Last of the Mighty (2 page)

I held my ground as the hellhounds charged. The black male rocketed straight for me, teeth bared, while the brown veered way out left. For that second, I didn't care what her plans were. One immediate attacker was better than two.

My eyes fastened to the black thing and my fists tightened. Senses in overdrive, I could almost hear the sweat pushing onto my brow. As the monster leapt, my slo-mo kicked in.

I was used to this slow-motion phenomenon from my martial arts competitions. A sensei of mine had assured me that God was not slowing down the universe just for the benefit of good ol' Og. It was that I, fueled by adrenaline, not to mention my Mighty DNA, was moving faster.

I rocked the beast with a fist-strike to the back hip. A sickening pop and the dog's pelvis was gone. The animal was thrust into a flat spin, whirling in circles like a weather vane in the wind, until hitting the ground with a solid thud.

I scanned the area for the brown female. Nothing. I did come across Chool, though. His formerly greedy smile had curled into a scowl. On the other hand, maybe that was just his bigger smile. The one he took out for parties and first dates.

The black dog rose, holding himself up with his three good legs. I went into Mantis. The thing surprised me by not charging at once. I hoped he was too busted up to attack again.

No such luck.

He was simply waiting.

For his two friends.

The brown female was back.

And she'd brought along a gray hulk nearly twice her size.

Sizing me up, the gray mongrel spewed a maniacal hyena-chuckle that stiffened the hair on my neck. Then all three blasted toward me.

Everything slowed and the world hushed. My heart thumped in my ears as I assessed the situation. The brown edged in front of the gray, hackles raised, murderous pupils fixed to mine. The black dog lagged behind, limping severely, while the gray was a step behind the leader, approaching fast.

I spun left, whipping my right fist around and hammering a down-stroke into the hinge joint of the brown dog's jaw.

No crack of broken bone, but the girl's front legs folded and she skidded into the earth, nose first.

A bomb of pain exploded in my upper back. The gray tore into me with teeth like shrapnel. Claws dug in, carving out ragged rows of blood near my shoulder blade. He clung on, vise-like and heavy, suspended off the ground, snarling, throwing his head back and forth. My blood everywhere.

I peered over my shoulder. Could smell the gray's rancid breath, hear the grumble in his throat. I saw his blood-stained ear pressed flat to the skull. Then, near my calf, the dog's hind leg swung up like a pendulum. I snatched it with two hands and twisted the joint. Brutal. Corkscrewed it until the grinding of cartilage gave way to the splinter of bone.

The creature bawled, released its hold, and fell. I fed him a back-kick to the teeth on the way down. That dropped him. I turned and stomped on the base of his skull with one foot then the other. His eyes rolled up, shuddered and closed. Unconscious.

As I prepared to end the mammoth gray, a fuzzy dark cloud lunged at my midriff. I wheeled just in time to deflect the black dog's snout then continued around and finished with a spin-kick that shattered his ribs.

I was suddenly rammed from behind and jarred forward, ten yards. Managing to keep my feet, I turned to see the brown female who had just head-butted me trotting for me again like a cocky rhino, picking up speed.

Why hadn't she bit me?

The answer lay in her slack jaw. Her jowls had come unhinged, hanging there as loose and harmless as a busted puppet's. My previous blow had dislocated it.

Without her teeth, I dispatched of the brown easily with a knife-hand to the chest. But I could feel my strength waning.

The black had taken himself out of the fight and hobbled back to Chool. When it reached him, the Nephilim threw a finger in my direction, demanding that he get back to the fray. The dog just sat there, whimpering and shivering, gazing up at his master. Chool attacked with a chokehold and crushed the mutt's windpipe.

My back burned, throbbed, and stung, my wounds streaming freely. I was dizzy, fading, yet the war was far from over.

The gray regained consciousness. He approached slowly, cautiously, his damaged paw tucked up close to his body.

Blood loss was sapping my strength, playing with my eyes—my sight alternating from white to blurry to black. Wouldn't be long before I was passed out with a demon hyena gnawing at my jugular. I took a breath and shook my head. For a moment, my vision cleared. This was it. My last chance. I summoned what little strength I had left and launched an all-out assault.

The next two minutes were a hazy whirl of blood and teeth and claws and fur. Yelps and growls, chomping jaws, and fractured bones. Of flying feet, fists, elbows, knees, and God knows what else. At one point, Chool must have joined for I vaguely recall a gigantic fist skimming off my cheek…an arm strangling my neck...a human figure thrown over my hip to crash into a headstone and smash it to pieces.

In the end, I alone remained in the graveyard. Exhausted. I blinked away the blood, sweat, and dirt, surveyed the carnage. I was sliced up, bad, from knuckle to elbow. My shoes were drenched in deep, red gore. Three mutant carcasses were slumped around the graveyard while the big gray was a motionless mound at my feet. His spine was bent, his ribcage stoved in and his muzzle submerged in a widening pool of blood.

I looked like a matador who'd just lost to the bull. Blood leaked into my eyes, mouth, down my neck, off my fingers. My head was a sledgehammer, my back a machete, and my legs were buckshot. With the world smeared and spinning, I looked for Chool.

I glimpsed him in the distance…

Scurrying away…

Just before it all went black.

A dull, pulling pain at my shoulder blade woke me up. Stitches. Eighty-nine of them. Plus another couple hundred spread around my arms, hands, thighs, and waist. But the coolest little six-pack was on my left cheekbone.

A scar.

Sweet.

It kind of ruined my clean-cut, Disney hero look, but I loved it. The new me. The ex-goody-two-shoes, ex-altar boy still a little tweaked at God for stealing my mom and leaving me here without a father, sibling, or grandparent. And now Chool and the dogs—His latest blessing.

I glanced around my bedroom. How I got there, I had no idea. Stiff and sore, it could've been worse. I could've been dead. Took a few testing breaths to see how deep I could inhale before my back stretched to the point of tearing away my pretty hem job. Wouldn't want to upset the seamstress.

My sight was smoggy, and I stared at the objects in the room until the mist lifted—a crucifix on the wall, a painting of angels, statue of the Virgin Mary… Checked the alarm clock on my nightstand. One-thirty. I'd been out for six hours.

A couple weeks after my mom died, they thought it best that I move out of her convent and into the pastoral living quarters of Saint Perpetua's, the Catholic Church up the street. The rooms were like those in a monastery. Simple and sparse. Just a bed, nightstand, and small closet. I shared a bathroom and kitchen with Monsignor Z and an old groundskeeper named Amos, who was also the cemetery caretaker.

My head was thumping. Thankfully, The Committee was keeping it low. What I referred to as The Committee was the near-constant static in my head. For the last eighteen months, my brain had been like a cheap radio trying to tune in to some far off demon radio station. If my dome wasn't hissing and buzzing, it was filled with shrieks, gunshots, cackles, scheming conversations, and weeping. So much weeping.

Figured The Committee was muffled from the painkillers. So when a louder voice called out, “You're such a wad,” I had a pretty good idea who it was.

Merryn.

She stood in the doorway with her arms crossed and chin wagging. She eased into my room, cautious, though desperate not to show it. Tough Merryn. She tried, but failed to chase away her smile, the one that said I'm glad you're okay.

Of course I was in love with her. You would be too if you knew her. Merryn was cute, but not supermodel beautiful, with brown hair and light brown eyes. Smart, but not genius. Funny without knowing it. Some would say a little dorky, but in a totally adorable way. To me anyway. She got crazy excited about things like ice cream and rain. And where most girls freaked out about my size and being a nun's kid, she felt as comfortable around me as I did around her. Maybe because we'd known each other for more than half our lives.

But Merryn wasn't my girlfriend. She had no clue how I felt about her. Too afraid to tell her. Facing a Nephilim and devil-dogs was nothing compared to telling someone you loved them. Especially when that someone was your cousin.

She sat on the edge of my bed and casually looked me over—the dried blood, the walnut eye, the sewn-up bites, and all those trenches dug out of my flesh by demonic dog claws. She tested the bedsprings with her fingers and quipped, “Guess ya shoulda broke up with her over the phone, eh jack-wit?”

Jack-wit. Merryn and I had been inventing innocent swear words for years. Jack-hole, jack-weed, jack-wad, even jackalope were part of our regular repertoire, but I hadn't heard her latest invention. I grinned at it. Until the scab on my lip cracked and began to dribble.

Without a thought, she swabbed the blood off my chin with her finger then rubbed it into her hand until the red was gone. She pointed to her cheekbone, indicating where my awesome little stitch-pack was, and said, “Cool.”

“Courtesy of your mom, I presume?”

My Aunt Laurel was a nurse. Whoever found me and hauled me up here must have phoned her to lace me up.

I turned my cheek to her so she could get a better look. “My own little murder.” That's what they looked like to me. Six crows. Sitting on a wire.

She half-smiled and lightly stroked the birds on my cheek.

And just so you don't get too weirded out about the cousin thing, Merryn was adopted. My aunt and uncle took her in as a foster kid when she was six. Fell in love with her immediately and began the adoption process a month later.

Though we had no blood relation thing going on, it was still strange being in love with Merryn. Yet, super cool at the same time. Hasn't everyone had that one cousin they wished they could date? Well, I could.

Someday anyway. Maybe.

“So, c'mon.” Merryn bobbed her chin at my wounds. “Spill it.”

She was the investigative reporter type who always cut straight to the chase. Good or bad, she needed to know the what, where, how, why, and who.

Though it wasn't like me to kick and tell, I wanted to tell her about the dogs and Chool and how he was definitely going to try to kill me again. But I needed some time to process, so I faked up a yawn and mumbled, “Tired.”

She rolled her eyes. “Don't gimme that sheetrock. Geez! Tell me now or—”

A knock at the door stopped her.

Amos Booth, the church groundskeeper and cemetery caretaker, filled the doorframe. He was big, black, and barrel-chested. Seventy years old. All-American nose guard back in the day at Texas Christian University. Though a bit thicker in the middle nowadays, Amos still moved with the powerful grace of a panther.

“Afternoon, Ms. Caffrey. Og.” He dipped his chin at us. Old school. Southern manners to go with his Southern drawl.

“H-hi, Mr. Booth,” stammered Merryn, but she couldn't meet his gaze. She kept her eyes at the chest of his denim overalls.

For some reason, the old guy wigged her out. I could see why. Amos Booth had that quiet, serial killer vibe. He lived three doors down the hall, and for the last twelve weeks, he'd said maybe a dozen words to me. Sometimes I got a g'mornin', but more often it was just a nod of recognition. Which isn't a bad thing. What was a bad thing was the feeling he gave me. Like he was watching me, spying on my every move. Twenty-four seven.

“How's yer pain, son?” Amos rounded my bed.

“Okay, I guess.”

At my nightstand, he twisted off the caps of the two amber-colored prescription bottles.

“S'posed to check on ya. Make sure these here pills're gettin' in ya.”

He picked some tablets from the bottles and gave them to me along with the water on my nightstand. I looked at the tablets. Three of them. I washed them down.

Merryn had gone into stealth mode. Silent. She stood in the corner, fiddling with her phone and trying to look busy, doing anything to avoid talking to Amos.

So when he said, “Ms. Caffrey,” she nearly dropped her cell phone.

Giving her a small, polite smile, he asked, “Mind if I have a word with Augustine in private?”

“Sh-sure.” Merryn's eyes darted to mine. “Sure. Yeah. Yeah. N-no sweat.”

Merryn became a repeater when nervous.

She said a quick goodbye, twice, and hurried away, relieved to put some distance between herself and Amos Booth.

As soon as she was out the room, Amos closed the door.

Gently.

Too gently. The way gangsters close doors in the movies right before they rub out one of the good guys.

Which, in my current state, shouldn't take too long at all.

Amos Booth had lost his softness. He was all shoulders, menace, and square-jawed toughness as he glided around the room. His big hands and arms were flecked with mud, soil ground into his knuckles, and the dirt packed beneath his fingernails—in dark brown curves—looked like blades of the Reaper's scythe.

He cleared his throat. “Got a mess out there this mornin'.” His thumb itched itself on the gray stubble of his two-day beard. “Ain' never seen me nothin' like it. An' I seen a bit.” His hazel-green eyes, piercing, steered into mine. “Ain' never seen me no human fight like tha' neither.”

I expected him to smile, at least a little, but I got an accusing glare instead.

“You saw the whole…thing?” I asked.

“Heard some noise. Took it for cai-yoats.” That's the way he said coyotes. “So I grabbed the shotgun'n come runnin'. An' there you were. Standin' there all bloody. With a dead dawg at yer feet.”

He paced to my little window overlooking the cemetery. Tense. Nervous. He peered over the headstones and asked, “Care t' tell me ‘bout it?”

Now he couldn't even look me in the face.

With his eyes on a bird, Amos reached into his pocket and drew out what might've been a nail. But it wasn't like any nail I'd ever seen.

He turned to me and said, “Why don'cha tell me who y' are, son.”

My vision went blotchy. Cleared again. The pills were kicking in.

Amos played with the nail now, rolling it across his palm. It was as thick as my finger and rusted reddish-brown all over. Spanned six inches from its pyramid-like head to its roughened tip. A slight curve to the crude, iron shaft made it look like it was crafted by a blacksmith from the Dark Ages.

“I'm…Augustine Caffrey?” My tongue went thick, the walls wavy.

I focused on the nail, figured it for one of Amos's carving tools. He'd been known to sculpt a headstone or two. Maybe he'd accidentally left it in his pocket.

Problem was, he was holding it like a weapon.

I added to my reply, “I'm S-Sandrine's…kid. The nun.” My voice went soft, scared, wimpy.

Amos advanced on me. Ominous.

Wait, I thought. Or maybe I said it. Three tablets, two amber bottles. That's why I was so out of it. The extra pill. Amos had drugged me.

“An' who's yer father?” His black boot stole another step forward, his grip tightening on the nail.

“N-never met...him.”

Murder pulled at his lip, creased his forehead.

But why would Amos want me dead?

I pinched myself, hoping to wake from a drug-induced frightmare. I mean, what're the odds of two different people in a seven-hour period trying to off you?

Hovering above me now, his eyes went suddenly damp, shined with…was it…sympathy?

“H-hey-y,” I tried to object. Reason with him. But fear and drugs had taken my voice.

“Jus' relax, Og.” His face softened. “You'll be fine.” The words were tender with compassion. “Lemme free ya, son,” he said, like a loving father chastening a child.

A scream revved in my chest…but never made it out.

Amos brought the nail up over his head. “Our Father…”

My eyes caught the Grim Reaper scythes of his dirty fingernails—each one like an evil brown grin.

“…who art in Heaven…”

The nail came at me.

“…hallowed be thy—”

“Hey, Og!” Merryn burst in, panting, breathless.

Amos wrapped the nail back in his fist and stuffed it in his pocket.

“Oh, sorry, Mr. Booth, but I forgot to tell Og something.” Merryn's eyes ping-ponged between Amos and me. She knew something was going on. Wouldn't have been the first time she'd listened to a secret conversation from the other side of a door.

“Ever hear o' knockin', Ms. Caffrey?”

“It's super import—”

“Merryn!” A frantic voice came from the stairs. “Og!” Aunt Laurel bounded in. “What's wrong?” She searched for the emergency. “Is everyone alright?”

Merryn held up her cell phone and wiggled it at Amos. His evil plan thwarted by a 911 text from daughter to mother.

“Og.” Aunt Laurel looked me over. “Are you okay?”

My vision cloudy, my brain mushy, I gazed into the pretty smudge of Merryn's face and then to Aunt Laurel. “Hee…himm…” I had to tell them what Amos had done. I pointed at him. “Hin— Hinnall…” My throat was sand. “Pock…Pock… Pocket!” My thoughts were wind.

“It's okay.” Aunt Laurel snickered. Another patient loopy on meds.

“No, it isn't!” I screamed…yet not a word of it came out.

Aunt Laurel smiled and put a palm to my forehead. “It's nothing a little sleep won't cure.”

Mute and helpless, I gave in to Aunt Laurel and nodded, hoping Amos wasn't insane enough to try something with two witnesses in the room. My eyes found Merryn. I wanted to thank her for saving me, but all I said was, “Myy m-m-mom? Issz deadd.”

It came from nowhere. The hollow emptiness. The grief and aloneness. The missing her and needing her touch. A wave building and cresting and crashing all in the same second.

I closed my eyes and let sadness overtake me.

Merryn told me later that I wept for an hour.