Realm Walker rw-1

by Kathleen Collins

“Norris?” Ben. Great, just what she needed.

  “Hold on.” He could damn well wait until she got rid of the demon magic. Finally, the last of it faded away. She shut down her gift and turned to face her boss. She kept the glasses on. This conversation would go easier if he couldn’t see her eyes. They were too expressive.

  “Okay there?” he asked.

  “Yeah, why wouldn’t I be?” she asked, her voice innocent.

  He blinked at her. After a moment he shook his head. “Forget it. What are you doing here?”

  She glanced at the cross and raised an eyebrow. “Guess.”

  “Don’t be a smartass. Who told you about it? The Agency ordered you to be kept out of it.” He shoved his hands in his pockets as he said the last. She couldn’t tell if he was angry because she knew or because the Agency didn’t want her to.

  She narrowed her eyes. “How exactly did you propose to do that? It’s a crucifixion. We don’t live in a communist state. Seems like evening news material to me.”

  “Don’t give me that, Juliana. You’re not here out of curiosity and we both know it. You can’t help him.”

  “He’s demon-ridden. I told Jeremiah. I know he passed it along. What are you going to do about it?” She preferred Ben when he stayed behind his desk where he belonged. Out in the real world, he pissed her off.

  He glanced around as if suddenly aware they might be overheard. He grabbed her arm and moved her farther away from the crowd. Probably didn’t want to cause a panic. Rumors of demon-ridden vampires would do that. “Jeremiah told me, but I don’t believe it. You’re too close to this. Besides, it doesn’t matter if he’s demon-ridden or turned, the result’s the same. The kill order stands. How did you find out anyway?”

  “I had a conversation with him on the phone. And I’ve got a witness in the End.” She knew how it sounded; she wasn’t an idiot. But she had to try.

  “Probably some doped out scum sucker who wouldn’t know a host from his own mother. I’ve told you before about the reliability of your witnesses. Have you seen Kendrick with your own eyes?”

  She pursed her lips, thought briefly about lying then sighed. “No.”

  “Then there’s no way you could know for sure that he’s demon-ridden. You’re guessing.” His smug tone was the final straw. He was going to believe what he wanted no matter what she said. She might not have seen Thomas, but she’d seen the spell.

  “I am not guessing, Ben.”

  “Listen to me. I let you get away with a lot because you’re good at your job and I like you. But you are not going to interfere.” He poked a finger in her chest. “If you see him, you will kill him on sight just like every other employee of the Agency. That’s an order.”

  Her jaw ached from the pressure of her grinding teeth. There had to be something she could say that would get through to him. “What about the fact the demon is powerful enough to ride a corpse and will just jump to a new host?”

  “We don’t have anyone’s word on that but yours either,” he snapped.

  “And the Director of the Gathering and however many other mages were watching.”

  “James Piper would say anything to protect his brother-in-law and the rest of them would say whatever he told them to.” The quickness of the response told her he’d already thought this out. That he would have an answer for every argument.

  She twisted her neck to the side trying to loosen up the knots. “So in other words, you’re ignoring the fact this demon isn’t like any we’ve ever faced. You’re just going to follow procedure to the letter, screw the consequences. Nice use of your authority there, boss.”

  He narrowed his eyes and leaned forward on his toes crowding her space. “If you aren’t willing to terminate, Norris, you’re of no use to me. Go home and stay the hell out of my way.”

  He kept his eyes locked with hers for a moment then turned and walked away without once looking back.

  Michael laid his hand on her shoulder, a slight stirring of the air the only warning before his sudden appearance. “Great boss you’ve got there, Jules. You okay?”

  “Yeah,” she lied. There wasn’t anything about this that was okay. Her boss had turned into an overbearing jerk who no longer seemed to be on her side. And the Agency intended to hunt Thomas down and eliminate him. They wouldn’t stop until they’d succeeded.

  “And now?” Michael asked.

  She glanced at him. “We hope we find him first.”

  * * *

  “Another dead end,” she said to Michael as she slid back into the car. They’d been chasing leads from the Agency and the vamps all day. Either Thomas and his demon had toured the entire town or people were calling in every sighting of a dark-headed vamp with a bad attitude. Dark and brooding were vampire stereotypes for a reason. The description matched half the population and they’d spent the past four hours hunting them all down.

  Michael had taken to waiting in the car while she ran in and looked things over. After all, she only had to sniff the air to know whether they dealt with a demon or not. He turned the car on and made a u-turn.

  “Where are we headed now?” she asked.

  “Catalina called. Someone saw Thomas entering an office building not far from here. She claims this source is more reliable than the others.”

  “It’d be hard for them to be any less reliable. We’ve turned up nothing so far.” She shifted her gaze to the world outside the window. Every minute that passed made it more likely that someone else would find him first. That they’d be too late, that he would die. Then the demon would find a new host and they’d be right back where they started. Only she’d care a lot less about the outcome.

  They pulled up in front of a rundown office building that skirted the line between downtown and the End. She fired up her gift as she stepped out of the car. Pain flared and throbbed behind her eyes. She’d scanned every place they investigated to make sure the call wasn’t a setup. As soon as she ascertained nothing lay in wait for them, she shut the gift down. The pain receded but didn’t leave completely. She was in serious need of an aspirin, but at least it still worked.

  She entered a rather nondescript lobby with peeling paint, cracked floors and the large potted plants that were standard issue in offices all over town. She doubted any of the others boasted a body sprawled in front of the elevator bank, though. A deep breath filled her nose with the scent of cinder and ashes. Finally.

  She signaled to Michael and he grabbed a rifle out of the trunk before hurrying in. She flipped the deadbolt behind him. It wouldn’t do any good if someone really wanted in as they could just break the glass, but it would slow the less criminally inclined.

  Michael immediately crossed the floor to kneel by the prone form. “He’s alive.” A jolt of surprise accompanied his words. There wasn’t a single reason for the demon to incapacitate instead of kill. Especially given the bloody trail it had left behind so far.

  “Drag him over there so he won’t be visible from the door. The longer it takes the Agency to come sniffing around the better.”

  For once, he did as she asked without arguing, propping the body against the wall behind a plant. She drew her sword and strode across the floor as she sniffed the air. Passing the elevators, she headed for the stairs. The smell faded. Of course, the cursed thing would take the elevator, making it harder to track. Gods forbid anything just be simple.

  One of the elevators dinged as it reached the lobby. They pressed their backs against the two thin sections of wall between the doors so they could cover all three elevators. The door between them slid open. Nothing or no one came out. It started to close and she stopped it with her hand. She peered around the corner. The car was empty.

  She glanced at Michael and shrugged before stepping into the elevator. He followed. Her hand hovered over the panel trying to decide which button to press. There were too many options and not enough time. They rocked on their feet as they jerked into motion.

  “Did you press a button?” he asked.

>   “Nope.” She moved to stand beside him at the back of the car, shifting her grip on the sword. The motion kept her focused on the here and now, kept her brain from imagining a million different scenarios of how this could all turn sour. The bell dinged on each floor marking their slow progression upward. When they reached the seventh floor, they came to a stop. The door opened to reveal a dimly lit room filled with rows of cubicles. Every shadow, every crevice was a new place for the demon to hide. Super.

  She sniffed the air as they stepped out of the elevator. The odor was strong. Their prey was here or had been until recently. Michael tapped her arm and gestured behind her. The doors of the other two elevators had been jammed open making those units inoperable. Theirs had obviously been sent for them. Great. She immediately took another look around but saw nothing. Taking a cue from the demon, she took a moment to jam open the door on their unit as well. If anyone else wanted up, they were going to have to take the stairs.

  She signaled to Michael that he should go left. He nodded once and headed in that direction. She tried to ignore the blood pulsing through her veins, her heart pounding in her chest. She looked down the length of the first row of cubicles on her side. The toe of a woman’s dress shoe was just visible past one of the walls. Making her way toward the shoe and the person wearing it, she looked in the cubes on either side of her as she hurried down the aisle.

  The woman lay sprawled in her chair, arms and head thrown backward. Her chest moved up and down as she breathed. If her skirt were any shorter, Juliana would have had a lot more of a show than she wanted. Leaving the woman, Juliana continued down the aisle. Two more victims were in that row. One slumped over a keyboard and the other lay on the floor beside her. Both alive.

  Like the man in the lobby, none of them had any visible injuries but something had knocked them out. Given that there wasn’t a mass of bodies clogging the exits, she suspected there’d been no warning. That they’d all passed out at once. She flashed her gift on only long enough to see the sheen of a spell laid across them. She left it alone for now as it kept them out of her way while she hunted the demon. That’s all she cared about.

  When she stepped out of the aisle, she found Michael waiting for her at the end of his. He nodded to her and started down the next row of cubicles. It made her smile that he checked on her.

  She made it no more than two steps down the next aisle before a heavy hand clamped over her mouth, covering her nose. At the same instant, her assailant’s other hand snared her wrist in a bruising grip. Her arm bent almost to the point of breaking and she was forced to drop her sword. It hit the carpet with a soft thud no louder than a misplaced footfall.

  She clawed at the hand on her mouth, twisted her body but was no match for the strength of the man behind it. He yanked her back against his firm body and she recognized it instantly. Thomas. The demon found her first. Relief warred with anxiety. Thomas was alive, but she was at the demon’s mercy. It shifted its hand so her nose was free and she sucked in a greedy lungful of cinder and ash tainted air.

  It dragged her into one of the offices that ringed the room. It spun her in one fluid motion and clamped a hand around her throat, instantly cutting off her ability for speech. With the other hand, the demon closed the door and flipped the lock. It pushed her backward until she hit the wall, lifting her off the floor by the hand still wrapped around her neck.

  Wheezing breaths worked their way into her lungs, but it wasn’t enough to keep spots from clouding the edge of her vision. She gripped the arm with both hands trying to pull it away, to relieve some of the pressure. Suffocation was shaping up to be one of her least favorite ways to die. She was going to kick this demon’s rotted carcass straight back to its realm when she came back to life. Just when she thought she was going to pass out, it released her completely.

  Her feet slammed against the floor and the rest of her would have followed if the hand hadn’t clamped around her neck again. The grip was looser this time. She could breathe, but only with effort. She’d take it. Any breath was better than none, even if the taint of the demon rode the air and coated her insides.

  The demon leaned forward laying its face alongside hers. It inhaled and sighed in contentment. “Hello again, Hound.” It ran its tongue along her pulse point and she shivered. She wished she could say it was entirely from revulsion but the demon inhabited her mate’s body. And she had always responded to Thomas.

  “You torment me, did you know that? I’ve been watching you since almost the first moment I appeared in this realm,” it said, its voice low but unmistakably Thomas. It wasn’t him, though. He was merely a puppet acting for his master. A vise grip squeezed her heart. Thomas was the strongest being she knew. If the demon bested him, what hope did the rest of them have? Then its words sank through the fog of panic. She had seen someone outside her house the night she fought the troll. And then later she’d seen him in the warehouse mutilated and destroyed and she’d never even realized it.

  She closed her eyes listening for some sign of Michael. She heard nothing, but he’d be looking for her.

  “The sole purpose of my summoning was to kill you, to make sure you died in such a way you couldn’t be resurrected.” The demon’s breath was warm against her skin. “But if I kill you, my master, my real master, will hold my life forfeit. You’re not worth dying over. But if I do not kill you, I can’t return to my realm. Decisions, decisions.”

  She said nothing. She wasn’t sure she could have even if she wanted to. If the demon didn’t return to its realm, its power would begin to fade. Eventually it would die. So the choice seemed to be a slow death or a quick one. She knew which way she leaned but she didn’t think it wanted her opinion.

  It stepped back to look in her eyes. “And this host retains more of its will than any I’ve ever experienced before. He is currently being most vocal about my treatment of you. It is...different.”

  It loosened its grip slightly, running a thumb along her pulse point. “That scene at the house? All that destruction? That was him. Mostly anyway. He was most difficult to take over. His rage was the door that let me in. I fed it, fueled it, but I think he rather enjoyed it.”

  She wanted to believe he was lying. That her mate had been nothing more than the weapon the murderer used. But she knew Thomas better than that. She was his and they hadn’t protected her. Regardless of the fact she came back, she’d died and someone was going to pay for it. Because Raoul wasn’t immediately available, he’d taken it out on the rest of the coven. She hoped Thomas would have been a little less bloody had he been in control but she couldn’t be sure of that.

  She did know that every one of the people she encountered in the building who wasn’t dead owed his or her life to Thomas. The demon had no reason to keep them alive, but the vampire had no reason to kill them. The vampire had evidently won. It made her feel better for Thomas’s chances.

  The demon inhaled deeply, its eyelids fluttering. Thomas’s eyes darkened and his fangs extended. Once again, it laid his face alongside hers to speak in her ear. “Should I suck the sweet blood from your veins? Should I drain every last drop from you until you fade into nothingness? It is why I am here and there is no release for me until I finish you.”

  Teeth scraped her skin. Her pulse skipped and raced. Panic clawed at her insides. Images of Raoul flashed through her mind. Pinning her down, draining her, raping her. The demon knew this. It had read her file and was using it against her. Anger forced its way past the panic, helped her regain control.

  The doorknob rattled and the demon spun to face it with a hiss.

  “Michael,” she managed to force out of her damaged throat. It wasn’t loud, but she knew he could hear her.

  “Juliana!” A thud reverberated through the room as Michael threw himself against the door.

  The demon turned to her, fury contorting Thomas’s features into an unrecognizable mask. Metal groaned as Michael threw himself against the door again. She heard sirens on the street below.
>
  “It seems the time has come for me to go,” it growled. “Come and find me, Hound.”

  It released her and she fell to the ground, her hand cradling her throat. After kicking out the window, it stood on the sill and looked back at her. With a grin, it waved and launched itself through the opening just as Michael finally broke through the door.

  He glanced at her and, once assured she still breathed, unshouldered the rifle and rushed to the window. An icy shard of panic pierced her chest. Michael could hit a coin dead center at three hundred paces. And he aimed to kill. She launched herself at his legs and knocked him off balance just as he fired. If he’d seen her coming, she wouldn’t have stood a chance.

  Ever the professional, he ignored her and re-aimed. “Damn it, lost my shot,” he spat and lowered the rifle. “What the hell was that?”

  She clenched her jaw and wrapped a hand around her throat. “You can’t kill him.” Every word felt like sandpaper rubbing against her throat. It didn’t sound much better than it felt.

  He looked at her a moment, then sighed and knelt in front of her. He laid the gun on the floor beside them. “I have a feeling you may regret doing that,” he said as he wrapped his hand around hers and gently pulled it away from her throat. “I thought he bit you.”

  “Wanted to. You interrupted.” Her voice sounded a little better with each word but it hurt like hell to talk. She needed to communicate as much as possible with as few words as she could.

  He helped her to her feet. “He’s gone again. Jumped to the building across the street. I might make the jump, but I can’t guarantee the shape I’d be in after.”

  They needed to trap him somewhere he couldn’t get away while she figured this out. She just needed time to think. The seeds of a new plan started to grow. She needed to run it by Michael, though there really wasn’t a point. He was going to hate it. He always hated her plans.

  “Freeze,” a voice said from the doorway, chasing any other thought away.

  “Well, this should be fun,” Michael said as he laced his fingers on top of his head.