Normally, the attacks coincided with the portal opening, but this time, he didn’t hear the familiar pop and whooshing sound it usually made. There was no sign of it at the end of the tunnel either. So either the demons were early because they were restless, or he’d missed it. He was praying it wasn’t the latter. Surviving another six hours under these conditions didn’t seem likely.
The snake was almost at his ankles by the time he disposed of both griffins. He shot it several more times, but stomping on its head was what finally made it go still. Behind it, several more pairs of glowing red eyes caught his attention.
A loud grunt from Hines had him spinning around. One of the devil dogs had made its way past Christian and was gnawing on the Vampire’s head. “Son of a bitch!” Aaron screamed. Hines could do nothing to defend himself, and the canine had destroyed most of the quack’s scalp. Aaron shot the dog three times before it started whimpering and backed away. One more shot and it was down.
“Sorry. Slipped by me,” Christian said, kicking another dog in the head as the red eyes on Aaron’s end of the tunnel closed in. He could see them now, devilish creatures of all variety. He shot in their general direction, but that grenade was starting to sound like a decent option.
He didn’t have a lot of time to check on Hines, but from the looks of it, the Vampire didn’t have long to live. A good portion of his head was gone, and he was billowing smoke and ash like a chimney in old London. There was absolutely nothing Aaron could do to help him, so he began to think about an alternative solution. When the portal opened, he needed to get Christian out, and then he’d just have to find a way to survive a few more hours.... Again....
“We need to keep him alive!” Christian shouted, as if reading his mind.
“How, exactly, do you propose we do that?” Aaron yelled back at him, taking aim at the approaching monsters.
“I don’t know, but if he dies...”
“If he dies, you get out, and then we start this process all over again,” Aaron clarified.
“Not happening. You’re getting out this time. I made a promise.”
Aaron wondered why in the world Christian would want to start keeping his promises now, but with a large cheetah-like hellcat bearing down on him, he didn’t have time to argue. He fired several bullets into the cat as it leaped into the air, its daggered claws swiping at his face.
The gunfire threw the cat’s trajectory off, but it still managed to catch Aaron’s shoulder, sinking its claws in several inches as it fell lifeless to the ground. He pulled away from it, letting the heavy corpse hit the cave floor as spurts of blood came from the gashes. The pain was bearable, though he would’ve preferred it if Jamie’s blue healing light was surrounding him now. There wasn’t much time to think about it, though. Not only were there several more monsters coming at him, a familiar noise in the distance caught his attention. He turned to see a small area of light behind the devil dogs on the cave wall. The portal was opening.
A glance at Hines told him they wouldn’t have long. Getting through a half-dozen or so rabid mutts before Hines expired would be tricky, especially since he couldn’t turn his back on the other creatures, nor could he let them get to Hines before he and Christian were both out.
“Make a run for it, Major Henry!” He shouted over his shoulder. “I’ll cover you.”
“No, you go,” Christian insisted, another of the dogs hitting the ground from his fire power.
“We don’t have time to argue about this!”
Christian mumbled a curse word under his breath and stopped shooting long enough to bend over and collect the dying Vampire. Tossing Hines back over his shoulder, he turned just in time to fire at another hound while Aaron kept the first line of other monsters at bay. “Let’s go!”
“Why are you bringing him?” Aaron yelled, keeping his back to Christian so he could fire behind them.
“Because it’s the only way to keep him alive until we get out of here.” It made sense, so long as Christian didn’t get Hines too close to the portal opening. Back to back, they continued to fire, trying their best to keep their attackers away and still get to the portal before it closed.
They were almost there. Another griffin swept down at Aaron’s head when they were just a couple of yards from the end of the tunnel. It’s talons grazed his face, opening up the skin, before he managed to shoot it from the sky. Now, in addition to the blood dripping down his arm, his face was covered with the sticky substance as well.
At the end of the tunnel, they would have to cross a small intersection before reaching the opening of the portal. But he knew from what Heather had told him earlier and his own experience running into a glass wall the portal was longer than it looked. As soon as Christian stepped out into the opening at the end of the tunnel, they were greeted with dozens of demons on either side, some the familiar devil dogs, snakes, and hellcats, others free-form, like the shadow monster Aaron had faced back before Alex had died. They were flooding in from both sides, and the tunnel was filling up fast as well.
The opening to the portal was only feet away, and so far it was clear. “We need to drop Hines and sprint out of here!” Aaron insisted.
“Yeah, we’ll never make it unless we can find a way to move them back,” Christian replied. He looked about as frightened as Aaron had ever seen him.
“Grenades. It’s the only way.”
“Unless it collapses the whole tunnel, like you said earlier, or kills Hines.” Christian had a point.
“I don’t see any other way. Do you?” Aaron fired into the crowd of monsters one more time as Christian agreed with his statement.
He flung Hines down on the ground and went for his belt, pulling out three of the grenades he’d designed to kill Vampires. Hopefully, they worked on demons, too. He handed one to Aaron and nodded in the direction of the creatures in front of him, and Aaron understood that Christian would toss the two down the other tunnels.
“If this doesn’t work, and only one of us gets out, there’s no point in coming back for the other,” Aaron said, looking the man he’d known for over a century in the eye.
“Then it better work.” With a deep breath, Christian counted to three, and they both pulled the pins.
