War Demons: An Urban Fantasy Thriller (The Prodigal Son Book 1)

by Russell Newquist

  Michael lost it. Raising the fire extinguisher as a club, he charged into the fray again, beating down creatures left and right. The Colonel reached out after him, shouting angrily. It barely registered. Realizing he’d lost the cause, he ordered his men to aid the ex-soldier. With support fire surrounding him, Michael made good time through the throng.

  But Khalid and the mysterious robed man made better time. The mob made an easy path for them. Faith struggled fruitlessly. They made their way toward the dragon and escape.

  A pair of soldiers from each squad slowed, taking deliberate, aimed shots at the two men. Michael knew that they’d be the team’s sharpshooters – the best riflemen among a team of men known for their marksmanship. Red flickering light outlined each bullet as it ricocheted off the invisible shield.

  The Colonel barked orders into his radio again as he ran. A few moments later, the gunship bore down once more, vaporizing a mass of zombies in their path. Both teams ran through the opening, converging on the fleeing men, refusing to slow even when the beast reared up on its hind legs and screeched.

  The blast of fire followed almost immediately. Kestrel 2 tried to evade, but it couldn’t pull out of its strafing run fast enough. The dragonfire burst hit it dead on. The vehicle careened out of control. By the time it slammed into a nearby copse of trees, it had been reduced to a hunk of gooey slab.

  Michael still had a few dozen yards to go when Khalid and his party reached the dragon. The beast lowered its head as the two men manhandled the ladies onto it and secured a perch for themselves. The robed man assumed a position high on the neck, right behind the monster’s head. He leaned forward and whispered into its giant ear. The beast crouched down, tensing its legs like giant springs.

  The wind pushed back the robed figure’s hood just a little, drawing Michael to a dead stop. The long blonde locks that poked out threw him off, but it was the eyes that caught his attention. He shook it off. They weren’t quite right anyway; he knew that. Nobody knew those eyes better than he did, except maybe Jim Covington. His mind must be playing tricks on him.

  There was no way he’d just seen Catherine Covington’s eyes.

  He shook it off and ran at the beast again. Peter had caught up to him and ran at his side. It was too late. The dragon let loose and leapt into the sky, flapping its giant wings as it rose. Soldiers opened fire, fighting hard to remain standing against the blowback, as the dragon moved a massive amount of air around it. The 5.56mm rounds from their M4 carbines proved even less effective than the .50 caliber mini-gun rounds had been earlier.

  The second Blackhawk swooped in, but held its fire. Helicopter mounted mini-guns were not precision guided instruments. There was no way to aim them well enough to take down the dragon without harming its passengers. Even if it could, they’d already proven the rounds to be ineffective against the beast.

  Instead, the pilots followed the kidnappers along their escape path, trying to maintain visual contact. But the robed man had other plans. In the darkness of the night sky, a ball of glowing blue light illuminated the dragon. Even from the ground, the soldiers could see the man standing, making arcane gestures with his hands. The ball of light grew, and then the man released it.

  The Colonel shouted into his headset, but Kestrel 1 had already initiated evasive maneuvers. The transport banked hard to the left. The blast narrowly missed, but the helicopter lost stability. The soldiers on the ground watched in horror, for a moment certain they would lose a second chopper that night. A heartbeat before it hit the trees, the Blackhawk righted itself and stabilized.

  Their attention snapped back to events on the ground, as the remaining hordes pressed in upon them. The cleanup operation didn’t take long. Whatever had spawned the seemingly endless horde ceased with the dragon’s exit. A little bit of standard defensive maneuvering and a few sprays of mini-gun fire from Kestrel 1 ended the threat. But by then, the dragon was out of sight. Peter raised his saber to the sky and screamed in futility.

  The girls were gone.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Michael gripped the sides of his seat in terror. He hadn’t been back in a helicopter since the crash. He admitted his fear to himself without shame, but that didn’t really help. The ride back to the Covington estate proved blessedly short.

  The atmosphere of the house stood in sharp contrast to the dark chaos they’d left less than an hour ago. They’d gotten the lights back on, both inside the house and out. Police cars, ambulances and fire trucks added color to the light show. Michael counted at least three TV vans from local stations and a fourth from CNN, satellite uplinks fully extended. A whole platoon of government agents wearing alphabet soup jackets surrounded the house.

  The Blackhawk landed on the north lawn and the Colonel led them back into the house. They found James Covington in the keeping room off of the kitchen, surrounded by federal agents of various stripes. All of them deferred to the Colonel as he strode in. The large, flat-panel television over the fireplace showed CNN’s live feed.

  “How’s Abby?” Jim asked urgently.

  “Gone,” Michael barely contained his rage. “I’m sorry, Jim.”

  “But alive,” Peter reminded them. “And Faith, too. We have to get them back.”

  “Back from whom?” the Colonel asked.

  Michael turned on him.

  “I’ve got nothing to say until you’re ready to tell us who the hell you really are.”

  The officer took a moment to think it over.

  “Lieutenant Colonel Kevin Abrash, Joint Special Operations Command, Task Force 13.”

  “For real, this time? No bullshit?”

  “No bullshit.”

  “I’ve never heard of Task Force 13.”

  “You weren’t supposed to.”

  “You have a lot of experience with this kind of thing?”

  “Some, yes.”

  “You fight dragons a lot?”

  “Dragons?” The expression of despair on Covington’s face deepened.

  Abrash hesitated.

  “Not often, no.”

  “How many?” Michael pushed.

  “I’m not at liberty –” Abrash began.

  “How many?” Michael insisted.

  “Um, it’s actually our first dragon,” a blonde woman responded. She withered under the twin glares of Michael and her Colonel. “We did training runs,” she finished sheepishly.

  “And this yellow-nosed thing that’s been following me?”

  “We were actually hoping you could tell us a bit more about that. We’ve never encountered one before.”

  “Screw you. I already gave a report with everything I know. You didn’t want to listen, remember?”

  Several agents stared at their feet and backed off.

  “What about those things in the house tonight?” Peter deflected the tension by changing the subject.

  “Run of the mill vampires and zombies,” Abrash answered, happy to play along. “Probably under control of that warlock.”

  “Warlock?” Covington asked.

  “He came in with the dragon and gave us quite the light show for the grand finale,” Peter explained.

  “She,” Michael mumbled. Peter shot him a quizzical look. Nobody else seemed to hear it.

  Later, Michael mouthed.

  “What about the yellow-nosed things?” Michael asked, before anyone else could notice.

  “Actually, we think there’s only one,” the blonde woman’s voice broke in. “Captain Long, TF-13,” she filled in.

  “I’ve fought two of these personally, Captain. I can assure you, the first one didn’t look like O’Bryan.”

  “Because it wasn’t. But we think it was the same actual creature. Something used both the man in the cave and then later O’Bryan as a host.”

  “Like some sort of parasite infestation?” Peter asked.

  A familiar voice interrupted them.

  “The word you’re looking for is possession.”

  Gabriel McCann led t
wo strangers into the room, soldiers flanking them all. A sheepish looking sergeant answered the unspoken question.

  “They asked for you by name, Colonel. And they gave all the right pass phrases.”

  Abrash let out a long string of profanity.

  “The Tibetans call them ser na.” The newcomer wore long, black robes, bound at the waist with a simple leather belt. The cowl that covered his shoulders reached down to his belt, and sported a hood off the back. A pair of tiny spectacles hung on his hooked nose. Michael detected the faintest hints of a German accent. “They believed the ghosts of selfish mortals possessed the living to feed on them.”

  “We’re dealing with Tibetan ghosts?” Peter asked, incredulous.

  “No,” the robed man continued. “Pagans always misunderstand these things. The being that possesses your friend is a demon, Mr. Alexander.”

  “And the phurbas they used to kill them –”

  “Don’t actually kill them,” the final stranger interrupted in an Irish lilt. Six foot six and build like a tank, he carried the aura of a man used to giving orders. His short cropped red hair and ruddy complexion matched the accent. “It only drives them out of their host. They just find a new host.”

  “Like the one you faced in the cave,” Captain Long pointed out, catching on. “It commandeered your friend’s body as he vacated it.”

  Michael winced at the image.

  “So then it just lay dormant before, what, digging its way out of the grave?” Covington asked.

  “Get that grave exhumed,” Abrash barked. “Now. Wake up the groundskeeper at Arlington, if you have to.”

  “Yes sir.” The sheepish sergeant fished his phone out of her pocket and stepped into the other room.

  “So what does kill them?” Peter asked.

  “Only the power of God can kill a demon,” the bespectacled man answered.

  “I can’t believe this,” Abrash let out the exasperated words. “Here you go bringing your religion into it again.”

  “You didn’t complain when we brought religion to Tora Bora,” McCann snapped back.

  Michael raised an eyebrow. After two deployments, he knew Afghani geography quite well. The cave complexes in Tora Bora carried a tough reputation in the special forces community.

  “What happened in Tora Bora?” he asked suspiciously.

  A cloud of sorrow washed over Gabriel and his friends.

  “That’s top secret,” Abrash barked.

  “They need to know, Kevin.” the red haired man stared down the Colonel.

  “Fine, Conor. You tell them.”

  “We tracked a major warlock through the cave complex,” the Irishman started.

  “Like the warlock we saw tonight?” Peter asked.

  “Not the same warlock,” Abrash answered.

  “How do you know?” Michael queried.

  “Because we’re still alive,” the Colonel replied bluntly.

  “We’d been trying to track him for about a decade,” Conor picked up the story. “A few months earlier, we’d started to close in on him. Then the trail went cold – very cold, very fast.”

  “Until Friar Stefan had a vision,” Conor finished, indicating the man in the robes. “We had to help.”

  Abrash grunted.

  “Stefan showed us the way through the caves,” Gabriel noted.

  “The whole team fought him,” Captain Long’s quiet, fearful voice surprised Michael. “We brought every weapon known to a modern military. And they couldn’t touch him.”

  “He wiped the bloody floor with us,” Abrash agreed.

  “Sir Richard fought him to a draw and forced him out of the cave.” Stefan made it sound easy.

  “One man fought this sorcerer to a draw, where the US Army failed?” Jim interrupted skeptically.

  “Not just a man. The Knight of the Sword.” Gabriel said it as if it explained everything.

  “A knight and a sword. Great.” Michael shook his head.

  “Not a knight,” Conor corrected him. “The Knight.”

  “What happened outside?” Covington asked.

  “We dropped a Daisy Cutter on him,” Abrash answered.

  “Dropped what on him?” Peter asked.

  “One hell of a bomb,” Covington summarized. “I saw a couple used in ‘Nam. I read that you guys dropped them in Tora Bora to suck the air out of the caves.”

  “Hell no,” Abrash said. “That’s just what we told the press. We dropped that bad boy right on his head. We killed that son of a bitch.”

  “He’s not dead,” Conor contradicted the colonel. “We told you that at the time, but you wouldn’t listen. Now intelligence has placed him in Pakistan.”

  “It’s not him,” Abrash insisted. “Can’t be. Nobody – no living thing – could have survived that.”

  “It’s him,” Stefan stated calmly.

  Abrash locked eyes with the friar.

  “Vision?” he asked quietly.

  Stefan nodded gently.

  “Dammit. You haven’t selected a new Knight yet, have you?”

  “We don’t select a knight,” Conor answered. “God selects a Knight.”

  “Ok,” Peter interrupted. “Who are y’all?”

  The newcomers traded looks.

  “Ordo Gladii Sancti Michaeli Archangeli.” Stefan answered formally.

  Michael gave them a blank look, not recognizing the Latin, but Peter translated for him. “The Order of the Sword of Saint Michael the Archangel?”

  Conor gave an affirmative grunt.

  “OK. Now I really want to know. What brought you here?”

  “Friar Stefan had a vision,” McCann answered Peter’s question. The members of Task Force 13 went quiet. After a moment, Abrash responded.

  “Shit.”

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  A young lieutenant entered the room with a look of urgency.

  “Excuse me, sir.”

  “What is it, Hollingsworth?” Abrash asked him wearily.

  “It’s the corpses, sir. They’ve all turned to dirt.”

  “That’s what vampires do, Hollingsworth,” the colonel replied in exasperation as he continued to pace.

  “Not dirt, either,” Gabriel corrected softly. “Clay.”

  “Yes sir,” the surprised lieutenant answered. “How did you know?”

  “Golems,” Conor answered. “Not vampires or zombies, but magical constructs made to look like them.”

  “Nonsense,” Abrash dismissed the claim. “Golems are big and bulky and look like the clay they’re made out of.”

  “They used to be,” Stefan agreed. “A group of French witches got creative a few years ago and decided their golems had to look good, too. They made great facsimiles of people. I hear one or two of them are even working in the fashion industry now.”

  “The fashion industry?” Peter interjected.

  “Yeah, if you can sculpt one that’s looks good enough, they’re kind of perfect for it,” Gabriel answered. “They never age and they never get fat.”

  “This warlock seems to have gone for quantity over quality,” Conor chimed in. “These are sloppy and easy to kill.”

  “Then the warlock is the key,” Michael noted. “What’s he after? And where is he?”

  Everyone turned to him.

  “Look, none of this makes any sense on its own. Yellow-nosed demons possessing soldiers, a vampire attack on the Covington estate, a frat boy in the middle of it, and then a wizard rides in on a dragon? What possible connection do they have? He wants something, and he’s orchestrated all of this to get it. Twenty-four hours ago, I thought this was all something personal between me and O’Bryan. Now I’m positive that it’s not.”

  “We agree,” Conor chimed in. “There’s something bigger at play.”

  “What does he want with my daughter?” Covington asked.

  “And Faith,” Peter added.

  “Well, dragons are well known for capturing maidens,” Friar Stefan answered. Everyone looked at him expec
tantly. “You know, virgins.”

  “Then why would it want Abby?” Covington snapped.

  One of the Task Force 13 soldiers snickered. Jim shot him a dirty look. The young man wiped the smile from his face and stared at the floor. “And don’t look at me like that, Michael. You were neither the first nor the last. I’m a doting father, not an idiot.”

  “What about Faith?” Conor asked.

  Peter turned bright red.

  “I… don’t know,” he stammered.

  “You didn’t ask her?” Michael asked, genuinely surprised.

  “Of course I asked. I always ask. She got offended and wouldn’t answer.”

  “That’s at least a possibility, then,” Gabriel noted.

  Peter looked away.

  The sheepish sergeant returned.

  “No body in the coffin, sir,” he reported. “Just sand to give it weight. And no signs it had been tampered with.”

  “Probably wasn’t that hard to arrange,” Michael furrowed his brow. “The funeral was closed casket.”

  “There had to be an inside player,” Covington pointed out.

  Abrash scowled but didn’t contradict him.

  “It gets worse,” Long added. “We got word back from Stoegemoeller’s house. They found the doctor’s wife unconscious. Someone tore the place apart.”

  “Any idea what they were looking for?” Conor wondered.

  “No – and we don’t even know if they found it. But that blasted dragon showed up again. Burned the place to the ground. We got his wife clear, but we’ve got to find that thing before this gets out of hand.”

  “You mean it hasn’t already?” Peter asked.

  “Everything about this is out of hand, kid,” Abrash told him. “Captain Long, round the team up. We’ve got work to do. Get me a line to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. We’ve got a rogue sorcerer on US soil, one powerful enough to summon and control a dragon. And the Order is here. Tell him they’ve had a vision.” He turned and shouted at one of the men in an FBI jacket. “Special Agent Riley! This house is under lockdown. Everyone inside is under house arrest until notice, for protective custody.” Riley nodded and barked orders into his radio.