The Merging Read online

  It rang my bell pretty good, but this was no time for pain.

  “Get up,” I commanded the rest of my team as I fought to regain my footing. “We have to stop him before he figures out how to undo the runes.”

  Reese launched another volley my way, but I dived forward, getting under the streaming river of light.

  I rolled back up to find Griff waving his hands in dramatic fashion. He replaced his shield as Jasmine and Rachel flung everything they had at Reese.

  This time they were having an impact.

  But the angry mage wasn’t done yet. He put up a shield of his own and then sent a wave of power into the werewolf and succubus.

  They pushed up to their feet and began running at me, Chuck, and Felicia. The beasties were moving faster than any beings—supernatural or not—should have been able to run.

  I snapped up the Eagle and yelled, “Fire!”

  There were times where you wanted to hear the cracking of gunfire. A banging sound that kicked you like a mule. Something that would give you the feeling of more strength as you took down the monsters that were coming at you. So it was a bit anticlimactic to see the bullets having their intended effect while making only tiny “pop pop” sounds. I would have to ask Turbo to supply a volume slider for moments such as these. Assuming we survived, obviously.

  I knocked a decent-sized hole through the werewolf’s chest and another took off half its head, but his initial momentum was enough to have him crash into me.

  That should have been all there was to it. He should have been dead because Reese didn’t have the bandwidth to heal him anymore.

  But the thing was still moving. And not just wiggling about, either.

  It sat up and started raining down blows, having me in full mount.

  I put up my hands, fending off strike after strike. It reminded me of a UFC bout I saw at the Mandalay Bay Hotel a few weeks back.

  “How the fuck are you still moving?” I yelled.

  It was all I could do to stop the thing from pummeling me into dust. Fortunately, this is why cops always have someone watching their backs. Just as one crushing blow got through to my chin, Felicia slammed into the side of the creature, dislodging him from me.

  I rolled over, feeling even more woozy than before. My chin was definitely going to bruise from that punch.

  Felicia and the beast were wrestling on my one side and Chuck and the succubus were squaring off on the other.

  They were both holding their own, but it was an impossible fight because these monsters had holes through their bodies and were missing half their heads.

  Whatever those runes did that Warren fired off on the demons, it was currently backfiring with the werewolf and succubus. They were even more powerful than before, and bullets didn’t seem to be much of a deterrent anymore.

  In a nutshell, my team was still deep in the shit.

  I glanced up to see if Reese was somehow animating them, but he was having enough of a struggle keeping my mages at bay.

  That’s when I noticed the demons behind Reese were no longer apparitions.

  They were fully physical creatures now.

  Green and scaled with red eyes, sharp teeth, and long claws. They were slender-built with a low center of gravity and their arms were long and lanky. There was little doubt that these things were going to be a bitch to kill.

  “Are the demons gone?” asked Warren as if on cue.

  “No, Warren,” I said as calmly as I could manage while lifting up the Eagle and aiming it at one of them, “they’re really not.”

  Chapter 38

  It had become abundantly clear that the Eagle was a useless instrument against the likes of a corporeal demon. Oh, it irritated the hell out of them—so to speak—but it didn’t stop the things in the least.

  This was a losing battle and I knew it.

  It was time to use one of my special amalgamite skills. I was still discovering them all, but knew one that was fitting for this particular situation. I called it “Freeze.”

  I rarely did it because it made me rather cantankerous, I was exhausted for days afterward, and I lost some control over my emotions. But it gave me speed, healing, and power that was about the only weapon capable of holding these demons at bay.

  The reason I dubbed it “Freeze” instead of something like “Rage,” was because I became cold and calculating. Emotion essentially died. Besides, calling it something like “Hate” or “Rage” would draw comparisons to me being a normally mild-mannered scientist-type who turned big and green when he got ticked off.

  “Everyone, listen up,” I stated as the demons began heading toward me, “I have to go into Freeze mode.”

  “Oh goodie,” said Rachel, having been around me in the past when I’d done things like this.

  “Serena, you and Warren have to figure out some way to waste these demons. If that means you take me out at the same time, so be it. Don’t let these fuckers survive. Are we clear?”

  “We’re clear,” Serena replied in her business-like voice.

  “Lydia,” I called back to base, “I’m about to go into Freeze. We’ve got demons and magic flying around us up here. If we don’t succeed you’re going to have to get the full council in on this.”

  “Oh, honey, you can’t—”

  “Sorry, Lydia,” I interrupted, “but I have no choice. You may also want to get The Spin down here fast, but tell them to get the hell away even faster if this goes south.”

  “Be careful, lover,” she replied sadly.

  “Keep them off me for as long as you can,” I commanded the others before I closed my eyes and allowed the cold to set in.

  The screams silenced, the flashing of lights grew dark, and my heart slowed to a crawl.

  Entering the world of Freeze was something I could do quickly, but it was only used as a last resort. And it didn’t last very long, so I had to be quick with my actions. Once I was fully engaged, assuming that Warren didn’t kill me as collateral damage during his attack on the demons, I’d have to fight to control myself.

  A small blue light began to grow out of the pitch black. Every strand of my being focused on it, building the deadness of emotion until only blue filled my vision.

  My body was rocked by something hitting me. I assumed it was one of the demons or another blast of energy from Reese. But I felt no pain; I was already lost in the beginnings of the Freeze.

  Now this wasn’t some kind of berserker mode like Felicia was known to go into when her inner werewolf was too much for her to contain. It was more of a methodical destruction. I thought of it like a level of pain that gets so bad your brain stops you from feeling anything. I had to get deep enough into survival mode that I became grim, fierce, and dedicated to the eradication of anything that pissed me off.

  My eyes snapped open.

  A demon was on my chest, pulling back to rake its claws across my face.

  I let it.

  Then I reached up and grabbed it by the throat and snapped its neck with a flick of my hand.

  The Freeze had begun.

  Chapter 39

  The demon didn’t die. I hadn’t done enough to warrant that. Plus, I understood that it would likely require a vat of that black goop from Warren to take the thing completely out. But it was disoriented enough to give me time to utilize it for a little destruction.

  I stood and grabbed the demon by the arm and lifted it straight up. It struggled and slapped at me with its claws, but I didn’t care.

  Two of the others came rushing my way with fury in their eyes.

  I already knew they weren’t that fond of me, but they must have also realized that I had become their biggest threat at the moment.

  I launched the demon I was holding straight into the incoming rush, knocking them down like a bowling ball does pins. They collapsed in a heap.

  Turning, I saw that Chuck was struggling against the succubus. It was only a matter of time before she overpowered him. There was no emotion, per se, but rather jus
t a deep-rooted understanding in my psyche that Chuck was on my team, which meant the succubus was not.

  I sent a flying fist to what remained of her head. She flew off of Chuck and hit the ground, unmoving. I knew she’d get back up once the demon in her roused again, but that wasn’t my problem right now.

  “Thanks,” said Chuck.

  I looked at him impassively and then turned my attention back to the demons I’d bowled down. They were spreading out in front of me now instead of just running in. Obviously, they’d come up with a plan of attack.

  The Desert Eagle was a few steps away, sitting between me and the demons. With a speed that would have seemed a blur to most, I jumped over and picked it up, checked the magazine, replaced it, and shot each of them before they had a chance to do anything. Then I turned and placed a shot through the werewolf that was attacking Felicia, and another through the succubus, who had started moving again.

  This had given Felicia and Chuck enough time to get their weapons back in order. It wouldn’t be sufficient for them, but it would help.

  I could hear the chatter through the connector as my team yelled back and forth to each other. It was mostly noise, though, as my brain was in its own world. Their voices merely echoed in a cacophony of muddled sounds.

  Even if I could have understood them, it wouldn’t have broken my focus.

  The demons needed to die.

  Reese needed to die.

  I glanced up at the mad mage who was continuing his battle with Rachel, Jasmine, and Griff. It was evident that I had to get to him and so I pushed forward.

  This caught the attention of the angry demons. They already hated me because of their inability to posses my soul, and I’m certain that going into Freeze and making them look like waifs didn’t help either. But now that I was moving to threaten their link to this world, they redoubled their efforts to stop me.

  As one, including the werewolf and succubus, they attacked.

  It wasn’t like one of those shows where the kung fu artist stands there taking on fighter after fighter, one at a time. No, these guys dived on me in a combined effort to take me out.

  My bones were far denser than the average mortal, though, another product of my particular genetic make-up. Removing me from the equation was not going to be an easy task, especially when I was in Freeze. I’d still bleed, of course, but even then the Freeze would enhance my healing rate to nearly instant.

  I couldn’t last forever against them, though. Fortunately, I didn’t need to. I just needed to keep them busy long enough for Warren to get the black goop on them.

  I fought back at them ferociously, yet calmly. The feeling was strange. It was barely describable as “feeling” at all. If anything, it was as though I were nothing but a machine whose job was to demolish. An item comes into my world that is flagged as being on the destruction list and I crush it. There was no desire or hate, really. Just an emotionless requirement to destroy.

  Every time I threw one of my attackers away, they’d surge back in.

  Felicia and Chuck struggled to help, but the creatures were in a fit of madness that made it difficult. Still, every little bit helped. Had my mages been able to attack them with me, this would have gone much smoother, but they had to keep their focus on Reese. It was like playing chess. If you pressed your attack on one side of the board, your opponent would press back on another.

  We were struggling against each other in a game of inches at this point.

  That’s when I heard the only voice that was ever able to get through to me during the Freeze. It was faint, but it broke into my mental blocks just enough so that I could hear it.

  “Ian,” said Rachel in what sounded like a whisper, “Warren and Serena are constructing a void wall. When I say go, you will need to throw the demons through it.”

  I couldn’t respond to her, but I had enough presence of mind to search out the location of Warren and Serena. They were standing behind me, which placed the demons equidistant between Reese and them.

  One of the demons stuck its claws in my neck. I grabbed its arm and bent it back with a sickening crunch. Then I snapped off each of its claws as it screamed in agony. This wasn’t done out of malice, but rather out of self-preservation. The claws were dangerous and they had to go. So I removed them. Another punch to the face knocked it down as I drove my knee powerfully into the head of the one under me.

  The succubus sent her whip across Chuck’s back. He fell forward with a yelp as Felicia fired a 50-caliber round. It caught the succubus on the shoulder, blowing it apart.

  “Now, Ian,” said Rachel desperately. “Now!”

  Chapter 40

  As I said before, the Freeze didn’t last forever, and I could feel my resolve starting to weaken. The more focus I had to expend, the quicker Freeze dissipated. And I was in a state of needle-like tunnel vision right now.

  With a burst of energy that I knew was likely to knock me clear out of my hyper-focused state, I threw the leeching demons away and bolted toward the void.

  Warren was waving his hands at me to veer away from the wall of black he’d created, but my safety wasn’t as important as the destruction of these beasts.

  At least this was what the part of my brain that was still in Freeze thought. Unfortunately, the part of me that was struggling to regain control considered self-sacrifice not nearly as appealing.

  “You must,” I said to myself.

  “Fuck that,” I replied.

  Yes, I was quite literally talking to myself.

  A demon slammed into me from behind. I fell and rolled with the blow, launching the demon through the air as I continued my summersault. It flew straight into the blackness and was no longer a threat.

  The tip of my shoe hit the void as I came to a sliding stop. I yanked it back quickly and noted that it was gone. Fortunately, I wore my shoes a little loose; otherwise I’d have been short a toe at that moment.

  “What the shit is that?” I shrieked.

  “Your destiny,” the frozen side of me replied without emotion.

  I slapped myself and yelled, “Shut up!”

  The whip of the succubus snapped around my neck an instant later, thankfully yanking me back from the wall of death. I doubted it was her intent to save me, but my ever-growing desire to live was rather pleased nonetheless.

  I was starting to fatigue and Freeze was losing hold.

  Thinking quickly, I pulled out the Eagle and fired it straight up at the succubus. It hit her in a not-so-friendly spot and she screamed a scream I’d likely have nightmares about.

  Felicia kicked her in the back a moment later. The succubus was thrust forward far enough to allow Serena to step out and help her along the rest of the way into the void.

  So much for that fantasy of being with an Amazon-sized succubus.

  Two demons down, three to go.

  “Everyone attack these goddamn demons,” I yelled as inspiration struck and Freeze was nearly gone.

  “But…”

  “Everyone!”

  They all turned their attention toward the demons. Reese did as well, but his intention was to heal them as fast as my crew attacked them.

  But I had recalled something about my particular relationship with Reese. He couldn’t block me out.

  As my mages fired wave after wave of energy at the demons, and Chuck and Felicia supported their efforts by punching, kicking, and shooting the green-scaled things, I ran full force at Reese and launched myself at his mid-section, barely ducking a blast of energy.

  We hit the ground and he began building up the same type of spell that he’d used on us at the morgue.

  The tornado was coming again.

  But this time I wasn’t going to wait for it.

  I pulled out the Eagle and fired it at point-blank range into his chest.

  The growing noise faded, replaced by the screams of demons who were being systematically sent through the void.

  “What have you done?” said Reese as his eyes dimmed.
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  “Stopped an asshole from taking over the world,” I said through ragged breaths as I pushed up and leveled the Eagle at his head.

  “You have no idea what you’re doing.” His voice was subdued and his breathing was gurgled. “Killing me will not stop us.”

  “Us?”

  He began to chant as spittles of blood formed on his lips. His eyes started to brighten until there was a stream of light shooting from them.

  Rachel hollered, “Kill him!”

  This was enough to shake my mind back to the moment.

  A 50-caliber bullet stopped Reese’s chanting once and for all.

  Chapter 41

  I collapsed next to Reese’s body as Rachel came over and lifted my head off the ground.

  “Are you okay?” she asked.

  “I’ve been better.”

  “You’ll be out of it for a while, you know?”

  I nodded.

  The headache was already beginning. It always followed quickly behind the Freeze, or any of the other special skills I used. But I had to do it. We needed the time.

  “I hate it when you do that,” she said while running her fingers through my hair.

  “It’s the only way I can get you to touch me,” I said, giving her a tired wink. “I’m feeling a lot of pain in my groin area, too, you know?”

  “We’re not allowed to play that game anymore, remember?” She smiled and shook her head. “Freak.”

  As if my head hadn’t hurt bad enough, I heard the growling voice of Paula Rose as she thumped across the roof.

  “Great,” I said. “I don’t suppose you’d be willing to talk with her about—”

  “Oh no,” interrupted Rachel. “Fighting demons, werewolves, vampires, and evil overlords is one thing. There’s nothing in my contract that says I have to tangle with your ex-girlfriends.”

  She helped me to my feet as Paula came up, wagging her finger at me.