“You dare think you can stand against us?” Victor said, his voice a strange chorus, grabbing the spear with his right hand and pulling it free. He held the solid bronze weapon out with ease, as if it weighed no more than a pencil, and looked at it. “Without your Shepherds, you’re nothing. Who will save you now?”

He drew the weapon back and hurled it. The bronze javelin flew like a lightning bolt and found its target—piercing Corbin through the right upper chest. Wide-eyed, she looked down at the metal rod sticking out of her. With disbelief on her face, she turned to Sarah Beth while her tremulous fingers feebly pawed at her impalement.

“Your turn to die,” Victor said, fixing his glowing eyes on Sarah Beth.

She gasped.

And he came for her.

CHAPTER
FIFTY-TWO

FRONT GATE

Ablaze, eight demon warriors streaked toward the gap between the berms. They moved with preternatural speed, zipping past Jed’s APV before he could even get the door open.

Johnny went to work immediately, firing from his elevated sniper hide on the berm. Eli and Bex joined the mix a heartbeat later, firing from inside their right and left side APVs through portholes in the rear windows. Jed, for his part, took cover behind the open door and engaged the dark fighters from behind. The Shepherds had the Dark Ones pinned in a perfect kill box, with gunfire pouring in from four axes. Under normal circumstances, against a normal adversary, the battle would have been over in seconds, but nothing about this engagement was normal.

Two demon warriors fell quickly from head shots, but the others scattered.

Jed saw a pair streak off toward the berm where Johnny was set up as overwatch.

“Three, you got incoming,” Jed shouted, taking aim to drop the lead assaulter. They were running using an erratic and unpredictable zigzag pattern, making it difficult for Jed to get a bead. Despite having a laser target designator, his first three rounds missed.

“I see ’em,” Johnny said. “Man, they’re fast.”

“And they’re washing out my NVGs,” Eli said.

“That’s ’cuz they’re on fire,” Bex added.

“Yeah, I noticed,” Eli came back, his voice interrupted by the staccato crack, crack, crack of his rifle.

“One, you’ve got flankers,” Bex shouted. “Coming in hot at your nine and four o’clock.”

“Check. Four, shift to cover Three,” Jed said, shifting his aim from the assaulter closing on Johnny to the one closing on him.

He swiveled left, put his laser dot center mass on a flaming figure sprinting toward him, and squeezed off two rounds. The bullets found their target, but the possessed warrior kept on coming. Time slowed. Like a scene out of a horror movie, Jed saw the man’s face twist and contort in slow motion as he charged—a silent scream of rage and pain as the flesh was literally being burned off his skull.