Forsaken (42 page)

Another chime. On some level it felt good to know people cared, but most of them were just trying to hear the inside story.

Not happening.

Riley typed a response to the last message:

I’M OKAY. PASS IT ON.

To her annoyance, the hot chocolate had cooled beyond what was acceptable drinking temperature, but she sipped it anyway. She kept her eyes riveted on the cup’s contents, away from the television screen. Someone scraped a chair across the floor as they sat at a table and Riley jumped at the sound, half expecting a horde of demons to pour through the front door at any moment.

The cup trembled in her hands.

I have to find my dad.
It was unlikely his body was buried under the rubble at the Tabernacle, not when a necro went to all the effort to summon him from his grave. By now that very necromancer would be lining up someone to buy Master Trapper Paul Blackthorne, if he hadn’t been sold already. Once he was owned by someone it’d be nearly impossible to get him back. She could take his new owner to court to prove the summoning hadn’t been legal, but rich people had expensive lawyers and she was barely making the rent. By the time the case reached a judge her father would be back in the ground, anyway. Deaders weren’t good for much more than a year, even with the best of care.

What is it like to be dead and walking around like you’re still alive?
Besides the creep factor, it had to be truly weird. Did her dad remember dying? Did he remember the funeral and being buried? Did he even remember he had a daughter?

Spiky cold zipped down Riley’s spine. She had to get her head in the game.

I’ll find him. I’ll get him back in the ground and that’ll be the end of it.

A timid voice broke through her dark thoughts.

“Ah, ah…’scuse me?” it said.

Riley looked up to find a freckled-faced boy watching her. He was about seven years old with big, brown eyes.
When he gets older, girls are going to love those.
A man stood right behind him, his hands on the boy’s shoulders.

“Go on, son,” he urged, smiling politely.

The boy gathered his courage. “Can I … can I have your aut’graph?”

You’re kidding me.

“But I’m … I’m…”
Not important.

“You fought all those demons,” the boy said. “It was awesome!”

Awesome
wasn’t the word she’d have chosen. Hellish. Bloody. Brutal. Still, the kid was so sincere she couldn’t blow him off.

“Sure.” Riley scribbled her signature on a Grounds Zero napkin with the pen his father handed her. The boy beamed like he’d just met the president or a rock star.

“Thanks!” He took off like a shot, bearing his prize back to a woman who sat at a table near the front of the store. Probably his mother.

Riley handed back the pen. “I’m not anyone special,” she said, feeling like a fraud. “I’m just an apprentice. The other guys, they’re the real deal.”

The boy’s dad shook his head. “I think you’re selling yourself short. We just want you to know we think y’all are real brave. We’re praying for you.”

“Thanks,” she said, not knowing what else to say.
We’re going to need it.

Mercifully, the guy retreated and no one else came up to her.

Her eyes wandered back to the television. A different reporter was doing a play-by-play of last night’s horror. He had it mostly right—the local Trappers Guild had held a meeting at the Tabernacle in downtown Atlanta just like they always did. In the middle of the meeting, the demons had arrived. Then it got bad.

“Eyewitnesses say that at least two different kinds of Hellspawn were involved in the attack and that the trappers were quickly overwhelmed,” the reporter said.

Three different kinds, but who’s counting?

Riley frowned. The trappers hadn’t been overwhelmed. Well, not completely. They’d even managed to kill a few of the things.

When she went to pick up the cup of hot chocolate her hands were still shaking. They’d been that way since last night and nothing she did made them stop. She downed the liquid in small sips, knowing people were watching her. Talking among themselves. Someone took a picture of her with their cell phone.

Ah, jeez.

In the background, she could still hear the reporter on CNN.

“A number of the trappers escaped the inferno and were immediately set upon by a higher level fiend.”

The higher level fiend had been a Grade Five demon that’d opened up deep holes in the ground, spun off mini tornadoes, and caused the earth to shake. All in an effort to take out one trapper.

Me.

If it hadn’t been for Ori, a freelance demon hunter, the Five would have killed her just like it had her dad.

“Eyewitnesses are saying they saw angels last night,” the reporter continued. “We had Dr. Osbourne, a professor of religious studies at UC Santa Barbara, review the videos. He’s with us here today via satellite.” A gray-haired man appeared on the screen, solemn and stern. “What’s your take on this amazing event, doctor?”

“I’ve watched the videos and all that is visible is a circle of incredibly bright light that surrounds the demon trappers. I have colleagues in Atlanta who’ve claimed to see angels in your city. They’ve appeared throughout the Bible to Abraham, to Jacob. Sodom and Gomorrah rated two of them. In this case, they were actively protecting the trappers from Hellspawn. Biblically, I’d say that’s significant.”

Last night all the rules of engagement had changed.

Riley dug in her messenger bag, retrieved a pen and began a list on a crisp white napkin.

Find Dad

Bust Holy Water Scam

Save the World

Do Laundry

Buy Groceries

As she saw it, if number three on the list didn’t work out, the last two weren’t going to be needed.

TWO

Feeling a tickle in his throat, Denver Beck coughed deeply in an attempt to purge the stale smoke from his lungs. It did little good. In the distance, firefighters moved across the Tabernacle’s rubble, working on the hot spots and searching for charred bodies in the mounds of broken bricks and charred wood.

I should have died last night.
In the past, it wouldn’t have mattered. Now it did. It was fear for Riley that had driven him out of the smoke and flames.

To his right, Master Trapper Angus Stewart leaned heavily on his cane in the late afternoon sun. His usually ruddy face was nearly the color of his white hair, pale against the bloodstained bandage tucked into his hairline. They stood near one of the many holes in the Tabernacle’s parking lot, the stench of burnt asphalt hanging heavy in the air. Beck bent over and stared into the hole’s maw, which was laced with tangled wires and debris. A thin column of steam rose from the center of the crater.

“How does a demon do this kind of damage?” he said, shaking his head at the sight.

“The Geo-Fiend just waved its hands and this abyss appeared. They have some strange power over the earth and the weather,” Stewart said in his rich Scottish accent. It was still noticeable, though blunted by a decade in Atlanta.

Beck straightened up, the demon wound on his thigh cramping in protest. The dressing was leaking and the drainage had soaked into his blue jeans. He needed more aspirin—his temperature was up, and every now and then his teeth would chatter. Like a mild case of the flu with claw marks as the bonus.

Everythin’ has changed now.
He knew angels were for real; he’d seen them around Atlanta. Most were the ministering kind, the most prolific of Heaven’s folk who came and went doing whatever God wanted them to do. He hadn’t seen any of the higher realm, the ones with the flaming swords. He had last night.

Beck shook his head, unable to deal with how eerie the things had been. At least seven feet tall, clothed in eye-blinding white with shimmering alabaster wings edged in gray, their fiery swords had roared like summer thunder and filled the night air with the crisp tang of ozone.

“I’ve never heard tell of Heaven steppin’ in to protect trappers,” Beck said in a lowered voice, mindful of a television news crew on the other side of the parking lot. They were all over the city now, trying to get a handle on one of the biggest stories to hit Atlanta since the Olympics. “Why’re the demons workin’ together now? It feels like a war’s brewin’.”

“So it does.” Stewart cleared his throat. “Seein’ the angels make ya a believer?”

Beck blinked at the question.
Had it?
He’d never really thought much about God, and he figured the feeling was mutual. “Maybe,” he admitted.

Stewart huffed in agreement. “The city will be wantin’ action.”

“Master Harper will take care of that, won’t he?” Harper was the most senior trapper in Atlanta and Riley’s master. From what Beck could tell he was a serious piece of work, but a good trapper when he wasn’t drinking.

“Nay, not with his ribs bein’ the way they are,” Stewart said. “I’ll have to take the lead.” He paused a moment, then added, “I’m pleased ta hear young Simon’s gonna make it. That’s good news for Riley.”

“Yeah,” Beck replied, unsure of where the old master was heading with that last comment.

“She and Simon have taken a fancy ta each other, did ya know? They were holdin’ hands and kissin’ before the meetin’. They didn’t think I saw them.”

“Kissin’?” Beck felt something heavy form in the middle of his chest, like a thick stone weighing on his heart. Had to be because of the demon wound, they always made a person feel weird. It wouldn’t do him any good to think of Riley as more than just Paul’s little girl.

“Ya didn’t know?” the master asked, all innocence.

Beck shook his head. He’d known Riley and Simon were spending time together—they were apprenticing with Harper and saw each other every day. But he hadn’t realized their relationship had gone that far. She was only seventeen, and now that both of her parents were dead he felt responsible for her. Sort of like a big brother. Maybe something more.

“Yer frownin’, lad,” Stewart observed.

Beck tensed, uncomfortable with the old trapper’s scrutiny. “Simon’s okay,” he acknowledged. “But he’s not what she should be thinkin’ about right now. I’ll have a talk with him once he’s better. Warn him off.”
Let him know if he goes too far with her I’ll rip his damned head off.

The master gave him a fatherly smile. “Let
them
sort it out, lad. Ya canna keep her in a bubble the rest of her life.”

Wanna bet?
It’s what Paul would have wanted and, if he was honest, the only way Beck could sleep at night. As he stared at the broken landscape and the savaged building, his mind filled with images from the night before. Of demons and the trappers battling for survival. Of Riley in the middle of the flames. How close he’d come to losing her. Beck shuddered, ice shearing through his veins.

Stewart laid a heavy hand on his shoulder, startling him. “I know ya stayed inside that furnace until the very last. That takes stones, and I’m damned proud of ya. Paul would have been as well.”

Beck couldn’t meet the master’s eyes, troubled by the praise.

The Scotsman’s hand retreated. “Ya can’t carry it all on yer shoulders, broad as they are.”

He sounded just like Paul, but that made sense—Master Stewart had trained Riley’s father, who in turn had apprenticed Beck. From what Paul had said, the Stewarts were some of the best demon trappers in the world.

This man thought he’d done all right last night.
He’s just bein’ nice.

As if knowing a change of topic was needed, Stewart asked, “Any idea who pulled Paul from his grave?”

That was the other thing hanging over them. Though he’d been dead for two weeks, Riley’s father had appeared at the trapper’s meeting, summoned from his eternal rest by a necromancer. He was a reanimated corpse now, a Deader, money on the hoof providing he’d made it out of the Tabernacle in one piece.

“Riley did everythin’ she could to keep him in the ground,” Beck complained. “She sat vigil every damned night, made sure there was a consecrated circle around his grave. Then some bastard steals him when she isn’t there. It just sucks.”

“She have any notion who did it?” Stewart nudged.

“I didn’t get a chance to ask her.” Which wasn’t quite the truth. Beck could have. They’d huddled together in her family’s mausoleum in Oakland Cemetery until dawn, on hallowed ground in case the demons came after them. She’d been so upset about Simon and the others, she’d cried herself to sleep. At the time it didn’t seem important to know who’d resurrected Paul, so he’d just held her close, kept her safe, thanking God she’d survived. Trying to work through his feelings for the girl. When he’d left her this morning she’d still been asleep, dried tears on her cheeks. He hadn’t had the heart to wake her.

Stewart shifted position again, he was hurting more than he let on. “I canna help but believe there’s a connection between the demons’ attack and Paul’s reanimation,” the old trapper mused.

“How could there be?”

“Think it through. Wouldn’t he have gone off with the necro who summoned him rather than droppin’ in for a wee visit with his old mates?”

“I don’t know,” Beck said, swiping a hand through his blond hair in agitation. “I’ll know soon enough. I’ll find the summoner who did it and we’ll come to an understandin’—Paul goes in the ground or the necro does.”

Stewart stiffened. “Be careful on that account. The summoners have wicked magic and they’ll not appreciate ya gettin’ in their business.”

Beck didn’t respond. It didn’t matter what happened to him; Paul Blackthorne was going back in his grave and that was that. He hadn’t been able to keep him alive, but he could honor his friend’s memory in other ways. He’d do it for Paul’s daughter, if nothing more than to give her peace of mind.

“I hear that Five went after Riley, in particular,” the master stated. “I wonder why.”

Beck had no answer to that. Grade Five Geo-Fiends were the big boys of Hell who generated earthquakes and spawned mini storms as easily as he took a breath. A Five had killed Paul, and Beck was willing to bet it was the same one who’d gone after Paul’s daughter during the battle.