From the corner of his eye, he saw a knife slicing down. The blade severed the tip of the tongue, and black blood splashed Raven’s face. The sticky fluid burned his skin, the stench overpowering.
Whip-fast, the damaged tongue withdrew back into the monster’s mouth. With a roar of rage and pain, the demon’s wings flared out, and he launched himself at the Plymouth. The boy’s father never showed any fear. That was what he would remember most about this moment. Not his own terror or pain, but the calm, steady gaze of his father as he told Raven to run and never look back.
Raven could only nod, hot tears streaking down his face. His dad released the seat belt and handed him the green glowing gun.
“The gun will keep you safe. Use it the way I taught you. NOW RUN!”
Raven didn’t remember taking Hellseeker or opening the door. Didn’t remember climbing out of the car. Didn’t remember breaking into a run.
He only recalled what happened next.
His father cranked the engine, and the Plymouth blasted toward the demon at full crank. Raven did go against his father’s wishes and turned his head as he ran, watching the scene unfold.
The demon rippled toward the incoming vehicle. Gunfire filled the night, his dad blasting away as he charged forward in a suicide run. Even at eight years old, Raven understood that father was buying him time to get away—and the currency for this distraction would be life.
Raven stumbled to a halt. His heart hammering with terror, he watched as the Plymouth slammed into the demonic figure at full speed. Later he would remember his father winking at him just before the impact. He must’ve imagined that part, his memory playing tricks, but the image persisted. As he grew older, Raven drew a weird comfort from it, this final positive memory of his father to hold on to.
Metal twisted and buckled as the Plymouth erupted into a fireball that lit up the blustery winter night. Heat singed Raven’s face; roaring fire surrounded the demon. It seemed to be laughing. An instant later it disappeared, returning to whatever hellscape had spawned it.
Suddenly there was a new sound, a roaring, unholy noise that seemed to bash against his ears. Raven’s head slumped forward and his body sagged, all strength leaving his limbs. Whatever terrible thing was heading toward him, he no longer had the strength to run. The horrors of the last hour were catching up to him. He’d lost the two people that meant the most to him in the whole world in the same night.
Instead of a new supernatural threat, a familiar man walked over to Raven and gazed at the burning wreckage of the Plymouth. Like his dad, he was sporting a glowing gun, his long trench coat flapping in the wind.
Raven looked up, his eyes blurred with tears.
“Uncle Skulick?” he asked, trying to make sense of what he was seeing. His father’s best friend reached down and held him to his feet.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
AS THE MEMORIES slashed through my mind, the past came alive in a rush of images and emotions. I gasped as the zombie demon threatened to crush my throat, and I clenched my fists to hide their trembling. Facing the demon made me feel like I was eight years old again, and the pain of losing my parents felt fresh. As Robert Horne’s reanimated corpse lashed out at me again, my instincts took over. I had one rule: I didn’t take human lives. But I could use deadly force against the creatures of the night, be they vamps, weres, wraiths or any other form of supernatural nastiness. Robert was a zombie, his lifeless body a vehicle for the demon tearing toward me. Which made him fair game.
Even without Hellseeker, I still had a few tricks up my sleeve. Without hesitation, I whipped out my demon slayer blade and slashed the zombie.
He recoiled with a wail, allowing me to wriggle away from him. I scrambled madly toward my downed pistol. With a desperate lunge, I scooped up Hellseeker and spun toward the demon. Blessed lead stitched Horne’s undead form and drove him back. Had the creature chosen to physically manifest, I would’ve been done for, but within this corpse’s shell he was too weak to resist Hellseeker. There are limits to the power of the blessed pistol, as my father and I discovered two decades earlier when we faced this same beast.
The hail of bullets from the magical gun flung Robert into one of the grotesque statues, a weirdly elongated and horned animal skeleton, and both the bullet-riddled body and the statue went down.
Smoke wafted from Hellseeker, and the stench of cordite burned my nostrils. My hand shook and I felt sick to the pit of my stomach. The demon’s very presence had made me ill. I sucked in deep gulps of air and wiped the sweat from my face.