Good Intentions 3: Personal Demons (43 page)

The bubbling spray from Hank’s roar turned out to be a mere preview of the deluge he spewed against the wall. Souls trapped within the barrier screamed in all-new agony as flesh, bone, and rock burned and boiled away. Then the worm’s huge maw plunged into the weakened spot and burrowed deeper.

“Fight off the sentries!” Lorelei ordered her archers and flyers. “Give him cover!” She turned away as arrows and demons flew into the sky, facing the brutes she’d gathered earlier and the mob that followed. “The rest of you, move in. Exploit the breach the moment Hank is clear.”

As she spoke, the wall and its defenders reacted. Hank suffered the same treatment as the behemoths guarding the battering ram at the gate, yet much of his bulk was already buried too deep within the edifice to be reached by those above. The wall itself twisted inward all around the worm, attacking his hide with splintered bones and sharp rock. None of it seemed to do anything but spur Hank on.

Within seconds, the flow of battle changed. The wall’s defenders already had to deal with the ram and the demons Lorelei sent through the tunnels used earlier to attack her. This new threat appeared and grew so dire so quickly it sowed panic among the enemy. Arguments at the top of the wall caused distractions, giving her troops greater freedom of movement.

Horns blared out warnings. The battering ram struck the gate with an earthshaking blow.

Another roar drew her attention toward the wall directly ahead. She could no longer see Hank amid the tumult. Instead, she saw a great hole and a crowd of her warriors and brutes rushing in like water sinking into a drain.

She closed her eyes. The crown heated up as she called upon its power. In her mind’s eye, she saw images of a crowded tunnel, monsters shuffling and shoving their way through, and then a final escape. She saw a landscape of jagged rock and tar pits. A single road wound from the gate around the crags and valleys to a black, foreboding palace in the distance.

Dark clouds hung low over the palace, much lower than anywhere else in the sky. A swirling vortex reached down from those clouds to touch the palace like a slow, gentle tornado. She expected such a sight, and visions of demons climbing or flying up the vortex, yet she saw none of the latter.
He must have realized the scope of this attack and halted the summonings,
thought Lorelei.
How many have already made it through?

In the foreground of her vision she saw Hank, battered and bloodied, thrashing and fighting on against a mob of foes that attacked him from all sides. Then she saw wings and blades leap into her vision as battle came to her surrogate.

The vision ended with another thunderous boom from the ram, ending in a loud, momentous crack. Lorelei looked to the noise. The battering ram sat partly embedded in a split between two halves of the metal gate. Her servants roared with excitement as they pushed harder, some now heedless of the others working to pull the ram back for its final blows.

Until now, she’d thought the battle and all it entailed pushed the power of the crown to its limits. The surge of morale and bloodlust among her servants seemed to renew all that, flooding her with even more power.
So much for the better
.
I may need all of it before this is finished.

“Lady Lorelei!” called out a voice from above. The flyer dropped down to kneel beside her. The thin demon folded up its wings, still much larger than Lorelei’s even at rest. His eyes were similarly oversized, resting on a face that seemed stretched out to accommodate them. “News from above, mistress.”

“Speak.”

“We are watched from all sides. Beelzebub, Mammon, Adramalech, and others. All have scouts in the distance. We have seen their magic in the skies.”

“Of course they watch,” said Lorelei. “Do any of them move?”

“One, mistress.” The thing’s head bobbed low in confirmation, then slowly tilted up. Those wide eyes seemed even wider now with the fear of delivering bad news. “Belial’s forces gather on the borders of your realm. S-some of them already pour across.”

“Understood,” she said, turning away.

The thin demon gasped. “Mistress,” it ventured. “Surely Belial knows how your realm lies undefended.”

“Scout, what is your name?”

It flinched in expectation of a violent rebuke. “They…call me Squint?”

She rolled her eyes. “Of course they do.” Then she pointed toward the tunnel through the wall. “The way is clear. Find the fastest path to Azazel’s palace. I must know that and whatever resistance awaits along the way. Locate me on the other side of the wall to deliver your report. Go now.”

Her servant gasped in surprise when she turned away. She didn’t notice his awe at not being hit even once during their exchange. Squint leapt into the air, his broad wings unfurling halfway, and then swiftly glided over the heads of countless warriors and demons before disappearing into the tunnel.

Lorelei waved the rest of her troops forward. The crowd passed her by while she walked at a deliberate, steady pace. She focused her mind on the task at hand. It was the best way to resolve all this quickly—and to drown out any hedonistic thoughts about how it felt to wield so much power.

Far too many others had fallen into that trap.

* * *

“They’re on the seventeenth floor. The middle apartment, not the ones on the corner.” Evelyn gazed up from the street with a cold, admiring smile. “How clever.”

“What’s clever about that?” asked Leon. “A place like that keeps you isolated. Only a couple of ways out, unless you can fly or somethin’. Or teleport, but we know how unreliable that is.” He stood beside her on the sidewalk with Aaron, Bill, and Dutch, taking in both the condominium building and the layout of the street. Light rain fell from a dark sky. Businesses all around had already closed for the night. This stretch of the street shut down early on Sundays.

“Hell, Leon, this whole neighborhood’s a death trap,” spoke up Dutch. The bearded man wore an almost cartoonish scowl, looking up at the tall buildings with approval. “Downtown here is built half on landfill in a major earthquake zone, and right next to the bay over there where you can have a tsunami. Gotta be an idiot to live in a high-rise in a place like this.”

“We can always count on you, Dutch,” Bill sighed.

“That stuff’s all a matter of public record and geological research, Bill,” retorted Dutch. “I’ve got all the maps and charts back home if you wanna see. What they don’t tell you is how all that earthquake safety architecture is a big ol’ scam in collusion with the insurance companies and FEMA just like the World Trade—”

“Dutch,” grumbled Leon. “Unless you can tell me we’re gonna have a nine-point quake in the next few hours, it don’t matter.”

The other man practically retreated into his beard as he lowered his head. “Jet fuel don’t burn hot enough to melt steel beams is all I’m sayin’,” he muttered.

“Evelyn, what’s clever about this?” Leon asked again. “How are you sure it’s that one?”

“Hm?” the blonde murmured. She’d grown accustomed to tuning out the paranoid rantings of her mortal students. Dutch was only the worst of the lot. With his outburst settled, Evelyn gestured to the upper floors of the building. “I’m sure of it because that’s the only apartment I cannot see properly. It is obscured from supernatural view, but it’s subtle. I would not have noticed were I not scrutinizing the building so carefully.”

“It’s seventeen floors up. You can’t see much from here anyway,” noted Aaron.

“No, yet I can sense life and activity in the others. And now that I know to look, I can see the difference between that apartment and the rest. The elevation keeps it out of casual view, as does its place nestled among other such apartments. A penthouse or a corner unit would stand out. Such a spot also complicates any action taken against them, what with all the potential mortal witnesses so close at hand.”

She didn’t mention the other obstacle, namely the likely presence of guardian angels nearby. Evelyn had already caught glimpses of white shapes darting in and out of the building. Within an area as dense as this, such traffic would be constant. Those guardians would reliably look first to their mortal charges before interfering in other matters. That urge to get mortals out of harm’s way would buy Evelyn’s allies time to act, yet sooner or later those guardians could enlist other angels nearby who wouldn’t be so distracted.

“This will require speed,” Evelyn warned. “Our escape must also be swift.”

“Yeah, we’re on top of that,” said Leon. “Nobody wants a serious tangle with the police.”

“Yes. Police. That’s precisely what concerns me,” murmured the demon. No one caught her sarcasm.

“What’s the plan, Dad?” Aaron asked Leon.

“We open this up the old fashioned way,” the leader decided. “Dutch, you think you can get around in here?” Leon gestured to the office tower looming over their side of the street. It stood in an almost perfect match with the condominiums.

“Are you askin’ if I can handle some locks and security cameras?” Dutch scoffed. “Shit, I took care of every camera watchin’ us when we pulled up. The worst this place might have is a couple live security guards. That won’t be a problem.”

“Okay. Aaron, you and Dutch take a couple of the boys. Find a position across from the target. Call in on the radio as soon as you’ve got a spot. If we’re lucky, you’ll be able to take ‘em all out in the first swing. Evelyn, can you go along to help? The floors on these buildings don’t line up exactly. I don’t want ‘em looking at the wrong apartment.”

Evelyn’s lips curled into a wry smile. She wondered if the older man wasn’t more concerned with keeping her where she might protect his son—or where his son might keep an eye on her. “I have no objections. What of our allies? They’ll understand if this is ended quickly, but they’ll at least want to be involved after coming out this far.”

“They’ll be back-up. Besides, we have to keep them out of sight as much as possible, right?” Leon reached into the bulky jacket he wore to cover up his body armor and pulled out a radio. “Coot, you there?” he asked.

“I’m here,” came the response.

“We’ve got the right place. Pull the semi through the alleyway. We’ll let everyone off at the loading dock. And keep the engine quiet. We don’t want to make a ruckus.”

“You’ve got it, boss.”

“I’ll be there when you arrive. Loretta, you copy?”

“I read you,” answered Loretta’s voice.

“You and Bill stay outside on the street for containment duty. Roll in some fog around these two buildings, but make sure it doesn’t get in view of the targets. Loop it around to close both of ‘em off from view from the outside. We don’t want them to smell trouble coming. Then put up some deterrence spells on either end of the block so we don’t have traffic or pedestrians coming through.” He tucked the radio back into his jacket and nodded to his comrades. “Okay, we gotta nudge some of the neighbors out for a couple hours to make sure we don’t have witnesses to complicate things. Let’s get this done. Quietly.”

* * *

Dutch had been right about security. The group had no problem with locks, cameras, alarms, or guards. Magic took care of all that, while discipline kept things orderly. For all their paranoid delusions about an impending apocalypse, the Light was an orderly group. Evelyn didn’t need to lift a finger to help them along their way through the building.

Finding an optimal spot required a little guesswork. Evelyn and the four men walked through quiet, darkened cubicle halls without a soul to stand in their way. The first office they tried sat a little too low for their liking, but that only meant the second would be almost exactly in line with their target.

Someone thought to darken the hallway outside before opening any office doors. Evelyn and the rest of the crew waited as Dutch wrapped a copper wire around the door handle and mumbled his incantation. He blew a puff of air across the handle and gave it a twist. The door opened as easily as the others.

Inside, the office lay dark and quiet. “Perfect,” said Aaron.

Evelyn looked around the corner of the doorway. Across the street, she saw only an obscured window, as if the glass had been fogged over. Mortals would not be equally affected. “What do you see?” she asked.

“They don’t have a curtain up or anything,” said Aaron. “I think that’s our two witches in there. Looks like an ordinary living room.”

Dutch already had his rifle out. He raised it to his shoulder in the doorway to peer through the scope. “Yep. Looks like they’re havin’ a pizza party or some shit. I count seven of ‘em.”

“Then let’s do it,” said Aaron. “We’ll give it a minute to see if anyone else comes out of a bathroom or anything.” He grunted out instructions to his men, who dutifully cleared the desk and chair away from the window. Then everyone set to pulling their assault rifles from their bags.

“You’re sure this is how you want to start?” asked Evelyn. Dutch and another man took a knee at the window. The other two needed a moment more to fiddle with their fancy guns. “You all carry talismans to ward off bullets. What makes you think the enemy does not do the same?”

“A talisman isn’t perfect,” said her pupil. “It’ll ward off a few bullets, but it won’t ward off a few dozen. This’ll be over in seconds. If not, we’ve got back-up ready, right?”