God Hammer: A novel of the Demon Accords (35 page)

Second time in a half hour I got in trouble with a woman for entering without knocking properly.  Damn new record, O’Carroll.

“I was just checking on you.  I heard fighting.”

“Right, and you just had to come and save me yet again, is that it?  I’m helpless without you?” she asked, really pissed.

“No, no.  Listen, I’m sorry.  I hear fighting, I check on things,” I said, both hands up, eyes on her eyes.

“Maybe I don’t need a smart-assed wizard to save me all day long.  You’re not the center of the world, you know,” she said, storming past me and grabbing her clothes from beside the door.  I didn’t turn to look at her, instead frozen in place by my own sudden anger.

I got in trouble for not opening doors, I got in trouble for trying to open doors, and now I was in trouble for opening a door to check on a friend.  Couldn’t fucking win for trying.  Part of me understood, at least on some level, that she was mad at herself as much as she was mad at me.  Well, me too.  I was mad at myself, but why should she take it out on me?

She finished dressing and stormed out, slamming the gym door in the process, leaving me staring at the dropped and broken weapons.  I stood that way for about three full minutes, eyes on the sheared-off hammerhead and the prybar.  Then something clicked.  A thought shoved its way past the anger and the hurt feelings and demanded attention.  Moving forward, my hands picked up the hammerhead and the cold metal bar.  Then I looked at Thing Two.

“Rise up and extend one blade,” I ordered it, trusting its own AI to pick a suitable blade.  “Freeze position.” 

The steel blade was banged and scratched but still plenty sharp enough to chop me in half.  I held the pry bar in both hands and reached forward till the point touched the metal carapace.  Then I noted where the blade was, how close the tip of the blade was to me and how much space there was between the pede’s body and the beginning of the blade.  And just like that, the idea formed solid as steel.

“Stand down and recharge,” I ordered, leaving the pede but taking the bar and steel hammerhead.

Back in my own apartment, I texted Mack. 
Be prepared to help me with a project.

He wrote back instantly. 
Fine, but we are going to have fun too right? And I’m gonna show you some of my work.

Wanna go to Plasma?

Hell Yeah!

That settled, I left the tools and headed out onto the mean streets, tracking down a florist with late evening hours.  Purchase in hand, I headed back for the tower.

In the lobby, the elevator door opened, revealing Grace and Aleesha on one side of the car and Stacia on the other.  All three looked at me, then at the bouquet of white roses in my hand.  I stood back to let them all off, not saying a word.  Grace and Aleesha slid by me, eyes flicking from the flowers to my face and then back to the flowers.  Stacia frowned at the flowers, then at me.  I shifted the flowers to my other hand and waved her off the elevator.  Now her frown shifted to puzzlement as she stepped by me.  I walked into the car and turned around, pressing the button for the executive floor, still not saying a word.  All three females looked at me, confusion on one face and curious speculation on the other two.  Then the doors slid shut.

Celeste raised one eyebrow at me when I stepped off on the exec floor.  When I set the vase of roses on her desk and apologized again, she allowed the smallest quirk of a smile before it fled from her face, but she did give me a single nod, which I took as apology accepted.  She pointed one slim, red-tipped finger at the corner of her desk.  My laptop was sitting there, awaiting its owner.  I thanked her and left.

Mission accomplished, I went to find Katrina and Mr. Deckert.

“Do we leak these texts, send them to the FBI, or just bury the bastard ourselves?” I asked.

“Lydia, has Miss Chatterjee done any blogging yet?” Tanya asked the pixie-sized vampire.

Lydia just smirked and pointed her tablet at the wall monitor.  Brystol’s blog page,
The Cryptic News
, was open to an entry dated earlier today, titled
The Evil within Us.

Dear Readers:

I’m enraged, disgusted and madder than I have ever been in my life.

Let me explain.

I’ve made the paranormal, the eldritch, and the supernatural my business, and these last few years, business has been good.  I was honored to bring you the first interviews with Christian Gordon and Tatiana Demidova after the Battle of Washington, as well as the first one-on-one chat with the White Werewolf, my friend Stacia Reynolds.

During the Battle and continuing since then, we’ve seen a steady stream of miraculous revelations.  In short, the world has been turned on its collective ear and I’ve been privileged to occupy ground zero for all it.

But in my opinion, the most disruptive thing to come out of all these events isn’t that vampires and werewolves are real, or that Angels walk among us.  I believe it’s the stunning treatments and cures that vampire biology promises for the most insidious of our diseases.  If you don’t believe me, just look at the plummeting stock values of the world’s most advanced pharmaceutical companies.  That’s proof positive to my mind that the medical and business world believes in the treatments being tested in other countries right now.

Our nation will be among the last to have access to the wonder drugs derived from Darkkin biochemistry while many of the world’s poorest and sickest are already enjoying the life-altering effects of this new technology.  The irony is delicious.  Even the richest must petition to be treated in India or Thailand, the decision in the hands of the very people who saved our President, our government, and our country from an apocalypse straight out of the bible.  And the source of these treatments spends enormous amounts of its own money to sponsor, through Angel Flight, the most needy of Americans to receive life-saving medicine.

Four of these individuals: Krysta Downes, Stevie Winslow, Kyle Roberts, and Trinity Keevers, all beautiful, courageous children given a new lease on life, have all died.  Two in accidents, two of medical compications.  There are organizations that would have us believe it is the fault of man for turning to vampires for cures.  That an angry God has taken them back among his own as punishment for the sin of seeking a cure from, gasp, a supernatural race. A group whose leader claims to know what God is thinking.  I call bullshit.  This is not God’s vengeance but Man’s evil.  My evidence?  Take a look below at this YouTube video showing security camera footage of Kayla Downes’s last day on Earth.  Note that glorious little girl rubbing her shoulder after this person bumps into her.  Read the autopsy report that says she died of sudden onset pneumonia and see here, circled in red, where the doctor found a red spot similar to a needle track.  Coincidence?  Or a highly professional hit? 

Slim, you say?  I dug deeper.  Here’s a copy of the police report on the accident that killed Kyle Roberts.  The car that lost its brakes and hit him had just been inspected two months earlier.  Yet the brakes failed completely on a four-year-old car.  I’m sure Stevie’s dad would have cried foul, but he died too.

My grandmother used to say once is an accident, two times a coincidence, but three times makes a pattern.

Trinity Keevers died of a particularly virulent form of influenza that completely overwhelmed her immune system.  The Arkansas state health department reported no other cases of that particular strain in the entire state.  The hand of God or the twisted hand of Man?

If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, guess what… it’s very likely a duck.  But who would do this?  Stay tuned… this reporter is on the case with further information and evidence coming soon.

On a separate note, tomorrow’s blog will be a big one; a fascinating look into the world of witches and witchcraft as I report my interview with a real spell-slinging, potion-brewing practitioner of magic.  That’s right, Harry Potter better move over because the real deal is out there and I’ve met him.

Chatterjee out.

“Well, she’s got the ball started,” Darion said.  “My advice would be to sanitize our backtrail, print this shit up, and hand it, in gloved hands, to the DA of Krysta’s home county, the Texas Attorney General and the FBI.  With Miss Chatterbox’s fire burning under their collective asses, something ought to catch.”

The rest of us were quiet for a moment, pondering his words.  Tanya looked at me and I nodded, then she turned to her vampire Friday.  Lydia’s eyes were slightly unfocused, staring at a blank space on the wall.  She blinked, letting her eyes rove around the room, from Darion, to Kate, over Josh and Chet, and finally to Tanya and myself.  “I like it.  Brystol has a huge following and law enforcement will have no choice but to look into it.  If we can develop any additional leads from these phone numbers, it, too, can be thrown on the bonfire.”

“And the Church of the True will burn itself to ash,” Tanya said.

“Let’s do it,” I agreed, watching Josh and Kate exchange evil grins.

I picked Mack up at Penn Station early Friday afternoon.  Actually,
we
picked him up as Mr. Deckert insisted on sending me in a company car with two of his men.  The driver was Joe, the same guy overseeing the front desk the day I arrived.  The one who walked into the station with me was Benson, who looked like an NFL lineman.

We found the Ethan Allen train from upstate just as it arrived, and Mack was like the tenth person to step off.  Then we had to wait for him to collect two pieces of checked baggage.

“Dude, you’re only here for two nights.  If Jetta was with you I’d understand, but I know you don’t even own that many clothes,” I said.  He smiled as I went to pick up one of the bags and the answer was obvious when the weight hit my arm.

“You brought toys?” I asked.  Mr. Benson hefted the other bag in his left hand; his right being free to employ whatever was making his jacket bulge over his right hip.  He raised one eyebrow at my words.

“Mack is learning to make knives in a custom blade smithy,” I said.

“Blades?  What kind?” he asked, interested even as his eyes scanned the people around us.

“This batch is mostly tactical.  The railroad doesn’t normally let you even check knives but as long as they were sheathed and locked in these bags, they were okay.  I had to explain that I was an apprentice knifesmith, on my way to a show,” Mack said.  “Not exactly the full truth, but what the hell.  I wanted you to see my work.”

“You sell them?” Benson asked.

“I will when I find buyers.  This is the first batch that I feel good enough about to put on the sales table.  Between you and me, Mr. Benson, I’m pretty sure I can sell a couple to this skinny beanpole here as Christmas presents for his step-aunt and martial arts instructor,” Mack said.

“The deputy and the Krav Maga guy?” Benson asked me.  I had spent time with most of Deckert’s men during my warding time and he knew a little about my family life.

“Actually, if what you made is at all similar to Mr. Moore’s work, I bet the security team would be interested.  They’re all ex-military,” I said to Mack.  To Benson I said, “His mentor is Ian Moore of Bear Mountain Blades.”  Benson didn’t reply but his eyes flicked over Mack with interest before continuing his scanning.

“You have a company car and driver?” Mack asked when we stepped outside and Joe opened the back of the Explorer for his luggage.

“Perks, baby. Perks,” I said.

Back at the tower, I had the pleasure of seeing Mack go wide-eyed at the inside of the Demidova Tower.  Then we got to the security desk to give him his visitor’s pass, and nothing would do but that he broke out all his hardware.  Within minutes, most of the on-duty team was clustered around his display, which, frankly was even better than I had imagined.  About half were made from Bear Mountain’s proprietary Damascus steel with silver wire folded into the mix.  Those all sold immediately, several in minor bidding wars among the ex-soldiers.  The obvious utility of steel with anti-vamp and were properties combined with Mack’s talented workmanship was instantly valued by Deckert’s men.

The other half were split between utility blades and bushcraft blades made of high carbon steel and super tough tool steel.

“You just started making knives this year?” Deckert asked my buddy.

“I grew up on a horse farm and I was always fascinated when the farrier came to shoe the horses.  My uncle did a little blacksmithing and we made a few knives together.  I’ve always been mechanical and Mr. Moore is a really good teacher,” Mack explained, looking delighted and slightly shocked at how quickly his stuff had sold out.

“Alright guys, I’ve got more work for him to do.  We’re okay to use the utility room, Mr. Deckert?” I asked.

“Standard conditions apply: don’t burn the place down, don’t blow the place up, and don’t crack the foundation of the building,” Deckert said.  Nobody even smiled.  They all knew he wasn’t joking with me and that any and all those outcomes were possibilities, as far as I was concerned.  “That elevator is only just working again,” he said.

“See, there’s the example for you… if I break it, I fix it,” I said.  He frowned but then waved us away.

A few minutes later, I showed Mack my rooms.  “Holy shit, dude.  This is a freaking palace.  You live like a king while I’m slaving away like a peasant,” he said.

“Don’t give me your shit, Sutton.  You and your sister have a whole farm with a massive forge and workshop, not to mention shooting range and hiking trails.”

“Well, yeah, it doesn’t suck, but this is the shit,” he said.

We stowed his stuff and went down to the gym, where I showed him the discarded tools and had Thing Two demonstrate the problem.

“Ya know what?  You can keep all this fancy shit if
that’s
what you gotta fight to earn it,” he said, awed by the robotic death machine.

Then his analytical side kicked in and he started to get serious.  “Okay, you say the weight isn’t a problem?”

“No, she’s not as big as Dellwood, but she’s strong as hell and fast,” I said.

“Then I think we want to go for more of a Chinese sword breaker design rather than your pick ax thing.  It’ll be similar, just straighter lines and squared off to give hard, sharp edges backed by a diamond design for strength,” he said.  “We’ll lengthen this pry bar to give her reach, we’ll draw out this hammerhead and make two long, squared spikes to block or break these things’ blades, we’ll square the pointy end, also for blade breaking, and we’ll beef up the handle for a big wolfy fist to hold. We’re going to have a big chunk of that twelve-pound hammerhead left over, so we’ll weld it to the end for balance and bug bashing. Now, where do we take this shit?”

Mr. Deckert had given me permission to use the building’s huge utility room for a makeshift forge and I took Mack there with the tools.

The utility room was on the lowest level, through one of the doors right off the elevator, and it sat on bedrock.  Perfect, especially when Mack pointed out a potential flaw in my plan.

“Even though I know you can heat the shit out of this metal, drawing out that hammerhead is gonna suck.  We really need a power hammer,” he said.

I grinned and placed a mental call to my ace in the hole.  Actually, ace in the ground.

Mack almost shit himself when a really big section of the floor stood up and formed the ten-foot-tall shape of Robbie the golem.

“What the fuck is he doing here?”

“I called him.”

“How’d he get here?”

“Well, it seems I pretty much screwed up when I made him.  In my defense, I didn’t have anyone to teach me how to make a golem, so I just made it up.  It started with Draco and was only more of the same when I made Robbie,” I said.  He looked thoroughly confused, so I explained.  “See, they’re not really golems.  Instead, they were kinda, sorta baby elementals.  Draco is quickly becoming a full-fledged Air elemental, which is why he gets along with Aunt Ash so well.  Robbie is not far behind him as a fledgling Earth elemental.  So to answer your question, he travels though the ground.”

“Dude, I don’t know what an elemental is but somehow I don’t think it’s normal for witches to make them,” Mack said, walking around Robbie and examining his features.

In many ways, of all the kids at Arcane, Mack and his sister Jetta are far and away the most miraculous.  Born completely mundane without any supernatural powers, talents, or abilities, they nonetheless are so thoroughly steeped in the supernatural world as to be completely comfortable with, well, everything.

And they are both disgustingly competent at living, fighting and getting along with people who have superhuman abilities and powers.  Excellent athletes, with high hand-to-eye coordination and great reflexes, they both adapt and learn with ease.  Maybe it had something to do with being teenagers when they tracked and killed off the better part of a pack of rogue werewolves by themselves.

Mack had met Robbie before and the monstrous entity was scary enough to frighten old vampires, yet Mack had such faith in me and my abilities that he had no thought that Robbie was a danger to him.  Frankly, if I wasn’t so flattered by my buddy’s trust, I’d question his sanity.

Ten feet tall and over five feet wide, Robbie had formed himself from the concrete and bedrock of the floor and was even bigger then last semester. His face had only rudimentary features, craggy blunt nose, and cavernous black eyes.  Yet I knew him and could feel his… thoughts?  Feelings?  I’m not sure either of those fit the bill, yet Robbie, for all his fearsome size and shape, was basically placid and patient.  Like rock. He preferred resting in the woods around Rowan West to doing almost anything else.

“Okay, so how are we going to employ our friend here,” Mack said, absently patting Robbie’s rocky leg.  My creation was aware of and considering the soft squishy human with almost fond thoughts.

“Chris seems to have a thing for manhole covers.  Somehow, he ended up dragging a few home from various fights.  So I lugged two down here and thought Robbie could use them like an anvil.  This chunk of I-beam was at a construction site.  I sorta borrowed it,” I said, mentally asking the young elemental to hold the big pieces of steel in his hands.

“Gonna be loud, but let’s get started,” Mack said, looking thoroughly excited.

First, I drew a huge circle on the floor with blue chalk from my bag. A straight line of yellow chalk bisected it exactly in the middle. A red line bisected that one from the other direction.  On one side of the yellow line, I drew the rune of fire; on the other side, the rune for ice. I did the same with the red line, drawing
spear
in one quadrant,
bow
in the other.  In the very center, I wrote the rune
ear
for Earth.

Then I brought Robbie into the circle, positioning him in the middle.  Mack brought the two pieces of metal in and I closed the circle, invoking it with a thought and a touch of my right index finger.

“What now?” I asked.

“Well, let’s start with the hammerhead,” Mack said.

With Robbie holding the steel in his rocky hands, I began to pull heat from the building and the ground.  With thousands of tons of mass to draw from, the sledge quickly started to glow, waves of heat radiating off it.  At this point, I activated the rune Ice to pull the excess heat and countersink it back into the ground.

“See that cherry red color?  That’s called critical temperature,” Mack said.  “Now we can work the metal, and all the carbon and other non iron elements in the alloy are in solution.”

I had no idea what he really meant, but I had Robbie pound out the metal, drawing it out while I kept it heated.  Mack cut off the excess with the edge of the prybar. 

With Mack directing, we formed two square spikes around the hole in the head that previously held the handle.  A rectangular rock was shoved into the empty space to keep it from collapsing.

When we were done, we had what looked like a short, straight-limbed pick ax.  Two ten-inch-long, inch-thick rectangles with pyramidal points jutted out from the handle collar, positioned so that they presented a diamond shape rather than square.  A seven-pound lump of steel sat unused on the ground beside us.  Mack had us set the spikes aside to cool in the quadrant of the bow while we heated the pry bar and had Robbie pound it out to seven and a half feet long. We next fit the side spikes to the prybar, sliding the collar down two feet from the pointed end. Mack pulled a plastic coffee container out of his gear.

“This is Borax.  It’ll pull the impurities out of the metal so we can weld it together,” he said, proceeding to dust the whole deal with white powder.

“You brought white dust on the train in a coffee can?” I asked.  “Lucky you’re not in prison.”

“Hmmm.  Maybe I should leave it here when I go back, huh?” he asked.

“Ya think?”

I heated the whole thing up to critical and Robbie pounded the collar with a corner of the I-beam until it was essentially welded in place.  The next hour was spent straightening the spear and making the edges really square. The point was deviated like a bird’s beak to keep it from sliding off bug armor if the weapon was jabbed.  Then we welded the lump of unused steel to the end, squaring it off like a medieval mace head.  Finally, we had the elemental golem hold the manhole covers and pound one into another while I telekinetically moved the spear through the pounding hammers to give it sharp corners.  Lastly, I used an old screwdriver I found on a shelf and engraved more runes directly into the metal, pushing power into the weapon with every scratch.