by Kevin Wright
The whirr and roar was that of a jumbo jet engine blazing to full force as the demon unloaded on the crowd, cutting men down and in half, baptizing them in a river of hate.
* * * *
“What the—?” Peter said, vaguely aware as walls shattered and exploded around him.
“Beowulf’s thunder!” Detective Winters grasped Peter by the collar of his jacket. They were running, and then Detective Winters was hurling him bodily over the bar as a hurricane whir of bullets blew by. Liquor and glass and plaster and brick broke their fall.
Men and women screamed.
The earth cried out in pain.
“What the hell is that?”
“The bouncer,” Detective Winters answered, occupied.
“Where’s Pussywillow?” Peter yelled.
Detective Winters cast a clump of blond hair on the ground and nodded his head toward the doors.
Peter peeked over the bar as Pussywillow slid out the door, dragged along by, “Carlo?”
“Down.” Detective Winters yanked Peter down as the wall exploded under a hail of bullets.
Peter watched on as Detective Winters threw open the trombone case and pulled out a four-foot-long black pipe with a handle. In one motion, Detective Winters plunked himself on the ground, braced the contraption with his feet, and pulled back on a lever until it clicked. He slid a missile in one end and propped the other end on the bar.
Peter’s eyes went wide.
“You may want to move down.” Detective Winters hoisted it tight against his shoulder and brushed off his hat.
“Bazooka?” Peter asked, scuttling crabwise away.
“Yup,” Detective Winters grunted.
The Demon unleashed a roar and a hail of bullets, and it was the buzz of a thousand chainsaws on chalkboards.
“Dude, what is that thing?” Peter covered his ears.
“Hamburger.” Detective Winters squinted, aimed, fired. With a flash and a zoom, the bomb leapt towards its target and exploded in a cloud of smoke and fire. The bar, soaked with alcohol, lit up like a bonfire, along with Detective Winters’s coat, which he deftly removed and beat out.
“Holy shit!” Peter yelled.
Detective Winters pulled his smoldering coat back on.
“He dead?” Peter asked.
“No. Wrecked his suit, though.”
“You have another missile?”
Detective Winters nodded.
“Shoot Him in the head, then!” Peter yelled.
Reloading, Detective Winters paused, glanced up, frowning. “I just did.” He clicked the firing mechanism into place.
“What does that mean?” Peter whipped his head up over the bar for a glance and dropped again as bullets roared by.
“Job security.” Detective Winters slumped behind the bar again; then he was crawling towards Peter, then past him, the loaded bazooka in tow.
Peter scrambled after.
Broken shards of glass shivered with each footstep of the Demon.
Detective Winters turned back; Peter froze.
“Hurry,” Detective Winters said, as the floor shook and trembled and split, cracking, shattering, falling as the Demon trod closer, as He leapt onto the bar, splintering it down level to the ground with His sledgehammer feet.
Scrambling on, they coursed down one wall, turned right, then on along another wall of the immense disco hall. Broken glass bit into their hands and knees. Neither one noticed. Over corpses they crawled, and soon-to-be corpses.
Ahead, Detective Winters stopped, turned.
“Wall.” Detective Winters turned, pulling the bazooka up and over the bar.
Peter glanced past him as they hit the wall, literally. There was nowhere else to go.
As one they gazed up at the Hell-spawned thing that pursued them. Piecemeal, He smashed the bar away as He strode forward, face jagged with shrapnel, broken teeth protruding from His mouth. His tuxedo, along with His cigar, had been reduced to smoldering black cinders.
Peter throttled the gun.
The Demon strode on as though nothing on earth could stop it, and it looked as though nothing could. He raised His gun-arm, aiming.
Detective Winters said, “Duck,” as he raised the bazooka.
The Demon chambered a round just as Detective Winters’s bomb exploded on His gun-hand.
The Demon roared.
Heaven and hell crumbled.
Smoke cleared.
His gun, twisted charred metal scraped along the floor. Smoke poured off it in tendrils, and the Demon’s eyes followed those tendrils, for a moment, in disbelief. Then He turned His gaze and pounced forward.
Peter stumbled back.
Detective Winters unleashed a volley from dual FoeHammer.50 semiautomatics, and the Demon roared as bullets thudded into His flesh. On He came through the hail of bullets and twin shotgun blasts that stopped suddenly with a click and a click and then an expletive.
Forward with two great hands grasping, He snatched Detective Winters, hoisting him up towards His open jagged maw.
A snatched whiskey bottle in hand, Detective Winters shattered it over the Demon’s head and then stabbed him repeatedly in the face.
The Demon roared and hurled Detective Winters into the wall, crash!
He turned towards Peter.
Peter scrambled back, gun drawn.
The Demon’s sunken eyes went wide. He froze an instant as Peter drew the hammer back, squeezed the trigger and the hammer flipped forward, down, click, and nothing, absolutely nothing, happened.
“Shit…” Peter said.
* * * *
Crouched within the black passage, Sanjay watched, frowning, unprofessional, but effective. His employer cared not for the niceties of his trade. She cared only for results. The Kyberwulf assured them, yet with a maximum risk to Sanjay. One stray bullet and his soul would be forfeit.
A whirr of bullets ripped past.
It was almost over. Lit up like a jack o’ lantern, Sanjay’s face was rapt with attention, watching the massacre unfold. Massacres, as a rule, are not good for business in the short run, but it would not ruin him. In the long run, given the proper marketing to the proper people, they would return in droves to dance in glee upon the bones of the fallen. Of this, he was certain. The floors would certainly need fixing, the bar, too, everything. Sanjay had never been content with the bar, though. Yet again he had found the silver lining.
The ground shook once more, and Sanjay was again covered in dust from the deteriorating ceiling.
“Sleeman’s corpse!” Sanjay swore, pulling his silk ruhmal from off his shoulders and whipping the dust off it. He reached inside his suit coat pocket for his comb and froze, the hairs on the back of his neck rising. someone was coming. Sanjay melted into the darkness.
* * * *
Barely had the rounds penetrated His thick hard skin, remaining where they had struck like short, dull porcupine quills. One eye oozed yellow, deflating. Black demon ichor oozed from every hole in His body. His teeth were chipped, cracked in half, His gun-arm nearly vaporized. Grumbling, He twitched the muscle in his arm that was connected to the trigger and nothing happened.
First, He must kill the boy. Then, he would take his time with the Chaldean.
All these thoughts roared through the Kyberwulf’s head as he sprung forward. He snatched the scrambling boy around the midsection. The boy screamed as the Kyberwulf lifted and squeezed him like a fistful of writhing slugs. The Kyberwulf peered close at the dying boy, split charred teeth revealed in a snarl. A rib popped, then another.
He savored it, the pop and snap of ribs, when something suddenly slammed into Him, knocking Him to His knees. HIM. To His knees!
And for the first time since the Hunstruck Wrym had wrapped its great coils about Him, the Kyberwulf knew fear.
* * * *
The wide bright sword Durendal slammed to the hilt, hissing, a forged blade quenched within the flesh of the Dragon’s back, but still He lived.
He rose defia
nt.
Elliot’s thick muscled hands twisted the searing sword, and the Dragon turned with an unearthly cry, Elliot attached by an umbilical of steel.
Four massive paws on long arms reached round from the front and grasped at Elliot. He kicked them away. Lurching, the Dragon snared Elliot’s leg, tearing him off in a torrent of burning dark gush and the scrape of steel on bone.
Elliot crashed against the wall.
The Dragon roared, and all who heard trembled.
All fell.
All except one.
Landing with a thud amidst the crunch of broken glass and corpses, his sizzling black blade still in hand, Elliot roared, and he stood. Then he was charging. “HAI DURENDAL!”
Durendal, a quicksilver lick of steel slicing through the air, split the Dragon open, and entrails poured free, a mass of slick, black anacondas writhing.
The Dragon’s massive paw whipped out, shattering Elliot’s shoulder and driving him back. Spume oozed from His mouth as He withdrew his cigar and tossed it aside.
Elliot charged once more, ducking and slipping inside the Dragon’s bludgeoning arms, burying the blade into His chest, driving him back.
Columns tumbled, and the very brick’s and stones of the building shook at the roar of the Dragon.
Men covered their ears and their drums exploded.
Elliot drove the sword deep, deeper, driving the Dragon back, back, back, and into, smash, through the wall. It gave way and timber and stone block cracked and buckled.
Upon the fallen Dragon’s chest, amidst an orgy of writhing snakes that were the Dragon’s guts, Elliot stood knee-deep, amidst a noxious cloud. Stones like meteors rained; Elliot forced the blade deep and deeper down into the very stones of the earth. Upon his back the Dragon lay sprawled, teeth bared to black gums, snarling, grasping and tearing and slamming!
Elliot withstood it.
Bruised, battered, shattered, he took it all, always driving down, down, down and neither heaven nor hell could stop him. There was only the Dragon and himself and the blade that connected them, which the Dragon grasped, severing fingers, slowing its descent, forcing it up, forcing it out!
Rising.
Roaring.
But Elliot roared back!
The Dragon screamed!
And the ceiling trembled, cracking, caving.
And Elliot drove Durendal down one last time, and with a massive blow from his hand, he broke the hilt from his blade as the Dragon’s arms grasped him, holding him fast, crushing him as the sky fell, and reality tore from the jagged ends of the blade like silk.
* * * *
South, across the river the great wolf paces, back and forth, rapid-mad, his thick hairy paws thumping upon the wet concrete beneath him. Agitated, he is agitated. Anxious. Indeed he is anxious. Something is about to happen.
“Something something something something,” he mutters in the dark to anyone nearby.
No one is nearby.
Near-perfect circles, orange as jack o’ lanterns, shine in his eyes as he glares up through the grating in the bottom of the bridge and at the moon.
The chain around his neck clinks and chingles as he strides back and forth in an arc beneath the bridge, His bridge. It chinks and chingles louder as he grumbles to himself and stops pacing, listens. Something is happening. Across the river, men are dying. Ghouls are dying, again. A battle. A glorious battle. Knights. His knights and dragons.
On thick night winds ride screams and gunshots. The wolf inhales deeply, smelling the smoke and the blood and the brains, tasting the flesh tinged with the spice of gunpowder. He begins to drool; his pupils constrict in the dark; his thick tail wags. Then it stops.
Everything stops, his tail wagging, his drooling, even his breath. A torrent of rage that has built within him breaks free and engulfs him.
A Dragon has been slain.
A knight fallen.
The sword broken.
“A promise!” he roars, rearing up at the end of his chain, straining every link. “Broken!”
“A promise! An oath!” the wolf roars, fighting harder. “Oath breaker!”
“I’ll be the fool!”
“Never!”
“NEVER!”
“NEVER!”
And then his collar snaps.
* * * *
Elliot hears nothing.
Choosing, he sacrifices.
One hand held high, Elliot clutches the broken sword. As the impaled Dragon screams, Elliot slams down the hilt, again and again and again.
Huge slabs of stone and brick fall.
Thick arms flail, shattering bone.
Men scream his name from afar, but he hears them not.
His thick, strong arm snaps.
Down he is drawn, toward the Dragon and the glittering dark chasm beneath.
He blinks, dropping the broken sword, clutching his chest, crushing pain boring through his heart, his very soul. The Dragon roars, falling.
The ceiling gives way and the floor with it.
They fall.
Swirling darkness.
It is now only a dull pressure, only a tickle in his chest; it is nothing.
He blinks again.
There is no pain, his last scattered thoughts as he falls through the void … Emily Tine … his wife, Alicea, and children from long, long ago.
Chapter 33.
DAWN WAS BREAKING.
“Well, you see,” Salazar pushed his glasses back up his nose with one finger, “the reason I’m here to renegotiate the contract is not that Mister Speares is almost certainly dead, that was merely a matter of time, and of no real concer — uh, we had accounted for that with our last negotiations. Our bone of contention lay in the fact that, reportedly, the sword has been broken.”
Salazar skimmed one of his documents and then looked up.
“That, I believe, is the word on the street, as well as what the reports support. Neither Mister Spears nor the sword have been found at this time.” He flipped through the documents. “Hmmm, massive structural damage, water main break, gas leak, some sort of inter-dimensional rift? Ridiculous.”
He held the report closer to his face, “Witnesses state the sword was first lodged within the, ah, the chest cavity of a rather large four-armed-hell-spawned demon. That’s a direct quote. The, ahem, demon had sustained terrific wounds prior to his alleged death. He had also inflicted mass carnage upon dozens, at the very least it says, of people in the club that night. Anyways. These reports are about as reliable as the internet. The sword is nowhere to be found, though investigators are still looking. We have people looking, too, of course. Touchy business. There was quite a bit of damage, as I said; most of the mill collapsed. May take months to find. That’s being optimistic. Even were we to find the hilt and recover the blade from the demon’s corpse, the one man alive who could possibly re-forge it is, shall we say, indisposed. Its power is broken, perhaps. Do you follow?”
“Elliot is dead, then.” The Gurkha folded his hands.
“Yup, as a doornail, you can bet on it,” Salazar glanced at his report, “but let’s, just for a moment, focus on what’s important.”
“On what is … important,” the Gurkha repeated, his eyes cold, dead, far.
“Now, now,” Salazar raised a finger, “I’m not saying Mister Speare’s death wasn’t important, he did kill a,” he squinted at the report, “jabberwocky or something.” He shook his head. “But the fact of the matter is that Lord Brudnoy is not happy. Not happy at all. The breaking of the sword breaks the contract. Lord Brudnoy was counting on using that sword in the near future. He believes that it was a holy relic from the days of yore. Called it the Blade of Tyr. Believes Genghis Khan may have used it, or was it Attila? Anyways.”
“Blade of Tyr?” the Gurkha said.
“Norse God of … something.” Salazar shrugged. “Who gives a shit? Lord Brudnoy called it that, so that’s what it was, to him. Yet, one must always remember one thing.”
“What is that?�
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“Lord Brudnoy can and does lick his own crotch,” Salazar said. “You only met him that one time?”
“I knew him through reputation as a man of his word,” the Gurkha said.
“He is a man, or werewolf, of his word,” Salazar said. “If he said something, he would do it. If he remembered it anyways, or didn’t twist it in his mind somehow. Admittedly, that wasn’t often. Anyways, he believed the sword to be a holy relic because he wanted it to be one. I dug up some convincing information that might support the Blade of Tyr theory. Of course it’s more convincing if you’re stinking hobo drunk, but the fact that Lord Brudnoy believes the sword to be holy does not, of course, make it so. Anyways, as you know, the sword itself was to be the presiding instrument of his preliminary funerary arrangements. No other blade is sharp enough.”
“He wished to kill himself,” the Gurkha said. “I know this. We discussed it.”
“Of course we had,” Salazar said. “We discussed it when we wrote the contract you did not sign, and we discussed it not two nights ago. You and I and Mister Speares were here.”
The Gurkha nodded. “What is your point?”
“My point is, my little brown leprechaun,” Salazar said, tempting fate, “that everyone at that meeting knew that Lord Brudnoy wanted to die by that sword in a special ceremony. Even had a song picked out. It was so precious, Dust in the Wind. By Kansas.” He wiped a tear.
“Now my point is that the party that I represent did not break the contract. And the party that you represent did not break the contract, oh, my mistake!” He whipped some papers from his coat and slapped them down. “It was your party that broke the sword. So that means it was your party that broke the contract. The contract that Lord Brudnoy held so dear. And so you represent the party that selfishly sent poor, poor Lord Brudnoy careening over the edge.”
“Selfishly…” the Gurkha reached for his kukris.
“Indeed!” Salazar stood up from the table and edged away, his briefcase held before him as a shield. “Your party broke the contract, and now Lord Brudnoy’s gone rabid. You ever seen Old Yeller? Worse than that! Broken his chain! Raving about the sword! Raving about the contract. Eating men and women and children! All because of Mister Speares, incompetent old bastard! Did he have to break the sword? I wouldn’t have broken the sword? Why not simply cut off the demon’s head? Hmmmm? Seems more efficient to me. Just cut it off. Then everybody’s happy. That’s how I’d’ve done it. But then, I’m not a welcher.”