Talon whirled toward the nearest wine rack, his mind shutting out what was happening around him, disconnecting himself from the fear of being crushed under a deadly pile of rubble. His eyes locked on a potential weapon, and he made a go for it.
The cultists only vaguely registered what Talon was up to. By the time their loyalty to Morgaine overcame their mortal terror, Talon was upon them, armed with a wine bottle. He swung at the first cultist’s face, shattering enamel and reducing the man’s stunned features to a bloody pulp.
Talon spun toward the next man and brought the bottle down on the hand with the pistol, smashing bones. The cultist let go of his gun with a cry of agony.
Talon had become a wild beast unleashed. He didn’t see these cultists as men—they were mere obstacles he had to overcome. Outside, more of these fanatic assholes were piling dirt on Charlie. Who knows how long she had before she too would succumb to the soil pressing down on her. Talon refused to let that happen. Even though he barely knew the young woman, he wanted… needed to save her.
In his mind, any woman offered on the altar of some fanatical ideology became his Michelle. He’d failed his love. He hadn’t been there for her when she needed him the most.
Saving others didn’t bring her back, but it allowed him to live with himself.
Deep down, he hoped that wherever Michelle was, she was looking down on him. And whenever she saw him save an innocent life, she could be proud of him. A part of Talon scoffed at the idea, while another part needed it to be true.
Atonement. That’s what he lived for nowadays.
He would not let Charlie die.
He clenched his jaw as he pounced at the third cultist like some wild jungle cat. The unbroken bottle cut through the air, an extension of his arm, and the cultist’s chin erupted in a spray of red on contact.
The bottle found the fourth cultists before he could launch a counterattack. It blew up in the man’s face in an explosion of glass and red wine. The man collapsed into a heaving mass. Blood mixed with cabernet.
The moment the cultist’s unconscious form hit the ground, the shaking stopped.
Talon’s breaths came in sharp bursts as he cast aside the jagged neck of the bottle. It joined the other broken pieces of glass littering the floor.
Talon wiped the sweat from his face and scooped up two of the cultists’ pistols. A few feet away, one of the downed men still had some fight left in him. His reached for the gun he’d dropped when a bullet from Talon’s newly acquired pistol tore through his outstretched hand.
The man’s yelp was still echoing through the winery as Talon sprinted into the battle that lay ahead. Wine bottles would not cut it in a rematch with Morgaine. If he was honest, he wasn’t even sure that the guns would be enough. He needed a magical weapon. He wondered what had happened to his demon slayer knife, but there was no chance of stopping to look for it.
Armed with two pistols and a steely determination to save Charlie, he ran toward the winery’s exit.
Chapter Fifteen
The first thing Talon noticed once outside was that one of the three graves had vanished. Where the freshly dug up soil had formed a small mound not long ago, there was only barren earth. It was almost as if the ground itself had swallowed all signs of the grave during the initial quake.
Talon was still trying to figure out a plan when a second tumbler rattled the courtyard.
He instinctively threw himself to the ground as the quake rippled through the property. Giant cracks exploded across the walls of the structures enclosing the courtyard, and windows erupted. Talon clawed at the soil, the vibrations emanating from beneath the ground thrumming up his arms.
Up ahead, he saw a replay of what must have happened to the first grave. The mound of soil heaved and shivered, and then the ground itself swallowed up the rectangular patch of dirt—and the two dead sacrifices inside. Flesh and blood in exchange for all the abuse humanity had afflicted upon the planet.
From where he stood, Talon saw the cultists who’d dug the graves huddling on the trembling ground, frozen in mortal terror. The earth shook, and the vineyard burned, and to them, it would have seriously seemed like the end of the world.
Not to Talon.
His years as a Delta Operator might not have exposed him to supernatural dangers, but Talon knew what it felt like to be shelled by mortar rounds while bullets buzzed around his head like wild hornets. War was chaos, and it had taught him to think under pressure.
Focus, buddy. Where is the enemy? Where is Morgaine?
Talon’s gaze swept the winery’s courtyard and found the statuesque Amazon in her blue robe. Positioned atop a small hill, she faced the incoming tidal wave of fiery destruction. Her face was a tranquil mask, but her eyes were alive with a terrible joy, dancing with depraved delight. Arms open wide as if she was welcoming a returning friend. She was both composed and savage, controlled and untamed. Her long, dirty blonde hair fluttered in the wind, miraculously untouched by the clouds of ash swirling around her.
As she held up her tattooed arms, the ink started to light up with a spectral glow, the power of the elements growing with each passing second. Air, Water, Fire and Earth were all active now. And the neck tattoo was joining the light show too. Talon wasn’t as well versed in magic as Casca, but he’d learned a thing or two. To his eyes, it appeared as if the Element of the Spirit was powering up.
“I call forth the powers of the elements,“ Morgaine said a moment later. “Mother Earth, I command your forces now. Giving me your avatar of destruction and let me punish the parasites who take you for granted.”
In response to Morgaine’s pleas, something large and powerful stirred under the earth. The soil spasmed and buckled, almost as if some giant mole was burrowing its way toward her, forming tunnels at breakneck speed.
The earth crested in a wave, confirming that this wasn’t another quake. No, some creature of massive proportions was working its way through the undulating ground.
Morgaine was calling forth this avatar of destruction.
The earth opened up, and the head of a giant wormlike beast surfaced, its maw open wide, teeth gleaming in the light of the incoming wildfires. The tip of this earthworm was the size of a yellow school bus, a prehistoric nightmare brought back to life through elemental magic. Who knew how large the creature was in its entirety? Going by the shifting patterns in the earth, most of the monster’s form remained hidden under the earth.
And as Morgaine’s neck tattoo ignited with red light, Talon grasped the true power of the fifth element. The sacrifices had not merely allowed Morgaine to conjure this hellish monstrosity into existence, but also gave her the power to commandeer the beast.
She will turn this nightmare against the modern world, Talon realized. Perhaps it was one of many such beasts. They would overrun the planet and shake civilization to its foundation.
It’s not over yet, Talon told himself. As long Charlie lives, this ritual isn’t complete.
There was still a chance to interrupt the magic and pull the plug on this occult madness. Giving himself an internal push, Talon turned his attention away from the monster eating its way through the ground beneath his feet and focused on the third and final grave. That was where Charlie was buried. Where she was, even now, suffocating.
Talon clenched his jaw and staggered toward the grave. This was another important lesson he’d internalized while fighting America’s wars abroad. Shut out the chaos by focusing on a simple objective and make it the only thing that mattered in the goddamn world.
He stepped up to the fresh grave and stared at mound of earth beneath him, sweat dripping down his face, every muscle in his body on fire. Talon would have dropped to his knees and dug Charlie free with his bare hands, but tonight luck was with him. His eyes fastened on the shovel one of the cultists had haphazardly discarded.
As the quavering of the second quake subsided, Talon snatched the tool and went to work. Steel sliced through the soil. A pile of dirt grew around him
as he dug frantically, heedless of the blisters forming on his palms. In Talon’s mind, he imagined Michelle was buried in the ground beneath his feet.
I’m coming for you, he thought as he repeatedly plunged the blade into the earth. He’d become a machine, programmed to save the two souls whose lives hung in the balance. He stopped thinking about Morgaine and the primal nightmare now under her control. Stopped thinking about everything but the mission at hand.
After removing over a foot of soil, he tossed the shovel aside, afraid the blade might hit the victims entombed in the earth. He switched to his hands now and continued to dig. To his amazement, he dug even faster using his hands, scooping up large clumps of earth. He was a man possessed, driven by a singular goal.
The woman orchestrating this madness suddenly became aware of what he was doing.
“No! Stop him!”
The panic in Morgaine’s voice energized Talon. He redoubled his efforts with a savage snarl, digging faster and harder than before. Now that Morgaine had noticed what he was up to, she would do everything in her power to stop him. And he knew all too well what she was capable of.
A few seconds, he caught his first glimpse of a mop of blonde hair. He hurried to clear Charlie’s face, gently brushing the dirt from her eyes and mouth.
For a terrifying beat, he thought he was looking at a dead woman. Charlie’s eyelids remained sealed, her skin imbued with a bluish tint.
And then her eyes snapped open and she gasped for precious air. As she filled her lungs with oxygen, Talon’s fingers clamped around her small wrists and pulled her out of the ground. Clumps of soil ran down her body, the ground only reluctantly giving up its prize.
With one final heave, he wrestled her from the grave, the element of earth denied its prize in the final moment. Talon lowered her to the grass and then turned back to the yawning pit. The second sacrifice was still down there.
The man had rolled onto his side, perhaps becoming disoriented in the dark as he was buried alive. Talon worked to turn him over and clear the man’s airway. A moment later, he jerked to life too, spitting out dirt as his arms flailed against the soil imprisoning him. He landed a solid hit against Talon’s jaw, and the former Delta Operator groaned.
Sacrifice thwarted, he turned to check on Charlie. The young woman’s haunted gaze met his. Instead of gratitude, there was only dismay.
“What have you done?” she hissed, tears cutting muddy tracks through the dirt on her cheeks.
Dark understanding filled Talon’s heart. Charlie had wanted to be sacrificed. She’d tried to escape the pull of the cult, but in the end its power over her heart and soul proved to be too strong. The cult hadn’t tracked her down, as he’d first believed. She’d voluntarily given herself over to her ordained fate.
Talon shook his head, heavy with the sense that although he’d saved her from death, Charlie was still lost.
An animalistic roar filled the courtyard and Talon turned away from Charlie’s accusatory glare. The supersized earthworm was expressing its displeasure at this latest turn of events, clearly unhappy to be denied the sacrifice promised by its worshippers.
The creature reared its massive bulk before Morgaine. For a brief moment, Talon’s eyes met Morgaine’s panicked gaze. The light of the glowing elemental tattoos was rapidly growing fainter, the movements of the giant creature growing more erratic as her control over the beast started to waver.
Talon made a mental note to tell Casca about this. Their theory had been correct. Without the final offering, Morgaine would lose her dominance over the thing she’d called forth from the pit to punish humanity.
But first, he needed to survive the night.
Morgaine’s features twisted into a mask of pure rage and she whipped out a metallic object. Without hesitation, she hurled it at Talon.
On instinct, he ducked. And at the same moment, Charlie rose to her feet and made a move toward her beloved cult leader.
It was pure chance. A spin of fortune’s wheel.
The demon slayer blade that had been meant to kill Talon instead buried itself in Charlie’s chest.
Her eyes widened as she stared at the steel handle sprouting from between her ribs, and then she collapsed.
Talon felt as though he’d been the one who was stabbed in the heart as he aught Charlie in midfall and lowered her to the ground. She stared at Talon for a moment, her face a mask of incomprehension, and then all life left her face. She was gone.
No third earthquake followed. That meant the ritual was officially a bust. Charlie was supposed to die by the earth, not the blessed steel of Talon’s knife.
As the young woman’s stunned gaze glazed over, the world froze for a moment. As if reality had switched into slow motion, Talon peered up from Charlie’s dying form and locked his gaze on Morgaine. The glowing elemental tattoos on her limbs had dimmed to a mere hint of luminescence, and as he watched, the light radiating from the symbols went completely dark.
The giant worm towering above Morgaine unleashed a monstrous wail. The chilling sound froze Talon’s blood.
What was the creature going to do next?
Talon received his answer a moment later. He watched in horror as the prehistoric monstrosity snatched up a few screaming cultists in its wide open maw before whipping back into the earth from which it had sprung. Seconds before vanishing from view, a long tongue shot from its wide-open maw, wrapped itself around Morgaine’s waist, and pulled her into the underworld.
Her scream seemed to reverberate for a short eternity, followed by a shocked silence. The remaining members of the Children of the Green traded glances, completely lost now that their leader was gone. Someone in the crowd started crying, but otherwise all was silent save for the crackle of flames and the creak of half-ruined buildings.
Talon released Charlie’s lifeless body and liberated the demon slayer blade from her chest.
He rose and surveyed the destruction. The wildfires were rapidly dying down all around the winery. They were magical in nature, and he guessed they needed the ritual to burn in the same way real fires needed oxygen.
A giant crater was all that remained of the horror that had nearly invaded this world.
Talon eyed the confused followers for one more beat and then helped the innocent man he’d freed from the grave to his wobbly feet.
“C’mon, buddy,” Talon said. “Let’s get the fuck out of here.”
“Who are you?” the man asked, looking around the scene with awe.
The sky had cleared, red skies giving way to a brilliant blue firmament and brilliant sunlight. Around them, the crowd of cultists parted. Talon walked through them, daring them to make a move.
No one did. The Children of the Green were broken.
Morgaine had seen humanity as the greatest threat to the Earth. Perhaps she was right, or perhaps she’d exaggerated. Either way, you didn’t save the world by destroying billions of lives.
In the end, the human race was a threat to the planet, but an even a greater threat to themselves.
While some folks dedicated their lives to saving the natural world, Talon was determined to save humanity from its own darkness, own person at a time. He knew that Casca would see the events of tonight as a win. He’d stopped the apocalypse and prevented untold deaths. But Talon also knew that Charlie’s loss would weigh on him.
The war against the evil raging inside the human soul would continue. And no matter where the next battle took place, Talon planned to be fighting in the frontlines.
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THE END
Who am I and what to read next?
Hi guys, I hope you had fun reading the story you just finished. I figured this might be a good time to tell you a little about the man behind the words.
I’ve been at this writing game for a while and started in screenwriting in Hollywood. Well, technically I started in high school, publishing little story pamphlets, but let’s not go there. I had an eight-year run in the film industry. working on such projects as Anaconda 2 and Return to House on Haunted Hill. During this time, I sold a bunch of projects, most which never saw the light of day. Pretty frustrating for a creative, even when the check clears.
Perhaps that’s why I turned to books. As a creator of stories, it’s important for me to get them out into the world. And that brings me to all my current book projects. As you might have noticed, I have many series out there, so it might be a bit challenging to figure out which one to pick up next.
All my Urban Fantasy features horror elements. None of these series feature a talking cat or demon bartenders. The tone is more Constantine/Hellblazer/Supernatural than Dresden Files. You could call it Urban Fantasy Horror (UFH) or Dark Urban Fantasy. I like the stakes to be high and the paranormal elements to be genuinely scary. Shadow Detective and Night Slayer are my series with the strongest Urban Fantasy flavor.
The Night Slayer Series:
A sorceress recruits a SWAT Team Commander to help her in a secret war against a magical cabal.
This one is a high-octane Dark Urban Fantasy. The hero is learning magic, there are vicious beasts of all sorts, and the action is big and loud. There is a touch of horror, but the emphasis is on action and monster hunting. Overall this series is a fun, fast-paced romp with both strong male and female leads. Currently there are three books out, which are also available as a boxed set. Should appeal to fans of Hexecutioner and Occult Assassin.
Occult Assassin: The Complete Series (Books 1-6) Page 61
