Wickerman Cove

Part 32: Revelations

Steph knew there were a lot of reasons not to just let loose with an automatic weapon in the middle of a crowd. The biggest one was that even if you hit what you were aiming at, bodies didn't always stop bullets. Even relatively small rounds like the ones the bullpup was firing could easily go through a person and out the other side, especially at this distance.

On the other hand, the Guide was leaning over her, the glow of the firelight reflecting off its tan, bog-mummy skin. The rain steamed off him, trickling onto her face. She couldn't quite process how something could have water dripping off its nose and still look dry, but the Guide managed it. It had blue eyes now, with bright whites. They were alive: vibrant, intense. They fixed on her with an intensity that left no illusions. She was something to be consumed, and not in a sexy way.

Her hand was already on the bullpup. She could hear Mansfield yelling at Gabriel less than ten feet away. It gave her the strength she needed. Penny was at the hotel. Mansfield was in danger. If she didn't stop this now, what was to stop David and his extra-dimensional friends from rolling into town and doing whatever they wanted?

She brought the weapon around with a speed she would have barely believed possible. The knife wounds hurt like hell. From the cold, and the way her heart was racing, she was losing blood pretty quickly. It didn't matter.

The Guide distorted space and vanished, but this time she could feel him – moving around to the right, crouching to get his hands around her throat. The rain seemed to bend around where his body should have been, not quite occupying the same space.

Satisfyingly, he made a noise of very ordinary, human surprise when she whipped around so that the rifle was pressed into his diaphragm, and then pulled the trigger.

The Guide reappeared as the rounds tore a hole in the middle of his body. His back burst with a shower of what she could only think of as 'human splinters' that scattered, and then came down on her with the rain. It was a semi-automatic burst, so she did the same thing again. She'd half expected him to shrug it off: "Aha, your bullets cannot hurt me, Billy the Kid, I am Dracula!"

That isn't what happened. Sure, he didn't look as shocked, agonized and dead as someone who'd just taken six rounds to their centre mass, but he wasn't smiling anymore. With a shudder of pain that made her want to retch, she got to her knees and pushed herself up on one hand.

The other clips for the bullpup were still in her jacket. Awesome. The fact that one of them seemed had taken some of the force out of Dave Jr.'s knife thrusts probably meant she needed to make sure she didn't use it.

With the Guide's attention on her, the cultists had really thinned out. The remnants of the congregation maintained a near-circle, hovering just close enough that the white neon and firelight could pick them out from the darkness. Most of them were white, their faces slick from the rain, with dark patches of red. Their expressions ranged from terror to ecstasy – eyes wide, lips parted. A brown woman – South Asian, although it was impossible to know where from – stood with them, her eyes wide with joy. A tall black guy with greying hair watched the fire, the rain dripping off his beard.

The Guide struggled to draw breath, not that Steph really expected he needed to breathe. It was probably just a habit. They both knew she was waiting for him to move through the weirdness again.

Behind her, Gabriel was still ranting, an edge of fear creeping into his crazy. "Do you think you can stand against the power of the Lord? Of they who planned eternity? You are dust on the wind."

"Yeah, let me know how that's going for you," Mansfield said, her voice audibly straining from the effort of sounding casual. She addressed a comment over her shoulder, to where Steph and the Guide were circling each other. "You done yet? I haven't got all day."