Roaring Blood (Demon-Hearted Book 2) (16 page)

The only thing I was worried about was the necromancer.

If Agamemnon should return before we could escape the building, then we risked getting killed on the spot. Hungry for revenge as I was at that moment, I wasn't foolish enough to think that the two of us would be able to stop the necromancer. Not by ourselves. We'd need more help to get that job done.

Kanta was held to the wall by just one rapidly-corroding anchor when, suddenly, there arose a commotion in the upstairs.

Fuck
, I thought.
So close
. The moans of zombies sounded and loud thuds rattled the floors above. The undead had heard the commotion and were going to come down to investigate. I wasn't leashed to the wall anymore, but this wasn't exactly how I'd hoped to take on the pack of mongrels that awaited us. I spit on the final anchor repeatedly while Kanta brought her trident down again and again. Sparks flew and cottonmouth prevailed.

Then we heard the footsteps, louder and more confident than the rest. Those weren't coming from a shambling minion.

Agamemnon was back.

“Shit, that's him!” cried Kanta. “We've got to hurry!”

Gadreel punched me in the chest from the inside, repeatedly, while I tried to bust apart the last remnants of the anchor holding Kanta to the wall. The thing finally broke, but as it did so I heard the door to the cellar opening, followed by an ominous thud.

He was here.

Summoning up as much power as I could muster, I prepared to face Agamemnon once again. There was no way this could end well; Kanta and I were about to get served and we both knew it. But it didn't matter. The two of us were willing to go down fighting; it was an unspoken vow. As much as I wanted to escape, to get away from here with my life and evade the eternity of hellfire that awaited me in the next life, I knew I had to stand and fight. If there was any chance that we might stop, or even slow down the necromancer, then we had to take it.

The heavy steps started coming down the stairs, and before the necromancer came into view I whipped up the chain still clinging to my right arm and let it crack like a whip.

What it struck was not the necromancer, but the headless corpse of a zombie, which tumbled down onto the cellar floor.

Soon thereafter, descended Chief Kubo.

I'd never been so happy to see the guy. I about cried, honest to God, when he came strolling down the stairs with a gore-slick machete in hand. “C-chief?” I uttered, scarcely able to believe what I was seeing.

Kubo wiped at his brow, appraising us with a grin. With that machete in hand and his hair all disheveled, he almost looked like a messy kid who'd been making mud pies in the backyard all day. “In the flesh,” he said, glancing at the chains we wore. He reached into his torn-up jacket and removed the well-worn stack of magical seals. Thumbing through them he selected a pair and threw them down upon the chains.

In an instant, the formerly unbreakable manacles began to rust. With a little effort we were able to break them completely. Kanta massaged her wrists and glanced nervously up the stairs. “H-how did you find this place? And... and...”

Kubo laughed. “Well, the Veiled Order hasn't got the Scythe of Thanatos, but we
do
have Black Hawk helicopters and thermal imaging technology.” He reached out and slugged me in the arm; not hard enough to seriously hurt me, but harder than he would have done in jest. “Plus, you can thank this idiot here. I had a trace on him this whole time. I figured he'd fuck everything up and get himself in trouble, so I made sure to tag him before he left headquarters. A bit of insurance. Would have been easier if he hadn't gotten your asses captured, though.”

My head was spinning. “G-gee, thanks for the vote of confidence, Chief.”

“Don't sweat it, Lucy. It all worked out in the end. We've got the building covered by armed choppers, but we still haven't got the manpower to fight off the entire horde. We need to get out of here quickly and regroup at HQ.”

“Where's Joe?” I asked.

“And Percy?” added Kanta.

Kubo's expression hardened a little. “That I don't know. We sent in some reinforcements but it's going to be hard to say how they fared.” He pointed at the stairs. “Let's beat it.”

***

Hiking up the stairs, I was stunned at the carnage that surrounded us. Kubo and a handful of commandos had managed to storm the place and carve up the undead Agamemnon had left behind as guards. We were lucky the necromancer had cut corners; if he'd left a more substantial force behind the Chief's rescue wouldn't have been so neat and tidy. We exited the building and made our way out into the field, where a black helicopter was waiting for us.

Kubo yanked open the door and waved us into the chopper. “Inside, both of you. Haven't got a minute to lose.”

“W-whoa, we really get to ride in this?” I asked. “I've never been inside a helicopter! This is awesome! Ever since I was a kid I've wanted--”

Kanta elbowed me in the side. “Now's not the time to be a fanboy.” Grimacing, she clutched at her ribs and entered the chopper, sitting next to the Chief. Once I was seated, the door was shut and the pilot, a commando by the name of Harris, started her up.

“You hurt badly?” asked Kubo, glancing at Kanta's side.

“Just a busted rib,” she replied. “I've had worse.”

I smirked.
She's had worse? Damn... tough as nails
. I looked through the window as we lifted off; the building below us, and the surrounding woods, shrank into the distance. “This is so damn cool.”

Kubo cleaned off his machete on his pant leg. “We're going to fly in and survey the area. Joe, Percy and a team of troopers were engaged with the enemy. We supported them with some helicopter fire, but we aren't sure how things turned out. We did advise them to flee, and blew a pretty good chunk out of the woods down there to help them build a running start. They weren't too far from the SUVs when last we sighted them.”

I shook my head. “No, Chief. Agamemnon left the compound back there and said he was coming back for them. I don't know if he actually found them, but--” A glimpse at the forest below showed me a landscape scored in ribbons of fire. Large swaths of vegetation were burning, and if I really squinted I could make out small pockets of what appeared to be disoriented zombies. From up here I couldn't make out much else. If Joe, Percy and the rest had survived, then they were probably further out. I hoped that they'd made it out of the woods before the necromancer got to them.

I donned a wicked smile as I imagined Agamemnon failing to capture Joe and the others. And then he'd be going back to his little outpost in the woods, to discover Kanta and I missing.

The necromancer still had the upper hand, but he was having a pretty shitty day, all things considered.

Down below, a parking lot came into view. There, at the very edge of the park, were the SUVs we'd left behind on our march into the woods. Several commandos were stationed beside them, unloading their guns into a wall of incoming undead. A few had loaded up their flamethrowers and were keeping the advancing army from overcoming the vehicles.

And who did I spy with my little eye? It was none other than Joe, holding the front line and manipulating the bursts of fire coming through the flamethrowers. He rained fire down upon the undead, toasting them up like s'mores. From way up in the air he looked rough and exhausted. But he was very much alive.

“There they are!” I said, motioning to the lot. “Let me out, Chief! I'll take it from here.” I could see someone holding a big sword down there, too. Percy was leaning against one of the vehicles, appearing rougher than Joe. The way he held himself up on the hood, feebly holding out his sword, told me he'd been wounded, perhaps seriously.

There wasn't much time. Kubo instructed Harris to lower the chopper. The plan was to have me and Kubo jump down and help beat back the horde while the others piled into the SUVs and drove off. Then, when everyone else was out of harm's way, Kubo and I would get picked up by the whirlybird and sail off into the night like proper action movie heroes.

Well, that would have been cooler than the actual plan, anyway.

“Once the others have made it out, you and me will take the last SUV, Lucy,” said Kubo. “No theatrics. We just want to get everyone safe and back to HQ. Got it?”

“Got it.” I threw open the door and jumped out of the chopper at around twenty feet, landing hard on the pavement below. Kubo waited till it hovered a little lower, and ended up hitting the roof of an SUV.

The fight was on. Harris and Kanta remained in the helicopter, hovering twenty or thirty feet up and distracting the zombies with pot-shots from an assault rifle while Kubo and I swooped in like relief pitchers. Thankfully, there was no sign of the necromancer. Apparently he'd been held up somewhere in the woods.

Hammering through a ripe zombie head with my knuckles, I pulled to the front lines of the fray and used up some of that aggression I'd built up during my imprisonment. The wall of fire sent up by the flamethrowers made the creatures easier to manage; a few stragglers made it through the line, but the minute they started for the SUVs or the handful of rifle-wielding commandos, I stepped in to dismember them.

Kubo smacked the blade of his machete against the roof of the SUV, like a dinner bell. “Pull back!” he shouted. “Get inside, we're out of here!” He dropped down onto the pavement and started throwing open the doors, waving nearby commandos inside. They were told to abandon their weapons to make room, and the beleaguered forces packed themselves into the vehicle like sardines. Percy was helped in, hobbling on one leg, and the door was shut behind him. That was one SUV's worth of guys. The vehicle peeled out of the lot. Now the only ones left were the guys with the flamethrowers, Joe, Kubo and I.

Joe's face lit up as he noticed me coming up on his six. “Fuck,” he said, pointing at me. “I never thought I'd say it, but I sure am glad to see your stupid ass, Lucy.”

I laughed aloud, stopping a sprinting zombie with a pound to the face. A bit of black blood leapt from the newly-hewn cavern in the thing's skull and landed straight on my tongue.

Words just can't convey how shitty that tasted.

Joe started falling back, edging his way over to a nearby SUV while still manipulating the flames within his reach. The three guys with flamethrowers started sending out intermittent bursts, intended to scare the remaining undead into a retreat. The plan would have worked perfectly if all hell hadn't broken lose at that very moment.

That mother of all fuckers, Agamemnon, rode in just then on a wave of zombies. No, I really mean it; the guy stood atop a roiling heap of zombified bodies, twenty or thirty feet high, as though he were surfing in on the
Great Wave Off Kanagawa
. Scythe extended over his head, the mountain of undead surged into the sky, allowing him just enough reach to neatly pierce the exterior of the Black Hawk that was supposed to be our air support.

Have you ever seen a Black Hawk helicopter explode? Not a spectacle I'd recommend to the faint of heart. Especially from up-close. When the thing fell into two pieces and began sailing towards the ground, I froze in place. My momentary fear of getting struck by a few tons of wreckage was literally blown away as the chopper erupted into separate balls of flame. Kubo and I hit the pavement and were pelted in molten debris. The bang was so loud I wasn't sure I'd ever hear again, and the initial flash was so bright I felt like my eyes were being poached in their sockets.

The remaining SUVs were crushed by flaming wreckage, and then also exploded. As did the cases full of weapons and ammunition. The guys with the flamethrowers? Yeah, they exploded too, as their fuel tanks were damaged.

The whole parking lot was transformed into an inferno, and lingering on its very edge was a mountainous heap of contorted, rotting bodies. Agamemnon leered down at his work from on high.

He hadn't been late after all. He'd been just in time to wreak havoc and ruin everything we'd worked to accomplish. There'd be no rescue, no pulling one over on him. This had all been calculated. When he'd promised to use Kanta and I as bait, he'd meant it.

Kanta!
She'd been in the helicopter. Rolling onto my back, I managed to sit up and survey the incredible devastation. Kubo and Joe were within arm's reach of me, and somehow the two of them were unscathed. Joe's powers were probably to thank for that. He had his hands up, and his dizzy eyes were trying to focus on keeping the encroaching flames off of us. He looked severely dazed, like the blast had knocked him senseless, and I could tell he was close to passing out at any moment. Kubo, too, was white in the face and barely able to stand.

Knowing we had little time before the necromancer started picking off survivors, I grabbed up both Joe and Kubo, threw their shell-shocked bodies over my shoulders, and bounded out of the flames. I took off running through the parking lot, my clothes and hair singed.

Percy and the guys in his SUV had made it out in time, just barely. But Kanta and the others were done for. I felt more awful than I can describe. The two of us had only just been getting to know each other, had only minutes ago begun to work as allies. This wasn't how things were supposed to go down, and as I turned and watched the mountain of surging dead return to the forest, I felt the most potent hatred I'd ever known.

I kept on running till we were more than a mile from the park, and then I set Kubo and Joe down in the grass. They moaned, palming at their eyes and ears like fussy babies.

“H-headquarters,” mumbled Kubo. “Need to... need to get back to headquarters.”

Joe sat up and clutched his knees. “How did... how did...” He couldn't finish the thought.

I knew what he was asking, though. He wanted to know how that goddamned necromancer had pulled it off. It wasn't a question any of us could answer. He was possessed of powers far beyond anything the three of us had encountered. If he was capable of stunts like that one, then there were really no limits to what he could do. Detroit would most likely fall to his might, and every other city in the Midwest would soon follow.