A few minutes later the air around the church shimmered brightly. Cautiously at first, the Tainteds moved toward the church, testing to make sure that the wards around the building were indeed gone. Once one of the Tainteds had crossed the threshold of the church, Blackwell walked quickly into the church with the warlock just behind him. Several of the Tainteds followed their master.
“Take it easy,” Cai said. “Let as many as possible go inside.”
“Why are so many going inside?” Evelyn asked. “Wouldn’t it make more sense to leave a bunch of them out to secure the perimeter?”
“The warlock is channeling some of their energy to break the wards on the scroll box,” Eve explained. “He needed them to surround the church to crack the wards around it, and he’ll need them to break the wards on the box the scroll is in, too.”
“My guess is that they’ll only leave a few to guard the doors and a few more around the church.” Cai said.
“Get set,” he added, “almost half of them are inside.”
“Someone’s coming,” Colm said, pointing to three sets of headlights approaching the church.
Cai put the night-scope to his eyes. “Shit,” he hissed.
“It’s Martin, along with three vans full of Unseen.”
Evelyn sighed. “Okay, I’ll bite. Who are the
Unseen?”
“Really colossal pains in the ass,” Cadell replied.
The vans skidded to a halt in front of the church and black-clad men sword-wielding men leapt from the rear doors. The Tainteds outside the church instantly rushed to meet them with their curved black steel swords. The Tainteds inside the church charged outside to join the battle as well. Through his scope, Cai saw Blackwell bolt from the Church and run towards his limousine while still clutching the box he’d arrived with. Close behind him came the warlock with a second, identical box floating in front of him as he ran, suspended and propelled by his magic. “Chris, get the limo, then cover us. Don’t kill any Unseen unless you really have to.” He gestured to the others. “Let’s go.”
Christian’s Springfield spoke. With the report muffled by the suppressor, only the sonic crack of the bullet split the nighttime silence. Two of the high-powered rifle rounds pierced the armor of the limousine’s engine compartment and holed the engine block through and through. More of Christian’s bullets destroyed the engines of the Tainted’s other vehicles. Both the Tainted and the Unseen fought to determine where the gunfire had come from even as they battled each other. Into that chaos charged Cai and the other Blessed Warriors, blades flashing.
Cai cut both legs from under a Tainted. A single stroke from his English backsword removed the limbs at the knees, producing a torrent of blood that quickly formed a muddy puddle beneath the wailing demon. Leaving the crippled Tainted where it had fallen, Cai stalked toward Blackwell and the warlock, turning away attacks from Tainteds trying to protect their master and trusting his brothers to protect him as he fought his way to Blackwell. The warlock was hurriedly making gestures necessary for a spell. The box from the church was at his feet. Noticing Cai’s approach, Blackwell placed the box he carried on the ground and drew a blade made of shiny, black crystal from beneath his coat.
Seeing the warlock in the middle of spellcasting, Cadell tried to move toward him, only to be blocked by one of the Unseen, who attempted to disembowel him with a rushing, two-handed thrust. Cadell sidestepped and brought his sword down, crossing the back edge of his enemy’s sword. He used his own blade to guide his foe’s blade to the right and upward. Closing the distance to his attacker with a wide step, he used his left hand to grab the Unseen’s right elbow and force him off balance. He smashed the Unseen’s face repeatedly with his broadsword’s brass handguard and drove a stomping kick into the Unseen’s knee, feeling the bone shatter beneath his foot. The Unseen fell onto his left side, clutching his shattered knee and wailing in pain. Cadell took away his opponent’s pain with another kick to the man’s head that robbed him of consciousness.
His path to the warlock was blocked again, this time by a Tainted that occupied a particularly large, muscle-bound body. Its sword arched toward the left side of Cadell’s head. Cadell slipped to his right and brought his sword in front of him point down, to his left. As it intercepted the demon’s blade, Cadell took a lunging step toward the muscular Tainted and made a tight, arcing cut across the right side of its neck. As a stream of blood sprayed from the inches-deep wound, the Tainted fell to his knees, using one hand in a futile attempt to stem the blood gushing from its severed artery. Cadell decapitated it.
Cai dodged past a Tainted’s sword and slammed an elbow into the back of its head, driving it onto the point of Colm’s great sword. Colm forced the blade downward, creating a bloody fissure from the Tainted’s abdomen to its groin. Cai’s path to Blackwell was now clear. Cadell was still trying to fight his way to the warlock, with Evelyn at his side. The swords of the three contending factions were ringing against one another in a chaotic, bloody melee. The Selkirks mercilessly slew any Tainted that came in front of them while trying to spare the Unseen. The Tainteds were willing, even eager to die for their master, and the Unseen fought both the Selkirks and the Tainted with equal zeal.
The crack of Christian’s rifle made Evelyn turn suddenly to see an Unseen screaming and clutching a ruined right hand. The pistol he had been aiming at her back lay a few feet from him. A Tainted occupying a body that was short, wide and powerfully built came at her, his double-edged sword slashing at her midsection. Fighting with her rune sword in one hand and Cadell’s rune-carved Randall in the other, she shuffled backward and deflected her attacker’s sword with the Randall and tried to thrust her sword into her foe’s chest. He batted away her thrust with his own sword and slammed a foot into her abdomen, dropping her to her knees, gasping. She rolled backward and avoided a sword-stroke that would have taken off her head and then rolled forward again as the Tainted’s sword arched over her head, bringing her to a crouch at the Tainted’s feet. The Randall bit into her enemy’s inner thighs. Her cuts had severed both femoral arteries and blood sprayed and gushed at the same time. Bursting from her crouch, Evelyn drove her sword’s point under the demon’s chin until the point struck the inside of its skull.
Her blade’s point was still there when she felt a jolting pain in her right arm. Her hand released her sword and blood sprayed in a wide arc as she twisted her body away from another slash from the blade of another Tainted. Her right arm hung, almost useless, at her side as the bone deep gash to her triceps muscle continued to gush blood in a thick, steady stream. She avoided another slash from the machete-like weapon used by her opponent and managed to slash the Randall across his left arm. The wound made the demon recoil briefly but was not crippling. The Randall, now her only weapon, seemed tiny in her hand as the Tainted charged her again.
The sonic crack of a rifle sounded again. The Tainted dropped his sword as Christian’s bullet shattered his sword arm. Two more shots rang out and the demon head jerked backward twice. Its eyes and a large part of its head had been blown away by Christian’s shots, but still it lumbered toward Evelyn; its wounds already beginning to close. Its still-intact left hand was reaching for her throat. She fought to remain standing. Her vision was beginning to fade as she saw three more Tainteds coming toward her like wild dogs sensing weakened prey. She brought the Randall up in front of her in a feeble attempt to stay alive. Then Cadell was there.
Through hazy eyes, she saw him dancing among the four Tainteds threatening her. Falling to her knees, she could see his feet move in the macabre, bloody dance of steel and flesh. His feet moved with truly dance-like grace. His sword was moving with scalpel-like precision, almost too fast for her eyes to follow. In seconds, the four Tainted lay dead at his feet, all of them missing at least one limb. Blood fell steadily from his sword’s tip.
Cadell helped her to her feet. At his touch, a surge of energy flowed between them and Evelyn felt some of her strength return. “Get out of h
ere,” he told her.
“No,” Evelyn said weakly, “I can still help.”
Cadell slapped her in her wounded arm, sending a lance of agony through her whole body. “Bullshit,” he shouted. “You’ve done your part. Run toward Chris. He’ll cover you.”
The pain from Cadell’s blow drove home his point. She could no longer protect herself and would only hinder Cadell and his brothers in battle. Incapable of actually running, she moved toward Christian at her best speed. Two of the Unseen tried to block her escape, only to have a knee each destroyed by Christian’s rifle. She reached the shelter of the tree line and fell, exhausted, a few yards from where Christian lay prone, his eye still behind his scope.
“There’s some of mom’s tincture in my right coat pocket,” he told her. Eve had already retrieved a first-aid kit from the Escalade and she and Helen tended Evelyn’s wound.
With Evelyn comparatively safe, Cadell turned back to the warlock. His hands were still moving and the sound of his chanting could now be heard over the din of the battle. He moved toward the spellcaster, killing two Tainteds and crippling an Unseen warrior who tried to interfere with his progress. A swirl of shimmering light began to form in front of the warlock. Cadell recognized it as a magical portal being opened. If the spell was completed, then Blackwell would escape with both of Solomon’s scrolls. Although many Tainteds had been killed, those that remained closed ranks around the warlock and Blackwell.
Cadell came to Cai’s side and the brothers tried to fight their way toward Blackwell and the warlock, but they were surrounded by a mass of battling Tainteds and Unseen. The Unseen were fixated on killing Blackwell and the Tainteds were determined to prevent it. Cai and Cadell waded into the melee, killing the Tainteds while only hobbling any of the Unseen who threatened them. Blackwell’s black scimitar-like blade was spinning in all directions, cutting down any Unseen who came within reach and any Tainteds unfortunate enough to be in its way. The battle became more of a three-sided riot.
Having dispatched all other opponents, Callum and Colm joined Cai and Cadell in their struggle to reach Blackwell and the warlock to prevent their escape. The wall of battling bodies seemed impenetrable. When one combatant was knocked or cut out of the way, another replaced him. The ground was muddy with blood and strewn with hacked-off limbs. The warlock’s chanting could literally be felt on the skin and the air became abruptly and profoundly colder.
“It is ready, my Lord!” the warlock shouted. The air in front of the warlock split open and a fluctuating translucent disk floated vertically in space. Sparks of magic flashed around its edges and hot wind rushed from it. Blackwell turned away from the fighting and moved toward it, slowed only slightly by the bullets from Christian’s rifle striking his torso. He stepped into the portal with the scroll box he had originally brought tucked under one arm. Using his magic to float the second scroll box toward the portal, the warlock was several feet away from it himself.
Cadell drove his sword’s pommel into an Unseen’s face, knocking to the ground and giving him a momentary line of sight on the warlock as he moved toward the portal. In desperation, he charged headlong into the Tainteds and Unseen in front of him, ignoring their blades in hopes of smashing through them with sheer brute force. He succeeded to a degree but found himself held by a Tainted who had lost one of his hands in the battle. He hacked off the hand holding him and then turned to make a desperate, diving thrust at the warlock just as he stepped into the portal. The sword’s point sank deeply into the warlock’s lower back, near the kidney. He staggered and fell the rest of the way into the portal. As soon as he was through it, the portal vanished.
Minutes later the remaining Tainteds had been killed and five Unseen who were still alive and able to fight had continued to engage the Selkirks. In no mood to be gentle, the brothers used non-lethal but efficiently brutal techniques to deal with them. When the last of the fighting Unseen was felled by a cut to the back of knees from Callum’s two-handed sword, two sets of headlights appeared in the distance. Christian’s rifle fired again. Both sets of headlights stopped a few hundred feet from the Church. Seconds later running, darkly dressed sword wielding men could be seen silhouetted in the headlight beams. The Selkirks formed a line to meet them. “Stop,” A voice said loudly from the church’s doorway. “These men are not our enemies,” he added. The newly-arrived men obeyed and stopped their attack. “Tend to our wounded brethren,” the man added as he came to stand in front of Cai. He was of average build in his thirties.
A hardship-weathered face held alert, piercing pale-blue eyes.
“You could have said that a few minutes ago, Martin.” Cai said, making a sweeping gesture with his sword toward the dead Tainteds and wounded Unseen strewn about.
“I was rather preoccupied,” Martin answered, holding up his own blood-drenched arming sword. “Your presence here was unexpected. I’m afraid my men became confused. Thank you for showing such…” he searched for a word while panning his eyes over the Unseen that had been wounded by the Selkirks, “restraint in dealing with them.”
“We weren’t here to kill humans,” Cai said. “If your people hadn’t attacked us, we wouldn’t have hurt them at all.”
Martin nodded slowly. “As I said, the situation was confused. Your presence here was unforeseen.” He tilted his head. “Why are you here, may I ask?” “Why are you here?” Cai retorted.
“To kill Aetius Blackwell,” Martin admitted. “As I am sure you’re aware, he is very well-protected at his residence, and his political connections make storming the house in force quite impractical. We keep a constant watch there, however. When he left his home without an escort, a decision was taken to follow him and seize any opportunity to destroy him.” Once again Martin panned his eyes over the battle’s aftermath. “What brought the Selkirk brothers here this night?”
Cai shrugged his shoulders. “We wanted to kill
Blackwell, too,” he replied.
Martin tilted his head to the other side. “That is part of the reason, perhaps. But I suspect your purpose here had something to do with the boxes that Blackwell and his warlock escaped with. The boxes contain objects of power, perhaps?”
“We’re done here,” Cai said.
“If I may ask one courtesy?” Martin asked.
Cai’s eyes narrowed. “What?”
“I have called for additional men. I see now that they won’t be needed. But it would be unfortunate if they were to be fired upon when they arrive. Your hidden rifleman, your brother Christian, I surmise, has already disabled the vehicles that we arrived in.”
Cai took a handheld radio from his pocket. “Chris, they’ll be some more cars coming in a minute. Don’t fire on them, they’re Unseen. Have Helen come up here, please.
She has a hell of a mess to clean up.”
Martin and Cai both turned to see some of Martin’s men binding a surviving Tainted with oversized manacles. “Ah, my men are doing their part in the clean-up effort. Our inquisitors will make the demon reveal Blackwell’s secrets. This misadventure may well not be a complete loss.”
“I don’t suppose that you would care to share any information that you get out of your prisoner?” Cai asked, already knowing what Martin’s answer would be.
Martin lips curved into a wry smile. “I’m sorry, my friend, but Mother Church does not share anything with heretics.”
Chapter Five
The warmth of the Selkirks’ home was welcome, even if the mood of those returning to the home after the battle at the church was somber. With both scrolls in the hands of the Nephilim, Aetius Blackwell and the Unseen now involved in the search for Solomon’s ring, the situation seemed to have gone from grim to nearly hopeless. Astrid, Clive and Josh greeted the returning party at the kitchen entrance and Astrid immediately took the wounded Evelyn in hand, sending Clive to fetch healing supplies. Leo and Theo milled around Evelyn, whining their sympathy.
“What in creation happened?” Astrid asked, guiding Evelyn to a
chair at the kitchen table.
“Aetius Blackwell was there and Martin showed up with a bunch of Unseen.” Cai explained. “All three sides started fighting one another and it turned into a free-for-all. Blackwell has both scrolls now,” he added.
“Yeah,” Josh added. “The Hidden keep a twenty-four hour watch on Blackwell’s house. When he took off with only one driver, our guys watching the place almost had kittens. Half of the Hidden in town will start packing to leave, and the other half are gearing up for war when the find out that Blackwell has both scrolls.”
“But the warlock didn’t have time to break the wards on the box the scroll from the church is in,” Cadell interjected. “He was using magic to move it because demons couldn’t touch it with the wards in place. I tagged him pretty well before he got into the portal, and just opening that portal had to have drained him. He’ll be too weak to break the wards for a while. We still have a little time to get the scrolls back.”
“Some, maybe, but not much,” Cai said. “He may have another mage to break the wards.”
“I doubt that,” Eve said, pouring a cup of coffee from a restaurant-sized maker. “Randal is a very powerful and skilled practitioner. There aren’t many beings out there that can get through his wards.”
Evelyn winced as Astrid removed the bandage from her wound. “More newbie questions,” she said, holding up a finger. “One: who or what are these Unseen people? And two: what, exactly do you mean when you call that guy a warlock?”
“Unseen is short for ‘The Unseen Order.’ They’re an order of warrior-monks that deal with the demon problem for the Vatican,” Cadell explained.
Her head tilted and her eyebrow arched again in Vulcan-like fashion. “You mean those guys we fought tonight work for the Catholic Church?”
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