Payable On Death: A Jax Rhodes Novel, Book One (The Jax Rhodes Series 1) (16 page)

"You have less than four hours to prepare and be at the next location. Report back here once you've destroyed the gateway. Even if you're injured. No back alley doctors from here on out." Tobias speared Dane with a look that brooked no arguments.

That didn't stop Dane from muttering something about Dr. Rob's credentials under his breath as the angel left the room.

"I heard that. Three hours and forty-two minutes. I suggest you start packing, Sin Eater."

Rather than aggravate the angel anymore than he was, Dane and I got busy setting up our gear. It took less than an hour to get everything prepared, so we spent the rest of the time going over maps, blueprints we'd found online, and Google street view to have a better understanding of the layout of the next church.

One protein bar, one bottle of water, and one trip to the bathroom later and we were ready to go.

The church looked
different from the first one but it felt exactly the same. Energy, dark and heavy, pressed against us. Even with the sun sitting high in the sky without a single cloud blocking its rays of light, a normal person would feel a sense of dread, a natural instinct to keep away and that's just what the demons wanted.

Once a beacon to believers, the tall steeple, its white paint faded and peeling, barely contrasted the clear sky. The brick façade had begun to erode away, exposing the wooden boards beneath it like a decomposing body. There was one noticeable and disconcerting difference from the first and second churches apart from bricks and stone. Where there had been some signs of life crawling and scurrying around at the last location, nothing moved or lived within a block of this church.

Nothing natural, anyway.

Dane and I fought the rising tide of demon energy to cross the grounds. The sun weakened demons but they weren't vampires in some horror movie who'd burst into flames and die as their ashes scattered in the wind. No, they could still manipulate and distort your mind. Still powerful and dangerous compared to the average mortal, if the church was half as infested as it felt, destroying the portal wasn't going to be as easy as the last time.

And that was saying something, considering I'd blown up a street corner.

Lesser demons clawed their way down from the rafters the moment we breached the front door. All attempts to mask their true nature gone, poisonous saliva dripped from their mouths as they hissed and screeched at us. Fetid breath mixed with the telltale sulfuric odor, creating a noxious layer in the atmosphere. My protein bar threatened to make its way back up as the first demon attacked.

Blades drawn, I drove one dagger into its side when it lunged, turning to avoid deadly claws. Injured, but not enough to stop it, the demon came at me again. With a short up-kick to its chin, snapping its jaws closed and its head back, I pressed forward, shoving my other blade into its stomach and jerked hard to the side. Entrails spilled out onto the floor, splashing against my shoes.

Demon hunting's a messy business. Good thing my new wardrobe was devoid of all color apart from black.

Dane emptied his first mag as I continued to slice and dice my way through the crowd. I'd stopped thinking, stopped trying to plan the next move in an unchoreographed fight. Muscle memory took over, my hands and feet moving like they would in the ring. Except instead of boxing gloves, my hands were fisted around daggers, adding weight to my blows and a deadly finishing move.

For the first time, I felt like the hunter everyone expected me to be.

Demons littered the floor around us. Their thick blood coated everything, including us, in an oily, black sheen. After Dane found a clean spot on his shirt, he wiped the demon plasma from my face and then his own. We'd only cleared the first level. We couldn't afford to be blinded by blood and sweat in our eyes before moving on to the next. He started to say something, something no doubt sweet and sentimental, but there wasn't time or need as the next wave of demons scurried up from the basement. I knew he cared for me. I hoped he knew I felt the same way as we dove into the fray again.

Beating back the demons rushing up the staircase was easier than in the open expanse of the worship hall. No more than two wide could pass through the doorway. Neither of us bothered to waste the ammo, simply cutting them down as they came up. Like shooting fish in a barrel, until one of them got wise.

Lesser demons weren't the brightest of creatures, formed from some of the most twisted, damned human souls and focused on one solitary task at a time, torture, torment, consume. Every once in a while, you came across one who had the makings to be more, the desire to move up the ranks and become a stronger, badder demon. Like Lazarus or any one of the legions the Devil created.

Like this one.

It made its way up and over the others, climbing on backs, stepping on heads until it reached the top. Pushing off and rocketing out of the doorway, it hit me with enough force to slam me back toward the worship hall. Dane called my name, his voice rising in decibel and panic when I didn't answer immediately. With the wind knocked out of me and a demon pinning me to the floor, it took a minute to find my voice. He'd almost fought his way back to me, our gazes locking long enough to reassure him I was okay, when another minion twice as large as the rest charged into him.

Dane went down like a quarterback sacked on Sunday night football, hitting the floor hard. The beast, using my chest as a chair, took advantage of the distraction and grabbed a fist full of hair, its claws digging into my scalp as it slammed my head against the hardwood. Black dots danced in and out of my vision, a blackout not far off if I didn't turn my attention back to the demon sitting on top of me. Dane still hadn't popped up off the floor. From the sound of things, he was holding his own against his opponent’s ground and pound game.

My head hit the floor again, the blackness creeping over a little more of my vision. I'd lost one dagger when the demon took me down; the other was still within reach. Stretching my arm and fingers to the point of dislocation, I finally felt the blade beneath my fingertips. Sliding it closer, I managed to wrap my hand around the hilt. My grip was all wrong, but I hammered the dagger home anyway. Bury the blade, pull out, repeat. As fast as possible.

Blood ran down the side of my head, pooling in my ear from the lacerations on my scalp, a few of my ribs were broken, and I was one hit away from a concussion. Still, I managed to find the sweet spot, piercing the demon's heart. It collapsed on top of me, giving new meaning to the term dead weight. It took far too much of my rapidly depleting energy to push the damned thing off of me. Somehow managing to get out from under it, I crawled my way over to Dane.

The sound of his struggle faded and I feared the worst. Relief flooded me when I saw he was the victor. Pretty beaten up but still alive, which was more than could be said for the demon he'd slain. We'd had our asses handed to us and hadn't even made it to the basement.

Things were not going according to plan, which meant it was time to improvise.

"Repeat everything that I say. I've never banished this many." I had no idea if it would even work but I kept that little tidbit to myself. Conviction in the words was half the battle.

The next wave of monsters started up the steps. The amount of demons in the church was unlike anything I'd ever seen, like the gateway was open and the Devil emptied the bowels of Hell in the basement. I started the prayer, one I'd learned and memorized from an old text Tobias gave me, with Dane echoing every word. Disappointment threatened to break my concentration when nothing changed. Rather than quit, I picked up the pace and started the sermon again. Dane raised his arm. Gun in hand and rock steady, he pulled the trigger. We kept going, our chanting never missing a beat as the creature hit the floor.

The demons closest to us began to disintegrate. Dozens more coming from the basement hissed and screeched when the sound of our voices hit their ears. We pressed our advantage, picking ourselves up off the floor and slowly making our way back to the basement steps. Dane matched my pace and tempo, his voice melding with mine, adding more power to the prayer than the round robin style we'd been doing. The lesser demons easily dispelled, we were left with only a handful of second level demons between us and the portal. Guns raised, we blasted our way down the stairs, finally reaching the portal.

Unlike the fissure we'd discovered in the first church, this gateway wasn't an open fiery wound in the floor. A large puddle, the size of a cargo van, seeped across the floor like an oil slick, the inky blackness oozing closer as the portal expanded. At its furthest point, it filled the back right corner. Unable to cross it, there was no way to draw the symbols around the entire portal. I dropped to my knees, as close to the edge as I could get without it touching me.

"Nothing in the scroll said what to use to make the symbols." I looked over at Dane, fear in my eyes as I realized we didn't have anything to draw the markings with.

"Shit. We don't have much time. That thing has a pulse, slow and steady when we walked down here. Soon as you knelt in front of it, the pace picked up. I'm calling Tobias. We need to get the script on the floor and get the hell out of here before whatever is trying to cross through shows up." Dane grabbed his cell from inside his coat pocket. "Damn it, no signal."

"We'll just have to make it up as we go then." I pulled my knife out of its sheath and dragged the blade across my forearm, not wanting to sever all the nerve endings in my palm. I pressed against the tender wound to draw even more blood to the surface. I needed enough to draw the symbols all the way around the edge. I didn't want to have to cut myself again.

"You're using blood?
Your
blood? I don't think that's a good idea. Seriously, that's a terrible fucking idea."

Dane's warning barely registered. All my attention was on the symbols, making the shapes exactly as they were in the scroll. And the hum, the lyrical sound of the vibrations coming from within the portal. Scooting over to my right, I moved on to the next symbol and then the next. With each marking, the vibrations changed, intensified, until it became a primal beat matched to my pulse.

"Jax, you need to finish it. Jax!" Dane sounded far away, the pounding of the drums drowning everything else out.

My body began to sway, the circular movement keeping pace as the tribal sounds sped up. Time and space slipped away. There was me, there was the drums, and then there was him. His beautiful features emerged from somewhere deep below the surface. The urge to let go, to lean forward and begin the plunge into the abyss overwhelmed me. Whispers replaced the percussion, promises of safety, security, love. The silky soft words coaxed me, tried to convince me I belonged to him, with him. Hell was my home and it was time I joined the rest of my family.

Perhaps he was right. I'd made my bed when I sold my soul. It was time I laid in it. With him. The Devil. What was left for me, who was I saving? What was I saving? A world where people killed complete strangers for no apparent reason? A world where money is valued above all things, even human life? The people in charge up here are as corrupt as the one below, filling their pockets as they fill the cemeteries with the people they've sacrificed. So much death, so much darkness, so much despair. What was left?

My hand inched closer to the inky surface, the edge of the portal just touching the tips of my fingers. Small jolts of electricity surged through my body, my hair blowing around in a static-charged breeze. Part of me wanted this. Wanted to walk away from the responsibility, from the burden, of saving everyone in a world full of people who wouldn't stop to help me if I was dying on the street.

Why did I have to be the one to save the world? Or the one to destroy it? I never asked for any of it. I didn't want it. Up to my wrist in the portal, his fingers brushed mine, beckoning me to join him. It would be so easy to let go, to submerge myself and disappear into his waiting arms.

Too easy.

The moment his hand closed around mine, gently pulling me in, I felt it. Felt everything in my connection to him. Smug, confident, arrogant. He'd succeeded. I was his. Convinced he'd won, the Devil continued to gingerly caress my hand, tugging with a perfectly calculated amount of force. Not too light he couldn't pull me down and not so hard it gave away his urgency to get me completely through the portal.

Afraid he'd discover the trance began to wear off, I didn't move.

My elbow dipped just below the portal surface as Dane's pain and fear tore down what remained of the Devil's illusion. He hadn't dared touch me, afraid of what might happen once I'd connected with the portal and then with him. Still, he stayed by my side, talking to me, encouraging me to finish what I started. Finish the markings around the portal. His pleas not to leave him were an undercurrent in my mind. Beneath the drums, beneath the Devil's lure, there was the sound of Dane's voice.

I latched on to that, pulling my mind and arm back from the abyss and completing the next symbol. Each character drawn on the floor was more complicated than the last and required more blood. Pumping my fist to get the blood flowing again, I made another small puddle on the floor, dipping my finger in after each stroke in order to finish. With the last line drawn, the oozing black pool hardened into a sheet of shimmering obsidian as the Devil's roars of outrage rang in my ears.

"Next time, I'm bringing some spray paint. I was a pretty proficient tagger back in my middle school days. With the right size nozzle and a can of Rustoleum, I could paint those. Because I am not opening a vein around one of these things again."

"I'm not going to tell you I told you so." Dane ripped the bottom hem of his shirt and wrapped my hand in the scrap of fabric. It wasn't the cleanest bandage I'd ever had but it stemmed the bleeding.

"You do know what you just said is the same thing as saying I told you so, right?" Exhausted, I took his hand, accepting his offer to help me up off the floor.

"The next time, we'll have specific instructions from Tobias. I won't sit back and wait for you to succumb to his call. If he pulled you through…. No, there’s too much riding on you."

"I'm still here. I'm fine. See." I turned my arms over and then back again. Apart from my self-inflicted wound, I'd escaped the thrall of the portal unscathed. "Nothing happened until I cut my hand. Like the blood called to him. If we use a different medium, we should be fine."