God Hammer: A novel of the Demon Accords (12 page)

The ball unrolled into a nine-foot horror that latched a leg claw onto the broken robot and clicked and scuttled over the floor toward Chet and the door.  Chet stood up and moved cautiously out of the room, watching Thing Two drag its broken brother with a mixture of fascination and mild concern.

For a second, I thought Awasos might attack it, but his head just tracked its progress like a tank turret until it passed out of the gym, the screech of dragging metal moving away.

“Great.  We’ve got about an hour and a half, then I have to get ready for tonight’s board meeting.  Declan, please plan on attending. It’s at nine, in the board room on the forty-fifth floor.  Business casual will do fine.  Now, let’s start,” Tanya said, eliciting a groan from Declan and a fierce grin from Stacia, who dove at him from behind.

The kid went down in a tangle but bounced back up and jumped six feet away, the glyphs on his arms and legs appearing like oil bubbling up under his skin.  Stacia came right after him, her twin batons flowing through an escrima pattern.  He held his ground and when she got close enough, ducked under her left hand swing, dropping forward on one knee to snare her right leg in a single leg takedown.

Her right hand baton came down hard on his back but bounced when it got an inch from his skin, the recoil so severe that the rod came right out of her hand and flew Tanya’s way, where a pale white hand snatched it out of the air.  “Good shielding, Declan,” Tanya said.

Declan was able to pull Stacia off balance, but as she fell, she twisted and turned, getting his body in full guard, her legs wrapped around his waist in a manner that might appear intimate unless you were the one experiencing the strength of her hold, the fierce gleam in her eyes, and the relentless pull of her arms as she dragged his arm, then shoulder, then head forward.  Her legs un-scissored and rewrapped further up his back as she prepared to execute a triangle choke.

Realizing she was too strong, even with his glyphs, Declan relaxed his posture, letting her pull his arm against her torso, his hand falling flat on her sternum just below her neck.  He smiled at her slightly as if he was using the situation to cop a grope or something, but suddenly, there was a sharp snapping pop and then he was flying backward from the weregirl whose blonde hair was almost standing on end, her eyes shocked and wide.

“Good Declan.  You can’t match her strength, even with your glyphs, and her jiu-jitsu is very good, yes?  So you snuck in one of your own surprises.  Now let’s do it again from the same position, only this time, let’s say your pool of magic is depleted so you have to get away without using magic.”

“I could try for an eye gouge,” he said, sounding uncertain.

“Putting your hand in a werewolf’s face is a sure way to get it bitten off.  You’re going to have to defend against her triangle choke first, then attempt a counterattack.  Here, let’s work through it.”

Tanya put them back into the guard position and started to show Declan what to do.  A furry mass pressed under my arm with inexorable pressure as Awasos decided he wanted my attention.

“What do you think, buddy?  Will the kid survive the summer?” I asked my bear.

Declan glanced my way, “I heard that!” then disappeared in a flash of tanned legs that slipped around his neck and cut off his air.

‘Sos yawned and lay down on the ground.  “Yeah, probably not,” I agreed as my intern frantically tapped out.

I had no idea why I would be invited to a board meeting of the Demidova Corp, but I was interested.  Who wouldn’t want to be a fly on the wall of the world’s newest Wall Street wonder?

The board room was almost over the top.  Huge, polished table dominating a massive room with plush carpeting, expensive vases and sculptures around the perimeter, one whole wall clad in hand-fitted sheets of dark green marble, the name of the company in ten-inch-tall gold-plated letters against the deep, rich marble.

Twelve chairs encircled the table, five per side with one at each end.  A separate desk with mounted monitor and keyboard sat just adjacent to one end of the table, and Lydia was settling herself into its chair.  Tanya’s spot as Chairman and CEO was the end seat nearest Lydia’s secretary’s desk.  At least that’s what the little cheat sheet that Lydia had made me said.

The single page of copier paper had a rough sketch of the room drawn out, with names and notes for each position.  Based on some of her written comments, I was interested to see what these people were like.  I sat in a small group of chairs that occupied the same side of the room as the mini fridge, sink, and espresso maker, which was a statement on the importance of caffeine for the oversight of a multi-billion-dollar company.

The Demidova Corp had exploded onto the international finance scene immediately after the Battle of Washington.  With the massive spotlight of global attention that had been focused on Chris and Tanya, their company had received almost as much media coverage as they had.

From what I knew, the company had offices around the world and operated as a diversified group of businesses that were radically different.  Apparently, Tanya had formed it from businesses she had already owned, accumulated during her silent teenage years.  Chris had mentioned on many occasions that she was a business prodigy, with a razor-sharp mind and trip wire instincts for making deals.  As the anointed prophetic figure of the Darkkin world, she had been receiving massive gifts of wealth since birth.  Her mother, another business prodigy, had given her free rein to invest her own money, and invest she did.

The skeleton of the company was a real estate empire that owned offices in London and Hong Kong, shale deposits in Texas and South Dakota, and apartment complexes around the world.  It was accessorized by nanotech startups in Germany, Japan, and upstate New York, a software company in Ireland, biotech research facilities in Israel, France, and Germany, and a Chinese solar panel production plant that she somehow owned a majority of in Beijing.

The IPO had been this year’s most anticipated event on Wall Street, and every investor on the planet had wanted in on the company owned, started and run by God’s own power couple.  The price of the stock had rocketed to stratospheric heights purely on the momentum generated by the constant replay of the Battle.  Analysts had discussed the solid cash flow generated by the real estate and energy plays while speculating on the possibilities of the biotech innovations that vampire biology was sure to provide and, of course, the firm’s unique ability to clean up extra-dimensional incursions of the demonic kind.  They charged pretty heavy for those, at least to large, developed nations that had engaged in the kind of particle physics experimentation that had been proven to erode the space-time barriers across the multiverse we had found ourselves in.  Smaller, less wealthy countries got discounts—big discounts.  Corporations engaged in similar particle physics activities got really large bills for their ectoplasmic cleanup costs.

The result of all this was a unique group of board members, most of whom were beginning to enter the room now.  Lydia had helpfully stapled a printout of the boards' photos and bios taken from the company website so I could attach names to faces.

The rows of extra seating in front of me filled up with department heads and other corporate officers, each giving me a curious glance or nod, depending upon if we had met during my rune drawing activities or not.  Someone sat in the seat next to mine, but I didn’t look over, instead glancing from my cheat sheet to the board table.

The attractive pale brunette who sat to Tanya’s right was her mother, Galina Demidova.  She looked maybe thirty, but was older than the United States.  She was focused on her tablet, her white finger flipping through pages at an unlikely speed.

On the other side of Tanya’s seat, a tall, wide-shouldered man in his early thirties, with dark hair and dark eyes, sat staring at the table directly in front of him, almost like he was meditating.  I looked at the chart and found his name—Brock Mallek, CEO of Lupine Industries.  The connection came to me a moment later.  He was the Alpha of the New York Pack, which Stacia belonged to.  Lydia’s notes indicated he had been a friend to Chris since my mentor had arrived in the Big Apple several years ago.  Maybe he was meditating; it would be a good idea.  Keep that werewolf temper in hand and all that.  Maybe Delwood could learn it.  Ha!

Next to Mallek was a twenty-something with a smug look and expensive watch.  He was dressed much more casually than anyone else in the room, but his casual attire probably cost more than my laptop.  Dustin Cryor, founder of Crytech Cybersecurity, Incorporated.  I was familiar with his company, which had had almost as meteoric a rise as Tanya’s.  We studied his software in class, and the professor had been an unabashed fanboy of Cryor’s.

Across from Cryor, sitting next to Galina, was another vampire.  Ian Smitwick, a British investor, who, Lydia’s notes indicated, had his fingers in many pies around the world.  I looked up from my notes to get a visual on him and found myself staring at a pair of pale, ice blue eyes.  Immediately, I broke eye contact and went back to looking at my pages, although my eyes didn’t see a single word.  He had been studying me while I had been reading about him.  Was he like Nika?   A telepath?  Without conscious thought, I felt my mental shields solidify and lock down.  When I looked up, I deliberately looked to his side, where an Indian vampire sat.  I could still feel Smitwick’s eyes on me for a moment longer while I read about Dr. Raj Singh, board member and Chief Medical Officer of Demidova Inc.  The Brit vamp’s stare was almost like a pressure on my senses.  Abruptly, it let up and when I allowed my gaze to traverse Smitwick, he was engaged in conversation with Galina.  I let out a tiny sigh of relief.  The person sitting next to me snorted softly and when I glanced her way, I found Katrina sitting there, smirking.

“Yo Trina,” I said softly.  She smiled in an unsettling way, more predatory than friendly, but that was par for the course with her.  I had learned to ignore it at College Arcane.

“Trying to hide out in the back row again, O’Carroll?” she asked.  “Not working, is it?”

“Not a hundred percent, no,” I said.  “How about you?  Got a speaking part in this show?”

“If called on,” she allowed, settling down to inspecting her glittering, razor sharp nails as if they could actually break or chip.

After a moment, I went back to my cheat sheet. A human sat next to Dr. Singh, a tall male named Dr. Wade Pitcairn, Columbia professor, which seemed an odd choice for a board member till I read that he taught classes in folklore, theology, and occult myths and legends. The end chair was Chris’s, and next to him sat yet another Doctor, Dieter Bernhard, PhD.  Doctorate in Applied Nanotechnology. 

The board member next to Dr. Bernhard was a female vampire with brown hair and scars on the side of her neck and face.  The list had her as Alexandra Vincent, Outer Guard.  There was no other explanation.

Two of the twelve chairs remained open, even as Tanya came in, conferred with Lydia, and then claimed her own. Lydia’s notes left them blank.

“I’ll call the board to order,” Tanya said softly, instantly silencing the chatter in the room.

“You’ve all received the minutes from the last meeting on your tablets. Any questions or corrections?” she asked.

The cyber guy, Cryor, raised one hand, speaking when Tanya nodded at him.

“Under Mr. Aikens’ report on computer security… or rather a lack thereof, I believe, I’ve been misquoted.  It says here
Mr. Cryor asked about the extent of the measures taken, noting that Crytech had not been one of the security companies utilized.
  I believe I wasn’t noting so much as asking why my firm, arguably the leading cybersecurity provider on the planet, hadn’t been involved,” he said, a smirk flickering across his lips.

“Lydia?” Tanya asked, even as her tiny vampire administrator started typing instructions at improbable speeds on her keyboard.

A massive screen descended from the ceiling along with a matching high-grade projector.  Footage appeared, obviously of this very room, with a date stamp from a month earlier.  The footage fast forwarded in bursts, then abruptly stopped.  Cryor was shown, his face serious, hand fisted on the table in front of him.

“
I see a rather lengthy list of
my competitors here and yet nothing of the industry leader, Crytech?”
the projected Dustin Cryor asked.

“Semantics, possibly, but let’s change
noted
to
asked
,” Tanya instructed Lydia, who nodded sharply.

“So noted,” Lydia said with the tiniest twitch of her lips.

“Satisfied, Dustin?” Tanya asked.

“With the correction? Yes.  With the explanation given?  Not so much.  This company is burning capital at an unsustainable rate, operations disrupted and frozen by overt hacking and DDoS attacks, and you are not utilizing the best weapon you could have—me. That seems… negligent,” the smarmy little bastard said.  I’d been here five minutes and already the villains were self-evident.

“Ah, well, reading further in the minutes, you’ll note that management’s answer was that we were avoiding a potential conflict of interest while pursuing other solutions,” Tanya replied.

“And how’s that going for you?” he asked, extremely self-satisfied.

“If you would allow her to complete the agenda in order, we might all find out,” Brock Mallek said, his deep voice almost a growl.  I sat up a little.  When a werewolf uses that tone, it’s best to pay attention. 
 

“Exactly.  If we could get a motion on the corrected minutes, we can proceed to the next order of business, which so happens to be Chet’s CIO report,” Tanya said.

“I’ll make the motion to accept the minutes,” Galina said.

“Second,” Dr. Singh said.

“All in favor?” Tanya asked, getting a chorus of ayes.  “All opposed?” she asked again, with only silence for an answer.  “So carried.”

“Chet, would you be good enough to put us out of our misery?” she asked.

The skinny computer honcho was sitting in the front row of chairs in my section and now he stood up and confidently walked to the projector screen, where a Powerpoint presentation had replaced the recorded footage of the last meeting.

He turned and faced the board, the screen next to him changing to show the first slide—titled Systems Status.

“As of six p.m. yesterday, all headquarter systems have been declared secure.  As of midnight, last night, all secondary and tertiary systems as well as our satellite assets have also been secured.  All exploits, malware, viruses, and repudiation attacks have been stopped and cleared from our systems.  DDoS attacks continue but have failed since midnight.  Operations as of today’s date have resumed under normal conditions, worldwide,” Chet said, a matching bullet point appearing on the slide for each of his declarations.

The vampires were harder to read but the humans and the Alpha werewolf were clearly impressed, although Cryor’s expression bordered on disbelief.

“How did you achieve that?” Dr. Singh asked.

“The intern program bore exceptional fruit.  A small subgroup of our summer computer interns, under my supervision, put together some rather revolutionary software that was able to cleanse our computers and continues to successfully protect them from further attacks,” Chet said.

“What about our financial assets held at other institutions?” Galina asked.

“We’re in the process of reconciling those accounts, matching our now-recovered records to theirs.  It may take some time to completely clear up, but the process is moving forward.  Accounts held in our subsidiary bank are fine,” Tanya said.  “The finance department is again issuing invoices and working with our vendors and customers to expedite payment of all the older accounts receivables that we haven’t been able to bill out.  It’ll take some time to clear up, but our resources and contingent lines of credit are sufficient to get us over the hump.  In short, we’re back in business,” Tanya said with a slight smile.