Simon had his Spike Bolter up, aiming it at the black-clad man that had blown the wall apart. The man was younger than Simon had at first believed. Then Simon saw the scaled fist that thrust through the man’s coat sleeve. It looked like his skin had been removed and lizard’s hide transplanted there.
“Help us,” a tall Cabalist cried out as he took cover. “We were ambushed by the demons.”
“Let them through,” Derek commanded.
Grumbling and cursing, the Templar pushed the Cabalists behind them and took up arms against the demons. They stood with the security people. And the demons continued their assault.
“Mercer,” Derek yelled, “get these people out of here. All of you fall back. We can’t fight them here.”
Mercer fled up the stairs.
Derek had Balekor’s Hammer in both hands as he sprinted back toward the exit. He pushed into his men, urging them onward as the demon hordes pressed in from behind.
Weapons fire from the demons struck within the vault. Sparks erupted from Simon’s helmet as some kind of beam splashed against him. The force rocked him on his heels but he stood his ground.
“Derek!” Mercer yelled from the top of the stairs. “The door has closed! It’s jammed and I can’t get it open! We can’t get out!”
Simon wondered if the door had been blocked by the people they’d told to leave the premises. He wouldn’t have blamed them.
“Get the door open!” Derek shouted back.
“Wertham’s trying!”
Simon pushed himself forward through the advancing wave of Cabalists. The man in black who had caused the wall to explode brushed past him, obviously looking for the fastest way out.
“Derek,” Simon said as he watched the demons approach. He stood in front of the Cabalists, drawing weapons fire and providing the protective wall of his armor. “We can’t run. There’s no time. If the demons bottle us in here, they’re going to pick us off. We can’t get trapped in here.”
Derek stood beside Simon.
“It’s time we fought back,” Simon said. He held his sword and the Spike Bolter. “Live or die, we can’t run from this fight.”
“Here!” Derek shouted. “Form a skirmish line! We’re going to take the fight to them!”
Scared and pumped up on adrenaline, Simon reached for the anger that fired through him. Maybe these weren’t the demons who had slain his father, but it had been demons like them. He stood ready.
Derek flashed him on a private band through the HUD. “We can’t let the hammer slip out of our hands. No matter what happens.”
Simon nodded grimly, rocked by another salvo of beams that sliced through the blown-out wall. “We can’t stay here, either.”
“I know.” Derek slung the Hammer over his shoulder and freed his sword. “Charge!”
As one man, the Templar boiled out of the vault, racing over the bodies of the dead and injured Cabalists bleeding on the ground. War cries, amplified by the HUD’s audio enhancers, pealed from the walls of the rooms. They met the demon horde less than ten feet from the opening in the wall.
A solid wave of Templar met the ragged line of demons. For a moment, the demons held their ground, then they were knocked aside and down as the powered suits got the upper hand.
Simon thrust the Spike Bolter into a demon’s face and squeezed the trigger. The demon’s head blew into pieces, scattering gore all over Simon. Setting himself, Simon swung his sword and cut deeply into another demon’s body.
There are too many, his mind screamed at him. But there are already two less than there were, he told that scared part of himself. They were also packed so solidly in front of him that he couldn’t miss. All he had to do was keep fighting.
Metal ground against metal as the Templar blades and armor met the armor the demons were wearing and the weapons they carried. Already several of the demons were down, some of them dead and others mortally wounded and crying out in fear. The Templar killed them without mercy, just as the demons did to the fallen Templar. The din was horrendous, like a scene cut from the deepest pits of Hell.
Simon kept moving, using the HUD to keep track of the other Templar. They tried to stay in a group, but it was impossible with all the close-in fighting that was going on. Reaching across his body, his sword raised to block an axe blow, he pushed the Spike Bolter against the back of a demon’s head that was attacking a fallen Templar and pulled the trigger.
The demon’s head went to pieces, but as the creature slumped, Simon saw that he’d acted too late. The demon had already succeeded in shoving a spear through the fallen Templar’s chest. Electricity and arcane forces fired at the breach in the armor, but blood was there, too. The falling demon draped the Templar.
Lifting his foot, Simon drove his other attacker backward with a kick. Simon reached down for the fallen Templar, just enough to make suit contact so he could read the other man’s vital statistics.
All his suit received was a series of flat lines that confirmed what he’d feared. There was no pulse. No respiration. The man was dead.
“Simon! Look out!” Derek chopped with his sword, turning aside a spear that had been aimed at Simon’s heart. The demon behind the spear thrust was a brutish beast almost twice as large as Simon.
The demon swept a massive fist back, striking Derek full in the face. If he hadn’t been in armor, the blow would have killed him. As it was, Derek crumpled against a wall nearly twenty feet away, his senses wavered, and for a moment he thought he was going to drop. He took a deep breath and shook off the effects of the blow.
Simon waded into the fray again. With all the limbs and weapons waved around, with beams tracking scorch marks on the floors,
