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?”
