Aikido 101.
Use the other person’s force, weight, and momentum against them.
In this case, he’d made a serious miscalculation.
Namely, he’d forgotten the approximately fifty other demons that were standing only a dozen yards away.
Demons moved fast.
They moved damned fast.
By the time Dags remembered all that, and remembered just how outnumbered he was, the first demon already had him pinned to the manicured lawn. For those first, critical seconds, Dags could only lie there, on his back, gasping in the darkness. They’d rolled into an unlit section of garden surrounded by massive palm trees.
Unleashing the blue-green light, he let out a thick yell, exploding it out of him.
It forced the first demon back but not all the way off him, maybe because the guy was a monster. The demon let go of Dags’ throat and wrist, gasping as he was forced back into a kneel, and nearly lost his balance. The demon held up his hands, staring from one to the other, as if he’d burned them on a hot stove.
“Mother of Satan!” the demon growled, staring at Dags in disbelief. “I thought you said this winged fuck wasn’t awake!”
A female demon walked up behind him, smirking at Dags.
It was one of the people Dags didn’t know.
“Looks like our baby angel learned a few things since last time,” she cooed.
Dags tried to hit the guy off him, using his fists, then kicking hard with his feet, but the male demon gripped him tighter, growling at him. Dags geared up to slam him with the blue-green light, but the demon swung at him before he could relax enough to do it.
Like everything demon, he did it fast, catching Dags in the jaw, snapping his head sideways. The bastard threw his waist into it, his thick-fingered fist feeling like a block of stone, or maybe cement.
Dags let out a gasp. Pain exploded over his jawline and cheek.
He never stopped struggling.
He fought to get free, even as he tried to relax that part of his chest enough to release the blue-green light a second time.
The demon hit him again.
Dags absorbed the blow, gasping, and now he tasted blood.
He managed to jerk away enough to lessen the impact of the third blow, right before he opened the fire in his chest. That time, he unleashed a hell of a lot more of the blue-green charge, trying to shove the massive, giant of a demon off him for real.
The blue-green fire rippled out, hitting the demon squarely in the chest.
It was enough to stop him where he’d been winding up to punch Dags again, but it wasn’t enough for Dags to free himself.
He was still trying to pull his body out from under the legs and weight of the damned thing, when he felt them, all around him.
He looked up, fighting for breath, his jaw still throbbing from those few punches to the face. He writhed backwards again, swinging a hard hook at the face of the man over him, but only managed to piss the damned thing off, making it hiss at him.
A crowd of dark shadows stood over Dags.
The only thing visible were the rings or red irises shining from their faces.
Dags realized he was starting to panic.
He managed to get free enough to writhe backwards on the lawn, but they had him surrounded now. He started to hit out with the angel fire, but one standing behind him grabbed his hair, even as the monster stood up long enough to kick Dags, hard, in the thigh.
Dags winced, grabbing his own leg, right before he twisted his weight sideways, trying to hook the monster’s legs.
That time, another of the demons kicked him in the face, stunning him.
He was in trouble. He knew he was in trouble, even as some part of him remained halfway in denial of that fact. Looking up, gasping, he gazed around at those red eyes, the pale faces, counting them even as he tried to decide what options he had left.
Barely a second passed while he sprawled there, fighting to think.
Then something came at him, so fast, he couldn’t get out of the way.
Everything flashed a bright white.
Pain exploded in his face and head.
Before he could pull his mind back into straight lines⏤
Everything went dark.
Chapter 14
How To Kill An Angel
“I think he’s waking up.”
The voice shocked him with its nearness, and its eerily familiarity.
“Throw another bucket on him. I saw his eyes move⏤”
“I don’t understand why we don’t just kill him now,” another voice grumbled. “Wouldn’t that solve our problems?”
“It might,” the familiar-sounding voice muttered.
“It wouldn’t solve all of our problems,” another voice reminded him.
“Wouldn’t it halve our problems?” the second voice said.
“The Father absolutely forbade it⏤” a new one began calmly, coldly.
“Only because he didn’t want the other one awakened too soon.” The second voice again. Male, his words colored by a Scottish accent. “It’s a little bloody late for that now, isn’t it, Mara? Anyway, if we kill her, too, who cares?”
“He doesn’t want her dead, either,” the calm, cold female voice said.
That must be Mara.
Whoever she was, she sounded like she was in charge.
“He doesn’t want either of them dead,” Mara added. “Get that through your thick skulls. He’s only told us this again and again.”
“Sentiment,” the familiar voice muttered, as if the word repulsed her.
“Does the Father have to know?” the Scot grumbled under his breath.
The one they called Mara let out a disbelieving snort.
“I think he might notice, Molokai.”
Another male voice added, “Over half the Father’s plans right now concern the exact, precise timing around when to awaken the two of them. Especially her, since the male is halfway there already. Mara is right. The two of you need to get on board. We are all tired of your whining, so just shut up and grow a pair.”
Dags could almost see the male shake his head.
“Did you not see how easy this one was to take down tonight?” he added, disgust in his voice. “What are you even afraid of?”
“Why does the Father care about that female so much, anyway?” another voice complained, and now Dags was starting to lose track of all of them. “Is it just to manipulate this one? To get what he wants out of the male?”
“It is not for us to know all the Father’s plans,” the one named Mara warned. “The point is, if we hurt this one too much, we have no idea what it will do to her. If she awakens before we can get to her, the Father will know. And it will anger him.”
“So what?” the Scot grumbled.
“So what?” Mara said mildly. “You would disobey him so easily, Molokai? I wonder if you will feel the same after he yanks your spine out of your back?”
Molokai grunted, about to speak, but another voice got there first.
“Perhaps we should disobey him,” the familiar, female voice murmured. “…if to do so would protect him.”
She paused at the silence her words produced.
Dags felt her look around at the others.
“Isn’t that our first duty?” she pressed. “To protect the Father? Regardless of the cost to ourselves?”
Her voice hardened to metal.
It grew louder, too, and Dags could almost feel her staring down at him.
“I say we kill them both,” she said coldly. “Take the heat from the Father. If those pious jerks are so heaven-bent on interfering down here, let them bring the winged ones back for another incarnation. That gives us… what? Fifteen years? Eighteen? It would be at least that long before he’s old enough to be a pain in our asses again. By then, the Father will be well established here. He’ll probably even thank us⏤”
“He won’t thank you,” another male said, with a deep voice. “It is sheer arrogance to t
hink you know better than our Father, Leticia.”
“Just shut up… all of you.” Mara’s words were cold as ice. “I told you. The Father forbade it. He wants them alive. He was not ambiguous on that point.”
“We could at least fuck him up a little,” Molokai muttered, sounding petulant. “Drive him up the coast a few miles. Roll him off a cliff into the ocean. That would break him enough that we could finish the ritual without all this bloody interference⏤”
“Absolutely not,” Mara warned.
“Why?” the one called Leticia growled. “Do you really think he’ll just leave us alone? Now? After he’s seen the bodies we’ve taken? It was stupid to take so many from people he knows. She’s the one we need to persuade. Not him. He’s already a lost cause.”
“The Father doesn’t think so,” Mara warned.
“He can definitely hear us,” a deeper male voice said. “I just saw his eyes flicker.”
“Why did you have to hit him so hard?” another female complained. “If you’d just stunned him, we could have shoved him in the trunk of his car and left him there.”
“We could have done that anyway,” Molokai grumbled. “We could do that now. Then drive him off a cliff into the ocean.”
“I told you,” Mara snapped. “No one is throwing him into the ocean. The Father said no. You could kill him on accident. Anyway, you’re wrong about it solving our problems, even in the short term. You know how these pious fucks are. We kill one of theirs, they send down not one, but twenty more to replace him.”
“And again, I say… So. What?” Molokai let out a disparaging snort. “In eighteen years, we won’t give a shit.”
“You’d be surprised,” Mara said, exhaling. “Eighteen years is nothing, Molokai. It is a blink to one of these creatures.”
“He’s listening to you,” the staid male with the deep voice said.
“Oh, shut up, Rupert,” Molokai snapped.
Dags fought with whether to open his eyes, whether he should try to look at the faces there. From the dull, thick throbbing of his head, not to mention the fact that he felt like he might throw up, he doubted it would make much difference.
Either they were going to kill him, or they weren’t.
He kept his eyes closed.
“He’s definitely awake,” the familiar-sounding female voice said sourly.
He was pretty sure that was the one they called Leticia.
Someone reached down, smacking him lightly on the face.
“Open your eyes, little angel,” the same female said. “We know you’re faking it. Just open up. Before we cut the lids off your face.”
“Manners, Let,” another female chided.
Dags opened his eyes warily, squinting up at a bright light.
He found himself surrounded by even more shadowy forms than he’d seen before he got knocked out. Given the brightness of the light, he guessed they must have dragged him inside. As he slowly blinked up, focusing his eyes, he found he could see faces, in addition to that dull, blood-red glow in their irises.
Two of those faces jumped out at him at once, making him flinch, and not only because they were closer to him than he’d realized when his eyes were closed.
One of those faces belonged to Jade, his friend from high school. He hadn’t recognized her voice among the others who’d been speaking.
The other face belonged to homicide detective, Kara Mossman, his not-friend from high school, but his sometimes ally, sometimes pain-in-his-ass now.
It hit him that hers had been the voice he recognized.
He hadn’t put Kara’s face with the voice until now.
He guessed that was because the demon inside her, “Leticia,” didn’t talk much like Kara Mossman. The cadence, tone, the emotion behind her words, even the words themselves were different from what he associated with the female homicide detective.
Because of that, he hadn’t made the connection.
Now he knew why Kara hadn’t been returning his calls.
Damn it.
Dags looked at Jade, then back at the homicide detective, still fighting to clear his vision, to get his brain working. Even in those foggy first seconds, it hit him that Jade looked different than Kara. Unlike the other demons, Jade looked weirdly stoned, like she was only half-there. Even stranger, Dags didn’t see the red glow in her irises.
He saw that glow in every other face hovering over him.
He had no idea what that meant.
He struggled to think. His vision wavered, cutting in and out, making him feel dizzy enough, he suspected he might have a concussion.
His hands were positioned strangely over his head.
He tried to lower one to touch his face, feeling something sticky there, something that was making his eye twitch, something that was probably blood.
His hand jerked, hit resistance.
Looking up and back, over his shoulder, he saw his wrists cuffed together, held down by a massive, black-leather, steel-toed boot. Following that boot up a pair of black jeans, then to a black T-shirt and a gold medallion on a gold chain, Dags squinted at a pale face. He recognized the giant demon from before, the one who used his jaw as a punching bag, right before someone kicked him in the face.
The thick-chested demon was standing on the chain between his cuffs, resting his whole weight on it.
Dags met the demon’s gaze, and the big guy gave Dags a wink.
“Mornin’ precious,’ he said, smirking.
Dags recognized the voice from when his eyes were closed.
It was the stoic, stone-voiced demon Dags heard telling the others that Dags was awake, that he was listening to everything they were saying.
Dags looked back at the rest of them.
The one he guessed must be Molokai was glaring at him.
Dags realized he recognized him, too.
The blond, Hollywood-looking fuck still wore the red slacks, black shirt, black jacket, and blood-red tie he’d worn at The Dolphin Club. Given that, even as a human, good ole Alvin tried to get Phoenix to play in some low-budget porno flick, Dags wasn’t too bothered by the idea of smashing the guy’s face in.
His guess that “Alvin” and “Molokai” were the same person was confirmed when the demon scowled, aiming his glare at the demon version of “Kara,” who was “Leticia” now. The two of them exchanged looks like they were both on the same page.
“I still say we kill him,” Alvin/Molokai grunted.
“I agree,” Kara/Leticia said.
A demon with dark red hair, probably Mara, gave them cold looks, but scarcely did more than roll her eyes. Clearly, she was tired of arguing the point with both of them.
Molokai aimed his glare back at Dags, his lip curling.
“I mean, look at this fuck. Just being this close to him is making me sick. I can’t believe he and the Father are even the same species. I’m going to need to kill someone just to get the smell off me. Or at least torture a dog or something.”
Dags’ jaw hardened more.
Kara/Leticia smirked at him, obviously seeing his anger.
The one called Mara was unmoved by Molokai’s words. “We’re not killing him, brother. We have our orders. Stop squealing like an angry little piglet.”
“So what do we do with him, then?” Kara/Leticia asked.
She smirked at Dags.
“Could we play with him a bit, at least?”
“He’s seen our faces,” another demon said, a female Dags didn’t recognize. “We can’t just let him leave. We need to give him some of that potion. The stuff the Father had us make. This one is still human enough. It should work on him, enough to make him forget. I say we dose him, and drive him out into the wilderness somewhere, dump the body. He won’t die from that, and like Molokai said, it’ll get him out of our hair for a few days.”
Frowning down at Dags, the same demon added,
“Otherwise, he’s going to come back here. We can’t afford to kill him by accident, and the Father doesn’t wan
t us to move again. This one already forced us to give up one refuge. The one that stuntman lined up for us in East Hollywood~~”
“That place was a dump,” Leticia/Kara smirked. “I can’t believe the Father actually intended to live there. It was an insult.”
“It was only meant to be temporary,” Mara said, rolling her eyes.
“Children.” Rupert that time, his voice warning. “We’re getting off-track.”
The Kara-demon never stopped staring at Dags’ face.
For a few seconds, the one named Mara stared at Dags, too.
“I agree we should use the drug,” she said, her scrutiny sharpening. “He’s not a threat to us, but it’s better if we get him out of the way. From what the Father told me, this one doesn’t know anything yet. We should do everything in our power to keep it that way.”
Mara looked up, glaring first at Leticia/Kara, then at Molokai/Alvin.
“He’s safer to us stupid than pissed off and worried about his mate. We’ll dose him and leave him somewhere, like Gisele said. That will keep them both busy while we finish preparations. It will keep the Father’s mate safe. It covers all the bases. Once we finish, it won’t matter what he remembers.”
“We can’t wipe him totally?” the Alvin-demon said, his full lips pursing.
“We can try. But he is an angel.” Mara looked down at Dags, quirking a dark eyebrow. “I think we should give him everything we have left. It’s better to overdose him than to give him too little. Once he remembers what we did, he’ll only be more determined to find answers. It’s in his nature. He won’t be able to help himself.”
Another male demon spoke.
Dags squinted up at him, and was shocked to recognize him as his gardener.
“You say he doesn’t have help,” the demon-gardener said. “But wasn’t he talking to that old Catholic, the exorcist, at one point? I heard he contacted witches, too. Real ones. Well. A few real ones, anyway. Most were pretty much one-trick ponies, but a few of them⏤”
“That’s not what I meant.” Mara glared at him from where she crouched next to Dags. “I meant others of his kind. We can’t have him seeking out the others. We can’t have him getting a real education on what he is, or what his abilities are. I don’t care what a few humans with low-grade Earth magic can tell him.”
Bad Angel Page 11
