Demon Accords 6: Forced Ascent by John Conroe Read Free Book Online Page B

I’m just Chris,” I said, succeeding at surprising her.
     
    “Ookay.  Chris, did you know that homicides are up almost forty-three percent this year?  That most of the murders in the city are unrelated to drugs or normal crime?  Random murders involving friends and family members without much in the way of motive.  Then there are those five cases that I mentioned.  Like the apartment buildings where violence broke out on a mass scale among the residents.  Churches are having a sudden unexplained upswing in attendance, and the clergy are getting ridiculous amounts of calls and questions about the Devil and his demons.  And it’s happening all across the country; in fact, across the world.”
     
    “Nope,” I answered, slurping more shake.  “Didn’t know that.”
     
    Well, I knew some of it, but the part about church attendance climbing was news to me.  Maybe some deep instinct was driving humans to seek the protection of the church.
     
    “I don’t believe you, Mr… er… Chris,” she said.  “I think the authorities call you in to fight the demons and close the gates to Hell.”
     
    Okay, there it was.  She just dropped it out like I was politician with my hand in the public cookie jar or cheating on my wife with taxpayer-funded prostitutes.
     
    “So let me get this straight.  You’re investigating a statistical upswing in demonic activity, and you have me pegged as some kind of spiritual consultant for the City? Who tracks demon statistics anyway? What papers are buying these kind of stories?  Oh, wait, I get it.  Listen, did you write that article about Bigfoot fathering children all across the Bronx?  That was a beauty,” I said.
     
    She frowned, now smelling of anger, and leaned forward.  “I don’t write that crap.  My stories have substance.  You’re just deflecting.  I nailed it and you’re trying to make me out to be crazy.”
     
    Damn.  She was rapidly becoming a major pain in my ass. One I was having trouble removing.
     
    I frowned and waved my hand a little threateningly in her direction.  The fact that I was holding a cheese fry might have diminished my fearsome demeanor.
     
    “Then if you think I’m some kind of demon hunter, why are you so afraid of me?  Why were you shaking when you sat down?”
     
    She looked at the cheese fry, an incredulous look crossing her face, before frowning.  Then she pulled back a bit from her aggressive lean.  She remembered something, getting that funny look of recall that we all have when we’re pulling memories.
     
    “I wrote a story last month about a kidnapping in Owl Head Park in Brooklyn.  A military team took a little girl and died doing it.  They were all highly trained killers, some equipped with tech straight out of the movies… armored suits and stuff.  They were destroyed to the last man.  There was like almost twenty of them and they almost failed because of just one unarmed man and his… wolf.  You’re that man.”
     
    Shit.  She had just stepped up to a searing pain in my posterior.
     
    “Miss Chatterjee, I think we’re done here.  You’ve got some interesting angles for stories that inquiring minds might believe if they were high and hallucinating.  For some reason, you’ve chosen to involve me in your make-believe world.  But anyone can make up stories.  It’s the proof that’s hard to come by.  I’m just an ex-cop who consults with my old employer from time to time.”
     
    She raised both eyebrows.  “You were a cop for all of maybe nine months.  Most of that was probationary training.  I don’t know a single law enforcement agency that considers that to be such a vast wealth of experience that the police commissioner would seek you out.  And as far as proof, I don’t really need any for myself.  You see, Chris, I was there that day in the park.  I was thirty feet away when those agents killed that little girl’s bodyguards and I was right there at ground zero when you and