Trenton and Arkady had swords and axes out and were fighting demon hound-raptor thingies and Stacia had her little illegal sawed-off shotgun in hand. She’s got a bit of a thing for shotguns; in fact, it might border on a real obsession. Gonna have to watch that, although it made it easy to pick out birthday and Christmas presents.
She fired both barrels at a demon, which knocked the monster back a bit. When it shrugged off the salt and shot and started forward, she exploded out of her clothes. Not the Oh-My-God-Stacia’s-naked-grab-a-chair-let’s-watch kind of explosion, but an almost instant Change to beast form. Just shy of seven feet tall, white fur rippling with muscle, she was as eye catching in her new body as her human one, it’s just that each form invokes a different emotion.
The demon hadn’t been expecting that and it hesitated, which is generally a bad idea when fighting werewolves. Her clawed right hand removed half its face and spun its head around. Before it could look back, her steel trap jaws slammed together on its neck, severing its spine and almost decapitating it.
Deciding that she was handling her first fight as a full werewolf pretty well, I called Kirby for cleanup and headed forward.
The horror that was Amaymon was waiting for me, a broken, torn agent hanging forgotten from one clawed hand, huge taloned feet kneading the crumpled asphalt street. Moving forward unhurriedly, I started to angle toward his right side, moving obliquely and picking up speed, then sharply turned and angled the other way, jinking three more times before darting low to the ground by his left leg. Grim lunged, most of my weight on my folded right leg, left extended out behind in a manner that would make a fencer proud. My demon dart just pierced the Hell lord’s left ankle before he moved the whole leg. Unfortunately, he moved it forward and kicked it straight at my head. Dropping flat, Grim let it fly overhead, taking the opportunity to stab upward at the grotesque flopping male organs left exposed above us. A perfect strike—the mother of all nutters.
First blood was mine, but his roar of pain and outrage told me that I had really only managed to piss him off. He clutched his very public privates in pain and Grim seized the moment, jumping forward to stab at the monster’s side. Amaymon was faking, a fact that became clear when he unwound a lightning fast backhand that slammed me twenty feet away and through a car windshield.
If it were me, I’d a just laid there a bit and tried catching my breath around the searing pain of my body. But Grim was running the show and hanging out helpless isn’t part of his tactical game plan. Instantly, we/I pushed back deeper into the car, narrowly missing a swipe by the master demon’s oversized claws that would, most likely, have removed some of my body parts. As it was, they tore through the steel frame around the windshield without slowing down.
I rolled over a couple of dead bodies, ignored the wetness of their blood on my skin and the burning pain of my healing wounds, instead focusing on kicking out the rear driver side door. None too soon either, as massive claws punched through the driver’s and front passenger’s doors and the whole car left the ground in a smooth glide, lifted effortlessly.
My newly cleared doorway showed me a twisting roller-coaster view of the battleground below, giving me glimpses of ‘Sos fighting some kind of cross between a crocodile and a python, which would give the Syfi channel’s movie production staff fits of envy; while Tanya sparred with Orias, whose hands had been replaced by blades of demon chitin; Arkady, Trent, and Stacia fought individual demons; and Lydia… God help me, Lydia was heading toward my fight.
I love Lydia like she’s my older sister and have nothing but respect for her wit, cunning, and political skill, but she doesn’t belong on a battlefield, despite her training and her vampire abilities. Against humans, sure, but demons? Not so much, particularly demon princes.
Amaymon’s back was to her, so he didn’t see her pick up a government-issue assault rifle from the ground where its dead, previous user had carelessly left it. I didn’t know what she thought the puny 5.56mm rounds were going to do, but then she removed a couple of green and gold objects from the fallen agent’s vest and slid one into the second, larger under-barrel on the M4. Oh, a grenade launcher. Hmm, gold head, olive drab body. I tried to remember my M203 grenade launcher round color codes. Grim offered up the answer: high explosive, dual purpose. Right—could be used against ground targets or… armor. She stopped about thirty feet away, which seemed too close.
She raised the weapon and fired, the chunking sound of the grenade launcher catching Amaymon’s attention enough for him to turn and look, still holding the car off the ground.
The round streaked right at his flank, hit, and bounced off onto the ground, rolling harmlessly around before settling down. Yup, too close to arm in flight. Something over fourteen meters seemed about right. The demon prince looked at the little vampire and snarled, bunching his arms to throw the car at her. With my demon spikes shoved through my belt, Grim swung us out the doorframe and under the car, monkey barring the rear axle, then the drive train, and finally the front axle. My hands released the axle when my feet were pointed straight at the monster, the same part of the arc a swinging kid uses to launch him or herself off the swing and into the air. Both my hands drew a spike in preparation for landing.
Lydia was backing up and frantically reloading the launcher as the demon lord flung the car at her, not even looking to see where I was. My feet hit his chest and my spikes sank into his shoulder and neck, slipping past his armored plates and deep into his flesh. That got his attention rather dramatically, his roar shaking the ground almost as much as the crashing car did.
Lydia got the new round chambered and had blurred back another sixty feet before firing the M203 a second time. The explosion and flash of light were much more in line with Grim’s expectations, and Amaymon’s roar changed tone to a new octave of pain. I felt some pain of my own as his right-hand talons pierced my torso and ripped me away from his body. Torn and soaring end-over-end, Grim still managed to right my body and Cling us to the front of a ten-story building.
Roaring and bleeding, Amaymon turned and started to run, straight down Pennsylvania Avenue back toward downtown, back toward the White House. We were winning the fight but he was going to complete his mission.
Bounding from my spot, I hit the ground running; racing to catch up, speed increasing with every step and every wound that healed. I’m fast, really fast, but so is a demon prince and this one had mile-long legs that clearly gave him an advantage.
A round object lay on the street nearby, a disc of metal almost three feet in diameter—the third sewer cap. Grim waved my left hand at it and the manhole cover left the ground, shot down the road, and hit the fast-moving demon behind his right knee. Three hundred pounds of cast iron moving at almost sixty miles an hour makes a hell of a calling card. It not only took him off his feet, it almost took his leg off at the knee. Amaymon piled up in a rolling mess of red and black, dripping inky demon blood from a score of wounds, rolling and flipping for twenty or thirty feet before slamming face first into the storefront window of a Starbucks almost on the corner of 17
th
and Pennsylvania Avenue.
Just ahead were the barriers that stopped all traffic from driving past the White House. At least a dozen police and federal vehicles blocked the street in front of the barriers. Armed officers were barricaded behind their cars with rifles and shotguns pointed our way.
Amaymon was just starting to pull himself up when I arrived, my healing almost complete whereas his had only just started. I interrupted his recuperation.
There were several heavy concrete tables out front, the kind that are a bit awkward to sit at because the designers had favored theft-hindering bulkiness over aesthetic comfort. The one I grabbed had to be five hundred pounds of poured and hardened cement. I hit him with it. A bunch of times.
After a good five whacks at him, he finally dipped into his demonic reserves and shoved himself up while I was still on my backswing. When the remains of the table came down on him this time, his arm shot up and stopped it cold before ripping it away and throwing it out into the street. So I stepped up and hit him with aura-wrapped fists and feet. He took a bit more damage before he knocked me aside with a big fist. I only flew eight feet this time—I was tiring the bastard out.
Standing up, he snarled at me. “You can’t win against me, Malahidael. I have always been more than you and here, in these forms, without your sword, you are outmatched,” he said, stretching to his full nine feet in height.
I was certainly outmatched in size, but just then, I would rather have been a compact five-ten than an eye-catching red and black nine feet because every cop and agent behind those cars and barracades opened up on him with everything they had. Being the people who protect the President, they had a lot.
My trained ears heard the sharp bark of various handguns, the brap of MP-5 and FN-P90 submachine guns, the boom of shotguns, the sharp crack of assault rifles of various kinds, and even the heavy roar of a magnum sniper rifle. Concrete, glass, and bits of red demon flew everywhere. Me, I hugged the ground and watched the fireworks.
Prince Amaymon was nine feet tall and striped all over with red—only an idiot could miss him. The people on duty to guard the President aren’t usually categorized as idiots, and they’re pretty much all dead shots. The sheer volume of metal that impacted the demon would have outright destroyed a lesser being and I think it came real close to ending Amaymon’s time right then and there, except that he moved, maybe even fell. The motion put most of him behind another concrete table whose mass protected him for a few moments. Time enough, it seems, for him to heal at least some of the damage he’d taken. He was still heavily wounded, black blood pouring out onto the sidewalk, and I could have killed him outright but for the same shit storm of metal that was peppering me with concrete and dust, mostly copper and lead, but some of which was silver and a bit seemed to be depleted uranium. The President’s men were loaded for me.
I could see the Hell lord taking deep shuddering breaths and I reached for a quarter from my belt, thinking one good blast of molten US coin would end him, but the belt was gone, along with most of my belt loops, lost somewhere behind me further up Pennsylvania Avenue.
Before I could find anything else, Amaymon lifted his head, looked me in the eye, and bellowed out a guttural word that made my skin crawl and my stomach turn. Four hundred or so yards back up the street, a screech answered him. I turned and looked in time to see Orias break off his fight with Tanya and run halfway up the side of the eight-story building nearest him. Then, standing sideways on the building, he pulled a cell phone from his duster pocket and made a call.
Immediately, the sounds of gunfire doubled, only this new volume wasn’t directed at the demon prince but rather at his human attackers. Glancing at the White House defenders, I saw several stagger and go down as they started taking flanking fire from 17
th
Street both north and south of us, as well as quite a few building windows. The new participants appeared to be just regular humans—well, as regular as demon-worshipping gun nuts can be. They wore street clothes, everything from suits and ties to jeans and t-shirts to camo and leather, their one similarity the fanatic expressions on their faces. The weapons they carried were a mixture of everything from hunting rifles to M1 Garands and AR-15’s. But their shooting was accurate and the gunfire directed at the demon prince dropped off to nothing as the agents and officers turned their fire on the demon’s human followers.
I hadn’t thought about human helpers—to me, it is inconceivable that anyone would willingly worship and follow the creatures that seek to eradicate anything human. But the Heaven/Hell business is all about swaying free will and winning souls. There will always be those who go over to the dark side, whether, in fact, they actually serve cookies or not.
Chapter 23
Sneering at me one more time, Amaymon bolted up 17
th
Street, plowing past his own minions, ignoring those who were now being picked off by the Secret Service and the White House police force.
I followed him, immediately picking up some fire from the Hell’s militia members. Shooting a moving creature is hard. Shooting one that moves at cheetah speeds while zig-zagging left and right is even more difficult. I made it worse by pushing a blast of aura up the street, causing their guns to fall silent as their cartridges became useless. The police ammo was still good, though. At least four of Hell’s lackeys died with bewildered expressions, looking at their inert rifles as police sharpshooters put them down.
Amaymon ran just one block north before turning right onto H Street and heading toward the big green space north of the White House. Lafayette Square, I think it’s called.
He was end-running around the Secret Service, and I wasn’t having any part of it. I swung past a street light, leaning over as I ran to rip off the oval-shaped metal access panel at its base. About six inches long and four wide, it was too much metal for my purposes. Still running, but slowing somewhat, I clipped it into thirds with a mono-edged hand. Then I stopped and started some shooting of my own.
Pressing a dimple into each of the flat lopsided metal discs, I then threw one into the air and clapped my aura-lined hands at it. A sharp report and a streak of actinic plasma shot toward the demon at explosive speed. The irregular shape of the metal threw my aim off and my shot went far right, blowing a huge hole through the top of a big blue mailbox just to the side of the demon. He veered left a bit and I fired off another, immediately starting to run after him, as he was getting too far ahead. My second shot was closer but still a bit off and it took out a Ford Focus parked on the street, the gas tank exploding as super-heated molten metal blew right through it.