“It does,” Madelyn piped up. “You just need to grab the demon.”
“Sorry, what?”
“You must distract Cairax Murrain,” said Stealth, “and then pin it so it cannot move.”
St. George swung his oversized club again. The weight of the concrete bent the pole in the middle. He sent it spinning into the exes. “I don’t understand.”
“And it needs to be facing me,” the cloaked woman added.
“Are you serious?”
“There is no time to explain,” she said. She whirled and drove her heel through the jaw of a dead construction worker. “You must trust me.”
He nodded. “Got it.” He glanced down at his bare arm and the cobweb of scars stretched across it. “Taking on the demon again.”
St. George rose into the air, took a deep breath, and hurled himself at Cairax.
Zzzap still felt cold. Most of the effect of the demon’s claws had worn off, but there was a chill at the center of the energy form. He wondered if it was all just in his head, then realized when he was Zzzap everything was just in his head.
Freedom leaped up to the roof of a car. The back half of the vehicle was melted to slag, a victim of Zzzap’s megablast. He leveled his huge pistol at the demon.
Then St. George shot forward and tackled Cairax. They tumbled across the street, over a low wall, and struck the corner of a Ralph’s grocery store. The brick facade crumbled around them and a few last shards of glass in the picture windows dropped and shattered on the ground.
The building exploded in flames as St. George poured fire onto the demon. Scraps of paper bags and cardboard signs ignited around them. When Cairax tried to push its way out of the rubble, St. George punched it twice in the face. He seized two of the demon’s large horns and slammed the creature’s head down into the floor again and again. He found a chunk of concrete ribbed with rebar, raised it up, and smashed it over the demon’s skull.
Cairax lay still just long enough for the hero to relax. Then St. George caught a backhand with enough force behind it to knock over a bus. He sailed into the intersection, bounced twice off the pavement, and crashed into the side of a street sweeper.
The demon stalked out after him. “This is most welcome,” Cairax hissed. “My defeat at your hands was a gnawing insult. How pleasant it will be to right those accounts.”
Zzzap blasted the demon in the chest. Freedom hit it with two bursts from Lady Liberty. Cairax glared at them, cringed away from Freedom’s shots, but didn’t slow its march toward St. George. Blue flames sparked behind its teeth as it roared.
The hero was waiting for it. St. George tore the door off the street sweeper and flung it at the demon. The amount of raw force behind his throw made up for his lack of finesse. It struck Cairax in the shoulder, sprayed dark blood across the pavement, and knocked the monster back a few feet.
Freedom leaped over a dozen exes to land on the roof of an SUV. It crumpled under his impact. He winced as his ribs shifted in his chest.
Zzzap circled around to the monster’s far side and let his feet drag through a crowd of the dead.
St. George yanked the plastic seat out of the cab and hurled it at Cairax. The demon put up a hand and shattered it in midair.
The plastic shrapnel sprayed back over Captain Freedom, and he threw up an arm to protect his eyes. When the rain of fragments stopped and his arm came down, the demon’s tail was a foot from his neck. He spun and the barb tore at his shoulder instead of his throat, but the move made him slip on the uneven roof of the SUV. He grabbed the closest thing he could. It was rough and scaly, even through his glove, and writhed in his grip. When the scorpion tip whipped up he let Lady Liberty tumble away and grabbed the tail with both hands.
Cairax glared over at the huge officer and St. George slammed a fist into the side of the demon’s head. It was like punching a statue. He threw two more punches, scratching his knuckles on the barbs and horns covering the creature’s skull.
The demon hissed at the hero. Its tongue snapped out between long teeth and lashed at St. George’s face. It drew blood at his temple. The long arms lashed out in wide swings, but the hero soared back and out of reach.
Stealth charged forward. Her batons cleared a path through the exes. She leaped into the air, sheathed the batons, and drew both Glocks as she landed next to Freedom on the SUV. Bullets tore through the meat of the tail.
Cairax shifted its hips and its tail slashed through the air, yanking Freedom off the SUV and away from Stealth. The tail smashed the huge officer against the pavement, then flipped him into the air. Freedom’s hands slipped and he spun into the sky, then back down.
It met him halfway. The barbed tip speared him in the side, just under the ribs, and the impact knocked him back into the air again. He slammed against the roof of a bus and the recoil tumbled his body down the street and into the crater full of exes.
The barbed tail curled around Cairax like a snake. A good six inches of it dripped Freedom’s blood. The demon chuckled.
A tall ex, a dark-skinned man with a bullet-ridden torso, reached across the roof of the SUV for
