One by one the members of the team picked up strands of the psalm, advancing slowly as their voices became one low harmonic chant. Dense night surrounded them, the transparency of the air around almost becoming a thicker texture that made it feel like they were trudging through wet sand.
Shabazz abruptly stopped, forcing the group to come to a halt behind him. "Wait," he whispered. "You feel it?"
"Like walking through the swamp," J.L. said. "But you can't see anything."
"It's too quiet - you can't even hear the club music inside, or traffic," Big Mike murmured. "We're in a zone."
Damali turned in a slow, three-hundred-and-sixty-degree circle. All eyes were on her as she spread her arms out, her walking stick in one hand, and splaying her fingers on her free hand to feel the nothingness. They were in some kind of silenced area or cocoon. It was too freaky, and way too dangerous. Something invisible could snuff them out without a sound being heard by anyone but them. "They've got us in some sort of sound bubble. Vamps don't normally roll like that. They come upon you silently, but they can't block exterior sound."
"Damali might be on to something. This is different," Marlene murmured.
"Too much like a setup," Shabazz agreed.
Mike rubbed his jaw and glanced at Jose and J.L. "You ain't said a mumblin' word, bro."
"Now, you all are reaching," Rider said with a nervous laugh, fingering his gun.
"Oh, it's there," Damali reassured Rider, growing defensive and testy by his arrogance. "Something's out there."
She didn't care what anybody said, the density had changed around them. Everything around them felt weighted and as though it was pulling them down. It was creepy, like a gate to the dark realm had opened. Marlene had told her about the phenomenon, but none of them except Marlene had ever claimed to experience it.
"Mar, you're the expert on this one. What's your take?"
Marlene let her breath out slowly and used her stick to point to the fire escapes, thin sidewalks beyond the cobblestones, and then motioned out toward the wider asphalt street beyond the alley. "Notice how the colors around everything are off, aren't what they should be - gray isn't gray, black isn't black? Seen this before. Only once. Wasn't good."
"Demons?"
"Possibly."
"But I thought we all sensed vamps tonight?"
"We did. That's what I can't figure out."
Damali looked at Marlene for a moment. Hold up. Her mind lunged at the facts. The two entities don't travel together, demons and vamps. Plus, demons were fixed to locations... like a house or a building or within a host body they'd possessed, unlike vampires that could freely move about as long as there was no sunlight.
Big Mike opened his vest and took out two vials attached together on a long leather cord. Raising his arm above the heads of his teammates, he began swinging them in a hard circular motion until the two objects at the end of the tether became a blur. "Then let's light this joint up."
Hurling the vials fifty feet before the group, they exploded against the cement with two small pops of broken glass. Holy water trickled from the shattered containers, and then suddenly ignited the asphalt. The flames quickly spread, moving swiftly back toward the group, covering the cobblestoned ground around them as though a river of gasoline had been lit at their feet with a match.
"Jesus H. Christ!" Rider's line of vision followed the edge of the flame.
"It's like we're standing in the middle of Hell!" J.L. hollered.
"Down!" Damali yelled, as the flame suddenly stopped twenty-five yards out from where it began and disappeared into the street vents, which gave way to a screeching, fluttering cloud of movement. "Bats!"
Hundreds of the flying vermin circled their heads with beady, glowing red eyes and huge, menacing fangs, diving at the team in a high-pitched aerial attack.
"It's too f**king many of them to shoot! They're moving too fast," Rider shouted.
Damali and Marlene swung wildly at the offending creatures, and kept the swirling mass from descending on the group using their walking sticks, while J.L. and Jose spun in erratic circles, trying to get a clear shot at the multiple enemies smaller than the stakes their crossbows held.
"Save your ammo. Don't fire. It's probably only one giving the illusion of many," Shabazz said, cool control lacing his order. "Wizard, J.L., lights on. Damali, Marlene, cover 'em. UV lights up - and back that bullshit up. Now!"
Jose and J.L. worked feverishly to free the halogens and Fres-nels in their duffle bags, hooking them immediately into the battery packs slung over their shoulders, and then sent beams into the fluttering black mass.
Immediately the cloud dispersed, then reconstituted itself into one form, and then separated into multiple forms just beyond the flame, yards away. The eyes of the beasts glowed red within their slits. Huge fangs protruded from the creatures' deformed mouths, stretching gray, death-pallor skin over their overpacked jaw lines. Their limbs seemed elongated, unnatural, and yellowing, hooked claws turned their hands into razor-sharp weapons. And the sounds they made ... then their jaws unhinged. What the hell... These were not normal vampires!
"Crossbows up," Damali ordered as the group's focus trained on the shadow that was still shape-shifting before them. "We need to take all six of them out pronto, people."