Collateral Damage (Demon Squad Book 8)

by Tim Marquitz

  The wizard forced a grim smile. “A man can hope, right?”

  I started to assure him that there was still hope in the world, even if I didn’t really believe the shit I was selling, but Michael’s bullhorn psychic shout thundered inside my head, setting my ears to ringing.

  “We’ve found Katon and Scarlett,” he shouted in our minds, “but they’re under attack.”

  I delayed only long enough to make sure Chatterbox and the fiend knew they were on babysitting duty again, and we were gone, Rachelle ripping a furious hole in space to where the couple were. CB saw us off to a rousing rendition of “Ride of the Valkyries.”

  We appeared in the middle of a war zone.

  Bullets screamed past us as we stepped from the portal, the smell of cordite and fresh blood thick in the air. The tangy combination set my nose alight. None of us had thought to ask who Katon and Scarlett were being attacked by, presuming it to be Trinity—of whom I’d hastily told the others their name—but that wasn’t what we walked into. A battalion of DSI troopers—well, significantly less at this point—were bearing down on the couple.

  Katon was a blur of motion across the sandy beach where he and Scarlett had gone to escape the world, his sword a shimmer of silver that trailed crimson. Scarlett’s wings, the manifestation of her angelic powers, burned like the sun. While Katon circled around the men, forcing them into tighter groups, Scarlett simply stood her ground waiting for them to come. Everto Trucido, her trusty demon-slaying blade—which happened to work on pretty much everything—cut through the soldiers. Her full lips were pulled back in a sneer, her frustration showing. She hated fighting humans but it wouldn’t stop her from killing them before they could kill her or Katon.

  Outside of the swarming ants of the DSI soldiers and the scrappy couple, there wasn’t another person in sight, the shore stretching on for miles in either direction without so much as a shack popping up. I didn’t have a clue where we were, but the pair had found a hidden paradise to sneak off to, which explained why we hadn’t heard from them. Outside of Michael’s telepathic messaging service, they were as far out of touch as humanly possible. It still didn’t explain why Michael couldn’t reach them, though.

  The soldiers turned their guns on me and Rahim as soon as we appeared. I whipped up a shield to cover us while Rachelle flitted back through her portal. Once she was gone, Rahim and I joined the fight.

  There was a gargle-throated roar off to my side as Rahim let his anger out in the basest of ways by going full on bear. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the wizard disappear as his lycanthropy took hold. Already a big guy, his transformation was startling. Layers of muscles and fur erupted across his flesh, adding hundreds of pounds within seconds. Razor sharp claws burst from the tips of his fingers, which had become massive, black paws. His face elongated, the act always reminding me of the movie An American Werewolf in London, and rows of vicious teeth sprouted from his swelling muzzle. He let out a feral growl and charged into the mass of soldiers. Their screams sounded an instant later.

  Not to be outdone by Carnage Bear, I pulled my guns and went Wild West on the DSI fuckers, all two-fisted fury. Like I said, there’s something very satisfying about shooting someone in the face. I did just that. The soldiers wore full body armor and helmets with visors, but there was no way the face shields could hold up against the close up love of a .45. And they didn’t. As quick as I could pull the trigger a DSI lackey sprouted a third eye where his nose used to be and his gun went silent. Still, there was a ton of the guys.

  Katon whizzed past, slipping in and out of the ranks to merciless effect. He glared at me. “I’m not pleased by any of this, Frank,” he answered before running off, his dark eyes lit up like burning coals. “Why are all of you here?”

  I could only imagine he was pissed. He’d come to the beach to make nice with Scarlett after all the bullshit we’d been through lately. An army of militants trying to blow their head off was hardly conducive to the brown chicken, brown cow atmosphere. Still, it was hardly the worst thing they’d faced down.

  I stared out over the field of soldiers as their numbers were whittled down with brutal precision, his question only then sinking in. Why were the DSI there? This wasn’t some vacation resort where someone might have recognized Katon or Scarlett and reported them. They were, literally, out in the middle of nowhere, and yet here we were, fighting a battle against a battalion of DSI troopers in full regalia and there wasn’t a ship or helicopter in sight. I paused for a moment, letting my guns cool while I ran through everything. It all seemed off.

  It made sense that, if the other DSI shitheads could teleport, there’d be a way for these guys to do it, too, which would explain the lack of transport but that wasn’t the only thing bugging me. Shaw knew who Katon and Scarlett were, knew what they were capable of. She could have thrown three times the number of soldiers at them without much of a chance at taking them out. And since she had all the assets of the Army at her disposal, why didn’t she? Why not a tank or two or some air support? Why not her supernatural lackeys?

  And then it hit me, my brain slamming into my skull as shit became clear. Katon hadn’t been asking why the DSI troops were there, he’d been asking why Rahim and I were. Shit.

  “It’s a trap!” I screamed in my best Admiral Ackbar voice. “Close ranks!” Katon hadn’t reached out to us, Poe had simply stopped blocking the signal, so to speak. He’d been pitting his telepathic abilities against Michael’s from the start, keeping Katon and Scarlett separate from the rest of us. They didn’t need us to take out a few soldiers. They might have contacted us after the fact to let us know what had happened, but Poe had let the ruse slip so Michael would pick up on what was going down and draw us out. That’s what the old boy had been apologizing about.

  And sure enough, as soon as the words were out of my mouth a trio of presences sang out against my senses. Trinity.

  They appeared just yards from where Scarlett held her ground. She spun to face them, eyes narrowed, confusion showing on her face. Out of the loop, she had no clue who the hell they were or what they were doing there, but she knew well enough to not trust them. Of course, they made that part easy by attacking her.

  “And so the Lord offers us another opportunity to slay the seed of Lucifer!” the old man shouted as he loosed a bolt of energy at my cousin.

  That was likely the worst possible thing he could have called her. The look on her face was as if he’d shoved a shit-flavored lemon in her mouth. She sidestepped the blast and grabbed one of the soldiers by his throat, winging him at the old man.

  “I am not the spawn of that vile serpent!” She was on Trinity before any of them could react.

  The Father—calling him that was gonna get old real fast—batted aside the DSI agent like a piece of fluff in the breeze, but he wasn’t quite as lucky with Scarlett. Her blade carved a trail across his burgundy robes, pale skin showing underneath for just an instant before the whiteness was washed out with red. He grunted and stumbled back, clutching at his stomach but it hadn’t been a mortal blow.

  “You will die just the same,” the revenant shrieked.

  Jagged claws sank into Scarlett’s arm, holding her in place, as the Spirit’s other hand ripped across her chest and up toward her neck. Scarlett twisted to protect her throat, managing to turn the blow away at the last second. The claws gouged chunks out of my cousin’s shoulder, blood and black ooze bubbling up in the wounds. She screamed through clenched teeth and shrugged the revenant off but the old man wasn’t done with her. That’s when I put a bullet in his ass.

  Or at least tried to.

  The Son reached out with Longinus’s sword and deflected my shot, lead clanging against mystical steel. He laughed at me, and once again I found myself imagining how I’d kill the little bastard; this time I was fist-fucking his ear hole. The thought made me happy. I was on him before he finished smirking.

  Guns still out, I took to pistol-whipping the little fucker. The barrel smashed into
his nose with a satisfying crunch, and I backhanded him with the magazine of the other gun, snapping his head sideways. He was a tough little shit, though.

  The kid turned with the blow and let momentum spin him about. Before I’d even registered what he was doing, he’d driven his stolen sword into my side. I screamed as the magical blade sank into the meat several inches, igniting a fire inside me. The steel ripped free when I jumped backward, keeping him from impaling me. It wasn’t as bad as it could have been, but it was gonna leave a hell of a mark. My entire side throbbed, and I could feel threads of pain pulsing down my leg, threatening to hobble me.

  “Frank!” Scarlett cried out, seeing me get stabbed.

  The old man punched her in the face while she was distracted. She crumpled in surprise, falling to a knee, but the thing few people living know about my cousin is that she takes a hit like a champ. She caught the Father’s second punch in her palm, twisting his wrist away at an ugly angle. He grunted at the unexpected move, but she wasn’t done yet. She drove the pommel of her sword into his breadbasket with the force of a bullet train. There was a sharp crack as the old man’s arm snapped at the elbow, slipping free of Scarlett’s grip, and he went flying, tumbling asshole over elbows. Scarlett hopped to her feet, wiping the blood from her lip as the Spirit closed on her.

  I put my guns away and charged the kid, ignoring my wound as best I could. It slowed me down just enough. The revenant got in a few more slashes at Scarlett, leaving her face and arms dripping blood and ichor, but the ghost would have to do better than that to take her out. The kid, however, was far more effective.

  He darted in under the wailing arms of the Spirit and sliced an ugly gash in Scarlett’s thigh that nearly crippled her. Steel clashed as she batted his sword away, ripping it from her leg, and drove her forehead into the side of his skull. He crumpled, and I took advantage of the opportunity to treat him to some of the abominable power he so despised. My magic hit him like a fiery bulldozer, shredding flesh and setting him alight. The kid shrieked as he was slammed backward, bouncing across the sand.

  Then it was the revenant’s turn.

  Katon got there first. Coated in the blood of the DSI men, he looked like a Walking Dead cast member left out in the sun too long. He came up behind the revenant and cut a hunk of its ghostly essence away with a vicious overhand swing. Its arm and shoulder vanished in a hissing burst of gray smoke. The Holy Spirit roared and whipped about only to be stabbed in the chest and driven back as Katon gouged more of its hoary flesh.

  “You okay?” he asked Scarlett, but he kept his eyes on the ghost. That was when the old man jumped back into the fight.

  A blast of energy slammed into the assassin, and he raised an arm to cover his face. A grunt slipped free of his lips as the power tore at him, searing flesh. He ducked beneath it, trailing wisps of blackened smoke while he dodged away.

  A furious roar cut through all the clatter as Rahim tore through the last of the DSI agents and flung himself at the old man. The Father turned his attack on the wizard, setting Rahim on fire, but old man apparently had a pretty good grasp on physics. Half a ton of angry bear flying through the air isn’t something you’re gonna stop. His magic fluttered, and then so did he, the old man vanishing an instant later. Rahim hit the ground with a reverberating thump, slashing at empty air.

  The revenant hissed, shaking her remaining fist at us. “We will see all of you slaughtered.” She unleashed a burst of energy that went wild, a brimstone stench welling up. That’s when she disappeared.

  Katon screamed then.

  I spun to see the kid riding the vampire’s back, Longinus’s blade cutting a line across Katon’s eyes. The Son grinned maniacally, his face a charred mess, teeth gleaming between melted lips.

  “Our lord has decreed you abomination. He will have your souls!”

  Katon shrugged the Son off before any of us could reach them, but the kid vanished without hitting the ground. His smile still stayed seared across my retinas.

  Scarlett caught Katon as he stumbled, wrapping her arms around him for support. “I’m here, my love. I’m here.” She stared at his injury, eyes narrowed in sympathy.

  He growled low in his throat, but he leaned into her. “I’ll be fine,” he said, but the deep trough cut across his eyes told a different story.

  Both of his eyes were gone.

  Ten

  We rushed Katon back to Hell as quickly as possible. He complained the entire time.

  “Leave me be, damn it. I am not some child who needs to be coddled.”

  “Maybe not, buddy, but you’re gonna need a service dog and a pair of Stevie Wonder glasses for a while.”

  As if to prove my point, he bumped into the chair Scarlett was trying to get him settled into. He grunted and flopped into it, clasping at the stone arms as though he might fall through it. Dude was tough as shit but losing your eyes had to screw him up.

  “Be quiet, Frank,” Scarlett told me as she dropped down on the floor beside him, a painful hiss slipping loose. She touched her hand to the slice in her thigh and pulled it away, blood staining her palm red. She glanced at Katon’s face for a few quiet moments, then over at me. My hand was plastered to my side but there was no missing the blackened seep than ran between my fingers.

  Her eyes met mine. “Am I wrong in thinking I recognize the blade that did all this?” she held up her hand, blood dripping.

  I drew in a deep breath. “Nope, you’d be right on the money.”

  “We can discuss this later,” Rahim cut in. “First, we need to see what we can do to help Katon.”

  “Can he be helped?” Scarlett rounded on the wizard, getting back to her feet. “If Longinus’s sword did this, will he heal?” Her emerald gaze came back to me with all the hardness of diamonds.

  Fortunately, Katon reached out and, though fumbling, took her hand in his. “I’m already healing,” he told her. “It will simply take time. I’ll be fine.”

  Scarlett, not known for her restraint, clearly bit back a comment, her mouth half-opening to spit it out before easing shut. She glared at me for a while, though, not willing to let it go. “How they’d get the sword, Frank?”

  Rahim swooped in again in an effort to save me some grief, but I waved him off.

  “They killed Karra and took it,” I said, fighting not to choke on each and every word.

  The hard expression on her face shattered like broken glass. She gave Katon’s hand a quick squeeze before letting go and flying across the room to wrap me in her arms.

  “I’m so sorry, Frank,” she said, clinging to me as though she never intended to let me go.

  Regardless what she thought of Karra—I think she actually liked her, surprisingly enough—and even more so what she thought of me, Scarlett was blood; family in a way no one else could be. We hated each other, loved each other, tolerated each other, and did all we could to avoid each other on a regular basis, but at the end of the day both of us would move Heaven and Earth for the other. She clung to me, her tears warming my neck. For all my devilish inheritance, she cared; she understood what Karra had meant to me.

  I stood holding her as she whispered apologies and quiet words of sympathy. She trembled in my arms, all raw emotion and heart, feeling sorry for my loss like the true angel she was. I held her and did what any self-respecting man in my position would do in a moment like that.

  I bawled like a little baby.

  There was no holding it back. Soon it was her who was propping me up, keeping me from collapsing. Every time I thought I’d run dry I plumbed a new well of sorrow. California would ransom Hollywood to have as much rain as I was spewing tears. They just kept coming until I was a shaking, wretched mess.

  At some point she’d led me to the chair beside Katon, and I hadn’t even realized it. I snapped to with his hand on my shoulder and Scarlett hunched over my back, doing her best to lend me her strength. Where her fingers clasped, white outlines on my skin told of her fierceness. She wasn’t gonna let me go un
til I was okay. Neither was Katon. For that matter, no one there would.

  Rahim and Rachelle stood arm in arm in front of me. Rachelle’s cheeks were rosy, streaked with silver trails. She saw me looking at her and forced a smile I knew she didn’t feel. We’d come a long way since Abraham’s death, and that brought even more tears to my eyes. I hadn’t been there for her while she’d been suffering it. No, I’d been too worried about being the cause of his death that I stayed away, that I hadn’t shown her how much I cared like she was doing for me.

  “I’m sorry,” I said to her, to all of them; to no one. Life had changed for all of us. There’d been so much loss and pain since the leashes on Heaven and Hell had been severed. Not that life was ever a weekend at Disneyland, mind you, but the two sides had kept things in relative balance. Humanity was still a pile of stinking shit on occasion, but they could be managed, held in check. There was no reining in the supernaturals now, at least not without a fight that would eventually result in us losing someone else. That’s how it’d been the last fifty years. Death had reared its ugly head for the rest of us not labeled as human, and the changing reality was as easily for us to swallow as a poop sandwich. We’d become the shock troopers in a war we never wanted, and all we’d lost was only the beginning. There would be so much more suffering before it was over.

  “The baby?” Scarlett asked as if realizing where my mind was headed.

  “She’s fine,” Rachelle answered. “She’s here and has several of our people looking after her.

  “And she has Chatterbox,” I said, wiping my face on my sleeve.

  “That’s a relief.” Scarlett chuckled. She wiped her brow in mock relief. “I was worried you might have left her alone with the dread fiends.” Her smile gleamed above me.

  Rahim laughed but chose to keep his mouth shut regarding my earlier actions.

  “Speaking of Abigail,” Rachelle started, “I’d best check in on her.” She sighed and wandered off. It was strange seeing her so focused. She’d always been flighty, so off in her own world, but since I’d been back around she seemed more grounded. I let out a sigh as she left the room. Guess death has a way of lashing you to the here and now.