“Be ready,” he whispered to the others.
No sooner had the words left his lips than something shot out of the gaping hole in the back of the corpse’s skull. Cade struck instantly, driving his sword downward as fast as he could, piercing the many-legged thing’s chitinous exoskeleton and pinning it to the ground.
“Now!” he yelled, as the blood-and-brain-splattered insectoid-looking creature twitched about, trying to free itself.
Riley’s Mossberg boomed again, blasting the thing to kingdom come.
When it was over, Olsen stepped forward and nudged one of the pieces of exoskeleton with his foot.
“Is that…?”
Cade was nodding grimly before Nick had even finished the sentence. “Yeah, it is,” he said, as he wiped the gore off the end of his blade and then redrew his pistol. “We need to get off the street; the noise is going to attract more of them.”
But it was already too late.
Figures were emerging from the shadows all around them, each and every one a new and different grotesquerie as the demons inhabiting the once-human forms reworked the flesh they’d stolen to suit their individual needs. Tentacles instead of arms. Multiple sets of legs instead of the usual single pair. Eyes and mouths and drooling snouts replaced the villagers’ once-tranquil features. In many cases there appeared to be no rhyme or reason for the changes aside from the need to pervert the original form and design, exactly what Cade expected from anything that crawled up out of the infernal realms.
A glance told him that his team was outnumbered by at least four to one. If they didn’t get out of there quickly, they were going to be in serious trouble. Seeing that none of the demons had reached the vehicle yet, Cade made his choice.
“Start withdrawing back to the SUV,” he told the others, even as he lifted his pistol and began firing.
CHAPTER TWO
Most of the supernatural creatures the Order regularly fought against were split into a hierarchy of classes based on their difficulty to kill. The demons Cade and company were facing now were no different. The Order might classify this particular breed as a minor variety, since they could be affected by ordinary firearms and regular melee weapons, but that didn’t mean that defeating them was a walk in the park. They were still demons, after all, and Cade kept that foremost in his mind as he pulled the trigger of his Mark 23 three times in rapid succession, putting all three bullets into a circle the size of a half-dollar in the center of the nearest demon’s face, dropping it in mid-stride.
By the time Cade turned to take up another target, his companions had joined the fray. The staccato chatter of the MP5s being used by Olsen and Duncan was punctuated repeatedly by the boom of Riley’s Mossberg and it was music to Cade’s ears as the demons before them were cut down one after another. In minutes the street around them was filled with the dead and dying. The demons were fast, yes, but the combined firepower of the Templars was enough to temporarily keep the creatures from closing the distance.
And that was all Cade was hoping for.
He checked to be sure the way was clear and then turned, shouting to his men as he did so.
“Back to the SUV! Move, move, move!”
They piled into the vehicle with Cade and Riley in front and the other two in back. Duncan was still pulling his door shut when Cade threw the truck into drive and stomped on the accelerator. The tires spun for a moment in the snow before catching hold and then they were off, bouncing over the body in the middle of the road and racing off down the street.
The demons gave chase, howling in anger and clambering over the bodies of their own dead to pursue the Templars.
Inside the SUV, Riley and the others switched out the magazines of their weapons then reloaded the empty ones they’d just removed, while Cade drove. He made several turns at random, driving deeper into the heart of the village, doing what he could to put some distance between themselves and their attackers.
In their altered forms the demons were fast, much faster than the average human, but they weren’t a match for the 300-horsepower engine under the hood of the Expedition Cade was driving. He gained a slight lead — maybe 200 yards, if that — and it might be enough to lose the demons if he could stay out of their line of sight.
At the next corner Cade cut the wheel hard to the right and took the turn without slowing. The SUV rocked, whipped around and Cade was still gunning the engine when a barricade appeared out of the darkness ahead of them; there was furniture piled at least ten feet high and across the entire road.
Cade’s reaction time had been honed by years of fighting the supernatural and could honestly be said to be near instantaneous, but that had very little effect when fighting the inertia of a 6000-pound vehicle moving at forty miles an hour. Still he tried, slamming both feet onto the brake at the same time and pulling back on the steering wheel as if that might somehow keep them from ramming into the barrier. It didn’t, of course, but his efforts slowed the vehicle enough to keep from severely injuring those in the front seat as the truck hit the barrier at twenty-five miles per hour, crumbling the front end and deploying the airbag into Cade’s face with an explosive whoosh.
The impact stunned him; for a minute he couldn’t remember where he was or what he’d been doing or why it was that all he could see was white.
Then Olsen was there, slashing at the airbag with one of his knives and dragging Cade from the front seat, shouting something urgently over his head to someone on the other side of the vehicle and it all came back to him — the mission, the dead man, the attack by the protean demons. Cade shook his head, like a dog shedding the water from his fur after a good swim, clearing the remaining fog from his mind, and then he took stock.
The SUV was nose-deep in the tangle of wooden furniture and discarded appliances that had been used to form the roadblock. Steam poured out from under the crumpled hood of the SUV and what looked like a tractor axle was jammed through the grill and into the engine compartment.
There goes our transportation.
On the other side of the vehicle, Duncan was helping a groaning Riley out of the front seat, while doing his best to keep looking behind them in the direction from which they’d come. It was the expression on the younger Templar’s face that caused Cade to turn and look back.
He could hear them coming, could hear that shrieking-howling cry that ground at the guts, but thankfully, the road behind them was still clear.
There was still time.
Olsen appeared in front of him, MP5 in hand. Cade was relieved to see the duffel bag that contained their swords slung around the sergeant’s shoulder.
“You good?” he asked.
Cade nodded.
“Another day in the life, huh?” Olsen grinned; he was always happiest when in the thick of things. “If we hurry, we might be able to get inside one of these buildings,” he said, pointing at the storefronts on either side.
But Cade disagreed.
“No. If we get caught on this side of the barrier we’ll have nowhere to go if we need to retreat. We’re going up and over and then we’ll find shelter,” he said, pointing at the barricade behind them. “Get going. Duncan will help Riley. I’ll be right behind you.”
“You’re the boss,” Olsen said, then cheerfully slapped him on the shoulder and moved to comply.
Cade meanwhile rushed around to the back of the SUV and grabbed the nearest of two spare jerry cans out of the rack attached to the outside of the rear doors, shaking it and then casting it aside when he realized it was empty.
Come on, come on.
He grabbed for the second and was rewarded with a healthy sloshing sound from inside the can, which brought a smile to his face. An emergency roadside kit was stored in the same rack as the spare gas cans and Cade took that as well. Turning, he hurried after the others.