With a resounding crash and boom, the doors hit the floor in a flurry of dust and smoke. Before they had even stopped moving, we charged. Light grenade thrown, detonation in 3, 2, 1 … With a crack, the sun seemed to rise in the main hall turning night to day and drawing screams of rage and pain from the demons. The small fry run. Support can deal with them. The big guys are just incredibly pissed off.
Holy fucking Christ. There are hundreds of them! Del Toro moves up fast, frantically calling Dispatch to send every available Operative through, right the fuck now. Wickham and his mop up squad close behind, fanning out into a square and setting up a safe LZ for incoming Operatives. Operatives start popping into view and expanding the square, banishing demons and keeping the flow of exploding sun grenades constant.
Suilien, almost dancing through the demons, targeting the buruburu - those with the appearance of elderly men and women and banishing them back to hell. Franco two paces behind, blasting any demon that locks on her into oblivion. She pulls her sword and absently chops through the body of a War Lych in her way. I note with part of my mind that it falls, dead, as she forges on.
What was I doing in all this chaos? Driving straight ahead, leaving a trail of dead and dying demons, and, more usually, bits of demons, in my wake. Hong two paces back, banishing anything out of immediate reach of my blade. I can see my target, about one hundred metres ahead. Hong freezes. Glance behind. A buruburu, looking like a grandfather from hell, eyes glowing as it extends its fear and prepares to feed is bearing down on him. Fear cannot touch me, I am deep in the rage of the hunter. Pirouette under the clawed hands of a ghoul, slash its eyes out to slow it down. Spin and decapitate the buruburu and follow through with a hard slap with the flat of the blade to Hong's ass to get him moving again. Twist back and dispatch the confused ghoul to wherever hell-spawn go when they die. Hong lurches into motion again, a look of total misery on his face. Quick check – he'll not be much use for a while afterwards, but he'll not run. Not now. The noise is immense. The roars of the demons, the screams of the injured and dying, the clockwork boom of Ahitana's shotgun. A yellow and brown yowling streak races past me and leaps, dragging the head of a particularly tall demon down to striking level. I remove the beast's head, and Flash races to the next target. Damn cat is too dumb to know it is dangerous in here. I am glad she is with me.
Finally – a clear run to the Reaver. Every breath burns like fire in my lungs. Arms feeling like lead weights have been strapped to them. Getting constant updates from del Toro, the battle is going our way. Hong banishes two Lyches in our way simultaneously – I didn't even know that was possible. He has fought through his fear and found a level of competence that most people only dream of. I stop.
The Reaver stands a full 6 metres tall, golden scales glistening in the dying light of the last sun grenade. His wings extend as he notices the threat. Eyes, pits of total, pitiless blackness, focus on me as I break into the clearing in front of him. Feel the hook as his eyes catch mine and starts to pull out my soul. A flick of my shoulder and the brooch winks in the light. His eyes are drawn to it like filings to a magnet. I raise Pain and swing. And swing again. Two soggy thumps as his hands and forearms hit the floor. He looks both pained and totally enraged.
“You DARE!” His voice booms out, deafening me and bringing all combat in the room to a sudden, screeching halt. His eyes still focussed on the brooch, seemingly indifferent to the loss of his hands. I take my chance. Leap, pushing off his bent knee, and drive Pain deep into his right eye socket. Reaching for the left eye with claws extended. And feel Pain grate against bone, rather than penetrating to the brain.
The scream of agony from the Reaver could be, and was, heard five miles away. His thrashing head threw me ten metres away, landing with a sicking squelch and crunch on the shredded remains of a couple of demons and one Operative. Desperately try to hold on to consciousness as dead, upraised claws pierce my ribcage and one lung collapses with a sigh of inrushing air. My mind expands out, and for a few sickeningly exhilarating seconds, I am totally in tune with the Reaver's mind.
The Reaver looks at me, unaware of our connection. “Fool mortal. You know not who you are dealing with.” He gestures with the stumps of his arms, and a wormhole appears. My last conscious thought as he disappears is “But, demon's can't do that!”
* * *
Wake. The smell, and the subdued lighting seeping through my closed eyelids, tell me I am once more in the hospital. Really, when you can identify a hospital by smell, you have been in them too many times. It might be time to find a new line of work. Flare nostrils. Someone sat next to my bed, smells half asleep. Suilien. Open my eyes and roll my head to look at her. She is totally filthy, covered in muck and demon ichor, halfheartedly wiped off. Two clean tracks down her cheeks – she has been crying.
“How long?” My voice grates a bit. She starts awake.
“Two hours, maybe a little more. You only had a collapsed lung and some poisoning.”
I attempt a smile, it doesn't work well. “So, how does it feel to be a Zero?”
“What?!” Total confusion. Heh, she doesn't even realise.
“You killed a War Lych. I was watching. It'll be clearly visible on the after action reports.”
“But, I never ...”
“You never even noticed.” I interrupt “That is often the way, you find the ability in the heat of battle. Welcome to the most exclusive club in the settled planets. Population five, including you.”
I let her think. It is a fundamental shift in values, especially for an Operative One, who is taught to respect life, even demonic life, with an almost fanatical devotion. She slowly reaches out and takes my hand, as gently as if it was an injured bird. Her voice is low, hesitant.
“I watched you during the battle, wading hip deep through the thickest clumps of demons and leaving just pieces behind, like some personification of destruction and rage. I don't think I can do that.” Her eyes are pleading for understanding and comfort. Sometimes I want to tell my job to go fuck itself.
“Jasmine. Ghaada. You have no choice now – you are a hunter, like it or not. Sometimes it is glorious. Most times – it is bad. None of us ever have the choice, really.” She chews her lower lip, unhappy in her triumph. “Right, help me up and find me some clothes. There are injured to speak to and the dead to mourn. Part of the job that they never tell you about. One you never get hardened to.”
And answers to find, to questions that should never have been raised. But who can I trust? Well, there are my friends, I guess.
* * *
Have you ever tried taking a young, healthy and disgustingly exuberant cheetah for a walk? First off, they only have two gears – stop and full throttle. Combine that with them being twice as strong as you, with any cat's total disdain for control, and you get something more suited to a comedy film than any ideas of dignity.
With Ahitana laid up in the hospital, healing a leg shattered when a ghoul surprised him, someone has to look after Flash. And she is fond of me and will tolerate me handling her, making me fairly unique in the Free State. She is missing several patches of fur, where she got too close to the bile demon before it was banished by Franco, and has healing scars down her side. A legacy of her joining in with me and Hong on the final assault on the Reaver.
The fact that exercising her gives me a good excuse to move around and out of the Free State with minimal interference is a bonus. We wander though the streets, Flash continually wrapping her lead around bollards, signposts and very frightened pedestrians, until we eventual wind up at the mouth of the alley leading to Luigi and Marta's.
A little girl, ten years old walks past. “It is OK, Tio Gatto, no one has followed you.” She skips down the alley, we follow. Instead of using the main door to the cafe, I walk along a little further and enter a side door, leading to the kitchen. Marta comes forward and gives me a kiss.
“We called the people on your list. All have come except the one called Sergei. He will be here tonight.”
She leads me to a private room in the back of the restaurant. It is crowded with people. Some I know well. Some, recruited by Luigi less well. Marta presses a beer into my hand and takes her seat between Luigi and Seraphina. My eye roams the table, finding comfort in old friends. Several waves and smiles greet my entrance. I stand at the head of the table.
“Friends, I asked you all to come here, because I needed people I could trust. People outside the system.” They still. “These demon appearances and attacks are not accidental. They are a deliberate act of war against humanity.”
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