Valor and Violence

Lucas sat at the diner counter, sipping his stale black coffee and picking at the bacon and eggs sitting in front of him. The toast was burnt, the butter spread thin and, worst of all, the eggs were undercooked. Ordinarily, he wasn’t a picky eater. Hell, he’d even gone through a Rocky phase where his breakfast every day for about a month had been a half dozen raw eggs in a glass, but undercooked eggs still turned him off completely. Something about the combination of a firm base with a top coat of slimy raw egg white made his stomach turn, and with a resigned sigh he slid the plate away from him, ignoring the judgemental glare from the middle-aged waitress pouring coffee a few patrons down.

He took another sip of coffee as he checked his watch. Zero eight fifty. Another three hours until lunch. God-fucking-damnit, it would be a long morning. He leaned back on his stool, twisting kinks out of his back as he looked around the diner. It had that fifties chic that filled older patrons with a sense of nostalgia for the last century, but for a thirty-year-old like him it engendered nothing but vague disdain.

It had the race car red upholstered booth seats around plastic tables, now off white with age, and cheap linoleum flooring with a black and white tile pattern that in no way shape or form captured the elegance of an actual tile floor. A long counter across from the kitchen window completed the look, tired truckers and pensioners scattered along its length as they took their morning coffees and flipped through the paper, the former putting off starting their twelve hours plus day, the latter just killing time until they died. Oh, the joys of the atrophying American country town. He checked his watch again.

Zero eight fifty one.

Why didn’t his work ever take him anywhere nice?

A scream from the street snapped him out of his moping, followed fast by another and then an unholy roar. With his second resigned sigh for the day, Lucas stood, pulling a wad of crumpled notes from his pocket and dropping them next to the unfinished coffee. He exited the diner and headed for the source of the sounds: the alley beside the diner.

Terrified civilians streamed past him as a black van screamed towards the alley’s mouth, jumping the curb and skidding to a halt. The side doors flew open and three men in suits leapt out, shining silver knives drawn, charging without hesitation into the alley. Lucas counted down in his head as he strolled, hands in the pockets of his old leather jacket.

One Mississippi, two Mississippi.

Just before the third Mississippi, one of them came flying back out of the alley, slamming against the van so hard it rocked up onto two wheels. Lucas strolled over and knelt by his crumpled form, quickly checking for an arterial pulse.

Alive, but he’d be feeling that one when he woke up.

Lucas stood and faced down the alley where four men and a woman fought the Possessed they had been hunting this last week. It had shed its human form, standing a little over eight feet tall, grey skin pulled tight over its skeletal frame. Despite its emaciated appearance, it moved with blinding speed and power, running one man through with its four-inch-long claws and hurling the unlucky Paladin into one of his peers.

The demon rounded on the remaining holy warriors who defiantly stood their ground despite the trouncing they were receiving. They muttered to each other and tensed, ready to attack again, when Lucas interrupted them all with a sharp whistle. The Paladins stared at him with a mixture of indignation and relief as he waved them off. They hesitated, just for a moment, but eventually backed away from the demon, dragging their injured with them. The Glutton eyed them off, a long, sickly tongue darting out and running along its lips, but it ultimately decided Lucas was more interesting as it turned to face him.

“Fuck me, good thing I didn’t eat those eggs after all,” Lucas grumbled. Courtesy of the various fluids and gunk leaking from the demon’s various orifices, his appetite had completely evaporated.

Possessed in their true forms were grotesque caricatures of humans. Well, most of them anyway. He wouldn’t exactly call the Lust demons grotesque, but even they weren’t everyone’s cup of tea. Regardless, the demon in front of him was most definitely not from the second circle. It was a Glutton from the third. Most initiates expected demons to exemplify their sin, but often as not, their appearance was actually an ironic reversal of expectations. The Glutton before him, far from being overfed, looked like it was about six months into a juice cleanse. The other sins often followed suit; Wrath demons could be small and shrivelled, seemingly deceptively impotent in their rage, while Sloth demons suffered crippling insomnia. Only Pride and Lust demons seemed to avoid the curse, the former because they seemed to follow a different set of rules to the lesser demons, and the latter because God hadn’t anticipated man’s willingness to fuck anything exotic, even if it had goat legs and bat wings.

Damn furries.

Pulling himself from his reflections on the appearance of demons, Lucas casually drew his twin pistols, Lucy and Lilly, so named purely to spite the religious nut jobs in the Order. Holding them loose by his side, he addressed the demon.

“Fuck face. I’ll give you one chance. Tell me where the kids are and come with me quietly.”

“Or?” the demon asked, its voice a cross between nails on a chalkboard and the sound of sausage meat being churned out of the press too fast.

“Or I execute you in His Holy name and blargh, blargh, blargh. Basically, I’ll send you back to Hell and go find the kids myself.”

The Glutton laughed, a sickly schlurping noise that sent revulsion crawling up Lucas’ spine.

“The children are consumed. Their souls condemned. You are too late, Nephilim.”

So, he’d picked Lucas for what he was. Guess he shouldn’t be surprised. You’d never catch a Paladin casually blaspheming, which was a habit he was somewhat prone to. Still, the important thing was that the kids were alive and close. The demon hadn’t eaten them yet. If he had, he would have skipped town already. He was bluffing.

Lucas tapped his chin thoughtfully with Lucy. Where, oh where, would he have stashed them? It would be nearby so he could duck out and have a snack whenever he got peckish, but isolated enough that he wouldn’t be disturbed. It would also be related thematically to the sin of Gluttony because demons had no concept of cliches.

“You’ve got them in the meat works outside town, right?”

The demon hissed and charged.

Bingo.

The demon was faster than any regular human could hope to match. Paladins relied on skill, faith, and weapons imbued with Holy power to stand against them and even they struggled. But a Nephilim was another matter entirely.

Lucas casually twisted around an overhand blow aimed at his head, placed the muzzle of Lucy against the thing’s rib cage, and pulled the trigger, blowing a ragged hole in its chest. The beast howled and Lucas drove his boot into the side of its knee, the limb buckling as the joint snapped with a loud crack. It fell to a knee, spitting curses at him as Lucas pressed Lily against the thing’s head. One final bang and the headless corpse toppled to the ground.

He couldn’t believe it was already over. He checked his smart watch to get his pulse.

Barely a beat or two above resting. He gave a third resigned sigh. He was on babysitting detail, watching over teams of new initiates as they hunted Soldier class demons around the country, because he’d politely suggested an archbishop insert a sandpaper wrapped dildo up his arse after the holy man called him an ungodly abomination. The rest of the Seven had thought it was a charming and witty riposte, but the Crusader General had taken a much dimmer view.

He scowled and kicked the demon’s corpse, launching the body into the wall with enough force to rupture it. Babysitting was a waste of his time and talents, and a more effective punishment than the splash of holy water he’d been expecting. He re-holstered his weapons and turned to the Paladins.

“There’s a defunct meatworks about 5 ks out of town on the south side. The kids will be there, or at least, most of them should be, depending on how hungry the bastard was. Take them to regional HQ when you’ve got them. They’ll need indoctrination or memory repression depending on the psych’s assessment.”

Without waiting for an acknowledgment, he turned to leave, pausing when the female paladin cleared her throat.

“And where are you going, Nephilim? The assignment isn’t finished.”

“You took three days longer than expected to track this guy down and I’ve got another job on the east coast I was meant to start yesterday. Even you clusterfucks can’t screw this up from here. You don’t need a babysitter to reverse kidnap some kids on your drive home.”

He could sense the hostility of their gazes on his back as he strolled out of the alley and over to his mustang. It was going to be a long drive, and he still hadn’t eaten breakfast. He was contemplating going back to the shitty eggs when his phone started buzzing, an audio clip of ‘Cold As Ice’ by Foreigner alerting him to the callers ID. He answered the phone and put it to his ear without checking the screen.

“Rebecca, so good to hear from you! How’s the cloister?”

“It’s ‘Chapter Master’ to you. And for the thousandth time, I’m not a nun, fuckhead.”

“Well, certainly not with a mouth like that.”

Rebecca held the rank of Chapter Master within the Order, ordinarily a powerful and coveted position, though in her case it was the one ‘Chapter’ no one else wanted. They called it the ‘Black Chapter’ and it comprised her, some administrative staff and techs, and the infamous team of Nephilim known as The Seven. Most self-respecting Paladins wouldn’t touch the job with a ten-foot pole dipped in the juices of Jesus himself, but to her credit, Rebecca wasn’t most Paladins. Sometimes Lucas almost felt bad for all the shit she copped on his account.

Almost.

“Why the hostility, Bec? Don’t tell me you’re an Archbishop Butt Hurt fan girl as well?”

“His name is Berthertz, and you know I’m not. What I am is a supremely pissed off liaison between a team of arsehole Nephilim and a group of senile old priests who spend half of every Sunday Mass debating whether you should all be burned at the stake. And yet you still insist on antagonising them at every opportunity.”

“He antagonised me first.”

“What are you, twelve?”

“Yes, actually. We demonic hellspawn age differently than regular humans. It’s why we demand payment in ice creams and xbox live subscriptions.”

“God, I hate you.”

“Tut tut, Rebecca. That was blasphemous.”

“Oh shut up, Lucas. I’m calling because the powers that be have a job for the Black.”

“Who do you need?” Lucas asked as he climbed into his car, popping the glove box and pulling out a pack of crumpled smokes. He put a horseshoe of dip in his bottom lip too and closed his eyes as it hit him. The nicotine would keep him going until lunch.

“Everyone.”

His eyes flew open. The Black Chapter hadn’t all been in the one place since they’d ended the war with the Sons of Solomon a decade ago. It had been a very deliberate decision to keep them apart. This was not good news.

“Bec, what’s going on?”

“Rumours and whispers, mostly, but the mystics in the Eastern Order started going bat shit two days ago. The auguries are vague, but we think a Coven has popped up somewhere in the UK.”

“We’ve had Covens before. We haven’t needed the entire team for them.”

“The mystics think this one is led by a Warlord. Maybe even a Prince.”

Lucas chewed the end of his cigarette as he processed this. Demonic entities were as unique as every human, but they could still be grouped by Sin, in the case of the Christian demons at least, and relative power. The tier system ranged from Fodder, the weakest cattle of the unholy forces, up to King, a largely hypothetical ranking of which only a single demon had ever been encountered. Princes sat a single rung below the King, and the Warlords the rung below that. They were the real deal. If it was a Prince, they would absolutely need the whole team to take it down.

“Where’s the RV?”

“The London Chapter. I’ll meet you at the airport and brief you in. Want me to call the rest of your team?”

“No, I’ll handle it.”

“Roger. And Lucas?”

“Yeah.”

“Hurry the fuck up.”

“Love you too, Bec.”

“Bite me.”

She hung up before Lucas could ask if that constituted an invitation. He chuckled, turned on the car and screamed off toward the nearest airport as he scrolled through his contacts list. It wasn’t a long list; aside from Bec, there were only six numbers.