Read Beyond the Veil Online

Authors: Tim Marquitz

Beyond the Veil (7 page)

I stiffened at a metallic
clang
and the sudden buzz of a wasp
zipping past my ear. For a second there, I thought I’d blown a gasket. My head
swiveled around to see Longinus’ sword hovering just inches behind me, my face
reflected in the wavering steel. Wisps of smoke cast tiny ripples of distortion
in the image. Beyond the blade, I spied a couple dozen aliens charging toward
us. Each wore a mismatched set of riot-type armor over their clothes, helmets
with clear facemasks and thick plates draped down their torsos. Spears and
swords seemed to be their main weapons, but the largest of the group held what
looked like a small, hand cannon. It was pointed directly at me. The alien
grinned as he pulled back a lever on the side of the gun. The
click
of its motion struck a chord in my
dimmed sense of self-preservation, bringing everything into perspective

He was trying to kill me.

Eight

 

“Oh, hell no! You did
not
just try to shoot me.”

“He did, actually.” Longinus twisted his
sword so I could see the other side. A hint of sooty blackness marred the
surface where he’d blocked the blast aimed for the back of my skull.

“Son of a…”

Longinus shrugged as Rala bounced into
action. She grabbed the old man, hugged him tight against her, and raced toward
the shadows at our back. They were all assholes and elbows, leaving us to deal
with the would-be hit squad on our own. I looked to Longinus, and he motioned
for me to go first. So generous.

I pulled my guns and ducked as another
bullet—damn near the size of an acorn—zinged overhead. A quick glance behind told
me neither the girl nor her master had been hit, the pair still hustling for
cover, so that was something. My fingers twitched on the triggers, and I
returned fire. The first shot slammed into the facemask of one of the aliens.
It turns out the thing was
mostly
bulletproof.

The mask spider-webbed under the force of
the blow and snapped his head sideways. His body caught up a split second
later, and he wobbled on his feet but didn’t go down. My second bullet grazed
his arm, but he didn’t seem to notice.

“Impressive,” Longinus commented as he met
the first wave that crashed over us. One of the aliens was split in half from
stem to stern from the upward slash, the green stew of his guts splashing to
stain my boots.

Longinus was clearly jealous that I got
more mileage out of my toys than he did. A spear zipped past my cheek in a
silvered blur. I batted away the thrusting arm and stuffed my pistol up under
the facemask and squeezed the trigger. The helmet muffled the report, but it was
like sticking a bullfrog in a blender. Blood and chunks of indefinable mush
exploded inside to coat the mask. It gushed out from underneath as I kicked the
body aside to shoot the guy behind him.

Up close and personal, the D/A slayer
punched a hole straight through the makeshift breastplate. There was the dull
thump of the bullet impacting the armor at his back and another meaty
thunk
followed
right after. He grunted and stumbled forward with his eyes rolling in their
sockets. I
matadored
him aside, picturing my bullet
bouncing around in his squishy bits, trapped by the steel plates on either
side. It wasn’t a pretty way to die, that’s for sure.

His buddy must have thought me cruel
because he stabbed me in the shoulder.

The blade sunk into the meat until it hit
bone and came to a grinding halt. I twisted away but the bastard hung on,
grunting and swearing as he tried to push the sword in deeper. The wound burned
like a feral case of the crabs—not that I’d know anything about that. It wasn’t
a magical weapon, but it still hurt like a bitch. Before he could sink the
blade in any further or yank it out, I placed the barrel of my .45 to his wrist
and blew the joint out the other side in bits and pieces. He shrieked and stumbled
back. That’s when I shot him in his baby parts.

Oddly fortunate—unfortunate?—to have
noticed the Felurians had external genitalia, I was guessing they were every
bit as sensitive as humans. Alien-boy squealed and collapsed to the floor like
a deflated balloon proving my guess to be painfully accurate.

Another of the Felurians ran up alongside
me, and I spun, slamming him in the side of his head with the pommel of the
sword still stuck in my shoulder. It stopped him cold though I was pretty sure
it didn’t hurt him anywhere near as much as it did me. He stared at me with
wide eyes, full of offended surprise, their swirling color distorted behind the
mask. I aimed the pistol in my left hand at his crotch and winked. He hunkered
down to cover his nuts with the armor and his hands, having seen what I’d done
to the last alien. That was fine since it was all a feint, anyway. I pressed my
other gun against the top of his head. This close, the helmet would need to be
made of Bill Clinton’s ego to shrug off the shot.

It wasn’t.

Steel warped and tore away, and the alien
slumped, a waterfall of brains and blood spurting downward to stain his chest. His
spear fell at his side, unused.

A gunshot that wasn’t mine drew my focus
from the corpse. The big alien, more leopard than cuddly zebra, fired over the
crowd at Longinus. The ex-Anti-Christ cleaved through one of the others just
before the shot ripped into his arm. He hissed as the bullet cut a groove
across his biceps and careened off his ribs as he spun away. The look he gave
would have puckered assholes even in a bathhouse, but big boy must have been a
special kind of dense. He just giggled and stood there, at the rear of the
pack, cranking the lever of his gun back into place. Several of the little folks
leapt at Longinus while he was distracted. They hacked and slashed, yanking his
attention away from the gunner who hadn’t forgotten about Longinus. The alien
clacked
the chamber home and aimed. I
shot first…a couple of times.

The rounds hit him square in the side and
knocked him over. He fell out of sight behind the others. His gun spit its smoking
wad into the air as he went, but I wasn’t given a chance to see if I’d killed
him. Another Felurian dove at me, trying to skewer me on his spear. He missed
by about a half inch. The sharpened point hissed by, and I locked my right elbow
over the shaft, pinning the weapon against my ribs. I grinned and shot him in
the shin. The Felurian screamed as I fired into his other leg. He dropped, and
I let his spear go, driving my knee into his chin, just below the facemask. The
alien grunted as he went out. I put a bullet in his neck to be sure and then
yanked the sword from my shoulder. It stung as it pulled free, but it wasn’t
too bad. With it out of the wound, I’d heal up quick enough. The skin already
tingling, I glanced over at Longinus.

Bodies lay scattered all around him, but
there was something different about the way he fought. He’d leapt into the fray
quickly enough, even confidently, but I hadn’t noticed how sluggish he seemed
before. There should have been nothing but dripping corpses left by now, but
there were still a bunch of the enemy throwing themselves at him. A quick head
count told me the majority of the aliens had gone after him. He certainly
looked the scarier out of the two of us, but why would anyone leave the demon
with ranged weapons for last? It didn’t make sense.

Or maybe it did.

A light went off. As rough as the journey
to God’s plane was, Longinus had been protecting me. That was what the dread
fiend blood was for. He didn’t
need
it to power the gate, but had used it so he could use his own energies to
buffer the impact of the trip on me. Despite it, he was exhausted and drained
of his magic, and we weren’t getting shit from the Felurians in the way of soul
transfers. That’s when it hit me.

Longinus had come here thinking we would be
dealing with demons and angels, magical snack packs he could use to refuel and
heal his wounds with, but we’d been dumped onto the barren planet of doom. These
folks we were fighting were nothing like Xyx. They were the indigenous species
of Feluris. They might as well be human for all the power they wielded. That’s
why Gorath was plundering the last of the magical resources.

Weaker than Longinus before he’d come
through the gate, all that time spent in the containment case, he was probably
sucking wind. Longinus had to have thought of that and probably figured he’d
still be the stronger of the two even after all the mileage. It didn’t look
like he counted on Gorath having minions already. And we weren’t gonna get
anywhere if these
schlubs
tore up the ex-AC before we
got to Gorath.

While I wanted Karra back as much, if not
more, than he did, we both knew this was his show. He’d be the one to take out
Gorath. I was just the assist, and this looked as good a time as any to get on
that.

I put my guns away and drew on the tiny
ball of energy that wormed inside me. While just a pipsqueak on the ruler that
measured magical dick size, what I lacked in girth and length, I made up for
with imagination. My power sputtered and roared to life. I couldn’t help but
smile at the feeling. It was like eating
Häagen-Dazs
and getting a blowjob at the same time; fan-fucking-
tastic
.

My arms out to my side, I started walking
toward the mass of aliens that were harrying Longinus. The ground trembled
beneath my feet as my magic swirled around like a billion-armed octopus.
Mystical tendrils snatched up every rock and stone and piece of rubble they
came across, gathering them and drawing them back to the glistening cocoon I’d
woven about my body. The debris stuck, each piece
clacking
into place before the tendrils ran off for more. After
just a moment, I was completely covered in the wreckage that littered the field.
Focused on Longinus as they were, the aliens didn’t even realize I was still
there.

“Hey, assholes!” I shouted, amplifying my
voice with a dab of magic. The sound echoed off the surrounding buildings and
drowned out everything. The world went quiet as the echoes died away. Every eye
turned in my direction. I took one last step, my stony footstep thumping loudly
in the silence. “I suggest you duck, Longinus.”

I smiled, willing the stones at my face to
mimic the movement all while imagining I looked like the Thing from the
Fantastic Four. “It’s clobbering time!” With no other warning, I charged
forward and lit the imaginary fuses behind each and every single piece of rock.
Then I set them off.

It was like
Motorhead
played a concert in my head.

A sonic boom erupted in my ears and the
debris flew in every direction…almost. Knowing how much it would suck if I
ripped Longinus’ head off his shoulders with my little display, I aimed the
wreckage so it stayed a couple feet above the ground. As long as he stayed
down, we were good. The aliens stared like inebriated lemmings, not even
realizing Longinus had hit the deck. By the time they figured out what was
happening, it was too late.

The pieces of stony shrapnel ripped into
them. There was no time for screams. Holes appeared all across the orange and
black flesh of the aliens, dots of daylight that suddenly gushed with green
fluids. The aliens danced with frantic rhythm under the barrage, unable to
fall. The bloody stones traveled through to ricochet off the nearby walls. From
there, they clattered to the ground, bouncing and rolling to collect once more
on the field. The bodies were the last to topple. They collapsed like boneless
sacks of soup, wet splats resounding until the last of the corpses oozed to
earth. A gloomy hush settled over the area.

Longinus raised his head and looked around
at the mess. “It appears you’re not completely worthless, after all.” He
grinned as he climbed to his feet, obvious amusement brightening his face and muting
the sting of his barb. After surveying the scene, he walked over and slapped me
on the back with a meaty hand. “Well done.”

He didn’t say anything about his condition
or why I’d had to go nuclear to keep him alive, so I didn’t either. Pride was a
sin us demons really took to heart. We both understood then that our jaunt into
the otherworld to rescue Karra was far more dangerous than we’d anticipated. We
weren’t gonna be strolling in on Gorath and handing out an easy ass-whooping.
We were in for a scrap.

A muffled grunt rumbled from under a nearby
pile of dripping corpses. Longinus spun about and stared after the source, my
own eyes tracking it down. A flutter of movement drew our focus and both of us
walked over to it. Longinus’ grin flared up full force.

“Look what we have here.” He reached down
into the puddle of alien glop and grabbed something that put up futile
resistance, pulling it out of the wet wreckage. It was the big alien’s arm, followed
by the rest of him. On the ground when I’d blasted his buddies, he’d escaped
being stoned. He’d still been shot, mind you, but that hadn’t killed him. Not
yet, at least.

“Why did you attack us?” Longinus asked,
his tone of voice triggering disturbing images, which bubbled to life in my
mind.

The alien just lolled in his grip. He was
conscious, but not really all there. Not wearing armor like the others, his
side was a bloody mess. His shirt was ripped free of the wounds I’d given him,
and he’d wadded it up and used it to stanch the blood flow until he’d gotten too
weak to hold it. It lay beside him, soaked with green.


Lonn-loong
—” he
stuttered, finally raising a finger at his inability to form the word. He
pointed at Longinus. “
Yuuu
.
Afff-tur
.”
Longinus let him drop, and he slumped to the ground with a quiet, bubbling
sigh.

“Why would he be after you?” I asked, the
alien’s attempt at speaking having finally made some semblance of sense.

Longinus shrugged.

“He is one of the Eidolon.” A quiet voice
snapped our heads around. Rala stood there amidst the ruin, the old man no
longer with her. She pointed at a small, black spot almost invisible under the
flow of the alien’s gory side.

I leaned down and wiped the blood away,
revealing what looked like a tattoo. It was an image of a phoenix, its flaming
wings rising up out of the smoking ashes portrayed at the bottom of the tat.
The edges were reddened and slightly swollen, as though it were fresh ink.

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