Demon Accords 6: Forced Ascent (20 page)

The word
MRAP
popped through my head as we/he/I surveyed the object holding my vampire hostage.  He rejected the tires as targets because the six-wheeled vehicle was likely designed to run with flat tires or without any at all.  The monster vehicle had to go over 40,000 pounds and was over ten feet tall.  Grim went through its side.  Mono-edged hands together like we were diving in a competition instead of through thick armor.  My body Posted to the ground as my hands started to peel the metal.  The driver shifted to reverse and gunned the big diesel, backing the armored car and simultaneously ripping his side armor to shreds on my two-handed can opener.  An M4 barrel poked out the tear in the armor and Grim grabbed it one handed, crushed the barrel, and pulled the gun and the officer attached to it out of the mini tank.  The gun went off, the barrel burst, and the cop flew into the crowd, while we/I/him flowed into the Mine Resistant, Ambush Protected cop car and sorted out the four officers remaining.  That took almost exactly two seconds and left them in various states of injury, but all alive.  I slung Tanya over my left shoulder and slid back out of the MRAP.

Fifteen cops and agents with guns all pointed at me pulled their triggers simultaneously.  I jumped, sent an aura burst through their weapons, and landed behind them, right in the middle of the four FBI agents who seemed in charge.  I grabbed one by the back of his neck, and despite the fact that he was six-four to my five-ten, put him down in front of me like a child.

“If you start shooting, I start killing,” my mouth said in a voice that would have scared the demon priest. 

The three agents still standing looked from me to the ripped-open MRAP where the previously beat up SWAT guys and the driver were now gunshot and moaning from ricocheting friendly fire. They looked to the fifteen cops all trying to get their guns to fire a second time.  Two of the agents turned to the third, who was looking at the big guy I was holding effortlessly by the neck. 

Arkady arrived in a rush of air, standing just behind me.  Grim handed Tanya to him, releasing the agent on the ground.  Still watching the lead fed, Grim plucked a folding tactical knife from the ground agent’s pocket as he stood up, sliced my left wrist, and put it to Tanya’s mouth.  Even unconscious from the silver mixture in her veins, her instincts responded, sucking down my blood in gulps.

Lydia popped up at my other side, looking first at Tanya then at the agents.

“Okay Elliot Ness, let’s chew this over.  The ones that killed the original three cops?  They would be the melting bull thing and the priest from Hell.  We took them out for you, thank you very much, and
he
sent them back to Hell. So what do you guys do?  You poison his girlfriend.  Dick move, J. Edgar.  Now he’s pissed, like really, really pissed.  Last time he was this mad, an entire forest in New Hampshire got blasted into ash,” she said, her words loud enough that the entire disheveled crowd of reporters, onlookers, and cops could hear her. “So far, he’s only torn up your Tonka toy, but my impression is that his patience is gone.  Every time we step in and save peoples’ asses from demons, which is what those things were by the way, you federal government types attack us, try to murder us,” she said, waving at Tanya’s gulping form.  “It’s as if you’ve declared war on us.  Is that what you want?  War with the only people that can defend this country from the beings your own scientists have opened the door for?  Cause if that’s what you want, I’ll just back away and let this play out.  So how about it, Agent? Wanna see why they codenamed him Brutal Asset?”

Pale blue eyes that couldn’t get any wider flicked from Lydia to me, sweat glistening on his forehead.  I felt Trenton and Stacia’s approach, Grim’s senses tracking all the movement in the area.  A red dot flashed across Lydia’s body and Grim responded in a new way, using a combination of vampire power and aura I had never seen before.  A hundred yards away, on the top of the bank branch, a previously hidden police sharp shooter suddenly flew off the roof, arms and legs flailing before landing on shrubbery. 

The head fed came to a rapid conclusion.  “Guns down, now. We’re letting them leave,” he said loudly. For a second, there was no sound except the whir of digital cameras running, the television crews still capturing the events live.

Arkady, Trenton, and Lydia left in a rush of air, leaving me standing with Stacia just behind me. I sensed her turning and leaving at a regular pace, Awasos moving up alongside her.  Grim kept mental overwatch as I picked my way through the crowd, ignoring the fearful eyes while I first pulled the bull spike from the cop car and then the other one from the remains of the pinned priest’s body, letting the corpse collapse to the ground, grotesque mantis arms beginning to melt.  The Hell bull itself was steaming, popping, and sputtering as it melted into goo, taking its spikes with it.  The two spikes I held, however, showed no signs of evaporating and my dark half wanted them.

I took a moment to look over the field of battle, my gaze pausing for a moment on the Chatterjee girl’s face before turning and following my people into the dark.

Chapter 17

“Welcome back to our special coverage of the events in Baltimore last night.  You’ve seen the footage from our camera crew; some of you may have been watching it live last night when we interrupted normal programming to bring it to you. 

“Our next guest was right in the middle of the events and she’s the first person to offer an explanation, although we’ll warn you right now that her ideas are beyond disturbing.  CBS and its affiliates, producers, and officers want to make it clear that we are in no way endorsing her theories.  Please welcome Miss Brystol Chatterjee.  Brystol, welcome.”

“Thanks Keith, Melissa.  It’s great to be here.”

“You’re a journalist, isn’t that right? With your own blog?”

“Yes Melissa, that’s correct.  It’s called the Cryptic News.  It’s what some call fringe journalism.”

“Fringe as in supernatural?”

“Yes, Keith.  I investigate anything paranormal or supernatural.  Most of it I debunk.  Some turns out to be real.”

“And your investigation brought you to Baltimore?”

“Yes.  I’ve been investigating a big increase in unexplained violent behavior in normal, noncriminal individuals that I feel is demonically influenced.  A series of crimes led me to the individuals in the footage you have, first in New York City, then New Jersey, and finally, last night in Baltimore.”

“Brystol, you say demons like it’s an accepted thing.”

“Well, Melissa, it is to me.  If you’d seen the crime scenes I have and witnessed the events in New Jersey and Baltimore firsthand, you might believe as well.”

“Let’s get back to last night.  Most of the footage is too blurred to tell what’s happening at first, but at the end, we see an individual attack a police armored vehicle, basically a mini-tank, with just his bare hands and tear it open.”

“The footage you’ve shown is blurred because the action is taking place too fast for the camera to properly record.  You have to record at ultra-high speed to make any sense of it, Keith.”

“And you’ve brought your own footage today that does just that, correct?”

“Yes, Keith.  Brian, my cameraman, was filming the background with twin-mounted cameras.  One high def and the other on standby, a high speed model.”

“He was actually filming you from across the parking lot and not the crime scene.  Why?”

“Because, Melissa, I felt strongly that the people in question would show up and I hoped to contact them again.”

“Again?  You’ve met them before?”

“Yes Keith, I met two of them, but before we talk about that, maybe we could show the footage.  No one else has seen it yet, just me and Brian.”

“Of course.  Let’s roll it.”

Brystol was sitting at a big, three-sided table with the anchors, a flatscreen set up next to her and her own set of video controls by her hands. The flatscreen showed a green-tinted camera view that had Brystol centered in the view.  A different cameraman stood near her, his own camera scanning the crowd of onlookers and reporters.  Suddenly he stiffened, visibly locking down on something.  Brian’s camera view shifted toward where the other cameraman was looking and I recognized myself in my geek disguise.  The flower van was visible behind me.  The assassin in drag suddenly turned my way and started to draw his gun, then the footage blurred.

“Okay, here comes the high speed part.  We’ve slowed it down as much as possible, and it took Brian a few moments to activate the other camera.”

The new scene didn’t have the green tint and was just a bit dark, but you could see me flipping myself over the bull monster and the flash of light from my coin, then the monster rolled.

“It’s hard to follow, isn’t it?”

“Yes, Melissa, it’s a little tough but after a couple of times through it, you begin to see what’s going on.  See, what I think is happening at first is that person in the dress, who isn’t a woman, figures out that the nerd isn’t a nerd.  That sorta kicks off all the action.”

“How did they figure it out, Brystol?”

“The camera guy next to me was running a thermal unit.  Our mystery guy runs at a much higher body temperature than the rest of us, Keith.  I think he alerted the dress guy with a micro radio.”

“How do you know that, Brystol?”

She bent down below the anchors’ desk and pulled up a battered camera.

“Remember the part where the old lady next to me knocked over the camera man and threw his camera at the armored car?  This is that camera, and it’s not a standard camera.”

“Hey Carl?  Carl? Come look at this unit. Carl’s one of our senior cameramen,” Keith said.

A balding man in khakis wearing a headset walked onto the set, a bit hesitant, but nonetheless examined the camera.

“
She’s right.  It’s been dressed up to look like a commercial camera.”

“There’s an output slot right next to the handgrip.  Here’s a patch cord.  I can show you what’s on it.”

Deftly connecting the cord that Brystol helpfully provided, Carl the camera expert turned on the camera and a new scene opened on the television monitor.  Oranges and reds mixed with gray and black spread uniformly across the crowd, till one figure lit up the camera with whites and yellows.  The figure is me.

“You can see how bright he shines.  Makes disguises tough.”

“Who is he Brystol?”

“He’s a young ex-cop, Keith.  His name is Chris Gordon and I think he’s the one the government keeps trying to kill.”

“Kill?  As in assassinate?  Brystol, that’s a serious charge to make.  Do you have proof?”

“Do I have copies of signed kill orders?  No Melissa, I don’t.  I have now seen Chris on eight crime scenes like this one.  And I believe he was brought in by law enforcement.   Each time, he’s gone into scenes that have been locked down and treated like quarantine sites and when he comes out, the police flood in like he’s removed whatever contaminant was present.  Many times, gunshots are heard when he’s inside with his crew.  At the Jersey site, I spoke, off record, with several officers who witnessed all the events.  NSA agents tried to take him into custody.  They failed.  Almost immediately, a US Navy sub launched a Tomahawk missile that should have blown that part of the Pine Barrens to dust.  My eyewitnesses say that Gordon was the first to be aware of the missile and they believe he did something to crash it. Apparently so did the NSA agents, who stopped trying to apprehend him.  Now you have this footage, Melissa.”

“So you think it was a trap?”

“Traps.  One by the feds, the other by the priest thing and his pet.  Both failed.”

“But Brystol, he threatened to kill police officers and federal agents.  It’s on the tape.”

“Keith, when a country declares war, they should be prepared to lose soldiers.”

“They were cops, Brystol, not soldiers.”

“Semantics, Melissa.  They dress like soldiers, carry assault weapons, and tried to shoot him after assassins poisoned his girlfriend.   And despite all that, he still didn’t kill any cops.  Even the one that was possessed is apparently alive and in the hospital.”

“So you believe that the priest somehow possessed the police officer?”

“Don’t you, Keith?  You’ve seen the footage.  Let me roll the rest of our slowed down version and you tell me what you believe.”