Demon Driven (13 page)

“Of course not! You aren't supposed to!” he
said.

“Then what am I here for?”

He opened his mouth to speak, then paused and
thought about his answer first.

“As difficult as it may be to believe, it is
okay for demons to be here. They are part of the test of life. But
Lucifer will always go too far. God's Warrior” – he pointed at me –
“ is here to control the numbers of Lucifer's minions, to reduce
their lot. You are a ... demon predator! Yes, that's the way of
it!” he said, excited with his own answer. “Only, Yahweh was tired
of losing Warrior after Warrior and Lucifer has been bending the
rules here and there. So, Yahweh has upgraded you! Now you are a
predator of all the predators!”

“You're saying that God intended that I meet
Tatiana and that this” – I waved at myself – “would happen?”

“Of course! All happens as Yahweh intends,”
he said, his brow furrowed. “Why else would your other half be here
with you?”

“My other half? You mean Tatiana?” I
asked.

“Of course! It is why you both are here! You
really do not remember?”

“How could I remember what I didn't ever
know?” I said, thoroughly frustrated.

He snorted. “Because it was all your idea in
the first place!”

I didn't know where to begin with that. My
head was reeling from too much information, as well as the circular
nature of his thought pattern, not to mention a serious lack of
sleep and food. I gulped down the rest of the burger while I
thought. Maybe it was time to change the subject.

“Barbiel, you are an Angel, am I
correct?”

He started to laugh, hard enough that it took
a moment for him to recover.

“I am sorry, Christian! I am not laughing at
you, just that you of all would ask
that
! Yes, that is what
I am! Hah!” he said, enormously amused.

Something suddenly occurred to me.

“Wait, aren't I tainted now? By the demon
blood?” I asked.

“Christian, I told you ... all is as Yahweh
wishes. But I am very happy that you did not succumb to the Taint.
You must always force it to your control,” he said. “Is it greatly
horrible? The demon blood?”

I took my time answering, pausing to eat
another burger while I pondered his question.

“It makes me short tempered, sometimes, and
it is prone to cause violence. “

“Painful, then?” he asked.

I shook my head. “No, that's the problem.
When I let it out, when I open the cage door for it, it
feels...good...powerful...enjoyable!” I shuddered at this
admission.

His face was serious and he nodded. “Yahweh
said that this is the greatest burden that you face in this
service. I do not envy you.”

Footsteps clattered on the pavement and I
looked up to see Gina heading our way. She was locked on me and
didn't appear to notice Barbiel. We both watched her walk up and
take a seat on my left side.

“You getting enough to eat?” she asked.

“Ah ... yeah. I was getting shaky there for a
while.”

I took a big slurp of shake to show her I was
packing in the calories.

“This one is very special, Christian. It is
interesting how you and your other half...er..Tatiana, Tanya, draw
the special ones in,” Barbiel said from my right side. Gina didn't
seem to hear his words.

“According to Adler,” she said, “we'll be
heading to the airport in a minute or two, so you might want to
come back to the car. You wouldn't want to walk back to New
York.”

“Okay, I'm coming,” I said, standing up as
she did.

“Remember Christian, I will be at any church,
temple, synogogue, cemetery or holy ground that you might step into
or on,” Barbiel said, starting to fade before my eyes. “If you need
me, I'll be there.” And just like that he was gone.

“You okay? You look like you saw a ghost,”
Gina commented.

“Yeah? Well, churches have that effect on
me.”

* * *

The flight back to the city was uneventful, I
spent some of it contemplating Barbiel's words and my own sorry
state but most of it thinking about Tanya. The helicopter was too
loud for a cell phone call, but I could text.

C: Are you there?

Nothing happened for about ten minutes, then
my phone vibrated in my hand, snapping me out of a mental self
beating.

T: Whr R U?

Tanya tended to write very full, complete
sentences. This abbreviated version spoke poorly for her mental
outlook.

C: Heading back from Vermont.

T: Couldn't feel U.

C: Too far away.

T: Couldn't feel U right after IT.

It took a second, until the realization
struck: she hadn't been able to feel me right after I blasted
Reyes.

C: Oh.

T: L says link damged or week after UR
blast.

The misspellings and poor structure of her
writing really bothered me, but I was relieved that she was at
least having a text conversation. It's possible that the impersonal
nature of texting was actually a benefit in this case.

C: That is probably true. Should be okay as
more time goes by.

T: Maybe. Not sure.

C: Tanya, I'm sorry!!!!! I'm an idiot!!! A
moron! Really, really, really stupid! I should never have doubted,
even for a second. I left you...ARGHHHHH! I love you!

My phone stayed quiet for such a long time
that I was about to send a second text when she wrote back.

T: We R broken, r'nt we? Both broken. I have
to go. Sorry.

C: We can fix! Don't go! You have nothing to
be sorry for. None of it is your fault. My fault, all of it. Tanya,
we can fix this! Please!!!!

She didn't respond for the rest of the trip.
The Blackhawk dropped us off at Downtown heliport and I was on my
phone as I left the helipad.

“Hello Chris.”

“Lydia, how is she?”

“She's not great, but who would be. Listen,
you need to give her some time. Keep the texting going. That's the
first I've seen her respond to much of anything. But not now, she's
resting again.”

Her voice sounded weary.

“How are you doing Lyd?”I asked.

“Well it's never boring! I should have let
you kill the bastard when you wanted to,” she said.

“I've thought about that a bit myself,” I
admitted. “But mostly, I keep thinking about the awful look I gave
her, when she hadn't done anything, and then I left her!”

“Yeah well, I've been doing some hind sight
looking of my own. Probably should have told you about
Benders.”

“Benders?”

“Like Reyes. Bend people to their wishes.
Nasty stuff.”

“Lydia, I want to see her.”

“Give it a few days, Chris. She's not ready
to see you yet. Try texting again. It lets her decide if she's up
to answering or not. She'll get there. Her grandmother and mother
are here now. They'll help.”

I could see Senka , Tanya's 'grandmother',
who was also one of the two remaining vampire Elders left in the
world, helping her. But her mother, Galina? I couldn't quite
picture that ice queen being of much use. Maybe she had depths of
emotion I wasn't aware of. I wouldn't put money on it.

* * *

Roma met us at the squad's offices, debriefed
us and sent us home with orders for me to take the next day off and
rest. Great! Now I would have a clear twenty-four hours to rake
myself over the coals and wonder about Tanya.

Oddly, I was able to fall asleep, but after
only three hours or so, I woke back up. The rest of the night was
tossing and turning, with only bits of fitful sleep. I finally got
up and made breakfast and a big pot of coffee. About five-thirty, I
called Gramps, knowing he would be having breakfast.

“Hello?”

“Gramps! It's Chris! How ya doing?”

“Chris? Chris who? I don't know any Chris, do
you, Len?” he asked his top hired hand, Len Lafluer.

“Well now, I seem to recall a scamp named
Chris, but he left and moved on,” Len said in the background.

Len Lafluer had been with my Gramps for
longer than I've been alive. I think they knew each other in

the Marines, and when Len had shown up on
Gramps’ doorstep back when my dad was a boy, Gramps hadn't wasted a
second taking him in.

Len was the kind of guy that every good farm
seems to have – rock solid dependable, capable of any task and
always there, but sort of in the background. Average height,
skinny, but strong as hell, Len could deliver a calf, fix a tractor
or fence a pasture. And he was a really deft hand at skinning
anything that needed skinning. As a matter of fact, Len had been my
first knife instructor. First as a sad, orphaned eight-year-old, I
had gotten my first knife from him, a Schrade folder. Made me give
him a penny for it, which is the old country way. Give a friend a
knife and you may 'sever' the friendship, sell it to them for a
pittance, and they stay true.

Later, when I had begun to train to fight
Hellbourne, he taught me the secrets of knife fighting and years
later when Tanya had begun to coach me, she had been impressed with
my technique.

“Yeah, sure! Let's beat a guy when he's
down,” I complained.

“Down, huh? What's got ya down, boy?” Gramps
asked.

I laid out the story, avoiding using any
words like vampire, werewolf, angel, Directorate of Anomalous
Activity, Special Agent or any other catch word that could trip a
National Security Agency computer watch program. One never knew
when old Uncle Sam might be listening in. Hell, Duclair had
probably ordered my phones tapped from the helicopter.

Gramps listened without a word, letting me
get through the whole thing. When I finished, he thought it through
for a moment, then spoke in his deep rumbling voice.

“Well, that about sucks, boy! But listen, I'm
not gonna tell you to stop beating yourself up, because I know
you're gonna no matter what I say. And I know you're gonna give
that wonderful young lady of yours some time and space, but you're
also gonna stay close for when she's ready. But I will tell you to
watch that snake oil federal lady, 'cause she's absolutely liable
to come after you,” he said. “You still got those tools I left
you?”

He was referring to my father's .44 magnum
and the shorty pump shotgun he had left with me last fall.

“Of course!” I said.

“Well, keep 'em close. You might be needing
'em.”

We chatted about the farm and the adjoining
farm that we had bought in January. Gramps had dialed back his own
operation to just a small herd of dairy and beef cows, and still
planted corn, mostly to sell to other local farmers for feed. I
think he kept farming the little that he did, just to keep his men
employed. I also know that he sold the feed corn at greatly reduced
prices, his way of helping other local farmers. He certainly didn't
have to farm at all, his income assured from a very healthy
investment portfolio. The farm we had bought had been an investment
as well, and he told me he was renting the fields to another local
farmer for hay and looking for a tenant for the farmhouse. Deftly
turning my attention away from myself and my troubles, he made sure
his detailing of the small bits and pieces of life in the North
Country was surprisingly therapeutic. I finally let him go so he
and Len could get their regular chores done; even a small farm is
hard work.

* * *

I spent the day on my own chores. First I
looked up cop stores in the area and located one that sold vests
like my ruined one. That wasn’t hard to find, everything imaginable
is available in the city.

I cleaned up my gear, did laundry, checked
over my guns (I didn’t trust Duclair’s people to not mess them up),
did some bill paying and, of course, ate as much as possible.

That evening I was able to get Tanya to text
some more, nothing too dramatic, just inconsequential conversation
about what was on television, what I was eating, things like
that.

Finally, I went to bed after she indicated
she was going to look at some business stuff, which I took to be a
good sign.

Chapter 15

I was up early and out the door, bored with
sitting around. I ate breakfast on the way, picking huevos
rancheros from a Mexican place near the subway entrance. They
served the food wrapped in a flour tortilla for commuters on the
go.

I beat everyone but Olivia into the squad’s
offices. To my knowledge, nobody ever got in before Olivia.

My office is also the copier and file room,
which is what happens when you’re the last to be recruited. I
didn’t mind, ‘cause I didn’t spend much time there and if I had a
lot of paper work I would spread it out on the conference room
table.

I worked on my report to Roma. Our group
couldn’t really file regular reports on our cases. Oh, we filed
reports, but they were works of literary fiction, totally divorced
from the truth, as the real story wasn’t ever fit for consumption
by the unknowing. We also filed our own reports, internally, on a
secure system of Chet’s design. The system was stand alone,
disconnected from any other computers and had layers of security,
including biometric identifiers and advanced fuzzy logic software
that would ask you a series of questions based on your username.
The questions were specific to each user and the code was
sophisticated enough to never ask the same question twice. At the
end of the layers of security sat a nasty computer worm designed to
completely erase the hard drive in the event of a severe
breach.

Finishing up my detailed recap of the rogue
werewolf incident, I stored it on an encrypted thumbdrive and then
brought it out to Olivia to be inputted into the secure system.
Only Olivia, Roma, Gina or Chet had access to the system. Finished
with her upload, Olivia wiped the drive clean and returned it to me
with a smile.

“Thanks ‘Liv”

“No sweat, Chris. Listen, are you okay?” she
asked.