Chapter 1: The Doorbell Rang
It is said that the only tragedy is to not become a saint; thankfully, most paths to sainthood had fewer gunshots than mine did.
Unfortunately, more than a few had similar problems with demons.
I awoke that night to the doorbell ringing. The last person who owned the house had been a police officer on the bomb squad, and partially deaf, so it sounded like an alert at a fire station.
I was up and out of bed, gun in hand, before I knew I was even awake. After scanning my empty bedroom for a threat, I took a deep breath and forced myself to relax.
Gun in hand, I went downstairs. It wouldn’t have been the first time we were greeted by uninvited guests in the middle of the night.
I flipped the lights on for downstairs and took one step at a time, trying not to make more noise than the doorbell.
I stepped onto our enclosed porch, and the ringing stopped.
I paused for a moment, listening for movement on the front steps. After a minute, there was nothing. There wasn’t even wind. There was no smell of evil. There was nothing.
It’s an old house, I thought. Old wiring can glitch. Do I believe that? No. But not everything has to be a demonic attack. I—
The optimistic train of thought was cut off by pounding on the door. It wasn’t the quick three pounds of a police raid. It was a constant stream of hammering—six pounds a second. It was like someone wanted to break down the door with bare fists.
I strode to the door and hit the porch light with my left as I pressed the muzzle of my gun just under the peephole. I looked outside through the wide-angle peephole.
There was nothing there. Nothing. Just the other side of the street. I moved my head to check multiple angles. Nothing new popped up.
Still looking out the peephole, I turned off the light.
The world outside the peephole turned to fire and flames, a vision of Hell. In front of me was a man. His skin was raw and bleeding all over, and on fire. He screamed into the peephole, bellowing, “Nolan!”
It was Rene Ormeno, an old adversary, as I had last seen him—flayed alive.
“You did this to me, Nolan! I’m coming for you! And everyone you love!”
I stepped back from the peephole, gun up, ready to fire. I didn’t dare shoot through the door, lest it was another hallucination.
I waited, gun up and ready.
After a minute, I sagged with relief. Nothing came. It was just another night in a three-year campaign of harassment by demons to deprive me of sleep and generally drive me slowly insane.
Note to self. Make sure to tell Father Freeman that Sunday dinner will double as a visit to bless the house again.
I turned and walked upstairs. I glanced at the living room clock on my way up. It was two in the morning. Plenty of time to get some additional sleep. Assuming the adrenaline would burn off enough.
As I made it upstairs, my daughter Grace stood at the door of her room in a full nightgown and robe. Grace looked more like her mother every day. She was taller and a little sturdier in build, but the resemblance was so close it almost hurt.
She looked me up and down. “Everything okay, Dad?”
I shrugged. “Another night, another demon harassing us. So, yay.”
Grace patted me on the arm. “Don’t worry. Try to get back to sleep.”
I looked to the door on the other side of the main bedroom. “Alex didn’t wake up?”
Grace smiled and shook her head. “Does he ever?”
I frowned. I worried about Alex some days. Ever since Mariel died, the house was empty with just Grace and me. I didn’t want to bring in other women from the shelter, lest they be caught in the crossfire of my life. Alex was getting older, with no family, and I had the room. It helped calm me to know there was always another person with a gun in the house.
Lucky for him, Alex was a heavy sleeper.
I smiled to myself. “At least Lena and Jeremy aren’t here. They might be having a quieter night.”
Chapter 2: The Bank Job
London, England
Sometimes, pulling the same trick twice works solely because the victim thinks they’ve prepared for it.
For example, in 1971, a group of robbers broke into the Baker Street branch of Lloyd’s of London, an old and trusted bank, established in 1765. The Baker Street Branch was a particularly amusing target, because the criminals had stolen the idea from a Sherlock Holmes short story. They dug under a store, into the bank, and then up into the safe deposit boxes. There was even a Jason Statham movie about it, but any relationship between that and reality were purely miraculous.
Since then, seismic sensors had been installed in most banks. Active security systems, guards on patrol, security cameras, were also put in place. It was hard to drill safe deposit boxes when guards saw the perps in real time.
However, cameras didn’t help when two MIT graduates (who doubled as CIA agents) cracked the closed circuit cameras and looped the feeds. Guards didn’t help when all they saw was the empty vault. Seismic sensors didn’t help when a telekinetic traced the wires with her mind and pulled all of the relevant circuitry that enabled the alarms to sound.
Lena Nolan was first out of the hole after the thermal lance had carved their way through the bank floor. She was a tall woman with long golden hair and piercing green eyes. She was dressed in dark green coveralls, the better to disappear into the night.
Her husband, Jeremy Nolan, came up right behind her.
“Box 319,” he muttered.
Lena nodded. The two of them went to the box as the others climbed up behind them. The others were not members of the CIA or any part of the US government. Outside of the Nolan family, no one wanted to deal with the supernatural. The FBI had a guy they shared with the military, but no one at the Agency had either the spine or the spiritual fortitude to deal with the forces of darkness. Even though monsters from Hell could be slowed down with bullets, no one wanted to trifle with the forces of darkness. Most of the FBI didn’t believe in the supernatural. The few agents who had considered themselves prepared for the forces of darkness had all come with their own mystic crystals—they had been eaten. Two Asatru in the military who had aided Tommy against an arch-nemesis had been asked to join, but they didn’t want to deal with the FBI bureaucracy.
It was easier for Lena and Jeremy to hire some local toughs and lie to them. It had been tempting to call up Tommy Nolan and have him just bi-locate into the bank, drill the lock, and grab the contents, but they didn’t know if the drill would go with him. It would have been easier, but neither Lena nor Jeremy signed up thinking this job would be easy.
Box 319 was in the corner of the bank vault. Jeremy kept one eye on the men they’d hired from the wrong side of town. The five of them had been paid at a rate of fifty pounds an hour. This was in addition to whatever else they could steal from the boxes.
Jeremy didn’t trust them in case they decided to look at what he and Lena wanted.
“Remember to take only cash, jewels, precious metals,” he told them. “Try not to take anything personal or personalized. Last thing you want to do is get arrested because you tried to hawk Grandma’s monogrammed ring.”
The thugs barely even looked at Jeremy. One waved him off, leaving them to their business. He sighed. He gave them the warning for two reasons. He stated one. The latter was that the bank’s insurance would replace monetary loses, but family heirlooms were a different story. He didn’t want to rip off something that couldn’t be replaced with a fat check.
Jeremy sighed, but let them get to work. He glanced over his shoulder. Lena had already popped the locks on the box. She patted him on the shoulder, and they swapped places.
Jeremy gloved up with metal mesh, cut-resistant coverings. The metal mesh gloves were a mix of iron and silver, guarding against anything fae related, or other monsters and demons. Even with all of that, he still expected a booby trap to reach out and grab him.
“When do you think these guys are going to stab us in the back?” Jeremy whispered to Lena as he reached in.
Lena kept her eye on the other thugs. “They may wait until we get back to the storefront. But I’d rather not wait for them to make a move.”
Jeremy nodded. “Smash, grab, and run. Got it. They can’t kill us if we’ve packed up first.” He grabbed the box and pulled hard and fast before anything could come get him. It came loose smoothly.
“Got it!” he said with a smile. “Let’s go.”
Jeremy’s smile faded as he realized that he saw his breath. In the seconds since he pulled the safety deposit box, the temperature in the bank vault dropped thirty degrees. He glanced back. From the empty box slot, frost grew and crystallized along the surface of the other safety deposit boxes. Ice crystals already formed, freezing humidity in the air. The cool air touched Jeremy’s skin and bit straight to the bone. Shudders ripped through him without any warning.
Jeremy didn’t need to see where this was going to know the end result. He backed up, Lena moving with him. He barked. “Change of plans! Run!”
Lena sprinted away from Jeremy, heading for the hole. She leaped straight down, skipping the ladder entirely, and sprinted down the tunnel. Jeremy was only two steps behind her.
The dark inside the box’s slot grew, spilling out of the opening. It crawled out slowly, blotting out the surrounding boxes, spreading like liquid shadow.
The men they had brought with them hesitated, looking around, confused by the sudden warning. They had felt the temperature drop, but didn’t understand that it was a herald of something darker.
Two of them sprinted after Jeremy and Lena, but the rest turned back to the loot that sparkled temptingly before them.
The four of them ran.
The dying screams of those left behind followed Jeremy and Lena down the tunnel as the darkness spilled out of the bank vault, crawling after them. The last two thugs slowed, eyes wide. They turned back, calling out the names of their friends.
“No! Run!” called Lena.
This time, it was Jeremy who took her hand and pulled. They kept running. Sparing a glance back into the living darkness that had now consumed every last thug,
Jeremy only spared a glance back into the living darkness to realize that his budget was going to save plenty of money on hiring out the bank job thugs.
Jeremy slapped the air above his head, nearly touching the ceiling. He caught the first tripwire, set in case something like this happened. It was on a five-second delay, giving him and Lena enough time to get away and hopefully causing a cave-in on the living darkness.
Then he did it five more times on the way through the hundred-pace-long tunnel. Jeremy had spent too much time being outclassed and overpowered by the forces of Hell to think that there was any such thing as “overkill.”
Lena didn’t climb the ladder so much as she pushed off the ground with her mind. It almost looked like she flew up the side of the tunnel wall. She turned, waiting for her husband. When he was in sight, he threw the box up the tunnel shaft. She caught it with her mind and deflected it onto the floor off to the side.
“Jump!” Lena ordered.
Jeremy did. The telekinetic grip wrapped around him like a hug and hauled him up through the hole. He came out of the tunnel as the explosions went off, burying the living shadows.
Jeremy landed next to the fire hose they had specially rigged for the occasion. It ran from the building’s water main, through a fifty-gallon drum of holy water, and then out through a regular hose. He pointed the business end of the hose into the hole and opened up at full force.
Once the shadows had punched a hole through the collapsed tunnel, it ran directly into the stream of holy water.
Jeremy stayed there, still as a statue, forcing the fire hose to stay still as the tunnel flooded.
As Jeremy did that, Lena took and opened the lock box, peeking inside to see their prize. She didn’t have any doubt what they had, but it was the only way to be sure.
Inside was the end of three years of investigations, military actions, and outright assassinations. This was the last piece of the inventory for the dark web vendor, Shadow Mart. Each piece had been held by a different member of the Illuminati. Some had been seduced under a false flag operation in the guise of the Freemasons. Some had been willing participants to murder and casual slaughter. Lena and Jeremy had been left out of much of it. But most of their operations had been dealing with the Illuminati to some degree or another.
The lock box had the last piece of the puzzle: the Necronomicon.
It was a hideous creation. Bound in leather made from human skin, blackened and stained with evil and fastened shut by buckles. It had been owned by George Matchett, decades ago, before he was even a teenager. It had passed on to Arturo Bergolio, the former General of the late, unlamented, recently-dissolved Jesuits.
Lena nodded, then closed the lid. She didn’t lock it, since she didn’t want it spared as she slid it, open-end first, into a fire bucket full of holy water.
The book screamed in torment. Agonized wails of the damned poured forth as the bucket boiled and hissed with steam. Lena leapt back before a spurt of flame came from the bucket’s mouth. The bucket rattled and shook as the book and the holy water seemingly fought for victory.
Lena was happy to stay far back.
She turned back to her husband as he turned off the fire hose. “Book is waterlogged. Tunnel?”
He nodded. “The same. Let’s get the heck out of here.”
Jeremy led the way. He thought it was the height of politeness that she never went ahead of him. That way, he would be the one to spring traps or ambushes.
He stepped into the abandoned shop and looked around. No one was there. He pounded on the wall behind him to signal her up. According to the plan, she walked past him, out the door, and down the street, heading for the car.
Jeremy waited, ready for his contact to reach out.
The phone pinged immediately. Jeremy frowned, wondering how they had managed to be so fast. He grabbed his phone from his back pocket and took it out, glancing at the text message.
Then the door opened, the little bell chiming to signal a new customer.
The text had read: “No sudden movements.”
Jeremy didn’t move his head from the downward tilt of reading the phone. Instead, he moved his eyes up, locking onto the front door.
In came a man of medium height and athletic build. He was as tight coil of muscle and skill. He was as young as Jeremy but Chinese. His clothes were solid black. It was a business suit specially-cut for his fighting style. His Makarov semiautomatic handgun was locked on Jeremy’s chest.
But it was okay, Jeremy knew him. He was the attack dog of “Division Four,” the People’s Republic of China’s supernatural warfare department. They collected supernatural artifacts and experimented with them—usually on people. But it was the PRC, they had people to spare. They were usually Muslim Uighurs (Wee-gars), but when they ran out of Uighurs, there were always Christians to mutilate.
Jeremy’s eyes narrowed. “Lim Tong,” he greeted flatly.
The Division Four operative slid in, staying fairly close to the door, easily twenty feet away from Jeremy. “Jerry.” Lim Tong smiled. “Once again, Jerry, we see that there is nothing you possess that I cannot take away.”
Jeremy’s mouth dropped open slightly. His back and shoulders straightened and he slipped away the smart phone. “Did you just quote Raiders of the Lost Ark at me?”
Lim Tong scoffed. “I would never. Western decadence doesn’t befit one of my station.”
“Here I just thought you were unoriginal.” Jeremy’s eyes narrowed. “What now? You going to kill us?”
Lim Tong laughed. “Of course not, Jerry. Who else would I get to do all of the work for me? Now hand over the book.”
Jeremy smiled at him and cocked his head. “Book? What book?”
Lim Tong’s smile faded. “Don’t play with me. The Necronomicon. Hand it over.”
Jeremy bunched up his mouth, making a show of thinking hard. He even stared at a spot on the wall for a moment, as though deep in thought. “You know, Limmy? I don’t think so.”
Lim Tong glanced from one side of the abandoned store to the other. “I don’t see anyone here to save you, Jerrry.”
Jeremy nodded towards the front of the store. “You missed that guy.”
A fist rapped hard on the front door.
Lim Tong spun, Makarov raised. The little gray man at the door was already ducking and running away.
Lim Tong turned back, but it was too late. Jeremy had bent down, tucked his shoulder, and charged Lim Tong. He body slammed the Division Four agent against the glass door. Lim Tong face-planted, but quickly shoved off with both hands. That meant his grip on the Makarov wasn’t secure. Jeremy slapped his hand on the barrel of the gun, pinning it against the glass. Between holding the Makarov or getting away from Jeremy, Lim Tong took the escape. He sidestepped away from Jeremy, slipping to the right.
Lim Tong and Jeremy whirled. Jeremy spun on his left foot, throwing his right side away from Lim Tong and hurling away the gun as well. (Jeremy had held the Makarov by the barrel and wasn’t going to try shooting with his weak hand or take the time to change the grip to his right.) Lim Tong spun counterclockwise, throwing a right hook for Jeremy’s ribs, but missed.
Lim Tong burst forward, landing on his left foot and swinging his right foot up in a kick to smash Jeremy’s chest in. Jeremy also burst forward diagonally, coming in on Lim Tong’s right side, passing the attack. Jeremy pushed pass Lim Tong, clothes-lining him with a straight arm across the chest. Lim Tong slammed to the ground, then kicked to his feet, spinning to fight Jeremy.
Jeremy had already turned back, back-fisting Lim Tong across the right side of his face. The People’s Operative spun, kicking Jeremy with a back roundhouse. Jeremy staggered, and Lim Tong burst forward, pressing his advantage. His right fist was cocked back, telegraphing the strike—but Lim Tong led with a left jab.
Jeremy wasn’t stupid enough for fall for it. He parried the left jab with his right hand and sidestepped to avoid the right cross. He chopped the blade of his right hand into Lim Tong’s throat. He didn’t have enough room to wind up for a killing strike, but it made Lim Tong gag, setting him up for Jeremy’s left roundhouse to the face. Lim Tong staggered back under the blow.
Jeremy leapt forward, driving his knee into Lim Tong and collapsing on him. They ended up on the floor, with Jeremy sitting on Lim Tong’s chest, knees in his armpits and hand on his throat. Jeremy held Lim Tong’s head steady with his hand on his throat—but that was to keep the operative’s head still while Jeremy punched him in the face. Each impact bounced the man’s head off the tile floor.
First Jeremy punched Lim Tong until he stopped moving. Then he hit him twice more to see if there would be a reaction.
Taking no chances, Jeremy flipped Lim Tong over and zip-tied him.
The door chimed as it opened again. Jeremy glanced at the little man who came in. He was the epitome of “bureaucrat.” He was a little gray man in a little gray suit, vest, and tie. His thinning hair was gray. Even his eyes were gray.
His name was Griseo Grayson. He was from MI-6—British intelligence.
“Everything all right, dear chap?” Grayson asked.
Jeremy nodded. “Perfect timing. Did you bring Father Pearson with you?”
Grayson nodded. “He should be right behind me. Any problems?” He glanced at Lim Tong. “Other than him, I mean.”
Jeremy shrugged. “We handled it. With luck, the security system on the Necronomicon’s box will disarm before the bank vault is open again. Few supernatural entities want to screw with the entire human race. It would be counter-productive for them. A lot of people would get a lot religious a lot quick.”
Grayson winced at the mangling of the English language. “Oh, please, go. I’ll have Father Pearson call you later. Where is the offending book?”
Jeremy jerked his head towards the stairs to the basement. “Down there. It’s the angry bucket of water in the corner. You can’t miss it. It has a safe deposit box sticking out of the mouth.”
Grayson nodded, then stepped over Lim Tong and moved to step past Jeremy.
Without looking, Jeremy gripped Grayson’s arm. Then he met the little man’s eye. “Don’t go down there without Pearson. I don’t care what sort of badass you think you are. I don’t care how smart you think you are. That thing is pure evil, it’s alive, and it’s probably smarter than everyone on the planet put together.”
Grayson looked at him with disbelief. “You sound like you think I’d try to use it.”
Jeremy’s face remained flat and serious. The man who bantered in the face of a mortal enemy was replaced with someone who’d seen Hell work its way too often. “When I was a kid, it raised a mile-tall demon. I was there. I saw it. You’ve probably seen the satellite photos. I wouldn’t even recommend being in the same room with the book. You’ll say No harm ever came from reading a book. Because it will tell you that. You’ll believe it, no matter how much you know better. By page two it will devour your mind, and by page three it will own your soul. By page four, you’ll probably be plotting to take over the world. Stay up here, and stay away from the book.”
“...Maybe you’re right.” Grayson glanced down at Lim Tong. “What about him? We could make him disappear.”
Jeremy dismissed the idea with a wave. “Nah. We know Limmy. We know how he thinks, how he operates, his name and his face. We can see him coming. Besides, wouldn’t want to violate his diplomatic immunity, now would we? Heh.”
Through the window, Jeremy saw Lena pulled up in the car. “Now pardon me, we have a plane to catch. We have to be home for Sunday Mass.”