Legacy of the Demon (Kara Gillian 8)

“Hey, that’s me!” Scott Glassman—my former coworker—called out with a laugh from the Stryker behind me.

“—you false soldiers defy God’s law and embrace sin by employing evil witches and sorcerers to battle these demons.”

“And that’s me,” I said with a snort. Yeah, well, the preacher could rant all he wanted about my evil nature but, as an Arcane Specialist, my “sorcery” was part of the reason the DIRT forces could mount any defense at all.

Like right now, as my othersight revealed a nasty orange glow forming on the demon’s clawed left hand.

“—demons to punish the sinners and—”

“Yek ziy!” the demon bellowed. To punish all.

“Double-M left,” I yelled, scrambling up to dive behind the thick tires of the Stryker. Hatches clanged shut, and “umbrellas” made of an arcane-resistant polymer snicked open as the troops without cover deployed shields.

The ground heaved with a concussion that set my ears ringing, followed an instant later by a blast of heat and shriek of metal. My pulse slammed in reaction. A reyza cast that? I’d only ever felt an arcane detonation that powerful from a demonic lord.

Fear seized me. “Oh no . . .” I surged out from behind the Stryker. The umbrella shields were arcane resistant, meant to deflect a typical demon strike—not a blitzkrieg.

My heart dropped to my toes. I barely registered that the SkeeterCheater lay intact but unanchored over a widened rift. My focus was locked a dozen yards beyond it, where two squad members crouched motionless, fatigues seared and smoking while around them the asphalt popped and boiled. Nothing remained of their shields but the twisted metal of the frames.

The reyza let out a roar of triumph and sprang into the air with powerful strokes of his wings.

“Glassman and Chu, keep eyes on that demon!” Roma shouted with just the barest hitch in her voice. “Landon and Abercrombie, status!”

For an endless second nothing happened. Then Landon lifted his head, working his jaw as if to pop his ears. A second later Abercrombie looked up, blinking, then patted out a patch of flame on Landon’s shoulder. “Five by five,” Landon croaked, echoed by Abercrombie.

“Stay put until the medics can extract you,” I ordered, wobbly with relief. “Arcane injuries aren’t always immediately apparent,” I added to Roma to explain why I’d stepped on her authority. Technically speaking, I outranked her, but I wasn’t stupid enough to override her on tactical or military matters. And her nod told me she wasn’t stupid enough to dig her heels in on arcane matters. Then again, one of the reasons I’d requested her for my squad was because she cared more about her people and the mission than her ego.

As the medics hurried up, Roma turned away to marshal the rest of the squad to re-secure the SkeeterCheater and track the reyza. Alpha Squad was one of a dozen special units deployed around the world to areas with high rift activity, its members hand-picked and carefully screened. Most of the men and women in DIRT had police or military backgrounds—such as Roma, who’d been a retired Marine Master Sergeant. But there were plenty who’d earned spots by being excellent marksmen or just plain hard as nails, relentless, and unflinching. Slackers weren’t tolerated, not with the world at stake.

I kept one eye on the circling demon as I harangued the medics into moving faster. Due to the weak potency on Earth, it usually took a reyza at least a minute to ready an arcane strike—or “magic missile,” as the first DIRT fighters had dubbed them, hence the “Double-M”—but it was obvious this was no ordinary reyza.

“Only God’s power can truly defeat these spawn of Satan. The gates of hell have opened, and the righteous shall endure for all eternity.”

A familiar ache tightened my chest. No, the gates were closed. Within a day of the PD valve explosion that started this whole nightmare, contact with the demon realm was cut off. No valve travel, no summonings. The rifts were the last remaining conduits between Earth and the demon realm, but the invading demons were the only ones who understood how to use them.

Then again, the incursions were how I knew the demon realm still existed at all.

“You false prophets and so-called soldiers hide in the shadows like the craven cowards that you are, cringing from the face of evil.”

Outrage boiled through me. The courts had ruled that the picketers and protesters had the right to say their piece as long as they didn’t get in our way. I agreed wholeheartedly with the country maintaining its freedoms no matter what disasters befell it, but I was also relieved and pleased when the courts decreed that if any of them got hurt while demonstrating near rifts, it was their own stinkin’ fault.

To my twisted delight, the reyza swooped low over the picketers, obviously not giving a shit that they were supposedly at a safe distance. The lead protester dropped his mic and dove out of the truck. A few others broke and ran, but the rest hunched behind their eight-foot-tall signs as if cardboard and plastic would protect them.

But hey, for all I knew the protesters and preachers were right. Maybe this whole nightmare started because some god looked down and thought, “Ew, what a mess! Time to wipe the slate and start fresh.” Made as much sense as anything else at the moment.

The medics carted Landon and Abercrombie off. The demon circled the protesters. “Yek ziy,” he roared.

My twisted delight turned to horror as orange light blossomed in the demon’s hand. I needed to distract him, break his concentration, or the protesters would get fried. I didn’t like their “helpful” messages—or their foolishness for setting up so close to a rift—but they were human, and no way would I sit on my ass and let them die. But what to do? Shooting at him was a lousy option. The demon had arcane shielding, plus the distance increased the chance that we’d hit the civilians with friendly fire. The Light Armored Vehicle was closest to the highway, but even they couldn’t—

“Chu!” I yelled at the top of my lungs. “Crowd control the demon. Now!” I wasn’t concerned about the protesters getting accidentally tear-gassed. Helluva lot less lethal than an arcane strike, and maybe they’d be smart and run away.

Chu immediately swung the grenade launcher around, loaded up the needed grenades, then sighted and fired four times in quick succession. I held my breath as the grenades sailed toward their target, then watched in relief as the demon wheeled toward the incoming threats, the orange glow vanishing from his hand. He batted a tear gas grenade into the midst of the protesters, but the second and third bathed him in gas and smoke, and the fourth peppered him with rubber pellets. While the demon pivoted in an aerial dance of gas and pellet avoidance, the protesters—including Microphone Man—made their own escape, scuttling like roaches into the woods behind them.

But they were still far from safe, especially if the reyza decided to blast the woods where they were hiding. Drawing my Glock from my thigh holster, I marched to the rift and began firing into its depths. As I’d hoped, the reyza let out a cry of outrage, then he turned on a wing and headed toward us. Yet instead of going straight to the rift, he flew high and circled twice before descending to land atop what was left of the Piggly Wiggly.

He crouched and settled, a pose a reyza could hold for hours on end. It was clear he was waiting for something. Reinforcements? The puny humans to give up? Screw that.

I jogged to the Stryker and pounded a fist on the side. “I need the wizard staff,” I