Axes and Angels: A Snarky Urban Fantasy Novel (Better Demons Series Book 1)

by Matthew Herrmann

  I’m not— I tried to say but again, soul form. I made a concerted effort to attack him, but instead of gliding right at him, my soul zigzagged around him.

  And with a savage downward thrust, the Zeus assassin brought down his blade.

  Before the blade could find its mark—in my chest!—I found myself lying on the cold earth of the Pine Barrens-themed InBetween.

  Edward peered down at me like a specter.

  “Send me back!” I demanded.

  “There’s been a … complication.”

  “Complication? My body is about to get eviscerated!”

  Edward hesitated. “Perhaps your body is too weak to accept it … but I rather think it’s your soul. Being here … did something to it.”

  I picked myself up and dusted off my pants. “Can you do it or not?” I all but shouted (OK, I shouted).

  He placed a cold hand upon my forehead as if checking my soul’s temperature. “Your lifeforce is weaker than I’d imagined but you possess a strong will.” He gritted his teeth. “Still, you find yourself in quite a perilous environment.”

  “You’re telling me! My body’s about to receive an impromptu surgery as soon as I return to my body! Can’t you help me? Come with me and go full Devil down there?”

  Edward silently regarded me. “I cannot simply appear in Typhon’s compound. My physical body resides in the Pine Barrens, safe in my lair, while my spiritual body traverses the astral plane and the InBetween. Would that I could help you further, Theo.”

  I nodded. Damn the limits of magic!

  His palm, still against my forehead, pulsed with energy. “I see the issue now. Part of your soul has been chipped off. Probably a consequence of entering this place.”

  “What?”

  “Do not worry. You don’t need all your soul. Think of it as losing your appendix.”

  “My appendix is not my soul!”

  “Yeah but—”

  “You saying I might turn into an axe murderer or something?”

  Edward considered this. “Probably not.”

  “Probably not?” I said. “Grr. Fine. Can you send me back or not?”

  “Yes. I think so. I shall have to write up an instruction manual on transporting souls—”

  “Then do it—I’m ready. Beam me up, Scotty.”

  Edward’s eyes furrowed. “You wish me to take on the appearance of Captain Kirk?”

  Ugh. Others and their misunderstandings.

  “No. Just send me back to my body.”

  “Very well. Close your eyes.”

  I did and then my entire Soul Body shivered and vibrated at hyper speed, and I swear I could feel the atoms in my body being suspended in a vacuum—then it felt like a vacuum cleaner sucked them into a tight tube, and blasted every essence through an impossibly fine mesh filter and down toward my vessel like a shot of adrenaline.

  “You have one duty,” Edward’s disembodied voice said as I continued down the … umbilical tube to my body. “Obtain the pendant from Typhon.”

  It was all I could do to bob my head as the G-forces of my transport folded back my molecular cheeks like a dog with its head out the window of a spaceship.

  I watched my soul streaming back to earth like a shooting star, caught a glimpse of Typhon’s skyscraper from the outside, and Arachne and LK standing outside the lobby where a group of hooded Zeus gang members battled some of Typhon’s thugs. And then I passed through the pavement, passed through alternating levels of earth and concrete and sewer system until I saw my body and my would-be Zeus gang assassin looming over me, his form frozen in his dagger’s mid-downward thrust.

  As soon as my soul rejoined my body and time resumed its passage, I knew this was either going to be a case of superior reflexes on my part or the shortest bodily reunion in the history of bodily reunions …

  “Bringing Knives to a Gunfight … Still Effective”

  My soul joined my body in a sucking rush. I had a single moment of time-frozen clarity where I locked eyes with the Zeus gang assassin above me, and then his blade resumed its downward trajectory.

  Not wanting to become a sacrificial victim, I threw myself into a hard roll to the side, spiraling to the floor as my attacker’s blade bit into the metal table right over where my heart had just been.

  “Theo!” Simon shouted.

  “Take this!” Garfunkel said and stabbed my attacker with a scalpel nearly twice his size.

  My attacker, his eyes gone wide after seeing a floating scalpel, batted Garfunkel’s tiny invisible-to-him body away. And then my assailant was pinning me upon the floor, holding down one of my shoulders as he raised the blade again, its blade dulled from the metal table. This was going to hurt …

  I threw up a leg, my sneaker connecting with his family jewels. He shrieked and refocused his eyes on me, rage burning brightly.

  But before my would-be-killer could bring the blade down and mash my heart to pulp, an object crashed across the top of his head. His eyes went glassy, and then a strong hand shoved him to the side where he tipped over the metal examination table I had been on.

  I guess I was expecting the Minotaur, what with the ease he’d just dealt with my attacker, but I stared back at none other than …

  “Orion …?” I said.

  He extended a hand and I was about to accept it when a hooded assassin appeared and sank a blade into Orion’s side.

  Orion grunted and turned, elbowing his new attacker across the jaw, toppling him to the floor. Then another assassin was on him, and then another, and in their combined rush they brought Orion to the floor.

  “Orion!” I said, trying to pick myself up, but my palms kept sliding off the floor. I grasped at a metal side cart beside me for support but my arms and fingers were rubbery. I couldn’t seem to grasp anything no matter how hard I commanded my fingers. I felt like an adult trapped in a newborn’s clumsy body. And it sucked.

  While Orion lay somewhere beside me, probably getting stabbed hundreds of times, my familiars tugged and pounded at my arms and hair.

  “Theo! Theo! You must get up!”

  “Yeah,” Garfunkel said. “Suck it up—come on!”

  Simon buried himself in my hair. “I’m scared. There’s bad people everywhere—”

  “Hey,” Garfunkel said. “Words hurt.”

  I reached out and felt my hands grasp onto the small medical side table. For a moment, I believed I’d be able to pull myself up. Then the stand fell over, spilling an assortment of sharp metal implements to the floor like a string of profanity.

  Before my knees even hit the floor though, small hands caught me under the shoulders from behind.

  “How are you even walking?” a female scientist said, her chest sagging forward with the weight of my body in her arms. “By all accounts, you should be dead. The Arena is only for Others. And you’ve had no rejuvenation therapy—”

  I narrowed my eyes on her gawking at the ugly ring around my neck. “You think right now would be a good time to flip me into one of those green vats?” I said with as much snark as I could muster.

  Gunshots and shouts erupted from somewhere close. The scientist screwed up her eyes. “I don’t think—”

  The first bullet struck her in the back, sending her into my arms; the next barrage of lead shattered the nearest glass tank in a crumpled explosion of glass.

  “The horror!” Simon wailed as greenish liquid rushed out in a fluid heaping wave, soaking my shoes, brushing up past my calves with the scent of soured Kool-Aid. I wrinkled my nose as my familiars clung to and dangled from my shoulder pads.

  The weight of the scientist in my arms toppled me backward to the wet floor with a splash, and when I glanced at her eyes, I knew the woman was already gone. I twisted my aching, not-responding body and laid her to rest beside me against the wall.

  As my military training took over, I realized the scientist in my arms was dead. I actively surveyed the room for obstacles and possible advantages. All around, men and women were slipping on a
nd falling into the greenish liquid sloshing over the lab’s floor. I didn’t see Orion.

  “What are we going to do?” Simon cried out.

  I was attempting to haul myself to my feet again when a Zeus gang member appeared before me brandishing a scimitar. “Justice for Zeus!” he wailed as he swung the blade—

  And was splatted to the side by the flat of a halberd.

  “THEO! You must GO!” the Minotaur said.

  I stared back at my savior’s flaring nostrils. “Why are you helping me?”

  The Minotaur’s pool ball-sized eyes met mine. “I—” His eyes bulged with pain, and I saw a trident sticking into his side. “CONFOUND IT!” he roared, spinning and bringing down his halberd upon some new attacker.

  I stared a moment longer before Garfunkel said, “Earth to Theo! Let’s do as the giant bull-man said … and vamoose!”

  The situation seemed helpless. It was chaos; death being doled out in blind ritual. We were being overrun.

  “Where are the commandos?” Typhon shouted as he discharged his shotgun from behind an overturned steel table.

  Dickie Man unloaded a tommy gun. “They should be here any moment, Boss!”

  “Then let’s go!” Typhon and Echidna ducked through a hidden passageway in the wall. Gan and a couple of Typhon’s minions followed him and Typhon peeked back out. “Minotaur! Wayfinder! Come on!”

  A spike of pain twanged my heartstrings. I still hadn’t seen Orion resurface from his assailants.

  Just then, the Minotaur crashed through the storming horde of sky blue, his halberd singing, and moments later Orion emerged from the swampy mess of a lab. Instruments and Other’s organs floated on the water as it ebbed and flowed, lapping against waists and walls and metal tables.

  “FOLLOW ME IF YOU WANT TO LIVE,” the Minotaur bellowed as he cut a path back to the hidden passageway Typhon had passed through, water splooshing like great crater blasts with each step. He reached the doorway and turned back.

  Orion hadn’t made a move to follow him. Instead, he stood transfixed, his eyes on me as Zeus gang assassins struggled to maintain their footing all around us.

  “WHAT ARE YOU DOING?”

  Typhon shouted, “Wayfinder, come on!”

  Orion blinked a few times and made toward me in a fluid rush, blades swishing at his back as he reached me, scooped me up in his arms and turned toward Typhon’s passageway.

  But there were simply too many Zeus’ers converging on it, and Typhon blurted out, “Collapse the tunnel you fool!”

  “I am SORRY,” the Minotaur said, and then there was a great crumbling crushing sound followed by splashes as the walls and ceiling around the passageway’s opening collapsed.

  “We’re trapped!” Simon screamed.

  “Wait for me!” Dickie Man shouted as his profile emerged from the brackish water, his arm shooting out and reaching for the rubble pile. But an assassin had already pounced on him, shoving his head under the sour fluid as he repeatedly thrust his dagger into the small of Dickie Man’s back.

  Orion still held me in his arms. An assassin lurched up to us from the side and Orion raised a boot and slammed it into the hooded man’s chest.

  I glanced up past Orion’s beard stubble and into his milk chocolate eyes. He met mine and winked.

  “I do like a challenge,” he said as he sloshed through the water, his mythical hunter eyes seeking the way out as he burned some time.

  There was an explosion somewhere behind us as a troop of commando gear-outfitted goat-horned satyrs emerged into the chaos.

  From my left shoulder, Garfunkel scoffed. “Cavalry’s a bit late.”

  Orion, meanwhile was running his palm over the stone wall in an almost sensual manner, like a woodworker bent over a planer. “Ah, got it,” he whispered, slipping his fingers into a small fissure in the wall of the lab behind a refrigerator that had been shoved aside. Inky blackness protruded behind the crack.

  Orion set me down against the wall and said, “The way out.” Somehow I managed to hold myself upright as he burned some additional time, allowing him to pry apart the crack in the wall with both hands until there was an opening just wide enough for us to slip inside.

  He reached out to grab me but an assassin had already lunged for me. As physically exhausted as my body felt, I managed to grasp a chunk of rock from the floor; I smashed it across my attacker’s jaw, moving with the slow, lavish effort as a goddess in an ancient Greek painting. My attacker stumbled as Orion tugged me after him through the opening and into the darkness.

  Then Orion burned a bit more time to seal the wall behind us, drenching us in a darkness thicker and richer than my mom’s minestrone.

  “Tunnels Beneath Tunnels … So Many Tunnels”

  Orion’s trusty tactical light snapped on, illuminating a claustrophobia-inducing tunnel bored through solid rock.

  “From warzone to underground tunnel …” Garfunkel mused.

  Simon gasped. “The walls are closing in! The walls are closing in!”

  I reached out and rapped my knuckles against the rock. “Calm down, Simon, the walls are not shrinking.”

  A slimy substance coated my knuckles, oozed to the stone floor, and Simon’s jaw dropped open like a nutcracker’s. “What is that!?”

  “I uh … it’s not in your Others encyclopedia?” I asked.

  Simon wavered like a sleepy toddler upon my shoulder and I reached up and cupped him in my hand, eased him into his shoulder pad where he could lie down as he hyperventilated himself into unconsciousness.

  I realized then that Orion was giving me a curious look. “It’s Bogey fluid,” he said, swiping his finger in the goo and bringing it to his nose. “It’s how they mark their territory.”

  “Like urine?”

  Orion shook his head. “More like a pus.”

  “I’m going to be sick,” Simon whispered.

  “Do Bogeys eat human flesh?” I asked.

  With a shrug, Orion said, “Oh, they’ll eat just about anything. Good thing is this is at least a few days old; it’s probably moved on. Wouldn’t want to run into one of those things in the dark.”

  Simon gulped from inside his shoulder pad and pulled his suit coat over his head.

  I held up a hand so as not to be blinded by Orion’s light. “Where are we?”

  Orion smirked. “The tunnels beneath the tunnels beneath New York City.”

  I scratched behind my head. “You sound as if you’ve been here before.”

  Flashing me a look that said Duh, Orion said, “Of course. I’ve been overseeing Typhon’s digging.”

  None of this was making any sense. Orion hated Typhon … But Typhon had injected him with the Sins Formula, essentially making him his evil servant or whatever … But digging tunnels?

  I gasped.

  Typhon was using the Wayfinder to search for the hidden power the Zeus gang had mentioned. He’d probably wasted no time in turning Orion to the Dark Side to help find it.

  “Digging for what?” I asked.

  Orion threw up a hand. “I’m … not sure.”

  Maybe it was just the lighting effects, but I didn’t quite believe Orion. He’d rescued me back at the lab instead of following Typhon so maybe the Sins Formula was starting to wear off. I just didn’t know what to believe at the moment.

  “But,” Orion continued, tapping the tunnel’s rock wall. “Typhon and his men are just on the other side. If we don’t keep moving …”

  “He’ll catch up to us—” My legs suddenly turned to rubber and I fell backward, striking my head against the sticky pus rock.

  Damn 25% energy level!

  Orion caught my arm and eased me to the floor. “You’re not well, girl,” he said.

  I rubbed the back of my head. “Girl?”

  “What do you want me to call you?” He scratched his beard stubble, the gesture somewhat ominous with the flashlight under his chin. “I do not recall your name from the Arena.”

  You know that feeling when you
r heart is tied around a heavy rock and dumped in the ocean. Yeah …

  “You don’t remember me?”

  Orion threw back his shoulders and laughed. “I remember your fighting skills. And that kick of yours …” He rubbed at his crotch, something Orion never would have done in my presence. But hey, he was still under the effects of the Seven Deadly Sins formula.

  “You don’t remember being my partner?” I said.

  He leered. “Partner? What kind of partner?”

  I raised a palm as if to cover my body from his gaze. Well, this was going … badly. Energy levels at 25%. Hundred feet underground. Stuck with a wrathful, lusty strongman who I used to have feelings for …

  “What exactly do you remember?” I asked, hoping he wouldn’t try to … I don’t know, force himself on me. I prepared to kick him just in case.

  Maybe Orion sensed me tensing up. He turned away as if in recollection. “I remember all of my first life. Ah, such a life well-lived. Until Scorpio killed me … It was in a tunnel system not unlike this one, mind you.”

  Orion’s face grew serious. “Then I was a constellation. The next thing I remember is waking in Typhon’s Arena Pit. Him, uh telling me to help guide the way for his excavation team and he’d take care of me. I didn’t much like him, but I needed gold—I mean, money.”

  Odd, I thought, considering the Orion I knew didn’t take much stock in money.

  “You don’t remember anything before that?”

  He flashed me a shadowed look. “That is what I said. Did you hit your head during our escape?”

  “I didn’t … I’m not …”

  A tiny hand tugged my left earlobe. “Theo, Orion doesn’t remember you,” Garfunkel said. “But hey, look on the bright side of life, he’s still a badass.”

  “A badass that doesn’t remember me,” I said, and Orion cocked an eyebrow at me.

  “Oh, right,” Orion said. “You’re one of those ‘crazy people’ who talk to themselves … In my time, your kind were oft said to be touched by the gods. Have you been touched?” He took a step closer to me and I could feel his breath.