I swept the light around the room once again. "I don't see anyone," I said. As soon as the words left my mouth, I knew I made a mistake. The wall behind me exploded as an arm punched through the wooden boards. It grabbed onto the back of my vest and pulled me through the wall, tossing me into the wall at the other end of the room. I hit hard, leaving a small crater before sliding to the floor. I blinked several times trying to bring the world back into focus.
A man in a dark suit walked unhurriedly toward me. He brushed the dust and splinters from his sleeves, then readjusted his cuff-links before lifting me off the ground with one hand. Looking down at his face I knew there was more to him than just this display of supernatural strength. It was in his face, his eyes, the fierce clarity in them that said he could break me as casually as cracking an egg, and do it with as much indifference as if I were just one of a thousand eggs that needed breaking that day.
I lifted the shotgun still hanging from its strap at my side and hit the man several times in the face with the heavy, wooden stock. He didn't even flinch as I rained down blow after blow. After three or four, the man tore the gun from my hands, breaking the strap and tossing the gun across the room. With his free hand, he pulled a large hunting knife from inside his jacket.
"Now, if it isn't too much trouble, could you tell me who sent you and I can send some friends of mine to say hello," he said holding the knife to my throat.
Before I could say anything, a bare hand clamped down on the top of the not-quite-a-man's head and I heard Thomas's voice speaking in a rushed Latin. The man's eyes glazed over, then turned fully black. His arm went limp and he dropped me to the ground. He raised his face to the ceiling, mouth open in a silent scream. A black sludge spewed from his mouth and oozed from his eyes. After a few seconds, he collapsed on the ground.
I nudged his foot a few times with my boot to make sure he wouldn't be moving anytime soon. Satisfied, I pressed two fingers to the man's neck. "Still alive," I said, looking at Thomas standing behind the man. "Did you see that? I've never seen something like that before."
Thomas just shrugged his shoulders. "Looks like simple demonic possession." He gave me a quizzical look. "Are you sure you've dealt with demons before?"
I shook my head as I walked to retrieve my shotgun. "This one felt different. Not the same as other possessions I've dealt with."
As I picked up my shotgun, another door kicked open and three more men walked into the room. They wore a mismatch of clothing with no uniformity suggesting that they all must've come from different walks of life. In their faces though, I saw the same bestial snarl and blackened, midnight eyes. Clearly different from the man that threw me across the room and lifted me above his head. I still didn't doubt that each of these men could do the same. Except they, or at least the demons within them, would take a lot more pleasure in the act.
I raised the shotgun, both barrels loaded with blessed buckshot. Before I could pull the trigger, Thomas stepped in front of me. "Human life always comes first," he said, placing a hand on the gun and pointing it at the floor.
Calmly, he rolled up the sleeves of his jacket to reveal a series of intricate tattoos covering his forearms. He began to chant in Latin again, raising his bare arms in front of his face. As he spoke I could feel a pressure building in the air like a storm coming to life. Finally he spoke his last syllable and brought his arms together. A blinding light erupted from his arms and filled the room. Black smoke spewed from the other three men and departed the room. The emptied bodies dropped lifeless to the ground.
Though Thomas took his time to nonchalantly roll down his sleeves, I still kept my gun trained on the three bodies until I checked each of them. "They're all dead," I said.
Thomas nodded. "The demons must've used these ones up leaving just the shell of a body."
"Then why was the other one still alive after you drove the demon out?"
"Perhaps these three played hosts to the demons longer than the first one we encountered?" he offered as an explanation.
I shook my head. It was a sound theory especially based on the evidence The Hunter Guild collected years ago. Still, something about it bothered me. Instead of spouting any dissenting theories, I just kept my gun trained on the door from which the three men emerged. I suspected wherever we needed to go next, it started with going through those doors.
Instead I was surprised as the entire floor gave away beneath my feet and I dropped hard into the basement. Luckily, the heavy wooden floorboards broke my fall and I think I got away with just a sprained ankle. I pointed the shotgun around the room as the dust settled, the flashlight beam sweeping the room around me. The remains of the floor from the room above covered the basement along with its sparse furnishings. Archaic drawings painted in blood covered the walls. It stank of fresh death and murder.
"Thomas," I coughed, looking for the slayer in the rubble as well as keeping an eye out for whatever it was that bought down the entire floor. "Thomas, where are you?'
"I'm here, though I don't think we're alone down here," he said as the light swept over him. He dragged himself out of the rubble and immediately drew his sword.
A reddish light filled the basement. It took me a second to realize it wasn't emitting just from the runes on the walls but coming up through the rubble under foot. There must be even more drawings on the buried basement floor.
"Get your back to the wall!" Thomas shouted as he spun in a circle, eyes taking in everything at once. "It's a summoning circle. Something's coming."
A pressure filled the air, almost as when Thomas banished the demons from the human bodies, except it felt like the exact opposite. The air grew hot and dry, the stench of rotting meat and burning hair filled the room, and the chorus of a million flies buzzing deafened my ears. Then the pressure broke and now, standing in the middle of the room was a creature I could only assume was a demon. Red leathery skin, great ram-like horns, black wings that I doubted could carry its weight into the air. It reeked of sulfur and shit. Instinctively I took aim and fired my blessed buckshot at its muscular torso. Pump and fire, pump and fire. I emptied the gun only to watch the buckshot sizzle on contact with its skin, the pellets just not having enough power behind them to do any real damage against a creature from The Pit.
The demon laughed, a deep bass booming in the cellar. In an instant, it was upon me. With a sledgehammer fist, it knocked me across the room. Before it could follow-up and finish the job, Thomas launched himself at the demon. His sword pierced through the demon's back and out its front. He withdrew it, a black sludge spurting from the wound, and jumped back in time to avoid the demon's fist.
The demons smiled as he spoke, "Blessed ammunition and a holy sword. You two came prepared. I thought I'd kept Heverfore's machinations under the notice of slayers." Then his smile grew wider, revealing more teeth than should be physically possible to fit into one mouth. "A welcome surprise though as you two will provide excellent entertainment for me until the moment I allow you to die."
