Weston Ochse - Reign of Evil

Holmes sighed.

Laws had the same feeling. They just loved it when they had a smart-ass helping them. It made life so pleasant and so worth surviving for.

“What are we doing here?” Yank asked.

YaYa responded, “What do you think we’re doing here?”

“No, I mean, aren’t SEALs supposed to be near water, hence all of our water training? Kneeling on a plateau in the middle of BFE seems so out of place.”

“You’re out of place,” Walker said.

Laws gritted his teeth as the tension built. The air around him felt like the skin of a balloon filled past capacity. It was only a matter of time. “We’re a different type of SEAL. We’re pasture SEALs.”

YaYa laughed. “BFE. Usually stands for ‘Bum Fuck Egypt,’ but I guess we’re in England, so it fits.”

“Do you boys always talk so much?” Sassy sounded exasperated.

Laws knew it was any second now. “Only when there’s imminent danger.”

Two hounds rushed toward them. One from the right and one from the left.

Hoover squared with the one on the left, running full out for it. They met in midair. The heavier hell hound took Hoover down, its massive jaws clamped around the dog’s back right leg. Hoover twisted around and clamped her smaller jaw on an ear, ripping it off. Then she managed to bite down on the hound’s neck.

Yank and Holmes let their rifles fall, catching and hanging on their slings as they drew the gladius machetes.

Laws wavered between joining and watching his sector of fire. Holmes stood a few feet from him, and by the way he stood, it looked as if he could take on a pack of hell hounds single-handedly. And Laws hated that. Why was it that the rest of them had to work so hard, yet everything came so easy to Holmes? It was infuriating the way he could be so lucky. Hell, his own ire was shared by half the casinos in Vegas, Holmes’s hometown. Even they thought he was too lucky.

The other hound thundered toward them from the right. Yank held his gladius in his rear hand. The creature leaped. Yank sidestepped and brought the weapon down on its spine. The hound cried out as it fell to the earth. Holmes sliced off its head. Then the two pieces of hound evaporated.

Fucking Holmes. Like he wasn’t even trying.

Laws was aware his barrel had drifted toward the other two SEALs but didn’t care. After all, it was Holmes and Yank. Boy weren’t they a pair. Different sides of the same coin. On one hand you had the impeccable Holmes, King of Cool-Ass Luck, and on the other you had Shonn Yankowski, black on the outside and white on the inside. “Hell, he might as well be a—” Laws caught himself at the last moment. He’d pressed the trigger but rode the firing into the sky.

Holmes turned on him, eyes blazing.

Yank turned to Holmes, gladius raised for a killing stroke. Laws could hear YaYa and Walker shouting at each other behind him.

Once more Sassy saved the day.

The feeling of unreasonable anger passed, but it couldn’t stop Yank’s sword.

“Holmes!”

The SEAL team leader spun, catching most of the descending blade on his own gladius. The rest of it sliced into his arm, which immediately began welling blood.

Yank dropped his blade. “Oh shit. Sorry, Boss.”

“Let me guess.” Laws glanced at Sassy Moore. “Empathetic magic?”

She nodded abruptly, then continued her thousand-yard stare. Suddenly she went down as two dozen darts pierced her body.

Laws spun and spied what looked for all the world like a Gatling gun that had appeared forty yards in front of them… except this one fired flechettes instead of rounds.

Son of a bitch.

Simultaneously, more hounds bounded onto the plateau from where they’d been hiding in the archaeological dig. A line of seven Red Grove druids also appeared. All the while, flechettes ate through the air. Laws threw himself to the deck as three flechettes bounced off his armor, one dug itself into his face near his left eye, and five of the three-inch steel slivers lodged in his unprotected legs.

“Fucking hell!” he screamed with pain.

What was going on? The witch was down. Holmes was wounded. No telling what the other men were doing. And where was Hoover?

Laws’s hand had gone to the wound in his face and was now coated with blood. Still, he found his grip on his rifle, raised up a foot, and began to fire at the guy manning the flechette cannon. This was beginning to feel like a trap. Laws wondered where King Arthur was. Was he at the dig site? Was he even here?

The entire place felt wrong.

Then came the sound of helicopters.

Walker shot up from his prone position and fired at the druids and the guy manning the flechette cannon. He saw one druid go down. The cannon began to swing Walker’s way again and he dove to the ground. Three slivers of pain caught him in the back of his right thigh. The ground drove the breath from him, but he didn’t have a moment. He’d seen Hoover getting her canine ass handed to her by the hell hound. Without help, they might lose her. Hoover was as much a part of the team as any of them. It just couldn’t happen.

He lurched to his feet again and began running. The flechette cannon was no longer firing. He didn’t know if it was because the cannoneer was down or out of ammo, but he couldn’t spare the moment it would take to turn and look. His entire focus was on the interlocked canines—one supernatural, one SEAL.

He stumbled once but soon closed the distance. The last ten meters he ripped free his rifle and tossed it aside. He pulled his gladius. It felt like a fire poker in his hand and he had no idea how to use it. Still, he had to do something. Hoover was howling as the hell hound savaged her leg. Walker raised the gladius, intent to strike, but something in the eyes of the creature before him stilled his hand. As it looked his way with a large blue eye, he could swear it paused and regarded him. Somehow within its brutish baboon face there was something remarkable. The way the eye looked at him, the shape of the orb, the slight sadness surrounding it, sent a shock wave through his memories. A great well of sadness exploded, filling him past bursting. The feeling of loss… of nearness… of need… shot through him like a lightning bolt.

He staggered backwards. Could it be?

He uttered a single word. “Jen?”

The eye blinked at him.

He inhaled emptiness.

He’d known all along that the hounds were fueled by the souls of those they killed, but it had always seemed like an academic idea, something so unfathomable that he just took it for granted. Never once did he imagine that he’d be put in a position to not only face her but also possibly kill her.

She stared at him. My god, how he loved her. A thought struck him. He remembered what the witch had said about the souls of the hounds possessing the fonts. Was there a chance? Could he at least get that part of Jen back that was her essence? She wouldn’t look the same, but then that wasn’t what made her… her. All he had to do was find someone to possess.

He shook his head. What was he thinking? He couldn’t do that to someone else!

Not even to have his girl back?

Not even to have the love of his life back in his arms?

He’d give the world to kiss her one more time, the feel of her soft lips, the warmth of her hands as she held him, knowing that he could close his eyes and she’d be there forever.

She blinked at him as if she was reading his mind. He could see recognition in her eyes.

The gladius felt heavy. He knew he needed to use it to save Hoover, but he couldn’t kill her. Not again.

Then she did something at once beautiful and terrible. She opened her great monstrous jaws and released Hoover’s leg. The hound’s human hand that had been holding Hoover let go as well. It reached out to him, slow, tentative.