Demon Hunt (29 page)

“
Yes.” She was going to kill the bastard. Rhi flung the words out of her head into the sky.
Listen to me, jackass. I am going to kill you.

A familiar voice filled with innuendo entered her mind.
What good’s power if it doesn’t warn you, Rhiannon? It will be your fault, like my brother. You’re a matched set …

Pam unpacked weapons and body armor as she mumbled to herself.

Rhi fumbled for the window controls, rolling down all four windows on the truck and the window on the cargo hatch. “Be ready to jump out whenever I stop.”

Pam glanced up from her work to meet Rhi’s gaze. “I’ll kill them all for this, Rhi.”

“
And I’ll hold them down for you, honey. Get ready.”

The SUV caught air as the truck flew over the last hill before the ranch. A lazy ribbon of smoke floated on the morning wind above the ancestral home of Pam Douglas’s pioneer ancestors. A nightmare scene of flames and scurrying creatures in among the outbuildings, barns, fence and battered main house of the thriving cattle ranch brought another lightning bolt of pain to Rhi. She bit her lip hard, breaking the skin to keep from screaming.

A gigantic black shape was visible on the roof of the main house. The outstretched wings of the dragon stretched 20 feet in either direction. The beast’s black scales twinkled in the dim morning light, while the demons in the dust of the yard clung to the shadows of the buildings. Katie’s golden ringlets and pink sweater could be clearly seen from several hundred yards away. The child hung limply from the one of the dragon’s claws.

Two human figures armed with shotguns shielded themselves beneath an old Farmall tractor, wounding but not managing to kill demons when they scampered by.

In the air above the dragon, small forms glowing with blue light swooped and dived at the creature. Blackthorne and Pearl DeVere slashed at the dragon with their swords and dodged the streams of liquid fire the monster spit at the pair. Then the dragon cradled the tiny girl in his arms like a treasured stuffed animal and took to the sky.

“
She’s unconscious. Blackthorne will get her back,” Rhi muttered to herself as she tried to shove the gas pedal through the floorboard. “Pam! Toss the sword here and brace yourself.”

A quick glance in the mirror revealed Pam, now wearing the bulletproof vest and carrying an M-16 rifle. She was loaded down with several other weapons, her face blank. The hilt of the sword appeared on the console next to Rhi and a loaded 9-millimeter landed in the passenger’s seat nearby.

“
Don’t forget to turn off the safety,” Pam reminded her gruffly.

Rhi didn’t bother to reply as she tore through the closed wrought-iron front gate of the ranch in a shower of sparks.

A burnt out SUV was parked near the front door of the house with what might have been a pile of human remains beside it. The Biblical version of an actual devil stood on the front porch, brandishing a huge sword.

The creature was five times as large as its brethren who scampered about the yard, gorging on cattle released from the pens and pulled down to rip apart in the front yard. The devil stood at least eight feet tall with the shape of a body builder but there all human similarity ended. Two foot-long horns resembling those of a longhorn steer jutted from his forehead and his scarlet skin glistened and smoked. He was naked down to his cloven hooves. The obvious proof of the creature’s sex jutted in front of him obscenely.

“
Hang on!” Rhi tore a wide swath through the yard, mutilating at least twenty demons with her truck with a shower of blue sparks. Behind her, Houston pulled up to the trapped pair under the tractor and threw open the passenger door to let them crawl in. Bobby Wayne stood in the back of the pickup, strapped to the roll bar and raining bullets upon the demons on the ground. The sound of the concussion grenades he threw increased Rhi’s headache exponentially as she manhandled the truck through the yard.

It was good to know the hoodoo Pearl put on her truck was still effective, Rhi decided as another shower of blue sparks exploded against the SUV where she had crushed one of the larger demons under her wheels.

She swung the vehicle around, slowing up enough for Ellie Mae and Pam to make the leap out of the opened cargo door.

* * * *

Pam hit the ground hard and rolled her lean form into a ball, cradling and protecting her weapon. On her feet in an instant, she instinctively crouched to survey the scene. The bark of the guns Bobby Wayne fired from the back of Houston’s pickup popped in her ears and she added the music of her own weapons to the chaos.

The holy water ammunition had a stunning effect on the creatures swarming towards her. The smallest of the white, slug-like demons burst opened like air popped popcorn. The larger ones were alive after she hit them but were horribly mutilated. They kept coming, crawling on the ground towards her, legs missing and intestines spilling out, reaching for her with bloodied claws. She coldly cleaned out a dozen of them, clinically watching the bullets tear through several monsters at once. She yanked out the clip and replaced it, not acknowledging the crowd surging towards her until she looked up to begin firing again.

“
Eat this, you little freaks,” she screamed. There was nothing she could do about her daughter, who hovered, clutched in the dragon’s claws, above her. But she could make Manius Black pay.

“
Keep going, baby, I’ve got your back!” Bobby Wayne called from the bed of Houston’s truck. He laid down a line of fire, covering Pam as she rampaged. He punctuated his bursts of bullets with periodic rebel yells.

Houston was busy in the crew cab of the vehicle, tending whomever he had picked up a moment ago. Pam could see him as he periodically paused to shove his pistol into the stomach of a demon that managed to get past Bobby Wayne to climb into the broken window of the truck.

The SUV ran wildly through a crowd of demons swarming on the opposite side of the barn, before bursting through the building in a cascade of splintered wood and straw. The vehicle picked the most destructive path towards the front porch where the gigantic ‘head demon’ stood, barking out orders to his panicked minions. Pam tensed to make the dangerous run across the open ground to help her friend.

A thin wail broke through her bloodlust. Heart breaking, Pam forced herself to stare up in despair at the tiny pink tennis shoes kicking at the dragon’s claws. Her gun empty, she tossed it aside to grab the machete and the pistol, swinging the weapon with one hand while firing the pistol with the other.

The first demon the blade touched sparked and flamed, as did the next one. But each blue spark was weaker than the last and Pam realized that the protection was wearing off of her makeshift sword.

Above, Pearl swooped in to slash at the dragon’s arm that restrained the child but was rewarded with a slap of the tail that sent her head over heels into the roof of the farmhouse. She rolled down, falling two stories before hitting the ground with a sickening thud. Across the yard, Houston darted out of his truck under Bobby Wayne’s cover fire to get to the madam’s side before the milling demons realized where she lay.

In the air above where Pam fought, Blackthorne slashed at the beast’s side with his sword. If the dragon let her baby go, who would catch her?

Pam fought her way through the hellish crowd towards where she assumed her daughter might land.

Her only warning was a burst of heat and she leaped to the side, landing on her back in the mud. A squirt of liquid fire from the circling monster sizzled beside her head. She didn’t dare fire at the creature that held Katie, so she leaped up to keep as many of its associates as she could out of the area. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Ellie Mae tossing demons into the air as easily as she did her stuffed doggy toys.

The crowd of demons the dog landed in had scattered with screams of dismay and blue sparks as Ellie Mae picked up the first one she found by the scruff of the neck and shook it like a terrier with a rat. The tinier, weaker demons trying to seize the huge animal were rewarded with a neon blue bolt of fire that turned them into black piles of hot ash immediately.

A ferocious roar of challenge forced Pam’s attention towards the farmhouse’s front porch, where the huge demon stood with a smoking sword over a corpse she prayed was not her mother or father. He brandished the sword and stretched his bulbous lips out into a grotesque leer, his teeth at least an inch and a half long, pointed and stained. Stained with
what
was something Pam didn’t want to think about right then. She roared in return and sprinted towards the monster that might have laid his hands on her child. She looked like madwoman, her hair on end and her face blackened. Beside her Ellie Mae ran, wraithlike. The dog growled and tore at every demon that dared to stumble into their path.

They weren’t fast enough to beat the battered vehicle, which chugged past like a caffeinated rhino, straight for the huge demon.

* * * *

The moment her friend and the dog bailed out of the cargo window of the truck, Rhi hit the gas, ignoring the weapons Pam had made ready. She already had a weapon at hand, a big one. She paused long enough to stuff the Bible into one of the large inner pockets of her barn jacket where it lay like a stone, humming happily against her body.

With a jerk of the wheel, she carved a wide swath through the yard and burst through a cattle pen. A nauseating path of bulbous, quivering death lay behind her. The burning, half dead carcasses tried to pull themselves upright to feed on each other or whatever they were tearing apart when the demons met up with a rampaging mountain of metal that burned to the touch.

Keeping an eye on the dragon and the other on Blackthorne and Pearl battling in the air above the ranch, Rhi racked her brain, and reached for her other self.

“
What do I do? How do I fight this, Raven? Come on, I know you’re in there, damn it.” She watched Pearl plummet from the sky and Houston run to crouch protectively over the madam’s body. Behind him, Bobby Wayne kept firing from the bed of the truck, protecting the victims in the cab, who Rhi hoped were Pam’s mother, Lillian, and her husband, Colonel Douglas.

Behind Houston, yet another hulking demon arose from the depths of the barn, a twin for the monster on the front porch Pam charged towards. The new demon headed straight for the ex-pilot, who rose to take a defensive stance in front of Pearl, his hunting rifle up. Houston fired at the being’s massive red chest, one shot after another.

She couldn’t see her dog.

“
Crap.”

Stuffing the pistol into the waist of her jeans, Rhi grabbed the sheathed sword. She floored the gas and steered straight at the front porch of the house.

“
One, two, three …” She threw open the door and hit the ground rolling, feeling her clothes and flesh tear as inertia dragged her over the ground. Her head hit something and she fought for consciousness. She focused on the twenty-foot high flames shooting up from the remains of the porch. The demon had exploded on impact.

Solid hands grabbed her and Pam jerked her to her feet without regard for any injuries she might have gotten in her fall.

“
Do something, Rhi, please do something,” Pam sobbed. The other woman was now covered with gore, the machete still in her hand. The all-too-familiar bites and scratches of Rhi’s nightmares marked her face and body.

Wincing, Rhi pulled in her strength and reached deep and hard for her power. The power to stop the monster in the air, power that her past self had never been strong enough to call upon.

Above, Blackthorne darted in and out at the creature. The blue flames of his sword flared, igniting a lost memory and Rhi gasped as her power flowed. Sheets of electric blue flame shot from her hands towards the dragon. Even as she felt the energy surge, she realized that it was not enough.

The black dragon shrieked in pain, writhing in the air. Its vicious tail whipped back, cutting into the man who hurtled through the air. The blue nimbus that shielded Blackthorne’s body faded, time enough for the beast to hurl another glob of fire at the unprotected body of the knight. The liquid brimstone sizzled as it made contact and Blackthorne plummeted to the earth. The dragon made a graceful, gliding turn towards the mountains.

“
Catch him, catch him, catch him,” Rhi muttered and reached out a hand. Blackthorne’s decent stopped and she lowered his burnt and broken body to the ground with her mind. She dropped to her knees as Pam stumbled away towards Bobby Wayne’s pickup truck where her mother struggled to get her wounded husband out of the cab.

Pam’s mother, an older version of the skinny farm girl, helped the colonel to the ground beside the truck. After carefully checking him over, she collapsed to ground, sobbing hysterically.

Pearl, who had regained consciousness, sat in the mud with Houston’s head in her lap. The bedraggled madam wept sooty tears as she smoothed his thinning gold hair. The expression on her face told Rhi all she needed to know. The second massive demon was nowhere to be seen.

Ellie Mae materialized out of the rolling clouds of smoke to limp beside Rhi as she made her way towards where Blackthorne lay sprawled in the mud. Behind her, she could hear Bobby Wayne telling Pam’s mother to stay near the truck with her wounded husband while he secured the area. He jumped out of the truck and marched past her without a glance, gun in hand.