Aftermath (13 page)

“There is not simply one, but many,” Lance answered, sending a shiver cascading down my spine. “The stories of old are all based in truth, ages of deities battling for supremacy over the pantheon that came before only to finally succumb to the wiles of the one true God.”

Which, much to my regret, completely explained how a fire giant from myth and legend could be roaming around alive and well these days.

“So I’m guessing Morgan is aligned with someone or something that just happens to be locked up inside the interstice and she wants to free them.”

“That would seem the most likely rationale.”

And she’s clearly not alone in her desire. “Do you know who might be helping her?”

“I’m afraid I don’t,” he said. It was worth a shot but nothing is ever that easy.

I sighed. This was all too much. Morgan was working with the masked guy to free someone from God’s prison but I still had no clue why. Not that it probably mattered much. There was no reason to believe a god, having been locked up forever and suddenly freed, would check in with his parole officer and work toward being a model citizen. No, if there was one thing gods did pretty damn consistently throughout history it was that they did their damndest to rule. I couldn’t see a happy ending to this fairy tale reunion masked boy and his cohorts were working toward.

“They’ve already been inside the prison,” I told Lance. “I’ve seen their handiwork, the place scorched and burning. Are we too late?”

“I do not believe God would make it so easy to release the skeletons of His past. The fact that we still exist and have not been struck down from on high gives me hope that we still have some time left to us.”

The guy was an optimist. Peachy. “Where can I reach you if I need you?” I asked, my head spinning with all the doom and gloom Lance had filled it with. I couldn’t take any more.

“Stop by the church. My people can contact me. I will have them send you a message should I learn more.”

I nodded. “Find Morgan if you can, Father. She’s deep into whatever is going on and she might just be the lead we need to shut all the rest down.” We were gonna need one hell of a plunger for all the shit backing up.

Father Lance reached out and I took his hand. “Be well, Frank.” He spun on his heels and marched off, purpose in his stride. Right then I wished I had half his motivation.

The end of the world coming, new gods moving in, and everything I’d ever known getting ready to go kablooey, I was gonna have to pick up some lube. My ass was fixing to be
real
sore.

Chapter Eleven

I hung out for a while after Lance left, just letting everything he’d told me sink in. Things were turning into a shit sandwich and any minute I’d be forced to take a great big, heaping bite of it, little bits of corn and all. I could taste it already.

I had no clue who masked boy was trying to break out of the interstice but the fact that he was willing to drop nuclear bombs on the ones in
this
dimension didn’t give me hope things would get any better. Anyone willing to kill that many people to reach their goal was ruthless in a way I’d never faced. They clearly weren’t going to stop no matter who or what got in their way.

Head hung low I figured it was time to face the music and let everyone else know what I’d found out. Unfortunately folks had other plans.

“Well look who we have here.”

I glanced up to see a group of people headed my way. Even in their human forms I could sniff out there were-critter in them. “A Covenant of Dicks welcoming party. How sweet of you, but really you shouldn’t have.”

The group spread out as they advanced. Maybe twenty strong they looked more like street kids than they did some tough ass gang to be afraid. Only the guy who’d spoken appeared older than fifteen. While the majority of the weres were standing on their tiptoes to reach five feet the head honcho clocked in at a good 6’8” easy. He was half as wide as he was tall, too, all thick muscle and bad intentions.

“If you’re looking for directions, you can go right the fuck that way,” I said, using my middle finger to point back the way they’d come. It was pretty much a guarantee I’d run into these guys anytime I popped into Old Town but I really wasn’t in the mood for their posturing. There were bigger things in play.

“Oh no, we’ve found exactly what we were looking for.” Big boy grinned, towering over his diminutive companions. “The star of
Jackass
.”

“You have a name?” I asked. “I want to know what to put on the plaque when I mount your head over my fireplace.”

He chuckled. “You can call me Ass-Whupper because that’s all that’s gonna be mounted here today.”

“Fine then, Ass, let’s get this over with. I’m meeting your mother later and she hates when I’m not on time.”

The mama joke was apparently too much.

The first of the weres barreled forward in mid-transformation, claws poking through their fingertips and growing as they closed. Yellow teeth gnashed and flung spittle, making tiny rainbows in the sunlight.

Conscious that I might have to face something way bigger and badder than a pack of hairy midgets in the near future, I held back my magic and whipped out my .45. I gave the first guy a nose job on the house, putting a bullet right in the middle of his face. Then I bitch slapped his buddy and put my foot in his ass, sending them both toppling into the hole I’d dug for Judas. They hit the bottom with bone-snapping thuds. I ducked under a wild haymaker from the third and jammed my gun into his taint.

“Heard you guys are full of it.” I pulled the trigger. “That ought to clear you up some.”

The were-thing, some sort of cat I believe, gurgled and froze in place, the tiny slits of his eyes going wide as the bullet rattled around inside him and chewed his guts up from the inside. I knocked him out of the way before anything could spew on me and capped another of his buddies who’d kind of stumbled at seeing his friend’s ass get blown apart. He fell to his knees gasping, clawing at his chest.

“That’s’ right. I didn’t just kill him, I rectum.”

Yeah, I went there.

The rest of the weres circled but they were hesitant now, none of them willing to start the second wave. I raised a hand and let a touch of magic dance along my palm.

“Not too late to reconsider this course of action,” I told them. “We could pick it up another time. You know, when the rest of you find your balls maybe.”

“I’ve got enough for all of us, Trigg,” Mr. Whupper said, stepping forward. The rest of the weres eased out of his way as he began to take on his lycanthrope form.

As much as I wanted to shoot him and get it over with, I had to admit to having a certain morbid curiosity about what kind of creature he would become. The weres had always been liberal when it came to infecting other critters with their disease, always looking to increase their effectiveness—or maybe just their weirdness.

And their streak remained intact.

Great slabs of muscle heaped themselves on top of the ones already there, Ass Whupper’s upper body widening into almost comical proportions. A dull gray washed over him, painting his skin as if it were leather, veins thrumming beneath the thick flesh. His nose shifted above his clenched teeth and started growing like Pinocchio was breaking out with the world’s greatest lie. It grew further and further, coming to sharpened point. I glanced past it to see Whupper’s eyes narrow and his head having grown sleeker, sliding back seamlessly into the knotted mass of his powerful back. He roared a challenge as he dropped into a crouch.

“A were-rhino? You guys are rocking the diversity angle, I have to give you that.”

Apparently my social commentary fell flat because Whupper snorted and came stomping at me, massive fists clenched. I couldn’t help but smile. Compared to the fire giant he looked damn near petite.

I ducked low and sidestepped his charge, driving the barrel of my pistol into his ribs as he passed. It
thunked
impotently against the rhino’s mass so I just holstered it so I’d have my hands free. He growled and spun about and came after me again. This time I stood my ground. I’d been wanting something to take my aggression out on and since Ass had been so kind as to volunteer I felt it rude of me to not take advantage of his kind offer.

An uppercut met him coming in and stopped his advance cold. He stiffened and scrambled to keep his feet, surprise coloring his expression. I’m not sure what he expected to happen but me biting down and going Rocky on his ass probably wasn’t it. Still, the dude was a scrapper. He swung back on instinct but all his bulk put him at a disadvantage in tight. I caught his punch on the forearm and, even though it felt like being clipped by a wrecking ball, I turned it aside, punching him in his throat in response. The rhino gasped but didn’t give an inch. His fist slammed into my liver and had me seeing stars, my legs wobbling like fresh Jell-O beneath me. I could just imagine Bill Cosby waiting for me to pass out.

Ass chuckled and tried to separate my head from my shoulders with a wild hook. It kicked up a hurricane of wind just inches from my face as I slipped the punch, battering my eyeballs with rhino stink. That was pretty much when I realized I had to let my pride go and put a little extra oomph into my punches or I was gonna end up staring at the clouds.

Before the rhino could close the distance and shut my lights out, I leapt back and channeled my magic into my fists, darting back in at him as soon as he moved to catch me. He flinched at the unexpected reversal but there was nothing else he could do. A quick jab lifted his chin and I followed up with a dirty shot to his rhino-giblets that bent him double. I followed that up by wrapping my hands around his massive neck and driving a knee into his face, over and over and over, reminiscent of Anderson Silva dethroning Rich Franklin. And much the same, Mr. Ass Whupper went down in a heap of quivering meat. He twitched in meek defiance but his jaw remained uncomfortably planted on the asphalt.

I raised my arms and spun in a circle to face down the rest of the furred horde. “Anyone else want some?” Seemed they were content hanging back, the weres staying in place. The only offense they offered up were ugly looks and low snarls until one of them found his nerve.

“Fuck this,” he said, yanking out a grenade.

That was my cue to bail. I reached down and grabbed Ass and hauled him up in front of me so the grenade bounced off his prestigious gut, then I burst into the air, dragging the limp rhino along with me to shield me from anything else the Covenant assholes might hurl at me. Besides, after getting a good look at my were-rhino companion, there was always a chance I could skin him and make myself a pair of boots.

#

By the time I settled on the roof of a water tower a dozen blocks away from the weres I had a better idea of what to do with Mr. Ass Whupper. First I needed to get in touch with Mike, so I reached out, doing my best to do it quietly. He got back to me a few minutes later while the rhino napped.

“Hey. I got a little sidetracked here in Old Town,” I told him before passing on most of what Father Lance had told me and the good news about Judas being free in the world again. “Can you grab the stack of paperwork that I tossed on my bed and take a look through it? It’s from the first prison and it might clue us in to something. That old man is crazier than the whole state of Florida but there’s a chance there’s something hidden in all his wannabe artistic scribbles that will identify him or help us figure out his role in all this.”

Mike agreed and I cut the connection as the rhino started to come to, grasping at the hot roof, ripping up chunks to help get into a seated position. He glared at me through blurry eyes.

“Feeling better, Sleeping Beauty?”

“Fuck you!”

I slapped him, knocking his head into the pole behind him. “Still horny?”

He grunted, wiping the blood from his lips off with the back of his hand. “That’s funny.”

I grinned, dropping into a squat in front of him. “Thus ends the entertainment portion of our program. It’s only gonna go downhill from here.” My magic fluttered to life, lapping at the were-rhino so there was no mistaking my intent. “Have anything you’d like to tell me?”

“Fuck you?”

“We back to that?”

“Yeah, we’re back to that.”

“Okay, let me rephrase the question.” I reached out and grabbed the rhino’s pinky and snapped it backward. It gave way with a muffled
crack
, his scream drowning out the sound. “Clearer this time?”

Drool rolled down the rhino’s chin as he clung to his injured hand. Red eyes poked holes in my face.

“You’ve got nine more where that came from, then I move south and start on your toes. I’ll find something else to snap in half after that if we make it that far. Want to keep going?”

“The Covenant will—”

Crack!

“Will do what exactly?” I asked, releasing the second of his broken fingers. “Do you think they’re gonna save you?” Ass groaned and tried his best not to cry as I reached for yet another piece of him. “Now tell me why you were looking for me.”

“All right, man. Fuck!” He yanked his hand back and clutched it to his chest to keep it away from me. “We weren’t there on Covenant business. Someone paid us to put the hurting on you.”

“You should really return their money,” I said.

He sneered at me but didn’t say anything.

“So, you gonna tell me who sent you after me or do we start all this over?”

Ass grumbled under his breath but finally gave in. “It was a man in a mask.”

“A Luchador? Please tell me it was El Santo.” I started to hum the Mexican National Anthem.

The rhino just stared at me, not sure what else to say so I made it easy for him.

“That’s all I’m getting?”

He stayed stoic for all of thirty seconds before spilling the beans about the what, where, and whens, only leaving out the who since all he knew was a masked man hanging out with a weird old man. They’d paid him and his buddies more than adequately to not ask any questions, or so he said. I left it at that and didn’t push any harder.