Demon Mind (Vector Book 2)

by Anthony J Melchiorri

  Jaber trundled past him and picked up a lamp. He swung the gold-plated base at Alex.

  Ducking, Alex dodged the attack. The lampshade slammed into the wall. The bulb inside shattered, fragments flying.

  Jaber twisted on Alex then pitched the lamp at him.

  With nowhere to go, Alex blocked the missile with his arm. The heavy metal base slammed against his arms, pain stinging through his bone. But at least it wasn’t his face. The Jordanian man let out an angry bellow that shook Alex’s eardrums.

  Alex backed away, hands up defensively.

  “Damn it, Wolfe. What the fuck is going on?” Skylar asked. She looked sick and angry, her eyes bulging. Not too much different than Jaber.

  But at least she still seemed to have some control over herself. She lurched backward and leaned heavily on the door, pressing her hands into the sides of her head.

  Jaber didn’t have the same level of restraint. The man wreaked havoc on the room. Every piece of furniture became a weapon. He tore the curtains from the windows. Statues slammed against the floor. Any time Alex tried to calm him down, to talk to the man, another picture frame or lamp flew his direction.

  He couldn’t even get close to the guy without the man turning into a whirlwind of flying limbs.

  “Jaber, you’re going to hurt yourself!” Alex turned to his partner “Skylar, we have to stop him.”

  She stumbled toward the man, looking like she was fighting a hurricane-force wind. Alex came at Jaber from the other side.

  Normally, Skylar could take down a man like Jaber without the slightest hesitation. He’d seen her send men over twice her body weight to the floor. She was a skilled fighter, both with mechanical weapons and her own fists.

  But whatever was happening to her was screwing with her mind. She tried to go for a sweeping kick to knock Jaber off his feet. He went nowhere, retaliating with a ferocious attack that sent her flying across the room. Her body slammed into the wall, leaving a slight crater in the plaster.

  Alex went low on Jaber, finishing what Skylar had started. He wasn’t inhibited by whatever was making them both crazy. While Jaber went after Skylar, Alex took the opening to tackle the man from behind. They went down together with a heavy thud that shook through the floor.

  Alex’s world turned into a desperate struggle to restrain Jaber. It was as if the man’s brain had been entirely hijacked by unadulterated aggression.

  No matter what he tried to say, no matter how he tried to restrain Jaber, the man fought with an unstoppable fury. Sweat poured over Alex’s body. He tasted blood in his mouth from a handful of blows that had sent his teeth chattering. His muscles felt ready to pull from their tendons.

  “Stop it. Calm down. Why are you fighting me?” he asked through gritted teeth.

  Jaber’s elbow thrashed into his chin. They rolled over the floor in a violent struggle. Alex could end it so easily with his knife or pistol. But he needed Jaber alive. He needed the man to tell him about the ring of Solomon and the Red Sea.

  Somewhere past Jaber’s writhing and furious attacks, Skylar was standing again. She had a hand against the wall, steadying herself near one of the windows where Jaber had torn the curtains away.

  She turned suddenly toward Alex and Jaber, pulling out her pistol. “They’re coming.”

  The anger had not subsided. Pain still wracked Skylar’s brain. Bad enough that she wanted to claw her own skin off, to wreck the whole world just to make it stop.

  Her heart thundered in her chest, and she ground her teeth together, waiting for them to crack like the broken statue at her feet. Her breathing would not slow, threatening to put her into an involuntary panic.

  But she was no stranger to adversity. She’d rather look it in the face and tell it to go to hell. She could fight against whatever was slamming into her mind and commanding her to go apeshit like Jaber.

  I will not give in.

  She repeated the mantra, staring out the window.

  I will not give in. I will not give in.

  I am in control.

  Three men with black scarves and masks ran down the alley, rifles in hand. They headed straight for the door to the apartment building.

  “Gunmen. Three of them,” Skylar managed. “Headed into the apartment.”

  She needed to help her partner. Subdue Jaber, get everyone out of here.

  But another voice in her head told her to destroy everything. To pick up that chair. Throw it at Jaber. Use the broken pieces to bash Alex’s skull in.

  Better, use her gun. Shoot everything. The humming air conditioner. The light glaring into her pupils. The windows reflecting the light from the streetlamps.

  But first, Jaber. His grunts and yells were growing increasingly grating on her eardrums. Useless, sweaty bastard.

  “Skylar, don’t!” Alex said from where he was wrestling with the mad Jordanian.

  That was enough to shake Skylar from the furious thoughts crashing through her skull. She realized she had her gun in her hand.

  The gun wasn’t leveled at Jaber but at Alex.

  And her finger was on the trigger.

  “Skylar, just—”

  Alex was interrupted with another punch straight into his jaw.

  “I…I don’t…” Skylar lowered the weapon, breathing heavily. Her arms shook, muscles tightening. She barely managed to stow it in her holster again.

  Pounding footsteps and voices sounded from outside the door.

  The pain in her head flared, and her mind went blank for a moment.

  People were coming. Who was coming?

  What was going on?

  Her world turned bloodred. She vaguely made out the figures of the two men gripped in combat. Why were they fighting? Didn’t matter.

  She wanted to join. To fight. To destroy.

  “Skylar, block the door,” one of the men called.

  Block the—?

  Her eyes were throbbing, heat rising behind them.

  Block the door.

  Another voice, deep behind the anger, told her to do just that. To keep that door closed.

  She could do that.

  Skylar heaved one of the couches in front of the apartment doors, grunting as she did. She wanted to push the sofa straight through the door.

  That fire in her brain grew stronger.

  “Help, Skylar,” the man called to her again.

  Help? How?

  Her vision became tunneled. Her fingers curled, and a distant memory surfaced. She had a weapon. A gun.

  She pulled it out, raising it again. The two men. Fighting.

  They had to die.

  That was what she had to do.

  Her finger found the trigger. She fired.

  -11-

  The bullets slammed into the tiled floor next to Alex’s head. Shards blasted into the side of his face. His left ear rang, the blasts from Skylar’s pistol nearly deafening in the confined space.

  From outside the apartment door, he heard shouts and the thumping of footsteps up the stairwell.

  “Stop!” he yelled. “Skylar, please!”

  Her expression was blank. She seemed as though she was possessed by a demon. Whatever had turned Jaber into a monster had gotten his partner too.

  And he was losing the fight against Jaber.

  Moments ago, Jaber had been nothing but a sniveling wreck of a man. Now, no matter how many blows Jaber absorbed, no matter how Alex tried to restrain him, the man would not stop. He was a relentless beast hell-bent on destruction.

  And now, Skylar looked like she was going to take them both out.

  Alex managed to wrap an arm around Jaber’s neck. He put the man in a chokehold, enduring the painful blows rocking into his body. The vessels in the man’s neck bulged. His fingers clawed at Alex’s, trying to escape.

  “Don’t do it, Skylar,” Alex tried in as calm a voice as he could muster. “Look at me, Skylar. Don’t do it.”

  Her eyes didn’t meet his, but he saw the gun wavering. She was no longer sq
ueezing the trigger. She didn’t set the gun down though, either.

  “Skylar, please,” Alex said. “It’s me. It’s Alex.”

  Alex was still on his back on the floor, Jaber on top of him. The man continued to flail and fight against Alex’s grip. He slammed his head backward, smashing into Alex’s nose. Blinding pain shot through his skull. Blood streamed from his nostrils, the taste of it filling his mouth. His vision blurred.

  Everything had devolved into a fiery disaster. He was starting to think that demons really had possessed the two of them.

  The voices in the hall were growing louder. Someone slammed against the door, trying to break it open.

  If Alex couldn’t even subdue a middle-aged bureaucrat and his own teammate was inches from killing him, how in the hell would he deal with the threat outside?

  Then, finally, Jaber went limp.

  Alex let the man go, at first thinking his chokehold had finally put Jaber to sleep. But the man’s eyes were still open. His pupils roved lazily back and forth. Alex shoved the big man off then pushed himself up, struggling to catch his breath.

  “Skylar?” he asked, looking at his partner.

  She, too, seemed to have fallen into a sudden stupor. Her fingers had loosened around the pistol, and the handgun dangled as if a fly landing on it might push it from her grip.

  “You still with me?” Alex said, recovering his breath.

  She didn’t respond. The voices outside grew louder. The door still muffled them though, making them hard to distinguish. It was at least clear they were speaking Arabic. And it was equally clear that Alex needed to get out of here with Jaber and Skylar.

  But neither was moving.

  “Jaber, we need to go,” Alex said, yanking on the man’s arm.

  The Jordanian didn’t budge, instead staring vacantly at the ceiling as he lay prone.

  “What’s….?” Skylar started to ask, but she instead let out a sigh.

  She looked almost content. As if she had just received the most relaxing massage of her life and now was basking in a warm bath. He grabbed her upper arm, hoping to break her from her lethargy. Instead, all he succeeded in breaking was her grip on her handgun. The weapon clattered against the floor.

  “What’s going on?” Skylar asked, sounding drunk.

  “We need to move. Do you understand me?”

  Alex heard the voices outside the door go quiet. Then he heard metal scraping as though they were trying to pick the lock.

  “Help me with Jaber,” he said.

  He scooped up Skylar’s pistol and stowed it in his waistband then pulled her toward Jaber’s body. She shuffled forward.

  The doorknob twisted. The couch kept the door in place. A few muffled curses sounded outside.

  He had no illusions that the couch would hold. Especially not after everything they had gone through to get here. In seconds, they would probably blow that door open.

  Alex tried to drag Jaber to his feet. Skylar merely stared at him, reaching for the big man half-heartedly.

  “We need to get him out of here,” he said.

  Jaber hadn’t finished telling them everything he knew about Ballard or what the two of them were working on together. Alex had a feeling the border security bureaucrat still knew far more about his “clients” than he’d been letting on—and the information they’d gotten so far was nowhere near enough to follow Ballard’s trail.

  Alex looked between Jaber and Skylar. The door slammed against the sofa, widening the gap. Alex took out his pistol. Through the crack in the door, he could see a couple of men pushing against the door.

  “Skylar, quick,” Alex whispered. He couldn’t get Jaber to his feet, so instead, he dragged the man by the collar into the kitchen, away from the view of the door.

  Things were about to get worse. A lot worse. And he had no intention of losing his only lead in a firefight. Problem was that Skylar would be in just as much danger once that door blew.

  His partner was still standing in the middle of the living room, lazily watching the door.

  What the hell had happened to the two of them?

  One minute, they were trying to destroy everything in the apartment, including him. Then the next, they were paralyzed by some invisible force.

  His mind raced. He couldn’t get both of them out by himself. He could barely lug Jaber from room to room. Adding Skylar to the mix made it impossible.

  He needed his partner.

  Alex left Jaber in the kitchen then rushed to the living room. From the scraping and voices outside the front door, Alex assumed they were looking for another entry. They hadn’t expected to run into resistance.

  Insight flashed through his mind. Those people must have had something to do with Skylar and Jaber going crazy and then being little more than mindless husks.

  He looked out the window where Skylar had seen the van earlier. Another four men were running toward the entrance to the apartment building. Another six already waited there with assault rifles.

  Alex looked at Skylar. If he was going to get them out, he’d have to shoot his way past the people outside of the apartment, then through all six of those other men who had just arrived. There would probably be reinforcements once the firefight started.

  Where had the bastards even come from? He had been absolutely certain they hadn’t been followed.

  Had those people forced some kind of GPS tracking chip down Jaber’s gullet?

  It didn’t matter now.

  Another person rammed into the door. The sofa scraped back a few more inches, enough for Alex to see a face on the other side. The man’s eyes were wide, mouth open like he was surprised to see Alex.

  Maybe this man thought Alex was supposed to be in a stupor like Skylar and Jaber. Or maybe he assumed that the crazed pair would have killed him.

  Whatever the case, the man raised a gun barrel toward him.

  But Alex was quicker. The shot exploded in the confined space of the apartment. The man’s head flicked back in a spray of blood, and he fell back.

  A few startled voices sounded outside. Alex rammed his shoulder into the door, slamming it shut again, then shoved the sofa back up against it.

  “Skylar, we need to move now,” he said.

  Jaber was still lying on the kitchen floor as though he was drugged out of his mind. Probably not far from the truth.

  But how Skylar had been affected, too, without Alex suffering like them was still a mystery. One he didn’t have time to figure out.

  The door shuddered. A spray of bullets cut through it. Splinters burst from the impacts. Then someone crashed into the door again. This time, the wood split apart.

  Alex fired into the doorway. A pained yell roared out in response. He scooped up the bag with Skylar’s sniper rifle and yanked her away from the living room and toward the kitchen.

  Glass exploded behind him. Bullets lanced up from the gunmen in the street. Rounds cut through the apartment’s windows and punched into the ceiling. The few light bulbs left exploded in a spray of sparks and glass, the room going dark.

  “Skylar, are you with me?” he asked. She didn’t answer. Alex hadn’t really expected her to.

  The gunfire subsided for a moment. Clouds of dust billowed in the streetlight bleeding through the broken windows.

  Hands pushed the tattered remains of the door away, and a man with a rifle started to climb over the wreckage onto the sofa, searching the living room for a target. He swiveled toward where Alex stood over Jaber.

  Alex fired. Bullets lanced into the gunman’s chest, and he collapsed. More gunfire erupted. This time, someone else had leaned past the broken doorway and begun firing, forcing Alex deeper into the kitchen, behind the counter separating it from the living area. He kicked over the kitchen table and kept his aim glued on the door, waiting for the next attacker.

  Alex was not getting Jaber and Skylar out that way. But he and Skylar had chosen this safe house because it had more than one exit.

  Their escape waited
out a window in the kitchen. One that led to the flat roofs and terraces of the neighboring buildings.

  When they had selected that escape route, they hadn’t counted on Jaber being unable to stand, much less Skylar barely able to hold herself upright.

  More voices. More exploding gunfire.

  Alex fired back out the door. His slide locked back. Empty. He jammed in another magazine.

  These guys were determined, and that was worrying. Already, two of their number had died, and yet it hadn’t deterred them.

  Then Alex heard the clunk of metal against wood, the hollow sound of a grenade landing in the middle of the living room floor. He recognized the shape. A flash-bang.

  There was only a fraction of a second to react—to make a choice that would determine whether this mission succeeded or failed.

  He might only get to save one person. Would that be Skylar or Jaber?

  -12-

  Blinding light burst through the apartment. A violent bang cracked into Alex’s eardrums.

  He had been expecting the flash-bang, but there was only so much he could do to prepare for the disorientation and the loss of balance making him stumble toward the kitchen window. Jaber didn’t even react. The man remained on the floor right where Alex had left him, eyes wide open.

  Skylar, at least, seemed to break out of her stupor. Enough for Alex to usher her behind the overturned table in the kitchen.

  Then came the gunmen.

  Alex blinked, trying to see straight, but they were so close that he didn’t really need to aim. He emptied his magazine into the people rushing through the broken door. One, maybe two men crumpled before Alex’s slide locked back again.

  “Jaber!” he cried, hoping that somehow the man had been roused by the commotion. “We need to go.”

  No luck.

  Another three men pushed past the bodies of their comrades. They unleashed a storm of rounds that seared through the air. Bullets cut into the kitchen cabinets and slammed into the tabletop Alex was using as a makeshift shield.

  More men would be up here soon. Alex’s sole advantage, the choke point in the doorway, would eventually be lost. There were no options left. They had to get out. That meant two trips out the window as he helped both his incapacitated partner and asset out.