Armageddon Bound

Boiling Point

The van dropped me off at the alley where Baalth’s men had abducted us. At that point, I wasn’t so much mad as I was worried. I couldn’t get Abraham out of my head. I slammed the door to the van shut and started to storm away when the driver called out. I spun around, waiting to see what last minute BS Baalth had set into motion. My cynicism didn’t play out this time. In the driver’s hand was one of my pistols.

“Baalth thought you might need this.” He tossed it out the window to me.

I caught it and sighed, looking it over. At least they didn’t steal them both. I thanked the guy as he drove off, stuffing the gun into my waistband and pulling my shirt over it. It wouldn’t help to be seen waving a gun downtown. I didn’t need any more problems. I had far more than enough on my plate already. Feeling out of touch, and not a little bit adrift, I decided contacting DRAC would be my best bet. I went to a nearby phone booth and dug some change out of my pocket. I deposited fifty cents and called one of the dummy corporation numbers that would put me in touch with DRAC. I gave them the call signs, before hanging up. A few seconds later, I felt my head tingle, Rachelle’s wispy voice reverberating inside my head.

“What can I do for you, Frank?”

I paused for a second, not sure how to tell her what happened. I edged toward the alley and turned to face the wall. It wouldn’t do to have people think I was some lunatic carrying on a conversation with himself.

“I’ve some bad news. Baalth has kidnapped Abraham.”

I felt her concern through the connection. “Is he well?”

I tried my best to sound sincere. “I don’t think they’ll hurt him, but I’m not sure he’s okay, exactly.”

“I’ll alert Rahim and Katon. They can help retrieve him.”

“I don’t think that’s such a good idea. Abe thinks we need to stay focused on the task at hand. If we veer off to rescue him, we put the world in danger. He doesn’t want that on his conscience. Sadly, I agree.”

I hated saying that, no matter how true it might be.

“Baalth said he intends to stick to his word and go after Asmoday. He’ll pass on the specifics of what he intends before it goes down. I’ll forward them on to you as soon as I know.”

I could hear the hesitation in her voice. She understood the situation, even if she didn’t like it. “Then we will stick to the plan.” I knew leaving Abraham in Baalth’s clutches was tearing her up as much as it was me, maybe even more so. I’d always imagined the two had a thing for each other. The pain in her voice all but confirmed it. I felt like a schmuck.

I changed the subject to avoid rubbing salt in the wound. “Have there been any more magical hot spots popping up, recently?”

“The last one to occur was Asmoday’s trap.”

“What about the gates? Any traffic through them?”

“The usual travelers, but no one out of the ordinary. I’ve been keeping a close watch hoping we’ll stumble across something, but so far there’s been nothing.”

I shook my head, trying to think of a way to track Asmoday down before it was too late. A thought popped into my head, hard as that may be to believe.

“What about any dead zones? You were telling me Asmoday was using some sort of magical dampener to mask the magic he was calling up. He’d have to activate them before he actually performed anything, so that’d give us a small window of detection. Have you noticed any areas where your senses drop off, maybe?”

She took a second to think about it. “I hadn’t noticed any, but I hadn’t been looking. I’ll start another scan and see what I can find. Is there anything else?”

“Yeah. Can you please send a message to Scarlett and ask her to meet me here? I know you’re not supposed to do stuff like that, but I don’t have time to try and track her down. I need her help with this.”

Fortunately, Rachelle wasn’t a stickler for the rules when it helped the cause. “Of course.” She paused.

I figured she was just off in her own world, so I waited patiently. A few seconds later, she continued. “Be careful, but do what you must. I’m sure Abraham will be fine.” She cut the contact before I could respond. I thought I heard a quiet sob right before the connection was severed. That only made me feel worse about Abraham’s kidnapping, it being my fault and all. I am a horrible friend.

Sick to my stomach, and no longer in the mood for coffee, I figured it best to get off the street while I waited for Scarlett. I wandered around the corner and back into the alley where Abraham and I had been ambushed. I paced back and forth for a while, replaying the scene where I’d left Abraham behind. My conscience gnawed at me as I thought about the things I could have done to avoid it. Caught up in my head, I barely heard the quiet squeak of brakes at the opposite end of the alley. I looked up to see a gray van parked there, the side door sliding open. I watched in disbelief as the Black Metal trio hopped out and started toward me.

“Not again,” I muttered to myself. You gotta hand it to them. They were nothing if not persistent. Not in the mood, I snarled. They were pissing me off. I looked the motley crew over as they stalked forward. Meinie had recovered from his injuries, no doubt thanks to Veronica and her gifts. He’d paid for that help though. His face was unhealthy thin, almost skeleton-ish. His clothes hung loosely from his narrow frame. He’d probably lost twenty pounds since I’d last seen him, pinned between the van and dumpster. The other two looked a little better, but not much. My ex-wife had left her mark on all of them. They looked used up, desiccated. Though in their case, looks were deceiving. As long as Veronica had her psychic hooks in, they were a threat. Stronger, faster, and armed with magical weapons, they could take me out, given the chance.

As they spread out across the alley, I noticed Eenie had replaced the knife I’d confiscated from the demon assassin with a samurai sword of some sort. I imagined it was wrought by the same supernatural hands that had created the weapons the other two wielded. I wasn’t interested in finding out. Unlike the last time, when they’d caught me unarmed, I was prepared to fight. As they got a little closer, I whipped my gun out and went to work. I pumped three rounds into Meenie. The first two slammed into his chest, the third crashed into his nose. He didn’t even have time to scream as the back of his head exploded in a spray of crimson tendrils and gray chunks. Before his body hit the ground, I was firing at Eenie. He caught two to the face. In a flash, his head was like a melted candle, streams of ruby pouring down his neck.

As his friends crumpled around him, their weapons clattering to the ground, Meinie closed on me. His eyes were like two pieces of coal, simmering with rage. He was looking for vengeance, but I was ready. He swung his short sword in a wide, downward arc, which I easily sidestepped. The blade bit into the cement, throwing up sparks as I moved behind him. Before he could spin about, I shot him in the back of the knee. He screamed like a banshee as his leg buckled and he fell, face first. I was on him like white on rice. My next shot was to his wrist, the bones shattering on impact. His sword bounced from his hand and skittered across the ground to land a few feet away.

I added insult to injury. I stepped on his broken wrist and pressed the barrel of my. 45 hard against the base of his skull.

“E Nomine Satanas, motherfucker.” I pressed harder, his face grinding against the rough pavement. His grunted moans made me happy. “I know my ex is a hot little number, but trust me, nothing she’s got is worth dying for.”

He muttered something incoherent and bucked against me. Despite his wounds, he was still pretty strong, Veronica’s magic coursing through his veins. I increased the pressure on his wrist and leaned my weight into my gun. After an initial groan, he went quiet. He was smarter than he looked.

“I’m trying to give you an out. Don’t give me any more of a reason to kill you than I already have.

Do you understand?”

I could feel his resistance crumbling as he thought about his options. He grunted affirmative.

“Good. Now play nice and I won’t have to blow your balls off, you hear?”

He gave the thumbs up gesture with his good hand and I took a step back, kicking his sword further away as I did. Moaning, he pulled himself into a seated position, his back against the wall. He looked up at me, his eyes awash with fear, his body too dehydrated to form tears. But for all his bravado, he hadn’t signed up to die.

“How’d you find me?”

“Veronica told us where you’d be.”

“How did she know? Is she working with Baalth?”

He shrugged. “No idea about Baalth. All I know is she said she could track you. That she knew where you’d be. I don’t know how she does it.”

I thought I did. As a succubus, Veronica was drawn to the essence of life. She fed on it, devoured it, leaving behind an empty husk. I don’t mean just our marriage either. She’d always been able to seek out the most potent of humans to feed on, but it had been more of an instinctual thing. It happened without her conscious control. At least it had. We’d been separated for the last twenty years. A lot could change in that time. The possibilities were intriguing.

“It’s too scrawny. You’ll have to throw it back,” a voice from behind me said, interrupting my thoughts with a start.

I turned to see Scarlett strolling up to me.

“We’re gonna have to stop meeting like this.” I gestured to the alley. “People are starting to talk.”

As usual, she just laughed at me. It made me feel like the loser at the bar who’d be stopping off at the allhours quickie mart for magazines and hand lotion on his way home.

“Don’t tell me you needed my help with this?”

She pointed to Meinie.

“No, I think I’ve got this one handled. I actually needed you to help fry a bigger fish.” Keeping an eye on Veronica’s wannabe assassin, I pulled the business card out that Poe had given me and handed it to her. She looked it over. “What are the addresses for?”

“Those are a few of Asmoday’s local interests. I’m hoping you’ll look after them. I’d hate to see anything happen. You know, like a raging inferno or an accidental carpet-bombing.”

“You think he’s at one of them?” She couldn’t help but smile at the thought of raining down her righteousness on Asmoday.

“I doubt it, but if you make a big enough mess, he might pay a visit.”

“Ah, you’re looking to draw him out.”

I nodded. “Either him or one of his cohorts, Page 159 preferably one from on high. If they’re busy protecting his interests, they aren’t off destroying the world.”

“That’s a simplistic presumption.”

“Simple is what I do best. Besides, I’m not choking all my chickens in one basket.”

Scarlett looked at me like she didn’t know whether to laugh or be offended. I could tell she was leaning toward the latter.

“Just pay a visit to those addresses and let me know what happens. I’ll handle the rest. Oh, and do me another favor.”

She raised her eyebrow.

“Can you take those things with you?” I pointed to the collection of weapons scattered amongst the bodies. “I don’t have time to stash them somewhere safe.”

She nodded and scooped them up in a hurry. Not one to resist the opportunity to blow something up, Scarlett waved and shot up out of the alley, leaving me alone with Meinie.

He sat there with wide eyes as he watched the golden trail of her passage fade away.

“Come on. We’ve got places to go and succubi to see.”

He shook his head, sweat pasting his greasy hair to his face. “I can’t do that. She’ll kill me, man.”

“You ever see the movie Deliverance?” His eyes grew wide. Apparently he had. “If you don’t get up and Page 160 move your ass little piggy, I’m gonna whip out my banjo and make you squeal, you feel me?”

He raised his hands in surrender. “I’ll take you, man. I’ll take you.”

“Good choice.”

I grabbed his healthy arm and hauled him to his feet. Twisting it behind his back, I dragged him to the van and shoved him inside. I hopped in the back and closed the door, settling in. To be sure I had his cooperation I jammed my gun against the driver’s seat hard enough so he could feel it through the padding.

“Drive.”

With a resigned sigh, he started the van and drove off. Good thing for him it was an automatic. I leaned back in my seat and stared out the window. It had been a long time since I’d seen Veronica and it was obvious she wasn’t taking the divorce well. I wasn’t looking forward to the reunion, but if she could do what I thought she could, it would be worth the trip. Besides, I might even get laid.

‘Till Death Do Us Part

“This is as far as I go, man,” Meinie told me as he brought the van to a stop near a seedy strip of No-Tell Motels at the south end of Old Town. “She’s in room 112, bottom floor near the ice machine.”

“You’d better not be lying to me.”

“I’m not, I promise. I’m done with it, dude.”

That wasn’t possible, but I didn’t bother to tell him that. Once a succubus got her claws in a guy, he was as good as dead. What she had to offer was more addictive than any drug imaginable. I don’t care how good a woman was in bed, the things Veronica could do would put the best lay to shame. The feelings she evoked with just a whisper could curl your toes and make your ears wiggle. She could make a heterosexual man listen to Clay Aiken and like it. I was starting to get aroused just thinking about it; Veronica, not Clay, just so we’re clear“Fine, but I swear if I ever see you again, you’ll spend your last few moments singing soprano. You get me?”

He nodded enthusiastically.

I ground my gun into the back of his seat once more out of spite and slid the door open. I hopped out and looked toward the hotel. I felt my chest grow tight as I thought about seeing Veronica again. There was a Page 162 lot of water that had passed under that bridge and most of it smelled like raw sewage. I wasn’t sure I was up to jumping back into it, however temporary the swim was. Meinie, not waiting to see how things turned out, gunned the van and took off, squealing the wheels as he took the corner way too fast. He was gone in a flash. He was the smart one, apparently. No longer concerned with him, I headed off toward the hotel. I figured Meinie might give Veronica a heads up I was coming, but I didn’t care at that point. If she still wanted me dead, she’d have to do it herself. I slipped around the side of the building and approached her room. Not giving myself time to get nervous, I knocked on the door. I did it lightly to avoid it sounding like a cop knock. It must have worked. The door swung open and Veronica stared out at me, her eyes wide with surprise. She looked even better than I remembered.

She had on a pair of black biker boots that ran to the calves of her painted-on blue jeans, which hugged her in all the right spots. She also wore a tight, wifebeater T-shirt, which barely contained her bra-less chest. The sight of which got my blood to flowin’. My eyes roamed up her body, taking it all in, much to my libido’s delight.

Her taught arms rippled with lean muscle beneath the colored lines of extensive tattooing that covered their entirety. The brilliant colors and

Asian-themed artwork ended at her collarbones where her long neck led up to her shocked face. Her big blue eyes stared at me from above her scrunched button nose, her head framed in a halo of short, wild black hair. The look of surprise quickly vanished to be replaced by the hard lines of her fury.

“Frank. You son of a bitch,” she growled. Before I could open my mouth to defend my mother, she clocked me. Throwing a sneaky uppercut, she caught me flush on the chin. I heard my teeth clack together as my head whipped back, knocking me off balance. I tumbled into the parking lot, fireworks exploding in front of my eyes. Face to the asphalt, I mumbled an incoherent complaint as a thin stream of my blood trickled from my mouth and pooled beneath me. I’d forgotten how hard she could hit. I rolled over to talk just as her boot crashed into my ribs. I felt my breath whoosh from my lungs as I slid back across the lot a few feet, scraping away layers of skin. I instinctively curled up to protect myself from further injury, but kept my eyes on her. I wanted to see the next shot coming.

“I’ll kill you!” she shouted. I’m not sure whether it was a good thing no one was around to witness her kicking my ass. Not that it would matter much. In Old Town, people tended to ignore everything that didn’t involve them, or they couldn’t profit from. I wasn’t gonna get any help from the locals.

A few giggles maybe, but no assistance. Furious, she kicked me again, her boot slamming into my arms. While it stung, it didn’t do much damage. I caught my breath as she kicked again. This time, I grabbed her leg and twisted. She went down, rolling away from me as I jumped to my feet.

“Come on now, can’t we discuss this like adults?”

She growled low in her throat and flung herself at me again. “I guess not.”

She came at me like she intended to tackle me. I let her close, then just as her shoulder connected with my stomach, I wrapped my arms around her waist and lifted. I spun sideways and let her go, using her momentum to throw her into the ice machine. She let out a grunt as she slammed into it, the sound drowned out by the crash of falling ice, knocked free inside. She righted herself and glared at me, her eyes sparkling with rage.

“Look, I don’t want to fight.”

She ignored me and stalked forward, her hands raised like a boxer. I sighed, shifting my own stance, resigned to the fact we weren’t gonna work our differences out peacefully. I really didn’t want to fight her. It’s not like I was all that concerned about hitting a woman, I am part devil after all, but I always had a hard time hurting those I cared for. For all our problems, I couldn’t help but think of the good times we’d shared. Admittedly, most of them involved her face shoved into a pillow, but that’s beside the point. They were good times, for me at least.

She clearly didn’t feel the same way. She closed and threw a left. I moved my right to defend against it and caught a kick to the liver instead. I stumbled back with a hiss, angry at myself for falling for her feint. She’d gotten better. That didn’t bode well. She’d always been a scrapper, but she’d been sloppy, undisciplined. It wasn’t something she really needed to learn considering her feminine charms ensured she had an army of men to do her dirty work for her. The fact she had taken the time to learn how to fight properly meant my task here was going to be harder than I thought. What a surprise. Nothing was ever easy for me. Why should it start being so now?

She didn’t give me any time to recover before she pressed her attack. She came in fast, throwing a nice combination of punches. I blocked the first two, but the third slipped past, catching me in the temple. Once again I saw stars, my legs doing the chicken dance beneath me. She laughed and took advantage. She drove a straight right into my nose. I felt the crack as once again the cartilage in my nose shattered. Ice pick-sharp pains shot through my eyes as they welled up with tears.

“Bitch.” I growled as I stumbled back, getting angry, but she wasn’t finished with me. She charged forward, throwing a flurry of punches and kicks.

I managed to defend against a few, but most of them connected with solid thuds. She drove me back toward the hotel, her fists a blur of violent motion that rocked my head back and forth, blurring my vision even further. My skull rang like a bell.

I felt my back slam into the wall. With nowhere to retreat to, my face a train wreck of swelling contusions and bleeding cuts, I needed to do something to turn the tide. As Veronica closed on me, I dropped down and slipped a punch, causing her fist to crash into the cinder block wall behind me. I heard her grunt, but didn’t wait to see if it slowed her any. I popped back up and headbutted her. My forehead collided with her nose and I heard a loud snap. She shrieked and stumbled back, clutching her face as blood seeped from between her fingers.

Not interested in giving her time to recover, I leaped forward and grabbed her by the arm. With every ounce of strength I had, I spun her about and flung her through the window of her room. The glass shattered, exploding into a million shards of glittering razors that slashed at her as she flew through, landing in a heap on the hotel bed. I waited a second for the shards to clear, then dove in after her, landing on top of her, my weight pressing down.

I knew there was no reasoning with her, especially now that things had gone so far, so I did what I had to get through to her. Crouched on top, I slugged her in the face. I followed that up with another, then another, pinning her beneath me. She squirmed and cursed me as I rained down blows, her hands tearing at me to get me off her. One after another, I punched her until her face looked like a slab of tenderized meat. By about the twentieth shot, her struggling resistance at last gave way to whimpering compliance and I stopped. She looked up at me, her blue eyes filled with pools of crimson, interspersed with tears. Her clawing hands, giving up their useless defense, now gripped me like steel vises. I stared down at her, meeting her sad, beaten gaze with my own. She moaned, part pain part something else, and pulled my head down. With a passion I’d not experienced since our wedding night, she kissed me.

Though I knew her as well as anyone, I had to admit, I hadn’t thought my plan would work considering our history. You see, succubi are not like most women- or more correctly, they aren’t like what any woman would ever admit to being-in that they are drawn not only to power, but to the display of said power. The bigger the display, the better. Able to control men with but the merest sliver of their sensual capabilities, they find themselves bored easily so they seek out those who offer them the most challenge. The harder the pursuit, the more they invest themselves in the chase. Due to the nature of succubi, the man who can conquer one physically also conquers the succubus’s heart. Though that didn’t make things perfect, our failed marriage a good example of that, it certainly made things easier in the wooing process.

I reveled in the kiss, letting her tongue run amok inside my mouth. Through the heat, I could taste the intermingled blood of our wounds and as disturbing as it might sound, I found it arousing. I pressed down onto her, leaning hard into the kiss. It’d been a long time since I’d been with a woman. At least, it’d been a long time where the encounter didn’t end with me pulling out my wallet, so I did my best to savor every second.

I felt her grinding her hips into me, setting off rampant sparks in my crotch. I shuddered in pleasure and ground back, working myself into a frenzy. I could feel the warmth, radiating outward from our conjoined crotches, tingling up through my limbs. I tore my mouth from hers and pushed her head to the side, diving into the crook of her neck, kissing and biting. She hissed in pain and pulled away, shattering the moment. I sat up in a rush, taking my weight off her. I looked down at her beautiful face, although it was really hard to call her that at the moment considering the amount of swelling and bruising present. I felt a little bad, I had to admit.

“Uh…hi.” Her voice was raspy and wet sounding, but nothing could hide its sexiness.

“Hi yourself,” I replied, a little at a loss for words, all the blood somewhere besides my brain.

“No hard feelings?”

“For what? Sending assassins after me three times? Trying to kill me?” My mouth went on autopilot. I have foot-in-mouth disease.

“You sent me back to Hell, how’d you think I was going to react?” Her look turned hard as she pushed me away.

I rolled off her and sat on the edge of the bed. I raised my hands in surrender. “You’re right, I probably had it coming, but what did you expect? I came home to find you in bed with the cable guy. You didn’t even have the decency to get us free HBO.”

“Hello. I’m a succubus, that’s what I do. You knew that when you married me.” She sat up, glaring.

“Knowing you use sex to retain your strength is one thing. My walking into the bedroom to see some strange guy’s hairy ass bouncing up and down as he pile-drives my wife is another thing entirely.”

She shook her head. “You always were too damn sensitive, not to mention insecure. That’s one of the reasons I left you, not counting the unexpected, forced visit to Hell. And just so you know, it took me fifteen years to hitch a ride back to Earth thanks to your uncle shutting most of the damn gates down.” She put her hands on her hips and glared at me. “I was with you because I loved you, not because you satisfied my needs as a succubus.”

Ouch. I felt my hard on retreat. “That’s just cruel.”

Veronica laughed. “Get over it. You know damn well I can’t feed off you because of your genetics. Don’t get all butt hurt over it. It just wasn’t going to work. I needed more than you could provide.”

Bah. Women. Can’t live with them, can’t bury them deep enough to avoid prosecution. I tried to act like I was cool with her logic. I wasn’t, but I didn’t want her to know that. I went on auto-redirect. “Anyway, I didn’t come here to stir up old memories.”

“Then why did you come?” She ran her hand over her battered face and winced.

“Meinie told me you tracked me, knew where I was all the time.”

She looked at me with quizzical eyes. I sighed and explained. “You know, one of the longhairs you were sleeping with to get him to kill me?”

“Ah, okay. What about it?”

“I remember your life-sensing abilities were pretty limited, so how’d you do it?”

She snarled. “A lot has changed in the last twenty years, Frank. I’ve gotten better at everything I do.” She licked her swollen lips.

Like an idiot, my thoughts started to wander. I reined them in as flashes of past perversions burned their sinful images into the screen of my mind. “How good is your tracking these days?”

Page 171

“Quite good. I tracked you easily enough, didn’t I?” She looked me over like a piece of meat. “Although I have to say, it helped you’ve gone and upped your power a few notches since we last crossed paths.” I thought I heard her purr.

“I’ve seen a bit of action, lately.” Of course, it wasn’t the kind of action I wanted to see. “So, if I were to ask you to track someone for me, could you do it?”

“Depends.” Her eyes grew wary. “Who’s the mark?”

“An angel. He’s no one you know, but I really need to find him.” I didn’t want to tell her too much, but I tried my best to convey the importance of what I was asking of her. She picked up on it pretty fast.

“What’s in it for me?”

I couldn’t help but laugh. Like every other supernatural being in my life, they all wanted their cut. Shit, for that matter, so did all the humans. Veronica was no different. “What do you want?”

She smiled, knowing I’d given in too easily. She’d figured out I needed this favor badly so she was gonna make it worth her while, regardless how it turned out for me. Satisfied she had me by the short and curlies, she decided to drag it out. “I’ll think about it for a bit. Right now, I’d like to get cleaned up and find a way to heal.”

I heard the less-than-subtle hint in her words. She knew about the vials Lucifer had given me and was maneuvering to get one. I kept the fact I had one on me to myself. “I think we can work something out.” I didn’t mind giving her a bit of my uncle’s blood, but I sure wasn’t gonna do it before I got something in return.

“I’m feeling a bit exposed out here in Old Town. Why don’t we go back to my house and finish our discussion there?”

A hint of a smile graced her lips. “Of course. Let me get my things.” She dropped off the bed and started stuffing her belongings into a couple of small suitcases. She was traveling light. I guessed she’d thought her assassins would finish the job quickly. She should have known better. I’d always been pretty good at disappointing people. You’d think she’d remember that, being married to me and all.

I’d called a cab while I watched her pack, my car still at Coffee Hut. I didn’t imagine Meinie would swing back by to give us a ride. Too bad, he seemed like a nice enough fellow. He had good taste in music, at least. Once Veronica was finished, I grabbed her bags and headed outside with her. Much to my surprise, it was only a few minutes until the cab pulled up at the curb. The cabbie must have been desperate for a fare to have arrived so soon. The look on his wrinkled face when he saw us told me he thought he’d made a mistake. I didn’t give him the chance to change his mind. I gave him directions and a healthy cash incentive to get us there fast. Money talks and people listen. He heard me loud and clear. We were on the road in a flash. I glanced at Veronica and despite the bruises and bloodstains marring her face it was still very apparent why I’d been so attracted to her in the first place. Her sharp features lent her a classic beauty that even all the damage couldn’t completely hide. It didn’t hurt I could see down her shirt. She turned and smiled at me, sliding down in the seat to snuggle beside me. I put my arm around her and sighed. It felt like old times. No matter how everything else turned out, no matter how bad things got, no one could take away the happiness I felt. With her boobs pressed into my side and her hand on my lap, the end of the world was a distant memory.