by Jenny McKane
That got a sigh out of Metatron who opened his mouth to speak before closing it—obviously thinking better of what he was about to say.
The awkward silence was just about to get the best of Sunny, but the archangel finally spoke.
“In terms of what we’re doing here, you’ve got the most important job, right? The pressure and weight are really on your shoulders to get all of this right,” he explained, his voice low. “But our job, collectively as the rest of the group, is really just to keep you alive. There’s no other way of putting it, Sunny. You save the world, we keep you alive. And Eli’s really good at what he does.”
Metatron paused for a moment. Sunny wondered what he was grappling with in his speech.
“And now he has emotions involved, so it’s messy,” the archangel said. “You have to give him a little leeway to mess up a few times as he finds his footing on this new ground.”
What had Eli so emotional? She could only guess it was the betrayal they’d all suffered from Gideon. From the way Metatron was phrasing things, it was almost as if Metatron believed Eli had some sort of crush on Sunny, but that was ludicrous.
Wasn’t it?
Chapter Nineteen
The town wasn’t really Salt Lake City, it turned out, which was about 50 miles to the west. They’d actually traveled to a small town called Shooting Star, Utah.
According to Ronnie, Shooting Star was on sacred lands and had several different guardians keeping it safe because it held a few sacred elements that the tribes didn’t want getting into the wrong hands.
As soon as Ronnie had been introduced to Plaxo, a lightbulb had gone off in his head.
“You can shut portals down faster than we can,” he’d said, to which Plaxo didn’t have much to say. Most humans made him a little shy. “We’ve got a situation getting out of control up near Salt Lake that could really use some assistance.”
So they’d agreed. Plaxo, too, though he hadn’t said much before disappearing. He was going to use his link with Sunny to jump to wherever they got to and would break the portal that Camael was currently using.
Now, just outside of town at a gas station, they’d pulled their cars into the parking lot and were planning their entry strategy.
“Most of the folks in town have evacuated,” Ronnie said as he picked through a bag of beef jerky. “Jericho is on her way and will be better able to explain what happened here and what they are trying to do to stop it.”
They were on the outskirts of town and the sun was drifting in the sky. Night was still some time away, but it was definitely drawing on the afternoon and Sunny got the sudden feeling she didn’t want to be inside the city limits of this little town after dark. There was nothing much that she could see from where she was--but there was an energy to it that she couldn’t deny.
Something was definitely dark and dangerous, and if Sunny wasn’t crazy, it seemed to know they were there, too.
“Jericho is one of the leaders of the volunteers around here,” Ronnie explained. “Folks from all corners got together about two months ago when rumors started. And when things broke loose last month, they’d already amassed small units that could protect folks who were trying to escape or hold down territory, if need be.”
“Do these areas get hit a lot? Outside this area, it’s mostly big cities so far,” Eli asked.
He and Gabriel would know--they’d spent a lot of time travelling together while Sunny was recovering.
“More than you would think,” Ronnie replied. “Think about it--all the sacred boundaries, the amped up power from centuries of belief and worship of the old gods. It’s the perfect place to build portals and potentially even target tribe members.”
That caught Sunny’s attention.
“Target them how?”
Ronnie let out a long breath and scowled toward the distance he was facing.
“We think they might have turned a couple of our people into one of them,” he said.
“Into a nox?” Sunny could hardly believe the words.
“Not sure,” Ronnie answered her. “But we’ve had disappearances and nobody has seen these guys since. Strong, young men who were working with the volunteers to patrol areas they were worried about. Just vanished, never to be seen again.”
That sounded bad. Really bad.
“How many have gone missing? And from what places?”
Ronnie considered the question a moment before he replied.
“I’d say we’ve lost eight men now,” he finally said. “And from all four states from the Four Corners area. It’s not just one location.”
Just as Sunny wanted to ask another question, the sound of tires on pavement and a humming engine cut her off. Someone was coming.
Sure enough, a few seconds later, a large white pickup truck roared around a nearby corner and angled straight towards them, stopping with a few inches of Gabriel’s bumper.
“Damn,” Eli said, obviously worried just a little that the truck was going to take out the sportscar.
“My friends, this is Jericho,” Ronnie said, a definite note of pride in his voice as the young woman stepped from the truck. Sunny was momentarily awestruck at how pretty this bad-ass militia leader was--she definitely hadn’t been expecting that.
Ronnie introduced Sunny first.
“This is Sunshine,” he said as Jericho stepped forward to shake Sunny’s hand. She had long, black hair that hung in a braid straight down her back to her waist. Her skin was tanned and smooth and her dark brown eyes were sharp, but at the same time friendly. “Sunny is the Solomon.”
He said the word like he was whispering an oath, making Sunny a little uncomfortable. Jericho didn’t seem fazed, though, and gave Sunny a firm handshake.
“It’s nice to meet you,” she said as she pulled her aviator sunglasses from the top of her head and put them back in the truck.
Ronnie went on to introduce Jericho to the rest of the group, one by one, until all introductions had been made.
“Jericho’s not just a fearless demon fighter, she’s also my middle child,” Ronnie announced a little proudly. Jericho looked embarrassed at the older man’s display of obvious pride.
“I’m glad you all are here,” she said. “I’m sure my dad has filled you in on what we’re facing here, so if you’re ready, we can head to the site.”
“Site?” Gabriel asked.
“The portal,” she said. “We’ve got it mapped and narrowed down to a building on the far south side of the town. We haven’t gone in yet because we don’t know how to destroy the thing.”
That was where Plaxo would come in, but he’d already told Sunny that he wasn’t going to show himself on the mission. The less humans who knew about him and what he could do, the better. He’d appear when he was needed and be gone before anyone outside of their group knew better.
“The ride in should be good, they’re less active at this time of the day,” she continued. “When we get there, a couple of my guys will meet us and provide a little backup. I expect the smaller ones will wake up first and we’ll have to keep them off our backs. They’re small, but they’re pretty overwhelming when their numbers swell. The big guys might be inside for all I know--we simply don’t know what’s guarding the portal.”
That sounded nice and ominous to Sunny, who swallowed hard. Turning to Asmodeus, she tried to keep her voice down.
“Is this a situation that the generals could help with?”
“Could? Yes. But would they? I don’t know. Highly unlikely,” the archdemon said. “This isn’t exactly in their scope of work--they’ll have more leeway to fight you on this. My guess is it wouldn’t be worth it, but you can try.”
He didn’t exactly give her answers, but he didn’t totally wipe his hands from the situation, being the master at not committing to things that he was.
“What about Agares? He seems to be kind of friendly to me? Do you think he’d help?”
The closer they were to the actual fight, and there was no doubt
in Sunny’s mind that that was exactly what they were headed towards, the more nervous she got. She was in a near panic thinking about the unexpected. She wasn’t good at this—this not knowing.
“Solomon, calm down,” Asmodeus said. The words were probably meant to be encouraging but the tone fell short. He sounded annoyed at Sunny. “You haven’t even seen what’s going on yet. Isn’t it a bit premature to start assuming you’re out of your league this early?”
While he had a point, it was still sort of insulting. She wasn’t panicking—was she?
Instead of giving him a response, she shot Asmodeus a cold glare and got back to the conversation at hand.
“So we’re going to walk in from a few blocks out?”
Jericho nodded at that.
“From what we’ve gathered, the portal hasn’t been active in a couple days, so there’s a good chance the building is mostly empty,” Jericho said. “For the most part, the demons arrive on this side and get moving pretty quickly. We’re not sure if they’re thinking freely or have some sort of set of orders of somewhere to report—we don’t get a chance to ask them questions. Either way, they move out of Shooting Star within a day or so of coming across.”
Where would they be heading? There weren’t many reports out of area metro cities yet. Where were they headed?
No matter. They’d close this portal down and figure that part out later.
“On foot, you’ve got to move quickly and quietly past the old laundromat,” Jericho continued. “It’s attracted a lot of the smaller ones for some reason and they haven’t moved on in a few weeks. We had a guy get his hand bitten off two weeks ago from one of those bastards holed up in there. There’s no way to reach the Grayman Building without passing it, though, so you’ve been warned.”
Sunny sighed. Damn. Small, viscous demons were just as annoying as the big, stupid ones. The small ones were easier to kill, but they were also a lot faster and more agile. It was a trade off and it seemed like the humans around here were getting the raw end of the deal. Hopefully, she and her group wouldn’t meet similar fates—Sunny was rather attached to her limbs and wanted to keep it that way.
Jericho went on with her plans.
“We don’t know much about this building,” she said. “It’s been abandoned and nobody that lives in Shooting Star can tell us much about it, but from we can tell, the portal is on the first floor in the back—where there’s an old commercial kitchen. The place used to be a diner.”
Sunny was running the facts through her mind. Diner. First floor. Portal. Small demons. At least the homegrown militia was coming, too, so Sunny didn’t have to run point on an operation that she wasn’t familiar with. Jericho seemed like she’d been doing this for a while and Sunny was relieved to have someone to shadow for once.
Leadership seemed to come naturally for Jericho, as she stood toe to toe with an archangel and an archdemon and basically told them where to stand and where to stab the pointy end of their swords—as though they’d never been in a battle before.
“With the small ones, you have to get them in the neck,” she was explaining, while she made a thrusting motion with her hand. “If you hit anything but the neck, you’ll either break your blade or you’ll just piss it off. And watch the ones with the wings. They’re blood’s corrosive.”
Sunny shot a look to Asmodeus.
“Seriously?” She was doing her best not to whine, but demons with battery acid for blood was really pushing it. She hadn’t trained in weeks and she was coming off a serious round of bed rest and meditation.
“Do your job, Solomon,” the archdemon simply said. “You whine like a mule. It’s unbecoming.”
Unbecoming. Sunny couldn’t give a rat’s ass about being unbecoming right now.
Jericho checked her watch and nodded.
“They should give me a call in about five minutes and we’ll head out,” she said to Sunny. “Will the dream demon be ready?”
Sunny had no clue, but she wasn’t about to admit that.
“He’ll be ready,” she said, instead.
Jericho gave her a curt nod before turning to Ronnie and listening to him catch her up on events from the past couple days. Including the Skinwalkers.
Jericho’s eyes went wide as she looked over to Sunny.
“You’re either really brave, or incredibly stupid,” she said. “Everyone knows better than to make deals with Skinwalkers.”
Suddenly forgetting all the great things she was thinking about Jericho just moments earlier, Sunny felt her jaw tighten and her teeth clench together.
“Maybe a little of both,” she said tightly. “Perhaps a dash of desperation and a sprinkle of having to think on my toes, too. My manual on how to do these sorts of things was apparently lost in the mail.”
Jericho didn’t exactly look duly chastised, but she had the good sense to accept what Sunny said without any more passive aggressive comments.
“This should be an interesting fight,” Jericho finally said as her cellphone rang. She answered it and had a short conversation as she looked down a road behind them, waiting. When a vehicle in the distance came into view, Jericho hung up.
“It’s time,” she said as she headed toward her truck.
“Can I ride with you?” Sin called as he jogged toward her.
Sunny had to bite her lip at Sin’s obviousness. He was clearly smitten. Eli just shook his head and Metatron smiled. Gabriel and Asmodeus either didn’t see or chose not to acknowledge Sin’s awkward attempt at getting a little alone time with the new girl.
Clearly, Sin didn’t realize the new girl could chew him up and spit him out without a second thought. She was unlike anyone he’d likely met in his life and Sunny wasn’t sure just what he was trying to accomplish.
To everyone’s surprise, probably Sin the most, Jericho gave a nonchalant shrug and agreed.
With a triumphant grin a mile wide, Sin, climbed into the passenger’s seat and buckled himself in before Jericho took off down the road toward the town of Shooting Star.
Metatron motioned for Sunny to get into their car and she couldn’t help but notice that Eli didn’t join them—choosing to stay with Gabriel.
Chapter Twenty
There really wasn’t much to Shooting Star, Utah.
Nothing, really, but a gas station, a laundromat, a court house, an empty grocery store and a library building. Jericho mentioned there was an elementary-middle school on the outskirts of town, as well as a high school the town shared with the neighboring village of Glemmings. But downtown Shooting Star had a handful of buildings that made up its business district and most of them looked like they might have been out of business long before the demons showed up.
They pulled in to the old grocery store and killed their engines. Jericho backed her truck in so that the front of it was facing the parking lot’s exit. Both Metatron and Gabriel must have seen the wisdom in that and followed suit.
The other vehicle she’d been waiting on parked beside her and four men got out. They ranged from late 20s to early 50s and Jericho made the introductions to Pete, Keller, Billy, and Wayne. They were from New Mexico and had been out with Jericho and the volunteers for about a month now. Five of them had left their home in Gallup. Their friend, Paco, had been one of the young men taken by the demons in a fight they’d gotten into near Shiprock.
They didn’t get into much detail. They didn’t have to—their worn faces and tired, sad eyes made clear exactly what they were feeling and a small glimpse into what they’d gone through.
Small talk wasn’t really an issue, as everyone quietly started assembling their weapons and armor for the upcoming fight. Sunny had her sword, the one with the runes on it, as well as the two obsidian blades—the one from Michael that she’d taken into Hell, and the one that Eli had gotten her after she returned.
The volunteers had Samurai-style swords and each of them had at least one pistol on them.
“Any luck with guns?” Eli asked Wayne, the oldest one in t
he group. The older man looked at the Beretta in front of him a moment.
“Not really, but I’m not certain I keep it on me for the demons,” he said, his voice low. “I think mostly I keep it on me in case I get taken by them.”
Sunny swallowed hard at the sentiment. They were prepared to kill themselves instead of being taken by the demons for whatever they had planned for them. She couldn’t meet Eli’s eyes as she finished getting herself ready. Since they’d returned to the States, Gabriel and Eli had invested in armor.
Sunny had initially balked at the idea when Eli had brought it up when they first set out on the road earlier in the day.
“No way,” she said, imagining heavy medieval armor. But what Gabriel had found fit Sunny like a glove, going just over her t-shirt and lacing up like a corset. She put her sweatshirt on over it and could hardly tell she was wearing something that would help stop an angry talon or tooth. They were genius.
“I love it,” she said to Gabriel, who was adjusting his. The ties were on the sides, making it easy for the wearer to take it off and on themselves.
“I’m glad,” he said as he finished with his own and replaced his jacket. “Just don’t let it lure you into a false sense of security. It’s only leather, Sunny. Keep the demons off you and in front of you. Is Plaxo ready?”
Sunny couldn’t sense the dream demon nearby, but that didn’t necessarily mean anything.
“He’ll be here when he needs to,” she answered, seriously hoping it was true.
Gabriel nodded and joined Metatron and Asmodeus who were engaged in a serious conversation.
“Obsidian,” Metatron said as Sunny joined them.
“Inherent risks,” Asmodeus replied. “It works on the more human of demons, but on the animalistic species, obsidian can merely enrage them. Even if they die, they’re going to inflict as much damage as possible on the way out. You need to be careful.”
He was looking at Sunny as he said the last words. She knew it, too. Her obsidian blades could end the very existence of a demon with the right cut, but it could also wreak a lot of havoc, too. It was why she preferred a runed sword, despite not knowing exactly what happened to a demon that was taken out by it. Nobody knew, really, not even Metatron, who had given her the thing.