He nodded, a flicker of relief coloring his face.
I felt a little better as I squatted down and went to work on the tape, nothing having jumped out and bit us yet. Veronica stood watch, just in case.
“What happened?” I asked the mentalist, making small talk while I pried him loose.
Poe stretched his newly freed arms, rubbing at them to return the circulation, while I moved around to release the other two flunkies.
His hands moved to his temples, massaging them. “We’d just reached Old Town when a mass of ghouls ambushed us. We managed to get a call out to Baalth right before we were suddenly attacked from behind by Reven’s enforcer. Caught off guard, I believe we were knocked unconscious, awakening right now, apparently. I don’t recall anything after the ambush.”
“She didn’t use her blades?” Paranoid by nature, my gut tightened into a knot.
“She may have. It all happened so fast, I’m not entirely sure.”
I stopped loosening the tape and turned my head to stare at Poe. He stared back, the dark bags under his eyes made pits of them. His leathery face was calm and cool as he got to his feet. There wasn’t anything in his manner that made me think he was lying, but something felt weird.
I glanced back at McConnell and Marcus and noticed their eyes were underlined in black circles, as well; their faces taught, tight. They looked a hell of a lot better than the last time I’d seen them, but they still looked drained. That’s when the lights clicked on. All their wounds were healed.
“Veronica!” I screeched as I got to my feet and tried to back away.
I didn’t get far.
In a blur of motion that shredded the remaining tape, one of Marcus’s massive fists crashed into the left side of my face. A maelstrom of bright dots exploded in front of my eyes and I felt my legs go rubbery and give way. I hit the ground hard, my head spinning with the impact while sucking in a lungful of smoky nothingness.
You’d figure clouds would be softer and taste a little better.
No stranger to being hit, instinct took over. I rolled to my feet and raised my. 45. My vision cleared as I settled into a defensive posture.
I really didn’t like what I saw.
Not five feet away stood Marcus, defined by the gun he was pointing at my face. It was the one he’d stolen from me not too long ago. Loaded with angel/demon slaying bullets, the barrel-end wasn’t the side I wanted to be on. With God and Lucifer on hiatus, death had become a permanent condition. One I hoped to avoid.
Marcus, on the other hand, was all for putting me in a hole. He didn’t hesitate to put the gun to use. I saw the muzzle flash as I dove into the fog. The sudden, searing agony that lit up my side told me I hadn’t been fast enough.
Once more I hit the ground, pain shooting down my leg and across my chest in nerve-shattering waves, my stomach roiling. I fought down the nausea and used my momentum to carry me over into a crouch, bringing my gun up as I did.
Through clenched teeth and watery eyes, I realized it was too late. Marcus had followed me. He stood in front of me, the deadly abyss of his gun barrel just inches from the bridge of my nose. I closed my eyes.
I could handle dying if that’s what it came down to, but knowing it was Marcus who‘d be hammering in the last nail was a serious kick in the balls. As if realizing what I was thinking, he chuckled low in his throat, no doubt savoring the moment.
Hunkering down, I heard the creak of his knuckle as he squeezed the trigger just before the discharge silenced the world. A wave of blistering heat smacked me in the face and I tumbled back, clutching to my head. My skull throbbed, a thunderstorm of hurt. A warm wetness oozed across my palm and down my arm as I writhed in pain, sinking into the fog of Limbo. A cold blackness settled in.
“Frank!”
I heard my name called from a distance, muddied and shrill. It took me a second, but I recognized the voice. It was Veronica. I tried to answer, but the darkness, eager to drag me down, filled my mouth, choking me.
She cried out again. Desperation colored her voice. There was something else there as well, something sharp and acidic; angry.
Suddenly a burning pain exploded in my shin. My eyes snapped open to see my ex-wife standing over me, drawing back her foot to kick me again. Fury scarred her beautiful face. Marcus was nowhere to be seen.
“Get the fuck up, asshole. I need you.” She leapt away at the crack of gunfire, bullets whistling past.
Staying down, using the fog as cover, I felt my head and realized rather sheepishly that Marcus had only grazed my skull. But add that to the seeping wound in my side, I was lucky to be alive. With an eye on remaining so, I scanned the shifting clouds to find where the last batch of gunfire had come from. The third time wouldn’t be a charm.
At the edge of my vision was Poe, the haze parting before him as he advanced. Calm and cool, he tracked Veronica, looking for a clean shot. She did her damndest to not give it to him.
Off to my left, pulling himself up from the murky fog was Marcus. His back was stained in red, leaking steadily from the deep gouge between his shoulder blades. I understood then how the bastard missed. Veronica had saved me. The realization warmed my crotch and made me sick to my stomach at the same time. She’d gone against Baalth, risking Marcus’s life to rescue me. The possible consequences for that were unimaginable, though we both knew it’d be horrific. Despite it all, she did it anyway.
If we survived, she was never gonna let me live that down.
With no time to worry about it, I went after Marcus, doing my best to ignore the screaming agony in my side. He’d gotten to his feet and zoned back in one me, his face a mass of twisted snarls. He lost his gun when Veronica hit him, so I didn’t have to worry about him shooting me. Sad part was, even though I still had mine, I couldn’t shoot him either. Marcus didn’t seem to care one way or the other.
As we barreled toward each other, his head down like a charging bull. I readied to meet him, calling out to Veronica, “Go after Poe, but don’t kill him.”
I heard her curse-laden response from somewhere in the fog, answered by a gunshot, just as Marcus hovered over me. No time to explain further, I ducked under his bulk and used his momentum against him. I grabbed one of his grasping arms and twisted it to toss him, spinning him about in midair. He flew past and landed hard on his back. The air was knocked from his lungs in a whistled grunt.
He was already scrambling to his feet when I went after him. “They’re being controlled. You can’t kill them!” I shouted out again, making sure Veronica understood what we were dealing with.
While I couldn’t put a bullet in Marcus, nothing stopped me from using my gun. As he struggled to get to his feet, I slammed the butt of my. 45 into his temple, the sound like cracking a side of beef with a baseball bat.
He groaned and rolled with the blow, getting to his knees, but I could see by his eyes swimming in their dark sockets. I’d gotten him good. It didn’t matter though. Marcus was as tough as they come and all it’d take for him to recover was a second. I didn’t give it to him.
I followed up with a left hook, my fist crashing into his jaw and snapping his head to the side. He fell back, bloody spittle spraying from his mouth like a sprinkler. Before he even hit the ground, I was on top of him.
Once more I put my gun to use, smashing its chromed surface across the side of his head. He bucked underneath me, stunned, but unwilling to concede. So with growing satisfaction, I struck him again, and again, and again, each blow resounding against his skull like a thumped watermelon. He fought back with everything he had, but blow after blow I beat the fight out of him. Just when I thought I’d have to kill him to keep him down, he went limp beneath me. I gave him one more for good measure and stood up off him.
His face was a puddle of crimson, blood streaming from his head and pooling in his eye sockets, nose, and mouth. His ragged breath came out in wet gasps, tiny bubbles forming at his nose. Not wanting him to drown in his own blood, no matter how satisfying it might be to watch it happen, I rolled him to his side. His labored breathing eased as a river of red ran free from his mouth.
Satisfied he wasn’t getting up anytime soon, I looked for Veronica. I spotted her standing over the crumpled form of Poe, her sword in her hand. My stomach convulsed as I ran over, dropping down beside him to feel for a pulse.
“Don’t worry, I didn’t kill him,” she told me as the subtle thump of his heart confirmed her words.
Relieved, I stood, giving her a grateful smile. She didn’t return it.
She bent down, turning Poe’s washed-out face to me. “Do you see this? They’re under the control of a
