Shadow of a Doubt Page 28

  Depweg leaped at the first one that strayed too far from his buddies. The demon swung its fat fists as Depweg’s powerful jaws closed around a thick throat and his momentum and weight brought the creature down on its back. It was practically dead before it landed as it gurgled its last breath. Black bubbles formed where the missing flesh from its throat had been while a leg twitched sporadically.

  I rushed the center demon, increasing my speed from pretty darn fast to inconceivable preternatural speed at the last second, throwing the demon off. My blade sliced cleanly through its torso while its own sword remained poised above its head, ready to strike. As I passed through the spine, the impact traveled up my arm before my sword finished its trajectory and bisected the demon.

  The minigun began burping again in short bursts and I turned to see Magni expertly taking out the enemy like it was some sort of video game. I smiled proudly as scores of enemies were reduced to clouds of black mist or ectoplasm.

  An obsidian-clawed hand slashed at my arm, deeply scratching my armor—Da’s armor. Time froze as I stared at the cuts in the once pristine armor I had been entrusted with only an hour ago. A nuclear bomb of wild and violent anger exploded into a mushroom cloud of rage. Every nerve ending cried out in indignation, and my skin began to heat up and crawl at the same time. My muscles tensed like an armed bear trap, and I sucked in a breath before erupting in a battle cry that sent spittle flying from my mouth.

  White interlaced with red plumed from my eyes as my gladius became a solid mass of rampant heavenfire. The ground on which I stood started to ignite, melting the asphalt into bubbling sludge while energy flowed around me in waves like a helicopter above a wheat field. The road split apart and cracked where the fire hadn’t yet consumed it from the coursing, raw power.

  The demon who had clawed my armor stumbled backward in response. Eyes made of raging white-and-red fire locked onto the hunchbacked demon as I lifted the blinding blade to the sky and brought it down with all my might. A line of energy infused with heavenfire lanced out, cutting the beast’s head off while splitting the highway in a straight line for eighty feet. My sword became lodged in the ground to the hilt, followed by a shock wave from breaking the sound barrier. I was vaguely aware of the sound of clattering glass striking the road coming from behind, and the simple action brought me out of my battle rage. The plumes stopped wafting from my eyes, and though I couldn’t see the flames from where the blade had lodged deep into the ground, I knew they had diminished as I regained control.

  An obsidian blade came down at me while my sword was still wedged into the ground, and I lifted my left hand while manifesting a bloodshield out of pure instinct. I knew the demon blade would slice right through my shield. All I could hope for was that it slowed it down enough to allow the celestial armor to stop it.

  I shut my eyes tight as I hoisted the shield into place. There was a clang of metal on metal, and I opened one eye to see my normally red manifestation replaced with a full ivory white shield with gold lining at the edges.

  The demon had been thrown off balance from his weapon bouncing back, and when I lowered the celestial shield, I saw the obsidian sword had embedded itself into its owner’s face. One of the demon’s eyes was searching from left to right like he was trying to figure out what had happened. His other eye stared straight forward, unmoving.

  I willed the shield to morph into my gladius and then grabbed the hilt of the demon’s sword with my other hand, pulling it free as he fell backward before melting into ectoplasm.

  A hellhound tackled me and began ferociously chewing at the pauldron protecting my neck and shoulder. I struggled to bring one of my swords around to strike at the beast, but only succeeded in lightly cutting it in my attempts. I tried rolling on my back, but the hellhound kept the bulk of its weight squarely on my back, pinning me to the ground as it ferociously gnawed at my armor like I was its favorite chew toy and my flesh was the peanut butter–filled center.

  The hound, in its frantic attacks, moved its massive paw off my back, allowing me to scuttle forward on hands and knees. Powerful jaws closed around my ankle before I was violently yanked back into position, my gauntlet-covered fingers ripping chunks from the shattered road.

  I was pulled into the still bubbling pool of asphalt I had melted, and the hellhound placed a paw on the back of my head, pushing my head into the boiling slush. I screamed as my beard and eyebrows burned up like I had glued thousands of firecrackers to my face. My exposed skin began to sear like meat on the grill. My flesh bounced bullets almost as effectively as a red-underwear-on-the-outside-of-your-pants superhero, but introduce a little tiny thing like fire or any of its extended family, and all bets were off.

  In a panic, I pushed off the ground with one hand in an explosive move and was thrown in an arc into the air. The hellhound, quick to react, latched onto my throat while I was in midair and slammed me to the ground on my back before climbing on top of me, his teeth piercing the flesh around my neck. Thank Lilith half his jaw was trying to close on the base of my celestial helmet.

  Copious amounts of drool mixed with the boiling asphalt still coating my face and began to add volume and liquidity. One of my wide eyes was covered in a puddle of melting sludge, prompting me to slam both eyes closed with a yelp. I could feel the damn orb melting precipitously in my socket.

  As I struggled on the ground, I heard thunderous footsteps and felt the ground rumble. I dared to open my remaining eye and was rewarded with the sight of a giant demon lumbering toward me with fists the size of smart cars raised to crash down.

  While keeping my mouth closed in an effort to keep the boiling drool sludge from entering it, I screamed through my nostrils, my cheeks puffed against my helmet.

  A blur smashed into the hellhound on top of me, and Depweg and the beast went tumbling, allowing me to scurry backward several feet. After they recovered, both canines squared off, growling their warning. The hellhound leaped at Depweg, who feigned his own charge before standing on hind legs and swiping upward—with claws that belonged on a bear rather than a wolf—as the hellhound flew through the air, helpless. It landed and began to stumble as black blood gushed from the four gashes on its throat. Depweg didn’t even wait for the thing to finish dying before moving on to his next target.

  “Oh shit…” was all I could manage in admiration. I wiped at my melted eye and bubbling face with my forearm before I remembered Captain Ham-Hock-Hands, who was slamming his fists downward. At the last second, I brought both of my blades up in a powerful strike that removed his hands at the wrist. But they still fucking continued their path and pounded me into the ground like a pair of asteroids. I saw stars as my body crashed through structurally sound asphalt that was neither melted nor cracked, and even compacted the earth underneath.

  In my haze, I heard the distant roar of a train somewhere in the distance. It was growing louder as my swirling vision attempted to coalesce, my melted eye healing only to burn again from the sludge that had seeped into my socket. Relying on my remaining eye, I looked up to see the house monster was screaming its indignation and pain while stubs at the end of its wrists gushed viscous black blood. I let go of the obsidian blade, which I noticed had shattered just above the crude hilt, and stuck a finger inside my eye socket. I scooped out as much of the solidifying sludge as I could so I could freaking see. I started wiping the asphalt on my armor when I realized what I was doing and shifted to rubbing the goo on the detached demon hands instead.

  My depth perception slowly returned, and I could see that my body had become one with the ground, the giant hands on top of me like bride and groom figurines decorating the top of a wedding cake.

  Dizzy, I looked around and noticed I was at least three or four feet beneath the road.

  “Oh, shit…” I struggled to repeat, but in a different context this time.

  Regaining my senses, I attempted to lift the demon hands off of me, but couldn’t move. That meant lots of things were broken and needed to heal. I cl
osed my eyes and focused on healing as the monster recovered and began stomping back to where I lay, helpless.

  The demon lifted a foot that was even bigger than his hands and started to bring it down in a crushing blow that would no doubt squish my flesh out of my armor like a tube of toothpaste under a monster truck’s tire. All I could do was lift my gladius straight up and hope for the best.

  The demon saw the flaming blade and tried to reverse his attack, but it was too late—for both of us. The blade pierced his flesh before his foot crashed down on top of his hands and my body. Luckily for me, his foot was bigger than the crater I had created, and the road slowed his attack. But his hands had been sticking well clear of the road, and his foot crushed them further into me. I heard more than felt the crunching of my bones and knew that wasn’t good. Then I got mad…again. Did I have an anger issue? Nah. Probably. Yes.

  “I’m…not…fucking…dying…here!” I screamed between heaving breaths and with increasing intensity as I willed my blade to blaze aggressively with heavenfire. The gladius, still inside the demon, began to surge with flames that ate at the innards of the beast. In a few moments, he was burning from the inside out, all while screaming in agony. He began to fall on top of me, and I could see the flames coming out of his eyes, nose, mouth, and even ears as he fell. Then he began turning translucent and melting into ectoplasm as his bulk landed on the John-sized hole I had delicately crafted with love. The weight that had been crushing me began to lighten before the fists fully melted. The body followed after and filled the hole with warm demon leftovers, leaving me in an ectoplasm-filled crater. I took a moment to soak in the tub while keeping my eyes and mouth closed as tight as possible while I let my body heal—again. Part of me wondered what ectoplasm tasted like before my brain caught on to the question and yelled a command to keep my mouth closed.

  I was surprised to feel that it didn’t take as much energy to recover from my wounds in the angelic armor. I would have to do some research on whatever magnificent magic this was. It was like it amplified my own abilities, which was just fine and dandy by me.

  After my bones cracked and popped back into place, I reached up and grabbed the ledge of the hole and pulled myself out of the slimy muck. I took a deep breath, placed my hands on my knees, and began spitting intermittently like a college kid on a bender who had just thrown up and wanted to get the last of the vomit out of their mouth.

  “Yuck!” I cried out as I flung ectoplasm off my limbs and rubbed at my face. At least the asphalt sludge had stopped burning and had washed off with the demon juice. Oh Lilith! It had soaked through my brand-new, freshly regrown beard! I sniffed through my nose and the wafting aroma from my epic facial hair made me gag. I grabbed at my impressive and full beard, and ripped it off my fucking face with a tearing sound. The flesh came with it, and I held up what looked like a Native American trophy taken from their enemy. Within seconds, my skin and beard had regrown sans the slimy ectoplasm of the demon. I tossed the beard to the ground and regarded the battlefield, spitting one more time for good measure.

  Depweg was tearing through demons with an unhinged brutality that made me kind of cringe as I gawked. I could sense his insatiable hunger for violence and frowned at the thought of Dawson being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

  Depweg was working through his hurt, and right now, I was just fine with—A small squad of drow tackled me from the side and held down my hands and legs while I struggled on my back. One began lining up a dagger strike above my head. I screamed and shook my head back and forth as hard as I could, not wanting to get the darkness inside me, before one of the drow slammed his knees into the ground on either side of my face. My head was caught in a vise I could not escape from. It was unnerving to feel how absolutely strong these elves were.

  As the drow pulled his dagger back for the killing blow, I saw past him to the giant death star that was flying downward at an alarming speed.

  “Oh shit,” I said once again as the drow stabbed his blade into my face. The supernaturally sharp dagger pierced through my cheek and lodged itself at the base of my skull. It burned, and I knew I was fucked. I didn’t scream or even gasp; I just lay still, staring in disbelief at the drow who had just stabbed me in the Lilith-damned face.

  The drow attempted to pull the dagger from my skull as the death star continued to careen toward the ground near where we were.

  Unable to use momentum, I realized my sword was useless, so I retracted the gladius and reached with all my might for the holster strapped to my leg. I poured my energy into my arm, moving it at an agonizingly slow pace toward my gun while the multiple drow struggled to hold me in place. My leg armor disappeared as I reached for the Glock—how the hell had the protruding gun stayed on with my celestial armor? Thoughts for later.

  My hand finally wrapped around the sidearm and I pulled on it before becoming alarmed to feel it resisting me. I tugged again, harder this time, and knew it wasn’t going to budge.

  The drow yanked the blade from my face with a sickening pop as metal was freed from bone before he raised his dagger again. I saw the fission ball was almost on top of us.

  With a moment of clarity, I thumbed the release on the Glock, slipped it out while turning my wrist, and put several rounds into the drow on top of me. His arm dropped and I set my jaw to prepare for another knife to my face when his hand landed gently on my chest before he slumped to the side and off of me.

  I laughed once in surprise and let loose with my firearm, aiming for center mass at point-blank range. Each dark elf holding me down received two silver-tipped rounds to the chest. It was ironic that the ball of fission that was about to consume me provided enough light to make the drow vulnerable.

  “John! Run!” I heard Locke cry. It sounded like he was struggling to get the words out and I risked a glance to see Lolth had him in her massive hands. The turret was empty and Magni was nowhere to be seen.

  A pair of skinny demons stood on either side of the Hummer, waving their hands while chanting in hellion. As they did, a bubble appeared over them that not only shielded Lolth from the light, but I felt it safe to assume would protect them from the blast. Lolth was staring at me with malicious glee in her purple eyes as my death approached with exponentially increasing heat. I seriously doubted the angelic armor would be able to save my flesh from becoming reduced to ashes.

  I heard paws on asphalt and saw Depweg hauling ass toward the Hummer. Lilith, I hoped he made it through the bubble. He didn’t. Depweg leaped through the air and landed on the bubble as if it were solid ground. Then he climbed over it and began digging at the top, his claws doing no damage to the protection spell.

  “Get behind it!” I called out as I searched for a way out of this mess. He looked up at me with ears that pointed in my direction before they flattened against his skull. With a quick jump, he placed himself behind the bubble and crouched while keeping his yellow eyes locked on Lolth and growling.

  With Depweg as safe as he could be, it was time to focus on my favorite person ever: me.

  Out of pure instinct, I looked at the ground in front of me while I moaned out loud, “Oh, man, gross,” before holstering the Glock and jumping into the ectoplasm-filled crater. I was aware that my leg armor had shimmered back into existence once I had no more use for the firearm.

  As I became submerged in the evaporating remains of the huge demon, the explosion rocked the ground around me. It felt like I was on top of a pile of wooden pallets during an earthquake. The shock wave that rocketed outward from the explosion was enough to level trees for tens of city blocks all around the impact site. The asphalt of the road melted, while the concrete of the barrier between the highways crumbled to dust.

  The heat sped up the evaporation of the pool I was in, and within a few seconds, the exposed skin of my face was poking out into the superheated air. I felt the tip of my nose sizzle before I flinched downward and tried to flatten myself against the floor of the crater. I felt the ooze seep into the gapin
g drow dagger wound on my beautiful face and started to dry heave. I opened my eyes under the almost clear ectoplasm and immediately regretted it. The blinding light caused by the controlled fission explosion ate at my retinas with vigor. I shut my eyes so tight I thought the bones of my sockets were going to collapse in on themselves.

  The ectoplasm dissipated to the point where the front of my body began to meet the air. I screamed as I shot my hands out in a vain effort to protect my body. As I did, my arms began to violently shake, and I opened my healing eyes to see a blurry rush of fire racing into my opened hands.

  My irises finished repairing and I saw the mushroom cloud of fire getting sucked into my outstretched palms. For some reason, I thought about the movies where a large hole breaks in an aquarium and water shoots out like a supercharged fire hose—only it was flowing into my hands.

  The gold that lined my armor began to glow as if reflecting the brightest sunlight, starting at my hands and working its way up my arms. My reeling mind equated it to a battery charge, at least visually.

  I stood, feeling the rush of power flow into my angelic armor, and then into me. I shouted again, but this time in overjoyed excitement at what was happening. The fission bomb was becoming a part of me in sci-fi contrast to how I siphoned energy from blood. From the gash in my face to the base of my skull, I felt warm tingling for a few seconds before the feeling faded into the storm of euphoria that flowed throughout my entire body.

  The wind howled as what sounded like a tornado was sucked into my hands. I could feel my eyes giving off white plumes of heavenfire that crawled up my helmet, and I turned to see that Lolth’s face had dropped into a confused frown. Locke, on the other hand, was smiling from ear to ear with eyes bathed in awe and wonder.

  I kept my right hand up while moving my left hand toward the Hummer. Smiling, I closed my fist while I left my index finger pointed at Lolth like a gun, cocked my thumb, and said, “Bang,” while my thumb mirrored the hammer on a gun.