Apocalypse Soldier (10 page)

She was back in control—for the moment.
 

***

Talon and Nicole ran toward his jeep. There hadn’t been any more explosions, and Amon and his followers by now probably knew that their prize was gone. With three of the trucks remaining untouched by the C-4 he’d planted, it would become a race to the airfield. One man versus the demon’s army.
 

And speaking of the devils…

Two of Amon’s soldiers peeled from the darkness. Talon’s Glock spit fire and delivered the devil worshippers to hell. Talon switched out the pistol for the AK-47 he’d appropriated from one of the guards. Now that he had Nicole, there was no further need for discretion. Increased firepower would be called for. The chase was on.

Men ran from the stables, weapons ready. Talon spun around and swept the area with the AK-47, mowing down the first group to be foolish enough to come after him. The soldiers were thrown backward, tattooing the wooden walls red. The life in their surprised gazes dimmed while the burning wrecks flared nearby, painting the night the color of spilled blood.
 

Talon pulled on Nicole’s arm, urging her to hurry. He tried not to dwell too much on what he’d seen in her eyes when he first stepped up to the ritual circle. They had barely traded a glance much less spoken a word since then. There would be time for chitchat later. Nicole still seemed to be in control of her faculties, and as long as there was hope, he would try his hardest to keep her safe.
 

They dashed away from the horse farm as Amon’s powerful voice barked sharp orders and headlights speared the night. They reached the barbed wire where Talon had entered the property and darted into the sagebrush beyond. They were only a few minutes away from the jeep. His mind raced ahead. According to the map he’d studied earlier, the private airport was thirty miles away. It would be a literal race with the devil to see who reached the airfield first.
 

Just another day in the field…

The fence erupted as hell came down around them, and Talon flung Nicole to the ground. For a moment they didn’t move as bullets buzzed overhead. As soon as there was a lull in the shooting, Talon returned fire. He aimed low, hitting the legs of the incoming enemy. The men crumpled, their yells and curses music to Talon’s ears.
 

Knowing that reinforcements were on the way, he sprung to his feet and pulled Nicole along. Without looking back, they sprinted through the darkness, the stench of cordite and burning gasoline following them. Behind them, trucks and motorcycles revved to life, and they picked up their pace.
 

When they arrived at the jeep, Talon ripped the door open and Nicole wordlessly got in. As soon as the door snapped shut behind her, Talon got in on the driver side. Turning the ignition key, he scanned his rear view mirror. Headlights were approaching as the pursuit vehicles caught up with them. So much for having a head start. He pulled the screaming jeep from the gulley and headed for the freeway—an army led by a human monster hot on their tail.

C
HAPTER
F
OURTEEN

THE FIRST GREY fingers of dawn backlit the mountains, the desert still cool.
 

Talon mashed the gas pedal, driving way above the speed limit. The fanatics following him weren’t playing by any rules of the road, and being pulled over for a speeding ticket had become the least of his worries. He saw a procession of vehicles breaking over the horizon, rapidly gaining on them, their taillights streaked along the desert road. Talon counted five bikes, two pick-up trucks, one van and one Hummer.
 

His cell phone chirped, and he scanned the incoming text from Casca. Talon had sent a message a few minutes earlier informing him that Nicole was safe and they were headed to the airfield. Casca’s response confirmed that the Learjet would be ready. Reassuring news. The big question was whether they’d reach the airfield before the cult caught up with them.

Talon turned to his passenger. There was raw terror in Nicole’s eyes.
Dried blood and mud caked her drawn and haunted features. What had happened in the barn? Based on what he’d witnessed in the stables he feared the worst. Were the seven demons already inside her?

“Who are you?” she asked, speaking for the first time since he’d pulled her from the barn.
 

“The guy who is going to keep you safe from these fanatics.”
 

She kept studying him, her intense scrutiny making him uncomfortable. For the last few months, he’d operated in the shadows, hunting his enemies without being seen or heard until it was too late. Striking like a phantom, delivering death. His ability to blend in and become invisible had been honed during his military career, but now he’d turned into a ghost in real life. Except for Casca, he’d avoided people since Michelle’s death. Having to face another human being and explain who he was and what he did made him realize how crazy and disconnected his life had become.

“You said Father Cabrera sent you. How did he know?”

Good question. Talon hated to lie, but he needed to tell her something that would make sense given the situation. A billionaire monitoring the world for occult threats and a soldier devoted to battling them might’ve stretched credulity.
 

His eyes never left the road as he spoke. “Two days earlier, these soldiers attacked Cabrera’s church because they were looking for you. That’s how they were able to find you.”

“But why?”

Talon recapped what Casca had told him about the entities. With each word, her face grew paler.

“I saw seven shadows back in the stables…”

She broke off, unable or unwilling to describe the experience.

He held her gaze for a beat before he said, “Father Cabrera will know what to do.”

“He won’t. It’s too late. These demons…they’re inside me now. I can feel them.”

There was a grim conviction in Nicole’s voice as she continued. “There’s only one way now. You can push me out of this moving car…or put a bullet in my head.”
 

Talon’s face tightened as he roughly grabbed her shoulder, repelled by her suggestion. “Don’t even say it.”

“It’s the only way. I’d do it myself, but they won’t let me. Their power over me is already growing. I can feel it.”

“We’ll find another way,” Talon said tightly, shaken by the idea of another innocent being forced to pay the ultimate price to appease the forces of darkness.

Almost as if Nicole could read his thoughts, she said, “There are far worse things than dying. Believe me. Do it now while there’s still time.”

Disturbed by Nicole’s fatalistic words, Talon turned his focus from the road to the rear-view mirror. The cultists were gaining fast.
 

“You’re a killer,” Nicole said. “I saw what you did back at the farm.”

“Now you listen. Between Cabrera and my partner, we’re going to beat this thing.”

She shook her head, and a lock of hair fell across her face. “Cabrera was up against one entity and it nearly killed us both.”

She grimaced, seeming to wage a silent war with herself. “You failed to save your woman. Don’t let history repeat itself.”

Talon recoiled from the words. Long seconds elapsed before he broke the silence between them. “How did…?’

“I know nothing. I know everything. I know there’s only way to stop this at this point.
Please
.”

Talon clutched the wheel tighter, disturbed by what Nicole was demanding from him. The road unfurled before him at nearly a hundred miles per hour. The pursuit vehicles had grown larger behind them. Amon and his army were closing the gap even though he was driving as a fast as he could. He almost wished these murderers would catch up with the jeep. He’d rather confront these cultists in a gunfight than contemplate Nicole’s chilling request for a second longer. Talon had spilled much blood over the years—but never from an innocent victim.
 

“The evil inside me,” she said, “I’ve only caught a glimpse of it but I know this much: it plans on destroying this world. You must send it back to where it came from. Before it’s too late.”

“We’ll find another way. You can’t give up hope…”

Without warning, Nicole’s hand shot out and grabbed the Glock. She held the pistol at her own head for a terrifying beat before putting it back. She slumped forward, shaking.

Talon took the gun from her limp hand, cursing himself for leaving it within reach.

“They won’t let me do it. I belong to them.” She lowered her head in defeat and added in a voice that wasn’t completely her own.

“
We have returned sevenfold.”
 

C
HAPTER
F
IFTEEN

PEERING OUT HER window, Nicole saw the sun rising, haze already eating up the mountains to the east. Like the arrival of the new day, the change was speeding up with each passing second.
 

Her thoughts and emotions were being analyzed and dissected by the seven entities that had infested her soul. They were tearing her apart from the inside. Invisible, clammy fingers probed her memories and dreams, testing her limits, her strengths. She’d worked hard to make herself stronger in case she should ever face the demonic entity again. But all her preparations were geared toward the spiritual assault by
one
demon.
 

We have returned sevenfold,
the voices kept whispering. Voices practiced at deception were now speaking the truth.

How could she fight seven of these creatures?
 

She belonged to them now, a plaything they could do with as they pleased.

Struggling to remain in control, she regarded her savior more closely. He projected both sinewy, physical power and a practical intelligence, a capacity for violence tempered with a hint of sadness.

He’s been touched by the darkness
, the voices had whispered. Touched in what way? Was he like her? A victim of a demonic possession? Is that how he knew Cabrera? The possibility of meeting someone who’d gone through the same horrific ordeal held a strange appeal.
 

Who was this man?
 

As soon as she asked the question, a name popped into her head, the seething forces inside of her plucking the information right out of the man’s thoughts.

Mark Talon
.

The hard features couldn’t completely hide the empathy simmering in his gaze. The way he looked at her, they way his fingers had closed around hers as he dragged her out of the stables. This was a battle-scarred warrior with a heart, capable of taking life but never drawing pleasure from the darker aspects of his work. He wouldn’t kill her as long as he believed he could still save her.

He’s a fool!
one of the voices hissed
. Unwilling to embrace his potential.

In her mind, she saw the face of a woman, beautiful, full of life. Then Nicole saw her blood-soaked body covered by too many stab wounds to count…
 

Michelle.

The demons’ preternatural powers of perception, their ability to sense weakness and pain, was growing within her, paving a way for the entities to seize full control over her. This man had lost someone who he loved dearly. Her murder was a terrible weight that threatened to crush him. But it also fueled everything he did. The demons wanted her to use the loss against him, to twist him to their dark purpose.
 

Goddamn it, get out of my head! Leave me alone!
 

She experienced a near physical sensation of the voices backing away from her own thoughts.

They’d return all too soon, louder and more insistent than ever. The process of possession was advancing with the speed of an aggressive cancer, metastasizing.
 

And there was absolutely nothing she could do.
 

Grabbing her rescuer’s gun had quickly turned into a lesson of who was in charge here. No matter how hard she tried, she was incapable of pointing the pistol at herself and pulling the trigger.

Nicole balled her hands into fists and pressed her lips into a tight line. She did her best to focus on outside stimuli, anything to escape from the wild thoughts and images surging through her head. Concentrate on the soothing warmth of the sun against your skin, the endless stretch of road, the majestic mountains shimmering in the heat.
 

The convoy of vehicles was closing in on them at breakneck speed.

Any second now, a masked figure would pop out of the incoming pick-up truck’s tinted widow and spray the road with hot lead. Almost as if Talon could read her fatalistic thoughts, he punched the gas, the jeep’s engine screaming as the speedometer shot past 100 miles per hour.
 

Up ahead, across an expanse of desert, a cluster of lights marked the location of the airfield. It promised a chance of escape.

“Listen carefully,” Talon said. “We’re going to pull up as close as possible to my friend’s plane, get out, and make a run for it. Odds are good our new friends will start opening fire. We’re not going to look back and we’re not going to stop running. Do you understand?”

She nodded.
 

There was a growing suspicion in Talon’s eyes and she didn’t blame him.
Smart soldier
. He’d be keeping an eye on her to make sure she didn’t turn on him.
 

The jeep pulled off the freeway and blasted down a dirt road, the vehicle’s powerful tires raising up clouds of dust as it zipped through the entrance of the airport. They shot past parked aircraft and dilapidated hangars baking in the desert temperatures. At this time of day, the airfield was deserted except for the sleek Learjet taxiing down the runway toward them, the early morning sun gleaming off its brilliantly white surface.
 

For a second, hope spike inside of her again. If they made it on the plane and managed to successfully take off, maybe they would reach Talon’s friend in time. But who was this mysterious friend? Judging from the twenty-one million dollar aircraft, he definitely wasn’t a priest or an exorcist. She looked up at Talon again, but this time the demons didn’t provide any more information. All she saw was a man steering a jeep with expert skill, seemingly hellbent on breaking the sound barrier. The visions had died down—for now—and she welcomed the brief interlude of normalcy. She knew it wouldn’t last.