Highways to Hell (22 page)

Jack looked at Andy. His half-brother’s eyes communicated a decision that didn’t need to be verbalized. Jack detected movement in his peripheral vision, the pub’s front door opening again. Light glinted off something metallic. Jack’s cigarette slipped from his fingers and tumbled end over flaming end to the sidewalk as his hand moved in a flash to the .45 in his shoulder holster. The gun was in his hands and aimed at the pub’s door less than a heartbeat later. Andy O’Day produced his weapon just as quickly and aimed at something behind Jack. For one breathless, frozen moment the world seemed to stand absolutely still.

Then Jack’s forefinger squeezed the trigger of the .45. The big caliber gun made a big sound

BLAM!

and sent a bullet zipping through the air. The round struck the forehead of a big, burly, bearded man clad in leather, punching a neat hole all the way through where his brain should have been—but there was no rain of blood and brain matter against the pub door, nor did any leak from the forehead hole. Jack kept firing even as Andy’s own weapon started to erupt. Spent shell casings rained on the sidewalk.

PLINKPLINKPLINKLPLINK

and glittered in the streetlight before rolling off the curb into the storm drain. The faux-biker’s body was soon riddled with holes and it fell back against the bar’s entrance. It was shaken, but far from out of the game. It looked at Jack and grinned as it struggled to push away from the door. There was no more doubt the grinning jackass was an alien. A real human would be dead already, flat on his back, bleeding out on the ground. A primal fear rose in Jack, but he dropped a psychical equivalent of a manhole-sized lid on top of it, shutting it deep down into the recesses of his brain. There was no time for fear in a situation like this, no time to wonder how in hell you might kill something that gave every appearance of being unkillable.

So he squeezed the .45’s trigger until it clicked empty. He ejected the spent cartridge even as Andy spun on his heel, drew a bead on something to their right, and kept firing. Jack calmly stood his ground as the alien at last managed to push away from the door and come lurching toward him. He slammed a fresh cartridge into the .45 with the base of a fist and drew down on the biker alien again.

Before he could start firing again, the air next to him shimmered and grew warm as Lucien shapeshifted. A savage growl reverberated in the street and saliva from the hellhound’s snarling mouth hit the sidewalk and sizzled, the corrosive fluid eating through concrete as easily as a stream of lava burning through timber. Another stuttering growl rang out, then Lucien sprang at something outside Jack’s field of vision. There was a heavy thud as the hellhound drove the body of an alien to the ground, followed by the agonized wail of the alien.

The sound of the thing’s pain heartened Jack. It meant they could be hurt. Maybe even killed—at least by a supernaturally powerful refugee from Hell. Jack directed some more high velocity lead at the biker alien, obliterating most of its head with a tightly centered series of blasts to its face. The thing tottered sideways a moment, swayed on its feet, then feel to the ground in a unmoving heap. Jack kept his gaze on the downed alien a moment longer, not quite trusting the reality of its death, then he released a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding and glanced around him, taking quick stock of the situation.

Lucien, still in full-hound mode, looked up at him from the sidewalk, his muzzle flecked with bit of shredded flesh—but no blood. Instead, the insides of these things were filled with a vaguely ectoplasmic white goo that stank worse than a chest-high pile of manure.

Andy, who’d guessed the proper kill method sooner, had dropped three of the things. Their faceless, nearly headless bodies lay still in the street and on the sidewalk, leaking goo on concrete and asphalt.

Jack’s heart pounded.

Awareness of the rest of the world hit him with the force of a cannonball to the head. His first thoughts were of damage control and of how to escape. The police would be here within moments, and there’d be no way to explain any of this in a way that’d make sense to normal people. His gaze swept the street. He saw people cowering in doorways and behind parked cars lining both sides of the street.

Jack laughed. It was desperate laughter. His own office was on this side of the street, just a couple of buildings down to the left. But there would be no sanctuary there tonight. Not after a big-time Technicolor shootout in the middle of a crowded city street.

Lucien’s hound form shimmered and he resumed his human form, his tattered clothes hanging from him like rags, making him look like a wolfman from some old movie. Jack met his gaze, nodded, then looked at Andy.

“You thinking what I’m thinking?”

Andy put his gun away, palmed his pack of Lucky Stikes from his jacket pocket and calmly lit a smoke. Andy liked to project an air of absolutely imperturbable cool. He wanted you to think he was the coolest, smoothest, calmest dude in the world. At times like this, Jack suspected he was exactly that.

Andy exhaled a stream of smoke, cleared his throat. “Yeah, mate. Let’s portalize our asses outta here.”

Using the tip of the cigarette, he described a circle in the air as he intoned a series of Latin phrases. The circle shimmered. It was more of an oval, really, Jack thought. Then there was a black, fire-ringed space in the fabric of reality.

Andy, puffing on his cigarette again, stepped through it.

Jack and Lucien, careful to keep their feet away from the flickering flames, followed.

3.

Another Random Hell

The sun was a burning orb hanging high in the sky, projecting intense heat that felt absolutely unfiltered.
Ozone layer
, Jack thought deliriously.
What goddamned ozone layer?

“So any idea where we are?”

Andy chuckled. “The desert.”

Jack sneered. “You know what, Andy? Believe it or not, I’m not in the mood for sarcasm. I know this is a desert. So I’ll clarify.
Which
goddamn desert?”

Andy shrugged. “Dunno. Looks familiar, though.”

Lucien groaned. “No. It can’t be.”

Jack shook his head and sighed. “Nevada. Again. Christ.”

“Makes sense,” Andy said, nodding as he stripped off his shiny blue button-down shirt, exposing flesh so pale Jack figured the guy would be bright red within minutes.

Jack’s own flesh was only marginally darker, so he resisted the urge to shed some of his own garments. The heat was suffocating, but he figured he could endure that better than becoming one big man-sized sunburn. Bad enough that he’d left his wingtips on that Florida beach. The desert sand beneath his feet was blisteringly hot. The heat was so oppressive he didn’t even feel like lighting a cigarette.

Lucien, though, didn’t appear too bothered by the heat. It figured. A hellhound wouldn’t be too adversely affected by conditions such as these.

Lucky son of a bitch.

Jack directed a smirk Andy’s way. “You might want to work up some SPF 50 mojo, bro. Unless you want to wind up a crispy red blotch on the desert floor.”

Andy winked. “Already taken care of.”

Jack rolled his eyes. “Freaking wizard. Always one step ahead, eh? And by the way, why in the hell does being back in Nevada make sense?”

Andy lit a cigarette.

Jack glared at him.

Andy snickered. “Ah, well. It’s like this, Jackie. Any time I have to work out mystical coordinates on the fly like that, when time is really of the essence, I have to make some shortcuts, let the portal take us back to a previous destination.”

Jack frowned. “And you let it take us
here
? You’re aware Satan’s minions are everywhere here, right?”

“Everywhere, eh?” Andy made an exaggerated show of scanning the wide-open desert landscape around them. “Huh. They must be invisible.”

Jack snarled and ripped the pack of cigarettes from Andy’s hand. “Oh, screw you. Think you’re funny, huh?”

“Sometimes. And for your information, no, I didn’t pick this destination.” Andy hesitated. An almost sheepish look stole over his handsome features. It was an odd sight. Andy almost never seemed abashed about anything. “It sort of…well, on the fly like that, as I was saying…um…it sort of happens at random.”

Jack’s jaw dropped. His stomach did a slow, wrenching churn. He tried to say something, but the right words momentarily eluded him.

Lucien supplied them: “We could be in Greytown right now.”

Jack gulped. Greytown was a section of Hell. A sort of outlying suburb that resembled New Jersey more than any fire and brimstone preacher’s lake of fire visions of that netherworld. It was where he’d met Lucien.

That moment of awe and absolute terror passed. Anger took its place. “Andy, I give you a lot of crap, I know, but you know I’ve got great faith in you. You’ve gotten us out of a lot of tight jams. But dammit, man, you know how screwed we’d be, hell, how screwed the whole world would be, if we wound up back in Greytown.”

Andy sighed. “I know. Okay? But we’re not in Hell. Things worked out.”

Lucien snorted. “Right. We’re in the desert. Near the earthly home base of our most serious adversary.” He shook his head, making long, sweat-drenched black locks flop about his shoulders. “We should’ve just run for it.”

Jack nodded. “Damn right.”

Andy heaved an exasperated sigh. “I get the point, okay? I screwed up but what’s done is done. Hindsight’s 20/20, all that jazz. In a minute, I’ll do a more precise portal spell and get us the hell out of here. But before we jump back into the fray home, let’s take a moment to take stock of things.”

Jack shook a cigarette out of the pack and lit it, unable to resist the impulse of deep addiction any longer. “Fine. Advise us, oh wise one.”

Andy nodded. The old fire came into his eyes again and he spoke with his usual authoritative confidence. “Here’s the lowdown on the aliens. They’re not invaders. They’re not part of an advance guard paving the way for the colonization of earth by legions of little green bastards. They’re rogues. Criminals. A gang. Think of them as being like the first New York mobsters who entered Florida way back when. That’s what they’re doing in Nashville. Establishing a base of operations.”

Jack drew in a lungful of sweet, bracing smoke, then slowly expelled it. “Okay. Which better explain why it’s not a job for the government. Hell, for all we know the local gov’s taking kickbacks from these guys.” He frowned. “So…er…what exactly sort of crimes are these Plan 9 mafiosos into anyway?”

Andy’s expression grew grim. “Lots of the usual. Racketeering. Prostitution. Stuff we wouldn’t even bother with under normal circumstances.”

Lucien abruptly cocked his head and turned away from them. He moved several feet to the east and raised a hand to his brow, squinting against the blazing sun and refracted light on the horizon. “Um…guys?”

Jack said, “I’m assuming there’s something else at work here, right? Something unusual?”

Andy flicked his spent cigarette butt away. “We’re talking about human slavery, Jack. These extraterrestrial sons of bitches are snatching people and shipping them back to paying customers light years away from here.”

Jack gave a moment’s thought to what sadistic aliens might do with their human slaves and felt a fresh surge of molten anger. “You’re right. We’ve got to stop them.”

Lucien’s voice came louder this time: “Shut up! Something’s coming.”

The urgency in the hellhound’s voice at last drew the attention of his comrades. Jack and Andy abruptly dropped further discussion of the alien dilemma and moved to where Lucien was standing. They each mimicked his hand-to-brow stance and squinted at the hazy horizon.

Jack gulped.

Lucien was right. Something was coming. Multiple somethings, in face. Black specks hurtling across the desert from several directions at once, all of them apparently intent on converging on one spot.

THIS spot
, Jack thought glumly.

“Um…hey, Andy…”

“Working on it already, mate.”