Two more demons launched at me, and I slashed them with the magical sword. I opened the chest of one beast from collar to sternum, and then I managed to drive the point of the sword into the throat of the second creature. Their howls of agony reverberated as their monstrous forms disintegrated.
Fantastic! I thought. Between the sword and Hellseeker, I felt invincible.
You know that saying about how pride comes before the fall? Unfortunately, my moment of triumph was short-lived as more demon creatures poured into the chamber. My weapons were pretty impressive, but these bastards would quickly overrun me by sheer force of numbers.
Escape seemed like the wisest option.
I spun toward Vittoria who was nailing one demon after another. We naturally fell in step with each other, firing away at the inhuman brood as we surged toward the nearest doorway.
Dimitri appeared on our side. The three of us kept blasting away, united against a common enemy. All around us, the shadows continued to devour the other members of the team. Everyone else was on their own. Max’s pitiful cries for help suggested not all of the erstwhile bank robbers were prevailing against the deadly horde.
I didn’t know these people, they weren’t exactly angels, but no one deserved to die like this, reduced to meat for beasts from another, darker world.
We pressed through the doorway, the demons hot on our tail.
Once inside the next chamber, both Vittoria and Dimitri kept running, but I stopped in my tracks. I had to find a way to slow down our pursuers or else none of us was going to make it out of here alive. I spun toward the door we had just passed through and sealed it shut. The lock snapped in place with an audible rasp.
Not a second too soon.
One of the demons slammed into the iron door. The steel buckled under the powerful assault but held. I turned back to Vittoria and Dimitri and saw them vanishing down another passage.
I ran after them, sword and pistol up. This wasn’t the sort of place where you wanted to be on your own, seasoned monster hunter or not. As I sprinted down the hall, I tried not to think about the fate of the other thieves.
Norton was running for his life. He hated running.
The bank had turned into a nightmare landscape of razor-sharp teeth and gleaming fangs. Two decades as a career criminal had allowed him to rub shoulders with some of the shadiest motherfuckers walking the Earth, and the experience had sharpened Norton’s survival skills. He had faced his fair share of monsters, but they had always been of the human variety.
A monstrous bellow made him whirl, and his eyes fixed on the demon.
Norton quickly veered right, changing direction in mid-stride, and rushed toward a bank of elevators.
The demon matched his movements.
Fury overcoming his terror, Norton unleashed another spray of gunfire, sending the creature reeling. He punched the elevator button, and the door split open with an audible ding.
Norton couldn’t believe his luck. Without hesitation, he jumped into the gleaming elevator. He barely paid attention to Max’s desperate cries begging him to hold the door and furiously punched the close button instead.
Sorry, buddy.
Norton had long ago decided that he wasn’t a nice guy. Nice guys didn’t break into high-security banks.
Nice guys got themselves killed.
As the doors slid shut with agonizing slowness, Norton watched Max. The safecracker was surging toward the elevator like it was the last lifeboat on the Titanic. For a beat, something like hope lit up his face before a winged shadow descended on him. He was pulled toward the ceiling. His writhing, screaming form was the last thing Norton saw before the elevator doors slammed shut.
The lift descended into the unknown darkness. The glowing numbers ticked down on the display panel. Norton’s hand shook, and he nearly dropped the bag of explosives as the horror caught up to him.
He was still too pumped on adrenaline to even let out a sigh of relief. He wiped his sweat-soaked face when he narrowed his eyes. Something was wrong, but he couldn’t put his finger on what it was.
As soon as the realization hit him, there was surreal flash and reality warped around him. It almost felt he was experiencing a jump cut in a movie. The gleaming elevator’s walls had closed in on him, the space having become significantly smaller.
Impossible, a voice inside of him shouted, even though he knew that anything would be possible in the devil’s bank. Any lingering doubts on that score had been cast aside by the demonic attack. His years in prison had been marked by long stretches of solitary, which had pushed him to the brink of madness. Ever since then he’d suffered from claustrophobia. The cave systems had been bad but the shrinking elevator felt much worse.
And the horror was merely beginning. Reality warped and shimmered and the walls inched even closer. The elevator was feeling more and more like a steel coffin.
“Let me out of here!” Norton croaked, his voice a hollow whisper. He pounded the elevator door. There was another surreal hitch in his perception of reality, and now the walls were merely inches away from him. His eyes bulged with raw panic.
And that’s when his gaze fell on the bag clutched under his arm.
The bag with the explosives.
A strange calm descended over Norton as he snatched open the satchel, his trembling fingers closing around the plastic explosives.
He planted the explosives all over the elevators’ shrinking walls at random intervals without his usual care. He madly activated countdown timers. One after another: 00:10... 00:09... 00:08...
Another flash. The walls were nearly touching his body now.
Norton grinned. 00:03... 00:02... 00:01...
“I’m never going back into a cage!”
A heartbeat later, the charges detonated.
Haru fired into the shrieking darkness. Where was her brother? Relief flooded her when she saw him dart through a door at the other end of the bank floor. He was still alive.
But why hadn’t he waited for her?
Her thoughts were interrupted by a moving shadow. She whipped out a curved blade as she retreated toward the cashier area. Twelve inches of steel shone in the muted light.
The shadow slithered, and her steel snaked out. A spray of black, demonic blood was followed by a howl of fury and pain from the guard.
As the demonic creature fell, Haru was already running after her brother. The door he’d walked through led into another large chamber. She scanned the room, but it was empty.
“Shoji?”
There was no sign of him. Slowly, cautiously, Haru advanced through the maze of desks, computers, and file cabinets.
She called out for him again.
No response.
Haru put a little more force in her voice.
“SHOJI, where are you?”
This time around, a voice answered. It wasn’t her brother.
“Probably up to no good, if ya ask me.”
Haru pivoted, knife up, but she stopped in mid-movement.
A mixture of emotions stirred inside her. Horror. Disbelief. Followed by a white-hot hatred that the ten years since her father’s passing had failed to cool.
Even though he was dead and gone (or so she had believed until this moment), she still caught glimpses of him in other men. Her father might be six feet under, but abusive pricks like him still walked the earth, always on the lookout for weakness they could prey on. But she was strong and cold and deadly. She would never allow herself to be vulnerable. The fear was gone, but the hatred remained, a flame which time had failed to extinguish.
Staring back at her was a balding, out-of-shape man in his late forties. A stained undershirt spanned the hairy beer belly spilling over his boxers. Crude, ugly tattoos lined the beefy arms.
“Be a good little girl and come to daddy.”
“Stay away from me,” she said, her voice that of the scared eleven-year-old girl. It was a voice she hadn’t heard in a long time. A voice she’d hoped to never hear again. He
r fear disgusted her. She was afraid of no man. She couldn’t let the bastard intimidate her. Her breath coming in sharp bursts, she held up the knife as if it was a talisman capable of warding off great evil.
“You know you're going to hell, little girl.”
“Stay back!” she hissed.
“And guess who'll be waiting for you there?”
He took another step toward her.
“Get away from me!”
Her father reached out for her.
“Once we're reunited, there won't be any escape.”
“Shut up! SHUT THE FUCK UP!”
Haru’s rage detonated. She brought up the knife. Blood oozed, the undershirt turning crimson. The knife ripped into her father's stomach, again and again. She gasped and shook all over. Slowly, her fear gave way to mad glee, her wild sense of triumph edging toward madness.
“Look at you now, you fat pig!”
She kicked the downed man for good measure. Laughter burst from her lips. A mad cackle.
Her laughter died, surprise creeping into her blood-spattered face.
“Oh no. Oh God, no.”
She backed away. Dropped the bloody knife. It clattered on the floor.
“No, no, no...”
Haru staggered from the bloody body at her feet. There was no place to go. No place to escape the sight before her. She desperately tried to look away but found it impossible.
Instead of her father, she was staring down at Shoji, his chest drenched with gore. His stunned gaze peered emptily into space, his blood-spattered hipster glasses having slipped off his face.
Her legs caved in, and she slumped forward, all strength leaving her body. Her anguished sobs reverberated in the cavernous space. And below that, her father's mocking laughter rang out.
Tapping into her last reserves, she lurched to her feet and stumbled for the exit. She had to get out of this madhouse. She barged through the nearest doorway and entered a large hallway that led up to an exit. Strange patterns and symbols decorated the massive doorway. They seemed to shift in the darkness, almost as if the door was imbued with an unnatural life of its own. Her boots slapped the floor hard. She was running on fumes, her edge gone. The only human being she had ever cared about was dead. By her own hands no less.
She came to a dead stop in front of the ancient steel portal. For a beat , she felt like she was facing the gates of hell itself.
A sound of groaning metal bashed the air as the portal creaked open. Her breath caught in her throat as a roiling ocean of flames spilled through the open door.
At the center of the churning vortex of fire, she made out two slitted eyes made of flame. As the column of fire blasted toward her, the flames reconfigured and began to take on a human shape, becoming a creature made entirely of living hell fire.
Haru didn’t scream, resigned to her fate. After killing her brother, she was almost ready for whatever came next. She deserved to die, welcomed the peace of extinction.
She took a deep, steadying breath but never got the chance to exhale. Scorching magma engulfed her flesh, her father’s terrible laughter drowning out the roaring flames. His mad cackle was the last sound she would hear in this world before the fiery darkness claimed her.
15
I emerged from the winding corridor into the subterranean office, Demon Slayer in one hand and Hellseeker in the other.
I had barely taken a few steps when the door to my right swung open and Dimitri appeared, his face bone-white, his hands shaking.
Unable to see clearly in the dark chamber, he mistook me for one of the undead pursuers. Fortunately, Vittoria slammed his pistol down, and the hail of bullets which would have torn me apart chopped harmlessly into the floor instead.
I stepped up to them, and we huddled close in a circle. Even seeing Dimitri was a relief in a weird way. At least the Russian was human.
“What the fuck were those things?” he asked.
I answered in a sober voice. “Low-level demons.”
Vittoria nodded. “Taske feared that the bank's security force might not be human.”
“And you kept that little detail to yourself? You knew what we were walking into here and you said nothing,” Dimitri said. For once, his anger felt justified.
“Would you have believed me if I told you?”
The question shut the Russian up for a beat before his eyes sparkled dangerously. I almost expected him to whip out his hunting knife and lash out at Vittoria. Instead, his baleful glare morphed into a creepy smile that split his face.
“I always knew the old man was a cunning bastard.”
High praise indeed from one sociopath to another.
“Here’s what I want to know. How did your bullets hurt the demons? They’re usually immune to conventional weapons,” I asked.
“All our ammo was made from silver and blessed in holy water.” Vittoria explained. “Tasks’s orders.”
“Looks to me like it just pisses them off!” Dimitri said.
As my own dagger had shown me on numerous occasion, silver was only effective against the weakest of paranormal creatures. Still, it was better than nothing.
A woman’s scream tore through the darkness. It had to be Haru.
Then again, maybe it wasn’t her. After all, the bank might be playing more tricks on us, hoping to slow us down and lure us deeper into its twisted web.
The screams died down, reinforcing my decision to stay and reminding myself that escape was our first priority. My gaze locked on the rope dangling from the opening thirty feet above us. Hard to believe only an hour had passed since Norton had blown a hole in the ceiling.
Dimitri was already reaching out for the rope when Vittoria’s face drained of all color.
“What is it?” I asked. From the way she was chewing her lips, something was terribly wrong.
“My bag,” she said.
“What about it?”
“I must've dropped it.”
“Who gives a shit about your bag?” The Russian was being his usual eloquent self.
“Taske's contract was in it,” Vittoria replied in a deadly serious voice.
The Russian shrugged and shook his head. “Tough luck for Taske.”
“We’re not leaving without the contract,” Vittoria said. What power did the billionaire hold over her that’s she was willing to risk everything for the old man? Unlike the rest of us, she had knowingly walked into this hellish insanity.
Dimitri rolled his eyes at her. “You're not going to suggest we go back for it?”
“No contract, no money,” Vittoria reminded the Russian mercenary. “We’re not leaving this place empty-handed.”
“You should feel lucky to be leaving this place alive,” I said, my own patience running dry.
Vittoria cocked her pistol in response to my words and leveled the weapon in our direction.
“You even know how to fire that thing?” Dimitri scoffed.
“Want to find out?” A smile curled her lips, but her eyes remained cold. “We can't leave without the document. There won’t be a second chance.”
I shook my head. “Vittoria, you saw what’s waiting for us back there. It's only a question of time before those things come through that door.”
“Enough of this nonsense!” Dimitri’s hands closed around the dangling rope. Defiant, he began to climb. Vittoria returned her pistol to her shoulder holster. Was she giving up that easily?
Vittoria was merely switching weapons. She unslung the rifle strapped around her shoulder and brought the barrel of the weapon up.
With military precision, she targeted the rope near the ceiling, now stretched taut under Dimitri’s weight. Her eyes squinted behind the rifle’s scope.
I’d seen plenty of Westerns where some sharpshooter used a perfect shot to sever the hangman’s noose. I had always wondered if such a thing was possible in real life. Apparently, it was if you had steady hands and used a caliber powerful enough to cut through thick rope.
The bullet seve
red the rope more effectively than a knife, and Dimitri immediately came crashing down, one end of the frayed rope in hand. What was left of the rope dangled twenty feet above us now, out of reach even if one of us had been an NBA player. Dimitri groaned with pain as he picked himself up, his gaze locking on Vittoria. The insincere smile was gone, replaced with murderous rage. The Russian brought up his pistol.
“Are you out of your mind?” Dimitri snarled. “How the fuck do you expect us to get out of here now?”
“There's another rope in my bag,” Vittoria explained, her voice measured. “The same bag that holds Taske’s contract. You want to live, you'll come with me.”
I sensed how tempted Dimitri was to squeeze that trigger and turn Vittoria’s calm expression into a mask of gore. But he was smart enough to know he still needed her. If we wanted to get out of here alive, we would have to find Vittoria’s bag with the rope inside. And only Vittoria knew where she might have dropped the bag. More importantly, we would need every gun in this room, considering what was lurking for us back on the main banking floor.
Vittoria and Dimitri lowered their pistols. This wasn’t over, but for now the partnership would continue.
Returning to the place of the slaughter filled me with dread despite my blessed weapons and the two professional badasses on my side. Our furtive glances swept the corridor. We were all expecting something to pop out at us at any juncture.
I sidled up to Vittoria and gave voice to the question burning in my mind. “Why do you care so much about what happens to Taske?”
“Who says I do?”
She was pretending to be just another merc out for a payday, but I wasn’t buying it. “Everyone on your team is driven by greed, the big score,” I said. “Everyone except for you. This is personal for you.”
“You know what you learn when you break into a bank, Raven? People aren't quite as easy to crack as a safe. Maybe you should stick to what you know.”
“I was just wondering what power Taske holds over you, that’s all.”
There was a beat of hesitation and then the words came.
Demon Dawn (Shadow Detective Book 4) Page 9
