Published at 8th of March 2024 7:45 am

Book 2, Chapter 20

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And missed.

The jet-engine scream burst from my gun, missed the windshield of the demon truck by about a foot, and created a red line of hate-powered destruction, ending in a five-foot crater in a hill next to the freeway. I winced.

Ida leaned out behind Alice (probably so we wouldn’t be firing from the same side of the car), braced her left arm against the roof of the car, waited a moment for Alice to find a smooth patch of road, and unloaded a small burst with her MP5. Six bullets found the big eye above the cab in a tight grouping, exploding—some liquid that might be blood? It was bright yellow. The wind caught the liquid and kept most of it from getting on the windshield below the head.

Over the next couple of seconds, the wounds the bullets made pulsed and winked like a twitching orifice, before the one big eye reformed into half a dozen misshapen eyes, each looking like they came from a different animal. Their one commonality was that they looked pissed.

“Oh, beurk,”I heard her say with disgust.

Then she lit up the windshield.

The driver was a heavy-set guy wearing a robe similar to the people who attacked us in the food court. His face was obscured by one of those tragic theater masks so I couldn’t tell what his expression was, but I could guess by his panicked and ineffectual wheel jerking that he very much wanted to turn the truck away from the gunfire. Unfortunately for him, the truck was under new management. Ida walked the gun back and forth across the cab and soon I couldn’t see much inside past all the bullet holes. I did my best to forget about the driver.

I took a page from Ida’s book and braced myself against the roof as best as I could, aimed down the sights of the Webley, and waited for a calm stretch of road. Let’s see how this thing healed from the Webley—

“Hold on!” Alice shouted.

I was almost flung from the car as Alice jerked the thing to the left. If I hadn’t gotten a firm grip on the roof I’d likely be leaving the majority of my skin on the freeway right now. As it was, I had to suddenly tighten my hold on the door frame with enough force that I heard the metal protest. I spread my legs out, one foot catching the side of what felt like a headrest while the other squeezed between my seat and the door. My groin and back protested the awkward angle and I felt like I was doing a shitty dance move in slow motion.

“Ow! Watch it!” Alice yelled.

Oops, probably kicked her.

“Sorry!” I grunted, sliding mostly back into the car. Feeling like a dumb ass, I copied what I saw from several action films and just poked my left shoulder and head out of the window while I hugged the back of my seat with my right arm. I braced my left forearm against the side of the car and waited for the truck to dip into view.

That’s when I saw what had made Alice turn suddenly: another truck.

This one wasn’t all “demoned” out. At least, not yet. It also wasn’t a U-Haul truck. It was a big industrial flatbed with fence-like sides, the kind you see transporting propane or other gas tanks in bulk. In the back were several cultists—God do I feel silly every time I think that word—around a ritual circle that pulsed red even in direct sunlight. As I watched, six hands reached from the center of the circle and gripped the bed of the truck. A vaguely humanoid monster with purple-black skin came out, its face dominated by a pair of mandibles and one giant eye. In all it had eight limbs; six arms and two reverse-joint legs that ended in what looked like parrot feet.

Without even thinking I turned and shot it, my arm moving almost of its own accord. The Webley roared its hate and the top half of the demon exploded into bits, covering this stretch of the 210 with monster parts. I hope they weren’t toxic.

As the remaining half of the monster fell to the side, I saw another six hands reach from the bed of the truck.

“Oh, fuck that,” I said and aimed at the truck’s engine.

The driver must have sensed my intent (or made a logical deduction), because it swerved to the left and behind us, using my own car to spoil my aim. Tracking the flatbed brought the demon truck into sight, however, so I adjusted my aim and put a round right dead center into the demon truck's engine.

A new roar followed the scream of the Webley as the front of the demon truck exploded, leaving behind something that didn’t look so much like a vehicle as it did a gory stump. However, the explosion must have damaged the front axle as the left wheel danced in its housing until it bent at an odd angle, slamming into the wheel well. The stopped tire dragged at the front of the truck, which started to spin out until finally falling on its side, leaving behind a truly impressive smear of blood and gore in its wake as it slowed to a stop.

There was a crash and my rear window flew back and away. “Was that really necessary!?” I shouted as Ida began firing from the backseat.

Ida waited until her gun ran empty before replying, reloading with smooth efficiency. “You have the money.”

I grumbled. I did have the money, yes, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t a pain in the ass to replace a window.

I was griping mostly to keep my mind off of how terrified I was. I knew the state of the car wasn’t important; if breaking a window meant we lived another day, fuck it, let’s break all of them. But holy shit an evil cult was attacking us with demons in broad daylight on a major Los Angeles freeway. What the fuck! Also, were there fewer cars on the freeway than there were a minute ago?

I wrestled my mind back to the task at hand. In the half minute, I was dealing with the demon truck and the distraction of my rear window being kicked out, the second truck had crept up behind us and I could see two of the black-skinned demons scuttling over the cab, preparing to leap.

I leaned a little farther out of the window to take aim at the truck's engine. Before I could pull the trigger, one of the demons leaped from the top of the cab, deforming it with the jump. I changed targets on the fly and pulled the trigger. The blast from the Webley took off two of its arms but I missed the center mass. The demon landed right on the trunk of my Honda, its remaining four arms slamming into the roof and attempting to get a grip. The car jerked violently as the frost wheels left of the road for a moment from the impact, and it was all Alice could do to keep us from crashing. We swerved and I knocked my head on the side of the car and I saw Ida bouncing around the back seat. I couldn’t see Bogo, and I hoped my not-dog was okay.

Blinking the pain from my eyes I gathered my magic into a bowling ball-shaped mass of force and slammed it into the thing's sternum (or what would be a sternum on a human). Just as my power was making contact the demon whipped a hand at my head faster than I could react and grabbed my face. A small, disconnected part of me realized this thing had several thumbs, kind of like a koala. The larger, more task-oriented part of me realized that judging from what I felt of this thing's grip, it was fucking strong, and keeping up with the current course of action would result in me having a broken neck. The demon would be off the car, though.

I decided I wanted to keep my neck unbroken. I braced my legs on the seat as best I could as the hand on my face tried to yank me out of the car. I reshaped my magic around the hand on my face, not trying to pry it off but to just create a layer of force between it and my skin. With my right hand, I reached up and grabbed its wrist. The original plan was to dig my nails into the wrist but it was too big to get my hand all the way around, so I adjusted my grip and dug my thumbnail in there.

In the space between moments, I inanely wondered if my new nails would be able to pierce demon skin. Sure, I’ve used them to mark wood and can accidentally cut myself, but this would be the first time I’ve tried to use them to inflict harm.

I didn’t need to wonder anymore, because my thumb sank a good third of an inch into the wrist and a howl emitted from the demon on the roof. I felt the grip on my face weaken by a hair and that was when I redoubled my efforts on my magic. I didn’t try to force the hand off my face, instead, I tried to create a frictionless surface between the hand and my skin as I jerked my head back and yanked with my arm.

It mostly worked. The hand came off and didn’t take my head with it, but it did give me some cuts on the sides of my head, one dangerously close to my eye. I yanked again on the arm as I once again condensed my magic, slamming it into the thing's ribs. I let go as the magic hit it and watched as it was flung off the car to awkwardly fall into the K-rails in the center of the freeway. I was lucky the arms I had shot off had been on my side of the car.

I heard gunshots from the back of the car, but not the “ratatat” of the MP5 but the bigger, punchier shots of the 1911 I gave to Ida. Was she out of ammo already? We need to stop at a gun shop if we survive this.

“Cops!” Alice shouted.

I turned and looked down the freeway. About a mile down the road was a blockade of cop cars across all four lanes of the freeway, reinforced by the boxy SWAT vans. Even at this distance, I could see that every single cop had a gun pointed in our direction.

I guess being chased by cultists and demons while firing hate-beams and other small arms was a little too much for the meager attention wards on my car to handle.

“Ida! Get in and hold on!” I said, doing likewise. I judged the distance between us and the cops.

“What do you think about getting as close to those cops as you can before slamming on the breaks and doing a u-turn?” I asked Alice. “I bet that truck can’t stop as well as an Accord.”

She shrugged. “I can try,” she said. “I know I drive fast but that doesn’t mean I’m a fucking stunt driver. I’m more concerned about the cops shooting at us. Is your car bulletproof?”

“It’s an Accord,” I said, my voice full of incredulity.

“I had to ask! You said you enchanted it!”

Truthfully, I had reinforced the body and tires with some protective magics. But I didn’t want to do anything really heavy-duty that’d attract the attention of anyone with magical talent. So I doubted the enchantments would hold up against the entire Los Angeles Police force. I imagine it’d be very much like how Robocop can take a shot from a handgun without a problem, but when he’s shot by every cop in the city he nearly bites it.

The 1911 went off rapidly, and there was a large noise as something hit the car. I glanced back just in time to see a dead demon with two holes in its head fall off the trunk, hit the pavement, and then get run over by the truck still tailing us. “Focus!” Ida shouted. “Banter later!”

“I can protect us from bullets, but not the whole car—in fact, we need to be in as small a space as possible,” I said as I reached down and hit the chair lever, pushing the back of the seat back. I heard Bogo make a noise of protest. “Sorry, boy.”

I muttered something about how we’re all going to have tinnitus as I started to move into the back seat. “We’re going to all be on one side of the car,” I said as I pulled myself along. “Me, behind Alice, Ida on my lap, and Bogo on the floor. Alice, do you know any protective spells?”

“You wanna take over driving so I can cast them?” She asked sharply.

“Right, so it’s up to me,” I said. There were a few awkward moments as I climbed under Ida and she straddled me, keeping her gun trained on the truck behind us. Bogo was stuck under the lowered back of the passenger seat until I hit the lever with my magic, snapping it back up and allowing him to crawl under my feet. It was a very tight squeeze for all of us.

I glanced under Ida’s arm, between the front seats at the line of cops. I could vaguely hear them yelling at us over a megaphone. They were about a quarter mile away.

“They got another demon!” Ida shouted, making me wince. She was right next to my ear.

“When do you want to do this, Colm?!” Alice asked, the line of cops getting closer.

“On the count of five!” I said.

I began to gather my magic around us, starting with the sides and in front of Alice. I wanted to keep the back open in case Ida needed to shoot another demon.

“Five!”

I started making the porous field that would diffuse the energy of the bullets.

“Four!”

I backed up the field with a pane of solid force.

“Three!” I started filling in the area around us with the force, excluding Alice to keep her arms and legs clear to drive.

“Two!”

“We going on one or zero?!” Alice asked.

“We go on Go!” I said through gritted teeth, forming the final layer of protection behind us.

“One!”

I groaned as I poured as much magic into the protections as I could.

“Go!”

Alice yanked the wheel 30 degrees and pulled the e-brake, sending the car into a spin and swinging the little Accord’s ass out of the way of the truck. The truck driver tried to keep on us but I was right with my assumption that it couldn’t corner as well as a vehicle a quarter its size and it just turned awkwardly before spinning out. That was the last I saw before I squeezed my eyes shut.

What I guess happened next was the cops saw a truck with a demon or two on it and decided that their bullets were being wasted, just sitting in their magazines all useless. The car came alive with the sounds of metal hitting metal and suddenly it was all I could do to maintain my magic against a swarm of bullets. The small arms fire I barely registered, but the assault rounds slammed through the porous field and into the harder pane of force with such violence it felt like my head was being hit with a hammer.

I was vaguely aware of some screaming, of the car moving, being bounced around. It seemed to go on forever but after a while, it petered off. Someone was shaking me.

“Colm,” I think it was Ida talking? “COLM! We’re safe! You can stop!”

I let the magic fall with a groan. “Are we still moving?”

“You are full of shit, you know?” Alice said. “You enchanted this fucking thing.”

“Of course I did,” I said, glancing around. The entire right side of the car was a disaster. Everything had holes in it, the stuffing from the seats was everywhere. In the roof, I could see several long gouges where bullets and torn a path through. My fancy Bluetooth dashboard was destroyed. None of the windows, nor the windshield, survived.

Bogo crawled out from under my feet and made a distressed noise, before perching on the case of the blood stick. I was relieved to note, that aside from a few dents from a couple of stray bullets, it was intact.

“But that was a lot of gunfhbmb—“ I was cut off by Ida latching onto my face with a fierce kiss.

I was fine with this.

She released me and slid off my lap onto the seat beside me, giving me a self-satisfied smile. I held back a laugh. “But that was a lot of guns and I didn’t enchant the car to defend against a fucking fusillade.”

I glanced back at the roadblock. I could just make out a few large demon shapes being blown to bits. Aim for the head, guys.

“Fuck!” Alice shouted.

I turned around and swore as well.

The demon truck was back.

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