Chapter 7: Dream Walker
Since I had lasted danced with the Devil himself outside of my wife’s funeral, I had constant nightmares. I would not say that they were countless nights of horrific dreams. Father Freeman came by every so often, prayed as though he were driving out a demonic infestation, and I would get more nights of rest.
Usually, my nightmares consisted of a world where God had never answered my prayers. The worst part was that they had consisted of autobiographical events that could have gone very wrong. The nightmares I had lived through haunted me once again, only with the slightest rewrites. And they happened in order.
First, an errant bullet found its mark outside of my police station. It killed the MS-13 thug I had aimed for, but not before he could pull the trigger on his rocket-propelled grenade, blowing up my police station and everyone inside. The MS-13 gunmen let me be as I walked through the bodies of my dying fellow officers. I would sometimes awake with their dying wails of torment echoing in my ears.
After that, I saw Mariel, again dying in my arms. Only instead of a clean, painless death of a brain tumor, it was the long, lingering death of a slashed throat. Unlike reality, she did not miraculously heal, but instead she drowned in her own blood, struggling to breath. Instead of wails of agony, those segments ended with demonic laughter of a possessed serial killer enjoying my helplessness as Mariel died. When I awoke from those dreams, I sometimes checked my hands to make certain that they weren’t stained with blood.
Being stabbed repeatedly by rebar as it pinned me to the wall was downright painless in comparison. Those dreams never forced me awake, but in the morning, my scars ached as though I had just had the experience.
Another nightmare consisted of what would have happened had there been no bi-location, allowing me to call in reinforcements against a death cult. First I saw my son burned alive in a fire pit, at the foot of a giant Moloch statue, set in a scenic backyard. After I watched Jeremy die, I was next to be sacrificed. Only I did not get the tender mercy of the flames, but I was strapped down, and vivisected. First I lost finger joints, then toes. Then the axes came out. I only hope that my internal organs didn’t really look like that. If I was lucky enough to awake then, my nose was filled with the scent of blood and burned flesh.
Several of the nightmares resulted in my horrible murder by living shadows, flayed alive, and then consumed. In one case, I had been killed instead of Rene Ormeno—wrapped in shadow, constrained, then shredded to pieces, unable to scream with the shadows down my throat, tearing me up from the inside.
Instead of angels coming to my rescue, I was stomped to death by an angry mob of Jihadis.
Instead of an army of golems to fight at my side, I met an army of demons with no charge in the Soul Ring. Then the dragon ripped me to shreds.
One special night terror involved death by succubus in an orgy of the damned in a nightclub in Germany. That was extra special, because that one conjured up an image of Mariel as a spectator, frowning at me as though I were willingly indulging in the affair.
Some of those deaths were not rewritten memories, but reflections of the actual events as I was devoured alive by shadows in London. Or consumed by bugs in an office in Massachusetts.
But that night, none of those nightmares happened.
Nor did I dream of Mariel.
Instead, I did not dream.
When I slept, I thought my eyes opened again on daylight. Instead of my bed, I saw my office.
Across from me a tall, thin black man with a bald head and wide, smiling mouth. His long slender fingers were folded in front of him like Sherlock Holmes. He looked a little bit like Baron Samedi from the James Bond film Live and Let Die, the actor Geoffrey Holder.
But while he was alive, I knew him as Bokor Baracus. He’d started as a supernatural mercenary and tried to kill me several times. He had called up the demon to possess the serial killer and probably would have been the one to sacrifice me and my son at the altar of Moloch, if things hadn’t gone my way. Later, through a quirk of faith and the appalling strangeness of the mercy of God, he had become my ally. Perhaps he had even been my friend. He was also the reason the Joint Supernatural Taskforce had been fully funded, complete with a private jet, since he left me all of his earnings from three hundred years on Earth.
“Good to see you, Lieutenant,” Baracus said in his musical accent. “I see that you have made good use of my fortune on Earth.”
I blinked. My dreams frequently didn’t have discussions with me. When I had met saints, they walked up to me in the street while I was awake. One or two punched me in the arm.
I glanced around the office. Some of the room was blurry, because they were corners I have never paid attention to enough while I was working there. “This is a dream.” I focused on Baracus. His image was crystal clear. “But I’m really talking to you, aren’t I?”
Baracus nodded. “You are. Do I have to tell you why?”
I smiled at him wryly. “Because only saints could come to me while I was still awake?”
Baracus rolled his eyes and laughed. “Very funny, Lieutenant. But you know what I meant.”
I nodded. I knew perfectly well. “Lucifer. He’s back.”
Baracus solemnly bowed his head. “You must stop him this time. For good. You will not get another chance at this.”
I scoffed, mostly at myself. “I figured. I don’t think he’s going to play nice next time. When we first fought, he could have beaten me to death before he fled from the angels who showed up. Our second match was a chess game. I had a game plan. He had a game plan. I kept bilocating and throwing myself at him while three priests prayed an exorcism at him. It ended in a stalemate because I didn’t destroy the lich’s phylactery. Which is some sort of necromantic backup copy?” I blinked, thought a moment. “Shouldn’t you have had one of those?”
Baracus nodded. “Correct. When I first died, helping you, your Soul Stone did me in. It first purged me of my magics, and the feedback destroyed the phylactery.”
I frowned thoughtfully, thinking hard. “It’s been a problem ever since last time. I can’t do anything I’ve done before. I can’t call angels clamoring to my side, Lucifer just runs away. I can’t pull the bilocation trick again, he’ll probably have allies of his own.”
Baracus nodded. “Good. I am glad you’ve given this some thought. But I would be wary as you enter into this final confrontation.”
I sighed, suddenly tired, which was odd since I was asleep. “I knew what I was getting into when I entered into the faith. It’s fairly clear. Be a good little boy your entire life, do nothing wrong, and you’re guaranteed to be nailed to a set of two-by-fours. Everyone wants to enjoy Easter Sunday, no one wants to going through Good Friday to get there.”
Baracus laughed in his deep, musical voice. “I know.”
I smiled. “Glad you find that amusing. One thing, before the end?”
Baracus cocked his head, still smiling. “Yes?”
“How many times did you see Live and Let Die?”
Baracus smiled broadly and spread his hands like he was taking his final bow. “Why, Lieutenant! It’s my favorite film!”
When Thomas Nolan texted that Michael and Mariel were already asleep, Jeremy and Lena looked at each other and exchanged a smile. They didn’t have to communicate any further than that. Because there was only one thing that occurred to both of them.
Because while Thomas was an NYPD Lieutenant, and tried to follow the letter and spirit of the law as much as his unique and bizarre circumstances would allow, Jeremy and Lena didn't have that problem. They worked for the CIA. And while the CIA technically wasn’t allowed to operate in the country, the task force allowed them some leeway.
And no matter what Tommy told them, if they didn’t get caught, there was no harm done.
They didn’t even need to do anything. They just needed to take a look at what was happening down at the docks.
At this hour of the night, the drive to the other end of the borough was relatively quick. It was a quick jaunt west on the Grand Central Expressway. They didn’t even need to park close to the piers. They parked the car down the road so it wouldn't stand out. Lena tucked her hair under a baseball cap.
Because “taking a look down by the dock” didn’t mean staring at it with a set of binoculars.
They were three blocks away when the shooting started.
The initial bombardment came from the warehouse on what Jeremy had identified as the Chinese pier. Machine gun fire sprayed the docks owned by the Jihadis, cutting through the terrorists on the dock. A second team of Division Four agents burst from across the street down the dock as cover fire came in from the other pier. RPGs fired out from the Division Four pier and struck the boats below the water line.
By all rights, the Jihadi pier was screwed. They were boxed in with nowhere to go.
Lena pulled Jeremy into a side street, so they could watch the firefight from a safe distance. He smiled at her. “When the Four-holes take out the Jihadis, we can follow them and take whatever they come away with.”
Lena rolled her eyes. “Let’s just follow them. Then we can humor Hussar and call in a strike and get reinforcements. We don’t have to take them now.”
Jeremy sighed. “You’re no fun.”
Lena smiled at him and punched him in the arm. “That's not what you said the other night.”
Jeremy gave her a cockeyed grin. “The other night, you were fun.” She gave a frustrated sigh but smiled anyway. She looked back at the firefight. Then she frowned.
She looked back at Jeremy and whispered harshly, “We have some new players.”
A dozen vans turned onto the street. They spilled forth dozens of men, all of whom started blasting away at the Chinese as soon as they had a clear shot. The Division Four men on the pier had nowhere to go but forward. The only cover was on the other end of the pier, where they still took fire from Jihadis. Now that backup had arrived, the tables had turned so fast, it might have been a roulette wheel.
The fire from the Chinese pier redirected. But something emerged from the shadows, as though part of the shadows had peeled itself away from the dark half of the street. It was a big, hulking monstrosity that reminded Jeremy of the thing that had killed his mother. But it was not obviously a draugr. It was covered in metal plates, and the head wasn’t scaled and armored but looked raw and bleeding, like part of the face had been skinned and part of it had been melted. There was no skin to cover the teeth, locking the face in an eternal death’s-head grin. The creature raised its right hand, conjuring a ball of fire to halo around the massive fist. It reared back and hurled the fiery orb like a baseball. It slammed into the upper part of the warehouse on the pier and blew off the front of the roof, taking large sections of the top floor with it.
In a matter of seconds, the men on the Division Four pier knew what the real threat was. RPGs fired from the warehouse. The creature waved its hand and the grenades were knocked aside in a harsh, ninety-degree turn into the water.
More of the creature’s gunmen swarmed both piers. They were already up the Jihadi's pier, chasing the Jihadis back into their base. The Division Four pier was nearly as overrun. Gunmen kept the Chinese shooters at bay. RPGs were aimed at the fireballs to make them explode in midair.
The surviving Division Four team on the Jihadi pier had all broken into the Jihadi stronghold.
Seconds later, the Jihadi pier exploded in a massive green fireball reminiscent of the destruction of Our Lady of Lourdes Church. Instead of a massive pillar into the sky, it went up in a bright green burst, like the pier and everything on it had been made of flash paper.
At the Division Four pier, boats sped away before the new gunmen attacked. Fires started inside the warehouse, even in areas that had been untouched by the attackers.
“The survivors burned all of their documents and ran,” Jeremy muttered to himself.
Lena nodded, saying nothing. Her bright green eyes focused on the shadowy hulk. “What do you think it is?”
Jeremy shrugged. “No idea. Whatever it is, it looks like Nemesis from Resident Evil. Though I think it has a bigger vocabulary. It’s giving instructions to its gunmen.” He glanced to Lena. “It seems the monster is giving orders to Frankenstein. It may be a hollow.”
Lena winced. They had fought hollows before. They were one part animated flesh golem, only the animation came from the other part—the inhabiting demon. “Time for us to leave.”
The two of them promptly took off at a quick stride down the side street, out of sight of the remaining gunmen.
As they crossed the street to put extra distance, they heard the quick steps of someone else on the empty street. They turned, only to find Lim Tong heading towards them. He was so busy looking over his shoulder, he may not have even been coming for them.
Lena patted Jeremy on the arm, then pointed, indicating that he should circle around to Lim Tong’s side. Jeremy nodded and broke off, and Lena stepped in front of Lim Tong’s path.
Lim Tong was so busy looking for pursuit that Lena slapped her palm against his chest before he stopped. He instantly jumped back and reached for his gun. Lena merely held up a threatening finger. He blinked in stunned silence for a long moment, studying her features. His eyes were wide and frantic as they flickered over her face.
After a moment, he sighed and sagged, relaxing. “Thank Mao, it’s you. Where’s Jeremy?”
Jeremy slipped out from between two cars, just out of striking distance. “Right here.”
Lim Tong flinched at the sound of Jeremy’s voice. If he were any jumpier, the two of them were going to offer him a tranquilizer. He was scared.
“What’s the matter?” Jeremy asked him. “Is this the first time you’re not the scariest thing in the room?”
The Division Four operative glared at Jeremy. “That thing just killed my men.”
Jeremy shook his head. “Not all of them. I saw some of them pull out on boats.”
Lim Tong scoffed. “Did you see what it did? It blew through some of my best men.”
Jeremy rolled his eyes. “Dude, if those are your best guys, I can only presume you’ve never been on the receiving end of this crap. There’s never anything that resembles overkill.”
Lena nodded. “What did you intend to do, Limmy? You saw the explosion in our neighborhood, and once you saw it worked, you’d take whatever they used?”
Lim Tong laughed. “Of course, I did. Now, if you’ll pardon me, I have to leave before someone finds me.”
Jeremy nodded. “Sure. You need to order more men.”
Lena stepped aside, letting Lim Tong run away. When he was well out of earshot, Lena turned to Jeremy. “Speaking of more men, we might need a bigger boat as well.”
Jeremy slightly dipped his chin, just in case Lim Tong came back. “Yup. Call Adara. She should reach out to whoever is in charge of collecting the tinker toys and start gathering them. I’ll call Bram.”
Lena looked back to Lim Tong’s retreating back. “Yes. Have him put his men on standby.” She glanced to Jeremy. “We don’t need to tell Hussar about this, do we?”
Jeremy shook his head. “Nah. He’ll hear all about this in the morning.”
Chapter 8: Shake Hands with the Devil
When I woke up Monday morning, after I returned home from Mass, there was good news and there was bad news.
Good news, we didn’t need the warrant.
Better news, we didn’t need ESU, SWAT, or D’s people.
Great news: We were right about Nur Trading’s pier.
Best news: I didn’t even need to wake up early.
Bad news: we wouldn’t be interrogating any suspects.
Worse news: there wasn’t even a building left.
Worst news: The entire pier had blown up like the block of Our Lady of Lourdes. The pier that used to be there? Gone. There was a charred end where the rest of the dock used to be. Aside from that? Nothing. Poof.
It wasn’t that difficult to figure out what caused the entire place to go up in smoke. Bodies littered the pier outside of the main warehouse. Some of them were Middle Eastern, some Chinese.
Baffling enough, some of the bodies were MS-13. No, seriously, what the Hell were they doing there? They had now popped up twice in two days. I could only assume that this was a new bad habit they had acquired, something to go with all of their others.
I went out to the site. The skies were still gray but not enough to threaten more than a drizzle. It would probably hold off until the hurricane got here—if it got here. The wind had become colder and biting and strong enough that shell casings could easily escape the crime scene with the right gust.
On the pier, it looked like most of the crime scene techs in New York had arrived. They picked up shell casings. They even picked up fish. The fire from the explosion had boiled the surrounding water so much, the wildlife were well done. A seagull was on the pier, and it had a wing burnt off in mid flight.
There were more shells on the pier than magazines, making me think that the Chinese had hit the Jihadi pier. At some point, MS-13 joined in on the fun. Since all of the MS-13 bodies were on the street, not the pier, I figured they came on the Chinese from behind. Either they also wanted what the Jihadis had, or they were in league with them, trying to defend against the Chinese. Either way, there were no MS-13 bodies on the pier itself. The Chinese advanced all the way into the warehouse, and at some point, either the Chinese hit something they shouldn’t have, or the Jihadis had deliberately detonated the warehouse to avoid leaving evidence behind.
Either way, there were no winners in this engagement.
At the start of the pier, however, the crime scene techs had set up a place to lay out evidence collected. Aside from bags of shell casings, most of it consisted of pocket litter. The Chinese didn’t have any; their colleagues had taken away all identifying marks and tags, and they burned down the pier they owned, just to be thorough.
I did not want to be on either arson detail or crime scene for the next few days.
However, the few Jihadis had things in their pockets. They probably thought that their self-destruct explosive on the pier would take care of it. They didn’t figure that some of their men would die on the dock itself. With gloves, I was allowed to handle each wallet. I flipped through the contents carefully, one of the CSU men watching me with an eagle eye.
When I went through the last one, I glanced at the CSU tech and said, “You see what these things have in common?”
The tech frowned. “Cards for a body modification clinic?”
I nodded, then smiled. “Why have cards for a body modding clinic? They’re terrorists, not metrosexuals.”
He shrugged, unimpressed. “Maybe they’re vain?”
“Or maybe it’s a front,” I stated. I then checked the address on the card.
It read Union Turnpike—less than a mile away from my house.
To the west, a church was destroyed within spitting distance of my home. To the north, perhaps another monster’s hideout. Forget having a bad feeling about this—I felt slowly encircled by darkness.
Outside the Humvee, the wind howled. A physical evidence technician chased evidence across the pier until it flew off into the river.
I started the Humvee and dialed the office using my hands-free option in the car’s system. After a few rings, Alex answered, “Hey, Tommy. What’s up?”
“Is Jeremy still in the office?” I asked.
“Sure, I’ll put you on speaker... go ahead.”
Once I was on, I explained the situation at the pier—the Jihadis, the dead Chinese agents, the destruction of both piers, and the insertion of MS-13 into the mix.
“Seriously, Tommy, maybe we should have spent your money putting a hit out on MS-13 members,” Alex joked.
I groaned internally, just imagining how many ways that would have gone wrong. “Don’t even think about it. Then we’d have MS-13 bringing in the snitches or tattooing random victims so they could collect the cash.”
Jeremy chuckled. “That’s dark, Dad. I like it.”
Lena ignored that conversation and said, “Was there nothing else to point to?”
“All of the Jihadis had cards for the Doctor Reyansh Sunder Body Modification Clinic. Get this, it’s on Union Turnpike. Somewhere near the Cross Island.”
“Yeah, that’s not hinky or anything,” Alex said.
Jeremy muttered. “No kidding. One second.”
I heard typing. No one said anything for a moment until Jeremy cleared his throat. “Dad, I hate to break it to you, but the name Reyansh Sundar? It’s Indian for beautiful ray of light.”
My foot pressed down harder on the accelerator. “Kids, pick up Father Freeman and meet me at this clinic. Tell Freeman to bring his Rite of Exorcism. We’re going to have a chat with Satan.”
I got off of the Grand Central expressway at the wrong exit, so I went up the Clearview Expressway and off onto Union Turnpike. I was going to have to be on that road one way or another. Taking local streets meant the drive would be a little longer.
I hit the first stoplight on Union. A woman stood on the corner, her eyes focused on somewhere out on the distance. Her coat was trapped tightly around her as she braced against the gusts of wind and cold. Her hair was shaggy, down to her neck. She looked exhausted.
The red light had just clicked in, and I wasn’t going anywhere. I rolled down the window on the passenger side. “Ma’am, you okay?”
She blinked and looked around, thinking I must have been talking to someone else. When she made eye contact with me, I said, “Yes, you. Ma’am, are you okay?”
She smiled and shrugged. “I’m okay. I guess. Long night.”
I nodded slowly. Below her coat, her legs were clad in fishnets. She wore high heels. It was still early in the morning. If I were to guess, I’d assume that she was coming home from business.
But it was none of my business. I was in homicide, not vice.
However...
I reached into my coat and pulled out my badge wallet. I badged her and said, “Would you like a ride? It looks like it’s going to get messy.”
She took a reflexive step back. “You’re not arresting me?”
I smiled. I understood that she was wary, but still. “What for? Loitering with intent to cross the street? You’re heading east?”
She nodded.
I mirrored her action. “I’m heading past the Cross Island. And you?”
“Bell Boulevard.”
I winced. That was a long way to walk in the cold, and longer if it was in the rain. “Hop in.”
As she strapped herself into the chair, the light changed.
“So, cop, huh?” she asked me. “What do you do?”
“I run a task force. Counter terrorism,” I explained. It was close enough to the truth for government work. “I’m Tommy, by the way.”
“Jade.”
I nodded, not really believing that was her name. “Long night?” I asked.
She coughed out a laugh. “You could say that.”
I said nothing for a moment as I dodged around a double parked car. “Anything I can help with?”
Jade’s laugh this time was different—bitter and ironic. “Only if you have a good escape plan.”
“I’ve got five types. City, state, countrywide, to a country next door, or a different hemisphere?”
Jade;s head whirled at me so fast, I thought she’d get whiplash. “What?”
I nodded and spared her a glance. The next light was already yellow. I was in no rush at the moment. If I knew where this conversation was going, I’d need to make a slight detour anyway. “Should I repeat the options?”
Jade was silent for a long moment. I didn’t press her until we came up on Bell Boulevard. When she said nothing, I kept going. “Would any of those plans come with rehab?”
I didn’t blink. “Booze, pills or injectibles?”
She flinched. “Are you serious? Don’t you want to know—”
I had gone through this conversation so often, I had a canned answer. “I don’t need to. Unless you’re a federal fugitive, I just need to put you with people who know what they’re doing. They’re fully funded. Unless you ‘re leaving behind a child, then you don’t even need to go back and collect your things.”
I spotted someone in my rearview mirror. He crowded me, but not enough to make me pull over and write him a ticket. “You don’t happen to know someone who drives a purple car, do you?”
Jade ducked down in the seat and said, “Oh shit! It’s Joey. My pimp. He said he was going to pick me up, but he’s thirty minutes late and—”
I held up a hand. “Let me handle this.”
I pulled over to the curb and put it into park.
I waited for the purple car to stop as well. When his engine turned off, I stepped out of my car. Joey stepped out of his. He was a big guy, with a beer gut that made him look like he was pregnant. He could have taken on several strung-out women, and probably intimidate most customers.
I didn’t think he was ready for the conversation he was about to have.
Joey didn’t even ask me anything. That was fine with me. I memorized his license plate.
I had my hand on my gun. It was next to my badge. I didn’t need to say anything more.
A war of emotion flickered across Joey’s face. It went from rage, to confusion, to more anger. “She’s not going with you.”
I nodded. “She is. You lost one. Live with it.”
Joey opened his mouth, and I thumbed down the strap on my gun holster. I could draw without a problem.
“Move on, and no one gets hurt, Joey.”
The pimp scoffed at me. “Whacho gonna do, pig? Shoot me? Over that piece of pussy?”
My face was stone. I didn’t think I was mimicking Clint Eastwood. I hope I wasn’t squinting. But shooting him did have a certain appeal. “Any human life is worth defending, Joey.” I looked him up and down, then glanced at his garish vehicle. “In your case, I may make an exception, but one thing at a time. Are you going to move along, or will we just settle all of this right now?”
Joey frowned. His right hand slid along his belt. He thought he was being subtle. Before his hand could go out of sight, I said, “Gonna have to stop you right there, Joey. If your hand disappears behind your back, I’m going to have to assume that you have a gun or a knife. Then either one of two things happen. Either I take you in on a weapons charge, or you’re carted away in a meat wagon.”
Joey’s expression changed. He smiled, his eyes brightening. “You think so? I’m within twenty-one feet.”
I refrained from rolling my eyes. He was referring to the Teuller test. It was a law enforcement knife drill, where a cop is attacked by someone with a knife, and must draw their sidearm. Most of the time, within twenty-one feet, the one with the knife had the advantage. But I already had my hand on my weapon, and was ready to draw. The Teuller drill started with the cop at more of a disadvantage.
Not to mention that my history had me going toe to toe with things a lot meaner and a lot faster than some overweight pimp from a back alley.
Maybe the best way to communicate his situation to him is to convey just how little risk I’m in.
I smiled at him. “You know what? Let’s do this. Reach for it. Go ahead.” I glanced at his hand. “Try me. Draw down. I’ll wait for you.”
Joey blinked. His hand even inched back. His hand was about to disappear behind his belt. Then he paused. Perhaps he finally considered that the odds were not in his favor.
Finally, he pulled his hand in front of him, then spat on the street. “Fuck it. You can keep the whore.”
I nodded. “Wise choice.”
When he was definitely out of sight, I got back into the car and called D’s company. I asked for a check on the license plate, and all properties connected with it. Then Jade told me where he kept “the girls.” I sent some people to escort them away from Joey and into the women’s shelter operations.
My next stop was to get Jade to the shelter.
After I finished my detour, it was time to talk with Satan.
The building for the Doctor Reyansh Sunder Body Modification Clinic looked like your standard house in a residential neighborhood. It reminded me of my dentist’s office growing up, where it had been the first floor of a remodeled home.
And yes, it smelled of evil before I even parked across the street.
Union Turnpike was an easy dash across, once I got the timing down on the traffic lights. I didn’t mind crossing in the middle of the block, since one, I was from here, and two, it was the quickest way to go.
Lena and Jeremy had snagged a parking spot on the same side of the street as the doctor’s office. I gave them a low-key wave without raising my arm. I didn’t want to attract attention to them. But I did notice that Father Freeman was already reading the Rite in the car.
I walked up to the door, pressed my badge to the peephole, and knocked.
The door opened without any hesitation. There was a tall Indian fellow in a lab coat. Underneath it was a robe in two shades of orange that I only thought belonged to Buddhists. From his neck dangled a medallion of a silver wolf’s head with blazing ruby eyes.
“Reyansh Sundar?”
He smiled broadly. “How may I be of service to you?”
I nodded, sliding my badge onto my belt. “Lieutenant Nolan, NYPD. May I have a word with you?”
He cocked his head to one side. His smile had not gone away. “About?”
I kept a close eye on him as I said, “Let’s start with what you do here? And whether or not you’ve been having an inordinate amount of traffic lately?”
He nodded, almost a bow. “Please. Come in.”
I stepped inside, turning to face him as I stepped out of the way of the door. I didn’t want to put my back to the rest of the building, but he would be problematic enough if we were right. Sundar walked past me, into the rest of the house.
“So, what exactly do you do here?” I asked. “It doesn’t look like a surgeon’s theater. Don’t you need that for what you do?”
He shrugged affably. “To a certain extent. We do body modification.”
I paused for a moment, wondering what he meant. “So it said on your shingle. Please elaborate. You mean transition surgery? Men to women and vice versa?”
“Not quite,” Sundar said tranquilly. “We've helped our clients transition into dragons, cats, birds. We unleash the true being within.”
Well, isn’t that horrifying? I thought. “Really? How do you go about avoiding body dysmorphia or other medical/psychological conditions?”
Sundar beamed at me. “Oh, don’t worry, we have NDAs and iron-clad contracts.”
I blinked at how casually he tossed aside concerns about real-world psychological issues. “That’s not my point. Do you know the suicide rate on the average transitioned person? It’s through the roof. More than half of the people who transition from one sex to another kill themselves. And that’s while staying human. Not if you’re becoming something else entirely, as you claim.”
Sundar shrugged. “What does it matter? We are unleashing their inner beauty.”
I had seen some of the people who tried to “transition” into animals with surgery. “Have you looked at those images? Beauty isn’t what I had in mind.”
He smiled at me as he led me into a living room. Over the fireplace was a collection of photographs all over a giant cork board. They were photos of men and women, with before and after photos on either side. Some of them ... not so much.
And then I spotted her. Or should I say “them”? Because one photo was of a mousy, plain-looking brunette. The “after” photo was of a buxom, tall, sturdy redhead with eyes of jade and a killer smile.
I had seen the face of the redhead on two women. One was named Melissa Reed, a witch who was also part of a security company called Hexagon. The other woman wasn’t a woman, but a succubus that had called herself Jayden.
In fact, the entire bottom row of the cork board was filled with familiar faces. They all belonged to the coven of Hexagon, Inc. They had all tried to murder me three years ago.
I glanced at “Sundar.” I sighed deeply. “Honestly. Did you think we weren’t going to check that ‘Reyansh’ meant ‘ray of light’?”
The thing that called itself Reyansh Sundar paused for only a beat before he burst out laughing. It was not the voice he had greeted me with, but something deeper, darker. It was the sort of bass that played Satan in the opera for Faust. It was a thing like the love child of Christopher Lee and James Earl Jones.
When he stopped laughing, Lucifer grinned. It was a truly horrific, face-splitting thing. “Oh, Saint Nolan, it is truly inspiring to know that not all humans are as stupid as the average man.”
I shrugged. “You can thank my son. He looked it up on DuckDuckGo. But then, after the two companies on the piers, we were looking for you.”
Lucifer sighed and waved it away. “Ah well. You must allow me some humor. But it was good of you to catch on.”
I nodded slowly, keeping my eye on him. “So, do I call you Lucifer? Satan? Adversary?”
Lucifer smiled evilly. “You should have called me ‘master’. Your wife would still be alive.”
I sighed deeply and gave him an annoyed look. He kept trying to make this personal. It wasn’t. “Dude? Really? You tried that gag already.”
Lucifer shrugged as he wandered over to the sideboard. It was an array of booze. “Can't blame me for trying.”
“So, what’s the point of your BS this time?” I asked.
Lucifer chose bourbon and poured himself a few fingers. Maybe a whole hand. “I do what I’ve always done. I just capitalize in the latest trends by humanity. Vanity this time.”
I looked from him to the cork board and back. “How do you figure? I've seen some of the ‘modded.’ Cut off a nose and ears, tattoo on some scales and call them a dragon? ‘Freaks’ would be a nice way of putting it.”
Lucifer chuckled. “Oh, you haven’t seen the half of it. But it’s simple. The current concept is that men are trash, so we’ll elevate women. Only, we’ll take everything appealing away from women, stripping away what should be celebrated, even their identity, making them look masculine. We destroy beauty and replace it with ugliness.”
I nodded slowly. I’d seen things like this in protests to modern art. “You’re an angel—a fallen one—but you’re smart. You’re supposed to understand things. Do you understand why people think this is a good idea?”
Lucifer paused, took a long drag on his glass. “Don’t you believe them when they say it makes things more real?” The Fallen One chuckled.
I shook my head. “No, because it isn’t more real. There’s more beauty in a forest, a sunset, or just on a beach than in any of this. Making something ugly doesn’t make it real. Saying ‘oh, this is real because it’s ugly’ makes it less real, because reality has beauty in it.”
Lucifer nodded with a smile. “It boils down to the same as everything else: just how petty humans are. It’s a way to destroy beauty and make people tear it down. But the humans who have implemented it come up with so many contrary and contradictory rationales for it, it is senseless. Those who are ugly in soul and ugly in mind hate those who have beauty at any level. This gives them an excuse to unleash their wrath and destroy beauty. It feeds body positivity; so five-foot, five-hundred-pound women can all feel good about how gluttonous they are. Because now, they are as beautiful as supermodels. Body positivity tells them so. So what if they cannot walk up stairs or walk a mile, or live past forty-two? And of course, they all have a sense of pride at what they’ve accomplished.
“I enjoy showing how corrupt and ugly the human soul is. It all works out.”
I raised a brow. “Like how you like tearing down souls and trying to teach God you know better?”
Lucifer said nothing.
I shrugged. “If you say so. You have an endgame this time?”
Lucifer cocked his head and studied me, a small smile on its lips. “Do I need one? People are coming to me by the thousands. The tens of thousands. Each ‘modified’ idiot now belongs to me.”
I cocked my head. “Did you kill them all?”
Lucifer gave me another skull-splitting smile. “That’s up for you to figure out. I don’t do all of your work for you.”
My phone rang at my side. I didn’t pick it up. Lucifer gestured with the glass. “You should answer that.”
I blinked, and Lucifer was gone. So was the booze, the glass, the furniture, and all the contents of the house. Even the carpet from underneath my feet was gone. The windows were boarded up from the inside. The light fixtures and electrical sockets were empty.
Great, now he’s lord of illusions. Yay.
I answered the phone. The caller ID said it was Doctor Sinead Holland. I picked up. “Go ahead.”
Sinead spoke. “Tommy, the fingerprints came back from the patches of shed skin. It took a while because the prints were discounted from the search.”
I furrowed my brow as I looked for my way out. “Why discounted?”
Sinead said, “The person they belonged to is listed as dead.”
I blinked, surprised. It was actually a first for me. “Huh. Anyone I know?”
“I should hope so,” Sinead told me. “He tried to blow up the station once.”
I flinched. My stomach lurched, ready to eject anything that might have been left inside. There was only one serious attempt to blow up my entire police station. “No. You’re not saying it’s...”
“It’s Rene Ormeno.”