“Shit,” I say, cocking back the hammer of my gun.
Azrael, unconcerned with either the human on this side of the door or the former humans on the other side, takes a ponderous step towards the door. As if in response, the massed bodies outside surge towards the cabin, feet making sharp sucking sounds as they run through the thick mud in a silent battle charge.
I leap to the side, just barely getting out of the way of the first rush. The ghasts come in a single, silent wave of the undead. The only sounds come from the brittle crackle of glass as they force their way through the windows, the rough slamming of dirty feet on the rough wooden floor. They pour into the room, nearly filling it in seconds.
In an instant, a large chunk of hell breaks loose.
The ghasts surged at Azrael, ten of them swarming over it like rabid ants as they grasp madly for the Cleave. It utters a savage roar, slashing with its gigantic razor, snapping with its bear trap mouth. In seconds it has taken off two of their heads and torn the chests out of two more. The disemboweled ones hit the floor with wet thuds, then promptly get up and rejoin the silent assault.
I fall back against the wall, but there is simply nowhere to go to avoid the battle in the small room. It takes only seconds for one of them to spy me and lunge. I put a quick three rounds into its head, the shots echoing deafeningly off the brick walls. The ghast drops, only to be replaced by two more, both with matching, drooling maws. So much for going unnoticed.
Ten feet away the monster is all but hidden by the swarm of undead. Its right arm in particular is supporting at least half a dozen ghasts, weighing down the claw that holds the Cleave while the left arm slashes, crushes and heaves whatever it can grasp. A broad sweep of the trunk-like arm sends half a dozen of them pinwheeling into a wall, fracturing it in multiple places and causing a shower of debris. The roof groans, shifting with an agonizing creak that is all but lost in the din of battle. Unburdened, it switches the Cleave into its left paw.
A sickly light casts out of the blade, momentarily freezing us all in our tracks. Though it is shining brightly, it isn’t by any stretch of the imagination a light which would encourage hope or warmth. It’s pestilential, galling, nightmarish, a diseased light that seeps out of it and fills the room. The ghasts recoil in its presence like roaches, even the dead repelled by the power of the Cleave, but all I see is light.
“Mine again, at last,” Azrael breathes, its horrific face beaming in triumph, and with a speed I’d never have thought possible in something that massive it sweeps its arm in a vast, hairy blur. The sudden motion turns the light of the blade into a kaleidoscope, sending shadows twisting along the walls as the razor slashes along the backs of the ghasts clinging to its right arm. Six bodies fall in twelve pieces, twitching as they hit the floor. Everything in the room, myself included, sinks back a step from the scene.
“God Almighty,” I hear myself say.
“That has nothing to do with God,” a raspy voice says from my right. I look over and see the ghast with the perforated face looking back at me. We stand together, the living and the dead, watching the carnage with unbelieving eyes. After an awed moment of silence neither of us seem certain what to do next, so I tilt up my gun at waist level and put a bullet through the bottom of his jaw and send his decayed brains out the top of his head.
At the sound of the shot the remaining ghasts swarm again, this time scaling the beast’s body from the front and back. It crushes and slashes the three that attack it head-on, but two more slide behind it as fast as thought and climb straight up its back. One reaches around Azrael’s head, sinking clawed fingers into its eyes and nose and eliciting a roar of outrage. Distracted, even the monster can’t react fast enough to stop the other ghast from shimmying down its left arm, wrapping its hands around the exposed bit of razor handle, and wrenching. It gives a sudden cry of victory as it leaps down to the floor with the Cleave clutched triumphantly in its hand.
I aim on the fly, firing twice at the ghast. One round takes it in the shoulder, but the second hits it squarely in the hand holding the razor. The hand explodes in a grisly shower of bone and skin, the glittering blade arcing out of sight.
Azrael, seeing this, roars in anguish, eyes darting around the room until they fall on the Cleave. Judging by the relieved look on its horrific face I assume that the razor isn’t indestructible. Then the last remaining ghasts (five of them in all) go for it and the thought is lost.
I lunge for the Cleave, ducking a wildly swinging arm the size of a tree trunk that takes another ghast square in the face, knocking the head off the neck like a T-ball. I beat eleven grasping hands and close my own on the cold little piece of metal.
At my touch the razor changes again. In an instant it’s as it had been before, a slightly larger than normal straight razor. No light shows this time. I draw the Cleave to me and roll away from the fracas, spraying the last rounds from the Springfield into the rapidly thinning crowd. Two of the ghasts go down with extra orifices in the backs of their heads, the third and final one caught its round in the right hip – a crippling wound for a human, but an annoyance for the undead. I aim for the kill shot to the head, then see that the slide of the gun is all the way back. Empty. It turns to me with a hiss of anticipation, then Azrael’s wheelbarrow sized paw wraps around its head, neck and upper chest and squeezes the thing into a thin red jelly.
The silence is as shocking as thunder. I look around the remnants of the cabin. The floor is littered with corpses, some with bullet wounds, more with paw and claw damage. Like me, Azrael is also surveying the carnage. It’s definitely less winded than I am, though. It looks hard at me, then at the item in my hand.
“Give it to me,” it snarls.
I slowly reach back into my holster for the third magazine, the red one, the one I save for special occasions, while at the same time ejecting the spent one from the Springfield and letting it fall at my feet. The red magazines are among the prizes I’d secreted out of the Aegis’ armory the day I’d left, one of the secret weapons their Envoys relied on in difficult situations. I pull it free of its resting place.
“No,” I say, sliding the red magazine home and racking the slide.
The monster stares at me, chest heaving, then it charges. This time I don’t need to take the time to aim. The head is wider than a serving tray. I fire once, the round taking it squarely in the forehead.
It doesn’t penetrate. I don’t expect it to. I’ve seen the beast in action and know that the thing’s bone structure is probably harder than iron. The crimson bullet strikes the thing just above the eyebrow ridge and then explodes viciously in a brilliant flash and a sound like a portable thunderclap. A sheet of skin the size of a dinner plate blows clear off its skull with a flash of fire and bloody mist, sending sheets of golden blood and dangling flaps of loose flesh falling into its eyes. It roars in agony, clasping both hands to its head. Thick gold liquid immediately flows through the fingers, running down its forearms and matting in the thick fur there.
Blind, it charges with the ferocity of a rabid elephant. I dodge it easily, jumping over mangled body parts, and it plows through the brick wall as if it were Styrofoam precisely where I’d been standing. I can hear its wails fading as it runs screaming through the cemetery, rapidly disappearing into the night.
A small creak is all the warning I have. There was no place to hide if I did have more. Without the support of the wall the roof comes crashing down, sheets of plywood, ancient 2x4’s and heavy ceramic tiles falling in a single crash. I barely have time to wrap my arms protectively around my head as the building falls on me, the impact and weight driving me to my knees, then flat on my chest, the roar of the collapsing cabin dwindling as the rubble encases me and seals me off.
Darkness layered on top of darkness. Pain, pressure, choking dust, no room to take enough of a breath to choke, and finally a red-tinged emptiness that swallows me whole.
Seventeen
An hour, a day, a week later…
Co
nsciousness comes seeping back. No, it couldn’t be consciousness. I pick up a few thoughts, firing around the opaqueness of my mind like drunken bees, become half possessed by a dim kind of self-awareness, but it isn’t consciousness. Something is missing.
I wrestle with my awareness, turning it loose inside my body. There is no pain. There should be pain. Memories float back to me from the ether – the Cleave, the ghasts, Azrael with the front plate of its skull blown clean and breaking down the wall. The roof falling on top of me.
Yes, I should definitely be in pain. There should be an aria being sung up and down my nerve endings, but instead there is only a pervasive sense of emptiness, of nothingness, as if I’d simply been disconnected like an unpaid phone.
Shock would explain the self-inflicted anesthesia. It’d make sense, seeing as how a building is lying on top of me. A small building, sure, but it’s still a building. The human body can be ridiculously fragile, as I have learned in depth over the last few years. A person could be killed by a hell of a lot less than a building collapsing on them. It would be completely believable that something vital in my body had been pierced, crushed or otherwise compromised.
I’ve been waiting for death, one way or another, for a long time. Ever since that night when I’d stared at Oliver the wendigo and raised my fists, the very last weapons I had left, and realized that they couldn’t stop death from coming I’ve known that it was only a matter of time before something claims me. It might be a cannibalistic Native American monster, a dragon, a werewolf, a half-drunk flesh golem, or a renegade angel. Maybe even a literal Grim Reaper. Something is going to pick me out of its teeth sooner or later, either literally or metaphorically. It seems like tonight might be the night.
I wonder whether or not Remy would try to take his ire at losing the Cleave out on Claire once I’m gone. She’s done a lot to help me, from trying to secure Moira’s aid to helping me fry some of his ghasts, and Remy is the type to hold a grudge. She’ll fight back, of course, but though she has some potent magic at her disposal, Remy is a titan. If he decides to eliminate her, there would be nothing she could do about it.
Unless she rejoins Moira’s coven.
I draw in a deep, reflexive breath and the rubble shifted ever so slightly around me. Dust wafts into my mouth, and my tongue awakens to the taste of blood and powdered ceramic.
I can’t let him. I don’t care if it does kill me, I’m not going to let him get to her.
I stir, only a bare quiver but my body does initiate its own action, and there’s the pain I was looking for. The tiny movement breathes a spark of life into numbed nerve endings, which wake up with a shriek.
I’m stunned by the sudden onslaught. The spark turns into a wildfire in a heartbeat, spreading through my body with distressing speed. In an instant a thousand pains, some minor and some major, come to screaming life. I gasp, and my quick breath is rewarded with a red, stabbing pain in my left side. I lay there, bathed in agony, and just like that I am now feeling the crushing weight of the layers of debris pinning me down.
I shift my body, gritting my teeth against the tides of anguish. Tears squeeze out from beneath my eyelids, falling straight down into the rubble, but I manage to twist and lurch my body around so I’m face down on the floor. With titanic effort I wrestle first one hand under my chest, then the other. I heave, doing a full-out pushup, straining until lights begin to flash in my vision. The mounds of debris resists, then shifts minutely as I gain a precious inch. I sink back down to my belly as my screaming muscles fail, then I clench my teeth until I’m sure they are going to crack and put the pressure back on. One inch becomes two, then four, then six. I can hear the piles of scrap shifting now, falling away with growing rattles and I’m screaming out loud now, all the pain and fear and frustration of my life flooding through my body like the tide and finally I am able to get my knees underneath me.
With an anguished cry, I press myself up through the rubble. The last of it gives way, sloughing away like falling water as I break through into the cool night air. I gasp, reeling from the stabbing pain in my left side that curls me into a twisted slouch, clutching my arms around my middle. I cough up some dust, spearing fresh agony through my body, and I reel like a drunk in the thigh-high rubble. I catch myself, forcing my body not to topple over until the world stops spinning around me and I can take a full breath. I carefully pick my way through the ruin, but just as my right foot touches the grass my left foot becomes snagged on a plank and I stumble.
A pair of small, strong hands catches me before I hit the ground, lowering me gently to one knee. I look up to see Claire standing next to me, the grapefruit moon gleaming over her left shoulder as she looks at me with concern.
“Thought you were going to wait for me,” I groan, bracing myself against the soft earth.
“I got lonely. Are you okay?” she asks.
“Headache,” I answer. “Think I cracked some ribs, too.”
“I was afraid you were dead.”
Our eyes meet and hold. “I was a little worried about you, too.”
She helps me to my feet. I’m getting a little short of breath, and a veritable sea of bruises is starting to bloom all over my body. Moving is getting tough. She seems to sense my need and inserts herself under my left arm.
She smiles weakly. “Man, some days it just doesn’t pay to get out of bed.”
“It does today.”
“Why’s that?”
With a grim smile I hold up my fist and open my clenched fingers, displaying the black and steel prize I’m clutching.
“Because I’ve got the Cleave,” I whisper triumphantly.
Eighteen
“What was that thing that broke down the wall?” Claire sounds awed. We’re still sitting just clear of the rubble, catching our breath.
I look at her. Really look at her, not just a glance or a peek. Her body is mottled with mud and darker things. I don’t even have the energy to search out her elusive tattoo. Her hair looks as if it has been styled with an acetylene torch, her face is smudged and bruised. There are bits of scorched flesh stuck to her bra, her skin, and her voice is husky from either strain or spell.
She looks beautiful.
I blink away her image and explain, briefly, about Azrael and what it may or may not be. She takes it in stride, all things considered.
“It killed Bruce?”
“Yeah. I tried to stop it, even tried to make a deal with it, but it doesn’t seem to put much stock in people. I should know by now not to trust the monsters.”
“I thought you’d gotten over that. How else could you have managed to hang out with me all this time?” We rise together, then she cocks one eye at me. “What’s that look for?”
“You are a person,” I say quietly.
“Not a monster?”
I let a smile be my answer as I take her hand and we set off for the cemetery entrance. Moving around helps the pain, but it’s going to be a slow recovery. We move slowly back towards the cemetery entrance, leaning on each other. I tuck the Cleave deep into my pocket as we go. Too much has been sacrificed already to let it get lost now.
“So, you just fought with an angel?” She sounds impressed.
“Not a real angel, at least not as we understand them. Maybe a different caste of angel, maybe an offshoot or a cousin. Maybe something else entirely. We don’t know, and hopefully I’ll never get a chance to ask it.”
“You think it’ll leave you alone now?”
I’m trying to concentrate on the path. Between the gravel and the wet grass, the footing is treacherous. “It seemed to be hurt pretty bad. It’ll have to heal before it gets a chance to come after me again. Hopefully by the time that happens this damn razor will be long gone.”
“Think it’ll forget about you?”
“You know, I don’t really want to think about that right now.”
We make good time through the graveyard, and time is very much on my mind. Gunfire, even in sparsely populated neighborh
oods like this, tends to attract the attention of all kinds of civil servants, and we can’t afford to be detained by any of them now. Fortunately, the only sound in the air is the chorus of cicadas and not sirens. The police kind, that is. As we come in sight of the cemetery gates I hold the Cleave tightly in my left hand while my right dips into my pocket.
“What are you doing?” Claire asks.
“Getting rid of this damned thing.” I fish my cell phone out of my pocket to call Madeline. We are less than half an hour’s drive from her hotel, and the faster she can take the Cleave off my hands the happier I’ll be. I grip the phone’s case and pull it out of the pocket, causing a shower of crushed phone parts to fall glittering into the grass.
We look at each other. “You have yours?”
She nods and pulls hers out, apparently none the worse for wear. Lucky break, but I’ve come to learn over the years that the moment you begin to rely on luck was the moment it turns on you.
The woman standing at the cemetery gate is a perfect example of that.
She’s one of the sternly dressed women who’d been watching us earlier at the sandwich shack. She has glossy black hair that gleams under the streetlight like polished steel, a trim figure with a tight-fitting knee-length dress and a matching blazer. Pretty, but so severe in appearance she loses points. On the index finger of her right hand is a ring that looks as if it had been carved from a rough chunk of amethyst stone. This she points at us as we come close.
“I’ll take the Cleave now, Mr. DeLong,” she says in a clear, authoritative voice.
“Oh, for God’s sake,” I said, exasperated. “Since you know who I am, you know whatever that ring does won’t work on me. Just get the hell out of our way. It’s been a rough night.”
“Well, then, fortunately for you your night’s over.” This comes from behind us. We turn to see the other woman from the boardwalk standing behind us, similarly dressed but with sandy hair. Her stone ring is pitted, colorless stone, like concrete.
Swim Like Hell: A Visit to Superstition Bay Page 18