“Wonder how different Cairo would’ve been if I’d had the dagger at the beginning,” Patrick croaked out.
Gerard gripped his shoulder in a brief gesture of support. “It doesn’t matter. You have it now, so do some damage.”
Patrick nodded, getting a better hold on his dagger.
“I’ll take this,” Hermes said, taking the rifle out of Patrick’s hand. He braced it against his shoulder, comfortable with the weapon and the damage it could do.
“Bullets can’t kill soultakers,” Patrick warned.
Hermes’ smile was cutting with its ferocity. “Who said anything about demons?”
The messenger god slipped away through the storm, and Patrick couldn’t watch where he went, attention drawn to Gerard’s advance. Patrick followed on shaky feet, grabbing at any bit of concentration he could get in the aftermath of being cut from the spellwork. His body felt weird, but it obeyed him, and at least this time he was coming out of paralysis brought upon by magic, not demonic possession.
Patrick stayed on Gerard’s six, keeping some distance between them for maneuverability. Other Hellraisers shifted position, and Keith came up on Patrick’s left to flank him.
“Doing all right, Razzle Dazzle?” Keith asked.
Patrick nodded. “Getting there.”
“Good. Let’s get you close to fuck shit up.”
Gerard’s aura spilled out around him, godly in its brightness, and the soultakers zeroed in on him like he was their next meal. The monstrous screams coming out of their wide mouths would have been a warning for anyone else to run, but they just set Gerard into motion.
He surged forward, a blur to Patrick’s eyes. TheGáe Bulgwas like an extension of Gerard, flashing through the air as he fought soultakers. He used his magic to draw them in between the headstones before attacking, using his position to drive them to Patrick. Gerard’s otherworldly speed was all that saved him from the soultakers’ tongues that whipped through the air and their wide maws ready to bite.
Patrick went a little light-headed, thinking of how tonight so eerily mirrored the one all those years ago in a Salem basement. But he couldn’t dwell on it for long, because the first soultaker was forced past Gerard, and the demon had caught his scent.
Its bulbous head turned their way, the dark maw of its mouth parting on a scream. Patrick conjured up a mageglobe and filled the pale blue sphere with raw magic, baiting the soultaker ever closer.
“I hope you know what you’re doing,” Keith said.
“You and everyone else,” Patrick muttered.
He took a steadying breath before lunging forward, sending the mageglobe left while he dodged right. The soultaker’s hunger meant it followed the path of Patrick’s mageglobe through the air for a second, tongue lashing out at the magic.
It was enough time for Patrick to fall to his knees, miss getting his neck snapped by the slashing of the demon’s tongue when it whipped back around, and slam his dagger into its chest.
Light sparked along the blackened bone and muscle where the blade cut through with an ease like nothing else. Even air strikes couldn’t guarantee a soultaker’s eradication, but prayers from the heavens burned the demon to ash that turned to mud beneath Patrick’s feet. He went to his knees, sliding in the grass.
Then Keith was there, grabbing his arm and hauling Patrick upright. “No lying down on the job, Razzle Dazzle.”
Patrick sank his heels into the mud, steadied himself, and took aim at the next soultaker Gerard herded his way. “Keep the others off me if you can.”
“Distraction by wasting bullets. You got it.”
Armor-piercing rounds could rip through a soultaker’s skin. The Hellraisers were equipped with spelled bullets, and while the demons would brush off any other projectile, the hint of magic caught their attention. It wouldn’t be enough to hold it, so Patrick reached deep for his magic. His soul felt scraped raw, but Patrick formed a mageglobe despite the pain.
The magic in it called to the soultakers’ hunger, and two of the demons left Gerard to target Patrick. Two-on-one odds weren’t great, but the odds got worse when three of Zachary’s mageglobes cut through the air toward them with lethal intent.
Patrick didn’t have the focus for a good counterattack, still shaking off the lingering effects of the spellwork. Jono wasn’t there to help him tap a ley line, and he had two soultakers nearly within dagger reach. There wasn’t time for him to defend against both attacks.
Zachary’s magic was malevolent and capable of killing, but so was the god that slipped free of the veil, his arrival announced by the haunting, echoing sound of a conch shell.
Ku swung his wooden spear lined with shark teeth into the trajectory of the oncoming mageglobes with a furious war cry. The sound of it was taken up by the Night Marchers that poured into the graveyard, war drums a counterpoint to the thunder booming through the night sky above.
The feathers on Ku’s cloak and helmet didn’t wilt beneath the rain. When his spear made contact with Zachary’s mageglobes, the explosion was brutal, but the god stood like a mountain in the face of the concussive force.
The soultakers lost their footing from the shock wave of the explosion that rolled over the graveyard. Patrick braced himself against a headstone, squinting against the wind-driven rain at the demons. The godly support to the fight was prayers answered, but demons still walked the earth, and Patrick needed to do something about that.
