Demon Accords 6: Forced Ascent

by John Conroe

  “My Lord, I am here to aid you,” Orias yelled out, still running and still talking. Dumbass.

  Baldy was headed straight for me, bladed arms raised to strike, but Grim had learned from the priest and the bull demon in Baltimore. A vampire energy Push stopped the demon duke like an invisible wall, giving me enough time to move to him and freeze his feet to the ground with a combination of aura and Posting energies twisted together, like an invisible ship’s hawser. He hacked one crablike arm at me and Grim caught it between the flats of both aura-lined palms—the Jackie Chan sword capture, Hell’s version. He tried to pull his stuck feet free as his other arm swung back to strike me, only it flew off completely when three feet of tungsten sword cleaved it free. He locked eyes with me as Tanya’s second sword snipped his shiny head free from his neck, eyelids slowly blinking, skull tumbling, and then there was nothing left but to call a Kirby for cleanup in aisle H.

  “Impressive teamwork, but my vassal’s sacrifice has given me time to heal and I don’t think your tricks will have quite the same result with me,” Amaymon said.

  A thought came to me that wasn’t mine. Two thoughts really.

  Hello, you’re monologuing just like your idiot minion.

  That was the first. The second was more of an idea. I glanced at Tanya, who was staring fixedly at the demon prince. No, not at him, but just past him. I saw what she was looking at, and her idea made sense. Enormous sense, but the sheer coincidence and unlikely providence of it all made me glance Heavenward for just a moment.

  “Oh, He won’t help you now, Mal. It would be a breach of His precious Accords,” Amaymon said, not understanding my wondering look. “He is sooo enamored of free will.”

  I didn’t have to look at Tanya to know what she was thinking—more grandstanding. So when she threw her lefthand sword at him, I was already moving, her attack plan received and acknowledged. I ran and leaped straight at him, feet first.

  The sword punched into his left foot, but he barely noticed, instead throwing the lamppost, spear-like, at my vampire before turning to meet my charge. I trusted Tanya to dodge the projectile and slide into position on the ground at his feet. Her left foot roundhouse kicked the back of his right knee as my feet met his outstretched hand and I bounced off.

  Without Tanya’s actions, my impact, which had enough power to cave in the side of a dump truck, would have done nothing to the red and black giant. But with one foot pinned and the other knee buckled, he went over backward, crashing into the unique property behind him and half-crushing the sign in its yard.

  That’s when the vision struck along with the flare of heat from my God Tear. Only it wasn’t a vision, more like a dream. I went from fighting a demon prince to being in a foofy pink bedroom, lying on… no. Floating over a soft, twin-sized princess bed complete with canopy. My attention was on the portion of the wall I could see through the bed’s draped canopy. Painted with a mixture of Disney characters, it was mostly normal—other than the strand of black that was growing downward from the ceiling, beginning to cover Goofy and branching off to flow right through Princess Ariel’s friend Sebastian. My form floated out to investigate, finding strands of blackness running down every wall and all across the ceiling. Instant unreasoning rage overwhelmed me at this magical attack on my charge. Now my ghostly purple form was touching a strand and following it backward, up the wall, through the ceiling across the night sky of New York City, riding the twisted black cable of magic like a road. Floating across the cityscape till I was coming down through the roof of an apartment building, through the top floor, down to the second, and suddenly in a room of chanting women. Thirteen women, all older, all focused.

  As one, their closed eyes snapped open, identical looks of first disbelief, then outrage, and finally, as my purple hand clipped the closest one’s head from her shoulders, terror. A flurry of violent images flowed like a first person shooter game gone amuck.

  Suddenly I was back in the street, kneeling on one leg, weak and breathing like I was asthmatic, the Tear cooling under my shirt.

  Tanya was alternating between watching me worriedly and looking back at where the demon prince was jerking and shuddering on the yellow and white building’s sign. Mere moments had gone by.

  The part of the sign that I could still see indicated it was Saint somebody’s Church, and the effect on Amaymon was graphic. Every part of the demon prince’s body had erupted with boils and his skin was bubbling as the church’s consecrated ground seared the unholy flesh within its boundaries.

  He howled, bounding to his feet, then stood atop the remains of the signpost and glared at us.

  “That’s it? That’s everything you have? I can stand this all night, this blighted ground He has favored with his Grace. And you, Malahidael, you are spent and worthless,” he said through clenched teeth, blisters and foul steam rising all about his body.

  Weakly, I pointed just behind him. He frowned, then twisted slightly to see where I directed.

  Barbiel stood between the white columns of the church’s front, but he wasn’t the Barbiel I knew so well. Gone were the casual clothes, replaced by silver and gold armor that shown with a light so bright, it was hard to look at. A golden helmet covered his curly hair and his blue eyes showed an emotion I had never seen on his face before: intense, deadly anger.

  A four-foot blade of white flames was in his hands as he advanced on Amaymon.

  For his part, the demon prince gaped a bit, looking like a horrific idiot. Then he straightened and reached into the air in front of him to produce his own sword—this one dripping with a soul-sucking blackness and radiating a cold so intense, I could feel it from forty feet away.

  “Barbiel, you are less my match than Malahidael. This will mark your final end.”

  “But you’re in my yard, bitch!” Barbiel answered, confirming my suspicions that he’d been spending way too much time reading teenagers’ cell texts.

  The two came together in a blur of blades that was hard for even vampire vision to follow, the impact thunderous. They both staggered back, a line of blackness on Barbiel’s chestplate and a glowing white rent across the inside of Amaymon’s right thigh.

  Again, they came together for an explosive exchange of strikes and again, they separated.

  Barbiel was unmarked, but Amaymon was limping and when he turned, I could see another white streak across his right calf.

  I don’t know if they would have been evenly matched anywhere else or any other time. Maybe Amaymon was right and he was the more powerful being. But here, on hallowed ground, already punished by our running battle and hundreds of bullets, the prince of Hell was outmatched. And here’s another fact you might not know… real blade fights, be they sword or knife, ax or spear, are decidedly much faster than Hollywood would have you believe. The third exchange was the last, as Barbiel beat Amaymon’s guard down, stepped to his left toward that weakened right leg, and speared the demon through his ribs, the tip appearing out the giant’s upper left shoulder blade. Then the Angel of October smoothly pulled the blade free and lopped off the demon’s head.

  The massive oblong shape fell to the ground and exploded into embers and ash on contact. A larger, flashier explosion followed when the now eight-foot remains timbered to the consecrated earth immediately after.

  Chapter 24

  “Nice sword,” I said when my angelic case officer looked over at us. “Where can I get one?”

  “You already have one, Malahidael… you just need to call it,” he said, puzzled by my ignorance.

  Great, like I couldn’t have used that tidbit of knowledge many months and hundreds of demons ago.

  A blast of wind buffeted me as one of the news choppers swung extra close for a better picture. When I looked up and met the pilot’s eyes, he pulled the aircraft back despite the visible haranguing his onboard reporter was giving him.

  Two more helicopters circled the scene, each with local news call signs on their sides. The biggest paranormal fight of the century ha
d just been broadcast live on global networks. Fantastic.

  “Ah, the cat’s kind of out of the bag here,” I said to Barbiel, who approached me, sword vanishing as he walked, armor morphing back into street clothes.

  “I am just a vague person-shaped blur on their equipment. You and Lailah, however, are sure to be rendered in exquisite detail,” he replied, standing just on the edge of the church grounds.

  “So what happens now?” I asked him, glancing at Tanya, who was picking up her sword.

  “I do not know, Mal—can I call you Mal? I kind of like it,” he said.

  “Yeah sure, but isn’t the Big Guy gonna throw the book at us for letting this all happen in public?”

  “You think He is displeased that such vivid proof of his existence has been provided without his input? You have heard the phrase… any publicity is good publicity?”

  “Is he dead?” Lydia asked, suddenly streaking onto the scene, looking around while clutching the assault rifle tightly. “Is Amaymon dead?”

  I could hear Arkady, Trenton, and Stacia coming not far behind and a rhythmic thudding told me that ‘Sos was done with his battle as well and approaching.

  “He is more than dead…he is destroyed,” Barbiel said, his tone somber.

  “Completely destroyed? Not just returned to Hell?” she asked, poking at the swirls of ash that had fallen back on the ruined church sign.

  Before he could answer, a male voice yelled at us. “Drop the weapon now! Put your hands on your heads and drop the weapons!”

  Lydia turned, the M4/M203 in her hand and I sensed what was about to happen before it did. Desperately, I flashed a burst of aura toward the Secret Service team that was demanding our compliance. I wasn’t fast enough. The agent who had yelled now fired a stream of high velocity rounds from his FN P-90 that shut off in mid-burst as my aura blast arrived.

  Turning back to Lydia, I saw her falling away, shoved by Trenton’s horizontal dive. He had never stopped running, arriving just at the moment that the shooting started, and he was faster than the others. A spray of red mist exploded from his back as the little rounds ripped through him, climbing up his body till the last few exited his skull. I moved to him, meeting Tanya, who caught his falling body. His open wounds were smoking, as if burned and I suddenly remembered the mix of silver, copper, and DU rounds that had been directed at Amaymon.

  The back of his head was a series of gaping holes, but his face was oddly peaceful when she tilted it up her way, just three tiny dots to show where the bullets had entered his cheek, nose, and forehead.

  Part of me felt disbelief, part felt Tanya’s enormous loss and self-blame, and part of me felt rage—plasma-hot rage. Turning away just as Stacia and Arkady appeared on either side of my vampire, a tiny portion of my brain flashed through a series of memories that had till this point been missing: Trenton at Plasma, guarding my neighbors; Trenton at the Brooklyn Heights home, guarding Tanya; Trenton guarding us all through countless demon incursions.

  The rest of my brain flashed into full combat mode as Grim took charge. One of ours had been killed by those we were trying to protect; therefore, they had just forfeited protection and become enemy combatants. Grim knew what to do with enemy combatants. First, their weapons. Unlock.

  The biggest burst of aura that I could now remember left me, expanding out in an arc of exploding guns and ammo. Weapons, hand-held, holstered, or lying forgotten on the ground, all burst apart in flames and thunder as the purple wave reached them. Above, three newly arriving Apache gunships lost their chain guns and a good portion of their stubby wings when their loads of 30mm cannon shells and Hellfire missiles ignited from within. Flight integrity compromised, they tilted away, airframes shuddering.

  The half-globe of ordinance destruction expanded outward, passing one hundred, two hundred, and three hundred yards in every direction. At least a hundred arriving cops and agents were suddenly batting at flames and burning bits of gunpowder as their tools of the trade turned against them.

  High overhead, beyond the atmosphere, something came online, catching the attention of my inner monster. Different from other satellites, it was powering up to do something, something that I was sure to disapprove of. Grim pushed my right hand up in the air and made a grasping motion. As he twisted my fist, the space-borne weapons platform moved with it, twisting its position just as it released its charge of focused light. The infrared laser beam was fully visible to my eyes as it carved a burning black line through the green grass of Lafayette Square, hundreds of feet from our position, the line running across the ground and through a car, ending when the satellite’s onboard capacitor exhausted itself. Before the space weapon could recharge, Grim squeezed our right hand tightly and high above, the satellite crumpled in on itself—a billion-dollar crushed beer can.

  With that out of the way, Grim turned our attention to the ones that had made our vampire grieve her lost guardian. Already wounded by their own weapons, they would fall like wheat to our scythe. Lining my hands and arms with aura, Grim prepared for the slaughter, only to stop at the warm touch of a single finger on my left bicep.

  Stacia was standing next to me, back in human form, her approach ignored by my combat persona’s focus on enemies and enemies alone. Grim retreated a little at her contact and when I turned to her, part of my normal self was able to read her expression. Sorrow, disgust at the shooters, and fear—fear for me. Fear that I would lose myself in the slaughter that was about to follow. She was wearing just a borrowed jacket, but it must have been Arkady’s because it was enormous and covered her almost to her knees.

  Grim pulled back a bit further and I looked back to where Tanya held Trenton, her gaze locked on mine, her regret and loss so sharp it had weight. Lydia was staring down at the handsome face of the silent bodyguard and Arkady stood with his head bowed. Awasos sniffed Trent’s form then blurred back to wolf form, sitting and raising his head to the sky to howl for his lost companion in the way that wolves have since even before man lived in smoky caves and cowered in the dark night.

  Grim checked our surroundings one more time, finding it clear of immediate danger for several hundred yards in all directions, before retreating fully. Sirens approached but they were the ambulance and fire truck kinds, here to treat the wounded and control the damage I’d already done.

  The news choppers continued to hover, but all the military ones were pulling back. Fully myself, I went back to Tanya, whose eyes were streaked with tears. Then I noticed Barbiel standing at the edge of the church grounds, mere yards from the others, his expression one of relief as he looked straight at me. He gave Stacia a firm nod, then looked at Tanya, who had turned to look where I was staring. Meeting the angel’s gaze, she came to a conclusion, one I could feel through our link. She stood, lifting the tall, lean Guardian’s body without effort and started toward Barbiel.

  He patted her shoulder as she lay Trenton on the church grounds at his feet. He leaned over and held one hand out, as if to give the dead vampire a hand up. White light lifted from the body and touched his outstretched hand, swelling from an arm-shaped line to a body-shaped oval of pure white light.

  “I will take this warrior home myself, Lailah. He has served well, sacrificing himself for his comrade,” the Angel of October said before blurring into gold and silver light himself. Both blobs of light ascended, slow, then fast, then gone.

  Chapter 25

  Alexis Bishop arrived in the back of an ambulance, jumping out with the paramedics, moving quickly out of their way as they set about tending the survivors. Most of the wounds were flash burns, micro shrapnel, ruptured eardrums, shock, and temporary blindness. I caused those. There were some gunshot wounds from the Satanists—who were mostly dead, having fought to the last man. Then there were the agents and officers who had tangled with the demons. Only a few survived, and they had already been medevaced to hospitals. The rest were just bodies being covered by the cleanup crew.

  Looking around at the wounded officers, bodies
, and debris-strewn streets, it took her a moment before she looked over our way. It’s not like we were hidden, sitting on the masonry base of the smashed church sign. Plus the three—no, make it now four—camera crews situated on the roofs of the nearest buildings were all broadcasting a continuous video feed of our every move, while parabolic microphones sought our words.

  I think it must have been the sheer activity that was taking place and the amount of damage to the street, parked cars, and surrounding buildings that occupied her attention.

  All of the flashing lights were ambulance and fire truck mounted, as no military or SWAT vehicles had approached closer than five hundred yards to the center of the destruction. The only non-news helicopters had been the medevac units and Marine One, which had landed on the South Lawn of the White House and then left, most likely with the President aboard. Why he hadn’t been evacuated at the start of the whole thing, I didn’t know.