God Hammer: A novel of the Demon Accords (42 page)

I wanted to go to the baby that wouldn’t stop crying.  It was a scared cry.  An all-alone-and-abandoned cry.  But the old man in the funny clothes kept handing me playing cards that I had to throw at the red darkness.  He had a long white beard and hard dark eyes.

The cards hurt it, a little, spinning through the blood-colored clouds that filled the rest of the room and pressed against us.

A three of clubs, ten of diamonds, king of spades, all went spinning across the room as I shot them in alternating snaps from each hand.  The king must have hurt because the cloud pulled back, but only for a second.  Ace of hearts, two of spades, queen of clubs, I just kept throwing them and the old man kept handing them to me.

We were backing up, not by choice, but the damn clouds were pushing us back, probing at us from an upper corner or lower floor.  They didn’t like my cards, not one bit, but they kept pressing forward and the cards just disappeared into the red-shaded blackness.

Now we were backed into the doorway to the baby’s room, the old man behind me, feeding me an unending supply of cards.  The room was an odd sort of nursery, an antiquated Apple Macintosh on a desk in the corner, old software boxes stacked on shelves, a Microsoft poster on one wall.  The crib itself was made from Mac and PC boxes.

The pictures on the cards changed as the tough old man went through more decks, the face cards and number fonts shifting from small and shiny to old and worn, to downright archaic—big, thick, crudely drawn depictions of royalty and old-fashioned numbers.  No matter their form, coloring, or craftsmanship, they all spun off into the other room, which was now one big cloud the same hue as a storm sky at morning.  Sailors take warning.

The baby kept crying, the old man kept handing, and I kept throwing.  I held the doorframe for a while, increasing the speed of my throws, doubling and tripling cards in each hand.  But then the pace of cards coming into my hands slowed.  The old man shrugged, gave me a nod, and handed me what was obviously the final deck.

Then he moved to the crib and picked up the baby, holding it in stiff arms.  I saw it was a boy, naked and scared, although now he stopped crying and stared at the old warrior who held him.  The baby’s eyes glittered like silver or tin, light where the old man’s were black like night.

I turned back, flicking out cards in an arc, landing them on the floor in a semicircle closing off our side of the room.  The clouds flowed across the floor but stopped as if by a glass wall, rolling up to the ceiling but coming no further.  Then the cards on the floor fluttered, their edges browning a little, beginning to curl and smoke.

I turned back to the old man, but found him and the baby gone. Instead, a young boy stood naked next to the computer box crib.  About five years old, he regarded me with two mismatched eyes, one glittering silver, the other black.  I backed up and put my arms around him, shielding him from the cloud with my body.  He snuggled closer and we stood like that, waiting.  It wouldn’t be long now.

We hit the doors to the church hard, almost exploding them from their hinges.  A priest stood calmly, seemingly awaiting our arrival.

“Bring him this way,” he said, turning and leading us deeper into the sanctuary.  “Here on the altar, I should think,” he said, turning as if for approval, toward the priest’s chamber. 

Barbiel stood there nodding.  “Perfect,” he said, face very serious as he moved closer to examine Declan’s unconscious form. Stacia had simply sat down, still holding his body tightly.

“You must help him, Christian.  You are the only one who can,” Barbiel said, turning his head to look my way.

“He’s fighting Anvil, isn’t he?” I asked.  The rest of my group wore expressions of awe and it occurred to me that they were actually seeing the Angel of October.

“How?  How can Christian help him?” Tanya asked, less shocked than the others.

“The battle takes place elsewhere.  You have the means to send him aid,” Barbiel said, pointing one finger at my chest.  I looked down.  No, not my chest—he was pointing at the God Tear around my neck.

“He helped you put it into its current form, no?” Barbiel asked me.

“Yes… well, he helped his aunt help me,” I said.

“Minor distinctions.  It was his strength and power that allowed the Tear to split and form two.  Now you must send him that strength and power.”

“How, Barbiel?  How do I do that?”

“You must pull the doppleganger… what his grimoire would call your
doppleghiest
to you.  Then you must send it into the boy.”

“I don’t know how to do that.  And that thing might as soon kill him as help him,” I said.

He shook his head, curly hair barely shifting.  “No.  It is you and you are it.  And it knows him.  It knows the flavor of his power, does it not?” Barbiel asked.

I thought about how he’d been able to take the duplicate necklace that Toni wore off her neck.  Nobody but me had been able to do that so far.

“It will leave Toni unprotected,” Tanya protested.

“For moments.  Besides, no other human goes through life with such a guardian.  At this time of night, she is safe in her bed.  Now is the very best time to do it. Now, when the guardian is feeling less concern for his charge.”

“What do I do?” I asked.

“First, place the God Tear over his neck,” he instructed.  Stacia gently raised the boy’s head, letting me slip the silver links of the necklace over his thick, shaggy hair.    Oddly, I found myself thinking he would need a haircut soon.

“Think of him,” my angelic case officer said, pointing at Declan.  “Think of him in every memory you can recall while you hold the Tear in your hand.  Lailah, you can help him with your bond.”

Memories?  The one thing I was most unsure of, yet because of this kid, this teenaged powerhouse of a witch, I had my memories of Tanya back.  It seemed fitting that those memories I didn’t need help with, that the ones that included all of my interactions with Declan should be the ones to help him.

“Where do I start?” I asked.

“Where else?  The beginning.  Think of your first sight of him,” Barbiel said.

“In the silo,” Stacia said.  “You must have seen him there first.”

“When you tore the cellblock open,” another voice said.  Caeco stood near the back of the sanctuary, gun slung, fingers laced together in a nervous gesture.  “He was telling his stupid Chuck Norris jokes to Toni.”

“I remember,” I said, picturing the lanky boy trying to bolster my goddaughter’s courage with clunky jokes.

“You and furface.  Then I came along,” Stacia said. 

“They protected Toni when I couldn’t,” I said, the image of a dead assassin on the ground, killed by teens to protect the one I should have protected.

“Sheeeeit,” Lydia breathed.  I snapped around to look her way.  A violet figure stood four feet away, studying me.  I studied back.  It was like looking in a weird funhouse mirror that colored me purple.  I tilted my head, and the figure matched the motion exactly.

“Your young friend is fighting the battle of his life, almost all alone, and he is in desperate straits.  He needs the Hammer of God,” Barbiel said.  “Send your thoughts to him, Chris. Send your strength and resolve as he sent his into the Holy Tear.”

Turning from the purple me, I looked back at Declan.  His breathing was growing labored, the sweat on his forehead dripping onto the white-jacket-covered arms that held him tight.  What was he fighting in there?  What kind of battle raged in etherspace?

I coughed, the smell of the burning cards filling my nose, but I didn’t bother to look around.  Why?  Instead, I held the little boy close, trying to shelter him with my body, waiting for the end. 

The singed remnants of my protective shield fluttered back, now close to my feet, pressure beginning to build on my back.  The reddish light grew darker, the room getting colder.

A flash of violet light lit up the room, coming from the nursery windows and from the outer room.  A second burst of purple tore through the smoke, illuminating every corner.  I spun around, keeping the kid inside my arms while trying to see what was happening.  Another wave of purple light crashed into us, rocking me back on my heels, then another and another after that.  I felt the boy’s lighter body come off the ground and press against my chest with each flash.

Something fast was moving through the reddish fog, although fast doesn’t begin to describe it.  It was faster than Chris or Tanya, fast like the ghost in the clinic.  And the red cloud was frightened of it, the smoke pulling away from the figure that moved in a continuous blur, blasts of violet energy flashing from it.

Movement in my arms pulled my attention back to the boy.  He was a little bigger than before, just a bit, but it was noticeable.  Like he was now seven or eight.  He looked into the red fog, his posture straightening up.  A slim hand touched my cheek as he looked me in the eye. The black eye and the silver one were gone, replaced by swirling cyclones of the two colors.  He patted my cheek a couple of times, reached down, and picked up three of the tattered cards.  His hands moved, his motions odd, and the cards were gone, a folded paper bird in their place on his palm.  He blew it toward the clouds and the little bird flew, its tiny wings flapping.  It seemed to grow bigger as I watched, from the size of a bumblebee to that of a sparrow.  A few more flaps and it was crow-sized, then larger than the largest raven.  It swooped through the nursery air, its flapping wings driving the smoke away till the room was clear.  Purple light still flashed in the outer room and now the paper raptor flew out the doorway and the smoke was gone.

My eyes fluttered and I reopened them.  The room was gone, replaced by a fantastic vaulted ceiling; most of my view taken up by green eyes that looked both worried and scared.

“We’re going to have to buy him lots of clothes,” I said to those eyes and then I knew nothing.

“We’re going to have to buy him lots of clothes,” Declan said immediately after opening his eyes, speaking directly to Stacia.  Then his eyes rolled back and he slumped down.  Doctor Singh was on him in a heartbeat.

“He’s asleep, I think.  Nika?” he asked.

“Yeah, he’s out.  Fight seems over,” she said.

“What happened?” Tanya asked Barbiel.

“I think it’s over.  Our side won.  Maybe cigars are in order,” he said.  Then he smiled wider as something occurred to him.  “Yes, cigars all around,” he said, winking at Tanya and elbowing me.  “Wow—look at the time.  I gotta go.  Reports and all that.”

And he was gone.  We all looked around, but he simply wasn’t there.  Doctor Singh stood up and caught my eye.  “Let’s take him back to the Tower,” he said, then tilted his head and studied Tanya.  “Have you been eating enough?” he asked her.  “You’re looking peaked.”

“I’m fine,” she said. 

“No, she’s not been eating right,” I said, throwing her under the ambulance.

“Time for an examination, Princess,” Doctor Singh said, eyes narrowed.

She fought most people who gave her orders, but the good doctor had more leeway than most.  “Fine, if it will get you off my back, but first let’s get this whole mess squared away,” she said, then gave me a nasty glare.  Tough.

Back at Demidova Inc., we found a snarled mess of feds, NYPD, firefighters, and Demidova executives trying to create order from chaos.  Lydia, Tanya, and Nika waded into the mayhem and started to organize things.  Media snapped photos and reporters tried to get answers. I noticed that the massive stone man was gone, the hole in the ground gone, but the street lines disrupted as if the pavement had been recently patched.

Stacia carried Declan by the cameras and crowds without stopping and when Director Donlon stepped forward to question her, the growl that ripped from her throat froze him in his tracks.  Agent Krupp grabbed him and pulled him away, her eyes locked on the blonde wolf girl. Caeco moved past us to open the Tower’s door, letting Stacia through.

A few minutes later, we entered his suite, startling the bejebbers out of Mack, who was deep in a first person shooter game.

“Ah, what happened to him?  What happened to her?  To her clothes?” Mack asked, eyeing the billowy lab coat and torn tights.

I explained quickly as Stacia settled Declan into his own bed.  She tore off his bloody shirt with two effortless ripping motions and then covered him with the blanket folded on the foot of his bed.  “I’m gonna keep an eye on him,” she said. Caeco’s face was unreadable, but after touching Declan’s forehead with one hand, she turned abruptly and left the room. Her eyes might have been wet.

I took Mack with me, gathering up Chet and Arkady to check out the computer center.  Oddly, except for the mess of broken desks, it was mostly intact.  The mainframe was functional, according to Chet, and when we looked in on the quantum project, it seemed okay, still humming along.  “Hmm.  Blood is gone,” I noted.  The dollop of Declan’s blood that had pooled on the quantum chip was gone, not a drop to be seen.

“Holy shit, Chris.  This thing is operational.  According to these readings, its qubits are not only stable but entangled.  They freaking did it!” Chet said. “I have to test this thing.”

We left him to it, instead rounding up the comp sci interns and sending them to help him put the center back to normal.  Then I sent Mack back to Declan’s room with a hefty tray of food to feed the hungry and therefore grouchy werewolf guarding my intern.

After that, I went to check on Tanya. I found her in Singh’s examination rooms.

“Congratulations,” the doctor said to me, smiling mysteriously and leaving the room.

“What the hell does that mean?” I asked my vampire.  She looked shocked.  Pleased but shocked.

“It means that we’re going to have to empty out the pool table room in our apartment.  It’s going to need fresh paint and a crib,” she said, watching me closely.

“You’re… pregnant?”  I asked.  “How the hell did that happen?”

She raised one eyebrow slyly.  “Do I need to explain it to you?”

“No. I know how it happens. I just didn’t know it could happen to us,” I said.

“Me either.  But it has.”

“When?” I asked.

“We don’t know.  He’ll have to do more testing,” she said.  “Are you happy?”

I paused to let it sink in.  “Estatic. Confused and curious, but yes, I’m very happy.”

“Good, because I’m not sure if the rest of the world will be,” she said.

“Heaven help them if they object,” I said, suddenly savage.

“Somehow, I don’t think they’ll get any help from that department,” she said, kissing me.  “Ah, now I’m kinda hungry.  Any chance a girl can get a bite to eat?”