“Fuck.” Ciaran raised his hand and let out a telekinetic blast that swept the corpses off their feet and sent them sailing away from Orrin. He then teleported to the sentinel, grabbed his arm, and teleported him to Jolene’s side.
“Motherfuckers,” Orrin spat, covered in scratches, bites, and streaks of dirt.
Her heart thudding, Khloé quickly closed the cellar door and bolted it shut. “How the fuck didn’t we feel their minds? I can feel them now.” She could also hear them moving around, so Enoch clearly hadn’t withdrawn from their minds yet. “Shit, I say we get out of here right—”
The window near the kitchenette smashed as a black, smoky orb zoomed into the cabin and smacked Ciaran’s head. Khloé’s heart leaped into her throat as her brother fell to his knees, coughing and gagging. Fuck, no. Her demon hissed in pure fury.
In an instant, Jolene popped up her shield while Khloé and the others ducked and took cover. More black orbs were pitched through the air. They crashed into walls or furniture, rotting whatever they touched. Some hit Jolene’s shield but did no damage.
“Get behind me!” Jolene yelled.
Richie and Orrin followed the order but, seeing that Ciaran was struggling to fight off the strange gas, Khloé crawled to her brother.
“I’ll help,” she told him. “Combining our power did the trick last time.”
Sucking in air like a drowning man, Ciaran shook his head. It’ll wipe us out. You can’t afford to be weak right now.
Neither can you. Khloé clasped his hand and shoved some of her power inside him. His own rose to meet hers, and they melded into a powerful force that leapt on the gas, aiming to chase it from Ciaran’s lungs.
Even as Jolene, Orrin, and Richie launched balls of hellfire in the same direction that the black orbs were coming from, the imps all moved to stand in front of Khloé and Ciaran so that the shield would protect them too.
“Can you guys see him?” Khloé asked them.
“Yes,” replied Richie. “The fucker has a forcefield surrounding him. I can’t work out whether he’s trying to lure us outside or pin us in place.”
Or maybe he was keeping them distracted, she mused. But why?
Finally, Ciaran inhaled a long breath. “I’m good now,” he croaked, releasing her hand. He coughed and cleared his throat. “But I can’t teleport us out of here yet. Not strong enough.”
“There’s five of us against one of him,” Richie reminded him. “We’ve got this.”
The front door burst open. Corpses shuffled inside, slow and clunky with disturbingly vacant eyes. The ones in front were humans. Behind them on the porch were animals—a bear, a cougar, and several wolves.
Khloé felt her mouth drop open, and her equally shocked demon could only stare. Shit. None looked like fresh kills. They’d been dead a few days. And she strongly suspected they’d all died at Enoch’s hands.
“I can’t move my shield to block them or Enoch’s orbs will hit us,” said Jolene.
“You keep him occupied,” Orrin told her. “The rest of us will deal with his puppets.”
And then the cabin became a battlefield. Khloé set her sights on the bear, blasting it with a current of electric fire. Richie took on the humans, snapping their bones like twigs. Orrin concentrated on the wolves, hitting them with telepathic punches that knocked them off their feet. Ciaran fought off the cougar with telekinesis and hellfire, keeping it at a distance.
It would be fair to say that chaos reigned. Hellfire orbs sizzled. Electric fire crackled. Bones snapped in half. Bodies slumped to the floor. Voices cursed or cried out. Corpses grunted or growled.
Neither she nor Ciaran were at their strongest, due to having combined their powers only minutes earlier, but they kept up the pressure. Still, it helped that the corpses couldn’t move quickly, or they’d have pounced on the imps in a flash. That didn’t make the puppets much easier to fight, though. They were, as Keenan had once commented, the perfect soldiers.
You could knock them to the ground with pure power, but they’d get back up without a wince. You could shoot them with bullets of electric fire, but they’d do no more than flinch with the impact. You could break their necks or limbs, but they’d keep on coming—even if they had to slink like a worm along the floor.
And the human corpses could throw balls of hellfire. Two of which hit Khloé—one on her shoulder, one on her leg. Both hurt like holy hell, and the smell of her burning, blistering flesh was just as nauseating as that of the corpses that just kept on coming.
“Try to blind them,” Khloé advised. “If Enoch can’t see through their eyes, he can’t attack us.”
The imps smacked the faces of the corpses with hellfire, aiming for their eyes. Some dropped like stones, blinded and useless. Others kept coming, having dodged the orbs in time.