Page 49 of Blood Bearon
“Just get us as far as you can,” Khove barked. “Help will come. All we need to do is make it that far, understood?”
“Yeah, sure. Get to the Manor. No big deal!” She rolled her eyes.
They were out into the countryside now, passing by farmers’ fields on one side, and untamed wilderness on the other.
A human head came toward her door, and Rachel hesitated, unsure about hurting a human. Her eyes lit upon its furry lower body, and she realized with a start it wasn’t human. The knife slashed forward, but the delay was costly.
The creature dodged her strike, slashing downward with its own hand. Rachel yelped as her arm went numb and the knife clattered away into the darkness. She was unarmed.
But not helpless.
Wearing a disgusting leer upon its face, the half-breed human-beast attacker came close, only to receive a solid tactical boot to the face. It reeled back, nose smashed in, spewing purple blood all over the place.
For a moment, she wasn’t under attack, and Rachel had time to think.
“Khove, what do we do?” she hollered.
“Just keep going!” he bellowed, the truck rocking wildly as he battled some nightmare creature.
“Right,” she muttered to herself. “Easy peasy.” She didn’t believe it.
It wouldn’t be long before they decided to go for the wheels, or the damaged engine gave out. When that happened, they would be—
The engine coughed and died.
“Fuck you!” she screamed at the roof, unleashing her pent-up anger to the heavens above.
The truck rapidly slowed.
“Khove!” she shouted. “Khove, we’re in trouble. Truck’s dead.”
There was no reply.
“Khove?” she called weakly, looking in the rearview mirror as the truck sputtered to a halt and the mass of demons closed in around her.
The truck bed was empty.
There was no sign of Khove, just a wash of purple and red stains covering the bed. Rachel frantically undid her buckle and climbed out of the cab into the bed. Her foot kicked something into the sidewall. Bending over, she snatched up Khove’s fallen dagger, slashing at the air, daring any of them to come closer.
“I’ll take you all on!” she shouted as fiercely as she could manage given the situation.
The mass of human and inhuman faces came closer. They hadn’t even been slowed by her gesture. In fact, she thought, looking closer at the eagerness of some, they had beenencouragedby it. What the hell?
Rachel was well aware that living out the night was no longer an option. With Khove gone, and several hundred creatures straight out of a book surrounding her truck, it would be over in minutes, if not seconds. There was nothing she could do to stop that.
Except take as many of them with me as I can.
Bearing her teeth in a silent challenge, Rachel waved them forward. Better to die quickly than to be torn apart slowly. It was a cold thought, but that was her trained police mind at work.
The ground shook, rocking the truck slightly. The oncoming wave of demon beasts slowed, their hoots, hollers and war cries wavering and fading into silence.
“It wasn’t me, you pansies!” she shouted, beckoning the nearest, a half-man, half-goat-like thing, with horns that curled down from where its ears should be. “Let’s get this started.”
An earth-shattering roar broke the growing silence, driving even Rachel to her knees as it assaulted her eardrums.
“What is this?” she shouted. “Some sort of video game? Do I fight the boss now to pass the end of the level?”
Then the demons did something she didn’t expect. They shuffled toward her. It wasn’t the aggressive advance she’d expected. It was almost as if…
