The imp roared with fury, lashing out blindly in every direction, and I barely managed to roll out of the way of those horrible claws before they shredded my upper body like wet cheese cloth “Ok, as useful as stabbing the damn thing seems to have been, where are all the good toys, grenades and flamethrowers and such?” I was glaring a hole into my brothers stupid aww shucks face, but the bastard didn’t even have the decency to look chagrined.

He just shrugged at me “With all the civvies we’re kind of limited in firepower options, but don’t worry, I’m sure itll work out.” I snarled at him as I threw myself sideways, narrowly avoiding the imps razor sharp meat hooks yet again. It seemed almost irrelevant to the thing if it actually hit me, I think the bastard was just enjoying the chance to swing his claws around. Although it might also just have been pissed off about the three feet of roman pilus embedded in its sternum, no one ever called me a demon whisperer. Despite not bringing anything good Alex had at least taken the time to grab a few smaller weapons, and as I came out of the roll I heard a shout and I managed to snag the Mossberg shotgun he tossed me with a quick nod of thanks.

After a quick check to make sure it was loaded I threw myself hard to the side landing on my side in the snow with gun pointed under the imps ribs before I fired. My brother has a tendency to saw off the barrels of his shotguns but luckily this one was one of mine. Sawed off gives great spread, but when shooting something with thick ass demon hide you want the force concentrated as much as possible.

The imp roared in pain, echoing the earsplitting howl of the gun that had just punched a hole the size of a fist in its side. Black blood dribbled from the hole in its flesh as the beast seethed with rage. I scrambled to try to reload the damn gun, knowing the monster wasn’t playing around with us anymore. If we didn’t kill this thing quickly it was going to rip us each at least a dozen new assholes.The cold and wet of the snow left my fingers numb and fumbling as I tried to slide the cartridge in, and I could barely ignore the brimstone and bellowing of the imp as it bore down on my soaked, frozen form.

I managed to get the bullet in and pump the gun once after a few seconds of fumbling, but as the beast bore down I knew I’d been too late. Sarah was screaming my name, her high voice a counterpoint to the enraged bellow of the being about to rend me in half, and I tried vainly to bring up the barrel of my weapon before those horrible claws could reach my flesh. I would have died there, cold and alone in the snow, if a bullet hadn’t slammed into the imps head, dazing it for a second. Unfortunately the things horns had caught the round, so staggering was all it did, but that was all the time I needed to finish raising my gun and put a twelve gauge hollow point slug right between its beady little eyes.

I turned to look in the direction the shot had come from, seeing Alex calmly working a pump action rifle as he gave me a quiet nod. I fell back down in the snow, heart pounding and breath rushing out as I let my muscles relax from the tension of battle. My pulse was singing in my veins and the adrenaline was pounding through me, but I was exhausted. I’d been in fights before, but nothing this…visceral. Jobs for the family were more hunt and kill than battle to the death, and I don’t think I’ve ever been in that much danger before. I felt an odd sense of accomplishment as I looked at the dissolving corpse that was slowly resuming Lawsons shape. Damn. This had been a fun day.

After we calmed everyone down (we convinced them that Lawson had been on drugs and carrying a flamethrower and that they must have been drunker than we thought to be seeing demons) we got Alyssa and Sarah back to their houses. The others had scattered but the girls were too drunk and full of adrenaline to be driving anywhere and they were extremely hesitant to be out of our presence until they were home. We split up and drove their cars home for them, and Sarah, eyes still wet with tears, gave me a hug and a kiss on the cheek and told me I was her hero. She asked if she would see me again, and I smiled and said yes, because lies are always nicer than the truth.

I texted Alex after I dropped her off, Abby had lived a lot closer to the gas station than Sarah did and he was going to walk back and drive our car down to get me after cleaning up the site. No one would find Lawsons body, and if they did find something to hint at his death, someone higher up in the police force would let the cop responsible for the case know that he hadn’t found anything strange and either his new raise would convince him of that, or he could come to terms with it over his long career stuck doing traffic duty.

I slumped against the tree in Sarahs yard in the snow and sighed. I was finally coming down from the adrenaline, honestly I probably could’ve stayed inside, maybe gotten somewhere with Sarah, but she had just gone through some pretty heavy stuff and I was going to be gone in an hour. If she’d been a different kind of person, less sweet or bubbly, I might have done it anyway, but there were too few people in the world that genuinely struck me as “good” even at first meeting for me to make one of their lives a little sadder, especially after all the dark she’d gone through tonight.

I smiled sadly at that. I could use more people like her in my life, sometimes when your world is all darkness, its nice to have a little bit of sunshine. I shook my head at the useless thought, I was heading home now. This endless job was finally over, and I desperately wanted to get home and see my brothers and Ali and even my overbearing asshole dad. Traveling for jobs always makes me miss the family.