Across the field, within the confines of the satellite projected pentacle of Mercury, half a dozen berserkers raged and four succubi very wisely took a step back from that sight, reexamining the very disturbing position they suddenly found themselves in.
The air was practically filled with incorporeal demons. Long streams of thick, black smoke darting about in the air within the pentacle. All of them trying in vain to find some way out and accomplishing nothing more than to obscure the line of sight from Malcolm's team at the tree line beyond.
The last mists of the holy water aerosol bomb rained down over the area, burning the panicked, smoky forms of demons as they flittered through the air. Raining down on the four succubi, burning them enough that they howled and convulsed from it. Doing exactly what it was intended to do, panic and confuse the hell out of everyone.
All but Jahi, who grit the teeth of the mining company executive she rode. Grit her teeth and suffered the agony, keeping her furious attention on the berserkers raging on the other side of the field, preparing to charge.
Most of the lower demons were incorporeal now, with less than half a dozen still riding hosts having been knocked across the ground and into the pentacle near Malcolm's team, just now beginning to claw their way out of the pile of bodies they found themselves in. The berserkers were a split second from charging for Jahi and her group, while the succubi themselves hesitated, unsure how to react to what confronted them.
So now it was time to move in. The succubi were slightly shocked, perhaps even a little intimidated, but they weren't stupid. They'd snap out of it the second the berserkers took that first step toward them, then they'd remove those men as a threat.
The team needed to be in position to take advantage of that.
Malcolm had his particle rifle shouldered, cheek to the stock, ready. Reaching only to tap his glasses and switch over, so the roiling mass of smoky demons filling the air wouldn't block his sight any longer. Ordering his team to do the same.
"Combat sensors." He muttered, pausing only long enough for the rest of his team to switch as well. HUD displays in the glasses they wore dropping thermal signatures and electromagnetic auras into place, so the whipping and churning mass of smoky demons filling the air could be ignored.
"Move in."
They moved, quickly and quietly across the field to the relative cover of the trucks that had been thrown free of the madness ahead.
Felicity, still in her perch high above, waited patiently. Focused on Jahi, keeping her in her sights...
Until the first berserkers screamed madly and started to charge. The succubi tensing, preparing to respond to that. Then she flicked the ranger finder on her gauss rifle on, thumbing the button on the forward stock, sending the simple laser beam out to land right on Jahi's forehead.
She didn't even notice, being so focused on the berserkers threatening her.
That projected red dot on Jahi's forehead was instantly detected by the rifle's sensors, range to target calculated and the magnetic force necessary to send the projectile to its target, penetrating the skull without exiting again, quickly determined. All adjustments made and the rifle ready to fire, before Felicity could tense her trigger finger.
Felicity pulled the trigger and the rifle kicked, nothing but a quiet snick and a quick shove at her shoulder to indicate it had done so.
The bullet struck the head of Jahi's host a literal split second later, just as she was drawing back her hands again to lash out in fury at the berserkers.
Her head jerked and she stumbled, left to blink in sudden surprise at the new hole she had in her skull. There where a solid iridium bullet now occupied a central resting point in her host's brain. The first pentacle of Saturn, with all associated holy script pronouncing the eternal damnation of demonkind, microetched across on the bullet's surface.
Jahi forgot all about the holy water burning her. Forgot the berserkers just beginning to sprint her way as well.
She screamed in horror, slapping at her own host's skull, trying to dislodge the thing tormenting her in there. Clawing at herself, trying desperately to get the thing out of there without actually smashing through the skull and touching it...
Lamia and Lelina barely noticed and didn't care. They had berserkers coming to rip them apart, but they weren't quite smart enough to do what should have been obvious. They lashed out instead, still not quite accepting their power would accomplish little to nothing here.
Lamia sending another great wave of force across the field, ripping the grass free and tossing loose earth up in a cloud behind them...but not moving the berserkers or slowing them so much as a step. They shoved right through her power like it was nothing.
Lelina, surprisingly, displayed electrokinesis out of nowhere. Something the lore they had on her hadn't even hinted at. She blasted the entire line of berserkers coming for them a long, continuous electrostatic discharge grounded in the earth behind them. A literal bolt of lightning arcing across the field to destroy the men charging for her.
They barely twitched, still sprinting for them, howling madly and horribly.
It was Eisheth who got smart first, just as Reed had predicted. And Felicity was ready for her, already having switched targets there, tracking her as she stepped forward with vicious determination on her face. The succubi couldn't overcome the berserker's power directly, so they would be forced to do just as Reed had done. Simply pick them up off the ground. Give them nothing to exert their impossible strength against. No way to move.
But Eisheth, surprisingly, didn't do even that.
She stopped after only a single step, a step forward toward the berserkers, throwing up one hand at them, fingers snatched out like a claw.
And not so much at them but at the ground before them. Flipping that clawed hand up and flexing her entire arm, sending her power out.
The earth convulsed, even rippling out beyond the pentacle, even to the tree Felicity perched in, so that she lost her target for a moment as the world trembled around her. It took only a second for the stabilizers in the rifle to compensate, so she could reacquire her target...
It was already done by then, the earth cracking wide open before the berserkers. They sprinting forward at full speed, moving too fast and too insanely intent on destroying to even recognize the danger and react. Decide whether to jump over, go around, even to halt, much less actually manage anything of the sort before they ran right into the huge crack in the earth.
They were in and gone before Felicity's targeting laser found Eisheth's forehead again.
And she pulled the trigger. Because that was fine, and it was pretty much what the berserkers were there for in the first place. Taking the heat long enough for Reed's team to move in and take advantage of the distraction.
Eisheth's head jerked and she started screaming, right along with Jahi. Lamia and Lelina only now realizing something else was going on that they might want to take an interest in.
Malcolm was in position at the first truck, aiming over the cab with his particle rifle. Aliyah beside him, taking aim as well.
Chavez was already in the open, unnoticed by any of the succubi, despite the fact that he was firing massive gouts of plasma over the pile of bodies nearby, blasting the handful of lower order demons dithering there. They were caught by surprised as they stood there, uncertain what to do about the battle raging on the other side of the pentacle.
He vaporized almost all of them in only three shots, before the last demon realized some crazy Human was actually firing a high powered plasma cannon at him. He ran...but he had nowhere to go inside the pentacle but closer to the berserkers and everything going on there.
So he ran sideways, evading the fist-sized plasma bolts flying all around him, bringing him right in front of the other two he hadn't noticed.
Malcolm and Aliyah lit him up on the run, literally setting him ablaze as he ran in a panic past them. He fell quickly, his host's body too badly damaged to do anything more than fall down in a smoking heap, the demon bursting out almost immediately to join the whirling cloud of black smoke in the air around him.
Leaving Jahi and Eisheth screaming, slapping madly at their own heads. Lamia and Lelina looking around quickly, trying to figure out what was going on.
Both of them snatching their hateful glaring attention to Malcolm when he stepped out from the behind the truck on the other side of the pentacle's border. Particle rifle shouldered, aimed at them. Aliyah and Chavez moving to form up at his side as he moved in to the edge of the pentacle.
Both of the succubi recognizing very quickly what was happening here.
Human hunters, they thought at first. Some crazy band of Human hunters and berserkers come for them.
They stepped past that assumption immediately, though.
The berserkers, the pentacle projected from orbit that they now perceived, the uniforms these Humans wore and the advanced weaponry on display...
These were agents of some Human government. Come for them on that authority, as representatives of mortal rulers.
That changed everything, and that took a moment to adjust to.
Malcolm waited, smirking at them down the sights of his rifle. Aliyah and Chavez already at his side, aiming at them as well. All of them standing just outside the pentacle, beyond the reach of the succubi's power, at least directly.
Lamia and Lenina hesitated, staring back at them, eyes narrowed. Adjusting themselves to the new situation.
Behind them Jahi finally stopped screaming and clawing at her host's skull. She threw back the man's head and smoked out, vomiting into the air in a dark black coil of smoke, crimson flashing deep in the midst of it. Curling up into the air and down again, to snake along the ground.
Eisheth following suit a moment later, unable to bear the torment of the curse lodged in her host's mind either. She smoked out in a massive way, through the mouth, eyes and ears all at once, pouring up into the air to join the whirling storm of incorporeal demons panicking there.
Behind it all, crouched unseen behind the twisted remains of the cage that had held him before, Bobby Palmer waited. Still full with demon blood and the power it gave him, but smart enough to bide his time. Furious at it all and wanting nothing more than to lash out himself, twist and break something...
But he watched and waited, while demons and men strove against one another. Waiting for his moment to escape. The pentacle couldn't hold him and the government agents here had no power over him either. Their weapons posed a threat, but he had power of his own to wield.
So he waited, quietly. Hateful and bitter, but smart enough to pick his battles. Ready to run and abandon these succubi, if it looked like they wouldn't prevail here.
And that's exactly what it was starting to look like.
Jahi curled up in front of him before he knew it, pausing to relish his shock at her sudden appearance before she darted in at him. Into his mouth and into his eyes, seizing his body in an instant.
He fought, instinctively, but it availed him nothing. It was Jahi's tainted blood flowing through his veins so that made him the perfect vessel for her at the moment.
He convulsed and gasped desperately, struggling...but she had him in less than a second. Jerking his head back forward, seizing control of him.
And snatching her furious attention back to the confrontation waging near at hand.
Malcolm waited a moment, smirking at the succubi while they came to terms here.
The governing authorities had stepped in. They'd come to intervene in this matter themselves. What that suggested to the demons, Malcolm knew perfectly well.
They'd gone too far. Jahi had led them astray and they'd blindly, rather stupidly followed her in that. If the mortal authorities had been provoked to respond, then divine intervention would be coming right behind. Coming to take matters firmly in hand, because that could not be allowed.
There was a chain of command in place here, realms of authority firmly delineated that simply could not be breached. These matters were beyond the authority of mortal governments. If they intervened, that challenged the authority of the divine.
That required a response. Predictably, a very heavy handed response.
They were screwed, basically. They'd cut their own rope here, reaching far beyond the freedom granted them to grasp at things they shouldn't. They'd stirred things up too much and it was all about to spin out of control.
Right here and now, apparently.
Every force of authority in the universe, both mortal and divine, would be coming for them now. If these Humans crossed the line they stood upon at this very moment. If they, in the name of their nations, came against them now...
Malcolm watched as they considered that, pausing to confront the thing they should already have realized, had they not allowed themselves to be blinded to it. It just remained to see whether they would recognize the full gravity of the situation or continue to allow their wicked passions to blind them.
Lamia stepped forward first, snarling at Malcolm.
"You can't be here." She seethed. "You go too far."
Malcolm snorted at that.
"You go too far, Lamia." He said. "We're here and you know what that means."
"It means war!" She screamed. "Every demon of hell will come for your nations now! All of them! All the pitiful rulers of Earth...!"
"This is your chance." Malcolm said, calmly. "Submit now and we send you back to hell for a while. Stand and you'll have that war. Don't fool yourself, Lamia. Don't be stupid. You know what will happen if the nations come after you."
Lelina stepped forward then.
"You will all burn and die!" She snarled. "That is what will happen!"
"And that won't be allowed." Malcolm insisted. "We cross the line and the divines will come themselves. That won't go well for either of us."
Lamia laughed at that.
"Where are they, then?!" She challenged. "They don't care about you! They would be here already if they did!"
Malcolm frowned, shaking his head a little at that.
"I'm not here to argue." He said, firmly. "I'm not here to make a deal either. You submit or we tip the scales, right here and now."
Both the succubi sneered at that.
But they didn't say anything further. The point had been implied and they were suddenly confronted with it.
Jahi had perhaps led then too far and they'd followed all too eagerly.
They could rail and rant all they liked but matters may well have come to a head here. Mortal authorities had come to face them. That could easily lead to total war, all the way around. With everyone and everything being brought to bear over this.
Malcolm waited, aiming down his sights at them, hoping they'd make the very convenient decision and give up here.
Hoping they wouldn't see through the horrible bluff he was playing. Because they were right. The angels hadn't intervened so far and there was no sign they intended to. But demons were really only afraid of one thing, if you got right down to it.
Hell, The real hell. The lake of fire. They all knew quite well that it was coming, and they naturally denied it. Turned a blind eye to it. Ignored it. Didn't think about it.
And when it confronted them, it shook them to the core. In fact, most of the pentacles and wards and rituals that were so effective against them incorporated exactly that very confrontation with the damnation that awaited them all.
That was why Lamia and Lenina hesitated now, and why they trembled slightly. Because Malcolm insisted they'd gone too far, that they'd stirred the mortal authorities against them. And that this in turn would stir the angels to intervene.
And, perhaps...even the Most High...
"It's over, ladies." Malcolm said. "Give up, before it's too late."
Jahi didn't give them time to make the inevitable decision, though. She was there, riding Bobby, in a flash of emerald light. Slapping her hands down on both their shoulders, Lamia and Lenina, where she stood, suddenly appearing between them.
Smirking back at Malcolm.
"Oh, I don't think so." She grinned.
And they were gone.
Not even a flash or so much as a rustle of air. They were simply gone, disappeared, instantly.
Malcolm jerked in surprise, his eye coming away from the sights of his weapon to stare in astonishment. Aliyah even twitched, sending an accidental blast of plasma across the field, having been just that ready to open fire here.
Jahi had just teleported out of the pentacle. While riding a host. And she taken two others with her.
The pentacle of Mercury was a weak pentacle for a demon as powerful as her, true, but...that was impossible. She could have left the field incorporeally, but not with a host. Certainly not dragging two others along as well.
Utterly impossible...unless she was even more powerful than they'd assumed.
Malcolm's mind raced, catching up with the situation.
They were gone, that was a fact. Impossible or not, get beyond that. Salvage the situation. Now!
Eisheth had smoked out...
So she was still here.
He tapped the comm at his ear, practically fumbling for it.
"Close the beam!" He snapped.
And high above, in orbit around the Earth, the old outdated defense satellite shifted focus. The laser projection tightening in now.
The pentacle began to close, dragging the smoky forms of over two dozen demons before it, moving in on them. Forcing them to huddle up all the more, whirling even more madly, desperate for escape.
Except for one. That one hovering uncertainly as the pentacle passed over it, leaving it beyond, in the open. Eisheth, too powerful for the pentacle to contain in her current incorporeal form. And now, literally, cut out from the herd.
"King!" Malcolm ordered. "Eisheth!"
Out beyond the pentacle, across the field on the far side, Luther King rose up from where he crouched, bringing the shotgun he shouldered to bear. Lining up quickly with the target Reed had picked out for him and taking aim.
Just as Eisheth began to coil tighter, ready to dart off and away from the sudden threat she perceived.
Luther fired, sending the package on its way. Out through the air, to burst almost immediately. A small, thumb-sized round with a preceding blast of granulated salt cutting a path before it.
Striking the black cloud coiled in the air, forcing it to recoil just as the round flashed through at just a hundred meters per second. That small tubular round, fashioned from diamond and etched with powerful sigils lined in gold filament. Ridiculously expensive and prohibitively difficult to construct.
Very good at its job, though.
It flashed through Eisheth's smoky form, the sigils etched into the sides of the diamond tube flashing amber the instant it made contact. Flashing through, out into the air beyond and over the woods.
Dragging Eisheth with it, already sucking her into the small diamond canister as it went. Snatching her right out of the air to whip off after it, almost entirely sucked in before it even began to finally fall into the woods several hundred meters away.
Malcolm allowed himself a slight smirk as he watched that flash by through the air, before turning quickly to gesture at Aliyah. She was on the run instantly, dropping her short rifle to bounce at her chest while pulled the scanner from her belt.
Off and gone to track down the canister out there in the trees.
Malcolm chopped his hand twice at the closing pentacle, rifle already shouldered as he rushed to move in. Chavez at his side, plasma cannon ready, and Luther appearing from the woods on the far side to move in as well.
Arriving at the huge crevice in the earth that Eisheth had caused a few moments ago.
Peering in to find Dusty laying down there, completely naked, tattoos in full evidence. Laying there, weak and spent, atop a small pile of other naked or, at best, practically naked men. All of them too weak and worn to do much about all of that but frown about it.
Dusty glared up at him and Malcolm smirked back.
"Well," He said, looking down at that. "You lot look comfortable enough. Give us a moment."
He was out of sight and gone before Dusty could say anything about that, not that he had the strength to.
It took nearly two hours to the berserkers out of the hole in the ground, mostly because they were too weak even to stand on their own. Malcolm was forced to call in a local search and rescue team, throwing his weight around a bit to get that done without answering too many questions.
That had to wait of course, which didn't make the men down there very happy. The demons in the pentacle had to be dealt with first and Malcolm wasn't about to take the easy route there. He called in a consultant, through Division Ten itself. That took an hour before the priest finally arrived and he was a bit shocked at what awaited him.
He'd performed an easy score of exorcisms for the Division in the past, but...there were over two dozen demons in there, churning around in a storm of evil black smoke, inside in an infrared laser beam pentacle being projected from orbit...
It took him a few minutes to wrap his head around that before he could start digging about in his books for just the right ritual. And Agent Reed insisted on sending them all to hell, permanently if possible.
He settled for a thousand years, since the priest insisted that was the best he could do. There were two dozen of them, after all.
Aliyah recovered the diamond canister from the woods and returned with it by then. Chavez, White and King having cleared the area of all obvious forensic evidence that they'd been here. Satellite surveillance and every other passive recording of anything that had happened would be stepped on very subtly and efficiently by his Division Ten superiors as well.
By the time the demons went wailing back to hell and the priest departed, the search and rescue team arrived. They had Dusty and his men out of the crack in the earth as quickly as they could, Malcolm being forced to make a few not very well concealed threats to prevent them from calling local law enforcement.
They called them anyway, of course. The strange, impossible crack in the earth, a half dozen naked tattooed men trapped down there, piles of dead bodies...and pieces of bodies...extremely large vehicles tossed around and exploded, the two survivors they managed to find babbling about demons and hell...
Of course they made the call. But Malcolm and his team had already snatched the berserkers away from them and simply left by then. The fallout from that they left to the Division to handle.
The cargo hauler met them on the highway. A rigid, helium filled airship coming to rest right in the middle of the road the second the traffic was clear. Picking up the van itself and taking to the air again, floating off to the west like any other private company airship.
Malcolm exiting the van the moment they were parked in the cargo bay, even before the airship lifted off again. Making his way past the engineers coming to secure and check the vehicle, into the brightly lit, white-walled corridor at hand and beyond to the conference room there.
Wasting no time reporting to the men standing by the conference table, waiting for him, but throwing up a smirk and the diamond canister itself, letting that do the talking for him. They stepped aside, signaling ahead and sending the science types scurrying.
The door was opened for him and the path cleared, and he was in the interrogation chamber only a minute later. Two armed MACO officers at his heels, one wielding an automatic shotgun armed with cold iron buckshot rounds, the other with a weapon exactly like the one King had used before, firing rounds identical to the one Malcolm carried. Just in case.
Malcolm stepped right to the wall, activating the transparent metal viewing port there and slid the canister carefully into the slot at hand. The automatic mechanisms there seizing the round and pulling it in, sealing off the access port again with a small, iron plate itself covered with microetched sigils and wards.
Inside the interrogation chamber, the canister jutted out of the wall slightly, no more than a centimeter.
And began to whine slightly at the impossible pressure being brought to bear on the small tube, filled now with a tightly churning, smoky black mass.
The diamond canister eventually cracked...and that was all it took.
Eisheth exploded out into the chamber, a furious black snake of smoking rage, rebounding off the walls and whirling about the room, looking for escape.
Pausing for a short moment in midair suddenly, perceiving that she was being observed from beyond one of the walls. Drawing back and dashing forward the crash against the one-way viewing port where Malcolm stood watching.
Accomplishing nothing, not so much as forcing Malcolm back a step in surprise or in any way overcoming the invisible wards stamped on the very molecules of the walls around her.
Malcolm turned his head to watch as the science officer dart into the room, practically leaping for the console set in the wall. Tapping madly and poring over the data...before finally slumping in relief and turning to give him a nod and thumbs up.
He smirked back, nodding himself. It wasn't really a question and Carver was just being the nervous sort, but it was good to have confirmation at least.
Malcolm reached and tapped one of the buttons on the panel near him, set next to the viewing port. Pushing the button and letting it go again, watching through the view port intently as the walls inside lit up, bright and white.
Forty-two specific sigils on the walls, floor and ceiling, precisely seven each, arranged just so...all lit up in gold by the white light shining through the walls.
Eisheth's smoky form immediately recoiled, bunching up in the air in the center of the chamber. Then tightening up some more.
And then again, compressing herself down to nearly the size of a baseball.
He could almost hear her screaming in outrage and agony, desperately trying to get away from the painful, convicting signs all around her.
He tapped the button again and the walls went dim once more. Pristine and white, with no sign of what they'd just displayed. Waiting until Eisheth uncoiled hesitantly, after a tentative moment, to hover in a black, angry cloud in the middle of the chamber again.
Then he pressed the other button.
"I'll be back in ten minutes." He said. "Consider the situation while I'm gone. When I get back, I expect you'll have the location. Where and when that ritual is to be performed. And I hope for your sake it's not in the next ten minutes."
Eisheth immediately darted forward, spreading across the viewing port until it was covered in black. Moving across it for a moment...forming a word there with her own form.
Deal.
Malcolm smirked.
And reached to tap the first button again. Leaving the lights on in there while Eisheth recoiled and roiled in agony once more in the center of the chamber.
Leaving it on and leaving the room. To return in ten minutes.
No deal.