by Michael Todd
Calvin looked at Sofia. “What about you? Have you been going to the range regularly like I told you to do?”
Sofia swallowed hard and nodded. “I have been going a few times a month. The doctors said I could go until twenty weeks or so. I’ve been taking advantage of that so I can feel comfortable alone in the house while you are out in the field.”
Calvin looked at her father and shook his head, handing the gun to Sofia. “Believe me, I don’t want my pregnant wife to have to do this any more than you do, but she is the best option we have. This isn’t just some random intruder. They are not here to rob us. They are here for blood, and from the looks of it, Sofia’s.”
Her mother covered her mouth and began to cry. Sofia shook her head, then hugged her mom and shushed her. “It’s okay, Mom. Take a deep breath, okay? I am going to be just fine. We all are. We just have to get through this, and then we can move on, okay?”
Calvin pulled his gun from the back of his pants and grabbed Sofia by the back of the neck. He kissed her for several moments and pulled back. “I am going to check things out. The person shooting fell to the ground, and I haven’t heard any shots since then. They may have left. If anybody comes through that door who isn’t me…”
Sofia nodded. “I know what to do.”
Calvin smirked. “Yeah, you do, because you are a badass. Part of the reason I love you so much.”
Sofia’s dad groaned and Sofia laughed, waving at Calvin as he disappeared through the kitchen door into the living room. She reached over and took her mother’s hand, keeping a solid eye on the door in front of her. It swayed on its hinges, and the sound of it slapping against the wall echoed through Sofia’s head. She was prepared to do whatever was necessary to protect her family and her baby.
She had become a woman capable of anything. She was no longer a weak girl afraid of some guy. She had been to hell on Earth and back, and her husband had literally been to hell. This was just a drop in the bucket.
10
Timothy wheeled Sean up to the dining table and put on the chair’s brakes. “Boy, I am telling you. You get some sick wheels, and you are going to have all the ladies knocking down your door.”
Sean scoffed. “Yeah, right. Women tend to shy away from cripples.”
Timothy wrinkled his nose. “Cripples? Is that what you are, Tiny Tim? I haven’t heard anyone call it that since my grandfather was old and mumbling about random shit from the war. You, sir, are handi-capable, thank you very much. You are as capable of everything as I am.”
Sean shook his head as Timothy sat down in front of him and passed his plate over. “Yeah, except that little thing… What’s it called? Oh, yeah. Walking.”
Timothy scoffed. “Please. It’s overrated. If I rolled around in a chair all day, my shoes would last forever. They would go out of style and then come back in style as vintage. Saving the dollars and always high fashion, people. That is what this is all about.”
Sean took a spoonful of potatoes. “Oh. I thought this was all about demons trying to take over. I didn’t realize it was about fashion.”
Timothy nodded. “Of course. Do you think they have rainbow leather men’s dress shoes in hell? No, I don’t think so. The demons are coming here to take over the shoe industry.”
Sean shot a glance at Timothy, and they both started laughing. “Oh, did you watch the last Great British Baking Show? It was all about cooking the perfect Bakewell tart.”
Timothy nodded deeply, swallowing his bite of potato. “Yes, I did. And personally, I think they were wrong.”
Sean’s mouth fell open. “Wrong? Are you kidding me?”
Timothy shook his head, licking the pudding off his spoon. “I sure as hell am not. I do not know why you would eat a Bakewell tart without covering it in sweet-cream icing.”
Sean shook his head. “No, no. You can put piped icing on it, but the almonds are going to help with that sweetness. Why overdo it?”
Timothy laughed. “Have you met me? This girl overdoes everything, okay?”
Eddie popped up beside Sean, scaring both of them. Timothy put his hand to his chest and shook his head. “No, you cannot just come popping up out here on your own like that. I already have to deal with sharing this dining hall with recruits now, I am not going to shit myself while I am trying to finish my snack pack. Do you understand me?”
Eddie chuckled. “I do. I apologize. I’ve been looking for Sean everywhere.”
Timothy pursed his lips. “What, did you think he just rolled off in his wheelchair, never to be seen again? Please! It would sink as soon as he left the pavement. He would be out there like quicksand.”
Sean smirked. “It’s happened. I know this from experience.”
Eddie shook his head. “I don’t even really want to know how you figured that out. Anyway. I wanted to tell you that the guys are getting together tomorrow.”
Sean nodded. “For what?”
Eddie glanced around and lowered his voice. “We all want to discuss the demon stuff as a team.”
Sean groaned. “Right, I forgot about that. Okay, just come and get me from Comm when you guys are ready. If I’m not in there, I’m either in here eating or down the hall in my room. Most likely I’ll be in there, though.”
Timothy nodded, blotting his lips with a napkin. “He lives in the Comm room with me. I made it handi-capable accessible.”
Eddie laughed and gave Timothy a high five. “You are always looking out for my man. Thank you for that. All right, I gotta get back out there. I am doing inspections in the morning and have to figure out my route. I want to be ready to bust some heads.”
Sean laughed and shook his head. “You have way too much fun torturing these guys. One day they are going to pay you back for it.”
Eddie scoffed as he walked toward the door. “I’d like to see them try.”
As Eddie disappeared around the corner, two soldiers walked in and sat down at the other end of the table. Sean looked at Timothy, who was taking a bite of his muffin. “What were we saying? Oh, yeah. Bakewell tarts, and how you are absolutely insane for saying it must be covered in icing. I bet you don’t even put jam on the bottom.”
Timothy lifted his nose indignantly. “Personally, I like the idea of jelly, but that is neither here nor there.”
The two soldiers at the end of the table looked at each other and smirked. They grabbed their food and scooted down to where Timothy and Sean were. Timothy stopped talking and sneered at them. “Can we help you?”
The guy on the left chuckled. “Are you over here talking about baking?”
The other guy snorted. “Yeah. Cakes. They’re cake-eaters.”
The first guy looked at Timothy and Sean, raising his eyebrows. “You put Fruit Loops in that cake?”
The other guy slapped his hands down on the table, laughing. “You fucking know it. You know they load that shit right up.”
Sean lifted his chin and squinted at Timothy, who had pursed his lips and tilted his head to the side. Slowly Sean reached down and undid the brakes on his wheelchair. Without the guys noticing, he let it roll back just slightly. He pulled his fist back and punched the first guy in the kidney as hard as he could.
The guy spat his salad out and fell forward onto the table. Timothy sneered, flicking a piece of lettuce away from close to him. Sean then turned, and before the other could get his arm fully back to hit him, he reached up and grabbed him by the collar and slammed his forehead into his. The guy grabbed his head and teetered back and forth, falling off the chair to his knees. Sean rolled forward, slammed his knees into the other guy’s back, and grabbed him by the hair. He pulled him over backward and slammed his elbow into the guy’s nose.
Sean continued to beat on the two guys, getting to one before the other could make a move. By the end of it, both of the guys were on the floor with blood on their faces and their hands in the air. “Please stop. We didn’t mean to piss you off like that.”
Timothy stood up and took his trash to the can
before walking back and standing next to Sean. Sean rubbed the lump on his forehead and glanced up at Timothy. “They were pretty rude.”
Timothy sucked the back of his teeth with his tongue. “You boys must be new here because I have a hard time believing any idiot would think they could piss off one of the original members of Brock’s mercenary team and live to tell about it.”
The guys looked at each other, realizing what they had done. Timothy shrugged and rolled Sean toward the door, patting his shoulder. “You defended my honor. My hero.”
Esther crawled across the ground and across the street, pulling herself to the other side of her Corvette. She breathed heavily as she reloaded a mag, having gone through all the full ones she had brought. Coco scurried up next to her, peeking under the car from time to time to make sure Calvin wasn’t racing over to kill them. She reached into her pocket and pulled out another bullet, snapping it into the mag.
She raised herself up and looked over the hood, but there was no sign of him yet. “This was not what I expected to fucking happen. Lucifer told me this shit would be easy as hell. Some young pretty human meatsack with a baby belly. Pop her off and head out. They would think it was gang-related or something. Apparently, he was completely fucking wrong.”
Coco shook her arm. “Maybe we should turn back. Come back another time.”
Esther pulled out the other mag and began to load it, too. “No way. You know how Lucifer feels about demons being chickenshits. We said we would do it, and here we are. We have to finish it. I just didn’t know that a Damned would be with her. That Calvin asshole was supposed to be just human now, but there is definitely a fucking demon in his body.”
Coco shook. “I don’t like this. We should maybe find a better hiding spot. He will know it’s your Corvette.”
Esther rolled her eyes. “We’ll hear him coming. I know you’re small, and that makes you useful, but for fuck’s sake, act like the demon you are. Grow some fucking nuts and take a chance. We either sink or swim with this one. There’s no way around it.”
Coco thought about it for a minute. “Or we could go back to the zoo. I met a nice giraffe. It let me ride it around at night.”
Esther slowly turned her head toward Coco, rolling her eyes. “Are you fucking kidding me? You have spent the last year or two hiding out in the zoo, riding fucking giraffes?”
Coco shrugged. “I got bored while I was waiting for more info from hell. I like animals. Don’t you?”
Esther grabbed Coco by the neck and lifted him. “We are animals, or at least we are to these humans. Before long, if we don’t beat them, we’re going to end up in cages just like the giraffes. People will poke at us and throw hunks of bread at us.”
Coco sighed. “Then I wouldn’t have to hunt for food anymore.”
Esther blinked her eyes and shook her head, slamming the now-full mag back into her gun. “This was supposed to be an easy job. They called me and said, oh yeah, just a shoot-and-go. You’ll be doing Lucifer a solid. You’ll be helping him win the war and get revenge on the merc. I thought, well shit, what’s better than being on his good side? And here I am, inundated by bullets from a fucking Damned, standing next to the most ignorant demon I have ever met.”
Coco sighed. “Maybe it will get easier from here on out.”
Esther pulled out both of her guns and turned to face the hood of the car. “Sure it will, because I’m just going to kill every last fucking one of them. I can’t go wrong then. Only one of them in there is Damned, which means these bullets can kill the rest of them.”
Slowly Esther stood up, cracking her neck. She held the guns out in front of her and smiled. “Say goodnight, Mom and Dad.”
Coco let out a gasp. Calvin stood next to them, his gun pointed at the woman. “I don’t think so.”
Esther turned quickly. Calvin’s bad leg gave underneath him but he let off a shot with his special metal bullets and dove to the side. Esther screamed, dropping and grabbing her knee. Coco shook, running back under the car and hiding. Esther pulled the triggers on her guns, shooting wildly until the pain was so deep she couldn’t handle it anymore. Calvin crawled quickly up on the curb and dove over the white fence. He held his gun in front of him and caught his breath, waiting for any sound.
Esther looked down at the hole in her knee and narrowed her eyes. “What the fuck did he shoot me with?”
Coco scurried up next to her. “Special metal. It hurts.”
Esther growled at him. “No shit. We gotta get the fuck out of here.”
She reached in her pocket and pulled out her keys, dragging her body over to the door. Opening the passenger side, she groaned as she struggled to get in. Coco jumped into the floorboard, and she shook her head. “Why can’t you be big enough to fucking drive?”
Pulling herself into the driver’s seat, she put the key in the ignition. She looked over to where Calvin was hiding and started the car. Hearing the roar of the engine, Calvin jumped up and began to shoot again. Esther put it in drive and slammed down on the gas, the tires squealing as she started to pull away. She turned the steering wheel as fast as she could, whipping the car around and up over the curb.
Calvin kept shooting until he realized the car was going to hit him. He got out of the way, jumping for the door and landing on his back with his gun up. The car plowed through the fence, throwing wood shards everywhere. In the passenger seat window, Calvin could see Coco pressing his snout to the glass with a look of total fear on his little demon face.
He hurried to his feet and went out into the street, firing at the car as it sped off. After a moment he lowered his gun, knowing there was no reason to keep shooting. He wasn’t going to make that long a shot. The car made a righthand turn and disappeared. Calvin put his hands on his thighs and breathed heavily, shaking his head.
Nate Dogg finished healing his wounds as he stood there. Not to be a Negative Nancy or anything, but you might want to get your family the fuck out of here. Who knows if she is coming back, and who she might bring?
Calvin nodded. Yeah, I know. Who the fuck was that?
Nate had no idea. Whoever she was and whoever that little fuck-turd was, they came looking for your wife. I don’t know who you pissed off to get targeted for that kind of retaliation, but boy, they are out to get you.
Calvin turned and ran back into the house, coming through the kitchen door with his hands up. “Don’t shoot, it’s me.”
Sofia closed her eyes and put the gun on the counter. “Are you hurt?”
Calvin shook his head. “Nothing my demon can’t heal. Come on, we gotta get out of here. They’re gone, but who knows if they are coming back.”
Calvin corralled Sofia and her family out the door and into the Jeep. He reached over, took Sofia’s hand in his, and nodded at her. She rubbed her hand over her belly and nodded back, looking at her house as they left.
The Jeep was totally silent as Calvin pulled out on the highway, his heart rate finally slowing down. He adjusted the mirrors and glanced behind them to make sure that no one was coming. Sofia looked at Calvin with tears in her eyes. “Did they come for me or did they know you were here?”
Calvin shook his head, squeezing her hand tight. “I don’t know. I don’t know what they were after. Trust me, if I had known there would be something like this, I would have never come here. I would never put your life in danger.”
Sofia shook her head. “If they were here for me, I’m damn glad you were here. I would have had no warning at all. None of us would have.”
Sofia’s father hugged his wife tightly, gazing in the rearview mirror at Calvin. “This happen a lot, Calvin?”
Calvin glanced into his eyes and back at the road. “Honestly, more than I like to admit. But nothing like this has happened in a really long time.”
Sofia’s father gritted his teeth. Her mother put her hand on his chest and shook her head. He pushed it away and leaned forward. “You have a family on the way. You have a responsibility to my daughter and that
child.”
Calvin rubbed his face and slapped his hand on his leg. “I know, I know. It’s a big, bad world out there. More than you probably have any capability of understanding, and I don’t mean any disrespect by that. I wouldn’t want anyone to know what I know, but our child will be prepared to face it.”
Calvin looked at Sofia and pointed to the glove compartment. “Grab the phone out of there and hand it to me, please.”
She opened the door, pausing at the gun inside, then grabbed the phone and handed it to him. Calvin dialed the authorities. “There was an attack at 548 Beach Drive. We have left the scene, but I need police to come over. My name is Calvin, and I will meet them there after I get my family to safety.”
He hung up the phone and took the next exit toward Chula Vista. He pulled off at the first hotel he saw, leaving them in the car as he got a room. He hurried back out and drove them around to the back. Calvin helped Sofia out and then the others, hurrying them into the hotel room and locking the door. He put the gun from the glove compartment on the dresser and handed Sofia the room key.
Sofia sat on the end of the bed and started rubbing her belly. Calvin knelt in front of her. “No one knows you are here. There isn’t any reason at all that you shouldn’t be safe. I left the gun on the dresser.”
Sofia put her hand on Calvin’s shoulder. “Where are you going?”
Calvin took it in his and kissed the top of it. “I am going to go back to the house to meet the cops. I’ve worked with the department out here before, so I should be able to get them to start investigating. There are some hard questions that need to be answered, but until this gets on the books, we’re out there in the wind. Stay here. Order room service or delivery if you need to, but do not leave this room.”
Sofia nodded and closed her eyes as Calvin stood and kissed her forehead. He paused and stared at her parents before rushing out of the room.
11
