Hell Freezes Over - A Quincy Harker, Demon Hunter Novella Read online

  “Our Lady of Holy Comfort, right here in town.” I saw Glory start a little at the mention of the church.

  “What is it, Glory?” I asked.

  “I…I can’t say, Q. Sorry, above my pay grade.”

  “What do you mean, you can’t say? Is there something going on at that church? Do the angels know something?”

  Glory stood up from the arm of the couch, where she’d perched through Flynn’s recitation of the Standish family’s boring life story. She paced my living room, shaking off sparkles of light with every step. Her wings rustled and she toyed with her braid just like a nervous human until I finally stood up and grabbed her by the shoulders.

  “Glory, stop it.” I gave her a shake, and she looked up into my eyes. If you’ve never locked gazes with an angel, I don’t recommend it. There are things humans aren’t meant to see, even humans with supernatural abilities. Maybe especially humans with a supernatural streak and really long lives. The purity of the soul staring back at me from Glory’s eyes was like a mirror, reflecting every nasty thing I’d ever done, every impure thought, every vindictive moment and every commandment I’d shattered. I let go of her and turned away, dropping to one knee and trying valiantly to keep my dinner where it was supposed to be.

  “You shouldn’t do that, Q,” Glory said from behind me.

  “No shit, angel-face,” I said when I was ninety percent certain I wasn’t going to paint my carpet in day-old fast food. I coughed a little, wiped my mouth with the back of my hand, and got to my feet. “What’s the deal with the church?” I asked.

  “I really can’t tell you. I would if I could, but I have orders I can’t break,” Glory said, looking miserable.

  “Of course you can break them, G-money. You just open your mouth and tell me what I need to know.”

  “It doesn’t work that way for us, Q. If we’re given an order by one of the Host that outranks us, we can’t disobey. Remember what separates humans from the Host? What caused the War in Heaven?”

  “Free will,” I whispered.

  Glory nodded. “We’ve gotten a modicum of freedom in the last few millennia, but not much. I still couldn’t tell you if I wanted to. Which I don’t, because I don’t want you to die.”

  Chapter 4

  If I’ve learned anything from the past century of wandering the Earth, and the jury is certainly out on that question, it’s not to bother arguing with supernatural beings. Angels, demons, faeries, and all those other kinds of magical creatures just see the world differently, probably because they aren’t of this world in the first place. So when Glory told me she couldn’t clue me in as to what was going on at the kid’s church, I decided to go ask the folks on the other team if they knew what was up.

  “Where are you going?” Glory asked as I went to my closet and pulled out a long black leather coat. Cliché, I know, but when dealing with demons and black wizards, it’s best not to be too subtle. Not that I’ve ever been accused of being subtle.

  “You can’t give me the information I need, so I have to go follow up with other sources,” I said. “No harm, no foul on your part, darling, but I have to know what’s up with this kid and why she’s suddenly decided to go tiptoeing through the tulips of my nightmares. Because, let’s be honest, the inside of my head is the last place a sweet little girl like that needs to be walking, no matter how dead she is.”

  “He’s got a point,” Flynn said. “I’ve been inside his head, and it’s ugly in there. But what are these other sources you’re talking about? Sounds like something I’m not going to approve of.”

  “Which falls directly under the category of things I give zero fucks about. Sorry, Flynn, but you don’t get a vote in this one,” I said, checking the pockets of my coat for all the usual accoutrements. Salt, check. Silver stakes, check. Holy water, check. Flask of Macallan 18, check. Snub-nosed thirty-eight hammerless revolver, check.

  “I don’t think that’s quite correct, pal,” Flynn said, putting herself between me and the door. “You see, when you started hitchhiking in my head, we became partners. And this looks a lot like the kind of thing a partner needs to know about, unless she wants to suddenly find herself on her knees with a migraine in the middle of the police station, or grocery store, or wherever I happen to be when you start getting your ass kicked again. Which I do feel every bit of, by the way.”

  “Yeah, sorry about that,” I said. “We should work on getting some better shielding set up. I’ve kinda developed a bit of a high tolerance to pain over the years. Knowing that you’ll eventually get over it takes a lot of the sting out of even the most vicious beatings.”

  “Be that as it may, until we get that set up, let’s work on you getting your ass kicked less, shall we? And the way we start working on that is by you not going stupid places without backup. So where are we going?”

  I looked at her, then looked at Glory. My guardian angel was studiously being no help whatsoever, sitting on my sofa reading The Way of Kings. I didn’t own the book, so I knew she brought it with her. That’s angelic power, right there—strong enough to carry a Brandon Sanderson novel and still fly.

  “I’m going to Mort’s,” I said. I squeezed my eyes shut and stood there, waiting for the explosion, but nothing came. I slowly opened one eye, then the other until I was looking at a very confused Rebecca Flynn.

  “Mort’s, the dive bar on Wilkinson?” she asked. So she did know it, but apparently she only knew the cover.

  “Yeah, that’s it,” I confirmed. “Gotta go meet a guy about some information. I’ll call you tonight. Or you call me if anybody else bites it.”

  “Hold it.” Flynn pressed her back to the door. “Obviously Mort’s is more than just a dive bar, so why don’t you clue me in?”

  “Mort is a demon who lives in the back room of the bar. He’s a leech, feeding off the sadness and pain of the humans that come into his bar,” Glory said with a snarl.

  “His place is also a kind of informal safe haven and meeting ground for a lot of the things that go bump in the night around town. It’s where people in the know go to sell a little extra piece of their soul for a few more years in the corner office, or a few extra points of profit on a business deal, or just to look better in a bikini for a few more years.”

  “So what are you going to do there? Won’t most of the customers want to kill you on sight?” Flynn asked.

  “Yeah, but Christy, Mort’s manager, has a strict no murder policy, so I’ll be fine.”

  “How does she enforce that if the clientele is as nasty as you say? With a demon in the basement and who knows what in the bar, I think one little bar manager might have more than she can handle,” Flynn said. “I’m going with you.”

  “No, you’re not,” I said. “Don’t worry about what Christy can or can’t enforce. She’s one of the most powerful witches I’ve ever met, so nobody messes with her.”

  “So you’re going to a demon’s bar run by a black witch to get information on a ghost? This doesn’t sound crazy to you?” Flynn said.

  “I’m over a hundred years old, super-strong, super-fast, know more spells than most D&D rulebooks, and Dracula is the first number on my speed dial. My definition of ‘crazy’ might be a little broader than most people. Besides, I never said Christy was a black witch.”

  “But she works for a demon.”

  “And my uncle is the most famous bloodsucking villain in literary history,” I pointed out. “That doesn’t mean much. I’ve never seen Christy do anything evil. To the contrary, most of what I’ve seen her use magic for has been protection of the innocent, or keeping the peace in general, both pretty white-magicky type things. Who knows? Maybe she just took the job there to keep an eye on Mort.”

  “You don’t believe that,” Flynn said.

  “Nah, but there is a slim possibility. Look, you wanna come with me, fine. Just don’t interfere unless I’m in real trouble, and don’t eat or drink anything unless it comes from me or Christy. Even from a sealed bottle. A twist-off
top will not keep out magic.”

  “Is there really anybody in there that’s dumb enough to mess with your partner?” Flynn asked with a smirk.

  I stopped and turned to her, working really hard not to grab her by the shoulders and give her a shake. “Rebecca, let me be real clear. I’m a badass as far as humans are concerned. Or mostly human, or whatever I am. But when it comes to the things that sit in the dark corners of places like Mort’s bar looking for prey, I’m like a high school quarterback going up against Brett Favre. I’m not even in the same league as these things, so watch your step. Seriously. There are guys sitting at the bar eating peanuts and watching football that can turn your skin inside out without blinking an eye. And I don’t have near enough mojo to throw down with them.”

  “So why are we going in there, if you know you might not be able to walk out?” The look in her eyes said she got the message, at least as much as anyone really can without seeing what a manifested demon can do.

  “One, it’s the only place in town where I can get the information I need. And two, they have excellent fried pickles. And you know how I love some fried pickles. But seriously, it’s a Sanctuary. No one is allowed to raise a finger to another creature on the premises.”

  “And these monsters abide by that?” Her eyebrows were crawling up around the middle of her scalp at that.

  “They need a safe place to drink and watch the game, too. Plus, remember the whole thing about being run by a demon and managed by the most powerful witch in three time zones? They keep a tight rein on the clientele.”

  “Then why are you so worried about me? If it’s a Sanctuary, then nothing is going to hurt me while I’m there.”

  “Yeah, but unless you plan on staying there forever, which has been done, eventually you’ll leave, and Sanctuary will no longer apply. So try not to draw attention to yourself. Any more than you will just by walking in.”

  “Not used to women?”

  “Not used to delivery. You walking through the door is the demonic equivalent of Domino’s knocking on the front door of a frat house.”

  “Oh,” she said, and her voice was small and decidedly less enthusiastic. I hated to scare her because usually that’s not conducive to shooting the bad things, but in this case, I wanted her afraid. Because if she was afraid, she wouldn’t unwittingly violate any of the hundreds of little social mores that exist between predators like humans and demons.

  We took Flynn’s car because rolling up to a bar in my shitty little Toyota just never did anything to impress anybody. At least her confiscated Escalade made us look like thugs, and the long coat and hat pulled down over my face did nothing to dispel the illusion.

  I knocked on the door, and an old-school peephole slid open in the steel-reinforced door.

  “Password,” a pair of red-rimmed eyes appeared in the hole.

  “Open the fucking door, you dimwitted twat,” I replied.

  “Close enough. Come on in, Harker. Try not to break anyone this time.” The door opened and a half-shifted werebear stood beside a small podium with a ledger on top. “Sign in,” the bear said, motioning to the ledger.

  “Are you fucking high?” I asked. “I’m not fucking signing anything, especially not here, of all fucking places.”

  “I never said you had to sign your real name. Nobody does. You’d be amazed at how many Donald Trumps and Mickey Mouses we have in the bar tonight.”

  “Fair enough,” I said, picking up the pen and writing “Jimi Hendrix.” I passed the pen to Flynn, who signed “Lucille Ball.”

  Mort’s place looked like any stereotypical dive bar, only darker. Beer signs along the walls provided most of the illumination, along with a rectangular light fixture over the room’s lone pool table and the glow of the jukebox in the corner. Mort’s one nod to contemporary decor was a color-changing bar top, but I knew it was magic and not LEDs that made the colors shift with the mood of the inhabitants. I know because I cast the spell in exchange for a rather extravagant bar tab I’d run up on one of Luke’s birthdays a decade or so earlier.

  The bar was a deep blue when we walked in, tinged with green at the edges. Calm, with a hint of horny and depressed. That’s about what I wanted to see when I walked into a demon bar. A couple spots of purple appeared at the corners of the twelve-foot expanse of blue as the inhabitants got a good look at me. Plenty of the denizens of Charlotte’s underworld hate me on sight, so I wasn’t surprised that I made enough impact to shift the bar’s color. As long as most of it stayed purple, lavender, or blue I was okay. If more than a third of the surface went red, I needed to think about getting out of Dodge. Mort loved the early warning system, and it did provide a lovely up-light for the highball and martini glasses scattered all along its length.

  I stepped up to the bar and Christy slid me a Newcastle and flashed me a smile. “Where you been keeping yourself, handsome?” she asked as she eyed Flynn.

  Christy was a plump Asian woman in her forties with an easy smile and a slow temper, as long as you followed her rules. And her rules were simple: don’t start shit in her bar. That was it. Follow that one, and you’d never see her dark eyes flash pupil-less black.

  “Who’s your friend?” Christy asked me.

  “Detective Rebecca Flynn, Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police,” Flynn replied, flashing her badge with as much subtlety as anyone can have flashing a badge in a demon bar.

  “You do know you can lie about that shit every once in a while, right?” I asked. She looked at me like I was nuts. “You do understand that you don’t have to tell every single bad guy in the city that you’re a cop, don’t you?”

  “It makes it easier if I have to shoot anyone later. Identifying myself right off the bat means that if I have to blow somebody’s face off, I have to fill out less paperwork.”

  “I can understand that,” Christy said. “You should see the paperwork we have to run for the Alcoholic Beverage Commission.”

  “What the hell kind of crime lord’s joint is this? Cops welcome, paperwork in order, what the shit? Am I on an episode of Punk’d?” I asked.

  “I don’t think that show’s still on the air,” Flynn said.

  “Besides, Harker, I already knew Detective Flynn,” Christy said, and both women shared a laugh, probably at my expense.

  “Huh?” I said, confused. That was starting to be my natural state around Flynn, and I didn’t like it.

  “I worked vice a few years ago when I was new to the force. I did a couple of undercover cases here. There was something hinky going on with one of the regulars, but we never could pin anything on him. This was before I knew anything about the supernatural, so that’s probably how he kept us from nailing him.”

  “Don’t worry, we took care of him,” Christy said. She turned to me. “You remember that incubus with a thing for little boys?”

  “Yeah,” I said, a glower on my face. “I remember that as soon as I was ready to chase him down and do lots of unpleasant things to him, he disappeared. I always figured you had something to do with it, but couldn’t come up with a good way to ask.”

  “He’s buried behind the sand trap leading up to the green on the fourteenth hole at the Country Club. And under the sand trap on the twelfth. And in the water hazard on eight. And—”

  “We get it. He’s in a lot of pieces scattered in a lot of places. Good job,” I said.

  Christy looked at me. “We don’t shit where we eat, Harker. That’s the first rule. This stupid fuck couldn’t control his impulses, so we controlled them for him. Now, what can I do for you?”

  “I need to know what’s going on at Our Lady of Holy Comfort,” I said, leaning on the bar.

  Christy’s face did something I thought impossible—she turned white as a sheet. The bartender’s eyes got big, and she looked around as if to make sure no one overheard me. Useless since there were three vampires sitting at various tables around the room, and they could hear a fly fart in a hurricane a mile away. If any of those guys wanted to hear what Chri
sty was saying, all they had to do was listen.

  “You’re gonna have to talk to Mort about that,” Christy said, and my blood ran a little cold. I’d been going into Mort’s for more than a decade and had never laid eyes on the big boss. I’d hoped to maintain that status quo for a little while longer, but it seemed like my luck was running like normal—shitty.

  “What’s the big boss got to do with this?” I asked, keeping my tone light but casting my eyes around the room using the mirror behind the liquor bottles to see if anyone was paying undue attention to us. All the other customers seemed to be firmly ensconced in whatever they were up to, be it pool, drinking or just not looking anywhere near me.

  “All I know is I have directions that if anyone asks about that particular church, they go straight to the boss’s office.” Some of the color had returned to Christy’s face, but I could see by the green in the bar top nearest her that she was still pretty nervous.

  “Well, lead on, then,” I said.

  “It’s the door between the two restrooms. He knows you’re coming,” Christy said. “She has to stay out here, though.” She nodded at Flynn.

  “Oh, hell no.” The detective responded about as well as I expected her to. “No way am I letting this idiot go in there alone while I sit out here sipping piña coladas and fending off the unwanted advances of denizens of the underworld.”

  “Don’t worry, sweetie, most of the guys in here wouldn’t be caught dead with a human. A live one, that is,” Christy said. “And it’s not like it’s negotiable. Harker is going to go back and talk to the boss, and you’re not going with him. It’s up to you two how much furniture and how much you get broken before we all come to that conclusion, but that’s how this debate ends. So you want that piña colada now, or after I start throwing magic missiles around in here?”

  Flynn looked an awful lot like she wanted to take her chances throwing down with Christy, and in a normal fight I’d give Flynn the edge every time. Christy tops out at about five-three and carries a few extra pounds on her, almost all of them in exactly the right places, while Flynn is tall, at least five-eight, and all lean muscle and Krav Maga classes. But all it would take is one well-placed spell, and Flynn’s sleeping it off for the next day and a half, while Christy wouldn’t even break a sweat.