Fallen: The Demontouched Saga (Book 2) Read online

  “We know the orb can collect the soul from anyone who dies in the area. We believe that Duncan planned on killing the people in the warehouse to collect the souls from the people. We still don’t know why he wanted the souls, though.”

  “What happened to the demons that I managed to trap in the orb before it shattered?”

  “They are still in there, as far as we can tell.”

  I stand up and walk to the window. “So, tell me what this place really is.”

  “Nothing gets past you.” Uriel opens up the front door and waves me out. “This is our base of operations here on earth. We needed to find a place to hole up when we got sent down and managed to find this place. There are a few hundred condos in this complex with a ten foot brick wall surrounding the entire complex. We have three exits, all gated with protected guard shacks. The best part is that we are away from the city, which helps us keep under the radar.”

  “You have all of this. All of these people. And you call me to handle your problems.”

  “We call you because we can’t afford to throw away lives.” She looks me in the eyes. “You are capable of some amazing things. I really wish we had a hundred more like you. We might actually stand a chance.”

  “You don’t think we can win this?”

  “I’ll say that the odds are stacked against us. We knew we were going to have an uphill battle before this all began. I just wish we had a little more time to plan and prepare.”

  No matter how often I hear that, I find it hard to believe only one being in existence knew when this would all start. I can understand humanity ignoring the warnings. Our lives are way too short to give a shit about something that, odds say, will never happen in our lifetime. Angels, however, don’t die naturally. You would think they would have spent some time at least considering what they would do when the time came.

  “So, what is next?”

  “For you? We need you to find a way to control Einuir. Ideally, we need to find a way to expel him from your body without killing you.”

  As much as that tempts me, my odds of survival are low enough with my abilities. I wouldn’t last a week if I had to do this on my own.

  Suddenly an alarm sounds throughout the camp. I look around and notice the soldiers taking defensive positions around the wall. I look over at Uriel. “What the hell is going on?”

  “We are under attack.”

  -3-

  We run up towards the gates and notice the soldiers have taken up defensive positions behind whatever cover they can find. I take the hint and work my way to the gate while trying to remain behind what cover I can find.

  “What’s going on here, soldier?” I ask, ducking behind a car next to a soldier.

  “One of our scouts noticed three car loads of people heading this way. We sound an alarm any time we don’t recognize a vehicle heading our way.”

  “Seems a bit excessive, don’t you think?”

  “Rather play it safe. It is hard to tell the friendlies from the enemies these days.”

  Within moments the cars pull up, stopping about fifty yards from the gates.

  “Slowly open your doors and walk out with your hands up.”

  I look out at the cars, trying to see if there is any movement coming from them. It’s hard to see from this distance, but it almost looks like the cars are empty.

  “Last chance. Open up your doors slowly and exit the vehicles with your hands up.”

  The lull in the action doesn’t last long.

  “Unload on these assholes.” A soldier yells on the other side of the gate. Within seconds, gunshots fill the air. I lean back against the car and hold my hands over my ears. If I had one main reason for hating guns, its the noise.

  For nearly a minute the soldiers fire at the cars. If there is anyone left inside of them, there is no way they are alive.

  “Hold your fire.” The soldiers echo as the firing comes to an end.

  “Suarez. Williams. Go make sure our friends are no longer with us.”

  I watch as the two men move towards the cars. I look around, noticing the other guys with their guns held at the ready. They stop a few feet away when the shorter man jumps on the hood, aiming his weapon into the car. He looks back and shakes his head.

  The men start to relax their weapons when I hear a blood curdling scream coming from the air.

  “Holy shit. Suarez!”

  The gunfire erupts once again. Three men exit the car, one pushing his hand forward, which causes Williams to fly back towards the gate. They all move quickly into the wooded area outside of the complex.

  “Pull your men back!” I tell the nearest officer. “You aren’t prepared to deal with demons. Send someone for Uriel and Zeke.” I pull my knife out and head towards the gate. “And open this damn gate.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “I’m going to save your asses.”

  The gates open and I run off into the woods looking for the men. I don’t bother with the other two cars, but I assume they are both demon filled too. Running off after three was a death sentence enough. Hopefully the angels can come out and handle the others.

  I come around a tree and notice the three demons huddled down next to a creek. I throw my knife and reach out, guiding it into the neck of one of the demons. I start running towards the trio as I pull the knife back to my hand.

  The two others stand up and charge at me. I’m not really sure what I expected to happen, but I duck the lead asshole’s clothesline just to take a boot to the face from the second one which knocks me to the ground.

  “Not fast enough, pathetic human.” He lifts up his leg to stop my head.

  I roll out of the way of his stomp, but into the other demon who grabs me from behind. I feel the darkness start to settle in my veins. I take a shot to the gut as my vision starts to go cloudy. I reach down and pull my knife back to my hand. I reach in for the kill only to have the knife knocked free and take a shot to the jaw.

  Eunie has had enough. I try to hold on, but the darkness takes me anyways.

  I pulled up to her house fifteen minutes too early. I had a thing about punctuality already, but I couldn’t stand the wait. I knocked on the door and a hundred thoughts enter my head. Part of me wants to tuck my tail between my legs and run. I know it hasn’t been that long since Carla, but something about this one is special. I can’t seem to place it, but I’ve never been the one to subscribe to infatuation.

  Within moments she answered the door wearing a beautiful blue dress that flowed down to her calves. Her hair was pulled back in a pony tail which exposed a pair of dangling purple earrings and a silver cross on a thin chain.

  “So, where are you taking me?” She reaches out and takes my hand.

  “I’m sworn to secrecy.” I smile at her. “You will like it.”

  We got in the car and drove down to the riverfront. Our first stop for the evening was at the esteemed Glassini Restaurant.

  “Wow. You went all out.” She flashes a smile.

  “You haven’t seen anything yet.”

  We walk inside to a table I have reserved at the back of the restaurant. Instead of sitting at a standard table, ours is back in the kitchen with the chefs. The chef greeted us as we walked into back as we took our seats.

  “Wow. I didn’t know they did this here.”

  “Its not something they advertise out front. The table is usually booked months in advance.”

  “How did you manage to get it on short notice then?”

  “I’m a freelance accountant. I happen to do the bookkeeping for the place. I wanted to do something special so I called in a favor.”

  “Are we allowed to walk around?”

  “Yes, madam. I’d love to show you around.”

  Chef Baurdine gave us the grand tour, complete with a chance to help prepare our meal on the line.

  When the meal is near completion the chef has us return to the table so he can finish it up and bring it over.

  “What is it yo
u do?” I ask her as I cut into my salmon.

  “I’m a photographer. I do some work for the paper, but I mainly do weddings.”

  “How did you get into that?”

  “My father did it as a hobby. He would take me out with him every weekend. We would visit the most beautiful places and take some amazing pictures. We would be gone all weekend sometimes. Mom almost filed a missing persons report one year.” She started to laugh.

  “I take it your mother is supportive of it?”

  “She wasn’t around much either. She was a nurse at a local hospital, so she worked some very long hours. She usually had to work the weekends so that was my dad’s time with us.”

  “Divorced?”

  “No. But, it was hard to tell sometimes.” She took a sip from her wineglass. “What about your parents?”

  “Died in a car accident when I was a teenager. I ended up spending my high school years living with my aunt.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be. My aunt treated me like I was one of her own, maybe even better sometimes.”

  We finish our dinner and take a walk out on the riverfront. I half chose the restaurant because of my relationship with the owners, and half because of what I had planned for the second half of the date.

  “You are taking me on a cruise? I’ve wanted to do this since I was a kid.”

  “I know. I had one of my friends ask yours at the bar the night we met.”

  She grabbed my hand and we walked onto the ship. I didn’t reserve a cabin, like some men would have on a night like tonight because I want to see her under the moonlight.

  “I wish I brought my camera. It is so beautiful out here.” She looks over smiling.

  “We’ll just have to do this again, some day.” I turn towards her and we lock our hands together. We spend a few moments staring into each others eyes before I finally grow the nerve to bend down and give her a kiss.

  I stay with it as long as I can. If I could go back, I would make sure it never ended.

  -4-

  I wake up just as the smell of smoke enters my nose. Looking around, I notice a dozen corpses around me. I reach down, pick up my knife, and try to get my bearings. The last thing I remember is charging into the woods to take care of three demons that attacked Uriel’s complex. I know I managed to kill one but none of the corpses here looks like the other two.

  I walk towards the walls of the compound. Thankfully Eunie didn’t destroy those. That is the one thing I fear the most is losing control around other people. He doesn’t really care who he happens to kill. To be fair, he only gets to play when I’m within steps of eating it. But, it doesn’t make me feel any better knowing that.

  I work my way towards the gate. I get close when one of the soldiers manning the gates raises his weapon.

  “Hands where I can see them, tough guy.”

  “I’m on your team, numbnuts.” I raise my hands slowly in the air.

  “Thats not how I saw it. You managed to kill ten good men before you finally collapsed. We should have killed you last night. I won’t make that same mistake today.”

  “Stand down, sergeant.” Uriel walks in from behind him. “He told your men to stand down and get me. You sent your men to their deaths, not Mitch.”

  “How was I suppose to know that he was as twisted as the fucks he charged after?

  “You weren’t. Your job was to have your men man the walls and protect the encampment. If you send men every time someone tests our defenses, we will not have any left.” She places her hand on the barrel of his gun and presses it downward.

  I lower my hands, walk through the gates, and stop in front of the sergeant. “I’m sorry about your men, Sergeant. I have some problems of my own that I can’t control.”

  The sergeant sets his rifle back on his back and storms away.

  “Any idea what they were after?” I ask.

  “The attack on the gate was a diversion. Not long after you ran off three of them jumped over the walls and ran directly at my house. Ezekiel managed to kill two of them, but one managed to get into the room with the orb fragments.”

  “Shit, they took them?”

  “No, but they no longer hold the shadows.”

  I can’t say for sure, but it sounds like the demon souls are no longer inside. I have never been a fan of cameras for security, but I find myself wishing Uriel had some installed in her house. “So we are going to be dealing with Duncan again.”

  She nods. “With any luck they have some trouble finding a suitable host.”

  “But a demon can possess anyone. Why would that matter?”

  “If a demon forces his spirit into a body, it will not have as much power as a willing host. He could return to a physical body once he gets released, but something tells me that they are going to wait.”

  “Does that mean that you could possess any body you wanted to?” I’ve always been curious about the angels. Demons, as a rule, are a lot less secretive about the shit they can do. That’s not to say they tend to overstate their abilities at times. Angels, however, come off as a bit protective. That probably has a lot to do with them being tasked with protecting us, but surely someone has been on the bad side of one at some point.

  “Yes, but as a rule we only go into those who ask.”

  “That kind of limits your options now days, doesn’t it?”

  “It does, but we are much better at healing our hosts than them.”

  “How much good does that do when our enemies already outnumber us?”

  “If we have to drop to their level to win, then this is a war I don’t want to fight.”

  It is a war she was created to fight whether she wanted to or not. This is why I laugh when people prayed for an end to any war. God created all of us to fight. The angels split into two factions and fight each other. Humanity just took that to the extreme and split into hundreds of factions. The only thing that worries me is knowing that some of these factions still have access to nuclear weapons. I realize we are all going to die, but that is not the way I want to go out.

  “Talking about wars we don’t want to fight, I better be getting out of here. I don’t want to see Michael’s bad side.” I start heading towards the door. “If you need anything you know where I’ll be.”

  Zeke meets me at the door. “I’m sorry that you have to be in this mess, Mitch. I wish we found you before all of this, but I’m glad to have you on our side now.”

  I reach out and shake his hand. “All things considered, I’m glad you didn’t smite me for my mistake.” I can’t say I wouldn’t have done it to him if the situation was reversed. What kind of idiot makes a pact with a demon and hangs out with angels.

  “If we did that to every human who made a bad choice, we wouldn’t be able to fight this war.” He walks me out to my ride and opens my door. “We will find a way to get you out of your deal. You deserve it.”

  “I appreciate it.” I put my seatbelt on and pull down to the gate. Besides some dirty looks from the soldiers at the gates, I don’t have any issue getting out of the place, though I do have to swerve around the cars the demons left behind when they hit the place.

  The drive back home is rather pleasant. The one advantage to the apocalypse is the complete lack of traffic on most of the highways. Yeah, you will see other cars from time to time, but you don’t have to deal with traffic jams. Probably the best thing is the lack of road raged idiots on the roads. I find it hard to believe that they all stopped existing after things went south, but considering your odds of dealing with someone willing to kill you over something relatively minor have gone up, I can see why they may have learned to leave the finger on the steering wheel where it belongs.

  I’m about ten miles from the pad when I come across a group of cars blocking the road. I notice that they have the occupants of the front car standing outside of the vehicle while two other people are searching the vehicle. In the past I would have been trying to hide the booze I have in the back seat while su
cking on as many Tic Tacs as I could before I got to the checkpoint, but something tells me this isn’t a sobriety checkpoint. Of course it may be the two assholes with assault rifles that are heading my way.

  I roll down the window as the men approach. “What’s the problem here? I’m running late for an important business meeting. The boss will have my ass if I don’t get there on time.”

  The one on the driver’s side of the car raises the gun towards my face. “Nice ride you have here. Why don’t you get out of it and take a nice walk down the highway.”

  “And if I pass?”

  The asshole on the passenger side busts out the passenger window. “Then my friend there is going to take it from you.”

  “OK. OK.” I step out of the car. “You win man. The ride isn’t worth my life.” I take a few steps backwards. “Tell me, is it worth yours?”

  I focus my push on the barrel of his gun, sending him tumbling towards the ground. I focus on a pull on the other gun, which brings it to my hands. I then rush forward and put everything I have into a punch to the first guy’s jaw. I wasn’t the type of guy who you feared taking a punch from in the past, but survival today meant having to learn how to disable people without killing them when possible. I’m not against killing these guys, but I need to keep things quiet unless I want to decrease my survival rate.

  I square up to the other asshole on the other side of my car. I pull my knife to my hand and hover it in the air. “Time to play.”

  The look in his eyes is somewhere between holy shit and I have to run, but he stands his ground. I admire a man who is willing to stand up and fight, even when he knows he is royally screwed. I start to twist the knife around mid-air while he makes his play. His play is to take off running down the highway away from the roadblock. I also admire intelligence in a man. I bring my knife to my hand and start to walk towards the roadblock.

  If these other two assholes hadn’t tried to take my car, I would have probably let them pick this couple dry. Supplies are scarce, true, but they aren’t worth dieing for. Besides I would have picked them up a few miles up the road and given them a few things. Now I have to make an example out of them. I always thought the seven deadly sins were more figurative than anything. Ironic that these guys are going to die today because of greed. I allow a smile to come to my lips as I close in.