by Cari Z
“Lovely job with the door. I told Shan that he’d seen Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade one too many times, but he was so insistent. Sometimes it’s just easier to give children what they want, you know?” the voice continued. Rio drew one of his Sigs and proceeded carefully down the hallway, heading toward the mocking sound of his lover’s chuckle. “I was positive you would make it to us, though. I know your type, Rio. You nephilim are masterful warriors and tacticians, before the languor gets you.” Rio did his best to block out the words, moving methodically and checking every step for traps.
“I had forgotten, you know, how very rare you are. Such wondrous abilities, and now they’re almost gone. Your masters abused your kind for far too long. More of you might have lasted to the twenty-first century if you’d been given a little room to breathe.”
Rio stepped into a large, spacious ballroom that looked like something out of a tawdry Victorian novel: a high ceiling with elaborate molding in the shape of cherubs and fruit, marble floors, and enormous windows separated by brass sconces shaped to look like oversized orchids. Obviously no expense had been spared, but as far as Rio was concerned a sense of taste was severely lacking. On one side of the floor was a series of long, low cages, all empty, and in the middle of the room was a Solomon’s Seal, complete with silver boundary. There was blood in the center of it, congealed but not quite dry. One quick look at the people in the room was enough for Rio to know who it had come from.
His eyes skirted over the speaker, not quite wanting to confront the demon in its new casing yet. Instead he took stock of his other opponents, standing on either side of Cressidus. One was the girl Rio had shot through the head in the hotel, her eyes no longer the telltale green of a succubus, but weeping black ichor. It trailed from the corners of her mouth and both nostrils as well, misty and amorphous. A shadow demon. Powerful and poisonous but limited in a human body. He’d be okay if he could keep a little distance.
On the other side was a man, another cambion, his face a mess of blood and pulpy skin. The demon inside of him was a crude thing, incapable of the subtlety of an incubus. It had already reformed the bones in the dead man’s skull to give him shard-like horns on his forehead, and more white splinters protruded from the palms of his hands and the undersides of his forearms. His teeth bent forward, jutting out through his lips like stumpy knives. Stupid but dogged, a creature of brute force. Rio hadn’t seen a demon like this one since the French Revolution.
The last unknown was a little girl off to the side, and here Rio paused because, to his surprise, the child was still alive. Her eyes glowed white, and her throat danced as if she was choking, even though she didn’t make a sound. A siren, maybe? That was tricky; a siren could sound like the Heavenly Host if it knew how, and nephilim had far fewer defenses against them than they did against demons of lust. An ancient siren who knew the songs of Heaven could draw him in unconsciously. Rio didn’t want to kill the child, but she would be a dangerous distraction.
“Now now,” Cressidus chided him. “Focus your gaze, warrior. Don’t avoid looking at me just because it might give you pain. Your kind delights in pain.”
“You have us confused,” Rio said, but he did finally look directly at Cressidus. It was, oh God…the demon wore Devon perfectly. He was nearly nude, all his gorgeous bare skin on display except for a simple loincloth. Rio ached to reach out and draw Devon in, to cover his lover with his own body and shield him from the wickedness that surrounded him, that permeated him. The evil was inside of him though, and very firmly attached. Even the telltale green of the demon’s eyes had diminished to Devon’s irises, the only physical sign that the thing standing on the far side of the Seal was anything other than Devon Harper as Rio had always known him.
Well, that and the shit-eating grin that was just a hair too broad to belong to Devon. Rio knew every permutation of Devon’s expressions, from fear to rage to ecstasy, and this hard-edged, feral smugness wasn’t one of them.
“Demons are the ones who enjoy pain,” Rio continued, training his gun on Cressidus’s shoulder. He didn’t want to shoot, that was the last thing he wanted, but he would if it meant taking the demon out of the fight early. “Nephilim just enjoy dishing it out. We should have fun together.”
“Oh, Rio,” Cressidus sighed, moving out in front of his other children. He spread Devon’s arms wide, smirking knowingly. “You know you don’t want to do that. Even a careful shot might hit something vital, and it takes time to heal wounds in this body. Especially when I’d be doing double duty.” He indicated a thin red scar on the right side of Devon’s chest. “The poor boy’s already had a punctured lung today; how much more damage do you think you can do to him before his body simply can’t take any more? And he’d feel it, you know.” Cressidus patted the wound. “He can still feel these things if I let him. It’s he who would know any pain, not I. He knows pain right now, this darling son of mine. He sees you and it makes him weep, he wants you so badly. He’s so ashamed.” Cressidus curled his tongue around the word like it was succulent, a delicacy to be devoured.
“And he’s disappointed in you,” the demon added with a vicious smile. “You promised him you’d come for him, didn’t you? And here you are, his knight in matte-black armor, just…not quite in time for Devon. Too little, too late, nephilim.”
Rio narrowed his eyes, then shot each of the dead cambion squarely through the heart, rocking them back a few paces. He left the child alone, but had his gun trained back on Devon before more than a second had passed. “It’s not too late for me to send you back to Hell, lackeys or not.”
Cressidus laughed. “Bravado! That’s so sweet! But bullets aren’t going to be enough for you to knock my helpers out of my children, and I still don’t believe you’re going to shoot me. That was a poor starting move, Rio, going with such a blatant bluff. Luckily I’ve got a better one.” Cressidus reached behind his back, pulled out a pistol of his own and smoothly fired it at Rio.
Rio was already moving, leaping to the side and rolling so that he ended up behind the cages. One of the bullets shattered a ceramic plate in his vest and another tagged his arm, but he made it to relative safety in one piece.
“Oh, I knew you would be a challenge!” Cressidus crowed, morphing Devon’s sweet voice into something dark and hateful. “I knew you’d be worth the fight. I almost considered trying to contain you, to see if I couldn’t fill you up with one of my brethren. It’s been done before, you know.” While Cressidus spoke, Rio could hear the other demons moving, closing in on his position. He tuned his ear to the sound of their footsteps, and the heartbeat of the little one. As long as Cressidus was shooting, Rio would have to keep one of the other demons between them. Cressidus wasn’t a great shot by any means but Rio also wasn’t a terribly challenging target, as big as he was.
“A demon possessing a nephilim, I mean,” Cressidus continued. The whispering drag of the shadow demon’s corpse was closest, coming in on the right. Rio drew his machete and readied himself to lunge. “It’s been done several times. The demons must be powerful, of course, closer to their angelic selves than these poor beasts with me. The body of the nephilim tends to burn out quickly, but while it lasts, oh…there is carnage the likes of Absalom’s rebellion!”
The whisper of sound suddenly became a rush, and the shadow demon skidded over the top of the cage, dropping down next to Rio and spewing a cloud of foul black smoke toward his face. Rio leaned away and held his breath as he swung the machete, slicing through the front of the demon’s throat. The smoke poured from the gap he made, sinking down instead of projecting forward. The shadow demon’s mouth twisted in a snarl and it lunged for him, black-tipped fingers seeking to grab and draw him in so it could pour its poison directly into his mouth.
Rio swept the machete in an arc, severing both of the demon’s hands. It stared at the stumps and hissed, more smoke billowing, and there was enough of it now that Rio had to retreat or risk accidental inhalation and illness. He crawled backward,
staying low so that the cages still provided him with some cover from Cressidus, and turned to look for the…
Oh…
That sound…it was divine. It was the sound of prayer’s rising up to Heaven; it was the sound of the Host’s gracious acceptance. It was the voice of an angel come down to Earth in all its glory. It had been so long since Rio had heard anything like it, anything so perfectly wonderful. It filled him with peace even as he realized, almost too late, that peace was death.
A glint of silver rising up above him broke the reverie long enough for Rio to roll to the side. The heavy blade of an ancient guan dao crashed against the marble just beside his head, and the noise of it jolted Rio out of dregs of his reverie. He rolled to his feet and dodged the next stroke, then closed with the horned demon, slashing its chest. It dropped the heavy weapon and brought its hands up to grasp Rio’s forearms, strong enough to stop him in his tracks. Even through the heavy fabric of Rio’s fatigues, the bone shards dug deep, spilling his blood in dozens of tiny rivulets. The demon grinned and licked the base of its palm, where the blood collected. “Sweet,” it growled. “Strong.”
“I’ll show you strong,” Rio said through gritted teeth. He heard Cressidus cock his pistol and twisted them so the shots thudded into the horned demon’s back. He jammed his foot into the demon’s stomach, rolled backwards and hoisted it into the air as he continued to roll, until he was sitting upright and straddling the demon’s body.
The demon’s teeth peeled back in a knowing rictus of a grin, and suddenly its own ribcage shattered, sending thin spires of bone shooting up into Rio’s inner thighs. Rio let himself yell, turning the pain he felt into a battle cry imbued with heavenly energy, strengthening him and blocking out distractions. It focused him enough so that he could wrench the hand holding on to his machete free, and he brought it down on the horned demon’s neck as hard as he could.
The flesh and bone parted on the first stroke, and Rio flicked the head away with the flat of the blade. He could feel the demon’s grasp on its transport fade away, and after a few seconds it was gone entirely, only the body remaining. Rio shifted off of it, wincing at the pain in his legs, then fell back as another round caught him in the chest. He exhaled hard, feeling his ribcage forcibly contract under the blow. That shot might have just cracked a rib.
“I like these weapons,” Cressidus said with a laugh from the other side of the room. “Devon doesn’t, poor thing. His hand shakes when he holds a gun, did you know that?” The demon fired again and again, missing by inches. Rio could see Cressidus frown. “It shakes like a little leaf in a hurricane, in fact. Devon, you wicked thing, stop trying to interfere.”
Rio was backing away the whole time Cressidus talked to himself, splitting his focus between the incubus and the shadow demon, who was striding toward him, still trailing smoke from the ruin of its throat. Rio switched from machete to Sig and fired straight into the thing’s neck as it drifted closer. Damn it, he should have brought better bullets… These ones looked like they were starting to do the trick, though, and after he ran through his magazine, Rio just switched to the other gun and kept firing. Get through the neck, get through the neck…the shadow demon stumbled and lurched, its head lolling uncertainly on the spindles of bone and muscle that were left. Almost there, almost there—
Two tiny hands took hold of Rio’s jaw and forcibly tilted his head back, bringing him face to face with the siren. It sang, not a song of Heaven this time, but a song of cold and darkness and damnation. The chill of it shivered down Rio’s spine and made his hands go weak, dampening the fire that fueled his determination. He dropped the gun and covered his ears, but the voice was already in his head. Split his focus, he should have split it, he knew she was there, he was useless, he deserved to die just like the rest of his kind, old, atavistic, worthless. Rio could smell the poisoned smoke of the shadow demon getting closer and closer.
Some creatures, when faced with death, froze from fear, their last moments reduced to an inability to look away from their own pitiable end. Others responded with outbursts of incredible violence, and luckily that was the way Rio had been programmed. Even as the despair of the siren’s song tore at his mind, his body recognized the danger, reflexively grabbed the siren by the wrists and hurled it away, straight toward the shadow demon. They hit each other hard, falling to the ground in a tangle, and the siren’s song cut off abruptly as it inhaled the shade’s toxins.
The siren clutched its throat and coughed violently, the shadow demon’s hellish magic clearly affecting it. It cast a baleful, glowing glare at Cressidus before suddenly exiting the child’s body in a flash of white light, leaving the little girl in an unconscious heap on the floor. The shadow demon tried to rise up again, but the last few threads that hadn’t been severed by its impact on the floor just weren’t enough to maintain its control of the body. It writhed on the floor like an enormous spider with its body pinned to a board, only the legs left free to struggle. Its vile smoke filled the air, a last ditch effort to fulfill the purpose Cressidus had given it, and Rio had to back away instead of moving in for the kill as the center of the room became a seething black miasma. He couldn’t see the child, he couldn’t see the shadow demon, and worst of all, he couldn’t see Cressidus. Rio snapped his extendable baton out and circled the room, looking for any sign of the incubus.
The silver blade of the guan dao suddenly hurtled out of the blackness like a shooting star. Rio managed to get the baton up fast enough to deflect the blade to the side, but then the sharp metal counterweight at the end of the wooden shaft came whirling around, smacking him hard right against his complaining rib. Rio stumbled away until his back hit the wall, his eyes fixed on Cressidus striding out of the darkness, holding the heavy polearm easily in a single hand. The other hand held the gun, and as he lifted it Rio knew he was out of options. If he wasn’t touching Cressidus, he couldn’t exorcise him, and the demon was too far away for Rio to lunge toward without hurling himself into the line of the bullet.
The fire burned bright again inside of him, stoking him, preparing Rio for his last moment. He straightened his back, refusing to wince as his chest screamed at him. His bicep bled from the first flurry of bullets that had come his way, and his forearms and thighs were both drenched with blood, slick and painful. Cressidus sniffed the air and grinned, then sighted down the shaking barrel and pulled the trigger.
Click.
Empty…holy shit, it was out of bullets? Rio couldn’t help but send a quick prayer upstairs.
Cressidus frowned, looked down at the gun and then threw it aside. “Ah, well,” he said mock-regretfully. “Spears are a more traditional instruments of death for nephilim anyway.” Cressidus re-gripped the guan dao, then thrust it straight toward Rio’s chest.
Rio deflected the strike, then wrapped his arm around the spear’s haft just below the blade. Cressidus jerked the guan dao back hard, pulling Rio in closer. Almost close enough to touch, but not quite, and Cressidus was terribly strong, pulling so hard that Rio felt the back of the blade cut into the skin of his armpit where the vest’s protection ended.
“Faster and stronger than a human, but not any smarter,” Cressidus taunted, making the shaft of the weapon shiver as he jerked Rio closer. Rio gritted his teeth and hung on, marking the inches. Why were these things so fucking long? “You’re so tired, nephilim. Aren’t you tired of being alone?” He wrenched the guan dao even harder, finally jerking it free of Rio’s grasp and sending him tumbling to the floor at Cressidus’s feet.
“Aren’t you ready to join the rest of your kind?” Cressidus asked, the look of compassion pasted on his face beautifully false. “It’s time for you to be free. Devon will be so pleased to know that you loved him enough to leave him alive. He really doesn’t think he deserves it, you know. I’m so happy you’ve proven him wrong.” Cressidus hoisted the guan dao back for the final strike.
Before the blow could fall, Rio reached out and wrapped his hands around the demon’s bare calves
. He harnessed the fire within him and poured the conflagration of the soul, the righteous fire of Heaven itself, into Devon’s body.
The fire permeated Devon instantly, putting the demon inside him on the defensive as it withdrew into itself, searching for any avenue of escape. It was too late for Cressidus to flee, though; the demon had knit his hellish essence tight to Devon’s humanity, to make him pass for perfectly human, hidden from angels, demons, and summoners alike.
The guan dao fell to the floor with a clatter. Rio drew Devon’s straining body down into his arms, pressed one of his hands against his lover’s throat and the other to the back of his head. He stared into the bright green eyes, full of ancient fear, and finally let his greatest power loose.
Rio’s power was brutal on a demon possessing a regular human. They felt such incredible pain that the only way to escape it was to flee to Hell as fast as they could, but Cressidus’s connection to Devon was so tight that Rio had no choice but to burn the demon out entirely while it was still inside of its child. The last time he’d done this, the cambion hadn’t survived.
Too tight, they had been too intimately linked. When Gregorio cleansed the Bandit of Bergkessel’s body of the demon, the exorcism took much of its host with it, leaving too many ragged tears in mind, body, and soul for the cambion to live more than a minute on his own again.
Not this time. Devon had to survive this, or Rio would die with him. He closed his eyes and pushed deeper, carefully severing every connection between Devon and Cressidus until all that remained of the demon was a sickly, pulsating ball of emerald energy in the center of Devon’s chest. Rio wrapped his power around it, smothering the energy with fire, and burned it to nothing.
Cressidus wasn’t exorcised. He was annihilated.