Break out the good Scotch my friends! Hell
Becomes Her has passed muster with my editor. It is
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| This is Marrin's BOOM STICK! |
“There was some dabbling in the early
days,” Marrin said. “Quite a few mythic creatures aren’t mythic at all. Although most don’t exist anymore. They’re extinct or nearly so.”
“Like us,” Del said and shook her
head. “Typical Throne policy. But how don’t I know about these Viking
elves?”
“Viking is a job title, not a people,”
Marrin scolded, but he smiled after he said it.
“How much time have you spent in the Nordic countries?”
“Some, but I’ve never been a fan of the
cold,” Del replied. “I went there for
assignments, and left when I was done.”
She turned to Jane and asked, “You?”
“A bit,” Jane said. “But my . . . education comes from Jaccob and
Joshua. We had rumors of a tribe in
Northern Nevada. They’re either
incredibly good at information control, or they aren’t doing anything out there
worth notice. Jaccob favored the later,
and Joshua figured why go looking for trouble.
There’s plenty in our region to sort out. We didn’t need to borrow more.”
“Oh wow,” Marrin said suddenly. He bounded off the ground fast enough that it
made Del’s head hurt. The big man
practically bounced into his room.
“If we’re going in for Ljosalfar,” he
said, his voice muffled by the walls, “I’m glad you talked me into this.”
Del looked a question at Jane. The other woman shrugged in confusion.
Marrin re-emerged from his room
carrying a leather shoulder harness with a pair of heavy looking revolvers
sticking out of the holsters and three boxes of ammunition. After the events in Utah, Del had made a
point of insisting that Marrin update his firearms. Previously, it’d been a chore to get him to
carry more than his sword. Nephilim,
except for Del, generally loathed change and often didn’t update their weapons
with the times. It was a combination of
their divine half that didn’t have to adapt, and their human half that didn’t
want to take the chance. Del’s cousins
ended up a few decades to a few centuries behind the times, often with tragic
consequences. Humans might fear change,
but for Nephilim is was downright deadly.
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| Han Solo wishes he had one of these. |
Before Salt Lake, Marrin had conceded
the argument by compromising with an archaic Broomhandle C96 Mauser, and an original
issue Colt M1911. Neither of them was
less than a hundred years old. She’d
insisted he keep them well-maintained, but didn’t like that he had to carry two
kinds of ammunition for outdated weapons with disadvantages compared to more
modern handguns. It had never become an
issue, but Del had made a much stronger argument that in the future it
could. You didn’t want a misfire at a
critical moment in a fight, and almost everything was critical when going up
against rogue demons.
As far as Del knew, he hadn’t settled
on a weapon.
Marrin grinned as he pulled on his
shoulder harness and worked the straps into place. The leather was old, age and use darkened,
which suggested it was the one he’d used to tote his Mauser and Colt. But the holsters were new and customized to
fit his updated weapons.
“You got the Matebas,” Del noted.
The grin on Marrin’s face was
contagious. He looked like a little boy
with a new puppy.
Where were you when you received the good news?
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