by Bobby Adair
Winthrop pointed and yelled at his priestesses and close priests, the ones who’d been with him from that first night in the woods, the ones who’d surrounded him and protected him from any monster who fought his way through the line of his soldiers.
But…
What’s that?
At the head of the new line of demons, Winthrop saw something strange.
The boy!
It was the kid, Rowan, fleeing from the demons. Maybe his god brothers had sent the boy back to him. Maybe the boy was a sign.
“The boy!” Winthrop shouted. “They’re after the boy! Let him through the lines. Save the boy!” Winthrop was relieved. The demons weren’t coming for him, after all.
One of the priests stared at the coming line of demons. “I see him, my Father.”
“Run, you fool!” shouted Winthrop. “Save the boy!”
The priest shouted at two other men to follow him to the line of fighting men. They pushed through the battling army and found a clear path for Rowan.
Winthrop was pleased. The gods were giving him a gift by returning the boy.
Rowan passed between two soldiers, and the pursuing demons piled up as they skidded to a stop, staying out of range of the priest’s swinging swords.
Winthrop raised his face to the sky, uttering the god-speak phrases his tongue had found on its own. That was the only way to praise the other gods and himself for being the source of such a wondrous little miracle. The boy should have been dead after disappearing on the night of the demon attack. Now he was a gift—no, more than that, an omen, a resurrection. Victory would come. There was no more need to fret, no need to quake. Only killing and burning remained, chores for his chosen before filling their bellies on a feast of demon carcasses.
Praise to me!
Winthrop opened his eyes to look down at the boy, expecting Rowan to bow at the feet of his horse.
But the boy wasn’t there, offering his thanks.
With anxious eyes, Winthrop looked up and saw the men who’d gotten the boy through the line. They were on their backs with demons on top of them, fighting against shredding teeth while more demons flowed through the gap in the line.
And that damn boy!
He was running along behind the line, stabbing a knife into the hamstrings of Winthrop’s defenders.
Winthrop’s priests fell and the demons charged over them.
No!
Oh, no!
The boy was some kind of evil fiend, an impish spawn of hell, a terror.
Winthrop wailed as the formation of his chosen disintegrated around him.
Chapter 89: Fitz
Fitz watched from her tower as the circular formation that Winthrop’s army had been holding disintegrated.
“Oh, no!” She had no mercy in her heart for Winthrop, but she fretted for the men and women who fought for him. They’d held out through so much of the battle, killing untold numbers of demons with heavy losses of their own, and just when it looked like some of them were going to survive, they failed.
They were all going to die.
With the weight of that on her heart, and the fear that the demons would soon have only Brighton to fight, Fitz turned back to the battle inside the wall. She looked toward the city, hoping to see Ginger’s mounted warriors coming, but she saw none of them.
Where were they?
Looking across a mile of potato and corn fields to where the west gate’s towers stood, Fitz saw most of the cohort that had been guarding that gate running toward the demons that were pouring over the wall south of them.
The main body of her army was fully engaged in the fight at the south gate and the nearby walls. The women, boys, and old men on the west end of the line must have realized the demons were coming over behind them, and they were starting to run.
It was the moment Fitz feared most: her soldiers, armed with spears and bladed weapons, turning their backs on the demons and getting tackled from behind. Dying because of their fear.
As Fitz watched, the western flank of the line frayed and she saw the disintegration as though it was a living thing coming toward her, destroying her army as it went.
“You haven’t lost!” Fitz yelled futilely. Even if there had been no battle under way, the fleeing soldiers were too far away to hear.
Fitz glanced back toward town. Still, Ginger’s mounted warriors were not coming.
Fitz scanned quickly across the rest of the battle. On the east side of the main gate, her women were still holding the line, killing the demons flowing over the wall. They were backing up, and their line was expanding with women setting aside their slings and joining the fight in front of them with spears and whatever other weapons they had. At the main gate, it was the same story. They were holding their own. Fitz had no orders to give, nothing to do but wait and hope the numbers worked out in Brighton’s favor when all the killing was done.
It was the fraying line at the west end that was their doom. If the retreating cohorts’ fear caught on, the whole defense would collapse, and it would be a very dark day in Brighton.
Fitz turned to one of the last of the captains in the tower with her. Getting the attention of that one, she said, “I’m going to rally the fleeing women. I need to stop this. Come find me if something more urgent arises.”
“You can count on us,” the woman confirmed as she glanced at the fraying line. “Go.” The anxiety in her voice told Fitz the woman understood.
Fitz crossed over to the ladder and all but fell to the ground with hands and feet pausing on wooden rungs just enough to slow her descent and keep her from breaking her ankles at the bottom.
Once her feet were on the ground, she ran to her horse and mounted it with ease. Her six personal guards were there, in their saddles and waiting. That was a blessing that could make all the difference. Seven women swinging swords from the backs of horses would do so much more to bolster the spines of her panicked soldiers than one woman riding solo.
Fitz drew her sword as she spurred her horse. “Follow me!” she called to her guards as she sped off on her giant, black beast.
Chapter 90: Melora
“I’m out!” Melora shouted, as she ejected her magazine and tossed it back to Jingo and Beck, who were feeding her, Ivory, and Oliver with ammunition.
To her right, Oliver and Ivory still fired.
“Here,” said Beck, breathing heavily from effort or panic, as he put two magazines into Melora’s hand.
Melora jammed a full magazine into the underside of her rifle and laid the barrel across the log, leveling it as she found her next target. She pulled the trigger and fired at a beast. The creature pitched forward and hit the ground face first.
Melora shifted slightly left and fired again. Blood exploded from a demon’s shoulder as it spun and went down. But that one would be back up. Melora was learning the difference between a kill shot and a wound, and she silently chastised herself for the poor aim.
Every bullet was of a limited supply, of which she expected to run out at any moment.
With every pull of the trigger, it felt like her finger was straining under a heavy weight. She’d never have guessed in all her life she could do something so many times, so quickly, that she’d cramp her finger. And her shoulder flared fire each time the rifle’s butt punched back with the gun’s recoil.
Melora, along with Ivory and Oliver, were killing demons on a scale that eclipsed her imagination many times over. The sloping pasture was covered with so many dead that only a few strands of the knee-high grass still stood, and even those were stained red.
Still, the demons peeled off from the larger mass assaulting the main gate and crossed nearly a mile of pasture for their chance to tear violently into the shooters.
“It looks like no more demons are coming from the right!” Ivory announced
next to Melora, giving her a hint of hope. It seemed like they’d killed all the ones that had been skirting the circle wall, looking for an alternate entrance to Brighton.
Twice since the shooting started, Jingo had pitched hand grenades to kill large bands of demons who’d managed to get too close. Each time it happened, both Beck and Ivory threw grenades, as well. Melora and Oliver were told not to, as neither could throw the weighty little bombs far enough to avoid endangering themselves.
“Those demons are gone, but there are many more. When will they stop coming?” Oliver called from where he was shooting, echoing Melora’s thoughts.
“Just keep firing!” shouted Beck.
Melora fired again, crying out as her shoulder flared pain. Suddenly Jingo was on a knee beside Melora. “Are you okay?”
Melora fired, blew out the back of a demon’s skull, and quickly shot again, “My shoulder hurts!”
“You’re doing a good job.”
Melora nodded and kept shooting.
“We’re going to make it,” Jingo told her. “War is terrible. Don’t lose hope.”
“I’m okay!” Melora yelled. She knew that if she stopped fighting, she’d die. Only living people felt pain.
“Who’s that?” asked Oliver, as he squeezed off another round.
Melora glanced left and paused for a moment, trying to understand what Oliver was seeing. She saw a glimmer of movement in between some demons that looked like a human.
Her first thought was that the vanguard of Blackthorn’s cavalry was charging out of the woods. Melora nearly shed tears of relief, thinking she and the others were saved.
But no cavalry followed that first rider as he swung his sword, racing through the mass of surprised demons coming at Melora.
She kept shooting the monsters as she watched the rider, thinking he was an even braver idiot than she was, tearing through all those twisted men, untouched by their teeth and tearing fingers.
But he had a familiar look to him.
He—
Melora gasped.
It couldn’t be.
Bray!
That murdering piece of pig shit!
Melora didn’t ask herself what he was doing all of a sudden in the middle of the battle. She didn’t speculate as to how he’d managed to steal a horse. No question was as important as the hatred she felt for him, and how completely that hate made all her fear of the coming horde seem like an irritant that could be ignored. She switched her aim to Bray.
Shooting demons was easy. They ran directly at her in a bloodthirsty frenzy. They were targets, and once she sawed them down, her barrel didn’t swerve, didn’t juke.
Bray was different. He rode across her field of vision left to right, galloping and swerving around demons, swinging his sword. He wouldn’t stay still for her.
“Who’s that?” Oliver asked.
She didn’t answer.
Before anyone else could ask, Melora fired.
Bray carried on, unfazed.
She lined up her rifle sight and fired again.
Missed.
She silently cursed and redirected her fire at the closest of the demons that were still charging her position. She killed several, and guessed she had a few brief seconds to try again for Bray before he got too far away.
Melora aimed again, taking her time. Bray paused, looking toward the log from which she, Ivory, and Oliver shot their weapons, probably wondering what the hell he was seeing and hearing. Melora pulled the trigger.
Bray lurched back with the impact. His arms flew out as he pitched back off the saddle.
His horse reared and started trampling demons as it panicked.
Through all the demons between them, Melora couldn’t see if Bray got back to his feet, but one thing she saw for sure was that he didn’t remount his horse, and that meant that even if the bullet didn’t kill him, he was as good as dead.
Without a trace of guilt for what she’d just done and with no time to revel in the satisfaction of justice delivered, she went back to killing demons. Oliver seemed to have redirected his focus to the battle.
For Ella, she thought, gritting her teeth.
Chapter 91: Bray
Bray felt an invisible punch that toppled him from his horse.
His shoulder screamed pain.
At the last second, he clutched the reins, saving himself from landing on his head, but the air exploded from his lungs as he hit the grass on his back.
The horse bolted, dragging him across the ground next to it with demons all around.
He’d gotten a glimpse of Melora, Ivory, and some kid, holding guns as they hid in the nearby trees, and he’d seen Melora aiming at him. He guessed he’d been shot, like those demons he’d seen fall under Kirby’s gun. But none of that mattered now, because the twisted men would surely rip him apart before he’d have the chance to think about it again, or his horse would stomp him to death. He’d never see William again.
Bray cried out as his legs slid underneath the horse and demons lunged for his flesh. The horse whinnied and reared up, stomping demons in front of it, spraying Bray with blood and knocking back a few of the twisted men. Bray pulled his legs away to avoid a crushing hoof, but he kept hold of the reins.
The horse was panicked and about to flee again.
That might be his only chance to get out of the tangle of demons.
The horse broke into a gallop, and Bray cried out as he was dragged again through the unforgiving grass, sliding over bodies of dead demons and slick patches blood, doing his best to keep hold of the reins. His body ached from dozens of new bruises as he was battered against the ground. He had no control.
He managed to hold on for a few seconds, escaping the immediate mob of demons, and then he lost his grip and fell.
He watched the horse gallop past hungry, pawing twisted men, and into the forest, which was only twenty yards away, and then he was alone, lying on his side. Bray grunted and turned his head.
His sword was gone.
He hadn’t gotten far enough.
Demons encircled him. He searched frantically for a weapon, but all he saw was a mass of stomping, bare feet and wart-covered bodies. One of the demons shrieked in triumph as it reached him, tugging at his boots. Another lunged for his face.
The demons were going to kill him.
Bray felt a surge of anger as the demons surrounded him with open mouths and tearing hands. His coming death should have been fitting for a man that had spent his life killing the demons.
But it didn’t feel so fitting now.
Chapter 92: William
Men were screaming all around. Odd thunder rolled through the daylight sky. Demons howled. Blades thunked into skulls and blood spewed, coating everything in red, giving the air a taste of death.
The blood was life, someone else’s life, leaving the body as the soul sank to that dark place where nightmares are born, never to breathe under a blue sky again.
William knew that taste of blood well, remembering it from his first kill on the mountain the night that Bray had robbed and abandoned him and his mother.
As it was now, the blood was warm on his skin, and in a perverse way, it felt like power.
But it was sick power, coming only from a brutality and hate so strong that it felt like a spike through his heart every time it spilled.
It was a tempting power, too. Each time William felt it, it beckoned him to try and kill again, to lean in close and feel a man’s last breath wash over his face as the man’s eyes went glassy and false, as the man’s heart stopped beating, and the enemy turned from man to meat.
Warm to cold.
Loud to quiet.
Something to nothing.
A new memory to haunt tomorrow’s dreams.
One of Winthrop’s priestesses lay on the ground beside William, shrieking and fighting as one of his demon brothers ripped at her throat.
All around him, the priestesses and Winthrop’s closest priests fought desperately against the demons overwhelming them.
Farther away, the unbreakable iron circle of Winthrop’s chosen soldiers had disintegrated. A thousand men, the last of those who’d fought together like a single, brutal beast, keeping their enemies in front of them where their sharp swords could do their butchery, were now individuals, surrounded and outnumbered, giving the power of their warm blood to those who took it.
At the center of the battle stood William, untouched by beast and man, watching as a dozen of his demon brothers surrounded Winthrop’s wild-eyed horse. It kicked and bucked, charged in fits, and stomped, all the while throwing a blubbering Winthrop back and forth in the saddle.
With a face stretched in desperation, Winthrop held on, knowing hell surrounded him in the gnashing teeth of the tormenting demons.
He bellowed his cowardice for all to hear.
It was sad to see such a majestic horse terrorized out of its mind, saddled with a mountain of useless lard. William didn’t want to see the beast injured. He didn’t want to see it killed, but Winthrop was on its saddle, and Winthrop had to die for what he’d done to Jasmine and Phillip.
For what he’d done to Brighton.
A demon leaped at the horse, trying to gouge at its eye.
The beast, though, had better instincts, and it reared high to avoid the attacking demon.
It happened at a bad time for Winthrop, who was still recovering his balance from the horse’s last dodge. Winthrop lost his grip on the pommel, and as the horse went near vertical on its hind legs, Winthrop rolled back and somersaulted backward over the horse’s tail, smashing onto the corpse of one of his dead priestesses on the ground.
The horse, suddenly relieved of its burden, bolted through the demons, running for the forest and safety.
