Blood and Magick Page 2

  I always have one in the chamber. Larson reached under his jacket, pulling out a Glock. The ugly, boxy semiautomatic filled his hand. Kat was removing her pistol from her purse. It was a 9mm. I know because I’m the one who gave it to her.

  A touch on my arm whipped my head around. Tiff was there, a Taurus Judge in her hand.

  The Judge is a big revolver that holds .410 shotgun shells. It’s a bastard of a pistol that does a shit-ton of damage. It is literally a handheld shotgun. Tiff had taken to using it since losing her eye. The leeway in aiming it adjusted for the loss of parallax she suffered.

  She leaned in close to me. “What’s coming?”

  “Don’t know.” I turned to the hole in the wall. “But it’s going to be bad.”

  The words were barely out of my mouth when a woman stepped through the wreckage and into the restaurant.

  She stood, prim and proper, just inside the charred ring of the blast radius. Slowly, she pulled a pair of thin lace gloves off two chubby hands, tucking them into a small purse that hung at her elbow. It snapped shut with a click. Clasping her hands together, she settled herself with a shake of fleshy shoulders, raised her chin, and began to look around the carnage before her.

  She was covered head to toe in a dress that would be dour if it wasn’t made of a brilliant pthalo green fabric that shimmered in the uncertain light. It was the same iridescent color as the underside of a peacock feather. Full skirts surrounded her legs, concealing them under layers of lace and crinoline. Her top was covered with a matching waistcoat that pinched a generous middle, held together by a row of tiny ebony buttons running waist to throat in a wavy line. The sleeves were tight on her arms, stuffed in like pillows, and went from puffy shoulders to puffy wrists. A silver pentagram the size of a baby’s head hung on a braid around her neck, a snarling goat head glaring out from it in satanic glee.

  Her hair was pulled back into a severe bun that revealed a severe face. It was a face made for correcting schoolchildren, a face where every feature was a harsh slash on a canvas. The only thing that tilted that face from sour to interesting was a pair of poison green eyes burning with fierceness.

  Two figures moved through the settling dust to stand next to her.

  One was a thin blade of a man in a black cassock. Wiry hair, dark as coal, hung shaggy around his head, blending into a thick, gnarled beard. His nose hooked out between deep-set eyes. They glittered like black diamonds beneath two wide stripes of eyebrow. His fingers were covered in armor styled jewelry, jutting out wickedly in points and barbs like the claws of a wild animal. A matching pentagram to the one the woman wore, goat head and all, hung under his beard, starkly bright against the black of his overcoat.

  He stood next to her, seething, shoulders rising and falling, metal claws clicking at the end of his hands. He stomped the ground with jackbooted feet, shuffling to and fro in feral agitation. His head jerked to the side, watching as the other figure sauntered up to join them.

  It was a young girl. Wild, tall, and lanky, she was all long limbs and hard angles. She looked like someone had stretched her into her near six-foot height. Long hair whipped around her like a blood-red briar save for one white streak as wide as my wrist that cut through from the side of her forehead. Her face was a younger, thinner version of the lady in green, set with the same poisonous eyes. I would bet they were related.

  She twisted and swayed as she moved to join her companions. Where her companions were covered nearly head to toe in clothing, this one was almost nude. Harsh angles of hipbones jutted over the waist of red leather pants so shredded they were indecent. A pentagram like the one the others had also sat on her chest, but it was lashed over nonexistent breasts with buckled straps of leather.

  As she joined them, the lady in green lifted her skirts and began to walk toward us, one dainty foot in front of the other. Her voice was sharp as broken porcelain, with a clipped British accent as she spoke.

  “I am Selene. We are the Wrath of Baphomet. Give us the blood or we will slaughter you and everyone who is still alive.”

  3

  I pointed the Colt in my right hand at the witch, lining the sights up on her face. “Stop walking or I start shooting.”

  She drew up in a swish of skirts. Chubby hands flashed out to her sides, stopping the other two one step behind her.

  “That’s better. Now what the hell do you want?”

  Selene cocked her head at me, one thin eyebrow arching over a poison eye. “We want the blood.”

  “I don’t know what that means.” I brought the other semiautomatic up, both pointed at her face. Tiff, Larson, and Kat raised their guns also. The three witches were covered with enough firepower to kill twenty people.

  My voice pushed out through clenched teeth. “All right, Scary Poppins, you’ve got about three seconds to explain yourself before shit gets deadly up in here.”

  The warlock pushed forward, raising a steel-taloned finger and pointing it at me. His snarled voice was deeply accented with something Middle Eastern, grinding from his throat like his larynx had been crushed. “We do not have to explain anything to you. Kneel before us and beg forgiveness for your insolence.”

  I barked a laugh at him. “Insolence? This isn’t insolence, you asshat. Insolence might be when I stick my foot up your ass.”

  Ebony magick crackled from his eye sockets, olive skin flushing dark. “You DARE to insult me?”

  He stepped forward, fingers weaving in arcane twists. Magick began to swell in the air, pressing against my skin. My fingers tightened on the triggers of my guns.

  The skanky witch giggled, long, thin fingers waving over her lips. Blood-red hair fell across her eyes. She looked out through the white streak. “Oh, Ahriman, relax. You don’t have to go apeshit over every little thing.” Twirling, she danced over to him, hips leading the rest of her body. “They have no choice but to do what we want; they just don’t realize it.”

  Snarling, the warlock jerked away from her touch. “Do not act familiar with me, Athame. I am in no mood for your games. You would do well to remember your place as third of our circle.”

  Athame pouted. “And you would do well to remember that you’re not the boss of me.” She spun on a bare foot, whipping her long hair around, hitting the warlock. She spoke to the witch in the green dress. “Isn’t that right, Mom?”

  Selene’s tone was sharp as a knife. “The two of you be quiet and return to task.”

  Athame stuck her tongue out at Ahriman as she sauntered over to stand beside Selene. The dark warlock glowered. He stepped closer to the two witches with a stomp of a booted heel.

  I looked at them. “Y’all done squabbling?”

  Selene nodded.

  “Good.”

  Thunder rolled as I pulled the triggers.

  Bullets unleashed in a hail of destruction as the others joined me. The air filled with noise and the sticky-sweet smoke of spent gunpowder. We pulled triggers, slinging bullets at the witches. They all jerked and twitched under the rain of silver-jacketed lead. The warlock fell backward, hitting the floor hard. The two witches danced under the impact of the bullets. The slides locked back on my guns.

  It was over in seconds.

  Automatically I reloaded. Gun under arm, swipe eject button, drop spent clip, pull spare, slam it home, hit the slide release, strip a new bullet into the chamber. Cocked, locked, and ready to rock. Repeat.

  It took less time to do than it did to tell.

  “Well, that was easy,” Larson said, replacing the clip in his Glock.

  Tiff pushed the last new shell into the cylinder of the Taurus Judge. A twist of her wrist snapped it closed. “It’s never that easy.”

  Magick brushed against my power like sandpaper to a match head.

  My hands tightened on the grips of my guns. “Yeah, let’s not break our arms patting ourselves on the back just yet.”

  The first one to move was the warlock. He rose, hinging back to his feet like he was hauled up on wires. Splattered
silver and lead fell from his chest, tumbling down his clothes, clinking together on the floor at his feet. Steeltaloned fingers brushed through his wiry beard, pulling out bits of bullets.

  The two witches rose together, shedding spent bullets that had splattered against them. The young one picked a piece of shrapnel from her teeth, using her tongue to dislodge it. She spat it on the ground. Selene simply shook out her skirts and tucked one stray strand of hair back behind her ear.

  Shit.

  “Did you think we came here unprepared Deacon Chalk? We are charmed against your silver. Now give us the Blood of the Trinity.”

  Double shit.

  Blood of the Trinity? My mind clicked. They must be here for me. After my blood, or more specifically, the Angel blood that ran in my veins. It didn’t matter what they wanted it for. Witches after your blood is a never a good thing.

  I shook my head. “Piss off, lady. No blood for you.”

  Selene turned to the dark warlock. “Ahriman? You may begin.”

  The warlock reached under the edge of his cassock, pulling out a glass bottle. The steel talon jewelry on his fingers clinked against the glass as he pulled the stopper from it. The liquid inside was thick, lumpy, and curdled like milk left to sit out for a few days.

  He turned it up, pouring the foul-looking liquid into his mouth. It splashed on his lips, sticking in his mustache and beard. Swiping the back of his hand across his mouth, he threw away the bottle. It arced up, spinning through the air to drop and shatter on the floor.

  Armored jewelry flashed as his fingers wove in intricate, arcane movements. Sodium yellow light filled his eyes, spilling out of them to cut shadows around his features. His mouth chewed words, spitting them out in a garbled language never meant for a human throat.

  Kat looked over at me. “What’s he doing?”

  “Bad shit. Dark magick. Hold on.”

  My power flared, running out to meet the magick filling the air. With a spark, my mind’s eye opened up and I could see the warlock’s fingers kneading witchcraft together, knitting lines of corrupted sorcery into a tangle between his palms. Every syllable he spat was a clot of magick that grew the spell in his hands. It was the potion, drank, activated by chanting, and regurgitated into dark sorcery. The spell was cold and clammy against my skin. Where it brushed felt hollow. Empty. Dead.

  Necromancy. Awesome, that’s just awesome.

  The lines of sorcery tightened into a knot of energy. With a final harsh choke, he spewed the last word and flung his hands apart. The magick flew, arcing over the destruction like flaming arrows. One by one, they each struck bodies that littered the floor. The sorcery barbed in, hooking and pulling.

  Ahriman’s voice was a throaty whisper, the words soft and seductive. “Come to me, my lovelies. Rise. Rise and bring me the skins of my enemy.”

  The dead got up, ignoring their broken bodies. The ones whole enough to stand began shuffling toward us, ruptured skin flapping around gaping holes. They shambled, dead throats beginning the forlorn moan of the walking dead.

  Zombies. I hate it when it’s zombies.

  They were all around and closing in. Between the rattling moans was the clacking of teeth as they began biting the air in anticipation of gnawing on human flesh. My human flesh.

  I counted quickly in my head. Twelve. There were twelve zombies now between us and the witches.

  “What do we do?” Larson’s voice had a high-pitched, brittle edge to it. I looked over. He was waving his gun around from zombie to zombie. Kat and Tiff both still had their weapons aimed at the witches, waiting on me.

  I yelled at him, “Pull it together!” There wasn’t time for him to lose his shit. The zombies were spread all over the front of the restaurant and coming our way.

  4

  Zombies are slow. They shuffle and shamble and drag their feet, but they are damn near unstoppable. They feel no pain. They do not get tired. They are relentless. Inexorable. The only cure for zombie-ism is to destroy the brain. They function off the cerebellum and the brainstem, which control motor functions. Destroying this part of the brain stops any kind of walking dead. Zombie, ghoul, draugr, mummy, or a wraith; it doesn’t matter. Scramble the brains and the walking dead become the non-walking dead. Even ones raised by witchcraft.

  I stepped around the table, rolling my shoulders to loosen them. “Stay behind me. If the witches so much as twitch a finger, you blast them. It may not kill them, but it has to hurt.” I saw Tiff nod out the corner of my eye. Larson trained his Glock back on the witches. “Don’t screw up and shoot me, or I’ll be pissed.” He knew I was talking to him. He was better than when I first met him but was still the least proven shooter.

  And why the hell is he able to stand?

  I pushed the thought away. First things first. Flesh-eating zombies and bloodthirsty witches before paraplegic-whosuddenly-has-the-ability-to-walk. My mind closed down, shutting off all extraneous thought. It shifted, tunneling into that soft, peaceful place that lets me do a lot of violence. The place that lets me kill. Everything falls away, becomes distant, and the only things I see are the things that need killing. My hearing went fuzzy in the staticky silence of my head.

  Fourteen bullets. Twelve zombies.

  Let’s do this.

  Pushing off, I crossed the floor. The first zombie met me midway. It was a young man dressed in a nice suit. The blast had ripped away both of his arms. He lunged at me, mouth clamping open and shut, zoom whitened teeth clacking together. The human mouth is deadly. Hinged by one of the strongest muscles in the body, it can sever flesh and break bone, especially when driven by an undead hunger for human flesh.

  I shoved the Colt into his face and pulled the trigger. The .45-caliber bullet punched him just under his nose, tumbling out the back of his head in a shower of blood and brains. The body dropped to the floor like a rock.

  I stepped over, meeting the next two zombies. They were one of those middle-aged couples who begin to look alike after being married for two decades. They were both pleasantly plump with frizzy, sandy brown hair. He wore a tie that matched her dress. They reached for me in unison. Crossing my arms, I stepped in and pulled both triggers at once. The bullets smacked them apart. They fell to each side of me. I stepped through and kept moving.

  The world dimmed even more, adrenaline pulling my focus down to only the next target and nothing periphrial.

  The couple with their son in his military uniform were dropped with three shots in a row. Mom and Pop had shielded their boy from as much of the blast as they could. Both of them were shredded by shrapnel, pink flesh screaming out against dark chocolate skin. The son was unmarked except for a wide gash across his throat that had leaked red over neat, crisp Marine dress blues.

  They hit the floor. I kept moving.

  Three frat boys, underdressed for the restaurant, stumbled over each other. The blast had turned two of them into charred briquettes. Skin black and cracking, they bookended their friend whose stomach was just a big gory hole I could see spine through. They dropped one after the other in a secession of shots.

  The slide locked back on the gun in my right hand. Empty. I shoved it into the holster, slide hot through the leather, and switched the other Colt over to my right hand. Something bumped into my back.

  Jerking around, I saw there were two zombies. Both of them were old and tiny bodies hunched from age. They scrabbled at me with thin fingers covered in loose, papery skin and liver spots. The blast had ravaged them, both missing more flesh than they had left. They were sad and pathetic, trying to eat my flesh even though the blast had also knocked both their mouths empty of dentures.

  I took a deep breath and put them both down.

  As they dropped I looked around for the last zombie. I was spinning on my foot when he slammed into me, riding me to the ground.

  The world snapped open with a rush. The slow ballet of adrenaline broke as I was driven into the floor. Hard. I heard someone shout my name but couldn’t tell who it was. This
zombie was fast, grabbing me in a frenzy of undead strength. Fast zombies suck. The Colt clattered out of my grip. My hands pressed against the zombie’s face, holding back snapping teeth. It pushed hard against my palms, beating my shoulders into the hard floor. The glass shard throbbed deep in my shoulder, an excruciating jolt that pulled my head sideways with cramped muscle. Pain shocked down in my joint; an explosion of fire-edged agony.

  The zombie had lost the skin on the right side of its body and face. It was scrubbed away like road rash. What skin was left prickled my palm with embedded shrapnel. He was a big son of a bitch, a bodybuilder, thick with muscle and heavy with mass. I held him back, but just barely. My arm was weak and getting weaker each second that went by. The piece of glass ground in my shoulder, sapping my strength. Chomping teeth pressed closer and closer to my throat. Bloody saliva spattered hot on my face.

  I bucked, feet scrabbling on the floor. My heel struck something, one of the walking dead I had dropped a second ago. It caught, giving me the leverage I needed to flip the big-ass zombie over. We rolled until I was sitting on its chest, hands still on its face. Leaning hard on my arm, I pinned it to the floor. The Colt lay a foot away. Snatching it up with numb fingers, I stuck the barrel between chomping teeth. Enamel cracked on nickel-plated steel as the mindless dead thing kept biting down. The head bucked once under my hand as I pulled the trigger.

  The warlock began screaming. I stood shakily to my feet. His voice was the howl of a wild animal.

  Selene spoke over him. “You did well.”

  I fought not to sway on my feet. My upper body felt sticky, covered in blood lost from a dozen small gashes. My shoulder was on fire, more blood running down my arm, soaking my shirt sleeve. Pain throbbed everywhere, pulses chasing each other through my muscles.

  “That was nothing.” I waved my hand. “You should turn around now and get the hell out of here before I really show you what I can do.”