A rumble from up ahead draws our attention. There’s movement as far left and right as we can see.
We need to get closer and find out what we’re facing.
The team starts running, kicking up a cloud of dust as we move through a garden of strewn boulders.
In front of us, the twisted trees rise like crooked fingers in front of a faraway field of tawny grass that stretches, chest high, to an obscured ridge-line.
Out on the periphery small fires smolder, embers kicking up flashes of spectral fire that light the terrain.
“This doesn’t look so bad,” Hines says.
Dominic gestures out to the grass where dark shapes are barely visible and fanning out, taking up positions.
The enemy has been anticipating and awaiting our arrival. They’ve been planning for us.
Michael and I bend.
He plunges his pitted swords into the ground.
My bladed chain slinks up close to my left wrist and settles at a resting position.
Michael puts his finger through one of many holes that have been eaten through the metal of one of his swords. He shakes his head, pulls the ruined sword out of the ground, and crushes it with the squeeze of one hand. It turns to dust.
He looks back to me. “We’re near the end of the abyss,” he declares.
I nod and look out into the spectral light.
“I can feel Noah,” I say. “He’s close.”
This time it’s real. My son is near. I can sense it.
“Are you ready to end this?” Michael asks. “Are you ready to fulfill your purpose?”
“Hines talks a lot about Kierkegaard and some story called Fear and Trembling. About a man who goes through life and reaches an abyss where he has to make a leap of faith,” I say and meet Michael’s glowing eyes. “They attacked me in my son’s home. They took Noah, Michael. Not only am I ready to make a leap of faith and end this, I’m going to keep fighting and get Noah back. Then, I’m going to tear this place apart and salt the ground.”
“You’d risk everything for a Nephilim who may end up as a mere mortal?” he asks with doubt in his eyes.
“I spent thousands of years walking the earth before I found something worth risking everything for,” I answer. “I’m NOT letting them take it from me without a fight.”
“We’ve got company,” Dominic warns, interrupting our parlay.
On the other side of the field, the dark shapes slash through the grass with amazing speed.
They’re far enough away that we have time to make a plan, but they’re getting close enough that we have to act quickly.
Michael presses his right hand to his temple and gazes intently. He’s making certain he chooses the right path before he acts.
He’s always been the strategic war planner, thinking centuries ahead, and sometimes mere seconds.
“It’s them,” he says. “Legio IX Hispana. The remnants of the Lost Ninth Roman Legion. Picked by Caesar himself. The ones who sold their souls to Lucifer.”
“Are you kidding me?” Hines spits. “A fucking Roman legion? C’mon, man, there’s no way we can do this. This is crazy.”
Michael glares at Hines.
“I am no man. Do not call me that. I slew two hundred thousand dark angels during the First Holy War in Heaven, and you call facing this crazy?” he asks. “I call it divine justice.”
“Yeah? Well, how many angels did you have backing you up?” Hines asks. “A lot more than our ragtag bunch I’m betting.”
“A hundred and forty-four thousand,” Michael answers with pride. “Almost half of the two-thirds who did not fall for Lucifer’s deception followed me into battle.”
“Okay, Mister Archangel,” Hines says. “You go get me a hundred and forty-four thousand badass angels, and I’ll be more than happy to go silly on…a Roman Legion.”
Out in the field, two dozen wiry, muscled soldiers sprint through the tall grass and toward the woods. Demonic Legionnaires, hoplite warriors who carry spears, swords, helmets and round shields called clipeus rush rapidly forward as one.
The ground rumbles beneath their feet.
Storm clouds brew in the Satanic stratosphere.
Thunderclaps echo across the wasteland.
I take a knee and swipe my hand through the sand at my feet.
Under several layers of pitted broadswords and armor, I find something. Buried in the sand, shields like the ones that the Legionnaires carry, clipeus, are perfectly preserved.
“Shields,” I say. “They’re beneath the ground. We can use them.”
Everyone grabs a shield as I join Michael in making a final survey of the battlefield.
“Their biggest weakness is the terrain,” Michael says. “If we fight them on uneven ground, then their shields, along with their phalanx formations, will be rendered worthless.”
“We’ll have to beat them to the trees then,” I reply, full of hope that we can do this. “If they make it there first, this will be over in minutes.”
Michael takes a deep breath and closes his eyes.
“May we honor the Lord with their deaths,” he says.
Michael leads the charge as I grab Dominic’s arm.
“I’m sorry for what I said before about an inside job,” I tell him. “After Noah was taken, I just, I don’t know. I was so enraged. I still am. I don’t understand why any of this is happening.”
“Well maybe if we make it through and miraculously survive, it’ll all become clear,” Dominic replies as we run forward. “You’ll have my forgiveness then.”
I nod.
The two of us face forward and pick up our pace to fall in with Michael and the others, as we desperately attempt to outrun the demonic Legionnaires and take the advantage that the desiccated woods offer.
26
Deadly Terrain
The enemy blitzes through the grass, short-swords out, steel shimmering under spokes of lightning in the sky.
One of the demonic Legionnaires pulls off his helmet to reveal the warped face of a demon underneath.
The soldier, likely a former general, raises a balled fist, shrieking to his brethren and urging them to follow him into the forest.
To my surprise, we reach the forest first and take up positions behind the carbonized trees.
After a brief pause to collect ourselves, the team spreads out behind fallen tree trunks.
We wait with bated breath as the clanking armor and footfalls inch closer.
Something rises up from the gloom out ahead of us. A silhouette.
Then another, then three more, and before I can utter a word, the horizon is full of forms lumbering toward us.
Once they’re close enough for me to smell their decrepit flesh, we know it’s time to attack and then the battle is on.
My bladed chain is out, but the first Legionnaire I confront clambers around it.
He slinks past my strike and counters.
He pistons me to the ground with clenched fists and raises his sword high above his head.
Michael’s remaining sword slams into the Legionnaire’s chest, knocking him back.
I push off the ground and finish the demon Legionnaire off.
Then, I glimpse at Michael.
He doesn’t take the opportunity to remind me that he’s stepped in once more.
Instead, he plows ahead, thrusting his blade into one demon after another as he quickly meets the battle head-on.
Michael gallops between the trees as the Legionnaires try to join their shields in a phalanx position.
As Michael predicated, however, the ground is too unsteady for the enemy to gain purchase, the trees are too cumbersome for them to form a solid phalanx as they should, and they can’t muster a unified strike as they’re accustomed to.
Michael exploits their unease, hacking and slashing the Legionnaires to pieces.
Fast as a reflex, he confronts six of the attackers, bringing his blades around, showering the Legionnaires with sparks.
Choppin
g his way through a knot of attackers, he moves at a furious pace.
He parries blows with one sword, while using other to cut and stab.
More of the demons scurry over the spine of a naked slab of rock, and Michael confronts them in nightmarish rage.
His battle cries are quickly drowned out by the roar of his blade as it shatters bone, metal, and even stone.
Hines and I press our bodies close to a pair of blackened and charred trees as the battle rages around us.
Hines wanders, eying Dominic who’s firing off arrows, downing two Legionnaires as he turns into the face of another Legionnaire.
The demon brings his sword down.
Hines leapfrogs to escape past, but he’s too slow to stop the monstrosity.
The demon’s blade slashes his shoulder.
Hines yelps and tumbles back, blood spurting in every direction.
The Legionnaire rises over him. The demon pulls its sword back, but then it stumbles. It reaches a hand behind its back.
Hines watches as the Legionnaire turns, revealing a sharp arrowhead jutting out of its back.
The arrowhead is attached to my bladed chain.
As the demon crumbles to the ground, I stand over it and look down.
I jerk my bladed chain upward and out of the demon’s flesh, clanking against its armor.
“Michael isn’t the only one who can help in the nick of time,” I say, smirking.
Then, I lean down and try to staunch the blood from Hines’s wound.
As I sense the Legionnaires creep up to us, I spin around, swing my bladed chain out in fury, and cut down three more of the attackers without breaking a sweat.
I continue to work on his wound and attempt to cinch the clothing around it to stop the bleeding.
Dominic maneuvers a weapon that he’s unearthed from a past battle. It’s an ancient Roman scorpio, the world’s first machine-gun.
It’s shaped like a giant crossbow on a wooden tripod supported by torsion springs attached to ten arrows stacked like bullets in a machine-gun clip.
“GET DOWN!” Dominic shouts.
I drop without needing to be told twice and kiss the ground.
Dominic’s eyes focus in on a dozen Legionnaires running at him as he pulls the scorpio up and fires a volley of arrows.
A steel-tipped curtain filters through the trees, slices the air, and plunges into the Legionnaires, dropping them like flies.
Jessup and Michael cheer as they duck.
The arrows slice over their heads even as more Legionnaires appear out of the grass.
Seeing the difficulty of moving through the trees with their shields, the Legionnaires discard them. This is a mistake on their part.
In the skies above, thunder rolls, echoing outward, and dark toxic clouds open as acid rain begins to fall.
I glance at my knee as a raindrop pelts it and sizzles. My body armor begins to take damage from the raindrops.
I look over to Michael.
“Acid rain,” he confirms. “We can use it to our advantage.”
I grab a discarded shield and use it as an umbrella while shouting at the others. “Use the shields!”
Hines, Jessup, and Dominic each hold a shield aloft. Matching our actions, they channel the rain away and around them as they move forward through the dried-out trees.
The Legionnaires scramble without shields, trying to take cover as the acid rain eats through their rancid flesh.
I lead everyone past the Legionnaires, who are busy being devoured by the deadly torrent of rain.
A thunderstorm has opened up behind us. The acid rain pisses down harder, melting the Legionnaires in droves.
We continue dashing through the grass. A moment later, the rain ends, and I rally the team together.
We share worried looks as I catch my breath.
“That force was too small to be an entire Legion,” I say. “Where’re the rest?”
Michael throws an arm up, and we stop dead in our tracks.
He intones, “And Dante saw that ‘the deepest isolation is to suffer separation from the source of all light and warmth’ in a Lake of Ice.”
Out in front of us is a frozen lake of black ice that resembles a slab of obsidian granite.
On the surface of the lake resides a maze of junked machinery.
It’s a madman’s menagerie of war, including armored vehicles, tanks, planes, and myriad other weapons systems created throughout history from all the eons of war that have never truly stopped.
It’s as if every weapon that has ever been was snatched up and dropped into the frozen water, left to decay under thick icy clouds.
The clouds loom over the lake and maze and billow out in the air like gauze above a distant ridge-line.
On the ridge-line, an army of demonic warriors can be seen, hordes of them.
They’re screaming, waving weapons, and shouting challenges and obscenities in various tongues.
Unfortunately, I now have my answer as to where the rest of the Legionnaires are.
I’m beginning to wonder if all the warriors, demons, and weapons that Lucifer and Moloch are throwing at us are truly meant to destroy us.
What if the real plan is to forge us and make us ready to fight in the way the Morning Star has always wanted us to—to fight for selfish passions rather than for something holy?
What if his true intent is trick us into fighting on his behalf without us realizing it?
My heart fills with dread as we prepare for the onslaught.
27
The Lake of the Dead
The five of us gather together and exchange worried looks that are mixed with hope. We’ve made it this far, but I fear the worst is yet to come.
“This is it,” Michael declares. “The lake at the end of the abyss. This is the final battle.”
We all share tense looks while readying our weapons.
Then, as if reading one another’s minds, we drop down on top of the frozen lake as one, ready to slash through the enemy.
Howling winds whiplash the team and we all shiver as we begin to sprint across and into the maze.
We move left, then right, and around discarded articles of war.
Jessup stops in the middle of the advance and looks at the ice under his feet.
He gasps when he sees a face peering back at him.
From above, we can see that every inch of space beneath the ice houses warriors who died long ago in battle.
They stretch as far as the eye can see, too numerous to count.
Their faces are visible. Their eyes and mouths remain open and gaping in soulless screams.
They’re trapped under the ice for eternity.
The blood from these fallen and trapped soldiers has congealed, giving the lake its dark color.
I cringe and ready my bladed chain.
Jessup clutches himself as a powerful gust of wind blows and knocks him over.
Then, a cloak wraps around his shoulders.
He looks up to see me placing my outer garment over him.
He needs it more at this moment.
Something in his past, something he hasn’t shared with me, is haunting him now.
This frozen lake of the dead is the worst possible place for him.
Someone he once loved must have fallen prey to an icy death.
There isn’t time to comfort him anymore, though.
We need to move.
I only sport my body armor now.
Transparent spider silk material protects my chest, arms, thighs, and hips.
A metallic alloy forged in the Sun covers my breasts, abdomen, pelvis, and most of my legs down to my steel-tipped boots.
I might appear on the surface to be heading for a model runway with a warrior’s decor, but any mortal-forged weapon aimed in my direction will only annoy me and incur my wrath.
My muscles tense and throb as the wind picks up.
I begin to wonder if I’ve made the right decision in giving up my cloak.
/> “You—you didn’t have to—to—” Jessup stammers as he continues to shiver. “I—I don’t understand why I’m so troubled.”
I wave him off.
“You don’t have to explain,” I say, trying to comfort him. “We all have our inner demons.”
Jessup chuckles a bit at that.
“I owe you one,” he says.
I shake my head.
“No, no you really don’t, buddy,” I reply. “Just keep your eye on the prize and fight like there’s no tomorrow, because there might not be.”
Jessup looks like he wants to say more, but we’re interrupted.
An explosion rocks the lake as Jessup and I swivel to see the army of demonic warriors charging down the ridge-line in an unholy onslaught.
The enemy fires weapons and lob explosives at us.
As they slash forward, it’s clear that their ranks comprise warriors from across the various centuries.
In their number are Hoplites, Norse berserkers, Ottoman warriors, Cossacks, SS commandos, and everything in between.
Their faces are skewed in demonic grins with bloodlust in their eyes and decrepit bodies as they scramble by in their moldering uniforms.
Amidst the junked machinery, we slide along the slick ice and take cover while searching for a means to turn the tide of battle.
My hope begins to fade.
We could really use some reinforcements right about now, but they’re not coming. We’re on our own.
Dominic shields himself with a gutted tank and manages to pry a machine gun from the side of the turret.
He checks the weapon and sees that it’s functional, even better—full of ammo.
He grins and aims.
At the same time, Michael slips through the top hatch of a blasted armored personnel carrier, a light armored vehicle with a twenty-five-millimeter on top.
Inside, he rummages through the remains and finds a few scattered grenades and a satchel of explosives attached to wire straps. Within seconds, he’s back outside of the vehicle and ready for more.
Hines kneels near a munitions jeep where he uncovers a pair of machine guns, rifles, and a few sticks of dynamite.
Jessup and I charge across the icy surface and meet back up with Hines, Dominic, and Michael.
DEATH SUITS HER_A Supernatural Reverse Harem Romance Adventure Page 15