Free Hellhound on My Trail by D. J. Butler

feeling stupid.
    “No, silly,” she said. “Not all of the time.”
    The little kid stopped, and Twitch and Mike stopped with him. Adrian cleared Zvuvim off to one side of them with long rat-tat-tat-tat-tat sweeps of his machine pistol, and Eddie guarded the other flank with his shotgun. “There it is.” The boy pointed at the flaming wreck of the chest, with Rabbi Feldman’s charred corpse smoldering over wood that had collapsed into glowing coals.
    The doors resounded to the sound of another mighty blow, and Mike looked back over his shoulder, through the cloud of swarming demonic flies. Chalk sifted down from Adrian’s designs, but the doors held.
    “Poor kid,” Mike muttered, turning back to look at the kid pointing earnestly at the toasted rabbi. “He’s got a death wish.”
    “What do you mean, darling?” Twitch asked the boy. “Show me.”
    “Under,” the boy told her. His voice was a little dazed, like he might be in shock. “Under the ark.”
    “Poor dumb kid,” Mike groaned, and couldn’t help but think of Chuy. Chuy had only been a kid too, really, a criminal many times over but not yet eighteen, when Mike had led him to his death. He hadn’t meant to, but he’d done it. “He thinks we’re on a boat.”
    But as soon as the kid spoke, Jim dropped his sword to the floor. The singer grabbed both halves of the broken table beside the pyre, shoving one into Mike’s hands and turning to the fire himself.
    “Huh?” Mike fumbled.
    “Shovel!” Eddie shouted. Boom! “Shovel like your life depended on it!”
    “It does,” Adrian affirmed. Rat-tat-tat-tat-tat.
    The Hellhound bellowed again, so loud Mike thought he felt his own spine tremble with the sound. The Zvuvim seemed to be getting smarter, and they swarmed in closer, diving and clacking their steel mandibles together greedily. Eddie and Adrian kept them off with a ceaseless chatter of gunfire.
    Jim pressed his half-table to the floor like a squeegee and Mike followed him clumsily, feeling fat and slow next to the lean, broad-shouldered giant of a singer. He grunted with effort and proximity to the hot coals, and Jim snorted air through his nostrils, and they fell forward and the weight of their bodies brushed away the stinking inferno—
    and Mike saw the outline of a trap door, made of scorched hardwood, with an iron ring bolted into it.
    CRASH!
    Mike stumbled to his feet and whirled to see the Baal Zavuv, tall and gray-black as it charged forward through the splintered remains of the synagogue door, its cloak of flies buzzing frenetically to keep up. At the demon’s heels came the Hellhound, adding blue and black tints to the weird, patchy light inside the building.
    “Adrian!” Eddie shouted. “I need daylight!”
    “Oh yeah?” Adrian shouted back, blasting a Zavuv away from Eddie’s back and slapping a new clip into his gun. “Shall I just set the gun down, then?” Rat-tat-tat-tat-tat. “Between the devil and all that jazz!”
    Twitch dropped the little boy’s hand and jumped to Adrian’s side, flailing with a wooden club in each hand and knocking demon-flies away like so many low-hanging apples in an orchard.
    Jim grabbed the iron ring and heaved. A groan escaped his lips and Mike saw smoke curl up from around his fingers. The ring, he realized, had to be hot, and the thought of the pain that Jim must be feeling made Mike’s back and shoulders and the back of his head ache. He dreaded looking in a mirror.
    “Mike!” Eddie yelled, and he realized he was standing in the middle of the action and doing nothing. He drew a bead on the Zvuvim over Adrian’s head and started shooting.
    In the meantime, Jim had lifted the trapdoor to a vertical position. Stone steps, rough-hewn and worn down really deep in the center of each step, descended into darkness. Jim grabbed the little kid and tossed him down the stairs over a short yelp of objection.
    The Hellhound bellowed behind Mike, and with the bellow came a slobbery chittering