“She’s right. The comments coming in are mostly supportive. A few from the other side of the fence, but most are questioning the government’s story. And these videos are getting huge hit numbers,” Tanya agreed, still surfing the web.
Trenton suddenly moved to the television and turned the volume back up.
“
In another development, it appears Homeland Security has picked up an individual matching the picture of the woman mentioned by Chris Gordon during his interview. According to sources actually in the hotel where she was staying, not far from the White House, heavily armed SWAT teams arrived a few minutes ago and took her into custody. That person, a blonde woman, was understood to be a visiting federal agent. Not much else is known at this time, Sonya.”
“Well, Jacob, if it is this the Brianna Duclair named by Chris Gordon, then you would think the authorities would at least have a discussion with her. Most likely they will transport her to the Liberty Crossing Intelligence campus for an interview.”
“Hotel is not too far from here. We should follow?” Arkady asked.
“We should,” I agreed.
We did, the seven of us jumping into the two cars and heading toward downtown Washington.
Trenton drove our car with Tanya, Arkady, and myself. Lydia drove the Subaru with ‘Sos and Stacia. Tanya still had the tablet and we were watching a streaming feed from the news channels through the cell network. The shot was coming from a traffic helicopter that had been sent up as soon as the story broke. The cameraman in the copter was using a night vision-equipped camera to track a squat, FBI panel van caravanning between two big, dark SUVs.
“- bringing coverage to you live as it happens. The van is, to our best knowledge, carrying a woman who matches the description of Agent Brianna DuClair. DuClair has been a Department of Homeland Security agent for eleven years although there is some confusion about her most recent assignments. At one point, she was a team leader for Homeland Security’s
Directorate of Anomalous Activity. That’s not a division I’ve ever heard of before, Sonya, have you?”
“No, Jacob, and my sources in Homeland Security either haven’t heard of it or refuse to speak about it. Since 9/11, the intelligence community and federal law enforcement has literally exploded in size and complexity. To my knowledge, there really isn’t anyone who has their arms completely around all the divisions, units, groups, and alphabet agencies. The
Washington Post
did a story about just this—Holy Mother of God, Jacob did you see that?”
The video feed showed the panel van exploding from within, the metal walls peeling open banana-skin style in a flash of red light. The follow-on SUV slammed into the twisted remains of the van even as a black-clad, SWAT-suited body fell back and through the SUV’s windshield. The news copter swooped closer, shaking and shifting the video shot so hard, it was difficult to tell what was happening. When the picture settled, it was apparent that the front SUV had stopped and armed agents were boiling out of it and shooting at someone or something still in the interior of the burst van. That someone ignored the gunfire, too busy tearing a SWAT soldier in half.
“Trenton, you need to get us there now!” Tanya said.
“What is happening?” Arkady asked.
“It looks like Brianna, or I should say Amaymon, decided going with the nice agents wasn’t really his style. The vehicles were taking him/her away from the White House and seeing as how midnight has come and gone and it is officially Halloween, I don’t think the demon lord was planning on spending his day in an interview room,” I said.
“It’s tearing those agents apart,” Tanya said. “How we doing, Trenton? Do you need directions?”
“No ma’am. The flashes of light, the explosions, and the circling helicopters up ahead are a pretty good indication of which way to go,” he said calmly.
“You’ve been around Lydia too much,” she said, still watching the tablet.
“Yeah, she’s contagious,” he agreed, slamming our Honda into a tight turn and slipping into the new traffic stream amidst blaring horns and squealing brakes. I could hear the Subaru squealing behind as it followed our dangerous lead.
Watching the scene unfold from an overhead news camera was distinctly surreal. My confusing, secret, creepy-as-hell hidden world was now being transmitted to virtually everyone on the planet via mainstream media. The world would never again question the existence of the supernatural. Clutching my two demon horn spikes in my left hand, I alternated between watching the tablet and looking up at our crazed ride through downtown Washington.
More agents had appeared around the destroyed van, but Brianna was killing them almost as fast as they arrived, moving at vampire speed and ignoring the full automatic gunfire that should have torn her to pieces. In one fast sequence, she punched an agent’s heart out of his back, tore an arm from another, and decapitated a third with a slap, laughing as she did.
The news helicopter suddenly flared backward as two black government choppers shot past it and down toward the nightmare scene on the ground.
Sharpshooters leaned out the open sides of the Blackhawks and opened fire on the grinning blonde in the torn clothes. They had brought bigger guns… much bigger guns. The boom of the big Barrett M82A3 .50 caliber rifles was audible on the tablet and audible to my naked ear over the sounds of the racing engines, blaring horns, and sirens. We were getting close. The tablet video clearly showed the half-yard bloom of muzzle flash as the sharpshooters started to put rounds on target.
Brianna/ Amaymon had been pretty much shrugged off the pistol rounds and even the 5.56mm M4 rounds that the dying agents had been peppering the demon lord with, but the big .50 caliber rounds refused to be ignored. Most .50 Browning machine gun rounds have muzzle energies of well over 13,000 foot-pounds, or six and a half tons. Brianna was only about seventy or eighty yards from the snipers. The rounds blew her head-over-heels like a rag doll, over and behind a parked car. Not resting on their laurels, the snipers kept firing, shooting through the parked car until it exploded in a massive fireball that sent a mushroom cloud of smoke and flame roiling up into the sky.
The remaining ground agents moved forward in crouched, weapons-ready stances, all muzzles on the last known location of their enemy. It looked good, I mean, even I was thinking they had put the Hell bitch down. It all went to shit a second later.
There were three manhole covers on that hundred-yard section of road. I know that because all three shot straight up into the air at the same time as three pairs of clawed hands reached out and dug into the asphalt. The things that flowed up out of the sewers were long and lean, a hellish cross between wolf hounds and velociraptors. They shot forward on four legs before standing up and bounding on two. Six to seven feet of lethal black and red muscle, claws, and teeth. A bald-headed man in a leather duster climbed out of the sewer behind them, strolling along with a grin.
It was one of those moments when you want to yell at the screen, to try and tell the heroes right through the monitor that doom was racing up on them from behind. It unfolded right in front of our eyes, laid out in high resolution, graphic pixels under glass.
The rear line of federal agents was scythed down under the reaping claws and teeth of the bounding monsters, the agents in front too focused to realized their backup was now face up.
Of course, the front row guys had their own problem, one that stood up in the midst of the burning car fuel, stretching to a full nine feet in height, strips and chunks of burning human flesh falling off its reddish-hued, plated body as the demon fully manifested.
Will the real Amaymon please stand up? Long cabled arms ending in banana-sized claws that looked like knife blades. A sharp-snouted shark face filled to overflowing with triangular saw teeth that locked together—literal scissors from Hell. A crown of spikes grew straight up out of his head. Plates of thick chitin covered much of the demon’s vital parts like a built-in suit of red armor. Brianna was gone; her driver had outgrown her as a vehicle. I never even got to curse her goodbye.
The prince of Hell had morphed into his unnatural form and the Department of Homeland Security was in a lot of trouble.
Trenton took a sharp left and I happened to glance up long enough to catch sight of a street sign: Pennsylvania Avenue. Wait, isn’t there an important address there? Oh yeah, the President’s house. DHS had been carting Brianna toward their headquarters northwest of the Capital and the White House. Amaymon had just declined their hospitality, rather forcibly, preferring, no doubt, the traditional architecture of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and the chance to slaughter the leader of the free world on his front lawn to the modern sterility of the spy headquarters.
Oh well, I didn’t vote for the guy… wait… did I? I couldn’t recall the last election, but I doubted I voted Garth in because he was a piss poor leader and far, far too liberal for my conservative values. Still, I should probably try and keep the leader of the most powerful nation on earth from being sacrificed to a new order of demonic overlords, if only on principal. Just because I differed in political bent didn’t mean I could just give up on my country, right? I mean, how would it look if God’s warrior let that happen? No, it would besmirch my image. And I’m all about image lately, right? Hey, I used the word
besmirch
in a sentence. Look at Mr. Vocabulary now.
Back on the tablet, Amaymon was tossing aside the twisted, blackened remains of the burning car, the flames not appearing to bother him at all. Duh… Hell lord… fire, like peanut butter and jelly. The towering figure advanced on the retreating agents, ignoring their puny assault rifles. The big boom of a Barrett sounded and Amaymon was knocked backward a step. He straightened and snapped his head toward the Blackhawks hovering above him. Turning, he looked back at the road, raised his long right arm, and made a throwing gesture. Two of the heavy flat manhole covers shot off the asphalt and disappeared from the camera view. The suddenly crashing Blackhawk that fell past the news chopper answered the question of where at least one of the metal discs had gone.
The camera view snapped up in time to catch the other Blackhawk pulling back out of range, the Barrett sniper dangling from his safety strap, his rifle missing, leading me to appreciate just how hard the pilot had jinked his bird to dodge the other manhole cover.
The camera swung back to Amaymon, who was now staring at the news chopper as the first Blackhawk exploded further up the street in a huge fireball. You could almost hear the camera man gulp. Then the demon prince snarled a toothy smile and turned back to the fight. Who knew that demon lords were camera whores too?
Moving forward in fast bounds, he was pushing the remaining agents back toward the hell beasts that were feasting on their fellow agents when the camera scene showed two new cars pull onto the scene. The fact that they weren’t Spy vs. Spy black and that they were a sedan and small wagon was a clue. The screeching, body-slamming stop that Trenton executed was another clue. I looked up and met the eyes of Amaymon through the Accord’s window. We had arrived.
Chapter 22
Grim took control even as the vehicle was still sliding to a stop, and I/we stepped out of the moving Accord and into the fight. We were at the back of the battle, nearest the velociraptor-hound things, so I took the opportunity to stab one in its shoulder as it swung at me and put the other spike up under its chin. Both punched right through its thick skin, slick as spit on a door knob. Sorry, about that mental image… it’s a Gramps-ism.
Twisting behind the thing, I kicked its wrong-ward bending leg out and pulled it down to where I could work on it. Levering the spikes in opposite directions had the effect of spinning its head around, Linda Blair style. Doing it two more times popped the head right off.
I called Kirby for a pickup as greasy crud issued forth from the neck stump.
The rest of the team piled out behind me, jumping into battle. ‘Sos flew past me in bear form and literally flattened a demon beast into paste. I called Kirby again and a second God Hawk appeared while the first was just leaving. The new one latched onto the black putrescent cloud that was erupting from the mess under ‘Sos’s feet.
The bald guy with the cool leather duster smiled at me. “Ah Malahidael, I missed you a few years back. Didn’t miss your brother, father, or you mother. Why, I had such fun…”
That was as far as he got because a whirlwind with swords chopped his left hand off and would have taken his head if he hadn’t stopped his stupid evil villain monologue and backpedaled furiously to get away. Tanya has no patience for grandstanding and monologues, and if you try that crap around her, you’re just gonna end up in pieces that much quicker. Dumbass was chit-chatting when he should have been getting ready for the fight of his unholy life. This bald douche must be Orias, the guy who killed my family. Normally, that would make me want to tear his heart out, but Tanya looked like she was enjoying destroying the thing that had murdered my family, so I left her to it.
Behind him, something else started to pull itself out of the sewer hole, something that had to force its toothy bulk through the round hole. I whistled to Awasos and pointed at the thing. He ran over and slapped it back down like Whack-a-Mole. It roared, sounding thoroughly pissed off, as it crashed to the bottom of the sewers.