Black Winged Angel

“Fire! You can kill them with fire,” Kamui quickly added.

Suki smiled as she swung around the corner and came to a screeching halt. Jerking the Hummer into park, she got out and opened the rear door. With a huge grin plastered on her face, she grabbed the flamethrower from the arsenal and strapped the fuel tank to her back.

Hefting the unusually heavy weapon, Suki sprinted around to the front of the haunted house.

She was wearing green military fatigues tucked into the top of combat boots. Two belts of bullets crisscrossed over her chest and a standard belt was around her waist with a sword and knife holster on her hip. Around her neck hung a pair of dog tags that had her name on them along with an identification number.

The look was completed by a blood red bandana tied around her forehead and her hair was down and free-flying everywhere. She looked like she’d just walked off a battlefield, which drew more than one man to stare at her.

The bullets, knife and flamethrower looked fake for Halloween but what no one knew was they were one hundred percent real.

“Damn Suki,” Kamui whispered. “Do you need to look any more sadistic?”

Suki grinned up at the camera mounted on top of the traffic light at the corner. “You like it?”

“Damn straight!” Kamui exclaimed. “But Shinbe would like it better.”

“Like what?” Shinbe’s voice rang over the transmitter but Suki ignored him as she walked up to the front door and gave it a hard kick, sending it flying back against the wall with a bang.

“Oh nothing,” Kamui said innocently. “Unless you like Suki looking all bad ass while holding a flamethrower and showing enough cleavage to put a centerfold to shame.”

Suki ignored that comment too as she made her way deeper into the haunted house. She’d get the PC wiz later. Walking through the curtain, she stepped over the dead ghoul lying on the floor and wrinkled her nose at the other one cut in half.

“I swear those two cops are messier than three year olds at dinner time,” she muttered. Her lips thinned when she saw the lady on the table. Passing the room up, she noticed an open door off to the side and a terrible ruckus coming from the darkness below. Hefting up the flamethrower, Suki started to descend the stairs.

“Here goes nothing,” she informed anyone listening.

Kotaro laid Yohji gently against the bottom step and turned to face the deadly crowd in front of him. Wanting to keep them away from his injured partner, he surged forward. It was like wading through thick mud and smelled worse.

Pain exploded along his right cheek when one of the ghouls bit him, making his teeth grind together. He hefted the one that had bitten him and slung him over the others, back toward the tunnel, knocking over more that had been trying to enter the basement.

Reaching behind him, Kotaro pulled a long-bladed knife from the hidden sheath tucked into the back of his pants. He swung his arm in a wide arc as he brought it up, piercing flesh and making black blood spray everywhere.

He cried out when another set of teeth bit into his left arm and plunged his blade into the top of the ghoul’s head. A feral growl erupted from his throat when he felt three more bite into his legs. Removing the blade, Kotaro swung again, this time decapitating the closest ghoul.

A sharp click and loud hiss made the monsters look up toward the top of the steps and he smirked at the ghouls around him.

“Bring the barbeque sauce?” he asked the lady that now had everyone’s attention.

*****

Darious stood in the back yard of the haunted house with his eyes closed, not only witnessing the battle inside but hearing it as well. He had toyed with the idea of going through the house to reach the underground tunnels, but knowing that would slow him down he stayed with his original plan.

The Guardians could take care of themselves… just like they had abandoned him to do so long ago.

Withdrawing his power of sight from the basement, Darious buried the feelings of hatred and forced the worthless emotions aside. He inhaled deeply, smelling the scent of the master demons behind the mayhem… he had smelled them before. Hell Hags… humans called them witches but he knew what they were and that there were three of them within the city tonight. It wasn’t surprising as they usually traveled in packs of three.

He would have to kill them before the ghouls would drop back into hell were they belonged.

Finding the direction easily, Darious started walking almost indifferently through the back alleys of the city. Once he left the main hub, the sounds of the night quickly surrounded him. In the dark corners were demons… hiding, spitting and hissing his name as he passed. He ignored them knowing he had bigger fish to fry this All Hallows Eve.

As he neared the cemetery, Darious felt an all-too-familiar presence and snarled. It annoyed him that only the weakest masters had awakened first, while the real threat slept somewhere beneath the city.

What angered him the most was that he had never wanted to return here after reading the scrolls for the second time. After the monastery had been destroyed, monks had come to rebuild… only to let it fall to ruin once they realized the ground was evil. They’d abandoned this land knowing it was useless.

Now the forgetful humans had built a thriving metropolis over the heart of sleeping evil.

*****

Kyou stood in the middle of the cemetery, scanning the area with sharp eyes. He’d been listening to the others talk on the com-link and while he’d gotten some amusement from it, he knew the problem wasn’t within the haunted house. The graveyard was the true center of demonic activity. It wasn’t in a ghoul’s nature to abandon their feasting ground without a master pulling their strings.

Closing his eyes, Kyou let his senses fan out around and under him… searching for the power he knew was there.

He could feel the dead growing restless within their graves and understood this cemetery had been troubled for a while now. The dead had been disturbed… something that all the guardians agreed was a very big taboo… it just wasn’t allowed.

His lips thinned knowing most of the graves under him where empty. Whether they had been devoured, or were now up and walking around was the question. His golden eyes opened and narrowed before turning his head toward the huge mausoleum to his right.

Stepping forward, Kyou opened the heavy door to the crypt, ignoring the creaking and groaning of the hinges. He took in the damage that had been done and understood why this particular crypt had been chosen. The family within had to have been centuries old and with no living relatives to continue its care, it was basically ignored, which worked in the demon’s favor.

All the caskets had been unsealed and lay open across the floor. Skeletal remains littered the floor, some of them still hanging from their vaults… ripped open to the elements. In the center lay two larger caskets, obviously the matriarchs of the family. The female’s side was virtually undisturbed but the male’s side had been desecrated.

A large hole went straight through the male’s coffin and what was left of the body inside it. No one had to tell him where the other end of that tunnel led. The demon had probably made the corpses dig it and connect it to the main tunnels.

A noise from further back in the crypt made him look up. Kyou stepped away from the disturbed vaults and followed a narrow path leading back and down a slope. He could immediately tell the moment he was completely underground, as the air became heavy and mold laden.

He heard something that sounded strangely like speech and stepped around a wall, discovering another row of caskets. Several had been pulled from their vaults and thrown open on the floor. A hell hag in her true form was bent over one of the partially decayed bodies, hissing an incantation into the corpse’s ear.

She was hideous with long white hair that writhed around her sunken cheeks and eyes much too big for the face. Her skin was dry and cracked, as though she’d been mummified alive. Long unkempt nails scraped the ground and the body of the corpse as though she were touching a lover.

Kyou growled when the corpse began to twitch, making the hell hag whip her head up to glare at him with those horrible eyes. A storm of power seemed to descend on him as invisible wind whipped around his clothes and hair. The air around him crackled and translucent golden wings emerged from his back, curling around him almost protectively as he surged forward.

He flew past the coffin, catching the witch around the neck in the crook of his elbow and slammed her through the wall on the other side. Stone and mortar fell as they broke through the other side. He sat straddled across her stomach with a hand around her shriveled throat.

“You would dare to send those filthy things into my city?!” Kyou roared in her face as she screeched and clawed at him.

The hell hag couldn’t get in a good hit in because Kyou’s translucent wings were still curled around him, preventing such an attack. She abruptly flickered with power and her form changed from that of a withered old hag into a vision of beauty. Her voice became soft and supple as her grisly hair straitened, turning white as the purest of snow.

“You do not have the power to stop me guardian,” she whispered as she laid her fingers on his cheek. “So much like him… yet so different,” she mused just as her claws dug into his face.

Kyou was stunned when a bright flash exploded right in front of him and he was thrown backwards through the hole they had created and into the opposite wall of the crypt. His heartbeat pounded in his ears as he allowed his rage to consume him. This demon was powerful and he needed to finish her off before the underlings that she was controlling killed more of the innocent humans.

He pushed himself from the wall to attack just as bony hands broke through the brick behind him. They wrapped around his chest and pulled him through with such force, Kyou actually found himself breathless.

He was suddenly surrounded by ghouls… their meaty hands pulling him away from the witch, who just laughed as she watched her underlings do her bidding. Just before the ghouls pulled him out of sight, Kyou saw mist rising up out of the floor, surrounding her and swirling eerily. A man appeared within the fog right in front of her. His long black hair fluttered as he turned on the ghouls coming toward him and let lose a string of fire from his palm that set them ablaze.

Darious turned his head to stare straight into the eyes of the hell hag. Seeing the fear leap into her blood red eyes, he let a satisfied smirk pull at his lips. She hissed at him and tried to flee, only to stop dead in her tracks when a black hole appeared below her feet… ensnaring her within a demon trap.

“Not so fast bitch,” Darious’s voice was so dark it made the already cool temperature within the mausoleum plummet several degrees.

Very slowly, the witch turned around to glare at him with a hideous twist to her lips. “I remember you,” she hissed with false bravado as she morphed back into her true form. “You wore the chains… we took turns with the whips… such a pleasure it was to see the masters rip your wings from your back….”

Her words were cut short and she screeched when magma suddenly rose up from the void beneath her feet, forming chains… snapping into place around her ankles and wrists, burning the flesh where they touched.

His eyes turned crimson at the reminder. “It took more than just you and your sisters to keep me chained, but I’ll give you a gift… the same gift the demons gave me. These chains have a nickname… they are called Eternity. You won’t be alone in the dark for long.” He gave her a sinister smile, “Your sisters will be joining you soon.” With that, the bonds tightened and began dragging her down into the pit.

“You will not live!” the hell hag screamed while fighting the pull of the chains. “Our master will see you torn apart and decimated the same way you did to us upon your escape… you will never be rid of us.”

Darious stood back watching with cold eyes as the witch continued her descent. She spit a number of curses at him, which made Darious feel amusement. Even when he showed them their own defeat, these demons would never be silent.

The witch’s screams rose in volume when clawed hands reached up from the void and clutched at her form. She continued to fight until the very last moment even when the void reached up to her ears.

She abruptly tilted her head back and smirked at him, “If He can’t reclaim you then He will reclaim the bitch who set you free!”

“He?” Darious whispered as he watched until she sank into the void, her screams finally silenced. There had been no one in the pit except demons so who was the witch calling He?

As the void sealed over the demon, his thoughts darkened remembering the hell hags. They and many other demons had struck him as he’d cried out for someone to save him… but no one ever came. Demons and their lies… no one had set him free.

He still remembered the pain of his wings being removed… pulled… yanked from the flesh of his back. That pain had been nothing compared to the agony of the chains they had wrapped him in. Now they will know how it had felt… physically and mentally. They will scream for someone to free them, but none will answer.

Kyou had remained silent once he shook off the remaining ghouls. No more had come through the tunnels they’d created, which meant Kotaro and Suki had handled the ones on their end. With any luck, the ghouls would merely vanish into nothingness before the flames died out. It would be their job to return the dead to their proper resting places once the proverbial dust settled.

Now Kyou stood still, watching the man’s expressions change from rage to pain and then… sadness. Wraiths flew all around him, as if trying to attack, but they could not and would not touch him. Kyou took a step forward… recognizing the power he had felt earlier that day in his office.

The man raised his head but didn’t even glance in Kyou’s direction before he vanished without a trace. The air rippled and sizzled… sending out purifying energy, washing over everything before the cemetery fell into a peace he was sure it hadn’t felt in many years.

Kyou’s golden eyes glowed in the darkness as he listened to the voices of the other guardians through the com-link.

Chapter 4 “Officially Freaked Out”

“Forget barbeque,” Suki exclaimed. “I’m going for deep fried.”

Kotaro’s eyes went humorously wide when Suki lifted the flamethrower in his direction. She pulled the trigger and set the closest three ghouls aflame.

All of the ghouls… even the ones the flames hadn’t reached yet, suddenly broke out in a chorus of inhuman screaming before they all burst into flames. Suki and Kotaro could only watch with confusion, as they all seemed to melt, leaving only partially intact skeletons behind. The basement was filled with loud clatter when the bones hit the ground.

Suki giggled unable to control herself, “Tastes just like chicken.”

Kotaro gave her a weak smile but he wondered why the ghouls suddenly, for lack of a better phrase, dropped dead.

“I don’t know about you, but I’m not going to look a gift horse in the mouth,” Kotaro managed before he dropped down on his butt.

Suki turned off the flamethrower and gingerly walked past Yohji to reach Kotaro’s side.

“Think you can walk out of here?” she asked sympathetically.

Kotaro nodded and, with Suki’s help, regained his footing and the two walked over to Yohji’s unconscious form. They got the detective hoisted up between them and very slowly climbed the steep staircase. Once at the top, they maneuvered their way through the rest of the haunted house, thankfully not running into any more animated corpses. They finally found the back door of the old house and stepped out into the fresh air.

“We need to get Yohji back to the agency,” Kotaro whispered. “He was bitten by one of those freaks.”

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