Epilogue

The night had been crazy. Sax and Natan were back at the bookshop. Speare took the lead and the blame, which had brought him to this greasy spoon with a cup of black coffee that would eat a spoon never mind melt it or make it stand up, and a delicious piece of apple pie with a slice of cheese on top (because apple pie without the cheese, is like a kiss without the squeeze as he was told in childhood) and vanilla on the side.

Agent Louie Regis was a frazzled older Asian man, whose car tended to backfire upon driving, stopping, starting, or simply just because someone looked at it. The crumpled trench coat look reminded Speare of the Peter Falk’s Columbo, and created a hard time believing that this man spoke for a super-secret government agency.

But it was said agency that had spirited away the body of the mayor after the night from hell. Now Speare was mid-bite as Columbo 2.0 kept yabbering on about national security. City Hall had already news conferences the death, letting the city know the original election cycle would hold and the Deputy Mayor would step in interim, this was done as a cost saving measure but also to honour the life of service of John MacCurtis. Funeral would be held in 3 days.

“I should arrest you Speare.”

“That’s nice Agent, but I can assume from the lack of Miranda and cuffs that is not how this is going down?” Speare stated.

Regis finished his cup of coffee, tossed some crumpled bills down to cover the cost, rose, looked at Speare. “We are watching you.” Turned to leave, turned back slowly, “thank you.”

Speare finished his pie and watched the agent depart in his car.

Stepping out into the sunlight, Speare stood quietly in the parking lot as he adjusted his toque, and zipped up his coat snug. Winter was here, there had barely been a summer, and now fall had given way to winter without much fanfare.

An echoey voice came from behind. “Mr. Speare, thank you for finally bringing peace to my friend.”

“No problem B.K.”

A blast of warmth around him as the Bionic Knight took flight.

Speare slowly walked across the parking lot to the bus stop. “Case closed, I fuckin’ hate supernatural sci-fi shit.” He mumbles under his breath.

Chapter Thirteen

Natan was down. Interesting his blood was blue and spreading on the laminate of the office. The bullet had taken him in the right shoulder. In one fluid motion Sax raised his bow, it had been years but like riding a bike the arrow was loosed through Slick’s gun hand sending the weapon flying. A yelp escaped her lips.

Speare’s hand tightened around the war hammer.

Slick’s good hand produced a second gun, she was an ambidextrous shooter and it was aimed squarely at Speare. Sax had another arrow knocked.

MacCurtis looked at his bodyguard and to the two still standing. Natan appeared to be entering shock. His eyes had rolled back in his head and he was mumbling something that sounded Latin.

“Welcome boys, it has been a while Sax and Natan, Speare you were always a beard on this enterprise.” MacCurtis said.

A beard? A set up. A diversion. A jive. Something to distract. Time Speare thought to put some cards on the table. “Slick, or do you prefer Reesa?”

“Reesa’s dead Speare, my Dad always thought you were a wank—“She did not get to finish her sentence as a red lightning bolt sliced through her chest.

Red energy began crackling around MacCurtis, his eyes moved to a solid blue colour and his hair and beard began growing. Sax let the arrow fly and another. They turned to dust before clearing the room. “It is time you boys lived up to the name Martyrs.”

Natan’s mumbling in Latin grew louder.

“So MacCurtis or is it now Thor?” Speare asked.

“There is no difference. That child thought he had stripped us apart, yet forgot that the entity and host are one.” MacCurtis laughed out loud. “And the best part is that you will die Speare as the nice bow on top of this gift of renewal.” Blue energy shot from MacCurtis’ eyes but stopped three inches away. Shock was on his face.

Plan part one, Natan’s spell contained. Speare raised the hammer, and another piece of shock crossed the Mayor-Entity’s face. Speare winked. “We are ready to rock.”

“You truly think this plan of Zeus’ will work and this little spell from the seed of Lucifer will hold!” MacCurtis yelled.

Speare moved quickly across the room. An alarm went off and sprinklers started. Smoldering flesh of Slick had created a smoke hazard and triggered the fire alarm. Media would be here soon, not every day there is a fire at City Hall. Sax would be good on trying to spin a cover story if this worked.

The hammer slammed square into MacCurtis’ chest and knocked him hard against the windowed wall of the office. Cracks started to appear. Speare knew if he fell through he would escape the containment spell. Which would create a huge issue.  This whole adventure had started out like a warped Spenser novel, but had quickly deteriorated into something from the mind of Alan Moore or Clive Barker.

Speare hated the supernatural, it was never clean and easy to solve this problem. Mix that crap in with alien sci-fi junk and it was a bad day at the office. Speare crouched low and upper cut with the top of the hammer. “You have no clue ya bastard how much I have this occult-sci-fi shit.”

MacCurtis was dazed. This was going to take finis to use the spike on top, the dazed man, Natan was still using the incantation so all the lightning was swirling around him.  Sax exhaled slowly he still had an arrow trained on MacCurtis’ eye just on the off chance something went askew.

Blood was trickling from MacCurtis’ mouth, and his teeth were loose, a loogie of blood and a few teeth splattered against the shield. “You shall be the Martyrs of my rise to power. This world will be mine.”

Sax burst out laughing. “Dude every night I make love to the supposed Anti-Christ, you jack ass ain’t no world dominator.” He let the arrow fly. Natan winked.

The arrow pierced the one solid blue eye. Speare double gripped the handle of the war hammer and from the crouch drove upwards with the spiked hammer into the entity’s heart. Releasing the handle as MacCurtis fell backwards into the already cracked window through and down wards from seven stories up to the plaza below. Speare and Sax moved towards the shattered window and peer down at the body now impressed into cracked concrete with gawkers, smart phones recording, sirens wailing and phone calls happening.

Natan’s voice subsides.

Sax looks to Speare.  “It is nights like this that remind me why I just want to sell books.”

 

 

Chapter Twelve

Lightning cascaded across the sky. John stroked his formerly salt and pepper, now more salty beard.  “Zed, old friend, is it truly time for this to end.” No answer came. He had a long life. Many lives over many different types of stories, there was moments as he watched the rain fall that he truly felt he was living more inside a comic book than the real world with the types of adventures he had.

His smartphone vibrates, MacCurtis glances down, Rick Saturn, lifelong friend. But in this moment he did not see him as his a friend or even the partner he was in the old Great Crime Fighter days, but as a reminder of where John was now. Alone, and waiting for those he once called proteges that he led into a life of mayhem and murder. Who knew the murder of Reesa would start the end game, then finding the body of Daemon in the gutted bunker, and now Malcolm dead as well. Just Sax and Natan left.

Much more death than when Thor had control of him, yet there was something more to be thought of in all this.  From the corner of his eye he notes Jacqueline moving from the couch in his office towards him. “Going to answer that boss?”

John just shakes his head. It shocked him to find out that the crazy former agent Jake “Shades” Slick had a daughter, he always thought the man whore was infertile or at the very least was smart enough to get a vasectomy. But here was proof.

The phone’s annoying ring tone that was a factory setting signals Rick had left a voicemail. John looks to the clock on the phone, 15 minutes until the kids arrival. The last of the Martyrs, who depending on what one believed about the murderers in the last several days were living up to their names.

“Remember the plan Jacqueline, when they walk in…”

“I shoot them both and drop the extra guns so it looks like I stopped an assassination attempt, but what about Speare boss?” She asks.

John chuckles. “Speare is an idiot, we will easily pay him off.” The thunder cracked loudly and the lights dipped. The Mayor wondered if the privatized energy companies were screwing around with the power grid once more. One of the worst things Ralph Klein ever did on the day California proved de-regulated/privatized power didn’t work, was to then follow through blindly, the one thing he hoped by being in office was to follow the money in the city to see who got the pay offs for the privatization. Unfortunately the tracts were covered to well.

Another flickering, what was the term—brown out?

A loud crack. The room was bathed in lightning.

3 new forms?

Then blackness.

A thud. A bullet shot.

Speare felt the stickiness of blood on his cheek as another flash of lightning illuminated the room. “Oh shit.”

Chapter Eleven

An immortal sociopathic alien entity has been playing with the lives of Supras and Canadians for many years. Years ago, Speare’s friend’s husband came back from the Purgatory between H’el and Valhalla having sacrificed his physical health to vanquish the entity and release its hold on one John MacCurtis, the current mayor of the city.

Yet a string of murders starting with a mystery lady named Reesa has laid the ground work that this entity is not vanquished, and there is a strong possibility that the first victim is actually alive, under an assumed name as the mayor’s hired gunsal, and well, said hired gun was actually carrying the current resurrected sociopathic entity.

This was confirmed in a night meeting, in a closed urban garden with the immortal alien entity known colloquially as Zeus, but the past 40 years had been the hero to Canada known as Zed. The monk that had opened a gap in time and space to reveal a weapon that may do what Natan had been unable to do in the in between.

Zed held the ancient war hammer of the mythological Norse God of Thor. It was tipped with a spike.

Natan smiled at his lover as he reached for it. “Run him through and poof.”

Zed nodded, “but first you have to get him to leave his host and face you as himself.”

Sax looked to Speare, “basically abandoned the one we believe to be Reesa.”

“What happens when this thing leaves a host?” Speare asked.

Natan cracked his knuckles.  “It de-aged MacCurtis, but he was alive when he was possessed, erased most of his memories of the time, until the reawakening of the Great Crime Fighters the past few years.”  Speare nodded, others dubbed it the renewal of hope, but same thing when the true heroes came back. “However if Reesa were dead when taken possession of, there would be but dust left.”

Natan advances towards Zed, “I will finish it this time.”

Speare sidesteps swiping the hammer. Zed laughs. “No, Nate, look you and Sax have a chance at living a life without boundaries, let your love shine. This is the crap I do for my pay cheque.”

It is Sax’s turn to laugh. “You actually think if you pull this out the mayor will pay you?”

“It’s an election year, there is nothing like occult and alien conspiracy in the office to drive paying of invoices on time to ensure proper cover up.” Speare said.

“Speare, I failed the first time to end Thor, I need to finish it.” Natan said.

Speare simply shook his head and hefted the hammer. “No.”

“How will you get him out of, what does she call herself currently, Slick?” Natan asked.

Speare paused, he had not thought that far ahead rather than just try his normal annoying ways to goad the entity to hopefully striking out and creating an opening.  The truth was Speare was more focused on keeping Sax’s husband alive so they could enjoy the weird spontaneous healing this case had inexplicably brought for him, rather than having him come even remotely close to tangling with this thing again.

A quick glance back and Zed had pulled a Batman.

From inside his coat pocket Natan pulls out a smart phone and swipes across John’s number. “MacCurtis, Sax and I need to see you at your office, 30 minutes. Someone murdered Malcolm.”

Some things Speare had not thought out on stopping, that phone call was one. 30 minutes to end game.

 

Chapter Ten

Movies like Star Trek First Contact romanticized first contact with alien species as the ushering age of a golden age for humanity out of the dregs of war. Some Ancient Alien theories show this throughout history as well as laid out through archaeology and religious thought.  Some just benign indifference or is it more like H.G. Wells in War of the Worlds? Stephen Hawking one of, if not the, smartest man in the world has cautioned that alien life attempting to contact Earth may not be benign or ushering in a humanistic golden age.

That is what Speare is discovering lately, the intersecting of alien life and the body politic, the rips in the atmosphere and the weird sky effects causing evolutionary leaps for humanity and creating the persons known as Supras. The way the Canadian government used a super-secret agency and two specific aliens who may or may not be immortal, and each of them who had been visiting the world throughout millennia each took a lead—one of “Prophets” that became known as media darlings, The Great Crime Fighters. The other, a covert black ops team, known as Martyrs.

In their final stand the entity that had possessed the mentor was finally exorcise and believed destroyed.

Then a mysterious woman turned up dead.

The journey revealed that even though the exorcism broke the one known as Natan, the entity had survived and now was back making the Martyrs literally their name sakes. Reesa, Daemon, and Malcolm. Now they were truly gone.

Yet there was a nagging question about the murder that started it all, and that is why Speare was standing in the urbanized garden in a shopping mall. It had been closed for a time as someone had started a grow op in it. Yet here he was, as a bookseller had contacted the other immortal alien to speak with him, for Sax had to care for his lover and spouse, Natan who was formerly in a wheel chair with oxygen, but now stood in a black linen suit that caused his faded red skin to glow almost crimson as they waited for the other.

The saffron robes were a give-away.  The one who had formally been known as Zeus, during his time in Canada and being a super hero, had adopted the name Zed, he was simply known as a mystic-Tibetan Buddhist Monk.

And this is what Speare struck upon. “Aren’t you supposed to be a Greek?”

“Seriously, you have google in this era, and literally have every ancient work at your fingertips and you glanced over the whole golden shower I once was?”

“Point taken. So why?”

“A monk. It was time to take my holistic self seriously, and to learn what it truly meant to be human I felt it was necessary to enter into the life of a refugee driven from home by an oppressive regime.”

Speare nodded. “Any advice on taking out Thor?”

Zed smiled, he had a mischievous twinkle in his eye. “Sadly he has always been a competitor. When he took over John MacCurtis it was because something had snapped, and the dark place this once great warrior had gone through.” There was a visible shudder by Zed. “I was overjoyed when the Martyrs disbanded, and Natan,” he nods to the red man, “had reported Thor’s destruction, the locking of the bunker. Even with the price paid, it was a good day for universal relations.”

“Thanks for stating the obvious.” Sax said. It looked to Speare as he was scratching his palm, he had never noted his friend looking this uncomfortable. “But what do we do to shut Thor down for good?”

“Is he back in MacCurtis?”

And that was the golden question to be answered.

Natan smirks as he looks at Zed. “This all started when we believed Reesa was murdered, but what if Reesa was Slick, and Slick was—“

“Thor?”

 

Chapter Nine

Malcolm stood dumbfounded at Speare’s question. Who had sent him to kill his former friends, and this new player in the game? It had been a phone call, but now the voice and the caller’s name were lost in a memory fog as thick as pea soup.
His mouth felt like it had cotton in it or more apro pos like how a mouth felt after leaving the dentist before the freezing had fully come out. There was throbbing behind his eyes, and a flash of pain across the bridge of his nose that went with the rhythm of the thunder rolling outside. Malcolm’s legs felt like rubber and would not move but he swayed slightly. Speare watched at this display and wondered exactly what would be possible if the large man collapsed, or worse projectile vomited as he pondered what should have essentially been an easy question to answer if he so chose: who had hired him.
The challenge though with these cases that went into the arcane and fantastical is that what should be simple could become more clouded than trying to understand a Marvel Comics relaunch or a Presidential election with Donald Trump as a candidate.
Speare focused in on the eyes of Malcolm, as they moved between red to green to yellow it appeared. “Seriously Malcolm, who sent you?”
Malcom’s left hand pinched his nose as he stumbled forward. “You need to stop asking questions was the message I was given to deliver.”
Sax let out a belly laugh. “Whomever hired you former brother Malcolm, has never met my friend Speare, for he has an insatiable curiosity of the kind that made for a bad end to the proverbial cat, even after he came back.”
Speare smirked, “What the bookseller said.”
Natan had a coughing fit that changed the momentum of the banter, but did not change whether or not the large man’s sudden on come of strange symptomology would change his ability to follow through on the threat.
“Is that a no to stop?” Malcolm asked, although his albino pigment was beginning to look almost green. Speare was more concerned with him becoming ill in such a confined space over fisticuffs at this point. Not a good thing for the hired goon of intimidation to suddenly get quick onset nausea. Speare glanced quick to one of the wooden chairs at the table that was empty, a plan formulating in his mind as Malcolm took more steps forward awaiting an answer. But they were not towards Speare specifically but rather Natan. Targeting the weakest link if you will.
A sheath of lightning crackled across the sky illuminating the darkened seat and room.
Speare moved grabbin the wooden chair. “That is a no.” Malcolm lunged as Speare swung as hard as he could with the wood chair sending it to an early career as toothpicks across the face of Malcolm. Blood and splinters on the floor. The large bald man stumbled back, not down. But dazed with a jagged cut across his nose bridge, eyes beginning to swell a little, blood trickling from the mouth and nose.
A quick left jab finished the nose with a loud crack Speare’s face tore the cartilage of Malcolm sending blood pouring and his eyes popping, but a large right hand swatted Speare up and down through the table. Sax rolled out of the way as a half blind now angry Malcolm swung for his head.
The large thug brought both his large ham hocks together to form a solid axe swing over the stunned and laying in the remains of the table Speare. His knuckles brushed the stucco from the ceiling as he swung them back…
When the oxygen tank squarely hit him in the right temple.
Malcolm’s fists dropped to his side. His eye lids fluttered, slowly his legs collapsed upon themselves as he crumpled to the ground.
Natan stood regally as he lowered the tank down. Slowly took off the oxygen hose and looked at his lover Sax as he offered and outstretched hand to Speare. Speare took the aid in getting up looking rather shocked at the development. “Don’t you…”
“I did, but not anymore. The Entity we knew as Thor…no the entity we knew as John MacCurtis is back. It is time to finish this.”
With the final work a shot of lightning burst through the wall and Sax watched as it landed squarely in the top of Malcolm’s head shooting through the large mans’ body and out his feet. Slowly burning the man from the inside out. The clothes on his back erupt as it was not a usual lighting strike, a message scarified on his back.
Death will find you.

Chapter Eight

Speare had always admitted (usually only to himself) that he had seen some pretty messed up shit in his life and cases, but nothing had prepared him for what happened when the large albino fist slammed into the back of the red skinned son of Satan’s head sending him reeling across the room.
Sax moved to his fallen lover’s side, but the form that stepped through the doorway was larger than the average thug that came to beat the snot out of Speare during a case. He was Hulkish in his sizing, bald and dressed like… “Why do you look like my accountant?”
“Sorry, I got transferred to the CRA after I left the Martyrs.” The thug like man said.
Sax aided Natan up to a chair and adjusted his oxygen hose. His eyes glared into the intruder’s, well technically from a crouch and with the height differential, possibly belt buckle if he was lucky. “Malcolm.”
The tenuitious silence was broken by a lot of coughing and chest rattling from Natan as the oxygen refilled his lungs. If it wasn’t so weird and wondering if this current member of the Canadian Revenue Agency was going to kill someone, this scene could be as hoaky as a death scene from Scream Queens.
“As I was saying before this overstuffed jabroni with the nasty bowtie and sweater vest smoked me upside the head.” Natan winked at Sax as he looked up from the chair at his former teammate. “Reesa was not her first name it was…”
“Jacqueline.” Malcolm finished Natan’s sentence.
Speare nodded. Things were taking a sideways turn especially since he had just learned Jake “Shades” Slick, best hitter on the Martyrs and the Prophets and for the Agency (not to mention whomever else could foot the invoice) never reproduced. Which left the question as to who was the mayor’s hired body guard.
“So who the hell is Slick?” Sax asked what was on everyone’s mind, for Reesa was dead.
Natan slipped his hand into Sax’s as he spoke. Malcolm glowered at Speare. “You can speak freely in front of him, Malcolm. He’s a good guy.” Sax said.
Rumbling in the sky, it was starting to feel like an old noir novel, possibly a Chandleresque outing, but Speare was always partial to Ellery Queen, most notably in the television show where the author turned character would break the fourth wall and speak directly to the audience before the big reveal.
Malcolm leaned against a counter, folded his arms across his chest and let out a hrumph. Lightning illuminated the room. As Speare decided to take his shot at being Queen. “Let’s see what we know. The original Thor entity took a hold of a young John MacCurtis and aged the bastard, he then used this new found power to found a secret black ops crew dubbed the Martyrs. As far as I can tell y’all had no families and he used Supra’s would either not survive the trials or if they did be so fubarred it wouldn’t matter.” The three nodded, so far the, no one was to clear on the actual job title Speare used was, but he was on target. “It all came to a head in a bunker under Balzac. One heckuva fire fight, that led into an even more invasive exorcism on the borderlands that ripped Thor out of MacCurtis, and sadly left Natan as he is now.” Speare exhaled slowly, and contemplated if he should take up drinking with the words coming out of his mouth.
“But here’s the hitch, the entity did not leave MacCurtis alone. Somehow the entity has a hold and led to the murder of a woman named Reesa, and the exorcism of a bloke named Daemon in the foresaid Bunker. Yet MacCurtis under fear of assassination has brought in his own shooter who is supposed to be the legendary Shades’ daughter, only not, and it is starting to look more and more like this shooter is actually the dead woman that started all this.” Speare finished with a question.
“Who sent you here to kill us, Malcolm.”

Chapter Seven

Even confined to the wheel chair, Natan looked like he was about to keel over. Sax had the not so impressed face a spouse gets when the other life partner does what is not in their health’s best interest. But here Natan was, had wheeled himself through the tunnel that connected the shop to the back yard double wide trailer they called home. Speare notes it is one other home he had never been in, much like this being the first time he had ever actually met Natan.

Sax moves from the seat and kisses his soul on the forehead tenderly, he doesn’t even have to ask simply grabs a tumbler and pours three fingers of scotch into the glass. Natan takes it in his long fingers, his skin tone is literally red, not racist red as when one spoke of Aboriginals back at colonizations, no – this was fire truck red or Satan red that his skin was toned as. Speare had always assumed that Sax had been joking when he would call his husband the son of Satan or sprung from the loins of Lucifer.

With the new information Speare was still processing the not necessarily new information, but confirmation of things he had believed around alien contact and governmental conspiracy up to this point on this case.

“You want to know about the borderland.” Natan rasped out.

Speare simply nodded, not wanting to have to extend anything more than necessary. Natan sipped on his drink, and from the little grin Sax gave his spouse, Speare could’ve sworn the red skinned man pinched his husband’s butt.

“It was a crazy time in the bunker, and then I noted the sparks behind MacCurtis’ eyes, the false mask coming off in a split second as he went insane. It was time.” Natan went on as he nursed his drink to walk through the psychic battle. Believing he was battling an alien entity that had presented as a Norse God, only to discover on the borderlands. “It was not about pushing him back into Valhalla, or a wormhole so he could go home. But rather it was a Nephilim, those that many ancient races had risen up to do away with. This soul had hidden away on the Ark, the storehouse of DNA samples before the great catastrophe.”

Speare noted that he needed to catch up on Ancient Aliens to be able to follow this case better. “Yet this parasite had lodged itself in MacCurtis and needed to be rooted out. Took all I had to exorcise if you prefer that word, as the gate to Valhalla was closing.”

“You pulled the Nehilim out and tossed it in?” Speare asked.

Natan’s dry lips cracked a smile as he finished off his drink. “I put his head into the portal before it closed.” A very cold chill ran down Speare’s spine, like a full body brain freeze realizing what Natan had stated. This youngish man had essentially wielded the power to destroy and ancient entity. “At which point MacCurtis who was already de-aging, and myself crashed back into the bunker. Slick had hot wired himself and a rescue team back in. We were flown back to The Agency’s HQ in Winnipeg, debriefed, and I guess to keep with the religious tones of Martyrs, de-frocked.”

“We were decommissioned, and pensioned off back into civilian life at that point Speare. I stayed with Natan until he was discharged from the hospital and we used our monies to buy this piece of paradise.” Sax said. “You already know what happened to MacCurtis, Malcolm vanished. Far as we knew Daemon and Reesa vanished off the grid to wed and pop out babies.”

Speare stroked his whiskers, as he looked at the man in the wheel chair. Chalk white hair down to his shoulders, Vulcan like ears. “What’s your story that seems almost unbelievable what you pulled off within the borderland?”

“My story is simple, I am part-alien, part-human. My mother mated with what the Hebrew Bible would reference as Lucifer. And that is why I was able to tap into the cosmic power to deal with the Nephilim.” Natan stated as one would list their monthly bills to be paid.

Speare nodded, let out a low whistle. Somehow this didn’t seem to shock anymore, he was getting used to rolling with the reveals, like a bad reality television show trying to stave off cancellation.

“So the Slick that saved you, that was Jacqueline’s dad?” Speare asked.

Sax and Natan exchanged quizzical looks and it was Sax that spoke. “Jake “Shades” Slick, was a man-whore, but he never produced a child. The only Jacqueline we knew was…”

“Reesa. It was her first na—“ Natan could not finish the sentence before the fist slammed into the back of his head.

Chapter Six

The air felt like it crackled around them. Another mysterious body, thunder rumbled over her. Speare looked at John, “who exorcised Thor from you?”

“Natan.” John said.

Slick dropped Speare off at the bookstore and was heading back to MacCurtis’ off  at his home or office. But the last thing said before leaving the bunker as the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) and CSIS arrived to take over with the new discovery was still a knuckleball that Speare was not expecting.

His friend’s spouse. He was the one that had performed the exorcism of the entity.

More thunder, soon the rain would start again. The shop still had five minutes before it closed. The cute wind chime that signalled the door opening.  Sax looked up while stocking a display of Prime Minister memoirs: Pearson, Clark, Trudeau Senior, Trudeau Junior, Martin, Diefenbaker and Harper.

Speare wonders how many of those Prime Ministers knew about the Prophets, who whether as a Member of Parliament, or Prime Minister condoned the Martyrs program. How far down this rabbit hole would these murders lead?

“Speare welcome back.”

“Yeah, that bunker was…” Speare searched for a word, knowing at one point in his life he no longer talked about Sax had lived there, was he there in the final fire fight.

“A shit hole.  I know, I did not mind locking that door the final time and walking back into civilian life. Veterans Affairs gave us both a good package.” Sax motions his head around the shop, the investment after buy out. “They took care of Natan.”

The last line was lower, Speare realized he had been friends with Sax so long yet had never actually met his spouse. Natan was a name spoken of with care, compassion and love but was a mystery.

“What happened that day of the lock down?”

Sax walked from the display, turned the sign to close and turned the deadbolt, he flipped the main lights off so security lighting took over and motioned Speare to follow him to the back office. There was a nice oak roll top that Sax had there, and a sitting area that looked light it fit into a tea room reconciliation sacrament in newer Roman Catholic Churches.

Speare glided into his chair, expecting a kettle to be plugged in, but in the bottom drawer of the roll top Sax pulls out a bottle of Glendfiddich, and two tumblers he brings them over to the chairs. Speare attempts to wave of the golden liquid, but Sax pours two drinks.

The bookseller takes a sip and looks at his friend. “I hated that this day would come.”

“Sax you have been a Jiminy Crickett like light to my life, what are you hiding?” Speare takes a sip to make his friend comfortable, he can feel the demons already emanating from behind his eyes.

Sax contemplates for a moment. Downs his cup, pours another and then contemplatively stares into the liquid like one doing a tea meditation. “I am not now or have I ever been a Supra. I was a street kid with a knack for the impossible.” Sax pauses many times as he tells more of his story. In moments that didn’t fit Speare could tell he was fighting tears.  Obviously the ending of the time with the Martyrs was not that heroic in his friend’s estimation. “I picked up a good use of the long bow, and took many lives much to my eternal soul state. What happened though that day…that was beyond crazy. Our bunker was discovered and we were hit hard by…Frost Giants, at least that was the short hand we used for them, huge ass alien buggars interbred with Supra’s on earth. Tore through the bunker like a shredder through paper.”

Speare could only picture the thoughts, these young adults who had done horrific things, seen horrific things suddenly in a ground zero in the one place they were supposed to be safe.  “But Speare we won, until the last bastard shot something square into our illustrious now Mayor’s third eye and then shit got real.”

What Sax described next was a literal battle through Hell and that is what tore the bunker apart. “Daemon was unconscious, so was Reesa. Malcolm was our big guns with Grizz…then Natan and me.  Malcolm was knocked out and then he…” Speare just waited, as Sax drained his second scotch and poured a third.  “Grizz was ripped in half, I can still taste his blood it hit my mouth which was open at the shock.” MacCurtis had not told Speare that he had killed the one member who had died, was that simply left out so history remembered this man better, or after the exorcism had he no memory of it and no one bothered to inform him? A why poke the sleeping bear (yes a bad pun since Grizz was part bear, part man).

But the silence was the heavy lifting necessary as Sax placed his third scotch down on the table after only a sip. He was shaking, trying to calm his nerves. “I fired at him, the very skin on his body was straining, like a t-shirt the owner of was to big for. His face was distorting. I emptied a quiver of arrows into him and he kept coming.  Then Natan.”

“Natan, your spouse.”

Sax smiled, he visibly relaxed. “My saviour, saved my ass and in that moment we were only shagging or at most a few dates in, nothing serious.  But MacCurtis was going to hug my throat if you will, but Natan stepped between us.”

What Sax described did not seem extraterrestrial or Supra related, but rather Super Natural.

“That’s where the government was wrong. Thor was not the alien entity behind the Martyrs. The entity had trapped Thor’s spirit before it could go to Valhalla. Natan shattered the prison, it was a demon that had created the Martyrs—a spirit of the Nephilim if you will. Natan infused with Thor’s spirit took the Nephilim possessed MacCurtis to the boarder of Valhalla in the midst of the bunker.”

Speare could not believe the mythological references spoken of as truth. This was a crazy moment that no one knew about, except the government sealed the bunker and covered it up. Although the general public would have no idea how to process this type of event.

“I need to speak with Natan about what happened in Valhalla’s borderland.”

“No you don’t Speare.” Sax drained his third scotch and poured a fourth. Tears were moving down his cheeks at this time. “He never talks about it, but he brought a 30 year younger MacCurtis back who was air vacced out to a hospital unconscious.”

“S.T.A.R.S took Natan too?”

Sax nodded, as he shot half his glass. “His body was burned, his hair was splotchy, an eye was missing, his ears were cauliflowered. A beautiful red skinned man that would have been spoked of as Dorian Gray, was brutalized, his clothes were rags. A spear had severed his spine, and brimstone had literally burnt his lungs.”

Speare let out a low whistle and finished off his first scotch. What had happened at the exorcism?

“Natan regained consciousness, but is in a wheel chair with oxygen and…” Sax was visibly shaken. “I held him all the way back to the city hospital. He opened his eyes when my heart realized…”

“You loved him.”

Sax nodded to Speare’s disclosure. “We live simply, the V.A. took care of him, we want for nothing medically, and mentally his mind is coming back together. But what you ask Speare, I can’t.” Sax said.

“But I can.” The voice was raspy like a smoker’s speaking through a tube. “Ask what you want of me Speare, and I will answer.”

Speare looked up. “Natan.”

 

Chapter Five

Speare hated the smell of closed up spaces. It didn’t matter if it was a dwelling place, a store or in this case a hyper classified government bunker for a team of supra’s doing black ops, they all broke down to the old man smell mixed with heavy amounts of dust, and the same thick layers of cobwebs.

This one also looked like it had been an extra set on Saving Private Ryan. Slick was jumpy with her hand resting on her glocs as they moved their way through what was the control room. John fumbled with a control panel cover to get at wiring.  Whatever had gone down here had also ended with the government not paying the power bill. He muttered under his breath about jump starting the power back up. Sparks, obviously in the dark illuminated by smart phone light John didn’t match the right colours.

Creaks. Skittering sounds. Speare knew it wouldn’t be rats, Alberta had a rat patrol that for the most part kept the province rat free, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t mice, voles, gophers, badgers or worse, skunks—not enough lemon juice in the world for the last one.

The sound of a vacuum wooshing. “How damn! Not bad for a colour blind mayor.” John MacCurtis exclaimed.

Colour blind? Speare shook his head as what was dubbed the control room came alive with light, the monitors were smashed, wires were dangling and sparking, one heck of a fire hazard is what this bunker had become. Not to mention dust bunny.

“What are you hoping to find boss man, this place has been scrubbed.” Slick said.

Speare tuned out the chit chat between boss and employee, as he noted there was a door slightly askew in the corner of 1100 square foot room. But that was just a guess off the top of his head as he moved to it. With all the stainless steel looking like something out of Star Trek, and the Tesla coils he was sure Minion from Megamind would state were from a dealer in Switzerland…

A wooden closet door. It was stuck. Speare pulled on the door knob and the whole door came ff the hinges, a thud before he could brace himself dust and cleaning supplies, mops, and brooms falling out and then a solid 200 lbs of dead weight slammed into his chest and knocked him to the ground.

Dead skin flaked off across Speare’s bald had and caught in his stubble as the body’s head bounced off his. Two bullets landed square into the now empty closet, Slick was in a squawt with both guns drawn and fired.

MacCurtis leapt over broken furniture and moved the corner. He heaved the body off of Speare and let out a gasp.

“Oh shit.”

Speare took a moment to regain his senses and brush the dead skin and body dust off as he slowly rose up and looked at what had hit him. It was a male, more mummified than decomposed, let appeared as if it had some of the skin flayed from his back. His face was deformed.

“A guard?”

“Good guess Speare, but no. After the last stand here when I exorcised the entity from me, the government came through, collected the dead, took other causalities to the hospitals and debriefed the living. The bunker was sealed and the program closed.” MacCurtis stated.

“So this body came in after sealing?” Speare asked.

Slick holstered her weapons like a gunfighter out of an American western Dime Novel and walked over to where the body was found.  “Know this Mummy boss?”

John looked at the mummified scarred face.

“Reesa,  I will always love you.” Daemon said stealing a quick kiss before tearing out into the desert in a dune buggy. The girl laughed as Malcolm, the large albino, fired the gun from the top, she slightly used her telepathy to push people’s mind to confusion.

Daemon, her love, met at the house ran by MacCurtis. He had been saved from a fire that his addict mother could not be, he still bore the scars. But the flames also gave him something else that night.

A large fence door loomed, that crackle in the corner of his good right eye.

A bolt of lightning and outwards to freedom from the camp.

John knelt down, crossed himself, it had been years since he had attended a Mass, but it seemed appropriate to begin his own reconciliation work with this piece with his past. He then placed his thumb on the dead boy’s forehead, and drew a cross on his forehead, his lips, and the chest where the heart would be.

Speare watched the scene. The religiosity of it all, MacCurtis was seeking redemption in this process, it was why he had sent the Bionic Knight away. But how does one claim redemption from a time when they were possessed by an extraterrestrial entity? His body, possibly his mind, but did he have culpability for actions?

A group of adolescents to young adults used for essentially suicide missions by his own government. Somehow they survived, when one didn’t it fell apart. This bunker was destroyed during MacCurtis’ exorcism, but after sealing the bunker someone killed this mummy and left them here as a message.

“John, who is it?” Speare asked.

John looked at this detective who had been brought into some of the darkest parts of his soul. Pieces he never wanted to think about, parts he wanted to remain dead. A detective that was friends with one of the kids, the Martyrs. Yet they had survived and moved beyond what Thor had attempted to do.

“His name is Daemon, no one knew his last name. Like all the Martyrs he was found in the system, and brought to the house to be trained and used. He was alive at exorcism, and after.  He was Reesa’s boyfriend.” MacCurtis said. Speare was not sure if that was a tear of sorrow or just the build-up of dust.

“So then the next obvious question—how the hell did he wind up dead in here after it was sealed?”

“By Jove Slick I do believe we will make a detective out of your thugness yet.” Speare retorted.

The air felt like it crackled around them. Another mysterious body, thunder rumbled over her. Speare looked at John, “who exorcised Thor from you?”