Double-Barreled Devilry

by D Michael Bartsch

  In truth, if you've got a gun in your hand, finger on the trigger, and three hundred pounds of angry lizard falls on your stomach, you end up firing the gun as your entire body, including your trigger finger, clenches. That being said, the first round may have been an accident, strictly speaking, the next four were the outcome of years of training and hard earned reflexes that are firmly tied into my survival instinct.

  The first round caught the Ravager in the left hip, skin didn't just rip open, it vaporized. If I had x-ray vision, I know I would have seen its hip shatter like a piece of china thrown from a skyscraper. That shifted some of its weight, allowing me to get some gasping breaths. I hip fired the other four shots after that, my elbow sinking into the wet mud as I rode the recoil of the massive revolver, channeling it down into the soft ground while my elbow rested on top of it.

  The second shot hit just beneath the ribcage. The last three ended up where I wanted, two in the throat and a third to the face. Rivers of black filth poured out of it, landing all over me and running off into the water. I definitely didn't want to get any of it on my face.

  The Ravager fumbled around, its clawed feet scraping across the ceramic plates of my armor, searching for traction. It fell into the mud, splashing filthy Hellion blood tainted water all over me, including in my mouth as I was still gasping for air. I practically inhaled a cup of it. I rolled over, intent not to drown in three inches of water. Besides, I knew I was going to end up Downtown when I died, and they would never let me live it down if I died like that.

  I coughed up some water, trying to catch my breath. I wasn't worried about the Ravager. They could take a beating, but the list of things that could take a .50 caliber round to the face was pretty short, and I knew that they weren't on it.

  I crawled my way to the nearest grave and used the headstone to pull myself up. Not super respectful, but in the grand scheme of things I had bigger things to worry about than tiptoeing around strangers' graves. My rifle dangled uselessly from the tac-sling. Covered in grassy mud and filled with water, I doubt the thing was going to fire anytime soon. I tossed the empty revolver into the mud. I had two more, and I started to pull off the rifle.

  My feet got swept out from under me as I did. I went down hard, taking a granite headstone to the shoulder on my way to the ground. I ended up back in the water, this time face down. Something was pushing down on me from above.

  I got my face out of the water long enough to get a fledgling breath before a clawed hand wrapped around the back of my skull and pushed me back into the water, down into the mud until it stopped giving. I twisted my hips, trying to roll out of it or get leverage, but there was another hand on the small of my back. I felt claws gripping for purchase on the steel plate of the vest. The thing was trying to pry off my back.

  I grabbed two handfuls of grass and tried to push my way up. I can do my fair share of push-ups on a good day, but I was already running on empty, and I challenge anyone to do a push-up with a monster pushing your head down in a pile of mud. I was going nowhere. I kept struggling, but the faster I used up all my oxygen, the faster I would pass out.

  My lungs were burning, and I could feel my strength leaving me. I could imagine the blackness seeping through the edges of my vision. My chest began to heave, my body trying to breathe on instinct while my conscious brain commanded it to do no such thing. My mind was blank, panic set in deeply. I was on the verge, and I knew that the only thing waiting for me on the other side was an eternity of misery that would make it all look like a walk in the park.

  Moments from passing out, I felt the pressure on my head vanish. The clawed hand was still grasping me, but the weight behind them was gone. The animal part of my brain took over, and I sprawled over, whipping my head up and a pulling in a painful breath of air as my head cleared the surface. I immediately coughed and tried to inhale through my nose, which was full of mud. Flopping on my back, I lay back, gasping for air, sweet precious air as rain fell on my face.

  Each breath was painful, and tasted like blood, but I didn't care.

  I felt the rain stop falling on my face. I still felt it slapping against my hands as they lay on my stomach. I opened my eyes, wiping the mud away as I did. I saw a familiar face, shrouded in reds and shadows hovering above me. I didn't know if I should be happy or pissed.

  “You gonna get up, or am I going to have to do the rest of this myself?”

  Andrej was looking down at me with smug satisfaction. I looked around and saw Balthazar sitting on a nearby headstone. He was conscious, but barely. His face was a bloody mess, and his expensive suit was sopping wet and covered in slashes. He had apparently decided to put up a fight somewhere along the line.

  I also saw a foot long section of scaly red arm with a clawed hand attached to it floating in the water nearby. The previous owner was laying in a heap on the ground, the top half of its head nowhere to be found. Andrej saw me looking at it.

  “It was so focused on killing you that it never even noticed. I had time to set Balthazar down and hack off both its arms.”

  I looked back at him.

  “I had him right where I wanted him.”

  He barked out some laughter at that.

  “Sure you did. Can you walk?”

  “Yea.” I said, pushing myself to my feet.

  “Good. This isn't the Marines. Plenty of men getting left behind tonight.”

  “What?”

  I looked from him to the center of the island. There was only one Ravager that I could see. It had moved back to the middle of the island with Sartre. It was looking right at us, no doubt as to where we were. Just behind them, huddled around the tree, three homeless men were gathered into a group. Sartre was leaning down and slashing the throat of a fourth man.

  “We need to leave.”

  “He's going to kill them all.”

  “Yes he is, and we're going to let him. We're going to walk to the edge of the circle, wait till he's killed all but the last of them, and then you're going to cross that line and break the circle.”

  It was a good plan. If we waited for all but one to get his throat slit before breaking the circle, he'd be out of blood to fuel another spell once the ritual was halted. He couldn't summon anymore Ravager's and Andrej looked like he still had plenty of energy left to handle the last one.

  “Sartre needs to be put down.” I said.

  “Balthazar's safety is number one, and he is not safe as long as we remain.”

  “And how safe will he be the next time?” I asked. “Sartre's still got the Eye. There are thousands of homeless people; he could be ready to try this again in a week. What then? Once he summons Moloch into our world, what do you think will happen to Balthazar? That bastard holds a grudge, trust me.”

  Andrej stared at me hard, weighing the options. He knew I was right.

  “We make for the edge of the circle, we break it, and then finish them off.”

  I'd like to tell you that I was a better man, that I demanded that we save the remaining hostages before they were sacrificed. I didn't though. I just turned around to walk away while Andrej got under Balthazar's shoulder and helped him up.

  I had gone two steps before I stopped dead in my tracks. I heard Andrej curse in Serbian.

  The good news, I wasn't suffering from oxygen deprivation induced hallucinations. The bad news, I was staring at two massive Ogres crossing the street of the roundabout, heading straight for us.

  17

  I one hundred percent regretted leaving behind the grenades and shotgun in that moment. I had ten bullets and two machetes. Granted the machetes were coated in anointing oil, but I still had to get close enough to one of the things to use them. That wasn't the most promising idea on a good day. I'd already managed to walk away from one Ogre attack, but I didn’t think I’d get that lucky twice.

  We set Balthazar down on the nearest rock and posted up in front of him. I would have rather dropped him in the grass and gone about my business, but I needed Andrej if I ha
d any chance of walking out of this alive.

  The Ogres walked up to the edge of the grass, stopping just short of it. Each of them brandished an improvised club made out of a rather large birch tree as thick as my thigh. Wet leaves still clung to wood here and there. The Ogre's themselves were bathed in glowing red light and devouring shadows.

  “They can't come in the circle without breaking it,” I said.

  They were creatures of magic, crossing the line of the circle would mean releasing the wards and the magic stored within.

  “We have to get back Ajax.”

  I didn't take my eyes off of the Ogres, but I would have loved to give Andrej a death glare.

  “How do you propose we do that?” I asked. “We can't outrun the damn things, and those clubs give them a twelve-foot reach. They'll swat me like a fly before I get anywhere near the edge of the circle.”

  “We don't have another plan.”

  “Sure we do,” I said.

  I had a semblance of one anyway. It wasn't a great one. It was something, though. I still had the backup plan as well.

  “We need to stop the ritual. If we don't, we're going to have to deal with Ogres, a Warlock, and Moloch. If we take out Sartre first, we can deal with the Ogres afterward.”

  “We take him together, quickly.” Andrej said.

  I turned back to the center of the Island. Sartre was slitting the throat of the second to last person. I could feel the energy building inside of the circle.

  “Let's get it over with then,” I said.

  Andrej pushed his katana into the sheath and pulled it out again, a fresh coating of oil shining in the red lights, like some sort of ethereal blood.

  I pulled out one of my Kukri, and we both took off running. I vaguely heard the sound of two screaming Ogres behind us. That was followed by a sharp stinging in my left ear as a thin branch slapped against the side of my head while a twelve-foot log came sailing right past me. The trunk plowed through several headstones, sending shattered rock everywhere, before landing with an exaggerated splash on the wet ground.

  Andrej and I both turned around, and I realized that I had grossly misjudged exactly what kind of circle we were standing in.

  If I'd have taken time to read any of the sigils at the points of the pentagram, I would have seen that this wasn't a circle designed to keep things out. It was a containment circle, designed to prevent magic from escaping.

  I had explained the compounded energy inside the circle solely on the Rift, but the magic had been gathering from outside of it as well. That meant that Hellions could enter it freely without disturbing the ritual, but anything trying to flee would be stopped from leaving.

  My first instinct was to run. It wouldn't do any good, though. Even if I could get to the edge of the circle, I'd break the seal, and they could follow me right out. There was no way I was going to outrun a twelve-foot killing machine, much less a pair of them.

  “Cain.”

  “I know,” I said. “You hold them off. I'll handle Sartre.”

  I'd barely gotten the words out before Andrej tore off, headed straight for the Ogre that had thrown its weapon. He seemed to move with inhuman speed, sending waves of water into the air with each step.

  He put himself between the Ogres and Balthazar in less than a second. He ducked under a wild backhand, and his katana bit deeply into the flesh behind the knee of the beast, the oil coated blade slid through the scaled skin easily.

  Not able to stick around and watch, I ran toward the center of the island, much more slowly and not nearly as graceful as Andrej. The ground was uneven, soft, and covered with three inches of water. It wasn't as easy as the Serbian asshole had made it look. Nonetheless, I made it to the center and met the final ravager.

  The thing screamed at me, but I didn't have enough time to dick around. I was tired, hurting, and ready for the damn thing to be finished so I could find a drink. I probably should have dropped sometime before then from exhaustion, but my adrenaline was pumping, and I had a little fight left in me.

  I pulled one of my S&W 500s and put a round through the thing's left eye. Knees buckling, the back of its skull exploded in a wash of black ichor. It fell to the ground with a splash.

  My wrist groaned from the recoil of the shot. Shooting one handed may have looked badass, but it was hell on the body.

  Sartre was standing ten feet away. He stood over a scraggly looking man with a wiry beard and matching brown and gray hair. The man was on his knees, and Sartre held him securely by a handful of sopping wet hair.

  I saw two smaller circles in front of me, one about twelve feet across, the other maybe six feet with the base of the tree in the center. Each circle was made of copper piping and had a pentagram inside made out of twine, with a dead body at every point. There were nine bodies in total; the man kneeling on the ground was on top of the final point.

  The ritual was elaborate, powerful, and one flick of the wrist from being complete. As soon as the blood of the final sacrifice was spilled, the summoning would be set, and Sartre would be ready to call up any Demon that he wanted.

  If I stepped over the outer circle, I would ruin the ritual. I was at least ten feet away from it. If I didn't break the circle before the portal was opened, the only way to close it would be to go into the portal.

  Theoretically, I wouldn't travel through the portal into Hell. I would just collapse it. However, there was a chance that the portal would just collapse behind me, and I would be stuck in Hell with no way back. It wasn't something I wanted to try. I had to keep him talking until I could think of something.

  “You don't need to do this,” I said. “Whatever Moloch told you, he lied.”

  Sartre smiled.

  “He has no reason to lie. The deal cost him so little, just one little soul. Not even one that belongs to him. All I needed was a little blood.”

  If Moloch had been able to secure the item Sartre had used to transfer a piece of his soul into, he could give it back. I don't know the ramifications of how that would affect his power, and a guy like Sartre sure as hell was going to end up Downtown anyway when he died, but if he got his soul back, he wouldn't belong to any particular Demon. He would just go in the general pool of suffering. Still a pretty shitty fate, but it was a whole lot better than being the personal property of a Demon for all eternity.

  “He offered you your soul back,” I said. “If you let him out.”

  “He did indeed. Such a small thing it was for him. He had to take it from Mephisto. After that, we only needed a way to meet on the same plane to make the exchange. I had arranged this deal so long ago.

  I don’t know how you’ve managed to stay alive all these years, but you will not ruin my plans again, hunter.”

  “You honestly think he'll keep his end of the bargain?” I asked. “I've met Moloch, trust me when I say he's a rat bastard.”

  “Any more than the Lord of Lies? No, Moloch wishes only to conquer this world. He'll give me the soul because he assumes that I'll end up dying with the rest anyway.”

  “You have a plan to avoid that?” I asked.

  “Of course. I'm no fool. He will attempt treachery. I've been planning this moment for two centuries. I have made contingencies within contingencies.”

  I took a step forward, trying to be inconspicuous. Sartre noticed though and tightened his grip on the man, pressing the knife closer.

  “That's far enough Mr. Cain. I remember what happened last time.”

  Behind me, I could hear the roaring of Ogre's mingling with the growling of a pissed off Slavic.

  “You don't have to stop me,” He said. “Moloch has agreed to a deal with you as well. When it became obvious that you were just too damn stubborn to die, I contacted him with an idea, your soul, in exchange for your walking away. He already has it in his possession. He has agreed to give you back your soul if you allow him free passage into this world.”

  I got a cold chill as he said it. My soul. I could have it back. What would tha
t mean? Where would that leave me? I would still be Unforgiven in the eyes of the Venatori. Selling your soul was a no take backs situation as far as they were concerned. Hell, as far as anyone knew it was. I hadn't ever heard of anyone making a deal to get their soul back. Most people didn't live long enough to come up with the idea. Sartre, on the other hand, had had centuries to think about it, to plan and scheme. This is what he'd come up with.

  “Think about it, Cain. You wouldn't have to wander about as one of the soulless anymore. You'd be the owner of your destiny again. Surely that's worth the price. You've been on the run from both Heaven and Hell for some time now. I assume that you are more than capable of disappearing from them a second time. You can have it all back.”

  He was right. I probably could slip away, provided I didn't get killed in the process. I could take my soul and find a nice piece of land to live out the rest of my days. I'd end up in the general pool of Hell and live out my eternity getting tortured at a normal level. Not exactly appealing in any way, but hey, I wasn't getting into Heaven regardless. I had nowhere to go but up.

  But I couldn't have it all back. I could never get Elena back. She would always be dead. She died and it was his fault. If he had never cursed her, I wouldn't have sold my soul. My hatred of everything I was, of everything he'd made me into was enough to boil water and scorch earth.

  “It's so easy. Just walk away. Like you told me all those years ago. Just let go and walk away.

  “We both know that Moloch will not succeed in his conquest. This city will surely perish, but he will be stopped. We only need to outrun the initial wave of destruction.”

  Something Carl said played in my mind.

  A light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

  I knew that he had meant me, but he didn't know any better. I'm a douche bag. Carl was a light, though. He was doing what he could to help the people all around him. He'd lost so much, given away what he hadn't already lost, and come to this town to live in a shit hole apartment, all to try and save as many people as he could. Because of me, he'd already lost his home.