“Agreed. So, where do we meet?”
“I’ll let you decide the time and place, but make it soon, Shaw. The things you’ve started in motion are dangerous and everyone’s lives are at stake the longer we drag this out. Oh, and don’t bring any of your pets or Ereshkigal’s. I see anyone but Rala and Mike and the deal is off, understand?”
Shaw acknowledged my warning and quickly offered a time and location for the meet, and Poe closed out the connection.
“You don’t think she’ll actually go through with this, do you?” he asked.
I shook my head. “No, probably not, at least not alone, but it doesn’t matter really. All she has to do is crack the door.”
The rest was up to me.
Well, not entirely.
After Poe and Veronica left, and Maximus and Venai back in their cells, I made a call I never thought I’d make.
Sixteen
Time ticked by slowly as we waited for Shaw. I’d positioned Rachelle in a safe spot in Hell, Rahim there to protect her just in case, a pinhole open between her location and the meeting place so she could reach out with her powers. Grace and the others were scattered about nearby, just a portal away. They waited for a clear opportunity, ready to pounce in case Shaw planned an ambush.
Me, I stood dead center of an open ice field Shaw had designated as our rendezvous point, the location in northern Canada, not more than a hundred miles from where Veronica had led us in our attempt to find Rala.
Speaking of Veronica, she was nearby too, Poe holding her psychic leash. She’d been placed on tracking duty now that we’d been clued in to Irkalla. After just a few minutes, she’d pinpointed Ereshkigal, a glaring beacon in the empty wasteland that was her kingdom, as well as Nergal. Her job was to keep tabs on the couple, ensuring they weren’t working their way toward us or to give us a heads up if they were. Poe would coordinate everything, just like he was doing then.
“All set?” he asked.
I glanced over my shoulder at the trio of dread fiends I’d brought along to lug Venai and Maximus, and to provide some cover should Shaw get the drop on me.
“Yeah, as good as I can be,” I answered, feeling exposed standing out there by myself. It wouldn’t be the first time Shaw had a sniper put a round in my head. I wasn’t looking for a repeat. “Make sure Rachelle scans the surrounding area. I don’t want Shaw or her goons catching us off guard, peeling open a gate somewhere else.” I listened in as she acknowledged the message, Poe channeling us all so there was no delay in communication.
“What do we do now?” Thud asked over the mental link.
“We wait.”
Everyone settled in on their ends, their anxiety bleeding over the connection. I did my best to push it aside, trying not to let it overwhelm me. There was enough stress hanging off me that I didn’t need theirs added to it. The stuff was like alcohol. It made me do stupid things.
I’d only just settled in when Grace whispered in my skull.
“Shit! Is that her?”
I followed the mental nudge and caught sight of a dark-haired woman across the far edge of the field by herself, traipsing our direction. It only took me a second to realize it was Shaw.
“Damn it! It is. How did she get past you, Rachelle?” My heart pounded, bruising my ribcage.
“She didn’t. There has been no gate activity anywhere in the vicinity,” Rachelle assured.
“She must have walked in,” Rahim said, his basso voice rumbling across the link, “either having been air-dropped or arriving before we did, giving her time to scout the scene and not trigger us with her arrival.”
Leave it to Rebecca Shaw to screw my plans before they’d been hatched. Nothing to do about it then, I drew in a deep breath of the cold air and let it sink into my lungs to calm me. We’d expected surprises, planned for them, so I’d just have to trust that we’d adapt to whatever Shaw had planned. That thought a mantra droning on in my head, I watched her approach until she stood about right in front of me.
“I thought you said just us, Trigg?” she asked, motioning toward the dread friends, her upper lip pulled back into a sneer.
“Someone’s got to carry the baggage.” Her eyes slid around me, narrowing as she examined Venai and Maximus, seeking any signs of a trap.
I held out a photograph to her. It was a group shot of the family members I’d plucked from the prison, angled and cropped so as to provide her no clues as to where it had been taken. She took it, swallowing hard as she examined it. Her eyes trailed the photo, and I did the same with her eyes, doing my best to pick out where she paused so I had a better guess as to which one was related to her. She stumbled near the right side of the image and corrected quickly by tossing the photo aside. It fluttered to the icy ground but I had a better idea as to who to look into once I was back at the church.
“I’ll accept this as proof that you have Maximus’s captives in your possession.”
“Good.” I forced a smile. “Then let’s get on with it. I’ve shown you mine, now show me yours,” I told her, jabbing a thumb in the direction of Venai and Maximus, both still unconscious.
“I expect the DSI prisoners to be released as well, you understand.”
I nodded. “And they will be, but right now it’s about our little foursome, nothing else. You know me well enough that I wouldn’t hurt them unless I was forced to so don’t try to make me out to be the bad guy here. Just give me Rala and Mike and we’re done here, me stepping out the way so you can do whatever it is you need to about Maximus’s masters.”
“Of course,” she said, breaking out in a feral grin. “Here they are.”
“A portal is opening,” Rachelle said in my head just before I felt the whisper of its energies rippling nearby, the air turning murky as if I were bathing in a swamp.
“Someone’s coming,” Veronica warned. “Several people of power. Rala and Michael Li are with them, as well.”
Teeth clenched, I waited as the portal peeled back the air, a muted darkness filling the space where there’d only been light a moment before. Out of the blackness came the biker couple who held Rala and Mike. Both the captives wore black hoods over their heads. The muffled sounds they made as the bikers yanked them around clued me in that they were gagged under the hoods. I cringed at seeing them like that but my feelings for the bikers took over. Memories of their vile empathic energies punched my fight or flight instinct in the balls. Seeing the male biker fully healed, not a scratch on his face, chilled me. The two of them were goddamned wrecking balls. Not wanting to dwell on that, I looked past them to see who else we’d have to contend with.
An attractive woman I hadn’t seen before slithered out of the portal, her essence peppering me with antagonistic probes like wasp stings.
Her wild, wavy hair hung over her shoulders. Golden highlights gleaming in the brown. She was dressed in a long flowing robe, which reminded me somewhat of a toga, except for the skull amulet dangling from her neck, which glared at me with ruby eyes. It triggered something in my lizard brain, and I realized then I was staring at the very same item Nergal had picked up at Keyser’s house.
One mystery solved, there was still the question as to what the thing, and the woman, did.
“She calls herself Synamon, though I suspect that is not her true name,” Poe told us. “She’s a fire elemental if my surface scans of her are accurate.”
Synamon?
The jokes just wrote themselves, but I kept my mouth—and my mind—shut. She didn’t look like a woman you wanted to piss off, and I had enough folks waiting in line to kill me as it was.
Behind her, a trio of beings slipped through the gate, adding to the weird factor. They all looked exactly alike. And I don’t mean like they were twins. No, they were exact copies of each other; clones.
They were male, all tall and thin; wiry might be a better description. They stared at me through eyes that looked like suns, brilliant yellow light leaking from their sockets. The trio was model thin—what did they call
it? Heroin chic?—with sharp, angular faces and cheekbones that doubled as scalpels, sloping down to sharp chins that spotlighted the fact that they had no mouths, which was kind of disturbing to look at.
Dressed as if they were Star Trek extras or wannabe superheroes, but in all white, they had on skintight unitards that emphasized their complete lack of jiggly bits and narrow, scarecrow-ish frames. A fancy triangle emblem on the left breast of their outfits were the only adornments.
If I had to guess, they—he—was—were—aliens—an alien.
Fuck that was confusing.
“He goes by Thrice. And you would be correct. He is not of this Earth,” Poe said. “The raucous couple, however, are, both hailing from San Francisco.”
I sighed. That explained so much.
“They are gargoyles, though a breed I have never encountered before, Whitneye and Jason their names.”
Yeah? Whitneye and Jason? Fuck me sideways with a jackhammer. I’d gotten my ass handed to me by a couple of stoners from San Fran. My street cred was so gonna take a hit.
“I thought we were making a trade, Shaw, not reenacting the gunfight at the O.K. Corral,” I said.
“Don’t think to try to fool me, Trigg. I know damn well you aren’t alone, so why would you expect me to be? You came here for something other than a simple exchange of captives.”
She wasn’t wrong. Still, the fact that she’d brought an army tweaked the nipples of my plan just enough to make them raw. I was gonna have to improvise on the first part, but only a little.
Now, Rachelle.
I reached out with my energy, tendrils of red energy forming into fists and hurtling toward the bikers from each side. They went to defend against the attack, both turning and sidestepping the clumsy blows aimed at their heads.
Which was exactly what I’d wanted them to do.
A portal opened below Rala and Mike and Sergeants Morrill and Skorkowsky caught the pair and ducked low as Rachelle sealed the gate over their heads. The bikers just stared, their pinched expressions making it real clear they knew they’d screwed the poodle.
“You son of a whore!” Shaw howled, veins throbbing under her pale skin. She looked ready to blow a gasket. “Kill them all!”
“It’s Kill `em All, bitch,” Thud corrected as a portal ripped open at her side and he slammed a meaty fist dead center of her chest. She sunk in on herself and stumbled back, gasping for air before falling to a knee. “Don’t ever disrespect the `Tallica again.” The demon cleared the gate and started after her, looking to finish the job he’d started.
A blur of white caught my attention as he did, and I spun to see Thrice barrel into the crowd of dread fiends guarding Venai and Maximus. I hadn’t planned on letting Shaw get her hands on them, but also I hadn’t given any thought to what might happen if things went south. If they died, they died but, given the current climate, I figured it would be best if they didn’t end up with Shaw. To keep that from happening, I went after Thrice.
Ahead of me, he stepped to the first fiend, keeping himself at range, and drew a line through the air with an empty hand, fingers extended. His other hand followed suit, swiping diagonally, both hands a good three feet from the sub-demon. It was like high-speed Tai Chi.
Apparently, the shit was effective.
A gleaming brilliance trailed the motion of his hands and red lines appeared on the dread fiend as though he’d been struck. Thrice spun from the first fiend and slashed his hand at its legs, again a yard from the target.
That was when I saw what he’d done to the first of the fiends. The sub-demon shrieked as the red line oozed blood and the rapidly growing slash across his chest widened. Before my eyes, the top half of his body slid loose of the rest, gravity grabbing ahold and pulling it toward the ground. The second, diagonal slash made its presence known then, the body splitting further, the left arm of the fiend falling away with a chunk of its shoulder, the sub-demon cubed and falling dead where it stood.
The other sub-demon toppled as I tore my eyes from its brethren, both legs severed just below the knees. Thrice didn’t even bother delivering another blow to that one, turning his weird powers on the last of the group, slashing at its face before spinning to face me. I blasted him with a geyser of crimson energy, hoping to overwhelm him and avoid having to deal with him up close and personal.
He shot that hope all to hell.
Just as he had with the fiends, he spun and ducked with an unnatural grace, slashing his hands at the energy of my attack. Where the invisible blows struck, my blast was redirected. It struck the ground and burst toward the sky, tracers flung in every direction but his. He slipped past the barrage without a scratch.
Too bad I couldn’t say the same.
Thrice darted in and slashed at me. A shield formed on instinct but I felt the first attack land, my skin lighting up as if he’d given me a King Kong-sized paper cut and doused it in napalm. I’d managed to deflect the second attack, but that was hardly a consolation.
Agony welled in the wound as I blocked a second and third slash, my heart stuck in my throat, desperately trying to flee my body. It had seen what happened to the dread fiends and knew what was coming. So did I.
Stomach in knots, I couldn’t help but look to the wound despite Thrice still advancing on me, swiping his hands every time he thought he had an opening. I gushed with relief as I realized he hadn’t cut me through as he had the fiends, but that didn’t make it much better. The wound was easily an inch deep, the white gleam of my ribs standing out in the surgical trough that ran the length of my chest. A rush of lightheadedness washed over me right then.
Don’t get me wrong, I’d seen my blood, guts, and bones splayed out a thousand times over the course of my life, but never had I seen the potential for it to happen so easily. Every time before had been a hard-fought battle, adrenaline and my devilish heritage muting the damage and seeing me through it. This was something different, however, and that realization bit deep.
Just like Thrice did.
Caught up in my thoughts, I’d let the guy slip around my shield, and he’d taken full advantage of it. A line of misery seared the length of my left arm, from the shoulder all the way down to my wrist. Blood welled as the wound bloomed like a gory flower, splitting my biceps in half and exposing a wide groove in my forearm. Bile stung the back of my throat as I stared at the damage to my arm and I went snowblind, all my pain receptors firing at once as my body realized what happened.
Next thing I knew, I was face down, my cheek pressed against the icy ground. Thrice loomed over me, and I was glad I’d taken the time to draft the blood will for Abigail. It’d been fortuitous timing seeing how I’d likely never see her again.
That blow hit me harder than anything Thrice had done, lighting a fire in my gut. While Abigail would be better off if she never had me in her life, she’d become the whole of mine, and I wasn’t ready to give that up just yet.
I rolled over as Thrice stared down at me, his hands wavering as if he was debating what cut was best to end me. The gargoyle, Whitneye, stood just behind him, grinning, and I realized her empathic taint was infecting me, battering me with its suicidal bullshit.
“No!” I screamed, forcing the gargoyle from my head.
I wasn’t going out like that.
Before either of them realized I was back to being me, I lashed out with a kick and shattered Thrice’s knee cap. He toppled forward without a sound, drawing his hand back for a slash. I rolled to the side to avoid it, his blow striking the ground next to me while I wrapped his legs up with mine, pulling him in closer. He stretched his arms back once more to hit me, and I realized he’d grown so comfortable fighting at distance because of his abilities, that he had no clue how to scrap on the inside.
Fortunately for me, I’d watched that John Lober video on the net.
No, not the porn one.
I twisted Thrice around so he was face down on the ground and I was on his back, hooks sunk in. Then I slipped my arm under his chin,
clasping my wounded biceps with my hand. Pain screeched through my veins but I bit down and ignored it, the hold doing double duty, holding my arm together and cutting off the blood supply to Thrice’s brain.
At least I hoped it was, seeing how I didn’t know just how alien he truly was.
The biker dude, clearly realizing what I intended, ran over and put a boot in my ribs. I just ate it and squeezed harder, bones grinding under my forearm.
“Get this fucking hippy off my—” I started to say when a glistening tendril of blue wrapped around her neck and yanked her away.
“It’s like you read my mind,” I shouted over my shoulder at Grace.
“She had a little help,” Poe said in my head, reminding me of our link.
Beneath me, Thrice thrashed and beat at the ground, his power ripping deep furrows in the ice, but then he went limp, arms flopping. That’s when I put the last of my strength into twisting his head sideways. A sharp crack sounded as vertebrae gave way, and Thrice’s eyes dimmed and went dark.
I let go of him and rolled to my back before scrambling to my feet, desperate to see where the rest of the team was. My hand went back to my biceps and I did my best to keep the wound together, blood spilling through my fingers like a busted sieve.
Grace lashed at the gargoyle with her kusarigama, gray sparks flying when her blade connected with the woman’s stony flesh. She kept trying to close but Grace wasn’t playing nice, extending her chain and driving Whitneye back and maintaining the distance between them.
Off to my left—I knew this because it was the hurty side—another of the Thrices lay on the ground, his head nestled in the ice a few feet away, a disappointed look on his pale face. The third of the group was nowhere to be found.
Comfortable Grace would hold her own for a bit, I took a second to assess the field. It was damn ugly. The male gargoyle raced toward the gate, screaming for his mate to follow. She batted aside a few more of Grace’s attacks and must have realized he’d had the right of it, spinning away and bolting after him.
Thud was on his knees before Synamon, looking as if he’d played tag with a flame thrower. Scorch marks covered the majority of his body, and I could see the flesh bubbling from where I stood; could smell it even. The woman just grinned, her fists raised, red-orange flames encircling them. Her stance told me she was about to put Thud out of his misery.
Institutionalized (Demon Squad Book 10) Page 15
