by Michael Todd
Another guy walked up and stared at him angrily. “You’re the fucker who started this whole thing. That was my friend you knocked out, asshole. I ought to—”
Juntto kept a calm expression and punched the guy in the face, knocking him to the floor. “I’m just warming up.”
He swung at anyone who got near him. He knocked out four guys and then watched two huge men circle one another. They each had a broken beer bottle and were threatening each other with them. Juntto grabbed their heads and slammed them together. The big men dropped in a pile of the unconscious brutes surrounded by shattered glass. Juntto sighed and watched the brawl continue in smaller, more vicious groups. “This is boring. Good night.”
He grabbed a bottle of tequila from behind the bar since the bartender was hiding and put it inside his jacket. He stepped over the unconscious men on the floor and pushed open the door. A young couple was about to come into the bar, but they stumbled back when they saw the chaos.
Juntto didn’t have a scratch on him.
He whistled as he strode carefree down the street. He pulled the bottle of tequila out, popped off the top, and took a swig straight from the bottle. “Fuck me, that’s something!” He laughed. “This place might have some serious pussies, but it is good to be free again.”
Someone passing gave him a high five. “Right on, buddy. Freedom!”
Juntto put down his hand and sneered. “Idiot.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Moloch’s walking stick clinked hard against the black stone rock. He grumbled to himself as he shuffled along, hating that his crew was too incompetent to do this on their own. He walked through a deep trench in the ground and looked around. One of the servants put his shaking hand up.
Moloch nodded and the demon swallowed hard, looking down at the ground. He was too afraid to make eye contact. “That is where the demon fell to his knees.”
Moloch pursed his lips. “Mmm. She must have gotten him good. She definitely used her powers to grow to his size. That must have been a sight to see. An eighty-foot-tall Pandora with those big tits flopping everywhere.”
He looked into the distance, seeing the remains of a gate that had burned the side of the mountain. He shuffled across the ground, kicking through piles of demon ashes as he went. “At least they put up a fight. It doesn’t look like the demons won, though.”
The servants zigzagged around the piles of their fallen fellow demons, getting more frightened by the second. Moloch moved up the side of the hill and looked around, finding shreds of the team’s climate suits simmering on the hot ground. He picked one up and sniffed it. “She had reinforcements. Other Damned. But why?”
“Excuse me, Moloch, sir. There’s something over here,” one of the servants whimpered.
Moloch made his way over to the servant and went down on one knee. He ran his large claw along the markings left by the equipment and sniffed the imprint thoughtfully. “Looks like they brought some sort of equipment with them. Several carts full. The heated metal scorched the ground along this ridge. What kind of machines would they bring in here, only to take them back that quickly?”
Muttering rose from the group of servants, and Moloch lifted his head to peer at them. “Well? If someone has something to say, say it. Or I’ll make a snack out of the lot of you right now.”
The group of servants tousled and grappled with one another until they managed to force one fat demon forward. His knees clanked hard together. Moloch straightened, staring down the portly beast. “What’s your name?”
“Ricidiocalese, sir,” the trembling demon replied.
“That’s a fucking mouthful, isn’t it? I’ll just call you Fat Rick. So, Fat Rick, what do you have to say? What machines did they bring?” Moloch was teasing him but hoped he would be more useful than the others. They were cowering just out of his reach.
The demon pointed his small claws at the burn marks. “I don’t know for sure. I wasn’t here. But I have seen machines before. So, maybe they were scientific machines? Maybe they were studying our land. Or something. I don’t know.”
Moloch growled. “Why would they do that?”
The demon flinched and put up his hand. “I don’t know. To learn more about us, maybe? One of the demons who made it back said there were five soldiers and Lilith, obviously not enough to fight. There were two humans in special suits, too. They were the ones with the machines. The demons said they left first.”
“Humans in special suits. I see.” Moloch patted Fat Rick on the head. “Maybe you aren’t useless after all, Rick.”
Moloch squinted at the ground and tried to figure this new riddle out. “Who comes to hell on purpose? Especially when you have to wear a suit to keep you alive. And what about her angel bitch? She was obviously not in control when Pandora grew that tall. Just what the hell is our Queen of Kicking Demons in the Balls up to?”
Juntto finished the bottle of tequila and tossed it down an alley. As he turned a corner, he spotted another drinking establishment. Perfect. Inside, the lights were low, and the music was heavy. He didn’t pay any attention to the people there, just went straight to the bar and ordered a drink. He threw some money down and turned around to view the crowd.
He sized up all the people drinking, dancing, and talking. Something was wrong. He looked at his clothes and then at the people again. He realized he wasn’t dressed in the same style. Almost all of them were wearing black lace-up boots, jeans rolled at the bottom, suspenders, and either no shirts or a tight white t-shirt. Their heads were bald, with the exception of a couple of younger guys. They were sporting tall spiked mohawks.
He glanced at a girl who’d bounced up to the bar. She had jet black hair and was wearing a short plaid skirt and a black band T-shirt. Her arm was tattooed with a swastika. She looked at Juntto and smiled. “You don’t look like you belong here.”
Juntto chuckled. “I don’t belong much of anywhere in this century.”
She smirked. “Okay. I’m Mist.”
Juntto shifted closer and looked down at her with a coy smile. “Mist, like the rain?”
She giggled. “Yeah, like that. You aren’t from around here, are you?”
Juntto shook his head. “No, is it that obvious?”
“Your accent is hot.” She smiled and ran her finger down Juntto’s stomach and below his belt buckle.
A man with a bald head and a strap of a beard walked up and put one arm around Mist. He put his mouth on her ear. “What are you doing over here?”
She smacked her gum. “Getting a drink.”
“Oh yeah? Is this lumberjack-looking motherfucker bothering you?” The guy looked Juntto up and down, but the frost giant wasn’t looking at him. He was staring straight into the crowd, taking a nonchalant sip of his drink.
The guy grabbed Mist’s ass and pushed her out of his way. He stepped to Juntto. “Hey, fucker, I’m fucking talking to you. You come into our territory, and then you act rude to me?”
Juntto glanced at the guy and took another sip of his drink. He almost looked bored.
The guy’s friend rolled up and slapped his friend on the chest. “What are you doing, dude?”
The guy stared angrily at Juntto. “This prick came into our club and is being rude to me. He won’t even look me in the eye when I’m talking to him. He thinks this is some sort of fucking game.”
His friend looked Juntto over, putting his thumbs through his suspenders. “Oh, yeah? Does he know how you carved up the last asshole who wandered in off the street?”
The guy chuckled, still staring at Juntto. “You know, I don’t think so. I like to show rather than tell. Sometimes guys like this, with their plaid shirts and expensive fucking boots, come rolling in here and just need to get their fucking asses kicked. I mean they need a boot shoved so far up their ass that they walk funny for a little while.”
The guys laughed, but Juntto just yawned, still not looking at them. The guy turned and pulled up his shirt sleeve, slapping his neo-Nazi tattoo. “You see this, prick?
You’re supposed to respect the supreme, and this means I am one of those.”
Juntto finished his drink and set it on the bar, carefully wiping his lips. He turned to the guy and stared at him for a moment. “I like your attitude, but can you fuck with that big dick you’re swinging around? When you say you have a twelve-inch dick, you should just whip it out.”
Beside them, Mist giggled. The guy’s face fell, then he reared back and swung hard at Juntto. His hand contacted Juntto’s face, and there it just stopped. It didn’t even dent Juntto’s skin.
Instead, the guy screeched and pulled his broken and bloodied fist back. Juntto lunged forward and punched the guy three times in the stomach as hard as he could. The guy fell to the floor, writhing in the fetal position.
Everyone stopped what they were doing and looked down at their friend. Instantly, the fight was on, with people lunging left and right for Juntto. He kept calm, swinging every chance he got. One guy came up behind him and jumped on Juntto’s back, but he grabbed the man’s arm and flipped him over the pool table. He grabbed the pool balls and grinned. He threw the balls, one after the other, at his attackers. Noses broke, teeth spun across the dance floor, and a few guys dropped to their knees clutching bruised nuts.
Juntto spun and caught a pool stick as someone swung at him. He snatched it from the guy and broke it in half.
He grinned deviously. “Two spears. I told that idiot Moloch. Two spears!” Juntto commenced beating the fuck out of everyone who was left. He was getting tired of the pricks, but he was pretty impressed with how hard they fought.
As he reached the center of the room, the guys pulled themselves together. They were bruised and bleeding, but now they were furious.
Juntto laughed and clacked his new spears together. “That’s all you big guys got? Come on, challenge me!”
With that, five guys ran forward at once, jumping on top of Juntto and muscling him to the floor. They wrestled him down and pinned his hands to the ground. Mist’s boyfriend with his chin-strap beard walked forward with an evil grin on his face. He was holding a knife in his hand and stood over Juntto.
Juntto smiled at him. “Is that for me?”
“It sure is, prick,” the guy growled as he lifted the knife.
Juntto gritted his teeth and used his enormous strength to yank one arm free. He used the broken pool cue to slash at the men holding him, and suddenly both arms were free. The pool cues broke flesh and shattered teeth. Juntto rose with his spears and stared with wild eyes at the man holding the knife.
“I guess this just got serious.”
The man lunged. He swung the knife right and left, but Juntto was faster. He thrust both broken pool cues into the man’s chest and drove them deep. The man gurgled once, then died.
Juntto pulled his spears free of the dead man and walked to where Mist was cowering near the bar. The sounds of her cries were loud in the place. Juntto realized he’d managed to kill everyone in the place, minus a couple of guys with broken bones who were moaning and whimpering on the ground.
He decided to ignore the girl. Instead, he nodded at the bartender and placed both halves of the broken pool cue on the bar. “One shot of tequila.”
Mist screamed and stood, and Juntto’s hand shot out. He caught her in the back of the head, and she slid to the ground, unconscious.
The bartender shook as he poured the drink. Juntto knocked it back. “Don’t be nervous. I always respect those who give me free drinks.”
The police sirens blared loudly outside.
Juntto sighed. He jumped over the bar, grabbed another bottle of tequila and left the bar by the back door. He found himself in an alley. “The polizei are getting faster, yes? Or maybe I am just getting slower. I will have to work on my technique a bit. It’s been a couple thousand years.”
He popped the top off the bottle and headed into the darkness of the alley, guzzling the tequila as he walked.
Inside, the police asked the bartender questions. “Où est-il allé? A quoi ressemblait-il?”
The bartender, stunned, shook his head. “He was a badass, that’s what he was.”
The fire crackled loudly in the fireplace in Moloch’s office. He tapped his long talons on his desk, trying to piece together everything he knew about Pandora’s sighting. He scribbled something on a piece of paper and held it up as he paced the room.
“She entered with seven others through a gate. They had some sort of equipment, and the two humans left early. The Damned, wearing special suits, fought off the demons. Pandora exited her human again, and grew to eighty feet tall and kicked my demon in the balls. Then they all left.” Moloch scratched his head.
He read it over and over, not understanding what in the hell was going on. Finally, he balled up the piece of paper and chucked it hard into the fire, frustrated. Sparks shot up as it burned. He went to get a drink from his bar. He stopped and glanced at the television, quickly reading the headline at the bottom. “Massacre at Swiss Bar.”
He grabbed the carafe of whiskey and the goblet of blood and hit the volume on the remote. A red-haired woman was bundled up in a jacket in front of a nightclub. There were police everywhere. “According to witnesses, this man came in for a drink, not knowing this is one of the more controversial clubs in this mountain town. It’s a well-known neo-Nazi hangout, and they don’t usually do well with strangers. The report says he got in a fight with a local, and things began to escalate from there. In the end, he left forty-three people dead, six critically injured with stab wounds, and a half-dozen being treated for broken bones and concussions.”
A sketch popped up on the screen, and Moloch burst out laughing. The newscaster continued, “This is an artist’s rendition of the assailant done with the assistance of the only conscious survivor, the bartender. They say he’s about six feet tall, medium build, and has medium-length dark hair with a white stripe down the side. He has a thick accent as well.”
The television switched over to the reporter standing beside the bartender. “We are here with Markus Khlur, the bartender in the establishment. Markus, I know this has been a shocking day for you and a crazy turn of events, but can you tell us what the man was like? Anything that can help us track him down?”
The bartender smiled and shook his head, a crazy chuckle under his breath. “He was like a Greek god!”
The reporter glanced nervously at the camera and held the microphone out to the guy. “A Greek god?”
The bartender nodded. “He never bled, never groaned, and never showed any weakness. He took down the whole place by himself. He took a shot before he left, and disappeared into the dark.”
Moloch picked up the remote and clicked off the sound. He added whiskey to his blood and took a great gulp of the concoction. He started to laugh. “There you are, you sick bastard.”
He clicked the sound back on as the bartender continued the story. “There were bodies everywhere. I don’t know. He was probably one of the Damned who didn’t like their politics.”
Moloch leaned forward, almost spitting out his drink. “He’s not Damned! He’s a fucking Leviathan, you Swiss idiots! Goddamned humans can’t even keep their species straight. He would come back and take a bite out of your ass if he heard you call him Damned. As if there’s a drop of human blood in that man. Greek god is closer than Damned.”
Moloch sighed and poured another drink. “What a prick.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
Katie laid down on the squeaky bunk. Her whole body ached, but she was glad to be back in the barracks, even if it wasn’t home. The guys had all been attended to by medical and were resting quietly in their own rooms. Calvin was the only one still up, watching the bay to make sure a portal didn’t suddenly spring open.
Pandora yawned. I don’t know why that man doesn’t try to get some sleep.
He’s always like that. Too jacked up after a fight to get any rest. He’ll crash eventually, or round two will kick in, and then he’ll crash. It’s just the way he works.
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Pandora grumbled something and then fell quiet.
Katie chuckled. Good night to you, too.
She curled her arms around the pillow and snuggled down. Just as she was almost asleep, her phone went off loudly. Pandora jumped into Katie. Holy mother of Lucifer, a band is in your room.
Katie groaned and threw back the covers. It’s just the phone.
She picked it up when she saw the general’s name on the screen. “Do you have someone watching me so that every time I lay down to sleep, you can call?”
The general chuckled but only momentarily. “I’m sorry, Katie, but I need to speak to Pandora.”
“Oh sure, sure. I’m just Pandora’s secretary. Hold, please.”
Pandora quickly took Katie over without her having to ask. She held the phone to the side, addressing Katie. “It’s about time you recognized that. I’ve been wondering if you’re slow or just obstinate.”
The general didn’t say anything. He wasn’t yet accustomed to the way the two of them addressed each other. He couldn’t tell if they loved each other, hated each other, or if it oscillated between the two. Either way, it was usually entertaining.
Pandora rolled her eyes as Katie curled up in the background. “Yes, General. I’m sure whatever it is warrants a call right after a battle in hell.”
The general let out a long dramatic breath. “Unfortunately, it does. We’ve had a weird sighting, and I need to know if you think this is a normal powerful Damned causing a problem or something else.”
Pandora cringed. “Uh-oh, this sounds like it is a heavy one.”
The general shook his head. “You have no idea. It would take something pretty badass to do this type of damage in the amount of time it was done. And apparently, the person or creature walked away without a scratch. Unfortunately, he is being hailed as a Greek god of sorts among some of the residents in the town where it occurred. I’m sending over pictures of the crime scene right now.”