Devil Hunters

by R. Gualtieri

  He was well aware of how petty some of the players in Washington could be, but to see Yarlberg actually choose his own public image over human lives was unsettling, enough so to make him rethink everything he was doing. As much good as his team did, the thought of being beholden to people like the governor was enough to make him question his life’s choices.

  Derek considered that it might not entirely be a bad thing if the plug was pulled on their operation. It would stink, but at least his conscience would be clear. If something like this happened once, there was nothing to say it wouldn’t happen again. Politics was a game of take and take some more. If someone else got wind of this and it served their political needs, he had little doubt they’d end up over the same barrel again. Precedent was a powerful thing in the law, and it held equal sway behind closed doors. Rolling over and playing dead for the governor was morally the wrong thing to do, but it would also send a signal to others that he and his team were up for grabs as scapegoats.

  He took a deep breath and pushed those thoughts away. It was pointless to think about it now anyway. He had friends in need and it was time to get his head in the game.

  “Which of those peashooters is mine?”

  Derek sighed before turning to face the reporter. “Listen, Julia...”

  She held up one hand and held out her other. “Save it. That’s my sister out there. I’m going even if you slam the door in my face and drive off without me. What else can I do? Sit around and wait for Yarlberg’s goons to arrest me the second they realize you’re missing? At least this way I can do some good before I flush my life down the toilet.”

  “And if something goes wrong?”

  “Then I’ll die doing the right thing.” She smiled. “But don’t go shoveling dirt over my corpse just yet. Besides, you need the help and you know it. Two isn’t going to cut it, not if what you said was true.”

  “It’s not that simple...”

  “I’d just like to say,” Mitchell interrupted, “I’d very much prefer to not drag civilians into our shit, but you remember as well as I do who the deciding factor at Bonanza Creek was, and it wasn’t us. Besides, she’s right. If there’s a small army of these freaks out there, I wouldn’t mind an extra finger on the trigger.”

  Derek considered arguing, but nodded instead. Standing here and fighting was pointless – he knew that the second they stepped out of the building – but he had to try. It would have been the height of negligence if he hadn’t. He was well aware that Julia knew the risks, but it still had to be said.

  But now that it had and those concerns had been subsequently dismissed, he didn’t see the point in continuing. Time wasn’t on their side.

  He turned, pulled a handgun from the rack in the SUV, and put it in her hand. “How do you feel about a Glock 23, .40 caliber?”

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  Adam pushed Danni backwards onto the bed. He grabbed hold of her legs by the ankles and shoved them apart before releasing her to work on his overalls.

  The second she was free, she pulled back and kicked out, catching the big man right in his prodigious gut. She might as well have been kicking a brick wall. Adam grunted and backed up a step, but that was all the effect she had.

  “Got a little fire, do ya, Sarah?” He grinned, showing off his sharp teeth, then unbuckled his overalls and let them fall to the floor. “That’s okay. I’ll quench that real quick, make sure you understand your place before I give you to Ezekiel.”

  Danni wasn’t sure what was worse – his casual tone or the sight of his lower half. The patriarch of the Lesterfield clan wore nothing beneath his overalls, exposing the lumpy, alligator-like skin that covered his stomach and thighs. No wonder her kick hadn’t done anything.

  But it was the sight of his manhood, fully erect, that terrified her most – large, misshapen, and only human in the most bastardized sense of the word. For a moment she could only stare in mute horror, which seemed to make him grin even wider. It was the look on his face, the sickening lust in his eyes, that finally spurred her from her shock.

  Danni rose from the bed quickly, hoping to use her smaller size and greater agility to her advantage. Sadly, the room wasn’t large enough for her to sidestep out of his reach.

  He lashed out with his clawed appendage, backhanding her across the face hard enough to see stars. She fell, fighting to shake off the daze even as she hit the floor, forcing herself to remember she’d fought creatures larger and stronger.

  Noticing that his feet were still entangled in his discarded overalls, she rolled and scissored her legs around his, lashing out and kicking at the back of his knees with her heel.

  Large and grotesque as Adam was, even he was not immune to such an attack. He stumbled and fell. She’d been hoping to maybe get lucky and for him to crack his head on the dresser or floor, ending this quickly. However, he merely pitched forward onto the bed. The springs squeaked in protest, but he was otherwise unharmed.

  Wasting no time, Danni rolled to her feet and quickly scanned the room for a weapon, anything that might give her the advantage. There was a chair and a lamp, but the former appeared too heavy for her to wield properly and the latter looked likely to shatter the moment she touched it.

  There was no time to second guess her odds against this man. With no hope of victory in sight, she stepped to the door, willing to take her chances running rather than stay here and face what he had in store for her. All at once she understood why Abby had retreated into herself. Her reality had been one of terror in which she was at the mercy of this bastard and his family. Though Danni didn’t know what the poor girl had been like before her capture, she was certain her final days had been spent as little more than a shell of her former self.

  It was a fate she desperately didn’t want to share.

  She grasped the doorknob and tried to turn it. It didn’t budge, and that’s when she noticed the keyhole on this side of the door.

  There came a jingle from behind her and she turned to find Adam standing again, a pair of keys dangling from his hand.

  “You think you’re the first to get past me?” he said with a chortle. “I know damn well I’m getting old and slow, but I ain’t stupid.” He tossed the keys onto the nearby dresser and took a step forward. “And I ain’t weak.”

  Danni thought of Abigail’s fate, but then refocused instead on Sophie. She was still alive. That meant there was hope for her – a chance, however slim. She wouldn’t let that hope die, not if she could help it.

  Biting down on that anger and refusing to let it go, she readied herself as Adam crossed the room, sizing him up as he approached. He was large, strong, and even more thick-skinned than the saying allowed for. But he had one major weakness so far as she could tell. He had one eye, effectively leaving him blind on his left side.

  He reached for her with his grotesque claw hand, but she ducked and sidestepped. His midsection was too tough for her to take him down that way. No matter what some action movies proclaimed, size and strength did matter. But crippling an opponent’s extremities was always a good way to equalize a fight.

  Kicking out low, she tried to drive her heel into the side of Adam’s knee, but he shifted at the last moment and she merely hit his calf muscle instead. Still, it knocked him slightly off balance, enough for her to stay out of his line of sight.

  She knew that dodging and weaving wasn’t going to win this fight, especially in these cramped confines. Were they out in the open, she could have eventually worn him down. But here? It was only a matter of time before he cornered her and it was all over. Once he forced her down with his bulk atop her, there would be little she could do to stop him.

  She had to take the fight to him as best she could.

  Danni stepped in and grabbed hold of his wrist. Before he could pull free, she hit his elbow with an open-hand aikido strike, hard enough to have broken a smaller man’s arm.

  Sadly, his meaty bulk was too much. She barely straightened his arm wi
th the blow, eliciting an annoyed grunt from him as opposed to the cry of pain she’d been hoping for.

  He spun, using his mass against her, and shoved her away, sending her stumbling back to the corner near the foot of the bed.

  “Fucking bitch. Time to teach you some manners.”

  Adam was upon her before she could recover. His claw hand grabbed her throat and forced her back against the wall hard enough to knock the wind out of her. He pressed the rest of his body up against hers – his normal hand groping her breasts while he crushed her against the wall hard enough that she could barely breathe, much less move.

  He bent his head down to hers and ran his tongue, a discolored elongated abomination, over her cheek. “Think I want a better taste,” he whispered in her ear, spinning and practically tossing her onto the bed.

  Danni managed to get one foot up before he could climb atop her, but he was too strong to push away. Desperate, she tried to use his momentum against him, hoping to throw him over her body. She grabbed hold of his wrists and lifted with her leg.

  Come on ... just a little more.

  Unfortunately, he was too heavy and the give of the mattress worked against her leverage.

  She almost had him when his weight became too much and her leg gave out, sending his bulk crashing down atop her and driving the breath from her body.

  CHAPTER 30

  Derek was far from happy. The circumstances of the past day were more than enough to put him in the foulest of moods. He had two missing teammates, had been shot, and was probably well on his way to becoming a fugitive. Now he could add being blackmailed to the growing list.

  He glanced in the rearview mirror at Arthur, who was sitting in the back of the SUV with Mitch and being given a quick primer on proper handgun use.

  That thing had better be empty.

  Following their dressing down by Yarlberg, Derek had dismissed the lab assistant. That part hadn’t been an act. Let the kid think him a monster, but he had no intention of putting a college student in danger. He’d known his chances of ditching Julia to be slim to none, but she was an adult. The choice was ultimately hers to make.

  Offering Danni a place on the team had been an exception, done under extraordinary circumstances. Her competence and bravery had warranted it, but that didn’t mean he planned to make it a habit of putting people not even old enough to drink in danger.

  Yet, that seemed to be his fate.

  They’d finished packing their gear and were just about to pull out when Arthur reappeared, stepping in front of their SUV and demanding to go with them.

  He didn’t believe it for a second when Derek had told him they were headed to the airport, the fact that they were all armed probably not helping his story. When Derek had finally relented and admitted that he planned to rescue his people, the kid had insisted on coming along, ultimately playing the ace up his sleeve: threatening to tell the governor’s men if they left him behind.

  Derek knew Eric and his goons would figure it out eventually, but the longer that took, the better chance he, Mitch, and Julia would be too deep in the woods for them to track down and stop. Though he doubted the kid would have actually ratted them out, he couldn’t take that chance.

  In the end, Julia had taken the shotgun seat while Mitch rode in the back with Arthur, giving him the Cliff’s Notes version of gun safety so he didn’t shoot the rest of his new teammates in the back by accident.

  This is a one-time only thing, Derek told himself. They’re not part of the team. Once this is over and done with, they can go back to their lives.

  Problem was, it was difficult for some to go back once their eyes were open, but that wasn’t his problem. Let them go out into the woods afterwards if they felt like playing recorded gorilla screams and waiting to see if anything responded. He couldn’t stop that.

  Derek noted that they were almost to the turn-off that led toward Shilough and the accursed woods beyond.

  “Best get to the final exam, Mitch. It’s almost show time.”

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  “So let me get this straight, Bob,” Eric said to his underling. “You let them leave without an escort and now you don’t have any idea where they are?”

  “They said they were just packing up. I figured they’d be back for the rest of this ... stuff,” Bob Hernandez replied, pointing to a heavy stack of printouts.

  “And you believed them?”

  “Loading a car isn’t illegal. It usually doesn’t require an armed guard. Hell, they didn’t even hitch up their ATVs. How the fuck was I supposed to know they’d bolt?”

  Eric took a deep breath. He knew Bob was right. Jenner’s team weren’t prisoners or wanted criminals. That alone limited his security detail’s powers in what they could and couldn’t legally do. Being handed what was essentially babysitting duty wasn’t exactly a prime motivator for the men on his team to be at their most diligent.

  That knowledge didn’t make him feel any better, though. He knew that if the governor found out, he’d go through the roof. It would be yet another in a long string of tantrums. Though he strove to put forth an aura of complete loyalty to his employer, deep down, he felt that oftentimes his assignment was akin to being the personal assistant to a spoiled child. Yarlberg was petty, jealous, spiteful, and none too bright, if you asked him. But the fat bastard could schmooze like a pro, buttering up constituents with promises made of nothing but bullshit and getting them to swallow it whole.

  Though he personally wouldn’t have wept at seeing his boss eat a bullet, his job was to prevent such things, amongst myriad other duties that Yarlberg seemingly thought up at random. His position as head of the governor’s personal security team was both prestigious and well-paying. It wasn’t something one walked away from lightly. That the governor’s golden tongue would likely garner him a successful Senate run, not to mention a potential future shot at the White House, told Eric where his bread was buttered.

  Even if the governor’s plans came to fruition and Eric’s position was eventually supplanted by the Secret Service, that would still leave him in a good spot. Dismissed amicably after years of loyal service, he could transition that to protecting other high profile clients, preferably ones that weren’t as fucking needy.

  The immediate problem was avoiding the governor’s wrath. Though Jenner might be nothing in the grand scheme of things, Yarlberg was currently worked up. If word got back to him that Eric’s group had been ditched or, worse, if Jenner caused a major fuck-up in the Pine Barrens that the press got a hold of, the governor would almost certainly take it out on the person tasked with keeping that from happening. If so, Eric would be lucky to find a job working guard duty at a construction site, much less anything better.

  This situation needed to be contained, at least in a way that Yarlberg’s anger would be focused elsewhere. Eric didn’t have anything against Jenner personally. Despite his gruff attitude toward the reality show host, he’d gotten the impression that the guy was competent, even if his story about mutants in the Pine Barrens was two steps over the border to Batshit County, USA. Still, if he was forced to choose between himself and a group of C-list actors masquerading as federal agents, it was an easy choice to make.

  “Bob, get Vasquez and bring the car around. Then call up Muellenberg, Hopper, and Sullivan. We’re heading to Shilough.”

  “We really need that many for these idiots?”

  Eric nodded, even though Bob was right. Bringing half a dozen men, the majority of the team, was overkill. Jenner didn’t strike him as a violent man, but he was definitely a stubborn son of a bitch. Confronting him with an overwhelming show of strength, though, would probably be enough to convince him that they weren’t dicking around.

  “You sure that’s where he’s headed, Eric?”

  “Yeah. Even if he’s not going there directly, he’ll be heading into the forest near there.” Eric looked at his watch and considered how much of a head start their quarry had. “Tel
l the boys to bring their hiking shoes. I have a feeling our feet are going to get muddy before this one is over.”

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  Danni was certain she’d smother as the rough skin on Adam’s stomach pressed down on her face.

  A moment later, feeling another part of him pressing into her midsection, she realized that perhaps smothering was the preferable fate to what would happen next.

  She turned her head to the side and managed to draw in a breath as she waited for the inevitable.

  The patriarch of the Lesterfield clan sighed atop her, a breathy moan. He twitched several times in what she was sure was perverse excitement on his part. Danni wanted to vomit, but wasn’t certain her constricted airway would allow it, pinned beneath his bulk as she was.

  However, rather than readjust himself and do the vile deed he’d set out to do, Adam Lesterfield settled atop her and became still.

  After several moments, she realized something was off.

  Did the bastard die of a heart attack?

  She shifted beneath him, using what little leverage she had to free her arms. He didn’t try to stop her. Struggling to keep the gorge in her stomach from rising, she slowly began to wiggle out from underneath him – the fear and exertion causing her to sweat, which slowly made it easier.

  She eventually pulled her upper body free and found herself teetering off the edge of the bed, her legs still stuck beneath the leader of this loathsome family. She angled her head up, expecting to see Adam grinning back at her, this having been some sick game on his part to allow her some final hope before defiling her.

  Instead, she saw the opened mouth grimace on his face, the last expression he’d ever make. Danni had been certain she’d failed in her desperate gambit to escape, but she now realized that she’d managed to catapult him back far enough.

  He’d been impaled through the eye on one of the broken bedposts. In the end, his massive frame, the thing he’d no doubt used to dominate whomever he pleased, had been his downfall.