part0006

Brent Lawson thrashed, fighting with all his strength against the creature that held him down. He tore free from the bonds that restrained him, overwhelmed by the smell of sulfur and the smoke that burned his eyes.

Tasting blood, Brent’s heart thudded, and his breath came short and fast, sweat plastering his clothes to his body. Another surge and he fell, landing on his hands and knees.

Brent opened his eyes, sure he would see the ruins outside of Mosul, where his career—and his sanity—went up in smoke. Instead, he found himself staring into the carpet on his bedroom floor and trailing the shreds of yet another ruined bedsheet he had torn to pieces.

“Shit,” he mumbled, falling back on his ass. He brought his knees up and covered his face with his hands until his breathing slowed and his heart stopped racing. “I’m home. I’m safe. It’s over,” he chanted silently, repeating the words until the shaking stopped.

Only then did he feel the pain. Adrenaline blocked out the ache of bruised muscles and the burn where stitches closed fresh gashes. The blood seeping down his chest told Brent that he had probably popped a few sutures in his wild struggle against the shadows that haunted his dreams.

“Fuck it all.” He staggered to his feet, knowing that he wouldn’t be getting any more sleep before dawn. The light in the kitchen guided him; the only thing worse than night terrors was waking in total darkness. Brent turned on the faucet in the sink and ducked his head beneath the cold water, sluicing it over his face and short hair. He came up, dripping like a wet dog, and blotted dry with a hand towel, then grabbed a glass and a bottle of Jack Daniels and sat at the kitchen table.

Outside, an autumn wind rattled the shutters. The old house on Pittsburgh’s South Side held both his office and his apartment. A cold draft made him shiver, and his heart spiked again, remembering the slither of icy fingers against his skin in the darkness, on a night not nearly long enough ago.

Enough . Brent sucked in a deep breath and let it out slowly, willing himself to be still, hating the way his hand trembled as he poured a couple of fingers of whiskey into the glass. This wasn’t the first time he’d had a one-sided conversation with “Jack,” and it wouldn’t be the last. Not until he found the fight he couldn’t win.

Brent ran a hand through his wet hair, then rubbed his neck. When he finally sipped his drink, the glass was steady. The whiskey burned, and Brent knew it would take the edge off both the dreams and the aching muscles from the fight in the warehouse. Shit, everything had gone wrong so fast.

The dream was still vivid; it always was, even after five years. He could see the ruins of the village fifty klicks from Mosul, with artillery fire lighting up the night. The sulfur mines were burning again, stinking up the air and settling yellow dust over everything. He and his team were part of a unit fighting the insurgents, but there’d been explosions, and they’d gotten cut off from the others. Under fire in hostile territory, they had ducked into the shell of a stone building, hoping to ride it out until the enemy fighters moved on.

Jamison had seen it first, the black shadow that moved all wrong in the moonlight. Hendricks took a shot at it, but the bullet went right through like it was made of mist. The thing took on the form of a woman, tall and statuesque, with red eyes and sharp, white teeth.

She didn’t notice them at first. The dark and terrible creature swept into the battle, trailing the fog behind her. Men screamed, and the rat-tat-tat of automatic weapons split the air, and then, only silence.

“What do we do, Captain?” Jamison had asked. Hendricks and the others had looked to Brent, expecting him to know how to hold off a monster. They didn’t cover ancient Sumerian demons in Basic Training, so it was a damn good thing Brent had played video games.

“Fall back,” Brent ordered. They couldn’t go far. The creature—whatever she was—prowled the ruins ahead of them, and the firefight was still going strong behind them and on both sides. But they needed a defensible position, and what they had at the moment were three walls and no roof.

He spotted a small house that managed to remain relatively unscathed. It had only one room—all the better for defense—and its occupants had fled, along with most of the other civilians. The glass was gone from all the windows, and its door was torn off the hinges, but it had a roof, and the walls were solid.

“I want salt. Anything you’ve got that’s iron. Whatever will burn—lighter fluid, alcohol, I don’t care,” Brent ordered. “If you have religious medallions, make sure you’re wearing them and have them out. Say a prayer, if you’re the praying kind. It can’t hurt.”

“What is that thing, sir?” Benny, the youngest of the team asked, and while he looked terrified enough to shit himself, he stayed at his post.

“Death,” Brent replied, although he did not know how right he was until much later.

How do you fight a demon? He wracked his brain for what he could remember from games and movies. At his command, Jamison laid down thin lines of salt from what they had in their rations and could scavenge from the house where they’d taken shelter. Brent ordered Hendricks to grab any empty bottles he could find as well as the cooking oil from the house and their lighter fluid and begin making Molotov cocktails.

“Pray over the oil,” Brent instructed. “Anybody here got a rosary?”

Benny held one up. “Right here, Cap.”

“Has it been blessed?”

“My grandma brought it back for me from the Vatican,” he said. “They told her it was.”

“Dunk it into that bucket of water and swirl it around, then say a prayer over it,” Brent said. Outside, the screams and gunfire waned.

“What do you think’s up with all the funny marks?” Jamison asked as he finished putting down salt. Brent looked up and followed the soldier’s gesture toward the scratches that covered the small building’s walls.

Brent had heard that game designers and scriptwriters drew on legend and lore, although he’d always doubted the authenticity of their creations. But now, as he recognized the symbols, he had never felt more vindicated for all his hours leveling up.

“That’s why the house is still standing,” he said reverently. Some of the scratches looked like intersecting “Vs,” what one game called “witch marks.” On each wall, a pentacle in a circle was surrounded by four crude drawings. The heads of a horned bull, a lion, a crow, and what looked like an Egyptian pharaoh marked the quarters of the circle, and numbers were scratched into each segment of the pentacle. He glanced around, looking for more charms, and saw crossed twigs wound with yarn dangling in front of each window.

“Sir?” Jamison asked.

“The symbols, the charms, they’re all ways to protect against demons,” he said, still gobsmacked that he seemed to have stepped out of the real world and into one of his games.

“Demons?” Hendrick echoed. “That’s what that…thing…is?”

“Got a better idea?” Jamison challenged his buddy.

“If the marks work, then where’re the people who lived here?” Benny asked.

Brent shook his head. “No idea. Maybe they went to get food, and couldn’t get back when the fighting started. Or maybe they were forced out. The marks keep out demons, not people.”

“Do you hear that?” Jamison asked suddenly. Brent and the others paused, but the night had gone quiet. Brent’s eyes widened as he realized that the silence was profound.

“They’re not fighting anymore,” Hendricks said in a hushed voice.

“Maybe they moved on?” Benny replied, and the hope in his voice broke Brent’s heart.

“I don’t think so,” he said. “We stay here, until daybreak. The demon’s power will be weaker once the light comes up.”

“How do you know all this demon shit, Cap?” Jamison asked. “You got a priest in the family?”

He could tell them the truth, that what he knew came from playing games and watching TV, and see their fragile faith shatter, or lie and give them something to believe in. “Yeah,” he replied. “Something like that.”

They hunkered down, waiting out the night. Then the shouts of insurgents rose over the distant thunder of bombs, and Brent waved his men to stay down and have their weapons ready. He glimpsed a group of a dozen fighters who came charging into what was left of the village like they were late for a party. He couldn’t make out their faces, but he bet they were young and angry, anxious to prove themselves.

The night grew suddenly cold, and the hair on Brent’s arms rose. He gestured for his small band of survivors to stay where they were and remain silent. The wind swept across the wrecked houses and burned-out vehicles, whistling through crevices. A feeling of dread rose in Brent’s chest. The insurgents outside, who had at first been jubilant, grew quiet, and then began to shout in terror.

Boots thudded against the hard ground, followed by gunfire and screams. The last of the men begged and sobbed, then the voices abruptly went silent.

Jamison’s eyes were wide, white orbs against his dark skin. Benny clutched the rosary, lips moving silently in prayer. Hendricks gripped a gun, his jaw set in anger. Brent held his breath, hoping the angel of death would pass over them.

The smell of blood, piss, and gunpowder filled the air. Then red eyes appeared at the window, and Brent sprang back with a gasp. Mavet—that was what the insurgents had called the demon—vanished, only to reappear framed in the doorway. Her dark form looked solid, blacker than the night around her. Brent and the others froze, wondering if she would sweep into the house and kill them all, but she did not pass the salt line at the door.

“Throw the bottles!” Brent ordered. Jamison scrambled for the lighter and sent two of the incendiaries through the doorway.

The rag stoppers burned bright as the improvised bombs flew through the entrance and burst apart in a plume of flames just outside the house. They could see Mavet clearly silhouetted against the firelight, saw blood dripping from her fangs. The demon was a primal force that lured its victims with a lethal attraction, like the urge to step too close to the edge of a cliff to see the view.

Benny moved, but Hendricks clamped a hand on his shoulder and shoved him down.

“Nobody’s going anywhere until daybreak,” Brent ordered.

Throughout the night, Mavet pounded on the roof and on the walls or threw herself at the open windows and doors, but the wardings held. Benny prayed, switching from the Hail Mary to the Our Father and back again. Jamison hummed hymns that Brent recognized from his childhood in South Carolina. Hendricks hurled bottles of holy water and Molotov cocktails, as his curses grew more obscene and creative.

A strange inner coldness filtered through Brent, bringing calm and detachment. He had evaded another demon, years ago, and it cost him his parents and twin brother. If this was the reckoning for that painful grace, Brent was ready to accept his fate, but he had no desire to hasten it.

When the long night finally ended, and the sun rose, the sounds of battle ceased. Mavet had vanished with the darkness, leaving behind the savaged bodies of the insurgents.

They heard a chopper, and Brent could have wept for joy. “Don’t say anything about Mavet,” he cautioned the others. “They won’t believe us. Just say we were pinned down and rode out the firefight. That’s an order.”

Brent’s shrill ringtone brought him back to the present, leaving Mosul and the demon in the past. “Lawson,” he answered, only belatedly checking the number.

“Hey Brent, it’s Mark. I catch you at a bad time?” A glance at the clock told Brent it was just after two in the morning.

Brent scrubbed a hand down over his face to drive away the last of the dreams and memories. “No, I’m awake. Whatcha need?” His Southern accent got thicker when he was tired, and the whiskey deepened it.

“Just got in. Been out all night after a bunch of ghouls that got loose.” Mark Wojcik’s offhanded tone didn’t fool Brent. He’d been on those kinds of hunts himself and knew that it took hours for the adrenaline to stop pumping, and for the reality of still being alive to sink in.

“Sounds like fun,” Brent replied. Ghouls were fast and vicious, but relatively stupid compared to other creatures, like the nachzehrer he and Travis had faced down in the warehouse.

“Hey, I called Simon for some research, and he said you’d been asking about vampires. You need any help? I can be down there in a couple of hours. I know it’s late, but I figured I’d better call. Don’t do anything stupid. If it’s vampires, let me help. You don’t tackle those bastards on your own.”

Both Mark and Brent relied on a loose network of experts in the occult, and Myrtle Beach-based folklorist and psychic medium Simon Kincaide was both a resource and a friend.

Brent took another sip of whiskey and reminded himself that he was lucky to have friends who gave a damn. Mark usually handled the northwestern corner of the state, near Lake Erie, but on occasion, hunts brought him as far south as Pittsburgh.

“I appreciate it,” Brent said, and he meant it. “But we took the son of a bitch down last night.”

His pride made him hesitate for a moment, then he decided that Mark probably needed to know about the demon-hunting ex-priest. “I went into a warehouse after the bastard, and it turned out to be different from what Simon and I thought it would be. You ever heard of a nachzehrer ?”

“Can’t say I have.”

“It’s a shifter-vamp. I didn’t have the right ammo. Fucker would have got me, but this guy came out of nowhere and blew him away. Next thing I knew, I woke up in the clinic of a homeless shelter downtown. Turns out, the guy’s an ex-priest, and he actually seemed offended that I was monster hunting in his territory.” Brent managed a harsh laugh.

“Ex-priest?” Mark echoed. “Did he have ninja moves?”

Brent frowned, not sure whether Mark was poking fun. “Actually, kinda.”

“Shit,” Mark muttered. “That means he probably is—or was—Sinistram. They’re trouble.”

Brent pinched the bridge of his nose. He’d grown up nominally Methodist, and so the intricacies of Roman Catholicism eluded him. “What’s Sinistram? Aren’t they the guys you work for?”

“No. I report to the Occulatum. Our priests are advisors and do exorcisms and that kind of thing, but they pay guys like me to do the fighting. The Sinistram, they’re badass. If the Occulatum is the Church’s version of the FBI, then the Sinistram is Vatican Black Ops. No one’s even supposed to know they exist.”

Brent knocked back the rest of his whiskey and poured himself another. “So I’m guessing they wouldn’t take kindly to rogue agents, like me.” His demon hunting was unofficial and very personal.

“Yeah, no. Not so much. You’re saying he broke cover to take you back with him?”

“You expected him to leave me there?”

Mark’s silence suggested that very thing. “I’ve only heard whispers about the Sinistram, but they’re the kind of guys who shrivel the nuts off the biggest badasses in the room. So watch your step, and don’t spread the story around.”

“Who am I gonna tell besides you and Simon?” Brent replied. “It’s not like I post this stuff on the internet.”

“Speaking of Simon,” Mark replied, veering the conversation to a new topic, “he wants you to call him—at a decent hour. Said he has a message for you.”

A chill went down Brent’s spine. Simon Kincaide was a gifted medium and clairvoyant, as well as being a walking encyclopedia of folklore and mythology. If Simon had a “message,” then it was almost certainly from the other side of the Veil.

Brent could tell from Mark’s voice that the other man had started to wind down from the hunt. “Get some rest,” Brent advised. “I’ll do my best to steer clear of ninja priests. But if you know of a good place to stock up on silver coated hollow points, text me. I apparently need to up my game.”

Mark promised to send him a reliable source for the ammo and ended the call. Brent stared out the kitchen window as he finished his second drink. He was too wired to sleep, even after the whiskey, and it would be hours yet before he could call Simon. Brent’s office, Lawson Investigations, didn’t open until nine, not that a private investigator got a lot of walk-in business.

With a grunt, he got up and walked to the counter, and started a pot of coffee brewing. Then he grabbed his laptop from the ottoman in the living room and brought it to the kitchen table. Brent spent a couple of hours chasing down details for the two open investigations he had under contract. Those jobs paid the bills, but they weren’t what drove him.

He poured another cup and shifted his focus. Brent needed another hunt to occupy his time and keep his mind off old nightmares. By now, he knew what to look for in unsolved murders and cold cases, details that didn’t add up, oddities more likely to be supernatural than psychopathic.

Missing person cases were usually a good place to start. Brent settled in, bringing the coffee pot over to minimize distractions, and started combing through reports for anything that seemed odd.

Most folks didn’t like to think about how many adults went missing every day. Big cities, small towns, and places in between, people vanished, and a disturbing number were never seen again. Sure, some of those were runaways or people intentionally looking to leave their old life behind, although that was much more difficult now than it used to be, unless you were a CIA operative, or in Witness Protection. Many of those missing individuals would eventually be found, victims of violent crime and trafficking or wandering the streets, homeless and drugged.

Some were never found. When Brent left the Army and went to work for the FBI, he chased his share of serial killers. He knew that some of those psychopaths remained on the loose, evading capture. But the small number of true serial killers weren’t prolific enough to account for the rest of the missing people. Brent chalked those disappearances up to a different kind of monster.

He’d spent three years with the FBI, but even then, he couldn’t escape run-ins with the demonic. He’d quit rather than risk the lives of his team, and ended up here, in Pittsburgh, taking a job as a beat cop working the night shift until he could get his investigator’s license and go out on his own. The PI work paid the bills. Hunting monsters was purely for revenge.

A text message pinged. A glance told him it was his girlfriend, Angela, bored with the night shift at the medical center.

“Couldn’t sleep. What, no drunks in the ER?” Brent texted back.

Angela worked rotating shifts as a trauma nurse at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center and usually came off nights with stories of shootings, DUI accidents, and gang fights. She rarely had enough downtime to eat, let alone be bored.

Brent had met Angela when a fight gone wrong with a ghoul had landed him in an ambulance. He’d been able to blame the gashes on a car accident, but the upside was meeting Angela. That she’d stuck around after he finally told her his whole story still amazed him, but Brent wasn’t about to question good fortune, because it happened so rarely.

“Just as well you’re working. I would have woken you up. Dreams.” He didn’t need to say more. Angela had woken to his cries and thrashing more than once, and each time, Brent was certain she’d walk out, disgusted by how broken he was. So far, she proved him wrong.

“Always,” she replied, adding a couple of hearts and a sultry winking smiley for good measure.

By the time the sun rose, Brent had found half a dozen disappearances that didn’t fit any of the usual patterns. That was suspicious, but when he plotted the last known locations on a map and found them all along Interstate 80, and all within the past four months, he knew he was onto something. In each case, witnesses had spotted a large black truck, no plates, and no description of a driver. He sat back, staring at his screen with satisfaction.

“Challenge, accepted.”

His ringtone startled him, and Brent glanced at the ID. “Simon. You’re up early.”

“I’ve got inventory to put away at the store before we open,” Simon replied. He ran Grand Strand Ghost Tours in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, and his shop also stocked a wide variety of crystals, charms, and amulets as well as other protective supplies.

“I was going to give you a call in a bit. Mark said you had a message for me?” Brent steeled himself, afraid of what Simon would say next.

“Yeah. From Danny.”

Brent closed his eyes and took a deep breath. One hand gripped the edge of the table, white-knuckled, and his gut clenched. “Tell me.”

“You know he doesn’t mean to hurt you,” Simon said gently.

“I know. It’s just…”

“Yeah,” Simon agreed. “I understand.” He paused, and Brent guessed that carrying messages from Beyond took a toll on the medium as well. “He worries about you,” Simon went on in a quiet voice. “He doesn’t blame you.”

“He said ‘Sherry’ and ‘coal mine’ and ‘not the first time.’ Does that make sense to you?”

Brent shook his head, even though he knew Simon couldn’t see him. That meant Simon also couldn’t see the tears that filled his eyes at the thought of Danny reaching out to him from the Other Side. “No. Not at all.”

“Danny seemed agitated this time,” Simon told him. “He pushed harder with his energy. Gave me a migraine. So it was really important for him to tell you that, and I think he’s afraid that you’re in danger.”

Brent’s dry laugh was bitter. “Nothing new about that.” Danger, like demons, seemed to haunt Brent. One of these days, his luck wouldn’t hold, and he’d finally catch up with Danny.

“If you won’t listen for your own sake, or for his, then for hell’s sake, do it for mine,” Simon said wearily. “I get tired of the headaches.”

“Roger that,” Brent replied. An awkward silence stretched. “Hey, Simon—thanks. I appreciate it. I do. It just throws me when it happens, you know?”

“He also said to tell you that there’s no hurry to join him, so don’t take chances.”

“That’s Danny,” Brent agreed. “Always the careful one.”

Simon said goodbye, telling him to stop in if he ever made a trip to the beach. Brent stared at the phone after the call ended, ignoring the now-cold coffee in his cup, resolutely refusing to top it off with Jack.

Starting the morning with a message from his dead twin brother pretty much guaranteed that the rest of the day couldn’t get any worse.