Echoes of the Past (Demon Squad)

Echoes of the Past (Demon Squad) by Tim Marquitz Page B

Book: Echoes of the Past (Demon Squad) by Tim Marquitz Read Free Book Online
Authors: Tim Marquitz
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streaks of blood lent color to the whitish bile as I coughed up chunks of phlegm.
    Karra returned and pulled me onto the couch, pressing a smooth glass vial against my lips before I could protest. I tasted the bitter fluid of Lucifer’s blood and went to spit it out, but she pressed my mouth shut. The healing power of the claret went to work without me needing to swallow. I wanted to scream, to kick, to rage against the essence she’d made me consume, but I couldn’t find it in me to be angry at her. She’d done nothing but what she felt was right. I couldn’t hold that against her.
    As the blood went to work, I sunk down into the couch with a ragged sigh. Karra settled beside me, her hand caressing my cheek as she whispered her love in my ear. Her words couldn’t chase away the pain of what I’d learned, but her touch and soft kisses were enough to soften the edges just enough so I didn’t snap…again. Unable to hold it in any longer, I fell into her arms and wept.
    I don’t know how long I stayed there, my breath coming in roughened gasps, but Karra held me close the entire time. After what seemed like forever, my tears had started to run their course, the sterile sense of realism and cynicism, which had abandoned me, crept back, encasing the wounds in its empty anesthetic.
    “ Fffurrrriiiieeeeessss ! ”
    Chatterbox’s voice broke through my misery. Karra hopped to her feet. Alone on the couch, I looked up through wet eyes to see her in a fighting posture, staring at the front door. A dozen or more growls erupted around the house and I wondered what had set the dread fiends off when I suddenly remembered having ordered them to silence. They spilled out of the spare bedroom without a sound and into the hallway just as the front door was torn from its hinges. Through it came a band of werewolves, all gnashing teeth and slashing claws. Their growls and howls made my ears ring.
    Glass shattered behind us as more of the werewolves burst through the windows. Chatterbox threw himself forward and rolled off the table to hide. Just as I hopped to my feet, the forty dread fiends crashed into the line of weres before they’d gotten more than ten feet into the house. The looks on the werewolves’ faces were priceless. Surprise !
    The fiends tore into them without mercy. Karra and I stood back and watched as the werewolves went down in a whimpering heap of bloody and savaged fur. Several of them scrambled to escape but the fiends were having none of that. Arms and legs were ripped free and flung about the living room, decorating my house in shades of red and brown. Judging by the smell, there was some shit mixed into the whole concoction of carnage.
    Before I could even think to call the fiends to heel, they had slaughtered all of the werewolves. Mangled bodies were littered around my living room, my kitchen, and dining room. There was more red on the walls than there was white. Everything was coated in a layer of werewolf gut juice.
    “Put the door back in place,” I yelled to one of the fiends. It complied immediately, snatching up the door and holding it inside the broken frame to keep it there. It wasn’t perfect, but it’d do to block people’s view from the outside. “Clean this up,” I told the rest. I didn’t have to tell them to do it quickly, as that was implied in the tone of my voice. While the fiends weren’t anything resembling smart, they were well trained.
    I ran to the windows and yanked the curtains closed. Peering out between them, I didn’t see anything to make me think the attack had been witnessed; not that there were a whole bunch of folks still living in my neighborhood. After all the weirdness around my house, the storms created by the Tree of Life were the last straw for most of the people. A whole bunch of them up and moved away, abandoning their homes to never come back. I imagine some of them had gotten caught up in the deadly fall and were killed, but regardless, the nearby

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