The Judas Line (20 page)

I knew instantly what was in that bag.

My eyes must have lingered too long. “What you looking at, asswipe?” he snarled. There came a sudden stillness from the other bikers and I knew that the wrong word, the wrong gesture, would see me buried beneath a stack of kicking, stabbing bodies.

So of course I took the road only the proud and foolish follow. “Your purse, ace.”

Not good. Don’t know why I said that. Something about Alexander really rubbed me the wrong way. Looking at him made my eyes itch, as if I could see
into
him, capture his subtle wrongness with sight; hence the suicidal response.

A busty woman standing next to the pool tables, blue and black tats on her large breasts, pointed out the only window as Alexander brought his hands up, knife flickering between his fingers. “What the hell?” she cried.

Everyone looked, even Alexander, who was poised to jump the bar. I could see two snowplows enter the lot at high speed; one dove out of sight to the left and one to the right.

Alexander snarled, “What the f---?” Just before a rending crash shook the building, a tearing, grinding noise boomed from both sides of the bar.

“Our bikes, man!” someone yelled, horrified.

Almost magically the bar emptied, people running out to save their motorcycles in a flood, shouting and screaming imprecations. Alexander spun around and fled with the mob, but not before spearing me with one last baleful glare. “I’m gonna kill you,” that glare told me. “Your guts are mine!”

I’ve never been so grateful for Morgan until that moment, saving me from my stupidity, my fat mouth. Pride is a sin that we all are susceptible to, so maybe I owed the Lord a few Hail Marys and a little time spent in reflection.

Time enough for that later, if I lived. I hurdled the bar in pursuit of the bikers, eager to see what Morgan had cooked up. I made it to the door in time to hear a few bikes power up along with the scrape and screech of metal as the plows came back into view, dragging parts of motorcycles behind them like so much metallic confetti.

“Hey Mike,” came a voice from behind. My heart leapt as I spun. Morgan! He stood behind the bar with a smug look on his face. Smug look or no, I could’ve kissed him right then. “See if you can get Alexander inside,” he urged. “Alone, if possible.”

Great, how was I going to get the attention of a psychopathic—

Never mind. Stupid question. Steadying my nerves, I stood in the doorway and shouted. “Hey, Alexander! We haven’t finished talking about your sissy little purse yet!” Not much as insults went, but in my line of work, cultivating effective verbal ripostes was not high on my “to do” list.

Hey, it worked. While the two snowplows gunned for the road with a handful of Harleys in pursuit, Alexander came high-stepping around from the right of the building, knife in hand, trailing his own cadre of out of shape but lethally dangerous followers who would have no problem festooning the place with my guts.

Two hasty steps back and I was inside. “Get ready, Morgan.” Behind me I heard sneakers hit linoleum as he vaulted the bar. I guess he’d already taken care of the fat guy.

Alexander/Baphemaloch tore through the front entrance like the door wasn’t even there. Its tempered glass shattered into a million shiny bits as he/it tore through the backstop and hit the wall.

Alexander’s fist, clutching six inches of knife, flashed toward me. Army training kicked in before I knew it and my fingers grabbed his knife wrist and pulled while twisting my body to the right. A brick-hard fist slammed into my kidney, bringing a searing ache that locked my muscles for a split second. As the pain tore through my torso, I still managed to fall back far enough for Alexander to stumble forward and tangle his feet with mine.

Both of us landed on a table, collapsing it. Splintering, it dropped to the floor as Morgan shouted one of his Words that hurled Alexander’s followers around like tenpins.

Alexander’s head swiveled wildly from our position on the remains of the table. “The Ay-rab Jew!” he screamed in panic, spit flying from his mouth.

Morgan was among the rest of the bikers, some five in all, moving like a ballet dancer, sinuous and deadly. Every punch, every stiffened finger hit with lethal precision, dropping gang members left and right.

Alexander twisted like an eel, shrieking, hands scrabbling for the knife that had dropped from his fingers when we landed. I grabbed a handful of dirty denim and squirmed my way up along his body until I came face to face with a demon.

Bloated features, a gaping maw showing rows of shiny white teeth. Red eyes wept black blood that flowed down to the hideously long canines, only to drip drip drip down its chin. Curling ram’s horns sprung from a wide brow. It took me a second to realize it was an artful rendering on the back of Alexander’s leathers.

That moment of shock, that split-second hesitation allowed Alexander to surge forward and grab his knife. Roaring in triumph, he leapt to his feet, throwing me off and planting the solid heel of his black boot in my gut.

Okay, that hurt. My breath gushed explosively out of my mouth as paralysis gripped my torso. I folded around that boot and held on, hands clenching Alexander’s leg like it was a lifeline.

Alexander’s head swiveled toward me, face stretched in a terrifying smile, his mouth pulled wider than human muscles are capable of. His eyes, once a shimmering green, now glowed black, like the absence of hope.

“Oh no,” I gasped with what air I had left.

“Oh yes,” answered the thing wearing Alexander’s face. Baphemaloch? Probably.

With uncanny strength, he/it kicked out, prying my fingers free from his leg and launching me like a soccer ball across the bar. I had time enough to think
This is going to hurt
, right before I hit the beer taps.

My 220 lbs hit those three steel taps hard enough to bend them, but not hard enough to break. Before the searing agony in my back rendered me unconscious, I fell to the floor behind the bar, landing on something that gave way with a muffled
pop
.

Fade to black.

Chapter Seventeen

Jude/Morgan

“Look at me when I talk to you!” shrieked the voice from the cell in my hand. The other was in the breast pocket of Mike’s uniform. Two disposable phones purchased the day before, a quick and easy way to eavesdrop on Mike’s encounter with the gang.

I started. From beside me, Jim, the owner of the local snowplow service, swore. “Let’s go, man!” I urged, slapping the dash. “This isn’t going to end well for Mike if we don’t get there on time!”

The young bartender, who introduced himself as Trev, along with walrus mustache man and a donation of a few hundred dollars, had given me the lead on the dispatcher at Danzinger’s and the snowplow guy.

Bernie, the dispatcher, had just been for sale, but Jim and his brother/co-owner Dale, were enthusiastic haters of the Blood. Seems like Jim’s youngest son was a victim of the meth the gang was slinging and was a friend of Trev’s. The two brothers, both with Popeye-style forearms and the beginnings of beer guts, would’ve worked for free, but when I shoved fifteen grand into Jim’s hand for his son’s rehab, I not only had the use of his two plows, but a friend for life.

Several phone calls later and the rest of my plan had come together. I just hoped no one would get killed. Especially me.

While Jim put the truck in gear (we were a few hundred yards away, parked at a truck stop along the Dalles-California Hwy), I raised Dale on the CB and told him to get his ass in gear.

Both plows were almost to the Hard Way when I heard, “Your purse, Ace.”

Was Mike suicidal? Wasn’t killing yourself frowned upon by Catholics?

“Dale to the left, Jim to the right,” I shouted into the CB as we made the turn into the bar’s parking lot. Motorcycles were parked in a big U around the building. It wasn’t hard to spot Alexander’s Pan Head; it was the only Harley that had a wide clearing around it on the right side of the building. “Jim, you and Dale going to be okay?”

Jim’s wide face smiled savagely as the blade of the plow hammered into the row of motorcycles, twisting and tearing bright chrome and polished leather. “Don’t you worry about me, son,” he shouted above the din. “We got this! Oh yeah, we got this!”

Metal grated and ground underneath the plow’s tires and I could imagine sparks flying. Bits of chrome and steel were flung sideways into the building, rattling the whole structure. My smile matched Jim’s mean for mean and the ride along motorcycle corpses was quickly over, the plow peeling off behind the building. I saw Dale maneuver his truck on the gritty flatland just outside the lot coming the other way, raising a cloud of gray dust.

Without a word, I opened the door and leapt out, taking the duffel with me (no way I could leave the Silver out of my sight now, not while on the run), tucking and rolling then bounding to my feet, making tracks as the plows made their turns toward the exit. The back door stood wide open, a cinderblock standing in for a doorstop. That made my life a little easier.

Inside, two precious seconds were wasted determining left or right. Left. Splintered black door. Shouts, screams from behind and I cursed myself because I’d promised Mike I wouldn’t use guns; the Kimber and Beretta lay nestled at the bottom of the duffel with my underwear.

Through the door, a fat guy behind the bar, shotgun in his hands, aimed at my friend’s back. No way in hell. My kick took him under his raised arm above his kidney and the shotgun dropped from his spasming hands. My fist hit the side of his lardy neck, then his jaw and he was
down.
The urge to finish him off burned like acid through my veins, but that’s not what I did anymore, not what I was about.

Breathing hard, I said, “Hey, Mike, see if you can get Alexander inside. Alone if possible.”

Mike grinned at me and went outside to poke the bear. “Hey, Alexander, we haven’t finished talking about your sissy little purse yet!”

My feet hit the ground at the same time Alexander hit the door so hard it shattered and began to have a little hoedown with Mike. I reckoned he could take care of himself, so I went after the few who had followed their master inside.

Time to play.

It’s funny how your muscles remember old patterns, old moves. I fell into the same routines of Krav Maga and Aikido that I’d learned all those years ago. A wrist trapped in my hands snapped so easily, the sound a crack of pain. Spinning, I threw an elbow into a screaming man’s face that smeared his nose across his face in a spray of blood.

A low kick broke an ankle while I turned a punch coming at my face into a hip throw that flung the man headfirst into one of the pool tables. He fell and lay very still.

Three down. Stiffened fingers jabbed hard against a throat. Four. A punch landed solidly on my chin, but I rode with it, despite the pain. I’ve taken worse. My response broke the man’s elbow across my knee. Five. Anger slithered through me like a snake of fire, but I didn’t give into the passion; instead I used it, let it fuel me, although desire to use magic nearly robbed me of my senses.
No magic,
I thought. S
ave it, keep it handy just in case.

My hands grabbed a man’s ear and pulled. An ear is held on by skin and cartilage, and I peeled it off like a decal, tossing it aside. Six.

The last man stared into my eyes and ran. He must have been the brains of the outfit.

A crash came from behind, startling me, and I spun in time to see Mike fall out of sight before a flash of steel focused my attention on a knife slashing toward my throat. I leaned away and the tip missed my neck by a fraction of an inch.

“Baphemaloch,” I growled at the demon wearing Alexander’s face. “So you’ve come into your own.”

“A Baphemaloch no more,” he hissed, lips curling unnaturally. “With sentience comes a new name. I am Cazzizz.”

Alexander was gone, or at least, the thing that made him Alexander, eaten by a spiritual parasite that had become a demon. Leslie’s son was gone and that hell-thing was going to pay.

“Well, Cazzizz, let’s have some fun.” With that, I struck.

And missed.
Fast
, the demon was faster than anyone I’d ever met, even Burke, and he was the quickest form of death I’d ever met.

Horny black knuckles hammered into my cheek, knocking me sideways. A boot to thigh sent a bolt of pain up my hip and knocked me to the floor. Cazzizz’s toe took me in the ribs, breaking several, spraying my torso with needles of pain and driving the breath from my lungs.

While I choked and gasped, Cazzizz walked slowly around my thrashing body, savoring his victory as if it were heady wine. “You have no protection against demons, Olivier.” He smiled even wider, the edges of his lips touching his ears like an obscene clown’s. “Oh, yes. I know who you are. Hell is full of those looking for you; I can hear them clamoring their envy and rage. Your death will bring me great power, such great rewards.” He raised a leg, boot heel hovering over my head. I closed my eyes. It had been a good run, longer than I thought.

The blow never came.

“Demon, you looking for this?”