“Yeah,” I whisper, “right.” Blaze makes his way towards the exit but I stop him again, urgency apparent in my voice. “Another thing—you checked me right? Ran the tests? That demon that was torturing me tried to possess me,” I confess. “They drugged me with a special mix of Sphinx.”
“Yeah, we did,” Blaze says with slanted brows. “Even injected you with a bit of Holy Water to stabilize you and dilute whatever they gave you.”
“Good.” I smile weakly.
“I can’t help but be more than a little freaked out by your string of questioning, Sailor. What’s up? You don’t think I’m competent without you around?”
“No, Blaze. It’s not that. I’m sorry. It’s just that I barely remember anything before your new friends rescued me…I don’t even remember if I was conscious. I’m trying to form a timeline, that’s all. I hardly remember anything outside of the brawl from the coffee house and even that’s fuzzy.”
“I was kidding.” He chuckles but my face remains still. I’m in no mood for jokes. “But, yeah,” he resumes after reading my expression, his tone more serious. “You were thrashing a bit during the ride back home. After a while you calmed down once we injected you.”
My heart jumps in my chest before going eerily still. Damn it. I don’t remember any of that. “Did I say anything? Was it violent?”
“No,” Blaze says as he pauses to look at the footage that plays in his mind. “No…you were just rambling…like you were dreaming or something. At first it seemed like you were having a nightmare, but after a while—when you finally calmed down, you just seemed glad to make it out of there alive. Could have been because of the Sphinx, but the injection cleared that up. Anything else before I go?”
“No. Thanks.”
“Yell if you need anything.”
“More like groan.” I smirk.
“Good to have you back.” Blaze smiles and I watch him as he leaves. The door slams shut, and once again, I’m alone.
I lethargically lower myself so that my back rests against my cot, careful not to aggravate my distressed body. I press my head into my pillow and close my eyes. The dim lighting that blankets the room succumbs to the darkness, my eyelids shutting out any light trying to illuminate my field of view. As I try my best to recover, a sense of dread overtakes me and an image of Alfonse burns into my mind. In a rush of panic, my eyes shoot open but no one is there. “Al isn’t watching me. I’m alone,” I mutter in a failing attempt to anchor myself to reality. In the silence that permeates my room, I can only faintly hear the muffled musings of the other hunters on the opposite side of my prison door. A dull thud registers somewhere outside my door and my heart flat-lines. I look for the nearest weapon, but there’s nothing in sight to defend myself with that’s worthwhile. I’m helpless.
I stare in speculation as I wait for a horde of demons to burst through my door, but they never come. A few seconds later, I hear the hunters laugh. The tension leaves my body, but their collective laughter reminds me of the demon lurking inside of me and just how fucked I am. If only they knew.
Chapter 3: My Darkest Night
As more time passes, I can’t help but wonder how I got here. My father always wanted me to live a normal life. I was just too stubborn to ever take him up on it. If I would have just done what he said back then, where would I be now? Demonless? Partying it up at a bar? Caught up with a decent guy? Would he really have wanted that, and am I stupid for not looking the other way? It’s hard to say. I was never supposed to be there. I remember when he kissed me on the forehead and told me to stay safe. That he would be back by morning, and if not, don’t go looking for him. He wanted me to forget him, but how could I? How could I forget any of the things we’d been through? My mom was killed by demons, my dad hunted them. How could I go back to normal, especially after seeing so much?
I remember watching him walk out the encampment, his shotgun patting his back with every step as he it carried over his shoulder. He was one in a group of five others, some I knew, and some were just faces. It was one of those guys who gave him the lead. He never told me his name, but only that he was a friend. Whenever they talked about the operation, my dad always made sure to leave me out of it. That it was his fight. He always preached about how he wouldn’t know what to do if he lost me, but I guarantee you he never thought about how I would feel if I lost him. What a shitty way to leave your daughter—armed to the brim with guns with revenge on your mind. It wasn’t even a real goodbye. He was just there one moment and gone the next. I wasn’t even allowed to cry. I mean, I knew he loved me…he had to based on the things he did for me. It’s just that…I don’t know…he was tough, even when he didn’t have to be.
He was my dad, not a mentor—my dad. And that was why I followed even though he told me not to; I had to because he was virtually all I had left.
Four months ago
Not long after they left, I snuck out and tracked them until I finally made it to where the ambush was to take place. I was late. And that was probably the only reason I was still alive.
My father was one of five from our crew but there were bodies everywhere outside the warehouse, both hunters and vessels. I had seen so much already that I was far from squeamish. If anything, seeing the trail of dead bodies only gave me a greater resolve to find my dad. So I did what anyone else would do. I went in deeper.
I approached the facility as stealthily as I could, using the bushes as cover while I moved at a snail’s pace. It was eerily silent and the air reeked of iron and sulfur. I was only thirty minutes behind them, if that, and it was already starting to look like a massacre. Just like my dad taught me, I used the shadows to scope the area, taking cues from the environment and being patient. There were no guards, no rotations, and no backup. It was almost as if God himself touched down and left in the blink of an eye.
As I neared the entrance to the facility, I scavenged over the body of a dead hunter. He was bit on the neck and died from blood loss. For a split second, I thought it was the work of a vampire. It would make perfect sense and account for the feeling of wandering eyes I couldn’t account for, but the wound was more of a tear and not a puncture. It was messy. Between his fingers, blood had leaked all the way down from his hands unto his jeans. He didn’t die immediately. I’m almost sure he bled out. Vamps aren’t the type to waste blood. It’s their livelihood.
I started with the folds of his jacket and then worked my way down to his pants pockets and then eventually to his socks. I managed to get an extra knife and another gun—only two shots fired from the clip before he died. He was caught off guard. I remember having the feeling of hopelessness, but pushed it down into my gut, silencing the voice in my head that begged me to leave. I turned over my shoulder one more time to stake out my surroundings before I opened the door to the worn-down facility—a front for whatever shit was really going on behind closed doors.
It was just like the other strongholds the guys used to tell me about when they told their stories. Cold, damp, and evil. To the naked eye, it looked entirely different than the outside. Modern even, but it was more of a false comfort. I was in demon territory.
With my gun drawn, I walked slowly and stayed near the light. The red hue that was cast overhead made the walls blend in with everything else. Anyone could be watching from the dark spots the emergency lights failed to reach, and depending on what I was facing, I would only have a fraction of a second to react.
I clutched the grip of my pistol as I traveled deeper into the compound, passing torture devices and interrogation rooms, prison cells, and what looked to be a lab. The voice in my head yelled at me to turn back, but I was too stubborn to turn away. I had to find my dad.
It was hard to tell at first if that’s where everyone was, but as I got closer to the basement entrance the walls began to leak with the sound of bullets and muffled screams. No doubt it was them. I took a breath before I busted the door down, intent to shoot anything that wasn’t human. The screams magnified tenfo
ld now that I was on the backlines. The dark corridor that led to the main room occasionally flicked with the light of flashing muzzles and echoed with the sound of empty slugs clinking on the concrete floor. Until suddenly, it stopped. My heart forgot to beat as I paced myself through the end of the hall and I found myself on the edge of a room surrounded by the dead and dying. Two men near the center of the room stood back-to-back, overlooking the disfigured vessels and their fallen friends. Both of them were wounded and bleeding. Neither said a word.
Further into the room, there was an altar. After I noticed it, it was easy to spot the runes and sigils outlined on the floor—even with the bodies that covered it. It was a summoning ritual…but there was no way to tell if it was complete or not.
I softly stepped forward into the room and the cold touch of a pistol caressed the side of my temple.
“Who are you?” The pistol ground deep against my skull and I heard the click of the hairpin.
“I’m—” I began to turn, but he pushes the gun against my head.
“Keep look’in straight! No sudden movements!”
“Don’t shoot, don’t shoot! It’s me! Sailor!” I voiced in a panic. “Joel’s daughter! Joel Ray!” My words seemed to connect with the man who held my life in his hands, but only after I just about pissed my pants.
“Well I’ll be Goddamned,” he said with a chuckle as he lowered his gun away from my head. “What are you doing down here at a time like this, little girl?”
“I…came here to help.” It was only after I spoke that I realized how stupid I sounded.
“Help?” he scoffed. “It’s more like survive. You should have listened to your old man, kid. Being here isn’t doing him any favors right now. He wanted you to sit this one out because he knew it was dangerous. What good would it do if you died out here? What then?” he scowled.
“Well, I’m here now, whether you like it or not,” I responded defiantly.
“Yeah and you’re not leaving unless you kill all of those things.”
“Things?” I scanned the room, but only saw what my eyes allowed in the unsettling darkness that blanketed my surroundings. The old man shook his head in quiet disappointment.
Apparently, I was too naive to know just how much danger I was in.
“The place is surrounded with sweepers. Your pops ever told you about them?” I looked into his eyes and there was an aura of sympathy behind his gaze. Almost like he felt sorry for me. I knew I was in over my head, but he the way he watched me was as if I had just signed my life away.
“Sweepers? No,” I said, careful not to sound too anxious. I glanced over at the two men in the center of the room. Their backs still pressed against one another while they continued to look for any sudden movements. The older man’s attention was elsewhere as well. His eyes were constantly moving, even though the room was still. “Are they invisible?”
“No, that would be easier. You saw all those bodies outside?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, that was from only two of them giving a helping hand. We didn’t know they had access to that sort of thing in this coven. It’s pretty high-level stuff. The demonic energy needed to generate one of them is enormous. Two is unheard of.”
“Are they super-fast? Can they possess? What are we up against?”
“They’re like massive earthworms from Hell. They’re about the size of teenager. Jagged teeth and claws for fingers. They have no legs, but they’re fast as shit.”
“How?”
“Because they can phase through the walls or anything really. They’re not completely solid. On our plane of existence, they look black and cloudy. Pure evil with red eyes and a set of choppers mama couldn’t even love. When we came down here, we thought we’d gotten them, but it turned out that they had three more to safeguard the ritual.”
“Three? But you said—”
“I know what I said,” he snapped. “Whatever they were planning ran deeper than what we knew. To amass that much energy, it would have taken years of highly trained witches and hundreds of rituals. That or outside help. It was stupid to go in not expecting the worst, and now we’re paying for it,” he said before sighing. “Lucky for us, we got one of them and the other two are hurt. Our bullets seem to do the trick. Seems like they can’t phase through anything blessed, and they need to become solid to attack. You good on ammo? These things are tough as shit.”
I emptied my clip and checked my bullet count before nodding and sliding it back in. “I think so.”
“Demons like this aren’t something you see that often, so you see, there’s a reason Joel wanted you out of this. Dealing with these fuckers at a disadvantage doesn’t exactly come with a high survival rate, Little Ray.”
“Have you seen him—my dad? I haven’t found him anywhere. He isn’t dead yet, is he?”
“No. He’s hurt but he’s alive in there with Sam and Logan. When they got the jump on us, Joel was on the front line. Pumped three rounds into the bastard with a shotgun before he got thrown to the other side of the room. That’s when the others came and started to wreak havoc. We scared em’ away, but they’ll be back soon to finish what they started. They’re not the type to run away, especially when we’re the ones at a disadvantage. Shit, we couldn’t run even if we wanted to. Too many casualties and not enough bullets. Things’ll only get worse the longer it carries on. Looks like they’re bound to this territory to safeguard whatever they’re trying to do.” He paused and looked at me, giving me his full attention as he watched my eyes begin to well with tears. “Hey now, none of that. Listen to me, kid. Whatever you’re feeling, use that on them. You take all that anger and all that pain and focus it behind that barrel you got in your hand, got it?” The tears in my eyes began to recede and I focused on the steel tempest that rested in the palm of my hand. “If we fight with everything we got, maybe we’ll come out of this alive. The odds aren’t in our favor, but it beats rolling over and playing dead, Sailor. We have a lot of good men and women who need urgent care. If we can get rid of these demons, we might have a shot to save some of them. Can I count on you, Little Ray?”
I released my gaze from my pistol and stared directly into the older man’s eyes. The passion they held only added to the growing fire behind my own. “Yeah,” I responded confidently.
For some reason, it made him laugh.
“Well I suppose that now’s as good a time as ever. The name’s Mitch by the way. And if we make it through this, I’ll be sure to treat you and your old man to some ice cream.”
“Ice cream?” I asked with a puzzled look.
“Ice cream. You got to treat yourself every once in a while to remind yourself that there’s more to life than this. You’ll go crazy otherwise. Mourn the losses but celebrate the victories, no matter how small.”
“You’re awfully optimistic. So what’s the plan?”
“They’re trying to stall us out. Just like all demons, the bastards heal quickly, too. The shadows give them the advantage and the mounted torches won’t last forever. The sigils on the floor have a binding spell embedded into them so they’re locked into defending this building. That’s all I managed to see before the bodies started piling up. They were trying to summon something but the ritual was incomplete. The altar on the other side of the room is their main power source from the contract. All the witches are dead but they won’t leave until we kill them or destroy the altar.”
“Can’t we just make a run for it and go in guns blazing? The room doesn’t seem that large.”
“Some hunters from South Dakota thought the same thing. It was three of them and they didn’t even make it halfway before they got ripped to shreds. A couple hundred feet isn’t much, but with a pair of Sweepers coming at you, it’s suicide.” I bit the side of my cheek as I looked deeper into the darkened ceremonial basement. Beyond the entry point, Sam and Logan were still standing back-to-back in a cold sweat. They were younger than Mitch, but not by much. Seeing them in the center of it all made me fe
el safe, but I knew it was just a ruse. The concrete frame that separated us from the ritual grounds didn’t mean anything. If they were as vicious as Mitch said, phasing through a wall and cutting into me should be a piece of cake.
“So what’s our move?”
“You and I are going to go to the center of that room. There’s safety in numbers. We go back-to-back until we meet up with Sam and Logan. Then, I’ll draw them out with a ritual of our own.”
“A cleansing ritual?”
“Yeah.” Mitch nodded. “Yup, that’s the one. I got everything we need right here.” He flicked his head backwards towards the brown backpack fastened to his shoulders.
“You think a ritual will dispel them?”
“No. Not at all, but it’ll be enough to draw them out. When cleansings are done, it causes a shift in the atmosphere. When places are abundant in demonic energy, whenever you go to cleanse it, the spirits react. You’ve heard of a poltergeist, right? It’s the same concept. Cleansings are like cancer to them. It’ll weaken them until they can’t take it anymore. That’s when they’ll show themselves.”
“And we kill them.”
“Correct, Miss Ray. And then we go after the altar and figure out what exactly is going on.”
“Sounds like a plan.”
“It’s the only option we have left. Now let’s get to it before they show up again. Get away from that wall and press your back against mine. You’re pretty much asking for death. Sam! Logan! I’m coming your way and I’ve got us some extra manpower. Joel’s daughter! Cover us and we’ll cover you!” Mitch pressed his back against mine, leaving me with my head towards the basement entrance. I pointed my gun at the darkness that loomed in front of me while trying my best to steady my shaking hands. “When I move, you move. We’ll do this one step at a time.”
“Ok.” Not a second later, he took the first step forward and I felt the pressure of his backpack against my shoulders leave me. I urgently stepped back, pushing against his sturdy frame.
Sailor Ray and the Dark Descent (The Pact Book 2) Page 3
