“Welcome to Cuzco, Jedidiah Johnson,” the Dark One said in heavily accented English. “We can do this the hard way or the easy way, but the end result will be the same. Intact or broken in pieces, you’re coming with me.”

CHAPTER
FIVE

PLAZOLETA DE LAS NAZARENAS

2031 HOURS LOCAL

Jed spun and fired first, putting a 9mm round into the forehead of the closest of the attackers behind him. He shifted his Romeo Zero red dot onto the second assaulter and dropped him with a double tap to the head. Jed hadn’t been a Shepherd long, but he’d already learned that head shots were critical when battling Dark Ones, because they just kept coming unless their human host was killed completely. His six cleared, he whirled back to the front, where the lead Dark One still stood brazenly in the center of the courtyard while two trios of attackers charged him from the right and left on converging vectors. This gang of attackers was armed but not like operators. Instead of wielding pistols or rifles, they looked like a street gang—running at him with bats, clubs, and pipes. Apparently the ringleader had been deadly serious on his threat to take Jed broken in pieces.

Given the speed of the assault, the number of attackers, and the fact he was firing a subcompact pistol and not a rifle, Jed had no choice but to target center mass in this onslaught. He emptied the ten remaining rounds in his magazine with methodical precision, managing to put at least one round into the chest of every single attacker before the horde converged on him. But despite his dialed-in marksmanship, only three of the six assaulters fell—leaving two on the left and one on the right charging him. With no time to change magazines, he juked right just in time to avoid a downward swing of a metal pipe from the right attacker. The pipe came down with  a metallic clang as it crashed into a cobblestone. Jed kicked the man in the side of the knee, hyperextending the joint.

The fighter howled and dropped his weapon.

Jed picked up the pipe and spun to engage the other two assaulters, one of whom had a cricket bat and the other a police baton. He blocked the cricket bat midswing before it could connect with his head. The impact sent a reverberating tremor down both Jed’s forearms and into his elbows. He backpedaled, trying to get separation, but the dude with the baton circled around behind him to create a 180-degree offset from his friend. Fighting multiples was a horrible proposition, even for a former SEAL as big and skilled as Jed. In a choreographed fight scene in the movies, the bad guys politely took turns, giving the hero time to dispatch them sequentially.

Not in real life.

They came at him simultaneously, faces twisted with rage and murder in their glowing eyes.