Occult Assassin 4: Soul Jacker (2 page)

Once again Talon’s eyes darted toward the rear-view mirror, but this time his blood turned to ice. A dark, faceless entity peered back at him—a figure carved from shadow. Struggling to keep his terror in check, Talon spun around and found the backseat empty.
 

His gaze traveled to the Grimoire, and Casca’s warning came to mind. The tome would do anything in its power to remain with its rightful owner. This wasn’t just a book but a direct line to another plane of existence, with the ability to sway the minds of those who didn’t keep their guard up. The terrible vision in the backseat of the car was probably just the beginning. As soon as the fatalistic thought crossed his mind, the book launched its next attack. The windshield fogged up and an oily mist filled the car. It coated the windows and turned the world black. Damn it! He was flying blind now. If he missed the upcoming turn, the Mercedes would go over the side of the road…

There was no hesitation as his gloved fist shot out at the windshield. Glass shattered and the ghostly green vision of the mountain landscape jumped back into view. Not a moment too soon as the guardrail rushed up at him. Talon understood he was mere seconds away from shrieking down the mountain in a steel coffin. He jerked the wheel, inwardly cursing the infernal book as he barely navigated the sharp turn. Rubber burned.

The car grew icy cold, but Talon wasn’t impressed. The Grimoire might be pulling out all the stops, but cheap parlor tricks wouldn’t be enough to defeat him. He turned away from the book of black magic and focused on the motorcycle closing in from behind.
 

With a snarl, he floored the brakes. The biker was going too fast to correct his course and slammed into the back of Talon’s Mercedes. The impact sent the rider over the handlebars, and the man crashed full-force into the rear windshield. A beat later, his lifeless form lay prostate in the backseat amid a shower of broken glass, his helmeted head lolling. Talon punched the gas, leaving the twisted, smoking remains of the shattered motorcycle behind.
 

Talon’s attention switched to the roadway ahead. The BMW was gaining on him.

Alright, come and get me!
 

The BMW pulled abreast of the Mercedes on the left side, and Talon clenched his jaw as he whipped the wheel. Metal collided with metal, the BMW protesting under the violent assault. Talon repeated the move once, twice, his face distorted with killer instinct. The third impact sent the Mercedes through the railing. The driver’s terrified scream echoed as the car plummeted down the rocky hillside.

Talon had only a moment to celebrate his victory. A helicopter was moving in fast, headed straight toward him. A man leaned out of the craft, machine pistol leveled at the Mercedes. Bullets stitched the road before perforating the hood, turning much of the Mercedes into Swiss cheese. It was only a matter of time before Talon lost control of the vehicle—or a lucky bullet hit the gas tank. The Glock was no match for the sustained firepower of his airborne attackers. What to do?
 

Talon glanced at the dead motorcyclist, and a plan sparked behind his eyes. Instead of slowing the Mercedes, whose engine was now belching smoke, he sped up and reached behind his seat to remove the corpse’s helmet. Swiftly, Talon donned the helmet.

Thirty feet in front of him, the chopper hovered beyond the road’s flimsy guard railing like some mechanical beast of prey. One last task remained before Talon could make his move. He grabbed the Grimoire and slipped it under his leather jacket. A burning sensation assaulted his chest, almost as if the book had sprouted claws and was ripping its way through skin and bone to get at his pounding heart. How he wished he could leave the infernal tome behind, but Casca would never forgive him. Besides, if the billionaire was right, even an explosion wouldn’t destroy the magical book.
 

The Grimoire secured, Talon hurled himself from the moving Mercedes. The mountain road lashed out at him with voracious ferocity, the impact rattling every bone in his body.

The Mercedes kept shooting down the road, on a direct collision course with the chopper. The pilot tried to pull away from the out-of-control car, now turned deadly projectile, but he failed to react fast enough. With a ferocious shriek of rending metal and glass, the Mercedes slammed into the cockpit.
 

The explosion that followed canceled out the eclipse, as for a brief moment it lit up the mountainside. The fiery wreck vanished from view behind the guardrail, and a series of smaller explosions rocked the landscape.
 

The symphony of destruction gave way to silence.
 

Talon lay on the dusty ground, grateful to still be alive and in one piece. He inhaled deeply and stumbled to his feet. His muscles screamed out in pain.
 

He extricated the book from under his leather jacket while the darkness around him lifted. The moon was beginning to pass the sun, and the first rays of sunlight lit up the world once more. The stench of burning metal and plastic permeated the air. Even the book was cold to the touch again, almost as if it sensed the battle was over.
 

Already dreading the bruises that would form by the time he reached the bottom of the mountain, Talon began his descent. Once again he’d cheated death, but how much longer would his luck hold up? He cast off the thought and eyed the book over which so much blood had been spilled. Talon could already picture Casca’s excited smile when he handed him the Grimoire. But would the tome of infernal magic truly be safe in the hands of the billionaire?
 

C
HAPTER
T
WO

DEMONS ROAMED THE streets of Paris.

Ismael Henni had spotted the first creature three weeks earlier on his daily train ride to the City of Lights. As an elderly French lady had struggled to shuffle into the packed Metro, their eyes had met. There had been nothing human about those eyes, just black orbs of unforgiving darkness. A gnarled hand had clutched his forearm, and he had choked back a gasp of pain, stunned by the lady’s fearsome strength. A reptilian tongue had slithered between the blackened stumps of her teeth.
 

Taking three quick steps back from the shocking apparition, he had crashed into a businessman who shot him an annoyed glance. By the time Ismael whirled back to the old lady, reality, to his relief, had returned to normal. Once again the sweet
madame
, she’d eyed him with a stunned expression, as surprised by his behavior as he’d been by her demonic transformation. Ismael attempted to convince himself that his vision had been triggered by an overactive imagination, but knew he was lying to himself.

The rest of the train ride turned out to be uneventful, but that night sleep hadn’t come easily. The next day the old lady’s mad cackle kept ringing through the one-bedroom apartment he shared with his mother and sister. Ismael was twenty-two and of Tunisian and Algerian descent, a third generation French Muslim. On average he spent two hours every day commuting between his home and Paris, where he worked at a fast food burger joint. A menial gig, but a step up from the job at the Coca-Cola bottling plant he’d held before. The color of his skin and his post code automatically disqualified him from the better jobs in the city. An address in the Parisian suburbs—the
banlieues
as Parisians referred to the area—would be a warning flag for any recruiter. It was a wasteland of housing projects dominated by poverty, unemployment, and gang violence best to be avoided. Rarely did the police patrol the crime-ridden slums, except for the occasional appearance by your friendly neighborhood RAID team.
 

Ismael got up, showered and dressed. His mother greeted him in the kitchen, concern etched across her features. “You’re having nightmares,” she said. “I could hear your screams.”
 

Ismael didn’t feel like getting into it and kissed her on the cheek before dashing out. Hopefully work would make him forget. But the horror was merely beginning. Over the next weeks, more creatures began to reveal themselves on the trains and streets of Paris. The demons always appeared innocuous at first before their true nature surfaced. Taut skin would transform into the rotting flesh of a leper. Smiles became snarls, revealing rows of sharpened teeth. He might admire the derriere of a well-endowed customer at his restaurant, only to spot a glimpse of a monstrous tail slithering underneath her dress a second later. Soon he could no longer deny what his senses were telling him: devils dwelled among them.
 

They wore the mask of humanity, but the illusion now failed to put him under its blinding spell. He knew the truth. The evil hordes controlled Paris, and suddenly everything else in his hard life made sense. The discrimination against his people, the lack of opportunity for a better life. The citizens of France were the true enemy, demons that had enslaved generations of Arabs and Africans. They would deport them all if they could, but it was far easier to keep them trapped in the broken suburbs that orbited the City of Light like burnt-out stars.
 

Ismael now saw the world for what it truly was, stripped of all illusions. The time had come to strike back at his oppressors.
 

To take a stand against the demons.
 

After two weeks of bearing witness to the horrors around him, he started bringing a knife to work. He concealed the weapon under his jacket, but its weight filled him with a sense of security. Would the twelve inches of stainless steel do much good if the bestial horde decided to strike out at him? He doubted it, but the knife made him feel better. At least he would be able to take a few of them with him if they attacked.

His terror came to a head five days later—exactly three weeks after he’d spotted his first demon. Three men boarded the train, and their mistrustful eyes landed on Ismael. He picked up on their dismissive judgment, their sly grins and superior laughter. They saw him as someone who didn’t have a place in this European city. An outsider. An alien.

What are you doing so far from home, brown boy? You’re trespassing, beur! Paris is for real French! Time to head back to the Middle East where you people belong!
 

Eyes blazing with crimson fire, their words devolved into guttural shrieks directed at him. As they pointed their fingers at him, the digits elongated and sprouted claws.
 

In the past he would’ve held his tongue, but not any longer. His days of slinking through French society like a shadow were over. Something snapped in Ismael, and he whipped the knife from his coat. For a frozen moment, the fluorescent lights of the subway train played across the steel. The three demons paused, reverting back to their human disguise. The eyes facing him filled with fear, but Ismael wasn’t going to fall for their tricks this time. He was tired of their games.
 

Without hesitation, he drove the knife into the first man’s chest. The blade cut easily through layers of muscle, and the stunned man gasped with agony. Green blood spurted and pooled on the subway floor.
 

The blood of a demon.
 

Reassured by this proof of the man’s inhuman nature, he withdrew the knife and slashed the second man’s throat in one swift move. The other passengers screamed and tried to surge away from him in the same panicked way Ismael had recoiled from the old lady demon three weeks earlier.

The third monster tried to join the retreating ranks, but Ismael’s knife still managed to find him. He struck with force and precision, catching the fleeing demon in the shoulder blade.
 

There was a stunned cry as the man went down, reduced to a screaming, bleeding mass of humanity.
 

The wheels of the train squealed as they pulled into the bustling Gare de Norde station, the frontier zone between the world of affluent Paris and the ghettos of the banlieues. It was one of the few places in the city where the two worlds met.
 

A soft ding announced the train stop and the doors swung open. The mob emptied into the station, cries of panic accompanying their rapid escape.
 

Ismael took a deep breath, wiped the sweat from his brow, leaving a green streak on his forehead. Following an irrational impulse, he dipped two fingers into the widening pool of blood and drew a symbol that resembled the letter M on the nearest window. His body moved of its own volition, the act disconnected from conscious thought.
 

Once done, he stumbled into the station. His gaze flitted back and forth, surveying his environment. He was intimately familiar with the station from his daily commute, but the place appeared foreign and hostile now. Everywhere terrified people turned away from him as if
he
was the monster. Shouts drowned out all other sounds. A part of him rejoiced in their fear.
Serves them right
, he thought. This was a taste of their own medicine. How many times had he worried some skinhead might jump him on the way home?
 

A police officer barreled toward him, gun up. The cop’s features were grotesquely distorted as if some mad plastic surgeon had tried to mold flesh and blood to resemble a living funhouse mirror. A slash of a mouth, eyes set too far apart, a crumpled mass of cartilage pretending to be a nose. It reminded Ismael of a Picasso painting given unnatural life.
 

All thoughts of his own safety cast aside, he rushed toward the demon, his knife raised, lips pulled back into a scream.
 

The police officer’s gun roared.

The world went topsy-turvy as the impact propelled him backwards. The train station’s stone floor rushed up at him. Bone slapped concrete with devastating force. He heard footsteps and shouts, but he couldn’t tell where they were coming from.

Ismael’s adrenaline spiked, and somehow he managed to jump back to his feet. He lurched toward the officer, his knife outstretched, and this time his blade found its target. Even as the demon in the police uniform fell, others rushed forward. They fired on Ismael and he collapsed. The shouts and gunshots grew dim as a soulless darkness consumed the station.