Luke smashed his right elbow down into the demon’s grinning face, pulping its nose and eye socket, but it didn’t release its grip. Luke wriggled his other arm free and rained fists down upon the demon’s skull, to no avail. After almost a full minute of struggling in the monster’s grip, Luke pushed off the wall with his left arm, ripped the cover off the breaker panel with his right, then reached into the electrical box, gripping one of the hot lugs with his left hand.
High-voltage electricity rocketed along every nerve ending, passing through his body into the demon. Luke’s body went rigid; the demon’s body began to convulse. As more and more power flowed through him, Luke noticed the unmistakable stench of burning hair—his own. Finally, the demon shook itself off Luke, who managed to pull his hand out of the panel and break the connection. He collapsed to one knee and looked over at the demon. Or rather, he looked as the scorched concrete where the demon last fell. There was no demon there, just the reek of sulfur and burned flesh.
Luke knew all too well that the burned flesh was his own, but there wasn’t time to worry about that now. He took three long strides across the floor, stepped on the edge of the magician’s magical circle, and kicked her under the chin. Even in his weakened state, Luke’s power was more than strong enough to topple the woman backward, her head smacking into the concrete floor with the sound of a cantaloupe dropped from a great height.
Luke looked at the unconscious woman, then down at his smoldering flesh, and a small smile flitted across his features. “Dennis, did the elemental disappear when I rendered the spellcaster unconscious?”
“It did, Luke. I don’t see anything else on the security cameras. I think you got the only one. And the arena team took out their bomb, so all that’s left is to find Orobas and send that fucker back to Hell where he belongs.”
“I concur. Please let Adam know that I will be with him momentarily. I feel a slight hunger that I must indulge before rejoining him.” Luke clicked off his headset and put it in his pocket without waiting for an answer. He smiled down at the unconscious magician. “And you, my dear, can rest easy in the knowledge that your death will not be in vain. You may not have accomplished your initial goal, but healing me before I rend your employer limb from limb is a fate not without its merits.”
He started toward the woman, fangs extended and a smile on his face that would have chilled the blood of anyone near enough to see it. “Just a little snack, and then we’ll return to our regularly scheduled program of saving the world.”
12
Centennial Olympic Park looked like the set of a horror movie when I walked up to the site of Orobas’s planned ritual. I don’t mean that there were dead bodies lying around and people covered in fake blood and effects makeup; I mean that it looked like someone was shooting a movie right in the middle of the Olympic Fountain. There was a crane with huge lights hanging from it, a team of gophers running around with clipboards and headsets, and a crowd of curious onlookers standing behind portable metal barricades.
I chuckled a little at the sheer balls of it all. Oro hadn’t just found a way to hide his ritual from the authorities and people who might want to stop him, he’d found a disguise that would get him extra souls to destroy just off the bystanders and hopefuls looking for half a second of screen time. It would have been an incredibly elegant solution, except that I planned to spoil the whole damn party.
I walked up to the barricade with Flynn on my left side and a step behind to clear my hands in case I needed to fling a spell in that direction on short notice. I threw one leg over the barricade, and a minion rushed over to intercept me.
“Excuse me, sir,” the minion said. She looked human, a short woman in a Walking Dead Crew t-shirt, jeans, hiking boots, and a Madea’s Your Mama baseball cap with a long curly brown ponytail pulled through the back. She wore a radio on her belt and carried a clipboard, the uniform of production assistants the world over. “You can’t come onto the set. We’re going to start shooting in just a couple—”
I didn’t slow down, just kept walking like she hadn’t even spoken. I held up my Homeland Security badge and said, “Get the people out of here. A biological agent has been released in the Georgia Dome, and we need this area evacuated as quickly as possible.” I pitched my voice loud enough that the nearest civilians also heard me. I saw out of the corner of my eye the nearest people turn to their neighbors and start to chatter. Good, I needed to sow a lot of confusion and more than a little panic if my sketch of a plan was going to work.
The PA got a confused look on her face, and she reached for her radio. “I need to check on that. But until I do, could you please step behind the barricade?”
“No, I can’t,” I said. “Detective, will you see that these people begin the evacuation quickly and efficiently?”
Becks’ face flashed dark, and a hint of red appeared at the tips of her ears. She was pissed that I stuck her on crowd control, but I was not letting her go toe-to-toe with Orobas. That guy beat the shit out of me the first time we met; I was not about to let him get his hands on Flynn.
You’re going to have some explaining to do about this bullshit when we get out of here, I “heard” across our mental link.
Deal, I replied. Now let’s focus on that whole “getting out of here” part. I turned my attention back to the little PA who was frantically trying to convince me to stop marching onto the “set.”
“Look, kid. I’m not stopping. And you’re not going to wrestle me to the ground and sit on me, so why don’t you go talk to my partner back there and start getting these people, and yourself, to safety?”
She looked at me like I was completely insane. It wasn’t even close to the first time I’d gotten that look from a woman, so I knew it well. “Sir, I can’t leave. That would be highly unprofessional, and I might never work in this town again.”
I didn’t bother telling her that if she didn’t get as far away from this park as humanly possible, and in the next few minutes, she probably wasn’t ever going to work again anywhere. I just shook my head. “Fine, lady. Do what you gotta do. But I’m going to go put a stop to this shitshow before anyone gets hurt or killed.” Preferably before I get hurt or killed. I kept that thought to myself, though.
I shouldered past the woman and heard her radioing for security behind me. It only took a few more seconds for me to break through the next security barricade and see what Orobas had going on. It was an elaborate ritual, apparently, because there was a huge double circle drawn on the brick plaza at the park’s fountain. There were people lying on their backs dressed in white robes at the cardinal points of the circle and a grinning Orobas in the center. The circle glowed with so much magical energy that its purple light was visible even without opening my Sight. Even the mundanes could see this thing, although they doubtless thought it was just a little bit of movie magic.
“Hello, Harker,” the demon called to me. “I’m so glad you could make it to our little film shoot.” He smiled even bigger, showing more teeth than I felt comfortable seeing, much less having aimed at me. His double circle was, at least, drawn in chalk, not blood, and the people positioned around his circle were alive, for the moment, but the Enochian scribblings in the space between the circles told a story of demons, dimensions, and doorways that I really didn’t want to see come to pass.
“Hi, Oro. I think there are some folks in town that would like to have a word or two with you. Why don’t you step out of that circle, and I’ll see if Luke is free to say hi?”
“I’m just fine in here, thanks. But please pass along my condolences to your uncle. I know how fond he gets of his lackeys.”
“And what about Mort? I think he’s got a couple things he wants to say to you, too,” I said, stepping close to the mystical barrier. The double circle was reinforced against both magical and physical attacks. If I was going to have any shot of stopping Orobas from completing his ritual, I had to get that circle down. I reached out to test the barrier, but drew my hand back before
I actually touched the circle. The tingle in my fingertips told me all I needed to know—Oro’s boundaries were strong, and I was not getting through to him easily.
I looked around, trying to find something to disrupt his circle, and my eyes landed on the people at the compass points of the circle. Each of them held an item on their chest, and all of them looked ancient. One held a book, another a dagger, then a helmet, and a folded bundle of fabric. At Oro’s feet was another book, and this one was bigger and more ornate than the one held by his minion.
“What’s with the toys, Oro?” I asked. “Planning a magical garage sale after your apocalypse?”
“You know full well what I intend to do with these artifacts, Quincy. It would have been much simpler with the sword of St. Joan, but she always was a contrary bitch, even in life.”
“The sword of…” It took me a second, but I realized Orobas was talking about the blade we dug out of the rubble of Luke’s house. Apparently, it was more than just a souvenir Luke took off a dead Nazi, but the sword worn by Joan of Arc, supposedly a gift to her from God himself when she took up arms as a man to go into battle.
I reached over my shoulder with my right hand and drew the sword. “You mean this old thing? I just grabbed it on my way out the door thinking if you wanted it, it must be important. Might even have a way to fuck up your little tea party here. So, what’s the deal, Oro? Is this little pigsticker important?”
I answered my own question as I slowly extended the sword, point-first, toward Orobas in his circle. I expected nothing more than to get my arm halfway out and bump the blade into his magical barrier. But that’s not what happened. Not even close. As the tip of the sword made contact with the circle, it collapsed. The glowing purple sphere blinked out of existence with an audible pop, and I saw Oro jerk within his inner circle as the power used to create it rushed back into him causing a painful magical backlash. I took two steps forward and jabbed the sword into the inner barricade, and it popped like a soap bubble, too, rocking Oro almost flat onto his back.
With his circle down and the mother of all backlash headaches, Oro looked up at me. “You will not thwart my plans again, Quincy Harker. I will open the Gates of Hell upon this miserable world, and I will storm Heaven itself, proving once and for all that it is Orobas, not that pitiful twat Morningstar, that is the true King of Hell. Mere moments from now, the power of a hundred thousand souls will flow into me, and I will be unstoppable!”
“Oh, are those the souls at the concert?” Jo asked, walking up beside me with her hammer in her hand. “They’re a little drunk, and you’d have to be to listen to that godawful excuse for music, but they’re fine. We defused your bombs. Because we’re cool like that.”
“Or did you mean the souls at the football game?” Luke asked, kicking over the metal barricade behind me. “Because they’re all safe as well. We disposed of your little firebug, and now it’s your turn.”
Orobas stood, glaring at me and my friends. Then he raised his arms, and a half dozen demons flew in to stand beside him. Looks like I wasn’t the only one who brought backup. These weren’t anything special, just run-of-the-mill demonic soldiers. They each were basically human in size and shape, except for the crimson skin, bat wings, the hooves where feet should be, the barbed penises (shut up, they were impossible to miss), and the curved black horns.
“Is that all you’ve got, Harker? A monster, a bloodsucker, a half-vampire illusionist, and a few humans? I obviously brought far too many demons along.” He snapped his fingers, and the demons charged us.
Or at least the demons tried to charge us. They took the first step, but then a blur of motion appeared from my left, and the demons suddenly fell to the ground, every one of them missing a head. I looked to my right, and standing there covered in gore with a pyramid of demon skulls at its feet was an eight-foot demon with obsidian skin, a four-foot curved blade, and a double row of teeth smiling at me from an elongated mouth that reminded me of an alligator with a bad attitude.
“You killed my daughter, you son of a pit imp.” The voice that came out of the demon was something I’ve heard in my nightmares ever since. It was a low, rumbling, viscous sound, like boiling tar covering searing flesh. That voice held within it centuries of screams and millennia of torture, and every word came out of that double-razored mouth with a smile.
“Mort?” I asked, almost under my breath. I’d never seen Mort’s true form since he was a passenger demon and preferred to possess others. Now that I saw his real body, and particularly his red, pupilless eyes, I understood why. Nothing he could ever possess would give me cause to almost piss myself just by having it turn its gaze on me.
But that’s exactly what it did. It looked at me, and that awful voice spoke again. “Hello, Harker. Please do not interfere. This putrescent cock-boil is mine, and I will have his soul for breakfast.”
“You can do what you like with his soul, Mortivoid,” Luke said, stepping up beside me. “But I get to take a piece out of his flesh.”
“Are you threatening me, Vlad?” Mort asked, reverting to Luke’s birth name.
“Not at all,” Luke replied. “Simply proposing an alliance. We kill him together, then you may have him for any length of time after that such as you desire.”
“I may have something to say about that,” Oro chimed in. All heads swiveled back to the demon, who stood in the center of his shattered circle with his hands pointed to the sky.
“Attack!” he screamed, and from the skies above Atlanta, it started to rain demons of all shapes and sizes.
I looked at my team, gathered around me looking terrified but determined. “Get as many humans to safety as you can, then start sending these bastards back to Hell!” They jumped into action, some drawing weapons and some moving toward the PA and the civilians clustered around her.
Orobas took advantage of my momentary distraction to leap from his circle and swat me to the ground, knocking the sword from my grip and cracking my head on the ground. I looked up at the monster, and not for the first time, thought, I fucking hate demons.
13
It was raining demons over Atlanta; I was flat on my ass in front of the monster responsible for the death of Renfield, Christy, and countless others; and Count Dracula was about to get into a pissing contest with a hitchhiker demon about who got to kill the bad guy first. And I dropped my sword and was pretty sure I had a slight concussion. My day was quickly approaching Defcon Fucked.
Orobas was distracted from his desire to rip my head off and shit down my neck by Luke crashing into him from the side and sending him ass over teakettle across the brick pavers around the Olympic Fountain. Mort followed a split second behind, his sword blurring through the air like a Cuisinart with more teeth. I almost felt bad for Orobas, until I remembered that he wanted to blow open the doors of Hell and relocate a couple million demons into my dimension.
Fuck, the demons. I looked up and saw a solid dozen Reavers scurrying across the park after any civilians who lingered outside the metal barricade protecting the “film set” of Oro’s ritual. There were at least as many Torment Demons stalking the fleeing humans, and one twelve-foot demon of a kind I’d never encountered before. It was an ugly bastard, to be sure, with four legs, a spiked tail, and half a dozen arms. It looked like the uglier brother of a Kali statue mated with a tarantula, without any of the charm of that kind of pairing.
“Adam, go for the Torment Demons,” I yelled. “Becks, Gabby, take out the Reavers. Watson, you and Jo cover the civilians.” The four humans Oro used in his ritual were just red splotches on the ground, the first victims of the demons, but there were still plenty of people that needed help.
“What are you doing, Harker?” Flynn called back to me.
“I’m doing what I do, Becks,” I shouted. “Sending the big nasty back to Hell.” I took a deep breath, picked up my fallen magic sword, and charged the four-legged giant with a wordless bellow. It’s a good thing I’m a fast healer because this might hurt.
The thing looked at me, its inhuman face splitting into a grin as I ran at it. It reached down with one clawed hand, but I’m a little quicker than the average bear, so I ducked under and opened a long gash in its forearm. The wound glowed with a blue-white light, and a smell like roasted assholes engulfed me. The demon jerked its hand back, and it reared up on its back pair of legs to strike at me again, this time much more seriously.
I guess it still thought I was human, though, because instead of trying to run or dodge, I did what no human should ever do when confronted with a demon—I leapt right at the thing. I vaulted into the air, my sword flashing down in an overhead strike worthy of its own Mortal Kombat move, and split the demon’s head right down the middle.
My momentum crashed me into the thing’s now-bleeding face, and we tumbled to the ground in a heap of blood, demon brain, and godawful funk. I’ve smelled some truly unholy things, and seen things no human should ever see, but when I stood up, one foot firmly planted in the skull of a dead demon, my stomach did barrel rolls at the stench.
But it was dead. With one shot I had killed the biggest damn demon I’d ever seen. And not just “sent it back to Hell” killed it, but “turning to slush on the ground” killed it. This thing was forever-dead, the kind of dead that’s really hard to manage with extra-planar beings. I looked at the sword in my hand with a new appreciation. It didn’t look any different, just a plain blade, about three feet long, with a glided cross guard and a leather-wrapped hilt.
“Good sword,” I said, then turned to see who needed a hand. Adam was the nearest, and also the one in the deepest shit as three torment demons were pummeling the shit out of him. I figured he was probably fine as long as they didn’t literally rip him limb from limb, but I still took a running start and chopped two of the demons down before they even turned to look at me. The third one got a single swipe at me with its claws, but I cut that hand off before I spun the sword around and opened the nasty fucker from his nuts to his nose. Demon guts spilled out onto the ground, and I whirled around in a lethal spin, taking the monster’s head.
Heaven Can wait: A Quincy Harker, Demon Hunter Novella Page 9
