The Sign of Raphael (Rough Draft Novella)

Chapter 1

"It's definitely them, the markings match." Anthony whispered under his breath into the cell phone. If he was too loud, he'd alert the cultists in the room. He backed away. "I don't know if they've summoned anything yet, but it looks like they're connecting to a demonic realm. At least it's not a Sorcerer's portal, it looks rather unstable." A door opened behind him, and he heard the raspy breathing of an incarnate demon. "I've got trouble. Tell Peter to get packed."

"Mortal! I will crush you!" Anthony barely dodged out of the way of a halberd cutting through the air, shimmering with arcane energies. He turned and took out his revolver, hoping it would be enough to take down the demon. Gunshots echoed in the room, deafening even the otherworldly being with its sheer volume. None of them hit, instead passing through smoke where the demon was supposed to be. The blade came again, this time thrust at the man's chest. He dodged, but got caught off guard by a cultist and slammed to the ground, gasping for breath as the air was knocked from his lungs.

The cultist screamed in terror and pain as the point punched through his chest, realizing his mistake only after the demon had finished his fatal strike. Anthony rolled out of the way, avoiding the blood that was being boiled by the supernatural flame on the blade, letting it sizzle on the concrete beneath him. It was time to concentrate.

The tetragrammaton flickered into existence in the air in front of the man as he chanted, completing the Aramaic only as the last letter took form. A circle appeared around him, scoring the floor and the ceiling and shimmering with light. The demon charged, but Anthony simply rolled out of the field, letting the demon smash into the field with a thunderous crash. It hissed with rage, but a shell from Anthony's sawn-off shotgun stopped it dead, sending it slouching to the ground as the limb that seemed to be its equivalent of a head fractured under the impact.

The air inside the circle flashed as the demon released its energy, blasting through the concrete ceiling and setting everything flammable in the room above it on fire. Anthony made his escape, ignoring the screams of a cultist who had been in the wrong place at the wrong time.

He was hit in the back by a fist as he ducked out of the building, a cultist jumped from his vantage point above the doorway but mostly missed, flailing as he fell and hitting the Raphaelite more by accident than by design as he landed on the concrete, shattering his leg along the shin. Anthony stifled a yell as he fell, and struggled to his feet. Another man came at him from behind, but the agent had been trained well enough to duck below his initial blow, letting the cultist overbalance. Anthony used his advantage by unbalancing his assailant with a kick to the legs that sent the man sprawling head first into the concrete on the other side of Anthony as he flew cursing over the agent's crouching form.

Anthony went to pick himself up, grabbing the handrail as he pulled up to a standing position. A gunshot exploded to his rear, and Anthony felt himself falling to the side and clinging onto the handrail to keep standing. His leg felt as if it had been lit on fire. His coat had blocked the bullet, but one of the stab plates had shattered and come through the lining, cutting a gash in his leg. He steadied himself and began to run.

"He can't run far, I hit him in the leg!" A glance over Anthony's shoulder showed figures running toward him from the other exit of the building, and he redoubled his movement down the sidewalk, limping in the rain as he grew increasingly cold. He prayed that the chill he felt shooting through his body was the result of a Seattle autumn and not blood-loss. One of the men following Anthony shouted an alert.

The leg continued to burn as Anthony ran, but the pain quickly gave way to the numbness of adrenaline. He continued running, hoping to lose his pursuers, even as his body rebelled at the thought of moving faster. He turned into the next street, sprinting for a few seconds in hopes that his pursuers would overestimate him, then let himself lapse back into a limp once he was out of sight.