Demon Trackers: The Anointed

part eighteen

Jake looked back to the monster next to them. Things were even uglier up close. The gremlin's rubbery lips pulled back from curving teeth in a snarl as Jake pulled the slipknot tight and shouted, “Dad! Now!”

The rope immediately jerked. Cal and Jake’s chests bumped together and Jake just held on, bracing his feet on every little protuberance, trying to help his dad with their weight as much as he could.

They were moving slow, but steadily upward in jerks and stops. Jake could only imagine his dad up above, straining against their combined weight, using the tonsil rock as leverage for his feet. Cal’s arms wrapped around his back, clinging to the ropes.

The gremlin moved with them, stopping when they stopped, until it finally scampered the rest of the way over the top.

“Dad, look out!” Jake screamed at the same time Henry shouted and the beast shrieked and suddenly they were falling, the walls of the hole rushing past them, crashing into several gremlins that peeled away. They slammed into the rock and Cal’s body went limp, his head and arms falling back as the rope wrenched to a stop.

“Cal! Jake!” The call came from far overhead. Jake was breathing so hard he couldn’t speak. “Boys! Answer me dammit!”

“We’re good,” Jake squeaked, and then tried again. “Good, Dad.” Except they weren’t. Cal had smacked into the wall, hard. “Just get us out of here!” He pulled Cal’s head to his shoulder, felt wetness in the matted hair and rough broken skin at the back of his head.

The rope moved upward again, slower than before. His dad’s muscles had to be burning, but Jake knew his father wouldn’t give up. The intervals between stopping and inching upward became longer. He looked around to pinpoint the gremlins. Apparently their little tumble, knocking several of them off the wall, had them spooked because they were keeping a wary distance. A few skittered up to the ceiling, moving out of sight.

“Dad, there’s gremlins above you!”

“I know.” Jake was shocked his dad’s voice was so close. His gaze shot up, his line of sight barely an inch higher than the rim. His dad was flat on his back, head and shoulders over the hole. He pulled on the rope that ran back toward the tonsil rock and around it, trailing along the ground to them. Most alarming was the gremlin clamped around his leg, teeth embedded in Henry’s thigh and his dad not doing a damn thing about it because pulling on that rope, getting his boys out of that hole was Henry Gillant’s highest priority.

Henry shifted back some more, farther out over the hole, and Jake realized that his father was ready to go over the edge, taking the gremlin's weight with him to give his sons that last little pull that would carry them up out of there.

“Dad?”

“Get Cal out of here. That’s an order.”

“I’m tying off as soon as we’re up.”

Henry nodded. The rope was around his waist. He could climb back up. Their dad could do anything. He could climb up. Jake could pull him up. They would do this. Get Cal out. Pull dad up. Doable. All doable. Jake’s heart was beating a mile a minute.

Henry shifted again. The rope inched higher. Jake braced a hand on the ledge, the other still cradling Cal’s head.

And a gremlin ran across the ground, grabbed Cal by the shoulders and heaved up like he weighed nothing. Since Jake was tied to him he was lifted too and then they were being dragged across the ground, Cal’s body bouncing roughly beneath Jake’s.