Time Jacker by Aaron Crash (nonfiction book recommendations .TXT) 📕

“Gabby!” Bailey cried out in horror. She didn’t pause but leapt off the cart and out of sight, into the middle of the oxen, the chitin dogs, and those barbed fiends in the air.

That left Jack alone in the cart, facing Kerrata. The Fug laughed. “Oh, so the little man who keeps getting in the way has come to get in my way again. I haven’t come all this way, with this little gift, to be stopped by the likes of you. Tanichron knows of you and this human bitch, and he has promised me land and power.”

“You won’t be making that deal, Horns, because today you die.” Jack raised the shotgun, but he never had the chance to use it.

Kerrata plucked the gun out of Jack’s hand and lashed him with the whip, shredding his coat and shirt and flaying open his skin.

Current Corpus: 155/200

Jack was blinded by pain for a minute, and then he heard Gabby shriek. She wasn’t blowing the horn yet, but they no longer had the element of surprise.

A fingernail bird came flying down and stabbed Jack in the back with its barbs, and his left arm went numb. There was a poison in that thing.

Current Corpus: 125/200

His left arm might be numb, but his right hand was still working. He could pull the Eternity Cannon, hammer back, the trigger ready.

A fingernail bird dived right into his face at that moment. Jack had no choice but to use one of his precious rounds to blow the thing apart. The wings turned to dust and black blood covered Kerrata, along with bits of flesh and the cracked remains of the thing’s fingernail face.

Since he’d killed with the Cannon, Jack was given a choice of what to do with the energy. He didn’t know if he needed to help Gabby or not, but he couldn’t help her if he went down.

“Aeterna, convert half the Kairos to Corpus, but keep the other half ready!”

The result was immediate.

Current Corpus: 150/200

Jack could partially use his left arm again, and he felt better, but he was still wounded, and the pain threatened to consume him. He’d fix that shit in a minute.

Kerrata raised the whip, but Jack wasn’t going to get hit again. He rolled across the cart and hit the edge just as a chitin dog drove a spiked bone leg into the wood right next to Jack’s face.

Jack used his hand cannon to blow off one of the chitin dog’s horns and most of his skull. Black brains filled the air. Jack changed more of that Kairos into Corpus, and the pain was better. He was close to full.

Kerrata stomped over, those clawed spider feet flapping. The Fug had his cat o’ nine tails up, and he lashed down, but not before Jack rolled off the edge of the cart. He hit the ground and faced a wave of chitin dogs.

Jack needed to fire a lot of shots fast, and that was something the Eternity Cannon couldn’t do it. He whipped the Cannon into his left hand and pulled the Beretta, knowing he had to make every shot count.

He kept moving as he fired into the horned Fugs, clacking around him with their bone spear-point feet. Move, fire, move, fire—every one of his bullets found a head. Chitin dogs went falling, one after another. Jack even had to take out some fingernail birds that swooped in close. He ran through one magazine, then had to eject it. He stuck the Cannon under an armpit so he had an extra hand to slam in more bullets for the Beretta.

The bodies were starting to pile up. However, Jack sped through the corpses and ran toward where Bailey was on the ground, blood streaming from a cut in her head. The demon had saved the angel but not without a price.

Gabby stood over the ink-haired demon, facing down both of the toenail oxen, who lowered their faces to smash the women to pieces or rend them into lunch meat with the sharp edge of their nails.

Jack aimed the Eternity Cannon at the center of one ox’s nail face and pulled the trigger, hoping the big magical bullet could pierce that thickened keratin. He wasn’t disappointed. A fist-sized hole appeared in the ox’s toenail face, and brains went flying. And yet, the thing was still alive somehow. It let out a roar. This beast was tough.

Kerrata was at the edge of the cart, laughing maniacally. He brought his whip down on Gabby. She took the barbed leather right on the face. She didn’t flinch, despite the blood.

The angel raised her horn to her bloody lips.

“Don’t do it!” Bailey screamed.

But they were surrounded, by birds, dogs, and oxen, with Kerrata standing above them, ready to whip them all again.

The angel’s divine horn let out a clear note of pure destruction.

The nearest birds popped like pimples. The dogs had their bone legs blown from their bodies. Some of them lost their horns. The toenail faces of the oxen split down the middle. The rest of their bodies were covered with blisters from the horn’s blast.

A howl of alarmed outrage rose from the top of the wall in the distance. Tanichron’s horde now knew there was an angel in hell.

It was only a matter of moments before the gates opened and the Hell Duke and his demons came pouring out. The timer had started.

Jack cranked back the hammer and stepped to the side. He blew the chest cavity out of the wounded ox. When the Kairos hit, he topped off his Corpus so his wounds were healed. He then seized Gabby’s hand and fixed her wounds.

He was about to do the same thing to Bailey, but the demon was up, taking on the last of the toenail oxen. The succubus charged forward and whirled her war pick and slammed it into the side of the thing. She then clambered onto the back of the beast and cracked her pick down into the fleshy side of