Peering out the windshield to get an up close and personal view of the awaiting hellish formation of roaring, armor clad giants set against a horrifying backdrop of spectral green light raining down from monument, I grumbled, “Walk it off.”
“Here we go!” Coop yelled, as our uncanny war pig and mirth mobile caravan was literally seconds from slamming headlong into the unnatural melee.
As Double OT belted out an ear splitting war cry that sounded like something between a shrieking choir of tone deaf women and a pack of hyenas having hate sex, the cloak flared out on my shoulders sending a bolt of divine Wrath pulsing through my system.
All my senses instantly kicked into über overdrive as the expected sensation of calmative awareness drew over me like a warm blanket, and time screeched to a near halt in response.
In what felt like extreme slow motion, I watched with great anticipation as Duncan lowered his massive head and careened with reckless abandon into the mind blowing blockade.
And for the record — it was pretty goddamn impressive.
Busting through a smoking heap of burned out cars like they were made of cardboard, the great, white war pig plunged into the first rank of anakim with unrivaled violence of action and blood thirsty fervor. Impaling countless giants on his razor tipped elephant sized tusks, Lil D’ waded into the masses like a rabid bull in a goddamn china shop while Caveman sunk his battle axe into anything that got remotely close to them.
The mind blowing phalanx of hulking figures scrambled to close their ranks as the Magic Bus skidded through the breach on Duncan’s heels; and a seemingly endless barrage of oversized fists and barbaric weaponry hammered the eclectic van like a nightmarish hail storm.
Loading his arcane long bow in a blur of motion, Coop kicked out the windshield with both feet and began to launch Holy Flame laced arrows into the seething hordes of bad guys like a frigg’n gatling gun.
Rooster, MacCawill, and Kruger held onto anything they could get their hands on to keep from being tossed around like rag dolls, while I ripped the semi-divine Winchester free of its holster and sent a barrage of Judgment fire blasts through the van’s side door just for good measure.
Literally plowing our way through the dark gauntlet of thrashing giants, we quickly lost sight of Duncan as Double OT did his damnedest to keep the speeding vehicle under some semblance of control.
Thoroughly enjoying himself as he mowed down anything and everything in our path, he yelled, “Want some? Get some! NecroLord rides again!”
Tragically followed by, “Oh shit…hey, guys…you might wanna — Hold onto something!”
And then the overzealous time hippie proceeded to swerve around a charging group of spear bearing anakim and drive the frigg’n van smack into the cement wall of a moderately sized building concealed in the deep shadows of the Washington Monument’s outer lawn.
Barely managing to pump the brakes before smashing headlong into the immovable obstacle, we screeched to a very abrupt, and rather unfortunate halt, which, in turn, sent all of us in the cargo bay on a violent, very unappreciated one way trip toward the front seats.
Hurtling into Coop’s back, the rest of the crew landed in an inglorious pig pile on top of me while what remained of Stoner’s pride and joy quickly filled with billowing black smoke.
Brushing off the rather unfortunate end to our short-lived Mad Max quality joy ride, I muttered, “Everybody okay?”
As an ensuing series of painful grunts indicated nobody was dead, Double OT asked, “You think Stoner’s got insurance on this thing? That flipping building came out of nowhere, guys. Talk about a public hazard. Anybody know a good personal injury attorney? I think I bit my lip.”
And then the driver’s side airbag thankfully shot out of the mangled steering wheel and socked him squarely in the face.
Thank you, karma.
“Owen,” I grumbled, as I squirmed out from the bottom of the heaping manwich and retrieved my shotgun.
“Yes, monkey man?” he replied, trying like hell to free himself from the ineffective, yet suffocatingly annoying safety device.
“If we survive the next five minutes, you and me are having a serious talk.”
“Heads up, y’all!” Coop yelled, bailing out the passenger side door and slinging arrows at anything that moved in the tormenting green twilight. “We got incoming.”
“How many?”
“I reckon pretty much all of ‘em are heading this way.”
“Fucking perfect,” I grumbled under my breath as an ear splitting cacophony of guttural sounds filled the air. “Time to go to work, gents.”
A turbo shot of adrenaline raced through my body as I jumped out of the van to find an endless swarm of otherworldly behemoths with bad intentions, and a wide array of oversized instruments of death and disfigurement clutched in their colossal hands lumbering toward our impromptu fighting position.
Swinging the shotgun muzzle toward the mob of charging beasties, I focused my will and cocked the lever as the crew pulled up alongside me with weapons at the ready.
“Stand your ground,” I muttered. “Let ‘em get nice and close. Kruger, get ready to do your thing. Wait for my signal.”
And just as we were about to be engulfed by the grisly sea of massive assailants, something rather unexpected happened.
They stopped.
Like dead in their tracks.
Lowering their weapons and just staring at us with eyes as black as pools of oil, a deafening silence fell over the mind blowing army of monstrous figures as they stood like grotesque statues in the looming, cold darkness.
After a long couple seconds of wondering what the hell was going on, the crowd began to systematically part and a man sized figure donning an impressive assortment of ornate armor casually strolled toward us. Despite the fact that I couldn’t quite make out his face in the thick shadows, I knew exactly who it was.
“Azazel,” I muttered under my breath as the cloak flared out on my shoulders and the smarmy fallen angel pulled to a boasting halt within a few feet of us.
“Hello, Captain,” he replied, with a satisfied smile as his crimson, snake-like eyes danced with elated contempt. “How very nice to see you. And welcome to the revolution, by the way. We couldn’t have gotten here without your many contributions.”
“Fuck off.”
“Call me curious,” he quipped, dismissing my snideness as he admired his freakish legion of super-sized soldiers huddled around us for as far the eye could see, “What exactly were you planning to do after battering your way through my outer defenses?”
As my face curled into a dark grin, I asked, “Before or after I beat the ever living piss out of you and your merry band of corn-fed carnies?”
When he offered nothing in response besides a rather icy stare, I said, “But seriously, after me and my pals make you look like a grade A bitch, my trench coated compadre here is going to shove that bazooka up your boss’s ass. Figured we’d see where it goes from there. You know the drill. Can’t plan too far ahead in these kinds of situations.”
“Yes, of course,” Azazel said, as he dismissively scanned my five man crew. “Although, I can’t help but notice that your team appears tragically under-staffed for such an ambitious set of maneuvers.”
“Understaffed?” I muttered, scratching my chin. “You think so?”
“I do,” he replied, still smiling like a cat about to inhale a mouse.
As the distinct sound of booming, throaty laughter permeated the surrounding mob of beasties, I said, “Cyrus, what do you think?”
Casually running a hand through his highly manicured hair helmet, Kruger replied, “Hate to say it, but he does make a good point, Deano.”
“Yeah, I guess he does. Son of a bitch. Maybe we didn’t think this thing through.”
“I’m suddenly feeling kinda foolish. You?”
“Yep. What the hell do we do now?”
“Guess there’s only one thing left to do.”
“Yeah
, what’s that?”
Winking at Azazel, he said, “Let’s dance, bitch.”
Then he simply threw both his hands high in the air causing the frozen landscape to instantly erupt into a swirling maelstrom of unnatural, man-sized funnel clouds that voraciously pulled the surrounding dirt, shrubbery, and anything else in the near vicinity into their whirring columns.
And before our freakishly large adversaries knew what the hell was happening, the endless sea of mini-tornados produced an endless horde of smiling Krugers interspersed within their staggered ranks.
As Azazel’s smug façade instantly transformed to something between con-founded disbelief and downright outrage, I muttered, “You heard the man, asshole. Let’s frigg’n dance.”
Chapter 35
Toting an impressive array of tricked out muzzle loaded rifles and Civil War era cavalry swords, the skinny jean clad clone army went to instant work, shooting and hacking their way into the anakim assault force, as a melee of epic proportion literally erupted around us.
Instinctively jumping into action, Rooster and Coop got back to back and started calling out targets as they unloaded relentless volleys of otherworldly arrows and barzel tipped bullets into the hordes of hulking miscreants. With the loaded bazooka slung on his back, MacCawill popped off rounds with his grenade launcher while Kruger whipped up new golems as quickly as they went down like an unnatural orchestra conductor.
Reverting to stone cold assassin mode, Double OT drew his katana and began to shimmer in and out of existence while cleaving giant body parts with impossible precision as their owners roared and howled in protest.
Letting out a primal scream, Azazel’s eyes blazed with maniacal fury as a man-sized, glinting sword manifested in his hand. A harrowing set of black, feathered wings unfurled from his armored back as he literally launched at me in a state of unfettered rage. Within seconds of running me through, my face curled into a dark smile as I raised the shotgun and readied to blow a basket-ball sized hole through his chest.
And it was right about then when Duncan busted through the surrounding calamity like a pissed off bulldozer, and slammed into the demented fallen angel with the force of a runaway train. As Azazel hurtled through the darkness back toward the National Mall, a grinning Caveman yelled, “Boomsicle!”
Glaring at him, I grunted, “What the hell? You know I had that under control right?”
“Sorry, bro,” he replied, shrugging his shoulders as Duncan let loose with a sheepish growl. “Lil’ D says he couldn’t help himself.”
“Fair enough,” I muttered, taking careful aim at a fifteen foot behemoth charging in on Rooster’s flank before unloading a Judgment fire cap in his arse. “You put eyes on Lucifer?”
“Oh, yeah,” Caveman said, pointing toward the looming obelisk bathed in haunting green flame. “He’s at the monument. You can’t miss him.”
Making the mental note that that couldn’t be a good thing, Kruger yelled, “Go! I got this, Deano. Do what you came here for.”
Nodding as the dirt clones continued their Herculean slugfest with the anakim militia, I barked, “Everybody on me. We’re moving.”
As the crew nodded in acknowledgment, Mick said, “Me and Lil’ D will stay here with Kruger. I got an idea.”
And then he started lobbing Stoner’s mystical grenades into the countless waves of combatants as Duncan snapped back into berserker mode and plunged into the chaos like the war pig version of a bucking bronco.
With Azazel’s cronies sufficiently preoccupied for the moment, the rest of the team formed into a tight wedge formation and slipped through the madness with Double OT on point. With no trace remaining of his hipster guitar hero persona, the arcane mercenary moved with the poise of a samurai master sheathing his fabled katana only to produce a glinting pair of double edged hatchet looking things.
With the battle raging around us, we successfully skulked past the smoking remains of the Magic Bus and into the eastern boundary of the oval lawn surrounding the monument, as the Krugers continued to literally throw themselves at the frenzied giants like man-sized spider monkeys. Quickly reaching the brink of the frothing fracas, we ducked into the thick shadows of a large makeshift bastion haphazardly cobbled together with chunks of ripped apart buildings and stacks of battered police cars.
Motioning for the crew to sit tight and cover our six, I crept down the long length of the impressively crude barrier until reaching the end. Carefully poking my head around the corner, I finally got my first up close and personal look at the Washington Monument.
And, unfortunately, I about shit myself.
Sitting amidst a literal minefield peppered with heaping stockpiles of smoldering debris and mutilated carnage, the colossal granite edifice blazed in the darkness like a nightmarish torch. The serpentine coils of hissing, spectral green flame that I’d witnessed from afar now completely enveloped the towering structure like a voracious throng of monstrous anacondas. Originating at the base of the monument, they wove their way up to the very tip of the conical apex only to inexplicably meld together into a lava-like stream that spewed into the hellish inter-dimensional portal swirling above.
Trying to wrap my head around what the frig I was actually looking at, Rooster pulled up on my flank and blurted out, “Fucking hell.”
After a long couple seconds with the two of us standing there completely awestruck by the inconceivable setting, I grumbled, “Something like that.”
Snapping back into mission mode, I focused my will and projected my Sight across the couple hundred meter expanse standing between us and the infernal shit show lying ahead. Like looking through a powerful zoom lens rapidly honing in on its target, my vision slammed to a halt and the monument’s base came into perfect focus.
Carefully scanning the area, it didn’t take long to zero in on the source of the slithering flame as I locked onto a gold plated chest sitting atop a rudimentary stone pedestal carefully positioned amongst the tattered American flags encircling the entrance. Pumping out a steady pulse of divine energy like it was a celestial power plant, the Heavenly artifact glowed and sparked like it was danger close to going thermonuclear.
“I’ve got eyes on the Ark,” I said. “No sign of Lew though. Where the hell is that son of a bitch?”
Still dumbfoundedly gawking into the sky, Rooster tapped me on the shoulder and simply pointed upward with a blank look on his face.
Following his gaze, I almost shit myself for the second time in as many minutes as a white cloaked figure inexplicably floating in mid-air adjacent the ghostly silhouette of the monument came into view.
“No fucking way,” I muttered.
“Way,” he replied.
Again focusing my Sight, I zoomed in on the felonious flying asshole to confirm it was frigg’n Lucifer.
“Christ,” I grumbled, intently watching as he quite literally hovered in a stationary position near the very top of the five hundred foot structure.
Apparently in some kind of deep meditative trance, he appeared to be continuously murmuring something under his breath as offshoots of spectral flame danced around him like sentient bolts of lightning.
“What is he doing?” Rooster asked.
“His eyes are closed,” I replied. “And he’s mumbling something.”
Thinking out loud, he said, “It’s gotta be the incantation that’s powering the gateway. Lucifer’s the conduit between the Ark and the monument. If we can break the connection, the gateway closes and Tartarus goes bye bye.”
“Will the Gomorrah Flare do the job?”
“It should.”
As my vision instantly returned to normal, I quickly surveyed the distance separating us from our target.
“Alright, we need to get closer first. I don’t care how good MacCawill thinks his damn aim is — there’s no fucking way he’s making that shot from here with a sixty year old rocket launcher and a wannabe wizard warhead.”
“Challenge accepted,” MacCawill grunted, as Rooster and
I spun around to find him standing there with the bazooka propped on his shoulder.
Taking careful aim at his former employer, he clenched his teeth on the frayed stub of a cigar hanging out of his mouth and grumbled, “Who’s your daddy…”
As he pulled the trigger, an ungodly booming sound split the night air like a clap of thunder and the Gomorrah Flare burst from the tube in a flittering haze of fiery apocalypse.
Watching with great anticipation as the peculiar projectile screamed toward the Washington Monument like a psychotic comet, I was more than surprised when the malevolent mojo laden missile somehow hit its mark and smacked squarely into the levitating Lucifer.
“Fucking Yahtzee,” MacCawill muttered, as the Evil Über Deacon plunged toward the ground like a white cloaked lead balloon.
“Son of bitch,” I happily scoffed, making the mental note that I may have underestimated MacCawill’s proficiency with arcane weaponry. “You did it.”
“Wait,” Rooster said, thoroughly confused, “Shouldn’t there be an explosion?”
With his mouth already curled into an exceptionally mischievous grin, MacCawill reached into his duster and pulled out his signature Oakleys.
“Hold that thought,” he said, sliding them on his face and dropping to a knee.
“What the hell are you doing?” I asked.
Ignoring the question, he replied, “You two should duck. Right. About. Now.”
Then, as if on cue, the unnatural missile detonated in a blaze of unparalleled glory sending a mind-boggling explosion of blinding, psychedelic light and palpable waves of blistering heat sprawling across the horizon line. It basically looked like somebody dropped an atomic bomb in the middle of a Pink Floyd laser light show.
Completely mesmerized by the surreal fireworks display, it felt like time screeched to a momentary halt as a caustic mushroom cloud the size of California blasted into the atmosphere taking the top half of the frigg’n Washington Monument with it.
“So … that happened,” Rooster murmured, as our collective jaws hit the ground watching the mammoth fragment of the historic granite edifice hurl into the darkness like a launching Space Shuttle before violently bursting into a gazillion pieces with an ear splitting boom.
Wrath of the Fallen: The Guild of Deacons, Book 2 Page 32
