Goetic Justice 2

Ryan dove behind the couch, hearing the bullets as they whizzed past not an inch above his head, sending bursts of stuffing spraying into the air where they impacted the cushions and armrests. The wooden frame of the couch seemed to be shielding him for the most part.

He heard the signature crack of the shotgun, peeking up from his hiding spot to see Nahash tear the weapon from the man's hands. She delivered a powerful kick to his chest with her cloven hoof that sent him flying into the wall behind him, the drywall denting and crumbling as it fell down around him. It seemed that their weapons were no longer doing the job, not now that Nahash was inside the circle and charged up with energy.

He had never seen her like this before, she was ferocious, wild. Her sheer size and strength made her formidable in such close quarters, she was throwing her assailants around like they were dolls. He ducked in alarm as she flung one of them towards the couch, the flailing man passing clear over his head and smashing through the already broken window in the living room. They were on the eighth floor, there was no way that guy would survive a fall from that height.

She gored another with her horns, impaling him through his vest. Apparently, it wasn't demon horn-proof. She lifted him off the ground like an angry bull, blood pouring from his wounds as she swung her head and sent him flying into the glass coffee table.

Suddenly Nahash was stopped in her tracks again. The man who had been reciting the incantation had pulled himself free of the half-collapsed wall. He had recovered his Seal of Solomon and was resuming his spell as he waved it at her. She twitched and shuddered, his words staying her rampage as she was rooted to the spot. The speakers were no longer working, the game console that they were hooked up to must have caught a bullet.

Ryan sprang into action, throwing himself towards the prone figure that was lying in a heap in the ruins of the coffee table in front of the couch. He fumbled with the man's weapon, still attached to him via a sling, struggling to free it from the motionless body. There was broken glass and blood all over the floorboards, Ryan trying not to think about it as he succeeded in freeing the weapon.

He had never fired a gun before in his life, but he had seen them in movies, played with them in video games. Just point and shoot, how hard could it be?

One of the surviving team members was rising unsteadily to his feet after having been flung into the kitchen, struggling to get his bearings. Ryan aimed the gun and squeezed the trigger.

Immediately the weapon jumped in his hands, the recoil strong enough that the last few rounds of the burst went into the ceiling directly above him, showering him with dust and debris. Ryan struggled to get the weapon under control, the noise making his ears ring like he had tinnitus. Even a poor marksman couldn't have missed a person from ten feet away with an automatic weapon, and he watched with a mixture of pride and horror as his target slumped over, bringing the kitchen table down with him as he crashed back to the floor.

Ryan turned towards the man who was casting the spell, Nahash's shivering form was directly between the two of them, and he couldn't get a clear shot. He edged around her, bracing the stock of the gun against his shoulder as he had seen the SWAT team do. The man was already drawing a sidearm from his vest, keeping the bronze badge held in one hand as he chanted.

Nahash was tall and wide, but she was standing an open-legged posture, frozen in position like a statue. The man took advantage of that to fire off a round between her legs, the bullet narrowly missing Ryan's foot as it chewed up the wood flooring.

Ryan danced out of the way, retreating back behind the couch. Surely this guy couldn't keep his attention on both Ryan and Nahash? He couldn't participate in a gunfight and recite a complex incantation at the same time. Ryan had to act quickly, dropping to a crouch and scooting around the back of the couch. A bullet tore through the lining where he had been a moment earlier, that round would have found its mark if he had been a second slower.

Keeping his body out of view, he raised the gun over the back of the couch and pumped the trigger, loosing a few random shots. They didn't seem to do a thing to Nahash, and so there was little danger of accidentally wounding her. When the ringing in his ears cleared, he heard the sound of a scuffle. He peeked out of his cover to see the furious Seirim pounding the man into the floor with her powerful leg, stomping on his body until it went limp. Ryan must have provided enough of a distraction for her to break free of the spell.

She turned her head to look back at Ryan over her shoulder. The white wool on her head and neck was stained with blood that was not her own, her eyes burning with an infernal heat. He was afraid of her for a split second, and then her enraged expression softened, the Nahash that he knew and loved resurfacing.

"Ryan," she gasped, "are you hurt?"

"Me?!" Ryan stammered, "what about you? I saw you...for a moment I thought that you had been killed!"

"They dissipated my corporeal form with their weapon," she explained. "But I am bound to your ring, and I cannot be so easily banished. If it was not for the circle..."

She glanced anxiously at the bare wood beneath the shredded couch where the chalk circle was still visible, it was no doubt all that had permitted her to reform as quickly as she had. If it had not been there, the men would have gunned Ryan down before she could intervene. Without the ring to which Azazel had bound her, perhaps her spirit would have been cast back into the immaterial realm after her body was destroyed.

"Who are these people?" Ryan wondered aloud, crouching to inspect one of the downed men. They were wearing police uniforms all right, but there were no markings, no badge numbers or identifying information that might tell him which department they belonged to.

"I do not know, I have never seen their like before. But Ryan, they were equipped to contain a demon. The Aramaic incantation, Solomon's Seal, the brazen vessel. If you had not intervened when you did, I might have been confined to that brass jar."

The adrenaline was wearing off now, leaving Ryan shaky and exhausted. He felt sick, the carnage in the apartment was turning his stomach. He had never realized that blood had its own smell before, metallic and cloying.

"I...killed a guy," he muttered. "I think I killed a cop. I shot him."

"Ryan," Nahash said, attempting to snap him out of his stupor. "We must leave, we are not safe here. More may come."

"I have to call someone," he said, "I have to call the police. But these are...police. What do we do?"

"We must leave," Nahash insisted, walking over to him and placing her hands on his shoulders. He looked up at her, staring into her amber eyes, the fog of confusion and fear seeming to clear like storm clouds parting to reveal a blue sky. He suddenly felt composed, collected, certain now of what he needed to do. Was she using her powers on him, manipulating his emotions to sharpen his mind?

He nodded vigorously.

"Should I bring anything?"

"Your wand and your grimoires, bring anything you might need to perform magick. Someone, somewhere knows that we are here. These mortals were well prepared, I fear that it is only by chance that we prevailed."

He wasted no time, collecting his books and the summoning gear that was laid out conveniently on a table beneath the living room window, intended to be within reach of the summoning circle if he should ever need them. It appeared that none of the dusty tomes had been hit by stray bullets, but anything on the bookshelf a few feet to its right was toast. He had a cloth pouch filled with chalk and a wand that was fashioned from a stick. While it couldn't shoot fireballs, it was used to direct energy and to give commands to demons.

He filled a rucksack with his belongings, taking a moment to tear one of the protective pendants from the neck of a nearby body. He retrieved the brass vessel and the Seal of Solomon too, they might come in handy at some point. These were nothing like the makeshift wards and seals that he had crafted when he had first summoned Orobas, these appeared to be professionally made. They were sturdy, forged from metal rather than drawn on paper, their carved runes and symbols intricate and precise.

Just who were these guys, demon hunters? Ryan had never bothered anyone in his life, why would they come after him? Were they just after Nahash?

He paused when he noticed a black handgun lying beside one of the motionless police officers. Should he bring a weapon? He might need to defend himself, and it was probably better to have one and not need it than to need one and not have it. He couldn't wander around with a machine gun, but he could easily conceal a pistol in his bag. He stooped to pick it up, examining the weapon and turning it over in his hands.

Guns had safeties, right? He should probably find it, or the weapon might go off in his pack. There was a click as he flipped a small lever just below the receiver, it only had two settings, and so that was probably the safety. He aimed the weapon away from himself and squeezed the trigger tentatively, but it didn't fire.

Ryan took a moment to look around the apartment. It was completely destroyed, littered with debris and bodies. It looked like a war zone, there were shell casings all over the floor, bullet holes in every surface and appliance. He had to hope that his neighbors were safe and that no stray bullets had made their way into the adjacent apartments in the building. He stowed the weapon in his bag and then slung it over his shoulder.

"Alright Nahash, let's get out of here. What did you have in mind?"

"We will take your car, beyond that I do not know. We should leave this city, we might seek sanctuary in the forest with my sister Seirim. But I fear that if these people know of me, then they may know of them too."

"Azazel wouldn't let any harm come to them," Ryan replied, trying to reassure her. She stooped and lifted him in her arms, his stomach lurching as she turned towards the window.

"Aren't we taking the stairs?" he asked.

"This way is faster."

She began to run, crossing the apartment alarmingly quickly on her inhumanly long legs. There was a crash as she leapt out of the window, clearing the frame of what shattered fragments of glass still remained and splintering the wood, shielding him with her body. They began to fall, Ryan closing his eyes tightly and clinging to her soft wool like a baby monkey. Nahash impacted the ground hard, her hooves making a sound like a thunderclap as the asphalt beneath them cracked, the demon absorbing the impact with her legs.

She released Ryan from her grasp, and he looked up at the window. The damage was almost unnoticeable from the ground save for the busted frame where Nahash had powered through it with her massive body. He turned towards the street and recoiled at the sight of the cop who had been thrown from the building. He was lying in a pool of congealing blood, his limbs contorted at unnatural angles.

Where were the sirens, where were the gawking pedestrians? There had just been a gunfight, where were the ambulances and the police? The parking lot and the street beyond it were a ghost town, there wasn't so much as a solitary car driving on the road. It gave him an odd feeling of foreboding. Had nobody in the identical tower blocks that surrounded his own come out to investigate the noise?

There was a sudden chill in the air, Ryan noticing that his breath was misting again. It was a cool night, the stars visible through the cloudy sky, but not nearly cold enough to make his breath frosty. The street lamps that had been casting the road in their yellow glow flickered on and off, the darkness that surrounded them suddenly growing thick and oppressive.

"Something is coming," he whispered.

"I sense it too," Nahash confirmed, "a demonic energy..."

Ryan's eyes were drawn to a point of orange light that was resting on the asphalt between the apartment complex and the street. It was an ember, the kind that a bonfire might produce. It must have floated in on the wind, but from where?

It caught fire before his eyes, bursting into a crackling flame, growing as if it was being fueled by unseen means. There was nothing there for it to burn and yet the ground was catching fire all the same. The burning flames grew and spread, licking at the air as they danced, so hot that he could feel it on his face even from twenty feet away.

From the fire emerged a dark shape, black as night and hunched like a beast made of shadows. It traversed the flames easily, stepping through them as if they were some kind of doorway, seemingly unharmed by the intense heat. As it took shape, Ryan saw its massive paws spread on the ground, tipped with wicked claws. A pair of burning eyes emerged from the roiling mass, not merely glowing, but shooting jets of flame like a blowtorch. They fixed on Ryan intently, hungry and predatory. It filled him with a primal terror the likes of which he had only felt once before, when Azazel had manifested inside his apartment for the first time.

The shadow took the form of a monstrous panther, its fur as black as soot, the beast beginning to circle them slowly as the fire that had carried it into the mortal realm faded. It was the largest big cat that Ryan had ever seen, tall enough at the shoulder that it would have reached his chest. Its black coat was rippling with muscle, powerful and primal, its body like a coiled spring.

As it walked, paws as large as Ryan's head spreading out to take its weight, he noticed that the slaver dripping from its jaws was also aflame. It looked like molten metal, hanging from its mouth in dangling strands that melted the tar of the parking lot where they fell. Every breath that it took exhaled a plume of dark smoke like a mythical dragon.

"Haures," Nahash whispered, her voice wavering with fear in a way that Ryan had never heard before. She was a Seirim, immortal for all intents and purposes. What kind of infernal beast might fill her with such palpable dread?

The panther spoke with the voice of a man, course and gruff, disconcerting.

"Away with thee, Seirim. I have no quarrel with thee, my contract is for him."

"The mortal is under my protection," she replied, taking an offensive posture as the demonic creature paced back and forth like a tiger behind the bars at a zoo. It kept those flaming eyes fixed on Ryan, unwavering and fierce, sending a chill crawling down his spine like icy fingers.

"What...who is that?" Ryan whispered as Nahash placed herself between him and the beast.

"Haures, a Great Duke of Hell. You may know him as the sixty-fourth Goetic demon."

A Goetic demon? Then he was far more powerful than Nahash, who was a mere familiar. Someone had conjured this creature, they had brokered a contract with it, and Ryan was its target. Had this demon been assigned the task of killing him if the SWAT team failed? Why? What made Ryan so important? He was a nobody, completely inoffensive.

"Why?" Ryan called out to the demon. "Who summoned you?"

"It matters not. I have been contracted to burn thee to a cinder. Step out from behind thy familiar, and I may grant thee the mercy of a quick demise."

"Run Ryan," Nahash whispered hurriedly, "run and don't look back."

"But what about you?" he protested, "what if-"

"As long as you wear that ring I can always find you, no matter where you are."

He traced the runes on his onyx ring with his finger, then nodded. He turned and sprinted back towards the apartment complex, letting his adrenaline carry him. He flew across the asphalt, faster than he had ever needed to run his life, a very real devil was on his heels. He made it around the side of the building, vaulting over a few scraggly bushes as he tried to escape.

The parking lot was to the front of the high-rise, and some distance behind it was the freeway. Between them was a short stretch of dilapidated, urban woodland, the skeletal trees scarcely serving to shield the buildings from the noise of passing vehicles.

As his scuffed tennis shoes left the tarmac and found unkempt grass, a flash of flame appeared before him. Haures sprang from the puff of black smoke, pouncing onto the ground two feet in front of him, the heat that the demon gave off enough to singe his eyebrows. He skidded to a halt, digging his heels into the dirt to slow himself, the black beast crouching as it prepared to tackle him.

Nahash shot by him like a bullet, driving one of her powerful hooves into its side, kicking like a mule and sending the smoldering panther rolling across the ground. Plants caught fire where it passed, leaving a trail of flames, and it quickly leapt back to its feet.

It snarled at Nahash, the yowl of an angry cat mingling with a terrible, bestial roar that filled Ryan with an unearthly terror. It spat flames from its open jaws, pearly teeth glinting under the starlight like porcelain knives. Gripping the earth with its wicked claws, it charged the Seirim, its powerful muscles rippling beneath its velvet-black hide as it powered forward at alarming speed. Something that large and that heavy should not have been able to move with such agility.

Before he could even turn himself around, Haures had knocked Nahash to the ground. It pinned her beneath its bulk, her white wool singing from its proximity alone, the fluffy curls turning black and shriveling as if they were recoiling from the heat.

She brayed like a goat, kicking and scratching, jabbing at Haures' face with her crown of twisted horns. Her assailant dodged and weaved, the two of them moving faster than Ryan's eyes could track, the clashing of their titanic bodies making the ground shake.

Haures gained the upper hand, baring its pointed canines and sinking them deep into Nahash's neck, dark blood staining her wool as she writhed and twisted. The great panther shook her like a dog with a chew toy, maintaining its grip and sinking those cruel fangs deeper.

Fuck this, he wasn't going to stand by and let this happen to her, whether she could reform afterwards or not. He swung his rucksack from his shoulders and rummaged inside it, quickly finding the items that he needed.

A loud crack rang out, and Haures' savaging was interrupted, the beast raising its dripping jaws to glare at Ryan. He was holding a smoking handgun in a trembling hand, having seen how the shotgun had destroyed Nahash's corporeal form and hoping that he could achieve the same effect.

"Brave, but foolish," the creature growled. "I shall have thee on a pyre, boy."

It stepped off of the motionless Seirim, its jowls red with her blood, crouching low as if stalking him. It inched closer, those flaming eyes locked onto him, so intense that he dared not meet its gaze. He could feel the aura of heat that it projected, the blades of grass beneath its feet blackening and shrinking away as they cooked.

It lunged, and Ryan stood his ground, extending his other arm towards it.

Haures faltered, skidding to a stop on the dirt, its burning eyes turning towards the brass badge that he was brandishing. It was the Secret Seal of Solomon that he had recovered after the battle in the apartment, a ward that would compel a demon to obey his commands. He didn't have Haures' sigil on hand, and he was nowhere near a skilled enough magician to command the demon into the brazen vessel, but it was a powerful symbol that would at least give the demon pause for thought.

"Get out of here, you fucker!"

Not exactly an Aramaic conjuration of exorcism, but Ryan was angry and scared out of his wits.