Risen: The Demontouched Saga (Book 6) Read online

  Placing the shotgun on the floor, I opt to pull out the sword to limit the noise I make. The last thing I want to do is let the whole crowd know we are here by shooting off a gun.

  I make my way down the steps, careful to keep my body and sword below the height of the wall. Along the screen, the light stops moving well before I’m down the stairs, so I stop moving not wanting to make any extra noise.

  I breathe through my nose when the light moves again, this time scanning the room instead of bouncing in front. Hugging the wall, I creep down the stairs even more carefully than before.

  Three steps from the bottom, the light moves again. Bouncing the wall across the theater. When I see a leg cross over the side of the half-wall, I move in to strike.

  My first attempt at killing the man is a wash as the blade deflects off of a nearby chair, the noise alerting him to my presence. When he looks at me, he drops the flashlight to the floor to grip the bat with two hands.

  “The bombs are gone,” the man laughs before faking a swing. “You think we didn’t know about them too?”

  I can’t see his face to know for certain, but the man almost sounds like he was at the hotel. Maybe not a permanent resident, but perhaps one of the guys who passed through occasionally. Considering Belial infiltrated the base as easy as he did, it would surprise me if there weren’t more demons involved.

  Not saying a word, I swing the blade at a high arc directly at his head. He lifts the bat to block the blow though putting a nice gash in the side.

  He rewards my miss with a fist to the gut, sending me reeling into the seats behind me. I grab my knife to naturally throw it at the thug. When blade is in the air, I raise my arm to put a little extra into it. Deep inside I can sense the metal, even feel it with my touch, but it misses wide when I’m unable to do anything with it.

  “Look who lost their powers,” he says laughing as he closes in.

  “I don’t need it to kill a punk like you,” I say, wielding the sword in a defensive stance in front of my body.

  “Peter and I will be rewarded with a kingdom of our own when I take that fancy sword from your bleeding corpse.”

  That confirms my thoughts about the hotel. Peter was a glorified dishwasher and errand boy back at the hotel. He spent a lot of time in the kitchen. That would make this Chuck, the cook.

  “What reward do you get when I send you back to hell?” I step in, taking a jab at his gut he blocks easily with the bat. With me off balance he hits me in the jaw with the handle, splitting my lip.

  Fighting a demon without my powers is a lot more difficult than I thought it would be. Not only am I a lot slower, I’m also not nearly as strong as he is. Thankfully, Chuck is still as overconfident as ever.

  He fakes a swing at my head, that I move the sword up to block before jabbing the head of the bat into my gut. When the pain hits, I let out a grunt before taking a few steps back. Then he moves in for the kill.

  With a loud yell he rears back, swinging the bat at a wide arc. I drop to my knees, avoiding the blow all thanks to the cover of the seats. When his momentum turns his body away, I stab my sword upwards into his chest.

  The bat rattles across the chairs after he releases the bat to grab the sword in his chest. Not wanting to give him a chance to pull it out, I push the hilt between his legs. When he drops to his knees I know I hit his heart. Getting to my feet, I kick over the corpse to pull the blade out of his chest.

  “One down,” I say, after I wipe the blade clean.

  A gunshot echoes through the room, sending me reeling for cover. It takes a moment, but once I gather my nerves I poke my head over the seats to take a look. Out front near the entrance there is a man standing in the middle of the light missing the left half of his skull.

  Not wanting to take a chance on him healing the wound, I rush down the stairs and remove the rest of his head with the edge of my sword.

  “Nice shooting,” I say to Sara as she walks down the stairs with her light back on. She stops long enough to pick up my knife off the isle floor.

  “Here,” she says.

  “Keep it. It may come in handy.”

  She smiles before placing the blade in the sheath I hand to her. If she is going to be with me, she needs a way to take them down too. I can’t help but feeling like it’s worthless without my power to assist throwing it around.

  Who knows, it just may save her life.

  We stop at the lobby to make sure the coast is clear before checking out the rest of the theater. The rest of the rooms were empty, leaving me to believe the thug. The demons must have taken them out of here long ago.

  I hate to go back to Nal with the bad news, but I’m all out of options. Without the explosives to take out the tower, we are going to need another plan.

  - 3 -

  “There isn’t a spare tire?” Sara says with her hands on her hips.

  “Nope,” I say, kicking the tire. “They didn’t store them underneath the truck until later on.”

  Looking back on the highway I see the cause of the incident, a highway sign knocked onto the roadway. Not paying attention to what I was doing, I didn’t see the thing until it was too late. Doesn’t help that the headlights on this thing don’t work worth a damn.

  “We should go back to the house,” Sara says, grabbing her stuff. “My car should still be there.”

  “Sounds good to me,” I say. “The battle will be long over if we have to walk back.”

  Belongings in hand, we start the trek back to the pad about five miles away. Walking in the darkness I make out packets of light off to the distance. It is too far to tell if it is a fire or electricity. But either way, someone isn’t afraid to stand out.

  Opting to take a shorter route, I knock a few boards out of a privacy fence lining the highway. The previous owners of the house behind it probably installed the fence to keep the noise levels down so they could sleep at night. Having lived next to train tracks as a kid, I can understand why.

  I thought I was going to be living in luxury when I finally moved out of that old house, but I spent the next few nights awake in my bed. After a few days, I bought a fan to create some noise.

  Once the Rising hit, it took me a few weeks to get used to sleeping in total silence when the power failed.

  About as long as it took for me to get used to sleeping on my own again.

  We cross through the yard and into the street on the other side. Cars line the road on both sides, leaving little room for another one to pass. Probably just as well since the gas situation is going to get dire without electricity to fuel the gas pumps. We can probably make it a few more months by siphoning off the abandoned vehicles, but that may be a stretch. There’s no way to know how much of that supply is gone on already.

  “Do you feel different?” Sara asks when we turn onto Page. Since we woke up in the back of the Expedition, she has been quiet. Almost too quiet. She is usually a bundle of energy just waiting to burst. So it makes me feel good she is finally opening up.

  “A little,” I say. “Like there is part of me missing.”

  She nods her head. “I feel the same way.”

  “Really? You weren’t even possessed that long?”

  “It’s the power,” she says, waving her fingers in the air. “My body feels empty without it.”

  I’m inclined to agree. After four years I feel naked without my power.

  “I keep telling myself its like having part of your body amputated. You have to change the way you do things to make up for the loss, but it will only hold you back if you let it,” I say, smiling.

  She is silent for the next few blocks, waiting until we turn down our street to talk again.

  “I want it back.”

  I feel the same way but can’t help believing it is impossible, even foolish in our cases. Both of us fought against the demons at some point, using our powers to survive. It is going to be near impossible to find another one willing to hand his over while letting us enjoy our lives.

>   Approaching our house well after daybreak, I see her green Celica sitting in the driveway partially hidden by the lawn that hasn’t been cut in a few weeks.

  OK, months. I never cut it unless Sara got onto me about it, which wasn’t often. It was a pain to cut when I finally got around to it though. I was tempted to find a Brush Hog to handle it then.

  Opening the door to the house, I’m greeted by a large mess in the living room. Glass and debris are spread over the floor, covered with the books and pictures we kept on the shelves. Across the room, the couch is in pieces as both cushions are sliced open, their contents spread across the room.

  The computer desk in the corner lies on the ground in a dozen shattered pieces, the case and monitor both split wide open. I don’t know what they were looking for, but they were thorough.

  “Who do you think did this?” Sara asks, picking up the shattered remnants of her computer monitor.

  It doesn’t take me too long to figure out. Likely after we started staying with Uriel, a group of demons came in and trashed the place looking for something. I’d put my guess on the orbs though it could have been anything, even me or the necklace.

  Searching the rest of the house, I find much of the same. Dressers knocked over with the contents of the drawers scattered on the ground. Boxes ripped open with their contents scattered about. Not even the mattresses were spared, both of them with the covers cut off, exposing the springs beneath.

  The only things we notice missing are my ammunition and the food in the cabinets. I don’t dare check the fridge to see if they got that too. If they didn’t, I can’t imagine it smells good by now.

  “You find the keys?” Sara yells down the hall.

  “Nope. Probably under this mess somewhere.” I couldn’t see anyone leaving the car in the driveway if they found the keys. They left it because they didn’t want it.

  On the floor I notice Sara’s laptop poking out from under a pile of clothes in the corner of the room. This is the computer she usually used to encrypt and decrypt data from things we found, including the USB drive I found in the warehouse that’s still plugged into the side.

  I take a seat on the couch after putting the stuffing back inside one cushion. Placing it on my lap, I push the power button on the top and it turns on. It must have been on the charger when we left. There won’t be enough power in the thing to last more than a few hours, which is fine. There really isn’t a need for them anymore.

  “You going to sit there and play games, or help me find the keys?” Sara asks, leering over the screen. Getting the point, I put the computer down on the couch to help dig through the debris.

  She starts in the kitchen, leaving me to check somewhere else. Not wanting to look the places she already has, I walk across the house to start in our bedroom.

  Walking inside, I step over the pile of clothes at the door, carefully avoiding Sara’s porcelain dolls lying on the floor. Those are her babies. Her prized possessions. Many of them she has had in her collection since she was a child. In our time together, I’ve added nearly two dozen to it while I’ve been out on the street. Many of those shattered in the room across the hall.

  Before digging through the room, I fix the mattress the best I can so I can place the dolls on top. The ones she keeps in the room are some of her favorites. Even the one dressed like a clown that freaks me out. I know it’s harmless, but it would scare the shit out of me when I woke up in the middle of the night. You can blame that on Steven King’s IT. I hated that movie too.

  I pick up the last doll, a little girl dressed in a small white wedding dress, revealing the keys below. I smile at the irony of the situation as this has always been her favorite doll. At least as long as I’ve known her. Every time we were out, she would make me stop at every store that sold the things. She was looking for a boy dressed in a tux to make a matching pair. Being a dreamer, she had hoped to have them set up in the reception if we ever got married. Something that was going to be difficult without any priests around.

  Real priests anyways.

  “Got them,” I yell, grabbing the keys form the floor.

  Sara walks into the room to see me not only holding the keys, but also the doll.

  “We should bring it with us,” she says, kissing me on the cheek.

  “I’m not sure that’s a great idea. Going to be hard enough to keep you in one piece when we get back to Nal.”

  She takes the doll from my hands, kissing me gently on the lips. “You protect me and I’ll protect the doll.”

  “Deal,” I say, smiling. It was an easy deal to make. I was going to do that much anyways.

  She walks to the closet, opening the door to take look inside. Out of all the things to do before we leave, she would have to check the one place that could keep her here longer.

  “You should put this on,” she says, handing me one of the priest suits from the closet.

  “Those days are done,” I say, shaking my head. With Eunie gone, I don’t think I could bring myself to wear the suits anymore. It was as much a part of him as it was me. With the wound of his loss still fresh, I’d rather not wear something that reminds me of him.

  “I’m still bringing it,” she says. “You may change your mind.”

  Fat chance.

  Wanting to drop the subject, I walk back in the living room. I’m about to walk out to the car when I notice the laptop sitting on the couch. Taking my seat on the repaired cushion, I open the file on the drive.

  The computer freezes when I first click the icon. I’m about to close the thing when the folder zips into existence once it is finally gone. On the drive are two icons, the top one labeled convention center that has a detailed map of the attack awhile back. The second one, however, still has the odd symbols below it.

  “You ever decode that second file?”

  “I had the program running when we left,” she says. “I figured the battery would have died by now.”

  “Guess whoever shut it helped us out.”

  I hand her the laptop, getting off the couch to let her have a good look.

  “Looks like it finished,” she says with a wide grin on her face.

  “What does it say?”

  The look on her face shifts from ecstasy to one of horror in two seconds. “I think I know where those bombs are,” she says, turning the screen.

  - 4 -

  “Hold on,” I say, making the turn onto 14th at nearly forty miles an hour. The rear wheels of the car fishtail to the right while I struggle to maintain control. I never had a problem driving fast, but I wish I learned how to drift. That skill would have come in handy when I narrowly miss a parked car on the side of the road.

  I weave through the city streets, narrowly missing vehicles and debris before ending back on Walnut. As I approach the new portal I see the damage and destruction of the battle below. A thick smoke fills the air underneath the southern pillar, near the same point where I parked the Expedition.

  As we cross over Broadway, we get an even clearer view.

  Three large cranes are lifting a piece of the pillar into location near the middle of the portal. Thankfully the piece isn’t large enough to fill the gap meaning there’s still time.

  “Bridge is out!” Sara shouts, placing her hands against the dashboard.

  I cut the wheel to the right, getting on Memorial. I take the road another block, stopping just past where Spruce connects.

  “Gotta run from here,” I say, grabbing my gear. It isn’t an ideal solution, but the concrete medians should give us a little cover.

  We follow the highway down a ways before crossing behind the construction vehicles left to fix the bridge and supporting roadways before shit went down.

  As we get closer, the gunfire gets louder telling me things are shifting against Nal’s group. I figured it was just a matter of time before that happened. Things were a little too calm earlier. Bullets and other weapons may disable a demon for a short period, but it is impossible to kill them without specialty
weapons like my sword or the knife. I can’t imagine they are here fighting on their own, either. They wouldn’t blink at the thought of abandoning a damaged body to take over another.

  The only real assets Nal has going for him are the two angels fighting for our team, Azrael and Malachi. They are bad ass as far as fighters go, but even they can only do so much against large numbers. I haven’t seen Uriel fight, but imagine she is a force in her own right.

  Up ahead we see the makeshift barrier the team is using as a command post still in one piece. Either the demons didn’t get the memo, or we got here on time. Commander Stevens walks around the side of the trucks, hand waving in the air when he sees us. Before I can wave back, the back door of the box truck blows open, sending shards of wood and metal into the commander.

  The blast sends him flying in the air nearly five feet, only stopping when his body crashes into a parked minivan. He moves around sluggishly once he is on the ground, covering his hand with blood as he feels his body.

  I drop my shotgun to the ground, pushing through the plastic construction barrier to get to the man. I don’t get to the other side of the street when another blast rocks the support of the bridge right below the roadway above.

  “Get back to the car!” I shout to Sara, hoping she can hear me over the sound of panic below the bridge. I don’t look back again to see if she listens, instead I focus on the damage unfolding before my eyes.

  One by one, the other pillars supporting the bridge explode. The concrete roadway above moans as it struggles to balance on what remains of the support beams. They may have been designed to withstand damage from a truck or a barge, I doubt they were built with this in mind.

  Before I can get much closer, large pieces of concrete fall on the ground around me, the area further under the bridge is much of the same.

  Not wanting to be crushed, I run back in the opening between the ramps and overpasses. The ground shakes violently around me as the bridges collapse to the ground, sending a cloud of concrete dust into the air easily four stories high. As the pillars continue to fall, I pull the collar of my tee shirt over my head to avoid breathing in any more of the dust than I have to.