Heaven Can wait: A Quincy Harker, Demon Hunter Novella Read online

  I gave him a sharp look, but he just shrugged. “I don’t eat anything, Harker. You don’t have to worry about me turning cannibal on you.”

  If that was supposed to reassure me, it didn’t work. The video switched back to Sparkles and the occupants of the other car.

  “Okay,” I said. “The good news is that Torment Demons are fairly run-of-the-mill bad guys. They’re big, strong, and very hard to hurt, but they don’t have any magic. They have to get their hands on you to do any harm. They’re not any faster than normal humans, but they do have seriously sharp claws, teeth than can chew through chain, and very tough skin. Normal blades probably won’t do anything. We’ll need magic, blessed weapons, or something crazy sharp to make an impression. But if there are only two of them, we should be in pretty good shape. I’ve dealt with two on my own before. It sucked, and I almost died, but I did it.”

  “Yeah… about that,” Sparkles said.

  “What about it, bud?” I asked.

  “There’s a half a dozen Reavers running around on the ground.”

  “Fuck,” I said.

  “What’s a Reaver?” Flynn asked.

  “Yeah, clue us in, Harker,” Jo agreed. “We don’t all hunt demons that often.”

  “Reavers are nasty little bastards,” I said. “They’re like overgrown imps, only instead of being mischievous, they’re just fucking mean. They’re about five feet tall, skinny little fuckers, with extra-long arms, razor-sharp talons on the ends of their fingers, and elongated jaws with a shit ton of pointy little teeth. All Reavers do is eat, fight, and fuck, and you don’t really want to be part of any of the three. I know I don’t. A pair of hungry Reavers can strip an elephant to bone in five minutes, and they’re always hungry.”

  “So how do we kill them?” Gabby asked.

  “Reavers go down easier,” I replied. “That’s about the only good news. They can be hurt with normal weapons. They heal fast, but not so fast that you can’t take them out of a fight. The only way to kill one is to behead it, and even then, you probably need someone to consecrate the body to make sure it’s really dead.”

  “And even that doesn’t really kill it, does it?” Becks asked from the back seat.

  I turned to look at her, and she went on. “That just sends it back to Hell, right?”

  “Most of the time, yes. There are weapons that can actually kill a demon, but not many, and I sure as shit don’t have one. But sending it back to Hell is good enough for our purposes because that makes them stop killing people, and that’s about all we can ask for on short notice. So, when we get there, I want to put you, Jo, Gabby, and Watson on the Reavers, working in pairs back-to-back. These fuckers are fast, so you need somebody to watch your six. Adam and I will work on taking out the Torment Demons.”

  “How exactly do you plan to do that without blessed weapons? You just going to throw fireballs at them and hope they don’t kill you too quickly?”

  “Nah, I’m going to shoot them off the Ferris Wheel with a high-powered rifle and ask friggin’ Frankenstein to rip them limb from limb. Once they’re torn apart, I’ll figure out a way to kill them.”

  “You know I don’t like being called that. My father’s name was Dr. Frankenstein. My name is Adam.”

  “I know, pal, but it’s the twenty-first century in America, and that’s what everybody knows you as over here. Sorry, but it’s just a lot faster this way.”

  Becks just sat in the back seat muttering about the level of surreal in her life since she’d met me. If she only knew what was coming, she would have known everything until then had just been a warmup.

  Adam didn’t bother trying to find a parking space this time; he just ran his Hummer up onto the sidewalk and pulled up close to the Ferris Wheel. That also happened to put him right on top of a Reaver demon, which I’m sure was no accident. I stepped on an arm as I got out of the truck and almost busted my ass, but I managed to catch myself.

  A cop ran over to us, sidearm out and a wild look in his eyes. “You can’t be here! This is dangerous, you people have to—”

  I held up my Homeland Security badge. “We’ll take it from here, officer. This is a National Security matter. Please tell your men to focus on setting up a perimeter and getting the wounded to safety. We’ll handle the terrorists.” My badge wasn’t worth the metal it was stamped out of since my consultant status with Homeland was revoked a few seconds after I shot my Supervisory Agent in the face, but this beat cop didn’t know that. All he saw was somebody who wasn’t shit-scared, had a badge, and was giving orders.

  He nodded and grabbed his radio, relaying my message to the rest of the locals.

  “Terrorists?” Flynn asked, sliding out of the back seat to stand beside me.

  “Yep. These guys will be a lot more likely to accept any mundane explanation, no matter how stupid, than they will a supernatural one. In their world, demons are something in comic books and movies, but terrorists are hiding behind every trash can.”

  Flynn nodded. “If they only knew that the real threat from illegal aliens came from other dimensions instead of other continents.”

  Just then the others ran up behind us, Watson coming to a limping stop behind the two women. “You alright, Jack?” I asked.

  “The leg makes it a little difficult in a sprint, friend. I walk fine, but running is right out except in most extreme cases.” He pulled up his pants leg a little to show me a steel rod where his leg used to be.

  “Shit, man, I’m sorry, I didn’t know. Maybe you should—” I started, but he held up a hand to stop me.

  “Oh sod off, mate. I can do anything except run and the high hurdles. Now what’s the plan?” He drew a small pistol from under his jacket and chambered a round. I noticed Gabby had strapped on her guns as well, and Jo carried a gigantic friggin’ hammer. I looked at her, then at the hammer.

  “I don’t like guns. And anything a bullet can stop, a damn nine-pound hammer can stop, too. Plus, one head is silvered, and the other head is cold iron, so it’s good against most things. And in a pinch, I can do this.” She gave the end of the handle a twist and a yank, and it came off into a wooden stake.

  “Nice. You four are on Reaver duty. Adam and I will work on the… fuck, let’s go.” I gave up on the instructions as the body of a fifty-something woman slammed into the bricks a dozen paces from where we were standing. I looked up to see a Torment Demon holding a teen boy out of a gondola by his hoodie. The fabric started to rip, and even from a couple hundred feet away, I watched the demon’s smile get wider and wider and the boy struggled to grab hold of something to save himself.

  “Adam, can you try to catch him?” I asked. “I don’t know what that kind of impact will do…”

  “It won’t matter, Quincy,” Adam said, his deep voice quiet. “Even if I caught him, the impact with my arms would shatter his bones. And probably tear my arms off, which would render me useless for a time.”

  “For a time?” Flynn started to ask, then her mouth closed with a click. “My life is so fucking weird. Come on, y’all. Let’s go kill some demons.” With the wave of an arm, her team moved off into the park, hunting Reavers and helping the cops get the civilians out of the way.

  The kid was dead. I had to let that one go. It sucked, and it pissed me off, but that’s all I could let it do. I walked around to the back of the Hummer and opened the tailgate. I popped open a compartment in the floor and pulled out a Remington 700 rifle with a scope and bipod. I picked up a pair of three-round magazines from a slot labeled “Holy Water” and slapped one into the rifle.

  Walking around the front of the Hummer, I flipped down the bipod and found I couldn’t get the angle right to steady the gun on the hood of the truck. I was too tall to shoot up at that kind of angle. So, I put the bipod up and steadied my elbows on the hood, sighting through the scope until the view was full of demon chest. No point in trying to get fancy, I just needed to hit the bastard and make him fall. No headshots here, not that I had too much faith in my ab
ility to make one.

  I let out my breath and squeezed the trigger. The big rifle bucked, and I saw the bullet spark off the metal frame of the gondola. The demon spun around, looking for me, and my second shot didn’t miss. Quite. I was a little low, but hitting the nasty bastard in the knee had the desired effect. The demon’s leg went out from under it, and he tumbled to the ground, slamming into the bricks with a sickening thwap. The worst part about that sound was that I knew it wasn’t enough. The demon would be out of the fight for maybe a full minute, but unless we banished it, it would heal, even from that fall, in not near enough time.

  “My turn,” Adam said, running toward the downed demon while I swung the rifle around to find the next target. This one was smarter, of course, because he knew I was coming. He had a woman acting as a human shield, and there was no way I was sniper enough to shoot the demon without killing the woman.

  “Fuck,” I muttered, trying to think of another option.

  “Leave us alone, Reaper!” the demon shouted. “This is our city, and before long it will be our world!”

  “Fuck you, asshole!” I yelled back, because I’m witty like that.

  “What are you going to do, shoot me? You can’t hit me unless you’re willing to kill this human, too. And then what? You going to raise this sweet little girl she’s got up here?”

  Fuck me, she’s got her kid with her. “Why don’t you come on down here and show me just how much this is your city, dickweed?” I yelled up at the demon.

  “After I’m done with the bitch, maybe I will!” It shouted, then pulled back from the door into the gondola. I cursed whoever decided that Ferris Wheels should advance from the old bench seats into having big people-cages because I had no shot at the demon.

  But I guess I didn’t need to since I saw a dark form swing over from the main body of the wheel onto the spoke where the carriage swung. Adam hadn’t stopped to fight the first demon after all; he’d apparently just scrambled up the Ferris Wheel like a really ugly Spider-Man and was now on top of the cage carrying the demon, mother, and child. He swung into the gondola, and the tinted windows blocked my view. The thing rocked wildly, and I wondered how anybody managed to stay inside through all that. Then someone didn’t.

  Two someones, actually. Two giant forms tumbled out the door and plummeted to the brick below, turning over and over and scrabbling at each other the whole way down. Adam and the demon landed with a mighty THUD, and I sprinted over to see what was left of them.

  Not much left of the demon, as Adam managed to land on top. He rolled over, sprawled on his back looking up at me.

  “Ouch.”

  “You’re not dead? I think that fall might have even killed Luke,” I said, absolutely baffled by how he was able to speak.

  “I don’t know how I’m alive, Quincy, and I don’t know that I can be killed. But I know we need to banish these things before they reconstitute themselves. And I know that both my legs are very severely broken, so could you please carry me somewhere that I will not be lying in demon entrails? They smell horrible.”

  He wasn’t lying. The scattered demon guts gave off a wretched odor, like three-day-old gamer funk mixed with rotted asshole. I leaned over and hoisted Adam over my shoulders in a fireman’s carry, then deposited him into the grass a couple dozen feet away.

  “Before you begin the ritual of banishment, could you take a moment to set the bones in my arms and legs? They will heal quickly, and I would prefer that everything line up correctly when they do.”

  I looked at the twisted mass of bones that were Adam’s extremities, and an involuntary shudder ran through me. Any human would have died instantly, and even if they didn’t, the pain from those injuries would have put them into shock. But Adam wasn’t even as close to human as I was, so he just sat there stoically as I set his arms and legs.

  “Lay there, and don’t move,” I said. “I’ll deal with these fuckers, then we’ll… son of a bitch!” I cut myself off as I looked over and saw the first demon getting to his feet. He was not supposed to heal that fast. Bastard was messing with my timetable.

  Oh well, stuck fighting an unkillable demon with my backup sidelined by injury. Story of my stupid life.

  3

  The Torment Demon wasn’t anywhere near full strength yet, and I could only hope that was going to be enough to let me trap it and banish it before it killed anymore people. Notably me. The rifle was still up at the Hummer, so all I had on me was my Glock and the short sword I’d strapped to my waist hours before. This was about to suck.

  The demon hadn’t turned his attention to me yet, mostly because it was currently regrowing an arm, but I figured I didn’t have a lot of time. I drew my sword and dashed in behind the big bastard, slashing down to hamstring him. Which was a great idea, except that my gladius was in no way consecrated, or blessed, or holy, or magical. So, it hit the demon’s skin and bounced off, sending vibrations up my arm and making my fingers tingle with the impact.

  That got the demon’s attention. Just what I always wanted—the undivided attention of a pissed off, invulnerable, seven-foot tall monster with a mouth full of razor-sharp fangs and claws that could rip me from nuts to nose in half a second. It spun around and backhanded me with its one good arm, sending me sprawling to the ground a good four feet from where I started. I rolled to my feet and drew in my will, coalescing energy into a glowing sphere three inches in diameter above my outstretched hand.

  I flung the ball of purple light at the demon and smacked it right in the chest. It had part of the desired effect, smacking into the creature and leaving a burned mark on its chest, but not the rest of it, which was to knock it down or maybe make it give a shit about the damage in some way. No, it just grinned at me and stalked forward, not even bothering to charge me.

  I fired energy ball after energy ball at the creature, backing up at about the same pace that it was moving forward, but it was a losing proposition. I was running out of energy at about the same rate the demon was healing, and that was going to put me staring down a fully-healed Torment Demon sooner rather than later.

  “Adam, a little help!” I shouted over my shoulder.

  “Busy right now, Quincy,” came the reply. I spared a glance and saw he wasn’t joking. He was standing toe to toe with the other demon, trading punches that would have caved in the skull on a normal man. Every once in a while, he darted forward to pull the demon’s leg out from under it, but the beast was quick to spring back up. I turned my attention back to the problem at hand, racking my brain for anything I could come up with on destroying tormentors. Nothing came to me, so I just kept flinging fireballs at the demon until I backpedaled off the sidewalk and tripped over a discarded bicycle.

  I flopped down on my ass atop somebody’s mountain bike and looked up at a grinning Torment Demon. There are a lot of things I don’t mind looking up to: mountains, stars, even a full moon, but a happy demon is never something I want to see looming over me.

  Fortunately, the demon’s smile faded abruptly as a gleaming blade sliced through its neck. The head toppled to the ground, and both segments of the dead thing dissolved in a cloud of sulfur, sent back to Hell where it belonged.

  I stared up at a much more welcome sight, a blonde woman resplendent in silver chain mail with wings and a shiny gold-rimmed helmet. “Hi Glory,” I said. “I was really hoping you’d show up.”

  My guardian angel just shook her head at me. “You know that’s not supposed to be how this works, right? You aren’t supposed to just randomly jump into lethal situations counting on me to save you. I’m supposed to be here for the unplanned things that could kill you.”

  “In my defense, I didn’t plan on demons attacking a Ferris Wheel today,” I countered.

  “You’re a dick, Q. A real dick.” Glory turned and unfurled her wings, flying across the grass and finishing off the demon Adam was ripping apart. Then she took out the last of the Reavers, and we all gathered back at the Hummer.

  “Did you just ca
ll me a dick?” I asked the angel.

  “If the shoe fits,” Adam muttered.

  “Screw you, golem,” I said, an old crack that never failed to get under his skin. He hated being called a golem more than Luke hated being asked if he sparkled. I turned my attention back to Glory. “Did you call me a dick? I didn’t think angels could curse.”

  “Swearing isn’t a sin, Q. Lying is a sin, but since you really are a dick, I get to say that as much as I want.”

  “She’s not wrong about that part, is she, pal?” Watson asked with a grin. I just glared at him, and he took a step back. I didn’t dislike the Brit, but I didn’t want him getting the opinion that since we were on the same side, that we were friends or anything like that.

  I glanced around the park at the carnage the demons wrought. There were bodies and body parts scattered across the whole area beneath the Ferris Wheel, and a veritable army of cop cars and ambulances were lined up just outside the perimeter the first cops had established.

  I pulled out my cell phone. “Sparkles,” I said to the blank device. “Can you do something about the curious locals?”

  “Already on it,” said the unicorn that popped up on my screen. “The officer in charge just had a video conference with the head of the local FBI office, who had never met, about the ‘terrorist incident’ in the park today. And all the video shot by those news vans will find itself mysteriously erased.”

  “Thanks, man. Any live feeds get out?” I asked.

  “I’m almost insulted that you felt you had to ask. But no, you’re good. But you’ve only got maybe two minutes before the crowd grows past the size I can manage. After that, you’re gonna be all over YouTube.”

  “Got it,” I said. I slipped the phone into my pocket and looked around. “Let’s get out of here, kids.”

  “Just a second,” Flynn said. “Glory, who called these bastards? And what did they want?”

  “I would assume that Orobas summoned them,” the angel replied. “But I have no idea why.”