And that’s when another recruit in the mud raised his voice and started to sing the Delta version of the Airborne Ranger cadence.
The singer was out of tune but there was a force behind the lyrics. An undeniable will to persevere and defy the miserable darkness.
The voices multiplied as the other trainees joined the chorus, including Talon. The instructors warned them to stop, but the voices of the recruits could not be silenced.
Talon heard that same song now.
As the cold threatened to whisk him away into frozen oblivion, it grew louder in his mind. The voices of his old buddies joined in, their singing building in volume.
The song had become Talon’s world.
He concentrated on the words, blocking out everything else, and soon his lips could form sounds again. At first a ragged whisper, his voice increased in volume and strength. The warmth returned to his limbs, his will conquering the grim magic.
Rezok paused, realizing something was amiss. With the blade hovering inches above Kristin’s neck, he turned toward Talon. His ivory skin seemed transparent, the capillaries outlined underneath. A man of ice.
The words flowing from Talon’s lips built into an explosive roar. A scream burst from his lungs, and suddenly Talon could move again. Life returning to his hand, he squeezed the trigger.
The bullet ripped through the albino’s shoulder in a volley of gore. Blood sprayed the snow but the ice rippled and flexed, quickly absorbing the scarlet life-force, its appetite whetted.
Before he could fire again, Rezok flung his knife at Talon. The blade buried itself into his shoulder in a spray of blood, sending a wave of agony down his arm. Talon stifled a scream and dropped the gun. Mercifully, the numbness brought on by the cold kept the worst of the pain at bay. Before he could scramble after the Glock, the icy ground swirled and sucked up the weapon.
Shit!
There was no time to ponder the phenomenon as Rezok closed in. He had scooped up a blade that one of of the other band members had dropped earlier. They started circling each other. The heads of the seven dead women looked on in silent indifference, forming a morbid arena around the two combatants.
Rezok lunged at Talon with rapid-fire strokes, the blade an extension of his long arm. Talon staggered backward, pulled out the reddened blade from his shoulder with a hiss of pain and brought it up just in time to block two diagonal slashes at his face and avoid a stab at his throat. The blades clung together and sprang apart.
Rezok’s height and longer reach was giving him an edge in this fight. Talon had to turn Rezok’s advantage into a disadvantage. He weaved through the snow, feinted an attack with his knife while striking out with his boot. The plan was to break Rezok’s wrist. Easy in theory, but a little more challenging in practice.
The albino’s reflexes were near superhuman. Spiderlike fingers caught Talon’s foot, yanked hard and flipped him around.
Under normal circumstances Talon would have maintained his balance, but the snowy environment turned against him. His boots sunk deep into the shifting, animated white mass. The terrain was Rezok’s ally. Chunks of ice snagged Talon’s ankles and hurled him to the ground.
Talon rolled over the snow and feathered back to his feet. But the maneuver had cost him precious seconds. Rezok was now right on top of him and rammed his elbow into Talon’s face, snapping his head around while simultaneously hacking at his arm. Steel bit into Talon’s white ski-suit and turned it red.
Rezok’s next kick targeted Talon’s right hand. The boot connected, sending his blade flying.
The albino loomed, his ghostly face hovering mere inches from Talon. Rezok was about to come in for the death blow when he grew still, mouth distorting in a mixture of pain and surprise.
Standing behind him was Kristin. Who knows what reserve of strength she tapped into, but she had snatched one of the skiing poles that the members of Ice God dropped earlier and buried the tip deep into Rezok’s back. He pulled the pole from his flesh with a splash of scarlet and whirled toward Kristin. Howling in rage, he punched her in the face and sent her flying. She landed next to one of the dead women’s heads, empty dead eyes boring into Kristin’s.
Rezok spun back toward Talon. Fortunately, Kristin’s bold move had bought Talon precious seconds to prepare a counter-attack. He whipped out a marker flare from one of his ski-suit’s pouches, snapped the cap off and a fiery explosion of light showered the icy surroundings.
Rezok brought up his hands, shielding his light-sensitive eyes.
Talon’s snatched his own Ka-Bar from his belt and moved in for the kill but Rezok still had some fight left in him. Bony fingers caught Talon’s incoming arm and clamped around the wrist holding the blade. Rezok mouthed words in the old Norse tongue, hoping to draw on the Ice God’s magic once more.
You’re not using that trick again…
Using all his weight and strength, Talon head-butted Rezok.
The albino staggered backwards.
Talon’s Ka-Bar found Rezok’s neck before he could recuperate. The steel went in with little trouble, slicing from ear to ear in one fluid motion.
Rezok stood dead-still for a shocked beat before hitting the snow like a slain ice giant. Talon approached his defeated enemy, breathing hard, knife dripping crimson.
On the ground, a dying Rezok gasped for air, drowning in his own blood. Sunken eyes shot through with red peered up at his killer.
But Rezok wasn’t quite done yet. With a last burst of strength, he scooped up the rune stone Kristin had regurgitated. One hand held his gushing throat while the other stuffed the artifact into his mouth.
Without hesitation Rezok swallowed the rune stone.
Talon took a step back.
The albino had opted to become the eighth sacrifice, thereby completing the cycle. As soon as his eyes turned up into white crescents, a rumble passed through the snowy ground.
Kristin traded a fearful look with Talon, sensing that something terrible was fighting to be unleashed from the ice. They had to get out of here. Now.
Talon snatched Kristin’s hand and dragged her back to her feet. They stumbled out of the haunted clearing. From the corner of his eye, he saw the dead women being sucked into the snow. The icy landscape devoured their bodies just as it had fed on Talon’s blood earlier.
Had Talon won the battle but lost the war?
He wouldn’t hang around to find out.
The earth shook and vibrated, branches unloading clumps of snow. It felt like an earthquake, the shifting of ice beneath them triggering intense vibrations. They were standing at ground zero of an avalanche.
Talon’s eyes locked on the snowmobile. A second later he was seated at the handlebars, Kristin behind him with her arms wrapped around his chest. He cranked up the engine and they blasted off, the vehicle’s skids carving up the white carpet.
Trees grew before them.
Talon yanked the controls, navigating the woodsy obstacle course. They cleared the forest and hit a chute. Balls of snow showered down the slope. The ice heaved and cracked and groaned, almost as if some giant Nordic monster was battling its way to the surface.
Bits of ice raining on them, they flew down the mountain at breakneck speed. Geysers of white erupted and for a second Talon thought someone had detonated charges under the snow.
They sliced through the powdery mass, skipping like a stone down the slopes. A tidal wave of ice tore after them, the snow frothing violently. The whine of the snowmobile’s engine was drowned out by the rumbling mountain. Behind them, the avalanche slammed through everything in its path, pulverizing trees and animals under its crushing weight.
Another enormous mass of snow erupted ahead but Talon never slowed down. As the hill buckled and rose before them, he cranked the gas. The snowmobile lifted off and the skids weren’t connected to the ground any longer.
For an eternal beat, they sailed through the air until…
WHAMM! The vehicle landed hard, rattling its two passengers to the cor
e.
They had reached the bottom of the mountain and the road below the ski trail jumped into view. The snowmobile skittered to a halt while the ocean of snow came to a gradual stop at the edge of the street.
Talon allowed himself to look back and take in the battlefield of icy rubble. Rezok had been trying to will an avalanche into existence and target the hometown that had wronged him. Somehow his sacrifice had been powerful enough to bring the snow to life but without Kristin’s life-force to animate it, the avalanche couldn’t reach its full catastrophic potential.
Below, Geilo glowed in the morning light, untouched by the power of the mountain and ready to face another winter day.
The snow seemed less cold and the sun shone brighter. Talon had long ago accepted that his days were numbered. Ten years of military service had made him come to a grim acceptance of his own mortality. Death was a constant companion, a shadow cast by his dark mission. No one man could hope to fight this type of war indefinitely.
But while he waited for the final moment to arrive, he’d spill the enemy’s blood and save as many lives as he could. He had just killed four evil men to save a city of thousands. Tonight there wouldn’t be any nightmares and he would sleep soundly knowing the world was a little safer.
Kristin studied him, still in shock but knowing that she was staring at the man who had saved her life. Even though the snowmobile had stopped, she refused to let go of him.
Her lips curled into a hint of a smile. It made her look beautiful. Talon returned the smile and even though it was freezing outside, for one brief moment the temperature had lost some of its bitter edge.
For the first time since the events in San Francisco, he was ready to come in from the cold.
4: Spirit Breaker
Book 4
The Mission
After a decade spent fighting the enemy abroad and keeping his country safe, Delta Force Operator Mark Talon is ready to settle down with the love of his life. But Talon’s world crumbles when his fiancée becomes the victim of a murderous cult.
In the wake of his terrible loss, Talon dedicates himself to a new mission – hunting down twisted occultists around the globe and stopping them before they can unleash the forces of darkness upon an unsuspecting world.
In Spirit Breaker, Talon must battle the terrifying forces of the afterlife.
Chapter One
The dead walked the Earth.
At least for today.
It was Dia de los Muertos, the Day of the Dead, and the streets of Mexico City bustled with morbid activity. Lukas Espinoza peered from the second-story window of his nightclub and soaked in the preternatural scene unfolding outside. A bobbing sea of skeletons, coffins, and death masks streamed through the arteries of the city, the procession moving to the steady, hypnotic beat of pounding drums.
His probing gaze roamed the mob. As one of Mexico’s top drug lords, Espinoza knew how to spot cops. His trained eye picked out the heavily armed police guards from the crowd, their presence unable to spoil the celebration. He chose not to worry about the law enforcement officers. If any screams should escape from his club, the drums and shouts of the surging congregation below would drown them out.
The festive atmosphere outside was the fusion of ancient Aztec beliefs in death with the Catholic celebrations of All Saints’ Day. While the people below used this day to reconnect with deceased friends, family members, and ancestors, Espinoza directed his prayers to Santa Muerte.
Unlike traditional Catholic Saints, Santa Muerte wasn’t the spirit of a living person but the personification of death itself. The grim reapress was the perfect deity for a man in his line of work. Besides the nightclub, Espinoza’s business empire counted sweatshops, drugs, and murder among its many revenue streams. Most people who worshipped the Goddess offered cigars, chocolate, tequila or fruit. They were deceiving themselves if they thought the reapress could ever be satisfied with such frivolous tokens of their adoration. To Espinoza’s mind, Santa Muerte only accepted the currency of blood—and he was about to make his payment.
A muffled moan emanated from the large space behind him, and Espinoza shifted his attention away from the festivities. Deep shadows cloaked the storage room on the top floor of his building. Usually, it contained a few crates of alcohol, a dusty desk, and a ratty couch. His eyes locked on the nude beauty dangling from the ceiling at the center of the room. She was strung up by her feet like a hog, the rope secured around steel rafters, her tawny body pointing toward the ground. The woman’s tight, small breasts somehow defied gravity as her long black hair, now caked with sweat and fear, brushed the dusty wooden floor. Her listless expression suggested a deep resignation to her fate.
The woman’s name was Camila, she was a nineteen-year-old dancer at the club, and she would die today by his hand.
Three robed, hooded figures surrounded the beauty, their faces painted like grisly skulls. Just like Espinoza, each figure wielded a rusty machete and was waiting for him to give them the word. Honoring Santa Muerte with human blood sacrifices had helped Espinoza secure supernatural protection and success in his extensive business dealings. Fewer and fewer of his drug shipments were being seized by US border guards since he’d started carrying out the rituals. It was almost as if Santa Muerte’s magic made his trucks invisible to the prying gringos’ eyes.
The thought of what lay ahead sent a thrill up his spine, and he clutched his machete tighter. As the leader, he would strike the first blow. Soon enough, metal would rend flesh and the plastic tarp underneath the catatonic girl would turn a dark red. His instructions to his men were clear: The blows were to be aimed at the torso and extremities as to extend the suffering of the sacrifice. The more savage the victim’s death, the greater the future reward from the goddess.
For a beat he peered into the woman’s eyes. He wanted—needed—to see the lights go out as she transitioned from the world of the living to the realm of the dead. Espinoza sucked in a sharp breath and addressed the Grim Reapress. “Please accept my offering, Santa Muerte.”
His hands trembling with excitement, he raised his machete, summoned all the savage energy he could muster, and brought down the blade.
Sharp steel hurtled toward vulnerable flesh.
Then a second machete shot out and blocked the incoming blow with a clang that reverberated through the storage room. Sparks flew as one of the robed men parried Espinoza’s death blow.
The druglord glared at the fool who dared to interrupt the sacrifice. Even though Talon knew the Halloween get-up made him look like a member of Espinoza’s brotherhood, his eyes would give him away. They belong to a different breed of killer than Espinoza’s thugs.
Grim understanding flooded the druglord’s features as he realized someone had managed to infiltrate his sacrificial circle. The goon Talon was impersonating was still seeping red in the alley that ran along Espinoza’s club—Talon’s own personal offering to the goddess of death.
It would be the first of many.
Before Espinoza could retaliate, Talon brought up the machete and slashed the blade across the druglord’s exposed neck in one lightning fast move. A second mouth opened below the first, and a shocked Espinoza grasped his gushing throat with horror. Blood splashed the nude victim, whose eyes were now wild with panic.
As Espinoza slammed onto the tarp with a wet smack, Talon spun around just in time to meet the two descending machetes of Espinoza’s soldiers. Steel clanged against steel as the men hacked away at him while their leader convulsed and hemorrhaged at their feet. His rattling death gurgle was drowned out by the intense grunts of combat.
Talon parried the first few blows and chopped at the arm of one of his attackers. The man let out a guttural roar and stumbled backward, spraying crimson.
The second cultist drove Talon back, his hungry blade slicing the air left and right, seemingly everywhere. One more inch and he would’ve taken the top of Talon’s head off. Definitely too close for comfort. His opponent’s attacks became fast
er and more intense. Making matters worse, the massive bastard outweighed Talon by about fifty pounds and knew how to use his weight to his advantage. Espinoza’s soldier rushed Talon, machete up, and pushed him against the wall with ferocious force.
Blinding dust showered down Talon’s face. Without hesitation, he headbutted the skull-face, pulverizing cartilage. The machete-wielding cultist backed away with a sharp curse.
From the corner of his peripheral vision, Talon caught movement. The first man had dropped his blade and was drawing a pistol. Talon spun and launched his machete at the cultist. The knife cut through the air and found its target with the wet thud of steel burying into flesh. The cultist crumpled.
Unarmed, Talon faced the incoming beast of a man he’d headbutted seconds earlier. The cultist’s face paint was coated in perspiration, the white and black running together, distorting the features until they barely seemed human. The onrushing machete missed Talon by a hair’s breadth and bit into the wall, where it lodged itself in the wooden framing beneath the plaster.
Before the attacker could dislodge the machete and launch another attack, Talon snatched the man’s forearm and twisted it with martial arts precision. There was a sound of bone giving way, followed by machete clanging against the floor. He drove his elbow with savage efficiency into the cultist’s face, crushing the man’s larynx.
The cultist collapsed and stopped moving.
Talon took a step back, sucking in deep gulps of air while wiping the sweat off his features. He regarded the downed enemy for a beat before he turned toward the terrified naked woman still swinging from the ceiling. Her eyes met his with a haunted expression. She was in shock—and who could blame the poor girl?
Occult Assassin: The Complete Series (Books 1-6) Page 33