Demon Hunt, page 21
“Eat this, you little freaks,” she screamed. There was nothing she could do about her daughter, who hovered, clutched in the dragon’s claws, above her. But she could make Manius Black pay.
“Keep going, baby, I’ve got your back!” Bobby Wayne called from the bed of Houston’s truck. He laid down a line of fire, covering Pam as she rampaged. He punctuated his bursts of bullets with periodic rebel yells.
Houston was busy in the crew cab of the vehicle, tending whomever he had picked up a moment ago. Pam could see him as he periodically paused to shove his pistol into the stomach of a demon that managed to get past Bobby Wayne to climb into the broken window of the truck.
The SUV ran wildly through a crowd of demons swarming on the opposite side of the barn, before bursting through the building in a cascade of splintered wood and straw. The vehicle picked the most destructive path towards the front porch where the gigantic ‘head demon’ stood, barking out orders to his panicked minions. Pam tensed to make the dangerous run across the open ground to help her friend.
A thin wail broke through her bloodlust. Heart breaking, Pam forced herself to stare up in despair at the tiny pink tennis shoes kicking at the dragon’s claws. Her gun empty, she tossed it aside to grab the machete and the pistol, swinging the weapon with one hand while firing the pistol with the other.
The first demon the blade touched sparked and flamed, as did the next one. But each blue spark was weaker than the last and Pam realized that the protection was wearing off of her makeshift sword.
Above, Pearl swooped in to slash at the dragon’s arm that restrained the child but was rewarded with a slap of the tail that sent her head over heels into the roof of the farmhouse. She rolled down, falling two stories before hitting the ground with a sickening thud. Across the yard, Houston darted out of his truck under Bobby Wayne’s cover fire to get to the madam’s side before the milling demons realized where she lay.
In the air above where Pam fought, Blackthorne slashed at the beast’s side with his sword. If the dragon let her baby go, who would catch her?
Pam fought her way through the hellish crowd towards where she assumed her daughter might land.
Her only warning was a burst of heat and she leaped to the side, landing on her back in the mud. A squirt of liquid fire from the circling monster sizzled beside her head. She didn’t dare fire at the creature that held Katie, so she leaped up to keep as many of its associates as she could out of the area. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Ellie Mae tossing demons into the air as easily as she did her stuffed doggy toys.
The crowd of demons the dog landed in had scattered with screams of dismay and blue sparks as Ellie Mae picked up the first one she found by the scruff of the neck and shook it like a terrier with a rat. The tinier, weaker demons trying to seize the huge animal were rewarded with a neon blue bolt of fire that turned them into black piles of hot ash immediately.
A ferocious roar of challenge forced Pam’s attention towards the farmhouse’s front porch, where the huge demon stood with a smoking sword over a corpse she prayed was not her mother or father. He brandished the sword and stretched his bulbous lips out into a grotesque leer, his teeth at least an inch and a half long, pointed and stained. Stained with what was something Pam didn’t want to think about right then. She roared in return and sprinted towards the monster that might have laid his hands on her child. She looked like madwoman, her hair on end and her face blackened. Beside her Ellie Mae ran, wraithlike. The dog growled and tore at every demon that dared to stumble into their path.
They weren’t fast enough to beat the battered vehicle, which chugged past like a caffeinated rhino, straight for the huge demon.
* * * *
The moment her friend and the dog bailed out of the cargo window of the truck, Rhi hit the gas, ignoring the weapons Pam had made ready. She already had a weapon at hand, a big one. She paused long enough to stuff the Bible into one of the large inner pockets of her barn jacket where it lay like a stone, humming happily against her body.
With a jerk of the wheel, she carved a wide swath through the yard and burst through a cattle pen. A nauseating path of bulbous, quivering death lay behind her. The burning, half dead carcasses tried to pull themselves upright to feed on each other or whatever they were tearing apart when the demons met up with a rampaging mountain of metal that burned to the touch.
Keeping an eye on the dragon and the other on Blackthorne and Pearl battling in the air above the ranch, Rhi racked her brain, and reached for her other self.
“What do I do? How do I fight this, Raven? Come on, I know you’re in there, damn it.” She watched Pearl plummet from the sky and Houston run to crouch protectively over the madam’s body. Behind him, Bobby Wayne kept firing from the bed of the truck, protecting the victims in the cab, who Rhi hoped were Pam’s mother, Lillian, and her husband, Colonel Douglas.
Behind Houston, yet another hulking demon arose from the depths of the barn, a twin for the monster on the front porch Pam charged towards. The new demon headed straight for the ex-pilot, who rose to take a defensive stance in front of Pearl, his hunting rifle up. Houston fired at the being’s massive red chest, one shot after another.
She couldn’t see her dog.
“Crap.”
Stuffing the pistol into the waist of her jeans, Rhi grabbed the sheathed sword. She floored the gas and steered straight at the front porch of the house.
“One, two, three …” She threw open the door and hit the ground rolling, feeling her clothes and flesh tear as inertia dragged her over the ground. Her head hit something and she fought for consciousness. She focused on the twenty-foot high flames shooting up from the remains of the porch. The demon had exploded on impact.
Solid hands grabbed her and Pam jerked her to her feet without regard for any injuries she might have gotten in her fall.
“Do something, Rhi, please do something,” Pam sobbed. The other woman was now covered with gore, the machete still in her hand. The all-too-familiar bites and scratches of Rhi’s nightmares marked her face and body.
Wincing, Rhi pulled in her strength and reached deep and hard for her power. The power to stop the monster in the air, power that her past self had never been strong enough to call upon.
Above, Blackthorne darted in and out at the creature. The blue flames of his sword flared, igniting a lost memory and Rhi gasped as her power flowed. Sheets of electric blue flame shot from her hands towards the dragon. Even as she felt the energy surge, she realized that it was not enough.
The black dragon shrieked in pain, writhing in the air. Its vicious tail whipped back, cutting into the man who hurtled through the air. The blue nimbus that shielded Blackthorne’s body faded, time enough for the beast to hurl another glob of fire at the unprotected body of the knight. The liquid brimstone sizzled as it made contact and Blackthorne plummeted to the earth. The dragon made a graceful, gliding turn towards the mountains.
“Catch him, catch him, catch him,” Rhi muttered and reached out a hand. Blackthorne’s decent stopped and she lowered his burnt and broken body to the ground with her mind. She dropped to her knees as Pam stumbled away towards Bobby Wayne’s pickup truck where her mother struggled to get her wounded husband out of the cab.
Pam’s mother, an older version of the skinny farm girl, helped the colonel to the ground beside the truck. After carefully checking him over, she collapsed to ground, sobbing hysterically.
Pearl, who had regained consciousness, sat in the mud with Houston’s head in her lap. The bedraggled madam wept sooty tears as she smoothed his thinning gold hair. The expression on her face told Rhi all she needed to know. The second massive demon was nowhere to be seen.
Ellie Mae materialized out of the rolling clouds of smoke to limp beside Rhi as she made her way towards where Blackthorne lay sprawled in the mud. Behind her, she could hear Bobby Wayne telling Pam’s mother to stay near the truck with her wounded husband while he secured the area. He jumped out of the truck and marched past her without a glance, gun in hand.
“They got what they came here for, Bobby Wayne,” she whispered. She knelt for a few moments beside Blackthorne, not daring to look to see if he was breathing.
After a few minutes, a moan from the knight caught her attention. Hope flared and she opened her eyes. The monstrous burns on his torso made her want to throw up.
Pam returned to crouch beside her and examine his wounds. “Houston’s dead.” The blunt words hurt.
Businesslike, Pam ran her thin hands over Blackthorne’s body, checking for broken bones and being careful not to touch the gaping burns. “So’s my cousin, Greg, and the housekeeper Rosa.” She rocked back on her heels. “Blackthorne looks worse than he is, Rhi. No major organs are in too much trouble, which I figure is about the only way to kill these guys … my parents made it to the barn when that thing hit. Dad was able to get his guns out of the rack in the back of his truck. It’s the reason they’re alive. But we didn’t make a dent in the demons. They disappeared into the ground as soon as that monster flew away with Katie.” Her voice didn’t break when saying her daughter’s name. She was strong, sure and deadly. “What do we do next?”
Another moan escaped the unconscious man as one of the more jagged cuts across one of his thigh knitted together. Hurriedly, Rhi ripped the heavy fabric of his fatigues leg to keep the cloth from being healed into the new scar.
“We carry our wounded and dead out of here and get ready. Mourn later,” replied Rhi, her eyes fixed on Blackthorne’s slack features as she loosened the rest of his clothing. “We can’t call anyone for help and we can’t let anyone know what happened here other than a bad fire, Pam.”
“The ‘balance’/end-of-the-world factor you mentioned?”
“Yeah, something like that. Take care of it, okay? Get Pearl to help you. I might be out of my head for a few hours,” she replied. She sat beside Blackthorne, cross-legged, and took his head into her lap. Absently, Rhi ran her fingers through his hair, and the hideous wounds from the dragon fire slowly, miraculously healed. “Empty out Cripple Creek, except for whoever is willing and open-minded enough to fight, Pam. You have to do this for me. I won’t be able to, I will be - changing.”
Pam’s face cleared as comprehension dawned. Rhi breathed a small sigh of relief. She needed her friend to function right now.
Manius Black took Katie to force her to give him the skull. Unfortunately for the fallen knight, Rhi was now going to give it to him. But to put the fix in on this gamble, she would have to become a changeling and the Raven part of her soul knew what it could possibly cost.
Rhi hesitated for a second to say goodbye to her humanity, to having children, to living a normal life with a normal man and dying in her own time and not one in a far distant era. Would she go to Hell for this?
Screw it, she was there already.
The vein in Jack Blackthorne’s throat pulsed under her touch. His face was serene in the dim light of the smoke and cloud ridden morning. She yanked the Bible from the pocket of her jacket and handed it to Pam. “Keep an eye on this thing for me. I might not be able to watch it as closely as I’d like.”
Pam nodded, tucking the book inside what was left of her own jacket and buttoning it up. Bobby Wayne reappeared to take up a guard position between Pearl and the couple beside the battered pickup. Rhi bent over her lover’s neck and, ignoring Pearl’s sudden call of alarm, bit deeply.
“What is she doing?”
She could hear Bobby Wayne’s shout fading and then she heard nothing but Blackthorne’s pulse in her ears. It was a strong beat that got louder as she drank. And drank. His blood was as hot as lava and as cold as permafrost. She gagged but forced herself to continue to drink, choking down as much as her stomach could hold. Her veins burned, the heat threatening to burst out of her skin.
If stealing the ‘gift’ from Blackthorne didn’t kill her, they might all live long enough to make it through the weekend.
Chapter Thirty
Katie had tired of screaming. Jaded from watching too much television, she had gotten bored with the ride in the dragon’s claws. When the roof of the farmhouse had been ripped off above her head, the little girl had been alternating between napping and watching the Wiggles on television in her upstairs bedroom. She was snatched out of her pink bed sheets before she could open her mouth or grab her stuffed elephant to cling to for comfort.
The sight of the shrieking housekeeper’s fiery fate as she stood in the doorway of the little girl’s room had been concealed from the child by the confining grip of the dragon. Katie had also missed the sacking of the ranch and the death of her cousin, Greg, a deputy from Eagle County visiting his relatives. He had died in a storm of flames while covering the escape of Colonel Douglas and his wife from the house. The wounded colonel had been busy dragging his screaming wife behind him as she tried to break free to chase after her granddaughter.
Amazingly calm, Katie now amused herself by watching the swirling shapes formed by the morning clouds. The dragon flew above the concealing mists, into the mountains from the smoking plain. As her captor descended, Katie could see the giant stone house her mother had always called The Castle, a brooding fortress right out of one of the nastier cartoons she managed to sneak a peek at when her mother wasn’t looking.
As light as a snowflake, the dragon touched down in the front courtyard of the great stone house and deposited his tiny prisoner onto her feet on the flagstones. It took to the air as a thin man emerged from one of the 10-foot-tall front doors of the house and sidled towards Katie. His walk resembled the movements of one of the snakes her mother sometimes pointed out to her on their hikes through the woods. His face held a strange mixture of anger, self-loathing and sorrow, which twisted his features into a grimace.
“Bye, bye!” Katie turned and waved at the dragon as it swooped in the air and disappeared behind the crest of the nearest mountain. “Stinky old dragon.”
Away from the heat of the beast that carried her into the mountains, Katie felt the chill of the day. She examined the pearl buttons of her sweater, deciding if she was going to try to fasten them. Giving up on the buttons, she examined her surroundings as she waited for the strange man to get to her. She wiped at her pink corduroys and sweater, attempting to get some of the ashes off of her clothes.
“Where’s my mommy?” she demanded, turning her rosebud face up to him as he reached her.
“She’s on her way, young lady, you can count on that,” the man replied with a wry grin. “I’m Troy and I’ll take care of you until then, okay? Now, let’s get you some clean clothes and breakfast, shall we?”
“But I already had breakfast,” the child objected. She then leaned towards him and said in a conspiratorial whisper, “And then I rode on a dragon.”
“I know,” he whispered back. “And dragon riding takes a lot out of little girls, I’m sure. We’ll get you some more breakfast. Then we’ll go see your room. I made up a special room for you. There are toys and TV and books. But you must be very quiet, okay? The master needs his sleep and he’ll be a bit cranky if we wake him.”
She considered that for a moment.
“Like my mommy after working a lot?”
“Exactly.”
She held her arms up to the man as he reached out. “I’m Katie.”
* * * *
Troy thoughtfully looked down at the handful of pink and gold in his arms as he went into the house. The child’s velvet blue eyes got as big as dinner plates at the sight of one of the smaller demons sitting on a sideboard in the hall across from the dining salon. It was eating God-only-knew what and dropping pieces on the clean floor. The demon’s lax behavior scared Troy. It was a sign his master was losing control of them. Troy wondered for a moment if the chef was still alive in his kitchen haven.
“Is that a monster, Mr. Troy?” She asked the question in a tiny voice, showing him the first sign of discomfort. Trust Pam Douglas to have a kid with the constitution of a NAVY Seal.
Troy considered his answer. He had to keep the child secluded from Manius, who was likely to become irritated at the slightest sound from the girl and feed on her to shut her up. And Katie Douglas was not just a hostage to lure Rhi Brennan to the Gate, but also Troy’s insurance in case things went south for his master. It was not likely that the other Blackthorne brother would forgive him for his previous bad acts unless the little girl was unspoiled and as little traumatized as he could manage under the circumstances.
“Yes, it is a monster, Katie, and there are a bunch of them in this house,” he replied. “You can never leave your room unless you’re with me or they will eat you up.”
Fear crept into the child’s face and she clung to him as he carried her through the halls. Horrid little faces peeped out at them from behind furniture and curtains. Scurrying sounds could be heard and claws scrambling across the polished stone floors. Katie buried her face in his sweater.
“But they can’t come in your room, okay?” he told her as he maneuvered to open the door to the room he had prepared next to his for Pam Douglas’s daughter. They were greeted by the sight of an elegant, turn of the century bedroom decorated in several shades of yellow and gold. A fire burned in the grate, cutting the lingering chill of the courtyard and the television already blared in an opened armoire in the corner. Stuffed animals and books were scattered throughout the room and a monstrous pile of little girl’s clothing lay on the bed. A silver tray, loaded with pastries and fruit, sat on the ottoman. Troy hesitated for a moment. The chef had been banished to the kitchens and his rooms for days to prevent his demise-by-hungry-demon and Troy had been delivering the foodstuffs to his master. He hadn’t brought up the tray. He deposited the child on the ground, where she stood as near to his leg as she could get. The little girl examined the room’s contents, searching for more monsters.
