Smalls woke up from a nightmare. Sweat poured from every pore of his body. He couldn’t remember the last time he had such a bad dream. Satan taunted him from a Mardi Gras float, and the possessed corpses of Ashe and Cybil held him at bay while the end of the world raged around him.
He sat up and for a moment lost all sense of where he was. Then he realized that he slept on Detective Cooper’s couch. After their adventure in the old house off of Confessor Street and all the church fires, she decided to let him stay with her. It had been a long time since he had stayed in a woman’s house without being in bed with her. Much like a drunk sitting in a bar, he was bothered by old urges. He thought that might have given him extra fitful sleep.
“Are you okay?” Cooper walked into her living room. She carried a cup of coffee and wore unflattering pajamas.
“Nightmare.”
“I didn’t sleep that well either. No nightmares though.” She sipped her coffee. “Want a cup of joe?”
“Cup of joe? You are a cop, aren’t you?”
“Can’t fight who you are.”
Cooper’s cell phone rang before Smalls could reply. She answered it. Her face fell from a friendly smile to a harsh frown. He didn’t care for the look. Something in it transcended normal displeasure to straight disgust. She sputtered a string of profanities as she slammed the phone down on her coffee table.
“That good?” Smalls asked.
“Dr. Rogers is no longer in our jail.”
“He busted out?”
“He’s dead. According to the chief jailer, the video shows a small dark man appeared in a flourish of fire, killed two deputies and two inmates before ripping Rogers’ head off and disappearing into a puff of smoke.” She drank her coffee.
Smalls crossed himself and said a silent prayer for his friend. He didn’t figure it was going to help since it seemed Rogers sold his soul to Satan, but he figured it might not hurt either.
“What are they going to do about it?” Smalls asked.
“Suppress the evidence. Can you imagine if something like that gets out to the media?”
“What are we going to do about it?”
“Find Mr. Czernobog and kill him.” Cooper drank some more of her coffee.
“You know that he’s probably Satan, right?”
“That’s why I’m taking you along with me.”
Smalls knew he had to face this evil but didn’t feel very pleased about it. There was little he could actually do in a full assault on the Devil, himself. If Czernobog was connected with the Mystics of Mayhem, then his nightmare might come true. They needed to stop that parade.
“Can you get the police chief to stop the Mystics of Mayhem parade tonight?” Smalls asked.
“I doubt it. Parades bring in big bucks, plus what am I going to say, ‘There’s a good chance this parade is being put on by the Devil’? They’d laugh me all the way to the psych unit.”
“But all the evidence. The reanimated corpses and church burnings.”
“None of that can be directly linked to Czernobog or the Mystics of Mayhem.”
“So what then?” Smalls knew the answer but asked the question anyway.
“We find him and stop him before the parade gets a chance to start.”
Ashe helped one of the possessed corpses wire a speaker to a USB port so that one of the engram storage mechanisms could be played through it. He had no idea where they were, however. During the early morning hours, Czernobog had moved him and Cybil from the warehouse. Blindfolded, he felt like the ride to the new location took forever. They turned onto and off of what felt like a myriad of streets. The large area the floats were set up in was much bigger than the main room at the warehouse.
Assisting in the installation of the speakers helped Ashe figure out the Devil’s plan when the parade rolled. The lead float would begin playing unsynced music impregnated with the satanic incantation. Later floats would do the same. Once the music played for a stretch, the engram machines would switch to releasing emotions into corpses lining the street. He planned for the last engram device to contain the deadly chant. That way he had most of the parade to stop Czernobog. The last float would be the one the Devil rode on. Ashe had gotten that impression by the design of the thing. It looked like hellfire had erupted on a flatbed trailer.
“Where are we?” he asked one of the minions.
“At the holding area to wait for our parade.”
“Where is that?”
“I do not know. The Master did not tell us. He only told us to get these speakers ready and be in costume by the time the sun sets.”
“Did he say if he wanted me to put the engram devices in the drives after we finished with the speakers?”
“He did not say.”
“You can’t take a guess?”
“My way is to do what the Master says. It is only because of him that I am able to be here. I will not upset the Master.”
A burst of heat hit Ashe’s back. He turned to see Czernobog step out of flames. He already wore his parade outfit. The suit he wore was red satin with a string of red sequins running down the lapels of the jacket. A few strands of beads hung around his neck. A pair of black and silver horns rested on his head.
“You can insert the engram devices when you have completed rigging the USB ports,” he said. “There was no reason for me to tell the others this.”
Ashe dug one of the devices from his pocket. All the ones that were rigged to use the incantations were in one pocket. The one that was made to the Devil’s specifications was in the other. He inserted one of the safe devices into the USB port. The small LED screen on the speaker lit up. A string of letters appeared and then the word play. A small button underneath the screen lit up.
“Is it working correctly?” Czernobog asked.
“Looks like it.” Ashe pulled the wire that connected the system to the power source. “The world will be ready to end at your convenience.”
“Why did you unplug it?” he asked.
“To make sure it doesn’t get turned on accidentally. If that thing plays, and I’m around, I’ll be dead. What would you do if something happened and you needed troubleshooting? Erik doesn’t know how to fix these things. He’d be no good to you.”
Czernobog smiled. “You have no idea how right you are.”
He looked Ashe over. The beady eyes felt like they scanned his deepest thoughts and soul. Ashe still was not certain that Czernobog couldn’t read his mind. Perhaps he was just being toyed with to make his ultimate demise worse.
“That makes good sense. No trickery, mortal, or our deal is void. Your soul is mine and Cybil’s body belongs to whoever wants it.”
“No tricks.”
The Devil nodded and started studying the remainder of the floats. Ashe moved on to the next speaker that needed to be rigged with a USB port. What Czernobog said kept running through his head. Every other time he’d talked about the agreement, Rogers had been part of the threat. This time he clearly said whoever. Something had happened. Ashe had figured out how to stop the onslaught of the possessed corpses, he hoped, but hadn’t quite figured out how he would handle Czernobog himself. The smell of sulfur wafted around the place. Ashe kept his head down and rigged the next USB port. Much of his mental effort was put to plotting his next big move.
“They’re not going to be here,” Smalls said as he, Cooper and a sheriff’s deputy pushed through the gate at the warehouse on Michigan Avenue.
“Positive thinking, Padre,” the deputy said.
“I’m positive they aren’t going to be here.”
“Have a little faith, Smalls,” Cooper said.
The door to the warehouse opened as soon as she turned the handle. They walked in. The deputy stepped in first with his weapon drawn. Cooper entered second, and Smalls came up third. The office immediately inside the door was empty. Only one fluorescent light flickered and hummed above them. The desks that just a few days before were covered with papers and other miscellaneous flotsam were bare. The air felt cold and stale. The ventilation and heating hadn’t been on for a while.
Cooper looked at Smalls. He smiled. After years of investigating and researching strange phenomena, he’d learned that when you expect something it’s never there. When they went into the house on Confessor Street, nothing was expected to be found, and they uncovered Rogers and one of the possessed corpses. If Satan was involved like Smalls almost definitely knew was the case, only the unexpected would yield results. This was too much of a diatribe for him to go on about to Cooper and the deputy.
They walked into the lab room, empty. The large area where several floats were being constructed was bare as well. It didn’t even look like any work had been done in the vast chamber. Not a scrap of material or speck of sawdust littered the open space.
“I guess we should have listened to Father Smalls,” the deputy said. “I guess you really do have a direct line to the Almighty.”
“It has nothing to do with my being a priest, but everything to do with being a scientist. Results always come when you don’t expect them.”
“A lot like police work,” the deputy said.
“They’ve moved to the staging area already.” Cooper pulled a radio from her back pocket. “Cooper to dispatch, get me the location of where societies wait for parades to start.”
“Civic Center, over.” The dispatch didn’t miss a beat.
“Do we have any officers, city or county, out there?” Cooper asked into the radio.
“Plenty.”
“Raise one of them.”
“They won’t be there, either,” Smalls said.
“Please try some positive vibes.” Cooper waited for a voice from the radio.
“This is Smithfield out at the Civic Center, what do you need, Detective?”
“Is the Mystics of Mayhem set up out there anywhere?” Cooper asked.
“Give me a minute,” Smithfield answered back.
Smalls walked to the far corner of the room. He dug into his pocket and brought out a salt shaker. The two police officers watched him as he unscrewed the top of the shaker and started pouring the salt as he walked the perimeter. They would think he was crazy. Maybe he was. Evil had been in that place. It echoed off the walls. Salt purified. The Bible talked about the purifying effects of the stuff. He mumbled some Psalms to help the cleansing. When the first shaker ran out, he removed another and continued.
“Still with me, Cooper?” Smithfield’s voice bounced through the cavernous room.
“On pins and needles.”
“There is no Mystics of Mayhem here, and no one has heard where they have set up for tonight’s parade. A guy with the KORs thinks they’d have to be close by. Over.”
“Roger that, Smithfield. Thanks for the info.” Cooper put her radio away.
Smalls finished his circuit of the room. He used five shakers of salt on his path. The two police officers looked at him like he’d lost his mind when he came back to them.
“What were you doing?” the deputy asked.
“Salt is believed to help purge evil from places,” Smalls said.
“Does it help find needles in haystacks?” Cooper asked. “’Cause we got one now.”
“No, but magnets do. Why don’t we try to draw them out?” Smalls suggested.
“We could just call the mayor and have this parade cancelled or wait for it to start and get this guy then,” the deputy said.
Smalls and Cooper both shook their heads.
“No good waiting. If this guy gets started it’s the end of everything,” Cooper said.
“Glad you finally believe me.”
“What are you two talking about? He can’t destroy everything.”
Smalls looked deep into the deputy’s eyes. “This isn’t an ordinary man. It’s Satan, and he may very well do just that if we can’t stop him before he starts or push whatever he’s trying to do over into tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow?” Cooper asked.
“Ash Wednesday begins a holy period. It should render him close to powerless.”
“I’ll try to get the parade stopped,” Cooper said. “Father, work on that magnet.”
Smalls waited outside the police station for Cooper. Streams of people passed by. Some wore layers of shiny plastic beads; others looked as if they were just getting ready for the festivities. He always enjoyed Mardi Gras. The parades went past his apartment. He could stand at the window and watch the colorful floats and people without getting into the mass of bodies on the sidewalks. Today, however, he wished everything would hurry up.
Cooper walked down the steps to the sidewalk. She shook her head the whole way down. “Chief won’t go for shutting the parades down. He says that the mayor would veto it because of the massive amount of money that would be gone.”
“Could he just shut the Mystics of Mayhem’s parade down tonight?” Smalls asked.
“Thought of that one too, but that particular parading society has asked for no police involvement.”
“The city is okay with this?”
Cooper rubbed her first two fingers with her thumb. “Apparently the Mystics of Mayhem dropped a huge amount of money on the city council’s desk. I’m sure they could get anything they wanted.”
“Mammon, you mean. I suppose Satan has an unlimited supply of wealth.”
“He is the Devil.” Cooper dug into the bag she had slung across her shoulder and brought out a pack of cigarettes. She bumped one out, pulled it from the pack with her lips, and offered Smalls one. He declined. She lit hers up. “What about that magnet?”
“When did you start smoking?”
“I do under stress. So how about that magnet?”
Smalls rubbed the back of his neck, something he did more when nervous. “You might want to stop by one of those fancy tobacco places near here and get a pipe and a whole lot of loose tobacco. I’ve known what to use for a magnet since we were at the empty warehouse. Problem is I can’t use it.”
“Why not?”
“Because it will tip our hand. The only defense and way to stop all this is to use an incantation to ward off evil. You saw what they did the other day at ATU and when you arrested Rogers. We could go to the staging area for the Mystics of Mayhem, which would have to be the parking deck for the cruise line that just pulled out of town. It’s the only place big enough to keep floats in that’s close to the parade route. I would use a light incantation to make the possessed corpses sick if you will. That might draw Satan out, but if we didn’t succeed in stopping the parade, he would know our only working tactic and could plan for it.”
“That is pipe-worthy.”
“There are other problems. The incantations may work on some but not all of the possessed corpses, and it won’t work at all with Satan.”
“What will kill him?”
“Nothing can kill him, and I don’t know what might cast him back to Hell.” Smalls rubbed his neck hard now.
“I know that it’s early, but let’s get over to Government Plaza. I want to be on the barrier on when the Mystics of Mayhem roll,” Cooper said.
Smalls wished that he could feel optimistic about things, but he only knew of one definite way to completely defeat Satan and that was God. He looked at the sky. It began to turn purple as evening crept closer. Something should be different. He figured that the night of the great battle with Satan and humanity would have more electricity in the air. It felt ordinary, like any other Tuesday.
“Peace and safety, then sudden destruction,” he whispered as he followed Cooper toward the parade route.