Hellfire (19 page)

Markus pointed to a fat, gray
cat sleeping on an old couch in a sunbeam by the front window. Tom didn’t look
at all threatening and certainly not dangerous, but the stench of demon clung
to him. Alton felt a pulse of energy from HellFire. He turned Ginny’s hand
loose and walked past Markus without waiting for the young man’s permission.

Squatting down on his haunches
in front of the couch, Alton reached for the cat. Tom raised one eyelid and
glared at him out of strangely luminescent eyes. Then he blinked, sniffed the
air, and growled. His ears lay flat against his broad skull.

Alton glanced at Markus. “Is
that a normal sound for your cat to make?”

Markus shook his head. “Not
like that.”

Alton stood up. “
Markus,
stand back, will you?
Ginny, draw
DarkFire.”

Her head snapped up. She
looked at Alton as if to reassure herself he’d really said what he’d said. Then
she shot a quick look at her cousin. “Are you sure?”

“It’s all right.” Alton drew
HellFire from his scabbard, ignoring Markus’s soft curse. He turned the blade,
making sure to catch what light he could on the crystal facets so that it
glowed even brighter than usual. He almost laughed. He’d never realized before
what a flair for showmanship he had.

“Markus, what you’re going to
see and what I’m going to tell you are top secret.” He turned and caught Markus
in what he hoped was a commanding glare. Markus didn’t move a muscle. Nor did
he shift his gaze from the glowing sword in Alton’s hand.

“Ginny and I are working for a
secret government agency that’s aware of the demon invasion. You can’t tell
anyone what we’re going to do right now. Do I have your promise?”

Markus kept staring wide-eyed
at the glowing blade on HellFire. He nodded, but when Ginny stood up and drew
DarkFire from her scabbard, he stumbled back another couple of steps.
“Holy shit.
What the fu—?”

Ginny flashed him a look that
shut him up in midcurse. “You heard Alton. Stand back.”

What now?

Alton struggled to keep from
laughing. She was a natural. For that matter, so was he. This was not the way
things were done in Lemuria.
I’m going to hold the sword to
Tom’s heart. When the demon is forced out, it’s all yours. Make it look good.

Tom seemed to suspect
something was going on. The cat rose to its feet and snarled. Alton glanced
toward Markus. “I’m not going to hurt your cat, but you have to stay out of the
way.”

Markus nodded and backed up a
few more steps. He kept his gaze glued to the two shining swords, not his
beloved cat. Alton dipped the blade beneath Tom’s belly and pressed it against
his heart. Tom screeched. Wailing like a banshee, the cat launched itself at
Ginny. She twisted out of the way just in time.

As Tom made the leap from the
couch to the floor, a black wraith, stinking of sulfur, exploded out of his
back and spiraled toward the ceiling. Ginny caught it with DarkFire in a shower
of purple sparks and sulfuric smoke, but just before it died, the demon took
shape.

There was no disguising the
twisted face, the sharp teeth, or the long, curving claws. This was most
definitely a demon, hiding in plain sight within the body of Tom the cat.

The smell of sulfur filled the
room. The three of them paused, caught in the sudden stillness and the foul
stench. At that moment, Ginny’s aunt walked into the room.

“Markus?
What is that awful smell? Oh!
Ginny?
When did you get
here?”

“Aunt Betty.
Uh…good morning.”
Ginny shot a frantic glance at Alton.

He raised his hand and swept
it slowly in front of her eyes. Aunt Betty smiled, turned around, and went back
into the kitchen. Then Alton turned to Markus, who was holding Tom against his
shoulder, stroking the fat cat’s silky fur. “Is your cat okay?”

Markus frowned. He lifted the
cat out in front of his face and stared at him. Tom hung there like a fat rag
doll and purred. Smiling, Markus brought him back to his shoulder.
“Yeah.
He’s fine, but what was that thing? How’d you get rid
of it? And how’d you get rid of Mom? She’s usually like a dog with a bone when
there’s something going on. She wants all the details
now.
”

Ginny glanced at Alton and
carefully slipped DarkFire into her scabbard. “Alton and I really are
government agents and what he just did to your mom is a special form of
hypnosis. Demons are invading Sedona and it’s our job to get rid of them.
That’s why I came down here, Markus. You guys are my cover and
I’m trusting
you not to say a word to anyone.”

Markus stared at Ginny,
glanced toward Alton, and stared at Ginny again.
“Holy shit.
I thought you were making that up.” He swallowed and held on to Tom. “I won’t
say a word. I promise. Is there anything I can do?”

Alton nodded very seriously.
“There is. You’ve got Ginny’s cell phone number. Call if you see something
suspicious. Let us know immediately, but don’t get near creatures you suspect
might be possessed. They’re very dangerous.”

Ginny wrapped her fingers
around his wrist and gave him a comforting squeeze. “Thank you, Markus. We’ll
be in touch.”

Ginny managed to hold on to
the giggles until they’d pulled away in the little blue rental car. “This would
be a lot more effective if we could shoot out of here in the Bat-mobile, or
leap into the air and fly away like Superman. Somehow, rolling away in a Ford
Focus doesn’t have the same impact.”

Alton’s confused frown just
made her laugh harder. It took her a moment to get things under control. “When
this is all settled down, and if you plan on hanging out on Earth, we need to
rent some movies, make a ton of popcorn, and catch you up on popular culture.
For now, though, what’s next?”

He still looked a little
confused, but then he merely shrugged and sat back while she drove. “Boynton
Canyon, I imagine. I want to check the vortex and see what, if any
portals,
exist there.”

“Boynton Canyon it is.
But food first.”

This time he smiled. “I do
like the way you think.”

Ginny already knew Alton liked
breakfast burritos, so she pulled through a drive-in window. They loaded up on
stuff they could eat along the way.

As Alton was
unwrapping
his second burrito, he glanced toward a small
strip mall and shouted, “Stop!”

Ginny hit the brakes and
pulled to the side of the road. “What’s the matter?”

Alton swallowed and pointed at
a drugstore. “Does that store sell condoms?”

Ginny couldn’t believe she was
blushing. Not after what they’d been up to last night. “Well, yes, but…”

“Take me there.” He swallowed
the burrito in a couple of quick bites. “I need some money.” He held out his
hand. Ginny fumbled in her purse, grabbed a twenty-dollar bill, and handed it
to him.

“I’m not going in there with
you.”

He grinned, swallowed, wiped
his face with a paper napkin, and then leaned close and kissed her. “You don’t
have to. I’ve discovered that the young women who work in stores are always
very helpful.”

He got out and walked across
the parking lot. Ginny didn’t even want to think about all those helpful young
women, especially with Alton shopping for protection. A few minutes later he
returned with a large plastic bag. “What did you buy?”

“I told you. I wanted to buy
condoms.” He opened the bag.

She looked inside and giggled.
“Two boxes of extra large?
My goodness.
You are an
optimist, aren’t you?”

He tossed the bag in the
backseat, looked at her down his long nose and raised one dark eyebrow. “I’m
following your advice. I merely want to be prepared.”

He sounded so serious it threw
her for a loop. Recovering, she quipped, “Are there Boy Scouts in Lemuria?”
Alton didn’t answer. When she tried to reach him telepathically, there was
absolutely nothing there.

Now why would he be blocking
her? Sometimes she was so sure she knew this guy, but at other times he totally
confounded her. She turned her attention to the road and tried to ignore the
oversized hunk in the seat beside her. It wasn’t easy.

There was hardly any other
traffic as they passed through neighborhoods that grew more and more rural,
until Ginny was driving past small ranches spaced out along the two-lane road.

“What are those?”

She glanced to her right, saw
what Alton pointed at, and pulled over to the side of the road. The fenced and
irrigated pasture was unnaturally lush and green for desert country, but she
knew it wasn’t the thick grass that had attracted Alton’s attention.

She leaned across him to get a
better look out of his open window. “I think those are Spanish fighting bulls.
They’re bred for the bull ring in Spain and Latin America, where they live like
kings until they’re old enough to fight against matadors, guys who dress weird
and carry very sharp swords. It’s pretty ugly—the matadors stab the bulls in a
ritualized battle in front of an audience until the bull dies in the ring.”

Alton turned and stared at
her. “They kill these beautiful animals for sport? These creatures will die?”

Ginny shook her head. “Not
here. Bullfighting in this country is illegal. These are probably some guy’s
hobby, more like pets.”

Alton nodded. He seemed
fascinated by the small herd. “They look placid enough, but their horns are
quite impressive.”

“That they are.
Impressive and very sharp.”
She checked for traffic and
pulled out onto the road once again, but she noticed Alton’s gaze stayed on the
grazing cattle with their long, curved, and deadly looking horns until they
were out of sight.

He remained quiet, staring out
the window as they wound along the two-lane road until they reached the parking
lot at the trailhead in Boynton Canyon. Ginny checked her watch. Considering
all they’d done this morning, she was surprised it was barely eight o’clock.

Other than her little blue
rental car, the parking lot was empty. Gray clouds hung low in the sky and a
cool wind was beginning to blow. Ginny grabbed her day pack and a bottle of
water, checked to make sure her scabbard was adjusted comfortably, and then followed
Alton along the well-worn trail.

“Do you feel anything
different here, Ginny?” Alton
paused
a few steps ahead
of her.

“No.” She glanced nervously
around, noting the wind-shaped red bluffs and unusually twisted juniper trees.
“Should I?”

Alton shrugged. “The energy in
this vortex is supposed to be a blend of masculine and feminine. You never did
ask me about girl vortexes and boy vortexes.”

He didn’t look like he was
joking. Ginny folded her arms across her chest and stared at him. “Are you
flirting with me, Alton?”

He shrugged, but he didn’t
smile at all.
“Maybe a little.
Don’t I need to?”

He seemed terribly serious for
such an odd question. “It never hurts,” she said. But they continued on in
silence, only pausing while Alton consulted his map.

“This way,” he said. They
veered off to the left. When Ginny tried to connect her thoughts to his, again
there was nothing where she expected Alton to be. Instead, she felt as if she’d
run smack dab into a wall.

Alton couldn’t shake the
uneasy sense he was being watched, and it wasn’t by the gorgeous woman walking
along the trail behind him. No, it was an all-over uncomfortable sense of
something
wrong.

He’d been blocking Ginny most
of the morning, mainly because he wanted to think about the fantastic time
they’d had together last night and he certainly didn’t want her tagging along
on such personal impressions. Now, though, he was glad he’d been keeping her
out of his thoughts.

It had started with the bulls
and a strange uneasiness he’d felt when he saw them. He’d never been prone to
premonitions and didn’t think of himself as all that imaginative, but the
feeling had grown stronger, even after they’d left the bulls behind. Now he
sensed something about this gorgeous canyon with the red rock bluffs and the gray
sky hanging overhead that had his skin prickling and his nerves on edge. The
last thing he wanted to do was make Ginny as nervous as he was feeling, though
he really missed her comforting thoughts in his head.

He hadn’t realized how quickly
he’d become accustomed to her subtle but constant presence.
Just
as he’d grown used to HellFire.
Maybe the sword could tell him what was
going on.

HellFire?
Is it just me, or do
you sense something here is not right?

I wondered
if you were ever going to ask.

He definitely wasn’t in the
mood for attitude.
Just your impressions
of the canyon, HellFire.
Please. I don’t need
a lecture.

Well…all
right. I feel it as well, but there’s no stench of demon. No sense of anything
specifically evil. More of an unrest, as if the spirits walk uneasily in this
place.

Spirits?
Demons were bad enough. Now he had to worry about spirits, too? He glanced over
his shoulder. Ginny was about five paces back. She stopped when he did.

“Something
wrong?”

He shook his head. “I don’t
know. What do you think? Do you feel anything at all that you shouldn’t?”

She gazed at the rock bluffs
on either side of them and frowned. Then she slowly shook her head. “I’m not as
relaxed as I’d like to be. Maybe it’s those girl and boy vortexes you were
talking about.” She flashed him a quick, if uneasy, grin. “Maybe they’re not
getting along.”

He knew his smile was a pretty
halfhearted attempt. “What does DarkFire say?” The feeling seemed to be
growing, the sense they should be anywhere but here.

“I’ll ask.” She closed her
eyes, reached over her shoulder, and stroked the jeweled hilt rising above the
scabbard. Then her eyes flashed open. “She says be prepared to fight. She
doesn’t know who or what, but to be ready.”

Ginny drew her sword.

Alton nodded and drew HellFire
as well. They walked another hundred yards or so, and the sense of wrongness
grew. Dark clouds swirled overhead. The soft shush of wind through the canyon
and the harsh caw of crows in the distance were the only sounds beyond the
scuffle of their boots on the rocky trail.

“Alton?”

The uncertainty in Ginny’s
soft call brought him to an immediate stop. “What?” He spun around.

She stood behind him and
stared up at the sky. He followed her gaze and his heart practically stood
still. Where moments ago there’d been only rain
clouds, the
sky was
thick with dark shapes circling above them. The crows they’d
heard weren’t the only black birds gathering. Others with longer wings and
ugly, naked heads dipped and swerved soundlessly on the rising air currents.
Birds by the hundreds, soaring and gliding above them in a dark
circle that rose high into the threatening sky—a veritable tornado of birds.

Yet none of them made a sound.

“What in the nine hells are
they?” He realized he’d tightened his grasp on HellFire. The sword quivered in
his hand, as if anxious to act.

Wide-eyed, Ginny slowly shook
her head in what had to be utter disbelief. “I recognize crows, ravens and
turkey vultures. Some of the smaller birds might be blackbirds or starlings,
but they don’t usually circle together like that. There have to be almost a
thousand birds up there.”

She took a few steps and
closed the space between them, but she kept her head raised, her eyes on the
growing flock overhead. “This is freaky. It reminds me of an old Hitchcock
movie—
The Birds.
For what it’s worth, that one did
not end well.” She touched Alton’s arm.
“How far to the
portal?”

Alton glanced at the map he’d
shoved in his pocket and looked around for landmarks to help him get his
bearings.
“This way.”
He grabbed her hand again, but
now they ran along the trail until it came to a fork with a sign that said
VISTA TRAIL
.

“It’s not much farther.” Still
hanging on to Ginny’s hand, lungs heaving with the short, hard uphill run
they’d made, he raced along the fork to the right. “We’re close,” he said.

A raven dove at them,
screeching like a banshee straight from hell. Ginny ducked just in time as it
slashed inches from her face with a beak filled with rows of sharp teeth and
wickedly curved claws at the end of each toe. “Crap,” she said, turning Alton’s
hand loose and holding DarkFire high. “I was afraid of that. They’re demons.”

“We’ll fight later.
This way.”
Alton grabbed her free hand and tugged. “That
spire over there is called Kachina Woman. The knoll with the vortex must be”—he
laughed—“right in front of us. There, where the rocks are piled? Someone’s left
a marker.”

“You sure we’ll be better off
inside? Isn’t that where these suckers are coming from?” Ginny trotted
backward, still watching the circling birds.

“Inside they should still be
harmless mist. Besides, if they’re using a portal here to come through from
Abyss, we could fight possessed birds forever and never kill all the demons. We
need to close the gateway first.”

A turkey vulture shot out of
the sky, vicious beak extended and red eyes glowing. Alton pushed Ginny down
and bent over her, protecting her with his body. The bird hissed as it passed
overhead. As soon as it took off, Alton clambered up the side of the small
knoll. He ran his hands over the sandstone face until he found the portal.
“Here!
Ginny, hurry up.
They’re coming!”

He leaned down and reached for
her. She grabbed his hand. “Hurry!” he shouted, and hauled her up the side of
the rock just as a huge phalanx of screaming birds headed straight for them.
Alton shoved Ginny through the portal first. He tumbled in behind her, along
with half a dozen screeching ravens.

The cavern was filled with the
stench of sulfur. Dark wraiths streamed through a seething red portal. Ginny
immediately went after them with DarkFire and the screams of dying demons
echoed off the walls. The stench of their burning souls polluted the close air
inside the cavern.

Alton battled the birds, but
on his own it was more difficult to stop the possessed creatures without
harming them. At this point, all he could do was keep them away from Ginny.

“I need to close the portal.
There’s no end to them,” she cried. “What do I do?”

“Command
DarkFire to shut it.
She’ll know.” He shoved a raven aside, but not
before it managed to leave a trail of bleeding slices across his forearm. Even
their claws were demonic—long and sharp and probably worthless for perching.

Perfect, however, for ripping
and tearing.

He sensed the surge of energy
in the cavern as Ginny focused DarkFire on the portal. The banshees already
through the gateway screeched and screamed, as if they understood what Ginny
was doing. Alton knocked another bird aside and quickly reevaluated his opinion
of mindless demons.