The Dark Storm (6 page)

Riel took a defensive stance. “Surely I’ll be sitting with my master soon enough, but not this night,” Raising his Poison in the air, he shouted, “Attend me!”

The air whistled behind Gabriel and he moved barely a second before another Stalker shot out from behind him. Gabriel grabbed the thing by its decomposing neck and held the head of the trident near its face. The Stalker cringed as the skin on its cheek began to smoke.

“Behold what the mighty armies of hell have been reduced to.” Gabriel tossed the Stalker roughly to the ground. “Borrowed flesh!” Gabriel howled as he raised the trident high above his head and plunged it into the Stalker’s heart. White light began to pour from its eyes, mouth, and ruined ears. For a brief moment Gabriel could see what the host had looked like before becoming a victim of Belthon’s evil. The portly man even seemed to be smiling as his spirit rose from his body in a wisp of smoke. His soul was finally free, and all that was left of his body was the clothes he had been buried in and a pile of charred flesh. Gabriel turned his attention back to Riel, but the demon was gone.

De Mona seemed to be holding her own against the wrestler, but the hulking corpse was wearing her down. She threw a wild punch at the thing, which grabbed her and slung her onto a car, breaking the windshield. De Mona tried to recover, but the hulk had her by the neck and was lifting her off the car. She hit it with a series of lefts and rights, but it didn’t seem to want to let go.

Gabriel raised the trident over his head and began twirling it like a baton. With every pass the wind picked up until he found himself standing in the center of a small storm. Lightning rolled up his legs and passed through his arms, like veins transporting blood. With all his might he hurled the trident at the creature. The creature shrieked as the trident buried itself in the hulk’s back and released its soul.

Gabriel stood over De Mona with a strange look in his eye. The storm was gone, but he was changed somehow, almost as if he had aged since they’d met in the library. Reaching down with his free hand, he helped De Mona to her feet. Her skin felt a little rough, but otherwise she had returned to normal.

“You okay?” he asked.

“My throat is sore as hell, but I think I’ll live.” She massaged it for emphasis. “Neat trick.” She motioned towards the trident.

“I didn’t do it. One minute I’m about to get my head chopped off, and the next I’m all fuzzy. I knew I was fighting, but it was like I was moving off instinct rather than courage. This won that battle.” He tapped the shaft twice on the ground as if he was trying to test its authenticity. The shaft vibrated and began to shrink. Within seconds it was the head of a fork again but had retained its luster. “Unreal.” Gabriel shook his head.

“I got the feeling you ain’t telling me everything, Redfeather,” De Mona accused.

“I could say the same. I don’t see a weapon on you, yet the thing that jumped you is dead.” He nodded towards the rotted corpse.

She shrugged. “I got lucky.”

Gabriel clearly didn’t believe her, but he didn’t press it. “You and me are definitely gonna do some talking, but not here and not now. With all the noise we made, the
police are surely gonna come, and I really don’t think they’ll believe us about how these bodies got here.”

De Mona looked around at the damage they’d caused. “Okay, you got that one. Where to?”

“Harlem, to see my grandfather,” Gabriel told her, stuffing the fork down the back of his pants.

The first patrol car had barely been at the scene for five minutes when it was joined by a midnight blue Dodge Viper. The officers hadn’t had a chance to call the crime in yet, so they knew it couldn’t have been one of theirs. The senior officer on the scene went to tell the driver to move along, but the door swung open before he had a chance.

The man who emerged from the vehicle was tall, with an athletic build. A subtle wind played with the hem of his leather jacket, exposing the two Colts holstered under each arm. If you looked closely you could see the runes carved into the barrel and grip of the one on his left. His face was a smooth chocolate color, with an angular chin and a wide nose that he had inherited from his Guyanese mother. Though there was no sun, he wore heavily tinted shades over his eyes. Neatly twisted locks were pulled into a tight ponytail, which hung down his back. A lit cigarette dangled from his full lips, sending flecks of ash floating on the breeze. He was quite handsome, yet most people tended to forget his face right after seeing it, which was how he preferred things. Secrecy was his edge. Flicking his cigarette away, he approached the crime scene.

“Sir, I’m gonna have to ask you to get back in your
vehicle and move along. This is a police matter.” A chubby cop with a beet-red face blocked his path.

“It’s cool, man. I’m with the department.” Rogue flashed his identification.

The chubby officer squinted to read the name beneath the blurred picture. “ ‘Jonathan Rogue,’ ” he read aloud. “I’ve heard of you. You aren’t a cop; you’re some kind of bounty hunter or something.”

Rogue grinned. “
Or something
, that’s cute.”

Rogue’s name was notorious amongst law enforcement in New York. He had once been a third-generation cop, who had a promising future with the Dade County narcotics division down in Florida until his temper got him suspended. A little girl had overdosed on heroin in one of Carol City’s housing projects. Rogue’s own sister had overdosed years earlier, so he took the girl’s death personally and took the law into his own hands. He hadn’t intended killing the dealer, but things got out of hand and Rogue found himself sitting in front of the Internal Affairs review board. Because of his family’s deep connections in the department, the death was ruled a justifiable homicide, so Rogue was able to avoid jail time, but because of his history of being especially brutal on dealers he was kicked off the force.

The fact that Rogue had been a good cop earned him the respect of criminals and law enforcement, but it was his gift for spell casting that made him the scourge of the supernatural world. In addition to being a third-generation cop, Rogue was also a seventh-generation mage. The mages were spell casters, but not like witches or sorcerers. The difference was something like that between a pancake and a crepe, the same but different. Though hardly as gifted in the blood as sorcerers, mages made up in knowledge what they lacked in natural ability, dissecting and reconstructing age-old magics to suit their own dark purposes.
The mages represented another spectrum of the magical wheel where light and dark were irrelevant and only power was absolute.

Like the witches, the mages also had covens of sorts called houses. Rogue’s family represented the house of Thanos, the death cult. Thanos was one of two remaining mage houses in the modern world. The followers of the fallen god were said to be masters of death magic and traffickers of the dark. Some even whispered that their powers derived from the spirits they held prisoners in their black towers.

However, Rogue and his family didn’t adhere to the general practices of their lineage. Since Rogue was a little boy his father had always taught his family that their gifts should only be used to help humanity and uphold the law. A sound philosophy until you learn that the line between law and lawlessness has become so blurred that doing the right thing feels wrong. Still, law and order was in Rogue’s veins and the situation demanded his attention.

“I prefer the term ‘consultant,’ ” Rogue continued, “and I consult you jokers more than I handle my own cases. Hell, it’s a wonder that I even stay in business.”

“I don’t care what and who you are; you can’t cross the line. This is a crime scene,” the chubby officer shot back. He folded his arms and stared at Rogue defiantly.

Rogue sighed. He’d been hoping that he could use just his fast tongue to get what he needed from the crime scene, but the cop was being a prick about it and Rogue didn’t have time to play twenty questions. He was hoping he didn’t have to rattle the cage, but Rogue wasn’t big on twenty questions. “Let me talk to you for a second.” Rogue moved closer to the officer. Peering over the top of his shades, he said, “I just want a quick look to see if this is related to a jumper I’m looking for. I won’t disturb the scene.”

The chubby officer knew that it was against procedure to let a civilian onto a crime scene, but there was something about the soothing tone of Rogue’s voice that made him feel wrong for denying the man. “I guess a quick look won’t hurt anything; just don’t tell the sergeant,” the officer said, not quite believing the words coming out of his mouth as he spoke.

“Good man.” Rogue patted him on the back and crossed the yellow tape. His guest snickered quietly, but Rogue blocked him out. As he got closer, he could see body parts and broken glass strewn all over the parking lot. At the edge of the crime scene there was a second officer leaning against a car, spitting up the leftover Chinese food he’d had for dinner.

“What’ve we got here?” Rogue asked, startling the second officer.

“Hey, you’re not supposed to be back here,” the officer said, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.

“It’s cool; I’m with the department,” Rogue told him, infusing his words with power.

The man’s face was unsure, but his words came out steady. “It’s like nothing I’ve ever seen.” He nodded towards the scene. “It’s as if somebody dropped a bunch of rotting corpses all over the street. I count at least three of them.”

“Rotting corpses?” Rogue raised an eyebrow behind his dark glasses.

“If that’s what you wanna call ’em,” the chubby officer said as he joined them.

Rogue turned his back on the officers and stepped close to one of the corpses. Behind his sunglasses Rogue let the boundaries of the physical world fall away and examined the scene with his
other
eyes. The fluids on the ground were fresh, but the corpse had died long before that night. The corpses were without a doubt Stalkers,
which was what concerned him. These were the foot soldiers of hell and had no business being so far away from the keeps and estates that hid their masters away from the world. It had been the sixth sighting in almost as many nights, definitely a bad sign. If these beasties were running loose in his city, then something big was going down.

Rogue removed a small penknife from his pocket and knelt beside one of the corpses. The stench reminded him of a murdered dealer he’d come across in his days on the force. The man had had his throat cut and was stuffed into a meat locker. He’d been in there for at least a week before his body was uncovered. Rogue collected a sample on the tip of his knife and scraped it off into one of the small glass vials he kept in his pocket for such things. It would take a day or two to complete the spell that would lead him back to whatever had destroyed the monsters, but from the way the Stalkers had been dismembered he wasn’t sure if he wanted to.

“What do you make of it, sir?” the chubby officer asked, a little unnerved by how still the bounty hunter had gone.

Rogue stood and turned his shaded eyes to the chubby officer. “I think it was a classic case of vandalism. Some kids probably got drunk and trashed a few cars.” He shrugged. “Not much to do except contact the owners and hope their insurance is paid up.”

The chubby officer looked at Rogue as if he had taken leave of his senses. “Rogue, I don’t know if this is getting through to you or not, but we’ve got three stiffs here. I think this goes way beyond drunken kids. I gotta call it in.”

“Couldn’t agree with you more.” Rogue removed his sunglasses and stood directly in front of the officer. The chubby officer froze when he looked into Rogue’s eyes … the eyes of something that was clearly not of this world. They were black, but not like the color. They were the
black of the universe before the supposed big bang that created the world. A black so deep that even if you shone a flashlight in them, they still could not reflect the light. Dancing within the blackness were dozens of star-like flakes. Staring into Rogue’s eyes was like looking up at a Nebraska sky on a crisp September night. The eyes were a gift and a curse from a demon his youngest brother had been foolish enough to summon and lose control of. With the combined efforts of Rogue and his father and uncle, they were able to coerce the demon back to the pit it had crawled out of, but not without a price. When you are dealing with demons there’s always a price.

Through the soulless eyes Rogue was able to see the world as no mortal ever would. He could see people for what they truly were and sometimes what he saw was horrifying, which was why he wore the sunglasses, to help block out the ugliness of the world. And just as Rogue could see as the demon would, the same held true for the donor. The demon could see the world with the simplicity of a mortal without leaving the solitude of its pit. The eyes bound them not only in sight but also in power. Because of their connection Rogue found that he was able to tap into the darkness to add to his own magic, magic that he used to banish the creatures of the dark and sometimes those of the light. No one escaped the bounty hunter when he was set on a trail.

Locking gazes with the chubby officer, Rogue called his power. The starry night in his eyes brightened and the flakes began to swirl in the darkness. “When you call it in, you will report it just as I said. Some kids got drunk and made a mess of some cars, do you understand?” The chubby officer was so enthralled that you could’ve slapped him in the face and he probably wouldn’t have noticed. This was just a sample of the centuries-old magic Rogue commanded.