Demon Accords 6: Forced Ascent (28 page)

Amaymon stopped and tore a lamppost out of the sidewalk, swinging it as I fired off my final shot.  Somehow, he moved the ten-foot post fast enough to catch my pitch, punching the plasma ball away from him just enough that it hit a building behind and to his right.  Standing upright, he held the massive bat one handed and stared at me.  Running feet behind me made Grim back us up, even as my heads-up mental image showed two figures approaching on foot, my mental link telling me the trailing one was Tanya.

“My Lord, I am here to aid you,” Orias yelled out, still running and still talking.  Dumbass.

Baldy was headed straight for me, bladed arms raised to strike, but Grim had learned from the priest and the bull demon in Baltimore.  A vampire energy Push stopped the demon duke like an invisible wall, giving me enough time to move to him and freeze his feet to the ground with a combination of aura and Posting energies twisted together, like an invisible ship’s hawser.  He hacked one crablike arm at me and Grim caught it between the flats of both aura-lined palms—the Jackie Chan sword capture, Hell’s version. He tried to pull his stuck feet free as his other arm swung back to strike me, only it flew off completely when three feet of tungsten sword cleaved it free.  He locked eyes with me as Tanya’s second sword snipped his shiny head free from his neck, eyelids slowly blinking, skull tumbling, and then there was nothing left but to call a Kirby for cleanup in aisle H.

“Impressive teamwork, but my vassal’s sacrifice has given me time to heal and I don’t think your tricks will have quite the same result with
me,”
Amaymon said.

A thought came to me that wasn’t mine. Two thoughts really.

Hello, you’re monologuing just like your idiot minion.

That was the first.  The second was more of an idea. I glanced at Tanya, who was staring fixedly at the demon prince.  No, not at him, but just past him.  I saw what she was looking at, and her idea made sense.  Enormous sense, but the sheer coincidence and unlikely providence of it all made me glance Heavenward for just a moment.

“Oh, He won’t help you now, Mal.  It would be a breach of His precious Accords,” Amaymon said, not understanding my wondering look.  “He is sooo enamored of free will.”

I didn’t have to look at Tanya to know what she was thinking—more grandstanding.  So when she threw her lefthand sword at him, I was already moving, her attack plan received and acknowledged.  I ran and leaped straight at him, feet first.

The sword punched into his left foot, but he barely noticed, instead throwing the lamppost, spear-like, at my vampire before turning to meet my charge.  I trusted Tanya to dodge the projectile and slide into position on the ground at his feet.  Her left foot roundhouse kicked the back of his right knee as my feet met his outstretched hand and I bounced off.

Without Tanya’s actions, my impact, which had enough power to cave in the side of a dump truck, would have done nothing to the red and black giant.  But with one foot pinned and the other knee buckled, he went over backward, crashing into the unique property behind him and half-crushing the sign in its yard.

That’s when the vision struck along with the flare of heat from my God Tear.  Only it wasn’t a vision, more like a dream.  I went from fighting a demon prince to being in a foofy pink bedroom, lying on… no. Floating over a soft, twin-sized princess bed complete with canopy.  My attention was on the portion of the wall I could see through the bed’s draped canopy.  Painted with a mixture of Disney characters, it was mostly normal—other than the strand of black that was growing downward from the ceiling, beginning to cover Goofy and branching off to flow right through Princess Ariel’s friend Sebastian.  My form floated out to investigate, finding strands of blackness running down every wall and all across the ceiling.  Instant unreasoning rage overwhelmed me at this magical attack on my charge.  Now my ghostly purple form was touching a strand and following it backward, up the wall, through the ceiling across the night sky of New York City, riding the twisted black cable of magic like a road.  Floating across the cityscape till I was coming down through the roof of an apartment building, through the top floor, down to the second, and suddenly in a room of chanting women.  Thirteen women, all older, all focused.

As one, their closed eyes snapped open, identical looks of first disbelief, then outrage, and finally, as my purple hand clipped the closest one’s head from her shoulders, terror.  A flurry of violent images flowed like a first person shooter game gone amuck.

Suddenly I was back in the street, kneeling on one leg, weak and breathing like I was asthmatic, the Tear cooling under my shirt.

Tanya was alternating between watching me worriedly and looking back at where the demon prince was jerking and shuddering on the yellow and white building’s sign.  Mere moments had gone by.

The part of the sign that I could still see indicated it was Saint somebody’s Church, and the effect on Amaymon was graphic. Every part of the demon prince’s body had erupted with boils and his skin was bubbling as the church’s consecrated ground seared the unholy flesh within its boundaries.

He howled, bounding to his feet, then stood atop the remains of the signpost and glared at us.

“That’s it?  That’s everything you have?  I can stand this all night, this blighted ground He has favored with his Grace.  And you, Malahidael, you are spent and worthless,” he said through clenched teeth, blisters and foul steam rising all about his body.

Weakly, I pointed just behind him.  He frowned, then twisted slightly to see where I directed.

Barbiel stood between the white columns of the church’s front, but he wasn’t the Barbiel I knew so well.  Gone were the casual clothes, replaced by silver and gold armor that shown with a light so bright, it was hard to look at.  A golden helmet covered his curly hair and his blue eyes showed an emotion I had never seen on his face before: intense, deadly anger.

A four-foot blade of white flames was in his hands as he advanced on Amaymon.

For his part, the demon prince gaped a bit, looking like a horrific idiot.  Then he straightened and reached into the air in front of him to produce his own sword—this one dripping with a soul-sucking blackness and radiating a cold so intense, I could feel it from forty feet away.

“Barbiel, you are less my match than Malahidael.  This will mark your final end.”

“But you’re in my yard, bitch!” Barbiel answered, confirming my suspicions that he’d been spending way too much time reading teenagers’ cell texts.

The two came together in a blur of blades that was hard for even vampire vision to follow, the impact thunderous.  They both staggered back, a line of blackness on Barbiel’s chestplate and a glowing white rent across the inside of Amaymon’s right thigh.

Again, they came together for an explosive exchange of strikes and again, they separated. 

Barbiel was unmarked, but Amaymon was limping and when he turned, I could see another white streak across his right calf. 

I don’t know if they would have been evenly matched anywhere else or any other time.  Maybe Amaymon was right and he was the more powerful being.  But here, on hallowed ground, already punished by our running battle and hundreds of bullets, the prince of Hell was outmatched.  And here’s another fact you might not know… real blade fights, be they sword or knife, ax or spear, are decidedly much faster than Hollywood would have you believe.  The third exchange was the last, as Barbiel beat Amaymon’s guard down, stepped to his left toward that weakened right leg, and speared the demon through his ribs, the tip appearing out the giant’s upper left shoulder blade.  Then the Angel of October smoothly pulled the blade free and lopped off the demon’s head.

The massive oblong shape fell to the ground and exploded into embers and ash on contact.  A larger, flashier explosion followed when the now eight-foot remains timbered to the consecrated earth immediately after.

Chapter 24

“Nice sword,” I said when my angelic case officer looked over at us.  “Where can I get one?”

“You already have one, Malahidael… you just need to call it,” he said, puzzled by my ignorance.

Great, like I couldn’t have used
that
tidbit of knowledge many months and hundreds of demons ago.

A blast of wind buffeted me as one of the news choppers swung extra close for a better picture.  When I looked up and met the pilot’s eyes, he pulled the aircraft back despite the visible haranguing his onboard reporter was giving him.

Two more helicopters circled the scene, each with local news call signs on their sides.  The biggest paranormal fight of the century had just been broadcast live on global networks. Fantastic.

“Ah, the cat’s kind of out of the bag here,” I said to Barbiel, who approached me, sword vanishing as he walked, armor morphing back into street clothes.

“I am just a vague person-shaped blur on their equipment.  You and Lailah, however, are sure to be rendered in exquisite detail,” he replied, standing just on the edge of the church grounds.

“So what happens now?” I asked him, glancing at Tanya, who was picking up her sword. 

“I do not know, Mal—can I call you Mal?  I kind of like it,” he said.

“Yeah sure, but isn’t the Big Guy gonna throw the book at us for letting this all happen in public?”

“You think He is displeased that such vivid proof of his existence has been provided without his input?  You have heard the phrase…
any publicity is good publicity
?”

“Is he dead?” Lydia asked, suddenly streaking onto the scene, looking around while clutching the assault rifle tightly. “Is Amaymon dead?”

I could hear Arkady, Trenton, and Stacia coming not far behind and a rhythmic thudding told me that ‘Sos was done with his battle as well and approaching.

“He is more than dead…he is destroyed,” Barbiel said, his tone somber.

“Completely destroyed?  Not just returned to Hell?” she asked, poking at the swirls of ash that had fallen back on the ruined church sign.

Before he could answer, a male voice yelled at us.  “Drop the weapon now!  Put your hands on your heads and drop the weapons!”

Lydia turned, the M4/M203 in her hand and I sensed what was about to happen before it did.  Desperately, I flashed a burst of aura toward the Secret Service team that was demanding our compliance.  I wasn’t fast enough.  The agent who had yelled now fired a stream of high velocity rounds from his FN P-90 that shut off in mid-burst as my aura blast arrived.

Turning back to Lydia, I saw her falling away, shoved by Trenton’s horizontal dive.  He had never stopped running, arriving just at the moment that the shooting started, and he was faster than the others.  A spray of red mist exploded from his back as the little rounds ripped through him, climbing up his body till the last few exited his skull.  I
moved
to him, meeting Tanya, who caught his falling body.  His open wounds were smoking, as if burned and I suddenly remembered the mix of silver, copper, and DU rounds that had been directed at Amaymon.

The back of his head was a series of gaping holes, but his face was oddly peaceful when she tilted it up her way, just three tiny dots to show where the bullets had entered his cheek, nose, and forehead.

Part of me felt disbelief, part felt Tanya’s enormous loss and self-blame, and part of me felt rage—plasma-hot rage.  Turning away just as Stacia and Arkady appeared on either side of my vampire, a tiny portion of my brain flashed through a series of memories that had till this point been missing: Trenton at Plasma, guarding my neighbors; Trenton at the Brooklyn Heights home, guarding Tanya; Trenton guarding us all through countless demon incursions.

The rest of my brain flashed into full combat mode as Grim took charge.  One of ours had been killed by those we were trying to protect; therefore, they had just forfeited protection and become enemy combatants.  Grim knew what to do with enemy combatants.  First, their weapons. 
Unlock.

The biggest burst of aura that I could now remember left me, expanding out in an arc of exploding guns and ammo.  Weapons, hand-held, holstered, or lying forgotten on the ground, all burst apart in flames and thunder as the purple wave reached them.  Above, three newly arriving Apache gunships lost their chain guns and a good portion of their stubby wings when their loads of 30mm cannon shells and Hellfire missiles ignited from within.  Flight integrity compromised, they tilted away, airframes shuddering.

The half-globe of ordinance destruction expanded outward, passing one hundred, two hundred, and three hundred yards in every direction.  At least a hundred arriving cops and agents were suddenly batting at flames and burning bits of gunpowder as their tools of the trade turned against them.

High overhead, beyond the atmosphere, something came online, catching the attention of my inner monster.  Different from other satellites, it was powering up to do something, something that I was sure to disapprove of.  Grim pushed my right hand up in the air and made a grasping motion.  As he twisted my fist, the space-borne weapons platform moved with it, twisting its position just as it released its charge of focused light.  The infrared laser beam was fully visible to my eyes as it carved a burning black line through the green grass of Lafayette Square, hundreds of feet from our position, the line running across the ground and through a car, ending when the satellite’s onboard capacitor exhausted itself.  Before the space weapon could recharge, Grim squeezed our right hand tightly and high above, the satellite crumpled in on itself—a billion-dollar crushed beer can.