God Hammer: A novel of the Demon Accords (27 page)

“If you want to make it through your first decade as a wolf, you’ll have to learn to read people better.  He’s not a wolf or a were, so you naturally felt like you had the upper hand.  You forgot that our Stacia doesn’t suffer fools, so at best, you would be facing her wraith.  Then you took it upon yourself to threaten one of Gita’s customers.  Now you face the entire wraith of her clan.  But the biggest mistake was thinking our young friend there was sheeplike.  I think you mistook his patience for weakness.  Look at him—does he look frightened?  Intimidated?” Brock asked, moving closer till he was right between the two wolves.  He dwarfed them as he put a big hand on each one’s shoulder and pulled them roughly around to look at me.

“Well?” he asked, shaking them both.

“Not particularly, sir,” the smaller one said.

“Ty?  What do you think?” Brock asked.

“He might feel that we won’t attack him in here?” Ty said, confirming his spot as moron of the year.

“Ty, what if I tell you that this young man is a special intern to Chris Gordon?  What do you think that implies?” Brock asked.

“We know that, sir.  Stacia told Gita that,” Ty said.

“You
knew
that and you still picked a fight?” Brock asked, incredulous.

“You mean that Mr. Gordon would beat us up if we hurt his intern?” Scott, the smaller one, offered.

“Well, that’s certainly one thought that should have held you up.  But tell me, do you think just anyone is handpicked to be an intern to the Hammer of God?” Brock pressed.

“You’d have to be tough as a mofo to work for him,” the young boy who was obviously Brock’s son, or clone, said, coming up alongside his dad.

“See that?  My twelve-year-old son, Bryce, has seen what you have somehow missed.  Chris Gordon’s intern must have something going for him or he wouldn’t survive the first day at work, would he?  Perhaps it’s for the best that you had the balls and the gall to address him here and now.  I shudder to think what might have happened if you had jumped him outside the restaurant,” Brock said.

Stacia grimaced as she thought about that, then her expression hardened.  The two idiots in front of me looked bewildered and embarrassed, the smaller one looking like he might want to find a hole to crawl into.  The bigger one still had just a hint of defiance about him.

“You’re the witch, right?” Bryce asked me suddenly with the innocent brashness of kids.  His mother’s lips twitched in annoyance and I had the impression he might get a lesson in manners after this all ended.

“I am,” I said.

“You do magic like Criss Angel?” he pressed on. Behind him, his mother’s eyes darkened.

“Not like that, no.  That’s illusion.  What I do is real,” I said.

“Oh yeah?  He can levitate.  Can you?” he challenged.  His mother started forward but stopped at a gesture from Brock.

“That’s too easy.  Instead, why don’t I levitate
you
,” I said, twitching my fingers and tele-lifting him six inches off the floor.

“Whoa!  Mom, look at this!  I’m floating,” he said, turning to look at his mom.  Her expression was still dark, but now there was a hint of nervousness in it.

Hmm, let’s not make a werewolf mom upset, shall we?  With another twitch, I floated him a foot closer to her and then set him down.  Her hands landed on his shoulders and he was yanked close to her, then spun around to face me.  She whispered in his ear and his face went red.

“Sorry.  I shouldn’t have asked you about all that,” he said, meeting my eyes despite the embarrassment.  He was definitely an Alpha in the making.

“That’s okay,” I said. 

Brock turned to the two wolves.  “Is that clear enough for you?”  

Scott, the smaller one, nodded.  Ty, the idiot, frowned but also nodded.

Brock clumped them both hard on the shoulder. “The key, gentlemen, will be to see if you learned anything from this.  Now go.  Leave.”  It was an order, and one they instantly obeyed.  Ty shot me a few looks as he left.  He might be a remedial student.

Gita met them at the door.

“Do not darken my doorway until you are invited,” she said.  Her husband and three sons moved up on either side of her to emphasize her point.  Scott at least had the sense to look chagrined as he turned and walked out.

Brock turned back to Gita and her husband.  “I think we’ll join Stacia and our young friend here,” he said.  Immediately, the family produced a second table and three more chairs.

“You understand?” Brock’s wife asked Stacia.

“Yes, of course, Afina,” my friend replied, nodding in agreement.  It wasn’t ideal from my perspective, but when the Alphas decide they’re joining you, there isn’t much to say.

After a moment, I realized that the Malleks had really no choice.  They needed to show both solidarity with and complete lack of fear of the witch in the room.  My demonstration been relatively mild, the boy only coming up a few inches off the floor.  Most of the restaurant didn’t even see it.  It was probably a good thing I hadn’t lifted old Ty and smashed his head into the ceiling.  Sitting in the middle of a room full of frightened werewolves would probably be bad, I reflected.

It only took moments for the efficient family of restaurateurs to reset the table and Klahan to arrive with more kabobs, both chicken and beef.

“So, we’ve interrupted your dinner.  Were you discussing work?” Brock asked.

“No, Brock. We were about to talk weapons.  Beast-form-sized weapons,” Stacia said.

“Oh now you have my complete attention,” he said.  From the attentive looks on his wife and son’s faces, we had theirs as well.

“Well, it’s like this.  Claws and teeth don’t work well against metal armor and silver machine blades,” Stacia said, holding up her left forearm to show the thin white scar there.

“Machine blades?” Afina asked.

“This has to do with the Corporation’s antagonist, doesn’t it?” Brock asked, looking at me.

I nodded but let Stacia tell the story.  She never referred to Anvil by name, but instead kept her words generic.  Afina was obviously clued in as she nodded along as the tale was told.  More food came out, most of the restaurant continued to listen, and then both Alphas made suggestions about how to fight machines and the weapons she should choose.  Drawings were rendered on napkins and my glass of water had to be refilled many times as fiery morsels burned their way to my stomach.

“Well, what did you think?” Stacia asked after we said goodnight to the Alphas and Gita’s clan.

“I think your ability to heal must rebuild your stomachs every five minutes in that place,” I said, rubbing my own stomach.

“I meant about the Malleks and the others,” she said with mild exasperation.

“Yeah, they’re pretty fiery, too.  I met Brock at the board meeting.  He’s very sharp and forward.  His wife, too.  The kid’s just like him, but maybe a bit spoiled from being the Alphas’ kid.  Oh, and it must be lonely sometimes when every idiot guy thinks you’ve been missing out all your life until you met him, and every idiot girl gets jealous because you’re gorgeous,” I said, unlocking Beast’s passenger door while mentally powering down his protective wards.

“Thank you for not blasting those morons to pieces,” she said.

“Hey, your people, your place.  It wouldn’t have been respectful to get into anything with them.  Plus, I figured our waitress would let you know about it and then I could see how you wanted to handle it,” I said.

“Respectful? How old are you?” she asked.  “I know guys twice your age who wouldn’t have figured that all out.  But tell me, what would you have done?”

“Sorrow suggested
Necrosis genitalia,
which I think is a flesh-eating spell that attacks the victim’s junk.”

“Werewolves heal fast and are magically resistant to disease,” she pointed out.

“It’s a magic spell, so it would keep attacking as they kept healing.  Sorrow has had much experience with weres.”

“That’s… disturbing.  Was that really your first choice?” she asked as I climbed in the other side.

I started Beast.  “No.  That would be literally evil.  Never ending junk-eating disease?  That’s something you reserve for rapists,” I said. “I would likely just fling them out the door with some good old-fashioned telekinesis.”

“And they would likely Change and come charging back in,” she said.

“No, you mean Change and come charging back into an invisible wall,” I said.

“And you think that would keep determined weres out?”

“I think having your wolf head stuck in nothingness while curry and pepper powder blows right up your sensitive wolf nose might make an impression,” I said.

“Now
that
would have been interesting to see.  Although Brock would have had their heads off for Changing in the middle of the dinner hour in the middle of Manhattan,” she said. “You’re gonna want to pull out and stay in the right lane here.”

“Just stay crouched down so the damned paparazzi don’t see you,” I said, pulling out into traffic.  “And thanks for an interesting dinner.”

“Somehow, Mr. Warlock, I think more than half the interesting parts came from you,” she said, “ and turn right here.”

She missed my smile, being to busy navigating us back to Demidova world headquarters, but that was probably just as well. 

There have been Pentagon briefings that weren’t as thorough as the one that Darion and Tanya’s teams delivered on the Church of the True and the Reverend Castille.

A young lawyer from Darion’s firm delivered the backstory on the not-so-good reverend.  Dressed in a sharp navy dress suit, the brunette esquire was probably close to the same age as Tanya and me, but her delivery was as polished and assured as someone ten years older.  She ran a projector remote as she spoke, never once referring to any notes.  The pictures began with a family photo.

“Daniel Castille was born Daniel Kane. He is forty-five years old.  His father was mayor of the town of Glint, Oregon; his mother the town historian.  When he was sixteen, his father was run out of office for having an affair with a council member.  Daniel’s family fell apart in the ensuing divorce.  At eighteen, he left his mother’s home and made his way north to Seattle, where he took a job at one of the city’s casinos.  By age twenty, he had been bitten hard by the gambling bug, and in his thirties, he was briefly successful on the poker circuit.  His good luck turned bad and he lost two big games the same night, a week after his thirty-sixth birthday. He only had enough stake to enter one, but he somehow fudged it and entered both.  He chose to skip town rather than make good on his debts.  Three months later, he turned up in Fairbanks, Alaska, again taking a job in a casino, only this time under the assumed name of Castille.  He met his attorney and later business partner there when the two embarked on a gold mining operation eighteen months after his arrival in Fairbanks.” Darion’s associate, whose name was Kate Doughton, had kept a series of photos of Daniel Castille flipping by as she spoke.  Now, she paused on a picture of what appeared to be a ghost town. 

“The two spent a documented thirty-three days in the mine, located adjacent to an abandoned town which was named Sweat for unknown reasons.  The mine was a previously spent operation that Fierro bought on the promise of an untapped seam of gold.  From what our field investigators have been able to piece together, the two used the town’s church as their base of operations.  A bit more than month after setting up, they called it quits,” Kate said. 

The last picture showed a small town church complete with a gray, weathered spire, most of the buildings around it in ruins.

“It’s here that the roots of the Church of the True were born. It seems the two wasted no time in filing paperwork for the Select of the Lord as a not-for-profit LLC.  It’s also at this time that Daniel had his name changed legally to Castille and he wrote a book titled
Forty Days in the Wilderness
,” Kate said, stopping on a picture of a younger, poorer Castille standing with a much leaner Fierro.  Castille held a bible under his left arm.

“You’ll note the bible.  From this point on, virtually every shot of Castille has that bible in it,” she said. “He claims in his book that he found the bible in the church and it brought both Fierro and himself to the Lord.”

“How do you know it’s the same one?” Tanya asked.

“The way he habitually holds the bible leaves the lettering on the cover almost always visible in pictures.  Our analysts have been able to blow up the photos and match the wear patterns in every photo,” she said, clicking through slides till she had one that lined three photos up, side by side, all blow-ups of the bible. “Note how the word
Holy
is missing the H.”

“Photo analysts?  What kind of legal firm has photo analysts?” I asked Darion, who sat next to me.

“The kind that is always ready to provide billable service to the Demidova Corp,” he said.  “Now don’t interrupt her. She’s just getting to the good stuff.”

“I want to hear more about the ghost town,” Tanya said.

“See, that’s the good stuff I was mentioning,” Darion said.

Kate waited till her audience had settled down, smiling.

“Sweat, Alaska has a dark past.  Founded just after the turn of the century, the town was originally part of a native community.  The local Native Alaskans were basically shoved aside when a vein of gold was discovered in the mountain just north of the town.  Traditional stories told that the mountain was cursed, but gold miners ignored that as superstition and mined the mountain extensively.  The town of Sweat appeared almost overnight.  The mine did produce gold, but the town suffered excessive violence and a high mortality rate for the entirety of the seven years it was active.  Then it cleared out, with about the same speed it formed, almost overnight.  The mine was said to have dried up and a series of unexplained deaths occurred in town.  Some rumors hinted at the mountain’s curse; others invoked the Devil’s name. Alaskan law enforcement was negligible at the time and the deaths went uninvestigated.  Since then, the mining claim has changed ownership many times over the years till Fierro bought it.  He still holds title to it.”

“What of the natives?” I asked.

“The locals were all Athabascan, just a small community.  Maybe five or six families, but they had lived in that region for generations.  When they were pushed off the land by the gold miners, they moved further east to the edge of their tribal territory.  Most died off over the last hundred years.  We did find a survivor who married into another village.  Her great-grandparents were displaced by the Sweat settlors. She herself never lived there, but she had been told tales of the cursed mountain by her grandmother.  It was well-known to her people that the mountain was home to an evil spirit.  Hunters who ventured too near were either never seen again or, worse, came back after murdering the rest of their hunting parties.  That’s all we were able to find out,” she said reluctantly.

“Sounds demonic,” I said, mostly to Tanya, but Kate picked up on it.

“It does seem to fit with traditional dogma regarding demonic influence,” she said.

“You’re preaching to the choir, Kate,” Darion said with a smirk.  She flushed, just ever so slightly, really only noticeable if you had thermal vision.

“Good presentation,” Tanya said.  “What do
you
have for us Josh?” she asked one of her finance staff.

Slender and slightly bookish, with dark glasses and a pinstripe suit complete with suspenders, Josh was one of her whiz kids, a young MBA straight out of Wharton who had a dazzling intellect for numbers and accounting.

He exchanged places and looks with Kate, nodding to another staffer who manned the computer for him.  At his nod, the monitor changed to show a table of numbers.

“The Select of the Lord filed for tax exempt status in Alaska, but quickly moved operations south to Seattle, Washington.  For the first three years, the church struggled financially, almost slipping into insolvency until the fortuitous death of a supporter left them with a serious bequest.  The infusion of cash was enough to build a small church and keep them afloat for six more months.  With that brick and mortar presence, Reverend Castille was able to attract enough members to keep the church going
and
purchase himself an entry-level Mercedes.  Oddly enough, just as that money started to run down, another church member expired, leaving an even larger bequest.  The Church expanded its headquarters and purchased a home for the good reverend.

“As you can see on this table, from that point on, the church was able to maintain a stable if not exorbitant income stream.  That all changed with the Battle of Washington.  Reverend Castille almost instantly changed the nature of his sermons, shifting to an anti-Darkkin rhetoric that drew in much larger numbers of followers, at the same time renaming his organization.  This is not surprising.  Multiple surveys conducted by numerous news and think tank organizations in the weeks after Washington indicated a wide-ranging upheaval in the public’s religious views.  Virtually every church on the planet has seen significant increases in membership and collection amounts.  You two single-handedly brought the public back to God,” Josh said with a quick grin.

“However, responses ranged from a renewal of traditional faith to evangelic, fire and brimstone types to even a few that preach about, ah, angels among us,” he said with a mock eye roll that made both Tanya and I laugh.  From the corner of my eye, I could see Kate watching him with a new appreciation.

“A certain percentage have come out with an anti-supernatural theme and of those, the most outspoken by far is the Church of the True.  As a result, they have tapped into that segment of the population whose fears and religious fervor needed an equally fanatical outlet.  The result is an explosive increase in the Church’s membership and finances. Castille almost immediately opened a satellite church in California and has announced plans for ones in Washington and here in New York.”

“What about John Cuttle?  When did he show up?” I asked.

“He first hit the payroll just prior to the events in Washington and the name change,” Josh said.

Kate stood up and cleared her throat.  “John Augustus Cuttle is thirty-three years old and a veteran of four tours of duty in Afghanistan and Iraq, courtesy of the US Army.  His background is special operations and his military history is a bit murky, with numerous disciplinary measures in his record.  He was discharged honorably, but it seems he might have accepted the discharge as part of a deal to get him out.  His superior officers almost uniformly noted he was an effective soldier with a serious authority issue.  Disorderly conduct and implications of theft and intimidation are littered throughout his record.  He went to work for the good reverend almost as soon as he returned home to his hometown of Seattle,” she said, giving Josh a
so there
look before sitting back down.

“Could I get a copy of your notes, Kate?  I want to brief my investigator,” I said.

She looked slightly offended, at least until Darion spoke up.  “His guy is an ex-intelligence operative who will infiltrate the Church and dig deeper than our people can get, Kate.”

She nodded, looking slightly mollified.

“Bank records indicate that Cuttle has been paid two six-figure sums already this year.  Cross-referencing matches the dates closely to the dates of the accidents for two of the children. The church later made an odd grouping of payments to several other LLCs, who in turn all paid the same sums to a bank in Singapore. 
That
bank initiated a wire to a bank in Belgium.  These payments occurred just after the other two children died of medical complications,” Josh said.

“That the result of your secret weapon digging around?” Darion asked us.

“We have a floor full of high-level hackers who did this in their spare time.  No need for
special
talents,” Tanya said.  Both Josh and Kate looked on with interest at the conversation.

“None of this is evidence of murder,” Darion said.

“
This
is merely the beginning.  Now the real digging begins.  Chris’s investigator will infiltrate and we will get down to the real hacking on Cuttle’s communications and personal electronics,” Tanya said.  “
Our
security team has skills that rival the NSA’s, only we pay better.”

I winced a little at the mention of NSA, but I don’t think anyone caught it.

“Okay, that sounds ominously like something
I
don’t want to know anything about,” Darion said.  “Kate and I will leave you to your plotting,” he said, getting up, Kate following his lead.

“Thank you Darion, Miss Doughton,” Tanya said.

“What can we say?  We live to bill… er… serve,” Darion said with a sly smile.  They showed themselves out, leaving us in the room with Josh and two other finance types—as well as Arkady and Deckert, who had been silent in the shadows behind us throughout the whole thing.

“I have some contacts in Belgium who can see about those bank wires,” Deckert said.  “We may need some tech support.”

“Chester will be more than happy to help you.  Tell him that this takes priority, even over the special project,” Tanya said.

“What about Cuttle?” Arkady asked.

“We need to steal his phone, tablet, laptop, or any other electronics he has.  Get them to Declan and he can implant his witchcraft computer virus.  Then we’ll see what gets reported back,” I said.

“Castille too?” Deckert asked.