by Kenny Soward
A slick black limousine stretched out next to it. There were at least twenty of those black-suited security people positioned strategically around it as well as several police officers.
And they were painfully exposed.
“Shit,” Em said, a hint of panic in her voice. She looked around for a place to hide, dragging Torri toward the gate.
A thin reedy voice cut through the crowd noise.
“Can I see your event tickets?”
A man came from nowhere to block their way down the path to the buildings. One of the black suits. Not a particularly tall man but extremely well-built beneath the suit. Wide shoulders stretched the material, and his attitude was stiff and intent. Intense.
His badge read Mr. Remi Agaras.
“Oh, hi.” Em stuttered, pretending to fish around in her pocket for the non-existent tickets. “Aw, shoot. Hey, Torri. You got the tickets?”
Torri stared into the man’s dark sunglasses. She fell into them, past their tinted plastic, to the cold eyes hiding behind them. The irises were pale and demonic, covered in a sheen of black like a layer of warm oil.
“I see you,” she whispered.
And she did. The pasty skin. The eyes. The darkness of the soul within.
A demon in human form.
“Torri, you got the fuckin’ tickets or what?”
Part panic, part anger moved Torri’s arms and legs. Taking a step back and away from Em, Torri brought her staff up and swung it as hard as she could at the man.
But he was ready, arms thrown up in front of him to block the blow.
The Rowan staff thudded across his forearms. At first, it seemed to have no effect, but then the man shook, lips pulling back over his teeth in a grimace. The shaking became more violent, and he made, “Uh, uh, uh,” sounds, struck with some sort of resonance, like she’d passed on a seizure to him.
“Let’s go!”
Em grabbed Torri by the hand and dragged her in the direction of the gate and all the fancy cars and SUVs. A couple security guards spotted what had happened and shouted into their little microphones while moving toward them and drawing their guns. A handful of guards came out of the crowd to cut the witches off.
And then Em was gone, vanished, leaving Torri to stand alone before the closing guards.
“Shit. Em?”
Just then, a ruckus broke out somewhere on the far left of the stage near where Missy Gray had gone. Torri’s eyes jerked in that direction just as a red balloon went sailing out of the crowd and hit the cardboard banner of Lindsey walls, just left of the woman herself, and exploded in a splash of red.
Blood.
A woman shouted some profanity, definitely Missy’s voice, and five more balloons were launched toward the stage. This time, Lindsey Walls sidestepped to avoid a direct hit. She glared into the crowd, and Torri felt she wanted to do something terrible but couldn’t because of all the cameras and people who didn’t understand just what kind of monster she really was.
Lindsey Walls’s closest bodyguards surrounded her and escorted her to stage right.
Some of the guards closing on Torri bolted through the crowd in Missy Gray’s direction, probably under orders to take care of the balloon throwers. Yet, three of the guards remained between Torri and the buildings, spreading out with their weapons raised. At the sight of guns, onlookers rushed for cover.
One of guards held out his hand, saying, “Give us the stick, ma’am.”
Torri sneered. “Come take it from me.”
And he did, lunging forward to snatch at the Rowan branch. Torri whipped it back and then cracked him in the chin with it. Inexplicably, the man’s head whipped around as if he’d been hit square in the jaw by the reigning World Boxing Champ.
His knees buckled and he went down.
Torri felt the bullet before she heard the crack of it. It was like a punch to her chest followed by a sharp pain shooting through her back and down through her hips. She stumbled back several paces and nearly went down. Tears stung her eyes. She could barely breathe. Yet, she got the Rowan branch up in front of her, gripping it with all her might.
People bolted in every direction to get away from the gunshot, some screaming and running over their fellow Lindsey Walls enthusiasts.
“Down on the ground,” the guard who’d shot her yelled. “I said, down on the ground! Now! Get down n—”
The man flew back from the sudden gust of wind Torri sent forth from the branch. At first, she didn’t think she could do it, but there it went, as clean and strong and cold as if she’d been drawing power from the top of her very own hill.
The last guard opened fire, but none of the bullets ever landed, driven away by the cold aura pouring off her. Torri strode forward, gritting her teeth against her aching chest. Out of rounds, the woman threw her weapon at Torri and turned to run.
A gust of wind from the Rowan branch helped the woman along, sending her flying through the air to smack face down in the concrete and slide a good five or six feet, leaving a trail of blood behind her.
Torri grinned, tasting blood in her mouth. Her eyes devoured the area around the stage, looking for Azarah. She spotted a rush of black suits whisking the woman down the stage right steps and toward the limousine waiting by the visitor’s building.
Torri started off in that direction.
Something caught the end of her Rowan branch and nearly yanked it out of her hands. Reeling, she came face to face with the man she’d first struck, the demon, Remi Agaras. He gripped the branch with lips peeled back from his tiny pointed teeth as he fought its tremendous power.
This close, she could see his skin peeling away like ash paper to reveal white scales beneath.
Her hand dove into her dress pocket, grabbed a handful of hill dirt, and flung it in his face while she uttered the words of conflagration at the same time.
The dirt turned to intense sparks, showering the demon with magical fire. Remi screeched, jerking back, whipping his face away and losing his sunglasses in the process, but not letting go of her branch. The fire died as quick as it had started, and the demon-man changed direction completely, bearing down on Torri hard.
He drove her backwards, hissing from a face pocked with smoking craters. Eyes glared beady from their sockets. Teeth snapped at her face.
Yet she held on to her Rowan branch, for losing it would be one of the last things she’d ever do.
The demon was powerful, splitting out of its black suit as if it were a second skin. Powerful legs drove Torri back, and suddenly they were airborne, Torri feeling a moment of weightlessness before slamming hard on the ground with the demon on top of her.
Before it could rip her throat out, she called up the flowers of the woods and exhaled a fine mist of spores into the demon’s face. He spat and winced as if it were a cloud of acid. “Bitch!” he hissed, before driving a claw into the bullet hole in her chest.
The pain was so sharp and agonizing it took her breath away. A sob tore from her chest. She kicked at the thing’s side, then brought her knee in and got it between them, trying to break its grip on the branch.
Although she could hardly speak, she relaxed her body while sputtering the words of the Earth.
“Green grass, hear my prayer…
Brown dirt, hear my prayer…
Rock and field, root and tree…
There is nothing more fae than thee…”
And then she was nothing. Just smoke whipping like a ghost in the wind.
When she formed up again, she stood behind the demon, looking down at him with a wicked grin.
The demon’s frustrated scream was cut short by the crack of the Rowan branch against the back of its head, splitting the scaly skull as if it were a melon.
Standing over the motionless, smoking body, Torri looked around. Nearly everyone had long ago cleared out except for the group who’d been ushering Lindsey Walls away. Protesters, Missy and her people, she suspected, descended on the escaping group with what little weaponry they had. They drew pisto
ls and fired at the black suits, scoring more than a few solid hits and surprised cries. But then the black suits turned their pistols on the protesters and opened fire. Those guns were cannons compared to the .380s and other small caliber guns the protesters had. Many of them fell, shot, or scattered like dust in a gale.
Torri hurried toward the two groups, one hand holding her injured chest, the other gripping her Rowan branch.
This time the limp was real.
Sirens went off and the crowd of black suits crossed out of Torri’s sight in front of the building.
“Em, where the hell are you?”
She had no doubt the witch was still around. She wouldn’t have abandoned Torri. But if there was ever a time to come out, this would be it.
Raising her hand, Torri focused on the limousine.
She couldn’t let them escape.
The crowd of rushing black suits appeared around the near side of the building, encroaching on the car. One threw the door open while two others ushered Azarah inside. The woman seemed reluctant to go, her head whipping around until her eyes caught sight of Torri. And then she stepped out of the way just as a swirling gust of ember infused wind from Torri’s staff spun toward the car, striking it with the force of a giant hand, rocking the vehicle. The gust picked up and became a seething inferno. The embers put smoking holes in the tires, ran rampant through the interior like firebugs, lighting the entire limo on fire.
The men who’d been ushering Azarah inside spun away, screaming, their clothes alight.
Azarah, no longer Lindsey Walls, stood stiffly as the maelstrom raged around her. She turned slowly toward Torri, straightening her suit, eyes blazing with a golden hue as she strode toward the hill witch.
Torri felt the woman’s power growing like an oncoming storm. Her clothes caught with cinders and blazed around her, flames trailing off her shoulders. Arms flying up, Azarah began her incantations, and all Torri could do was place the Rowan staff before her, gripping it in two hands to take the brunt of what was sure to be a brutal assault.
She remembered Azarah back on the battlefield below the Scottish Highlands so many years ago. She knew what the woman was capable of.
Blades of light spun and swirled toward her, slamming against her magical shield like ocean rain into a wall of hard baked mud. Pieces of Torri’s protection flew away, bits of that sharp light nipping at her skin, cutting, taking off little pieces of her like a sandblaster.
Around the corner of the building, she spied Em slinking toward Azarah, eyes pinned to her back, bone dagger in hand.
Torri strode forward into the storm to keep the woman’s attention.
Her face stung. Her eyes squinted to avoid being plucked out.
And then Em was there, right behind Azarah’s tall, naked form. She plunged the dagger between the woman’s ribs, her face alight with glee.
The storm of sharp light dissipated instantly.
Azarah spun, ripping the blade from Em’s grasp and backhanding her across the face, sending her flying with a yelp.
Torri straightened from having been bent over against the gale. Expression set, unsure she could pull it off, she came on to try and finish her foe.
Face set with anger and pain, Azarah pulled the blade from her back, snapped it in half, and tossed it aside. For a moment, it seemed like she might come to meet Torri, but then a coy smile oozed onto her face, and she backed up, disappearing around the corner of the building.
Chapter 30
Lonnie watched in horror as the nightmare repeated itself. A year ago, when his friend, Gruff, a friend of everyone, a great and strange man who’d built an underground kingdom beneath the Ohio River, was split open by his very own sister.
“I made myself a portal,” the old man had said, and Makare had used it to break through and attack them in the Under River.
But he knew Bess hadn’t done any such thing. So, if she wasn’t a portal, then what could be coming through?
Lonnie strode up, fists balled up and ready to hit something. The look on Bess’s face was both elation and pain. Tears streamed down her face. Her lips moved wordlessly.
“Lonnie, don’t…” It was Alex, the big man on his knees now if he was witnessing some miracle. His words were not a threat, but a warning. Almost like he knew what it was.
Lonnie looked from the big man back to Bess. From her stomach and chest, a golden light spilled. Two pale hands pressed together, coming through like a diver into water, sharp fingernails as dark as night, trailing bits of Bess’s insides. Two slender arms came next, and then a head with dark, lank hair. It was covered in slime and gore but still bathed in that golden glow that was breaking like a sunrise from Bess’s innards.
“Fuck it,” Lonnie said. Enraged, no longer worrying about the damn mechanical arms, the guardian, or anything else, Lonnie swept his hands together, but he didn’t release the energy. He allowed it to build up inside him, grabbed those arms, and jerked, dragging the now squirming form out of Bess. His eyes went wide as a tuft of feathery wings followed the creature’s shoulders before it fell to the floor with a thud.
A pale, gaunt face glared up at Lonnie. Eyes as black and fathomless as night stared back. Its lips were thin, its features, androgynous.
It tried to rise but Lonnie punched it right in the face. And while his runecraft power had given him the strength to stun the thing, he fully expected to have busted its nose in an explosion of blood, or at least have knocked it down. Something. But no, it shook him off and stood. Lonnie hit it again, harder, and this time it stumbled back, yet still didn’t fall.
Lonnie charged. The creature’s stained white wings burst open as the two slammed together, jostling and swinging at one another.
Lonnie landed a couple of blows, but the creature, whatever the fuck it was, was just as strong. And while Lonnie grunted and groaned and cursed, his opponent didn’t fight back. Its jaw was set, brow furrowed, but it didn’t take a single swing. It seemed determined to keep Lonnie held in place more than anything, fighting him to a standstill rather than trying to win any sort of advantage.
And that infuriated Lonnie even more. He broke free and landed a hard blow to its stomach. Then he struck it again, knocking it to its knees, each time he connected filling him with a chillingly cold satisfaction.
Slamming his hands around its throat, Lonnie squeezed, face twisted in a grimace. “This is for Bess, you asshole!”
“Lonnie, release my angel now or this one gets it.”
It was a young man’s voice, not threatening but powerful, and Lonnie’s hands relaxed just slightly because of it.
His attention turned, head whipping around, seeing that three more figures had emerged from Bess while he was sparring with this other. Two of them could have been twins to the one he was currently strangling. Tall and thin. Muscled and shirtless. Garbed in long, scaled kilts that reached to their ankles and feat laden with boots made of the same silvery-tarnished metal.
Each of them wore a huge, black-handled sword sheathed in thick hard-leather at their waists.
One of them held Bess up, her shivering form still jerking and twitching and glowing in gold. Her lips still moved, eyes focused on the one who’d spoken.
The other held Elsa from behind. An arm around her stomach and a knife at her throat.
The one who’d spoken was, compared to his friends, a relatively plain looking man. Average build with a mess of blond hair, the guy wore plain blue jeans, sneakers, and a white T-shirt, now stained with Bess’s insides. The man, a kid really, held a cigarette between his lips.
Not only did Lonnie suddenly find himself wanting a smoke, but he also wanted to teach this kid a lesson about killing his friends. Because even though Bess was clearly still alive (who the fuck knew how?) she likely wouldn’t be for long.
“You killed Bess.”
The kid gestured with his cigarette. “She’s dying for what she believes in. She’s been living for this day her entire life.”
As if
to prove his point, Lonnie caught sight of Alex on his knees, praying to the three characters in front of him. He did know what was going on here, and he dadn’t lifted a damn finger to stop it.
“Whatever you are, I don’t worship you.”
The guy took a drag on his cigarette while staring at Lonnie with a set of cold, blue eyes, then he exhaled blue smoke. “It doesn’t matter what you believe. The fact is, we got the drop on you.”
“Alex, what do we do?” That was Nina Yu.
Lonnie glanced inside the hall entrance to see Nina, Dion, and Rachel aiming their MP5’s at the group, switching from one target to another, trying to figure out which one to kill.
Jeff, mask thrown off, his face streaming with tears, held Alex’s ax. Looked like he wanted to use it, too.
“Stand down,” Alex said.
“Blow the fuck out of them,” Lonnie countermanded.
“No.” Alex’s voice was firm this time, rock steady. “This is the Light of the Lord. Stand down in His presence, or die.”
The ECC operatives lowered their weapons, but only slightly. All of them but Jeff, who seemed quite determined to go on his own private suicide mission.
When Lonnie didn’t say anything, the plain-looking guy took a step forward. When they were only a few feet apart, Lonnie seriously considered letting go of the angel he was holding and going after this other guy instead.
“Look, man,” the kid said. “My friend here will make sure Elsa doesn’t come back this time. He knows how to kill a whorchal.”
Elsa squirmed in the angel’s grasp, hissing and kicking with her legs, but she was caught tight.
Lonnie clenched his jaw, then let go of the angel with a shove.
The creature stood without so much as rubbing its neck and moved off to the side.
Lonnie squared up to the kid, who turned his head and blew smoke off to the side, avoiding doing it in Lonnie’s face.
“Look,” the guy said. “I know you’re confused. Pissed off. Probably wondering who the fuck we are. I don’t blame you. But we’re here to help, nonetheless.”
“Oh yeah? How’s that?”
“We’re going to cut that fucking tether.” Then the kid smiled and held out his hands in a mocking gesture. “That is, if you’ll let us.”
