Baptisms of Fire and Ice

by Nadia Sheridan

  “All right.” He waved at two groups of SWAT agents who were standing near the back patio of Barrow’s. “You guys head over there and get acquainted with our escorts. I’ll be around in a minute. I need to have one last chat with Dawes before we go our separate ways and get this operation started.”

  “Is Dawes managing the wide perimeter with the other ‘suits,’ or is she overseeing the main SWAT force on campus?” Adara asked.

  “The latter.” He swept the courtyard with his eyes until he located Dawes, standing near one of the parked Humvees and speaking into a radio. “She used to be a lieutenant colonel in the Marines, so she’s no stranger to large-scale combat ops. She’s one of the best tacticians at Overlock, and some of our most successful missions have occurred under her command.”

  Gideon whistled, impressed. “Lieutenant colonel, huh? She looks too young for that rank.”

  Jefferson’s lips quirked at one end. “She’s fae, Mr. Bell. They don’t age like you do.”

  “Huh.” Gideon rubbed his chin, no doubt wondering how old Dawes actually was. “And what about you, Mr. Vampire?”

  Jefferson’s lips tilted up into a full-blown smirk. “I don’t age at all.”

  Gideon stared at him for a long moment, then said, “Ah, I see.”

  Jefferson parted ways with them after that intelligent comment.

  Shaking the group out of its collective stupor with a fake cough, Adara led everyone over to the waiting SWAT teams. There were brief introductions that included names, ranks, and an overabundance of handshakes. Then they all wound up waiting in awkward silence, not quite willing to engage in casual conversation.

  It seemed the Overlock agents weren’t yet sure what to think of these shard holders. Which was fine, as Adara herself wasn’t yet sure what to make of having magic powers.

  With Overlock and their time-tested policies as a sounding board, Adara was certain everyone would eventually work through the mountain of questions and concerns regarding the shard holders. After the demons were dealt with and the future of human civilization once more secured.

  Until then, it was perfectly fine to be awkward as hell around each other.

  As long as it didn’t affect their job performance.

  They’re professionals, Adara assured herself. Experienced FBI agents who presumably have a great deal of experience at remaining calm in tense situations. They can handle a little awkwardness.

  She wasn’t so sure about the people on her end, however. Solomon was looking a little pale again. Victoria was hiding behind her hair again. And Gideon was having a staring contest with the leader of one of the SWAT teams, an astonishingly buff woman over six feet tall who could probably deadlift about eight hundred pounds.

  Enzo was the only one who seemed more curious than uneasy. He was obviously cataloguing all the features of the SWAT agents, trying to figure out if any of them weren’t human.

  Adara pinched his arm to get him to stop.

  “Ow,” he whined. “What was that for?”

  She shot him a rebuking look and replied, “Staring is rude.”

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Jefferson returned from his meeting with Dawes bearing news: “The first wave should be attacking in the next sixty seconds.”

  He snapped his fingers to get everyone’s attention. “We’ll be approaching our entry point at a roughly thirty-degree angle, which should shield us from any demons on the ground inside the campus wall. That’s not to say that none of them will jump the wall, or ambush us from a tree, so don’t be lulled into a false sense of security.”

  He motioned toward the alley next to Barrow’s. “Now, let’s get into a good starting position.”

  They all squeezed into the alley where a police cruiser had sat this morning. Adara wondered, as she huddled up behind the SWAT agents, what had become of the two cops who’d been watching the campus border for intruders.

  Had they been called to the disturbance on Maynard, only to end up casualties in the massacre? Had they been lucky enough to survive, only to end up hauling bloody corpses off the streets? Wherever they were, she knew they were worse off than they’d been a few hours ago.

  Most people in this city were worse off than they’d been this morning.

  It’s our job to make sure that trend doesn’t continue, and I intend to do that job, come hell or high water, she thought wryly. Or rather, come hell and high water.

  A staticky voice came through the radio attached to Jefferson’s belt. “Everyone’s in position and ready to commence,” said Dawes. “First wave, attack on my mark. Ten. Nine.”

  Adara curled her hands into fists.

  “Eight. Seven.”

  Enzo whispered a short prayer in Spanish.

  “Six. Five.”

  Gideon bowed his head, as if meditating.

  “Four. Three.”

  Victoria and Solomon took deep, shaky breaths.

  “Two. One.”

  Everyone tensed.

  “Go!”

  From every alleyway and intersection that Adara could see, men and women dressed in black poured onto the streets. On approach to the campus, they raised their rifles and took aim with practiced movements.

  Some pointed their guns straight through the gates. Some pointed their guns up at the campus trees whose gangly branches hung over the sidewalks beyond the wall.

  For half a minute, the streets were consumed by the raucous chorus of marching boots. Then the first of the SWAT teams reached the wall, and the roar of gunfire masked their footsteps.

  Imps who’d been lying in wait on the other side of the wall leaped out at the agents, and the agents fired back without restraint. Orange blood sprayed through the air, painting the bricks and the grass, and severed limbs went flying across the campus grounds.

  Over a dozen imps dropped out of various trees, but semiautomatic fire mowed them down in seconds. Their malformed bodies landed in tangled piles on the concrete, and streams of blood ran off the edge of the sidewalk and into the gutters.

  None of the imps died, their chests rising and falling as they panted in pain. But they were so badly mutilated by the bullets that only a handful tried to make a grab for the agents as they stormed past the campus wall.

  A few agents broke off from the rest and kicked those reaching imps away, clearing the path for the rest of the attack force. Then what seemed like an endless parade of black forms bearing steel raced through the gates and into the demon stronghold that used to be Edgerton College.

  The gunfire intensified on the other side, and Adara could only catch bits and pieces of what was unfolding behind the brick wall. The childlike shrieks of imps as bullets tore through their flesh. The bursts of bright orange as those same bullets blew out blood vessels and shredded organs. The grunts and swears of the SWAT agents as they kept shooting and shooting and shooting, only for more imps to fill the spaces that the fallen left behind.

  Three or four minutes into this madness came the first inevitable scream.

  Over the booming gunshots, Adara barely made out the man’s cries for help as an imp brutally clobbered his face.

  A second scream followed on the heels of the first, this one from a woman. One imp had latched on to her chest and was savagely beating on her helmet, so hard the metal was beginning to give way. A second imp clung to her right leg and repeatedly gored her thigh with its tusks.

  Several agents tried to save their two imperiled colleagues, but the imps were too quick.

  The man’s face caved in, and he died in a gush of blood and brain matter. At the same time, one of the tusks caught the woman’s femoral artery. Her blood spurted out across the ground, too much too fast for anyone to save her with field medicine during active combat.

  She collapsed, and the imp on her chest ended her misery by ramming its fist into her head one last time, shattering her skull.

  Skin white as a sheet, Solomon staggered away from the lineup and threw up the donuts and tea from the police station.
Victoria also looked like she was ready to hurl, but she held her ground and controlled her breathing.

  Enzo refused to keep staring at the carnage and cast his gaze at the blue sky above, like he was thinking of better days. Gideon didn’t flinch at the gore, which wasn’t surprising; he’d been trained by the army to withstand far worse.

  Adara didn’t feel sick or disturbed, which would’ve surprised her as recently as yesterday morning. But she had seen the carnage on Maynard, innocent people torn apart and burned to ashes, had walked among the fallen, had sat in their cooling blood on the streets. After that, it would take a great deal more to shock her into sickness, especially since the people dying now were not random innocent bystanders.

  These people were warriors. They’d chosen to be here, to put their lives on the line for the greater good. Their deaths were no less tragic than those of bystanders, but they were slightly easier to understand and accept.

  So Adara didn’t take her eyes off the battle. She watched these brave men and women sacrifice themselves so that the shard holders could have a chance to stop the demon invasion. Each time an agent fell, Adara added them to her mental tally, the running list of people whose deaths she needed to avenge when she finally reached the basement of the library and came face to face with the fragmenting cornerstone spell—and whatever was guarding it.

  After minutes that seemed like days, Dawes came over the radio again. “First wave has reached the close perimeter point and driven the imps back to the immediate area around the library. Second wave, prepare to move in.”

  Solomon, still wiping his mouth, staggered back over to the group.

  “You good?” Gideon asked.

  “No,” Solomon answered honestly. “But I can’t possibly feel any worse, and I’m still on my feet, so…”

  Gideon patted his shoulder. “You only got to do two things, weatherman: Put one foot in front of the other until we reach our final destination, and keep your head in the clouds while we’re rolling. We may need you to conjure up a storm at any point between here and the basement.”

  “Seeing as my power responds to fear,” Solomon said, “conjuring a storm shouldn’t be a problem.”

  “Second wave,” shouted Dawes over the radio, “advance in five, four, three, two, one!”

  Yet another throng of agents charged the campus, spilling out of houses and shops, crawling out from behind trees and bushes, jumping over the hoods and trunks of cars. They pressed onward with determination, their path to the library made clear by the sacrifices of those who’d come before.

  As they approached the newly established perimeter forty feet from the library’s west entrance, they brought up their guns and brought out their grenades—and one man pulled the RPG launcher off his back.

  “Here comes our cue,” said Jefferson. “SWAT teams, move in!”

  Jefferson held up his hand to indicate the shard holders should wait while the SWAT agents secured their entry point to the campus. Five of their ten guards slipped past the wall and formed a half circle, sweeping their rifles back and forth in search of enemies. The other five remained outside the wall, two pointing guns to the north, two pointing guns to the south, and the fifth checking the trees.

  Nothing ambushed them, and the buff female team leader gave Jefferson the all clear.

  Jefferson dropped his hand and said, “Now we go.”

  They dashed across the street, Jefferson at the lead, and filed onto the campus two at a time, slowing to a stop behind the agents in shield formation. Once they were past the wall, the other SWAT team completed the guard circle, keeping their weapons trained on the area behind the group to give the shard holders full defensive coverage.

  Like that, in the middle of a ring of highly trained FBI SWAT agents with big guns and bad attitudes, they hustled toward the library.

  They were fifteen feet from the close perimeter line when the agent in the second wave who’d grabbed his RPG launcher dropped to one knee and hefted the launcher onto his shoulder. Carefully taking aim at the west entrance to the library, he pulled the trigger.

  The rocket-powered grenade blasted off the launcher, soared through the air ahead of a trail of gray smoke, crashed through one of the glass double doors, and promptly erupted into a giant ball of fire.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  The entire glass-paneled entryway of the library exploded. Sharp, glittering shards hurtled through the air and pelted the sidewalk. Smoking bits of charred flesh followed the glass and bounced across the ground, all the imps inside the library who’d been near the entrance badly burned and blown to pieces.

  But many more imps hadn’t been close enough to the blast to succumb. Now they spilled out of the gray haze that had enveloped the hole in the wall where the entrance used to be. They trampled the mutilated bodies of their brethren, cut themselves bloody on the broken glass, and at no point showed concern for themselves or for the fallen.

  The imps were single-minded creatures, and they were on a mission: to stop the humans from entering the library no matter the cost.

  A man among the agents on the close perimeter shouted for everyone to fire at will. Dozens of rifles barked and sparked, the sounds of shots and imp shrieks carrying across the campus.

  Adara, half ducked behind their defensive guard, felt a fleeting sense of satisfaction as she watched imp after imp stumble and fall, run through with too many bullets to keep on going. These creatures had killed innocent humans with abandon on Maynard, and now they were getting their just desserts.

  Yet the worst perpetrators, the orchestrators of all this chaos, she thought solemnly, are waiting inside the library. And they’re the ones that we will have to fight.

  After more than a thousand rounds of rifle fire struck the imps, ate into the library’s brick walls, or flew off into the smoke and struck who knew what, the same man who’d spoken before gave the command to stop firing. The report of gunshots died out, and an eerie hush fell over the campus, disturbed by only the ringing in Adara’s ears.

  She observed the smoky entryway as intently as the FBI agents. Searched for the uneven gait of more oncoming imps. Searched for the sneaking shadow of a greater demon among the bullet-riddled stacks. Searched for any sign of impending doom beyond the imminent failure of the cornerstone spell hidden belowground.

  Adara saw nothing, and neither did anyone else.

  They all realized too late that they were looking in the wrong direction.

  Near the fountain in which Trevor’s body had lain yesterday afternoon, there came a loud groan. The heavy metal grate that covered the opening of one of many large storm drains on campus shot into the air, heading right for the close perimeter line.

  The SWAT agents reacted swiftly, diving out of the grate’s path. But although most of them moved with nearly inhuman speed, a few stragglers couldn’t get out of the way in time.

  The barred grate mowed them down like they were made of paper. Fresh red blood splattered the ground, the trees, and the other agents.

  A stray drop hit Adara’s cheek and ran down to her chin in a thin stream, like an errant tear. She wiped it away with the back of her hand and spun toward the storm drain.

  Imps, scores of imps, clawed their way out of the drain and lunged for the distracted agents still trying to regain their footing. Some agents were able to swing their guns up and fire in time. Some were not so lucky.

  Adara tried her absolute hardest to keep her attention off the struggling agents as the imps pummeled chests, strangled necks, and beat faces bloody. Because she knew that a far greater threat was about to emerge from the storm drain.

  Those drains were narrow but tall enough for a person to navigate, and since the imps didn’t appear to act in complex ways of their own accord, one of their masters was probably prowling around under everyone’s feet. And had been since the assault began, waiting for an opportune moment to strike.

  A number of the SWAT agents inferred this as well. They called for their comrades t
o focus their efforts on the storm drain.

  One agent threw a grenade at the storm drain. It tumbled right down the hole—only for a hand to catch it before it hit the bottom of the drain. This hand quickly tossed the grenade back at the agent who’d thrown it, and she was forced to take cover behind a tree.

  The grenade exploded, blowing a chunk out of the sidewalk and knocking five agents off their feet. No one was killed by the blast, but the agents who fell were sitting ducks for the imps. The little monsters tackled them as they were trying to stand and knocked their rifles from their hands.

  People screamed. Imps shrieked. Guns fired. Knives glinted. Blood sprayed and dripped and pooled, staining everything a toxic mix of red and orange. The entire fight devolved into a disorganized frenzy, the close perimeter broken by the sneak attack.

  The sneak attack led by Astaroth.

  Wearing the guise of another young woman, this one a bottle blonde with a fake tan, the greater demon hauled herself out of the storm drain. The nearest SWAT agents turned their guns on her, but she didn’t give them more than a passing glance. She raised her right hand in a lackadaisical manner, and black fire roared to life in her palm.

  “Toodle-loo,” she said, and made to throw a stream of fire at the agents.

  Just as the fire leaped from her palm, a hand clamped around her arm and wrenched it sideways. The fire stream went wide and struck a tree instead of the embattled agents, setting it alight from roots to canopy, an unnerving column of writhing black flame that roared like a living predator.

  Furious, Astaroth spun around to see who’d dared to grab her. Only to find herself face to face with Jefferson the vampire.

  Adara looked at the space in front of her, where Jefferson had been a split second before, and then to the space thirty feet away, where he was standing now. He’d traveled between here and there so fast that her eyes hadn’t even caught a flicker of motion.

  Can all vampires move that fast? Adara thought, so stunned that the rest of the bloody battle seemed to fade into a blur around the focal point that was the face-off between Jefferson and Astaroth. Is that why Jefferson tagged along with us, to be our trump card in case we screwed the pooch?