God Hammer: A novel of the Demon Accords (37 page)

“She’s right.  About the okay part, not the moron part.  You
will
take a car and driver. Enjoy yourselves, but no alcohol,” she said, turning to Mack for the last part.

“I don’t like to lose my senses in an unknown city,” Mack said.

“Particularly in a nightclub populated with vampires, right?” Chris asked with a wink.

“There is that,” Mack agreed. “And you probably know that this guy doesn’t drink at all,” he said with a thumb in my direction.

“Be like a five-year old with a flamethrower,” Lydia said. 

I just looked at her while I spoke to Mack.  “Come on, buddy. I want to show you my plans for a butterfly-slash-pixy collection.”

“Like you could organize a collection of anything,” she snarked.

“It might only need one specimen,” I said, turning and pushing Mack toward the door.

“Take the driver, Declan, and
stay
in the club.  Mack, you will be completely safe in Plasma,” Tanya said.  As I went out the door, I saw the white werewolf turn and look at me.  She might have been grinning… or snarling.  Hard to tell.

With the blade breaker in her paws, Stacia went from frustrated to terminally effective.  Tanya stopped the practice when Declan’s bug was down to just two partially operational blades.  It was so damaged, it could hardly scuttle.

“Well that’s fine for
her
, but what about us?” Lydia asked, pointing at Nika and herself.

“Try this,” Arkady said, lifting out of his gym bag a Glock pistol fitted with a suppressor.

“What?  Here? In the gym?” Lydia asked

“Is okay,” the giant said, pushing the gun toward Lydia, who just looked at him like he was crazy.  Nika reached out and snagged the pistol, racked the slide, and aimed at the robot, which was rattling and shaking as it tried to spin its damaged segments.

The gun popped twice, the action of the slide almost louder than the shots. The top third of Thing Two went rigid, segments lengthening out and freezing in place.

“Keep firing till enemy falls,” Arkady said to the blonde telepath.  She rattled off a half dozen more shots and the robot’s entire body stiffened and fell over.

“Are those bullets bewitched?” Lydia asked.

“Yes.  Boy
vedmak
puts tiny little scratches on ‘dem.  Has made over a thousand,” Arkady said, studying the bug, which was beginning to twitch.  “Seems to disrupt functions, but temporary.  And look… they stick to bug.”

Little flattened 9mm slugs were sprinkled across the centipede’s armor, almost as if glued.

“So the girls could paralyze bugs and the rest of us could then smash them,” Tanya said, pointing to the giant vampire, the blonde girl pulling on sweats, herself, and me.

“Yeah, although Declan thinks there might be some upgrades coming that would make them resistant to magic,” I said.

“That’s just super,” Lydia said with a grimace.

“What would Declan be doing during all this shooting and smashing?” Nika asked.

“Who the hell knows?  Something mildly devastating like shifting the tectonic plates or forming a volcano under the city,” Tanya said.  Nobody laughed.  “I’m joking… mostly.  Between him and that book inside him, I’m sure he’ll devastate twice as many bugs as the rest of us combined.”

“It’s pretty crazy what he can do, isn’t it?” Nika asked.

“Crazy is a word I would rather not ever apply in the same sentence as Declan,” I said.  “But remember, he does get tired, his shields aren’t perfect, and he is slow and soft compared to us.”

“Is that supposed to make me feel better?” Lydia asked.

“It’s
supposed
to make you understand that he needs us to protect him while he lays down area denial mayhem,” Stacia said.

“Oh, is that it?” Lydia asked, a smirk on her face.

Stacia pulled back and met the little vampire’s amusement with a glare of her own.

“You never thanked him for your toy?” Nika pointed out, her own lips twitching slightly.

“I’ll probably track those two miscreants down at Plasma and thank him while I keep an eye on him—them.  On them,” Stacia said, picking up her bag in one hand and the massive breaker in the other.

“Hmmm,” Lydia said.  “You should hold back a bit.  Mack seems quite the ladies man, and he might be giving his roommate lessons.  A couple of attractive guys getting the VIP treatment at Plasma are sure to impress a least a few girls.”

Stacia might have growled a bit. It was hard to tell.  She definitely glared at Lydia before taking her leave.  Tanya watched her go, a thoughtful expression on my vampire’s beautiful features.

“You press her?” Tanya asked Lydia, who in turn glanced at Nika before answering.

“She’s fighting with herself.  Sometimes ya gotta cut through the bullshit to get to the essence of the matter.  What I said was unvarnished truth.  I told the staff to treat them like royalty, and I’m sure they will be noticed.  I would bet money that our white wolf will be there within the next two hours.  Wolves are very territorial, you know,” Lydia smirked.

Before anyone else could answer, the gym doors reopened to admit Tanya’s own wonderkin, Josh.

“We have a problem… a huge problem,” he said.

Five minutes later, we were all in Tanya’s office, clustered around the wall monitor watching a live news feed from Seattle.

“—
I repeat.  From what we know, Seattle PD is investigating a vehicle explosion that they confirmed has killed John Cuttle, the head of security for the Church of the True.  At 9:24 this evening, eyewitnesses report seeing John Cuttle enter his SUV and moments later, it exploded into a massive fireball. FBI bomb squads are on scene. Reverend Daniel Castille has been taken to a safe location under heavy guard while authorities begin their investigation.  We will continue live coverage of this tragic event.”

The feed switched back to the two news anchors who began speculating on reasons, causes, and rumor.

“We didn’t do that, right?” Tanya asked, looking specifically at Arkady.

“Not unless Darkkin started using missiles,” Deckert answered for his boss.

“Explain,” she said.

The blocky former Marine took the television remote and backed up the coverage to the amateur cell phone footage showing the SUV and then the explosion.  He fiddled back and forth, finally freezing the shot. 
 

“Okay, see here?  This aerial shot, probably from a news crew drone, shows the blast site.  Notice here how the wreckage is spread in an arc back toward the building, almost all on one side.  If the vehicle was rigged, it would explode more uniformly.  This looks just like a car hit by a small rocket, something like an AT-4,” he said, pointing out the patterns on the screen.

“You’re saying someone shot him with a missile?” Lydia asked.

“Or some
thing
.  The angle this picture was taken at is close to where the missile came from.  So maybe another drone,” Deckert said, leaning close to the screen and continuing to study it.  “Pretty obvious missile damage.  No wonder they brought in the FBI.  A lot of cops have previous military experience.  In fact, I wonder why the network’s military consultants haven’t caught on yet.”

“It gets worse,” Josh said.  He was leaning against Tanya’s desk, looking at his tablet.  Now he turned it and I could immediately see Rev. Castille’s face filling the screen.

“YouTube video Castille just uploaded minutes ago,” Josh said, hitting play.

“I blame myself.  John Cuttle served our Lord and the Church with unstinting devotion and extreme competence.  But I decided, in my boundless, sinful pride, to beard the lions in their den.  I decided to confront the enemy in their Wall Street palace, in the very symbol of their outrageous wealth, and this is the result.  I threatened to expose them, certain in my pride that they would back down from the light of the truth.  But now a good man is gone and the monsters still prey upon us, still hoard resources enough for thousands of struggling humans, still chuckle softly to themselves in the dark as they thirst for our blood.”

Tears streaked his face and his bible was clutched tightly in his left hand as he spoke.  At the end of the speech, he wiped one track of tears away, artfully leaving the other side to enforce his emotions.  It was a devastating video.

“It’s going viral,” Josh said.

Tanya turned her head from the video and looked at her chief of security.  “Any military contacts that could make the same observations you just did who might feel like talking to the media?  We need to show this in a different light and in a hurry.”

“On it,” he said, pulling his cell phone and stepping across the room to make a call.

“So who did do it?” Nika asked.

“Anvil,” Tanya and I said at the same time.

“Why?” Arkady asked.

“Because we sent un-coded evidence to law enforcement that Cuttle had engineered assassinations of US citizens on US soil,” I said.  “And anything we do is monitored by Anvil.  Cuttle was, in essence, a terrorist.”

“And by doing it in this manner, there was a high likelihood of us being blamed.  That would hide Anvil and could damage us,” Tanya said.

“We have to reframe this to show it was military hardware, not something we would have access to,” Lydia said.

“But we could easily buy the weapons,” Arkady objected.  “If not here, then elsewhere in the world.”

“The public might not believe that, and especially if we can use the drone angle.  Most drone missile attacks are associated with the US military in the public’s mind,” Lydia said.  “Associating it with the Tomahawk misfire could be useful.”

“Shit!” Josh said.  He looked up from his tablet, his face fearful.

“What now?” Lydia asked.

“He posted another video,” Josh said.

“
Exodus 22:18  Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.  The enemy is legion and filled with evil in all its many forms.  Those that prey upon us and claim to protect us from the false one employ the false one’s own.  My faithful have provided me with additional information on John’s death.  This wasn’t an ordinary murder, even a professional murder, but one that employed powers and abilities beyond mortal men.

“Leviticus 20:27
A man also or woman that hath a familiar spirit, or that is a wizard, shall surely be put to death: they shall stone them with stones: their blood shall be upon them.

“The enemy employs sorcerers and witches and this young man is key among them.”

The photo Castille held up was Declan’s, taken outside Demidova Tower and showed him frowning.

“This one is going viral, too,” Josh said.

“Josh, call Darion. Get him and his full team here, now.  Lydia, call the Board members. Tell them I’m convening an emergency meeting.  When you speak to Wade Pitcairn, tell him to bring his contact list; we’re going to need expert counter opinions.  Nika, bring in the PR agency that handled the Angel Flight campaign.  We’re shifting to full crisis mode,” Tanya said.

“I’ll tell Katrina to retrieve Declan and his pal,” Lydia said.  “This place is going to be mobbed with protestors in no time.”

“Yes, Lydia. Bring our warlock home,” Tanya said. “And someone figure out how Castille found out about Declan.”

I opened Tanya’s laptop and signed into my e-mail.  Nothing useful.  Then I signed into the e-mail account we used with the investigator, Mark.  A second message was in the inbox.  Labeled
Final Report
.  I read it.

“Ah, Tanya.  Guys.  I think I have an idea.  I think we need to put together our own YouTube video.  But first read this,” I said, sending the e-mail to the big monitor.

The others read in silence, then turned to me one by one as they each finished.  “Oh, yeah.  We can work with that,” Lydia said.  “In fact, the PR team already has a bunch of footage that’s perfect with a few cuts.”

“Nice,
zayka,”
Tanya said with a nod and a tight smile.

Even Arkady smiled.  “Is showtime, ya?”

“Ya,” I said.