The Death Skull: Relic Defender, Book 2 (31 page)

The creature that used to appear human hunched over and growled at her, the sound quieter than the initial snarl but no less threatening.

She heard Jackson swearing beside her. “What in holy hell is that?”

“Goreal.”

“How the fuck do we kill it?”

“We don’t. Not easily.”

“Fucking terrific.”

The Goreal threw back its long neck and let out a warbling snarl that bounced through the City of Falling Stones, the echo throwing the sound back at them. From the corner of her eye, she saw Jackson clap his hand over his ears. While she was not as affected, the sound sent daggers of pain into her head.

“Shit,” she said softly.

“What now?”

“Jackson, take Kanek and go.”

“What?”

She saw him stiffen. His expression shuttered, but every rigid line of his body told her she’d offended him. She didn’t care. He had no idea what they were getting in to.

“More are coming. One we can fight and destroy. It won’t be easy but we can. More and you’ll not survive. I’m not sure I will.”

“Fuck that, Mari. I’m not leaving you alone.”

“I don’t need your chivalrous gesture, human. I can handle myself.” Cringing at how harsh that sounded, she took her gaze off the Goreal and looked at Jackson. Inhaling deeply, she tried to ignore the hurt in his eyes. “Someone has to go after the skull.”

“No.”

Ripples in the air next to the Goreal warned her they had little time. She was surprised the Goreal hadn’t attacked them yet. Maybe it wanted the support of its fellow demons while they ripped her to shreds. She expected she’d take down a few but in the end, knew they’d get her. Pammon was a weakling compared to the Goreal.

“Jackson.” She spoke with as reasonable a voice as she could muster. “This is the way it has to be. Keeping the skull from Beliel is important. I am not. I can keep them from coming after you two.” She jerked her head at Kanek who hovered behind her.

Despite the threat before him, the boy had a calm, serene expression, further illustrating that he was more than he seemed. More than human. Maybe not even human, but other entirely. What, she didn’t know. Didn’t seem as if he meant to hurt them, and what she’d seen behind his gaze proved that. Still, the fact she didn’t know what he was bothered her.

“Kanek will take you to the skull. He knows where it is.”

Jackson’s lips firmed into a thin line before he spoke. “Marisol Asheni, I am not going to leave you behind.”

She shook her head. “Foolish human,” she muttered.

Before he could react, she placed her hands on his chest and shoved him back into Kanek. The two collided with a grunt but she didn’t give Jackson a chance to recover. Snatching a picture of where the skull rested from Kanek’s mind, freely given—as otherwise she didn’t think she could have gotten anything from him—with a wave of her hands, she apported Jackson and Kanek out of the clearing.

Jackson’s shout of anger, as well as the picture of fury on his face, reverberated through her mind and lingered after they disappeared. “Goodbye, Jackson,” she whispered.

Glad that it appeared her powers were indeed working, at least inside Belize, she firmed her stance and turned back to the growing horde of demons. Before her hunched six nasty bastards, each one an exact duplicate of the other. Created from the same primordial ooze found in Hell, they had no identification other than a hierarchy of sort. Hive-minded, they were deadly because what one knew, the others did. Even when destroyed, they simply merged back into the ooze, only to reform later. It took time but there were always more.

Another shimmer. “Shit. How many Goreal does it take to kill one fallen angel?” Mari growled. Talk about overkill.

A female figure materialized in front of the slavering Goreal. The voluptuous form, curved in all the right places, was unbothered by the demons behind her that could tear her to shreds. With one hand on her generous hips, the other tapping at her full lips, she smiled at Mari.

She couldn’t help herself and rolled her eyes. “Jahi. I should have known these pets were yours.”

“Oh,” Jahi purred, “I can’t take credit for them, but they are rather useful.”

“Yes,” Mari murmured. “Mustn’t get our claws dirty, must we?”

Jahi’s gaze went beyond Mari. “Where is your delicious human, sister? I so wanted a taste of him again.”

A snarl came from Mari before she could stop it. If the bitch touched Jackson… Well, she’d just have to make sure she took out the succubus. “He’s not here.”

“I can see that.” Jahi’s brow’s raised. “Where have you stashed him? You know I’ll find him. After you are gone. Oh, the games we’ll play.”

Rage and fear for Jackson tightened her muscles. Mari opened her mouth to reply then pressed her lips shut. Through her nose, she drew in a deep breath. The bitch was just baiting her, trying to make her angry. Angry people fought poorly. Angry people died, and while she didn’t have any illusions as to her fate, she would not go down without taking out as many of the demons as she could—including Jahi.

Chapter Nineteen

Unceremoniously, Jackson was dumped to the hard-packed earth. He hit the ground with an
oomph
, then rebounded immediately to his feet. “Goddamn it, Mari,” he growled. What the hell had she done? “Stubborn, independent and crazy female.”

He looked around. Darkness surrounded him. Saved from pitch black by the soft, flickering light of several torches lining the chamber, he remained uneasy due to the many shadowed corners.

He whirled around when he caught movement in the dark. Feet shuffled along the earth. Jackson held up his sword. The black shifted, and Kanek came into the spill of light from one of the torches. With an inscrutable expression, he stared at Jackson. Then, he gestured and garbled something in his unfamiliar language.

“Sorry, kid. Can’t understand.”

Kanek came forward, and despite the fact that Mari seemed to trust the boy, Jackson stiffened, alert to any threatening movement on Kanek’s part. The boy seemed unconcerned that the sword was not far from spitting him like a pig. He took Jackson’s free hand and tugged. Jabbering something else, he continued to pull at Jackson.

“Okay. Okay. I get it. You want me to follow you.”

With his sword at the ready, Jackson stopped resisting and moved toward Kanek, who smiled and nodded. Good thing body language bridged communication gaps. As they walked, Jackson kept a constant watch over the surroundings. Despite not being able to see worth a damn beyond the torches, he continued to look.

What had that blasted she-demon done? Dropped his ass into some kind of cavern while she stayed behind to fight those ugly motherfuckers. His fingers tightened around the hilt of his blade. The urge to pound his fists into the nearest wall squeezed his stomach into knots. The thought of her having to face those things by herself, when he could tell she felt certain she would not survive, caused bile to rise in his throat.

Shit shit shit.
She was up there, somewhere, on her own, and if she was right, she would die—alone. And he couldn’t do a fucking thing about it stuck down here.

He’d never felt so damn useless.

He followed Kanek deeper into the dark. Torches still sputtered along the walls but were now spaced farther apart, which plunged the spaces between them into the pitch black he’d expected. The boy’s slight figure strolled confidently through the darkness, his path straight and sure. How the hell did the boy see where he was going? Must have vision like a cat.

The floor began to angle downward as the cavern dropped deeper into the ground. The occasional squeak of a bat, coupled with the sounds of dripping water, came from behind them in the darkness. Common cave noise. Nothing unfamiliar. No less unsettling, but familiar. The temperature dipped, lifting goose bumps on his arms. Something brushed the top of his head. He slapped at it, only to connect with rock. Christ, the ceiling was just a little above him. Much lower and he’d smash his head against the stone.

Ducking, he continued to follow Kanek. Just how deep were they going to go?

Without warning, Kanek stopped underneath one of the weakly glowing torches. Jackson barely halted in time to stop from slamming against the boy’s back. When he turned, the faint green glow shining from his eyes forced Jackson back a step.

Kanek rattled off something. Again, he didn’t understand the boy but the message was clear—
don’t move
. Jackson nodded. Kanek lifted his head, his oddly glowing gaze roaming around the darkness. Jackson followed his scan but couldn’t see anything beyond the lights except unrelenting black. In the distance, he heard the low moan of the wind rolling through the tunnels. Every once in a while, the wind reached him, brushing icy fingers over exposed skin. He heard nothing else to account for Kanek’s alertness.

Then—something. A scrabble against the stones. Like claws scratching on rock. A shiver crept down his spine.
Hearing things, son? When did you get so fanciful?
Even as Jackson tried to brush it off, Kanek spun and faced the direction they were headed. Or somewhere off to the side. Maybe a connecting tunnel?

Great. Fucking great.

The scrabbling sound increased until the
scritch-scritch
echoed within the cavern, growing louder. The shudder of Jackson’s body increased in reaction to the fingernails-and-blackboard squeal. Under the nerve-racking sound, he heard a low growling.

Kanek looked over his shoulder at Jackson. The glow of the boy’s shining eyes grabbed Jackson and held him. Inside his head, pressure grew as the light in Kanek’s eyes brightened, growing more brilliant the longer Jackson watched. His limbs trembled from the pressure continuing to bear down on him.

Finally, when he thought he’d hit the dirt, the pressure disappeared with a
pop
, as if he’d cleared his throat on a plane.

Powerful relief filled him, straightening his spine and lifting his shoulders until he stood taller. A sense of strength came to him. His vision sharpened, the light of the torches nearly blinding him. He blinked rapidly.

He focused on Kanek. “What the hell did you do, kid?”

How Jackson felt now reminded him of that movie where Kurt Russell was given some kind of potion from a Chinese man to give him confidence. But no potions here—just weird glowing eyes.

“Stand ready. Do not hesitate.”
The words formed within his mind.
“They will move fast. Make every strike count. Seek to kill. Or die.”

Jesus, Mary and Joseph, was Kanek talking to him? In his mind?

Jackson didn’t have any more time to think. From the tunnel to his left burst grayish-white figures about the size of a teenage boy with gangling limbs and shoulder-length greasy hair. Whip-thin bodies clamored to reach him. Humanoid, definitely. A little taller than Kanek and infinitely deadlier. The scrabbling sounds were claws, long-ass ones with black tips. The things entered swinging.

Jackson slashed at the ones that reached him first, while at the same time, he pulled out one of his Colts and shot at the others. When the bullets slammed into the first of the creatures, the things blasted apart as if they’d exploded from within. But instead of chunks of flesh, the dirt was soon covered with some kind of ooze. The substance sucked at his feet, making movement difficult.

He risked a glance at Kanek. The boy’s hands were curled around each other as if they held a ball. Between his cupped palms, a green light sparked and spat green fire at the things. Unlike the effect Jackson’s weapons had on the creatures, Kanek’s green fire blew them into smithereens.

Jackson didn’t have a chance to celebrate because more of the things boiled from the cavern until all he saw was a sea of roiling gray. Even as his sword slashed through them and the Colt spat bullets, he knew it wasn’t enough and he’d soon run out of ammunition.

What the hell were he and the boy going to do?

Mari stood with her feet spread wide, her weight balanced as she waited for the Goreal to attack. She spared a brief thought for Jackson and Kanek.

The lead Goreal screeched. The noise obviously a signal, the demons lunged at her. She met the first two with a wide sweep of her sword. The heavenly blade cut through the demons, separating their heads from their shoulders as if cutting through warm butter. The next Goreal anticipated her strike and ducked.

Following the path, she kicked the demon, the edge of her boots catching the thing in the neck. All it did was push him away from her, which allowed her to score the next one with a deep cut in its shoulder, nearly removing the arm.

Still, the cursed things kept materializing and she knew she had little time left. Even as serenity overtook her, a part of her wondered what it would have been like to be with Jackson. To spend a lifetime with him.

The demon next to her exploded into a cloud of black dust. She spun and found herself facing a tall figure in black. She only had the chance to recognize him before the demons washed over them like a tidal wave.

Her focus blurred. All she could see was the flash of her blade as it slashed and cut at Goreals, until she and her sword were covered in dark blood. At her back, she felt the comforting presence of Ash, which in itself was mind bending. Then she didn’t have time to think about anything else. Not even how she would get to Jahi, who stood off to the side, her wicked gaze satisfied.