"Yes ma'am." Crouching for action, he muttered, "Let’s go." The huge pistol, so big she would have had to work to lift it, disappeared and was replaced by a shimmering metal Grim Reaper sickle, the handle roughly eight foot, and the wicked hooked blade nearly as long as Sam was tall.
Toren spun into motion just before her, whirling and slashing with the sickle. Blood and tissue literally rained around him. The deaths were swift and complete, only the whistling whir of the blade accompanied the gurgled slurping and ferocious snarls of the prey fighting to get to the slayer.
Sam used the full range of her spiritual vision, but Toren glowed so bright, she had to shield his body with a hand to be able to see clearly.
She screamed when one of the creatures ran in an arc around him toward their rear. Toren’s wing shot out a dagger, dropping the beast in its tracks. Others followed the first beast and Toren's wings became weapons of mass destruction. A lethal hail of silver daggers sprang outward, each finding multiple targets before returning to its original place. Seemingly recharged, the blades flew again, repeating the entire process countless times.
The creatures groveled, tripped, and fell over one another as they strove to reach Toren. The tide never ebbed, and as they climbed the mountain of their dead brethren, their speed actually increased. Almost as if someone had cranked the switch up to NOW KILL NOW, leaving them powerless to do anything other than continue trying to reach Toren and Sam.
Sam watched, terror making her heart pound heavily. At any second, a monster would break through the protective wall of death Toren created around her. She was right.
Larger than the others, the monkey man launched clear over the dead and dying masses and landed inside the kill zone. Toren roared, a metallic sound that blasted the creature against the heavy log wall of the house with tremendous force. The wall shuddered, but held, and the beast crumpled to the ground.
But another followed the first and then another. And another. Then a dozen. Then an avalanche.
Shit, Toren couldn’t hold that many off. Shit, they were coming!
Sam began searching for spinal cords, trying to single them out amid the swarming sea of body parts, all fully visible. The first one she could distinguish, she imagined crushed and its owner fell to the ground. “Oh fuck,” she gasped in awe.
Swallowing fast, she searched for another and did it again, watching the same thing happen. Practice made perfect and before long, she could drop two every second. Feeling like her eyes were a vehicle to drive and coordinate with her mind, she squealed and danced and squeezed her fists in her monumental effort to make the motionless task go faster.
Another creature broke free, clear of both Toren's efforts and hers. Reacting instinctively, Sam pulled her revolver and shot, hitting the spinal cord on the first try. That was easy! All those countless hours practicing with a six-shooter weren't wasted after all. She began using the firearm exclusively as her weapon, and soon it was as easy as swatting flies. A hell of a lot easier than using her imagination to do it.
When there was an obvious lessening in the numbers coming at them, she began a slow advance toward the creatures. She fired her pistol like a gunfighter, fanning the hammer back with her left hand and letting it drop to fire. Her new angelic speed coupled with the lack of need to pull the trigger for each shot made her gun sound like an automatic weapon.
Soon, no more targets came before her and she turned to search the vicinity. She found Toren watching her with his brows raised, looking down at her gun. "Holy shit."
“What?” She asked, confused inspecting her gun.
He shook his head a second then turned it a little, seeming to listen. The ground began to tremble, as if a massive herd had stampeded. A glance around showed no livestock but the shaking intensified. An earthquake?
The shaking stopped.
A few seconds later, a small group of men rounded the corner of the house and Samantha paused to look closer.
Massive relief rolled over her. Her crew.
Oh shit. They were dead. At least that was what the news said. "Toren?"
"Fuck." He sounded exasperated.
"What…?" She didn't know what to ask. The men's jerky movements confounded reason.
"Reanimated."
"Oh my God." She remembered his explanation of what that meant after their encounter with the one torturing the steer. Her heart wrenched to think her men had made a deal with the devil as they died, with no idea of the sort of eternity they were gaining, imprisoned in nothingness.
Mr. Paul and Jonas weren’t there. A surge of victory ran through her blood. The enemy hadn’t gotten to all of them. Thank God. "How did the demons find them?"