Fallen Stars (The Demon Accords) (31 page)

“And she’s gorgeous?” he added, watching my reaction. 

“Yes, of course!  What do you want me to say?  She’s drop-dead gorgeous,” I hissed in a whisper.  “Everyone seems to hate her, but I gotta tell you, sir, she’s been the most stable, truest friend I’ve had so far.  Maybe in my whole life—at least what I remember of it.”

He thought about that for a moment, mentally chewing it over.

“Understand, Chris, that this is hard for all of us as well.  We have to remember all the time that you
don’t
remember.  It’s not easy.  Like in my case, I keep forgetting that anything you may have learned about women in the last two years is gone.  So here’s the thing.  You are bonded to the queen of the vampires and from what
I
know, you love her.  And she, by her own admission, is a jealous, territorial woman.  You saved Stacia from a werewolf and I know, because you told me so, that you’ve always felt guilty about her getting bit, a fact which bothers you much more than her.  And from what Lydia says, Stacia has a major thing for you.  So the vampire women don’t like her, which would be the same if they were human women.  But you have to stay true to your friends; if you didn’t, then I would have a big issue with you.  And you’re right… you never got a chance to have many friends.  So you have a tricky rope to balance on.  You need to make sure you don’t lead that girl on while trying to be a friend
and
staying true to Tanya, who I consider my granddaughter-in-law whether vampires marry or not.”

"Argggg!” I said, pounding my head with both hands.  “Like I need this right now.  I gotta try and rebuild who I was and juggle all that.”

He nodded.  “Not an easy road.  But you’ve never had an easy road, Chris.  So if friends and relationships are as important to you as I think they are, you have to stay on that road.”

“So how do I do it, Gramps?”

“One foot in front of the other, Chris. One foot in front of the other.”

The suite doorbell rang.  I went to the door, moving faster than I intended.  Gramps's crossword book swirled in the wind of my passage.  “Oops, my bad,” I told him as I opened the door.

A muscular human male with a crew-cut and
semper fi
tattoo on his forearm stood in the doorway.

“Mr. Gordon,” he said, then leaned slightly to take in my grandfather, who he addressed, “Mr. Gordon.”

“Good morning, Mr. Deckert. Coffee?” Gramps responded.

“No thank you, sir.  Just wanted to tell you that the NYPD is here.  They said to tell you,” he directed the last at me, “- that they have
another one.
They said you would know what that meant.”

I didn’t know much, but unfortunately, I knew that.

The same lieutenant from the night before was there, in the lobby, looking dead tired.

“We have another building in Queens.  Pretty much the same thi…” he trailed off, looking behind me.  Tanya was tugging a long-sleeved, black athletic shirt into place, dark sunglasses hiding her eyes. She wore the same yoga pants from the night before. She radiated sleepiness, but it was, after all, the equivalent of the middle of the night for her. “Ah Lieutenant?  You were saying?”

“Ah, yeah, ‘nother demon house thingy.  Hello, Miss Demidova,” he said, his attention to the matter at hand completely shot.

“Okay, let’s go,” I said, which caused Deckert to speak into a wrist mike, Gramps to grab his glasses and wallet, and the Lieutenant to pay attention.  Tanya stepped forward and took my hand in hers while a whirlwind of activity blew up around us.  A few minutes later, we were all riding in a big Cadillac Escalade with a police cruiser in full flashing-light-and-siren mode clearing the way for us.

Chapter 34

Gina was waiting for us, as was Stacia, which surprised me.  The beautiful were girl was dressed in olive green cargo pants, black boots, and was wearing a stretchy black athletic shirt that almost matched Tanya’s.  This time, we skipped the hazmat suits and just headed in: me, Tanya, the wolf girl, and Awasos.  There was only one demon in this building and the hole was even smaller.  Cleaning the whole thing up took about an hour.

When we left the building, Gramps and Gina were waiting for us, talking to an older, white-haired man with a big white mustache who wore a black suit and leaned on a crystal-headed cane.  An extremely fit-looking Native American woman was standing next to him, arms crossed, watching us as we approached. Correction—she was watching
me
and Tanya, having dismissed Stacia at a glance.  Something about her seemed odd.  It came to me three steps later: she was a were, and for a split second, her animal half seemed to peer out at me like a superimposed image.  Wolverine.

“How was it?” Gina asked.  The older gent and his assistant or bodyguard or whatever she was observed us closely.

“Easier than last night.  Still messy, though.  Lots of blood.” I said, watching the newcomers.  They both knew me. At least, their body language seemed to say so.

“Director Stewart, Miss Benally,” Tanya said with a nod at each of them.

“Why hello yourself, Miss Demidova,” the man, Stewart, said with a sly smile.  “You’re up early today?”   It was close to 2 pm.

“This
business
finds me keeping strange hours,” my vampire responded with a wave back at the apartment building behind us.

“Yes, this
business
,” he mused, twitching his mustache with one hand.  He looked at me with a curious gleam in his eye but then switched his gaze to Stacia.  “This must be Miss Reynolds!”

“You are correct.  Stacia, meet Nathan Stewart, Director of Oracle, and his right hand, Adine Benally,” Gina said.

Stacia shook the Director’s hand, nodded at Benally who hadn’t moved a muscle, and then, with a glance at me, asked the very question I had been thinking.  “What’s Oracle?”

“Occult Research, Alternative Combat League or O.R.A.C.L.” he replied with a delighted grin.

“Seems like you worked pretty hard on that mouthful?” Stacia noted.

The Director laughed outright, causing a couple of cops nearby to glance his way.  He ignored the attention, staying focused on Stacia, with a couple of sideways glances at me.

“My dear, that’s how it’s done.  First, you figure out the acronym you want to end up with, then you make the words fit.  Time-honored government tradition,” he said, beaming at her.  He seemed genuinely enthusiastic; it wasn’t contrived in the least.

Again, my blonde were friend asked the question I had been about to ask, saving me the trouble of displaying my lack of mental faculty.  “What does Oracle do?”

“Well, my dear, I’ve been able to assemble a group of talented individuals whose abilities have proven valuable, if not, in fact, vital to the safety of our nation.  But none of my people have Mr. Gordon’s collection of skills, and I’m afraid what you’ve all experienced in the last few days is happening on a much larger scale.”

“The hell gates?  How much larger?” I asked.

“Global, as best we can tell,” he said, turning his attention to me.  “Certainly all across our country, and we’re hearing from allied nations much the same.”

“A plague of portals to hell?” I asked.  “Why?”

“Actually, we already understand the why of it all.  It’s the how—as in how to close them that we don’t have good answers for… other than your skills.”

“Explain, please,” Tanya asked, although it sounded a bit more like an imperial command.  She was concerned, mostly for me.

“Certainly, Miss Demidova,” he said, adopting a more serious expression.  Benally had leaned forward at Tanya’s tone but otherwise held her place.

“Do you know of the Large Hadron Collider?” he asked.

“In Switzerland, right?  The largest particle accelerator in the world,” I said, asserting my geekhood.  It was a project I followed… had followed.  It must have been much farther along than I remembered.

“Exactly right, Mr. Gordon.  A wondrous achievement that has pushed the very boundaries of science.  It also seems to have had the effect of diminishing those barriers that separate our world from others.”

“Wait. Like string-theory and alternative dimensions?” I asked.  Tanya turned a raised eyebrow in my direction.  “What?  I’ve always been a nerd.”

“I thought you might have developed those… interests in the last couple of years?” she asked.

“No, he’s always been interested in science,” my grandfather interjected.  He seemed to know Director Stewart and his partner.

“Kind of a let-down, huh?” I asked Tanya.  She just smirked at me and turned back to Stewart.

“Is this development related to the Higgs Boson research?” she asked, turning slightly to arch her eyebrow at me in a
take that
look.  Wow, super-hot
and
brainy!  Apparently the old me had great taste in vampires… so to speak. 

Stacia looked annoyed, but the Director was grinning again.

“We think it’s a byproduct of just running the LHC at full power, something they’ve been doing a lot of lately.”

“What led you to that conclusion?” Tanya asked.

“We had an incident upstate.  Little town called Groton Falls.  We covered it up with a chemical spill story, but it was an incursion.”

“
Demons
?” My voice sounded really deep, and people around us turned to stare.  Stewart’s eyes widened just slightly and his partner, Benally, twitched like she was gonna pounce on me.  Tanya touched my hand, and the dark bubble that had swelled up inside me receded.  Gramps was eyeing me with a speculative look, Gina was unreadable, and Stacia… Stacia was watching Tanya’s hand on my arm with the focused look of someone learning a new skill.

“Sorry, but was it demons?” I asked, voice normal.

“No, elves,” Stewart said, his mustache twitching in amusement.

“Like in Keebler elves?” I asked after a shared glance with Tanya.

“Oh no, Mr. Gordon.  These elves are very, very far from the cookie makers or Santa’s cute helpers.  These are the beings that gave the Brothers Grimm the fodder for their bleak tales.  And with them came goblins and all sorts of other nastiness.  It would seem that Faerie is a real world, sort of a sister—a dark sister—to this one.  There are others as well, but Faerie is closest  and has the most history with us.  Natural cosmic events, which I don’t pretend to understand, have emitted particles from time to time that would unlock the dimensional doors, so to speak. 
They
have crossed over and left their imprint on our psyches and in our folklore for hundreds of years.”

“Sounds like they need to learn not to trespass!” I said, thinking about how it might be to kick some elfy ass.

“Actually, we have it under control.  The
trespassers
, as you call them, met up with the wrong man and, well, as I say, we have it under control.  Diplomatic relations and all.  I do have to say that upstate New York seems to breed some rather formidable individuals,” he said with a nod at both my grandfather and myself.

“Sounds like half my neighbors back home,” Gramps said.

“I think you might get along well with the fellow in question, Mr. Gordon,” Stewart said.  “But the elves have explained some things to us and
they
were well aware of the LHC and its effects.  This Hellgate business seems the same.  With the help of some of the elves that study these things, we’ve figured out how the LHC has done what it has done, and our scientists have corrected it.  But we are left with weakened barriers and many multiples of these portals, both the Hellgate kind and some of the interplanetary kind.  I’m here to see if we can prevail upon you to help us with the demon portals?”

Of course I would help.  Fighting demons was my reason for existence.  Before I could answer, my vampire leaned forward, one hand touching my arm to keep me quiet.  “Under what terms?  How much will the government pay?”

Stewart looked taken aback, shocked at her mercenary attitude, although I thought I detected a certain gleam in his eye.  “Remuneration?  It’s been my understanding that Mr. Gordon here helps the demon afflicted without thought of lining his pockets.”

“Hah!  For people with possessed children?  Of course.  For governments that have unbalanced the natural order through uncontrolled experimentation to exploit the knowledge?  Not so much.  Plus, Chris has the right to earn a living, just as you do.  Do you and Ms. Benally not receive payment for your patriotic service?”

I think I knew from someone, maybe Lydia, that Tanya had a good business mind, but hearing about it and seeing it in action are two vastly different things.  For the next fifteen minutes, I watched my beautiful girl reduce that tough, seasoned bureaucrat to a pile of quivering jelly, although he seemed slightly amused by it, as well.  Gramps watched with unconcealed awe, following the byplay like an ESPN commentator at the Super Bowl.  Even Stacia looked impressed.

The final upshot was that the government would pay me handsomely for each and every breach closure I completed.  Additionally, anyone helping me, as in Tanya, Stacia, or Gina would be paid as well.  The government was responsible for our transportation, lodging, and—most importantly—meals.  That one, right there, was gonna cost the taxpayers plenty.

“Thirty-thousand per breach seems like a lot?” I remarked as we walked to the waiting Escalade.