by Brian Fuller
More thrashing. Goliath’s Virtus flared and pulsed into the Possessed. The Possessed woman’s limbs shook.
“I don’t know!” Kish hissed. “We take them all. Cain sorts them out.”
“Then we’re done,” Goliath said. The evil spirit was peeled from the woman’s body as if dragged by the neck and was sucked into the bullet like light into a black hole. The bullet rotated and shook of its own accord, and Goliath clamped her hand around it and stood.
“Nasty little fart, that one,” Goliath grumbled.
Helo poked his head around the corner again. The Dreads were storming through doors on the second floor now and calling “Clear” to each other after every room. Were they an actual, trained unit? Perhaps Cain had found a higher class of Dreads to do his bidding.
“Gotta go,” Helo said.
Goliath swallowed the bullet. “They stop wiggling inside Ash Angel bodies. Don’t worry. It’ll be expelled at dawn. I’ll grab the girl’s pistol. Not much against Dreads, but better than nothing.”
Helo gripped his shotgun tightly and burst from the entryway, boots pounding the pavement. He kept his eye on the window three stories up. Jumping through it would be no small feat, but the vision said he could do it. When he reached the cross street, he sent a burst of Strength into his legs and jumped with everything he was worth. The pavement fell below him, and he pulled his legs up to his chest, turning his right shoulder to the window. The impact shattered the glass, and he fell onto a bed underneath it, rolling off it onto his feet to find himself in a dim bedroom. The dusty wood floor squeaked and popped with every footstep.
“Who’s there?” someone shouted from the kitchen.
Goliath sailed through the window a second later, glass clinking everywhere as the bed gave way and crashed to the ground.
“We’re Michaels,” Helo shouted as Goliath righted herself. She stepped in front of him and walked out with her hands up, and Helo followed her out. In the vision, the second he had exited the bedroom, he had heard footsteps and movement outside the door, but as yet, all was quiet.
An Ash Angel male, a huge one, stood in front of a fridge holding a Big Blessed Rifle. He looked the part of a bodyguard with a dark suit and tie and a comms unit in his ear. His face registered relief.
“Wasn’t expecting the Michaels for another fifteen minutes,” he said. “I’m Bull. You’re Tiny Goliath, right?”
“Just Goliath. This is Helo. It’s just the two of us for now,” Goliath said. “We took a shortcut.”
“The Helo?” he said.
“Yeah, yeah,” Goliath confirmed. “Who are you protecting?”
“You don’t know?” Bull said.
“No time to explain,” Goliath said. “Who is it?”
“Tela Mirren,” he answered. “You know, the singer? She’s in the panic room with Corinth and Scarlet. It’s behind the fridge.”
Helo clenched his gun. Cain was after Tela! How had he found out about her involvement? “Why aren’t you in there with her?” Helo asked, keeping his gun trained on the door.
“I just came out before you came in,” he said. “I was listening for signs we’d been followed.”
“Yeah, you’ve been followed,” Helo said. “Big time. Let’s keep our voices down. Get in there and seal the door.”
“It’s not one of the new panic rooms that can survive a nuclear blast,” Bull explained as the sound of boots in the hallway filtered into the room. “It’s really just a well-hidden room behind a fridge.”
“Give me your rifle and pull the fridge out,” Goliath ordered. “If we can all get in there, they might search the room and keep on going.”
The pounding of boots and the cracking down of the apartment door one over set the Michael bodyguard into motion. Wordlessly, he handed Goliath the rifle and went to the fridge.
“Clear!” someone next door yelled. “Next one.”
“Forget it,” Helo said. “It’s too late.”
The vision had caught up with them now, the heavy tread of Dread boots right outside the door. Goliath took cover behind the kitchen counter. Helo stood in the middle of the modest living room as he had foreseen. He knew exactly when and where to shoot. Three, two, one.
Blam! One shot, head high, right through the door.
Blam! Another shot, this one through the drywall two feet to the left of the door.
Blam! The last even lower, also through the drywall, at a little over hip level.
The slugs splintered the wood and sent drywall dust spraying into the air to mingle with the curses of the men on the other side. Helo dove for the kitchen floor as shotgun and rifle blasts tore through the door and the wall, debris flying everywhere. If he had stayed in the middle of the room, he would have ended up in pieces. As it was, it seemed the Dreads wanted to take the entire wall apart, the racket of the bullets deafening as they shredded furniture, light fixtures, and everything in between.
Two Dreads rushed through the wrecked door, guns blazing, one clearly using Speed. Helo joined Goliath and Bull behind the counter, but the old cabinets and scratched Formica were no match for Dread rifles. A slug struck Helo in the back, the body armor shielding holding but the force pitching him forward into a cabinet. Bull took a shot to the left shoulder, flinging him to the floor. Goliath popped up and let loose with a volley, blasting the head of one Dread and sending the speedy one scrambling away. She ducked back behind the counter, nodding to Helo.
Helo surged to his feet and blasted wildly at the Dread who was moving in a blur back and forth across the littered living room like a demented video-game boss. A simultaneous shot from the Dread took Helo in the chest, the slug caving in his armor and crunching his chest. The terrific force sent him back into Bull, who pushed him away. Helo didn’t know if he had even scratched the Dread, but the shooting had stopped. Bull popped up as Helo came to a crouch, Goliath at his side. The speedy Dread’s hands were a blur as he dug in his vest for ammunition.
Bull charged, and Goliath Hallowed the floor. The Dread winced and darted for the door, but the hallow made him slow. Bull dove after him and caught his ankle, and Helo figured once Bull had you, you weren’t getting out of his beefy grip. Helo took the opportunity to reload, fishing shells from his pants. As Bull dragged the flailing Dread back into the room, Goliath moved cautiously out of the kitchen, gun pointed at the empty doorway.
Then, with a thunderous yell and a flared aura, Bull put his fist through the Dread’s face and into the floor. A floor joist or two snapped, and a section in the middle of the living room groaned and then fell downward, Bull and the mushy-headed Dread collapsing inside with it.
“Ground and pound,” Goliath said. “Nice. You okay down there, Bull?”
“I’m good,” Bull said.
Helo skirted around the hole and edged up to the doorway. His initial three shots had taken the heads off three of the Dreads, but there should have been more bodies. More than two had been shooting up the wall. The decommissioned Dreads’ equipment surprised him. These weren’t loser Dreads scrounged up from a bar. Their rifles—the same kind Helo had found in the truck—had tactical flashlights strapped to the top. The Dreads even had body armor and comm units in their ears.
“We gotta get Tela out,” Helo said. “I think more Dreads are on the way. That wasn’t three SUVs-worth of Dreads.”
“Agreed,” Goliath said.
Helo snapped his shotgun up. Shouting in the stairwell at the far end of the dark hall told him their time was short. But there was something else, a dark feeling that slid over Helo’s heart. A Sheid was coming. By the look on Goliath’s face, she felt it too. Helo checked his belt. The sanctified knife was still there. They had to get Tela out. With more Dreads and a Sheid, her protection wouldn’t last long.
“We got more on the way,” Goliath yelled down to Bull. “With a Sheid.”
Then it hit him. The hole in the floor!
“Goliath, get them out of the panic room and send them down the hole to Bull. T
hey’ve already cleared the second floor and won’t be looking down there. You can get them out of the building while I keep their attention up here.”
“Nice,” Goliath said. “Hold them off.”
“I’m going across the hall to draw their fire,” Helo said, peeking out the door. Flashlight beams played on the wall opposite the stairwell, the hollow echoing of boots and jostling equipment ever closer.
Goliath yanked on the fridge to expose the hidden room. Helo sprinted across the hall and bashed the adjacent door down, finding a room full of dusty furniture like the one he’d just left. He had to draw their fire to him. Drywall was no match for the bullets they were flinging, and a stray bullet would kill Tela in an instant.
By the ruckus on the stairwell, there were lots of Dreads, more than he could possibly deal with alone. He exhaled to calm himself. All he had to do was slow them until Tela escaped, then he could bail. The Sheid would have to wait.
After scooting forward, he knelt, leaned around the doorway, and fired a warning shot at the top of the stairwell some forty feet away. The advance up the stairwell stopped. Helo pumped the shotgun. Seven shots left. He had to make them count.
A quick glance back at the other room revealed Corinth lowering Tela down the hole. Goliath helped another glowing Ash Angel woman who seemed familiar, but it was too dim to get a good look at her. Helo willed them to hurry, turning his attention back to the stairwell where the torching aura of the Sheid grew stronger. If only it were full daylight! Darkness played to the Sheid’s advantage, and the dawn had yet to gain its strength in the shadows of the urban ruin.
He put the butt of the gun against his shoulder and sighted down the barrel. And then it rounded the corner. Shedim could appear however they wanted, and this one strode forward in a snappy three-piece suit morphed to look like Cain, its black hair and dead, dark eyes menacing.
Two Possessed carrying pistols flanked it, and Helo’s heart fell. By Ash Angel dictum, he couldn’t kill them. Would he turn into a Dread if he did? Were there exceptions?
He risked a warning shot at the Sheid. It was useless. The bullet punched through its chest but barely put a hitch in its step. The hole sealed in an instant, the suit—just a creation of Vexus—restored to perfection. The Possessed opened fire, and Helo shrank into the room, bullets ripping through the wallboard and into his body armor and legs.
He fell to the floor, landing hard on his back as the bullets whizzed above him like angry bees. An instant later, the Sheid arrived, its face a sneer as it towered over him from the doorway ten feet away. Helo could make out Goliath jumping into the hole in the room across the hallway, her landing loud enough to attract the attention of the Possessed, who diverted cautiously toward the room.
Helo struggled to get up, his legs balky from the gunshots. The best he could manage was his knees. And then the Sheid torched him. It was a powerful wave of blinding, ethereal red. The blast of Spirit Shock begged him to dig up the graves of bad memories and stare at the corpses of the hateful events of his past life. His father’s neglect. His wife’s adultery. His self-doubt. But it didn’t stick.
His vision cleared. He was still on his knees, but the Sheid had come closer now, its legs right in front of him. Helo snapped his head up, finding a dark sword conjured from the Sheid’s energy in its hands and ready to fall. In one fluid motion, Helo pulled the sanctified knife from his belt and stabbed the Sheid’s foot.
The Sheid exploded into the dark cloud of Vexus used to create it. The glowing blade of the sanctified knife attracted the Vexus almost like it was sucking it in, and in seconds the divine light of the weapon had burned away the darkness. The Sheid was gone.
And so was the aura around the dagger. Some weapons could kill several Shedim, the virtue of others lasted one time. Helo tossed the used blade aside and peered through the open door of the other room to find the two Possessed he had seen before and two Dreads he hadn’t standing by the hole. They turned their weapons on him.
Helo rolled right out of their line of sight, floor creaking, coming to his belly and pointing his gun at the doorway. Apparently they had decided against the “take the wall apart with bullets” strategy. The floor in the hallway squealed as they approached. Perhaps they would try a good old-fashioned bull rush.
How could he survive it? Who knew what Bestowals the Dreads had, and if he couldn’t blow the Possessed away, they could fire at him with impunity. He wasn’t sure if he could walk at all, but even if he got to his feet, he doubted he could manage much more than a stagger. He shifted to get a better angle on the door, and the floor whined again. If the floor was weak, he could even the odds by going through it like Bull had done. The Possessed didn’t have the toughened bodies of Dreads and Ash Angels and might be reluctant to drop ten feet into a hole.
A Dread crossed the threshold as Helo raised his fist and gathered his Strength. Combined with the awful crack of his fist on the floor, the Dread’s shot was deafening. A bullet rocked Helo’s left arm, nearly tearing it off, as the floor groaned and yawned open. He slid face-first into the hole in company with wood and a cloud of insulation. He landed awkwardly on his mangled arm and rolled onto his back, his shotgun lost in the debris.
The Dread’s read aura glowed near the edge of the hole above him. It stepped cautiously forward, flashlight beam creating a column of floating dust as it darted around to find him.
Helo shifted, trying to get the weapon he had dropped. And then a friendly aura was there beside him. Goliath.
Two shots thundered from her BBR, mushing the Dread’s face. He fell backward, rifle falling into the hole and landing on Helo’s legs.
“There’s another one up there,” Helo reported as he tried to extricate himself from the debris. “And two Possessed. Where’s Tela?”
Goliath kept her aim trained on the hole and put a finger to her lips. Helo kept still. The floor above them creaked with heavy but careful footsteps. Goliath trained her rifle on the sound and let loose three shots, blowing a tight hole in the ceiling. The remaining Dread swore and tumbled through the larger hole, one of his legs taken off at the knee.
A white aura pulsed out of Goliath, covering the floor, its hallowing effect bringing mortal pain back to the Dread’s injured body. He screamed in agony and grabbed his shattered leg. Helo used his good arm to push himself up to sitting, Goliath using a single shot to the head to extinguish the Dread’s cries of pain.
“At least two Possessed left,” Helo said, grabbing the rifle near his legs. “I think more Dreads are around somewhere.”
Goliath backed toward him, rifle still aimed at the ceiling. The footsteps had stopped, and Helo wondered if the Possessed had given up and run off. Or maybe they had gone to find more Dreads.
Goliath extinguished the hallow and grabbed Helo’s body armor at the neck. Her aura flared again, and with angelic Strength, she dragged him backward through the dust toward an open door leading into a bedroom like the one they had jumped into. The window was open to a fire escape.
“Sheid’s gone, right?” she asked.
“Yeah.”
“Good. I get the next one. Can you still shoot?” Goliath said as she leaned him against the bed frame.
“Yes, but my one-armed aim will suck,” he said. “If it’s Possessed, can we shoot them if they shoot us?”
Goliath hopped over the bed and looked out the window. “Not according to the rules. I’ve broken arms and legs, though.”
“Where’s Tela?” Helo asked.
A car started somewhere outside, and then tires squealed, engine racing.
“There they go,” Goliath said as she reloaded her rifle.
“A ride would have been nice,” Helo said, checking the magazine of the gun he had snagged. Four shots left.
Goliath nodded. “It was a five seater, and Bull took up two. Besides, it would be hard to explain to a normal why you’re not dead or squirting blood everywhere.”
“I’d take the trunk,” Helo said. “How
long till the other Michael team shows up?”
“Five minutes,” Goliath reported, moving to the door and taking up position. “We’ll catch a ride out with them.”
Helo kept the Dread rifle trained on the door, though the building felt empty of everything but settling dust. The Michael team would burn all the Dread hearts and try to round up the Possessed for exorcism, and Helo hoped they would come soon. He was in no condition to fight.
Knowing the Dreads had come for Tela again set his teeth on edge. The first time the Dreads had taken her was under Cain’s supervision for the express purpose of luring Ash Angels into a trap. Was this the same? Her song lyrics had led them to Cain’s ships, but only Ash Angels knew about that. If Cain had somehow managed to find out, what did he want with her? More revenge?
The sound of the retreating car faded, and Goliath relaxed. “They’re clear,” she said. “If we hear anyone coming, we’ll bail. Until then, we stay here until the Michael team shows up. You know what kind of trouble you’re in when we get back, right?”
“You mean Aclima?” Helo said. He could only imagine what was in store.
Goliath’s eyes drilled into his. “I mean me.”
Chapter 11
Cookie
The Michael team stormed onto their floor several minutes later, though Helo didn’t have the legs to go greet them. Goliath jogged out to the hall and chatted with them for several minutes. Helo couldn’t hear a word she was saying from where he sat propped up against the bed with his shot-up legs. Goliath returned to the room a few minutes later, a female Michael in tow.
“That’s Helo,” Goliath said to her. “Yeah, that Helo, so don’t ask. Helo, this is Sade. She can heal so you won’t have to suffer the indignity of having your butt carried out of here.”
“Great.” It really was.
Sade was geared up for a war she had missed by ten minutes. She had the jet-black hair, brown skin, and facial features of someone from India. She smiled nervously as she set her Big Blessed Rifle on the bed and knelt by him.
