“You holding out for a dance?” I wrapped the cloth around his leg and tied it tight. “I don't know. I think we might have come on a little strong.”
Josh hissed, and then straightened. “Nah, no worries.” He tested his weight on the leg and then rolled the jeans back down. “Girls like it when you're assertive.”
I laughed shakily, took up my shotgun. “She did seem a little desperate. Practically threw herself at us.”
Josh stepped up next to me and shot me a look. “At us? She threw herself at you.”
“Guess that means you're too ugly even for a demon. Come on,” I said. “We've got work to do.”
During the two years that Josh and I had been working together, we'd killed twelve demons, roaming back roads in the Midwest, threading our way through the mountain passes in the Rockies, driving our truck through the small towns that were spread across Texas and Utah, stalking them through the neighborhoods of L.A. and Phoenix, Albuquerque and Abilene. Only two demons had ever survived our first attack, and one of those we'd managed to kill within five minutes of its escape, running it down to where it was dragging its mangled corpse along the bottom of a dried riverbed.
The second had escaped altogether. We'd hunted it for hours amidst a mass of warehouses in Denver, and only quit when our nerves finally failed us. We'd driven as fast as we could up into the mountains on I-70, blasting through endless small towns and ski resorts as we fled for Utah. It had chased us for four days, through Utah, into Arizona, and then New Mexico. We'd only escaped by driving almost nonstop, as fast as we could, right into Texas. We'd both been so traumatized that we'd spent the next two months just drinking and moving from motel to motel, unable to relax.
I stood up, slid my machete back into its scabbard and took up the shotgun. Suddenly I felt exhausted. The idea of going out there into the dark town and hunting the demon among the ruined buildings was almost more than I could bear. This was easily the worst situation we'd ever been in. We had about ten minutes before the blasted thing began to heal, and then we'd go from being the hunters to being the hunted.
“All right,” I said. “Let's find this thing before it grows its face back.” I looked down at the girl once more. “I think we're going to have to leave her here till we kill the fucker. This room is as safe as anywhere else. Let's go.” We exited the room and did our best to ghost down the steps that led through the missing front door into the chill night air. I paused to sweep my flashlight up and down the street before stepping out into the open.
I glanced at the buildings that dotted the length of the dirt road. Other than the church the demon had picked the only two-storied house in the whole ghost town for its lair. I looked down the street to where the church stood, tall and gaunt in the thin moonlight. There was a twisted appeal to the demon taking refuge in there, which meant that was what it had most likely done. With a sigh I began to walk towards it, Josh following and watching our backs.
I moved carefully, sweeping the beam of the flashlight from side to side. Shapes suggested themselves in the darkness around me, leering and unnerving. Two years of hunting with Josh had shown me enough to know that the darkness really was filled with monsters, but I controlled the urge to spin around and shine the light behind me. A building loomed on our right, nearly collapsing as it leaned dangerously toward us, all of its angles warped and unnatural. Nothing stirred in the windows though my imagination populated them with demonic faces and blank, hungry eyes.
We reached the end of the street and looked up at the church steeple rearing up blindly into the night sky. It was massive and boxy, its windows shattered. Steps led up to the small portico front where the double doors hung open on rusted hinges. I stopped and played my light over the building's front. It was in there, I could feel it. Waiting, hurt, bleeding, furious. Wanting to pull screams from our bodies. I felt my brow prickle with sweat, and wiped at it angrily with my sleeve. No matter how many times I told myself I was ready to die, no matter how much I tried to resign myself to an inevitable death, I always dreaded going into places like this. They were just too freaky. I shifted my grip on my shotgun, wiped one hand on the seat of my jeans, and turned to look at Josh.
“Ready for that dance?”
Josh managed a grin, his face wan in the darkness. “I've got my blue suede shoes on.”
“I'll take that for a yes,” I said, and began to mount the steps.
This demon was a big one. Not that it was stronger than the others; size didn't always translate to power. It had been big, but so skinny that the gaps between its ribs looked like incisions, its vertebrae visible through its withered stomach. Brown hide like sun-cracked leather covered its bones, but despite its gaunt appearance I knew it would be as tough as iron nails. It took a lot of work to keep one of these things down.
I reached the massive front doors and played my light about the inside of the church, gliding the beam over toppled pews, slatted wood walls. The far end was shrouded in darkness and the high ceiling was similarly hidden. But it was in here. Watching me already if its eyes had grown back. Listening, if not.
The plan was a simple one, automatic and perfected through practice. I would walk slowly into the church and wait for the demon to attack me. Josh, being the better shot, would then try to blow its head off from where he stood in the doorway before it killed me. Simple.
“Room service,” I called, pausing to listen. I turned to look at where Josh stood frowning up at me. “Huh,” I said. “No answer. Weird.” Josh stared at me with a long-suffering expression. I grinned at him and stepped into the church.
I walked down the center aisle, shining my light about the interior. I doubted anyone had prayed here in over a hundred years. I shone my light over the exposed rafters, on the altar in the back. Nothing. My heart began to pound once more, and I began to swing my light back and forth, searching—where was it?
A sound—a small scritching, and I spun around, raising the shotgun, the light. There it was. It looked like a vast desiccated bat and hung suspended right above the front door, its wings furled about its body, talons sunk into the wooden beam. As if sensing my light, it turned its head blindly to look at me with its ruined face, baring its fangs into a rictus grin.
I yelled and fired at the demon as it darted to the left with terrible speed. The recoil pounded into my shoulder, but the demon escaped the brunt of the shot. Josh was yelling from the doorway, but I ignored him, focusing on tracking it with my light.
It hit the wall halfway down, planks crunching beneath its claws, and I fired again, blowing out a chunk of the wall, but it was gone. It moved so fast, so horribly fast, that it was all I could do to lower my light in time to see it hit the floor. Spidery legs and arms bent to take its weight, wings flared out with a snap and then it was springing right at me. I raised the shotgun, feeling as if I were trapped in honey, knowing that I was going to be too late. It was just too god damned fast.
A sudden series of staccato explosions sounded, and the demon was knocked aside as Josh emptied his clip into its body, each fifty-caliber bullet as thick as his thumb and packing enough power to kill an elephant. The demon crashed down to my left amidst the pews, wings like collapsing sails.
I moved to the side, making for the opposite wall, shotgun raised, a quick glance confirming Josh's position. He was holding his flashlight in one hand, his gun resting on that wrist, both extended before him in the classic policeman's stance. Our lights were trained on the wreckage of pews, our breath stark and ragged as we waited for it to emerge, to give us a clear shot.
With a crash the demon surged upward, not standing but flinging itself into the air, and both our guns exploded into action, sending hot lead through the space below it. It had a gleaming length of wood in one hand, almost the entirety of a pew, and with a flick it sent the entire mass spinning through the air at Josh. He tried to dodge but his injured leg caused him to stumble, and the pew hit him across the chest with enough force to break itself in two and send him slamming to the ground to lie still.
My attention had slipped. Even as I looked back at where the demon had been, it was on me. Claws closed around my neck while another shredded open my shirt, and it lifted me off my feet and then drove me to the ground. My head cracked hard against wooden boards and immediately my vision doubled, the demon's face swimming in and out of focus. The demon pressed the tip of a claw into the flesh over my heart, and dragged it across leaving a trail of fire. I felt a second incision, crossing it. Then everything began to hum and my vision grew blurry, as if I were vibrating within my own skin. I was screaming, I realized, the sound tearing at my throat, and the demon was hissing, seeming to inhale.
The sound of the demon's inhalation filled my ears, and suddenly it felt as if something was being sucked out of me, through the wounds over my heart. As if the binds that held my soul in my body had been shucked and my essence was being ripped free, roots and all. It was an agony that just as quickly began to grow numb, such that I stopped fighting, lay still, straining and gasping like a beached fish. Darkness began to cloud my vision as I felt some deep and essential part of me being torn free. It felt as if it was tearing out my heart, and I was falling into a bottomless hole.
An explosion of gunfire and the demon was knocked off of me, bullets blasting into its head. With a great sucking inhalation my eyes flared open as everything came roaring back into me, my sense of self, my being, and—something more. Something red and pulsing and alien flooded into me along with everything else, something stolen from the demon through the very channel it had opened.
Pain. A blanket of burning roses with inch-long thorns wrapped itself across my chest, and for an agonizing second of pure white fire I wanted to die. I lay there, shuddering, and then with a force of will I made myself sit up, blinking tears from my eyes. A part of my brain was screaming at me, trying to tear through the shock and pain, screaming:
your gun! - get your damned gun!
The shotgun lay just a yard away from me. I crawled over to it and registered that Josh was yelling, firing shots. My head was ringing, each breath bringing fresh pain, but I picked up the shotgun and turned around.
Josh was backing toward the church door, trying to slam a new clip into his Desert Eagle, the beam of his flashlight swinging wildly, dancing over the floor, walls, ceiling. I raised my shotgun, lit up the demon as it rushed towards Josh, broad, skeletal hands outstretched, and fired right at its head.
Nothing but a click, and a sudden fury cleared my mind. Immediately I began feeding new shells in, but in those critical seconds the demon closed the distance.
Maybe if Josh hadn't wounded his leg he would have been able to get away, throw himself into a roll, something. Instead the demon swept its left claw around in a scything arc and tore a deep gash across Josh's throat. He let out a gurgling croak and clasped his hands to his neck, eyes wide with shock. The demon lowered itself so as to duck into the fountain of blood spewing from between Josh's fingers, and then punched Josh straight in the chest, cracking his sternum and sending him flying through the air to crash to the ground a few yards shy of the door.
I fired the shotgun from my hip, striding forward through the debris. The first blast caught the demon in the side, stove in its ribs. It turned on me, lips peeled back, shredded face gleaming blackly with Josh's blood. I pumped, fired a second shell. Its left shoulder exploded into dry splinters. The third shell took it out at the knee, causing it to fall. Somehow it avoided my fourth shot, rolling and coming at me with unnatural grace, crossing the distance between us so quickly that only instinct had me pull the trigger when it surged up, wings extended to curl around us both and draw me down into the dark.
The shotgun bucked violently at my hip and then it was on me. Leather and bones and long sinewy arms, a musky stench like rotted herbs and copper. I fell down before it, thrashing with arms and legs, the demon on top of me, dust and blood filling my mouth, expecting at any moment to have my throat torn out.
But it didn't strike. Instead it slid brokenly off, toppled to one side. I scooted out with my heels, yelling and hawking up gobs of dust, saliva and blood onto the floor, mouth scalded and raw.
The demon lay still, a heavy mass of dry canvas around an angular body of shadows. I stopped, frozen, and then pulled the machete from my hip, forced myself to my feet. With sudden maniacal energy I threw myself on it and began to hack as hard as I could.
My furious, terrified screams rang out in counterpoint to the swing of the blade. It's body was as hard as knotted tree roots. I yanked the blade free and brought it down with both hands even as it shivered and began to move beneath me. I was filled with a fury so bright and vicious that it overwhelmed the terror consuming me, and I hacked over and over even as the demon began to rise.
“Hurt you,” it whispered through its ruined maw.
“No!” I screamed, but then stumbled as the wing beneath my feet jerked out from under me. “Die, you piece of shit!” I hacked down again, the blade caught on bone, stuck. With both hands I wrested it free.
“Kill you,” rasped the demon, and I tore free the machete. With all my strength I swung that blade around and up from the hip like the world's greatest slugger and drove the edge as deep into its throat as I could force it. There was a crack like a branch snapping, and then it slumped. I jerked the machete free and brought it down again and again, my arms burning and then growing numb, until I missed a blow and nearly fell over. The demon slouched, collapsed.
Dropping the machete, I stumbled over to my shotgun. I picked it up and trained the light on the monster where it lay shivering in a broken pile, its bony back slashed open with deep lacerations that did not bleed. Its smooth skull was broken, shattered from behind, shredded in the front by the shotgun blast. But still it shivered, and even as I watched I saw the beef jerky flesh begin to close slowly over the exposed bones and wounds on its back.