by Aaron Crash
Contents
Summary
Aaron Crash's Mailing List
ONE_
TWO_
THREE_
FOUR_
FIVE_
SIX_
SEVEN_
EIGHT_
NINE_
TEN_
ELEVEN_
TWELVE_
THIRTEEN_
FOURTEEN_
FIFTEEN_
SIXTEEN_
SEVENTEEN_
EIGHTEEN_
NINETEEN_
TWENTY_
TWENTY-ONE_
TWENTY-TWO_
TWENTY-THREE_
TWENTY-FOUR_
TWENTY-FIVE_
TWENTY-SIX_
TWENTY-SEVEN_
TWENTY-EIGHT_
Books, Mailing List, and Reviews
Other Works by Aaron Crash
Books from Shadow Alley Press
About the Author
Dedication
Special Thanks
Copyright
Summary
Hell-spawned dragons, a haunted planet, and an unstoppable ancient evil…
After defeating the archduke of necrotechnology, Blaze Ramirez and the crew of the Lizzie Borden are still on the run, wanted dead or alive by the Interstellar Presidential Corporation. Despite their problems with the law, the demon hunters have never been closer to destroying the Onyx Gate and freeing the universe from its evil.
However, the one person in the galaxy who might know the location of the gate is trapped on a haunted planet, doomed to die as its two stars collide. And standing between Blaze and his mysterious quarry is an army of the walking dead, vicious specters, and a clan of psychotic clown-worshipping cannibals. A galactic demon hunter’s job is never done.
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ONE_
╠═╦╬╧╪
Gunnery Sergeant Ramon “Blaze” Ramirez gazed into the eyes of the freckle-faced, red-haired, super-hot IPC auditor that could, at any point, become a fiendish gore-obsessed vampire. It was easy to forget that. She smelled so good and her skin was so soft. More importantly, she felt warm and wonderful in his hands.
They were on the bed in the library/guest bedroom on board the Lizzie Borden, riding a spacetime wave toward Hutchinson Prime. There, if they were lucky, they’d find Granny and the coordinates to the Onyx Gate, the source of the evil power spreading out across the galaxy. Demons used Onyx energy to exist on the material plane. The energy also powered ghosts, vampires, werewolves, and a whole host of ghoulies.
Stars streamed past them, visible in the big front window. The glow of their streaks fell on the bookcases full of spell books, scrolls, and forbidden tomes. Around the bookcases were light green easy chairs and green plants, Meelah leaves for Ling, their resident Shaolin space sloth. Against the wall was the bed, large and forest green, matching the room perfectly. Elle, Blaze’s sister, loved to decorate.
Katrina O’Reilly touched his face. “You sure you can’t tell that I’m…uh…I think the word is undead.”
Blaze shook his head. “No way, Trina. You seem perfectly Human and alive thanks to Elle’s magic.”
On top of being an interior decorator, Elle was an Onyx witch, one of the only good ones in the universe, as well as a pain in the ass. Elle had a bad habit of trying to steal Blaze’s girlfriends and doing extremely questionable things when she was drunk. Like getting freaky with one of the bug aliens on their ship.
“Elle,” Trina sighed. “At least she’s sleeping again. After she destroyed Xerxes, she was awake for like three days. She got a bit edgy.”
“That’s putting it mildly,” Blaze said. He bent and kissed Trina’s lips, enjoying their soft wet feel on his own. His heart thudded as they both breathed harder. He loved how excited Trina got from just kissing.
She put a slim hand on his rock-solid chest. “Fernando assured me that I’m not contagious when I’m in my Human form, but aren’t you worried? What if I infect you with vampiric Onyx energy?”
“A shot of penicillin will clear that right up,” Blaze smirked. “Seriously, I trust Fernando. His insect brain and his passion for Human anatomy make him the best pinche doctor in the galaxy.”
Trina still looked worried. “What if I vamp out regardless of Elle’s control? Promise me, if I turn evil, you’ll put me down. I don’t want to hurt anyone.”
The gunny had to stop himself from growling. He was not in the mood to chat. He wanted to get busy, but he’d be a good guy. Fine. “Trina, you know the military alphabet?”
She nodded. “The phonetic alphabet was developed on Earth centuries ago. I always thought it was a 20th Cold War thing, but it predates that.”
Blaze chuckled. Hot and smart, Trina was cool. “Yeah, so if you do lose it, I’ll do a countdown starting with Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, and you have twenty-three more letters before I do what you want me to do.”
A determined glint filled Trina’s green eyes. “If you do get to Zulu, I’ll be beyond control, Blaze. So do it. Kill me.”
“I’d rather kiss you now and forget about all that. What do you say?”
She grabbed him by the back of his neck and pulled him down on top of her. Just when he thought they might finally be heading toward second base, a loud hiss filled the room.
Both turned. There, by the door, was a huge calico cat, the biggest and most colorful cat Blaze had ever seen. Bright orange fur covered the feline’s face except for a sword-shaped knife of black splitting her eyes. All calicos were female. Her belly and right front paw were white, but everywhere else was a mixture of almost neon orange and midnight black.
The hissing turned to yowls and moans.
Blaze felt the hairs lift on the back of his neck as gooseflesh broke out across his arms.
“That’s her!” Trina shoved Blaze away, forgetting though she appeared Human, she had vampiric strength. He went tumbling off the bed.
The door slid open and the cat streaked out.
While Blaze was on the floor, Trina turned into her vampire form. Her skin became translucent, showing every vein and artery, now running black with Onyx energy. Her fingernails grew into jet-black talons, and her eyes turned just as inky. Her teeth were the long canines of a predator. She sped out into the hallway, going faster than Blaze’s eyes could adjust. Damn, another evil creature in his family, and this one he had romantic feelings for. Well, nothing new there.
The gunny got to his feet. He’d left his ax and his shotgun, Ugly Betty, in the weapons locker, where he was living now. The gunny had strung a hammock between two shelves in the armory and slept surrounded by plasma rifles. They soothed him.
Blaze triggered his ocular implants, micron-thin pieces of technology on the surface of his eyes. He’d configured his main display to show his ship’s controls, relative speed, and major functions. Icons for his crew filled the right side of his vision. All their VHI, or vitals and health indexes, were at a hundred percent. Elle was asleep in her room. The rest of his crew were awake. Ling, Fernando, and Bill, the ship’s insect engineer and Fernando’s brother, were busy on repairs and getting things in order after their brutal battles with Xerxes, an archduke of hell and the lord of necrotechnology.
“Ling, I just saw Trina’s cat. Do a quick scan of the lower deck. Do you see any Onyx energy near the library?” The implants near Blaze’s eardrums and vocal chords allowed him to listen as well as talk to his team.
Ling answered in his usual mellow
voice. “Doing it now, Gunny. I don’t see anything out of the ordinary. Your heart rate and respiratory rates are high, as were Trina’s. I noticed that and assumed you were mating.”
“Buddy, we have got to talk about privacy.” Blaze broke from the room to find Trina alone in the hallway next to Cali’s room. Cali, a.k.a. Lupercalia Smith, was a nice Mormon girl they kept locked up because, on her bad days, she’d turn into an uncontrollable, indestructible killing machine.
Cali’s voice called to him over comms. “Blaze, what’s going on? I heard that cat yowling. Did you finally see it? Can you let me out?”
“Sure.” Blaze opened her door and Cali wandered out in a blue nightgown. She was a blonde wispy thing, barely over five feet tall. Cornflower blue eyes twinkled above a little nose, slightly upturned, and a crooked smile. She appeared so innocent except for the thick iron bracelets around her wrists. Those definitely looked off. But they served a very important function.
“Hey, Trina,” Cali said a little icily to the vampire.
Trina sniffed. “I smell the cat, but I can’t see it. It completely disappeared.”
Blaze felt the Lizzie Borden slow as the spacetime wave dissipated, sending them surfing back to normal speeds. Since there was no friction in space, they’d continue to careen through the nothingness, but they wouldn’t be going faster than light.
A bad feeling filled the gunny. The ship creaked and groaned, shifting dramatically. Blaze was flung against a wall and the horrendous thunder of utter destruction wiped out all conscious thought for a moment. Squeaks, squawks, and squealing pounded through his eardrums. He had to close his eyes and slam his hands over his ears.
What in the holy hell was happening?
He opened his eyes when things fell quiet. What he saw defied explanation. The corridor had expanded, so now it was twice as long to the staircase. It seemed the extra hallway was the galley, and the sick bay had somehow reconfigured to be a corridor instead of a room.
What could change a starship so much without destroying it?
A second later, Lizzie’s voice hissed through comms, breathy, different. “Onyx energy detected. Onyx energy detected. Hhhazardous conditions on the bottom deck.”
Blaze’s stomach churned in dread. The voice was feminine, but the way she hissed out her Hs sounded suspiciously like Xerxes. The demon had hidden itself in Blaze’s ship before. Was this some kind of echo?
“Lizzie, are you feeling like yourself?” Blaze asked.
A pause.
“Blaze. Hhhuman. Hhhow can I put this? No, I’m not myself. I think I might be completely and utterly insane.”
Xerxes, the archduke of necrotechnology, wasn’t dead, no, but alive and possessing his ship. Goddammit, he hated when that happened.
The wall to the armory buckled and came splashing down like it had become water. The metal reshaped itself into a squat toady figure, like a giant steel frog. The frog’s mouth opened, and a long tongue lashed out at Blaze. Trina caught it in a translucent fist with black veins visible. “Blaze, what’s going on?” she asked.
A clicking sound filled the hall, and a robot fashioned out of guns came stomping out of the armory. Various pistols formed the creature’s abdomen. Several plasma rifles made up the thing’s legs. Its left arm was three plasma rifles, while its right arm was Blaze’s double-bladed fusion ax. The ax’s crescent-shaped blades lit up the corridor with golden star-fire energy. No head topped the robot since it didn’t need to think. Whatever had possessed the Lizzie Borden was doing the thinking for it.
Trina was dragged toward the metal frog as the rifle robot raised its three-rifle left arm.
Blaze only had seconds to make the deadliest of decisions. In his combat display, he triggered the Cali Bad Dog command.
Cali’s bracelets snicked open. Inside the lead-lined compartments were rocks taken from Earth’s moon. Cali gave him a helpless, sorrowful gaze, which hurt him. She hated what she was and what it made her do.
The energy in the lunar stones transformed her from a nice Mormon girl into a slavering, uncontrollable, wolfish monster eight feet tall weighing several tons. Instead of going for the robot, she went for Blaze, a massive hand like a tennis racket of claws coming at him.
He rolled away at the last second, praying she’d get distracted.
The robot’s rifle’s plasma blasts hit her, sizzling through her fur but leaving her skin unhurt. Only Terran silver could hurt a werewolf. The barrage of energy blasts also struck Trina as the frog pulled her toward the razor-sharp ridges in its mouth.
She could heal those wounds. Vampires were only hurt by fusion energy, decapitation, or the classic wooden stake to the heart.
Trina tried to rend the tongue apart with her talons, but the steel held. Starships were made from the strongest titanium. If only she had a fusion pistol or any kind of weapon.
Cali howled and crashed past the vampire and leapt for the rifle robot. The thing dodged her blow and she went skittering down the hall, claws clicking. She sprang to her feet, sprang onto the wall, and then sprang back at the rifle robot.
The robot whirled, blasting off her fur in big round patches. The smoke and smell of burning wolf hair filled the corridor.
Cali growled, dripping spit onto the floor. Then she ignited the hydrogen shells in the underside of her bracelets. Fusion energy shot out on top of her claws, making her exponentially deadlier.
Another rifle robot shambled out of the armory and turned on Blaze. Damn, but it was a plasma minigun walking on pistols like some weird caterpillar. The six barrels on the massive weapon started to spin.
Blaze charged it. Not a wise move, but nombre de Dios, he wanted a gun.
He sprinted toward the barrels as they spun. He only had nanoseconds before they’d start spitting plasma bolts at him, six thousand rounds a minute. He jumped onto the squat beast as the minigun opened fire, slashing holes in the wall.
To his right, the shelves inside the armory were alive and in the process of configuring into a long-armed creature holding a silver machete and an old .12-gauge sawed-off shotgun. Without a doubt, it would have silver shells. Cali would be in trouble if the thing managed to finish forming.
Blaze leapt off the minigun caterpillar and dove into the armory. Confused, the minigun monster clacked down the hallway toward the central staircase on metal legs.
The gunny took that lucky moment to scoop up Ugly Betty and his bandolier of hydrogen shells. His hammock was shredded as the shelves twisted. A sharp tip stabbed into his arm, but he had his shotgun cocked and ready. He squeezed the trigger. Ugly Betty whined and sent a ball of fusion energy into the shelf. It was reduced to a puddle of molten steel, and the remnants of his hammock burst into flames.
Now Blaze was pissed. For a second time, he was losing a bedroom. What the hell?
He spun. Cali had ripped apart the rifle robot, but it was coming together behind him, reconfiguring. The werewolf slunk toward Blaze, who was still in the armory. The walls were gone, so she could easily get to him. Her eyes were still so blue, but now filled with a mad rage. Spit dripped from fangs that could easily snap his head off. Hell, she could eat though his thorax as if Blaze were only a buffalo chicken wing, deep-fried and bony.
Trina continued to struggle against the frog. The tongue was slowly dragging her arm toward the mouth. She was going to lose that limb if Blaze didn’t do something quick. But Cali was in the way.
And she was getting ready to jump. “Easy girl,” Blaze tried to soothe her. Yeah, like that would work. Uh, no.
He’d have to close her bracelets, but if he did that, she might slump over and her fighting time would be over. As a Human, Cali was soft, gentle, and shy. Hard to believe the beast creeping toward him was the same person.
The werewolf inched toward him because it seemed to like the fear in his eyes and the sweat on his face. It was evil, but it was an evil that could be used for good.
Blaze glanced in his display to slam the bracelets closed. He did
n’t have the chance. Cali raised a fusion claw and turned part of a writhing shelf into slag. She let the liquid metal drip onto the locking mechanisms of the bracelets.
He’d waited too long—the metal dried, and his Cali Bad Dog command did nothing.
Cali in her wolfish state was not only pure evil, but also eerily smart.
The caterpillar minigun monster clattered back into the fight. It swiveled and blasted plasma bolts into Cali’s backside. She turned on the creature, protecting Blaze for a minute. He jacked the action of his shotgun. The spent shell went flying. The new shell automatically slid into the breech. He had three shells left inside the magazine.
The werewolf flung itself out of the armory to get to the minigun. Out in the hallway again, the caterpillar’s six barrels spun and unloaded on Cali, forcing her back and ramming her with plasma energy. She crawled toward it like a Rottweiler fighting against the pressure of a firehose. All her fur was gone. She used her fusion claws to keep her traction.
He’d let Cali eat the minigun caterpillar, if she could get to it, while he took care of the newly forming shelf monsters. But the original rifle robot was standing again. This time his ax was the thing’s head. Not a very smart use of the weapon, but that was good news for them.
All the while, Trina clawed at the frog’s metal tongue. And then her arm went into the frog’s mouth. A second later, Trina shrieked as her arm was snapped off at the elbow. Onyx blood geysered out, covering the frog. The tongue latched around Trina’s throat. The frog would snap off her head next. That would definitely kill her. Vampire hunters had been beheading bloodsuckers since the dawn of time. Even before the Onyx Gate opened thirty years ago.
Comms were suspiciously dead. Where were Elle, Ling, and the Clickers?
A swinging shelf arm had managed to form, and it slashed the silver machete across Blaze’s arm. He used another shell to blast it away, but the entire armory was alive with flopping shelves and dancing guns.
“Xerxes!” Blaze called into comms. “How in the hell did you get into my ship?”