by LW Herndon
“If Shalim is really pissed at me, he won’t be happy if I’m already mush when he wants to interrogate me.”
Brazko didn’t exactly come around to my way of thinking. However, he gave me a shake and lugged me to the hall with obvious annoyance. Better than being thrown to the ground and pummeled into ground hamburger in the courtyard. His preference was to be inside my head, forcing crippling delusions as he tortured my flesh. Fortunately, that doesn’t work on me. The flesh part, sort of. Something about my brain doesn’t comply with force. My clan brothers had expended their frustrations on my body instead. Not necessarily a saving grace for me, but I heal very quickly. I learn even faster. Their persistence provided invaluable training during the times I remained conscious.
I didn’t waste time on Shalim’s guard dog, though I didn’t fight him either. A framework of humility always worked better with Shalim than arrogance. My delivery to my leader on Brazko’s meat hook would actually work in my favor. Brazko hadn’t figured that out yet, which was why he’d been on gatekeeper duty for the last century.
In an effortless toss, he slung me to the ground before Shalim’s chair. I rolled out of the way and jumped to a squat before Brazko could follow through with a kick to my ribs. I might heal fast, but if I didn’t have to expend the energy, then so much the better.
“Still agile, I see, mortal.” Shalim’s black eyes, rimmed with gold, stared at me. On his throne, his proportion mimicked Lincoln, minus the monument: great height, all muscle, no beard, and no top hat. While Shalim could pummel me in a fraction of the time it would take Brazko, he would never lower himself to such behavior. He was one of the few demons in the clan who represented strength and intelligence in one package. His powerful, dangerous skills were ones I respected and avoided at all costs.
“Need to be on my toes for the clan.” From my uncomfortably close vantage point, I could see the flames in Shalim’s gold rims. I had no real wish to see his eyes this close, and it didn’t bode well for me that I could. I scrambled to my feet, respectfully bowed, and brushed off my jeans while endeavoring to keep track of Brazko’s position behind me.
“Your reception would be different had you come earlier.”
From the corner of my eye, I took in the dozen or so of Shalim’s attendees. Chaz was suspiciously absent from the throng.
“I would have done just that if I wasn’t working out the details from this last job.” A growl from Brazko was all I needed to reach over my shoulder and pull the short sword I kept holstered under my jacket for these tender visits. I whipped around quickly enough to nick the big bull in the cheek as he let loose a sizzling ball of flame from his mouth that skimmed my elbow.
Several months had lapsed since I’d trained with the group, although I couldn’t best Brazko, even at my peak. The guy was just too big. However, clan life was all about survival, not necessarily winning. I would have to make do since I was clearly on my own. Shalim wouldn’t interfere until he had extracted his pound of flesh from me.
Brazko and I circled each other, and I waited. My best shot was to hold off as long as I could. Shalim would call this off eventually; it just depended on how much of a lesson he wanted to make of me.
Humiliation for the nick I had given Brazko got the best of the big beast. He paused, focused on generating venom in his mouth. Hot spurts of lava-like magma percolate from his lips before he shot them at my face. A nasty new trick he’d acquired.
Two things happened at once. The skin over my hipbone burned like a motherfucker, and I caught the molten magma, encircled on my sword, and slung it back in a fire bolt at the bullish demon. Brazko erupted in flames, his mouth open in a deafening scream.
Shalim held out his hand to halt the remainder of the watching clan. “Enough.” With a brief movement, he doused Brazko, who subsequently disappeared. “So you’ve learned new skills, mortal.”
“Ones that will no doubt be useful to your service,” I said, a bit out of breath as I stepped out of my fighting stance and bowed my head. After a quick look around to confirm no one else wanted a piece of me, I wiped my blade off on my jeans and slid the sword back in the holster.
“A suspicious skill.” His voice rumbled across the cavern.
“Damn lucky one, too.” Cockiness didn’t quite suite the occasion, but Shalim owned whatever skills I had. I knew it, and so did he.
Shalim’s mouth twitched. “What news do you have?”
“The most recent sorcerer conjured a bound beast, torn from the nether world. I have some confirmation that the Consortium’s sorcerers are working in unison on the latest summons and kills.” At least my newest female demon contact had provided some useful information, having corroborated my suspicion of the Consortium’s involvement.
“To what end?”
“Haven’t been able to figure that out yet. This latest setup wasn’t fresh. It required time and planning. By a sorcerer more mature in their power than the one killed in the fight.”
“Was he joined by others of his ilk?”
“He didn’t anticipate my arrival and had no time to warn others. I imagine they’ve figured out he’s missing by now. The sorcerers have expanded their use of humans for ingredients in their plan.”
“I don’t care about the humans.” Shalim’s mouth drew wide in annoyance, pearl fangs visible as his hand opened to palm a ball of white-blue fire. His fingers spun the flaming cotton ball without obvious effort. He had little tolerance for humans, his appetites not fed by their emotions, unlike most of the demons in the clan. He discounted them much as people discount ants, an inevitable nuisance.
I bowed again, going for acquiescence.
“While I understand your rationale, it’s still a way we may be able to track the Consortium. Or perhaps forecast when they are ready to attack us.” I didn’t really have the evidence to back this up, but then I had nothing to refute my hypothesis either. It left me a clear opening to mix my two purposes. At least until the plan no longer worked. Otherwise, I would have to explain large gaps of time. Permission was better than forgiveness with Shalim.
Always.
He nodded, though his posture remained stiff and his temperament difficult to read, unlike the change in the fireball’s color to a disturbing rose red.
“What else have you found?”
I had hoped to avoid the details of my latest finds. “An additional component is involved in the sorcerer’s ritual.”
Shalim leaned forward, “What does the Consortium enclave seek?”
“Blood.”
A glob of flaming spit landed at my feet. “Human blood. I care not. Wizards do not need to summon and bind us to gather human blood. Humans can be prodded with little cause to spill their own.”
“This was not human blood.”
Shalim rose from his throne and moved forward, his eyes dilated with interest until only a minuscule dot of black dominated their centers. Flames danced in his eyes, and once again I was way too close to his intensity for comfort. “What was the smell?”
I held my ground. He couldn’t read my mind; however, he could read a lie as easily as a wolf read his prey. The trick lay in giving him just enough information. “Couldn’t place it, something new. I would recognize it again, though.”
His face paused inches from mine, waiting to detect even a breath of hesitation or flicker of deceit. I remained still and held his gaze. The interrogation method wasn’t new. Shalim had just never had reason to doubt me enough to use it on me.
It was a bad sign that I had sunk to a new low, but good to know. Something had caused a major turn in my status since my last visit, and the reason was something I needed to ferret out and rectify, or it would affect the health of my future.
Shalim walked a full circle around me as if inspecting me for signs of lice, and then stopped, facing away from me. “Your plan?”
“Since the enclave used humans who fall beneath the radar of the public, I planned to start there. Find out why this is part of their proce
ss. Track them backwards from the loose ends they leave and hopefully intersect them when they try for their next effort.”
With a quick spin, he faced me. His lips drew back in a fierce snarl, and his white fangs elongated. The taut lines of the brown leather on his face pulled across his high cheekbones and pronounced brow bone. Anger emphasized the rows of inch-high ridge bones progressing from front to back over his head, and coalescing in a single long horn that spiraled down his back. “You know of another effort?”
I shook my head. “No. Though they’ve executed the same process several times now.” I frowned. I didn’t have to pretend conviction. “I don’t believe they’ll stop.”
Shalim’s eyes narrowed, but the fangs retracted a hair, and the expression on his face turned less malevolent. “We have no closure on this. The scouts pursue our clan—perhaps other clans also.”
Hmm. Had Shalim been extending an olive branch to other clans in order to save joint hide? Not a typical demon maneuver. However, I would never make the mistake of classifying Shalim as typical. “You still want me to try to hunt this down and stop it?”
The long, jeweled tip of one ear twitched above his right shoulder, and bad thoughts became very clear in my mind. I dropped to one knee, slid my knife from my boot, and sliced my palm, offering the hand to Shalim. “Because you have my oath, my loyalty.”
Bingo.
Shalim said nothing for a second, then two, then three. Then he leaned down, his head beside mine as his black-and-brown-striped tongue reached out to lick the pool of blood on my hand. “If I thought you had conspired with the Consortium against me, you would be no more than dust.” The words were a hiss, a promise of retribution, but the flame in his eyes had receded to a mere ring, and his voice carried only to my ears.
I didn’t know if he could kill me. It didn’t matter. For better or worse, the clan was my team. They had been there when humanity had turned its back on me. I’d saved Shalim’s life and in return he granted me freedom to live among humans. But he wouldn’t tolerate betrayal, and while he would never completely trust me, I would never betray him or my clan by choice.
I met his gaze. “They are beneath contempt. The Consortium has no regard for beings: demons, humans, or ranking deities. The threat they pose must be stopped.”
“We understand each other.” Shalim stood to his full height and returned to his throne as I rose to leave.
“Mortal.”
My turn coincided with the thud of a bag of coins at my feet. “Be more timely with your information in the future.”
I bowed in respect, snatched the bag and left. Life with demons was dangerous. Yet unlike life on the streets of Los Angeles, for me the risks usually paid off. The stick and the carrot, not one or the other but both, as long you stayed alive.
I weighed the bag in my fist. To keep information from Shalim was dangerous, but I had always lived dangerously. I wasn’t about to throw the pre-immortals into the mix of demon wrath.
Part human, I might be. Stupid I wasn’t.
CHAPTER 5
I opened the gate to my loft, reactivated the security, and ran a sensory check on the magical wards along the perimeter of my building. The three-story former firehouse wasn’t in the best part of town or pretty, but it provided what I needed. The first floor housed my three vehicles, with two more floors and a rooftop to provide me with the illusion of serenity and space. The bricks and mortar were sturdy, and usually my security system was tight.
With the exception of one demoness’s unfettered access whose now-familiar scent lingered in the air. A quick check confirmed the absence of her petite package of trouble.
But she’d been here.
It wasn’t just the scent. I could now key in to her distinctive vibration—useful. Especially since some creatures didn’t give me a heads-up. It had taken me years before I realized everyone else, human and demon alike, couldn’t distinguish vibrations the way I did.
I shed the jacket and put the sword and sheath on the kitchen counter before I noticed the package. A brown accordion file with an elastic closure secured around a plastic button lay on the coffee table. Slipping the button free, I slid the contents onto the table—six thick files labeled by name—each with a Post-it note beacon on the top.
A little background reading, D.
Still not leaving her name, I thought, as I smudged my thumb over the D. The lettering Decibel appeared in orange, glowing script and a prickle surged up my arm only to dissipate at my shoulder.
Interesting. Why safeguard these files with a sigil calibrated for me? Though that meant Decibel possessed more information and access to me than I cared for—again.
I flipped open the top folder and started reading.
Two hours later, I finished with the last folder and pulled my laptop across the varnished pine coffee table to scroll through the online archive editions of the Los Angeles Gazette high school sports pages. Harlan Deavers, Romero Hernesto, Randy Smith. There. Ayden Marlow, center for the Chatsworth Wildcats, led the team to a fifty-six to fifty-two win over the Lincoln Marauders on Thursday night. The sixteen-year-old junior shot for thirty-six points and can add this win to the Wildcats’ twenty and zero record.
I glanced at the page on top of the last open folder again. Ayden Marlow’s information showed him as the son of Janine and Fred Marlow, with three other siblings. Seventeenth birthday—two days from now—in a suburb of northeast L.A.
That page set aside, I pulled out a computer printout from the bottom. Five families killed in a geographic range from California to Oregon within the last year. Not a particularly stunning statistic.
Each family included a child seventeen years of age.
The first death occurred in Spokane, arson, followed three months later by a vehicular fatality in Portland Lake. The police categorized the third, in Mt. Hood, as a home invasion and accidental shooting. The fourth and fifth occurred further south in Sacramento and Fresno, one radon poisoning, the second a home gas explosion. No residual trace evidence connected the five crimes, and no arrests had been made or suspects targeted.
Each seventeen-year-old died within a ten-day span of their seventeenth birthday—with their entire family. Five of the six were boys.
An additional file listed fifteen more names, all well under seventeen, though this list was several years old. Home locations ranged across the country, with side notations of blood-test results. Again, nothing distinctive in the blood work that I could make out, but I have no background with medical data. I would need to find someone who could make sense of those details.
A disproportionate number of boys’ names. Though not all, I noticed. I ran my finger down the printout and paused over the few obvious girls’ names.
How had Decibel gotten this much information? If she was right, it wouldn’t be hard to pick these kids off like Coke bottles on the back fence.
One more list of ten “missing” children corresponded to a map covered with red dots pinpointing their last-known location. These kids had disappeared after turning seventeen, but lack of bodies was a hopeful sign to me that some had escaped slaughter and evolved. Given the dreariness of the information before me, I needed to believe some had survived. Scanning the list quickly, I checked the names again but saw nothing more of help and stacked the files back in the main pouch.
There was plenty of room to interpret the tragic events as random when evaluating each instance separately. Taken together, the murders for just this year denoted a plan, methodology, and a disturbing beeline to Los Angeles. Following the assumption that the murders were connected created an unsettling and precise profile for Ayden Marlow and his family as targets. How long did he and his family have before someone executed termination orders?
My cell phone buzzed in a half circle on the table, and I made a grab for it before it careened off the edge.
“So you’ve checked through the information I left. Best guess, he has seventy-two hours. The timeframes have been getting s
horter with each kill. Some of these kids haven’t lasted more than three hours after their seventeenth birthday.” Decibel’s voice remained even, but grit bit beneath her words.
I stifled a comment on her monitoring of my thoughts, realizing my contact with the sigil had alerted her. “How is someone tuning in to them so quickly?” Silence met my question. With an exasperated sound, I closed the phone and hung my head. I didn’t want to get used to her, but she was becoming incredibly predictable. “Decibel, I’d really appreciate it if you wouldn’t just drop in.”
She slung a leg over the arm of the couch and spread her hands open with a shrug. “Seemed easier to talk one-on-one. You are smarter than the average mortal to decipher my name.”
“I’m not an average mortal.” I wondered for a split second what that would even feel like?
“Mad skills and touchy. Not a good combination, Kane.” She brushed several fingers along the back of my shoulders before she rose, moved away, and examined the bookshelves on the far wall.
I shrugged to release the lingering touch, still acutely aware of the surge of her scent in the room and the thrum of her body’s resonance. “So we find this kid and then what?”
“I’ve already taken a run through the neighborhood, but there’s only so much time before the FBI are on to this, too.”
“When did the Feds get connected in this mess and since when did demons give a shit about law enforcement?
She strolled back, leaned over my arm, and tapped the bottom folder with a perfect nail. “This file’s theirs. They have also computers. It’s not under their radar that there are similarities in these families. This has been going on for several years.”
I leaned back and crossed my arms over my chest. “Then we let them find the kids and keep them safe.”
She released an exaggerated breath, drew her brows together, and shot me an annoyed glance. “They can’t safeguard these children.”
“How exactly do you expect we are going to safeguard them?”
