by Justin Sloan
His sister, Beverly, had been one of those lives. He couldn’t have forgiven himself if he didn’t save her.
Beverly was alive. So was Tess, the woman he’d been on a date with. Altemus and Anne possessed both the women’s bodies, and it was a miracle that Beverly and Tess were still alive. Rohan wanted to keep it that way.
“Are you okay?” Nora said, her gentle hand holding his cheek as her wide, brown eyes stared into his with concern. He was in her arms. He hadn’t even noticed that he’d fallen. In any other circumstance he would’ve stayed right there, staring into those beautiful eyes. Maybe taken her in for another kiss—the last had been almost worthy dying for—but no, the world was collapsing around them.
His head was spun and his right eye twitched.
“I’ll be all right,” he said, pulling himself to his feet. He pointed to the other side of the long warehouse. “See that door over there?”
She turned and nodded.
“There has to be a vehicle of some sort.” He snuck forward, peering around the building to make sure everything was fine. “It looks like the chaos is mostly in the city. We grab a car, hope it has keys, and get.”
“Get?” Bev asked as she snuck up to join them. “Is that how you necromancers talk?”
“Shut up, sis,” Rohan said. “We have to get out of here, okay?”
“And where, exactly, are we going?” Beverly asked.
Rohan had no idea. When they’d left Peru, the plan had been to see Beverly and Tess safely home. Now, with their homes not far from D.C., the plan didn’t seem so great. Not if D.C. was going through hell on Earth.
“Tell me why we can’t just hide here?” Tess said. “Like you told the rest of the plane passengers to do. Wait for it to pass over.”
Rohan glanced over at the group of people who’d all agreed to stay back and see if this would blow over. Half of them still thought it was a dream, the rest were certain it was the end of the world and God would be down to rescue them from our world a any moment.
“Something tells me that the only way this is going to ‘pass over’ is if we make it so. Us and any other necro—er, our kind we can convince to join the fight.”
“We’ll convince them,” Nora said. “But first we have to reach them.”
They sprinted along the warehouse without any trouble along the way, but when they pulled the sliding metal doors aside, Rohan cursed. It was empty warehouse. Plastic-wrapped pallets were stacked to the ceiling.
“We’ve got to find a vehicle,” Rohan said. He started toward the other side of the warehouse. He guessed there had to a parking lot on the other side. “I’m not walking around the globe to figure out how and where we’re going to fight these things.”
He reached a metal garage door and unlatched it. He strained as he lifted it up.
BAM!
They all froze, horrified at the sound of the gunshot they’d just heard.
“The hell was that?” Beverly said, the first to break the silence. “Sounded like a—”
“Gunshot,” Nora finished for her. “Yeah, I know.”
Ahead of them stretched a parking lot. One of the streetlights near the warehouse flickered. Underneath it was a white pickup truck. As they approached, they saw the windows were mostly covered up so no one could see inside.
“Oh my God,” Tess said. She pulled at her long blonde hair and clenched her teeth.
Rohan stepped in front of her and blocked her view. He had a hard time looking at the pickup, himself.
The windows were covered in blood.
Rohan opened the door, and a man slumped over the steering wheel, half his face bloodied from the gunshot wound. A silver pistol clacked across the ground.
“Turn away,” Rohan said, coughing on gun smoke.
Nora gasped. “What, you don’t think I should see this because I’m a woman?” she said, scrunching up her face.
“No, because it’s gross.”
The man lay still, but when Rohan reached for the pistol, the man jolted up and slammed Rohan’s arm into the steering wheel with a tight grip so that he couldn’t escape.
“What the—”
But the man was sitting up now, turning to face Rohan, and his half face smiled. A red light flickered in his eyes and his skin glowed florescent green.
“So we meet again,” the man said, his voice cracking and wheezing. “In your world, this time.”
The voice sounded familiar. Where had he heard it? This wasn’t just a regular evil spirit.
And then, as he remembered it, his memory flashed back to the six demons gathered in front of him as he stared at the face of the afterlife. The demon in the center had had red eyes and a deep voice too.
It was him.
“Azrael.” Rohan said, remembering the demon’s voice from the time that Altemus had used the tablet to momentarily thrust Rohan and Nora into Hell.
“My armies will soon be here to take care of you,” Azrael said. “I advise you lie down and die now, if you’d prefer to avoid the torturous route.”
Rohan glanced over to the city, and sure enough an army of spirits were flying right for them, massive and red and black like a tsunami from hell.
Nora stepped forward and focused her energy on the demon, a burst of it hitting the man and shooting blood across the windshield. But the demon in the man simply laughed.
“You can’t harm me with such measly powers, girl.”
“Maybe not,” Tess said, stepping forward. “But I can.” She made the sign of a cross at her chest and then closed her eyes and began to speak in Latin.
The demon shrieked, its skin smoldering.
It tried to lash out at her, but she raised her voice and it fell back, shrieking.
“Now!” she said, opening her eyes and turning to Rohan.
It took him a moment to realize what was happening, but then he stepped forward and nodded for Nora to join him. They lifted their hands for the demon and focused their spiritual energy. At first a force pushed back, sharp, like a layer of razors just underneath the skin.
“Stop,” the demon shrieked, and then it leapt for them. But with a final push of their spiritual energy, the demon was kicked out and became a wisp in the air that vanished into the sky as the body fell with a splat at their feet.
“What was that?” Rohan said. “When were you going to tell me you had that kind of power?”
“I wouldn’t say I have power,” Tess said. “Its more that my dad was a priest, and I had a stage where I was obsessing over demon possessions. Watched all the poltergeist and exorcism movies, and asked my dad everything I thought I’d need to know. Then, it turned out to be all hippy-dippy crap, worth a damn.”
“Until now,” Beverly said, impressed.
“Yeah, uh, until now.”
Rohan smiled, then realized Nora was giving him an odd look. Crap, he didn’t have time to worry about jealousy or whatever was going on there.
“Let’s get moving,” he said.
Beverly opened the door to the car and looked like she was about to vomit.
“Guess the guy saw what was happening and couldn’t take it?” Tess said, also looking a bit green.
“This guy shot himself rather than try to survive?” Rohan asked in disbelief. “Who does that?”
Nora took off her soaked jacket and began to rub the car clean. “Probably a lot of people when they realize they’re literally living in Hell on earth. Now stop wasting time. See if he has the keys in his pocket.”
Rohan knelt beside the bloody corpse and, with his face scrunched up in disgust, felt past the blood that covered this guy and found the keys in the right hip pocket. A Hawaiian teddy bear keychain hung from it.
“How cute,” Beverly said when she saw him eyeing it. “Can you just get us out of here?”
The car was still covered in blood streaks, but the inside of the warehouse had a carwash bay for semi trucks, so they found rags, wet them, and cleaned up what they could. They piled into the car and R
ohan cranked the heat all the way up because they were still drenched from the water landing.
“Any thoughts on where we need to go?” Rohan asked. “We could go right into the city and fight this… whatever it is.”
“Hell on Earth,” Nora said. “And no, there’s no fighting it—not like that.”
“So we get away from it all,” Tess said. Rohan didn’t fail to see the flash of annoyance from Nora, but Tess kept on going. “If my exorcism of the demon worked back there, we should head to my parents’ house out in West Virginia.”
“Any idea where we are now?” Beverly asked, but everyone shook their heads. “From what I could tell, we landed just outside D.C. Maybe we’re in [INSERT NAME OF CITY SURROUNDING D.C.?]
“What exactly is at your parent’s house?” Nora asked.
“My dad, the priest,” Tess said. “Then there’s the books on exorcism that could possibly help us.”
“It is away from the city,” Beverly said, staring out through the back window at the scene of fire and chaos of the city, red and black wisps flying through the air. Has my vote.”
Rohan glanced over at the front passenger seat where Nora sat, but she seemed to be purposefully avoiding eye contact with him.
After a moment’s silence, he said, “Yeah, okay. Makes sense.”
“Anyone have a cellphone that works?” Beverly asked, fishing hers out of her pocket. It was smashed up. “Commercials said it was waterproof…I guess crash landing and fighting demons wasn’t intended to go with the warranty.”
None of them had a working phone.
Just then, Rohan noticed a sign that said, “Welcome to _______.”
“Well I’ll be damned,” he said.
“Let’s hope not,” Nora said, her eyebrow raised. “At least, wait until after we survive all of this.”
“No, that’s not—come on. ______, I know where we are. We just have to get on the ___ and head Northeast. We’ll hit the ____ in no time, and then finding Tess’s parent’s place shouldn’t be too hard, as long she knows the way.”
“You get us to the ____, I’ll get us the rest of the way,” Tess said.
“Sorry to burst this happy bubble,” Beverly said, leaning forward and pointing ahead. “But…. Look.”
Rohan had been half watching the road, half paying attention to the cloud of spirits behind them that seemed to be following. But now that he looked forward, his heart sunk.
There was a traffic jam that stretched for miles. Their way was completely blocked.
***
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Justin Sloan
Justin Sloan writes fantasy and urban fantasy. He is a video game writer (Game of Thrones; Walking Dead; Michonne, Minecraft: Story Mode), novelist (Allie Strom and the Ring of Solomon; Teddy Bears in Monsterland, Back by Sunrise, Falls of Redemption), podcaster, and screenwriter.
He has written on taking writing from hobby to career in his book Creative Writing Career and its sequel, and how veterans can pursue their passions in Military Veterans in Creative Careers. Justin studied writing at the Johns Hopkins University and UCLA after five years in the U.S. Marine Corps, and now works as a writer and editor for Military.com.
You can find him at www.justinsloanauthor.com.
Michael La Ronn
Michael La Ronn is the author of many science fiction and fantasy novels including the The Last Dragon Lord, Android X, and Eaten series.
In 2012, a life-threatening illness made him realize that storytelling was his #1 passion. He’s devoted his life to writing ever since, making up whatever story makes him fall out of his chair laughing the hardest. Every day.
You can find him at www.michaellaronn.com.
Justin’s Books
www.justinsloanauthor.com
Michael’s Books
www.michaellaronn.com
Chapter 1: Blind Date
Chapter 2: Snatched
Chapter 3: Puppet Masters
Chapter 4: Inversion
Chapter 5: Reunited
Chapter 6: The Field Trip
Chapter 7: Jungle Safari
Chapter 8: Discoveries
Chapter 9: So Above, So Below
Chapter 10: Temple Run
Chapter 11: Return to Cusco
Chapter 12: Macchu Picchu
Chapter 13: Worlds Inverted
Chapter 14: Plane Ride
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