There was a demon in the road. It stood backlit by hellspawned flame, its wings folding and unfolding restlessly, its impossibly long arms drooped at its sides and reaching all the way to the ankles. But it was just an illusion of the fire. For in a few moments the vampire’s eyes adjusted and he saw the truth. The wings were just the billowing tails of an overcoat. The arms, one of which raised to point at him, were not what they seemed; the middle section was in fact the man’s forearm, while the lower extension proved not organic at all but cold steel with a 12-gauge bore. Still smoking.

One of the shotguns roared again. Danner staggered and fell, clutching his crotch or what was left of it. His cries were caused less by the blast than the silver it left behind. “How does it feel?” the avenging angel asked in a soft, vehement tone. Stiles’s voice.

“HELP ME!” Danner cried out. There had to be more of his children in the area, there had to be! “Kill him! Tear him apart!!”

“Forget it, Sebastian,” Stiles said as he strolled forward, both sawed-off shotguns pointed square at the prostrate figure’s knees. “It’s just you and me this time.”

There was a bestial hiss from atop a car parked along the curb and the soldier turned just as the spidery figure there lunged. The shotgun blast caught the vampire squarely in the chest from point-blank range, but it could not halt the creature’s momentum. The body slammed into him full-force and knocked him right off his feet. One of the shotguns slid away across the pavement. The soldier wrestled the cadaver aside and killed it and went for Danner again, but by now there were others there to protect him, four of them at least, with more on the way. He caught the next one coming in with another chest shot, sidestepping the hurtling body this time. A female caught him from behind and immediately began frantically clawing for his throat. The shotgun flew backwards into her ribs with crushing force, over and over, and once the hold was loosened he turned and dealt with her permanently.

More of the creatures were starting to gather, almost ten now, including a pack of children who sealed Danner away from the action and seemed anxious to take Stiles in a solid wave. But handfuls of Charlie Bean’s fragmentation shells came whistling into the street like New Year’s favors and their swarming stings dispersed the monsters and sent them howling into the night.

While the deputy kept them from attacking en masse, it was still Stiles who bore the brunt of the attack. And he bore it with an unsettling relish.