Good Intentions 3: Personal Demons (50 page)

A little magical fire didn’t bother him at all if it didn’t burn and if it took him home, or even someplace close to it. The shouts chasing them down the tunnel bothered him, though. So did the faint but constant popping noises up ahead.

He didn’t look back. Rachel did. “Aw, fuckballs,” she grunted as they came to the edge of the tunnel.

“What is it?” Alex asked. “What’s wrong? Oof!”

Details of his new surroundings flooded in all at once: a dark room, something like an office, but everything out of place and wrecked. He saw bodies on the floor, felt the cold night air and clearly recognized the popping sounds as gunfire now. Drew shouted his name, Rachel cried out, “Onyx!” and whoever Alex bumped into tumbled backward and waved his arms with a yelp.

Instinctively, Alex reached out to grab the man by the arm. The guy’s greater weight and loss of balance threatened to pull them both down, but Alex dug his heels in on the carpeted floor. Within another second, his mind processed more details: he was in an upper-floor office, the window was gone, and out across the street he saw his own condominium building—no, his own apartment, also with its window gone and the balcony smashed. The gunfire came from within.

The man he held back from falling out of the office looked immediately familiar.

“You!” snapped Aaron, still waving one arm for balance and trying to pull back inside.

“Oh, fuck
you
, clown,” Alex grunted. He let go without a second thought.

Aaron screamed, but not for long. The fall took care of that.

“God damn am I glad to see you two!” Drew huffed.

Alex spun around. Drew rose up from the floor while Rachel knelt over someone on the carpet. Blood pooled all around the fallen woman’s black skirt and Doc Marten lace-up boots. “Onyx?” he gasped in sudden shock and fear.

Then a rush of movement blew between them all, tackling Rachel into the wall and knocking both young men aside. Thankfully, the collision didn’t send Alex toward the window. Instead, it flung him against the same drywall that now held a halfway embedded angel.

Sammael stepped in to deliver a second punch. He lost control of it on the wind-up, pulled back by Drew’s strong arms. Even Sammael appeared vulnerable to good technique, leverage, and momentum. It wouldn’t last, though. The fallen angel could easily overpower everyone in this small space.

Alex spotted a nice assault rifle on the floor beside Onyx. It was his first look at her awful wounds, too, which only amplified his concerns. The last thing she could afford now was a fight like this. One good stomp and she would be gone.

Alex swept the rifle up off the floor as Sammael shook Drew off. He didn’t bother trying to turn the barrel on his enemy. He knew better than that. Besides, he’d fought this sort of battle before. Bullets weren’t the best weapon.

Training from two wars took over. With both hands on the rifle, Alex swung the butt of the weapon across Sammael’s jaw, then thrust it hard against his face. “Rachel!” he shouted. “Help Onyx!”

Already prying herself out of the drywall, Rachel crouched over Onyx to shield her and laid her hands on the young woman’s bloody abdomen. The angel didn’t need too much time to bring Onyx back from death’s door even after all her trauma. Though the witch was horribly torn up, Rachel knew as soon as she made physical contact that Onyx still had enough blood to stay alive. She only needed to mend the worst of the wound. The task would take only seconds.

Drew helped Alex buy that time, driving his heel into their foe’s back with a punishing kick. It wasn’t much, but all they had to do was keep him off balance. Rachel could feel her strength return now that she was back in her dominion. Onyx inhaled sharply as her flesh knit back together and her hemorrhaging stopped. Just a second or two more and Rachel could take over and fuck Sammael’s shit up like he wouldn’t believe.

It all changed in a flash. Sammael endured another kick, another pounding from the rifle, and promptly tackled Alex straight out of the open window. The rifle clattered onto the floor as they both dropped out of sight.

“No!” Rachel shouted—and then saw another enormous problem directly across the street. Demons swept down from the top of the condo building down at their home, some clinging to the edifice and others gliding on their wings. Gunfire from inside the apartment slowed their advance, but only barely.

“Oh shit,” gasped Drew. He stepped close to the ledge, first to track Alex and then watching the mess across the street.

Rachel didn’t hesitate. She gathered Onyx up off the floor. “Did he drop Alex?”

“No, they went that way, but—”

“Is Molly over there?”

“Yeah.”

“Stay clear of that mess,” Rachel told him. Strangely, she turned her back to the street. Then she jumped off the ledge as if diving backward into a pool, with Onyx in her arms and her wings spread wide.

The angel flew across the street, showing Drew exactly why she took that odd position when she knocked a couple of demons out of her way. Throwing herself backwards protected Onyx as the angel broke through the crowd. Her sudden appearance disrupted the attack. Some lost their grip on the edifice. Others shrank back in fear at the sight of her.

Rachel landed on her back in the living room. Amber and Wade held their fire as she flopped onto the floor. Reacting on instinct, Taylor nearly shot her.  Beside the angel, a short, squat, red figure picked itself up off the carpet, shaking its head. Rachel kicked the imp back out the window before rolling Onyx onto the floor beside her. “Guys, have Molly fix her up!” Rachel urged as she got back to her feet.

Reaching up from the floor beside Taylor, Jason weakly tried to call out, “R-Rachel?”

“Wait, but—!” Taylor tried to interrupt.

“No time! I gotta save Alex, too!” Rachel launched herself back out into the night, driving an angry fist into the nearest demon along the way. She knocked the thing out of the window, beat her wings once to keep herself aloft, and snatched the next nearest monster by its tail. Swinging it hard with both hands, Rachel used the hapless demon as a weapon to batter the rest of its kind aside and clear more space for her friends.

“Ugh. I see how it is,” Jason rasped, his hand falling to his side again. “It’s ‘cause I’m an atheist, isn’t it?”

“Whuh?” mumbled Onyx.

“I don’t even wanna hear it,” he mumbled back. “Lookit you. Freakin’ polyamorous pagan witch, and you get an angel rescue. I’m an atheist and I get a sandwich bag for a bandage ‘cause nobody trusts atheists.”

“What?” she coughed.

“Eh. Some shit I read online,” he finished before drifting out of consciousness.

Wade heard none of Jason’s ramblings. He saw an opportunity and took it. With the window briefly cleared of enemies, Wade spotted Drew still standing in the office across the street. He darted to the rifle bag on the floor and picked up the last remaining magazine for the assault rifle. “Drew!” he yelled before throwing it across. “Help Rachel out!”

His throw could have easily gone awry. Drew couldn’t even track it in flight until it was too late to catch the thing, but at least it landed inside the office. He only needed a second to track it down and another to retrieve it and the weapon. The demonstration from Hector’s shop remained fresh in his mind. He remembered how to eject the previous magazine, how to insert the fresh one—
no, wait, turn it the other way, dumbass
, he thought—and he remembered the bolt thingie or whatever it was called.

Outside, Rachel’s aerial battle continued. She fought roughly a dozen or so demons, some small and some large. None seemed inclined to push past her toward the apartment. Rachel hit one demon with a painful backhand, kicked another away before it could tackle her in mid-air, and generally held her own. Drew wondered why she didn’t whip out that flaming sword of hers, but it wasn’t like he could ask.

He knelt at the edge of the office. The fight wasn’t in completely open space. There were still a couple of floors above Rachel and her foes, and possibly people inside the apartments on the other side. Drew remembered Hector’s promise about his guns, and how the magic upon them would keep the user from shooting anyone he didn’t mean to shoot. Without such an assurance, Drew wouldn’t have even considered this.

“Reggae gun bunny better not be playin’,” Drew muttered with the rifle up to his shoulder.

Everyone moved too fast for him to aim very well. Rachel fluttered from one opponent to the next. Drew saw one demon get in behind her and rake her back with its nasty claws. He gave up on any hopes of precision shooting.

The gun roared in his hands, spitting bullets up into the sky around his friend. The attacker at her back caught the worst of it and fell away. Drew nailed a couple of others, too, driving them and the rest back from Rachel as the windows behind them shattered and collapsed. Not a single shot hit the angel despite Drew’s almost total lack of training or practice.

His unfamiliarity left him surprised at how quickly the weapon ran out of ammunition. The whole magazine emptied out in what seemed like a single breath, perhaps even faster, but at least he did some damage and gave Rachel some room to move. She pressed her advantage, flinging one demon out of her way and then another. Her quick efforts scattered the rest before she soared off in the same direction Drew had seen Sammael take Alex.

He couldn’t blame her for that. Hell, he
wanted
her to go after Alex. But even hanging back to help with this fight for less than a minute meant practically anything could’ve happened to his friend by now.

Things were still happening across the street, too. Drew saw Onyx slowly climb to her feet. Wade looked to someone else lying on the floor. “Oh God, Jason!” Drew gasped.

With his heart suddenly in his throat, Drew turned around to find a way out of the building. He stopped short at the glowing circle of light he found spreading up over Evelyn’s body. “Aw hell, seriously?” Drew grimaced.

“Wretched mortal,” hissed a voice behind him. Drew spun around again. Perched on the edge of the office was a dark red creature out of a nightmare. Broad, bat-like wings folded in around a head closer to a goat’s than a human’s, but goats didn’t have fangs. Tiny flames wafted up from bullet holes in the demon’s arm and chest.

Another demon swung its head and shoulders around the top corner, looking far more human than its companion but for the sinuous bend to its body. It, too, bore wounds from Drew’s gun.

“No angel remains to save you now,” taunted the first.

“You can have the soul,” offered the second. “I want the body—wait. Behind him!”

Had he not seen the light already, Drew would’ve taken the words for a cheap ruse. Instead, he jumped to the side, figuring it best to get as far out of the way as he could from whatever came.

A scaled, howling dog emerged from the circle to vindicate his instincts. Smoke and flame trailed from the beast as it charged the goaty demon on the ledge. The collision sent both monsters falling away into the night.

Another demon emerged from the circle, this one flying out on wings that scraped up against the walls of the office. It, too, attacked the nearest opponent, chasing the snake-like freak who’d laid claim on Drew’s body.

More followed. Drew practically flattened himself against the wall to avoid the rush of demons. The instant fighting between the newcomers and those who’d threatened him suggested this was a battle he didn’t need to join. The sudden influx ended almost as quickly as it began, and once again he saw his gut instincts proven right. This new faction tore headlong into the others with ferocity and roughly equal numbers.

Nothing else threatened his friends in the apartment, or at least at the window. Something or someone had their full attention directed toward the hallway, apart from Onyx still slowly getting to her feet and Taylor watching over Jason by her side. Drew saw Taylor nod as Onyx looked up, suggesting Jason still hung on. That simple sight relieved at least one of Drew’s fears, but this still wasn’t over. He had to rejoin his friends right away. He couldn’t do them any further good over here, nor did he really want to be alone.

Then a hand rested on his shoulder. “Drew,” she said.

He spun around and stepped back, fists up and ready to go another round with Evelyn if he had to. Thankfully, she was still on the floor and still full of holes. The demon woman standing in front of him looked every bit as fearsome, though—until his mind caught up to his reflexes. “Lorelei?”

The circle of light faded out of existence behind her, darkening the room. Her black clothes were in tatters, revealing a dark pattern of lines along her skin that hadn’t been there the one time Drew saw her whole demonic form.

Her eyes quickly took in the situation. “Is everyone else inside the apartment? Where is Evelyn?”

“Behind you. I got her with that magic gun, so I think she’s dead,” Drew explained quickly. “Listen, Alex and Rachel are back. That Sammael dude, too. He grabbed Alex and took off straight out the window. That way.”

“Get to the others if you can, and stay safe,” Lorelei urged before she flew off into the night.

He doubted he could follow both of her instructions at once. Her appearance made him think twice about running headlong out of the office, though. Drew glanced around at the dead men on the floor until he found another gun. Most of the weapons looked complicated, but thankfully one of the bodies wore a revolver on his hip. He’d tried one of those before. Better to go with something he could actually use than some fancy weapon he’d have to figure out.