Hey, y'all! Dakota here with a new chapter in my smut-laden series about a guy who teams up with a few sexy supernatural beings to do battle with ancient gods. This is essentially a serialized novel, so I recommend starting at the beginning to avoid unnecessary confusion.
Returning reader? Great to see you again! This chapter picks up immediately after the last and introduces us to a couple of new characters (both were hinted at previously). I hope you enjoy!
Much love to my supporters here and so, without further ado:
Inside James Faraday there exists a switch.
He discovered it first during basic training and then, later, during his clinical rotations in paramedic school. The purpose of the switch was to turn off his emotions, to deaden them so that he could do what needed doing so that he could think through the blood and the smoke and the gunfire.
He learned the hard way that throwing the switch comes with a price. He could throw it part way, like he had many times before, no worse for wear.
Throwing it all the way, however, was no small thing. But he would throw it in an instant if he had to.
The last time he threw the switch was when his helicopter was shot down outside of Aleppo. For forty-seven minutes, he was the sole provider on the ground. Miraculously he sustained relatively minor injuries. His crew, people he'd known for years, were not so lucky. They lay dead all around him. With his weapon at his side, he dragged bodies out of the wreckage, seven in total, making an impromptu triage area.
Captain Lucius Harlow had fought like hell to keep the heavy HH-60 Pave Hawk in the air after the Chinese-made shoulder-mounted rocket hit their rear rotor. In doing so, he managed to slow their uncontrolled descent by about 40 kph, lessening the resulting impact significantly but not enough.
Besides James, the only other survivors were Harlow and Senior Airman Thomas Mateus, a fellow PJ. Both were grievously injured.
Harlow was badly burned, his left arm and leg mangled from the crash. He was barely conscious.
Mateus was somehow worse. Despite his helmet, he'd taken a nasty blow to the head. Blood trickled from his ear.
With the rest of the crew dead and beyond saving, James focused all of his attention, all of his skills at stabilizing his two friends.
He'd thrown the switch.
Even as the enemy bared down on them. Even as his own injuries caught up to him. Even as help seemed impossibly far away. James took all the fear, rage, pain, and guilt and turned them off. He would not be the one to fail Harlow in his time of need. He would not let emotion stop him from stabilizing Mateus.
And he hadn't.
Harlow survived, losing his lower leg but keeping his arm. Mateus lived too, but the traumatic brain injury left him permanently changed.
James was called heroic but he felt nothing of the sort.
Later, after receiving a silver star for valor and an honorary discharge, he realized it wasn't as easy to feel again. Not just happiness or joy, but anger and sadness too. It was as if a bit of color was pulled from the world. When he threw that switch, he could come back. Just not all the way.
He imagined that if he ever threw that switch all the way again, it would be the end of him. He couldn't come back from that a second time.
Now, with Lenore at his feet, her chest cut open by Anubis' blade, with Gwendolyn either dead or close to it, and James surrounded by the god of death on one side and a giant cobra on the other, he felt his body calm. He felt the familiar rush as epinephrine flooded into his bloodstream, his fight or flight reflex enveloping him like a suit of armor.
James threw the switch all the way.
***
His first shot tagged Anubis in the knee. The god howled as he fell to one leg, nearly dropping Gwen's limp body.
James sidestepped just as the cobra's jaws snapped closed next to him, and he let loose a three-round burst in its face.
The cobra reared up, crashing into the ceiling with a wet
thunk
, and sending plaster raining down.
James moved with deadly purpose.
On him were his two side arms, the Glock, and, shoved in the pocket of his jacket, the big revolver. He'd also shoved the combat knife in his belt. That morning he'd electroplated the knife and several magazines worth of rounds with silver.
The silver-plated bullets seemed to hurt Anubis and the snake but it still felt like he'd brought a pencil to a knife fight.
Two more shots into Anubis, hitting him square in the chest. A lesser soldier would have hesitated, what with the god holding a hostage, but James knew his aim was true.
Hesitation meant death.
Spinning, he unloaded another three-round burst at the cobra. It hissed horribly, backing down the hallway, and giving James just enough breathing room to get to Lenore.
He slung the rifle down at his side, grabbed her by the belt, and drew the Glock.
He kept firing as he dragged her back. Two rounds at Anubis, three at that fucking cobra. Anubis finally wised up and held Gwendolyn close to his body, no doubt tired of being shot.
Fuck.
He had to separate him from Gwendolyn. She looked dead or close to it from where he stood but Anubis wasn't acting as though she were dead. And he would know.
James dragged Lenore about ten paces away, out of the thick of it, and then shot three times down the hallway. The cobra, no doubt some sort of god, hissed and backed up even further. He switched back to the Door Kicker and holstered the sidearm, firing another three-round burst down the hallway.
James charged Anubis.
He unloaded the magazine into him, aiming for any exposed piece of flesh he could. In seconds, the god's arms and legs were riddled with punctures, driving Anubis back down to his knee and causing him to drop the limb body unceremoniously on the broken glass of the kitchen floor. The god snarled and barked at him but was at least temporarily stopped.
He still held the golden blade, inwardly curved like a sickle. James shot him in the arm and then kicked at his hand, sending it clattering across the floor.
He switched to the Glock again, seamless in the transition, to free up a hand.
"Why the long face?" He popped Anubis in the head for good measure, jackknifing that stupid jackal snout to the side.
James lunged for Gwen, aiming to grab her by the corset. She was unconscious but breathing. She was alive.
Before he could grab her, James was yanked violently backward.
"Where do you think you're going, ssstud?"
The thick body of the snake wrapped around his waist and lifted him off his feet.
He was instantly upside down, the Glock pinned to his body. Breathing suddenly became impossible.
"You're rather feisty for a human," the cobra said. It glared at him with slitted yellow eyes, one at a time, studying him with each turn of that massive head. "My father sssaid you'd be a issssue."
The snake tightened around him. Every time he exhaled, he couldn't breathe as deeply. It was suffocating him. He couldn't speak.
"Not sssso tough now, are we?"
There was a wet
pop
as one of his ribs broke. James screamed and the snake constricted him tighter. Another rib broke.
James tightened his grip around the Glock. With it pinned to his side, there was no way of knowing where it was pointing. The barrel could be pointed at his dick for all he knew.
