by Harley James
Cruz was still talking in that soothing voice. Jessie could see his lips moving, the tight lines around his eyes the only sign of stress on his tattooed face. But his sound had muted. All the wet, gory sounds of bloodshed and fighting had receded, too. Nate would die if no one did anything to help. In the vacuum of her mind, Jessie’s eyes drank in her surroundings and saw many things at once. Bodies of both sleeping and dead party goers amid the overturned tables and chairs. Dorian, Spencer, Jawahar, and Katherine engaged in their own life and death struggles with creatures Jessie would have never believed possible. Nate’s blood slicking up the floor, pieces of tendon and muscle flayed from his body and hanging in shreds.
The jagged edge of the broken, metal chair leg.
She kneed Cruz between the legs and dove for the length of sharp steel. When she had the chair leg in her hands, she ran toward the creature and used her inertia to try to drive the chair leg like a stake into his back. The metal failed to penetrate his thick skin. As the creature turned toward her, its elbow spike sliced open her cheek. She had a second to stare into its cold, intelligent eyes—a moment to face her death—before the eyes, horns, and head were suddenly gone, sliced cleanly away by Nate’s silver sword.
She blinked, saw black, and went down.
She came back sputtering and squinting against a bright light.
She shook her head. Felt like she was gonna throw up, her brain was spinning so fast. And Heavens, the smell. Her cheek burned like hell’s flame, too. She brought her hand to her face. Sticky. She cracked her eyes open wider to peer at her fingers. Blood?
“Get her hands on him, now!”
Sounded like Katherine. Hands grasped Jessie under the armpits, jerking her upright into a seated position. They placed her hands on something gooey and slippery. Her mouth dried as she came instantly, brutally awake.
“Nate!” Her fingers fumbled with his bloody skin, trying to rake pieces of him up over his raw, exposed innards as he lay dying on the dance floor. “Somebody call an ambulance, please hurry! Help me stop the bleeding!” She yelled for Dorian and Cruz. Nate was bleeding out, yet those two were too busy dragging the beheaded monster off to the other side of the club to give a damn. Same with Spencer, who was doing weird swirly things with his hands near the club entrance. And Katherine, blonde hair trailing from her chignon, was on her knees beside Nate, her eyes closed, her lips moving in what looked like a silent prayer.
But prayers alone weren’t gonna do it. Why didn’t anyone do anything useful? Jessie grabbed a tablecloth that had fallen to the floor and pressed the fabric to Nate’s chest to help slow his rapid blood loss.
It’s not enough. A great gasp broke through her lips. “Katherine, please, please help!”
When Nate’s Unholy Inc partner opened her eyes, they were a crystalline pink, a color that spread through the rest of her skin, down her neck to suffuse her whole body in a pale, rosy glow. She placed one hand on Nate’s forehead and one on his mangled hand. “Lay your hands upon his heart and together we will heal him.”
“What?”
“Do it!” The walls shook with Katherine’s unearthly bellow.
Jessie jumped and laid her hands over the strips of skin where his heart had stopped pumping moments ago. She’d known because the blood had stopped flowing out of him. Jessie’s throat burned, her chest feeling as torn apart as Nate’s. She bowed her head and closed her eyes, unable to stop her gasping sobs.
Nate was dead. Killed by a monster.
Monsters are real.
She leaned back, ready to end this healing farce when the skin underneath her fingertips tightened. She blinked, shook her head and looked again. Nate’s color was returning, his tissues knitting together right in front of her eyes.
The glow beaming from Katherine faded and shone, faded and shone abruptly, like a child playing with a dimmer switch. Four, then five times until Spencer gathered her as she shivered violently, then slumped back, clearly exhausted as if she’d…what? Absorbed some of the horrific damage Nate’s body had sustained?
Jessie’s gaze skittered back and forth between Nate, Katherine, and Spencer. Then down at Nate’s body that was repairing itself as she watched. “What are you people?”
Spencer ignored her question. “Kiss him. It will help him mend faster since you’re his sou—”
Katherine snapped her fingers in front of his mouth before he could finish what he was saying. He spared a quick glare at Katherine before yelling at Jessie. “If you care about him at all, do it now!”
“Are you kidding me?” What brand of crazy was this? Nate needed a surgeon, not some lip lock.
Spencer frowned. “Hurry, Jessica. With Katherine now depleted, we need Nate at full capacity to reverse the wards to forestall the demons from entering the club.”
“Demons.” Jessie mumbled.
“Aye, demons,” Spencer snarled back. “The ones that crawled out when your brilliant uncle decided to unfasten a Seam of Hell.”
The ground trembled, shaking the walls so hard more plaster flaked off the load-bearing pillars, raining down hazy dust. Jessie leaned over Nate to shield him from falling debris, his body still knitting together, but considerably slower since Katherine wasn’t touching him any longer. Jessie pressed her lips to Nate’s, feeling a strange energy wrapping around her. Around them. She sighed into his mouth as his lips parted for her. Then, his hand was in her hair.
She leaned back abruptly, blinking at him. “You’re not dead.”
“So it appears.” Nate smiled and the great pressure in her chest began to ease. She wrapped her arms around him and squeezed as hard as she could, blubbering, until…
She reeled back on her haunches, staring at his newly perfected face. “I’ve never even had a choice in any of this, have I?”
Nate sat up, sparing a quick glance at his chest as his face grew serious. “Yes, you have, Jessie. Everything that I am, and everything that happens is because of free will.”
Everything that had happened to her was free will? Riiight. “What are you?”
He stood, then offered to help her to her feet, but she refused. He looked around as though assessing.
“Answer me!” she cried.
“I’m a post-human. We are called Guardians because we protect humans from demons.”
“Post human. So you’re an angel?”
“No. I was born a man, but because of my less-than-ethical choices, after I died, I became…what I am today.”
“Which means?”
“I have super senses, I live a really long time, and I have a second chance to make good decisions.”
This was so far-fetched she wouldn’t be able to make this shit up if she tried. “Does everyone get this buyout option?”
“No. Only those who were bad in their human—”
“We don’t have time for this, Nate.” Katherine’s voice held a slight waver Jessie had never detected before. It wasn’t comforting. “Asmodeus is rallying outside. I heard a few demons say his name. And…I feel it.”
Jessie couldn’t help looking around. There were so many pockets of shadows in the nightclub. “Has anyone seen Dante?”
Nate nodded. “He’s asleep with the others in the back room near the pool tables.”
Thank Heavens. “Who’s Asmodeus?”
Nate shoved a table and two leather benches aside to retrieve his sword. When he stood, he looked at Katherine and nodded his head toward Jessie. “Heal her. Please, Katherine.”
How could he know about the lump on the back of her head. “No, I’m…”
Katherine laid her cool fingers on the back of Jessie’s skull where her pulse beat in the goose egg that seemed to be driving nails into her brain. Soon, Katherine’s fingers warmed, and a bubbly feeling floated through Jessie like the prelude to a happy buzz. Then, her pain was gone.
When Katherine removed her fingers, Jessie touched the back of her head. The large contusion was gone. Unbelievable. “Thank you.”
Kath
erine acknowledged the gratitude with a slight dip to her chin, even paler than before. Jessie righted a chair and patted the seat, which Katherine accepted. Dorian and Spencer drew patterns in the air with their hands as they chanted, making quarter turns at the end of each breath. Members of the security team who’d come from other Unholy Inc nightclubs were sprinkling greenery, salt, and water from a cross-adorned container along the perimeter of the building, concentrating on the doors and windows. The walls still trembled.
Almost as though something wanted in.
“Who’s Asmodeus?” Jessie repeated. “And how can we protect ourselves?”
A muscle ticked in Nate’s jaw as he looked her in the eye. “Asmodeus is one of Satan’s children. He’s a dark prince who commands one of the Legions of Hell. We protect ourselves by killing him before he kills us.”
Her jaw slackened, her shoulders fell. She shook her head because what else was she supposed to do? Maybe start screaming. She’d never be able to stuff this knowledge away again. This was material you read about in horror stories or watched on TV. This couldn’t be her life. “What does he want?” she whispered.
Nate jogged to a hidden panel in the front of the stage and withdrew a few small, circular blades from a velvet-lined box, a black pouch that he attached to his belt loop, and a bottle of clear liquid, which also had a cross on it. Then he stalked back to her, his expression inscrutable. His face was so dear, yet so foreign seen through these new lenses.
“We’re not entirely sure what he wants yet. I’m sorry you had to find out this way. You should have stayed in the sanctorum,” he said.
“That’s what you call the room downstairs.”
“Yes,” he replied.
“Can you really kill one of Satan’s children?”
He brushed a curly piece of hair from her eyes and smiled. “I’m going to keep you safe, Jess.”
“Your avoidance of the question isn’t reassuring. You weren’t even going to tell me—about any of this—were you?”
He hesitated. “I was.”
“Don’t lie to me.”
“I was. Tonight. I just needed time to figure out how I was going to explain. In my experience—hell, in almost all of our experiences—most people can’t handle knowing about beings like us. Knowing that we exist only because there are demons who walk the Earth, who crave inflicting pain and suffering before sucking the life out of you. You can’t tell me you’re fine with all this. That you’re not scared out of your bloody mind?”
“Yeah, but…ooo, I hate this!” She paced around the room, stepping over a few people they hadn’t yet moved off to the side.
Spencer approached Nate. They stared at each other without saying anything, until Spencer nodded, then turned to walk to where Dorian and Cruz stood by the DJ stage. While they’d looked at each other, she’d felt the word Alexios echo powerfully through her mind.
Felt? Why—or how—would she feel a word?
“You can talk to me—in my mind. Can’t you?” she asked.
Nate’s eyebrows lifted momentarily. “It’s nothing to be afraid of, Jess.”
“That’s easy for you to say!” She gestured to the unconscious, costumed cat-girl curled up beside a one-eyed pirate on the floor. “Will Dante and the rest of these people wake up normally?”
“Yes.”
“Will they remember anything?”
“Most of them were drunk when we put them under,” he replied.
“But not Dante.”
Nate sighed. “No, not Dante.”
“How long will you keep them like this? And how will you explain the time advance?”
“Their minds will be wiped of all but how much fun they were having. If they’re confused about anything, they’ll blame it on the alcohol.”
“Mind wiping? You can do that?”
He shrugged. Unreal. This was all way too scary. She pinched the underside of her forearm, but the painful sting meant she wasn’t dreaming. She’d never been the kind to explain away paranormal stuff. The universe was too big to think humans could perceive everything that might be out there. But she’d never thought she’d witness the veneer falling between what she thought she knew…and what was actually going on.
Her heart thumped painfully in her chest. “When did you live? Like, how long ago?”
He approached her, but she backed away.
“Jessie, we’ve shared so much. I know you feel a connection between us.” He raised a hand to touch her cheek, then dropped it. She did feel something, but how could she trust that? If he could make the floor heave with a thought, who was to say he couldn’t manipulate her feelings, too?
Nate’s lips lifted briefly, but the hollowness in his eyes told another story. “I was killed in 1915 when a German Zeppelin dropped a bomb on London during World War I. Besides Dorian, who only died five years ago, I’m actually considered fairly young.”
She tried to swallow but her mouth was too dry. “How many others of… your kind are there?”
“Several hundred operate nightclubs in the Unholy Inc network, and thousands more are Guardian free agents who deal with rogue demons around the world. I don’t know our exact numbers.”
World War I, and he was considered young by Guardian standards? Black spots swam in her vision. Nate helped her fold in half at the waist so her head was close to her knees. She blinked rapidly.
“Deep breaths, Jess.”
She inhaled so deeply, she started coughing. After a few more breaths, Nate pulled her up. His eyes searched hers, but she knew he wouldn’t find what he was after. She was blank, washed out, short-circuited. She didn’t even know what questions she should be asking.
Nate walked her across the dance floor toward the hallway. “I need you in the sanctorum until we get this figured out.”
She pulled out of his grasp. “I need to check on my grandparents.”
“I will make sure they are protected. I promise, Jess, but you can’t leave right now.” You’d never make it, was the implied meaning in his eyes. She put her hands in her hair and looked around helplessly, trying to make sense of it all.
Spencer jogged up to them. “Nate, the metropolis dropped.”
“What do you mean, dropped?” Nate asked.
“The Twin Cities and many suburbs—I’m not sure the precise number at this point—have descended twenty feet into the earth’s crust, cutting off power, communications, roads, and all means of transportation—air and otherwise—since it also appears there is a force field encompassing the entire area,” Spencer said.
“My grandparents!” Jessie cried. “Everyone’s buried alive?”
Spencer turned to her. “No, Jessica, I’m sorry I frightened you. What I mean is that the Twin Cities are still generally intact—however there’s a twenty-foot cliff jutting up around the edges of the drop. The area literally took an elevator-ride two stories down into the Earth’s crust.”
Oh My God.
The walls shook with an aftershock, detaching two of the large disco balls from the ceiling beams. Dorian sprinted to catch them as they fell. Slow, scary sounds swirled outside. That would be the demons. Don’t. Panic. Nate grabbed Jessie’s arm again to pull her toward the hallway, but she planted her feet. “How are you guys going to fix this?” She looked from Nate to Spencer, but neither of them said anything. She could feel strange vibrations in the air, though, so they were probably doing that telepathy thing again. “Well? Don’t tell me this ‘dropped earth’ thing hasn’t happened before.”
“Not in the last four hundred years or so,” Spencer drawled. “We could ask Jinx or Alexios for a wider time frame. However, I don’t ever recall them talking about—”
“Four hundred years?” Jessie shook her head. “This…this is just…I can’t believe this. Are demons around humans all the time, but we just don’t see them?”
Nate nodded as more demons howled outside. “Dark spirits who find a way back to Earth have to possess a human host quickly as their mist forms ca
n’t survive long without a physical body on this plane.”
Horrors. “What’s going on right now then?” When Nate pursed his lips, she put a palm on his chest. “If you’re not going to tell me, I want to go home.”
He grabbed her hand and pulled her into the hallway, only stopping when they were out of earshot of the others. He took her other hand, squeezing both of them in one of his own. His eyes looked haunted. “Do you want me to wipe your memories?”
Other sounds—dark and threatening—scattered through her mind. She looked over at the mouth of the stairs expecting to see the man in the suit standing there again. Maybe she should have Nate make her forget all of it. Then these voices would go away. “This is all insane. I should say yes, but I can’t.”
He nodded, looking relieved, which afforded her some relief as well. He held up his hands. “I’ll be right back. Stay. Here.”
She followed him to the dance floor where Spencer was arguing with Katherine. When Nate noticed her he threw up his hands. “Woman, why don’t you listen?”
“You’re not my…” Well, actually he was her boss. Then again, she didn’t really have a job anymore since the whole metro area was Demon Central. “I think all bets are off at this point, don’t you?”
“No. Right now, martial law rules. You don’t know anything about these demons, so you’ll take my word as law.”
“Oh, really?”
“Really.”
“Knock it off, you simpering fools. Your fatal attraction is beyond tedious when we have work to do.” Spencer glared at them before waving Cruz and Dorian over. “You chaps alright with holding things down here so I can venture out again…” Spencer’s voice trailed off, his eyes going blank, then crackling with anger before he refocused on those standing around him. “My head of security at Inferno has informed me that there are high level demons at my club as well. More fallout from the rift in the Seam, I’d wager, though our city hasn’t plummeted into the Earth’s bowels, so that’s something. Katherine, have you checked in with Liquid?”
The female Guardian shook her head, and moments later, her eyes took on that same faraway look until a battle light came into her gaze. Nate yelled, “Wait!” But it was too late. Spencer and Katherine simply….vanished.
