Fallen Stars (The Demon Accords) (39 page)

I hurt, a lot.  But I could move.  My brain was spinning up fast, part of it observing my surroundings, but another, less-used part, was running numbers.  Calculations.  Algorithms and equations that my observational side could not identify.  I was also aware that part of me was Pulling something—an immense weight from above.

Slowly, supported by my best half, I sat up.  Then stood up.  

The Spider lay in three pieces on the ground. Well, more than three, but there were only three pieces big enough to recognize.  The rest was smashed beyond recognition.  The two people behind the glass wall were watching with dismay and fear.  I ignored them, still looking around. The elevator shaft behind the glass room seemed to have taken damage.  More spider parts were strewn across the top of the glass room.  Shuffling across the floor, I picked up a likely looking chunk of Spider and wedged it into the door frame, locking them in.

“What are you doing?” Duclair asked.  I turned to look at her, and so I saw when it happened.  In her fear, she had strayed across the pentagram and now stood right on the edge of the Hellgate.  Her eyes were watching me, so they didn’t see the tentacle that lashed up from the greasy black and wrapped around her ankles.  Her eyes had time to widen, then she was gone, yanked straight to Hell.

Hosta was as suddenly at the door, trying to get out, but my Spider lock worked great.

“Come on.  We gotta leave—now,” I told my vampire, heading back up the corridor.  Lydia and Arkady met us as we got to the stairs.

“We found a vampire and a were in cells. They’re both headed out now.”

“As are we, Lydia.  We don’t have much time.  Nine minutes and twenty-seven seconds, to be exact.”

“Till what?” Lydia asked.

I didn’t answer but just started up the stairs, my brain still humming with math.  Tanya picked up on my urgency and literally tossed me to Arkady, who carried me like an invalid.  Our speed picked up, and we were topside in twenty seconds.

Four Blackhawk helicopters were parked on the runway, blades spinning.  Armed soldiers in cammies ringed the perimeter of the facility.  Director Stewart and his assistant moved toward us.  We met them and moved right on past, making them swing around to follow.  I headed to the nearest helicopter.

“What’s going on?” Stewart asked.

“We have eight minutes and forty-nine seconds to get at least a mile from this spot.  Anything or anyone here after that is dead,” I said.  “I suggest you grab what you’ve managed to get your hands on, load everyone up, and let’s get the f outta here.”

Not waiting for an answer, I shuffled my way to the Blackhawk that had Toni in it, my wolf-bear sitting next to her, Stacia still buckling her in.

Stewart looked from me to Tanya, who nodded, then spoke to his assistant.  Two minutes and seven seconds later, we took off.  All four birds headed south, fast.  We cleared my one-mile mark in less than a minute.  We were a full five miles away when the crew chief yelled into his mike, alerting us to the speck of light in the sky to the west. My calculations had stopped and I could feel that part of my brain fall back asleep.

The dot grew rapidly as we watched, turning into a white-hot streak that seemed to be moving slowly, then suddenly became a flashing blur before disappearing below the treetops behind us.  

A moment later, a fireball rolled up to the clouds and a concussive wave tried to brush us from the sky.  The pilot fought the controls like a bronco rider, and then it was past.

Stewart turned to me from his position across the flight cabin.  “What did you do?” he asked, horrified.  The others all watched me as well: Lydia, Stacia, Arkady, Adine Benally, Toni, Tanya, and even 'Sos.  

“I made a statement,” I said, leaning back and closing my eyes.  I was never very good at math and it always made my head hurt.  Now, I had the mother of all headaches. It didn’t stop me from falling deeply asleep, though.

Epilogue

Metal bleachers are always the same—cold and hard.  These were no different, just a short, eight-tier set of aluminum butt busters set on the side of a standard soccer field.  Gina, Roy, and I sat near the top, watching the boys and girls of Toni’s club team scramble around the field.

It looked pretty official, with both teams sporting expensive uniforms and two adult referees in black and white.  A little overboard if you ask me, but hey, I guess there are worse things for people to spend their money on.

The fat guy two rows below me was reading a tabloid newspaper, and I was shamelessly reading over his shoulder between watching plays on the field.  A week after impact and it was still full of asteroid crap. 
Citizens call for plan—Senators demand investigation of anti-asteroid program—Russian president claims the strike was a US conspiracy to blame them.
  On and on like that.  I even saw
Bigfoot dodges space born assassination attempt.
  Pretty good pictures, though.  The front page had an aerial shot of the impact crater, circled by flattened trees.  Lots of experts and pundits opining about a whole lotta this and that.  Estimated energy of the strike, the odds of a small asteroid making it to the surface intact, stuff like that.  But hey, inquiring minds want to know.  None of the stories mentioned a Hell hole buried under a hundred tons of pulverized concrete though.

The ref blew his whistle for like the thousandth time in the first quarter.  They were two overly serious grown men dressed in matching black shorts and striped black and white shirts.  The younger one was the lead ref, and you’d have thought he was the head of Homeland Security, the way he acted.  All puffed up and self-important. And more than a little biased toward the other team.  Our side couldn’t touch the ball without incurring some infraction or the other.  The opponents, however, could probably have stolen a car and gotten away with it.

Roy got up to get some food from the concession stand.  I tried to hand him some money to get me a dozen hot dogs, but he mock glared and waved me off.  The stands shook as he clambered down like a grizzly descending the mountain.  Big guy, that Roy.

“How are your memories?” Gina asked as soon as her husband had stepped away.  Made me wonder if he’d been
sent
.

“Well, I have a lot more of them.  Mostly jumbled fragments.  But I spent most of a day with Grim out, so I guess I should be grateful I got that many.”

“Give it time.  It’s very encouraging that you get memories from Grim.  How is he, by the way?”

“He’s close.  Always close.  Like something shifted,” I said, trying to put it into words. “He’ll offer suggestions about how to handle day-to-day stuff, like an old lady driving too slow in front of me.  You know, like to ram her rear left quarter panel and spin her off the road. I try and explain that would be inappropriate.”

“You’re integrating him.  Which is great… as long as you still know that his regular ideas are generally bad ones.”

The pumped-up ref called a foul on Toni.  She was left forward offense, and apparently, she kicked the ball too hard or something.  He awarded possession to the other team.  A couple of guys on our side yelled about him needing glasses.  A father from the other team in the bleachers fifty feet to our right yelled "Good call.”

“How did Stewart make out?” I asked, curious after seeing a picture in the fat guy’s paper of the president talking to reporters.  Nathan Stewart was in the background of the picture, leaning on his cane.

“The President put him in charge of rolling up the AIR people.  Those scientists and all the computer stuff that got grabbed before you blasted the base gave him all kinds of information.  That girl that helped Toni?  Caeco?  She and her mother escaped from another lab out in New Mexico.  We rolled that one up, too.  Lots of hybrid, gene-splicing work going on there.”

“What’ll happen to those kids?”

“Nothing.  They’re back home in Vermont, although Stewart is working on creating a special school.  A college for
uniquely
talented kids.  He’s going to offer full rides to those two.”

“A special college for mutant kids?  How Stan Lee of him.  Who’s he gonna get to run it?” I asked.

She didn’t answer right away.  Super ref blew his whistle again because one of our players had the temerity to take the ball away from the other team. 

“Hey ref… you got money on this game?” one of the wisecrackers on our side yelled.  It actually wasn’t a funny question.  The ref was so damned biased, it was ridiculous.  I was starting to really, really dislike the guy.

I glanced at Gina, who still hadn’t answered.  “So you gonna take the job or what?”

She smiled.  “Tanya already told you, didn’t she?”

“Actually, it was Lydia.  Sounds like a pretty neat job, though.  Raising the next generation of bonafide superheroes.  You’d be really good at it.”

“Thanks.  What about you and Lailah?” she asked.  “I mean Tanya.”

“No, you didn’t.  Who blabbed?”

“Both Tanya and Lyd.  But did you really think I hadn’t guessed a long time ago?”

“How could you guess when
I
didn’t even know?” I asked.  “When I still have trouble believing.”

“Because the clues were all there:  unheard of exorcism power, visions from God, the ability to call His Collector of Souls at will, the very tone that sounds when you do.  Lydia and I speculated since I’ve known you.  That you were self-Fallen and that you and Tanya were matched from the beginning.”

“You even thought Tanya was… you know?”

“What, you can’t say it?  Angelic?  Yeah, let’s see, born from an impossible birth, the ultimate vampire but the first human she killed traumatized her for fifteen years, she’s the ultimate predator, yet she babies my baby.  And she was matched to you from the instant of your meeting.  We figure something like that.  Which brings me to this:  what’s your next step?”

I pondered that, taking my time before answering.  Yeah, shocker, I know.  On the field, Toni’s teammate was taking a corner kick, and Toni attempted to head it in.  She got hair on the ball, but it slid off the wrong way and the goalie grabbed it.

“When I… died, I had a meeting of sorts.  Got my… our marching orders. A Mission from God to paraphrase the Blues Brothers. The days of randomly running around exorcising demons have to stop.  We have to get more organized.  Those Hellgates?  There’s going to be more of them.  And things are already coming through the ones we haven’t closed.  It’s more than I can handle on my own.  So Tanya and I will bring in others, train them, and coordinate.”

She nodded.  “A team approach, then?”

“Yeah, not sure of the particulars, but the Coven will help.”

“Oh?  Senka cooperating, then?”

I laughed.  “Something about a ten ton asteroid that gets people’s attention.”

“You did that?  By yourself?”

“Nah.  I had help.  My Brothers,” I replied.  “They can’t intercede directly, but if I want to shuffle things around up in space, well, they don’t see that as directly interfering.”

A player on the other side made a dangerous kick, and one of our kids went down.  It was really blatant, but the ref didn’t call it.  Most of the parents were starting to speak up now.

Grim made a suggestion.  I liked it.  Out on the field, the ref suddenly fell down like someone had kicked him behind the knees.  He jumped up, furious, but there wasn’t anyone to blame. 

Straightening his suddenly muddy uniform, he blew the whistle for the other team to kick.  The ball came off the player’s foot and hit the ref right in the face.  He was bright red now.

Gina watched, then slowly turned her head to me.  I pretended innocence.  Roy arrived like the Calvary, complete with rescue hot dogs.  “Did you see that?  That asshole ref got hit right in the mouth.  And his spiffy outfit is all muddy from falling down.” Roy was laughing as he handed me a bag of delicousness. 

“I better share some of these with my pal,” I said.  Roy nodded understanding, and I just pretended not to see Gina’s narrowed gaze.

My borrowed Toyota SUV was parked behind us, backed up against the fence that protected the soccer field.  I remotely opened the tailgate and handed a half dozen franks to the beast lying inside.  Awasos ate them in quick gulps, his attention on the game—or, at least, one brown-haired little attacker.  A bigger boy pushed Toni down, which elicited a growl from 'Sos.  It happened right in front of the stands, and parents started yelling at the ref.  Instead of carding the kid, the idiot flashed his yellow flag at the coach for our team, pointing at the parents and getting into a yelling match with the coach.

A gust of wind caught the penalty flag and yanked it from the ref’s hand.  It floated across to land by my feet.  I picked it up and held it to 'Sos’s nose while holding the ref’s eyes with my own.  Then I walked it forward, leaning over the fence to hand it to the asshole.  I let Grim peek out at him, absurdly self-satisfied with the shade of gray he turned.

Gina was behind me when I turned around, arms crossed, eyes tight.  “What are you doing?  With everything you are, you are supposed to protect people… not hurt them.”

“Even assholes?  Cause I don’t want to help the assholes,” I said.

Despite herself, Gina laughed.  “Yes, even the assholes.”

“Well, it’s your fault.  You made me her godfather.  So I will protect her more than others.”