Aftermath (3 page)

I could feel the radiation prickling my skin and pecking at my eyes with what felt like thousands of tiny needles. While uncomfortable, it was clear it was relatively low-grade stuff as my body was shrugging it off easily enough. It wasn’t like the one I’d experienced in Hiroshima during World War II. That one had kicked my ass seven ways to Sunday. Of course I hadn’t been anywhere near as powerful back in those days. Still, a nuke was a nuke.

I managed to find my bearings after a short while, catching sight of a piece of the Piggly Wiggly sign still jutting out of the wreckage of the store, and I headed off in the direction the blast emanated from. Wasn’t much logic to my decision, but I figured if there was something to be found it’d be where the bomb went off. After a while of trudging through the somber mess that had been Pitkin I found the trail I needed to lead me to ground zero. The hardest part of the trek was trying not to recognize any of the bits and pieces of the people I’d shambled past for the last five months. Fortunately for me, though most certainly not for them, there wasn’t much left to identify. It was like the city had been sponsored by Nickelodeon, green goop everywhere.

The trees that had survived the explosion were bent and warped by the heat and pressure, all of them pointing away from the blast. All I had to do was keep them lined up and they’d lead me to the impact point, and not twenty minutes later they had. Just outside the northern edge of town I spied the crater.

The hole still smoked, wisps of gray and black whirling like ghosts above the crystalline surface. The crater was much smaller than I imagined, stretching maybe a hundred feet across, if that, and only sitting about five feet deep. I didn’t know enough about nukes to calculate its strength but it was clear it had been more than enough to wipe out Pitkin if not me. Then again, had Buford not run in and warned us I would be as dead as the rest of them. Only my shield have saved me.

I surveyed the scene, not expecting much evidence to have survived but it was a sound in the distance that caught my attention. Where there had been nothing but the preternatural silence in the wake of the blast, a heavy
thud
echoed through the trees, coming from deeper within the woods. A second noise followed, and I was storming off that direction before I’d even realized it, my feet taking the lead.

After what had been about a half mile by my estimate, I came upon what looked like a bunker partially buried under fallen trees and collected foliage. It had been uncovered from the looks of it, and steel construction poked out of the ground a few feet. A massive door, easily a yard thick, hung warped and open, its hinges misshapen and ripped from the frame. I started forward out of instinct but then brought myself to a halt. Something wasn’t right.

There amidst the overwhelming wash of bitter char and nagging radiation was something else; something I hadn’t expected. The presence of magic. A whole bunch of it.

I ducked behind a clump of broken trees and reined my essence in as voices wafted from within the bunker. It was probably too late to avoid being detected, but with all the other presences ringing out I hoped mine would be lost in the noise as they exited.

“Just as I promised,” a man said, smooth as silk, “you are now free.”

I swallowed back a sigh of relief at hearing his proclamation. The bombing hadn’t been about me at all.

“Freeeeee,” someone else said, dragging the word out like there was a sale on vowels.

“Forgive my skepticism, but at what cost to us?” a third person asked.

I peeked out from behind my wall of trees and spied a group of men clambering out of the broken door. There was easily fifteen to twenty of them by the time they were all out, a mass of supernatural energy wafting off the entire lot. It stung my eyes and set my jaw to clenching. There were a few demons and angels among the group but most were of mixed persuasion.

“I’ve already told you what I require,” the first guy answered. He was dressed in a suit of dark leather armor that was designed more for mobility than protection, like a cross between modern S.W.A.T. regalia and old world ninja. The guy had on a balaclava that covered his face and made it impossible to get anything more than a vague sense of his eyes. A cold confidence radiated off him despite the fact that he didn’t appear to carry a single weapon and his aura was reined in so tightly as to leave him a void against my senses. There was no telling what he was or how dangerous.

However, the man who’d questioned him was obviously a Nephilim, the half-breed child of an angel and human. He was tall and handsome, built like a cross between a bodybuilder and a model having taken most of his traits from his angelic parent, but the magic that emanated from him was of the bargain bin variety. That didn’t stop him from putting off more than his fair share of arrogance.

“You want slaves and sycophants,” he said. “The same as these fools who held us captive.” He waved to the bunker. “I will not grovel before you simply because you decided it was in
your
best interest to—”

“Then feel free to stick around, chump,” another chimed in, obviously a demon given the sour tang wafting off his essence. He shook his head and put some space between himself and the Nephilim as if the closeness offended him. “Our masked provider clearly didn’t come here for your sorry ass so be grateful to be included in the breakout and keep your yappy mouth shut.”

The Nephilim sneered but there was no doubt the truth of the demon’s words. The longer I sat there feeling the ping of their essences, the more I realized it wasn’t really the whole group I was registering but just one of them; one that was overpowering the essence of all the rest.

My gaze zeroed in on an old man sniffing about the edge of the group. He looked to be two thousand if he was a day old. Hunched and frail looking, he appeared weighed down by the world. Long gray hair hung past his ass in ratty, dreadlocked waves. His beard was entangled with his hair and hung almost to his waist. Families of birds would kill for a nest that lush. What I could see of his face was weathered and wrinkled, pale and lined, but his eyes stood out as if they were black wells dug into his skull. Darkness whirled in their depths.

And both of those eyes looked straight at me.

“Who have we here…here…here?” he called out, and I recognized the voice as the same one who’d sounded like Chatterbox earlier. The rest of the group stiffened and followed his obvious stare to where I was hiding. “I sense such confusion in you, child. A trace of the Christ sprinkled atop a sour heaping of the Devil and a dash of humanity on top of it all. How interesting you are.”

I groaned and gave up any pretense of staying out of sight, standing so they could see me without making myself too much of a target. “Sounds yummy, old timer, but I think your sense of smell is a little off.” Despite my lie the demon had caught the barest whiff of me and pegged the lineage of my power without effort. That didn’t bode well seeing how neither Daddy Dearest nor Longinus made a habit of leaving behind people who didn’t want some form of vengeance or another. That shit always seemed to fall on my shoulders.

He smiled, yellow teeth poking through the chaos of his beard as he stroked it. For all his power, though, he seemed timid enough on the surface. The man in the mask, however, let loose a feral growl.

“Fate has a morbid sense of humor it seems, Hellspawn.” He stepped past the old man and puffed his chest out. “However, if you have come to stop us you are too late.”

“Don’t you worry your secretive little head about it, buddy. I left my good Samaritan badge at home.” I raised my hands in surrender. “Just out sightseeing and stumbled across your little Pow Wow by accident. I’ve no beef with any of you.” Of course that had more to do with the fact that I was hungover and was seriously outnumbered than anything else. Calhoun, Buford, the Lieutenant, and all the others deserved retribution for what happened to them, but I really wasn’t in a position to provide it right then.

Masked boy chuckled. “I’d argue the contrary but we’ve no time for semantics.” Though the balaclava muffled his voice there was something vaguely familiar about the way he spoke, his mannerisms. I didn’t have a clue who he was but he apparently knew me despite the wild hair and scraggly beard obscuring my features. It was damn annoying.

“How about you take the mask off and we can chat face to face,” I said, stepping out from behind the clump of trees, hoping to get a better look at him while teasing a hint of my power. The element of surprise was long gone at that point so what did it matter?

The smile fell from the old man’s face and was replaced by some awe-inspiring fury that came out of nowhere. He started forward, magic flaring at his fingertips, ready to scrap. Masked boy grabbed him by the scruff and pulled him away like he was a recalcitrant child. “Kalar, Jazl, Aluceel, deal with this would-be upstart,” he shouted and pushed through his followers, dragging the angry old man with him. “The rest of you with me if you value your continued freedom.”

“Gladly.” The mouthy Nephilim stepped forward. His power unfurled as shimmering golden wings, the manifestation of his magic essence coming to the fore. He was definitely more angel than human to pull that stunt off, but he still wasn’t much more than the runt of the litter. “I’ve been waiting over a year to stretch my wings.”

“Is that what you call those limp things on your back?” Scarlett’s wings were twice their size when she was just a toddler. I was pretty sure her balls were bigger then too. “I’m sure there’s a pill for that.”

Two more Nephilim moved to circle me while I bantered with the first; Kalar I presumed. Neither of the other two had his looks or attitude but they seemed to pack about the same level of power as their mouthy leader, which was fine by me. While the alcohol and drugs had been scoured from my system by the blast and subsequent walk across the ruined city, I’d been going at it pretty hard the last several months. Outside of the shield I’d summoned, I hadn’t let my magic out for a walk since I’d run away from Hell. There was no telling how it would respond given all I’d been doing to myself of late.

Masked boy must have decided to err on the side of caution or he simply had better things to do. He and the others stood close to one another while the old man’s magic welled up. I got a menacing farewell glare from the guy, and then they were all gone, the group having teleported away.

“Guess it’s just the four of us then,” I said, turning my attention back to the Nephilim as they surrounded me.

“Not for long, demon.” Kalar pulled back his fist as energy coalesced about it, tiny bolts of lightning glistening across the knuckles. His pals drew upon their magic and made ready to follow his lead. “Soon it will just be—”

I figured then was as good a time as any to test my power. To my relief, it fired up without issue.

Kalar went to swing but my shot got there first. He grunted as my fist collided with his sternum. There was a loud
crack
when his ribs gave way and my magically enhanced punch ripped through him. It burst from between his shoulder blades like a directionally challenged alien. His eyes went wide and crimson bubbled between his pale lips.

I didn’t bother waiting for him to die before I pulled my arm free of his torso and whipped it around behind me, trailing Kalar’s blood in a wet arc. My will sharpened the blood into a scythe of red razors that cleaved through the necks of the other Nephilim before they’d taken so much as two steps toward me. Their bodies toppled to the charred earth, heads spinning away, and I let momentum turn me around so I was face to face with Kalar once more. Blood spilled from his mouth and trailed down his chin.

“You were saying?”

He gurgled something I couldn’t make out and collapsed, sinking bonelessly to the ground with the last of his life leaking from the hole in his chest cavity.

“That’s what I thought.”

Of course that was when it hit me that I should have kept one of them alive to question. I still had no clue who they were or why they were there in the first place. Shoulders hunched I headed for the door of the bunker, shaking the blood from my hand. If I was gonna get any answers I’d have to get them on my own.

The stairwell beyond the doorway was dark and cool and empty. A second door similar to the first lay on its side on the landing about 100 steps down, torn from its hinges and cast aside. Its steel bulk blocked a portion of the stairwell but there was still enough room to duck past and slip inside. There was a quick, almost ticklish wave of energy that ran over me as I crossed the threshold but it faded the instant I was through and a long hallway and a mangled body met me on the other side.

Dressed in unadorned gray overalls, the body had been that of a good-sized man before the tragedy that befell him in that narrow corridor. He looked as if he’d taken a howitzer round to the face. There wasn’t much left of his head but mush, a vaguely shaped human skull bowl full of bloody red hamburger meat. The alcohol churned in my stomach.

The desk beside him was drowned in his blood, everything on top floating in a pool of it. I sifted through the paperwork and sports magazines but the fluid had done a fine job of obliterating anything that might have given me a clue as to what was going on in the bunker besides boredom. Judging by the lack of TV or real entertainment, the folks that killed the guy might have done him a favor.

I tiptoed past the corpse and started down the hall toward the rows of recessed archways that lined the walls so I could get a better look. A vague sense of mystical energy drew me on through the gloom. As I got closer I realized the archways were massive, reinforced steel doors much like those leading out of the bunker. And like the others these were just as open, though not forcibly so. I peeked inside the first of them and was reminded of what the demon had said. He’d mentioned a breakout and, without a doubt, the thing I was eyeballing was a cell; cold, clinical, and empty. The one across from the first was the same way, and it wasn’t until I peered into the third that I spied any sense of occupancy.

Basic bathroom facilities were installed in the back corner of the 10x10’ room just a short distance from an uncomfortable looking cot with rumpled, sweat stained sheets and a threadbare pillow that had seen better days. A small wooden table, the only other piece of furniture in the room, sat across from the bed. It was covered in books and writing utensils and a lifetime of paper spread haphazardly across the face of the makeshift desk. There didn’t look to be a piece of paper that hadn’t been scribbled on by a variety of inks but the former resident hadn’t stopped there. The walls were decorated from the floor to the low ceiling in weird symbols and caveman-like drawings, heavy handed and poorly wrought, half-ass images of people—monkeys maybe?—a first grader could have drawn better. Maybe if I’d been high they’d have made some sense but there wasn’t a dick or a pair of boobs sketched anywhere I could see.
What kind of prison was this?