Satisfied the spine was broken, Franks rolled him onto the floor. Cratos flopped and twitched for several seconds, and then he stopped moving, lying facedown in a puddle of slime.

That works.

Judging by the flashlights and gunfire, his men had followed Cueto’s instructions, and gotten to a more defensible position. Too bad this place was still crawling with demons. He still had a lot of work to do. Franks shook one of his new arms out. He’d torn muscles trying to lift that stupid demon, and his internal organs were overloaded. Taking more Elixir so soon was dangerous, but Franks hurried and took another swig of glowing liquid pain. If he continued to push at this pace, death was the most likely outcome, but that was an acceptable mission parameter.

His radio chirped. “Go for Franks.”

“This is Archer. There’s a plane coming in. It’s a large military transport.”

“Stricken’s reinforcements,” Franks muttered.

“Looks like a combat landing.”

Curious. If Stricken had brought in the military, there was no point in ordering his men to fight them, because they wouldn’t. “Stall.”

“Roger that. There’s a . . . We’ve got incoming! Nemesis on the—” The channel turned to static.

“Archer. Come in.” There was no response. Nemesis had hit his people topside. Kurst was up to something. Worse, the rookie was up there. “Damn it. Cueto, did you get that? There’s a transport landing on the airfield. Nemesis is attacking us above.” There wasn’t an immediate response. Cueto was either occupied or dead.

Extremely loud footsteps rang against the metal above. “Hello, Franks.”

Franks returned the greeting as his night-vision-capable eye struggled to focus. All he could make out was a gigantic, misshapen form. “Kurst.”

“That aircraft is our way out of this place. It is remarkable what you can arrange on such short notice when you have all of Stricken’s authorization codes. We will start over, away from the mortal’s prying eyes. A place has been prepared where we will grow in number.”

“You’ll never make it. They’ll shoot you down.”

“None of these humans will be alive long enough to warn the others.” Kurst walked down the stairs. Other than being bipedal, there was nothing recognizably human left about his form. He made Cratos’ mutated body seem tiny in comparison. Kurst had to be at least eight feet tall, with skin stretched so tight over powerful muscles that it had split apart in places, and the sides of his skull had grown into a twisted forest of horns.

“What happened to you?”

“I have temporarily molded this form to be more to my liking. Don’t worry. I can change back in order to blend in with the sheep when necessary.” Despite speaking through an elongated mouth full of sharp teeth, Kurst’s voice remained unchanged. “Impressive, isn’t it?”

“I’ve seen better.”