Urban Allies: Ten Brand-New Collaborative Stories

by Joseph Nassise

  The second RPG struck an old Ford Falcon behind which three shooters knelt. The blast lifted the car and dropped it on them. And that left a clear line of approach for me. I ran up the middle like an offensive fullback, my Sig Sauer held in a two-handed grip. I am a very good shot because SpecOps soldiers who are bad shots get killed. I hit everything I aimed at. Might not have been the highest scores on a gun range, but men went down.

  Rizgar and the others fanned out, firing automatic weapons at the ISIL team. As soon as the contractors saw what was happening they shifted their focus from defensive fire to a fresh assault. Clearing the way for us. One of them came out of an open door firing a Kalashnikov. He was a brute, a bull. Six-eight if he was an inch, and he looked like Frankenstein. But the son of a bitch could shoot. ISIL fighters spun away, blood exploding from faces and throats and chests.

  They say war is hell. Sure. It absolutely is. Even if you like combat. Even when the sound of gunfire is your lullaby—which, for the record, it isn’t to me. But there is a part of me—my shrink and I call him the Killer—who shares my head and my soul with my other aspects, the Modern Man and the Cop; and the Killer loves it. In times like this he is fully alive. And maybe so am I.

  I hate that it’s true, but it is true.

  When I burned through all three of the magazines I had for the Sig, I drew my rapid-release knife and took the fight to close quarters. Using the men I killed as shields while I cut them apart, shoving them into their comrades, taking the long reach to do short, ugly cuts, going for effect rather than finesse. Slashing and slicing because stabbing will get your knife stuck and get you killed. There is a balletic quality to knife fighting when you do it right. You cruise on that edge between total awareness and a kind of Zen zero mind.

  The ISIL team fell apart. Rizgar’s men were brilliant, savage, and merciless. The Kurds have old scores to settle with the kind of men who join ISIL. And the contractors, buoyed by our arrival, took the fight to the bad guys in terrible ways.

  We won the fight.

  Until . . .

  Until the whole day changed.

  I cut the throat of one of the last ISIL fighters and saw that there was a teenage girl crouched down between two of their vehicles. Not armed, not dangerous-looking. I moved in close, hoping to grab her and pull her to safety. She cringed back from me, arms wrapped around her head, and at first I thought she was a captive, maybe someone from the village being used as a hostage, or one of the unfortunate ones who would be dragged off and used savagely until her mind or body snapped.

  Then I saw her eyes.

  They were dark and filled with madness. Total, absolute madness.

  And then they weren’t.

  The brown irises changed as I watched. The brown swirled like paint being stirred. Dark brown, then a medium brown flecked with gold, then sparks of red, and then they turned completely yellow. Cat yellow. Fire yellow. Her face, which had been contorted in terror at the madness and destruction around her, twisted, reshaped, became something else. Not another expression . . . it became another face.

  Another kind of face.

  Still a woman’s face . . . but not a human woman’s face.

  It’s impossible to describe, even now, even thinking back on it. There are things the human mind cannot process. Or refuses to accept.

  The girl rose to her feet and in doing so stopped being a girl at all. Her spine curved into a monstrous hump, almost like a camel’s hump; her leg bones broke with gunshot sounds and then reformed, taking on the knobbed angles of a goat’s legs. And her arms grew long, the fingers splaying and stretching, the nails extending as they tore through the nail beds in splashes of bright blood, then thickened into black talons.

  But her face.

  Good god, her face . . .

  The nostrils flattened and flared, her eyes sunk into shadowy pits so that the hellish light burned like real fire. Her cheekbones cracked and shifted, forming sharp ledges, and her jaw stretched as she smiled at me. Smiled. So incorrect and stupid a word for what was happening. The mouth grinned wide as row upon row of new teeth ripped their way from her gums until she had the dripping maw of a shark.

  All of this in a few seconds.

  All of this as the last pocks of gunfire tore the air.

  I stumbled backward from her—from it.

  One of the ISIL fighters lay dead at her feet, his throat sliced open by the knife held limply in my hand. The woman seized his wrist and with a jerk like someone cracking a whip, snapped the arm loose and then tore it from its socket. Blood and bits of tendon splashed on me, and in a moment of truly bottomless horror I watched the woman raise the severed arm to her mouth and bite. Bones crushed between those rows of teeth. Meat burst and blood ran down her chin as she fixed her eyes on me.

  “Jesus Christ,” I breathed, and for a moment I was frozen in absolute horror.

  4

  SPECIAL AGENT FRANKS

  Franks didn’t know who the new arrivals were, but one particular man could certainly fight. He’d been doing pretty good slicing up black pajama–clad assholes until he ran into a possessed woman. When she shed her face, he froze. It wasn’t a surprise. Most humans choked when they saw real demonic possession for the first time. Franks would have stepped in to save the man, but he had to duck to avoid getting shot in the head by a terrorist. A 7.62x39 rifle bullet at close range had a decent chance of penetrating his armored skull and might have rendered him temporarily combat ineffective, and thus unable to complete his mission. In other words, getting his brains blown out would have been inconvenient.

  Drawing his Glock 20, Franks put a controlled pair into the shooter’s chest, then turned back to face his demonic target. Franks figured the newcomer would have been torn limb-from-limb already, but surprisingly, the man had snapped out of it and gotten right back in the fight. He was staying ahead of the claws, and even managed to counterattack and slash the creature.

  Not bad, Franks thought as he went over, grabbed the demon by her hair, swung her around in a blur, and hurled her through a mud brick wall. Bones splintered and the wall collapsed in a spreading cloud of stinking dust.

  “What the fuck was that?” the man shouted.

  “Demon.”

  From the accent, he was an American. From his skillset, he might be useful. He looked up, and up, at Franks. “Who the fuck are you?”

  “Special Agent Franks. MCB.”

  The man scowled like he’d never heard of the MCB before, but they were both Americans getting shot at in northern Iraq, so it was obvious they were on the same team. “Captain Joe Ledger. DMS.”

  Department of Military Sciences personnel were probably cleared high enough to get read in on this one. He’d do.

  “That’s nice,” Franks stated as he walked toward the pile of rubble. The bricks were shifting as the demon struggled free. This was a tougher strain than expected—

  THWACK!

  The rifle bullet smacked into Franks’ leg. It punched a neat .30-caliber entrance hole, deformed as it struck his hardened femur, and burst back out the side. Blood sprayed everywhere. Franks immediately picked out the shooter, who had appeared on a nearby rooftop, aimed, and shot him before he could get off another round.

  “You’re hit. Get to cover!”

  But Franks just looked down at the fist-sized exit wound in his thigh and frowned. That was what he deserved for stopping to have such a lengthy conversation with Ledger. He lifted the dangling flap of skin and meat and shoved it back into the hole. “Just a scratch.”

  Ledger seemed a little put off by that.

  That wound was going to drastically slow him down, and he’d probably need a replacement leg when he got home, but worst of all, getting shot had cost him several precious seconds he could have used killing things. The demon shook itself free from the rubble. It took one look at Franks and Ledger standing there, realized it was outmatched, and fled.

  Without any hesitation and armed only with a knife, Ledger went after t
he monster.

  This one has style, Franks thought as he limped after them.

  5

  CAPTAIN JOE LEDGER

  So, okay, this is me running through the Iraqi desert with a guy I am pretty goddamn sure isn’t human, chasing something I’m absolutely positive is a demon. Yeah. Actual demon. Psychologically speaking, I am seriously fucked. I mean . . . demons!

  Shit.

  The thing fled from us, running like the wind out of the village and onto the sands. Franks ran well for a guy built like a bridge support. Well, but not fast. I ran faster, outpacing him. I’m over six feet and I go about two-twenty, but I’m built like a ballplayer. If I had even a smidge of talent I could have played third base. I can run my ass off, and I pulled ahead.

  Here’s the thing. Running faster meant that I was going to reach the apparently unkillable desert demon sooner than the definitely unkillable guy who actually stood a chance against this thing. As plans go, that sucks ass. But the Killer was in gear and he didn’t give much of a fuck what the odds were. He’d tasted blood and he wanted more.

  So I ran.

  The woman—thing, whatever—cut right behind a ruined wall and fled into the open desert, heading for a clump of palms clustered around a goat pen. The goats screamed and panicked, crashing into the rickety slats of the corral, leaping over the bars as they fell, jumping on each other to escape what was coming. The demon leapt the fence with ease and crashed among them, slashing right and left to clear her path. I saw heads and legs and red chunks fly into the air. It was as if the goats had run into a threshing machine. Their screams sounded like the terrified shrieks of children.

  I was five paces behind her. Even though she tore through the goats it still slowed her. When she raced to leap over the rear wall of the corral, I was there. My Wilson has a 3.75-inch blade, which is great for fighting people—the weapon was so lightweight that it allowed my hand to move at full speed. But when cutting at a fleeing target it was inadequate. The tip of the blade drew a seven-inch line across her upper back, but the cut didn’t go deep enough to destroy the muscles. Droplets of red-black blood spattered me and all my cut accomplished was to make her stumble. Her left foot caught the upper fence rail and the demon fell face forward into the dust on the other side.

  Fell . . . and rebounded, rising into a crouch, spinning around to hiss at me, eyes bright with madness and bloodlust, claws slashing the air. I launched myself into the air for a diving, slashing tackle.

  And then something hit me like a thunderbolt, slamming into my side, driving me at a right angle to the demon. I fell hard and badly, smashing into the fence post, spinning amid a cloud of splinters, feeling fire explode on my side as something tore at me. Then I was down, rolling over and over with a second woman.

  A second demon.

  6

  SPECIAL AGENT FRANKS

  Another possessed woman was on top of Ledger, trying to gouge his eyes out. The two of them were rolling through the mud and shit, trying to kill each other. As entertaining as that was, Franks wasn’t in the mood to dick around, so he aimed carefully and shot the creature square between the shoulder blades. The silver 10mm blew a hole through her heart, but rather than die, she screeched and reared back. Ledger reached up with his blade and slashed her throat wide open, half a second before Franks shot her through the side of the head. The demon rolled off of Ledger, thrashing and spraying.

  Well, these things were proving to be obnoxiously tough. Franks grabbed one of the kicking legs and dragged the monster away from Ledger while the first demon circled back through the pile of dead goats. Ledger would just have to deal with that one while Franks figured out just how much of a hellacious beating he had to administer to finish an Alghul for good.

  7

  CAPTAIN JOE LEDGER

  I fought the demon the way I’d fight a wild animal. I’ve had some experience there. Wild animals and genetically modified animals. Years ago I faced down mastiffs that had been transgenically altered to give them scorpion tails. I’ve faced genetically engineered vampire assassins and some other rude and nasty shit. This was my first encounter with something supernatural, but if it existed and if it could bleed, then some of the laws of nature had to apply. That was useful, that gave me a firm piece of ground in this shit storm where I could stand. And Franks had bought me a moment. So I used it.

  The demon tried to end it fast by rushing at me with those claws.

  Fool me once, motherfucker . . .

  As she darted in I twisted and marked her from wrist to shoulder with picks—short, hard taps with the wicked point of my knife that opened bleeders and ripped apart nerves—and with quick, circular slashes to the muscles for reaching and grabbing. The demon howled in pain and darted back. Tried again, got cut again, and darted back once more. Blood the color of red bricks flowed from a dozen cuts.

  If this was a person, I might have used the effect of a pick or slash to close to killing distance, but the wounds were hurting it—just not enough. Those arms still reached, still moved with obvious speed and power.

  “Stop fucking around,” growled Franks.

  “I’m. Not. Fucking. Around,” I snapped as I dodged a series of vicious slashes.

  “Don’t you have a big-boy knife?”

  “Fuck you.”

  He laughed a cold, heartless, mocking laugh and tossed something to me. A knife. A Ka-Bar USMC Mark 2 combat knife whose blade flashed in the sunlight. I faked left and lunged for the blade, snatched the handle, dove into a roll to give myself time to grip it properly, rose and spun. I did a fast swap so the Wilson was in my left and the much bigger Ka-Bar was in my right.

  “Silver,” barked Franks, then he had to concentrate on his own battle.

  Silver. Did that work on demons? I had no fucking idea. What do I know about any of this shit?

  The demon, though, she stared at the blade and hissed.

  She knew.

  Yeah. She absolutely knew.

  I felt myself smile.

  The Ka-Bar was bigger and heavier, but I’ve fought with them many times. You lose a fraction of your speed, but when you reach out and touch someone they get the message. I switched my grips on both knives so that I held them with the blades spiked down from my fists like the claws of a praying mantis.

  “Come on, beautiful,” I said to the demon. “Let’s dance.”

  Okay, it was corny but I was having a moment.

  So was she.

  With a banshee howl the demon flung herself at me.

  8

  SPECIAL AGENT FRANKS

  He hated when demons were strong enough to warp the flesh of the possessed. They always seemed to sprout claws and fangs, just to be pricks about it. This one had scratched him and tried to bite a hole through his armor before he’d slugged her in the head enough times to crack her skull and turn her brains to mush. Franks hoisted the dazed demon high overhead, and with a roar, flung her down, through the fence, and against the packed earth so hard that the snapping bones could probably be heard back at the convoy.

  The Alghul lay there twitching, beaten, glaring at him with eyes filled with hatred. She opened her mouth and hissed at him in the Old Tongue. “Traitor.”

  “Yeah, whatever,” Franks said as he reached down, got a handful of blood-soaked hair, and cranked the demon’s head brutally to the side. He’d been planning on twisting her head clean off to shut her up, but simply snapping the neck seemed to do the trick, and he felt the ancient malignant spirit driven from the possessed flesh.

  9

  CAPTAIN JOE LEDGER

  The demon tried to end it by driving all ten claws into me like a storm of daggers. I pivoted and parried, using the little Wilson to push the outside of her left arm to one side while also hooking and trapping her wrist. I used the Ka-Bar in a hard, sweeping overhand slash that sliced through scalp, ear, left eye, cheek, and mouth. I put muscle into it, using my inverse grip so that it hit like a heavy punch as well as a slash.

  It dr
ove her to the ground. Hard. Dark blood exploded upward, and everywhere a drop struck my exposed skin I could feel it burn.

  Even hurt she tried to turn, but I stepped on her elbow, pinning it and her to the ground to spoil the turn. I stabbed down into the base of her skull to sever the spinal cord. The silver-coated knife bit deep and hard.

  The demon screamed so loud that it knocked me back. She screamed so hard that blood burst from my nose as I lay there, hands clamped to my ears. The scream made the palm trees shiver and tore fronds off of them. Debris rained down on me as the scream rose and rose and . . .

  The silence was immediate and intense.

  For a terrified moment I wondered if my eardrums had simply burst.

  But, no.

  No.

  I got shakily to my knees and immediately vomited into the dust. Then I sagged back onto my heels, pawing blood from my lips and chin, blinking past pain-tears in my eyes.

  Franks stood there, wide-legged, chest heaving only slightly, sweat glistening on his skin, eyes dark and intense and amused.

  “What,” I said, “the fuck was that?”

  His expression was ugly and unfriendly. “I told you, Ledger. Demons.”

  “First—and don’t take this the wrong way—but fuck you and your demons.”

  He shrugged.

  “Second—since when are demons an actual thing?”

  “I thought DMS knew all this stuff.”

  “No, we goddamn well don’t.”

  There was a twinkle in Franks’ eyes. “Your boss does. What’s he call himself now? Mr. Church? You should ask him.”