by Marcus Wynne
No shit.
We each wore a simple leather pouch. Jolene had draped them over our necks in a simple ceremony as we left. The pouches each contained a small card with the picture of the Virgin Mary, another with the image of Michael the Archangel, and a small stone infused with the blessings of the Goddess and Mother Earth.
Like all Warriors of the Light sent to stand in harm’s way, we went with the full blessing—and protection—of the Goddess.
“You know what I forgot?” Dillon said.
“What?”
“Bottle of water.”
“I got. Far back, behind you, the small ice chest. Warm, but it’s wet.”
Dillon twisted around and half-climbed into the back and fetched us two bottles. He handed me one.
“Best place to store water is inside yourself,” he said.
I gulped mine down in a hurry. My mouth wasn’t dry from just thirst. “Throw some in the go-bags will you?”
We’d have to stop short and take a piss, but it’s always a good idea to enter into a fight as well hydrated as you can be. Getting shot at—or fighting demons—is thirsty work.
The highway between Minneapolis and Decanter is dark. No lights for long stretches; the faint glow of lights from farmhouses and the occasional offramp over the fifty miles were the only sources of light. There wouldn’t be much in the way of Highway Patrol on a weekday night as the clock approached midnight; after two a.m. there’d be some cruisers out looking for drunks. We’d avoid the main city. My guidance dovetailed into my Google Maps search, which showed an isolated farmhouse—just as I’d been shown—on the south boundary of Decanter. We’d do well to avoid Decanter at night; the police department was full of the possessed and the corrupt, and Dillon and I, to the possessed or other pawns of the Dark Forces, would gleam in their Dark vision like beacons in the night.
My headlights bored a tunnel through the night, just like the tunnel I traveled through . . .
. . . in journey. Tigre bounded beside the car, her long white legs an effortless flow; the light in her eyes brilliant . . . and feral. Burt flew above us, the point man in a long V-formation of crows and ravens, each in a dark gleaming rank, the same formation as the angels, when called to war . . . and when I glanced in the rear view mirror, First In Front, in full war regalia, sat with his eyes closed in prayer, his coup stick in one hand, his war knife in the other, arms crossed on his chest . . .
“Warrior . . .” a soft female voice. I looked at Tigre, who cut her eyes to my front. A beautiful glowing image of a woman wrapped in blue and white who said . . . “Warrior, the Space is held. Look for unseen help and allies . . . You will be tested . . .”
. . . a deep and sudden warmth in the center of my chest, as my heart swelled with recognition of that voice . . .
Dillon’s voice called me back. “Marius? You’re drifting, dude . . .”
I shifted the wheel slightly and eased back into the lane.
“Sorry. Tranced out. Happens sometimes.”
“I know. We’ve got to keep our mind in the game.”
Yes. We did.
CHAPTER 16
We parked the 4Runner off the gravel road that led to the farm; the last mile we’d crept forward on idle, lights out, windows down, listening to the night sounds as we inched closer to the house huddled against the night sky. Walking in was the best way to sneak up on these people; connection to the Earth helped me and my allies keep a cloud around us, hiding us from vision in this world and the next—getting out, well, we’d worry about that when we got that far.
One thing at a time.
I’d learned to trust Dillon’s lead in these things. He was silent, crouched forward slightly, his LMT at a low ready diagonal across his front, his NODs tucked up out of the way, as our eyes were ready for the darkness.
I touched his shoulder, stepped to one side, opened my pants and emptied my bladder. Always a good idea when you know things are going to get hairy. Dillon held security, then when I stepped aside he did the same.
Bladders empty, magazines full.
Time to go to work.
We knelt and watched the long driveway. The house gleamed at the end of it. One light on upstairs; a hint of light from the basement windows.
Of course they’d be under the ground.
A sense of foreboding. Weight on our chest. A chill at the back of our necks, and a sense that an unseen vise was closing around our heads. The Dark Forces cast a cloud, and that cloud can fog your mind, your thinking, even your vision and your hearing. But when you recognize it, you call on the Light . . .
Michael, beloved Archangel, I call on you and the Mighty Warriors of Light on Earth, to fill and infuse me with your Divine Love and Protection . . .
Like a bright camera flash from within, the fog lifted and our clarity returned, and that which was slipping in like a dark fog was repelled . . . but it was still out there . . .
“Marius, follow me,” Tigre whispered.
In my Other World vision she took point, padding along the right edge of the driveway . . . above us Burt circled, as implacable as a drone in the Middle World, and right beside me, where he always was in the fight, First In Front, his eyes narrowed and intense . . .
Dillon scanned left and right, his carbine muzzle tracking with his eyes, and I saw him lean in, hurry the pace up . . .
. . . in the Other Realm, he was a warrior whose long stride was lengthening as though to gather speed for the first throw of the javelin he held . . .
Sabrina?
Tigre shook her head no—“Stay focused, Marius. We hold the space. As does Jolene. This is Middle World. We can only work through you and her—Jolene is holding them.”
And my stride began to lengthen, too.
And Tigre began to sprint . . .
And so did we all.
And the first of the Dark Guardians turned in the front yard and ran towards us—
—a gigantic three-headed pit bull, maybe three or four hundred pounds, the size of a small cow. But fast as a pit bull.
Ever see a pit bull run?
Dillon broke to the right, I broke to the left and . . .
. . . in the Other Realms, a murder of crows descended on the black hole shaped like a three-headed pit bull . . .
. . . we started pouring bullets into the Cerberus on steroids rushing at us. Dillon worked full auto; he walked the rounds onto the charging pit bull, which flinched, but kept on coming; I rolled my trigger fast-fast-fast-fast and saw at least two hits; the EOTech was fast as can be for this kind of action, but the pit bull wasn’t slowing down and it was close enough to see the size of its teeth in each head, the eyes rolling red, the teeth the size of a child’s pinky, crooked in a “c’mere baby” fashion, and it looked like there might be an extra row or two in there, just like a great white shark and . . .
“Marius the bullets aren’t . . .”
Working? Yep. Dad gum it. Pesky Dark Side entities, which didn’t forebode well for our already compromised entry, but these things happen when you bring the fight to the Dark Forces door. I grabbed my Smith Revolver and did my best Jerry Miculek imitation, set the front sight on the three-headed pit bull and pulled the trigger bang-bang-bang-bang . . . the .357 hand loads shot flame like the Sword of Michael at the End of Days and the alloy of silver, lead and iron struck the pit bull as it launched into an impossibly long leap, necks outstretched, jaws gaping wide with multiple rows of teeth . . .
. . . and each bullet strike on the Other Realms flared brilliant blue-white, the white of the sun at the height of the day, the brilliant White Light of the Creator, striking down the Darkness . . .
And the three-headed pit bull fell and skidded to a stop right at our feet, four huge smoking holes in its body.
“Nice shooting . . .” Dillon began.
The heads reared up and snapped at us. We sprang back. The center head snapped and continued to snap, and the two side heads dug in and dragged itself along at us.
That
’s why an eight-shot revolver is a good idea.
Three shots to the heads and one more to the body, dump the casings, speed loader in.
But now the lights were on in the house. The lights were on, and somebody’s home . . .
We replenished mags and advanced on the house.
The second wave sprang out of the door.
Literally sprang.
Like those pictures of centaurs dancing along, except these bad boys had goat heads. They’d dispensed with their clothing. Below the waist, they had goat legs and massively engorged penises flopping back and forth, human torsos wrapped with what looked like Mayflower Trading Company plate carriers and mag pouches (how do they get all the best gear?), M4s tucked into their shoulders and the goat heads scanning . . .
The lights went out in the house.
Full dark.
We dropped our NODs into place, and saw the IR lasers aimed from their platforms. Apparently those goat heads had their purpose; maybe goats can see infrared, or maybe it was a custom mod configured for the Dark Forces by the black-lab geneticists and biologists. We weren’t modded by the black labs, but we had the best NODs Dillon could steal. Problem with IR lasers, as any recent generation of shooter with time in the Sandbox can tell you, is that it works both ways. Fine if you’re fighting people who don’t have the technology; not so fine if you’re careless and assume they don’t. They had IR, so did we—but we could see it with the NODs, and we could put our EOTechs right over the source of that beam we saw without switching ours on and—
—ever heard of “shooting fish in a barrel?” We were shooting goats in the dark.
Of course, they shot back.
Oh, and Hornady TAP works awesome on goats, or goat-humans, or goat-taurs, whatever you call ’em.
Dillon was systematic, in the zone. He worked the trigger on full-auto, no sear-designated controlled burst for him; he liked the finesse required and he could tweak out a single round, a double hammer, a triple burst or light ’em up with a full magazine while dancing sideways like a tango dancer shadow-dancing. He’d worked out a short burst of three to four per goat which dropped them decisively; they tried to converge their IR lasers on us but we were moving in tandem, enough space between us to keep them from tracking us both at the same time and enough firepower to keep them from concentrating.
I kept up the cadence, as Dillon had coached me and never let there be a lull in the fire just keep working the trigger and the brass arced over us both like the Rainbow Bridge of Asgard and track the targets across their front, tracking back to service them some more if they hadn’t already fallen out of my sight picture, and then tracking them down to the ground, a couple more anchor rounds in them, their blood black in the NODs.
A flare of gunfire from one of the darkened windows and Dillon met it with a full magazine is worth of full-auto that chewed up the window frame and lit up whatever was standing there.
And then a moment of stillness, when we realized all the goats were down, and the click as we inserted fresh magazines, our boots clinking amongst the fallen brass.
Wave three met us on the run, pouring out the door, crouched over their M4s. Men, or at least they looked like men—
“Cabal clones,” Tigre murmured . . . “Hurry, Marius, you must get in and downstairs . . .”
A formation of crows flew at them and First In Front leapt forward—
In the First War of the Angels, and in the War That Is Upon Us, the Angels of the Presence of God, the Faithful, have a battle cry. They stand in glowing ranks, the V-formation, and at the tip of the spear of the very vanguard of the Creator’s Army, stands the General of the Lord’s Host, who always leads from the front, and it is his name they cry as they charge forward—
“MIIII-KAI-ELLLL!”
Dillon and I were abreast and the fire we unleashed was withering the sickles in the wheat and the tares.
Cabal clones are capable of independent thought, of passing for humans, though they are easily muddled by the Light of the Creator when focused with intention, and the sound that issued from Dillon’s mouth and mine was an ancient one, one with a visceral energetic connection and meaning to those of the Dark—and it was the battle cry of those who wrought their undoing.
We were almost to the door, our wake littered with expended cases and the fallen carcasses of the soulless. The last clone fell. His vest said DHS. Among the other fallen were vests that said POLICE, SHERIFF, FEDERAL AGENT, SECURITY.
They needed one that said CABAL.
In the Other Realms, that’s what it looked like.
The door frame exploded. Literally. The wood framing ignited and blew outwards like det-cord wrapped around an old-school breaching charge. The door splintered and sent hot fragments pelting us and into the yard.
Dillon and I fell back a step, arms up to shield our faces. I had some fragments lodged in my face, but my Oakley goggles had protected my eyes.
At least from the fragments.
In the door was the demon who’d taken Sabrina.
And it had taken off the veiling hood it wore in the parking lot.
I could see why it wore a hood.
Remember Medusa? How she froze all those who gazed upon her, turned them into stone? This guy looked like Medusa on her worst day crossed with one of those giant pit bulls on rabies. Or maybe like the Balrog from Lord of the Rings. But worse. And the face shifted . . .
. . . the bully that tormented you in grade school . . . the face of a murderer in a TV show . . . the glare of a mass killing shooter captured, looking back over his shoulder at the news cameras . . . the face of nightmares past, present and future, constantly shifting . . . every bad thing we’d ever been afraid of, shifting across its face, and then it raised its hand and . . .
We were blown back like cartoon characters across the yard, tumbling end over end.
But we held onto our weapons.
Dillon rolled to his knees, fired a burst at the demon on the threshold.
Nothing. No joy.
He looked at me. “You’re on point, Marius.”
Gee. Thanks.
The demon wasn’t advancing. It held its point at the threshold. Which meant there was probably a containment barrier there, an energetic leash if you will, to prevent it from running amok to and fro. So we had to get past it, which meant through it or . . . around it.
We got up and as it raised its hand, I saw . . .
. . . in the Other Realm, Tigre throw herself in front and lunged at it . . .
“No!” I shouted.
“Tend to your fight in your realm, shaman,” she whispered as though in my ear. “I love you for wanting to stand in front of me, but it is my job and task to stand in front of you. Go quickly . . . Now!”
And we dashed for a side window as the demon batted and wrestled with something unseen to Middle World vision. The window Dillon had shot full of holes looked good enough. I stuck my head in and looked into a much-shattered front room, old and musty, and the demon wrestled to our left . . .
Dillon knelt and I stepped on his knee and went through, then reached back and pulled him in. We both took some small cuts so maybe it was the scent of blood that caused the demon to turn and glare at us.
“Don’t look at it, Dillon!” I shouted.
The demon was struck from behind, and I saw . . .
. . . Tigre batting it with both paws, teeth sunk in at the base of its neck, First In Front circling, his knife glowing from that which issued from the demon’s guts, Burt swarming in followed by a murder of crows, filling the room . . . and swarming around a stairway that led down, down, down . . .
The fifth wave showed up.
All three of them.
The first one was young, maybe nineteen, tall and slim and blond, wreathed in black, full sleeve tattoos; she had moon and crescent earrings that gleamed like her oversized incisor teeth protruding from disturbingly full lips and the scent . . .
“Vampire succubus, Marius, beware the smell,
watch Dillon . . .”
“Dillon! Step back . . . don’t look at them, don’t smell them . . .” I shouted.
Her companion was a boy about the same age, dressed much the same, feminine and languid in his motion, his fingers sporting long artificial claws of razor-sharp metal, dragging them across the wall like Freddy Kreuger and humming a child’s lullaby . . .
The last one was like a matron, middle-aged and thick, with black holes where eyes would have been. Her incisors protruded like a boar’s, and she clacked them and held up both hands where a single hornlike razor-sharp claw extended like a Dark Side Wolverine’s . . .
“Steel and silver, iron and lead, Dillon,” I said.
They sprang up and bounced off the walls and ceiling, the pack of three working to split us up to finish us off. Dillon and I pressed back to back.
It was time to open the Super Soaker.
I felt just like John Malkovich in Red when he got to open the pig.
I sprayed an arc around us that misted the air; vampires are fast, inhumanly so (pun intended) but they hit that mist of sacred water like Wile E. Coyote into a brick wall. Vampire screams are like bat calls, but amplified—the sound hurt our ears, reverberated in the room.
It will repel them, but it won’t kill them unless they are immersed in it, and even then not right away. A vampire—and their shape-shifting kin, the werewolf—requires an infusion of silver and iron and cold steel, administered and repeated as needed.
Time for my Jerry Miculek Smith Custom.
Nothing like a .357 hand cannon to say “Old School.”
In the fight, when you’re aligned with the Light, and in the right, there’s a sense of being and not-being, a sense of being a portal for the Mighty Warriors of Light on Earth, who guide us, who strengthen our hands for battle, and guide us. I’m a fair shot most of the time, and I get plenty of practice on Dark Siders, but even on my best day I never shot as fast and as accurately as I did just now BOOM-BOOM-BOOM-BOOM-BOOM-BOOM-BOOM-BOOM click . . .
Oh, how I hate that sound . . .
I dumped the expended casings and grabbed for a speed loader . . .