Summon Dorn (Archangels Creed) (27 page)

She was being taken captive.
"Help me." Sally finally managed a whisper through her pain and tears.

The strange men/creatures around her growled and gathered closer until they must have carried her along.

The source of her pain and pleasure waited for her arrival just ahead in a field. The levitating golden figure seemed to rush toward her.

A sudden blast of aqua blue lit up the field, jerking her heart. The
shhhooo-whomp
that followed seconds after rattled every organ in her body while the golden figure before her blasted out of her vision like it had been flicked by a large pissed-off finger. The Neanderthal creatures around Sally screeched and paused.

A giant sinuous form that reminded her of Chinese dragons, scales glittering aquamarine, stormed through the air sounding like rolling thunder. Aqua spikes blasted from its wings with a single flap while its blue tail of fire swept the ground like a tidal wave.
Wait, that was
Maxwell
, only twenty times larger.

Sally braced as the fire
from the beast’s tail raced toward her. The Neanderthal things leapt into the air with another screech just as the roiling blue slammed into her.

Not hot
, but warm airy mist roared in her ears and flooded her mouth and eyes until she tasted the ocean. Peering at the world through the aqua, she watched as the fiery tail continued to sweep the landscape with an arctic wave of fury that iced everything in its path.

She looked down, amazed
to find a flaming aqua robe covering her. Thank God.

Neanderthal
creatures came from all around and lunged for her. Dorn's back suddenly filled her vision. He was clothed in the same blue fire as her, but from the waist down. Overwhelming calm came with his presence and she found herself in a near drug haze wile muscles rippled in his alabaster torso from the chain whip in his right hand and the short sword in his left.

The whip harnessed the Enemy and Dorn wove through the creatures at a blurring speed, a streak of blue at times, leaving them twitching on the ground, aqua liquid issuing from their mouths, eyes, and ears, like they were drowning from the inside.

The beautiful snake dragon battled the fiery form and what seemed like a small army of those Neanderthal things. Balls of ice rocketed from his mouth sounding like barks of booming thunder.

Sally gas
ped at a bright flash of red. An angel with massive ruby looking wings appeared on the opposite side of the field, walking toward a flood of those things, shooting spheres of liquid crimson from a huge sawed off looking shot gun. God there were so many of those monkey men, like human rodents crawling over the ground.

The red angel wasn
't alone. A man in a white robe walked alongside him. He loaded and shot flaming red bolts from a crossbow with inhuman speed. It looked like he was loading handfuls of fire from the burning red cross on the back of his robe. 

Dorn spun and his blue eyes suddenly filled her vision. He swept her up in his arms and made everything blur.

Chapter Twenty Six

Lucian couldn
't believe he was left practically defenseless to guard the women with only an aqua pill he was not to eat unless necessary. And of course no time to explain why.

Every piece of furniture was up against the only door in the cottage. Dorn and Kassern had assured him the spiritual barriers they both placed over the structure left him with nothing to worry about. Only, Lucian remembered one little thing. The exchanged glance the two angels had shared right after that reassurance. Neither of them were positive. Hence the need for a strange blue pill that he had no clue would do if he should have to swallow it.

"
Vă rugăm să-mi ajute Dumnezeu atunci când vine momentulce
."

"
What are you saying?" Jessie's breathless words at his right reminded him of the last time he'd heard her voice that way. He had kissed her senseless.

"
Just praying." He eyed Karly who paced to the right of him. "You are making me very nervous."

She shot him a glance.
"Yeah well, if you knew what happened to us the last time we waited behind while they went to fight, you'd know why."

"
What happened?" Jessie's tone tattled on her overworking imagination.

"
Don't." Devyn's voice bit as she eyed her pacing friend.

Karly paused for a second, nodded,
then resumed her floor stalking.

A blast
shook the house and elicited short screams from the girls. Devyn and Karly huddled around Jessie while Lucian eyed the pill in his trembling palm. The bedroom door with all the furniture piled against it suddenly seemed like useless, juvenile hindsight.

"
Eat the damn pill Lucian." Karly's voice quivered.

"
Wait," Devyn whispered, leaving Lucian torn.

A gurgled laugh sounded outside the door
and the piled up furniture began to slide slowly forward.

"
Eat the pill!" The scream came from the two girls.

Lucian swallowed it.

"Oh God." Karly squeezed her eyes shut, her breaths trembling. "It's them."

It
's them
sounded like it came through a megaphone and Lucian dropped to one knee as his organs and muscles felt like they'd been plugged into a 220 socket. There was no breathing or screaming, only converging with the ripping of his pores and a back-of-the-mind prayer that what was happening to him was supposed to be.

Lucian heard, saw, tasted, and felt the creature suddenly. He
'd never known anything so entirely so quickly. He needed to crush the thing's brain stem.

Lucian launched with light speed upon the creature with a kick that rocked its head back hard. He grabbed its skull and gave a vicious twist severing muscles and ligaments before dropping the limp creature to the floor. More growling things appeared at the door and Lucian repeated the operation on the next one. Then the next and the next.

A dozen executions later, Lucian froze at seeing Leo, just inside the door, looking hale and hearty for someone who'd recently been brain dead.

"
Hello, Brother." Leo gave a lopsided grin.

Lucian
's vision faltered briefly. No, his super-vision faltered. And his hearing. An intense vertigo flooded his brain and he hit the floor with the momentum of a sack of lead being body-slammed. Lucian vomited violently, feeling like his body wanted to free him of his organs.

Screams echoed in his ears as he felt himself being hauled to his feet.
"Little brother." The words came out garbled and rough. Nothing like Leo's carefully casual country-boy sound.

Lucian pried his eyelids open and faced the strange man.

"I think you have something that belongs to me?"

There was nothing wrong with Lucian
's hearing, he realized. The person that looked just like his brother really did sound demonic. But what did Lucian have that belonged to him?

****

Jessie stared in wide eyed terror at Lucian's brother. "Ahhh. There she is," he rasped, aiming his evil eyes at her.

Lucian seemed on the verge of unconsciousness as he lolled his head in her direction. Jessie whispered
no
, not wanting him there, not wanting him looking at her.

"
I've got unfinished business with you, bitch." He aimed a straight-arm blow at Lucian and dropped him like a ton of bricks to the floor.

Jessie had the sudden sense to run. How would she make it? Half-way over the debris blocking the door, a death grip at the nape of her neck snapped her head back and yanked her in reverse like a rag doll.

The insane man suddenly released her with a roar of fury and Jessie scrambled into a corner. Dressed in her holy knight robe, Devyn went dominatrix on him. Nailing him with several blows a second, she drove him back with ruby shards for knuckles and boot heels with blades. The brutality of her attack brought black looking oil seeping from the open wounds all over his body.

More of the monkey men things came through the door.

"Karly!" Devyn yelled.

Karly held her head, leaning against the opposite wall.
"I'm trying, it won't come!"

One of those ape men raced to Karly, sniffing at her shoulder and studying closely. He threw his head back with a screeching howl,
sounding like a rabid monkey in a tunnel.

Jessie covered her ears but was unable to close her eyes.

The monkey man crouched to the floor, sniffing along Karly's leg. Jessie whimpered as he opened his mouth wide, thick globs of saliva dripping from massive canine fangs, head wobbling like it wasn't entirely attached to his shoulders. His head swiveled left then snapped forward like a spring-loaded sledgehammer and struck Karly's upper thigh.

Karly
's blood and scream erupted. The beast growled like a pit-bull on steroids nailing down for the kill. Karly brought both her palms down on the sides of his head, crushing it like an egg. Face crimped in fury, eyes flashing ruby red, she didn't even flinch at the blood and brain matter that splattered on her, and the walls.

Finally dressed for battle in
the attire Kassern despised, Karly met the next beast in the air with a round house kick to the throat. The stiletto heel of her go-go boot adorned with barbs, sliced him open before she slammed her palm into his forehead and sank a ruby dagger entirely through his skull. She yanked her hand away and launched through the air onto the back of another creature some five feet away and buried her stiletto heels into its side as she plunged her bloodied blade into its lower cranium. Before he could drop to the floor, she jumped onto another.

Devyn suddenly went flying across the room and hit the wall. It seemed to serve as a springboard by the way she rocketed back toward Lucian
's brother like a rubber ball, slamming her ruby spiked forearm into his face. Before he could recover, she grabbed his head and flipped him onto the floor. The two grappled for control and Devyn gained the upper mount and slammed her spiked knuckles repeatedly into his face.

In a flash he flipped and pinned her beneath him only for her to wrap a leg around his neck and flip him back, landing a few more rapid punches.

A monkey man attacked from behind and Devyn stabbed him in the chest with an elbow dagger. The break in momentum got her thrown off Leo.  

The second Devyn gained her footing Jessie screamed as the man plunged a long
knife through her chest and out of her back. Her wide-eyed gasp was silent as he threw her into the wall and she collapsed, unmoving.

Jessie continued to scream with the horror of it all happe
ning right around her feet. The more evil version of Leo turned and licked Devyn's blood off his blade. "You're next."

She ran with no plan but escape. A body slammed into her from behind and she hit the floor hard
, face-first, busting her nose and blasting the air from her lungs.

Leo flipped Jessie onto her back with a handful of her hair. Bending to her mouth, he forced his tongue inside while his fingers slowly clamped down on the bones in her throat.

She punched and beat at the solid wall, trying to breathe. Panic made her thrash but all it bought was his guttural laugh as he enjoyed her suffocation with a lusty kiss. Her body slowly went limp and the chaos around her faded to dark silence.

Air poured back into her lungs when
Leo's head snapped back with a roar and he flew off of her. Jessie scrambled to a wall with sputtered sobs.

A man stood over Leo in only a garment covering his loins, almost a kilt or skirt, that seemed made of blue fire. A tattooed angel on his chest glowed the same blue as Dorn
's eyes.

Lucian.

Thank God.

The wrath in his face added scary to his utter masculine beauty. Lucian grabbed Leo by the throat.
"I'm going to kill you." Lucian rocket launched him through the wall before disappearing in a blue streak after him.

Seconds later, Lucian crashed through the roof, his brother skewered in the chest with a long aqua blade.

The tormented wails that came from Leo's throat sounded like twenty condemned demons. He thrashed under the blade for endless seconds before his body deflated into a pile of skin. Then it disintegrated and wafted away, black mist on a current of air.

Like in a bad movie, Kassern and Troy arrived just after the bloody fight. Lucian suddenly stood next to Jessie, wrapping his arms around her, soft Romanian words murmured in her ear and silky kisses along her hair line.

Troy still in his white robe, hurried to where Devyn slumped against the wall. He jerked toward Kassern. "Oh shit, help me!"

"
You know what to do!" Kassern's voice thundered with emotion as he crouched over Karly's still body.

Troy placed his hand on Devyn
's wound and gasped a long string of strange words. Devyn coughed and cried out as a red glow entered her body. She opened her eyes and Troy pulled her in a tight embrace, his face buried in her shoulder.