I brought up the VHS, chanted my litany, and fired. I visualized the round going through her pretty head.
Instead, it hit her shield, pinging off harmlessly into the sky. The shield had stopped my bullet as well as a main battle tank.
“Try again,” she said, smiling sinisterly.
I fired twice more. Both rounds ricocheted harmlessly off her shield, into the distance. She cackled and whirled the flail.
“What’s the matter, big guy?” she taunted. “Can’t get it up?”
I fired again, holding the trigger as I sent round after round downrange, my chants becoming a scream of uninterrupted Norse, punctuated by the staccato voice of the Croatian rifle. But it was all for naught. Her buckler seemed to move of its own accord, and every time I shot, regardless of where I aimed, where I visualized, it was there, the flimsy-looking wood somehow blocking bullets imbued with the souls of the damned.
“That’s enough,” she said, lowering her body and charging.
As she did, she whipped the flail. It made a dreadful noise, somewhere between a whir and a scream. She leapt at me and brought it down, and I ducked just in time. The breeze from the weapon was red hot, and I felt flames tickle the back of my neck. I rolled right as she readjusted and slammed the flail’s head on the ground. I stood back up as quickly as I could and backpedaled, trying to create distance, but Zaira kept closing.
Something really shitty about life is that no matter what you do, it always comes down to your weaknesses. I was never good at hand-to-hand combat, and now, I found myself in a battle with a Hellborn psychopath with a flail.
I took a few more steps backward, ejected the magazine from the VHS, fired my last shot, and dropped the weapon. It wouldn’t help me anymore, but I could ensure she wouldn’t pick it up and shoot me with it.
She was moving slowly toward me, still circling her flail, looking for a perfect strike.
I pulled my knife from my boot and immediately felt overmatched. At least I had something.
I lunged forward with the knife, swiping at her.
Mistake. She nimbly jumped back and brought the flail down on my elbow.
My arm shattered with the blow, and I screamed in shock, my knife skittering away on the driveway.
She laughed; it was a harsh sound, all sadism and no mirth.
“I have no idea why my sisters were so stupid,” she spat. “Daddy told us you weren’t worth a shit in a fist fight. But some people are so addicted to their guns. America must have rubbed off on them, don’t you think?”
She swung the flail forward again. I sidestepped, and she back-handed it at my head. I hit the ground.
She whirled and slammed the flail again. I rolled over on my broken arm, trying hard to ignore the pain. I propped myself up with my other arm, but it left me vulnerable. She brought the flail down in a diagonal arc, aimed right at my torso. I scooted backward and forced myself to stand up. I avoided the flail, but not Zaira’s follow-up. She clocked me in the chin with her buckler, and I felt my teeth loosen with the force of the blow.
Her intensity had faded. This wasn’t a fight anymore; it was like a cat playing with her food. She lashed out with the flail, eyes glittering with glee as I frantically backpedaled. Fear gripped my heart. I’d always known I’d die in a really shitty way, but being killed by a half-demon with an eight centuries old weapon wasn’t one I’d anticipated.
“Not going to plead?” she mocked. “No last minute change of heart?”
“No,” I said with as much bravado as I could muster. My survival instinct screamed at me to grovel and beg for mercy. “Not at all.”
She rolled her eyes and lashed out again. The flail barely missed me, and my gasp must’ve been audible, because she smiled a predator’s smile as she whirled it again, building up momentum.
“You picked a medieval weapon,” I said. The crackling of the flames masked the sound of what I was listening for, but I heard it, nonetheless.
“I picked a weapon that works,” Zaira said. “I picked a weapon that I’ve trained with, that you can’t stop. My sisters tried guns. Those didn’t get them very far. I am going to be daddy’s favorite when I bring him your corpse!”
She swung the flail forward again, and I wasn’t quite fast enough. The spiked head impacted my chest, smashing several of my ribs. I fell backward, tumbling to the ground. Pain wracked my body, and my breathing slowed. Fatigue and blood loss dulled my reactions.
I looked up at her through blurry eyes. Zaira was triumphant as she raised the flail up and spun it around, building momentum for the killing blow.
But her focus on her medieval weapon left her susceptible to a blow from a modern one.
Amalfi’s voice crackled over the radio, which was lying a few feet away, next to my discarded athletic bag. My head was ringing, and I couldn’t understand it. I think she said something about “danger close.”
Low and slow over the pasture, Amalfi’s F/A-18 buzzed in. She was flying at a severe attack angle, maybe trying for a gun run, but something was wrong. The plane appeared to be out of control, rolling slightly as its velocity increased. What I was waiting for, the guns to fire or more bombs to drop, did not happen. Ice raced through my veins as I realized what Amalfi was doing. The plane slammed into the house, exploding and knocking Zaira off her feet. A wave of heat tore over me, and I was in more pain than I’d ever been in. I screamed as loudly as I could, not to get help, not in rage, but because once the pain reaches a certain threshold, all you can fucking do is empty your lungs.
Zaira got up and laughed, her leather lightly singed, a few smudges on her perfect face the only lasting damage.
“How pathetic!” she menaced, picking up her flail. “You were—”
She didn’t finish as Amalfi, in her full Chimera glory, leapt at her from the flames. Amalfi was a beautiful savior of animal fury, jumping over a piece of the F/A-18’s fuselage. She full-body tackled Zaira, her three heads screaming out in a hideous, roaring bleat that made me think I knew what Olympus sounded like. The Chimera was bleeding, pieces of metal and masonry embedded in her fresh wounds, but she circled Zaira menacingly in the driveway, showing no loss of composure, her predatory form ready to do what the gods had created her to do.
Zaira turned to fight Amalfi and pointed the flail at her accusingly.
“Amalfi!” she said. “You traitor! I’m going to strike you down.”
“If you knew what your mother was planning for you, you wouldn’t be so keen,” Amalfi said from all three of her mouths at once. She dropped her shoulders and jumped forward, landing next to Zaira. Zaira braced, but she wasn’t as strong as the Chimera. Amalfi stood on two legs, towering over Zaira. The half-demon braced her buckler against the chest of the Chimera. She tried to ready her flail with her off hand, but Amalfi was too close. Zaira couldn’t build up enough momentum to hurt the Chimera. After a couple of seconds, Zaira’s strength gave way; the monster’s weight was too much. Zaira’s arm dropped, and she tumbled to the ground, losing her grip on the flail as she fell. The Chimera jumped on her and held her in place, the creature’s weight firmly on Zaira’s chest. The half-demon woman put up her buckler, but Amalfi’s lion head crunched down, snapping the buckler in two.
“No!” Zaira said, her eyes wide with panic. “No!”
The Chimera growled.
“Mercy! Have mercy!” Zaira shrieked.
Amalfi’s lion head went for Zaira’s throat. Zaira was quick; she raised her spiked gauntlets and blocked her. But she forgot about the goat head. The goat’s maw opened, and a gout of flame burst out over the lion’s head into Zaira’s face. The woman screamed. The flesh on her face burned and turned charcoal black before falling off. She stopped trying to block Amalfi’s lion head, and, as soon as she dropped her guard, it was over. Amalfi’s lion head tore through Zaira’s chest, tossing entrails as she snacked. The melted flesh distorted Zaira’s death scream.
My pain faded at the sound of Amalfi consuming her master’s last da
ughter. I stumbled to my feet as she finished.
“There’s still the demoness,” Amalfi said. I thought I heard pain in her voice, but I couldn’t be sure. “And the traitor.”
I hurt all over and bled from a number of wounds. Perhaps worse, though, I feared. Zaira had nearly killed me. Had she been a little less eager to play with her food, I’d be in the Patron’s domain.
I nodded. “Amalfi, I’m…I’m not sure I’ve got this.”
“No,” Amalfi said, shaking her heads. “You are wounded. So am I. Defeating a demon and her servant in this state will be difficult.”
She changed back to her human form. She wore the remnants of a flight suit. Shrapnel had pierced her midsection and legs. A nasty, jagged cut ran from above her right eye to her chin.
“Crashing that plane was ballsy,” I said.
“The flames don’t scare me,” she responded, her voice tinged with a strange, off-key note that might’ve been pain. “But gravity does. Still, I had to do it. I saved you, didn’t I?”
I nodded, and, as I did, fresh pain wracked my nervous system, reminding me how much of me was crushed and bleeding.
“I’m hurt pretty badly,” I told Amalfi. “I think we should regroup.”
Saying each syllable hurt, making fleeing an increasingly attractive idea. We could bail out while Jerry and Mimi were still hunkered down and return to Lotus, Josiah, and Collette. To medical attention, comfort, and relief from the pain.
The thought flitted away when Amalfi shook her head.
“This is an important lesson, Nick Soren,” Amalfi said. “The mission is never over. There is always another task. Even when it looks hopeless. Even when you’re wounded. Even when you’re dying. So, come on. Pick up your rifle. There’s work to be done.”
I staggered to my feet. Every breath hurt. My badly broken right arm hung limply. My torso was nearly caved in. I coughed up some blood and wondered if one of my lungs had been pierced.
I took the rifle in my left hand. I chanted and looked down at my right hand. The rune and the ammunition still glowed.
I stumbled forward. Amalfi walked beside me, her breath punctuated by bursts of violent coughing. She still stood ramrod straight, and though I could tell she was hurt, she kept marching, a look of determination in her eyes.
We climbed the destroyed steps and opened the door to the mansion. The foyer was ablaze with the wreckage of Amalfi’s F/A-18. One of the tailfins was wedged in the mansion’s grand staircase, a painted skull and crossbones grinning through the flames. Everything smelled like brimstone and death. The flames had destroyed the rustic paintings and the antique desk in the entryway, and the chandeliers had fallen to the floor, spreading glass everywhere. Some of the wood flooring was torn up, and some was on fire.
I raised the rifle, unable to hold it higher than my hip with my functional arm. It was as close to ready as I was going to get, and, even then, the weight of the rifle was almost unbearable. I started chanting my accuracy spell, and the pulsing rune hurt. Every word was a struggle. My body was wracked with coughs, at least one of which brought up blood.
A sinister voice echoed through the burning halls, dripping with rage.
“You slay my spawn, you destroy my home, and now, you have the nerve to cross my threshold?”
Mimi appeared in front of us, shimmering into existence in the middle of the hall. All semblance of humanity was gone. She stood nearly eight feet tall, and her blood-red skin rippled over her muscles. She wore no clothing and held no weapons, but in each four-clawed hand, she held orbs of fire. Her head was still humanoid, though it was adorned with curling obsidian horns, and her eyes glowed with the fires of Hell. Scars showed her age. A tattoo of a meaningless sigil occupied the place between her breasts. She pawed the ground with her cloven hooves in anticipation of a fight.
I nodded.
“Yeah,” I said, wheezing. “That sounds about right.”
She hurled a ball of fire at me, but Amalfi intercepted it.
Amalfi said something in a language I didn’t understand. Mimi roared at her, and with a mighty backhand, sent the Chimera tumbling across the hall.
“Now, for you,” she said. Another ball of fire appeared in her hand. Her fangs glinted in the flame light, and she wound up.
“Just hold the Hell on!” yelled Jerry Vinter. He came out of the basement stairwell, wearing his Devil’s Gunmen bowling shirt. Despite his house being on fire, he looked fine. He didn’t have a smudge of ash on his face, and his hair looked picture-perfect. Mimi turned to him.
“Husband,” she said. “Don’t interfere.”
“Mimi,” he said. “This prick killed our daughters. He betrayed our trust. If you kill him, we’ll never know why.”
Mimi paused. She hefted the fireball, thinking.
Just then, my cell phone started to ring. I reached for it, letting the VHS slide down on the sling. Vinter raised his rifle, a wood furniture M14, and aimed at me.
I palmed my cell, hoping it was who I thought it was. I hit speakerphone, and Lotus’ voice shouted across the void. I didn’t understand the Latin, but I knew what she had said.
“Mismirus Antonia Brutii, I vanquish you. By the power of Flauros, Duke of Hell, I damn you to return. By the authority of the Lucifuge, I cast you back to Hell!”
When I’d asked Lotus to attempt the spell over the phone, she’d mentioned there was a chance it wouldn’t work, but Amalfi and Lotus made a compelling argument that there wasn’t any other way. The gamble paid off. It turned out we’d made a huge advance in occult magic.
Chains appeared from nowhere and wrapped around Mimi, binding her arms to her sides and her legs together. The demoness screamed as locks, each adorned with pentagrams and the symbols of Flauros, bound the chains together. A choir of Latin voices filled the room, echoing the words Lotus had chanted, as the floor of the mansion crumbled away, revealing the infernal maw of Hell. Souls of the damned gripped and pulled. Mimi resisted, and the last thing I saw of her was a taloned claw grabbing frantically at the masonry as she was dragged back to Hell to serve her time forever.
Vinter screamed, and as the portal sealed, he cried out again. He looked distraught. His face was slack with fear. His rifle wasn’t raised anymore. Fear, anger, and hatred danced in his eyes.
I chuckled, then regretted it, as I coughed up more blood and felt a little woozy.
“You bet on the wrong horse,” I told Vinter, gritting my teeth through the pain.
“You fuckin’ moron!” he spat back. “Do you realize what you just did?”
“Stopped you,” I said. I coughed, choked down some blood, and smiled. “You should’ve upgraded your cybersecurity. The vampires in Minneapolis got it all on tape, everything you and your ‘wife’ were up to.”
“Yeah?” he asked. “They get it on camera how much better we were gonna be? What kind of focus we were gonna have? How we planned to fix Hell? You got any idea what you stopped, boy?”
He waved his free hand in a sweeping gesture.
“You’re another tool of a corrupt, broken system. What you don’t understand is how fucked it is, and how much worse it’s gonna get. The only way to fix Hell would be to destroy it. You dumb fuck! You just stopped the only real shot at progress.”
“Doesn’t matter,” I said, stymying a cough so I could keep telling him off. “It’s not worth the price.”
“The fucking price?” he shouted. “The fucking price?! Are you out of your mind? You royally fucked any chance of anything on this god-forsaken planet!”
“Better than giving you and your brood control of Flauros’ domain,” I said, choking and wheezing, “at the cost of a bunch of innocent people.”
“Nobody’s innocent!” Vinter shouted, veins pulsing in his forehead. “Everyone’s crooked in their own way. You should know that, you worked for the goddamn devil! Dig long enough, and you’ll find something. Repressed sexuality, bullying and abuse, maybe even an affinity for murder. Everyone’s corrupt! Everyo
ne’s crooked! Demons and devils, at least, are honest about what they are, unlike you and the fucking hypocrites you just had to save.”
I thought of Collette Zhang.
“That’s where you’re wrong,” I said. “You and me, we’re evil. We’re scum. Not everyone is.”
I paused, choking and wheezing through another coughing fit. I felt like there was more blood in my throat this time, and the grey at the edges of my vision was advancing steadily.
“You had Amalfi in your service for years,” I continued, “but you never learned a damn thing from her.”
“She was a tool, Soren, just like you,” Vinter growled. “If you were older, you’d understand that sometimes you have to sacrifice people to get what you need.”
“Sacrifice billions of innocents?” I asked with as much sarcasm as my ruined lung would allow.
“Like you give a shit!” he screamed. “How many people did you kill for Flauros? How many of them were kids or women or others who hadn’t done a damn thing except exist?”
I raised my rifle, half-assedly, propping it against my hip like a movie gangster. Vinter was too mad or too distracted to raise his.
“What we are,” I said through a hacking cough, “is our problem.”
I stopped to recover, but I kept looking at him. He still hadn’t raised his weapon.
“And you’re right,” I continued. “When I was working for Flauros, I did take a lot of innocent lives.”
I locked eyes with Vinter. Conflict raged inside him. I steadied my breathing. I mustered my strength.
“But you, of all people, should know,” I continued, “I don’t work for the devil anymore. It’s time I started acting like it.”
He activated his speed rune with a quick burst of Norse, and I wheezed out what I hoped was good enough to make my rune hum. He brought his rifle up and fired. His shot was quicker, but mine was straighter.
His first three rounds missed, the fourth one took a chunk out of my right shoulder. I pulled the trigger. My round went right into his heart, and the blue-white flame of holy fire ignited within him.
Vinter screamed and dropped his rifle. Light gleamed from his eyes, his mouth, his ears, and his wounds. The blue-white light entered the rotten plotter’s bloodstream, piercing holes throughout his body. Little beacons of holy light shone through. His skin started to peel, chunks of flesh disappeared in blue-white puffs as the holy weapon took its toll. As he disintegrated, his skeletal fingers reached out toward me, grasping pointlessly, as his mortal form departed this world.
The Devil's Gunman Page 26
