Courageous Read online

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Epilogue

  Author’s Note

  Also by Nicholas Olivo

  Courageous

  Copyright © 2017 by Nicholas Olivo All rights reserved.

  First Edition: December 2017

  www.nicholasolivo.com

  Editing by: Holloway House Editing and Proofreading

  hollowayhouse.me

  Cover and Formatting by: Streetlight Graphics

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to locales, events, business establishments, or actual persons—living or dead—is entirely coincidental.

  Chapter 1

  During my time with the Caulborn, I’ve been stabbed, shot, burned, hexed, poisoned, and dismembered. But out of all those, getting electrocuted sucks the worst. Sure, I can recover from pretty much any injury, but being hit with thousands of volts of electricity always takes forever to heal, and is usually accompanied by a long period of unconsciousness. So, when Sojin blasted me with lightning from his wand, I knew I was in trouble.

  Sorry, let me back up. My name is Vincent Corinthos, and I’m a member of a paranormal police force known as the Caulborn. To say I’ve been having a rough week is a bit of an understatement. Just yesterday, I was literally sent to Hell for failing to keep a promise. It’s kind of a long story, but the upshot is that because I was worshipped as a god, any promise I made was eternally binding, and breaking one was a damnable offense. Due to a slip of the tongue, I’d promised my partner, Megan, that she’d be fine, and when Megan was murdered, I got a trip to Tartarus. After completing the rather Herculean task of returning an escaped demon to the Pit, Hades let me walk out of Hell, something that had never been done before.

  After a long shower and a decent night’s sleep in my own bed, I was ready to get back to work. Priority number one would be tracking down Megan and her murderer. Right, I forgot to mention that Megan rose from the dead as a strigoi mort, sort of an undead super vampire. The man who killed her, an asshat named Treggen, was mentally compelling her to act as his flunky to do who knows what.

  So, if I found one of them, I’d find the other. Step one in bringing Treggen down was going to the new Caulborn HQ in the Undercity, where I’d coordinate with… crap, who was I going to coordinate with? We’d suffered so many losses that the number of field agents was down to just one. Me. Maybe I could place a call to Dublin, the main base of Caulborn operations, and see what sort of resources I could get for help.

  I portaled to a location just down the street from our office, HQ being warded against extradimensional energy like the kind I use, and walked down the streets of the Undercity. While a part of me missed having our office topside, in Boston proper, it was nice to be able to make a portal right out in the open.

  Extradimensional gateways, carriages drawn by skeletal horses, and people transforming themselves into animals or suddenly growing wings are all commonplace down here. But the thing I really appreciated right now was the lack of snow on the streets. It never snows or rains in the Undercity; the air is always a balmy sixty-eight degrees thanks to a rather ingenious set of duct work, and the gas-powered streetlights keep the place at a comfortable, if not quite bright, level of light. Topside, a snowstorm was dumping another fourteen inches of the white stuff, but down here, it was just another day.

  I got into the office, and my first clue that things were off was that Jake wasn’t at the security station. The mountain of a man rarely left his desk, but recent events with Cynthia, the Electrical Woman who’d been in Jake’s care for the last hundred and fifty years or so, had been a real strain on Jake. I’d asked Psyke, the Greek goddess of the soul, to untangle a malevolent presence from Cynthia’s spirit. The process had been a draining one, and I assumed that Jake was visiting Cynthia down in Medical.

  As I passed the desk, an Indian man I’d never seen before stepped out of the doors leading to our offices. He was maybe an inch shorter than me, wearing a stylish tan business suit and expensive-looking shoes. He had a thin mustache, and wore a gold ring on each of his fingers. He blinked once at me, and a look of shock flashed over his face. It was gone so fast, replaced by a huge grin, that I thought I might have imagined it.

  “Vincent Corinthos, the godling agent, what an honor it is to meet you, sir!” he said, striding over and taking my hand in both of his. “Truly, it is a wonderful day. When Inquisitor Xavier tells me that I will be working with the Boston office, I am hoping to meet you. I have been hearing much about your exploits.”

  I smiled back, glad that this man wasn’t shaking the hand that I’d lost and regrown while in the Pit. If he had been, I was afraid the vigorous pumping would rip it off again. “I’m sorry,” I said, once I was able to remove my hand. “Have we met?”

  The man slapped his forehead and took my hand again. “Terribly sorry, I am having a moment of starstruckedness. I am Sojin Aroranona, recently transferred here from Mumbai. Inquisitor Xavier handpicked several of us from various locations to help re-staff the Boston office.” Sojin’s grin was so wide that it could’ve split his face.

  “About Xavier,” I said, my tone shifting. I wasn’t sure if it was common knowledge that Treggen had killed him, too. It turned out that Treggen had taken possession of a celestial phylactery, sealing his soul within it and gaining access to some seriously malevolent powers. He’d used those powers to kill Xavier, and then Megan, which had kicked off my fun tour of the underworld. “Do you know what happened to him?”

  Sojin’s face fell. “Yes. A terrible tragedy that was, indeed.”

  I nodded and chucked him on the shoulder. “Well, Sojin, I’m going to track his murderer down. We’ll catch the bastard.”

  The other man’s grin returned. “Absolutely we will, sir. Come, some of us have finished setting up the new data analysis center. We can begin the search there.”

  I followed Sojin through a pair of double doors and down a hallway. From what I could tell, the office was fully set up now. But the furniture, the decorations, the technology, they all felt too new; unused. That’d be changing soon enough. Sojin opened a door on my left and held it for me. I entered and found a room that could’ve been taking right off the set of Star Trek.

  Workstations connected to scanning and lab equipment ringed the room, their screensavers all showing a rotating Caulborn logo. Opposite me, a massive central monitor showed a map of Boston, with possible paranormal activity flagged with red indicator bubbles. The thing literally covered the entire wall, reminding me a bit of Alexis, the super-advanced AI from the Commander Courageous comics. A conference table, which had its own screens and touch controls inlaid into it, sat in the center of the room.

  Holy cr
ap, the agency wasn’t skimping on the new tech, that was for sure. We’d had good equipment before, but this was like going from playing Pong to using an Oculus Rift. I remembered Kristin telling me about all the whizzbang gear that other Caulborn offices had, and now I was starting to see what she meant.

  On the far side of the room, a man nearly the same size and bulk as Jake had his back to us as he ran searches against the main Caulborn database. At the head of the conference table was a woman with a bush of frizzy mouse-brown hair, dressed in business-casual attire. Several binders of case files were spread around her in a semicircle, and she was frantically making notes on a legal pad. She looked up at our entrance, and her jaw dropped when she saw me.

  “Eva Stein, this is Vincent Corinthos,” Sojin said as he walked in the door. “Eva is recently brought here from Sacramento.” To Eva, he said, “Vincent Corinthos is anxious to get to work. We are going to be finding the killer of Inquisitor Xavier together.”

  Eva got to her feet and scurried over to me. “Wow, Agent Corinthos, wow. I have to say… I mean, wow.” She took my hand, but not with the same force that Sojin had, thankfully.

  “And that strapping gentleman over there is Drago Soleshnokov, an agent who is being brought here from Moscow.” Drago turned, and his face had a jaw so square that Uncle Heph could probably forge weapons against it. His button-down white shirt strained against the muscles beneath as he moved, and his expression was much colder than Sojin’s or Eva’s. He gave me a quick two-finger salute, the light catching on a dragon-shaped signet ring on his forefinger, before he turned back to whatever he was working on.

  I realized I’d missed something Eva had asked, and I apologized to her.

  “What’s it like?” she repeated.

  “I’m sorry?”

  Eva blushed a little. “I mean, what’s it like, being a god? I’ve read so many of your case files and what’s available from the Caulborn database, but it never says anything about what you feel as a deity.”

  “Ah,” I said flatly. I didn’t want to have this conversation with anyone, let alone a complete stranger, but my Caulborn personnel file was going to have to be updated. And if I was going out into the field with these people, I didn’t want them thinking I still had access to my Urisk- and kobold-bestowed gifts. “It’s a long story, but the upshot is I’m not worshipped as a god anymore. So, anything you’ve read about my using telekinesis, or turning invisible or slinging fire is moot.”

  Sojin looked stunned. “But Xavier himself told me you were turning into a dragon during the Sakave case. Can you no longer do that either?”

  “Afraid not,” I said. “I can still make portals, still Open things, but that’s about it.” My ability to manipulate tachyon and time weren’t in my personnel file, and that was just as well. I didn’t want to use those powers unless I had to; screwing with time always resulted in me getting a headache, both literally and figuratively. Wanting to change the subject, I glanced around the room. “Where’s Gearstripper? This seems like the kind of room he’d want to live in.”

  Sojin chuckled. “Oh, yes, the little gremlin is quite the techno-wonder I am agreeing with you. He and some of the others are in the lower levels, where the new prison cells are being constructed. They are currently inspecting the new security features.”

  “Cool. We’re going to need him and the rest of the crew for this. Treggen, the man who killed Xavier, is hell-bent on trying to take over the timestream. I’m not sure how he plans on doing that, but that’s his end game. So, the sooner we find him, the better.”

  “How is it you are knowing that?” Sojin asked. He sounded stunned. I supposed I couldn’t blame him; the whole concept was pretty far-fetched. But when I was in Hell, I’d met with Nathan Singravel, a former Caulborn operative who’d been a double agent working for Treggen. Nathan had told me that everything Treggen did was with the ultimate goal of taking control of time itself from the Chroniclers.

  “It’s kind of a long story,” I said. “I figure—”

  He held up a hand. “Wait, please, I must be understanding something else completely first. You are telling me you are no longer a god?”

  I did my best not to grind my teeth. We needed to get past this and start work. “Yes, Sojin. That’s right.”

  He and Eva visibly relaxed. “Then that makes this all the easier.” And with that, he produced a wand from inside his suit jacket pocket and blasted me with lightning. I crashed to the ground, spasming. If it had been fire, or acid, or any other form of elemental attack, it would’ve sucked for sure, but my healing would’ve at least given me a fighting chance. Sojin’s attack was screwing with my central nervous system, and that meant I couldn’t do anything beyond twitch.

  “Let us take him below,” I heard Sojin say to Eva, just before everything went pitch black.

  Chapter 2

  Alternating pulses of red and green light shone through my eyelids as I returned to consciousness. Pins and needles of pain shot along my arms and legs, the telltale repercussions of being electrocuted. Groaning, I dragged myself up to my hands and knees and looked around. I was on the floor in a square room. Three of the walls looked like concrete and were covered with glowing red and green runes, which were the source of the light that had awoken me. The fourth wall was made of a clear material, letting me see into the dim hall beyond. Directly across the hall from me, in another cell, a small green form was crumpled on the floor. “Gearstripper?” I called. “Gears, can you hear me?”

  It was a futile gesture. As my head cleared, I realized that the clear wall was made of arcane glass, an indestructible material that only allowed sound through if the jailer wanted it. The default setting, of course, was to not do so. I crawled forward, trying to get a better read on Gears’s condition. Sojin had told me he and some of the others were “inspecting the new security features.” Well, now I understood what that meant. Gears was face down, his floppy ears splayed out on the ground. It looked like the little gremlin was breathing, but I couldn’t tell much else. I hauled myself to my feet, staggered, and hit the clear wall with a thud. More runes, which had been invisible on the glass up to that point, flared with a red light and threw me back a few feet, sending me crashing back to the floor.

  Repulsion runes. Great.

  After getting back to my feet, I took a look at the other runes warding the cell. Some of them I recognized as the ones Carmilla had used to block my extradimensional energy. I thought that was overkill, given that HQ was already warded against portals, but it told me that Sojin and his pals weren’t taking any chances. But why? Why had they attacked and imprisoned Gears and me, and presumably, the others?

  Maybe my Glimpse could tell me something. I concentrated, preparing to look into the past, and another set of runes on the wall, ones I didn’t recognize, flared to life, and it felt like someone had hit me between the eyes with a sledgehammer. I collapsed to the ground, my ears ringing. They’d used divination wards, too? That not only told me they were careful, but they were extremely well-informed. My Glimpse is a classified ability; it’s not something that Sojin or Eva would know about if they were run-of-the-mill agents. So, either these two were way higher up the food chain than I’d thought, or someone had been feeding them information. Someone who’d gained access to sensitive Caulborn secrets. And someone who hated me.

  Someone like Treggen.

  Had Treggen brought this group here? I didn’t need my Glimpse to see this in hindsight. If Treggen had planned to take over the Boston office all along, then he would’ve brought in agents he could control, or who would be loyal to him. And he would’ve told them all about the agents working here, so they’d be informed and able to dispatch them. That must’ve been why Sojin and Eva both looked so surprised when they first saw me; Treggen had watched me get dragged into the Pit. He would’ve told them that I was out of the picture, because, hey, no one
gets out of Hell. And when they’d seemed stunned about my knowing Treggen’s plans to take over the timestream, well, that wasn’t because they couldn’t believe it, it was that they couldn’t believe someone else knew about them.

  I let out a breath. Focus. Can’t portal out, can’t touch the door, and even if I could, fifty bucks said it would be warded against apertus energy. I patted my pockets. They’d taken everything, my phone, my keys, even the pack of gum I’d been carrying. It was too much to hope that they’d missed my switchblade, and of course the hidden sheath up my sleeve was empty. Rubbing my chin, I gave another look at the runes.

  I don’t know much about runecraft. I’ve seen Mrs. Rita do some things with them, and Herb Wallenby, too, but it wasn’t something I’d spent a whole lot of time with. I knew that if you screwed with a rune, smudged it, erased part of it, or otherwise damaged it, you’d break whatever it did, and likely cause a massive explosion of eldritch energy, too. If I’d had a convenient four-foot-thick wall of lead to hide behind during such an explosion, I’d be all for tampering with one of the runes, but I wanted to escape, not blow myself up.

  My thought process was interrupted as Sojin stepped into view, the same smile from earlier on his face. He tapped a spot on his side of the glass, allowing sound to come through. “How are you feeling, Agent Corinthos?”

  “Why don’t you come in here and I’ll tell you?”

  He laughed. “I am thinking no. I am simply here to check on you.” His expression changed from jovial to sneering so fast it was like he’d suddenly become a different person. “I have been wishing to kill you for some time, but I know it is better to let Treggen do that.”