“You haven’t been introduced,” Janea said. “Hjalmar Johanneson, this of course is Barbara Everette.”
“Pleased to meet you,” Barb said, taking his hamlike hand.
“Likewise,” Hjalmar replied. “My mundane name is Quenton Barber. I used to work in a plywood mill. These days I do construction when the Foundation doesn’t have need of my services.”
“I take it… well, actually I don’t know,” Barb said, uncertainly. “Do you get paid?”
“Quite well,” Janea said, laughing. “The Foundation draws on various sources of funding. Quite a bit from churches that are aware of our mission for example. About a third from the Catholic church alone. But, of course, when we’re called in as ‘consultants,’ the Foundation is paid and then we get paid.” She paused again and bounced up and down in her chair so that her breasts jiggled like gelatin. “I’m saving up for a boobie job!”
“The one thing you don’t need is a boobie job,” Hjalmar said, shaking his head.
“I’d sort of been wondering,” Barbara admitted, still unsure if she got paid and if she did how she would explain that to Mark. “But to get back to the point. You knew it was susceptible to… what? Iron and fire?”
“Part of training,” Janea said, shrugging. “There’s a bunch of books you’ll be getting. Some of the information is…” She shrugged again.
“The thing about demonology,” Hjalmar said, scratching deeply at his beard, “is that most of the source books are… semi-fictional. Very few serious researchers realize that demons and such are real. And witnesses tend to be… well, any eyewitness is a poor witness. They generally can’t get their heads around the reality of demons, especially, and they see things that aren’t there even if there’s not a glamour. Or they miss things that are there. And as to dispelling methods and the like, normally demons are only engaged in battle. There have been very few captured and studied and those only by the Foundation and a few other groups. Then there’s the fact that they’re so… incredibly abundant in history. So you study these books, most of them more alchemical than scientific in nature, and hope like Hel the source book is right and your identification is right. Take the Tikoloshe, for example. The primary source book doesn’t list it as having reversed feet. But all of our case studies have recorded it as having reversed feet. Nor does The Book have it as susceptible to iron and fire. But it is. Cold steel, as well, if you add power to the equation.”
“So if HRT had used, say, bayonets?” Barb asked.
“Wouldn’t have worked,” Hjalmar said. “Unless they were meteoric iron. Well, pure elemental iron would probably work. I had to have Frey work through me to dispel the demon. Even then it was touch and go. I could feel its power working against the god’s and it had built up a lot of power in its killings. But we, together, were able to overcome it.”
“HRT has first class shooters,” Janea said. “But they don’t have anyone that channels. There’s some talk of rearming them, but they generally don’t do Special Circumstances and trying to explain why they’re taking courses in special entry techniques using, oh, swords and crossbows…” Pause. “ ‘Why, yes, Congressman,’ ” she said in very businesslike tones, “ ‘we’re quite serious about that line item…’ I can just see it now.”
“Generally if we know that we’re going to need heavy help, we can call on the experts,” the man said, grinning faintly. “Such as Opus Dei.”
“Opus Dei?” Barbara said, aghast. “That’s a Catholic religious group.”
“Yeah, sure,” Janea said, laughing. “That’s all. ‘Hallo,’ “ she said in a thick and bad Italian accent, “ ‘My name is Cardinal Enrico Sarducci. You killed my father. Prepare to die!’ ”
“Sure,” Hjalmar agreed, laughing. “That’s all they are. But when you see a bunch of guys in cassocks and collars carrying ballistic nylon bags show up, you know the shit has well and truly hit the fan. I think they might have called in Opus for Almadu, if they’d known how powerful he had become. But even Opus doesn’t have a channeler as strong as you are. They are, though, very well shielded by their faith and their sacraments. They could have, oh, cleared the way for a more powerful channeler. There are a few in the Church,” he admitted, grudgingly.
“The Wiccans seem to produce the strongest channelers,” Janea said, seriously. “But their strongest channelers are, as far as I know, exclusively nonviolent. Full up vegan, sky clad, the works. And really nonviolent. The top operators are all from fairly minor sects who have a strong connection to a fairly weak god. Take Dartho; his god is virtually unknown and not particularly powerful.”
“And very chaotic,” Hjalmar added, rubbing his beard thoughtfully.
“And chaotic,” Janea admitted. “He might even be a face of the Jester or Pan. But Dartho has such a strong connection to him that he can get more power from less source than some who have stronger deities as backing.” She paused and sighed, putting on a little girl face, mooning like at a rock star. “Ahhh, Darthoooo… he’s so… sick,” she finished, changing back to her “normal” personality. “His god, well, he’s really into pain. Voluntary, mind you, but so was Aztec sacrifice, certainly the greater sacrifices. You know what BDSM is?”
“Yes,” Barbara admitted. “Sort of.”
“Well, can you imagine a good sect based around BDSM?” Janea asked.
“No,” Barb said, definitely.
“I actually can,” Janea said. “But it’s a stretch. And that’s the… nature of Dartho’s sect, of his god. They feed the god with pain, voluntarily derived, and the god feeds them with power.”
“That’s sick,” Barbara agreed, glancing over at the table Dartho had occupied and finding all of “his” group gone.
“You do what you have to for power,” Janea said, shrugging. “And sometimes more,” she added in a husky contralto, wriggling sexily.
“Our gods have, for millennia, been weak,” the man said, frowning at Barb, then shrugging. “They were displaced by the White God.”
“Well, I didn’t do it,” Barbara said, wincing.
“No, of course not,” Janea interjected. “But it’s one of the reasons Christianity is a sore point. Especially Protestantism, which doesn’t recognize saints.”
“What does that have to do with it?” Barb asked, totally confused.
Janea and Hjalmar looked at each other for a moment as if trying to decide which one had to tell the little girl that Santa wasn’t real.
“Well,” Hjalmar said, blowing out. “You see, most saints are old gods that got… assimilated by the religion of the White God. Michael, for example, is probably an avatar of Mars and Frey, who are almost certainly the same god. There are others. But when the Protestants took away even those souls, those prayers, it truly bit the old gods in the butt. So they sort of tolerate Catholics and Eastern Orthodox, but they’ve got a bug up their butt about Protestants. And… some people tend to bring that annoyance along with them. I mean, most of us went in the direction that we took because we didn’t find normal society… normal. For us. Add to that, in this group, actual communication with their gods, and the gods having a case of the ass with Christianity and, well…”
“I’m not the most popular girl in town,” Barbara said.
“You’re not the most popular girl in town,” Janea agreed. “But… you’re clearly a woman of great inner strength and beauty. That simply shows through in everything you do and say. And you have a strong channel to one of the most potent sources of power on earth. From our perspective,” she added, gesturing around, “you are also a fell warrior. So we Asatru accept you as if you were our own, despite being a representative of the White God. For your warrior skills if nothing else. Dress her in a chain-mail bikini and she’d be the talk of the town!” she added, giggling like a schoolgirl. “Ooh, we could go around as a pair of twins! Twins always make more…”