It was time to get into the groove. I cranked up the tunes and tried to relax.
I pulled my car off the road and onto the dirt shoulder about half a mile from where the GPS said Balthazar’s home away from home was. I’d have to make the rest of the way there on foot if I didn’t want to draw too much attention to myself. It wouldn’t make for a quick getaway, but driving right up to the front door wasn’t an option. A little stealth would go a long way here.
The last thing I wanted was for him to know that I was coming. If Benny did his job rounding up the goon squad at Rain’s, then Balthazar shouldn’t have gotten a heads up.
My spell bag fit comfortably over one shoulder. It was all I had between me and whatever was waiting up the road. I’d never actually needed weapons before. I hadn’t fired an actual gun in years. The only other thing I had with me was my folding knife.
I pulled that and a piece of chalk out of my jeans pocket. A few quick scrolls on the hood of the car with the chalk and it was time to prick my finger. I set my left finger down in the center of the ward I drew and spoke a word of power. “Occultatum!”
The car shimmered for a second and disappeared. Let’s hope no one needed to pull off the road. If they did, they were in for a nasty surprise. The next drop of blood went onto my right forearm, and I felt my personal wards activate.
The use of blood in your magic is most disturbing, Gideon said.
It’s only a way for me to add additional power to my wards; don’t read too much into it.
No response from the angel was normally a good response. That or he was trying to think of a way to subjugate me still. I knew everything that I did wasn’t strictly on the up and up, but you had to do whatever was needed when you went up against demons. They were ruthless and showed zero remorse when they decided to act.
With my wards in place and the car hidden, I started walking into the woods. I needed to get in far enough that I couldn’t be seen from the road, but not so far that I would get lost and miss my destination. I wasn’t exactly what you would call outdoorsy. Sure, I’d gone hiking before; everyone in Oregon hikes.
The weather here is damn near perfect unless you get caught in an afternoon storm. Even then, it’s not so bad as long as it isn’t an all-day rager. That being said, I always stuck to the well-traveled hiking trails and didn’t venture off them. No one wanted to get bear raped, or lost, but mostly the first one.
After walking for about ten minutes, I turned and headed back parallel to where I thought the road was. This was going to be an interesting experiment, and I was counting on Gideon to let me know if anyone was watching my approach. He had that angel radar thing going on which was pretty damn helpful. If my navigation skills were anything close to accurate, I figured I’d be to Balthazar’s cabin in less than fifteen minutes.
Half an hour later, the wall surrounding Balthazar’s cabin came into view. I hadn’t spent a lot of time in cabins, but as far as I knew, most of them didn’t come with ten-foot walls around them.
Sweat dripped into my eyes as I looked up at the last climb before the wall. Slogging through the forest wasn’t all it was cracked up to be either. In the future, I’d keep my hiking to the trails where you didn’t have uneven footing and branches slapping you in the face every three feet.
Yeah, I was being a bitch, but that was just my way of dealing with my nerves.
Gideon, you sensing anything out there? I asked.
I can’t see into the compound. I’m being blocked somehow.
Probably from Balthazar’s wards. Now that was something I could handle. Breaking down wards and excorising demons was right up my alley. Moving towards the wall, I reached out to my angelic counterpart one more time. Just keep an eye out for anything you may see, and I’ll work on bring these wards down.
Regardless of the fact Gideon couldn’t see anything—at least, I didn’t think he could without looking through my eyes—I would have had to check for and dismantle any wards I ran into before entering anyways.
It never paid to let your enemy have a leg up on you for any reason. I knew I wouldn’t be able to get all of them, but if I breached enough of them, I’d have a fighting chance. Balthazar was as tricky as he was paranoid and that meant he’d have guards and a few nasty surprises inside these walls as well.
I slashed the palm of my right hand with my folding knife and placed it against the wall. “Revelare Ipsum!”
Now, I could see the network of interlocking wards set into the stones. I’d have to move around the wall to deactivate them, but it could be done. Following the lines of power gave me a sense of the size of the entirety of Balthazar’s wooded retreat, and I realized this couldn’t be a single cabin, not unless it was huge.
This area was big enough to be considered a compound. The more I thought about how I let Balthazar slide, the more I realized how stupid I had been. I’d let this man create something evil in my own backyard.
Today, that was going to change.
The next three hours seemed to fly by. Wasn’t that always how it worked when you were doing something that required your complete focus? One second it’s two in the afternoon, the next time you look up it’s six p.m.
That was if you were lucky. I’d had entire days slip away when I was working on a new spell. Because of Rain, I didn’t have that kind of time. I kept my thoughts and my movements quick and sharp. A few more key points and I’d have almost all of Balthazar’s defenses down. The second that happened, he would know that something was going on. With Gideon’s help, however, I hoped Balthazar wouldn’t be able to stop it.
The last wardstone that I needed to destroy was on the opposite side of the compound from where I was. Calling this place a compound felt right even though I had yet to get a look inside the walls. For all I knew, it could just be a heavily fortified cabin with a lot of open ground around it, but I didn’t think so.
I slowly made my way back around the walls, counting on Gideon to inform me if anyone was patrolling in the forest that surrounded us. He hadn’t said anything yet, so I assumed that everything was all clear.
The last stone I needed to destroy glowed faintly blue to my vision from the spell I had cast earlier. I reached into my bag and grabbed a bag of dried herbs I used to ward against general evil. It was filled with angelica, basil, cloves, and rowan wood chips. All it needed now was a few drops of my blood, and we would be in business.
I gently cut along the same slash I had made to use the reveal spell earlier and then held the bag in that hand, letting my blood mix with the contents inside.
Inside of my bag, I also kept a tiny hammer and an iron nail. Placing the activated herbs over the last wardstone, I nailed it in place. The hammer found its way back into my bag, and I reached out to my angelic partner. Gideon, you ready for this?
I am always ready to render evil asunder, Bozley Green.
You can just call me Bozz, everyone else does.
With the bag firmly in place, it was time to cast the small bit of magic that would bring Balthazar’s carefully crafted wards crashing down. “Liquescimus!”
I pushed the bag firmly against the stone and held it there for a moment before pulling my hand away. I watched as the bag and the nail melted, and then I felt Balthazar’s magic come tumbling down.
Bozz, we have a problem.
How did we have a problem already? Care to elaborate?
You need to run, now!
When an angel tells you to run, you don’t ask questions; you just get the fuck out of there. My guess was that something big and bad was headed our way, and I needed to move quickly to avoid it.
Not one something, many somethings, Gideon corrected.
Again, not so helpful unless you can tell me what they are and how to beat them, I said.
In your world, I believe they are called zombies.
That certainly got my fucking attention. You have to be shitting me.
I do not share your same bodily functions, he replied, once again
reminding me that I needed to teach him all about sarcasm and colloquialisms.
I felt a laugh burst from my lips as I moved deeper into the forest. It’s just an expression.
I’d heard tales of other creatures out in the world, but I’d always dismissed them. Demons were all I had ever seen, and it was just flat out easier to believe the other things that scared the shit out of me as a kid didn’t really exist. In general, I knew there was a heaven, but I’d never really believed in it all the way until Gideon landed in my lap.
These corpses have been animated by demonic energy. You either need to find the source and destroy it, or destroy the corpses themselves, Gideon instructed.
So, can I just hit them really hard in the head or something?
Only if you don’t want to live long enough to save Rain.
Maybe he only needed colloquial lessons. Gideon was definitely starting to pick up on some of my sarcastic personality. I wasn’t sure that was a good thing, especially in a time like this. Then what do I do?
I’ve always preferred fire or dismemberment when facing the denizens of hell.
I don’t know about you, but I can’t create that much fire and all I have is my folding knife.
Hence the running, he quipped.
Now I knew for sure he was picking up on my snark. The last thing I fucking needed was an angel siting on my shoulder that was just as sarcastic as I was. How would we ever get anything done?
I kept running, but I could hear the zombies catching up with me. These weren’t your average shuffling horde zombies. These suckers moved fast. There was no way I could keep this pace up for long, and when I got tired and they didn’t, I’d become zombie treats.
Fuck, that sounded horrible.
If I couldn’t beat them on foot, I’d have to try and make it back to the car. Nothing said hello like crashing through the front gates of your enemy’s compound with a horde of zombies chasing your ass.
Ducking under a tree, I came back up and started sprinting. I had to make it, I was Rain’s only chance. As my feet flew over the dense forest floor, I tried to think if there was anything in the car that would help me. Sometimes David had a gun, but he wasn’t here, and it wouldn’t be like him to just leave a weapon in the car. But last summer he had added an extensive emergency kit to the trunk. There might have even been a gas can in there. The faint rumblings of a plan started to form as I ran for my life.
The car was still hidden, and I thought for a second of just trying to hide inside of it. Maybe the zombies would just wander off if they couldn’t sense me anymore. Then again, if they were tainted with demonic energy, they could just end up ripping the car to shreds and me along with it. So, with hiding off the agenda and the snarls of the zombies growing closer, I threw my half-assed plan into motion.
The trunk popped open as I was running towards the car. I came to a skidding halt and reached inside. There was a gas can, but the damn thing was empty. Made sense. I mean, you couldn’t drive around with a full gas can in the trunk of your car. Not unless you wanted bad things to happen.
Inside David’s kit I found a little bit of plastic tubing. Then I moved towards the side of the car and flipped open the flap and unscrewed the lid. With the tubing inside, I started to suck until the first splash of gasoline hit my tongue.
“Fucking gross.”
I spit out what I could and shoved the other end of the tube into the can. It wouldn’t be long before the zombies reached me; I had a few minutes at most. I could hear the horde smashing through the trees as they drew closer.
The plastic can was starting to overflow, so I yanked the tube out of the tank and tossed it aside. Yeah I was littering the fuck out of this forest road, but if I lived, I promised to pick it up or pay someone else to do it for me. The tube was going to be the least of the forest’s problems if my plan worked.
Smokey the fucking Bear was about to have a real bad day.
The first of the zombies came into view. Oh man, they were gross. Walking cadavers was a nice way to describe them. They actually looked more like the people that came back from hell in the early Hellraiser movies. No skin, lots of wet, gooey muscles.
I wondered what the guys who put those flix together would think of the walking embodiments of their nightmares.
These corpses were all ropy muscle and seemed to be bleeding as they ran. Looking over them now, I couldn’t tell you if they were men or women. What I did see was that there were a lot of them, at least twenty. “I’m going to need your strength for this.”
You have it, Gideon replied with confidence.
With everything I had, I tossed the full gas can into the air. As it arced over the zombies, I shouted. “Incendium!” The gas can burst apart, showering the demonic undead with its contents.
If you thought zombies couldn’t scream, you were wrong. As the gas touched their exposed muscles, the zombies let out a collective roar of rage. If this didn’t work, I might not have time to get into the car, let alone drive it away.
At least the fire actually hurt them, and unless they retained some of their spots, it should also confuse them, or so I hoped. Sometimes you had to look on the bright side of things. I , how many people could say they lit a bunch of zombies on fire?
Now that my little gambit was over, I had to act quickly. Focusing on a zombie in the middle of the pack, I sent all the power I could muster out towards it. “Exitium!” The results even surprised me. Either I was a hell of a lot stronger with my angelic counterpart tagging along for the ride, or fear and desperation kicked my magic up a few notches.
The zombie in the middle of the pack exploded in a ball of flame. The zombies directly around it were engulfed in seconds. The shockwave sent the other zombies crashing to the ground where the flames from the gas can were still burning.
The zombies howled in pain as the flames burned into their exposed nerves. It had to be enough to stop them. If it wasn’t, we’d have to deal with them on the way out. With the horde melting in flames behind me, I started to jog down the road while wondering what other kind of fun surprises Balthazar had in store for me.
16
The gate to the compound was coming into view, and I knew the guards would be on the lookout. Exploding a zombie and lighting the rest on fire made a lot of noise, especially out here in the country. That and as the sun was starting to make its way towards its final resting place for the day, the smoke was probably pretty visible, and soon the flames would be as well.
When the road split leading straight towards the gate, I continued moving past it. I’d love to say it was a brilliant military strategy, but really I just wanted a little more room between me and the zombies if any had survived.
Ducking back into the trees, I moved forward, and Gideon perked up inside of my head doing his imaging thing. Four guards to my right at the gate. Two were on each side of the closed gate, and they had guns. Four more guards were patrolling the grounds inside the compound while two guards were stationed in front of one building. It was a pretty good bet that if only one building was being guarded, then that was where I needed to go.
I didn’t fancy my chances at the gate, so it was time to see just what my sometimes-silent partner could do. The wall loomed up in front of me; the ground was sloped away from it. The fact that it was ten feet tall gave me a pause, but I had to try.
If the wall hadn’t been the pinnacle of a hill, I was pretty sure I could have found a way to jump up and grab the top, but I wasn’t so sure about my odds of doing that now. Plus, jumping and failing multiple times was sure to get the attention and probably a few laughs from the guards before they shot me. I liked my look to be bullet hole free.
“You think you can get me on top of that wall?” I asked out loud. It just seemed more natural then thinking happy thoughts.
Now, you ask the impossible.
Despite myself, I was starting to like this angel a little bit. We still had some shit to work out, and I was still leaning heavily on the side of
the fence that said send him back to heaven, but even I had to admit I might not have been able to do this without him. I just trusted that he had my back as I broke from the trees and started running for the wall.
I jumped, put one foot on the wall, and sprang upwards again. My hand reached out to grab the top of the wall, and a gasp of surprise slipped out as I sailed over it. Ok, sailed makes it sound a little more graceful than it was. My arms were pinwheeling as my feet cleared the top. I tried to keep myself upright so I didn’t land on my face, but that outcome wasn’t set in stone.
The wall passed just under my feet, and then I was falling on the other side. “Oh, shit.” Was all I managed to get out before my feet hit the ground. When I landed, I tried to throw myself forward. Tuck and roll were the words screaming through my mind. Instead, I took the full weight of the fall on my ankles and didn’t spring enough to roll and ended up on my chest with a mouth full of dirt. The cross around my neck dug painfully into my chest as I pushed myself up, trying not to make too much noise.
“Little warning next time,” I muttered, brushing the worst of the dirt from my shirt.
This was my first rescue mission, and I was going to save the damsel in distress wearing clothes covered in mud and who knew what else. Not exactly as I imagined it. Hopefully, Rain would be too grateful to care.
I expected you to land a little more gracefully.
Maybe next time you control the landing as well.
Gideon didn’t respond. He was probably thinking about how fragile humans were. Hey, buddy, we didn’t all have wings. That wasn’t exactly fair, but I was feeling a little insecure and way out of my comfort zone. If I didn’t have Gideon with me, I’d be totally screwed. There was always the chance I could have pulled this off without him, but the odds would have been on me becoming zombie food instead.
Keeping the gate on my right, I moved around the compound using Gideon’s heads up display to avoid the guards. It was kind of cool. It reminded me of playing a video game and using the mini map to avoid trouble. Sure, in this game, if I fucked up I died for real, but I was trying not to think about that.
Possessed (Bozley Green Chronicles Book 1) Page 15