Mixed among the hometown players are members of the visiting team. I make out half a dozen cowled men floating in a line three feet above the lawn, their hair dancing in the growing wind, nervously glancing at the Dullahan, the original headless horseman, whose black Clydesdale-sized horse never ceases its motion. A contingent of what I presume are human mercenaries, clad head to toe in black BDU’s with sleek rifles and night vision goggles that give their eyes an eerie red sheen, have spread themselves across the perimeter of the yard. A pack of Sasquatches drool on their feet near a fantastically bedecked group of spectral Hawaiian Nightmarchers while La Llorona, the Weeping Woman of New Mexico, watches and lets her endless tears fall. They scorch the grass where they land.
The oddest pairing is standing in the middle of the pack. A young blonde woman, stunningly beautiful, is standing a yard away from a young man with clean, aristocratic features. She’s wearing a short, crimson toga that showcases long, perfect legs, and she’s holding a longsword that is haloed in red fire. He’s wearing what looks like a finely tailored suit of sky blue linen, and in one hand he’s carrying a pitchfork haloed with blue frost. Her wings are feathered, a brilliant scarlet that matches her halo. His blue wings are leathern, like his horns. What really sets them apart from the crowd is the fact that they are the only ones in the field who aren’t looking at Remy’s house. They seem to have eyes only for each other. I make an optimistic mental note to check in on them later.
The air above is no safer than the ground. The sky is thick with swirling flocks of gargoyles, a mated pair of thunderbirds, what looks like a formation of pterodactyls. Black-armored warriors charge about on their winged horses, waving swords and spears as they trade battle cries with waves of harpies. A trio of winged serpents slithers through the darkness, all but indistinguishable in the night, and here and there I can see men flying and hovering.
Above them all, the swooping shadow of a fully-grown dragon, an actual dragon, larger than a Mack truck, wafts through the settling fog.
None of them, though, dare venture within fifty feet of the house. They stop as if at a wall. The perimeter of Danaher’s protective wards. Within the invisible boundary a phalanx of ghasts crouch in trembling silence, staring hungrily at the massed throng. Some are perched on the roof and on the hood of my stolen Jeep, which is parked haphazardly next to the front porch. There must be close to a hundred of them in total. God only knows where Remy had found all those bodies.
They aren’t holding the line by themselves. Other, various undead beings bolster their ranks, no doubt summoned by Remy’s necromancy. A thick, mingling cloud of vampires fifty feet long and twenty thick. There’s my old friend Arthur, the flesh golem I’d sent home so recently, holding what looks like a railroad tie in one hand and smacking it expectantly into the other. I wonder how his girlfriend Trudy is handling this newest absence. Next to him is a turbulent cloud of swirling debris ten feet across; some kind of poltergeist, I guess. I wonder if it’s one of the pair from Ellen’s. Six mummies with Egyptian funerary masks and curved, gleaming khopeshes bar the walkway up to the front door. A lone body in 1960’s-style fatigues and a ragged stump for a neck is standing casually, a Thompson machine gun cradled in his arms. And, standing alone in the crowd, a skeletal figure is holding its fleshless palms skyward while it stares down its master’s foes. Green electricity sparks through and around its bone fingers.
“Holy shit,” I whisper, awed by the sheer mass of destructive potential in the clearing before me. In the past, the Aegis has sent teams of well-prepared Envoys against only one or two of these things. I have only myself and my emergency kit in a borrowed police car. Not exactly what I would call an ideal situation. The only saving grace is that Azrael hasn’t graced the scene yet. Emphasis yet.
The house is in my sight, but as accessible it is it might as well be in the cone of a live volcano. I can’t blast my way through the inhuman masses. I don’t know if there’s enough conventional firepower in the all the Gulf-bordered states to do that. The only other way, as unthinkable as it might be, is to talk my way in instead. I climb out of the car gently and slowly, the way you’re supposed to when you’re faced with a dangerous predator. Once out I buckle on the shoulder rig and load the two handguns with my special ammo. No time for half measures anymore. I fasten the belt of vials around my waist, fill the pouches of the rig with extra shells for the shotgun and cartridges for the .460, slide my sword into the band and, with a final deep breath, chamber a round into the Mossberg.
The sound of a shotgun racking is like no other sound in the world and even these supernatural heavyweights react to it, shifting their attention dramatically. Every creature within earshot turns to look at me, and some of those things have exceptional hearing. A sea of eyes glitter in the darkness, and somewhere near the back of the throng something howls. I slowly make my way forward, exhaling with great care as I do. I hold the shotgun loosely in front of me, carefully not pointing it at anything that might take offense.
They just seem to get bigger as I get closer. I angle my approach so the first creatures I pass by is a large figure in dark plate mail, with a large battle axe and what looks like a crown of vertebrae. His dark eyes loom at me as I edge past him and press deeper into the crowd.
“My name is Ian DeLong,” I call out as I slowly thread my way through the mass. The bodies separate easily as I walk past, making room for me as I walk only to fill back in behind me. “A lot of you know me, or at least know what I represent. I’m not here to make trouble. I’m here to make a request.”
Now that I’m inside their perimeter I’m getting the impression that the monsters aren’t making way for me the way they were a moment ago. It seems to be getting more claustrophobic, bodies starting to press closer. A werewolf snaps its jaws near my left hip, a statement rather than an attack.
“I’m asking you to let me go into the house and talk to Danaher,” I say firmly. “Look at what’s gathered here in this field. You are the supernatural equivalent to a small nuclear strike. If there’s a fight, most of you won’t leave this town alive.”
“Fuck off, DeLong,” Erich Gault is suddenly there, his eyes golden, his fangs grown. “You’ve got no weight here. You’re not going to keep that razor from us.”
“You wouldn’t know what to do with it,” Moira’s coven choruses from the other side. “You’re a brainless pup, Erich. The Cleave would rot all of your souls out within a day.”
“None of you will take home the Cleave,” a new voice rolls with a thick Irish brogue. The Dullanan’s slightly muffled voice comes from under his arm, where the severed head is tightly held. The effect would be comical if it wasn’t inherently terrifying. “I will use it to do what none of you can – to save the world from those like us.”
This isn’t helping. I’d hoped to quell their energy with some good old-fashioned logic, but their anger is starting to build. If it isn’t stifled quickly it will burn like my house.
Suddenly, so suddenly I almost stumble, I’m clear of them. They stop as one a mere forty feet from the assembled mass of Remy’s defending troupe of undead. The monsters behind me cluster forward as I do, pressing closer, urged on by the promise of violence and a prize at hand. On the other side of the yard the undead creatures inch closer, some eyeing my flesh, some taking the measure of their enemies, some just itching for the kill. They’d been promised blood, and it’s closer than ever. Now, though, something new has interposed itself between the two forces, and they both shift their focus. In the span of a heartbeat I feel a hundred eyes, some very far removed from being human, turn their attention to me.
I feel very exposed.
Worried that a sudden move might provoke a bloodbath, I sling the shotgun over my shoulder. I transfer the sword into my left hand and draw the .460 with my right.
“Remy!” I yell. I turn my back on the ward and the drooling undead it’s holding back, watching the thick mass of horror draw closer.
“Remy!” I call agai
n, more urgently. “You have to stop this!”
“You know I can’t, Ian.” I look back over my shoulder to see Danaher on his porch. His two stone-and-iron protectors have moved, standing in identical first-position stances with their ugly sword/rods. “I don’t have that choice anymore.”
“You have a choice now, Remy. You can’t go through with it. It won’t work, not the way you think.”
“Of course it will,” he scoffs. “I’ve been planning this for years, Ian. There’s nothing about this that I haven’t planned.”
“Dammit, Remy! If you pull Susan’s soul back into this world, another soul will take its place. An innocent person will die.”
The darkness fills his eyes as his head dips sadly forward.
“Yes, Ian,” he calls back. “I know.” The chair pivots and he rolls back inside, leaving me staring in disbelief at the closed door.
Twenty-Two
I stare with mute rage at the closed door for a second. It’s all the time I can afford. With exaggerated slowness I turn back to the horrid mass. They have loomed closer while my back was turned, eyes gleaming in the dark, some drooling, some panting. Weapons are drawn by those who have them, some aimed at the house, some at the stirring legion of dead and semi-dead abominations who defended it. Claws flex and otherworldly energies begin to grow with visible glows and audible hums, while feet impatiently stamp and adrenaline makes everything pant and snarl. Everything around me is building up the killing mindset, knowing that blood will soon flow. It isn’t a might. It isn’t a chance. It will.
I slide slowly back away from the monsters but they match me inch for inch, straining at the last shred of their patience, while Remy’s undead soldiers edge hungrily forward. Both sides begin to whisper, then growl, then their noises grow as rage, hunger and even fear creep into them. Human voices from before and behind yell, then shout, then scream their vile promises while monstrous things beyond language groan, then growl, then roar their wordless answers.
And I, the least of them all, suddenly feel very fragile.
At last I have retreated as far as I can. The border of Remy’s protective magic is invisible, at least to me, but I can see where his thralls stop their advance and know that is the border of his wards. As if I need reassurance I’m right the monsters at my left and right stop just shy of the same line, forming a half-circle no more than ten feet wide around me. The two armies stare and gnash and dig their feet into the soft, damp soil, so close to each other they could literally touch if not for that cursed barrier.
I know what would happen if I take that one last step. My body will short out the ward, effectively throwing open the gates and letting the war begin. Not that I’d lose sleep over any of these creatures leaving this Earth forever, with the exception of the currently enthralled Arthur, but my current position leaves much to be desired. I wouldn’t have been satisfied with my current arsenal against any single creature here, let alone the lot of them. Then again, I wouldn’t have been satisfied with anything less than field artillery against most of them.
But I’m quickly running out of time. Remy had said that his procedure would take less than an hour. Claire had delivered the Cleave to him at least thirty minutes ago. It might already be too late. Even now, Susan might be waking from her long sleep and another soul gone to take her place.
No. It would be obvious if he had. First and foremost, once he got what he wanted he’d get rid of the Cleave. The monsters on his lawn wouldn’t go away without it, and there was no way he’d risk one of these things damaging his house to get it. No, he’d just have one of his stone guardians hurl it out past his shields and let them tear each other to pieces to get it. He hasn’t done that yet, so it isn’t too late.
Then I feel the tremor of a heavy footstep and realize that I was wrong. It is too late.
The monsters in front of me part as something marches in from the rear. Something that could scare monsters is here now, its presence like a thunderstorm, and it only takes seconds for me to see the sheer mass of Azrael, the Angel of Death, the Reaper, shoving its way through the horrors of the world as if they weren’t even there. When it sees me, though, it comes to a crashing halt, its eyes narrowing as they meet mine.
“You,” it seethes in pure hatred, tire-sized claws flexing.
“Fuck,” I spit.
I am out of time in every sense. An innocent living soul is about to be cut from the world, a supernatural war is literally within arm’s reach, and a pissed off Grim Reaper is seconds from tearing me into bloody chunks. I have to solve the last two problems fast in order to solve the first one, and there is only one way I can see to do all of that in time.
I’m in over my head.
It’s time to start swimming.
I move both arms simultaneously. My right arm swings up and I unload a fifty-caliber explosive red shell point-blank into Azrael’s chest, and as I do so my left swings back in a matching arc that sweeps through the plane of Remy’s defenses, shorting them out and popping the protective bubble.
With a sound that defies reason the two armies of monsters, with me at their center, crash together like rival tsunami.
Twenty-Three
In movies a fight is coherent and easy to follow, even though scores of people are trying their hardest to tear the whole world asunder. The camera tracks your hero with unerring precision as he blazes a trail of dominance through the bedlam with the inevitability of fate behind him, his (or hers) sublime blend of determination, grace and skill making the bloody chaos a smooth, linear path.
A real fight is dirty. The sounds become a cacophony, overlapping and mixing with each other until the noise becomes a deafening blanket, smothering perceptions until all that’s left in the ear is confusion and panic. Everything around you is a shaken blur, lights are too bright, adrenaline numbs the reflexes and saps your intellect.
All this and more happens in an instant around me when the protective bubble around Remy’s house breaks and the two armies slash into each other. A wave of ghasts leap over my head with their unnatural speed, tearing into the first wave of monsters with the ferocity of a school of piranhas. A dozen of them swarm over Azrael, tearing and biting. The ghasts have no sooner landed when a monstrous black horse leaps over them and charges into the wall of Remy’s undead protectors. The Dullahan, his head glaring from where it’s safely tucked under his left arm, swings his sword with mechanical precision, slashing at the next row of ghasts until an arc of green light transfixes the blade and freezes it in place. The ghasts bound away from the Celtic monster revealing the skeletal sorcerer, from whose extended arms flows the sickly light that pinions the horseman’s sword. The Dullahan’s head grins, the sword arm flexes and the green light shatters over it like a sea wave against a stone. He spurs the horse towards the sorcerer and I lose them in the confusion.
I’m at the epicenter of the conflagration, and I know that if I stay there my life expectancy will be measured in minutes if I’m lucky. I duck low, avoiding a flying, translucent spear, and run as quickly as I can in what I hope is the direction of the trees that surround Remy’s lawn. I need to get out of the center of the battle if I’m going to have a chance of surviving it, let alone stopping Remy.
The first enemy finds me a heartbeat later, one of the mercenaries with the shiny red eyes. He comes flying in from the side, thrown by something I couldn’t see. He hits the dirt hard but expertly turns his momentum into a roll that saves bones from breaking but still has to hurt. He comes up from it to one knee, his weapon spitting out fiery tracer rounds into the shaggy body of one of the Sasquatches, who is in the process of throttling a Nightmarcher. This is more impressive than it might sound, since the Nightmarchers are ghosts in their own right. I wonder why Remy couldn’t control them. Despite the fact that they are only selectively material and that the Hawaiian is driving a long, transparent spear into its apelike torso the Sasquatch is impressively doing a number on the displaced islander. The merc sees me and turns his gun i
n my direction but my arm is already in motion, the booming .460 brutally wrenching the muscles of my arm all the way up to my shoulder. His chest caves in under the force of the monstrous round as if stepped on by an elephant, some kind of vest stopping the bullet (which by itself impresses the hell out of me, as I didn’t know it was possible to make body armor that strong), but with more than three thousand pounds of explosive force behind it no armor on earth could have stopped the impact. He flies backwards and is trampled underfoot by another Sasquatch, racing with surprising speed to help its kin.
I start running again, cursing myself for my shooting reflex. The .460 is a titan of a gun even without the red ammo, able to bring down a pissed off Cape buffalo, but the tradeoff for its stopping power is that the cylinder only holds five rounds and I’ve just blown off two in a matter of seconds. I have more, but I doubt I’ll get the chance to reload. Can’t waste any more.
I have to make a sudden detour when I almost barrel into the decapitated body with the Thompson gun, who is unloading with everything he’s got on what almost looks like a two-legged goat, the elongated face being illuminated by the ceaseless fire. The drum magazine never seems to run dry. Gotta love magic. I weave past him, putting on more speed.
I only make it a few steps when a harpy falls from the sky, smashing to the ground in a cloud of oily feathers only a few feet from me. She’s immediately on her feet and, seeing an unarmored human so close, crouches to spring. I lift my sword, calculating the arc she’ll take with her leap to time my swing to meet her neck, when suddenly she freezes in place, a startled squawk escaping her throat. Then she’s gone, and in her place is a perfectly detailed white marble statue shot through with pearly blue veins. It’s flawless, down to the ridges of her feathers and the grime on her teeth. Startled, I look back over my shoulder.
A young woman is standing a few yards away from me, about five and a half feet tall, generously curvy, in loose jeans and a leather jacket. She has curly, shoulder length chestnut hair tied back in an efficient ponytail with wraparound sunglasses perched on top of her head, even though it’s night. She has a rather round face, very pretty, with hauntingly large, oval eyes. She heads purposefully in my direction, leading with her eyes like they’re spears. Then we’re nose to nose, close enough for me to see my reflection in those glistening pools. She gapes right in my face, clearly startled.
Swim Like Hell: A Visit to Superstition Bay Page 23
