“You’re a bully,” said Logan, glaring defiantly. “What’s worse, you’re stupid. The councillors are going to take your nuts off, McNaulty. You know what they do to people like you.”
McNaulty chuckled. “The councillor’s aren’t coming. Just like they didn’t come at Club Noir. You have no idea what’s going on. They aren’t coming back, ever. This town is ours now. There’s a new order in charge. You’ll be around long enough to see the birth of it. But not your friend.” McNaulty turned his attention to Lee.
The Chinese vampire had been ignoring Logan and McNaulty’s verbal duel. Breathing in and out the entire time. In and out. Eyes shut. Focused.
“I know you can hear me. Well I’ve got news for you. You’re dead as soon as Maeve gets here.” McNaulty glanced at Logan to see if the name got a reaction. Logan gave him a blank stare. “She’s gonna tear you apart.”
Logan watched as a new figure entered the room. It was the vampire that he had seen, briefly, at Pier 39. The one Lee had tracked to the mansion. He wore a priest’s robe with the white collar, and the same black, wide-brimmed pilgrim’s hat. For a few second, he watched McNaulty threaten an impassive Lee.
“That’s enough,” he said sharply, making his presence known.
Fear flashed over McNaulty’s face. He rose and waddled over to the vampire. “I didn’t tell them anything,” he whined.
Logan caught McNaulty’s eye. Smirked, when he knew his former chief could see it. “Like I said. You’re a little bitch-boy for these vampires. Grow some balls, McNaulty.”
McNaulty fumed, once again beet red. Embarrassed at being called names in front of his master. It was so pathetic that Logan just shook his head.
McNaulty pointed a chubby finger and leaned in Logan’s direction. “You’re dead!” he shouted. “You hear me? Dead! I won. You can kiss your precious city goodbye.” With that, he opened the door and stomped out. His enforcer guards followed.
The vampire sighed. Holding his hands behind his back, he looked down his long, straight nose at the smears of blood on the floor. Then, to Logan and Lee. “You think you are clever.” He shook his head, casually walked over to Logan.“I’m going to have so much fun with you.” He turned to Lee. “Such a disappointed,” he said, with a sad frown. Logan noticed that the vampire’s hair was unusually short for a vampire, almost a buzz cut. His face was long, with the hanging jowls of a bloodhound. He looked old. And, being a vampire, that meant he was very old. There were tears in his robe from Lee’s bullets.
“We had such high hopes for you,” the vampire continued. “But then, you never wanted to join us, did you? You dirtied your skin instead. I’ll never understand degeneracy. Maybe you will change your mind when the ritual begins. I wonder how long you will last without blood. It will be interesting to find out.” He took a knife from inside his robe and cut Lee’s bonds.
Lee leapt at him. The vampire grabbed him by the throat, and threw him to the floor. “Think on your sins,” he said, voice full of anger. He pointed at Logan with a long arm. “That is a marked slave. Maeve gives him to you. Take the holy sacrament and feast upon his blood. Gorge yourself. Christ has given you another chance. You have only to take him into your heart.” His voiced changed, taking on a tone of pity. “My advice,” he said, over his shoulder as he turned and walked to the door, “do it sooner than later. We both know you cannot last.”
20
“Run!” Zyzz shouted.
The building was coming down, dust and loose pieces of drywall breaking apart and falling from the ceiling. Zyzz looked around frantically for a window, but could not find any. It was a measure of security that the top floor, the archive, was only accessible by the stairs and elevator.
Going back down was not an option; they had no time for that, not even considering the mass of stranded hell spawn they would meet on the lower floors.
Laura jumped over a snapping swipe from the arch demon’s pet monster. She bolted for the doors leading into the archive, bushy tail trailing behind as she leapt over the broken counter.
Clint was not as quick, or as eager to leave Zyzz alone in the hallway. He circled away from the monster, back-peddling so that it faced away from the door that Laura had just gone through.
Zyzz did not wait for the remaining ghouls to come after him. Five, long strides brought him to the archive door. He mustered his strength, picked up a chunk of wood from the broken reception counter and hurled it at the giant hell spawn’s back.
The wood bounced off the protective horns protruding from the thing’s pinkish, wrinkled skin. The attack momentarily stunned it, and draw its attention. For all its muscle, it was a stupid, mindless beast. Easily baited and distracted. The question is, how do we kill it?
The building went quiet again. Zyzz glanced at the stairs, didn’t see any ghouls and surmised that during the blasts they had been knocked off their feet and tumbled back down the steps.
Clint daringly ran on all fours past the monster’s right leg.
“Dodge!” Zyzz yelled.
The monster had seen Clint coming, and swiped at Clint with open pincers, from the wolf shifter’s blind spot.
There was no hesitation. Clint dove aside, choosing the direction at random. The pincers crashed into the tiled floor behind him with the weight of a backhoe, shattering the tiles and causing a mild tremor. The pincers must have been as heavy as they looked, because the hell spawn creature was slow pulling back its arm.
Zyzz, Laura and Clint were already gone. Through the doors, then taking their first left into a row of bookshelves to break line of sight.
The archive was one large, tube-shaped chamber, three floors high, with a domed ceiling. Two stairs, one on either side of the room, led to the higher floors. One was a light brown, laminated wood. Thick, rounded railing spiralling up alongside the steps. The other stair had collapsed, most of it laying in a blackened, flame-chewed pile on the main floor. When it fell, the pieces of wood had knocked over several bookshelves. The books were spilled all over the floor, several feet high in some areas. The bookshelves directly knocked over had also then gone on to knock over other bookshelves. A domino effect that had laid low nearly half of the shelves on the main floor.
The smell of oil and brimstone was strong in the air, leaving Zyzz no doubt as to the kind of magic that had taken place here—that Mona was mixed up with.
His mate’s scent was strong. His guess in the elevator had paid off; Mona did come to the top floor.
She was nowhere in sight. Perhaps under a pile of books, but that was the only option, and an unlikely one at that.
Mona was gone. And instead of finding and rescuing her, Zyzz had led his best friends to their death.
The library shook again, this time hit from the other side by the Masters. A book fell from a shelf on the second floor and bonked off of Zyzz’s head. It drew his attention upward. He saw a group of shadow demons on the third floor standing in a circle. They chanted a black magic spell, while holding their staffs in both hands and pounding the bottoms on the floor in unison. They were so deep into the spell that they hadn’t noticed the intrusion.
So this is why the pet monster was put out to guard the front.
As soon as the thought entered his mind, there came the sound of the creature’s giant hooves stomping on the floor. Coming closer, making for the inside of the archive.
No windows in here. The dome is made of glass, but it’s too high to break through and escape.
Zyzz winced, a thread of pain winding up through the broken bones in his arm. “We kill those demons,” he growled. “Then we kill their pet…And hope the Masters don’t collapse the building.”
Laura and Clint nodded. It was all they had, the only path forward.
No better time to act than now, Zyzz thought. The hell spawn was about to enter the archive. When it did, it was likely that the shadow demons would notice and take a minute to hurl spells at whatever had slipped past their pet. From their vantage point on the third f
loor, it would be easy shooting.
Zyzz jumped, grabbed an empty shelf set against the wall, and began to climb. It was hard going. He only had one arm and two legs. Clint and Laura passed him almost immediately, climbing like commandos for the third floor. They were directly under the shadow demons, climbing straight up toward their chanting circle.
One of them absently looking over the edge. That’s all it would take.
Zyzz climbed as fast as he could to catch up. He didn’t want to be the laggard who got everyone caught. Doubly so because he was the alpha. He had to maintain his position, even if injured. It’s when an alpha is hurt and showing weakness that challengers choose to pounce. Zyzz didn’t have to worry about that with Clint. But it was a bad to let a lesser shifter take the lead. Looking at their backs while they surged ahead was not a sight that Zyzz planned on getting used to.
It did not last long.
The hell spawn monstrosity came roaring into the archive. Clint, Laura and Zyzz all saw and heard it. Even without eyes, the creature spotted them right away. It turned its head in their direction, lowered its horns and charged.
It moved faster than out in the lobby. The fact that unwanted guests had slipped past it must have made it agitated. It kept roaring as it ran. Not as loudly as its initial battle shout, but loud enough to draw the shadow demons’ attention.
Time slowed as the hell spawn charged through the archive. The full bulk of its weight pressed down on the sharp edge of its hooves, breaking, tearing into the covers and pages of the priceless books that it trod upon.
Zyzz glanced up. By all rights the shadow demons should have stopped their chanting to hurl black magic spells, but they did not. They continued to chant and pound their staffs against the ground, either not hearing, or too busy to be interrupted.
They did not even lose their balance when their pet monster slammed against the bookshelf below.
Clint and Zyzz were knocked off. Zyzz managed to swing himself to the side before losing his grip, and landed on a pile of books a few feet from the horned monster. Clint was not so fortunate. He fell straight down. He turned and twisted in the air to try and change direction, but it was no good. He was falling straight for the crown of horns sticking up from the monster’s head. And he would have died, if Laura hadn’t used her powerful legs and leapt, voluntarily, from her perch high on the shelf and knocked Clint off course.
The pair landed in a tangle atop a knocked over bookshelf. Clint groaned, having hit the hardwood at a bad angle.
Zyzz was already on his feet. The monster had embedded its horns in the wall. For the moment, it was stuck.
The time for stealth was over. A fresh wave of black magic smell, oil and brimstone, washed over the archive. The shadow demons pounded their staffs faster now. Their chanting rose from what had been soft mutterings to the force of an unholy choir.
Zyzz ran to the stairs. The ritual must be near completion. I have to stop them!
He didn’t look to Clint and Laura. He ran, cradling his bad arm against his chest. Stumbling, as his shifter form wavered—flickered, too fast for anyone to notice but himself, between his wolf and human forms.
The magic imbued in his blood was running out. His time as a giant wolf was coming to an end. His gifted magic needed time to replenish.
Another blast, and the stairs rattled where they were bolted to the wall of the archive. But they did not collapse, and Zyzz kept hold of the large railing. The building groaned in the aftermath of the Masters’ attack. Shifted on its foundations.
Zyzz ignored it, clenched his stomach muscles, clenched his jaw and ran on. Holding as fast as he could to his shifter form. Only a minute longer…Only a minute…
He didn’t know what he could accomplish. Even if he took out the group of distracted shadow demons, the library was still coming down. But it was something. So what if Zyzz was going to die? Did that mean he should just lay down and wait for it to happen? Hell no! The foul hell spawn were up to something big. A huge, black magic spell that required extreme focus and minutes, if not hours, of a rising chant. Whatever it was, it would be bad for the Academy. Bad for San Francisco. Bad for the priceless books. Bad for the Masters, all the gifted men and women who had come to fight for the Academy, and bad for Zyzz’s friends. If he could make it his final act to spoil the shadow demons’ spell and ensure they were brought with him into the abyss…An alpha shifter can’t ask for a better death.
Zyzz reached the top of the stairs. He pushed himself to run faster. He passed the remnants of the second, burnt stairs and caught another whiff of Mona’s scent. Zyzz only hoped that she was gone from the library. He held onto the smell of Mona, and all the memories of their time together. Wanting to keep them in his mind in the moment of his death, which seemed ever more near.
His shifter form failed him. He was not strong enough, lacking the experience to control his shifter form for any longer. He sprawled to the floor a dozen paces from the shadow demons’ circle. Once again human.
Zyzz reached down deep in his magic. Gathered enough of it to shift again, if only for a couple of seconds. His body screamed at him to stop, to let go. Any more and you’ll kill yourself!
Zyzz picked himself up, sharp claws digging into the carpet. He threw himself forward—but it was too late.
The shadow demons stopped chanting. Oil and brimstone, wave after wave, rolled out from where they stood, washing away the remnants of Mona’s scent. A new magical force entered the archive, far more powerful than anything Zyzz had known. It swept through the archive like a gale, then settled in the middle of the demon’s circle. Concentrated itself, tighter and tighter, until it took form as a vertical slit of shimmering darkness. It was not the work of the shadow demons, but of a force that they had summoned.
A rift opened, black and bubbling, oozing and spitting a thick liquid from its surface, which was oval in shape and wide enough for a hunched shadow demon to pass into.
The library shuddered. The dome shattered above, raining shards of glass down through the whole archive. Zyzz dove and took cover under a tipped over bookshelf. Watched as the first shadow demon walked into the black liquid and disappeared from sight.
The other shadow demons easily summoned a psionic shield over their heads; a temporary umbrella lasting only as long as it took for the broken glass to bounce and break off it. Zyzz waited until after the glass crashed against the cover of his bookshelf. Then he crawled out from under it, took five steps and tackled a shadow demon.
The others stepped away, entering through the rift one by one as Zyzz wrestled against the one he had attacked. His lame arm and weak, flickering wolf form made him an easy opponent. The shadow demon knocked him across the head with a hard blow from his staff. Zyzz tasted blood. He was stunned, unable to move as the shadow demon stepped to the rift. That was when his shifter form finally failed him, the last dredges of his magical fuel utterly exhausted and spent.
Zyzz picked himself up, jumped on the shadow demon for the second time. Using the jiu-jitsu he had been taught to hang onto the demon’s back and get his arm around its throat for a choke. The demon did not fall. It carried Zyzz, staggering forward and into the bubbling black.
21
“He’s gone!” Laura called over her shoulder.
She was still in her bobcat form, and ran with perfect balance up the railing of the stairs. Clint was running next to her on the steps, a couple of feet behind. They had avoided the largest glass shards, but not all of them. Blood ran down Laura’s fur from where two pieces of glass had slashed through her thick hide.
She feared that Clint was hurt even worse. Her ears picked up his heavy breathing, and the sound of his paws hitting the stairs at an uneven rate. His usual, loping stride ruined by an injury.
The hell spawn below had taken hardly any damage at all. Laura had hoped for the shards of glass to kill it. Instead, they had broken on the horns that protruded all over the creature’s body.
Laura glanced over her shoul
der in time to see the creature grab hold of the stairs with both pincers, roar, and pull back with its entire weight.
The stairs jolted. Laura and Clint kept their balance. They passed the second floor, reached the third and got off. The monster continued to wrestle with the ladder, thrashing, making the metal squeal where the bolts began to tear out from where they had been set into the wall.
Another blast rocked the library. Laura heard the sound of crumbling brick. Felt the weakness of the building in the trembling floor. The Masters were taking their time, toying with the hell spawn trapped inside the library. They could have collapsed the building in an instant. Perhaps they were trying to smoke the demons out into the open, where they could both kill them without destroying any books.
If that’s their game, they’ve reached the end of it. The building can’t take any more damage.
She glanced back to see how Clint was faring.
He was having a hard time keeping up. Blood ran steadily down one of his legs. As Laura was watching, he tripped on a fallen bookshelf and wiped out into a pile of books. He propped himself up with one arm, and his shifter form faded. Clint was human again, and without the fur to hide it, Laura saw that he was cut deeply on his leg, a couple of inches about his right knee. She saw the white of bone.
Laura turned back. She shifted out of her bobcat form. Reached down and helped Clint to his feet.
He grabbed her hand and, as she pulled him up, Laura couldn’t help but think of how handsome he was. Clint’s cleft chin, high cheekbones and narrow eyes made him look arrogant half the time, and suspicious the other half. That’s how Laura had judged them when they first met. It didn’t take long for her to realize that he was actually one of the rare individuals who wears his heart on his sleeve. Honest, and more vulnerable that he would ever admit.
Clint shouted to energize himself. Somehow, he managed to limp forward nearly at a run. The rift hadn’t yet begun to shrink, but that could start happening at any second.
Faerie Empire: An Urban Fantasy Novel (Vampire's Bane Book 2) Page 13
