Demon Squad 7: Exit Wounds (13 page)

“And it is there where we will find him.”

“There is no way in,” Rachelle said as she stepped from her portal, leaving it to shimmer, still open at her back. “Frank sealed all the gates to Hell. Even the ones Ab—” she stumbled across the name of the former leader of DRAC, her dead lover, drawing a deep breath and closing her eyes before she could continue. “Even the ones Abraham had created leading from our various headquarters.”

“Damn it, Frank!” Despite all I’d learned recently, it was still so easy to be angry at my cousin even though I suspected Azrael had instigated that move as well.

“Calm yourself, Scarlett.” Uriel set a hand on my shoulder. “Charging into Hell serves no one save Azrael. We will find another way to reach him.”

“How?”

“Were you to lose everything you held dear, the very essence of what you are taken from you, would you mourn the loss and move on or fight to reclaim it?”

“Fight, of course.”

Uriel smiled. “As will Azrael. For all he has stolen from Triggaltheron, it will never be enough to replace what he lost when Metatron revoked his magic, emptying his soul of its magic.” The archangel cast a mischievous glance toward Heaven before meeting my eyes once more. “We need only supply the proper bait and Azrael will come to us.”

My head swam at his statement, possibilities imagined and then discarded, realization finally bobbing to the surface with an illuminating ripple. “You mean—”

A wash of mystical energy fell over us then, dimensional realities warping and converging. There was a flicker of green as Uriel and I spun, weapons drawn, to face the threat that had sneaked upon us. It was too soon for Azrael to have grown bold, but I feared the worst.

There, not but a few feet from where the Angel of Death had opened a gateway to Hell, hovered an emerald portal the size of a plate. Its edges gleamed with a ghostly shimmer. Uriel started toward it just as its energy ebbed, drawing away from us. Then it was gone.

“It’s the same one,” I heard Rachelle mutter behind me, my eyes unable to leave Uriel as he searched the empty air for the now missing portal.

“The same?” I barely realized I’d asked the question, but I knew what she meant before the mystic even replied. “The realm Azrael opened.”

Rachelle’s confirmation was lost to the storm of my thoughts that roared in my ears. She was right. I’d been so focused on Frank—on
Azrael
—that I had paid little attention to the portal’s essence, but I knew it then as my senses replayed its touch. It
had
been the same.

Rachelle slipped passed me within a cloud of burgeoning magic. Her hands were extended, and she reached for where the portal had lingered, fingers clawing at its energies, searching for a key hole.

“Can you open it?” Uriel asked.

She grunted but said nothing, determination drawing creases across her pale face, a rare glimpse of her true age distorting her features. The swell of her magic rose and widened, but still she remained silent. It spoke volumes as to her success.

“Then our time is wasted here.”

“No!” Rachelle shouted, spinning to face the archangel. “No, I cannot find the seam to peel the wall back, but I can sense its presence.”

“It’s still there?” I asked.

“It is. Whatever Azrael did to open it has scarred the dimensional wall, marked it.” She waved her hand where the portal was just moments before. “That’s likely why it opened again. Something—someone—on the other side is exerting pressure on it.”

DRAC
was the first thought to come to mind, and I could see by Rachelle’s expression that she, too, felt as such. The book the alien girl had used to open the portal had been taken with them to the other side.
Could it be used to open it once more?
My stomach tightened at that, the news little better than hearing a loved one’s plane fell into the ocean and not knowing where. “But how can we retrieve them if we cannot open the portal from this side?”

“I cannot lift a heavy stone, either, but with leverage, I can send it rolling down a hill.” Rachelle grinned, the gleam of it making her eyes glisten manically.

“You believe you can hold it open, then,” Uriel asked.

Rachelle nodded. “Perhaps not indefinitely, but maybe long enough to get a message through to the other side.”

I shook my head. It all seemed too much. “There are creatures that guard the portal from intrusion. I’ve seen them at work. How will we get past those beasts to deliver our message? Scream through the hole and hope Katon and the others hear us?”

A willowy smile graced the mystic’s lips. “In a manner of speaking, we can do exactly that.” She closed her eyes, her posture settling into calm. “I need to make a call.”

Thirteen

Ever try to run from a ravening horde while lugging a crippled angel? I don’t suggest it. It’s not fun. It’s not fast, either. The only benefit we had was that Katon and I could run like the wind at a burrito convention. Sadly, that only lasted until we hit the woods and reached the rest of the group.

I shoved Ilfaar into Venai’s arms and put the smack to her ass to get her back to moving. No one else could carry him so easily, and besides, it kept her with her hands full and her brain occupied with something that didn’t involve turning on the rest of us. Shaw snarled at me, but the bloodthirsty shouts of Mia and her green-skinned gang ended any argument. We were running.

The pink trees flew past us as we pushed on, Katon, Karra, and I holding back a little to protect the rear, but I didn’t imagine any of us actually thought we’d get away. We were too loud, elephants thundering through the woods with nowhere to go. The only hideout we knew of had been pointed out to us by Mia. That’d be the first place she checked if we vanished, but even if that were our destination, we’d never make it. The greenies were catching up.

I ducked as a spear whistled overhead, its wooden shaft thumping off a nearby tree. Another followed, piercing the soil near Rala’s feet. We weren’t but twenty yards from being Shaka Zulu’d.
Phase one!

That distance was closing fast. I cast one last confirming glance back and realized we needed to do something, and we needed to do it right then. Fortunately, I had an idea…a real one. Sorta.

I ran up alongside Rala. “Can you change?” She looked at me through wide eyes as though she couldn’t understand me so I just kept pushing. “Can you change into your wyvern form? Answer me.”

“I-I think so…maybe.”

It was good enough for government work, horseshoes and hand grenades. I called for everyone to stop, running over and pulling Ilfaar from Venai’s massive arms. She didn’t even bother to resist. The angel hit the ground with a grunt, but there wasn’t time to be polite and apologize. I pointed to Rala. “Throw her.”

The Nephilim glared at me. “What?”

I got pretty much the same look from Rala. “Say what?”

“
Whhhhaaaaaaaaaaa…?
”

The greenies closing, I didn’t have time to explain to any of them. I grabbed Rala by her arm, knocked CB and the book aside so they were out of the way, and yanked the alien over to where Venai stood. “Fucking throw her!” I screamed, pointing upward at the canopy. “Now!”

Shaw must have given Venai a nod I didn’t see because the Nephilim snapped to and snatched the poor little alien up by her waist.

“Don’t I get a say in—”

The unspoken answer was,
nope, you sure don’t.
Veronica raised a hand to stop Venai, but it was too late. Before even the rest of Rala’s complaint could slip free from her lips, she was airborne. She shrieked as the purplish canopy swallowed her whole. Her voice faded in an explosion of leaves and branches.

“Spread out and find cover,” I ordered, yanking my spear from my Tarzan panties and moving to the relative shelter of a tree trunk.

“I hope you know what you’re doing, Frank.” Katon glowered as he took up a defensive position, the rest of the group following suit except for the two gimps who just stayed where they were and muttered complaints.

“You and me both,” I muttered, earning a glare of nuclear proportion from everyone, including Chatterbox.

“
Gggrrrrreeeeaaaaattttttt. Ggoooonnnaaaa dddiiiieeeee.
”

No opportunity to explain, all I could do was go through with my plan, such as it was. After everyone else was hunkered down, I stepped out from behind the tree while the green folks were barely thirty feet from our soon to be graves. For once I didn’t have an epitaph handy so I decided to just wing it and let someone else figure out what it should say.

“Raaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!”

My scream drew them up short. The first of the group stumbled to a panicked halt as if they’d never seen a guy make a final stand in borrowed underwear.

“Come any closer and you all die,” I told them, summoning my best De Niro.
You talking to me?

The greenies held their ground, splitting their gazes between me and the surrounding forest, clearly wondering what kind of crazy they’d walked into, but the pause didn’t last very long.

“Don’t let him frighten you.” Mia’s voice rang out loud and clear, a hint of laughter to it. “They’ve only half a dozen fighters, if that, and I suspect,” she continued, pushing her fellow greenies aside to step out front, “given the proper motivation, not even all of them will bother to fight.” Mia glanced pointedly over at Shaw and Venai. She’d seen our interaction in the hole and knew they weren’t part of the team.

Shaw shrugged, but the twisted smile on her lips told me all I needed to know about whose side she planned to be on: the winner.

“Surrender now and only a couple of you will get hurt before we take you before our lord.” She smiled at me, and then Karra.

That shit wasn’t gonna happen. Before she could say anything else, I yanked my arm back and loosed the spear at her.

Apparently it took a little more skill than I’d managed with it. Mia stepped aside easily as the tumbling shaft smacked the guy behind her with a dull
thud
. He cursed and shook his hand out where I’d
clacked
his knuckles. He looked mighty pissed but not very hurt.

“Fine, then we do this the fun way,” Mia responded. “Take them!”

“Way to go, Frank,” Veronica snarled from behind a nearby tree trunk. “Why does anyone still trust you to negotiate with women?”

The greenies didn’t give me time to respond, not that I would have had a good answer. It was kind of a mystery. They barreled forward, spilling between the trees, spears and knives, and swords, and pissy looks leading the way. I smashed the first of them in the face with my fist. It felt good. He stiffened and fell beside me, kindly lending me his weapons. The second and third and fourth were less congenial. Spears and blades zipped by me as I barely managed to pick up their buddy’s knife and sword. I parried a couple with half-assed effort and backed away to put some distance between me and the troll brigade, not that it mattered much. There were just way too many of them for us to stop. They were gonna boot stomp us good if I’d been wrong about the little dragonfly.

And it seemed I had been. A furtive glance at the quiet canopy did nothing but reinforce my pessimism. The array of sharp objects slicing away bits and pieces of my adopted skin didn’t help much, either. The rest of the group had settled in behind their tree-cover and were doing okay. Venai was smashing skulls while Shaw picked apart the enemy who managed to get inside her reach, a surgeon in an operating theater, but they were only barely holding their ground. Greenies fell this way and that, but even Karra and Katon had their fair share of red lines drawn across their skin. They were giving better than they got, but it wouldn’t be long before the equation shifted the other way. The greenies were starting to spread out and come at our flanks.

I growled, leaping across the intervening space between me and Karra, gouging my way through the opposition. We were fucked, but I wasn’t gonna let her and the baby pay for my stupidity—anymore than they already had, that is. If Mia wanted someone to hurt, she could take it up with me.

I cut a swath in front of Karra and planted my feet in defiance. “We surrender!” Apparently my mouth had a different idea as to what defiance sounded like.

Mia raised her voice, calling her dogs to heel. “Do you now?”

“Yeah, Frank, do we?” Rahim asked? There was more than a hint of sarcasm in his tone. At least he’d put some effort into it.

“Do we get a vote?” Veronica snarled as she shook blood from her blade.

“Are we voting
him
off the island?” Shaw asked, shifting to glare at me. “I vote yes, if we are.”

Venai chuckled beside her. “I’m with her.”

“It appears you have one tongue up back here,” Ilfaar pointed out, unhelpfully.

Chatterbox gave me yet another raspberry, clearly the deciding vote.

“Well, meat, do you surrender or don’t you?” Mia seemed amused by the sudden rebellion tearing us apart. She had no clue it was business as usual.

Better still, she hadn’t heard what I’d just heard. I smiled and gave a curt bow. “Oh yeah, I surrender fully…right in your motherfucking face.”

I grabbed Karra and hauled her to the ground while Mia stared at us with amused uncertainty widening her eyes. Katon, Rahim, and Veronica, knowing me well enough to understand that self-preservation was the one real skill I possessed, followed me to the ground without my having to say another word. Shaw and the Nephilim were a little slower getting the message, but the dragon bursting through the cover of leaves above was a warning even Helen Keller would have picked up on. They hit the deck as Rala roared over our heads.

Mia’s people—the Tenebraens as I’d just dubbed them since I was running out of things to call them—reacted accordingly. Well, close enough. I didn’t notice any of them shit themselves, but they might as well have. I was certain a few squirted judging by the sudden darkening of their loincloths.

“Guardian!” someone screamed, the word taken up as gospel to spread through the panicked mass of Mia’s people. White eyes filled with terror, and their lines scattered like someone shouted
brownies
in the middle of Woodstock. Rala landed in their midst with a shrieking
thump
.