((Ambient music: The Great Old Ones and Other Beings by Graham Plowman))
The fugitive trio headed for the coast on foot. It was Zoe's thought that they might be able to find a boat of some sort down at the Santa Monica Pier, even something they could pilot manually, which would hopefully make it harder for anyone to follow them. A couple of hours into their quick hike down Santa Monica Boulevard they passed through Beverly Hills. Desiree and Zoe joked around about sidetracking to squat in one of the swanky mansions, but the jests were half-hearted. There was no way they were going to stop, not even to rest.
Close to Woodlawn Cemetery they started to hear the blood-chilling sounds of the hellhounds Pietre conscripted to help in the hunt. Their diabolical howls cut through the fog, low and siren-like in their incessant wail. It was a disturbing sound that brought a sense of impending doom that scattered the wildlife, those that had adapted to the fog and the new creatures, predator and prey alike. The group picked up speed and opted to jog the rest of the way to the pier. If it was up to Kyle, he would have run since he was immune to feeling tired, but the women needed to pace themselves.
They eventually arrived at the Santa Monica Pier, with the incessant howls following them the whole way. Desiree recognized the boardwalk by the boarded-up aquarium. The main sign was hidden from view at the angle they came in from, but the roller coaster was impossible to miss even in the fog. The towering structure had rusted and was crusty with salt, but a handful of feeble lights still managed to put out weak, flickering light, powered by a sturdy solar generator that had long outlived its creator. The roller coaster creaked ominously when the wind picked up and loomed over them as they passed, a shadowy skeletal beast in the dark mist.
Noticeably closer than before, they could hear the sound of the Wild Hunt pursuing them. The howls of the hellhounds echoed eerily in the deserted streets of Los Angeles. For Kyle, it stirred muddy memories of being chased out of Sin City to be cornered by the same people chasing him now. Only this time, he had Zoe with him. Being close to her made him feel better—more like the person he was before Fiona took back her gift.
The group made it to the end of the pier, startling some blood crows into flight. The boardwalk had suffered a considerable amount of weather damage over the years without humans around to care for the wood and concrete. There was no sign of sea-craft anywhere. There were no boats near the pier and there weren't any along the shore as far as the night fog allowed them to see. If there had been any watercraft there before, they were all long gone.
The three looked at each other, each thinking more or less the same thing: We're screwed.
There was nothing at the end of the pier that could be of obvious help. The harbor office had a first aid station they could possibly hide in but then they would be trapped with no way to escape.
"Fuck!" Zoe swore, pacing in a circle. She rapped her head with her knuckles, but it didn't help her come up with a plan. "Why didn't I learn that stupid water-breathing spell?!"
"There's a water-breathing spell?" Desiree asked, momentarily distracted from her growing panic.
Zoe nodded and calmed a little. She found it easier to think when she was instructing someone else. "It's a temporary effect but it would be a literal life-saver right now. I never bothered with it when I saw it in the grimoire because, you know, when was I ever going to need to breathe underwater?"
"There's a grimoire?" pressed Desiree, even more intrigued.
"Fiona didn't tell you?"
The mulatto with shook her head.
Kyle made an impatient grunt. He didn't like how close the Hunt sounded and wished the women would take the conversation someplace else.
"It's a big book of spells," said Zoe. "I'll tell you more about it later. Right now, we need a plan."
—
((Music: Rise of R'lyeh by Graham Plowman))
When the Wild Hunt reached the pier and drew within sight of the three individuals cornered at the end, Pietre had the triplets reign in the hellhounds. He didn't want the escapees destroyed; he wanted them captured, if possible. They were much easier to torture when they were whole. The infernal hounds would tear them to pieces if allowed.
There were four of the monstrous beasts: Meg and Tisi each controlled one and Alec was in charge of the other two. The short-haired creatures were solidly built, broad and muscular, standing as high as a man's hip. They had the height of a Great Dane and the skeletal frame of a Russian bear dog. Their heads were wedge-shaped, mostly teeth and snarl, with fangs as long as a man's hand. They had long whip-like tails that leant them an almost reptilian mien but their thick canine claws were enormous. They slobbered and snapped, held at bay by sturdy black iron chains hooked to their collars—collars similar to the ones Zoe and Kyle had shed.
Zoe and Desiree were braced, their postures indicating their readiness to fight. Pietre made a slight motion with his hand that was meant for Tisi then he stepped out in front of his pack to take the lead. He closed the distance between the groups with confident strides, his bare feet soundless on the boardwalk, muffled by roll of the ocean waves. The cold air didn't bother him one bit.
"Leave us alone!" Zoe shouted when the hunters got too close. "You have what you wanted! You don't need us anymore!"
She meant the Daggers of Armageddon, of course. Her assumptions made the warlock laugh. Her lack of insight genuinely amused him. "Need? We never needed you, silly child."
Zoe wasn't sure how to react to that, but she didn't like how he was still coming closer. "Back off! I'm warning you! We're not going back to those cages!" She made a threatening motion with her hands, summoning a flicker of green flame between them.
Pietre stopped and lifted his hands in a placating fashion. "Fine. You don't like your cages? You've both been fairly well behaved up until tonight. Tell you what. Stop this foolish game. Come back with us now, like good boys and girls, and you won't be caged. Only collared and brutally tortured."
"..just like Madison," muttered Desiree darkly. She had told her companions what had become of the undead witch.
"You would like it if I treated you as I have Madison, wouldn't you, my dear?' Pietre sneered, lancing her with a look that left her feeling molested.
"In your dreams, asshole!" Desiree fired back.
The blond man laughed but he also made another motion with his hands, a little flick of his fingers that the triplets recognized instantly, putting them on alert for their part in what would come next. Deep thunder growled overhead and a flash of lighting high overhead brightened the fog briefly. The wind picked up, causing the roller coaster to creak and groan and the lights to flicker like mad. The hellhounds strained at the ends of their blackened chains, eager for a fight and thirsty for blood.
"Get ready," Zoe cautioned her companions, her eyes on Pietre and his lackeys.
Desiree needed no warning. She had spent enough time in the man's company to recognize his somatic magic style. She bent her left knee a little, like she used to do in softball when she wanted to hit one into the outfield.
"Now!" Zoe said and brought her foot down hard.
Several things happened simultaneously then. The energy from Zoe's motion translated into a rippling green magic fire that lapped around the outline of the complex pentagram they had scratched onto the boardwalk. Desiree snapped off a quick incantation, finishing the lynch pin of the spell just as lightning arced down from the sky. The bolt of white-hot electricity struck the boardwalk with a magnificent explosion of sparks, destroying the sacred circle and knocking all three of the runaways down. It had no effect on the hellhounds and the triplets, braced for what was coming, managed to stay their feet.
The smoke from the blast was absorbed by the fog but the ozone smell lingered. Pietre and the Hunt closed in on the felled individuals.
"That was the weakest protection spell I've ever encountered," the warlock said scornfully.
Zoe tried to get to her feet but her whole body was abuzz and her already-weakened muscles were sluggish to respond. "Wasn't…a protection spell."
Before anyone else could say anything, they all felt a rumble beneath the boardwalk. It was a deep bass sound that heralded instant alarm in every intelligent creature that heard it, even the women who had cast the spell.
"That doesn't sound like a giant squid," Desiree said with trepidation.
The water level below rose drastically as the tide came in. It wasn't big enough to be a tidal wave, but it was a large influx of water rushing in all at once, propelled forward by something huge moving beneath the surface. And it moved fast. In the time it took the combatants to register the sound and rising tide, the creature made landfall, surfacing at the end of the pier in a giant spray of seawater.
The monster was a hideosity right out of nightmares. It was definitely not a giant squid, though it did have some cosmetic similarities to the species, particularly in the eyes and skin and in the tentacle-like limbs it dragged itself about with. It scurried alarmingly fast toward the closest living things, who unfortunately happened to be the runaways. Kyle tensed, ready to brawl, but the thing took one swipe at him with a tentacle the size of a tree trunk. It swept him off the pier and out into the dark water. The bizarre beast was on Zoe next, seizing her with one of its many slimy pseudopods. She tried to defend herself by performing a life-draining hex on it but either it was immune, not alive, or she was weaker than she realized. Either way, the power had no effect.
Pietre shook off his surprise and rallied a counter-attack before the aquatic menace could get to his group. He had the triplets release the hounds and, while the leviathan was busy being harried by the demon dogs, the warlock and his apprentices hit it with a group lightning bolt that quickly made calamari of the thing.
The two dogs that survived the encounter were able to dig the rogue witches out of the blackened remains of the dead creature, which smelled like rotten fish. It was too late for Zoe, who had been crushed in the thing's titan grip, but Desiree was relatively unharmed. There was no sign of Kyle.
—
"What then?" Michael prompted the warlock when the other man paused retelling his version of events to refill his scotch glass.
"We collared the girl and left her chained on the pier for the rest of the night," Pietre smiled. He sipped his drink, then added: "We hoped maybe the zombie boy would come for her but...he didn't. As for the girl...A night in the wild without her powers and she was begging us the next morning to bring her back. She's caged in the basement now. Stronger wards this time."
"Did she say what happened? How did she free them?" pressed Michael. "Did she tell you who the father of the baby is?"
"She said Carrefour broke the wards and freed the prisoners," Pietre said.
"What's a Carrefour?"
"A voodoo god. Do you know of Legba?"
Michael nodded. He had learned the basics of every religion of man while growing up. It was something Father Jeremiah had insisted on even though Michael had found most of it boring. The voodoo stuff was interesting, but they had given it the same amount of attention as all the other faiths, and no more.
"Carrefour is his…dark mirror. In voodoo tradition there is a…" Pietre fished for the right words. His English didn't often fail him but for this archaic concept, he was having to translate through three languages. "For every light, there is a shadow. Carrefour is Legba's darkness. Some believe he is the Devil of the Petro Loa."
Michael frowned thoughtfully. "She asked a voodoo prince of darkness to help her?" He snorted. "Is she a moron?"
"I don't believe so," opined Pietre, swirling the liquor in his glass. "Naïve, perhaps. Ambitious. Certainly powerful. She summoned a demon lord and managed to enlist his assistance."
"Sort of," Michael scoffed.
"She asked him to free them," Pietre pointed out. "What happened after that was in her hands."
"And you're sure she's not an idiot?"
Pietre smiled. "I think she has value to your cause, either way."
Michael pulled a last drag from his cigarette then snubbed it out in the ashtray that sat on the end table between them. "When her baby's born, I want it checked for my Father's mark."
"And if the child is unmarked?"
"The coven can keep it," decided Michael. "Raise it to be a soldier for our cause."
Pietre found that an interesting answer. "What if the infant is marked?"
Michael was silent a long moment as he chewed on his dark thoughts. Finally, he said: "Then it can share the fate of my Father's other bastard."
xxx
Author's Note:
Cue music. Roll credits.
Okay, so the title of this chapter's a misnomer. Nobody escaped. Well, maybe Kyle? We'll see. The title's taken from a fun 80's action flick. No one in this story turned out to be a Snake Pliskin though.
Next Episode: Gehenna. Hell on earth. The final battle is here. Angels are real—and terrifying. There's a reason they always had to start meetings with humans by saying "Be not afraid." in the Bible. Fallen angels tend to be associated with darkness. Angels are light. Think: Sun. Nuclear detonation. Supernova. Blinding, searing, face-melting light.
And they're pissed off.