by Jamie Davis
The final demon made it past Jaz and was headed straight for him when he saw it intercepted by a bolt of white light from his right. The demon seemed to stop in midair as it was leaping towards him. Then it fell to the ground as the light turned to white-hot fire that consumed it and left the netherworld creature a charred carcass on the ground in front of him. He looked to his right and saw Jo standing there, her right hand outstretched, palm forward, fingers spread wide as if she were trying to signal someone to stop. There was a glowing ball of white the size of a baseball rotating in front of her palm.
Dean turned back to the scene in front of him. Jaz had drawn her sword and held it in one hand as she ran over to the Oni she had shot. It was struggling to rise after taking a flurry of bullets to its head. With a sweeping motion, she hacked through its neck from above and removed its head. As soon as she did so, the demon’s body turned into a red mist that dissipated into the air. He turned to see that Arlo, in his lion form, smaller than his father but no less powerful looking, had now latched his jaws on the neck of the Oni demon atop his father. He twisted his head from side to side as his jaws clamped down tighter. That must have done the trick because, with a snap of the younger lion’s head on the demon’s neck the Oni stopped struggling and went limp. Then, it too turned to mist and the two lions were left there on the ground, glancing around with puzzled looks.
Jaz walked over the still smoking corpse of the third demon and poked at it with her sword. She looked over at Jo. The young Wiccan still stood wide-eyed with the ball of energy or magic or whatever it was swirling in front of her outstretched palm. She looked around at her companions and then back at the demon, a look of disgust and horror on her face, then she raised her hand upward and the ball of white light burst upward into the sky out of sight. The girl then collapsed in a heap, crying, after releasing the pent-up energy. Jaz ran to her side.
Dean looked around and tried to decide what he could do to help. He had been of little value during the attack itself, but perhaps he could do something now. Looking towards the shifters, he saw that Albion had returned to human form. He had a few scratches and scrapes on him from the demon’s claws but Dean knew he would heal. Shifters regenerated after a time. Arlo was still in lion form and his father was talking to him in a soothing voice while the lion paced back and forth, letting out occasional growls and snarls. The younger shifter had less control over his transformation and would shift back once he had calmed down.
Dean decided that Jo needed help the most right now and went over to her. She was holding her right wrist in her left hand as she sat on the ground and sobbed. Jaz had an arm about her shoulders but was scanning the tree line and shooting glances towards the cabin door. He knew she was expecting another attack. Looking at Joanna’s right hand, Dean saw what looked like a nasty, circular second-degree burn on her right palm. It was already blistering and the area around it looked red and painful. He didn’t have a first aid kit with him but he did have a pack of four by four gauze in his uniform pants pocket. He wanted to keep that burn wound clean until he could dress it properly. The gauze would have to do until he had more supplies.
“Jo, I don’t know what it was you did back there,” Dean said, “but I want to thank you.” He opened the pack of gauze and laid it gently on the wound in the girl’s palm.
She looked up at him, blinking tears from her eyes. “I couldn’t let the demon kill you, Dean.”
“What was that?” Jaz asked. “I have never seen a demon outright killed like that. That one will never return. It is dead, dead, dead.”
“I’ve seen you kill a demon before, Jaz, like back at the diner,” Dean said. “They just kind of go ‘poof’ don’t they?”
“That is what happens when you destroy their corporeal forms here on earth,” Jaz explained. “Their spirit forms return to the netherworld, from whence they came. There they must regenerate for a hundred years before they can manifest again. But what Jo did was something different. She killed it, spirit and all. That demon will never return to kill again.”
Jo looked up at Jaz. “It is called sun-fire. I have never done it before and it takes a great deal of power to do it just once. I basically open a small portal to the center of the sun and release a ball of fusion plasma from there in the direction of my choosing. It will consume, body and soul, anything it strikes.”
“Plasma from the sun, huh,” Dean said. “No wonder you burned your hand. I’m surprised the wound is not worse.”
“I was stupid. I summoned another ball before I checked to see if I needed it,” Joanna said. “I shouldn’t have held it so long. The spell comes with wards against fire and heat, but it’s the sun, you know, so it’s not normal heat or fire. I also used up my power. I have a splitting headache and there’s two of everything I look at right now.”
“I have never heard of this magic before, but it seems dangerous,” Jaz said. “If it strikes an innocent or one of us, we’ll be consumed as completely. You must be careful.”
“Of course I’ll be careful,” Jo said, rolling her eyes at the hunter. She sighed and held a hand to her head. “To be honest, I didn’t know I could do it. I’d read about it and learned the theory of it, but no one has been able to cast it for centuries. Then again, no one has needed to try since the demon wars in the dark ages I think.”
“That’s probably why you didn’t know what it was, Jaz,” Dean said. “I’m sure she’ll be careful using it in the future. If she hadn’t used it here and now, though, I would be demon chow.” He turned and looked around the clearing again. The last time he was here, there were children playing in this clearing and several families lived here. Where were the dryads? A horrible thought occurred to him.
He stood up and ran to the cabin set back in the hill and went inside. He looked around the outer room and then started to head back the hallway, into the hill’s tunnels to the other rooms there. A hand on his shoulder startled him and he turned to see Jaz and Albion standing there.
“Let us go first. We can see better in the dark back here,” Jaz said, handing him a penlight. “Here take this flashlight for yourself while we go in.”
Dean stepped back as he turned on the flashlight to let the others take the lead. Albion went first and Dean could see he was partially shifted again, his talons extending past his fingertips. Jaz followed with her sword in hand. They hadn’t gone far when Dean detected the characteristic scent of death and heard the moans and cries of the wounded. Albion must have been able to smell the stench and hear the cries from the first room. It was why he looked so grim. He kept up with them as they went down the long hallway, checking each room to the right and left. These were the bedrooms belonging to the extended dryad family that lived here. They had shown Dean and Ashley such hospitality in the past when they had traveled to the valley on a weekend holiday.
They got to a room at the end of the hall. There were bodies piled in front of the door. The men in the family must have defended the door to the last against the demons. Albion looked back at them. “This is not going to be good,” he said. “Prepare yourselves.”
Dean had seen death and dying before but this carnage was beyond his experience. The men and parts of men were strewn about the floor. The smell was overpowering in the enclosed space. Dean heard retching behind him and he turned to see the werelion teen behind him turn and vomit on the floor. Jo had tears streaming down her face and she looked a bit pale, but when she caught him looking at her with concern she stood up straighter and nodded that she was all right. Arlo wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and tried to give Dean a weak grin.
“Arlo,” Dean said. “Why don’t you go back out and watch our backs. We don’t want to be caught from behind by more demons. We’ve got this covered here.”
The shifter boy nodded and looked grateful for the excuse. He turned and headed out to the front of the cabin. Dean turned back to face the door, standing amidst the bodies.
“Thanks for that, Dean,” Albion said. Dean
nodded in reply.
Dean looked around at the bodies and then saw movement. My God he thought. Some of them were still alive. He kicked himself for not doing his job right away and started gently pulling the grisly pile apart, checking each of the ten or so men and boys for a pulse. Four of them were still alive. When he found the first live survivor, he had to clear a gobbet of clotted blood from the teen’s mouth and tilted the head back to open the airway. He wished he had a portable suction machine, but he didn’t. Once he had succeeded in doing this much the boy’s breathing eased some.
He felt a presence next to him and saw Jo at his side. He looked over at her and, despite the pale and startled look on her face, she nodded and took over holding the boy’s airway open while he went on to find the next survivor.
“I need medical supplies, or these four survivors are not going to survive,” Dean said.
“I have some things from the SUV back at the cabin,” Jaz said. “I’ll go with Arlo and bring back one of our medical kits.”
“What’s in it?” Dean asked.
“It’s a standard combat medic’s kit. There are two of them, plus a few personal kits,” Jaz replied.
“Bring both of the larger kits. Hurry.” Dean urged.
While Jaz ran off toward the front of the cabin, Dean took a SOF-T tourniquet out of the cargo pocket of his duty pants. He always carried one and this was another instance he was glad he did. The next survivor was bleeding from a gash in his upper arm and had already lost a lot of blood. The arm below the elbow had been ripped or bitten away. Applying the device and tightening the strap by twisting on the attached windlass he was able to stem the blood flow from the mangled limb.
Two down, two to go. Dean heard Jo ask Albion to hold the tilt on the first victim’s head so his airway would stay open. He glanced over at her as he continued his work. She had started tearing strips from her long skirt and pressed the improvised cloth bandages into the worst of the first victim’s wounds. There were several areas that appeared to be bite marks on the torso and she was trying to manage that patient’s bleeding with her application of direct pressure and wound packing.
“You’re doing a good job, Jo,” Dean said. “Someone taught you well.”
“My father was training me to be an EMT before I left to join the coven. He hadn’t finished but we had gotten to the module on traumatic injuries. I can help,” the Wiccan teen said.
Dean nodded and went back to sorting the living from the dead. He had pulled the final two survivors out and was continuing to manage their serious wounds with what little he had when Jaz and Arlo returned with two black tactical backpacks. Jaz unzipped the first one so that it opened up with all its medical supplies exposed and laid out for him. Dean started grabbing supplies, including a needle decompression kit that he was going to need for victim number four to manage what he suspected was a tension pneumothorax or collapsed lung.
“Jo, do you know how to set up an IV bag for infusion?” Dean asked.
“Sure,” Jo replied. “Doesn’t everyone?”
Dean smiled. “I saw two IV bags in the first pack. There are probably two in the other as well. Get two set ups to run fluids for these patients when I get the IV’s started on the worst two. Be ready to spike the other two and get them ready if I need them. Okay?”
“Got it,” the teen replied and she set to work.
He thought he could get these four survivors stabilized for the time being now that he had the supplies he needed but they were going to have to get to a trauma center in order to survive. He looked around and saw Jaz and Albion pulling the dead from in front of a single door that ended the hallway.
Jaz reached out and tried the door handle but it did not open. Albion stepped forward and set his shoulder against it to shove. It did not move.
“It’s barred or blocked from the other side,” the shapeshifter whispered.
Dean looked at the men on the floor and then looked at the barred door. “What if there are more survivors on the other side? There are only males here. No women or children,” Dean observed.
Albion nodded. “That makes sense. Let me try something.” He stepped up close to the door again and called out. “Hello, is there anyone on the other side of the door? It is Albion and some other friends here. The demons are gone. It is safe to come out.”
There was nothing so Albion knocked on the door and repeated his message. Finally a muted voice came from the other side. It was a woman’s voice.
“Albion, it is Anya,” the voice said. “How do we know you are not some trick of the demons? They tried to get past the door with force. Perhaps you are trying to trick us?”
Dean called out from where he was working on getting another IV started, “Anya. It’s paramedic Dean Flynn. Do you remember me? I helped to heal your daughter Zora last year. I am Ashley Moore’s companion.”
“Paramedic Dean,” Anya’s voice called. “I remember you. Tell me, what were my daughter’s injuries?”
“She had two broken legs and a serious infection, Anya,” Dean said. “A tree had fallen on her when she tried to stop human loggers from cutting in the forest.”
There were murmurs and scraping sounds from the room on the other side of the door and then the door opened a crack with some light from the other side spilling out into the hallway. Albion stepped into the opening. Dean thought he was trying to block the view of the carnage in the hall from those in the room. A face appeared in the partially opened doorway. It was Anya. She looked both worried and relieved at the same time.
“What of Enric and the other men?” she asked. “We heard the fighting and screams and feared the worst.”
“There are some survivors, but I’m sorry Anya,” Albion said, “most of them gave their lives protecting you. Dean is working to save the few survivors now. We want to get you others out of there, but let us clean up the hallway a bit first. Don’t come out until we call you.”
The dryad woman choked back a sob, but she nodded at him and stepped back from the door, closing it. Again, Dean heard frantic voices from the other side and then cries and sobbing. He could only imagine what it must have been like to be on the other side of that door, listening to what was happening out here in the hallway.
Jaz said, “I’ll get some sheets from the other bedrooms. We can cover the bodies out here and clear a pathway to get them outside. It will shield them from the worst of it.”
Albion and Jaz set to work shifting the dead bodies, and parts of bodies, from in front of the door so they lay against the sides of the hallway. Jaz used a pile of sheets to cover the remains. There was now a path through the hallway to the outside.
Dean was finishing up his work on the final survivor when Jaz rapped on the door again. “Anya, it is all right to come out now. Carry the children, and stay to the middle of the hallway.”
The door opened again, this time wider, and revealed a small bedroom packed with the women and children of the dryad clan. Anya and Zora were the first Dean saw and the older dryad woman rushed over and pulled Dean close in a hug. He felt Zora join in. He held them while they expressed their relief.
“Come on,” he said, breaking the hugs. “Let’s get everyone out. I’ve got more work to do on the survivors, then we can talk and share what happened here together.”
Anya nodded and started gathering the women and children. Albion led the way while Dean and Jo continued their life-saving work. Jaz stood by in another doorway. As they passed the women saw the shrouded shapes on the floor and blood on the walls and the crying began. Dean knew he would hear that keening sound in his nightmares for a long time to come. He redoubled his efforts to save the living and went back to work packing wounds and assessing his remaining patients.
16
It took Dean and Jo another ten minutes to finish stabilizing the four patients as best they could. Then he used some more sheets to fashion litters to move them all outside. He’d have more light there and could do a better re-assessment than in the da
rkened hallway with his single flashlight. He didn’t know how Jo managed as well as she did and chalked it up to better eyesight.
Anya, Jaz and Albion came back in and helped him move his patients out into the clearing in front of the cabin while Jo stayed inside until the last had been brought out. When they got into the sunlight, he noticed that all the injured appeared somewhat improved. Then Anya and some of the other women began to bring small pots of something over to injured dryad men. The women pushed Dean aside and started peeling off the clothing that Dean and Jo hadn’t already removed from the patients. When the men were nearly naked, the women started smearing a green paste on the exposed skin. He watched as the paste was instantly absorbed adding a greenish tinge to the skin of his patients.
“What is that, Anya?” Dean asked.
“It is tree paste,” she said. “You would call it chlorophyll. It comes from the trees that sustain us and we use it whenever one of us is injured. It helps the body sustain itself while it heals.”
Dean looked down at his four patients. Their bleeding had slowed or stopped soaking through his bandages and their faces had more color. Far be it for him to doubt the healing abilities of his patients. They would still need some sort of advanced medical attention but he could see that it was much more likely now that they would survive.
“Anya, that is a good thing, but they all still need to go to a hospital. They have internal injuries and need stitches,” Dean explained.
“Some of the women will take them by car to the city. It will be faster than waiting for an ambulance to get all the way out here,” Anya said. “Zora and I will remain here with the others and tend to the children.”
Dean nodded. It wasn’t a perfect solution but she was right in that it was probably thirty minutes before an ambulance could get here in the remote valley. They could be halfway to the nearby county hospital by then.