The bow, in comparison, is silent. Yeah, they make a noise when they loose an arrow, but you have to be close to the shot to hear it. If you chose your targets wisely, you could potentially take down whole groups of enemies without one sounding an alarm. If you find yourself in hostile territory, having one could just save your life.
The destruction gets worse as we close in on the convention center. I figured that there would be some heavy damage here, even without the other bombs, thanks to the rubble that was thrown around during the display. None of it would be odd if the damage was limited to the side closest to the center, but the damage is all around them.
“Looks like they had one set close,” Zeke says as he pokes his head into the minivan sized hole in the brick wall.
“It had to be pretty damn close to do something like that. Wouldn’t it?”
“And up off of the ground. Almost like someone was holding it.”
“Suicide bombers? Who would be stupid enough to do that?” I admit, that is not the smartest thing I have ever said. Suicide bombers were rampant during the last ten years though usually a clear trademark of radical Islam. Not the type of thing you would expect three years after the Rising.
“Perhaps, but I don’t think so.”
Up nearly three blocks ahead I notice four figures turning onto our street, but heading the opposite direction. “Looks like we have company. We should follow them, see what they are up to.” I pull my binoculars out of my bag and put the strap around my neck.
Zeke nods and takes off at a jog towards the figures. I pull out the sword and follow close behind. We follow them as they turn north another block ahead.
“Hold here.” Zeke puts his hand up to signal me to stop. “They are close.”
I peek around the corner and pull my binoculars to my eyes. The figures, four men, are all surrounding what looks like a body on the ground. While I see some blood on the surrounding ground, I can tell they are alive.
“What is the one in red holding?”
“It looks like Duncan’s orb.”
“I thought it might be,” Zeke says. “You might want to look away.”
His warning was a touch too late. I watch as a man in a long sleeve black shirt pulls out a switchblade and cuts the man’s throat on the ground. Blood shoots in the air from the wound for a few seconds before a man in a Blues jersey kicks the body over. The bleeding man twitches for a few long seconds before he comes to a stop. When he does a wisp of white smoke floats away from the body and into the orb.
“Did you see that?” I ask.
“They collected his soul,” he says. “We suspected that is why Duncan had all of those people caged up in the warehouse. You captured a few demon souls in the one you found, but he didn’t know if they would attract the souls of other beings.”
“Shitty way to get your answer.”
Zeke nods. “One we weren’t about to try ourselves.”
“You think that is the same orb?” I say. “That can’t be something they mass produced, can it?”
“I wish we knew. For now we have to assume they have a few of them.”
“Then we should go take that one from them.”
“Agreed.”
I pull down the binoculars and take a step around the corner. I’m about to charge at the group when I notice another set of people approaching the others. “Shit, don’t move.”
“What’s wrong?”
“More of them. At least eight.” I was confident facing down the four demons a moment ago, but I don’t think I can handle a dozen. Having an angel on my side gave me a better shot, but one that still leads to my death.
Putting the binoculars back to my eyes, I wish I could hear the conversation. From what I see, the two groups definitely know each other. They have broken into three smaller groups all clustered together except for the one in red. He is walking across the street, towards a man that walks into the open.
“That’s Rick!” I say.
“Nal’s guy?”
“It sounds impossible, but that’s definitely him.”
“Impossible? How?”
“I saw his body. Hard to survive a gunshot that blows a chunk of your brain out of your skull.” I shiver thinking about it. Rick was a fast draw. It was odd that he would be caught with his pants down like that.
“There has to be another explanation. There is no way someone could come back from a wound like that.”
“Not even an angel or demon?”
“An angel could, few things can kill us,” he says. “A demon could if it had to, but it isn’t as reliable and it takes longer.”
“How much longer?”
“Weeks. Months. Depends on its strength. They usually won’t bother healing the host.”
“I know they can heal others. Maybe Rick made a deal before he died.” This theory makes the most sense to me, for obvious reasons. I have my powers, and problems, thanks to a deal I made with one to heal my wife. Someone on their own deathbed would be a lot easier to convince than I was, and I was easy.
“That is a very rare trait for a demon. One they wouldn’t waste on someone so close to death already.”
“Could one have placed an illusion on him to make it look like he was dead?”
“You have watched too much TV. That kind of magic doesn’t exist.” Zeke laughs. “Perhaps the most logical explanation is that this person just looks like him. Wouldn’t be the only people that has happened to.”
“You might be right.” Something still seems off, but I know I saw his corpse.
We watch as they walk down the street in one group. As much as I want to follow them and take their orb, it just isn’t going to happen here.
“What do you think we should do next?”
“I say we head back to the hotel. Make sure I’m not seeing shit.”
“If it makes you feel better, we can go. So you know. You won’t see what you expect there.”
“And what do I expect?”
“That he is doing all of this. He is on your side,” he says. “On our side.”
“Then there shouldn’t be a problem,” I say, walking back towards my car.
- 5 -
The area around the old Holiday Inn is quiet as usual. Nal used to keep a security force on hand to keep people away from the area, but as his territory expanded he had to send those people elsewhere. Except for the occasional attack from a rival, people generally tried to avoid the area.
That is until a pack of demons decided to attack the place.
I park the car a few blocks away. Call me paranoid, but I want to scope things out before they know I’m here.
“What is it you expect to see?” Zeke asks when I pull out the binoculars.
“Just playing it safe.”
“You can put them away. I promise you will survive whatever is inside without them.”
“Fine.” I throw the binoculars into the back seat and pull out my sword. Turning around I notice Zeke is standing back with his hand over his mouth. “Everything OK?”
“I,” he says. “I’ve never been a fan of those blades.”
That I can understand. While I have it in my arsenal to help me in killing every demon I come across, they also happen to be one of the few ways to actually kill an angel. There are so many things that can kill a human that we only freak out when they are being used to threaten us. I could easily see myself freaking out if I was looking at one of the few things that could kill me.
“Let’s get this over with,” I say. “If you are right, it won’t even leave my hip.”
Within a few minutes we come up on the parking lot. Unless Nal opened the place for business, he has loads of company today. Company was one thing he was firm about spreading out. When your business affairs cross over into various boundaries, you end up working with a wide variety of people. The more pieces you have to play with, the more likely it is that some of those pieces won’t get along together.
Nal must have called me a few dozen times th
at first year while he learned that lesson the hard way, but all I could do was break things up after the fact. I ended up doing some pretty disturbing things to one repeat offender, but even that didn’t keep them from starting shit on Nal’s front door.
It took one of them killing his dog for him to finally change. It wasn’t even over anything important. Two people were trying to open up a shop about a block from each other. The one owner, a woman in her late forties, insisted that she was there first and that the other needed to pack up and find another spot. When Nal told her that competition could be a good thing, the woman stormed out in a hurry. Things would have been fine, but the other woman was downstairs waiting for an appointment.
The angry gal pulled out a gun from her purse and fired a few shots at the other. She was a horrible shot, thankfully, but she was persistent.
Joe walked in the door with Nal’s dog when she was changing out her magazine. He let go of the leash and that dog just ran at her.
That was one of the smartest dogs I’ve ever seen. Nal trained him to attack someone if they had a weapon out. He didn’t attack often, but when he did it was nasty. Nal has a dozen or so pictures to prove it.
She got the magazine into the gun just seconds before she was taken down. With a lucky shot she managed to hit the dog in the chest. Amazingly, it didn’t stop the dog. That dog latched on the woman’s throat, ripping it out before he collapsed a few minutes later.
Nal didn’t take the woman’s picture that day.
From that day forward, he made it a point to keep an hour or so window between appointments, though he couldn’t bring himself to get another dog.
“Are you sure he still controls the place?” I ask. There are only two explanations at this point. Either Nal has changed his ways, or someone else has taken over.
“There is only one way to find out.”
We take our time walking across the parking lot. I don’t notice any movement, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t someone hiding in one of the cars.
The doors to the lobby are propped open by a chair. Before walking in, I look down at a red stain on the pavement. This has to be the spot Joe died. I close my eyes and say a silent prayer. There is no way this place will be the same again.
I walk inside and notice the lobby is empty. Not only is all the furniture gone, there isn’t anybody here to watch the front entrance.
“Where is everyone?” I ask. Nal isn’t the paranoid type, but he knew the value of having a set of eyes at the entrance. You just never knew when someone was going to grow a set of balls and try to start a fight.
“Something is wrong.”
“Let’s head upstairs. Maybe he is redoing the lobby for some reason.” Doubtful. He may not have liked how it looked down there, but he also didn’t spend enough time there to give a shit. I doubt one of the guys could have talked him into it either. He wasn’t afraid to invest resources when the time called for it, but he also hated to waste them.
I enter the hallway, walking past the elevators and toward the staircase.
“Still afraid of elevators?” Zeke says laughing.
“I prefer the term ‘cautious pessimism’.” There are a dozen ways I could label it, but that has to be the closest. You can triple it when there are questions about stability, like in here.
“Let’s take it nice and slow. No sense in announcing that we are coming,” I say.
Zeke nods and enters the stairwell. We make it about half a story when the lights flicker. Zeke snickers when I give him my best ‘I told you so’ look.
He stops at the doorway to the second floor and peeks in the window. “I see three of them in here.”
“Close?”
He shakes his head.
“Let’s keep going, then.” I hate to be caught between groups, but there is no way to know how many people we are dealing with in here.
Zeke walks up three stairs when the door opens. I duck back against the wall in a feeble attempt to hide. My thoughts go back to my son trying the same trick with me. He had the advantage of having a father who was fine with letting him win. Something tells me I don’t have that advantage here.
I hear the audible clink of the door closing before he has a chance to speak.
“Who are you?” he asks.
“Friends of Nal.”
He looks at me curiously. My instincts are telling me that I need to take this guy out. He may be harmless, but there is no telling about the other ones behind that door.
The guy pushes in the thumb latch and opens the door. I hear a light thud a split second before seeing the head of an arrow stick out from the man’s chest. He lets go of the latch, causing the door to slam shut before he falls face first, rolling down the stairs. I hold onto the handrail and jump over the body as it passes by.
Zeke walks down the stairs and looks into the window again. “We need to move.”
I don’t ask why, instead rushing down the stairs as fast as my legs will allow. I’m nearly at the bottom when the sound of gunfire fills the stairwell. The echoing shots ringing in my ears. I look back in time to see Zeke’s shoulder twitch slightly before noticing a bright white light shining from the bullet wound. If the shot was slowing him down, he was not showing any sign of it as he reached the ground floor quickly.
“You OK?” I ask.
“I’m fine. We need to go.” He takes off down the hallway and I follow close behind. When we get to the lobby the gunfire starts again. It is impossible to dodge a bullet, especially ones you can’t see, but I can tell they are firing blind as I hear the shots hit the wall behind me.
When I reach the door I turn around to face the bastards shooting at us. It is hard to use my tricks in an enclosed area, like the stairwell. But in a wide open area, like the lobby here, I am free to do my thing.
Three people, two guys and a woman, stop when they see me and square off and open fire.
I hold my hands out in front of me and concentrate on the metal heading towards me. Stopping a bullet is as simple as putting as much, or more, energy into the front of the bullet to match the amount of force that was used to fire it. It may sound like it should never work, but I have an edge after about fifteen feet.
I’ve stopped a bullet from as close as five feet away, but that was so close that I don’t wish to try that again. From this range, however, I can stop them all day long.
I keep my effort into stopping the new rounds as they continue to unload their magazines at me. After a few seconds the gunfire stops. I guess they finally noticed the bullets flying in the air between us.
“You people and your guns.” I throw my hand forward to push the bullets back at the shooters. The air in front of them shimmers and change into light shade of red as the bullets close in. When they hit the red the bullets turn bright orange before flickering out before they hit their mark.
A temporary stalemate is as good as a win for them. Now that I know they have some form of shield, I tuck my tail between my legs and rush out of the front door before they fire again.
I make it to the first line of parked cars before the gunfire starts again. Ducking behind a Dodge Charger as the bullets ricochet off of vehicles around me.
“Zeke,” I say, trying to get his attention. It isn’t like him to leave someone behind, but he may not have noticed me dropping off in the lobby.
“Over here.” He pokes his head around the side of a truck about three rows back.
I peek around the side of the Charger, looking for my opportunity to get out of here. It takes another thirty seconds before it comes. The gunfire stops for a moment so I make my move.
Crawling on the ground as fast as I can, I work my way back towards Zeke. Another round of sporadic gunfire opens back up. From the sound, I can tell they aren’t even close. We just may get out of here yet.
“Five more just came out to play,” Zeke says when I lean against the truck. “Either we need to stand up and fight, or we need to run.”
As much as I want to stay
and fight, this isn’t a battle we are going to walk away from.
“I vote run. Death just doesn’t seem like a lot of fun at the moment.”
Zeke snorts and helps me to my feet. “You have a way with words, my friend.”
We make it back another row before the gunfire hits the surrounding cars. I drop to the ground to avoid getting hit myself. “Think you can take that asshole out for us?”
Zeke nods before peeking over the trunk of the car. He readies an arrow and leans to the side of the car before loosing his shot. “He’s down,” he says a moment later.
“The yellow one. Blow the yellow one,” I hear someone say from a distance. Zeke and I look at each other and then at the yellow Mustang that is about five yards away from us. There is no time for us to think, only run.
I get about three steps when the blast sends me in the air and into the rear bumper of a minivan. In another three seconds, things go dark.
- 6 -
When I finally come to, I find myself tied to a chair in one of the hotel rooms. I’ve stayed here more than enough times to know how they look on the inside. Nal never even considered changing a thing about the rooms through the years. He figured they would work just fine if any of his people needed a place to stay without putting any time, or money, into them.
Across the room I notice Zeke laying on a bed with hands and feet tied to the bedposts. His shirt and pants are ripped beyond recognition but he doesn’t have a scratch on him. If it wasn’t for the blood that soaked into the sheets, you wouldn’t even know he had been hurt.
“Zeke, you OK?”
“I was wondering if you would wake up. The way you hit the van, I was sure you were dead.”
“How long have I been out?” I felt like I’ve got a bad hangover, but I wouldn’t think that I’ve been out for more than a few hours.”
“Three days.”
Holy shit, I must have taken a nasty hit. As you can imagine, my mouth has gotten me in trouble occasionally. There has been a time or two it wrote a check I just couldn’t cash. It has only happened once post-Eunie, and there may have been a fifth or two of vodka involved. If you think I have a mouth sober, you should see me drunk.
Reaper: The Demontouched Saga (Book 3) Page 3
