The thing looked more like an old-school Tommy Gun than a shotgun; complete with the drum magazine and everything. I’d seen people handle this monster at the range, but never tried it myself. The last few days had given me a greater respect for guns, but I didn’t plan on going John Wayne on whatever idiot was sticking his dick where it didn’t belong. I kept the barrel pointed at the floor, away from anyone else, and figured out where the safety was. I kept it on for my own sake as well as everyone else’s. I wasn’t going to be that asshole who accidentally shot himself in the foot.
There was so much extra power flooding through me, I had to do something to relieve the pressure. Since I had offense covered; the AA12 could punch a hole through a cement wall if it wanted, I focused on defense. I wove layer after layer of glamour around my chest, and then exerted an amount of pressure that was most commonly found in nature when making diamonds. It was what ancient swordsmiths did when creating a samurai’s katana, times a thousand. The result was a breastplate that would take a hell of a lot of force, or magic, to crack. The only problem was it wasn’t particularly flexible, which was why I stopped with just covering the vulnerable organs in my torso. I looked half conquistador and half Capone when I walked out into the lobby.
The place looked like a bank robbery gone wrong. Doors were smashed in. What was probably meant to be the getaway car was a smoking wreck in the road, and a bloodied-up beauty had taken a header into the fountain.
“Look at that ass,” the Aesir appreciated the view, despite the concrete basin being cracked and leaking water onto the tile.
“Clean up on aisle one,” I shook my head, as I continued around the fountain.
Imps had taken up positions everywhere with intersecting fields of fire, overlapping kill zones, and other tactical terminology that simply said they were going to kill your ass if you stepped into the building. One imp was out in the open, and Lark headed straight for him. I followed, my eyes scanning the area diligently for threats.
We were the first heavyweights on scene, and just knowing all the imps were deferring to our judgement made me a little giddy. Still, I stayed behind the Fae and let him do the talking. He’d had millennia of experience with this. I’d only killed one, lousy Nosferatu a few days ago.
We were a few steps away when Lark skidded to a stop. He threw out his arm to stop me. I slipped on the water, and ended up on my ass.
“So much for looking like a boss,” I grumbled as I picked myself up. My pants were soaked. It looked like I’d pissed myself.
“What is she doing here?” the satyr pointed at the girl with the nice ass; who I was now seeing wasn’t a girl at all.
Her skin had a blueish tint to it that was familiar. She was big, Not the biggest woman I’d seen, but definitely eight or nine feet tall. My mind said shifter before I saw the pointed ears.
“No way,” I edged around Lark to get a better angle. “Blue skin, pointy ears, silver blood,” I checked the boxes. The only thing missing were the red, swirling fractals, another couple of feet, and a sadistic smile as she tortured me.
The Aesir begged me to raise my weapon, and I didn’t argue. I didn’t even need to aim. This was the shotgun of all shotguns, and I could end the pain in the ass she was; right here, right now. I’d never need to look over my shoulder and worry about Aveena Foxbelle ever again.
“Sir, no!” the imp jumped in front of the barrel. “She’s claimed Sancta Familia.”
I gave zero fucks what that was, and my finger tightened on the trigger. The Aesir egged me on like a horny, little devil on my shoulder.
“Cam!” Lark yelled, and jerked the weapon up and away, so I didn’t turn Aveena, and the imp, into swiss cheese.
“What?” I snapped, showing my teeth to the Fae. The Aesir was getting closer to the surface, and I was having trouble controlling him with Aveena in striking distance.
“Take ten deep breaths,” Lark advised.
I couldn’t help but laugh. “I’m not a toddler throwing a tantrum,” I snapped back, pulled my gun out of his grip, and kept it pointed away from the woman who’d made my life a living hell for the last six months.
He raised an eyebrow like he was going to disagree, when the crunch of glass drew our attention. Civilians were still huddled around the room, freaking the fuck out at the giant goat man who’d suddenly ruined their vacation; but the woman that walked in the door didn’t seem to care for the weirdness factor in here. She added to it.
Her eyes were like twin, violet infernos. She was hot in an entirely different kind of way. She was the kind of woman who could tie a guy into a pretzel, and the guy would love it. All she needed was some shiny leather and a whip. Instead, she carried a walking stick that looked like it had barely won a fight with John Deere, and her ripped jeans were covered in blood splatter; along with the rest of her. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to understand the rips weren’t fashionable. It looked like Carrie had just arrived at the prom, ready to kill everyone.
“Wait a second,” I knew that face.
Take away the glowing eyes, give her a cosplay cape, and put her on a busy Manhattan street. “Hot Gandalf?” I asked out loud.
“Abomination,” she snarled, and that was all the warning I got.
She moved a hell of a lot faster than me, barked something that sounded like she was coughing up a fur ball, and made a punching motion in my direction. The kinetic force of the blast hit me in the gut, and sent me tumbling into the air. Thank the gods for my breastplate, or my insides might have liquified.
I flipped ass over tea kettle, and smacked my hip against the old gods depicted in the leaking fountain. I spun through the air like a dreidel, and only pure instinct allowed me to get my feet under me before I landed. My hip still ached like a bitch as I landed like reject Superman. The good news, I kept a hold on my shotgun.
“Do you like the taste of lead?” I asked as I walked back toward her, trying to hide the limp. “Because I’d going to shove this down your throat and pump your stomach full of this creamy goodness.”
“Enough!” she yelled.
This time she used the opposite hand. I braced, but nothing hit me. After a second, I continued toward her, but ran into an invisible wall.
“What the hell?” I pushed against it, then pounded on it, and then tried to find the edge. It spanned the entire lobby, and wouldn’t give an inch. “Bitch!” I spat and gave it a few punches at one hundred percent. It split my knuckles, and now I was bleeding on the tile.
Lark turned to her, and completely ignored me shaking out my aching hand. “Van Helsing,” he stated conversationally, despite her unprovoked attack.
“Fae,” she spat his name with nearly as much disdain as mine. “This doesn’t concern you.”
“You’re in my house,” Lark shrugged. “It seems like it does concern me.”
“She made an oath. I’m only hear to collect,” Van Helsing licked her lips and looked down at Aveena’s unconscious form. “She’s mine.”
“Hey, it’s twenty-twenty-one. Women aren’t property,” I yelled, and everyone turned to look at me. “Don’t get me wrong, I love some girl-on-girl action; and sure, Aveena’s a raging bitch with mommy issues, but she isn’t yours,” I used air quotes just to make sure the witch got the point. “If anything, I’ve got dibs on punching her ticket. Why don’t you hop back off to Comic Con and let us take care of her?”
“Cam,” Lark gave me a hard look. “Shut up.” He turned back to Van Helsing.
“Well,” her muscles tensed, like she was ready for a fight. “Are you going to give her to me?”
Lark didn’t respond for a moment. He looked down at Aveena, and then up into Van Helsing’s blazing eyes. There was more than a little power-drunk crazy in them. Even I could tell that.
“I can’t,” the old Fae replied. “She’s claimed Sancta Familia.”
“Hey, for those of us in the cheap seats, what the fuck is Sanctum formula?” I yelled.
“Sancta Familia,” Da
ni answered from where she stood beside me.
I barely managed not to jump in surprise; but damn, the girl was ninja.
“It is a claim under the Covenants,” the dwarf explained, her eyes darting about to assess the situation. “It’s similar to Hospitality, but deeper. Hospitality is something that is a courtesy to strangers. Sancta Familia is family sanctuary; calling upon your blood to help and defend you. Its sacred to the Fae, and regular people too. Even Venus takes it as seriously as a supernatural STD. If your brother, sister, aunt or uncle came running to you for help; wouldn’t you protect them, Cam?”
I didn’t have any of the above, but I’d literally engaged in a trial by combat with a well-hung troll because Aveena threatened my adoptive parents. I got it, and I gave a deep sigh, before cracking my back. My hip was going to have a bruise in the morning, but I was good to go.
“You won’t give her up,” Van Helsing didn’t care about Dani’s explanation to me.
“I’m sorry, but we can’t. Despite what you think, we do have honor.”
The two supernaturals stared at each other for several seconds, and then . . . BOOM! I didn’t see anyone make a move or say a spell. One second, they were engaged in a stare off, and the next, Lark was embedded in the marble wall behind me, and Van Helsing had been ejected from the building, and checked in, with extreme prejudice, at the Flamingo across the street. The invisible wall that separated me from Aveena shattered in the exchange, and its destruction threw Dani and me on our collective asses. I was getting really tired of being knocked around.
The Aesir begged to be let out to even the playing field, but I reigned it in.
“Ow,” Lark groaned as he hopped down from the impression he’d made in the mural, and experimentally rotated his shoulders. “She hits harder than I thought,” he worked his jaw like he was trying to get his ears to pop. “But that should buy us a minute or two.”
“What the hell are you waiting for?” Dani took charge. “Get the civilians out and set up a perimeter. Move!” she yelled, and the imps jumped into action. “And for fuck’s sake, someone get me my axe.”
As it turned out, Lark’s prediction was optimistic. The last group of civilians was still making their way across the lobby when I felt a full-body magical itch come over me. A second later, the air in the room started to stir. I’d had enough experience with Caeli mages to know this wasn’t going to be anything good. It started as a whistle, and became a roar. All the air in the room started to rush out the front door. It was like in those disaster movies when the tide went out before the tsunami hit; except, I wasn’t seeing this in IMAX.
“Incoming!” I yelled, but people were already running for cover.
A tornado, that should have had Bill Paxton and storm chasers after it, hit the front of Caesars like an enraged bull. I kept my feet, but it would have been better to get knocked on my ass this time. Every bit of glass shattered, doors were ripped off their hinges, and general chaos and fuckery dominated the lobby.
The worst were the imps’ screams. Those who’d been near the front of the perimeter didn’t even have a chance. Doors smacked into them, bludgeoned them, or they suffered death by a thousand cuts as the vortex of shattered glass ripped them to pieces. Soon, dark rubies glinted at the heart of the tornado; little swirling trophies of its conquests.
Worst of all, I had no fucking idea how to stop it. There was no way in hell I could get to my happy place where I could work human magic. I could barely light a candle, and there was no way I could create a glamour big enough to counter that monster. Even the Aesir was stumped.
Thankfully, there were people here who knew a whole lot more about magic than I did. There was a second roar, and a smaller tornado came tearing in from the elevator banks on the other side of the lobby.
For a second, I thought we were all goners, but the new tornado steered around the imps clinging to anything nailed down so they weren’t sucked into the whirling vortex of death. The two tornados collided with the sound of an artillery shell going off, and canceled each other out with an explosion of force that made my bones rattle. Now, it was just raining blood, debris, and body parts.
A limp, imp body landed a few feet from me with a bloody smack. It was the guy I’d cut in line to get the AA12. “Poor bastard.” I didn’t even know his name, but there was no time for that. This fight was far from over.
Van Helsing walked through the big hole in the lobby like she was the IRS looking for back taxes. This time, Lark and I weren’t alone. Morgan walked casually away from the bank of elevators and surveyed the scene. It was like watching gypsy Liberace. Damn, but that woman loved her bling.
The two mages watched each other carefully, and began to circle the battlefield. Everyone else cleared out. Some signal had been given, and the imps that were left were retreating with their wounded comrades. They were only a liability in this kind of fight. Truth be told, I should be retreating too, but the Aesir wouldn’t let me. Morgan fucking Le Fay against a Van Helsing. Pay-per-view should be charging a butt load for this, and I had front row seats.
“Why do you side with the abominations, sister?” Van Helsing asked. Her eyes still blazed, but I swore they looked a little sad addressing the other witch.
“You’re still a child,” Morgan stated simply. “There is much you don’t know.”
Apparently, that was the end of the conversation, because flashes started to go off left and right; some type of supernatural flashbang. I dropped to the ground on instinct. Good thing I did, because stuff roared over my head like freight trains about to jump the tracks. I felt hot, cold, pure force, more wind, and something I couldn’t describe, but made my asshole pucker. It all took maybe fifteen seconds before the strobing effect faded.
I looked up and gulped. Morgan had her arm cradled to her side, a grimace on her face, but looked otherwise unharmed. The lobby was fucking totaled. There was no other way to say it. A section of wall was flash-frozen; another part, melted. The mural on the wall had been ripped and scattered throughout the space. The front desk looked like it had aged a thousand years in the blink of an eye, and was little more than dust in the wind. Even bits of metal were corroded to the point a flick of a finger would shatter them.
“Shit,” I thought that was bad until I saw a pile of bones in the imp’s tactical ware. Apparently, one didn’t get out of the way in time.
As for Van Helsing, she was battered and bleeding. Lark had her in a Full Nelson; the sneaky bastard, and Morgan was advancing toward her. Morgan barked a sound that I would associate with someone strangling the life out of a Thanksgiving turkey with their bare hands, and the statues of the old gods at the center of the fountain started to stir. With a groan, they extracted themselves from the pedestal and walked over to the struggling witch.
A big, marble guy; who had to be Jupiter, reared back his fist and punched Van Helsing right in the face. It only rocked back her head a little, while the statue’s hand cracked from the impact. Whatever spell Morgan cast to bring the thing to life, they didn’t feel pain. Jupiter punched Van Helsing in the face until his arms fell off, and then he used his head until the rest of his body crumbled. Then, the next statue stepped up to take his place; and the next, and the next. They each took a turn pounding on the witch until they were piles of rubble.
“That’s enough,” a voice of absolute authority rang out across the lobby.
Morgan looked like she was set to carve out the other witch’s eyes, but pulled up short. “Aw,” she pouted, and turned to look back toward the elevator. Like Van Helsing, there was a subtle glow to her eyes; only hers were blood red.
“I guess that’s why Merlin called her a blood witch,” I gulped.
Before she drew away, Morgan ran a finger across Van Helsing’s face. Her lacquered nail parted the witch’s flesh where all the marble statues had failed. Blood oozed from the wound, Morgan took a vile, and coaxed some of the scarlet liquid into the tube.
“This is so that the next time you
think to invade my home, you’ll think twice,” she snarled, and stepped back.
That allowed Venus to take her place. The succubus barely reached the witch’s chin in the Gucci slippers she was wearing. “Brief me.”
“The young one has claimed Sancta Familia,” Lark kept his grip tight on Van Helsing in case she tried to do anything. “The witch contests the young Fae belongs to her.”
“On what grounds?” Venus didn’t flinch away as she gazed into Van Helsing’s violet eyes.
“A bargain,” the witch was the first to look away. “She swore thrice to me that Dupree would not return to the realm. I was taking my just rewards when she escaped.”
“It sounds to me like the matter is settled,” Venus shrugged as she looked down at Aveena.
Throughout the entire shit show, the Fae hadn’t moved from where she’d passed the fuck out.
“No,” Van Helsing spat. “I wasn’t finished.”
“That is not my concern. Aveena made an oath, she broke it, and you took a price from her. It is not my fault you didn’t take as much as you wanted, and allowed her to escape. That’s your failure to bear. The bargain is fulfilled. Get her out of here.”
Van Helsing struggled hard enough I felt waves of power lashing out. Lark struggled to hold her, but Venus just sighed like a tired parent. She reached up and pressed her thumb to a spot on Van Helsing’s forehead, right between her eyes. The powerful witch went limp as a rag doll.
“Dump her in the desert,” Venus ordered as she bent and picked up the witch’s staff.
“I wouldn’t,” Morgan cautioned. “Magical items like that are usually attuned to one person. It’s a poor trophy.”
“Huh,” Venus shrugged, lifted up the staff, and brought it down on her knee.
It snapped like a twig. When it snapped, it let out a scream like a dying banshee, before the lights on it went out. Venus handed it to an imp and ordered it be disposed of with the witch.
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