by Tim Marquitz
I rose up, shrugging the wreckage off to make sure none of it hit Rala. My body ached and my brain felt as if it was waking up from a drunken one night stand with an inconsiderate elephant, but I wasn’t seriously hurt.
“You okay?” I asked Rala as she curled tight against the floor. She half-ass nodded, and I saw the tome clutched beneath her, glad to see it looked in one piece, as well. “Stay low, and I’ll get you out of here in a second.”
Gray and black smoke whirled in the shattered remnants of Baalth’s safe house, its thickness blocking the view of the outside world. The only benefit to that was that it probably also blocked what was going on inside, giving me a few seconds to get my head straight. I surveyed the mess quickly. Unless I was being attacked by the US Air Force, it was pretty much a guarantee the RPG was only the opening salvo to soften us up.
I spied Scarlett’s arm pushing aside debris and ran over to check on her. A few seconds later and she popped free of the detritus and coughed out a lungful of dust. Like me, she was a little battered but didn’t look too bad. She was tough, but I felt sorry for whoever had bombed us, though, because she was livid.
Her fury poured from her lungs as she scrambled to her feet, curses flying out of her that would have made Jesus blush. I shushed her but there was no stopping her from venting, her sword already out and ready for blood. And then the gunfire began. Bullets ripped through the smoke and pocked the concrete walls around us. This time, however, I was ready. My shield glistened in the gloom, its protection cast wide enough to ensure none of us would catch a bullet unless it was a lucky ricochet.
“Who’d you piss off?” Scarlett asked, the question a razor blade that went for my throat.
I shrugged as I ran over to Rala and helped her to her feet. “Who knows?” And that was the truth. As hostile as everyone had been since I returned to Earth, it could be anyone, though I suspected it was retaliation for my roughhousing of the mercenaries. Maybe their mysterious boss had gotten my message. That made him organized and stacked with resources, which are never good things for your enemy to have in conjunction.
“Where’s Chatterbox?” Rala’s eyes widened as she scanned the ruin.
“The head?” Scarlett asked. “Seriously?”
I nodded, but I hadn’t been too concerned with the guy—seeing how he’s dead and all—though I didn’t want to leave him behind when we split. Besides, it was obvious Rala was attached to the old lunk. I started moving debris where he’d been sitting in his basket when I heard a rambling vocal line come from under the wreckage, the sound distorted by the constant ping of gunfire.
“Here,” I said, dropping to my knees to dig where I’d heard him. Rala came over to help.
A few seconds later, we yanked CB out of his buried basket. His eyes lit up when he saw us, but he kept singing away. He was a little grayer than I remembered, but it looked like all his maggots were accounted for.
“We need to get out of here and shut this down before someone innocent gets hurt,” Scarlett rumbled at my back. She was in avenging angel mode, and God help the idiots who’d lobbed a missile at her—even if it was meant for me.
I nodded in agreement and tossed CB over to Rala, only then catching the rhythm of the song he was singing. A grin split my cheeks as I waved the women in close. He was belting out “Eat Lead” by the thrash band, At War.
“What are you laughing at?” Scarlett glared at me as I formed the teleportation spell. It was complex, but it was like I had the blueprints to it laid out across the screen of my mind. All I needed was a location. Damn it was good to be powerful.
“Nothing,” I answered, trying to retrain my amusement. “Hold tight.”
My magic welled up inside me, chasing my headache away, filling me with power, and choking the life out of me.
I realized the last bit, however slowly, had nothing to do with magic. My gaze dropped to see an oily tentacle wrapped about my throat, and then I was flying.
Well, flying might be a generous description for what I was doing. The tentacle snapped me back like a rubber band at the end of its tension. Fortunately, the still solid face of the portal was there to stop that nonsense.
The back of my skull slammed into the mystical gate, and the Hunchback let loose with a cathedral bell solo. The vertebrae down the length of my back popped in rapid succession as the impact brought a sudden halt to my quite admirable momentum. I’d have cursed or complained, but the tendril remained wrapped tightly around my neck, and for the second time in the same day, I found myself unable to breathe.
Scarlett remedied that with a silver flash.
Her blade cleaved the tentacle in two, the back end slithering into the portal while the one around my throat stiffened. I peeled it loose with a gasp, spinning away from the emerald gateway. Streaks of dark blood slid down the portal’s face. Its vibrato hum grew louder, deeper.
“Uh, Frank…little help here.”
I spun, cognizant of Rala’s last warning, only then noticing the gunfire hadn’t stopped. Bullets were ripping up what was left of the house while the little alien hunched down with the book under one arm and Chatterbox under the other. Puffs of dust and dirt were bursting from the ground beside her. My shield was gone.
“Damn it,” I shouted, a little surprised by how rough my voice sounded, my throat raw from being throttled. “Sorry.”
A tribal drum circle practiced in my head, shooting my concentration to hell. Fortunately though, all it took was a push of will and my defenses returned. Despite how simple it was to resurrect them, it was becoming clear that while I had power to spare, there was a lot more to the control of it than I’d mastered. Another RPG explosion rattled the remnants of the building and set my ears to ringing. The place was getting ready to come down on top of us.
A bone-crushing agony made that the least of my concerns.
Another tendril had snaked from the portal and had latched onto my wrist, its length wrapping around it several times as the pressure increased. I snarled in defiance and yanked against the rubbery limb. Turned out, that wasn’t the best of moves.
Through the shimmering portal, and like Veronica had implied earlier, a whale-sized octopus-looking thing oozed its head out into our world. An inbred first cousin to Cthulhu, the creature’s round face nothing but tentacles; dozens of them clasped at the edge of the portal and used me and it as a foothold to slip into Earth. The hail of bullets at our back pretty much confirmed our status between a squid and a hard place.
There was no doubt I needed to get Rala out of there and make sure the book was safe, but I wasn’t confident teleporting her away because I didn’t know where she’d land. Canada might be nice this time of year, but I didn’t suspect any place outside of Old Town would be good for a zebra-striped orange and black alien.
I growled, gesturing to Rala as I ripped the tendril from my arm, realizing she wouldn’t be able to shut the portal down with that thing jamming it up. “You need to go.”
Her gaze snapped to mine. “Go? Go where?” There was no disguising her fear.
“Anywhere,” I answered. There wasn’t time to argue. I raised my hand and blasted a hole through the roof on the opposite side of the portal, away from whoever was shooting the place up. Then I fired another blast in that direction. Didn’t expect to do any damage, but all I needed was a moment’s distraction.
“Fly away, damn it,” I screamed, “but stay in Old Town. I’ll find you soon.” My eyes went to the book. “Protect that with your life.”
She hesitated for a heartbeat before I saw her make up her mind and trigger her transformation. Where the mousey alien had been, was now a shifting mass of growing flesh and strange, muscled appendages tearing her clothing into shreds. Rala’s face, already a bit long to begin with, had stretched even more, her jaw and neck elongating almost comically. Jagged teeth erupted from her mouth, which split her cheeks wider and wider. Her tongue lengthened and sharpened into a point, a frothy, reddened tendril that flicked in our direct
ion.
Rala’s arms twisted and grew longer, the elbows snapping backwards as leathern wings exploded away from them like a parachute being deployed. Her eyes were alight with energy, reddened fire crackling in their depths. She clutched to the book in one tiny claw and clasped Chatterbox in the other. His eyes were wide with squishy terror.
“Go,” I shouted, and she did, letting loose a roar as she hunched low and propelled herself through the hole I’d made. A quick gust of wind later, she was gone. There wasn’t time to see how far she got.
Scarlett cut away a tentacle that lunged toward me, and I sidestepped another, but there wasn’t enough room inside the wrecked building for us and the monster spilling into it. The thing had squeezed most of itself through the doorway, its amorphous mass filling up the room, where it had blocked off the back end with its bulk.
Both of us glanced at the fog of war at our back and sighed in unison. We were thinking the same thing. It ran contrary to Scarlett’s nature to engage humans but with all the missiles and bullets flying, they’d pretty much voided that concern on her part. It was risk human casualties or stay in the tight space and be squished by an extraterrestrial squid. She didn’t wait on me before she made her choice. Scarlett ducked a lashing tentacle and bolted through the smoke. I was right on her heels, the weird ululating trill of the creature chasing us out.
We broke into clear air only to have it filled with the murderous bee stings of gunfire. A quick shield around us deflected the worst of it and gave us a chance to see what we were in for. It didn’t look good.
All along the rooftops were men in generic SWAT gear, the spitting barrels of AR-15s trained on us. It took all of a split second for me to figure out who they were.
“DSI,” I muttered, knowing the mass of civilian cannon fodder were the least of our worries. “Watch out for—”
The rest of my warning was drowned out by the earth-shaking stomp of the Nephilim, Jorn. All six hundred plus pounds of big boy charged out of a nearby alley. Bald head tucked low, puppy dog jowls flapping in the wind of his passage, he roared at me, lunch pail fists clenched and ready to throw.
Unfortunately for him, he hadn’t thought his move through.
Even discounting my change of status in the food chain—and I’d kicked his ass as the old me—he clearly hadn’t given any thought to the angel standing at my side who, at the very least, had a bone to pick with his tubby butt.
“Oh. No. Way.” The words sputtered out of Scarlett’s mouth like bean farts.
Jorn had been involved in the welcoming party when Scarlett fled Heaven in search of help not too long back. He, Venai, who no doubt lingered somewhere in the vicinity, and their dear departed friend, Zellick—Starbucks bless his dead ass—had jumped my little cousin to try to keep her from finding that help. Even as wounded as she was when they’d come across her, and after they’d added more than their fair share of damage on top of that, she still managed to make it to my house. The rest, as they say, is the History Channel. All three got sent packing with a boot up their rectums.
“Stay behind the shield,” I called out. Mad as Scarlett was, she needed a reminder to remain cool. She was one of those fighters willing to take a shot to give one. Tubbs wasn’t there alone, though, and while the gunfire had slackened, I wouldn’t put it past Rebecca Shaw, DSI’s resident spook and headmistress, to use Jorn as bait.
Scarlett grunted and sheathed her sword as Jorn came at us. Another RPG exploded nearby, blasting a hole in the street on the opposite side of us. I just shook my head at the failed diversionary tactics and kept my eyes peeled for the real threats.
Jorn hunkered low and flung a brutal right hook at Scarlett, teeth clenched in his puppy dog jaw. It would have been a classic Mike Tyson KO…had it hit anything besides air.
Scarlett ducked beneath the blow and pivoted right, digging her left hand into Jorn’s ribs. There was a meaty slap, and he chuffed wind. Scarlett followed that up with a snappy right to the jaw, which spun the big galoot around in a full circle. He managed to stay on his feet, but sometimes being tougher than you are smart is a horrible trade off. Scarlett snapped out a kick and met his spinning face with the full force of her shin. The ephemeral manifestations of her wings gleamed at her back as she turned on the boosters.
There was a sharp snap of something breaking and Jorn was airborne. Like a lump of cookie dough launched from a cannon, he flew backward and slammed into a nearby wall. The whole building shook, bricks tumbling down over his stunned head. He fell beneath a cloud of gray dust and face-planted onto the sidewalk with a rubbery thwap.
That’s when all hell broke loose.
Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed a flash of movement low to the ground. I spun that direction to see a manhole cover hurtling through the air, a grinning Venai looming a few yards out. Manly as ever, her muscles rippled beneath the skintight outfit she wore. She said something I couldn’t hear, but the viciousness behind it made it clear she was either cussing me out or practicing her German.
Instinct took over and I leapt away, but my brain kicked in the moment my feet left the ground. It hadn’t been aimed at me. My gaze followed its path, unable to do anything.
The steel cover slammed into Scarlett’s lower spine, the blow damn near bending her backward. She shrieked and dropped, bouncing ugly off the asphalt, her eyes spinning in their sockets.
And then Shaw was in my face. A pale shade dressed in all black, the undead wraith raked her nails across my chest. I twisted away as best I could and fired back, winging a punch at her, but she was gone, having danced nimbly out of the way. Then it was all about the pain.
It was as if she’d injected battery acid under the skin. My nerves screamed with the explosion of agony that surged through my system, eyes tearing up. I stumbled back. Thick black blood bubbled up out of the wounds, festering pops giving off a metallic stink. Having never fought the woman before, I didn’t know what to expect, but she’d proven herself dangerous.
Shaw darted in again and ripped my side open as I glared at my injuries, her fingers tracing grooves between my ribs as if she were reenacting the Death Star scene, her nails the rebellious X-Wing scum. She dodged my follow up combo, both shots whiffing, and ducked in low to rip some more of me away.
Fortunately, my subconscious decided it’d had enough. Power welled up on its own and shrugged her aside with a dull burst of energy. Shaw stumbled back, but that was when Venai jumped in.
At least she tried.
As she flew through the air, ready to bash my skull in, a gray-black tentacle flew out of the swirling dust clouds and wrapped itself around her thick waist and stopped her momentum cold. Her eyes jumped from me to the tendril, cold realization settling across her square-jawed face. Terror didn’t make her any prettier.
The tentacle slammed her to the ground as the connected monstrosity floated out into the night’s darkness. Where there had been a smattering of opportunistic gunfire cracking off here and there, there was now silence. All eyes were on the beast as it revealed its dark mass, the last of Baalth’s hideaway crumbling in its wake. It spread its tentacles, a ring of serpentine eyes glaring at me from around a slathering mouth filled with shards of what looked like jagged black glass. The thing gurgled, something wet sloshing in the well of its throat, and advanced. It hurled Venai aside as it did, launching the Nephilim over the roof of the nearest building. She flew away to the fading soundtrack of her screams.
I watched her go without thinking about it, turning my eyes back to the approaching monstrosity only to realize it wasn’t alone anymore. A second creature drifted at is back, my heart ramping up to an uncomfortable rhythm that thumped against my battered ribcage.
“What have you done?” Shaw screamed at me from the other side of the creatures.
“Why does it always have to be me?” I asked, but there wasn’t much in the way of conviction in my voice. On the heels—flipper thingies, whatever—of the first monster, the second turned and headed my d
irection. Even if I didn’t want to admit it, the things were honing in on me like the last one had.
A quick sniff of my armpit told me I could use a shower, but I hadn’t quite started to funk so badly as to attract intergalactic sea monsters. I assumed it had something to do with the book, but it had been Rala doing all the work, so I couldn’t for the life of me figure out why the damn alien calamari were coming after me.
A waft of mystical energy erupted a short distance away, and I felt the tingling sensation of a dimensional rift being opened. My senses pinged on three people who I knew without having to see.
Katon and Rahim stepped out of Rachelle’s gate on the opposite side of Shaw and the shambling Jorn, who’d finally gotten back to his feet. The portal slammed shut behind them, leaving the enforcer and wizard alone.
“Welcome to the party, folks. I hope you like sushi.”
Seven
“What have you done, Frank?”
“Is there an echo out here?” I asked, Rahim’s question mimicking Shaw’s.
The whip of tentacles silenced any answer he might have given. I juked back as if practicing Tae Bo for paraplegics, suckered tendrils snapping all around me. The creatures filled the street now, pushing everyone further down the block. The surrounding buildings groaned against the tide of alien flesh, pieces of shattered glass and exterior decorations rained down as they were knocked loose of their moorings. I glanced over and saw Scarlett crawling to her knees this side of the first monster. She was right in its path.
“Shit.”
Knowing how little magic did to hurt these things, I leapt forward, rolling under the slapping tendrils and grabbed my cousin. Katon was there the instant my hands seized on her arm. He glared at me, but there wasn’t time for our pissing match. I yanked Scarlett behind me and pushed her toward Rahim as wet noodles slammed across my back, ripping away tiny mouthfuls of flesh. One lashed around my thigh but before it could tighten, it fell away in pieces.
