Sinister Seraphim of Mine (Overworld Chronicles Book 8) (18 page)

Peering that way, I saw one of the starburst statues at the end of a shelf near the far side of the room. "Let's give the hellhounds a minute to report back before we make a run for it."

She nodded, eyes scanning the room up and down. I extended my incubus senses as far as they would go, but in a room so large, that wasn't very far. A yelp echoed from somewhere in the warehouse. Thunderous growls reverberated. A hound shrieked like a puppy being beaten to within an inch of its life and abruptly went silent.

Ice formed a solid lump in my chest. Elyssa and I looked at each other before simultaneously ducking behind one of the stone cubes. Claws clacked on the stone floor. I peeked over and saw my massive hellhound running at top speed, tongue flapping.

Run away! Run away!
It sent me, its voice somehow still sounding dignified even in its panic.

What happened?
I asked.

Before it could answer, a dark ball writhing with countless legs rolled from a row of shelves and crashed into the hellhound. A horde of crawlers exploded from the ball.

Son of a bi—
was the last thing the hellhound sent before his black blood spattered the floor.

His attackers wallowed in the mess, thin tubes extending from orifices to suck up the nearly liquefied body parts. It was then I realized these things weren't crawlers. Each one looked like a scorpion the size of a small dog like Cutsauce. Their shiny black carapaces gleamed in the light. Instead of claws and a stinger tail, they had what looked like mouths filled with sharp teeth at the end of their appendages. Where a scorpion should have eyes, they bore the imprint of a human face, as if someone were trapped inside the shell and pressing with all their might to get out. The faces twisted into grotesque expressions, and as the creatures fed, the human mouths screeched in ecstasy.

A shiver ran from my scalp to my toes at the sounds and sight. Elyssa looked pale.

"What in the hell are those things?" I asked.

"Scorps," she whispered. "Demon scorpions."

"Who comes up with a boring name like scorp to describe something so scary?"

She gave me a fierce look. "We could probably take out a few, but not a horde."

"I'll crush those dorpions like the crawler."

"Dorpions?" Elyssa's confused expression added about five question marks to the end of her sentence.

"Yeah." I shuddered at the horrific noises of the creatures as they fed. "Demon scorpions. Dorpions. I was going to go with Scemon, but it sounded too sexual."

"That's an awful, awful name." Elyssa's lips curled up.

I glanced over the cube again as the shrieks faded. Where the last hellhound had died, the floor was absolutely spotless. I ducked back down. "At least they clean their plate."

Elyssa gritted her teeth. "How do you plan to trap all of them at once?"

"We'll need to make them form another ball." I measured the previous crawl ball in my head. It had been about the size of a compact car, maybe a little larger. If I concentrated, I could probably scoop them up in a big bubble of Murk and crush them like bugs. "Let's sneak around these cubes. If we can make it to the shelves with the statue, we can deactivate them. The sound will probably alert the scorps. While you snap a picture for Shelton to open the portal, I'll deal with the bugs."

"We don't have much of a choice," Elyssa said. "Let's just hope things work out better for us than they did for your poor hellhounds."

Before I could nod, an excited chittering pierced the air. I looked at the row of stone cubes in front of us. The demonic face of a scorp stared back, lips peeled back in a rictus of pure delight.

Chapter 16

My butt puckered and my heart stopped beating for a second. Luckily, Elyssa's catlike reflexes saved us. She gripped my arm and jerked me up just as a wave of scorps rolled over the cubes and enveloped our former hiding spot. A torrent of shiny black terrors poured through narrow spaces between the cubes. We leapt over a stream of the chittering creatures. I hurled a blazing ball of Brilliance at the seething mass. The explosion hurled the creatures everywhere. Some smacked against cubes, others sailed overhead. Far as I could tell, none of them died.

Elyssa grabbed my arm and guided me down an aisle. We blurred past shelves filled with statues—the wrong kind, unfortunately—and juked right into a wide aisle bisecting the artifact room. I heard the chittering of the scorps and swiveled my head to figure out how far away they were. A ball of legs and black chitin answered my question as it rolled into view down the center aisle.

"Find the statues." I reached through my inner Seraphim and channeled energy directly from a massive ley line in the earth below. "Time to kill these things."

"Scream if you need me," Elyssa said.

I chuckled. "Don't worry, I will."

She pecked me on the cheek and blurred away. I gathered my will and imagined a huge bubble of Murk forming around the scorps. As the sphere of demon insects closed to within a few yards, I flung my arms out, channeling dark energy on the floor beneath the creatures with one hand, and extending the other half of the bubble with the other.

The ball of insects exploded. Bodies threaded through the cracks in the incomplete bubble before I could close it. Instead of a horde, I merely trapped a couple of the scorps. The escaped bugs spread along the shelves and walls like a black tide. I squeezed my fists and contracted the bubble of Murk, crushing the few trapped scorps into goo, then released the channeled aether. The pureed remains splatted on the floor. Their former comrades swarmed the puddle, slurping it with their straw-like mouth appendages.

While they were distracted, I aimed a needle of destruction at the front of the dark mass. The creatures spread apart before the energy even reached them, and I only gouged a hole in the stone floor.

It's like they can sense it coming.

I raked a beam of white fire across the horde. Fast as lightning, the scorps dashed from the path of destruction before it reached them, even when I randomly changed direction. Only a few bugs didn't move in time and were summarily sliced apart. "That explains how they got out of the Murk bubble so fast." These critters were going to be a pain to kill.

A screeching noise alerted me to danger. I leapt back just as a scorp leapt from a shelf to my right, its mouth-pincers clacking. On instinct, I batted it from the air with my fist, sending its body slamming against the shelf across the aisle. Green gelatinous goo exploded from between joints in the chitin exoskeleton.

Crushing them physically isn't a problem.
But I couldn't stomp a swarm this size. I turned tail and ran as the creatures rolled back into a ball and propelled the mass forward at terrifying speed. My legs wanted to turn to jelly when I realized just how fast those bugs could move with all their legs working in tandem.

Running at top speed, I gripped a shelf column and used it to help me make a sharp turn without losing too much momentum. The scorp ball had no problem imitating my results. I spotted Elyssa about thirty yards ahead, her phone out and the deactivation tone playing. Her violet eyes blazed with alarm when she saw me coming.

"This is me screaming!" I shouted.

"I thought you were going to kill them, Justin!"

"My bug spray didn't work," I hollered over the cacophony of chittering scorps. "Please tell me we can open a portal."

Elyssa stuffed several statues into her satchel as she answered. "God, I hope so!" She aimed her phone at a shelf and snapped a picture just before I reached her. Without pause, she sprinted and paced me while the bug ball rolled behind us. "I'll send this to Shelton. If he can open it, all we have to do is stay ahead of the scorps and circle back."

The noise behind us grew fainter. I flicked my gaze over my shoulder, hoping the bugs had given up. Instead, I saw the sphere was about half the size it had been a moment ago. "Where did they go?" If there was anything I hated, it was when a roach vanished beneath or behind a piece of furniture and I couldn't find it to kill it. I would literally dream about the stupid thing crawling into my mouth at night, or dropping from the ceiling onto my face as I slept.

This was kind of like that situation, except these bugs were demon scorpions that could blend our bodies into primordial goo and eat us. All things considered, I much preferred a roach falling onto my face while I slept.

As I watched, the ball divided yet again, like two cells dividing, and one veered to the left and out of sight. The resulting crawl ball was about five feet in diameter. I couldn't tell how many scorps were in it, but doubted we could kill them all before one of us went down. I threw up a wall of Murk. The scorp ball burst apart and flowed around it before congealing into a sphere again.

"I count eleven," Elyssa said. "The rest are probably trying to trap us if we turn down another aisle."

"I see them rolling, and I definitely be hating," I said, unable to come up with anything constructive to say. "We're running out of space."

The front of the artifact room lay thirty yards ahead. Our only hope might be if I could wall up the exit with Murk. Unfortunately, the opening was huge. It would take me seconds too long to seal it before the bugs crawled through the cracks.

"We're going to have to take our chances." Elyssa's lips peeled back from her teeth. "We need to turn and fight."

It sounded like our only chance. Thankfully, the scorps couldn't fly. They could obviously jump, but we had a chance at cutting them up in midair. We passed another row of shelves. I noticed one of the other bug balls rolling down a parallel aisle and realized with a sinking feeling if we turned to fight this swarm, the other two would be on us in a matter of seconds.

Think, you moron, think!

I considered blasting down a shelf, but that would do little to slow down our pursuit. I thought about blowing a hole in the wall, but knew it was way too thick.
They can't fly.
I face-palmed myself at the obvious course of action.

"You either thought of a way out," Elyssa said, "or you think we're doomed. Which is it?"

"Hang on," I said, looking at the ceiling far above, and gripping her around the waist. I shot a strand of Murk straight up at the ceiling like an ultraviolet laser beam. It stuck like spider web. I held onto the rope of aether and willed it to contract fast. Elyssa and I were jerked from our feet as it responded to my desire and carried us up into the air even as we swung forward like a pendulum.

Using the forward momentum, I shot another aether rope at one of the giant support columns in the cavernous room and released the first rope. Our direction abruptly changed as we swung around the axis and headed back the way we'd come.

"Me Tarzan, you Jane," I grunted.

Elyssa made a whooping noise. "This is fun!"

I risked a sideways glance and saw her eyes shining with delight. "If escaping from demon scorpions by swinging on magical ropes is your idea of fun, you might want to have your head checked."

Her laughter abruptly cut off. "I hate demon bugs!"

A quick look back tore a growl from my throat. The scorps had apparently climbed the shelves and the three bug balls were pursuing us across the ceiling. "Stupid sticky insect legs," I muttered through clenched teeth. I looked down. The shelves were ten feet below. I saw a portal shimmer open down the center of the aisle. I wasn't sure if my aim was that great, but I had to try to thread the needle.

Before we hit the apex of the next swing, I released the aether rope to keep our forward momentum, and shot a rope at the top of the shelf below us. Gripped by gravity, we swung with terrifying speed at the side of the shelf. Hoping all my time watching super hero movies was time well spent, I aimed a strand at the shelf diagonally across the aisle and released the other rope. Our momentum shifted back across.

"Get ready to let go," I shouted as we swooped toward the floor and the open portal. "Now!"

"Holy sh—" Elyssa shouted as I released the rope. We hit the floor. Elyssa landed in a neat roll while I stumbled forward, somehow managing to keep my feet. Elyssa's satchel flew from her back as she rolled. The statues and her arcphone slid from within. She scooped up a couple of statues while still running. I saw the glowing screen of her phone and snatched it from the floor. Unfortunately, I didn't get a good grip and fumbled with it. The phone chimed as my fingers brushed the screen and unlocked it. My fingers finally closed around it. I looked up and saw Shelton's horrified face on the other side of the portal.

"What the hell is that?" he shouted.

Musical notes sounded from Elyssa's phone. The portal shimmered and blinked away.

"No!" Elyssa shouted.

I looked at the screen and realized with horror when I'd unlocked the screen, I'd activated the musical tone to activate the portal-blocking statues. I tried to play the deactivation tone, but it was too late. The scorps would reach us and pour through the portal.

There was one last thing I could do. When reached the spot where the portal should open, I gripped Elyssa. "Stop." She spun, drew her sai swords, and faced the oncoming rush.

Using all the fine control at my disposal, I pressed my hands together over my head and swiped them downward, channeling a dome of Murk around us. The scorp balls flowed around the barrier and covered it. Their nightmarish faces pressed against the ultraviolet film protecting us, and their straw-like suckers protruded from their mouths, as if they could somehow get to us. I felt like a fish looking at a cat outside the fishbowl.

Shaking off the horror, I swiped a finger across the display on Elyssa's phone and played back the deactivation sequence. "C'mon, Shelton. Open the portal again." I heard a crunching noise and saw scorps grinding the stone floor with their mouth claws. A gap appeared at the bottom of the dome, and one of the creatures reached beneath and groped with a snapping claw jaw.

Elyssa sliced off the appendage with a quick slash of her sword. I extended the barrier to cover the gap, but even as I did, the rest of the scorps surrounded the dome and continued wearing away at the stone.