by Cari Z
No! “Rio…” He tried to say it, but all that came from his lips was a froth of blood; the steel had punctured his lung. The pain was excruciating, but the fear was even worse. “No…please…”
“My Devon.” Pale lips touched his, followed by hot, intense pressure. It felt like someone was pouring boiling water down his throat. Devon tried to thrash, tried to move away, but the demon’s grip was unbreakable. His vision dimmed, the pain in his chest faded, and everything became emerald green, still like the surface of a swamp. The last thing Devon heard, from somewhere behind his eyes, was Daddy’s home, baby boy.
Then there was only Cressidus.
Chapter Twenty-Five
“Time to wake up, Brother.”
Gregorio’s eyes snapped open as soon as he felt the light touch upon his shoulder. Maxima knelt on the damp pine needles beside his bedroll, already tied into her worn suit of plate armor. The armor had been a personal gift from the Holy Roman Emperor over a dozen years ago, and the engravings that remained on the scarred cuirass and helmet were delicate golden filigree, the exact color of Maxima’s hair. She had shorn away her shining locks before this mission, as she did every time the Papacy called upon her, but Gregorio could still picture them coiling around her face, softening her harsh features.
“Today is the day, then?” he asked, wincing a bit at the soreness of his throat. It was never a good idea to drink with Leopold and Alessandro; they always worked together to encourage you far beyond your limit. Maxima had chided them for it, but according to Leopold, he and Alessandro had earned their vices, and the night before battle was not the time for sobriety. It hardly mattered. A nephilim could not stay intoxicated for long.
“Indeed,” Maxima said. “And none too soon, I think.” She glanced around at the thick trees that hemmed them in, just off the main road between Trier and Metz. “Do you hear that?”
Gregorio listened for a long moment. He heard Alessandro pissing in the distance, and Leopold talking gently to his horse, to all their horses. He heard Maxima’s breathing, and his own heartbeat. He heard…
“Nothing,” Gregorio said, surprised. “There’s nothing beyond us.”
“Indeed,” Maxima agreed. “There should be birds, squirrels, wild boar. There should be some vermin at the very least, mice and stoats. But there is nothing. Animals flee from the presence of demons, and I do not doubt now that these murders are a demon’s doing. Likely one living in its own spawn, to do this vile work so continually for so long.”
“A cambion,” Gregorio murmured. “I’ve never seen one before.”
“They are rarities in the Holy City, and you’ve led a sheltered life thus far,” Maxima said. “The Crusades do not count,” she added when Gregorio opened his mouth to disagree. “That manner of combat is what we were born for. This, this tracking and hunting, this is poor work for the child of the Host.” She shook her head. “We are meant for great battles, not sneaking into the lairs of snakes. Cambion are weaker than us, but they are cunning creatures.”
“Is that why they sent four of us?” Gregorio asked quietly. He’d been too busy to ask at first, and then too embarrassed, being the youngest of this group by far.
“Yes. Cambion by themselves are a simple proposition, but once a demon has taken root inside of its offspring, it can stay there. Nothing can force it out except death or exorcism, and such exorcisms are quite challenging when the demon’s hold on its vessel is so complete.”
“Which is why I am here.” Gregorio didn’t have Maxima’s many centuries of experience, nor did he have Alessandro’s skill with arms or Leopold’s abilities with animals. He was, however, highly skilled at exorcism, with no need for the trappings of bell, book and candle.
“Yes,” Maxima said. “That and your fighting ability. So many of our kind have lost their taste for battle.” She glanced away, her grey eyes gone stormy for a moment. Gregorio knew she was thinking about Severin, her husband for over half a millennium and once the commander of the pope’s personal guard, now retreated to a monastic life of solitude and prayer. Such listless passivity was affecting the waning ranks of the nephilim more and more as the never-ending battle between the church and its many detractors wore on.
“I will not fail you,” Gregorio swore to her, and the gentle smile that graced her face warmed his heart.
“I have faith in you,” Maxima assured him. “Now, you must rise, my brother. We will surely see battle before evening has fallen. Hey. Wake up, man. C’mon—”
“Wake up, man!” Rio bolted upright in copilot’s seat of the tiny Cessna 150 he’d hired to bring him to Kelowna. The pilot was shaking his shoulder, completely oblivious to how close he’d just come to being punched in the face. “We’re here,” the guy said, looking a little uncomfortable.
“What time is it?” Rio mumbled, cracking his neck with a wince.
“Almost five in the morning.”
It had taken two hours to find a discreet pilot, and another two to get to Kelowna in an aircraft that had a cruising speed of 120 miles per hour. Rio had pushed the guy to increase it, but the man protested that the engine might give them trouble if he did, so Rio’d had to be satisfied with a speed so slow it felt like a crawl. The small, cramped cabin hadn’t been in any way comfortable, especially not with the worried sidelong looks he’d been getting from his pilot, as if Rio might decide to murder him at any second. Rio certainly hadn’t expected to fall asleep, but then sometimes his body knew what he needed better than his conscious mind, and almost before they were off the ground, he’d dozed off.
Rio wasn’t surprised he’d dreamed of Maxima and their fight outside of Bergkessel. It was, after all, the last time he’d faced down a demon riding the body of its own child. The battle had been horrendous, the demon having summoned others of its kind into the bodies of its horde of followers; before the fight was over the cambion was dead, and so was a nephilim. Not a fair trade, Rio reflected. Not even close.
This time would be different. This time Rio only had to concern himself with one thing: getting Devon out of this mess alive and as whole as possible. Everything and everyone else could burn, as far as he was concerned.
Rio stepped down out of the plane and hauled his duffel out behind him. “And the car?” he asked.
“Over by the hangar.” The man looked nervously at the duffel sack. “Keys should be in the ignition…look, man, I don’t wanna be part of anything bad, got it? So you find another way out of here next time.”
“So you’ll smuggle drugs but you won’t give one man a nice, quiet lift over the border?” Rio asked absently, fighting to bring his mind back to the present.
“Not a second time, no.” The pilot shook his head firmly.
“I understand.” Rio held his hand out and after a moment the pilot shook it. “You’ve got to go with your gut sometimes. No hard feelings.”
“Right…good. Thanks.”
Rio turned and walked over to the hangar, casually looking over the tiny airport as he did so. Fuel was kept over there, mechanic’s shack over there, a tiny hut with a tall antenna on the far side of the runway…small. Discreet. And oh, the hangar bay door was secured by a padlock. Beautiful. Good to know.
The car Rio’s money had bought him was an older-model Land Rover with rusty holes above the wheels and a coat of grey primer doubling as a paint job. In the pre-dawn darkness it was practically invisible, which was perfect for Rio’s needs. He hoisted the duffel into the passenger seat, got in and turned the key. The engine started grudgingly, and Rio frowned when he saw it only had a half a tank of gas in it. That might not be enough to make it back here, and the last thing he wanted to do was have to stop somewhere in town to gas this thing up after doing battle with a demon.
Not just a demon. Devon. How’re you going to handle that, Rio?
He didn’t know yet.
Instinct, memory, those things told him that the best way to take out the demon would be to blow it, its followers, and whatever shell it was r
iding in to kingdom come. Before meeting Devon, before knowing him the way Rio did, he would have been tempted to do just that. The hell with Safeguard’s policy of capture and restraint, in their effort to dig beneath the surface and find where the information on demon summoning was coming from—in all honesty, it was too late to contain the rituals. The knowledge was out there, and people would always be able to find it if they dug deep enough. Rio very emphatically didn’t work for Safeguard anymore; he wasn’t bound by their rules. He could pierce the demon’s lair with righteous fire and burn it straight back to Hell.
But Devon’s involvement changed the rules; Devon made Rio’s instinct worthless. Cressidus knew that, of course; that was one of the reasons the demon had taken Devon. So much effort on the demon’s part to get its hands on Devon when it already had children it could inhabit, disappear into. It didn’t make sense.
It’s a demon, it doesn’t have to make sense. They’re not logical. They don’t think like we do. “We” being humanity, which wasn’t a very logical species either. Rio resisted the impulse to bang his weary head against the steering wheel and instead pulled out onto the nearest road.
Rio had been to British Columbia a few times before, but never to Kelowna, and he’d certainly never gone hunting down wineries before. There were way more of them than he’d expected, and even once he’d narrowed things down to Mission Hill it had taken a moment to realize that what Steven had been describing to him was more than just a location, it was the name of the actual winery.
There were two Mission Hill wineries. One was a sprawling place with neatly-groomed vineyards and a fancy restaurant with a terrace; not the kind of place a demon would probably pick to bodysnatch in. The other winery was an earlier effort by a different family, their vineyard situated right outside their impressively large mansion. That one had been a pet project by the family patriarch, which then became his obsession. His efforts had been amateurish and resulted in a tremendous loss of money and time, and after he’d failed to drown his sorrows in his own poorly-made swill one night, the patriarch of the family decided it was time to cut his losses. He killed both his wife and himself, leaving their teenage son with a hell of a mess to deal with. The house had been shuttered for over thirty years, the vineyard overgrown, and the entire effort defunct. Only a shell of the place remained.
And right now, that shell was bright with light.
Rio parked the car at the very end of the old road leading up to the original Mission Hill winery, a few hundred yards from the house. Now was when the real fun started.
First things first: he needed his equipment. Rio got out of the car and opened up the duffel. Fatigues, heavy body armor, night-vision goggles this time, oh definitely. His Sig P226s again, those were always useful, a machete with a serrated edge at the base, and, after a moment’s consideration, a twenty-six inch expandable baton, because he didn’t plan on shooting or stabbing Devon. No, the blade and guns were for whoever else was in there with him.
The last time Rio had put on his gear, he had headed into a psychopath’s lair intent on causing as big a fuss as he could before liberating Devon from the summoner’s clutches. He vaguely remembered a feeling of comfort as he’d donned his armor, as if it was really the safety net it promised to be. He had felt strong, solid, sure. That wasn’t enough now.
Now Rio had to leave behind his human persona. He had to tap into the part of himself that was nephilim, the part which made his soul hum with power. As Rio began to don his armor, he pulled away from the familiarity of it and tapped into a sensation he had tried to banish decades ago. The weight of his vest’s ceramic plates became like steel in his mind, and called up the memory of his last battle against cambion. Blood—
They shot for the horses first, the bastards, Alessandro’s going down before they made it more than a meter into the glade before the cavern. Leopold leapt off his own before the trick could be repeated, smacking the beast’s haunch with his gauntleted hand and sending it skidding back into the forest. Maxima and Gregorio dismounted as well, but not fast enough to save their horses’ lives.
A charge—
Shields together, advancing on the cave. More arrows came, but they couldn’t penetrate the metal shields. The scent of old death lingered in the air, and after a moment’s glance, Rio realized that many of the moss-covered branches beneath his feet were not branches at all, but bones.
The first clash—
Not the cambion, not to begin with. Lackeys, some possessed, some not. The humans were easiest to spot, and the easiest by far to kill. Gregorio hacked and hewed with his battle axe, used to facing opponents wearing armor. It was almost shocking to him, how deeply he could penetrate unprotected flesh.
Then the gruesome work of true battle, against opponents who wouldn’t be felled with a fatal blow—
So many of them, swarming out of the darkness like a cluster of spiders, clinging to wall and roof, and laughing, laughing at their own darkness and decay. They persisted like the incoming tide, inexorably sweeping away defenses and making their marks. A slash here, a cut there. Gregorio breathed deeply of the chaos and let it fill his soul with righteous anger. He was nephilim. He was of the Host, and he was mighty in the eyes of God and the Church. He would not be defeated.
Fresh death, too much bright blood—
It was Leopold, gentle, laughing Leopold who fell to the onslaught. Too many chinks in his armor, not enough strength in his shield arm. He was pierced through the side with the rusty edge of a scythe, and his scream echoed against the dark walls of the cave. Alessandro screamed with him, the sound split between anger and agony, and stood over his body to fight off the creatures that would drag a dying nephilim away into the dark to play with. Maxima covered his back and Gregorio focused on the cambion, lurking behind the masses.
The power that flowed through him, mighty, implacable—
Gregorio’s march to the cambion was unstoppable, demons falling away from him with just a touch, leaving broken bodies behind as they were forced back down to hell. He exorcised them with barely a thought, the spirit of the Lord was so strong within him. The cambion tried to fight, then tried to flee, squealing and gnashing like the cornered rat it was. The demon inside couldn’t escape fast enough, though, not from its own flesh to which it had bound itself. Gregorio reached it, wrapped his broad hands around the creature’s throat, and squeezed as he stared into its eyes. They reflected excruciating pain, the divine fire that raged through Gregorio’s heart passing into the cambion. Burn, he whispered in its ear as he tightened his grip. Burn from this day on forever.
The forgotten energy that came trickling back into Rio’s soul was like the thrum of a single string: subtle yet, but still a new sound in the silence. It filled his mind and made his whole body tingle with awareness, and Rio knew that far away, someone had just come to a realization. Somewhere, even now, he was being searched for.
It was too late to go back. Rio tucked the last gun into place, and then settled the night vision goggles over his head. He turned to the left, then to the right, looking off into the darkness of the trees. Traps, some obvious, some not so obvious littered the leafy ground. Pit traps, swinging spikes—it reminded him a little of Vietnam. Not the way to go if he could avoid it. He turned back to the long driveway. At first there was nothing to be seen. It was too obvious a ploy, though, and Rio switched the goggles to infra-red.
There they were. Laser lines crisscrossed the long length of the drive, attached to…Rio frowned and wrenched a branch from the nearest tree, then extended it out to touch the closest line, less than a meter from his face. A near-silent twang heralded the sudden appearance of a crossbow bolt, and Rio almost smiled. How traditional. The much-heralded Qin Shi Huang, China’s first emperor, had protected his tomb with crossbows that would trigger automatically, impaling the unwary. Their use had persisted throughout the centuries, and had clearly influenced whoever had set these traps. If it had been Rio, there would have been machine guns. Hell
, he could have made that house into a near-impenetrable fortress.
They’re not trying to keep you away. It was an uncomfortable but accurate thought. Cressidus had left him Porter Grey, so the demon must have wanted a confrontation. Hiding away had never been its plan. These traps were just a test, an annoyance. That didn’t mean he didn’t have to deal with them carefully, though.
In a few places the concrete of the driveway was unsettled, dug up and packed down again to look close, but not quite perfect. Mines, Rio surmised, and carefully avoided them as he moved through the slender bands of red, triggering each one with an exploratory branch that was rapidly becoming more metal bolt than wood. It was slow, methodical work, and he breathed deeply and moved cautiously and got to the end of the driveway without perforating or blowing himself up. Check one for the win column.
The porch light was on, illuminating a heavy wooden door that sagged slightly on its hinges. Rio checked for more laser lines, but there was nothing obvious. He moved forward and stepped, cautiously, up the stairs and onto the veranda, once so grand, now covered with leaf litter and dirt. Rio took off the night vision goggles and leaned forward, examining the front door carefully. The hinges had been moved recently, and put back inexpertly. The door had been changed to open “out” instead of “in” now. Why?
One way to find out. Rio drew back, took a deep breath, and kicked hard at the thick door, forcing it inward. The door barely made it an inch past the threshold before an enormous circular blade scythed down from the side, lodging deep in the wood and prying the door further inward with the weight of its retraction. Rio checked carefully for more tricks before stepping inside, rolling his eyes a little. Cressidus had absolutely no sense of subtlety. Of course not, this was the creature that had made its great escape from Seattle via helicopters and explosions.
“Such a grand entrance,” a familiar voice called out from further in the house. Familiar, but so different too. The pain that had been welling along the edges of Rio’s heart suddenly flared, engulfing him in a spasm of anguish and regret. Too slow, he’d been too damn slow.