by Jenny McKane
“I’m careful,” she replied a little too quickly. Defensive much?
This was her first operation after the great failure in Norway and everyone’s nerves were rightly tense. Hell, Sunny kept wanting to summon the demon generals as back up and she didn’t even trust them, knowing all four of them would probably kill her on the spot—either in retribution for whatever Solomon had done to her in the past or to be free of their contract with her.
And despite all of that, she was nervous enough to keep wondering if she should just bite the bullet and call them.
Asmodeus had basically voted against it, so she was doing everything she could to be brave. Be like Jericho, who seemed entirely unfazed.
Jericho and her team were ready. Sunny and her team were ready.
“Time to blow up a portal,” Eli said as they all began to move away from the vehicles and toward the small Main Street.
Eli was beside Sunny now, but still not talking to her, which was fine. She was still plenty pissed at him, too.
“Don’t do anything stupid, please,” he said as they made it to the sidewalks. According to Jericho, they had about five blocks to go before reaching the building.
“Don’t say anything stupid please,” Sunny bit back, bristling at the way he was still talking to her.
“I’m serious,” Eli began but Gabriel was behind them and barked at them both to be quiet.
“Not the time, you two,” he said. “Work out your bullshit after the mission.”
It was solid advice, but Sunny wanted nothing more than to hash out why Eli had been such a dick to her earlier.
The streets of Shooting Star were a ghost town as they walked noiselessly through it. It was a desert town with minimal greenery and a lot of rock landscaping, which Sunny hadn’t seen much of, having been raised in the Pacific Northwest. The place was flat, too, with rock formations dotting the landscape in the distance, but not so much as a hill in the town itself. It almost looked like a lunar landscape.
No, Sunny realized, it looked like the Shadow Realm. Sparse. Nearly inhospitable—there were key similarities between the desert Southwest and Azrael’s realm of Hell the more she thought about it. Arizona and Utah were beautiful in alien ways, much like the harsh climate of the Shadow Realm had been.
Could that have been part of the reason the portals kept popping up in the southwest? Climate acclimation for the demons that were coming through? Again, she had no way of knowing, but coupled with what Ronnie said about the inherent power in the land itself from the tribes and it seemed like the perfect breeding ground for building temporary portals, especially if the ones in the bigger cities kept getting taken out by the military and local citizen militias.
They kept moving.
Sunny found herself in the middle of the group with Jericho on point and her militia at the back. The archangels were between her and Jericho, the arch demon and Sin between her and the militia. Eli was walking beside her—not talking but not moving, either. He was matching her shorter strides on purpose.
Fine.
Sunny kept her eyes ahead and saw the laundromat coming up ahead on the left—it had a sidewalk sign clearly marking it. Her pulse spiked a bit, but she did everything she could not to let her face show it. She would be like Eli—nobody ever knew what Eli was feeling because his face was an emotionless mask. Sunny would do that instead of airing every fear and thought that came into her head.
Jericho moved the line off the sidewalk and out into the unused road when she approached the laundromat and the rest of the group behind her followed. Sunny was nervous to look inside the windows as the came up next to the laundromat—it was light outside with plenty of light overhead but the inside of the place was dark—really dark. She couldn’t see anything from where she was walking, but Jericho’s warning rang true.
A chill ran down her spine as she was directly in front of the place and she swallowed hard against the rising fear that she felt building. She wasn’t going to panic while everyone around her was keeping their shit together.
Shit together. Shit together. Shit together. She repeated her mantra with every step she took.
Sunny couldn’t lie—she felt an immense pressure leave her chest as soon as she’d cleared the building and, when the last of their group had put a little distance between them and the supposed demon nest, she could breathe again.
Just when Sunny figured they should be coming up on the building with the portal, she saw the building up ahead, with faded lettering painted on the side of the stucco exterior. Grayman Diner.
This was it. They were here.
Sunny was studying the side of the building when she felt something next to her. Not some thing. Someone.
She glanced down and saw Plaxo was now next to her.
“Don’t worry, Lady Hunter,” he said with a sly grin. “I was with you the whole time. You were safe.”
Beside her, she could have sworn Eli ruffled a bit at the comment he obviously heard.
“We’re gonna be fine, Plaxo,” she said, mostly to reassure herself.
She felt better now that he was here—both because she was a little worried that when the moment came for him to break the portal, something would go wrong and they’d all be in there with nothing to show for their efforts. And also because she did feel safer with him around—it had turned out that after all this time, Plaxo was the one constant in her life that had never let her down.
With her feelings of unease finally starting to ebb just a little and with a clearer head finally starting to take effect, Sunny should have known better than to relax and let her guard down.
Things always went to hell when she did, and sure enough, as soon as she thought things were going to be a simple demolition job—the windows from the laundromat a block behind them all shattered in unison in a deafening explosion that had Sunny clutching her ears against the concussive boom.
Chapter Twenty-one
Jericho spun and faced the direction of the explosion, shouting orders for everyone to find cover. They scrambled and Sunny felt Eli’s hand on her arm, dragging her into an empty building right beside them, one short of the Grayman Building they’d been headed toward.
“We need to get Plaxo next door,”
“We don’t know what’s coming,” Eli said, not letting go of Sunny as they moved through an emptied out sporting goods store. It looked like the thing hadn’t been opened in 30 years and yet they’d just breezed right through the door. It made Sunny think that demons had been here, too. Or that maybe they were still there.
Scanning the surroundings, she moved around Eli and followed the side wall to the back of the store.
“What are you doing?” Eli called, doing his best to keep his voice down.
“Still with me, Plaxo?” Sunny whispered as she moved.
“Yes, Lady Hunter,” Plaxo’s voice came from right behind her. He was invisible again, and wisely so.
Outside the store, she heard the crack of gunfire and the screech of something other-worldy--like a giant frog-bird, Sunny mused for just a half second.
Eli cursed and ran toward her, motioning for her to get down.
“Stay still, damn it,” he cursed again. “You’re gonna get yourself killed.”
It irritated her that Eli still thought of Sunny as some breakable, porcelain cargo that he needed to keep from getting dinged and dented. He’d never been like this before and it was pissing her off.
“You’re not my nanny, Eli,” she grumbled, finally finding what she was looking for.
The emergency exit.
She wasn’t sure exactly where the door lead or what was on the other side of it, but she knew that it was now up to them to find their way to the portal in the next building or more of whatever was outside crowing like a giant reptile/avian nightmare would likely cross over and join the party.
Another loud smash came from the front of the store, this time followed by the distinct sound of Metatron yelling. Eli couldn’t help but notic
e and Sunny saw the conflict on his face. He wanted to check on the archangel, but he’d also somehow made up his mind that he was also Sunny’s personal bodyguard. Foolish man.
“Go check on him,” she said, and Eli hesitated.
“Don’t move, Sunshine,” he demanded, his finger out and pointed at her. “Don’t you fucking dare move from this spot. Do you hear me?”
There was another emotion flashing across his face that Sunny was having a hard time placing.
She gave him a nod and a promise and he turned and raced toward the front, drawing his sword.
When he disappeared from sight, she turned back toward the exit.
“Ready?”
Directly in front of her, her dream demon appeared.
“Ready, Lady Hunter.”
*****
They shut the door to the sporting goods store noiselessly and Plaxo went invisible again, but not without promising to be directly behind her.
“We’ll get through this together,” he promised her.
She was going to hold him to it.
Sunny was not completely on her own, her only companion going radio silent so that he wouldn’t be detected. Someone seeing the situation from the outside might think Plaxo was hiding, but Sunny knew better.
He was a tactician and he knew he’d have a sure kill if he could attack without being seen first.
Jericho had said they believed the portal was in the back of the diner, so Sunny studied the building in front of her and followed it back toward a small courtyard and backdoor.
As soon as she crossed the threshold for the small back area, Sunny felt a cold tinge in the air--signaling a strong shift in magic. They were definitely on the right track, and Sunny hoped Jericho’s intel panned out. That would make this hair-brained idea of hers to go on alone much, much easier.
Earlier, she had been worried about what they’d all do if they encountered lock doors--nothing would wake potential sleeping demons like kicking a door in S.W.A.T. style. Lucky for her, the back door and three back windows had been not just broken, but entirely destroyed. Something big (or a few something bigs) had obviously come through here and made the majority of the back wall a memory.
Sunny finally drew her own sword and moved closer toward the empty space where the back door had once stood.
She listened.
It was eerily silent in the Grayman Building, and yet sounds of fighting could be heard from the street on the other side of the alley. Their friends were still fighting the hidden demons. She briefly worried there might be more lying in wait--could feral demons have been prepared for their arrival somehow?
It didn’t matter now. If her hunch was correct, and she was pretty confident it was, they were really close to the kitchen. And that was where the portal was supposed to be.
If she could have gotten away with it, Sunny would have climbed up the six steps into the building on her hands and knees just to be quieter. She really wanted to catch anything that might still be living in there by surprise.
As it were, she figured it wouldn’t be the most tactical way to enter, so she moved slowly and lightly on the balls of her feet with her sword in front of her, her eyes scanning the darkness just up ahead. She stopped, freezing altogether, and closed her eyes. Listening. Sensing. Searching the darkness for signs of anything at all. She stayed silent and present just as Kiku had taught her during their never-ending sitting sessions. Just as Kiku had taught her, Sunshine didn’t feel anything. She didn’t think, she didn’t wonder, and she didn’t try to analyze the situation for a few short, glorious moments.
Kiku had likened it turning everything in her mind off. “No thinks,” she had said. “No pollution. No confusion.”
No confusion. It was what Sunny needed right now. So she listened.
And she heard nothing, her gut telling her that it was safe to move forward with Plaxo.
She moved noiselessly up the steps and plunged herself into the darkness without a second thought, surprising herself. There was something to what Kiku had taught her and when she got the chance, she was going to send the elderly nun a thank you note.
As her eyes adjusted, Sunny was glad to see that she hadn’t been wrong--there were no demons sleeping on the stainless-steel counter tops or hiding under the range top. She moved forward even more and looked for any sign of a portal, large or otherwise. Asmodeus had warned her that it might not look like the portals she had encountered in the past year--the temporary portal might not be as big or solid looking as the ones she’d used.
Her eyes scanned the darkness, trying to look for any abnormality in the scene.
Nothing.
“Still with me?” she whispered in the darkness.
“Still with Lady Hunter,” Plaxo replied. Good.
They could do this. They had each other.
There was no other way at this point and no telling when their friends would be able to get to them.
Toward the center of the long, rectangular shaped kitchen, there was an open doorway that led to the dishwashing sinks and dish racks. The small side room had two open doorways that led back into the cooking part of the kitchen and as Sunny was looking at the other doorway, her eyes fell on it.
It was small, and inky purple around the edges, denoting a darker magic had built it.
“Found it,” Sunny said and Plaxo materialized.
“Great work, Lady Hunter,” the dream demon said as he moved around her and jumped on the drying station, moving toward the thing.
“Do you need long?” she asked. “I can cover for you, but I’m not sure how long.”
“Plaxo has never seen something like this before,” he said. “Can’t say.”
If she heard him correctly, Plaxo sounded a little perturbed at the possibility that Sunny was rushing him.
“Okay,” she said, trying to soothe him. “No worries. I’ll make it work.”
Plaxo started doing whatever it was that dream demons did when pulling portals apart, muttering in a language she didn’t understand. Was it part of the process? Or was Plaxo pissed off and muttering curse words about her?
The thought brought a very brief, very small smile to her face. She doubted it, but it was still funny.
When she moved toward the second door in the dishwashing room, she found that it led to what she supposed was the dining room. The front windows had been papered over, hardly letting any light through, but from what Sunny could see, the chairs and tables had been pushed to one side of the space. She saw the front doors and glanced behind her, where Plaxo was still working on the portal.
She worried the front door might still be locked, making it harder for their team to reach them. Making a split-second decision, she ran through the open doorway and out into the dining room, moving her feet until she made it to the double glass doors, which were still unbroken and whole.
She pulled the door and cursed when it didn’t move. It was locked.
“Shit,” she cursed, looking around her, as if a set of keys would just be lying around.
There weren’t any. She briefly considered taking one of the chairs against the wall and throwing it through one of the giant floor-to-ceiling windows to clear the way for the rest of her team but remembered that this was a two-story building and she still wasn’t sure what was upstairs. It’d be an awful lesson to learn if she were to wake up a nest of demons while she was on her own.
No, she needed to stay quiet and keep Plaxo safe while he destroyed the portal. She was fine. She could do this. Hell, she’d chosen to leave Eli back in the sporting goods store when he’d explicitly told her not to.
She shook her head as she ran back to the dishwashing room. Maybe she’d left just because he’d been so damn bossy.
Sunny had likely made her friendship with Eli even more awkward with that move and she was certain there was going to be a huge fight in their future when he finally got a hold of her. But part of her wasn’t shying away from it--he needed to learn how to talk to her and
how to treat her.
She might second guess herself in her mind all the time, but those thoughts were private and she worked hard to keep them to herself, never letting on how lost she sometimes felt. Despite all that, he didn’t have a right to treat her like she was helpless.
She wasn’t.
She was scared, but she kept moving and acting anyway.
And he could kiss her ass if he refused to see her as a job he had to fulfill.
Not that Sunny had anything to prove, but part of her really hoped that she and Plaxo could get the portal destroyed before the group joined them--not only would it mean that they would likely get out of the Grayman Building without making any sort of enemy contact, but she’d have completed an important mission without the usual hand-holding.
Back in the portal room, Plaxo was concentrating hard on the bottom right corner of the small portal.
“Do you need anything, Plaxo?” she asked, knowing she should probably leave him alone, but worried that he might need something not within reach.
“Just a few moments more,” he said without turning to face her. He was totally focused on what he was doing and back to speaking gibberish.
There was a loud bang that resonated somewhere from the area near the back courtyard--where they’d come through the back door.
She moved toward the first doorframe to get a better look, and not seeing anything, she moved further back into the cooking part of the kitchen toward the stairs she’d come up.
Nothing seemed immediately out of the ordinary, but just as she was going to move a little further to look in the alley way, she heard a crash come from the room Plaxo was working on. Then there was the sound of a struggle and Sunny was moving as quickly as her feet could carry her, her left hand holding her runed blade and her right hand reaching for the obsidian blade she held strapped to her thigh.
Rounding the door frame, she saw a small, red demon on Plaxo’s back, it’s large mouth open and full of sharp teeth that where trying to rip the dream demon’s throat out.
