by Marcus Wynne
. . . just as they sprang again, teeth bared, the matron in front, leaking from two massive glowing holes in her chest, but still full of fight; the young female looking down at the three holes in her torso, staggering forward; the male with a sear alongside his head and another graze on his shoulder—must have missed one. Dillon grabbed the Super Soaker, the sling still around my neck, and pulled me off my reload as he sprayed another arc around us, almost fast enough to slow them all, but the matron was on him and then she curled back and shrieked so loud I felt something give in my ear. Dillon twisted the Gerber Mark II fighting knife that had appeared like magic in his hand, cold steel blessed by the water running down his hands, and the matron vampire sprang back, both clawed hands gripping her midsection, one of her extended claws gouging a track white and then red along Dillon’s jaw, and I dropped the speed loader and fumbled another one out, a little bit of panic welling up in me and . . .
. . . First In Front reached out his hand and steadied mine. “Take your time . . . fast,” he whispered as he guided my hand into inserting the speed loader and twisting the cylinder shut and then aligning the revolver at the young male springing at me, his mouth opened wide, leading with his teeth . . .
. . . which shattered as I put several .357 hand loads in his mouth and down his throat and out the back of his head.
His head shattered, too.
One down, two to go. The young female bounded, but it seemed with the last of her energy, and I placed one round carefully between the dark holes of her eyes—she would have been so pretty—when she turned and ended her existence.
The matron stood across the room. The demon struggled with Tigre behind her. The matron leaked her essence from gaping holes and the massive wound Dillon’s knife had opened up in her.
“Shaman . . .” she hissed. “You’re on a journey you will live just long enough to regret.”
Boom!
A hand load cratered her face.
Three down, but the demon turned . . .
. . . and was snatched down by a white tiger, tireless in battle . . . “Hurry, Marius. Hurry downstairs . . .”
“You up?” I said.
Dillon sheathed his knife, checked his weapon. “Good to go.”
“Let’s roll.”
We went downstairs.
* * *
In shamanic training, when a practitioner is first taught to journey, the first journey that we make is one to the Lower World. It’s classic, simple, and fairly safe while under the supervision of a good teacher-shaman. You journey to a place in the natural world where there’s some sort of entrance to the Lower World, you travel down through there, through a tunnel that twists and turns and eventually you arrive in the Lower World. The Lower World looks like the Middle World—except there are no trappings of the “civilized” world we live in. It’s all about Mother Nature. Mountains, lush forests, oceans, streams, animals and spirit beings. It’s the home of benign and helping spirits, at least at the first levels.
But in the map of the Lower World, there are regions to explore deep and dark below even that surface, and part of the training of the shamanic practitioner is to venture there with the allies one finds, or who find you, because each nook and cranny of the Other Realms can hide a secret, a spirit or an insight that can help—or kill—a shaman.
These stairs were like that tunnel, leading and twisting down.
This staircase wasn’t shaped with human intention; it twisted and turned upon itself, crossing over, though always down and the roof dropped down and became one of earth, dripping moisture, crisscrossed with strange veins that looked as though they pulsed with blood or some other fluid.
Like being inside an intestine.
The air stank, had a thick substance to it that left a nasty-tasting film in our mouths.
There were no Guardians upon the stairs.
That worried me.
Dillon’s breath rasped.
“You okay?” I asked.
“Yeah,” he said. “Good enough.” He paused. “I’m scared, Marius.”
“I know, bro. I know. Me, too.” I took a deep breath. Fear is the mind-killer, as a great writer once wrote. I called and I was answered . . .
. . . Michael, stand with us and strengthen us in your Work, lend us your courage and your strength and your Divine guidance in this Dark Place . . .
And like that, it lifted, and we felt infused.
“Felt like someone lifted a pack off me,” Dillon said.
“It’s just all the ammo you’ve run through.”
He laughed. “No such thing as too much ammo.”
“Word, that,” I said.
Faint and far-off, down the staircase, a scream.
A woman’s scream.
Sabrina.
We ran. Towards the scream, down the stairs, our knees aching with the impact and our boots clattering and pounding on the wooden stairs that became steps carved out of living stone, and yet the staircase turned and turned again, and again . . .
Another scream.
From a woman we both loved.
And the stairs ended in a cavern, the way illuminated by glowing globes mounted in the wall, a sickly pale light in each nook, the passageway twisting . . .
. . . and then opening into a chamber.
In the middle of the room, a raised dais. Tied up, spread-eagled, Sabrina twisted against the red cord bindings that held her. She was naked. Her spread legs were pointed at a deformity in the rock that shaped the chamber, a deformity that pulsed like a scabbed-over wound with a vein beneath it. In a loose formation around the dais, centered on the one I’d come to find, were what appeared to be men.
And there were Guardians here.
Not one, but three—huge, twelve feet tall and muscled accordingly with bodies that would make a bodybuilder swoon. Faces human-appearing, handsome beyond handsome, but with an evil oiliness and slyness that repulsed.
The horns didn’t help.
Demi-demons.
A step up from your run-of-the-mill worker demon, roughly equivalent in the Dark Side way with a demigod, half-elven or half-angelic, half-human.
And Fallen.
Further powered by a Fallen somewhere close by, probably on the other side of that portal, ready to cross when the right energy was there and, from the appearance of it, the energy of rape and murder under dark sacrament was what they had in mind.
We were there just in time.
Dillon was already rolling forward, and I felt his energy shifting, the rage rising in him, overriding his fear to become something elemental, something older than primeval, the fiercest flame of all, the Divine Male in defense of the Divine Feminine, a friend in defense of another, a father for a child . . .
“Dillon! Stop!” My voice rang with something much greater than me, something much larger, and I felt the presence of the angels gathering at our sides, at our backs . . .
He stopped.
The closest demon laughed. “Don’t stop him, Marius.” The voice was male, confident. “Let him run. You’re always saying in accordance with the Divine Plan . . . this is part of the plan. Divine, isn’t it?”
Demonic laughter from all three.
Behind them, the ring of men laughed. And in the center, the block-headed gray hair I’d last seen in an expensive business suit. To either side, men with the greasy look of the small-town politician, and at least one officious public official, probably a sheriff or a police officer.
Possessed.
“Welcome to the party, Marius,” the one in charge—or so he thought—said.
“How are you, Will?” I said. “Tossed any babies in the fire lately?”
He didn’t like that, but he hid it fairly well. One of the demons looked at him and laughed mockingly. He didn’t like that, either.
“Not lately. But the night is young. Figure we’d warm up with your tasty little biker bitch friend here, then move onto you and Mr. Shoot-’Em-Up there. We might let him live so he can explain al
l those dead law enforcement officers upstairs. Make for an amusing day in court, I think.”
“Marius . . .” Dillon growled.
Sabrina raised her head. She was clouded, maybe drugged, definitely fogged by a Dark Veil.
. . . And then I felt Her . . . the One who worked through the One I slept with each night . . . a brilliant white light descending on Sabrina, around her, and I saw, as though through a brilliant porthole window lit with light, Jolene, face drawn with fatigue, lines furrowing her face as she concentrated and surrounded Sabrina with light. I had the sense of dark things throwing themselves against the shield wall Jolene held even as she breathed more life back into Sabrina . . .
. . . and I felt my own rage rise up, the heat of the righteous anger coming up in me, and I raised my hand and called upon the Powers . . .
. . . and was shown how it had happened before, so long ago, and now the opportunity to choose differently, how long ago the rage I’d felt in the defense of those I loved, those I’d sworn to protect, and how that rage had fueled the power I’d been given, the power I’d been gifted with, and how the rage transformed it into a weapon, the most powerful of all. But once I’d done that, there was no returning, the path of rage and anger led me down the Dark Road . . .
“Choose differently,” Tigre whispered, from far above where she wrestled with the demon on the threshold . . .
. . . First In Front touched his coup stick to my shoulder, and I felt his strength flow into me . . .
. . . Burt nodded as he settled down on the floor, his head tilted to one side . . .
And I brought it down, dialed it back like a rheostat, took a deep breath, let it settle down through me, down through the soles of my feet, down into Mother Earth . . .
. . . and there let the energy be grounded, let it settle, connect with the Mother and let her strength and wisdom flow up through me . . .
. . . And a stillness came over me, the stillness that comes in a forest in the space between strong breezes, when the hush settles; the stillness between heartbeats; the stillness of the ’twixt and the ’tween.
Power gathered. At my back, to my sides. The Presence of the Light.
And the Mighty Warriors of Light on Earth.
“Not me, Creator God, but you through me, in accordance with your Plan,” I whispered.
My chest swelled . . .
. . . and a huge burst of light issued out of my chest, like a flash suddenly ignited, and the Light held open, as I was the portal, and in the brilliant glare of the Light, I saw issuing forth the Warriors, who leapt at and engaged the three demi-demons . . . the possessed humans throwing up their hands to cover their eyes, others stirring at their backs . . . bodyguards?
“Dillon!” I yelled. He’d already sprung forward, a killing light in his eyes. My shout didn’t slow him; he grabbed one of the humans, an obese man in a Mason County Sheriff’s uniform, lieutenant’s bars on his collar, and head-butted him, knocking him cold, and then Dillon was beside Sabrina, his blooded knife in his hand slashing at the cordage, pulling her up and throwing her over his shoulder, grunting with the effort, as Sabrina was no small woman and she was practically unconscious.
Shots from behind the cluster of humans, and then several more goat-soldiers and Cabal clones emerged from a side tunnel. I worked that trigger—a Geissele SSE—like there was no tomorrow, smoke curling from my barrel, and serviced the targets before they could get completely clear of the tunnel’s mouth, stacking ’em up so the following echelons tripped over the bodies in front of them, more good shooting.
Dillon staggered past me and headed for the stairs. I covered him and backed towards the stairs . . .
. . . the demi-demons were swinging great swords of flame, hammering on the shields and swords of the Angelic Warriors of Light, one of whom turned and looked at me and mouthed the words: Run, Marius, we will hold . . .
And that made me want to run to them, my beloved brothers . . .
“Run!”
The blast of angelic communication lifted me and turned me and sent me up the stairs, right behind Dillon, huffing and swearing as he staggered up a step at a time.
“Run!” Burt shouted, his brethren swirling around him . . .
“Run!” First In Front shouted, demon blood running from his war knife, his coup stick matted with demon flesh and brains . . .
“Run!” I shouted.
Dillon jogged up two stairs, stumbled and fell. “God, Marius,” he gasped. “I can’t run up these stairs with her. How we gonna get her out of here . . .”
He was agonized. It’s just biology, part of being in the meat . . . he was in good shape, but we’d just fought our way down into an antechamber of Hell, and now he was carrying an unconscious woman up at least the equivalent of five stories’ worth of stairs, on the run, with demons snapping at his heels.
“Do the best you can,” I said. “I’ll hold them.”
“You can’t . . .”
“Get her out of here, Dillon! You’re stronger than me; you can carry her, I can’t. I’ll hold them here and fall back after you. Give me your spare mags.”
“What about the demon up top?”
“Dude, one crisis at a time, okay? Let’s get up there first. Go!”
He slung Sabrina across his shoulders in a fireman’s carry, wrapped his off arm over her dangling arm and gripped her leg, propped his LMT in the crook of his strong arm and started up, huffing—
—there was movement at the bottom of the stairs, and I welcomed them with a good long string of shots, then misted the air with holy water and fell back to the next landing, Dillon already working his way up to the next—
—bounding up the stairway at me a goat-soldier and a vamp, the vamp a full-body male, strong and springing from wall to wall, I dropped my M4 in the VTAC sling and drew my revolver boom-boom, two shots did in the vamp but the goat-soldier got off a burst that ricocheted off the wall, at least one graze or maybe a through-and-through on the meat of my leg, I turned the revolver on him boom-boom, four shots down, hope they don’t send any more vamps this way; working backwards I stumbled and sat down hard on my ass, which saved me since there was a burst of fire over my head, courtesy of an IR-equipped goat-soldier, and I got another .357 into his center of mass, punching a ragged hole in that very nice Mayflower chest rig—
—Dillon had paused on the upper landing; I could see his shoulder laboring; it was hard physical work anyways, especially after the fight in, but we had to move—
“Dillon! RUN!”
I slammed another speed loader of my hand loads into the .357 and started jogging up; the body count had slowed down the pursuers, though I wished I had a . . .
“Dillon!”
Pant, huff, pant, huff, “What!”
“You got any hand grenades?”
Pant, huff, pant, huff. “Yeah. Wait one.”
Thump, thump, thump . . . rolling down the stairs to me. An M-46 frag.
“You got any more?”
Pant, huff, pant, huff. “Yeah, gimme a minute . . .”
Thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump . . . two more.
All righty then.
Two turns down the cautious approach, light and nimble, goat-footed almost, a soldier came up.
I doused one grenade in holy water, murmured a quick prayer over it, pulled the pin, counted one, two, throw it!
And threw it down the stairs.
Way too hard, as it bounced right past their point man and rolled further down . . .
. . . and I hurried up the stairs—where the heck was that thing—and then . . .
Crack!
The overpressure compressed my ears, even a floor above, and the screams of goat-soldier shredded with holy-water-soaked shrapnel rose.
I ran.
Dillon was leaning against the wall. He looked as though he’d run a marathon.
“Marius, you take her, I can’t anymore . . .” His legs were shaking with the effort.
The stairwel
l was wider here, we were only two levels beneath the house. Above, I could hear the battle between Tigre and the demon still raging . . .
“Hurry, Marius, you must get clear . . .”
My white tiger.
Burt swirled past me, a wreath of black smoke that sprouted brother crows like feathers; they filled the stairwell beneath me and bounding up the stairs behind came First In Front, a warrior’s grin on his face; he stopped and waved me on.
I got up next to Dillon. There was barely enough room for us abreast on the widening stairs, but it was doable.
“Drape her over both of us, Dillon.”
He let Sabrina slip and kept one arm around his neck, I draped the other around mine and we staggered up the stairs—
—one flight, one more—
—and then we were entering the house, which was shredding to pieces right in front of our eyes, Tigre and the demon still tangled up, shredding the house in the Other Realms and in this one—
I doused the two remaining hand grenades in holy water, pulled the pins with my teeth with my best John Wayne panache, chipping a tooth in the process, and then tossed both grenades down the stairwell, turned to Dillon and . . .
The entire house lifted, shook, shattered into a million pieces of lumber, brick and plumbing, and Dillon and I and Sabrina were tossed like rag dolls in the hands of a furious toddler, end over end, to land in a heap in the field, a good twenty-five yards from the shattered foundation of the farmhouse that was no more. Debris landed all around us, but not on us, thanks be to God.
“Dillon?” I said.
A moment, and then his voice, utterly spent and still wheezing. “What?”
“I’m glad you’re alive. Sabrina?”
“She’s here. Breathing. Not hurt that I can see.”
“Dillon?”
“What?”
“What the hell did you put in those grenades?”
“Nothing.”
“Frags won’t blow a house up like that.” I paused. “I mean, will they?”
“Maybe they hit a gas line.”
I pushed myself up. In the ruins of the house, straining at the end of an invisible leash, the threshold demon raged at us, like a guard dog barely restrained.
Tigre stood above me. She was covered with demonic blood, but looked otherwise unscathed.
