She checked with the demon. Nothing. She kept moving. Her hand slipped on the floor as she backed up, and she banged her elbow. She winced, propped herself back up, and moved next to Nail. “No. Nothing.”
Another burst of gunfire threw splinters in the air. A bullet hit the altar, another knocked a piece off the corner of a pew, a third ricocheted and put a hole in a window.
“Ah, shit,” Nail said. “Windows.”
“Now, what the hell is that?” Karyn asked.
“What’s—oh.” Nail stopped and put his hand on the floor as he felt it, too. A deep vibration coming up through the floor.
The vibration worsened, sending an ache through Karyn’s legs and her butt, and rose in frequency until it turned into a deep bass note. As the volume rose, a second note blended with it, a harmonic sitting on top of the main tone, at an interval so perfect it was hard to identify as a separate note at first.
The shooting stopped.
“They done?” Rigoberto asked.
“Or they’ve conjured up something even worse,” Karyn said.
* * *
The light coming from the altar had become almost blinding. Belial was blocked from Anna’s view totally, and only Clarence’s head was visible. He had closed his eyes tightly shut and turned his face away, and his mouth was twisted in pain. The sound was now deafening, a chord of unearthly beauty that churned Anna’s gut and brought tears to her eyes and incited part of her, a part hidden back in her mind, to the desire for frantic, savage violence.
“I hope you’re preparing defenses,” Sobell said, yelling over the noise. “This isn’t exactly subtle.”
Defenses. What an idea. What did she know? There had to be something. “Come on, demon—now’s the time,” she whispered, waiting for that disorienting feeling of a strange, insistent idea blooming in her head. What she wanted was something to hide the whole damn building. Drop it under an impenetrable shroud . . . or . . . or pull the neighboring buildings in around it like a blanket, effectively making it vanish. Nothing like that came to mind, though. Instead, she got pyrotechnics, a dozen methods of creating flashes and bangs, lightning storms, something she was pretty sure created goddamn tornadoes of fire, which would be a great way to burn the building down around her and everyone else. The rage built in her—the demon’s pointless, directionless rage, her own frustration lighting aflame.
“Still got my marker?” she asked.
“You don’t have a spare?” He shook his head and then produced a marker from his pocket. It was a different one than what he’d used in the car. “Basic tool of the trade.”
“Not my trade,” she said. She stepped out into the store. Two of Moreno’s boys stood outside the door, somebody’s laughable idea of security. She nodded at them and began drawing on the wall that separated the stockroom from the main floor. This is stupid. I don’t know what I’m doing, and I have no time. She also had no other options. She drew as a dance of destruction turned deadly pirouettes in her mind.
* * *
The sound was going to vibrate his skull apart, Sobell thought, and that was if the light didn’t vaporize him, leaving him nothing but a shadow on the wall, which itself would soon be obliterated. It’s not that bright, he tried to tell himself, but it was a difficult sell. It was like standing a hundred yards from the surface of the sun, and he kept thinking it should have been hot. He wanted to sweat, and he expected his clothes to start smoldering or his beard to catch fire, but the room was no warmer than it had been when Abas got started.
What am I doing now? Waiting? That was pretty much it. Waiting for the dragon flame to scour away the rats, and hope it left him more or less untouched afterward. His fate was now out of his hands, unless he wanted to throw in with Belial at the last minute. That idea held no charms whatsoever.
“Rogelio,” Abas said. He held a hand out to the other man, who stepped forward. “It’s time.”
Moreno nodded. He climbed up on the picnic table and lay down.
There’s no relic, Sobell thought. None at all. There never was. Just this poor bastard who’s going to sacrifice himself.
Abas kissed Moreno on the forehead and resumed chanting.
* * *
“They coming or what?” Stash asked.
“Don’t invite trouble.” Genevieve shot a glance over her shoulder. She couldn’t see pursuit, but that didn’t mean anything. They’d slipped down another side street, then back into yet another alley, this one running alongside the block wall of the elementary school. They’d taken enough twists and turns that she couldn’t even see the black cloud from here, let alone any of their pursuers, but instead of reassuring her, that just put her on edge. The bad guys could be around any corner.
Stash stuck a finger in his ear and pretended to dig around in there. “What is that noise?”
“Don’t know.” Abas, she hoped, because it was getting loud enough even here that she had to raise her voice a little, and if it was the demons, they were up to some bad shit indeed. She supposed that Abas himself was up to some bad shit indeed, but at least he was on their side. Ostensibly.
“Where are we?” she asked.
“About five blocks south of where we need to be,” Freak answered. “And not getting any closer.”
“What do you want to do?” Stash snapped. “You want to head back that way? Make some new friends?”
“Just sayin’, that’s all.”
Genevieve got out her phone. If they weren’t being followed, then their pursuers would have broken off to join Belial, which wasn’t good. She texted Anna. More on the way.
Faster through the alley, with intermittent flashes from Stash’s phone to guide them around trash barrels and a pile of old palettes and a big old hole in the pavement. They hugged the chain-link fence to their left, just a few feet from the wall of the school building. Gaps between buildings yawned to their right at irregular intervals, each an impenetrable black hole in which anything could be hiding.
“Goddammit,” Stash said.
“What?”
He pointed. The silhouette of a man blocked the end of the alley ahead of them. As they watched, another man joined them. Any thought that the two might have been friendly vanished when one man conjured a swirling ball of blue-white flame in his hand.
“Back,” Stash said.
Freak stopped him with a hand on his chest. “Nope.”
“Don’t you—” He broke off as a familiar coughing sound echoed from the alley behind them.
“Fuck. Hurry up!” he said. He ushered the families into the nearest branching alley. Genevieve stood by, praying nothing horrible was down their escape route, and watching the slow approach of the oncoming men.
“Move it!” Stash whispered. The last stragglers disappeared into the tunnel-like passage.
The man with the flame threw it, underhand, in a high arc. Stash, Freak, and Genevieve ducked back as it hit the ground and splashed, spreading out in an eye-searing white pool. The skin on Genevieve’s face dried and tightened instantly.
Stash pointed his gun into the unknowable darkness past the blaze and fired. Somebody cried out.
To left, in the direction from which they’d come, came a heavy crunch and the sound of falling bricks, followed by a wet, growling cough.
“Go!” Stash said.
Genevieve ran, pulling Freak after her. Stash ducked as somebody returned fire and bullets ricocheted off the walls at the mouth of the alley. He shouted, stumbled, and then came running after.
Ahead, something clattered and crashed as somebody tripped on debris and fell, cursing. After the brightness of the flame, it was even harder to see here than before, and Genevieve felt as if they were running in an endless black dungeon. Only her fingers trailing along the left-hand wall gave her any sense of bearing, or even any clear indication that she was moving at all rather than running in pla
ce in one of her nightmares, in which she could never escape some pursuing monster.
A vibration came up through the soles of Genevieve’s feet, a deep thrumming in harmony with the distant bass note from before.
“What the fuck is that?” Freak asked. “Is that my dad?” Genevieve, too out of breath to answer, just pushed her forward. Did this alley never end?
They emerged into a street between storefronts, and Genevieve swore. This wasn’t better. This was much worse. The area was reasonably well lit and open. Nowhere to hide.
Somewhere on the other side of the school, something exploded. A tower of flame shot to the sky and then vanished.
Genevieve looked back at the alley they’d emerged from. “Where do we go?” she asked Stash.
“I . . . uh.” Even in this light, she could see that he was pale, and as he approached she saw the slick red wetness all down his right arm, coming from a dark hole below his collarbone near the shoulder. The grip of his gun was also covered in blood, and it leaked down and dripped off the barrel, heavy droplets splattering the sidewalk. He looked back behind them, wincing as he turned his head. Then he made a face, straining and sweating. His arm bent slightly at the elbow for his trouble. “Can’t move my arm,” he said. He staggered a few steps, and Genevieve rushed forward to catch him before he fell.
Now it was Freak’s turn to look at the alley. “Give me the gun,” she said to Stash. “I can move faster alone than with this crowd. I’ll give the motherfuckers something to think about.” To Genevieve, she said, “Got another one of them smoke bombs?”
“You can’t have my fucking gun,” Stash said.
“You can’t use your fucking gun. I trusted you this far, pendejo. Your turn.” She held out her hand.
Genevieve let go of Stash. Standing in place, he was able to support himself okay. She started working on what Freak had called her smoke bomb, trying to tune out the distant music, the screams and flame, and, under it all, the approaching sound of coughing. She tried not to look at the alley from which their doom would be emerging at any moment. She tried not to let her hand shake. She didn’t have a lot of success with any of it, but the glyphs accumulated on the paper.
Another cough. The alley lit up again, and white fire curled out of the end of it, setting a bag of trash alight.
“Give me the gun,” Freak said. “I could try to lead them away unarmed, but I don’t like my chances.”
“Your chances ain’t good even with the gun,” Stash said.
She set her jaw and shrugged.
“Don’t fuck me over,” he said. He took the weapon in his left hand and gave it to her, grip first. Handed her a spare magazine. “That’s it. All I got.”
The skinny guy emerged from the alley. Looming behind him, taking up the entire width of the alley, was the coughing monster.
“Now would be a good time for your smoke bomb,” Freak said.
Before Genevieve could say anything, Freak ran straight at the man and the monster. The guy grinned and spread his arms, beginning some kind of hellish incantation. Freak shot him in the gut and broke left. “Come and get me, motherfuckers!”
The monster lurched out of the alley, smashing the corner of one of the buildings to sticks and blowing out the big barred window as it moved. It seemed to be following Freak. For good measure, she shot it as she ran.
Genevieve finished her spell. Smoke filled the street, and then they were running again.
* * *
Anna had nearly finished the last of the glyphs when another of those shrieking, metal-grinding roars cut the air, this one much closer than the others had been. They were on the way. They must have been—nobody could miss the noise emanating from the back of the shop. She prayed that Abas would be done soon.
“Here they come,” one of the bangers said. Through the grocery’s front window Anna could see men running, and in their midst something huge, blue-black, and writhing.
There should have been fear, soul-penetrating, paralyzing fear, but laughter erupted from Anna’s throat instead. Let them come. I will lay them to waste. She bent back to the glyphs, finished the last two, and, smiling with bloodthirsty glee, began the incantation.
Moreno’s boys started shooting. The glass broke out of the windows. One of the onrushing men fell. Another opened his mouth and blew a jet of flame across the front of the building. It was hot and scary, but ultimately pathetic. Anna crowed with a sudden, hateful joy.
The writhing thing smashed the door to shards and squeezed through, giving Anna her first good look at it. She didn’t know how to wrap her mind around it. It was huge, far larger than the door opening, but flexible—a roiling mass of serpents, either a single creature clothed in snakes or some kind of cooperative, snaky mess. The snakes parted, revealing a pink-red maw in their center, ringed with blue-black teeth like hooked claws.
She finished the incantation, and exultation burst into bloody flower in her chest.
Thunder drowned out the creature’s roar as a tempest burst from the glyphs behind Anna. Screaming winds blew past her, ruffling her shirt and picking up speed until they became a gale tearing through the store. A mist formed around her. Within a few feet it turned into driving horizontal rain, and lightning ripped from the air and speared the creature. She stood with the kids from the gang in the eye of a conjured hurricane, and she laughed.
The kids next to her fired into the beast, hurling profanity and improbable suggestions as they did.
A man came through the door behind the creature, slipped in a puddle of water, and flew backward as the wind caught him and slammed him against the shattered glass of the window. Another came in behind him, then another. One started shooting, another raised his hand to call down some fiery doom.
The creature surged forward. The men were ducking low, barely able to advance against the onslaught of wind and rain, but the creature would not be stopped.
Anna cackled and screamed, her left hand calling lightning, her right calling slashing, icy rain. The remaining windows exploded. A crooked, blinding worm of lightning blasted through a shelf, another blew apart the counter and the cash register, a third threw a man across the room. Bolts tore into the serpent creature, scouring it, lashing it with fire, and it roared and lunged.
Anna felt like she was flying. She wanted nothing more than to rush at the beast, carried on wind and rain, tear at it with her fingers, gouge its eyes, rip its tongue. She flogged it with lashes of lightning, and it snarled and writhed, and tumbled back, serpents lashing the air and hissing as it rolled.
Anna’s muscles coiled as she prepared to rush forward, ready to administer the creature’s death blow with her bare hands—and a hand descended on her shoulder. She whirled, fists pulled back to smite with lightning and flame.
One of the kids stood there, eyes huge and terrified. “Are you insane?” he yelled.
Hissing, the creature slid backward out the door. Anna shrugged the kid off and ran after it.
* * *
“Now what?” Nail asked.
Karyn shook her head. The assault on the church had ended shortly after the humming sound went up—no more shots fired, anyway, and the monstrous roaring sounds had moved toward where Anna, Abas, and the others were working. That had been, what? Two minutes ago? Ten?
“We’re not doing any more good here,” she said. “We’ve bought all the time we’re going to buy.”
There was only one thing to do now—get to Anna, Abas, and Sobell, and see if they could be any help there. Slow down the demons, insofar as that was possible. Too little, too late, most likely, and she didn’t have a clue how to help, but what else was there? She got wearily to her feet.
The image of the church in her mind disappeared. Instead, she saw a street she didn’t recognize. A graffiti-tagged lavanderia next to a convenience store. The buildings to either side were blasted and smoldering. And—
what the fuck? Anna was there, smudged and bleeding, throwing flame at some kind of hell monster that was bearing down on her, Genevieve, and Special Agent Elliot. Genevieve was on the ground, cradling an injured leg, and Elliot wiped blood from her face as she reloaded. The monster fell back, but down the street beyond, Karyn saw the gathering forms of eight or ten of Belial’s new friends.
The vision vanished, and Karyn made a decision. Abas was on his own. He either had his shit together or not, but it was probably too late to do him any good.
“Still got bullets?” she asked Nail. “Anna’s in trouble.”
“Ain’t she always?” He checked his pockets. “I’m good on ammo.”
They went out. Outside the church, on the pavement where she’d faced down the demons, a crucifix had been erected. On it hung a beggar in rags, one hand fallen to his side, the other still tied to the crossbeam. “What the . . . ?” She looked to Nail. He was scanning the street beyond, looking for enemies, paying no mind whatsoever to the grim scene ahead. To the left, a pair of houses sent angry tongues of flame skyward. Empty houses, Karyn hoped.
She turned back to the crucifix. “Ah.” She thought back to her trip through the Gorow house to get the splinters, and the grisly signposts Amaimon had used to show her the way. “That way,” she said, pointing in the same direction as the man’s bound arm.
She and Nail broke into a run.
* * *
Where had the damn thing gone? Anna was soaked with conjured rainwater, her skin charged with electricity that crackled between her fingers, a lethal charge building and building, and she had nowhere to direct it. The ball of snakes had been right there, limping away and making a noise she interpreted as whimpering, and she had been poised to deliver the death blow when one of Belial’s goons took a shot at her. Things had gotten hazy after that. She remembered whipping her arm around and a searing arc of spitting electricity or flame or some utterly alien energy slinging from her fingers and cracking like a whip. She remembered laughing and the smell of burned hair. Somebody had hurled a garbage can at her and she’d batted it aside. Somebody else had been claimed by the ball of snakes, seized and torn into ribbons and crammed into its maw as it either slipped its leash or simply lost control. They were isolated moments, though, with all the connective tissue of the time in between obscured in a bloody battle haze.
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