Another One Bites the Dust (36 page)

But Yale did have a plan after all. Crashing the Pontiac into the concrete barrier that kept the steep hill to our left from falling down onto the roadway probably wasn’t part of it, but it did stop the car. He jumped out of the vehicle and onto the barrier like a cross-country runner and began slogging up the hill.

I pulled up right behind him, Cole and his truck full of SWAT men hard on my tail. But as soon as my feet hit the pavement I knew we were outnumbered. Outgunned. Out of our minds to even think of climbing that mound. Underneath this road, that grass, a million fiends writhed in their unending tortuous dance. Like the women at a Little Italy festival, they bounced round and round an enormous vat, their hooves pounding relentlessly on the souls of their victims, turning them into Satan’s wine.

“I would make a terrible merlot,” I muttered.

“What did you say?” asked Vayl as he dismounted with a heartfelt groan. I didn’t reply. Something was stuck in my throat. If I was a guy, I’d have sworn they were my testicles.

I looked up as I set the kickstand. On top of that slope stood an abandoned church. Its steeple still stood intact, though part of the roof had caved and all the windows had been boarded up. Though I swung my leg over the bike, it moved slowly, because it was hardwired to that part of my brain that insisted we’d found hell’s front porch and we needed to RUN!

“Vayl,” I gasped. “Do you feel it?”

“Yes,” he murmured. “It seems as if the road is filled with flesh-eating beetles, although my eyes insist we are fine.”

Behind us the guys were having even more trouble. Cole had made it out of the truck and was struggling toward us as if the asphalt was sucking at his shoes. The SWAT men, bereft of any form of protective powers, shared the narrow-eyed, tight-lipped look of soldiers who would turn and run but for their love of and loyalty to one another.

Jericho had brought what looked like the cream of the crop. A wiry, gray-headed gentleman carrying a Remington SPS Varmint sniper rifle nodded and introduced himself as Sergeant Betts. Corporal Fentimore had apparently not been satisfied with his original collection of muscles and decided to build himself a complete extra set on top of them. He and his barrel-chested, broad-shouldered buddy, who said shortly, “Call me Rand,” were both armed with SIG-551s. These men were cut from the same cloth as my brother, and my father in his prime. Just looking at them, you felt you couldn’t shake them with a mortar. And yet they danced from foot to foot like sprinters at the start line.

Which was when I realized the place was spelled. I hadn’t grasped it right away because the magic was so big. It had stunned my Sensitivity the same way your brain goes into overload when you first walk into an art museum. Until you step back and convince it to take one thing at a time, you never see a single picture.

I dumped my helmet and helped Vayl off with his. Cole had joined us by then. “There’s some kind of expellation spell on this hill,” I told them all. “What you’re feeling isn’t real.” And just knowing that, all of us would be able to function a helluva lot better.

“What about them?” asked Jericho, nodding toward the hill.

I looked over my shoulder. A line of dark shapes was pouring out of the desecrated church.
Shit!
“Those are a different story.”

CHAPTERTHIRTY-SIX

Half of Hell Hill stood between us and Desmond Yale. He’d made good time, but too, he’d already been running a while and the wear and tear on his earthly body had taken its toll. His knees kept buckling, forcing him to the ground every few steps. His tongue hung out like a hound dog’s, and blood seeped from the weakened parts of his shield. That was the good news.

Evidently he’d found himself a little cult of well-armed humans to guard his exit. Well, I’d known he was a canny old demon. I should’ve figured he had an escape plan.

His acolytes had taken cover behind an abandoned minibus that hadOUR LORD’S MISSION OF CORPUS CHRISTI painted on its side, and were firing down on us while Yale moved toward them. They didn’t seem to be able to shoot worth a damn, but then they had an enormous advantage in terrain. All they really needed to do was keep up a steady barrage while Yale struggled the rest of the way up the hill and he’d be completely out of our hands.

As soon as Yale’s gang had opened up on us, we’d taken cover behind the four-foot-high concrete barrier at the base of the hill to figure out our next move. Also to keep from getting our heads blown off. Even idiots get lucky once in a while.

“Jericho, you got anything available in the form of air support?” I asked.

“On its way,” he told me, pocketing his phone, “but probably not in time for us to catch the old guy.”

“Dammit!” I pressed my back to the barrier and traded glares with Vayl. I wasn’t sure which of us was more pissed. To come this close and lose. Neither of us cared to do that. We had to get up that hill, and fast!

“The armor makes me nearly bulletproof,” he reminded me. “But it slows me too much. I am afraid one of those nitwit gunmen would put a bullet through my brain before I could reach him.” He motioned to the part of his head Chien-Lung’s breath had cleared of ice. Though a gunshot wound wouldn’t kill him, it would knock Vayl out of the game, and we couldn’t afford that at this point.

Come on, Jaz, look around you. What are your tools? What can speed you up that hill without dying before you have a chance to take out the monster?

“Jericho, you guys got a ramp in the back of that truck?”

He nodded. “We need some way to get the ATV out to the sticks.”

“That’s what I wanted to hear. Vayl, how’s your dexterity?” He flexed his hands. He could only close them halfway, but that should be more than enough.

Funny how just knowing somebody’s got even the first part of a plan will galvanize everybody else on a team. While Fentimore and Rand used their SIGs to keep the reaver gang from totally controlling the field, the rest of us assembled the ramp. We had to do some adjusting, but when we were done it sat firmly against the concrete barrier. If the highway department were so inclined they could drive their tractors right up the thing, mow the hill, and then motor back down without a hitch. I had a slightly different plan.

“So,” said Jericho as I climbed into an old suit of body armor someone had thrown behind the driver’s seat of his truck, “you’re going to turn Evel Knievel on us?”

From our current vantage point, crouched by the 4×4’s front tire, we gazed first at the ramp, then at his precious cycle. “It’s going to be a steep little jump,” I told him. “But we’ll give ourselves plenty of room to build up speed. And we’ve got to get wheels on that hill. Nothing else is going to catch our reaver. Unless you can think of a better, faster way?”

As Jericho pondered the possibilities, my armor began to press down on me. Hard. So of course that was the moment my motherboard decided to do a short internal scan, throw up its hands, and screech, “Dear Lawd, a VAMPIRE has taken mah blood!” and initiate a general shutdown. I took a seat on the nearest flat surface—the truck’s running board.

“You all right?” asked Jericho. Cole, squatting by the back tire as he helped Vayl on with his helmet, gave me a worried look.

“I’m fine,” I said, pulling on my own helmet before my pallor could betray me. This was the immediate price I paid for increased Sensitivity. I had a feeling there would be long-term implications as well, but now was no time to obsess.

Problem was, once that cushioned Kevlar dome encased my head, not even the pinging of badly aimed bullets could distract me from the bone-chilling realization that, this time, I just might have bitten off one that would choke me blue.

I leaned back, banging my head against the door. “Goddammit!”

“What is it?” Vayl asked.

Since I didn’t want to discuss my current need to roll up in my blanky and snooze for a week, I risked a look through the window. “Yale has reached the top of the hill.” He was leaning over, both hands on his knees, puffing like an overweight smoker. Sergeant Betts hit him and he went down.

“Yes!” Betts shook his head in disbelief as Yale got back up. “What the hell?”

“Middle of the forehead, boys!” I yelled. But they couldn’t hear me. As if it would do any good. Yale would never turn toward us. Not willingly.

Vayl had mounted Jericho’s Ninja and started it up. He drove it over to me and Cole helped me on. “Aren’t we just a pair of lightweights?” I told Vayl as he gunned the engine, driving us across the street and into the lot of a rundown gas station.

“We would be if we were on the moon,” he replied, which somehow struck me funny. I laughed, and hoped to God Jericho’s tires were fully inflated.

I looked up the hill. As if on cue, Yale opened up another secret compartment in those dandy leather pants of his. I’d have made some smart-ass comment about setting up the reaver’s tailor with Mistress Kiss My Ass, but then he pulled out a plastic bag. The dark red organ inside seemed to squirm, as if trying to escape its fate.

“Oh my God.” I wanted so badly to look away. Save that little bit of myself that still thought it wasn’t a complete waste to wish upon a star and that Santa Claus was a dandy old dude, even if parents had to do the heavy lifting for him. But part of my job required me to be a witness. You couldn’t aim true if you kept closing your eyes.

Yale launched the heart, splattering it against the side of the defiled church, releasing a rain of blood that slowly built itself into a door. Just as it began to throb, Vayl hit the gas.

I clutched him around the middle, thankful for the sudden spurt of adrenaline that allowed me to hold on. We shot toward the ramp like a couple of stunt junkies, hit that puppy right in the sweet spot, and jumped the barrier so clean you could’ve driven a semi underneath us as we flew up the hill.

If my bladder hadn’t been empty I might have peed myself as Vayl nearly lost the front wheel on our landing. We swerved so far to the right I smelled earthworms, then overcorrected so badly to the left my calf spent a long moment pinned between the grass and the muffler. The heat burned completely through my jeans and left a blistering souvenir on my skin. Only Vayl’s vampire strength saved that bike—and us—from major wreckage.

Halfway up the hill a couple of bullets zinged off Vayl’s armor, but they stopped when I pulled Grief and returned fire. It’s tough to hit your target when you’re accelerating up a bumpy incline, but I got close enough and my backup shooters were doing their jobs so well, the reaver gang decided maybe they should keep their heads down for a while.

We motored toward Yale, quickly regaining the ground we’d lost at the bottom of the hill.

“This is going to be close,” Vayl said.

Yale had nearly reached the door. It had begun to open. Unearthly light, black and razor sharp, like the kind that shielded him, gaped through the crack.

I took aim at Yale, trying to steady my hand though it was like balancing a marble on a bowling ball. I squeezed off a shot. It pinged off Yale’s temple. He staggered and fell to his knees. Without even trying to get up, he crawled toward the door, lunging for it when he finally came close enough. It opened farther and he wrapped his fingers around the edge, giving it a helpful tug.

Vayl drove the Ninja right over the top of Yale’s legs, forcing a scream from him that made bats fly out the church’s chimney. We both rolled off as Vayl ditched the bike. I struggled to rise, but something punched me in the back so hard I thought for a second my lung was going to come flying out of my chest. I keeled over onto my face, realizing instantly that I’d been shot. The body armor had done its job, but it still hurt like hell.

“You son of a bitch!” I looked up.
Is that Cole’s voice? Oh, can I have a big amen!
He’d found a gully running up the west edge of the hill. I could see it from here, though it hadn’t been visible from our original vantage point. He’d made good progress, though he was still positioned probably fifty yards below us. I saw a flash from the muzzle of his gun and heard the scream of a dying man. Cole had brought his own rifle with him.

“Jasmine! Some help, please!” called Vayl.

Another boom from Cole’s gun and another scream let me know it was time to get a move on. I scrambled to Vayl’s side. He seemed to have entered a tug-o-war match. Clawed, bony fingers the color of raw, sunburned skin had wrapped around Yale’s wrists and were trying to pull him through a crack that had widened in the doorway. Yale himself had dug a small trench in the ground with his boots in his efforts to break free of Vayl’s hold.

Vayl had him around the middle, but with a grip composed mainly of ice he found it nearly impossible to maintain his grasp. He kept having to reanchor himself, and every time he did, Yale gained ground. Before I had a chance to take aim, Yale’s accomplice pulled hard enough to get his head behind the door.

“We have to pull him out!” said Vayl. “Grab on!”

I latched on to those old man legs and yanked, eliciting a scream from their owner that told me the cycle had done some damage. Good. I kept pulling, and with Vayl’s help we got Yale’s head back into target range. But as soon as I let go to take the shot, Vayl lost his grip.

“Goddammit! I am so freaking tired of this shit!” I yelled as I took hold of the calves above the cowboy boots I’d once admired and heaved to. “I’ve been shot and stabbed and burned on this mission! I’m so freaking worn out I could sleep through a nuclear explosion, and I have just realized I’m going to have to kill yet
more
of Samos’s underlings before I finally work my way up to him. I am so pissed off!” I gave one last big jerk and fell on my back.