Pity, disgust, and fear all swept over him at the same time as he locked eyes with the thing charging to kill him.

His targeting dot found the inhuman assaulter’s forehead.

Trigger squeeze.

The dark warrior’s head split open, and Jed watched the demon hosted inside flee the body with a fiery snarl.

A metallic thunk reverberated from the APV behind him.

Someone screamed in Jed’s ear—Johnny, he decided—at the same time someone else roared above him. He whirled and brought his rifle up just in time to see a smoldering black shape dropping on top of him from the roof of the APV. The second flanker had closed the distance faster than the first!

Jed flipped the fire mode selector switch from single to full auto and squeezed the trigger. His rifle burped and shook in his grip as he emptied his magazine into the shadow dropping on him from above. The Dark One slammed into Jed, and it felt like someone had dropped a house on him. Everything that happened next unfolded at reflex speed, a mortal combat between two feral gladiators. As the dark fighter savaged him with blows, Jed pulled his SOG Bowie from his kit and stabbed.

And stabbed.

And stabbed.

His arm was no longer an arm—it was a piston, pumping at redline and putting hole after hole into the beast on top of him until the fire in its eyes went dark. With a primal grunt, Jed heaved the massive fighter off him and scrambled into a kneeling firing stance. Sheathing his blood-drenched knife, his hands quickly found his rifle hanging from the sling around his neck. He ejected the spent magazine and reloaded a spare from his kit as he scanned for targets. He found one—a possessed warrior slamming its shoulder into the APV door where Bex was covering. Despite the armor plating, the dark operator had managed to buckle in the door to the point of collapse. Jed put his targeting dot on the back of the assaulter’s head as it made to rip the door off the hinges to get at Bex.

Trigger squeeze.

The Dark One’s head snapped forward and it sagged into a lifeless pile of flesh on the ground.

Finding no other targets, Jed popped to his feet and sprinted for the berm. Johnny was in trouble, big trouble—Jed could feel it, along with the calling to intervene. A shadow moving to his left drew a sideways glance, and Jed saw Eli on a converging vector to join him. They ran stride for stride up the embankment, passing a fallen Dark One as they did. At the top, Jed found the exact scene he feared—Johnny engaged in bloody, hand-to-hand combat with a demon warrior.