The Sword of Michael - eARC (13 page)

Time for my Jerry Miculek Smith Custom.

Nothing like a .357 hand-cannon to say “Old School.”

In the fight, when you’re aligned with the Light, and in the Right (I get poetic when I’m a bit giddy with the fight and the presence of the Warrior Angels) there’s a sense of being and not-being, a sense of being a portal for the Mighty Warriors of Light on Earth, who guide us, who strengthens our hands for battle, and guides us. I’m a fair shot most of the time, and I get plenty of practice on Dark-Siders, but even on my best day I never shot as fast and as accurately as I did just now
BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM click
…

Oh, how I hate *that* sound…

I dumped the expended casings and grabbed for a speed loader…

…just as they sprang again, teeth bared, the matron in front, leaking from two massive glowing holes in her chest, but still full of fight; the young female looking down at the three holes in her torso, staggering forward; the male with a sear along side his head and another graze on his shoulder, must have missed one, and Dillon grabbed the Super Soaker, the sling still around my neck and pulling me off my reload as he sprayed another arc around us, almost fast enough to slow them all but the matron was on him and then she curled back and shrieked so loud I felt something give in my ear, and Dillon twisted the Gerber Mark II fighting knife that had appeared like magic in his hand, cold steel and blessed by the water running down his hands and the matron vampire sprang back, both clawed hands gripping her midsection, one of her extended claws gouging a track white and then red along Dillon’s jaw, and I dropped the speed loader and fumbled another one out, a little bit of panic welling up in me and

First In Front reached out his hand and steadied mine, Take your time…fast, he whispered as he guided my hand into inserting the speed loader and twisting the cylinder shut and then aligning the revolver at the young male springing at me, his mouth opened wide, leading with his teeth…

…which shattered as I put several .357 hand loads in his mouth and down his throat and out the back of his head.

His head shattered, too.

One down, two to go…the young female bounded, but it seemed with the last of her energy, and I placed one round carefully between the dark holes of her eyes she would have been so pretty when she turned and ended her existence.

The matron stood across the room. The demon struggled with Tigre behind her. The matron leaked her essence from gaping holes and the massive wound Dillon’s knife had opened up in her.

“Shaman…” she hissed. “You’re on a journey you will live just long enough to regret.”

BOOM
.

A hand load cratered her face.

Three down, but the demon turned…

…and was snatched down by a white tiger, tireless in battle…Hurry, Marius, hurry downstairs…

“You up?” I said.

Dillon sheathed his knife, checked his weapon. “Good to go.”

“Let’s roll.”

We took the Down Stairs.

* * *

In shamanic training, when a practitioner is first taught to journey, the first journey that we make is one to the Lower World. It’s classic, simple, and fairly safe while under the supervision of a good teacher-shaman. You journey to a place in the natural world where there’s some sort of entrance to the Lower World, you travel down through there, through a tunnel that twists and turns and eventually you arrive in the Lower World. The Lower World looks like the Middle World—except there are no trappings of the “civilized” world we live in. It’s all about Mother Nature. Mountains, lush forests, oceans, streams, animals and spirit beings. It’s the home of benign and helping spirits, at least at the first levels.

But in the map of the Lower World, there are regions deep and dark below even that surface, and part of the training of the shamanic practitioner is to venture there with the allies one finds (or who find you) to explore, because each nook and cranny of the Other Realms can hide a secret, a spirit or an insight that can help—or kill—a shaman.

These stairs were like that tunnel, leading and twisting down.

This staircase wasn’t shaped with human intention; it twisted and turned upon itself, crossing over, though always down and the roof dropped down and became one of earth, dripping moisture, crisscrossed with strange veins that looked as though they pulsed with blood or some other fluid.

Like being inside an intestine.

The air stank, had a thick substance to it that left a nasty tasting film in our mouths.

There were no Guardians upon the stairs.

That worried me.

Dillon’s breath rasped.

“You okay?” I asked.

“Yeah,” he said. “Good enough.” He paused. “I’m scared, Marius.”

“I know, bro. I know. Me, too.” I took a deep breath. Fear is the mind-killer, as a great writer once wrote. I called and I was answered…

…Michael, stand with us and strengthen us in your Work, lend us your courage and your strength and your divine guidance in this Dark Place…

And like that it lifted, and we felt infused.

“Felt like someone lifted a pack off me,” Dillon said.

“It’s just all the ammo you’ve run through.”

He laughed. “No such thing as too much ammo.”

“Word, that,” I said.

Faint and far-off, down the stair case, a scream.

A woman’s scream.

Sabrina.

We ran. Towards the scream, down the stairs, our knees aching with the impact and our boots clattering and pounding on the wooden stairs that became steps carved out of living stone, and yet it turned, and yet it turned again, and again…

Another scream.

From a woman we both loved.

And the stairs ended in a cavern, the way illuminated by glowing globes mounted in the wall, a sickly pale light in each nook, the passageway twisting…

…and then opening into a chamber.

In the middle of the room, a raised dais. Tied out, spread eagled, Sabrina twisted against the red cord bindings that held her. She was naked. Her spread legs were pointed at a deformity in the rock that shaped the chamber, a deformity that pulsed like a scabbed over wound with a vein beneath it. In a loose formation around the dais, centered on the one I’d come to find, were what appeared to be men.

And there were Guardians here.

Not one, but Three—huge, twelve-feet tall and muscled accordingly with bodies that would make a bodybuilder swoon. Faces human-appearing, handsome beyond handsome, but with an evil oiliness and slyness that repulsed.

The horns didn’t help.

Demi-Demons.

A step up from your run-of-the-mill worker demon, roughly equivalent in the Dark Side way with a demi-god, half-elven, or half-angelic, half-human.

And Fallen.

Further powered by a Fallen somewhere close by, probably on the other side of that portal, ready to cross when the right energy was there and, from the appearance of it, the energy of rape and murder under dark sacrament was what they had in mind.

We were there just in time.

Dillon was already rolling forward, and I felt his energy shifting, the rage rising in him, overriding his fear and become something elemental, something older than primeval, the fiercest flame of all, the Divine Male in defense of the Divine Feminine, a friend in defense of another, a father for a child…

“Dillon! Stop!”
My voice rang with something much Greater than me, something much larger, and I felt the presence of the angels gathering at our sides, at our backs…

He stopped.

The closest demon laughed. “Don’t stop him, Marius.” The voice was male, confident. “Let him run. You’re always saying in accordance with the Divine Plan…this is part of the plan. Divine, isn’t it?”

Demonic laughter from all three.

Behind them, the ring of men laughing. And in the center, the block-headed grey hair I’d last seen in an expensive business suit. To either side men with the greasy look of the small town politician, and at least one officious public official, probably a sheriff or a police officer.

Possessed.

“Welcome to the party, Marius,” the one in charge—or so he thought—said.

“How are you, Will?” I said. “Tossed any babies in the fire lately?”

He didn’t like that, but he hid it fairly well. One of the demons looked at him and laughed mockingly. He didn’t like that, either.

“Not lately. But the night is young. Figure we’d warm up with your tasty little biker bitch friend here, then move onto you and Mr. Shoot-Em-Up there. We might let him live so he can explain all those dead law enforcement officers upstairs. Make for an amusing day in court, I think.”

“Marius…” Dillon growled.

Sabrina raised her head. She was clouded, maybe drugged, definitely fogged by a Dark Veil.
And then I felt Her…the One who worked through the One I slept with each night…a brilliant white light descending on Sabrina, around her, and I saw, as though through a brilliant porthole window lit with light, Jolene, face drawn with fatigue, lines furrowing her face as she concentrated, and surrounded Sabrina with light, and I had the sense of dark things throwing themselves against the shield wall Jolene held even as she breathed more life back into Sabrina…

…and I felt my own rage rise up, the heat of the righteous anger coming up in me, and I raised my hand and called upon the Powers…

…and was shown how it had happened before, so long ago, and now the opportunity to choose differently, how long ago the rage I’d felt in the defense of those I loved, those I’d sworn to protect, and how that rage had fueled the power I’d been given, the power I’d been gifted with, and how it transformed it into a powerful weapon, the most powerful of all, but once I’d done that, there was no returning, the path of rage and anger led me down the Dark Road…

…choose differently, Tigre whispered, from far above where she wrestled with the demon on the threshold…

…First In Front touched his coup stick to my shoulder, and I felt his strength flow into me…

…Burt nodded as he settled down on the floor, his head tilted to one side…

And I brought it down, dialed it back like a rheostat, took a deep breath, let it settle down through me, down through the soles of my feet, down into Mother Earth

and there let the energy be grounded, let it settle, connect with the Mother and let her strength and wisdom flow up through you

And a stillness came over me, the stillness that comes in a forest in the space between strong breezes, when the hush settles; the stillness between heartbeats; the stillness of the
’
twixt and the
’
tween.

Power gathered. At my back, to my sides. The Presence of the Light.

And the Mighty Warriors of Light on Earth.

“Not me, Creator God, but you through me, in accordance with your Plan,” I whispered.

My chest swelled…

and a huge burst of light issued out of my chest, like a flash suddenly ignited, and the Light held open, as I was the Portal, and in the brilliant glare of the Light I saw issuing forth the Warriors, who leaped at and engaged the three demi-demons…the possessed humans throwing up their hands to cover their eyes, others stirring at their backs…bodyguards?

“Dillon!” I yelled. He’d already sprang forward, a killing light in his eyes. My shout didn’t slow him; he grabbed one of the humans, an obese man in a Mason County Sheriff’s uniform, lieutenant’s bars on his collar, and head-butted him, knocking him cold and then he was beside Sabrina, his blooded knife in his hand slashing at the cordage, pulling her up and throwing her over his shoulder, grunting with the effort, as Sabrina was no small woman and she was completely unconscious.

Shots from behind the cluster of humans, and then several more goat-soldiers and Cabal clones emerged from a side tunnel. I worked that trigger—a Geissele SSE—like there was no tomorrow, smoke curling from my barrel, and serviced the targets before they could get completely clear of the tunnel’s mouth, stacking ’em up so the follow on echelons tripped over the bodies in front of them, more good shooting.

Dillon staggered past me and headed for the stairs. I covered him and backed towards the stairs…

the Demi-Demons were swinging great swords of flame, hammering on the shields and swords of the Angelic Warriors of Light, one of whom turned and looked at me and mouthed the words: Run, Marius, we will hold…

And that made me want to run *to* them, my beloved brothers…

RUN!

The blast of angelic communication lifted me and turned me and set up the stairs, right behind Dillon, huffing and swearing as he staggered up a step at a time.

RUN! Burt shouted, his brethren swirling around him

RUN! First in Front shouted, demon blood running from his war-knife, his coup stick matted with demon flesh and brains

“Run!” I shouted.

Dillon jogged up two stairs, stumbled and fell. “God, Marius,” he gasped. “I can’t run up these stairs with her. How we gonna get her out of here…”

He was agonized. It’s just biology, part of being in the meat…he was in good shape, but we’d just fought our way down into an antechamber of Hell, and now he was carrying an unconscious woman up at least the equivalent of five stories worth of stairs on the run with demons snapping at his heels.

“Do the best you can,” I said. “I’ll hold them.”

“You can’t…”

“Get her out of here, Dillon! You’re stronger than me, you can carry her, I can’t, I’ll hold them here and fall back after you. Give me your spare mags.”

“What about the demon up top?”

“Dude, one crisis at a time, okay? Let’s get up there first. Go!”

He slung Sabrina across his shoulders in a fireman’s carry, wrapped his off arm over her dangling arm and gripped her leg, propped his LMT in the crook of his strong arm and started up, huffing—

—there was movement at the bottom of the stairs, and I welcomed them with a good long string of shots, then misted the air with Holy Water and I fell back to the next landing, Dillon already working his way up to the next—