Collateral Damage (Demon Squad Book 8) (8 page)

Nine

I appeared back in my quarters in Hell, arms loaded down with baby stuff that I’d appropriated from a Goodwill drop off point that had yet to be picked up. I’d have to write them a check later, but until then, I would pretend I felt bad. Being the Devil has its benefits. Asshole is the default mode.

“Here, set all this stuff up, fuzzy,” I said to the fiend as I stepped through the gate. He stood with his shoulders slumped like a kid caught whackin’ it by mom. Abby squirmed on the bed, cooing. A slobbery smile smeared across her chubby cheeks when she saw me, but her gaze slipped past to something behind me. Chatterbox whistled innocently. I turned and looked at the looming presence that had cowed the talkative head and so captivated my kid.

“Hi, Rahim.”

“Chatterbox, Frank? Seriously?” he asked. “The least you could have done was tell us you were leaving so someone less…” he gestured to CB, “Someone not
that
could have watched the baby while you were off gallivanting who knows where.”

Chatterbox harrumphed.

“You had enough to deal with,” I answered, refusing to be browbeat about my poorly thought out parenting decisions. “How’s Rachelle?”

He rolled his eyes at my changing the subject, but let it go as I went and snatched Abby off the bed. She grinned and sprayed me with gooey love. I gave CB a dirty look. “You were supposed to lie for me.” He fell over trying to shrug.

Rahim ignored our antics and kept talking. “She was able to rescue another couple dozen of our people, but our furthest flung compounds have been completely destroyed, all of our employees there are dead or missing.” He swallowed hard though he managed to keep his face expressionless. “We’ve lost a number of good people and stand to lose more. Many of those we brought here are gravely wounded and might not survive until nightfall.”

Hell of a place to die,
I thought, no pun intended. Though in reality, it didn’t matter where they breathed their last. With God gone, the mechanism of sorting through souls and deciding whether they fell under Heaven or Hell’s purview was gone as well. As far as these folks were concerned, dead was dead. Welcome to the end. It’s a deep, dark hole of nothing, all of us sharing the same dirt.

“I can have the fiends create a hospice of sorts, someplace outside of the main thoroughfare, if that helps.” It wasn’t what he’d been hoping for, but it was all I had to offer, sadly.

He struggled to hide his disappointment. A long time ago, Rahim’s spine had been shattered, and he was likely never going to walk again, but I’d taken a chance and dosed him with some of Lucifer’s blood. It wasn’t a miracle cure by any means, his humanity a buffer against the full measure of its potency, but it had done enough. Soon after, Rahim could move, his paralysis resolved enough to give him a chance at a normal, if not entirely pain free, existence.

“All the go-go juice is gone, Rahim. I’d hand it over in a heartbeat if I had any,” I told him. “I’m sorry.”

The wizard forced a grim smile. “A man can hope, right?”

I started to assure him that there was still hope in the world, even if I didn’t really believe the shit I was selling, but Michael’s bullhorn psychic shout thundered inside my head, setting my ears to ringing.

“We’ve found Katon and Scarlett,” he shouted in our minds, “but they’re under attack.”

I delayed only long enough to make sure Chatterbox and the fiend knew they were on babysitting duty again, and we were gone, Rachelle ripping a furious hole in space to where the couple were. CB saw us off to a rousing rendition of “Ride of the Valkyries.”

We appeared in the middle of a war zone.

Bullets screamed past us as we stepped from the portal, the smell of cordite and fresh blood thick in the air. The tangy combination set my nose alight. None of us had thought to ask who Katon and Scarlett were being attacked by, presuming it to be Trinity—of whom I’d hastily told the others their name—but that wasn’t what we walked into. A battalion of DSI troopers—well, significantly less at this point—were bearing down on the couple.

Katon was a blur of motion across the sandy beach where he and Scarlett had gone to escape the world, his sword a shimmer of silver that trailed crimson. Scarlett’s wings, the manifestation of her angelic powers, burned like the sun. While Katon circled around the men, forcing them into tighter groups, Scarlett simply stood her ground waiting for them to come. Everto Trucido, her trusty demon-slaying blade—which happened to work on pretty much everything—cut through the soldiers. Her full lips were pulled back in a sneer, her frustration showing. She hated fighting humans but it wouldn’t stop her from killing them before they could kill her or Katon.

Outside of the swarming ants of the DSI soldiers and the scrappy couple, there wasn’t another person in sight, the shore stretching on for miles in either direction without so much as a shack popping up. I didn’t have a clue where we were, but the pair had found a hidden paradise to sneak off to, which explained why we hadn’t heard from them. Outside of Michael’s telepathic messaging service, they were as far out of touch as humanly possible. It still didn’t explain why Michael couldn’t reach them, though.

The soldiers turned their guns on me and Rahim as soon as we appeared. I whipped up a shield to cover us while Rachelle flitted back through her portal. Once she was gone, Rahim and I joined the fight.

There was a gargle-throated roar off to my side as Rahim let his anger out in the basest of ways by going full on bear. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the wizard disappear as his lycanthropy took hold. Already a big guy, his transformation was startling. Layers of muscles and fur erupted across his flesh, adding hundreds of pounds within seconds. Razor sharp claws burst from the tips of his fingers, which had become massive, black paws. His face elongated, the act always reminding me of the movie
An American Werewolf in London
, and rows of vicious teeth sprouted from his swelling muzzle. He let out a feral growl and charged into the mass of soldiers. Their screams sounded an instant later.

Not to be outdone by Carnage Bear, I pulled my guns and went Wild West on the DSI fuckers, all two-fisted fury. Like I said, there’s something very satisfying about shooting someone in the face. I did just that. The soldiers wore full body armor and helmets with visors, but there was no way the face shields could hold up against the close up love of a .45. And they didn’t. As quick as I could pull the trigger a DSI lackey sprouted a third eye where his nose used to be and his gun went silent. Still, there was a ton of the guys.

Katon whizzed past, slipping in and out of the ranks to merciless effect. He glared at me. “I’m not pleased by any of this, Frank,” he answered before running off, his dark eyes lit up like burning coals. “Why are all of you here?”

I could only imagine he was pissed. He’d come to the beach to make nice with Scarlett after all the bullshit we’d been through lately. An army of militants trying to blow their head off was hardly conducive to the
brown chicken, brown cow
atmosphere. Still, it was hardly the worst thing they’d faced down.

I stared out over the field of soldiers as their numbers were whittled down with brutal precision, his question only then sinking in. Why were the DSI there? This wasn’t some vacation resort where someone might have recognized Katon or Scarlett and reported them. They were, literally, out in the middle of nowhere, and yet here we were, fighting a battle against a battalion of DSI troopers in full regalia and there wasn’t a ship or helicopter in sight. I paused for a moment, letting my guns cool while I ran through everything. It all seemed off.

It made sense that, if the other DSI shitheads could teleport, there’d be a way for these guys to do it, too, which would explain the lack of transport but that wasn’t the only thing bugging me. Shaw knew who Katon and Scarlett were, knew what they were capable of. She could have thrown three times the number of soldiers at them without much of a chance at taking them out. And since she had all the assets of the Army at her disposal, why didn’t she? Why not a tank or two or some air support? Why not her supernatural lackeys?

And then it hit me, my brain slamming into my skull as shit became clear. Katon hadn’t been asking why the DSI troops were there, he’d been asking why Rahim and I were. Shit.

“It’s a trap!” I screamed in my best Admiral Ackbar voice. “Close ranks!” Katon hadn’t reached out to us, Poe had simply stopped blocking the signal, so to speak. He’d been pitting his telepathic abilities against Michael’s from the start, keeping Katon and Scarlett separate from the rest of us. They didn’t need us to take out a few soldiers. They might have contacted us after the fact to let us know what had happened, but Poe had let the ruse slip so Michael would pick up on what was going down and draw us out. That’s what the old boy had been apologizing about.

And sure enough, as soon as the words were out of my mouth a trio of presences sang out against my senses. Trinity.

They appeared just yards from where Scarlett held her ground. She spun to face them, eyes narrowed, confusion showing on her face. Out of the loop, she had no clue who the hell they were or what they were doing there, but she knew well enough to not trust them. Of course, they made that part easy by attacking her.

“And so the Lord offers us another opportunity to slay the seed of Lucifer!” the old man shouted as he loosed a bolt of energy at my cousin.

That was likely the worst possible thing he could have called her. The look on her face was as if he’d shoved a shit-flavored lemon in her mouth. She sidestepped the blast and grabbed one of the soldiers by his throat, winging him at the old man.

“I am
not
the spawn of that vile serpent!” She was on Trinity before any of them could react.

The Father—calling him that was gonna get old
real
fast—batted aside the DSI agent like a piece of fluff in the breeze, but he wasn’t quite as lucky with Scarlett. Her blade carved a trail across his burgundy robes, pale skin showing underneath for just an instant before the whiteness was washed out with red. He grunted and stumbled back, clutching at his stomach but it hadn’t been a mortal blow.

“You will die just the same,” the revenant shrieked.

Jagged claws sank into Scarlett’s arm, holding her in place, as the Spirit’s other hand ripped across her chest and up toward her neck. Scarlett twisted to protect her throat, managing to turn the blow away at the last second. The claws gouged chunks out of my cousin’s shoulder, blood and black ooze bubbling up in the wounds. She screamed through clenched teeth and shrugged the revenant off but the old man wasn’t done with her. That’s when I put a bullet in his ass.

Or at least tried to.

The Son reached out with Longinus’s sword and deflected my shot, lead
clanging
against mystical steel. He laughed at me, and once again I found myself imagining how I’d kill the little bastard; this time I was fist-fucking his ear hole. The thought made me happy. I was on him before he finished smirking.

Guns still out, I took to pistol-whipping the little fucker. The barrel smashed into his nose with a satisfying
crunch
, and I backhanded him with the magazine of the other gun, snapping his head sideways. He was a tough little shit, though.

The kid turned with the blow and let momentum spin him about. Before I’d even registered what he was doing, he’d driven his stolen sword into my side. I screamed as the magical blade sank into the meat several inches, igniting a fire inside me. The steel ripped free when I jumped backward, keeping him from impaling me. It wasn’t as bad as it could have been, but it was gonna leave a hell of a mark. My entire side throbbed, and I could feel threads of pain pulsing down my leg, threatening to hobble me.

“Frank!” Scarlett cried out, seeing me get stabbed.

The old man punched her in the face while she was distracted. She crumpled in surprise, falling to a knee, but the thing few people living know about my cousin is that she takes a hit like a champ. She caught the Father’s second punch in her palm, twisting his wrist away at an ugly angle. He grunted at the unexpected move, but she wasn’t done yet. She drove the pommel of her sword into his breadbasket with the force of a bullet train. There was a sharp
crack
as the old man’s arm snapped at the elbow, slipping free of Scarlett’s grip, and he went flying, tumbling asshole over elbows. Scarlett hopped to her feet, wiping the blood from her lip as the Spirit closed on her.

I put my guns away and charged the kid, ignoring my wound as best I could. It slowed me down just enough. The revenant got in a few more slashes at Scarlett, leaving her face and arms dripping blood and ichor, but the ghost would have to do better than that to take her out. The kid, however, was far more effective.

He darted in under the wailing arms of the Spirit and sliced an ugly gash in Scarlett’s thigh that nearly crippled her. Steel clashed as she batted his sword away, ripping it from her leg, and drove her forehead into the side of his skull. He crumpled, and I took advantage of the opportunity to treat him to some of the abominable power he so despised. My magic hit him like a fiery bulldozer, shredding flesh and setting him alight. The kid shrieked as he was slammed backward, bouncing across the sand.

Then it was the revenant’s turn.