by Jenny McKane
Sunny and the crew had come as far into Chicago as they dared, stopping and finding a Keeper with an empty home they could use in a Southwest neighborhood called Tammer Park. It was a nondescript two-story house on a long road of nondescript two-story homes. There were a few houses still occupied, but many were left vacant as residents fled the “terrorist” activity that was spreading through the city.
As soon as they’d arrived, late the night before, Sin had disappeared and chased down leads in the demon sect like a bloodhound on a scent. Eli wasn’t sure they should trust him.
“What if he’s just setting us up to get you killed?” he asked Metatron. “You’re one hell of a trophy right now, you know.”
Metatron just shook his head.
“I can read him,” the archangel said. “His intentions are true and maybe we need a little more interaction with friendly demons right now. Our angelic allies are basically nonexistent at this point.”
Eli didn’t trust demons. Not after all he’d lost at their hands, and Metatron knew every heartbreaking detail of what Eli had lost and the scars he carried within him. Eli just grunted at Metatron’s take on the cambion, but let it drop.
Metatron had reached out to a holdout of Seraphim he knew were in the area and were offering limited assistance to the humans—completely behind the scenes and invisible to them.
“Even if a Seraphim glamoured itself with the heaviest magic it could manifest, it would still look nothing like a human,” Metatron explained. “They’re wise to stay unnoticed at this point. While the humans believe they’re fighting other humans, they’re brave and willing to make a stand. If it was revealed too early that it was a supernatural war that they were caught in the midst of, they might lose their nerve and allow the city to be completely overrun.”
The group, affectionately called “The Get-a-long Gang” by Sin, was forming a plan and staying put until one was in place. Naturally, that meant Selah had disappeared into one of the bedrooms upstairs and shut the door, not coming out in the past 12 hours. It aggravated Sunny to no end, but even Sunny knew that it was more likely that Selah herself was aggravating her and not just her actions.
There would be a time, and it felt like it was coming soon, that she and the demon princess would have a little chat about what went down in the shadow realm. Sunny was walking around with a giant chip on her shoulder that was only growing with each passing day.
Sunny shook her head and cleared her thoughts of Selah. Ugh. The last thing she wanted to dwell on was her.
When she looked around the living room, she saw that Gideon was watching her and he raised his eyebrow in a silent question. You okay, he seemed to ask. She gave him a short nod, embarrassed that he’d likely witnessed her raging in her head against his friend and former fiancée. The thought made Sunny want to retch, so she schooled her features into a bored mask and looked away.
Yeah, there was a lot of talking and unpacking this little group had to do in the near future. But not today. Today, they were a few steps closer to Gabriel, who would hopefully have answers on how to stop Camael and his undead demon/hybrid army that was brewing on the other side.
“When the cambion returns with his information, my brother and I will head to the front line and make contact with the Seraphim,” Tesah said, her monotone voice breaking the silence in the room. Her long, white blonde hair was pulled back in a severe ponytail today and she was wearing her high-tech body armor outfit again. Seemed like the angel and her brother were itching for a little battle today.
“Will you stay there or return here? We’re looking to be on the move in the morning, based on the intelligence we can gather tonight,” Metatron said.
He was the only one that spoke with the Powers. Actually, it was more accurate to say that he was the only one the Powers would speak to. The humans were too low for their acknowledgement and the demons were too demonic. Even if they were only half-demon and had no choice in the details of their births.
*****
Sunny found herself standing outside of an abandoned toy factor at the ass-crack of dawn the next morning. There was a giant clown face, now faded and weathered, painted two stories high on the exterior of the building they were all staring at.
“That clown is the thing that nightmares are made of,” Sin complained aloud, though nobody responded.
But it was true. Its eyes were faded and worn so that they were essentially white with no distinguishing pupils. The paint in the open mouth was faded and chipping, giving the creature razor-sharp fangs instead of perfectly spaced, blunt teeth.
The toy factory was a nest of imps, according to Sin, who’d shared the news as soon as he returned late last night. Inside said nest of imps was a glorious prize.
“What the hell is wrong with this place?” Eli muttered from next to Sunny.
Even without the wrecked clown face on the front wall, the place was ramshackle at best. Haunted looking at worst.
The Powers had joined them a few moments before they left the Tammer Park house and picked their way through back streets and side roads across the Roosevelt Road line of demarcation. The change had been instant, too, once they found themselves in demon territory. Fires burned on every street corner, cars were abandoned in the middle of the road, and there didn’t seem to be a window in the entire zip code that wasn’t smashed out and broken.
The demons were mostly out of sight, likely recuperating from another night of battle. Many demon species were nocturnal, especially the more elemental, basic ones. It let them move as easily as they had been through the demon half of Chicago.
Sin had returned with a few more tidbits of information, too.
“The hostile demons that came across? Not the hybrids,” he reported. “They’re ferals that Camael managed to get control of.”
Ferals weren’t good news. They were more powerful than many demons Sunny had encountered so far and they were violent and often bloodthirsty.
“How the hell did he get control of them?” Metatron had asked aloud and nobody had an answer.
“Alder, most likely,” Sunny offered.
The major domo/butler/mad scientist was way more than Sunny had originally assumed—a mistake she promised herself she’d never make again. The next time she saw that grey-skinned asshole, she was going to gut him for what he did to Gideon and was in the process of doing to Plaxo before they all escaped.
“The nice incubus I talked to also mentioned something worth noting,” Sin continued, a self-satisfied look on his face. “He said that Camael was fighting a war on two fronts at the moment, more in the future, most likely.”
Metatron asked who he meant.
“The dream demons,” Sin said with a laugh. “Never met one, heard they’re terrifying. Seems like every time Camael works to build or activate a portal, those little bad-asses have it shattered into thousands of pieces before he can march a squad through.”
Sunny’s heart soared at the news. Plaxo and his cohorts were kicking ass and taking names, it seemed. She also smiled at the notion that dream demons were thought of as “terrifying” these days. Not too long ago, Plaxo told of a time when dream demons were all but ignored and even laughed at for their size and their penchant for dream manipulation. For years, that wasn’t the most highly sought-after skill a demon could possess. But now? Now, Plaxo and his peers’ stock was rising.
She only hoped that they stayed under the radar as long as they could. Once Camael got a good read on what they were up to, they were going to be hunted again.
The Powers were likely armed with the deadliest weapons among them all--runed swords that resembled their wings in that they appeared and disappeared at their command, just like their wings.
Metatron had an archangel sword that was powerful, as well, but even he knew it wasn’t on the same level as what Tesah and Eron were carrying.
Guns weren’t part of the arsenal, as they were useless on demons of the caliber they were likely facing. Sure, for a lower-level
demon, a bullet in the head would send them back to Hell and force them to reset, but that wouldn’t work on any demon that’d evolved even one iota in the past millennia. Human technology simply hadn’t kept pace with angelic and demonic technology.
Sunny still had her trusty obsidian blade at her side, but she’d also gotten a bit of a weapon upgrade when Metatron had gifted her a small, dainty sword from his armory, complete with a set of protection runes and just enough magic to send a demon back to Hell with a permanent scar wherever she’d managed to stab it.
Gideon had a sword from Metatron, too, and Eli had about 40 small, deadly weapons strapped to his body at all times. Selah? Sunny had no idea if Selah carried anything to protect herself with other than her own victimhood. And as far as Sin went, Sunny hadn’t seen a weapon offered to the cambion, but she was certain that he came with plenty of his own.
Metatron cut the power to the vehicle with a long breath and turned to the passengers in the back with a wide grin.
“I’m not exactly the archangel of battle, but I’m a little excited about this,” he said, completely serious. “You guys ready?”
Sunny wasn’t so sure she was, but it was too late to voice any concerns now. It seemed there was a toy factory that needed storming and they were just the ones to do it.
Chapter Seven
“This is seriously fucked up,” Sin was whispering as they tiptoed around massive piles of doll bodies.
They had arms, legs, and stuffed midsections—but they were all headless and long-abandoned to the point that there were giant cobwebs snaking around the six-foot-high stacks.
Sunny agreed. It was fucked up. Sin had gotten them a location, but no hints as to what sort of nest they were approaching. His sources said these demons were keeping a surprisingly low profile and not showing themselves—something Sin had taken as absolute proof they were hoarding some sort of valuable prize.
The building was two stories, and so far, it’d taken them a good ten full minutes to navigate the entryway and large warehouse room on the first floor. They hadn’t encountered any demon activity yet. No, they seemed to have all they could handle getting past the utterly creepy doll corpses.
They walked slowly, crouched low and checking/clearing doorways like some de-facto paranormal SWAT team with the Powers taking point, Eli next, followed by Sin, then Gideon who was in front of Sunny. Metatron was behind them all, making sure they weren’t being trailed or followed.
It was when the Powers made it up the staircase and passed the threshold into the second floor that chaos exploded inside the warehouse and Sunny found herself caught, sandwiched between Gideon in front of her and Metatron behind her—all while swords clanged and bodies pressed backwards above.
“Push forward,” Metatron yelled to Tesah and Eron.
A few moments later, the pressure building on the stairs was eased as Sunny felt Gideon move forward. She followed, Metatron still pressed in closely behind her, impatient to get into the middle of the battle. Sunny had no idea what sort of demons were up there, only that whatever they were, they were giving the Powers and Eli one hell of a time.
It was Sin who finally yelled back.
“Imps,” he hollered, the dislike evident. “A whole freaking swarm of the nasty fuckers!”
Her stomach dropped and did a freefall to her feet. Imps were nasty, primordial, and strong as hell. Every once in a while, you’d get really lucky and draw an elemental imp—one that could occasionally draw up a fireball or a shard of glass-like ice.
The hallway was engulfed in flames by the time Sunny crested above the staircase and as she was gaining her bearings, Gideon and Metatron launched themselves into the fray. Sunny pulled her small sword from the scabbard that hung behind her back and stood at the ready, trying to find her way in without getting her head chopped off by Sin’s rather unorthodox fighting style.
When she could get a good look around the cambion, she saw imps the size of middle school students. They weren’t the tiny knee-high demons that she’d pictured. No, these ones came to her midsection and from what she could see, were swinging wildly at their attackers with blade-like talons.
And they hissed—like rabid, giant snakes looking for something to eat.
“They’re hideous,” she grumbled, inching a step forward.
She didn’t need to wait long, as a duo of gun-metal gray colored imps came barreling out of one of the doors closest to Sunny. Like its brethren, it had claws and fangs, Sunny was lucky enough to draw the notice of a fire imp.
“Duck!” Gideon shouted seconds before a flash of bright light illuminated the hallway and he pushed her to the ground with the weight of his body, knocking her out of the way at the last moment as the fireball shot over her head and exploded against the wall behind her.
“You’ve got about a minute to kill that one before it makes another fireball,” Metatron was yelling at Sunny pushed herself to her feet. Gideon’s hand was gripping the back of her arm and he didn’t let go as Sunny started to move forward with the rest of the group.
Tesah, her blonde braids swinging against the graceful motion of her body, leapt at the fire imp, who still watched Sunny with a wicked gleam in its eye.
Imps were strong and stupid for the most part — and while they were incredibly dangerous, they were usually easy to predict when it came to their next move. They were more animal and battle than other demons and Sunny had never heard of an imp speaking a human language. But this fire imp, he was more predator-like than a big dumb animal. He’d locked on to Sunny for some reason, and because of it, he hadn’t noticed the Amazonian-looking angel leaping at him with a 50-ton nuke of an angelic sword.
Sunny watched as the runes on the sword burned bright blue as it neared the fire imp, and when it connected to the demon’s neck, it practically sang as it severed the imp’s neck from its body.
“I’m serious,” Sin yelled from a few feet in front of her. “I’d give my left nut for one of those swords!”
Eli laughed from where he stood, hacking away at the talons of one of the first imps they encountered. It seemed to be growing its fingernails as fast as Eli was cutting at them.
“I have no doubt that the Powers would have use for one of your testicles, Sin,” Metatron called over to him.
The archangel was holding a smaller imp, the size of a Labrador, by the throat and pinning it against the wall as it tried to tear the skin from Metatron’s arm. It wasn’t leaving a scratch on him-likely one of the perks of being an Archangel, Sunny mused to herself as the gentle pressure of Gideon pushing her forward made her move her feet.
“Press forward or they’ll try to trap us!” Eli was shouting orders as he continued the fight.
Eron was now leading the charge, as the group pushed forward and tried to move down the hallway of the second story. There were fewer imps, but there were still so many that everybody had swords moving and feet kicking out at the small demons. One managed to knock Eli onto his back, and Sunny watched with horror as the imp moved to strike at Eli’s neck with his black claws. It was Sin who jumped over Eli and hacked at the attacking demon with a sword, yelling and making a spectacle of the whole scene. Sunny giggled, knowing it was probably the wrong time to do so, but unable to stop herself. Sin definitely brought something to the group — a lightheartedness that it had been sorely lacking up until he walked in.
The others (save for perhaps Metatron) might not agree with Sunny, but the cambion definitely was adding to the cohesiveness of their little band of misfits.
From what she could tell in the small slivers of light in the dark hallway, they were pushing past workrooms and conference centers, but had to be reaching the back of the building soon. Were there more waiting for them?
It turned out there were. A whole lot more.
The room had a few windows that were uncovered, and it had to be the size of at least two roomy living rooms together. There was broken furniture laying around and it seemed that behind every pile of fur
niture was a tiny gaggle of smaller imps throwing broken glass, boards, and whatever else they could get their little hands on.
The first wave of imps, the larger ones, had to be the warriors. Who these mean little buggers were, Sunny had no idea, but it seemed like the fight was just beginning for them.
“Eyes!” Tesah yelled.
Sin turned toward Metatron with a question on his face.
“Cover your eyes quickly!” Sunny yelled as she followed her own advice. While keeping her sword in her dominant hand, she pushed her face into her other elbow and held her breath. Once, in New Orleans, she’d not bothered to tightly cover her eyes and had burned spots in her vision that lasted for almost three days. Lesson learned. When the Powers were about to unleash their angelic magic, Sunny listened to their warnings.
She didn’t hear Sin making a fuss, so she assumed he’d covered his face in time.
Whatever the Powers did with their swords didn’t necessarily make a noise, but there was definitely a change in the air when the magic was released. Sunny thought it was like a pop, while Eli swore it was a sizzle. Whatever it was, she imagined it looked like a wave of bright light (what she’d inadvertently absorbed with her faulty eye shielding) spreading out in all directions, eviscerating the demons they were fighting.
“Clear,” Tesah called back.
The magic never harmed Gideon, and when she looked up from her elbow, she saw that Sin was unaffected, also. Somehow, whatever the Powers were using on the lower-level demons (and the demon had to be weaker than the average demon dwelling in the human realm) didn’t affect the half-demons working with them. Although, technically, Gideon was only a quarter demon.
