Silas Robb: Hell Hath No Fury

Chapter 1-3

Some of the chemicals were caustic and immediately burned faces and chests, which, Silas thought, was an improvement. Others did little damage, but caused a small flock to retreat in fear. Silas kicked over a Bunsen burner, and one of the beakers caught fire, effectively turning it into a Molotov cocktail. It shattered against the wall sending flaming liquid over a group of the harpies.

A harpy dodged past the flying glassware and leapt onto Silas. He held her snapping beak away from him as she dug her claws into the flesh of his shoulders and upper arms. She smelled of bird s**t and wet feathers. He swung her around and threw her at another one of the creatures preparing to leap.

Jumping down from the table, he heaved it forward and flipped it toward the monsters. More of the liquid ignited, and soon half of the room and several of the harpies were enveloped in flames.

Silas glanced at Baba Yaga. She appraised the scene, every bit the disapproving grandma, and he knew it was only a matter of time before she would take action.

In the cage, the fairies were gripping the bars as though trying to press through. The cage and glass did not really hold them; it was the writing on the ground that bound them stronger than any cage. Silas pulled his arm back and punched the glass. It cracked, sending a spider web of breaks across the surface. The force of his blow should have been enough to shatter it; something unnatural was reinforcing it. He slammed his fist into it again, and this time it broke through. He couldn't see through the cracked glass, but he felt his hand wipe through the greasy writing on the floor around the cage.

Something grabbed hold of him from behind, and Silas was thrown back across the room. The back of his head bounced off the wall as he slid to the floor. Baba Yaga stood before him with her hands outstretched. Her face had twisted and shriveled, a long-dead face replacing the grandmotherly countenance she had a moment before. Arms ending in elongated fingers stretched out toward him, lines of energy crackled around them.

"You have ruined everything, you fool," Baba Yaga screeched. "This was to be my time, all the human flesh I could eat. All for me. Now it is all gone."

The room was a raging fire, many of the harpies now burnt husks on the ground. A few, however, gathered around Baba Yaga. The door out was on fire, and Silas was sure most of the thugs in the other rooms had made a hasty retreat. There were no fire alarms yet. The guy was smart and probably had them removed, so that by the time the alarms went off on the other floors, all evidence of a drug lab would be nothing more than molten sludge.

Ropes of energy snaked out from Baba Yaga's hands and wrapped around him. They tightened, and Silas was jerked to his feet. "I must return to the old country, but not before dealing with the great and powerful Silas Robb."

She smiled and her iron teeth gleamed a steely gray. Silas strained against the bonds of power looking for a way out. Baba Yaga was not someone you defeated; you were lucky if you got away.

"Feast on him, daughters. Pluck out his vile heart," she said.

And with that, the remaining harpies swarmed him. Tooth and claw pierced his skin, but once he was surrounded by the screeching beasts, the bands of power loosened and fell away. Baba Yaga was making her own escape. The flames could wound her just as easily as him.

Though his arms were free, it was too late. He struck out at the harpies, but there were too many. Surrounded by the smell of rot and sewage, Silas staggered about trying to pull away from the monsters, but beak and claw kept hemming him in. He soon realized they weren't doing any real damage to him; it was almost as if they were playing with him. Or perhaps herding him somewhere.

Silas was batting them away from his eyes when his back pressed up against something cold and flat. The window.

Oh s**t, he thought. They had been herding him somewhere.

They pulled back slightly and then, as one flock, flew straight at him. Their speed left him no time to move. When they slammed into him, the glass behind him shattered, and Silas flew out into the air over nine hundred feet above the ground. The harpies flew back from him, crowing with laughter as he fell downward. From above him the room exploded outward, sending glass and flaming debris hurtling toward the ground.

Even with his demonically-enhanced mortal flesh, the fall would damage this body beyond repair, which was a shame, because Silas genuinely like his current incarnation. When you spend eternity possessing any body that you can get a hold of, you do not always get a great selection. Frankly, Silas quite often had to slum it to get access to this world. He could only hope that the Vatican would pick something decent out when they summoned him back.

That was a term of the contract too. Death was no escape from their machinations. It would also take a while before he could be summoned again; meanwhile, he would have to hole up in hell. Not a fun place, even for a native.

Silas had fallen, perhaps half the distance to the ground, when he felt something grab the shoulder of his leather jacket. It was a fairy, a pixie to be precise. Then another grabbed his other shoulder. Silas felt a third fairy tug on the back of his jacket as it found purchase. Two more latched onto the belt loops of his jeans. His fall began to slow as their wings beat furiously. Within moments he was hovering three hundred feet off the ground, the pixies vibrating like hummingbirds next to him.

"Jesus Christ Silas, you are f*****g heavy," the male pixie on his left shoulder said to him.

"That's what all those drugs and alcohol will do to you, make you fat," the female pixie on his right shoulder said.

"Fat?” Silas sputtered. If you weren't holding me up, I'd squash you like a bug you little..."

"Yeah, yeah. Save it for when we get your ass down," she said.

With a scream, a harpy dove at them.

"Right!" yelled the fairy on his right shoulder at the same time the one on his left yelled "Left!” The end result was he went nowhere, and the harpy slammed into his gut.

With an "oomph," he flew backwards. The fairies kept him from falling, but they couldn't stop his horizontal momentum. Silas slammed against a concrete wall, and the harpy grabbed onto his body. For the moment there was only one. He grabbed her as the fairies stabilized him, and slammed her into the window, shattering the glass with her body and dragging her along the broken shards. Her throat was slashed to ribbons, and he let her body fall to the ground.

She would change back to her woman form before she hit the ground. When her body was discovered, the humans would find an explanation that fit into their blind world view. They would probably write it up in the paper as some s*x suicide pact. Throw in an exploding meth lab, and that sealed the deal. All sorts of weird s**t happens when people are on drugs. Hell, even if someone working late in a building across from them saw him being carried around by a handful of Tinkerbells, their human mind would tell him it was just an addict jumping from the lab as it went up.

The two remaining harpies were circling, preparing for an attack, a little more cautious now that they had seen what had happened to their comrade.

"What the f**k do we do now?" asked the female pixie. It was a little unsettling hearing profanities coming from such a tiny voice.

"Run," Silas suggested.

The harpies dove, and the fairies took off with Silas dangling beneath them. Soon Silas was speeding between the buildings, swinging precariously at every turn or dive they had to make as they dodged the harpies. Silas winced in pain as his right side hit against a building, but he had the presence of mind to get his feet up and push off the wall, sending him and the fairies careening off into the night sky. Just as they sped off, a harpy slammed into the building he had hit against moments before. Nobody ever said harpies were bright. Only one left.

"Climb!" Silas cried, and the fairies lifted him higher into the air just as the last harpy dove.

"Now let me go!" he yelled.

"What?" the two fairies on each shoulder said in unison.

"Now!"

They let him go. He landed directly on the back of the diving harpy. He straddled her back like a horse, grabbed her stringy, dirty hair and held on. Reminded him of that old joke about rodeo s*x. She bucked and twisted trying to throw him off, but Silas was too much weight for her and she plummeted.

Silas twisted and pulled the creature’s head back like it was the yoke of an airplane. She responded with a screech and unwillingly pulled out of a complete dive. He wrenched her head the other direction, and she spun off in a nose dive. She tried to straighten out, but he twisted once again and she continued in the crashing dive. Silas rode her this way all the way down, trying not to get too dizzy. Moments before impact he leapt, hoping for the best.

Tiny hands grabbed his coat and he was lifted once again into the air. Below him the harpy smacked into the ground with a sickening thud. The pixies lifted him up a little higher and then let go. Silas dropped through the sunroof of the limo, landing on the couch seat across from a stunned Mort.

"Done," Silas said and pulled another bottle of bourbon from the cabinet. He was glad he had insisted on leaving the bar cabinet in when Mort had added all his techno junk. The fairies landed gently in the seat next to him.

"Right!" Steve said from the front and hit the gas.

The car swerved through the debris raining down from above, leaving behind the bodies scattered throughout the street. In the background Silas heard sirens. Always a moment too late, thought Silas.

"How... subtle," Mort said.

"Freed the little fuckers, didn't I?"

"Yeah, nice one Silas," said the fairy that had been on his left shoulder. He held up his fist and it took a moment for Silas to realize he wanted a fist bump. Silas ignored him.

"You blew up part of a skyscraper, started a fire that will take an army of firemen to put out, and left bodies strewn about the ground of the business district."

"Mort, you have this annoying habit of always summarizing my activities," Silas said, and took a pull on the bottle of booze. "Besides, I did nothing so overt as to risk the Veil."

"You crash landed a harpy in the middle of a main street. You jumped—"

"Fell."

"—fell from a burning skyscraper."

"A meth lab, in a very unusual location, exploded, flinging several of the workers into the night sky. THAT is what the papers will say and you know it."

"What about Baba Yaga? I assume she got away," Mort said, but some of the fire was gone from his voice.

"That old hag? She’s heading back to the motherland, guarantee it. Actually, I’m surprised she’s even over here. She must have spent years setting this up. She’s not much of a social butterfly, more of the grab your children and cook ‘em for dinner type."

"So you’re saying that she was behind all this, not Dunkleclerk?"

"Yep. I bet if you look hard enough with that computer of yours, you’ll see he made some sort of trip to Eastern Europe or Russia. He probably crossed her path at some point, and she started this whole plan in motion. She always had the ambition, just not much in the brain department. She also wasn't very fond of fairies; they have a particular fascination with disrupting her plans. We won't see her for a while."

"Well this is fun and all, but we have to be going," said the female fairy. "Thanks Silas, we owe you one."

Silas just grunted. "Stay away from me, and we’ll call it even," he grumbled.

"Awwww Silas, you know you love us," she said and blew him a kiss as they flew out, one by one through the sunroof.

"Silas, how am I going to write all this up? It won't look good on the report," Mort said.

"What more does Moreales want? I did the job; just transfer the money as per usual," Silas said and leaned back into the chair while lighting another cigar.

"There’s still a lot of questions the Inquisition Project will want answered."

"Not now Mort, I got band practice to get to." Silas leaned back and let smoke ooze from his mouth. "Tell you what. You can work on the report at the bar, and in between sets I'll answer your questions."

Mort nodded, but looked distinctly uncomfortable when Silas brought up rock and roll and the club. Making Mort uncomfortable always made Silas feel better.