The Demon Deception (34 page)

Darcy laughed, “How are you going to do that,
Lilith? I have the power now, not you.”

Behind them, Darcy struck out. The bikers
were thrown back, some as much as ten feet or more. Bodies impacted
into motorcycles. Two of them didn’t get back up. Only the FBI were
still standing.

Lilith turned to Mephistopheles, “Help me,
you ass!”

He sneered and slowly shook his head, “No, I
don’t think so. I’m enjoying this.”

Rage overtook Lilith. Her body burst into
hellfire. Eyes smoldered as smoke poured out. Hands pointed, and
flame shot out at Darcy. The conflagration hit, but the flames
didn’t penetrate, sliding across the surface of the sphere.

Lazarus and Sam ran back from the fight.
Neither one wanted to be around that kind of power. Bolts of primal
energy were being exchanged between the Demon Succubus and her
erstwhile apprentice.

Sam looked at Lazarus, “What do we do?”

Lazarus shook his head, “I honestly don’t
know. If we intercede for Lilith, I have to fight Darcy. But the
boss wants me to work with Lilith. Plus, if that creature kills
Lilith, his master and demon horde explode onto our world. It’s all
about the sacrifice. We have to stop that from happening.”

He glanced over at the big blue alien with
the sharp teeth. Dargonth stood, waiting.

Lazarus made up his mind, “Okay, we’ll let
Darcy and Lilith duke it out. You and I, we take the big blue guy.
We can’t let Lilith be taken as sacrifice.”

Bands of force and bolts of fire ricocheted
through the air. Rocks flew to batter Lilith. Stray fire licked
around the edges of the curved shield of power to splash against
Darcy. Lazarus ran forward, dodging as best he could through the
magic in the air. Magic and hellfire seemed to bend around him. It
was clear that he had protection. The necklace that Uriel had
touched glowed, and felt warm against his skin. Magic blew by him,
but nothing touched him. Sam ran back to the van to grab something
that might put the big, blue guy down.

Despite her resistance, Lilith had been
pulled within striking distance of the otherworldly creature. The
gigantic curved sword swept up through the air, and cut down to
slash Lilith, “Your sacrifice is accepted.”

The great sword picked up speed as it swept
back down. For the first time, Lilith feared death. The sword was
her doom. She screamed as she faced her mortality.

Steel rang. The twin swords Faith and Mercy
pealed like church bells in bright resonance. The sword that
Dargonth held shrieked in agony against the Angel forged swords.
The demonic blade was held motionless as the great giant pushed
against Lazarus. Lazarus had Faith and Mercy turned so that the
quilons bound the blade. Dargonth couldn’t push the blade forward,
or pull it back. Lazarus tried to apply force and torsion to
shatter the demon blade. The hell blade wouldn’t break. They were
at an impasse. Dargonth focused his tremendous strength. Lazarus’
feet slid across the loose dirt against the might of the giant.

Behind them, Mephistopheles watched for
weaknesses, both in his allies, and in the alien threat. He weighed
strengths against weaknesses, and came to a decision. He made his
move, and a bolt of hellfire shot out at Darcy. She caught most of
the blast on one of her force shields, but some managed to get
through. Darcy flinched against the power of his magic, and the
bond that held Lilith loosened.

“Kill her!” Lilith screamed.

That woke all of the possessed. The bikers
and the FBI flooded forward. Violence intensified around Darcy as
she was swarmed, fighting both demons and their possessed.

Dargonth was too strong for Lazarus. He had
to move away from the alien creature, go on the offense. He did
this with a quick move to one side, twisting his swords in the
other direction. The demon blade shifted and arched down to the
ground as Dargonth cut down, trying to drive the blade towards
Lazarus. It missed, and Lazarus muttered praise as he danced away.
He didn’t think he would survive so much as a small cut from the
demon blade. Dargonth pulled the blade back. Since Lazarus no
longer had to keep it from splitting him or Lilith, he went on the
offensive. He was smaller, and hopefully, much faster than the
creature before him. His blades moved in an intense, furious
pattern. The alien was forced to defend against the twin swords.
The fury of the onslaught made Dargonth retreat.

The fight truly began in that instant. Now
the skills of the swordsmen were displayed as they tested each
other’s capabilities. Lazarus had been wrong in his assessment of
Dargonth’s speed. With such a large creature, and such a large
sword, he should be able to dance in and out of the alien’s guard,
but it just wasn’t possible. The pattern of the defense kept his
own offense away from the giant blue alien. Plus, he had to work to
keep the alien’s strikes away from him. Still, Lazarus was able to
use his size and speed to prance away from contact. He wove a
pattern of steel that kept the creature from moving forward to
attack Lilith. It was a stalemate, again.

This stalemate couldn’t continue, though. One
would tire sooner than the other. Once that happened, mistakes
would be made. Lazarus knew that, if the demon blade didn’t kill
him outright, blood would flow, and it would be just a matter of
time before he faltered. Lazarus prayed fervently that it wouldn’t
be him that drew the first cut.

The thud-thud-thud of the M60 machinegun
opened up, and bullets hit the alien. Sam to the rescue. Dargonth
held up his hands, trying to use magic to ward off the bullets. His
magic flared through the air, creating a shield, but it couldn’t
stop the blessed bullets. The bullets chewed into Dargonth. Lazarus
watched the wounds heal instantly, bullets dropping to the ground.
Dargonth changed his stance, and shifted to put Lazarus between him
and Sam. Sam stopped firing so that he wouldn’t hit Lazarus.

Lazarus used the distraction to his
advantage. As Dargonth moved from one position to another, his
guard dropped, the distraction of the machinegun fire throwing him
off balance. The swords flashed, and the alien cried out, a deep
cut across one thigh, and a slash across the abdomen. The cuts from
the angel forged swords didn’t heal like the wounds from the
bullets did.

“
No such thing as a fair fight,”
Lazarus thought as he pressed his advantage.

The chaos of the battlefield had changed the
positions of the antagonists. The two fights had shifted, and the
fight between Darcy, Lilith and Mephistopheles raged behind the
alien now. The only way that Lazarus could protect Lilith was to
press on and keep the alien busy defending from his attacks. He
increased the intensity of his assault.

Dargonth was dying. He knew it. Dargonth
never imagined he could fall in battle. He knew that he would not
leave this fight alive. The cuts on his thigh and stomach felt like
fire, a purifying poison. He had never experienced power that felt
like those twin swords before. He was weak from the strike of the
bullets as well. He could feel the poison working its way through
his body. Incrementally, he felt the weakness start to take him.
Failure was something that he could not allow. He had never failed
his master, and he wasn’t going to do so now. There was only one
thing that he could do. He turned his back on the diminutive
swordsman in front of him, and shifted his attack.

During the heat of the battle between the two
demons and Darcy, positions had shifted. Mephistopheles stared
stupidly as the point of the demon blade ripped out of his chest.
The blade went in through his back, and came out through his
sternum. He screamed as he felt his destruction. His being was
shredding, becoming undone. His metaphysical being was being
destroyed. His physical, corporeal form had been destroyed before,
but his soul, as tarnished and soiled as it was, was immortal.
Mephistopheles thought that he couldn’t die. It turned out, though,
that he was wrong in this belief. He could feel his soul
dissolving, turning into something different. He wondered if this
pain was what judgment felt like. Then he was gone.

Lazarus ran the creature through, Faith
striking where the heart on a human being would be. Mercy cut
through the spine, at the small of the back. The alien dropped to
its knees. Lazarus pulled the twin blades back, and they met as he
cut through Dargonth’s neck. The head of the alien landed with a
thud, dark purple blood spilling across the sand, the body falling
forward. Lazarus knew that he had failed, though. The sound of the
M60 sounded again, as Sam pumped rounds into the horrors that
surged through the portal. The portal was open, but it didn’t
widen. The portal stopped expanding with the death of Dargonth,
though it did stabilize with the sacrifice of Mephistopheles.

With the death of Dargonth, something
happened to Darcy. Her eyes rolled into the back of her head, and
she crumpled to the ground. Lilith, in her rage, started forward to
kill her.

Lazarus ran forward, “We have more pressing
business right now.” He pointed towards the portal, Mercy stretched
forward.

Lilith spit the words, “Kill them, Kill them
all.”

She began shooting hellfire towards the
opening, slaughtering the alien demons as they slithered, crawled,
ran, and pounced through the portal. Behind her, all of the bikers
changed as they ran forward. The FBI possessed, seeing
Mephistopheles killed, howled, and changing, surged forward.
Rifles, pistols, and shotguns sounded, the mass of lead driving
into the horde pouring from the opening. The wall of lead stopped
the horde in its tracks. The mass of possessed slammed into the
horde. Life was short and brutal on that front line as talons,
blades, and bullets ripped into the aliens. The alien tide wouldn’t
stop, though. They fought back with as great a ferocity. The
possessed were able to stop the horde, momentarily. They were the
cork in the bottle.

Lilith took a stance and shot precise bolts
of hellfire into the areas where the possessed were being pressed
hardest. Shots rang out as the shooters on the rim took advantage
of the sudden visibility and the press of bodies. Precision was
impossible, but there were so many, they couldn’t miss. The dead
piled up.

Sam, and Lazarus stepped back to watch the
carnage, hoping that they wouldn’t have to get further involved,
but it was beginning to look like a lost cause. More of the
possessed were falling, and the waves of the aliens were still
pressing forward.

Lazarus looked into the portal. He saw
something glowing in the distance. He pointed, and asked Sam, “Do
you see it?”

“What, you mean that gigantic figure in the
back?”

“Yeah, that thing. See the way the portal
pulses?”

“Yeah. Oh yeah, I see what you mean. The big
gem, and the colored lines on its body. They pulse with the
portal.”

“Do you think we can pop a rocket through the
portal and hit that damn thing?”

Sam looked carefully, then shook his head,
“No, not enough clearance. Plus, it’s too far. I think we need to
be closer.”

Lazarus looked at Sam, then looked at the
van. Sam followed his gaze, “Crap.”

Lazarus nodded, “Crap indeed. But we need
someone to clear the way for us.”

They looked at Lilith at the same time.
Lazarus ran forward, and clapped his hand on her shoulder. She
snarled as she turned on him, hellfire ready to immolate him. He
held up his hands in submission, and she saw who it was, and more
importantly, recognized him, “I should go ahead and kill you.
They’ll never know what happened.”

Lazarus smiled, “Oh, my guys will know.
They’ll make sure your boss finds out. I’m pretty sure he’s going
to be very unhappy when he knows you let the alien demon horde in.
Especially when he knows that you could have helped us stop this
thing.”

“What do you mean?”

Lazarus turned her and pointed out the
gigantic creature that was directing the attack. He explained his
plan. She stared at him as if he was out of his mind, “You trust me
to do that for you?”

Lazarus shook his head, “Oh no, I don’t trust
you at all. You’re coming with us.”

She shook her head, “Oh, hell no!”

He pointed into the portal, “If you don’t, in
about five minutes, you’re going to have to deal with that big
bastard over here, trying to eat you.”

She looked into the portal. She didn’t like
anything she saw there, but she understood Lazarus’ logic. The wave
wasn’t going to stop, there were way too many of them.

“How do you want to do this?” she asked.

Lazarus pointed at the side door to the van,
“You’re going to take that side door off,” he pointed at the back
of the van, “and then you’re going to take the back doors off as
well.”

“How?”

“They’re metal, you like to use hellfire. I’m
pretty sure you can figure it out from there.”

Lilith was a quick study. The side and back
doors came off with a liberal, though precise application of
hellfire. They piled into the van, with Sam in the driver’s
seat.

Lazarus pointed at the portal, “Sam, you get
up a good running start. Lilith, you clear a path for us.”

“What are you going to do?” she asked.

“I’m going to be in the back of the van,
making sure they don’t slow us down when we get to the other
side.”

Sam fired up the van, Lilith sat in the back
passenger seat, and Lazarus sat in the back with the weapons. He
had a carabineer attached to the back of his ballistic vest.

“Lilith, hook me in.” He pointed at two seat
belts, one on either side of the van. Lilith ran them both through
the carabineer. Lazarus leaned forward, and felt the tension of the
seat belts.

He turned and yelled, “Hit it Sam!”

Sam put the van into drive, and made a wide
turn to get speed up before he hit the portal head on. Sam was
doing fifty miles an hour when they hit the portal. Lilith leaned
out of the side door, and hellfire flashed from her hand. One of
the possessed was not fast enough to get out of the way, and
disappeared in the conflagration. The hellfire hit and ripped
through the mass of the invading alien horde.