J.L. Doty - Dead Among Us 01 - When Dead Ain’t Dead Enough (9 page)

At that moment Paul reached the limit of his patience, reached the end of any sanity or reason or forbearance he might possess. The world no longer made sense, was filled with strange and completely inexplicable creatures. He just wanted Suzanna and Cloe back. He just wanted everyone to leave him alone so he could understand how they had come back to him, or, if he was nuts, the certainty of which seemed more and more likely every day, he wanted them to leave him alone in his insanity so he could at least enjoy their return. It all finally boiled up in him, coalesced into his fist as he swung a wild, roundhouse punch. He put his shoulder behind it, put every bit of strength and frustration and anger he had into it, heard the real Katherine shout, “Nooo don’t touch it,” felt her hand grab his left wrist just as his right fist slammed into the vampire’s cheek, heard a satisfying crunch as it connected, felt a not-so-satisfying pain in his fist that shot up his arm. A blinding flash exploded from his fist where it connected. A thunderous clap accompanied it, numbing his arm to the shoulder and lifting him off his feet. Reality shifted and slid along a sideways track, a strange sensation at the same time both sickening and thrilling. Then he landed face down in the dirt. It was warm dirt, uncomfortably so.

He could recall no dirt in the hospital entrance, just concrete sidewalk, the blacktop street, and across the street a paved parking lot. As he lost consciousness his last thought was that there was no reddish-brown dirt in front of the hospital; he shouldn’t be lying on dry dirt  . . .

The explosion had shattered the glass in the front entrance of the hospital. McGowan struggled painfully to his feet, noticed Colleen sitting on the floor nearby, her back against the wall, her legs splayed out in front of her. She shook her head dazedly and mumbled, “What happened?”

McGowan helped her to her feet, trying to recall what he’d seen in the instant before the explosion. He and Colleen had been following Conklin’s smeared trail of blood, had spotted him and Katherine just outside the entrance to the hospital and begun running toward them. Katherine had been standing with her back to the hospital facing Conklin, saying something to him. And then without warning Conklin had drawn his fist back, and McGowan realized he was about to punch Katherine, a heavy blow that could hurt her seriously. But an instant before his right fist slammed into her face another Katherine stepped into view and grabbed his left wrist, shouting something McGowan couldn’t hear. And then Conklin’s fist connected with the first Katherine, and a searing, white-hot light, accompanied by an explosion, erupted from the point of contact. That was all McGowan could remember. And now both Katherines and Conklin were gone.

Colleen leaned heavily on him for support as he said, “There were two Katherines.”

“I know,” she said breathlessly, sounding like someone who’d just sprinted a mile. “Had to be a vampire, old one, under glamour. But where did they go?”

McGowan thought he knew, but to say the words was a death sentence for his daughter. No, possibly not a death sentence, but death would be preferable to the alternative. “I think it dragged them into the Netherworld.”

“Oh dear God!” Colleen said. “We have to get them back.”

McGowan shook his head. “We may not be able to.”

Something tugged at his pant leg. He looked down to find two leprechauns standing there. “We can help,” one said excitedly.

“Ya,” the other said with a big grin on its face. “Isn’t this fun?”

Baalthelmass stood in a glamour of deep shadow across the street from the hospital. The Lord had dragged the stupid Tertius and the young woman into the Netherworld, either a very cunning move, or a very stupid one. Baalthelmass would try to bring Trogmoressh back, but Its protégé might now be beyond hope. In any case, if the Lord made it back from the Netherworld still possessed of his soul, and that was by no means a given, then Baalthelmass would have to reevaluate Its entire approach to this Lord-of-the-Unliving, perhaps something less direct. Cloaked in Its shape and identity as a human mortal, It could draw on many resources. It could afford to be patient and careful.

Chapter 6: Oh Hell!

Paul scrambled to his feet and stood there unsteadily, his right fist surrounded by a pale blue halo. A hot wind howled overhead in a dirty brown sky lit by a sun Paul had never before seen. The vampire, no longer draped in a glamour of human disguise, climbed awkwardly to its clawed feet a few paces from Paul, one leathery wing twisted at an odd angle. It faced him for a moment and hissed at him angrily, exposing a snouted mouth filled with razor-sharp teeth. His heart climbed up into his throat as he took an involuntary step back, instinctively putting more distance between him and that thing. But it turned away from him, turned almost casually as if he didn’t matter, turned toward a dark form lying in the reddish-brown dirt at its feet. A slimy ichorous drool dripped off its chin as it bent over the form, which Paul suddenly realized was Katherine lying on her back with her arms and legs sprawled at odd angles.

Blind panic tugged at him. His primitive fight-or-flight instincts told him to take to his heels and run, screaming hysterically like a madman. In his present state of mind he thought he could probably let out a good girlie scream as he ran, but he owed her. She’d come to his rescue in the hospital. She’d warned him this monster was a monster, even when it looked like a nice middle-aged female doctor, and she’d fought by his side in front of the hospital, fought this thing and fought homicidal Joe Stalin.

As the vampire bent down over Katherine’s still form he charged, screaming hysterically, ran straight at the monstrous creature, trying to convert his fear into anger, trying to turn it into a hard and determined fury. He slammed into the vampire’s back at full speed and hit it with a shoulder block.

Paul was not a small man, and he was in good shape, had been working out again, but he bounced off that thing like a small child running headlong into a concrete wall. Again, a blinding flash erupted from the point of contact with the monster, hammering Paul to the ground. But where Paul’s momentum failed to have any effect, the flash made the monster stagger drunkenly and fall.

Paul tried to get to his feet, made it only to his hands and knees where a dizzy wash of power and strength prevented him from rising further. The vampire flapped about aimlessly on the ground paying no attention to Paul or Katherine. She still hadn’t moved so Paul crawled toward her, and his movement drew the vampire’s attention. It looked at Paul with blood-red goat-slitted eyes, then turned and loped away with an uneven gait. Paul reached Katherine on his hands and knees and collapsed in the dirt next to her.

The Lord had fed on It. Twice! Trogmoressh hadn’t fed on the Lord; the Lord had fed on It, badly weakening It and damaging one of its wings. No mortal should be able to do that, and It dare not approach him until It understood more. No, It would bide Its time, find a moment to feed on the young witch first and gain the strength It needed to battle the Lord.

Paul lay next to Katherine in a stunned daze, his cheek resting on the reddish-brown dirt, warm dirt, uncomfortably so. He hurt everywhere, was bleeding in a dozen places. And yet, he felt an odd strength flowing through him, a strange, almost giddy sensation unlike anything he’d ever experienced. It was as if touching that vampire, demon-thing had energized him.

He struggled to his hands and knees and tried to take in his surroundings. A nearby building bore only the slightest resemblance to the hospital, though after careful consideration Paul decided it did appear to be the hospital. But it was a twisted, blasted, crumbling hulk, with only the vaguest outlines to hint at what it had once been. He looked again at the dirty brown sky with the hot wind howling overhead, blowing gusts filled with reddish-brown grit.

“Mr. Conklin, you mustn’t dally.”

Still on his hands and knees, Paul rolled to one side and sat down on the dirt, found a tall, handsome man with coal-black skin standing over him. “I just need a minute. Don’t know what’s going on.”

“Don’t take too long,” the man said. “You and the young lady need to find hallowed ground, and quickly.”

Paul nodded impatiently. “Ok, Dayandalous, ok. But why hallowed ground?”

Dayandalous squatted down to be more on a level with Paul’s eyes. “Again, you remember. That you remember anything, even just my name, is most unusual.”

Paul shook his head, trying to clear his thoughts. “And every time you leave I forget.”

Dayandalous smiled pleasantly. “Yes, that’s the way it must be. But don’t forget how you got here? You’ll need the memory of that if you hope to get back with your soul intact. And if I might offer a bit of advice  . . .”

Paul looked into Dayandalous’ eyes. The pupils were fiery red vertical slits, like those of a cat, not the horizontal slits of a goat-eyed demon. “I’ll take any help I can get.”

Dayandalous said, “Look not into the demon eye, mortal. Look
through
the demon eye.”

Paul closed his eyes, lowered his head and ran a hand through his hair. His hand came away caked with the reddish-brown grit that permeated everything here. He was tired of riddles and supernatural bullshit. He opened his eyes, about to deliver an impatient retort, but the man had vanished. He scanned his surroundings quickly, opened his mouth to shout the man’s name, but couldn’t remember it. And then a moment later he couldn’t remember why he thought he should be shouting someone’s name.

Hallowed ground.
He did remember that. And
you and the young lady
. He remembered that too. Katherine!

She was still lying on her back, head turned slightly to one side, arms and legs sprawled haphazardly, her dress torn in a dozen places, her hair frazzled and wild, a few twigs and such tangled in the strands. He knew he wasn’t supposed to move an injured person until they could determine how badly she was hurt. But he was no doctor, and he couldn’t tell if she was breathing so he dropped to his hands and knees and pressed his ear to her chest to see if he could hear a heartbeat. He was listening carefully, hoping desperately she was unhurt. Then suddenly she took a breath and spoke groggily, “Is that how you get your jollies, sneaking a look down my blouse for a boob shot?”

He suddenly realized that part of her blouse had been torn completely away and his face was pressed against an almost bare breast, and he could see into her blouse, could see most of the other breast quite clearly. He snapped his head up and said, “I uh  . . . I wasn’t  . . . uh. I mean  . . . I didn’t.”

She laughed quietly, waved his complaints aside impatiently. “I know you didn’t, Conklin. But it’s so easy to toy with your little mind. Help me up.”

He helped her to a sitting position where she sat for a moment with her face buried in her hands. Then she leaned back, opened her eyes and took her first look around. And as she did so her eyes slowly widened and her face filled with horror. “Oh shit!” she said, scrambling frantically to her feet. “Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit!”

Paul scrambled up beside her. “What’s wrong?” He had to shout to be heard above the howl of the wind.

She turned on him and shouted. “We’re in the Netherworld. We’re in the Netherworld. How did we get in the fucking Netherworld?”

“Netherworld?” Paul pleaded. “What the hell is the Netherworld?”

“Exactly,” she shouted. “It’s hell, or at least what hell in most mythologies is loosely based on. Why did you bring us here?”

“I didn’t bring us anywhere. I just hit that fucking vampire on the chin.”

She looked around desperately. “We have to find hallowed ground.”

“You mean like a church?”

“Ya, church, or graveyard, anything like that. You know this part of San Francisco better than me. Is there anything like that nearby?”

Paul couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “But this isn’t San Francisco. You just said that yourself.”

“But it is,” she said, grabbing him by both shoulders and shaking. “In a twisted, hellish sort of way, it is. The Mortal Plane and the Netherworld are connected in many places, so the reality of the Mortal Plane leaks into the Netherworld, producing counterparts everywhere. Look around.”

He scanned the twisted and tormented cityscape about them. Something had blackened and burned all of the buildings, a few so badly little more than rubble remained, and there appeared to be the flickering reddish glow of massive fires on the horizon. The dry wind howled constantly, a scorching hot air laden with a noxious combination of sulfur and wood smoke that made it difficult to breathe. An almost continuous thunder rumbled in the background, constantly waxing and waning with a vibration he could feel through the ground at his feet. But this twisted and tormented city did bear a certain resemblance to the San Francisco he knew, so he tried to recall the local layout.

“I think there’s an old church about three blocks from here,” he said tentatively. “But I’m not sure. I’m not really religious, not a church goer.”

She shrugged. “Most wizards aren’t.”

“I’m not a wizard.”

“Sure,” she said. “We’ll talk about that later.”

Paul and Katherine moved carefully, but quickly, down the street. The structures on either side had once been the classic San Francisco nineteenth-century, wood-frame houses with three or four stories of bay windows. But then Paul wondered if anything in this hell had ever been whole, if perhaps everything here was created in a state of destruction. Their condition varied from abandoned, derelict hulks, to piles of mere rubble, and everything in between.

They crossed through an intersection and the street dropped down one of those steep San Francisco hills. They’d gone about a block when Katherine suddenly said, “Wait, stop.”

“What is it?” Paul demanded.

She pointed to the top of a pile of rubble that had once been a three-story Victorian. “I thought I saw that Tertius, but without the glamour. It’s following us, and I think it was limping.”

Paul quickly told her about his brief battle with the demon when he’d first awakened. When he finished she looked him over carefully, then stepped in close, intimately close. “That was very gallant of you, Mr. Conklin.”

He suddenly became conscious of her torn blouse and the serious cleavage it exposed. She had small breasts, and she seemed to be teasing him with them. And he realized he was staring at them.

She said, “And you need to get your mind out of the gutter, Conklin, get it back on finding us some hallowed ground.” She turned and started walking down the street.

He wanted to protest, tell her she was being unfair. She was the one who’d stepped in intimately close, had practically shoved her cleavage in his face. But all he could get out was, “Why hallowed ground?”

She looked over her shoulder impatiently. “Of course, hallowed ground. We’re in the Netherworld.”

He pleaded, “There’s no
of course
for me. I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”

She stopped and turned back to face him. “You really don’t have a clue, do you?”

He lifted his hands in a prayer-like gesture. “Not the vaguest.”

She turned around and continued marching down the street. He followed while she spoke. “Ok, crash course in demonology. I told you about the vampires, and how they’re a human possessed and warped by a demon. There’re three main demon castes: Primus, Secundus and Tertius. Beyond that there’re non-caste demons like imps and succubuses and incubuses, kind of a fourth caste, the least powerful of them all. By the way, the one that attacked us in the hospital was clearly Tertius caste, maybe one or two hundred years on the Mortal Plane.”

He interrupted her. “How do you know that?”

“If it’d been a Secundus, when it fed on me the effect would’ve been far more devastating. And a Secundus wouldn’t feed on me on the spur of the moment, not like that. Besides being more powerful, Secundus demons are far more calculating and patient. A Secundus vamp would likely have tried to enthrall me first, take me to its nest and feed on me at its leisure.

“In any case, demons cannot, by themselves, cross between the Mortal Plane and the Netherworld. They have to be summoned by a mortal or Sidhe sorcerer.”

“Sidhe?” he asked.

“Ya, you know, Faerie.”

“No, I don’t know any fairies.” He couldn’t hide his frustration and his words tumbled out in a rush. “Well, I do live in San Francisco, but that’s not the kind of fairies you’re talking about, is it?”

She’d been marching along like a storm trooper; again she stopped suddenly and turned back to him. “Who’s been teaching you? Who’re you apprenticed to, that they’d leave you so ignorant?”

He shook his head. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

She frowned and opened her mouth to say something but the ground beneath their feet started to shake, threatening to drop them both on their butts. They were in the middle of the street with no tall buildings looming overhead, so they faced no danger of injury by falling debris. But Paul couldn’t help thinking of an earthquake in an old low-budget movie, opening a giant crack in the ground and swallowing them both, then closing completely. He tried to ignore his own vivid imagination.

As suddenly as it started the shaking stopped, the wind died and utter silence descended on the city about them, an eerily complete silence that felt wrong and out of place. Something in the distance cried out a high-pitched screech. Similar screeches quickly answered it, baleful, inhuman cries.