Sacrifices

by Jamie Schultz

  “I sure appreciate that, but this isn’t going to be safe. You should get out of here.”

  “This is our home, lady. You don’t even live here.”

  “For reals,” the other guy said.

  Unbelievable. “I think you—oh, shit.” Too late. Anna’s car screamed around a corner, drawing shouts from an old man out in front of one of the houses. The vehicle rocketed toward the curb and laid a skid mark fifty feet long as Anna stomped the brake.

  Anna jumped out of the car even as the engine was dying. Sobell got out of the passenger side, clutching the doorframe to pull himself up. He looked awful. He stood up, straightened his polo shirt, and surveyed the neighborhood.

  Meanwhile, Anna had already run up the stairs. “Everything cool?” Behind her, the former rabbit, now shirtless, walked upstairs, still looking somewhat dazed.

  Karyn nodded. “For now.” She couldn’t tell one thing from another in the jumbled clot of bodies she saw before her, but it looked like the future was substantially less cool. Whether it was in ten minutes or an hour, the shit was going to hit the fan. She just hoped they could avert it. “Who the hell is this guy?”

  “This is Clarence. Friend of Nail’s, I guess.”

  “Yeah,” Clarence said. “Anybody want to tell me what the fuck is going on? I saw that Hector guy peel the skin off a dude’s head earlier. All of it. Off his fuckin’ head, while he was screaming like hell, and those other guys were singing and shit. It came off in one piece. I thought old Hector was gonna wear it like a hat.”

  “Not now,” Karyn said. “There’s no time. Get inside. Go.”

  Clarence glanced up the street. “Yeah, I don’t know about that. I might have better places to be.”

  “Suit yourself.”

  “You’re the one that can see the future, right? What happens to me if I leave?”

  “Sorry,” Karyn said. “It isn’t that easy.”

  He wiped his forehead. “Yeah, but you guys know about this kind of shit, right?”

  “A little.”

  “I like the idea of getting a head start, but I get the feeling they ain’t gonna forget about me. I know most of those guys.” He scowled, then looked from Anna to Sobell and back up the street again. “Shit.”

  Sobell disappeared inside the church. Clarence hesitated, swore again, then followed him.

  “They’re right behind us,” Anna said.

  “You need to go.”

  Anna grinned. “Just give me two minutes. I’ll give them something to think about.”

  Karyn nodded.

  Anna went down to the base of the front steps, got out her marker, and started drawing on the sidewalk.

  Inside the church, a deep, sonorous chanting began.

  “This is way fucked-up,” Rigoberto said from behind Karyn. She turned to look at him and nearly groaned aloud. Four more of the Locos had joined him and his friend, and they were all looking at her.

  “You guys got my back, huh?” Karyn said.

  “Fuck yeah, we do.”

  “All right. Sit tight, then. Look tough. And when I tell you, you get your asses in that church without messing around, you got that?”

  “Yes, ma’am.” One of the other kids said something that sounded like, “Hell yeah, boss lady,” and the rest nodded. If they followed through, that would be enough. They spread out behind her. They didn’t look tough, Karyn thought. They looked terrified, more or less like the way she felt.

  Below, Anna scrawled figures on concrete by the light of her phone and the stained glass. The chanting inside swelled and faded.

  A car turned the corner past the convenience store. The headlights were dark, but streetlight shone off the windshield and slid along the side of the vehicle. Another car followed, then a third.

  The cars stopped in the street, and men got out. Thirteen all told, which was fewer than Karyn had feared there might be from her earlier vision.

  “That’s it,” Anna said. She put a final line or two in place and backed rapidly up the steps. She moved close and handed Karyn a piece of paper. It looked like a receipt she’d drawn occult symbols all over. “Tear it in half when you need a big boom.”

  “Thanks. Now hurry up and get out of here.”

  “Okay,” Anna said, pulling away. “See you on the other side.”

  “Terrible choice of words,” Karyn said.

  “Later, then.” Anna ducked into the church.

  Karyn’s phone buzzed. She took a quick look at it. Elliot. No time for that right now.

  The men crossed the streets to the bottom of the stairs, stopping before Anna’s drawings. One of them, a broad-shouldered, bullet-headed guy with a murderous sneer, stepped out in front. “Where’s the boss?”

  “You need to leave here,” Karyn said. “There’s nothing you can do now.”

  On the left edge of the line, a man spat out an ugly-sounding word. A creature appeared in the space in front of him. It was hairless, sinuous, its segmented, coiled body supported on four legs, its head like that of a hellish mastiff. It lashed its tail and uncoiled, rubbing itself against the man’s thigh like an oversize mutant house cat. Furnace heat shone from its mouth as it panted.

  “What in the hell is that?” Rigoberto said.

  Toward the right end of the line, one of the men opted for something different: he pulled a gun. Karyn heard rustling behind her. Young men, readying their weapons.

  “How about you get out the way now, before I lose my temper?” the bullet-headed guy said. A man to his left licked his lips and stepped forward, and Bullet Head stopped him with one arm. “Maybe I’ll count to three.”

  “You’re too late,” Karyn said.

  “One,” the guy said.

  The man with the—dog? Cat? Worm-dragon-beast?— pointed and yelled, “Kill!”

  Bullet Head snapped around in irritation as the worm dragon leaped forward, a curse on his lips.

  “Down!” Karyn screamed. She covered her eyes and ducked just as the worm dragon crossed the line of Anna’s wards. A brilliant white flash went off, and the image in Karyn’s mind showed her own hands, red with the light pouring through them. At the same time, there was a muffled pop, like a cork leaving a bottle, followed by a chorus of screaming and shouting.

  Karyn stood. The line of men had dissolved. Several had fallen, some clutched their eyes or ears, and one stood in place, dazed, tottering from one foot to the other with blood coming from his ears. Karyn was untouched, as were the kids behind her. Part of the magic trick, she supposed.

  “Inside!” she shouted. “Quickly!”

  A gun went off as she turned, then another. Ahead of her, wood flaked off the door as Rigoberto and his boys ran inside. Karyn slipped in right behind them.

  “Get away from the door!” Nail shouted.

  Everybody scattered. The doors were thick wood, maybe three inches or more, but that didn’t stop bullets. A series of shots ripped holes through the doors; then a whole row of chips flew loose as somebody opened up with something automatic. Karyn and the others had already scattered, ducking behind the small columns and the pews.

  When the gunfire paused, Nail ran up and slid a heavy bar across the doors. It was makeshift, cobbled together in the last few hours from scavenged two-by-twelves and plywood. Warded somehow; Karyn didn’t know the details. Once it was in place, Nail ducked back behind the column with her and checked his gun.

  “What the fuck, man?” Rigoberto said as he looked at the empty interior of the church. “Ain’t nobody here!”

  “Shut up!” Karyn said.

  Nail grinned at her. “How’d you like my chanting?”

  “Awful,” Karyn said through a huge smile. “Just awful.”

  Her phone buzzed again, and this time the image in her mind changed. It showed her the flashing mayhem of police lights. The v
iew spun, revealing an overturned van, the back doors hanging slackly open, the interior empty. It was a DOC van, Karyn noticed with a sinking feeling. By the curb, she saw Elliot slowly getting to her feet. Her face was covered in blood, and she was messing with her phone.

  The image vanished. Karyn’s phone showed a text message: Got problems here. Jailbreak. About a dozen, headed your way.

  “Shit,” Karyn said. “We’re not going to get any help from Elliot.” She thought about those yawning van doors. “Probably just the opposite.”

  “That ain’t what I wanted to hear.”

  Outside, something bellowed, sounding like a dragon that had swallowed a Mack truck.

  * * *

  Genevieve huddled in an alley with her back pressed to the solid block wall of one of the buildings. Stash crouched next to her, Freak after that, and a line of people was strung down the alley beyond her—fifteen or more, some his crew but mostly a bunch of terrified evacuees whispering in Spanish Genevieve had no hope of following. Two families, one just the parents and two kids, another consisting of mom, dad, grandma, four kids, and somebody Genevieve guessed was an uncle. Stash had gotten them out of their homes with a short speech he and Freak had perfected by now, after the first dozen or so. During the first three houses, he’d learned that neither yelling a lot nor waving a gun in frustration had been very effective, so he’d hauled Freak in to work them in tandem with him. It was, after all, her neighborhood. That had worked like a charm, so he’d coordinated with other groups by phone to use the Locos as their ambassadors.

  They’d been running down the sidewalk, trying to get back to the shop, when the explosion hit. The gangsters reacted before Genevieve even figured what was going on, and they quickly herded the families into the alley for cover. They hadn’t been waiting back here for more than a minute when an unearthly, deafening bellow sounded from the direction of the church.

  “What the hell was that?” Stash asked.

  Genevieve wasn’t sure, but she had seen the line of demon-possessed criminals surrounding the church just before the explosion. “No telling,” she said, “but it’s probably big and horrible.”

  “Then we go around,” Stash said. Calm but mildly annoyed, as though he had to go out of his way to pick up bread on the way home. The kid had nerves of steel. He waved down the alley opposite the direction they had come. “Let’s go. Vámonos.”

  With Freak following, he moved past the line of people. Genevieve came behind. The three of them emerged out the other end of the alley. The street was empty here. He headed out into the street. Genevieve waited, feeling like a mother duck as she did a head count. It was wholly unnecessary—the families would surely take care of their own—but she couldn’t help it. A little boy with a big gap where his front teeth were starting to come in smiled at her. He, at least, was too excited to be scared.

  When everybody had emerged, she ran ahead to catch up with Stash. If she hadn’t lost her bearings, they were now six blocks south and a little west of their destination. Say twenty minutes there and back, if they rushed, and still half the neighborhood to evacuate. Maybe people would hear the noise and evacuate themselves, but she thought it just as likely they’d hunker down and stay put. That might be okay, too, depending on the level of destruction. She wished she had a better idea what the hell was going on back there.

  She saw movement ahead—a clot of figures under a streetlamp at the end of the block, headed toward the group. Her first thought was that it was more of Stash’s guys, but he stopped.

  “Now, what is this shit?” he asked nobody in particular.

  Genevieve took a longer look. The group ahead consisted of maybe a dozen people, though it was hard to be sure. It moved weirdly, more like a bunch of drunks who happened to be shambling in generally the same direction than a group of people walking in an organized fashion with a particular destination. It was oddly familiar, and the moment she placed it as the same type of roving party that Van Horn’s demon-possessed entourage had traveled in was the same moment that she recognized one of the guys in front. The skinny guy, first to take Belial’s unholy communion at the prison before everything had gone to shit. Blood streamed down his face from a wound in his forehead, but even from here she could see the white crescent of his grin. He should be in jail. What the fuck is he doing here?

  His eyes locked with hers, and there was no doubt in her mind that he recognized her.

  “Oh, fuck,” she said. Whether he thought of her as an enemy or a friend didn’t even matter—if the latter, it would take him and his cronies two seconds to figure out that Genevieve and her group weren’t with the program, and a bloodbath would probably follow.

  “Run!” she shouted.

  “Fuck that,” Stash said. He pulled out his gun.

  The group ahead parted. Behind them was—what the fuck was that? It reminded Genevieve of the huge slug thing that Anna and the others had conjured against Belial, but whereas that had been a giant, grotesque glob of featureless gray flesh, this was more distinct. The sluglike body was the size of a truck, supported on six or more elephantine gray legs, yet still low and seemingly boneless enough that it sagged and dragged on the ground. The front end sported a soft mouth of fleshy folds and tendrils, easily big enough to swallow a man.

  The thing lifted its eyeless head and coughed. Gray-green slime spattered the sidewalk in front of it.

  Stash fired. The possessed charged, laughing, and the beast coughed again and lurched forward. Stash squeezed off three more shots. One guy dropped, but the others didn’t even slow, and if the bullets touched the monster behind them, it didn’t show.

  “Run!” Stash yelled.

  Genevieve pulled a scrap of paper from her pocket. It wasn’t much, but it was all she had prepared, and maybe the only thing she had in her repertoire that would help during a dangerous evacuation. She uttered a short incantation and tore the paper in half. Choking black smoke boiled up from the torn paper and swirled thickly in the air, reminding her of nothing so much as squid ink.

  She threw the paper to the ground and ran after the others, already fleeing down the street as fast as their legs could carry them.

  * * *

  “Jesus, hurry the fuck up,” Anna said. The hideous roar that had split the air and rumbled through her gut was muted, but it couldn’t have been that far off. Had the stand at the church collapsed already?

  “You’re bleeding,” Sobell said. Past him, the priest was still preparing the altar, or whatever it was. It looked suspiciously like a picnic table that had been stolen from a nearby park and hauled in here for the purpose. “Here” was the back room of a grocery store. Brown cardboard boxes were piled up on shelves and on each other on the concrete floor, and everything had been pushed to the edges of the room to give Abas space to work. He’d thrown a white cloth edged in gold, presumably borrowed from the church, over the picnic table and gotten to work. Anna didn’t know that she’d seen so many candles in her entire life.

  “Huh? Oh, shit.” Her left hand, still bleeding from the spell she’d worked, pulling the shadows around the four of them—her, Sobell, and Clarence pulling a very reluctant Belial—as they ran from the church. She grabbed a hole in Sobell’s polo shirt, tore a strip off the shirt, and began wrapping her hand.

  “Was that strictly necessary?”

  “Either that or bleed to death. No joke.”

  He frowned and did his best to tuck in the remnant of his shirt. It wasn’t long enough, though, and it hung loosely, just barely covering his belly button. Anna laughed. It felt good to laugh.

  Nearer to where Abas worked, Moreno stood, chewing the inside of his mouth, anxiety cutting deep lines in his forehead. He watched the door and stayed silent.

  “Here. Sit him here,” Abas said. He pointed at a folding chair at the head of the picnic table. Clarence obligingly dragged Belial over and sat him down there. He stood b
ehind Belial, both hands pressed on the demon’s shoulders.

  “Shoe’s on the other foot, huh, fuck face?” Anna said, the rush of anger filling her chest and head.

  Belial ignored her. “Enoch,” he said. “You have cast your lot very poorly.”

  “I have cast my lot with the people least likely to fuck me over,” Sobell said.

  “Enjoy burning with them.”

  “I am so tired of demons. All you lot, with your threats and bluster, your impatience, your dickering and your whining and your petulance. If I could be shut of you, I would.”

  “After all we’ve done for you.”

  Sobell paused, tongue poised for a retort, and then he just smiled and turned away.

  Abas circled the table, sprinkling holy water. Then he circled again, this time with a censer, muttering in Latin. As he passed by Belial, the demon chuckled, the sight hideous on his lopsided, broken face.

  Behind the demon, Clarence stood with eyes wide and worried.

  A second roar sounded, the bellow of an enormous lion with a metal grinder in its throat. “What is out there?” Anna asked.

  Nobody answered.

  Anna felt it in her feet first—a vibration, too deep to be audible at first, but then rising to something just below the threshold of hearing. It traveled up her body, settling in her gut.

  At the center of the circle Abas walked, the picnic table had begun glowing an unearthly blue.

  * * *

  Moments after the second earsplitting roar, something immense crashed into the church door, setting it to shivering in its frame and sending Karyn diving back to the ground.

  “What now?” she asked Nail.

  “What are you asking me for? What the hell is that?”

  “This is your department!” Nail shouted. “I just do guns and electronics and shit!”

  “So shoot it!”

  “And what? Hit the magic doorstop? I don’t think so.” Back pressed against the column, Nail checked his gun. “You getting anything? Anywhere?”