The good news was, some of those one-time expenditures from the heydays were still good five or ten years later.
Like the AR-15 rifle that the sheriff carried in his trunk.
Erin snugged the stock against her shoulder and clicked the red dot scope on. It produced a little circular targeting reticle in the middle of a square display. It looked straight through into the magnifying scope just beyond on the top rail of the rifle, giving her a nice 4x zoom on what she was looking at. It didn’t have the power of whatever that person was shooting from up in the woods, but it’d spray some hurt, she figured.
And it’d be better than sitting in the car waiting to see if Arch and Hendricks survived their encounter with some fire-breathing creature from hell.
She didn’t want to think about how Hendricks had been right—and not crazy—about this one thing. She didn’t have time for it right now. She felt the stock against her shoulder, cranked back on the charging handle and palmed the forward assist for good measure. Then she thumbed the selector switch to three-shot burst and ran down the hill toward a fight she damned sure didn’t understand—but instinctively knew which side she was on.
***
Lerner was hanging back until the rifle shot echoed and Gideon staggered. Even a greater could get knocked down by enough force, and whatever that person was wielding looked like it had the oomph to do the job. Lerner had been shot before, by handguns, mostly, and he didn’t like the sensation. He wasn’t a greater, though, because those fuckers could shrug off a pistol shot like it was nothing.
He saw Duncan across the hood. Duncan spoke first. “You get to the trunk, I’ll—”
“Okay,” Lerner said, and Duncan was already in motion, drawing his baton as he charged at Gideon, who was falling back a couple steps from the impact of that shot.
Lerner fumbled with the keys and slapped the right one into the trunk. He would have wished for an auto open, but his hands were shaking so bad he probably would have crushed the key fob anyway.
***
Arch still had a couple rounds left when the roar of a big rifle up on the hill was followed by Gideon nearly falling over. He looked back, instinctively, since the bullet had probably only gone about two feet over his head on the way to the demon. He couldn’t see anyone up in the woods, but that was the point of a rifle, right?
His eyes fell down and he saw a couple things in quick order—the first was Erin Harris with an AR-15 and a mean look in her eyes. She was just stepping onto the dam when he saw her, and he wouldn’t have wanted to be in her way.
The second thing was a blur as Duncan shot past him, that peculiar-colored suit flapping in the breeze as the demon launched himself at Gideon. A baton popped in his hand as he went past, snapping to a three-foot extension like a miniature sword, and he brought it down on Gideon’s skull like he was an old-time lawman clubbing a protestor.
***
Erin watched as one of the suits she’d been chasing closing on the demon. He produced one of those spring-loaded batons and hit the thing in the head with it, causing the demon to stumble again and shake his head. He didn’t look pleased.
She came up on the sedan she’d been chasing as the other guy, the driver that she’d gawked at as she watched him smash her sideview mirror, opened the trunk and snatched a big black gym bag out of it. She started to tell him to stop, but he moved faster than anyone she’d ever seen, leaving the trunk open and her in the dust as he ran off across the dam toward the melee.
Erin cut across to the side of the sedan’s hood and got behind it. She’d seen that flame and didn’t really want to be on the receiving end of it the way Hendricks nearly had been. She parked herself there, pulled up her gun, looked through the scope, and waited.
***
Hendricks was getting up as Duncan came into the fray. He pushed off the flooded surface of the dam and brought his sword up as Duncan rained a hell of a blow on Gideon’s head. If it had been a normal skull, the crack he heard would have been bone splitting open.
As it was, all Gideon did was shake it off, take a step back, and blow a bellow of flame that sent Duncan into the air, on fire, and past Hendricks over the edge of the dam. Hendricks felt the wave of heat overcome him, and he flinched away.
It caused Hendricks to whip his head around to watch, involuntarily. Duncan shot past him like he’d been hit by a car, a ball of nearly unrecognizable flame as he plummeted four hundred feet down the sheer surface of the dam.
***
Lerner saw Duncan go over, was close enough to feel the heat. There was a hiss as the falling rain turned to steam and obscured his view.
Lerner felt some additional heat, though, a burning rage down deep. He started to drop to his knees in the mist of steam, grabbed hold of the zipper on the black gym bag in his hand, and he started to tug on it.
A jet of flame shot at him, lighting its way through the mist. Lerner rolled to dodge. The fire came at him so fast that he lost his grip on the bag as he evaded, throwing himself hard left. It only took a moment for him to realize he’d gone left when he should have gone right, and he fell off the dam just the way Duncan had gone. He snagged hold with one hand and dangled there by his fingertips while the flames roared over his head.
***
Arch saw Lerner go over the edge just a few seconds after Duncan. His first thought was that if the OOCs (or whatever) had sent their A-team, this whole thing was going to end badly for everyone but Gideon.
He didn’t dwell on that thought too long, though, instead popping the switchblade he’d been carrying in his pocket for the last couple weeks and charging at Gideon. The demon was focused on spraying the edge of the dam with flame, which was forcing Hendricks to dodge again; the fire was separating him from the cowboy.
Arch ignored the rain pelting him in the face and each splash of the water soaking his pants legs as he ran at Gideon in a tackle. Any second the demon could turn back, and Arch had to do some damage first.
How had they killed the last one? The heart, that was it. A blazing light in the chest of Ygrusibas—that cow-thing. He’d stabbed it himself, watched the thing burst into flames.
Arch bent lower for a tackle. He was going to hit Gideon right in the gut, blade first. Then he’d cut up, see if there was a light in him like there had been in Ygrusibas.
Then Gideon turned right at Arch, and Arch saw the light. But it wasn’t any sort of inner light, the beating heart of the demon.
It was Gideon’s breath of fire, hitting him squarely in the face.
***
Hendricks saw Arch disappear into the flames as Gideon swept around to counter the cop charging at him. Hendricks had been stuck in place, separated from Arch by the flames as Gideon chased him with the fire. He’d seen what it had done to Duncan, and getting hit by it was not on his priority list.
But when it hit Arch, Hendricks felt the cold, clutching fear wrap itself around his stomach and pull down like he’d had a weight tied to his gut. His knees felt like they wanted to buckle, and he could feel his jaw drop.
The fire blazed, pouring out of Gideon’s mouth, billowing like an orange cloud that was tall as a man and just as wide. Arch was swallowed up by it entirely.
Hendricks could feel the anger course through him, and he raised his sword. He charged as he heard another thunder crack of a bullet whipping down from the hills at the same time a burst of gunfire came from behind Lerner and Duncan’s sedan at his right.
***
Erin watched Arch disappear in the mammoth burst of flame, swallowed up by the demon’s breath, and it took her a second to catch her own. She’d known Arch for years. Since long before they’d worked together.
Everyone knew Arch. He was the local hero, the guy every other guy wanted to be in high school, and the one every girl wanted to date.
Plus, he could have been a real dick, but he never was. He’d stayed humble, and though he wasn’t a social butterfly, he never talked down to anyone like he was better than them,
never got pushy about his faith, even back then, and was always decent to everybody. Even those jealous, racist fucks who said shitty things to him for being a black man dating a pretty white girl.
Erin pulled the red dot scope up and centered it on the demon’s face. She could barely see it, through the hiss of steam. She could feel the heat, even from here, and she pulled the trigger and let a burst fly just as the big gun up in the hills opened up again.
***
Hendricks saw one of Gideon’s arms go spiraling through the air and he thought, damn, whoever was at the business end of that fifty cal rifle was a pretty fucking good shot. Not Marine Force Recon good, but pretty fucking good.
Not that it mattered, because Arch was almost certainly still burnt to death.
Hendricks let that thought fuel him as he came at Gideon. The fucker had killed the one guy who he’d confided in. Five years he’d been doing this. Five years he’d submerged himself in it, in over his head every goddamned day.
Sure, he’d talked to other demon hunters, but rarely. Arch was the first person he’d connected with, other than Erin, since he’d started down this road.
Hendricks let his feet splash across the flooded surface of the dam as Gideon staggered backward, the flames in front of him dissipating into steam as another three-shot burst of rifle fire pelted him in the chest. He raised his sword and slammed into the demon, burying his blade into Gideon’s belly and following with all his weight a moment later.
His momentum hit the demon while he was already off-balance. Hendricks saw the sword slide into the demon’s fat gut as his pudgy face registered surprise. As his shoulder hit Gideon, he felt himself leave the ground and they both fell back, over the edge of the dam, and Hendricks felt a splash as they hit the flooded reservoir below and began to sink.
***
Lerner pulled himself up on one arm, an easier feat for a demon than a human, he knew. Dangling over the side of the dam, picturing the drop that Duncan had just taken, it wasn’t something he wanted to ponder too long. As soon as the flame vanished over the side, he started to reel himself up using his wiry arms.
Water was sluicing over the edge, the overflow of the reservoir running over the dam and raining down on him. Lerner cursed it, cursed Sygraaths, cursed his fucking job and cursed the home office for sending him here. As he came up over the edge of the dam, water pouring onto his face, he cursed Duncan, too, for being a brave, dumb son of a bitch and doing what he’d done.
The black bag was still sitting there, just a few feet away from him. Lerner pulled himself up as Hendricks hit that fucking shitbird Sygraath with the sword, plowing into him and knocking him into the reservoir. Lerner could barely see it from behind the wall of steam that Gideon’s flame breath had made. Lerner had a feeling it was pointed at someone, and that meant said someone was dead. Duncan might have been able to survive that shit—maybe—but a human? No way.
Then the smoke started to clear, and Lerner saw who was at the middle of it. It wasn’t until he saw the state of them that he whispered, “Son of a bitch.” And he almost forgot to finish pulling himself up over the side.
***
Erin was standing there, stunned, the rain dotting the end of the scope as she watched Hendricks plunge a sword through Gideon and then tilt with him into the reservoir. It wasn’t exactly a long drop, maybe a foot or two, but because of the steam from Gideon’s attack on Arch they disappeared within a second. It took her a second more to realize that what she’d seen was real, not the product of the steam or the drops of rain gathering on the scope.
She heard movement behind her and turned with the AR-15 to cover the approach of whoever was coming.
It was Lucia, her bright red hair wet, and her white tank top soaked to match. Erin lowered her gun then turned back to the edge of the dam, where she’d just seen Hendricks go over. The steam was starting to clear, but something in her mind flared before it did—
She spun back around to Lucia and stared at the girl’s eyes. They weren’t green anymore, they were dark, indescribable, shadowed. “What the fuck?” she whispered, all thoughts of Hendricks and Arch momentarily forgotten. “Who are you?”
“Starling,” the girl answered and walked past her like she hadn’t even seen her. “Follow me.”
Erin turned to watch the redhead go, beating a steady path to the edge of the dam where Hendricks had disappeared. And she would have followed, but the steam finally dissipated, and she caught a glimpse of Arch, crouching down, his uniform top seared and burnt, nearly gone—
But his skin was flawless, drops of rain beading on it and running down his muscles like he was some model posing for a photo shoot instead of man who ought to have just burned to death.
***
Arch hadn’t even felt the fire as it surged around him. He’d looked down as it blazed and watched with almost absent interest as it burnt his uniform shirt to embers that flaked off, melted the radio that was clipped to his shoulder into plastic slag that ran off his back like droplets of rain, burning holes in his pants as they fell.
He was on his knees, not from the impact or the heat, but because he’d reacted by dropping down. It was a natural position for him, the same one he adopted as he prayed his prayers each night. Just as he’d done every night since he was a child and had learned to pray and speak scripture.
He had murmured one as the orange fire of hell had nearly blinded him—with its light, not its heat. “I sought the Lord, and he answered me; he delivered me from all my fears.” Then the flames disappeared, and he started to stand, his eyes still blinking away the light of the blaze.
***
“Out of the way, Shadrach!” Lerner called as he pushed past Arch. He shouldn’t have been surprised the cop was still standing. He’d seen this kind of thing before, once or twice.
That didn’t matter at the moment, though. Lerner peered over the edge of the dam into the reservoir. The water was right there, in front of him, and Hendricks had already disappeared beneath the dark, rippling surface, sunk from sight.
Lerner felt a presence next to him as he started to jump in. He caught a glimpse of red hair and thought, Son of a bitch, it’s the hooker, before he plunged into the cold water.
***
Erin halted after watching the man in the suit and Starling both jump into the water after Hendricks. Arch was standing there on the edge of the dam, looking in, and looking like he was still trying to catch his breath.
“You all right?” Erin asked as she came up behind him. She had the AR in her hands, cradled, pointing it down the dam automatically, her finger off the trigger but ready in case she needed it.
“I’m fine,” Arch said, but he sounded a little dazed. She couldn’t really blame him for that; it wasn’t like being immolated alive was an everyday thing. “Where’s Hendricks?”
“He pushed that—” she stumbled with the word, “—that demon-thing into the water. Tackled him in, I guess.”
Arch stared into the black water after him, and Erin wondered for a moment if he was going to jump. “Damn,” he said finally.
“What?” she asked. Hearing Arch say damn was like hearing Reeve drop the c-word; it didn’t happen, at least not in her presence.
“I don’t know how to swim,” Arch said.
***
Hendricks could feel the cool water seeping into his coat, saturating his shirt and flooding his boots. Gideon was right there, in front of him, he could feel it, even as the world went weightless around him.
Gideon tried to hit him, but his blow was reduced in power, slowed by the water. It felt like a hard slap and that was it. Hendricks smiled, a hand anchored on the hilt of his sword. He pulled it hard to the side across Gideon’s belly.
Air bubbled out and the water warmed around Hendricks. He knew he was getting somewhere and even in the frenzy of the water bubbling around him he could swear he heard Gideon scream.
Hendricks ignored another ineffectual blow from the demon and turned the
sword right, then pulled it up. The blade sawed its way up to where the demon’s sternum would have been and stopped. Hendricks could barely see him in the water, and the light from above seemed to be growing ever dimmer.
There was a low thrumming all around him, mechanical and steady. It was audible somewhere around the level of his heartbeat.
Hendricks felt hyperaware, time slowing down as the water flooded into his nose and mouth. It was just like this the last time, too, that drowning feeling, except this time he wasn’t helpless when he plunged into the water. He didn’t stagger into trouble by accident, dragging an innocent person with him.
He’d pulled Arch in with full knowledge, and he’d gotten the man killed.
Hendricks ripped the sword through Gideon even harder, and he felt the heat wash off in waves as the water bubbled up around him. He’d been in Ygrusibas at the end, felt the flames of hell licking at him. They were real, he knew that much, wherever they came from, and they were hot enough to boil the water around him if he didn’t find the heart soon.
Gideon hit him again, a punch that didn’t even make him blink. The mighty demon, reduced to something that felt comically like a slap fight. Gideon clearly hadn’t been in any fights; if he had, he’d have grabbed Hendricks around the neck and just crushed his throat. He had the strength for it.
Hendricks stared down at him, and Gideon flailed his remaining arm at him one last time. Hendricks ignored it and tugged once more on the sword. He brought it diagonal this time, and broke through where the ribcage would be on a human.
Where the heart would be, if Gideon had any such thing.
The effect was immediate; the water turned from warm bath to scalding hot in an instant, and Hendricks felt his skin start to sear. This was it: he was going to burn too.
Just like Arch.
But at least he’d taken this fucker with him first. And before he could drown the town.
The Southern Watch Series, Books 1-3: Called, Depths and Corrupted Page 45