by Chloe Garner
Carter had never seen a demon’s expression change like that, not that he could remember. Time continued to drip forward, Diana still on her way toward Tiber and Tiber still mid-arc toward Carter, and the sound came again. This time Carter watched as the bullet hit Tiber in the side, just below his shoulder.
Another noise, and Tiber wobbled. The entire room heaved as he tried to glitch and failed, the cascade of magic stripping itself free and tangling up around both Carter and Tiber. Another shot, moments later, another hit. Carter was trying to turn his head, but time was just too slow. Against his better judgment, because his curiosity was simply undeniable, he let time slip by faster, and turned to watch as Samantha shot Tiber five more times, rapid-fire.
The demon staggered away, slow, and Diana cut a deep gash across his chest. His sword was falling to the ground as his hands went to his chest.
Confusion.
That’s what that face was.
Pure, simple confusion.
Samantha dropped the gun and walked across the puddle that had been Ragweed, drawing Lahn, and before Carter could do a thing to stop her, she brought the short sword down two-handed. Tiber sheeted ash into two piles to either side.
The magic in the room throbbed once more and vanished, a fine rain of ash coming off of the ceiling where Ragweed had ended up.
Carter looked at Samantha, only sparing an instant, then he crossed to the hellplane.
Tiber looked stunned. He’d have been there for maybe an hour, maybe a little less. Carter had good reflexes.
“I’m not letting you off that easily,” he said. He raised Diana, and Tiber raised his arms as though he expected a sword to be there, but his sword was back on the earth plane, an element of Earth, not Hell. With no mercy and no hesitation, Carter dismembered the demon, chopping him smaller and smaller and kicking the pieces into a bigger and bigger radius around himself on the range. He noticed that Ragweed was here, as well, but for the moment, he ignored the smaller demon, dispatching Tiber thoroughly as he had any demon. Finally, he turned to the researcher.
“You picked the wrong team,” he said, sheathing Diana. “You’re alive because you saw it. You tell anyone who needs to hear. This is who I am.”
The demon fled and Carter crossed back to the earth plane.
“Didn’t know you carried a gun,” he said to Samantha.
“Abby thought I’d like it,” she said. “Bought the bullets special.”
Carter squatted, brushing through the ash to find one of them. A normal bullet, made of lead, caused no damage to a demon. Lead was a fluid on the hell plane. Even a reinforced bullet tended to take some damage, when it hit something. A demon’s body caught it perfectly, leaving it completely intact, and left it in the ash.
He found one and looked at it.
“Titanium cap,” he said. She nodded. “It’s good work.”
“Abby designed them,” Samantha said.
“All right,” he said. “I’m impressed.”
She nodded.
“You do what you set out to do?” he asked. She looked down at the pile of ash.
“Yeah.”
There was a long pause.
“Did you?” she asked. He nodded, searching through the ash to find Tiber’s sword. No reason to let that go to waste.
“Yeah.”
They stood for one more pause, feeling the empty of the room then he drew a breath.
“Well, let’s go home, then.”
Thank you for reading Diana, part three of the Book of Carter series by Chloe Garner. I hope you enjoyed it and by sticking with her mailing list you can pick up the rest of the books in the series from InstaFreebie as they release. If you want more of this world right now check out Rangers on Amazon or dive straight in with the first four books of the Sam & Sam series all at once in the Sam and Sam Origin box set.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chloe Garner is, a wanderer with a host of identities in her head fighting each other to get out. Chloe writes about the things that go bump in the night, the future, and all things fantastical. Find her on Twitter as BlenderFiction, on Goodreads and Facebook as Chloe Garner, or at blenderfiction.wordpress.com.
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