human; it had a distinctly demonic aura. I realized that, where they were located, they probably would have had shelter from both the RPGs we launched and a very good chance of taking cover from the grenades I’d tossed if they heard them clatter on the floor. I crouched low, took a deep breath, and kept Fragarach in front of me as I stepped into the gunk, depending on Leif to follow.
There were broken, bloody bodies on the floor, withered arms and knobby knees twisted unnaturally; all their glamour was gone in death. I would count them later. There were ten figures ahead that I could see, grouped in a loose circle, some of them seated on the floor chanting something in low tones, and nearly all of them showing the telltale signs of hell. As soon as I processed that, it set me to sprinting: The seated ones were in the midst of a ritual and the others were guarding them, because they were close to completing it. I had no idea who their target was, but I didn’t want anyone on our side to die because I exercised undue caution.
I hurriedly cast camouflage on myself, remembering that they hadn’t been able to see through it during the war. After that, my thinking self practically disappeared and I became an extension of my endocrine system.
One of the standing figures-a female silhouette-had an automatic weapon of some sort and heard me coming across the rubble. She sprayed a dozen rounds or so in my general direction; I saw the muzzle flashes at the same time that the slugs knocked me back on my ass, gasping for breath and counting my lucky stars that my neighbor was an arms dealer. She saw Leif coming next and turned the gun on him, but bullets bothered him about as much as bee stings, and many of them pinged off his steel breastplate anyway. I’d let him worry about the guards; it was the seated figures in the ritual that had to die right now.
I got up on my knees, gripped Fragarach’s hilt in both hands, raised it over my head, then threw it at the nearest skull in sight. It flew true, crunching messily through the back of the head and out the witch’s mouth before the guard halted its progress through her pate. Leif decapitated the machine gunner almost simultaneously and was amputating another guardian’s arm at the elbow when a small piece of hell busted loose.
Halting a demonic ritual in progress is usually disastrous for those involved, and so it was for the hexen. Instead of completing the hex intended for Malina or some other Sister of the Three Auroras, the two remaining witches-one of them on her back with her legs spread wide-were instantly immolated in the consuming flames they’d been trying to summon. Out of those flames rose a very large demon ram, bigger than those we’d seen on the second floor. It was laughing heartily, because we’d caught him in flagrante delicto and the death of the witches had unbound him, setting him free on this plane. Everyone, including Leif, stopped what they were doing to see what he would do. The ram regarded us evenly for a moment-he wasn’t fooled by my camouflage-and decided he had no desire to take us on; there was so much more fun to be had elsewhere, with people who couldn’t fight him. He turned his head north and lowered it as he charged, punching yet another hole in the glass wall and plunging into the street below, extending his hooves as he fell to absorb the shock in his powerful haunches.
Such an escape attempt was precisely what the Polish coven was waiting for. I scrambled to the edge to look below; Malina had stationed herself at the northwest corner, and though she had seen that Bogumila was under assault at the northeast corner, she hadn’t abandoned her post, lest something like the ram get away.
She attacked it fiercely, and all the faster so that she could run to help Bogumila. She shouted something indistinct in Polish, shot her empty right hand up into the air, and seemed to pull out of it a sort of red neon whip. She cracked it expertly before slinging it around the ram’s legs as it tried to disappear into the night. The ram bellowed and gasped fire as it fell onto the asphalt of Pecos Road, but Malina wasn’t finished. With another exclamation in Polish, she snapped the whip handle all the way down to the ground, sending a massive sine wave along its length. When it reached the ram’s legs, the wave tossed it shrieking up into the air by its feet, as if it weighed no more than a hummingbird. Malina flicked her wrist and let the whip handle go, and it spiraled up, following the ram, until it wrapped itself crushingly around the creature like a constrictor. The ram bleated desperately for a heartbeat before it exploded above the street in an impressive corona of orange and green fire.
The ram’s doom fell at our eye level, three stories up, and I heard shocked gasps behind me at this demonstration of Malina’s power. I laughed, looking back at the remaining German witches, and said to them in their language, “I can’t believe you started shit with her when you had only one fancy trick in your bag. She can pull exploding hell-whips out of the fucking air.” I’d always suspected Malina’s coven had serious mojo up their fancy designer sleeves, but until now they’d never had the chance to show it. The rotten apples in their bunch had been faced with werewolves at Tony Cabin, and nothing they could have pulled out of the air would have helped against the Tempe Pack, unless it was silver.
The hexen appeared unsure of where my voice was coming from, so I spared one more fleeting glance for Bogumila and Rabbi Yosef before finishing up what we’d come to do. The rabbi’s beard looked significantly larger than it had before, moving with much more animation as well, but Bogumila’s purple whorl of protection seemed to be keeping her safe for the moment.
I have heard people in weight-loss programs say that the last five pounds are always the hardest to lose. It turns out, in one of life’s enigmas that vex the wise and white-bearded, that the last five witches are also always the hardest to kill.
While I was worrying about someone else’s ass besides my own, one of the witches snuck up on me and delivered a sucker punch to my jaw, in the fashion of Pantera’s album cover for Vulgar Display of Power. Clearly, my camouflage had been compromised. I lost several teeth and tasted blood in my mouth as my head hit the glass and I dropped to the floor. I was treated to a couple of vicious kicks to the abdomen before I had time to fully appreciate the pain in my skull and assess the damage done. The flak jacket probably saved me from broken ribs, because the impacts were loud enough to remind me of the sound effects in Shaw Brothers’ films. My vision swam as I took a frenzied glance up at my assailant. Her face might as well have been one of those little yellow signs people used to put in their cars; hers said DEMON ON BOARD. Red glowing eyes and hot dung breath steamed visibly and promised there would be no light banter while she tried to slay me. She got another kick in while I turned off the pain in my head and ramped up my speed, a quickening of neuromuscular function I always used to keep up with Leif in our sparring sessions. It didn’t leave much magic in my bear charm, but I hoped it would get me out of the spot I was in.
As she aimed another kick at my head, I set my arms underneath me and whipped my foot around to sweep her plant foot from under her. I leapt up and fought off a spell of dizziness as she collapsed, howling. I backpedaled to the west as she scrambled to her feet, and I took the few seconds I’d bought to assess the new tactical situation.
These five hexen were still months away from squeezing a demon child through their pelvis, but apparently they were now enjoying all the perks associated with carrying a casting ram to term-abilities awakened, perhaps, by the abrupt deaths of their brethren. They had increased strength and speed, senses that could penetrate my camouflage, and a newfound talent for throwing hellfire. The other four were busy hurling angry orange balls of it at Leif, and he cringed away from them instinctively, retreating back east, unable to recall or trust in the face of so much flame that the talisman I’d given him should render him fireproof.
Fragarach was still lodged in the brain of a dead witch, and if I was allowed the time, I could have created a binding between the leather on the hilt and the skin of my palm, causing it to fly to my hand in one of those sweet Skywalker moves. My attacker, however, had no intention of affording me the opportunity. She charged at me with a cry of apeshit rage, her hands extended and her fingers transforming visibly into blackened claws. Said claws raked at my belly, and I was glad I’d stepped back instead of counting on my flak vest to stop them, because they caught the first couple of layers of it and shredded it as if it were no more substantial than crepe paper. I’d hate to see what they’d do to intestines-especially mine.
I couldn’t counter weapons like that with nothing but my bare hands available. She wasn’t wearing leather like many of the others; her clothes were all synthetic fibers, dead and removed from nature, so I couldn’t pull or push her around with any bindings. My best option was to get out of her way and hope I could retrieve my sword.
She circled around to the center, though, cutting me off. The west end of the building loomed at my back, and a dangerous drop yawned to my left now as I pulled even with the broken glass wall through which the demon ram had plunged. The witch lunged at me, grinning evilly. She took a swipe at my head that forced me to dance back toward the window ledge, then another that I ducked under before scooting to the right, heading for the west wall. She was quick enough to shoot out a foot and catch me square on my bloodied left ear, though, and the detonation of pain sent me reeling into the corner. Through a ringing and buzzing haze, I dimly heard her cackling; apparently she had me where she wanted me-on the ground with nowhere to go.
