The Night Beat, From the Necropolis Enforcement Files (17 page)

“Scared me,” Jack whispered to me.

Bobby looked away from Martin and back at me. “I saw the monster, but I also saw something else. It was smaller than the monster and it shimmered. I thought it was the drugs, they do stuff like that.”

“Shut up,” Jerry snarled.

Bobby shook his head and went on, talking faster. “There was a sound, like millions of buzzing flies or insects or something. And it…it was like the sound went into the shimmering. And all that went into Tomio, after we all died -- that was the last thing I saw, that shimmering thing go into him. He opened his mouth and it sort of flowed in.”

“He’ll kill you when he comes back,” Jerry said almost gleefully.

Bobby gave him a look that said what we were all thinking. “We’re already dead, you moron.” He looked back to me. “I don’t care what happens to me, but if you’re right, I don’t want anything to hurt my wife and kids. I never thought this would touch them. Please…do whatever you need to do to me, but keep them safe. Keep everyone’s families safe.”

The resurrection was fading. The bodies moved back to their graves. I had only seconds. “We’ll do everything we can to protect the people close to you -- I promise.”

There was a collective sigh, and then the bodies went back to very clearly dead. Black Angel Two worked fast, and soon there were seven neatly filled graves in front of us. Martin said some prayers over the graves, then we were done.

“What now?” Jack asked quietly.

I looked to Martin, Edgar and H.P. “It’s exactly what I think it is, right?” They all nodded.

Jack coughed. “What do you, and apparently everyone else but me, Freddy and Cindy, think it is?”

“Well, on the good side, it’s probably not the Prince.”

“Oh, good. So, what’s the bad side?” Jack asked.

“I’m pretty sure that Abaddon is already here, since they did the incantation a while ago. So this would be Apollyon.”

“Those are the same name for the Devil,” Freddy said. “Book of Revelations.”

“Scribes can get confused,” Miriam said. “They’re actually two different beings, and have nothing to do with the Devil. Yahweh is not their master.”

“No, the Prince is.” I heaved a sigh. “I think it’s time to go back to the alleyway and take another look at the portal from Hell.”

Chapter 26

There was a little discussion about who was traveling how. I stood firm and insisted Jack and I had to remain with the car, so we got to drive over. Sadly, Ralph insisted on coming with us. Happily, the moment he so insisted, Hansel and Gretel also insisted. So we had the three of them in the backseat. Ralph and Hansel were panting and Gretel was grooming. I felt like we’d either joined Animal Control or were running our own mobile pet grooming business.

“I’m sure Freddy and Cindy are asking the same thing,” Jack said as we drove out of the cemetery. “What’s with the number eighteen and what’s also with the idea of three different schemes?”

“The number is only significant because it’s a common number we’re placing again and again at the scene of the crime.”

“Yes,” Gretel chimed in. “It could be seven, it could be thirty-three, hundreds, one. It’s the fact that we can easily slot to that number that indicates the problem.”

“But we got to eighteen because there were five trails that led off from the alley,” Jack said. “Maybe we’re just reaching.”

“But we’re not,” Hansel said. “If we were reaching, we couldn’t have matched that number so well and so often.”

“Eighteen minus five is thirteen,” Ralph added. “Easy to match to the Prince’s favorite ‘bad’ number, too.”

“So, no matter what, we have a big problem and a lot of people involved in it, right?” Jack asked. There was unanimous agreement from the rest of us. “So, what’s up with Abaddon and Apollyon? Who are they?”

“Angels who went to the Prince. Any turned undead is powerful, but angels, by their nature, are worse.”

Jack nodded. “I can see that. I don’t want to be around Black Angel Two right now. I don’t want to try to imagine what they’d be like completely evil.”

“They’d be like Abaddon and Apollyon,” Gretel said, softly.

“God deliver me,” Jack said only half-jokingly.

“Gods help. When they can.” I thought about what Miriam had said to me. “But, when it comes down to it, it’s you and your soul against the Prince.”

We drove the rest of the way in silence. Well, other than the panting and other animal-related noises our backseat passengers were indulging in. I chose not to look.

I spent the time instead running through the three options we’d identified. They all led back to the idea that we had, if not the Prince, then some of his strongest minions running around free on the human plane.

We didn’t have enough data yet to be certain of what the play might be, though. And there was always the possibility that we didn’t have three plans, we had one big, nasty one. Eighteen doppelgängers was still a strong possibility -- once the pattern was imprinted, you could make as many as you wanted to, within reason, that reason being there had to be the right number of corresponding souls to connect with.

Eighteen fake Tomios wandering around was a bad enough idea. The essence of evil put into eighteen separate beings, myself and Jack included, was also not anybody’s idea of good. Eighteen souls connected to the infected souls -- also badness. But if what Jerry had insinuated was accurate, it wasn’t Tomio who’d been in the alley last night.

We poured out of the car and met the others at the end of the alleyway, at the dead-end. Examination of the physical revealed nothing new.

I knew what was on the right -- a small grocer who closed before dusk every night. There was a bridal shop on the left, also closed at night. Even the Prosaic City poor liked to look nice when they got married, after all. “What’s in the building that makes up the back side here?” I asked our newest recruits.

Freddy and Sexy Cindy both shrugged. “Didn’t get to that side much,” Freddy said.

I gave Sexy Cindy a look that said I wasn’t going to buy that from her. “We’re talking the fate of the known planes of existence here. What’s on the other side?”

“I’ll go look,” Ralph offered eagerly.

“Sit, stay, good boy. I asked Cindy a question and I want an answer.”

She made a face. “I didn’t go there, not my kind of place.”

Jack nudged me. “The Pleasure Palace, it’s a skin club.”

I chose not to ask how he knew. “You’re telling me you didn’t cruise outside a skin club, looking for business? Seriously, we’re on the same side now, and just how naïve do you think any of us are?”

She shrugged and looked down. “Didn’t like the clientele, okay?”

The base of my tail did its thing. Sexy Cindy had known instinctively that the incantation Tomio handed out was evil. “What about them made you uncomfortable?” I used my “questioning a frightened witness voice”. It was normally considered soothing.

Her head shot up and she glared at me. “I ain’t a baby.”

I gave up. “No. You’re an undead, a succubus, to be exact. One of exactly two who were swallowed by Slimy, Creature from the Hell Lagoon, who survived relatively unscathed.”

“We died,” Freddy said dryly.

“Cry me a river. You’re standing there, unliving. You just talked to seven of your brethren who aren’t going to open eyes or mouths again until the Prince can arrange his Final Solution Attack and then they’ll be raised up for cannon fodder for the side of evil.”

“You can’t know that,” Freddy argued.

H.P. cleared his throat. “Actually, we can. There’s ample proof, in a variety of tomes. When we have a spare minute, Frederick, I’ll be happy to show you. Until then, you’ll have to trust that Victoria does know of what she speaks. The dead who do not ascend, who do not join the unliving, and who do not automatically go to the Prince’s Hell remain interred in the earth, in blackness, until such time as they are called to fight. Those who died more on the side of the Prince than on the side of goodness will fight as part of the Army of the Damned.”

Sexy Cindy processed this. “That’s going to be most of them, isn’t it?”

I couldn’t help it, I had to ask. “What did you do, before your ex forced you into hooking?” She mumbled something. “What? Didn’t catch that.” She mumbled again. “Really, speak up. Time’s wasting here.”

“I was studying to be a preschool teacher.” Sexy Cindy had the combo of defiance and embarrassment down perfectly.

“Oh, I think you should aim for higher education,” H.P. said, with complete sincerity. I couldn’t blame him. The streets were burning off of Sexy Cindy and Freddy at the speed of Zeus’ lightning bolts. “We always need good instructors.”

“Recruit for the University later,” Monty said. “We need to plan our next moves.”

“No, actually, we need Cindy to tell us exactly why she didn’t like the clientele at The Pleasure Palace.”

“I agree,” Edgar said. “Because I believe there’s a good chance the monster originated on the other side of the wall.”

Chapter 27

We all stared at Sexy Cindy. She glared back.

I gave it another shot. “Look, we’re not asking because we think you’re stupid or not good enough or whatever inferiority thing you’ve got going is telling you. We’re asking because you’re spotting evil naturally, and you’re repelled by it. Ergo, if you were repelled by The Pleasure Palace’s clientele, we really want to know why, in that cop way of ours.”

She deflated. “Okay, fine. They all seemed…wrong to me. I don’t know any girl who ever picked a john up from there, either. Well, except one. But she’s dead now.”

Jack and I exchanged the cop “oh really?” look. “What did she die from?” he asked.

“Got real sick, sort of wasted away.”

“How soon after she picked up that john from The Pleasure Palace?”

Sexy Cindy’s brow crinkled in thought. “Maybe a week, maybe a little more.”

“How long ago was this?” The base of my tail mentioned that it knew exactly what Sexy Cindy was going to say.

“Right about the time when Tomio had everybody read those evil words.” Her expression said she had a direct line to my tail. “Oh, crap, it killed her, didn’t it?”