Gunmen stood all over the float, pointing an impressive variety of assault rifles at our suddenly inadequate seeming van. As I opened my mouth to protest the absurdity of the situation, bullets slammed into the van’s side panel, punching through the steel and bouncing around inside like angry hornets. Sunlight streamed through the holes in the side as Ramon stomped his foot down on the accelerator, sending us lurching forward.
“Well, you don’t see that every day,” Ramon replied just before a bullet smacked into the side of his head and bounced off with the hard twang of metal on metal. “Goddammit.”
“Well, Mac, if you have any mojo left, now would be the time,” Maya said, scrunching herself in the foot space in front of her seat as the float swung widely off the main street, slammed partially into a light pole that ripped off Peppa’s ear, and came barreling toward us.
“Seriously?” I asked as flowers streamed off Peppa’s face, and I realized I could see what looked like a fucking missile launcher inside. The mechanism inside the float groaned. Hydraulic presses moved and gears spun, pushing the tip of the missile through Peppa’s open mouth. In moments, it’d be aimed at us, and because I had no desire to be here when that happened, a sudden, stupid idea popped into my head.
“We’re definitely up to three saves,” Ramon said, taking a hard right onto a crowded street filled with fruit stands and people hocking piñatas stuffed with candy instead of death. Ramon leaned on the horn, causing it to blast God Only Knows by the Beach Boys at the people in front of us while throwing the van into reverse and stomping on the accelerator in an effort to get us out of here.
The people in front of us glanced up and mostly ignored us. I say mostly because a kid started sprinting toward our van with an armful of chiclets. Yeah, this was going to end horribly. So what did I do? I proceeded with my Really Bad Mac Brennan Plan ™.
As the float came skidding into view in a hail of pink and white carnations, I threw open the VW bus’s back door and called upon my magic. I’m not sure why, but as I did it, Sabotage by the Beastie Boys started playing in my head.
“Ignis!” I cried at the top of my lungs. Crimson Hellfire sprang to life in the palm of my hand as the inside of the van filled with scarlet light. I reared back in my best Randy Johnson imitation and hurled my magical fireball straight at the scud missile angling toward us.
Unfortunately, I didn’t quite see the aftermath because I was too busy jerking the door shut and flinging myself toward my companions while calling up every last ounce of power I could. My tattoos went radioactive as I landed hard on Jack’s chest. I scrambled forward, grabbing Maya’s and Ramon’s shoulders and hanging on for dear life.
“Tueri—” my cry was cut off as an explosion unlike anything I’d ever seen before sent the van flying in a burst of flame and shrapnel. As my own special brand of flame leapt out of me and spilled the entire inside of the van, a wave of heat washed over me, searing my nerves and making my vision splinter into fragments of shattered stained glass.
My head smacked into the ceiling as the VW lifted into the air and tumbled end over end in a wash of fire and debris. I slammed into the front seat as I struggled to keep the inside of the van from being melted into slag along with the molten windows spattering against my shield. Hopefully filling the inside of the van with a magical shield would work, after all, It had shielded Jenna when we’d been adventuring through Hell, but as my vision started to go spotty and everything around me faded into a distilled point of darkness, I wasn’t sure my plan had worked. Then again, we weren’t dead so that portable missile silo could suck it sideways.
Then the van slammed into a brick building, shattering the fire escape and crashing into the living room of an old guy wearing boxers and watching Jeopardy at full blast. He leapt to his feet in time for the van to fall completely on its roof. I smashed into the hard steel ceiling a moment before Jack’s unconscious form landed on top of my gut, causing the air to burst from my lungs.
I lay there, unsure I was alive as my flaming shield died with a whimper rather than a roar. I couldn’t hear much because it felt like my head had been dipped in cotton, but I struggled to my feet anyway. Maya was hanging upside down in the front seat, suspended by her seatbelt. Despite the cut on her forehead, she seemed relatively okay. Ramon was nowhere to be found, but judging by the hole in the driver’s side door, I was pretty sure he’d either been splattered across the pavement outside or leapt to safety. Given his healing factor and metal insides, I was giving him fifty, fifty odds.
Either way, we had to get out of here before more guys with missiles showed up. I shot a glance at Jack and sighed. I was going to have to carry him out. Damn.
“You better be fucking broken,” I said, hauling him to his feet because there was no way I was going to leave him here to die. “Because otherwise, I’m going to be pissed.” He didn’t even have the decency to respond, the bastard.
I wasn’t sure what we were going to find outside, but if we stayed here, the likelihood we’d wind up leveling the city on top of a bunch of civilians Avengers style was too high to contemplate. I wasn’t Speedball or anything so I’d get over it long before I turned my cat into a penitent puss.
Then and there, I decided, it was time to stop running around playing by their rules. No, I was going to take this opportunity to change the game Mac Brennan style.
Chapter 9
“Fancy a reclaimed cat skull full of cider?” the old man who had been watching Jeopardy in his boxers asked as I emerged from the scorched van carrying a comatose vampire. “Or are you more of an IPA type of guy?”
“Say what?” I asked, looking at him completely dumbfounded. Sure enough, he was standing in the small kitchen attached to his now ruined living room with a goblet made from a fucking cat’s skull in one hand and a jug of cider in the other.
“Do you want a drink?” he asked, fixing me with a steely-eyed glare as his caterpillar-like eyebrows narrowed. “I mean if you’re going to go and fuck up my shit, we may as well have a drink.”
I wasn’t quite sure what was going on with him because this seemed like a somewhat atypical reaction to us suddenly arriving in his living room as the result of me blowing up a missile with Hellfire.
“Is it organic?” Maya asked, crawling out from the now broken windshield. She stood, brushing bits of safety glass off of her clothing. “Because I only drink organic cider from cat skulls.”
“Do you honestly think I’d have gone to the trouble of getting reclaimed cat skulls if I was going to pour non-organic, GMO-laden crap into them?” the old guy asked, shaking his head angrily as he approached her with one of the skulls. Amber liquid frothed from within. “Honestly, kids these days.”
“Fair enough,” Maya said, accepting the goblet from the old guy as he looked her up and down without any effort to hide himself doing it.
“Nice window dressing, but you’re not really my style. No offense,” he said after a moment. Then as she stood there mouth open in shock, he walked right past her and up to me. “Here’s your cider.” He shoved the cat’s skull into my right hand and some of the cold liquid sloshed over the side and onto my blackened flesh.
Pain unlike anything I’d ever felt surged through me as my skin began to fizz like it was made of fucking baking soda and I’d been doused with vinegar. The smell of rotting flesh hit my nose as I stumbled backward, flailing and wound up dropping Jack in the process. The Indian vampire hit the ground with a heavy thunk as I tried desperately to wipe the cider off my dissolving skin. Thankfully, it didn’t seem to burn my left hand any. Was it Cursed specific?
“The more you fight it, Mac, the harder this will be on the both of us,” the old man said, shaking his head as he knelt down beside Jack and studied the vampire intently. “Warded bullets. Clever.”
His eyes turned into solid pink gumballs as he waved his liver-spot covered right hand over Jack’s unmoving form. The gunshot wounds covering Jack’s body glowed with cotton candy pink light before the bullets tore violently free from his flesh.
Warm blood splattered across my face and hands, and as it did, the pain from my dissolving skin receded enough for me to think. Was it because Jack’s vampire blood had healing properties? I wasn’t sure but no matter the cause, my hand had stopped burning, and before I could stop myself, I licked my lips.
The taste of his blood was like raspberry jam on my tongue, and as that realization hit me, the pain completely vanished. I took a quick glance down at my hand and much to my delight, found it good as new. Man, when this was over I was going to fill a flask with Jack’s blood and carry it around for emergencies or you know, in case I decided to try to leap over a shark tank on a motorcycle to impress the chicks from Happy Days.
The cat’s skull lay beside my foot, black, viscous fluid spilled across the carpet. I wasn’t sure what had been inside it but judging by the smell of sulfur I was going to go with something demonic. Interesting.
“I’m not sure what you’re doing, but an explanation would be nice,” I said, wondering why Maya didn’t seem terribly concerned by this weird old guy. She hadn’t moved so much as a muscle since he’d offended her, which now that I thought about it, seemed a bit off.
“Is that so?” the man asked, standing up. The bullets hovered in the air between us for a moment before falling emptily to the ground. “Why do I owe you anything? You came into my house, did you not?”
“Look,” I said, gesturing toward the cat’s skull. “There are people after us, and I don’t have time for whatever this is.”
“Yes, you do.” He smiled, revealing a grin that was all gums. “I stopped time. We have all the time one could want.”
“What do you mean you stopped time?” I asked, incredulously. I knew Beleth could stop time, but as far as I knew, my own demon had eaten her. If this wasn’t her doing, and I didn’t think it was, who the hell was this guy? Another time-stopping demon? Was that possible?
“This whole making me repeat myself thing is going to get old really fast. Let’s just cut to what I want, eh?” He moved past me, pausing just long enough to glance at the spilled contents of the cat’s skull. A confused look settled over his features for a split second before vanishing beneath a pensive mask. He shook himself like someone wearing a heavy coat and headed back toward the easy chair in the corner. As he settled into the chair, pink light wrapped around the old guy’s body like a cocoon. The guy’s form seemed to droop, and then another person pulled himself free of the senior who slumped over unconscious and drooling.
The hitchhiker stood and stretched. He was nearly seven feet tall and gangly as fuck. He wore a crisp pink suit, pink shoes, and a pink top hat. One of his white-gloved hands clutched the head of a jewel encrusted cane, and he leaned heavily on it while flashing me a grin that revealed a set of diamond encrusted golden teeth.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mac Brennan,” he said in a voice that made me think he ought to run for president or be a professional rapper. Given the state of things, he could probably do both. “I am Mammon.”
“Mammon?” I asked, raising my eyebrow. “Am I supposed to know who you are because, I’ll be honest, I’ve forgotten a lot of stuff.” I tapped my temple with my right index finger. “Fringe benefit.”
He chuckled, and the sound rolled over me like warm sunshine. It made me want to grab hold of it and keep it for a rainy day. “Of course you don’t remember me. We’ve never met.” He put his hand to his mouth and spoke conspiratorially. “I won’t hold it against you.”
“Good to know,” I said, surprised that was the case. Most demons I’d met were petty bastards. “So why have you gone to all the trouble to,” I gestured around us. “Whatever this is?”
“I’m glad you asked, and the answer is quite simple.” He spread his arms wide and the tip of his cane nearly touched my nose as he did it. “I want something.”
“Okay,” I said, drawing the word out as I spoke. “What do you want?” I left the “and why are you coming to me for it?” part of the question unsaid.
“See, Asmodai and I are involved in a border dispute. He seems to think Las Vegas is his because it falls under the purview of lust.” He made a disgusted face. “You know hookers and the like. It’s why I keep donating to the local politicians to try to get them to make prostitution illegal. Unfortunately, it hasn’t quite worked out the way I wanted.”
I could see this was going to go on a while, so I made a “hurry up” gesture with my hand because the last thing I wanted was to be stuck here talking to Mammon all day. Even if he had stopped time. “Okay, so you want Las Vegas and Asmodai owns it…”
“Precisely. See, I knew you were smart.” He grinned like a used car salesman. “While I cannot help you directly, I could offer you some assistance with your ‘council of seven’ problem provided you do a couple things for me.” He moved closer to me, put his arm around my shoulder, and pulled me close. “It shouldn’t be a big deal since you were going to do it, anyway.”
“Is that so?” I asked, wondering what help he could possibly be. Admittedly, demons had been pretty formidable, and having one’s help was usually a good thing, but at the same time their deals tended to suck. Still, he had stopped fucking time. If there was ever a useful power, it’d be that one.
“Yes, I merely want you to kill the council of seven, and yes, despite what you may have been told they ALL can be killed.” He patted my shoulder. “And, you know, I want their boss dead too. He’s a tricky devil, that one.”
“You want me to kill Asmodai?” I asked, raising an eyebrow at him. I mean, okay, I’d planned on doing both of those things, but if dealing with Sargent had taught me anything, it was that Asmodai was going to be hard as fuck to kill, and while my demon had proved to be quite formidable, she was a fucking cat. Asking her to do anything she didn’t want to do would do about as much good as a winter coat in the Sahara.
“Yes, and I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking ‘but Asmodai is one of the seven kings of Hell and the demons I’ve dealt with aren’t on that level’ and you’d be right except for one tiny thing.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a golden twenty-sided die. “You don’t have this.”