Collateral Damage (Demon Squad Book 8) (6 page)

Six

“What the fuck were you thinking?”

Rahim’s voice vibrated my ears with its insistence. He was almost always calm and composed, rarely sinking to my level and cursing even when he was pissed, but he clearly understood the basics of how to spit out an f-bomb. I felt like a child being reprimanded by a disapproving parent.

To his dismay, I wasn’t the good son.

“Those motherfuckers posted Karra’s head on the top of a pole like she was some kind of fucking trophy,” I screamed back, clasping what was left of Karra to my chest. She was a cold, sullen lump that drove my anger to greater heights.

Rahim dropped into Abe’s chair and ignored its pitiful complaint. He’d slipped his mask of control back on, the fear I’d seen banished, but there was still plenty of emotion slathered across his face. He stared at me for an uncomfortable moment before tugging open one of the desk drawers and plucking a remote from inside. He pointed the device at a TV mounted on the far well and clicked the power button. An instant later the television fluttered to life and I was staring at an image of myself, bloody and crazed looking. My hand was sunk deep in the chest of an officer.

“They set you up, Frank.” The anger in the wizard’s voice parted to reveal his frustration. “Can’t you see that? Why else would the DSI be there?”

The news broadcast prattled on with the volume low, but I could hear every word. They went on and on about a supernatural menace declaring war on the very seat of El Paseo’s government, but the camera never once drifted from my visage to show what really happened. They’d made it all about me, and that was the pitch they were making to the public.

Cameras followed my every move as I tore into the black-garbed agents, a good, clean focus on the death of each and every one as if the act had been scripted ahead of time. Multiple angles had been spliced together to add detail to those that lacked it. A warning to viewers flashed in bright red across the bottom of the screen. My mind struggled to engage as I watched it happen in real time. It was one thing to be there, in the midst, doing it. It was something entirely different to see it played out across the local news.

The air left my lungs, and I slumped into one of the chairs set before the desk as it all came crashing down on me. “I didn’t mean…” I couldn’t get the rest of the sentence out. It didn’t matter what I meant to do. Only what I’d done mattered.

I watched the TV as my deeds repeated over and over. Awareness having settled in, I could see the various camera angles that were being used. There was no way the news crews on scene could possibly have gotten those, backed up as they were behind the crowd. There’d been people in the nearby buildings waiting on me, ready to capture everything I did. Whoever planted Karra’s head there knew how I’d respond, and they’d pushed every button from the get go.

The loop started over, and I shook my head at seeing how the video had been spliced. There was no hint of where I’d pulled Karra from the pole or had been shot. The footage came in right after I’d gotten back to my feet and caused the mini-earthquake, a severed head in my hands, and even the blood spilling down my back had been whitewashed from the screen. That was when the agents confronted me, clearly responding the only way they could to such an overwhelming, psychotic threat. I sighed and sunk deeper into the chair, tears once more spilling free as I clutched at Karra.

“I’m sorry, Frank,” I heard Rahim say, but his voice was miles away as I stared helplessly at the lump of death in my hands that had just hours ago had been nearly everything in my life.

The holy rollers had been true to their word. They were tearing my world down around me. There I was, on the local news—and worldwide shortly, if not already—ripping my way through an army of federal agents like a madman. Stained in blood and sporting a manic grin, I was a newsman’s wet dream come true. It was everything Abe had drilled in me not to become.

As I sat there stunned, sickened by my actions, Rahim thumbed the volume back up. A familiar voice slithered into my ears, and I glanced back to the TV. Rebecca Shaw’s pale face stared back at me, grim resolve etched across her carefully sculpted expression. Dressed in a tan pants suit, an American flag pin conspicuously present at her lapel, there was no hint she was anything but a concerned government official.

“Due to this brutal, unprovoked attack upon the citizens of the United States by an empowered entity from another plane of existence, the President of the United States has authorized the Department of Supernatural Investigation to take whatever steps necessary to eliminate the threat and ensure the public safety and welfare.” Her eyes bored into the camera as though she were looking straight at me. “We will hunt down and destroy this inhuman assassin before he can take any more innocent, human lives. We will not rest until we have—”

Rahim muted the television, and I watched in silence as Shaw continued her tirade, threatening to use every asset at her disposal to bring me down, her words repeated in the ticker. After our last encounter in God’s prison realm, I had no doubt that she was a woman of her word. As she talked, a screen behind her played the scene at city hall over and over, my face clearly visible in every angle for the world to see. I swallowed hard as my assumed name appeared in big letters on the ticker beneath Shaw’s face. Any senses of anonymity I’d had went up in flames right then, scorched forever. I could have sworn I saw the ghost of a smile on her lips.

“I’m sorry,” I said as I got to my feet, though I knew the words lacked the power to make anything better.

The battle for Eden had brought the supernatural world under scrutiny in a way that hadn’t been seen since the Salem Witch Trials, confirming its existence to humanity. The storms that had arisen from that conflict razed huge swaths of the planet and killed way more people than I could lay claim to, but that had been unfathomable destruction, ruin from on high without a verifiable source. Humanity as a whole had laid that one on God’s shoulders since none of them knew He’d been gone for the last fifty years or that it was His absence that had provoked that situation rather than His presence. This time, however, the world had a face
and
a name to go with the massacre. Mine.

And they were gonna make me pay for it.

“I’m sorry,” I repeated and stumbled for the exit, the world spinning around me. It felt as though it were closing in.

“Where are you going, Frank?”

“Keep my daughter safe a little longer. I need to bury her mother while I still can.”

#

As horrible as I was teleporting because of my lack of confidence, there was one place I knew better than any other. That was where I’d buried my mother so long ago. There was nothing in the Siberian Tundra to block my passage but ice and snow and frigid death so I’d nothing to lose if I fumbled the shift.

I appeared just outside of the long gone village that had been home to my mother and me before she’d been killed and I’d been taken to Hell. The tundra had claimed the village eons ago, wilderness sprouting up in every direction, leaving only a barren patch of untouched ice in defiance of nature. I sighed as I sank to my knees in the clearing. It had been my presence that held the trees back, my blood souring the soil over the years until it became barren. The tiny vial of my blood that I’d buried as a beacon to light my way to the grave had turned the place as desolate as any cemetery. It was a fitting tribute to the sadness that dwelled there.

And now I was adding the body of another woman I loved to the ice.

The well of tears I’d thought long dry ran free once more. I’d always envisioned Karra living long after my stupid ass was gone, her teaching Abby how not to be like me for an eternity afterward. But there I was, clinging to a piece of her and getting ready to add it to the memory of my mother. It was a circumstance I’d never imagined even in the worst of my nightmares.

Karra was gone and now it was on me to raise Abigail; alone.

The weight of that hit me and I nearly went blind. That was
so
not how it was supposed to be. Abby having to grow up without a mother was more tragedy than a child deserved, but to have me as her father was the shit-flavored icing on the rabbit-turd cake. What the hell did I know about raising a kid? Dear ol’ Daddy Lucifer hadn’t exactly prepped me for the job unless you count letting me run amok and lying to me as examples of good character building traits.

My mind drifted back to my childhood of its own accord, but I shrugged the memories aside. There’d be none of that. Nothing there prepared me for anything but death and destruction and a life of mistakes and frivolity. It was all I’d been trained for, even after I’d refused Lucifer’s demands that I become the Anti-Christ. Look where that got me.

I should have paid more attention in Home Ec.

My head aflutter with thoughts I had no interest in thinking, I scrabbled to my feet and drew in a frigid breath of air, the cold bracing my lungs. Then before I could change my mind, I loosed my power and felt my hand warm with its energies. My face flushed as I willed the magic free to form a giant, glowing point of power. I pushed the tip against the earth and heat began to melt the surface of the ice. A moment later the makeshift drill plunged into the ground and sunk deeper and deeper, carving a narrow trough in its wake. Once I felt I’d gone deep enough, I released my energies and let them fade, tendrils of white smoke spilling from the hole I’d just dug.

I’d come to the moment of truth.

With trembling hands, I turned Karra’s face toward me so I could see the empty windows of her hazel eyes. My heart sputtered and weakness washed over me, my body tingling from the misery that enveloped me. She was truly gone, and there was nothing I could do to bring her back. My powers weren’t strong enough and there was no way Heaven would find it in their heart to intercede on my behalf in order to raise the daughter of Longinus, the greatest Anti-Christ the world had ever known. No, this moment was everything I’d hoped to never know; it was goodbye, once and for all.

She was lost to me forever.

I bit back a sob and brought Karra’s face to mine, planting a kiss on her cold lips, holding it until I couldn’t breathe. I broke away with a gasp. All the words I wanted to say died in my throat before they could find their way to my tongue. How do you tell someone how much they meant to you as you lowered them into the ground? Did it really matter then?

Despite knowing there was a Heaven, and having met God personally, there was no peace to be found in the moment. Her head severed from her body, Karra’s spirit was inert inside her dead cells, a useless organ destined to rot like all the rest. It wouldn’t be going to Hell or anywhere else thanks to the bastards who’d murdered her in cold blood and a God and Devil who’d left their stations behind. There was nothing but the emptiness of a cold grave waiting for the woman who made my life worth living. It was a bitter realization that I deserved this. I’d condemned hundreds of people to the same fate, and now there I was doing it to the one person who meant more to me than anyone ever had.

There was only Abigail now.

Before I could break down again, I used my magic to lower Karra’s head into the hole, keeping her turned toward me as she descended. Her wide eyes watched us part until the darkness swallowed her and there was nothing but the soft rustle of her reaching bottom.

“I love you,” I whispered, choking on the words as I sealed the hole behind her. She’d be safe there like she hadn’t been with me.

My breath spilled from my lungs and I collapsed, going fetal on the ice. Its freezing touch gnawed at me as I gave in to the emotions that clawed at my eyes and raked my heart.

I don’t know how long I lay there, but it was dark when I became aware again, a layer of frost having settled over everything. Sharp
cracks
sounded as I peeled my face loose of the frozen ground and rolled to a seated position, glittering shards of ice falling away like stars. The rest of my frigid bonds shattered when I climbed unsteady to my feet. My mouth was dry, and it felt as though I’d been asleep for years, my eyes crusted nearly shut. I wiped at my face and staggered about, trying to kick start the blood in my veins, but it was slow going. A telepathic message slammed into my skull while I stamped my feet to rid them of the tingling numbness that had overtaken my limbs.

“Frank!” Michael Li’s voice was a sledgehammer that rattled my equilibrium. “DRAC is under assault!”

Adrenaline accomplished in an instant what all my moving about hadn’t. My blood boiled, infusing me with warmth and empowering my magic. I shrugged aside the cobwebs of despair and teleported across the world without hesitation.

Seven

I appeared inside the main meeting hall of DRAC headquarters, needing the extra room to be certain I nailed the landing, feeling suddenly grateful that I’d been on the invite list and the place’s wards hadn’t fired off a nuke to keep me out. The hall was a riot of noise, people rushing back and forth with seemingly no organization, their arms full of boxes and folders and anything else they could get their hands on.

Right then, a thunderous
boom
rumbled overhead, followed by a second. The ground shook and the room swayed. Dust trickled down from the roof, the lights flickering, going out for a second, and then returning with a grating hum. The workers scrambled but their menial efforts went on without delay. I took my clue from them and bolted from the room and down the hallway toward Abe’s old office.

The inner sanctum there was built the strongest, designed to protect DRAC’s council long enough for them to escape should the rest of DRAC fall. Its walls hadn’t been ever been tested but it stood to reason Rahim and the others would be there with Abby. I fought my way through the push of people crowding the halls, doing my best not to interfere with the tasks they were about, but not daring to slow no matter who got in my way. Abe’s office appeared ahead, and I bulled through the open door, pulse racing.

Rachelle stood by the desk cradling Abigail in her thin arms, my baby clasped tight to her chest protectively. Chatterbox was snuggled in the out box. Huffed breaths threatening to rupture my lungs, I ran up to Rachelle, stopping myself from ripping Abby away from her in my excitement. She gave me a tired smile and handed the baby over without complaint. I sighed at seeing my little girl’s cherubic face, her eyes closed and chest rising and falling with comfortable ease.

“
Saaafe,
” CB said with a warming smile of blackened teeth. I patted him on the head.

“She’s clearly your child,” the mystic told me, brushing an errant strand of hair from Abby’s forehead.

I let out a relieved chuckle and nodded. That’d be my girl, sleeping through the end of the world as long as her belly was full. “What’s going on?”

“The Army has laid siege to us,” Rahim answered from behind me.

I spun around looking to see if the wizard was yanking my chain but there was nothing resembling a smile on his face. In fact, it was quite the opposite. His scowl was ominous.

“You’re kidding, right?”

“I wish I were.” He pointed to the TV we’d watched Shaw give her declaration on earlier but rather than displaying a news broadcast, the image on the screen looked as though it were a war documentary. Tanks and armored personnel carriers filled the view, men in camouflaged outfits flitting back and forth between the vehicles, M-16s slung across their backs within easy reach. Flashes of light interrupted the feed, the tanks firing, and DRAC rattled a moment later, the ground shaking. The disconnect between what I was seeing and the muffled impacts was disorienting, but there was no doubting what Rahim had said was true. DRAC truly was under attack by the military.

“Shaw.” I spit her name out as if it were poison.

Rahim nodded. “She’s wasted no time making good on her threat, it seems.”

“But it’s not like DRAC is—” The words grew thick in my mouth. It didn’t matter that the people of DRAC were the good guys, battling the enemies of humanity at the risk of their own lives. Shaw had lumped them in with me and she was taking the opportunity to wipe out everyone who dared stand against her. “How’d she mobilize the military so quickly?”

Another blast shook the compound, a second one rattling the roof a moment later followed by a third right after. The shells were falling faster now, the air thickening with dust from the explosions. I covered Abby’s head to keep her safe should anything collapse.

“It seems she had this contingency in motion already,” Rahim said through clenched teeth. “Likely ever since her escape from the prison dimension, I would wager.”

“Damn that bitch!” I spat. “Isn’t this place designed to hold off wizards and demons? How the hell are these guys doing so much damage?”

Michael Li stormed into the room then, an entourage of people shuffling behind. The mentalist gave me a curt nod my but said nothing, his fingers at his temple while he communicated with others somewhere inside the complex. He motioned for the workers to collect Abe and Rahim’s things, and then stood quietly in the corner, out of the way. A dribble of crimson trailed from his nose, and his eyes looked about ready to pop free of his skull.

“Abraham never expected DRAC to come under mundane assault, let alone one so expansive. While the compound can withstand the magical equivalent of a nuclear bomb, at least once, it wasn’t designed to hold out against a prolonged attack.”

“So, we’re screwed?”

“Aptly put,” Rachelle said as she came over to join us, her eyes locked on what was happening outside on the monitor. More blasts exploded overhead. They sounded closer, more zoned in.

“Have we found a safe fallback location yet,” Rahim asked Michael.

The mentalist barely spared him a glance, shaking his head before returning to whatever conversations he was having in his head. His lip peeled back in a sneer, frustration coloring his face.

The meaning of their short conversation slapped me across the face. “She’s hit the other compounds too?” I asked.

Rahim swallowed hard, listening to the explosions, taking a moment to answer. “It looks that way. We’ve lost contact with several of the smaller, more remote locales as soon as the assault began here, and several more have failed to respond to Michael or conventional means. Those still in contact appear to be in dire straits.”

“Then we go to my place.” I waved my hand in front of Rachelle to get her attention. “You’ve got the keys to Hell, sweetheart. Give me a few minutes to make sure all the back doors are secure, and then get your folks out of every DRAC holding and down south fast.” I glanced over at Mike. “Keep a channel open for me, yeah?” He barely nodded as I scooped up Chatterbox and tucked him in alongside Abby.

Rahim looked ready to question the move, but I didn’t give him the chance. I opened a gate just large enough for the three of us to fit through and stepped into Hell, sealing the way behind me. I hated taking the baby along but if there was safety to be found, it’d be in the fortified caverns of Lucifer’s old home not at the compound we’d left behind. DRAC was about to have its prostate checked by the United States military in a very uncomfortable way.

Oorah! `Merica. Fuck yeah.

Had I known all this was gonna happen, I’d have just stabbed Shaw in her smiling face while we were still stuck in the prison. The bitch could sure hold a grudge, but she had no idea the hornet’s nest she was stirring up by dragging DRAC into the battle between us. She’d crossed a very serious line by doing so. Shaw would live just long enough to regret it.

A couple of dread fiends met me in Hell as soon as I crossed over. Less riled up this time, they kept their cool and didn’t freak out. It probably helped that there were thousands of them lingering in the nearby caverns. I could smell them stinking up the place. The piles of dead fiends scattered all over the place wasn’t helping that any.

“We’ve got hundreds of guests coming, boys, and I need you to make rooms for them all,” I told the closest of the fiends, handing CB over to him. “The deeper inside the caverns the better, and drop the old boy off in my chambers. Clean this place up while you’re at it. Then when you’re done, get out of nose range and hang some air fresheners up. You bastards are rank.”

I shook my head as they scattered. Chatterbox hummed Intense Mutilation’s “Blowin’ in the Wind” as the fiends stirred the foul air into a fartnado. Even Abby would have been offended, and that’s saying something. Fortunately she was still asleep. Her little, scrunched face was tucked against my chest, and I could feel her hot breath wafting off me. I sighed at how tiny she was, how helpless. It was just her and me now. That couldn’t be good for anyone.

Rather than dwell on that thought, I let my senses out for a walk. The fiends would have warned me had something been wrong but I was feeling extra paranoid. While I couldn’t sniff out every corner of Hell, now that the caverns were locked down and the fiends had swept the place, I could go behind them and take a peek without too much effort. No one of any power would be able to hide from me here, and I took solace in my scan coming back without hitting anything out of place. That was the first thing to go right all day.

I sent a message back to DRAC via Michael, and it wasn’t more than a few minutes after that when one of Rachelle’s portals rent the air and people started spilling through, arms full of whatever they’d been able to scavenge. A second and third and fourth portal opened right after with more of DRAC’s employees stumbling into Hell, more opening after that. Wafts of dust and the deep rumble of mortar impacts followed them in, making it clear just how close we were cutting the exodus. Shaw had gone all out just like she said she would. Had to admire her conviction even if it meant I’d have to put a bullet in her eye-hole. Her bullshit was keeping me from getting my thoughts together and figuring out how to track down the Holy, Holier, and Holiest of buttslugs. The shit was maddening, but I needed to make sure Abigail and the DRAC folks were safe first.

“Pardon the mess, everyone. Doing a bit of redecorating and ran out of wet floor and bloody massacre ahead signs.”

Fortunately, the DRAC folks were used to me and the strange shit that happened in conjunction with my world. They didn’t look pleased to find a bunch of stinky dread fiend corpses greeting them as they came to Hell, but it’s not like they didn’t expect it.

“This everybody?” I asked Rachelle as she stepped through the dimensions, leading more of her people through the passageway.

She shook her head, her hair wild and her face strained. “There are several locations I still need to check with. They will—”

“They will wait. They must.” Rahim slipped through the portal at her back and put a massive hand on her shoulder. “These first, and then we’ll follow up on the others,” he told her, his voice full of sympathy.

While Rachelle was powerful, she was opening and maintaining a dozen portals through space and that was more than I’d ever seen her pull off at once. It had to be taking a toll on her. She growled—literally growled—at the wizard but didn’t shake his hand off. Despite her anger, she knew she was hitting the wall. It might bother her to wait a few minutes, and a few people might lose their lives, but if she fell apart, a whole lot more of DRAC’s people would die. She acknowledged his unspoken point with a curt nod, but she wasn’t gonna be happy about it no matter what the reasoning.

Nothing for me to do but watch, I slumped against the wall and sank down onto my ass. It was the first time since Karra had been killed that I hadn’t been on the run. It was starting to hit me, and I wished I’d built a Starbucks franchise in Hell. I’d passed up on the opportunity because they’d seemed too evil, and I was afraid they might take over. Still, I could use some frothy, overpriced coffee right about now. Oh, the irony.

My need for caffeine stifled, my brain shifted gears and settled on more pleasant thoughts. No, not really. It kept circling back to what had happened at city hall. How had Shaw known I would be there? She could have recognized Karra up on the pole before things got rolling, or she could have seen me when I returned to the house, realizing what had happened. There’d been a bunch of camera crews there. Wasn’t like I’d been stealthy. She could have seen that and started mobilizing, knowing it was only a matter of time until something came of it. People didn’t normally just assault me and leave it at that. Or Shaw could be involved with the holy rollers somehow, all of this a set up from the start. There were too many likelihoods for me to assume just one.

Rahim came over and popped a squat in front of me. “You all right?”

I shook my head. “Not remotely.” He nodded, sympathy playing across his face. It broke my heart to see it now that I’d managed to gain a little perspective. DRAC was in the doghouse because of me. So many casualties… “I’m sorry,” I said, gesturing to the room and all the people milling about lost.

“Don’t be,” he told me. “Despite all my frustration at how things have come about, I can’t honestly say I’d have done anything differently than you did, Frank.”

The confession caught me off guard.

“Shaw would have lashed out at us eventually, this situation simply providing her with too much to gain. She’s been consolidating her power for a long time, waiting for her moment to strike. That she waited this long is impressive, and I should have been better prepared to deal with her after we returned to Earth. This is my failure as much as it is yours.”

“Since you put it that way…” I groaned. He was right, though. We all knew Shaw would come back with guns blazing yet none of us had done anything, all of us content to be free of God’s reject dimension. Me, I was just happy to be back in my own body and have Azrael out of my head. The crispy little vampire flesh-suit seriously cramped my style. I got to my feet, careful not to wake Abby. “It’s not too late to take her out.” Images of me punching a hole in Shaw’s throat flared up.

Rahim chuckled, though there was no humor to it. “It probably is, Frank. She has the United States military behind her now. The days of strolling over to her office for a
chat
are long gone. Everything we do now comes with the tag of terrorist attached to it. We’re fair game now, each and every one of us.” He looked to Abigail, his eyes conveying his meaning. I hugged her tighter to me.