The four of them found themselves in a small cavern with a tunnel leading into the depths from the opposite side. Cade waited for the others to re-don their homemade flamethrowers and then led the way toward the tunnel and into its depths.
They found the first body a dozen feet or so along the tunnel, pushed up against one wall as if it were nothing more than trash to be cast off and discarded rather than all that was left of a human being.
Or, at least, Duncan thought it had been human; the deformed nature of the corpse and the odd array of extra limbs, both insectoid and mammalian made it very hard to determine its original state.
After that, the corpses became more regular, until it seemed to Duncan that half of the town must have been lying there in that unholy tunnel, twisted into vile shapes that not even their creator could recognize. On more than one occasion he thought he might vomit; it was the thought of showing weakness in front of his battle-hardened companions that, more than anything else, kept him from doing so.
Shadows danced and writhed at the edges of the light cast by their headlamps, ratcheting up the tension with every step forward. Twice Duncan spun about, convinced that the enemy was sneaking up on them in the darkness, and it was only the steadying presence of the master sergeant that kept him from squeezing the trigger and sending a cascade of bullets into the darkness around them.
After what felt like an eternity, the narrow passage through which they were descending began to grow lighter, as if lit by something farther ahead and soon the men didn’t need their headlamps.
Travelers are often known to remark on how the yellow-red glow of a campfire can warm the soul before the heat from the flames ever reaches you, but there was nothing soul-relieving in the light that reached them from the depths of the tunnel at this point. It was a harsh, silvery glow, one that gave off the sense of being colder than the weather they’d recently traveled through and it slipped down the edges of the passageway to light their steps forward as they moved the last twenty yards to their destination.
At that point, the tunnel opened on a wide cavern and the stench of blood and guts and feces that swept over them as they crossed the threshold unequivocally confirmed that they’d found what they’d come to find — the location where the original summoning had taken place. It was here they would find the master demon controlling the protean drones they’d been fighting off all this time.
Duncan let his light drift across the floor of the chamber in front of him and immediately wished he hadn’t. A massive arcane summoning circle had been drawn in colored sand across the cavern floor and what he assumed was all that was left of the original summoners were scattered about within it. Limbs and entrails and a seeming ocean of blood filled the space wherever he looked. The remains were so strewn about that it was hard to tell which limb belonged to which body.
Using hand signals, Cade sent Riley and Olsen around the right side of the cavern while he and Duncan took the left. They moved slowly, stepped over the debris in their path, keeping an eye out for the master demon. Cade wasn’t often wrong, so if he said it was here somewhere, Duncan was convinced it was as well.
They had crossed roughly three-quarters of the cavern when a rustling sound reached them from behind a pile at the rear of the cave, an area that was all but shrouded in darkness.
Cade held up a closed fist.
Duncan gripped the barrel of his makeshift flamethrower tightly, his finger sweaty on the trigger. The lesser demons they’d fought so far had been bad enough, but he knew the thing that spawned them was going to be infinitely worse…
Before any of them could act, however, events took a turn of their own.
From behind the pile of rubble they were watching so earnestly stepped a young girl.
She couldn’t have been more than ten or twelve. Her blonde hair was in disarray and she had dirt stains on her face and hands. Her once-blue dress was now nothing more than a set of filthy, tattered rags that barely hung on her thin frame. She was shivering against the cold, or perhaps, Duncan thought, with fear at the sight of strangers standing before her with guns in hand, but her gaze remained steady and she stood before them without trying to run.
Seeing the young girl in this condition nearly broke Duncan’s heart. He smiled, to show that he meant her no harm, and started forward.
“Don’t worry,” he said to her, in his most soothing voice. “We’re here to rescue you.”
The child looked at him quizzically.
“Rescue me? Don’t be silly,” she said, with a laugh that should never have come out of a child’s throat. “What on earth would I need rescuing from?”
Then she lashed at his throat.
CHAPTER TWELVE
The moment the girl stepped out of the shadows Cade knew there was something wrong. His gut clenched, his skin crawled, and he could practically hear the screams of a thousand lost souls roaring in the back of his mind that she did not belong here, that her very presence was an abomination against nature itself.
She might look human, but Cade knew she was the farthest thing from it.
His gun came up, his finger already on the trigger, and from the corner of his eye he could see Riley and Olsen raising their weapons as well.
Trouble was, Duncan was in the way.
The sergeant had taken several steps forward the moment the girl-thing had come into sight and now he stood directly in Cade’s line of fire. If Cade pulled the trigger now, there was no way he could hit the creature without hitting Duncan in the process. But he couldn’t afford to let the creature escape either.
They had only one chance…
“Down!” Cade yelled, in his best command voice, hoping and praying that all the months of practicing to respond to commands delivered in that tone would bring about the unquestioning response that he so desperately needed.
Hoping and waiting to see for certain were at opposite ends of the spectrum however.
Cade didn’t hesitate another moment but opened fire.
Duncan heard Cade’s shout at the exact moment that the ‘defenseless’ girl in front of him lashed out at his throat with a hand that had suddenly grown claws several inches long. It was only his well-honed instincts for preservation that saw Duncan throw himself sideways out of the vile creature’s reach and, thankfully, out of Cade’s line of fire at the same time.
The roar of the knight commander’s weapon echoed in the cavernous space but Duncan was still able to hear the demon’s hiss of fury when it realized it had missed. He felt its claws slash through the space where he’d been kneeling a half-instant before and knew he wouldn’t have survived the blow had it landed the way the demon intended. He scrambled backward, trying to put as much distance between himself and the thing as possible, knowing as he did what came next.
The demon paused and roared at him, a sound that would have frozen him in place not three months before, but he’d come a long way in a short time. Since joining Echo he’d faced down spectres, revenants, even a cabal of necromancers with anger management issues; they’d all perished but he was still around. And major demon or not, he had every intention of surviving this one, too.
He heard Riley shout something over the din of battle and while he couldn’t make out exactly what was said he had a pretty good idea. He didn’t take the time to look, just threw himself flat and covered his head with his hands.