous influence over there. The politicians in that country understand what they’re dealing with and wisely leave her alone. Similar to Russia, where Tanya’s family is from. So foreign travel might be nice. We’ll let you deal with demons on your own.” The other triangle got the same treatment, the glass melding together.

  “I see,” she said. “And what about the last part? The threat of turning me into a vampire? You would let her do that?”

  “Let her? Have you met her? I didn’t let her join this meeting—look how well that worked out. But it’s a good warning for you. Vampires and weres don’t play by our rules. They have their own and they follow them strictly to keep the general population unknowing. If the federal government chooses to reveal them, then all bets are off. Be prepared for civil unrest on a scale never seen in this country, ever. And then be prepared for the retaliation. You called them monsters for a reason. Who knows, maybe you’ll end up one and if you do, you’ll work for us.”

  “Okay, well on that happy note, I’d say it’s time to wrap this up,” Darion said, looking at his watch. “We’re not accomplishing much more today, so let’s all leave while the floor is still clean of blood, shall we?”

  I stood up, turning to leave. Alexis spoke behind me. “Mr. Gordon, this doesn’t end anything. The government simply cannot leave you free and unchecked. There will be actions taken.”

  “Ms. Bishop, before you go back to the evil plots blackboard, do me a favor. Borrow some footage from Nathan here—study that other threat we’ve been talking about.” Director Stewart didn’t look up; he was still studying the glass figure I had in my hand. I looked back at Bishop. “Then picture your friends and family right in the middle of one of those portal openings. See how you feel about me then,” I said, setting the little winged glass man down on the table in front of her.

  Finishing my turn, I took Tanya’s elbow and we walked out of the room, stepping into a hall of screaming mini-cheerleaders. We turned the corner and moved to the stairwell. Once through the door, we headed down into the basement. I stepped off the stairs and stumbled, a wave of dizziness mixed with doubled vision slamming through me. The God Tear necklace on my chest suddenly burned hot—for just a second, before it all passed. The disorientation left and my vision cleared as the silver-wrapped jewel around my neck cooled to normal temperature.

  “What happened?” Tanya asked.

  “Somebody just tried to kill Toni,” I said, meeting bright blue eyes.

  Chapter 3

  The crappy old hotel was a good choice for a whole bunch of reasons—it was out of the way, set in a well-populated neighborhood, and out of the Big Apple. It also had an old utility access tunnel that traveled under the asphalt parking lot to a buried concrete storm sewer collection tank. It was one of those big, prefabricated things that you see work crews lowering into the ground as your car crawls by at the direction of a bored signal guy. Its most important feature was the steel grate cover at its top.

  The access tunnel was small enough that we had to crawl on all fours. Tanya was just ahead of me, the tunnel dark, but my thermal vision gave me an interesting view of her from behind.

  “Stop staring at my ass and tell me again that Toni and Gina are okay,” she said without looking around. Damn mental link. It’s one thing to wake up and find you have a super-hot girlfriend; it’s another thing altogether that she can just about read your mind.

  Toni is my goddaughter, another shocking development that I had awoken to. Gina was her mother, an otherwise super-perceptive, intelligent woman who had come to the insane conclusion that I might make good godfather material. Go figure.

  “They’re both fine. They were having lunch in a café when a van pulled up and three men with guns got
out. That’s about all I saw as the God Tear around her neck activated and the men all sorta exploded.”

  “Exploded?” she asked, her tone professionally curious.

  “Yeah, well I think they all got shoved back toward the van but the shove was so hard and fast that their bodies just came apart. Gina covered Toni’s eyes and she didn’t see any of it.”

  “Good. It’s still too early for her to see too much of that. Any idea who was behind it?”

  “I didn’t get much other than what I told you. We’ll have to call them,” I replied, thinking about her phrase too early.

  We climbed out of the tunnel and stood up in a concrete box. A couple inches of stagnant water sloshed around our feet as I climbed the inset concrete steps and popped the metal grate cover open. I looked back down at Tanya before sticking my head out. She was smirking and staring at my butt. I sighed.

  “Turnaround is fair play, no?” she asked, letting her Russian accent roll through.

  A vehicle was parked above us with an open trap door in its undercarriage, which let us climb up inside the back of what seemed to be a uniform delivery van. We came up right between stacks of clean, folded uniforms and several bags of dirty ones. The driver and passenger’s seats were empty. That changed a moment later when the sliding driver’s door popped open and a stocky, muscular man with a crew cut entered the vehicle. He had a bag of dirty uniforms in one hand, which he threw to me or maybe at me, and a bag of bagels in the other. He was whistling the theme song to a famous Disney movie about dwarves and a princess and work.

  With a wink at my vampire, he swung into the driver’s seat and started the van, wheeling out of the parking lot with blatant disregard for the other drivers—in other words, just like every other delivery vehicle on the road. A string of black SUVs zoomed past us, careening into the parking lot.

  I started to speak but he held up one hand for silence, a tattooed Semper Fi visible on one beefy forearm. He used the same hand to turn on the stereo. The music that issued from the speakers had a hissing quality woven around and within the notes. White noise.

  “Okay, now we should be good as long as we don’t shout,” the human head of daytime security said. “Is everything alright, your majesty?” he asked with a glance in the rearview mirror at Tanya.

  “I think we’re good, Mr. Deckert,” she said with a small smile. Deckert was retired Marine Force Recon and had worked for the Demidovas for a half dozen years or so. He had always been a loyal, tough-as-nails employee, but Tanya had cured his daughter of cancer with her blood and now he cheerfully worshipped the ground under her and the air around her. I think he liked me too, but ours was a different relationship.

  “Gordon,” he greeted me, tone even.

  “Deckert,”I replied in my best imitation of his voice.

  “How’s General Creek?”

  “Kind of a bitter asshole,” I replied.

  “That’s his nominal condition,” Deckert said. He reached into his uniform pocket and pulled out a cell phone. After swiping his thumb over the biometric app, he handed it to Tanya. “This started buzzing with texts a few moments ago. I think they’re for you and Gordon.”

  “Yeah, there’s one from Gina—she says everyone’s okay and they’re being driven home by the security team,” Tanya said, still reading.

  “What about the cops?” I asked.

  “Gina says federal agents appeared almost instantly. The security guys told them they were taking their clients to safety and it would probably a bad idea to interfere. The feds told Gina they would be in touch. There’s also a text from a Stevens—that’s our Stevens, right?” she asked Deckert. He just nodded, eyes still focused on driving.

  “Stevens says it looks to him like a professional contract hit squad. A driver and three heavy hitters with automatic weapons. All four DRT. DRT?”

  “Dead Right There,” he translated. “You should probably hold off on replying until we get somewhere secure. This whole place is lousy with feds. FBI, NSA, lots of alphabets. Too dangerous.”

  At the word dangerous, my dark half surged forward and expanded my senses, filling my brain with a 3-D worldview that covered everything around and above us. Somehow I was seeing without my eyes.

  “There are seven very small quad-copter drones in the air around us. Most are converging on the hotel. One is following us,” I heard myself say in a deep voice.

  Deckert never flinched. “Can it meet with a freak accident? One that doesn’t arouse too much attention?”

  None of me answered right away; instead, my attention zoomed in on the lightweight quad drone thirty feet above us. We drove past a mom and pop corner convenience store and the drone started to rise above the large sign sticking out from the front of the building. I felt Grim do something with my/our aura and a gust of air pushed down on the little copter, shoving it into the sign. One of the four rotors shattered on the metal frame and the drone started to spin and tilt.

  “Done,” my Grim voice answered.

  Deckert glanced in his side mirror and I looked over my shoulder out the back windows. The little quad clattered to the road and an Escalade behind us crushed it under one big tire.

  “That’ll do, pig, that’ll do,” Deckert said, looking forward and whistling his off to work song.

  Five minutes later, he pulled into a warehouse garage whose name matched the one on the delivery van.

  The business was legit and was, in fact, the very service that usually provided the hotel with its uniforms. Deckert pulled into an open vehicle slot and jumped out of the van. A few seconds later, he opened the rear doors for us to disembark. I reached into my pocket as I stepped out, pulling the folded note that Nathan Stewart had slipped into my hand when we shook at the meeting.

  “What is it?” Tanya asked.

  “It looks like latitude and longitude,” I said.

  “For what?” Deckert asked, pulling out his smart phone. Several armed security staff appeared around us.

  “Nathan has a precog on staff. Ariel, I think her name is,” I replied.

  “What’s a precog?” Deckert asked, now looking at the coordinates and typing them into an app on his phone.

  “How do you know her name?” Tanya asked in a very even tone that set my alarm bells ringing.

  “Nathan told me about her when we were in Vermont. She’s young and needs training so that new program centered around Declan and Caeco would be a good fit for her,” I said, then answered the next question before it could be asked. “I think she’s about sixteen or so. Precog is short for Precognitive. A psychic that gets glimpses of future events. This girl has been successful at predicting where and when new demon gates are going to pop up.”

  “So she thinks there will be a gate in Central Park?” Deckert asked, holding up his phone, which showed a map with a dot centered in New York City. “Or is it a trap to get you and our young queen into a tactically compromised position?”

  “When is it supposed to happen?” Tanya asked, leaning over my shoulder to look at the note. There was nothing else but the coordinates. She reached over and took the note gently, turning it over. On the other side was a faintly penciled date.

  “That’s today,” I said, imagining demons running amok through picnics and Frisbee games.

  “Mr. Deckert?” Tanya asked.

  “On it, your majesty,” he said, turning and speaking rapidly to the security team that was hovering nearby.

  Chapter 4

  An hour and forty minutes later, we were approaching the Downtown Heliport near Wall Street in Manhattan. Deckert had scrapped the elaborate transport plan to slip us downstate in a specially equipped container truck, instead hiring a transport helicopter out of Albany airport. The Bell 206 B III could carry a total of four passengers, so Tanya, myself, and Deckert, along with one of his guys, all piled into the sleek helicopter. Four plush leather seats were laid out with two facing backward and two facing forward. I put Tanya directly behind the pilot facing rearward, as I t
hought he’d be too distracted to fly properly if she faced forward. As it was, the copilot kept trying to sneak glimpses of her over his shoulder for the entire trip. He was mostly unsuccessful, as we spent much of the time huddled over tablets, trying to get any information on sudden attacks or violence in Central Park. It was only mid-day, so Tanya spent some of the flight with her eyes shut, head tucked against my shoulder.