by Michael Todd
He wasn’t protected at all.
“Garrett!” Katie screamed, taking off toward the demon.
Do you trust me? Pandora shouted.
No, Katie yelled, but have at it.
Katie’s mouth was taken over by Pandora, and she let it happen as she pulled her gun with one hand and her knife with the other. As she sprinted toward the demon, she felt heat build in her stomach and travel up her throat. At first she thought she was going to puke, but when she opened her mouth an unfamiliar word spilled out. It wasn’t even a word really, more of a sound—a deep growling snarl that pulled the charging demon’s attention right to her. Katie leapt forward, shooting the demon in the chest point-blank as she reached up and plunged her knife into its neck.
The beast screeched loudly, falling to the ground with a thud as she rode it down. Katie pulled her knife from its neck as she rolled off and stood up. She turned to Garrett, who looked at her strangely.
That wasn’t quite the expression she had expected for saving his life.
“What was that sound or word you said?” he asked.
“Um, something I read in the research,” she answered.
Smile, Pandora suggested
She smiled at Garrett.
“Oh,” Garrett said, looking at her with disbelief.
“Nice kill,” Armani said, running up and high-fiving Katie. “That was excellent shooting there, too.”
“Thanks,” she replied. “Good to see you’re still alive.”
His eyes caught movement. “There’s the last demon and one of those weird human sympathizers,” Armani called. “I got this.”
“Armani,” Katie yelled, but she was too late. He was already running up a ramp toward them.
Armani breathed deeply as he raced to get ahead of them. The leader tripped, which slowed them down and gave Armani the chance to pull ahead. He grabbed the railing at the end of the long steep ramp and catapulted himself off it to land on the path in front of the demon and the leader.
Slowly he stood up, a smirk moving across his lips.
“Hey there,” Armani began conversationally. “Leaving so soon?”
20
You fool,” the leader spat, and waved an arm. “Get out of the way. He is coming. No matter what you do, you can’t stop Him.”
Armani shook his head. “I’m not sure who you’re talking about, but he definitely didn’t make advanced reservations so I’m afraid I can’t let you pass.”
“Fine,” the leader said, pulling off his jacket. His muscles bulged. “I’ll just kill you myself.”
“All right.” Armani sighed. “If that’s the way it has to go down.”
The two ran toward each other, slamming together hard and wrestling briefly before disengaging. They slowly stood up and faced off a few feet apart, both breathing hard.
Armani pulled back and punched the man across the face, watching blood spray from his mouth. The leader wiped his mouth on his arm and cracked his knuckles, then shot forward and grabbed Armani by the throat. It caught Armani by surprise, but he grabbed the leader’s hand as his face turned red. There was no air reaching his lungs.
“You and the rest of your kind will all perish.” He smiled as he watched the light in Armani’s eyes dim.
“You…first…” Armani choked out, pulling his knife from its sheath.
He jammed the knife into the leader’s side, pushing the blade in past his ribs as far as it could go. The leader looked at him with pain in his eyes, and blood trickled down his lips from his open mouth.
He let go of Armani, who fell to his knees, grasping his neck and gasping for air.
Armani stood as the man crumpled to his knees, stretching his hand out. Armani walked over and yanked the knife from his side. The man grabbed Armani’s shirt collar and pulled him close to his face, hard, but his strength was leaving.
“You’ll all die,” he whispered, choking on his own blood. “Just like your girlfriend.”
“You didn’t know my girlfriend,” Armani retorted, anger suffusing his face.
The man chuckled, spraying blood. “No, but my demon did.”
He let out one last rasping breath and closed his eyes for the last time.
The demon’s movement caught Armani’s attention, and his eyes narrowed, his teeth clenched, and his hands opened and closed tightly around his knives’ hilts.
He walked toward the demon, who smiled at the human who was saving him the trouble of chasing him down.
Humans’ emotions were their greatest weakness.
There was no way this human would get close to him with those knives without him using his claws.
At that moment the human didn’t seem to care, though.
All Armani saw was red.
This was the demon that had killed his girlfriend and left him for dead.
The demon thought he had killed Armani too, but apparently he had been wrong.
“Armani, no,” Korbin shouted from a distance.
Armani glanced at his team and back at the demon, who was standing in front of him and growling loudly.
The Damned began to circle the demon and realized he was bigger than most. The beast smelled of rotting flesh and blood and the scent stung his nose, bringing back flashes of that night.
His girlfriend had screamed and reached…clawed for Armani.
He couldn’t move since he was tied to a post, and a demon was crawling into his soul. All he could do was stare, and a tear fell down his face as the demon dragged her off to a dark corner.
Armani could still remember the moment when her screams ceased. He knew she was dead in the corner, her beautiful body mutilated. She had been the one true love of his life, the woman who had changed him into a man.
The sound of a gun cocking drew his attention to the side and he put up his hand to stop Katie, shaking his head. Damian ran up next to her and put his hand on hers, pushing the gun down and speaking to her. Armani smirked at Damian. He wouldn’t let this beast walk away again; this was the moment he would get his revenge.
He rushed forward, taking the demon off-guard as he slammed his body against the beast’s. He shoved his knife into his guts, and the beast froze as the blade cut through him. Armani pushed the other knife through the demon’s eye into his skull.
He leaned forward and smiled into the beast’s one good eye. He could see the soul leaving the body, the torture the beast was feeling as it was ripped from its capsule. Armani leaned forward and spoke maliciously into the demon’s ear.
“That was for my girlfriend,” he whispered. “Burn in the flames till the end of time.”
He laughed into the demon’s ear, but only for a moment. His face suddenly went blank and he groaned at the sharp pains jolting through his stomach. He pulled his head away and looked at the beast in confusion, then tilted it down and saw the claws that pierced his body.
“No,” Katie screamed, but Damian held her back.
The demon growled and pulled the knife from its eye, throwing it to the side with a dark, menacing laugh.
He slid his claws out of Armani and pushed him to the ground. Armani tried to stand back up but he couldn’t, so he sat on his knees as the beast stared down at him in dismay.
Shots rang out from behind Armani. Everyone looked around as Korbin walked forward, shooting and reloading his double-barreled shotgun and filling the demon with slugs.
The demon jerked back with each shot before finally falling to its knees. Armani and the demon stared at each other for a moment before the beast toppled over. Garrett ran over to Armani and caught him in his arms as he fell backward. He looked up at Korbin in panic, pressing his hands against the wounds that were spilling blood onto the ground. Everything went to slow motion at that point.
Katie stood in the middle of the crowd of people beginning to emerge from hiding.
She stared at Garrett as he did everything he could to keep Armani awake and alive.
Damian put his hand on her shoulder.
&nb
sp; It had been one of the bloodiest battles in the history of Korbin’s Killers, and unfortunately this time it was not just the enemy that suffered casualties.
THE KILLERS in the waiting room at the hospital were covered in dirt, grime, and blood.
The patients waiting to be seen stared at the group, aghast at their appearance.
No one cared, though.
They were waiting for news of their teammate—the one who finally got his revenge, who finally saw the importance of what they were doing, albeit too late. The demon had gotten his say, but Korbin had made sure it would never speak again.
Katie sat there in the chair staring down at her hands. Garrett had gone to the restroom to clean up, and was trying desperately to wash the blood off his hands.
She imagined him standing in the single bathroom with a look of panic on his face, scrubbing as hard as he could as the water ran red down the drain.
Pandora was silent, either because she knew it was appropriate or because of the battle she had witnessed. Katie knew Pandora couldn’t change, but she sometimes hoped that empathy or sympathy or something other than anger and hate might run through Pandora’s dark heart.
It was a silly dream, but for the first time since she had gotten there she found herself needing hope. Needing to feel like there was something more than just carnage and blood.
She was fighting a holy war for a God she didn’t even know.
She was fighting a beast, a monster, a devil she had never seen, at least not until the day she was Damned.
Korbin paced the floor, talking to who she assumed were the higher-ups on his phone.
They would have to come to the hospital and take care of the fact that they had all been there in that condition. They hadn’t had a choice, though. They had rushed Armani to the closest place, landing on the hospital’s roof.
“It won’t come off,” Garrett said, sitting down heavily in the chair next to her. His weight made the chair squeak.
“We’ll get some better cleaner from the back,” she told him. “It’s okay.”
“It’s not okay.” He shook his hands in sharp, angry movements. “I should have stopped him. I should have run after him, tackled him, knocked him to the ground. I should have stopped the bleeding.” He looked at her. “That’s what I do, Katie. I stop the bleeding.”
“No!” Katie exclaimed, turning toward him and placing a hand on his arm. “This isn’t your fault, Garrett. There is nothing about this whole fucked-up situation that’s your fault. There was nothing you could have done better.”
“I could have gotten to him faster,” he snapped. “I let him bleed out on his knees. I could have been one minute quicker. A minute…hell, five seconds can save someone’s life.”
“You need to stop this, Garrett,” she said, putting her hand up when he tried to argue. “You did nothing wrong. People die, even people like us. Armani was reckless. He’s been looking for this fight for a long time.” Her eyes pierced his. “This was going to happen. Even if it hadn’t been today, it would have been soon. You were there when it happened, and that was a sign. You showed him how much you cared, and gave everything you had. You don’t know what the outcome will be, but you may very well have saved his life.”
Garrett whispered, “You know that’s bullshit.” He looked down. “You saw those wounds.”
“I saw blood and torn flesh, which was largely what I saw everywhere today.” She inhaled. “You saved a lot of people today, and you did everything you could for our brother. Now you have to stop this. You can’t beat yourself up. Do you understand me?”
“Yeah.” He sighed, shaking his head.
“Okay,” she said, letting out a deep breath. “I’m gonna go grab you a drink from the soda machine. Get some caffeine in you, hydrate you a little. Stay here, okay?”
“Thank you,” he said, grabbing her offered hand. “I know you’ll tell me the truth whether I want it or not, and I appreciate that you do what you can. Thank you for that.”
Katie smiled kindly and stood up, but as she walked away from Garrett a hole tore in her heart. He was in so much pain; pain that she could feel just sitting next to him.
She put some money in the machine and pressed a button, then grabbed the cold aluminum can. Slowly she walked back over to Garrett and handed it to him.
“Drink this,” she said. “I’m going to go talk to Damian.” She pointed to the priest. “I’ll be right across the room, okay?”
“All right,” he said, nodding.
Katie took a deep breath and made her way over to Damian, stopping for a moment to grasp Derek’s hand as she passed. Damian looked up at her as she approached, opening his arms and pulling her into a hug. She wasn’t a hugger—not in this life or her prior one—but the contact felt warm and something other than sad.
“You did so well,” he whispered.
“Damian,” she said quietly into his ear, “I want to set Garrett free. Now. Here, in the hospital.”
“What?” he asked. He tried to pull away, but she held him close and he couldn’t budge. “Katie, I think we have been through enough today.”
“Look straight ahead of you,” she told him, damn near commanding his eyes to do what she asked. “Do you see him, Damian? Do you see him sitting there, only the shell of the man we knew just this morning? He blames himself for Armani, for not getting to him fast enough, for not stopping him. This is going to break him. When Armani dies, he will be officially broken. Do you want to sit and stare at a broken soul, a man who had the world in his heart, who would have helped anyone if asked? Do you want to give him the news when they tell us they couldn’t help Armani? You know how this ends, and it is dark. Only we can stop it. I would rather stop it this way than with my sword.”
“Katie.” He shuddered. “How can we lose another?”
“That is our burden,” she replied. “It is our burden to carry. We…you, me, us. We protect, helping any Damned who can be helped. He needs his family, Damian. He needs to feel the soft hand of his wife and smell the sweet scent of his children. He needs to be washed clean of all this. It makes some of us stronger, the memories building on the person that we are, but for others it only breaks them down one moment at a time.” There was a hitch in her voice. “Garrett will only grow weaker. He will lose himself quickly, and we know what will happen when he is too weak to fight his demon. He will end up like the others—only a whisper of the man he used to be, his eyes red as blood and his face twisted.”
“You are asking me to put his life at risk,” Damian told her, then added, “To put yours at risk.”
“Our lives are at risk every day,” she countered. “If you do this he will be at risk, but if you don’t he will certainly die—not as a hero but as a demon, foaming at the mouth. And who do you think will have to take care of that? One of us, which will only break that person down one more step. This chance needs to be taken, and it must be done before we lose him. There is no more time to think about it or mull it over. We can release him from this torture, and as his teammates it is our duty to do so.”
Damian pulled away as she released him, drawing back and looking up into her eyes. There was pain in his stare, but admiration as well. He glanced at Garrett and closed his eyes for a moment, shaking his head.
Then he opened his eyes. “You are a remarkable woman.” He smiled. “You have shown strength in the darkest moments, thinking only of others and never of yourself. You are the light in this storm, Katie.” He looked at Korbin. “I will talk to him.”
21
Katie nodded to Damian and stepped to the side, leaning back against the wall and watching as he approached Korbin.
Korbin started to talk but Damian stopped him, bending over and speaking softly. Nerves clenched Katie’s stomach as Korbin’s eyes widened and he looked at her from across the room. He turned back to Damian and the two continued to talk back and forth strongly, but not in an argumentative way.
Are they going to let us do it? Pandora asked
quietly.
There you are, Katie said. I was wondering where you went off to.
I just thought this might not be the best moment for my jokes, she admitted. I try to conform to customs of the people I invade.
That’s new. Katie chuckled. I thought for a moment you had feelings.
Oh, God no, she said. What do you think I am, a warlock?
Those are real? Katie asked.
Never mind that, Pandora said, changing the subject. So, do you think he will let us free him?
I don’t know. Katie sighed. Damian seems to understand the necessity for it, but I am not sure how Korbin will react.
If Damian gives Korbin the same speech you gave him, he can’t say no, Pandora said.
You were listening, Katie replied. So it was good? I mean, it was all true, but I felt like I was babbling.
No, that is babbling, the demon told her. What you said to Damian was spot on—if you are the type of creature who cares about others, of course.
Right, Katie said. I just hope that we can do this before we lose Garrett to his darkness. He’s not holding on very tightly right now.
Katie stood up straight as Korbin finally looked back over at her.
He narrowed his eyes as Damian continued to speak in his ear. He stared at her for several moments, but Katie stood her ground, showing no nerves or anxiousness. Inside she was a mess, worried about Armani and Garrett at the same time. The only comfort she could give herself with Armani was that if he died he would be free, something all of them would experience one day. He had been craving that for a very long time.
Korbin eased his shoulders and nodded at Katie, then turned back to Damian.
He’s going to let us do it, Katie told Pandora. You’d better bring your A game. If this goes wrong it will be disastrous.
I always bring my A game, my dear, she assured Katie.
Will I feel this?
I’m not sure, Pandora admitted. This is my first time too. I will do my best to keep it as painless for you as possible. I do know I can get him in, and I know for sure I can kill him. Toss him back down to Hell with the others.