Within seconds the room was filled with the acrid scent of gunpowder, the stench of blood and feces, and the grunts and screams of dying pig-demons. When the creatures got too close for the men to use their firearms, they switched to melee weapons, Joe smashing skulls with the stock of his shotgun while Cade laid waste about him with the long sword he’d pulled out of the sheath on his back.
“He’s getting away!” Cade shouted over the din and Joe glanced over the head of the pig-demon in front of him to see that the priest had torn open a door at the back of the platform and was in the process of disappearing through it.
Oh no, you don’t, you bastard, Joe thought, and redoubled his efforts, forcing his way forward with a few final swings of his shotgun stock until there were simply no more demons left in front of him to fight.
“This way!” he shouted and rushed for the platform, slamming through the door the pig-headed priest had used and stumbling into a dusty, fly-specked office. He growled in frustration as the man dashed through another door on the far side of the room.
Sensing Williams at his heels, Joe charged through that door as well and into a narrow stairwell. A mélange of foul scents flowed up to meet them.
Cade grunted behind Joe. “Blood.”
Joe sniffed, then added, “And pig shit.”
The Night Marshal thundered down the steps, not even trying to be sneaky. If they didn’t catch the priest before he rallied his supernatural defenses, they were fucked.
Crystals embedded in the stairwell’s earthen walls shed pulses of asynchronous orange light, revealing flashes of the priest’s back as he took the stairs two at a time.
Joe’s hobnailed boots skidded at the bottom of the steps, slipping in a reeking froth of blood and mud and shit, frustrating his pursuit. He could see the priest’s filth-stained robes as the man fled down an earthen tunnel, but Joe was gaining ground.
They passed arched openings as they hauled ass down the tunnel after the priest. Joe glimpsed piles of bloody bones and rotting meat and tried not to look at the sigils that flared to life atop the mounds of carrion. The priest was up to something, and they were running out of time to catch him.
Joe put on a desperate burst of speed and his fingertips brushed the priest’s robes as they exited the tunnel into an enormous cavern. Then the priest was gone, hurling himself from a muddy ledge. Joe and Cade skidded to a stop at the edge and saw their quarry splashing through the slop at the bottom of a shallow, muddy pit. Shadow forms rippled through the slop around him, forming a protective phalanx of unseen threats.
Joe rubbed his jaw. “Flip you for it? Heads, you jump down into the shit and kill him. Tails, I stay up here and watch.”
Cade grimaced. “I should’ve brought a rifle.”
A chorus of enraged squeals demanded their attention. They turned to see a growing mob of monstrosities charging down the tunnel toward them. They had the heavy-jowled heads and pointed pink ears of swine, but their faces and bodies were mockeries of the human form. Rows of slick pink nipples ran down their torsos, and their hands and feet were sharp black hooves.
Cade hefted his sword. “Locals aren’t very friendly, are they?”
Joe’s face split into a shark’s grin, and he raised his shotgun. “You just gotta get to know ’em.”
Then the pig-demons were on them, screaming and gnashing their teeth as they closed in for the kill.
Cade met the lead pig-demon with a cross-body slash that opened it from shoulder to hip, emptying its innards onto the bloody floor. The creature’s death squeals sent its brothers into a frenzy and Cade suddenly found himself surrounded by shrieking demons.
He hacked a hoofed arm off one of his attackers, then pivoted to rip the tip of his long sword through the leg of another. He parried a hoof aimed at his head and counterattacked with a pommel strike that split the creature’s muzzle to the bone.
Another attacker slipped through Cade’s defenses and slammed its hooves into his back. The blow sent the Templar stumbling into another one of the pigs, which snapped yellowed tusks at his face. Before Cade could respond, there was a thunderous roar and he was covered with a thick coating of sticky gore.
The Night Marshal flashed a grin over the gushing stump of the demon swine’s tattered neck before turning to blast a smoking crater in another monster’s chest. Cade couldn’t be sure, but it looked like Joe was enjoying this a little bit too much.
The monstrosities were clumsy fighters but they made up for their lack of finesse with numbers and raw strength. Cade’s arms grew weary from the constant hacking and parrying. He’d lost count of how many of the things had fallen under his sword, but the numbers of those still standing never seemed to dwindle.
He tore the head from another of the beasts and once again found himself eye-to-eye with the Night Marshal. “Can’t keep this up, they’re wearing us down.”
The Night Marshal responded by smashing in the face of a pig-demon with an elbow and slamming a fresh set of shells into his shotgun. “What’s wrong, city boy? Arm getting tired?”
Cade growled and plunged his long sword into the heart of another demon. The mob had pushed him and the Night Marshal almost back to the ledge. He glanced over his shoulders and ignited his supernatural Sight. The priest stood atop a pile of offal and bones, head thrown back, arms raised. Thrumming arcs of power surged up from the bloody ground to form a massive shape.
Cade grabbed the Night Marshal’s shoulder and shouted, “We’ve got trouble.”
Joe fired his shotgun into the oncoming horde, then glanced at Cade and asked, “What the—”
A shock wave of arcane energy blasted across the ledge and into the tunnel, tumbling the charging demons onto their backs. Cade had to brace himself with his sword to keep from falling over and saw the Night Marshal hunkering forward to do the same.
Cade turned toward the pit and felt his heart sink.
An enormous sow, easily twenty feet high at the shoulder, crouched in the center of the pit, smoking blood running down her snout and off her back. With a shrieking roar, she lowered her head and charged, murderous rage curling her lips back from enormous jagged teeth.
Cade raised his sword but knew that thing would run them down long before they could do enough damage to stop it. He and the Night Marshal were as good as dead.
Joe knew they were fucked. The pig-demons were regrouping after the shock wave knocked them on their asses and they’d be back in the fight in seconds. The hell-sow would reach the ledge before that, and he had no doubt she’d tear the damned wall down to get at him and the Templar.
He grabbed Cade by the shoulder and pointed at the charging giant. “Jump!”
Joe didn’t wait to see if the Templar followed his advice. If they stayed put, they’d be crushed between the charging pig-demons and the sow behemoth. Their only hope of survival lay in getting off that ledge.
Joe’s leap carried him over the giant sow’s lowered head and onto her bristled back. His boots slid on the creature’s bloody flesh and he crashed to his knees. His left hand grabbed a knot of wiry hairs that just saved him from sliding off the thing’s back and under its trampling hooves.
Cade landed next to Joe and drove his long sword into the devil-sow’s flesh to arrest his leap. Six inches of steel disappeared into the gargantuan pig’s meaty shoulder. That got its attention.
The monster threw itself into the muddy ledge, crushing a handful of its demon-pig minions while attempting to dislodge its enemies. It squealed in hellish rage and shook itself with such force that Joe nearly lost his grip.
“That’ll be enough of that shit,” the Night Marshal snarled. He rammed the gaping barrels of his shotgun between two knobs of the hell-sow’s spine and squeezed both triggers.
The shotgun’s occult discharge split the air like a peal of thunder. Silver fire and acidic green smoke gushed from the shotgun and tore a blistered crater in the monster’s back.
Its front legs folded underneath it and its blunt snout
crashed into the filth-covered floor. It squealed like a piglet on its way to the slaughter, the sound clawing at Joe’s ears and hammering at his sanity.
The Templar reared back and drove his blade into the exposed gristle of the demon-pig’s spinal cord.
The blade sank home with a meaty thunk.
It should have been a killing blow, even against a creature of the sow’s size. Instead, the mortal assault filled the beast with an unholy vigor.
The pig reared back onto its hind legs with such sudden violence that Joe found himself flying through the air, fist still clenched around a clump of bristly hairs.
Fuck, he thought, then slammed into the muck-covered ground.
Cade hung on to his sword, but the weapon ripped free of the monstrosity’s spine and he slid off the thing’s back and into the blood and shit. He rolled on impact, which was the only thing that saved him from shattering both of his ankles.
He couldn’t see the Night Marshal, and prayed his new ally wasn’t dead or too wounded to carry on the fight. Cade had to figure out how to kill the damned sow without being crushed beneath the mammoth hooves that smashed down all around him.
He let his supernatural Sight slide into place as he dodged around a descending hoof. The missed attack splashed him with a foul mixture of gore and manure. Cade retaliated with a wild swing that gouged away a chunk of the beast’s leg.
Blood burst from the wound, but so did a coruscating flicker of black light. It was there for the merest flash of a moment, but it showed Cade what he needed to know.
He threw himself away from the trampling devil-sow and slid on his chest and belly for a few yards. Then he scrambled forward, sprinting for the spot he’d seen the black light disappear into. He prayed he was right about this.
Because if he was wrong, he’d be dead.
Cade raised his sword and then slammed the blessed weapon into a seething vortex of power.
There was a tremendous flash and a moment of blinding agony, and then Cade was gone.
A hoofed kick slammed into Joe’s shoulder, jarring him out of his daze and numbing his arm down to his fingertips. He rolled with the attack and lurched back to his feet, shotgun raised in his good hand.
The Night Marshal squeezed both triggers before realizing he hadn’t had a chance to reload. The metallic click against the hollow barrels threw him off balance, and he narrowly avoided the demon’s flailing attack. He needed space to reload, but knew he wouldn’t get it. He could see more demons plunging off the ledge, hungry for his blood.
Worse, the sow saw him and was headed in his direction.
“Cade!” he shouted. He didn’t know where the Templar had gone, but he didn’t have time to find out. Joe turned his back on the demons and ran like hell.
Plunging into the Beyond left Cade blind and deaf. Before he could recover his senses, someone stabbed him.
The attack slipped between the armored plates on his right arm and pierced his bicep. Pain and adrenaline shook Cade back to his senses in time to see the priest drawing a wicked blade back for another attack.
With his sword arm injured, Cade lunged forward and hooked the fingers of his left hand around the man’s filthy throat. The priest writhed in pain and tried to gather his power.
The priest was the conduit between this realm and the devil-sow he’d called forth into Pitchfork County. As long as he could draw power from the land of the dead and funnel it into the demon, the thing couldn’t be killed.
But the same didn’t hold true for the priest. Cade lifted the man up by his throat. “Didn’t expect to see me here, did you?”
The priest’s eyes bugged from their sockets and his mouth chewed on arcane syllables that couldn’t find their way past his lips.
Cade threw the priest to the floor and bore down on his throat with all of his weight.
There was a split second of resistance, then a wet crunch echoed through the gloom and the priest’s eyes went glassy and dark.
As Cade got to his feet the gleam of something metallic caught his eye and he reached down, pushing aside the dead man’s robes to reveal the Eye of Horus on a chain around the man’s throat. With a quick yank, Cade pulled it free.
Behind him came a churning roar in response. Cade turned and watched as the portal out of the Beyond tied itself into a knot and disappeared.
Joe returned his empty shotgun to its back scabbard and pumped his arms and legs for all he was worth. His lungs burned; running wasn’t his normal game plan, but the hell-sow was gaining on him. Something had changed; he could feel the demons’ desperation as they closed in on him. The sow paid no heed to the pig-demons she crushed in her pursuit of Joe; their squeals of pain and fear turned the Night Marshal’s stomach.
Ahead of him, the lights of the cavern grew dim and a curved wall blocked his path. Joe realized where he was under the slaughterhouse and couldn’t help but grin. Maybe he’d get out of this after all.
Joe leaped at the concrete wall and climbed, fingers and toes digging into its irregular surface. Years of erosion from seeping water and more gruesome fluids had left the concrete rough, giving him the hand- and footholds he needed.
“Let’s see if you fuckers can swim,” he snarled.
Pig-headed spirits coalesced out of the gray fog surrounding Cade. He drew his long sword, preparing to wade into the mob before him, then thought better of it.
“Live to fight another day” was never one of his favorite expressions, but damned if it didn’t make sense right about now. He held no illusions about his odds of fighting off that many of the creatures and had no intention of sacrificing himself needlessly either.
Discretion is the better part of valor, a voice in the back of his mind spoke up, one that sounded suspiciously like his dead wife, Gabrielle, and he listened to it, turning to run with every ounce of strength he had left.
All he needed to do was stay ahead of the demons long enough to find a portal back to the other side.
No pressure.
Joe was thirty feet up the side of the concrete wall when the hell-sow plowed into it. The enormous creature didn’t even try to slow down, which Joe had counted on. He hugged the wall, knowing that even if this plan worked, there was a good chance he’d end up dead.
The sow’s impact sent huge cracks racing up the wall’s face, and a massive chunk collapsed into rubble, revealing a pillar of viscous red.
A tsunami of clotted blood gushed from the ruptured silo. The crimson wave slammed the demonic swine to the floor and washed their bloated bodies into the cavern’s walls with bone-shattering, blubber-rupturing force.
Even the massive sow was shoved off her feet and hurled against a stone wall. Her legs twisted and gave way with wet cracks as bones split and burst through the skin.
The monstrous swine’s wounds oozed thick black blood and her shattered legs twitched feebly. The Templar must have managed some trick to keep it down. “Thanks, Cade,” he said as he stalked toward the fallen pig.
It watched his approach with too human eyes filled with inhuman hatred. Joe pulled his shotgun from its scabbard and cracked it open. He loaded two shells into the barrels and snapped the gun closed.
The sow grunted and tried to lift its head, but Joe pinned its snout with his left foot. Despite its size, the thing’s strength had fled.
Joe pointed the shotgun at the creature’s oversized eye. “See you in hell.”
The shotgun’s roar echoed through the cavern, drowning out the hell-swine’s dying scream.
Cade ran as if the demons of hell were at his heels because, well, they were. They didn’t move as quickly as he did, their misshapen forms making it difficult for them to get up any decent speed, but he was exhausted from all the fighting and couldn’t seem to widen his lead any more than a few dozen yards. As he went, he kept looking around frantically, searching for that telltale gleam of a portal in the distance.
The Beyond was an unusual place and despite all the years he’d been traveling here he had
yet to squirrel out many of its secrets. He had learned to control his passage into the Beyond via the Mirror’s Road, using any reflective surface to step from the land of the living into this dark and desolate plane of existence, but he hadn’t learned how to do the same to get back.
Instead, he was forced to rely on preexisting portals, gleaming spheres of energy that were mystically tied to some reflecting surface in the real world which allowed him to travel in the opposite direction back to the world of the living.
Trouble was, they were few and, sometimes, far between.
And that was in a highly populated area. He’d entered the Beyond literally in the backwoods and the chance of finding a portal in so unpopulated an area was not good.
Not good at all.
But there was no way he was giving up.
A pig-demon got a little too close for comfort and he lashed out with his sword, cleaving off the top of the creature’s skull with a single blow, before turning back and concentrating on widening the distance between him and the rest of the pack.
A sudden gleam of light popped into existence about fifty yards to his right and he put on a burst of speed, angling toward it as fast as he could go. The only thing over here that shone like that was a portal, but Cade knew that it could vanish just as abruptly as it had appeared. He had to get to it before it had the chance to do so.
Faster, Cade, faster, he urged himself, and bent to the task.
Joe was standing over the carcass, wondering what the hell he was going to tell the other Templars about Cade, when he felt a faint burst of heat coming from the pocket where he kept his badge.
No sooner had he taken out his badge than it suddenly flared with heat, causing him to drop it in surprise. He was staring down at the garish red burn it left on the palm of his hand when the badge burst into brilliance, giving off a silver-white light so bright that he had to step back and shield his eyes just to see anything at all.
The light grew, flowing outward, expanding from the center of the badge until it formed a spherical platform a few feet off the ground. It reminded him of a hellgate, the kind of portal that Left-Hand Path sorcerers sometimes used to summon demons to this world, and he stepped back in preparation.
Urban Allies: Ten Brand-New Collaborative Stories Page 12
