To Hell and Back (Hellcat Series Book 4) (14 page)

“
Lass, watch out,” a deep male voice yelled.

Gabi had never been more elated to hear the booming Scottish
voice as she instinctively rolled out of the way of the stomping
foot, narrowly missing being pancaked. She shook off the throbbing
of her hip and leapt to her feet, backing up as Fergus and Charlie
materialised out of the dark a few feet from her.

“
Charlie,” she barked, “Julius needs help over there.” She
indicated to her right, where the mass of lizard things could still
be seen, though there appeared to only be four of them left. A wall
of flames erupted somewhere in the centre of the fracas, and Gabi
hoped it was Lance.

“’
Ere, lass,” Fergus rumbled, tossing her another dart gun
before rushing the giant, swinging his massive broadsword at the
demon’s tentacle arms. The two of them roared in battle fury as
they struck at each other; then there was a resounding thud, and a
grey, hand-like appendage tumbled to the ground, still holding a
spiked mace. The demon’s roar was deafening as it turned its full
attention to Fergus, forgetting about the tiny annoyance that was
Gabi.

“
Get close enough to make him kick at you,” Gabi screamed at
Fergus, leaping to his side, trying to avoid the demon blood
raining down from the arm that had lost its hand.

Fergus grunted in surprise but didn’t ask
questions. There were many reasons Gabi loved the stoutly built
Scot with a huge scar across his face; his trust in her was most
certainly one of them.

They both rushed back towards the demon, Gabi
staying in Fergus’s shadow. She hissed in pain as a glob of demon
blood landed on her shoulder and instantly ate through her
toughened leather jacket and into her skin. There was no time to
wipe the corrosive gunk from her as the creature’s massive foot
lashed out towards them. Gabi aimed the dart gun and fired into the
sole. She was intensely glad that the tech geeks had spent time
working on the darts and had found a way to add a small mechanical
to the darts, giving them a bigger punch than before. That combined
with a tungsten-based, super-sharp point drove the darts straight
into even the toughest Kevlar. Though the skin on the giant’s sole
wasn’t as tough as the rest of it, it was still tougher than
anything the average human was likely to come across. Her darts
found their mark but barely penetrated. The giant bellowed its rage
and stomped downward, driving the darts directly into its body,
Werewolf saliva and all.

Without pause, Fergus engaged it again, swinging his huge
broadsword at its massive torso. Gabi took a second to pull one of
the scraps of leather from a pocket and use it to scrape the
remnants of the demon blood off her left arm and shoulder; it felt
like she was being eaten alive by fire ants. She gritted her teeth
and checked on Fergus. The giant was already slowing, its movements
more clumsy, its intensity diminished. Fergus caught her eye and
gave a nod; he’d finish this one. She hurried back to the main
fight.

With Charlie’s help, Kyle and Julius were still
trying to dispatch the lizard creatures. Their alligator-like hides
were making it a tough job, and two smaller winged demons were
harassing them from the air. Then Gabi remembered that Lance had
done a superb job of slow roasting the last Godzilla demon they’d
encountered. She quickly scanned the melee. Lance’s blond head was
just visible in the thick smog. He was standing stationary with his
hands raised, pointing at a large demon with a shaggy doglike head,
several smoking piles of black goo were dotted around his position.
Flinging a dagger at a small batlike demon with unimaginably large
fangs and what appeared to be a dislocatable jaw, Gabi plunged back
into the fight, aiming for Lance. The bat demon dropped to the
ground behind her, and she already had Nex in her hand.

She hacked at a putrid-looking brown arm that reached for her
in the dark, and then stumbled as she stood on something large and
soft on the ground. She hit the ground hard, the jarring setting
her shoulder on fire again, and rolled, expecting whatever she fell
over to attack; demons didn’t stop coming until they were puddles
of goo. But the lump on the ground just groaned. She leaned in
cautiously and realised with a start that it was Callum, the new
Werewolf Hunter. He was still in human form, which meant he was
knocked mostly senseless, far enough to unconscious that even his
wolf couldn’t assume control and force his Change.

Shit, she had too many things she was trying to do at once.
Prioritise, she screamed at herself, praying for a moment’s clarity
in the mayhem. Her intuition kicked in, and she knew Callum had to
be her first concern. The others were holding their own; she would
sense if Julius was in trouble. Quickly she leaned over Callum,
trying to assess his condition. His eyes were open but not focusing
on her face. A vicious trio of gashes marred the entire left side
of his head. Gabi grimaced. It looked like he’d caught a spiked
flail to the face.

“
Come on,” she hissed, putting her burning left shoulder under
his and hefting him to his feet. She gritted her teeth, bracing
against her own pain, but kept Nex tight and steady in her right
hand as they began a stumbling shuffle towards the parking area.
She was grateful that Callum at least wasn’t too many inches taller
than her, carrying someone the height of Julius or Kyle like this
would’ve been close to impossible.

Another look around and Gabi saw that Lance was moving towards
them. She shook her head and pointed with Nex in the direction of
the lizard demons. He nodded his understanding and changed
course.

A skinny winged demon flew at them from the
right, knife-sharp talons and clawed wing tips raking at Gabi’s
face. She batted it away with Nex, watching it collapse in a
crumpled heap on the ground as she kept putting one foot in front
of the other in the direction of the backup crew. But the demon
hadn’t given up; it shook itself, realigning its wings, and
relaunched its attack, propelled like a rocket. Gabi hunched her
shoulder and threw up her arm, taking the brunt of the assault on
her right forearm. Shit, she was caught with Callum on one arm and
the demon on the other. The vicious creature dug its talons through
the protective leather and into her flesh and then began trying to
gnaw on her with its vulturine beaked mouth. She had no choice but
to drop Callum; if she didn’t, they’d both be eaten alive. But as
she began to tug her shoulder out from under the Werewolf, his
weight suddenly vanished. She grabbed blindly for him, unable to
spare a glance to see what had him, but then a voice reached
her.

“
We’ve got him, girl. Let go.”

Gabi almost sagged in relief at Mac’s order. With
her left arm free, she pulled a butterfly sword from her thigh and
shish-kebabbed the flying demon. As it flopped into deadweight, she
gingerly pried its beak from her flesh and flung it to the ground
before finishing it off with an angry stroke of Nex’s
blade.

The tight
knot in Julius’s chest eased as he saw that Mac and the clean-up
crew had taken the new Werewolf off Gabi’s hands and she could
defend herself unencumbered now. He’d been a hair’s breadth from
going to help her, and he knew that would’ve caused tension between
them. It still took a monumental effort on his part to leave her to
fight monsters on her own terms. He knew it would never work any
other way, but no one else, especially Gabi, could understand the
depth and intensity of his need to protect her. How he felt every
wound on her body as if it were his own; how it offended his innate
masculine compulsion to never let anything harm what he loved. How
Fate must be laughing at the irony of him, Julius, the big, bad
Master Vampire, falling in love with a mortal woman who would never
let him protect her, and would always be putting herself directly
in danger’s very maw.

He continued
to hack at the tough leathery plates covering the demon’s throat.
Each blow was chipping away at the protection; layer by tiny layer
it was giving way. Just a few more blows and Julius would be able
to get at the creature’s soft inner core. He launched back into the
attack, blow after blow on exactly the same place, even as the
creature spewed poisonous froth at him, snapping at him with a jaw
full of shark-like teeth and swinging its thick armour-plated tail
at him hard enough to break every bone in his body. The demon next
to the one he was focused on suddenly began careening around, its
useless little arms waving almost comically. Julius could smell it
burning, the stench enough to overpower the rest of the stink
layering the gardens. He stopped breathing, the smell too much for
his senses.

“
Julius,” Kyle yelled, “leave that one for Lance. We need to
check the perimeter.”

He gave Kyle a sharp nod, but instead of breaking away, hacked
one more time at the chink he’d made in the demon’s neck. He was
finally rewarded with the sensation of his sword finding soft,
vulnerable flesh. Changing his grip on the sword in an instant, he
drove the tip of it into the gaping wound and plunged the blade
downward. The demon collapsed forward, thick, black ooze pouring
from its mangled chest. Julius jumped back, grimacing in pain and
disgust as the revolting ooze coated his right hand and the hilt of
the sword. He dropped the sword and quickly wiped his hand on the
grass as he took in the rest of the scene.

Charlie and Fergus were dealing with a couple of smaller
horned demons, and Lance was standing not far from him, still
concentrating on the one remaining lizard demon; he was looking
tired, though. Kyle was running for the far side of the garden,
Simon on his heels, and Alexander was ghosting to the south side of
the garden. Finally he spotted Gabi; she was yelling at one of the
groups of Magi and pointing at something in a huge elm in the
centre of the graveyard.

He left his sword where it was on the ground, the blade was
still intact but the hilt had begun to dissolve, and ran towards
her.

“
Some of the winged ones are
in a tree over there,” she told him as he reached her. She was
sweaty and dishevelled, her hair falling out of the tight braid
she’d tied it back in. There was a bloody smear down the side of
her face, though it wasn’t her blood, several nasty scratches
marred one cheek, and more than half of her left shoulder was
exposed, showing a serious acid burn. But her eyes were alight, her
whole being alive, and she was glorious.

“
Leave the Magi to send them back,” he told her, pulling her
to him for a quick, fierce kiss. “Kyle wants us to check the
perimeter. With so many of them, who knows how many have tried to
escape into the City.”

She returned his kiss with a savage one of her own, and he
quickly pierced his tongue with a fang, gifting her a few drops of
blood. She pulled back, licking her lip and grinning.

“
Let’s go,” she said, quickly scanning where everyone else was
before choosing the east boundary.

Gabi surveyed the scene; it was one you’d expect
to see on a movie set, maybe one where aliens attacked earth,
almost cataclysmic. The foul-smelling fog was finally beginning to
dissipate, and the pale grey of coming dawn was just beginning to
light the garden, further highlighting the havoc. The clean-up crew
was moving through the garden, sucking up the disgusting puddles of
goo into special containers. Gabi had no idea what the containers
were lined with, and right now she was too exhausted to care. She
was perched on a piece of wall that had collapsed sometime during
the fight, while Harry, the SMV human medic, tended to the worst of
her injuries. Next to her on the ground were a small pile of
weapons and the remnants of the leather patches Savannah had asked
her to test against demon blood. They’d fared surprisingly well,
not perfect, but far better than Gabi had expected.

Julius was striding back towards her; he’d just
overseen the evacuation of the other Vampires back to the Estate
before the sun rose. He’d have to leave soon too. He’d called
Patrick, the Werewolf in charge of his daytime security, to bring
reinforcements to assist in the clean-up and escort exhausted Magi
back to HQ. The rest of the clean-up crews and Hunters who’d been
stationed at the stadium had arrived a few minutes ago, so Gabi
finally allowed herself a breather.

They’d chased escaped demons for more than two hours after the
main battle had been won. The Magi had done all they could to send
back the escapees, but there were simply too many. Luckily Byron
had been able to send them a Tracker Magus who was able to focus on
demons; he’d helped the Hunters find every one of the five
escapees. It was a miracle no humans had been bitten, and only a
handful had needed to have their memories wiped.

A sharp sting brought her back to the present with a hiss of
pain.

“
Geesh, Harry,” she snapped at the medic as he began to clean
the deep laceration on her right arm. Julius folded himself
elegantly onto a rock near hers and took her other hand.

“
Sorry, Hellcat,” Harry apologised, “but it’s deep, and I
don’t want to leave anything toxic in there.”

She gritted her teeth. It wasn’t Harry’s fault she was tired
and grumpy now that the adrenalin had worn off. “Just do what you
have to,” she said, trying to sound less testy. “Just warn me next
time.”

Julius didn’t move, but a sense of warm amusement trickled
through their mental link. Movement caught her eye, and she looked
up to find Mac and Razor picking their way through charred demon
remains and blackened patches of grass. Mac had a takeaway cup of
coffee in each hand.