Realm Walker rw-1

by Kathleen Collins

  Chapter Twenty

  Thirty minutes later Juliana sat in the back of the ambulance while a medic tried to convince her to go to a hospital or at least check in at the Agency. She shook her head for the third time. He threw his hands up in exasperation and stormed off to find someone more cooperative to treat.

  As soon as she stepped around Michael so the cop upstairs could see both their badges, he apologized and escorted them down. It hadn’t taken long for them to piece together what happened. Someone had seen Michael run into the building, rifle in hand, and called the cops. The police and the Agency had arrived almost simultaneously. Both of them wanted to know why they hadn’t called in the sighting of Thomas.

  Michael made himself scarce as soon as he was able, claiming he needed to take care of something. He just didn’t want anyone looking at his credentials too closely. Her story was that she wasn’t certain Thomas was on the premises and until she was, she didn’t see the point calling in resources needed elsewhere.

  For a moment, she was blissfully alone. She sat on the floor at the back of the ambulance, one leg swinging in the air below and the other knee drawn up so she could rest her elbow on it. She held an icepack to her throat, surprised at how much it helped. Closing her eyes, she dropped her head forward and just enjoyed the cool sensation on her tortured neck.

  “Norris!” Ben’s voice boomed from across the street. Though she was sure he attracted the attention of everyone else in the area, she ignored him.

  “Norris!” he yelled again, closer this time. Still not worth her attention. The conversation would be a repeat of their earlier one and she didn’t see the point. Nor did she have the patience.

  “Don’t you ignore me, Walker,” he said. She kept her head down but opened her eyes to find herself looking at his dilapidated dress shoes. He’d worn the same pair every day since she first met him. Maybe she’d give him a gift card for Christmas.

  “You let him go, didn’t you?” he demanded.

  “No,” she lied without looking at him. The only person that knew she’d let Thomas escape was Michael and he wasn’t about to tell anyone, least of all her boss. Ben could bluster and scream all he wanted, but she wasn’t killing her mate. And neither was anyone else if she could help it.

  “Don’t lie to me.”

  She didn’t think she’d ever heard him this angry. About anything. He grabbed her shoulders and jerked her to her feet. The icepack fell to the ground. “This is why I didn’t want you involved. You let him go, I know you did.”

  She clenched her hands at her sides reminding herself of all the reasons knocking him out would be a bad idea. She slowly raised her head to look him in the eyes. “I wasn’t exactly in control of the situation, sir,” she said with every ounce of disdain she felt for him at that moment. “But I am in control of this one. Get your damn hands off me.”

  His eyes fell from hers to look at her throat, which was no doubt starting to show its bruises. He dropped his hands away from her shoulders and took a step back. “I see.”

  She studied him for a moment, tried to understand what was going on in his head. “No, I don’t think you do,” she said after a moment. “He jumped out of a seventh-story window, and landed on a building across the street. Then he got up and ran away.”

  “I already know that.” He shifted his weight on his feet and frowned at her.

  “Then you also know he’s demon-ridden and you will report it as such. The gods help you if you don’t.”

  A flush crept up his face. “Are you threatening me, Norris?”

  “It’s not a threat. It’s a statement of fact.” She closed the small distance between them and locked eyes with him. “Every officer and agent on this street saw what he did. It will be in their reports. My report will state that you were informed of Thomas’s status some time ago. Initial skepticism on your part is to be understood, even commended. But if you continue to ignore what’s right in front of your face because of some personal power trip, you’re going to be the one they hand over to the executioner when this is done. I’ll make sure of it.”

  His face was now crimson with fury and she knew he was trying to find an argument, but there was none. Her words were true. He knew it and that probably pissed him off more than anything. She gave him one last long look then stepped around him and headed to the opposite side of the street where Michael waited in the car.

  He pulled away from the curb as soon as she shut her door. “What was that about?”

  “Just making sure my boss did the right thing and quit being an ass. We’ll see if it works. We might need some outside help on this one. As much as I hate to give them credit for anything, the Council is superb at this clandestine bullshit.”

  * * *

  It had almost killed her. The dark thing inside Thomas had wrapped his hand around his bride’s throat and nearly suffocated her. And there wasn’t a cursed thing Thomas had been able to do about it. He’d been most verbal about his dislike of the situation, but that was all. He’d tried to take his body back, to regain control, but it was hopeless.

  It seemed the only part of his body he was still in sole ownership of was his mind. The demon continually attempted to access information, but Thomas only allowed it into certain areas. He was afraid without that small bit of defiance he would lose himself completely.

  Even now the demon tortured, endlessly tormented those around him and there was nothing Thomas could do. Not that he tried. No, as much as he hated what the demon was doing, he needed to save his strength, use it to save Juliana if he could. He only hoped he would be able to when the time came.

  “I think it’s time to invite the Walker to play,” the demon said, confusing its current victim. It pulled out Thomas’s phone and called Juliana. “Let’s end this, Hound. I’m at the Den of Iniquity. Come get me if you think you can.” The demon hung up before she even had time to respond.

  A sensible woman would call the Agency for help. She would have the building surrounded and come in with a tactical team to destroy him and the demon with him. But his mate was not a sensible woman. She was headstrong and impulsive and entirely too self-sacrificing. If she died trying to save him, he’d never forgive her. Even if she did come back from the grave.

  * * *

  Michael and Juliana parked down the block from the Den. She called both the vampires and the Agency only to be told by both the bar was clean, that they’d checked it out and no one was there. They also said they weren’t going to waste any resources helping her out. Since the demon said he was there, she was fairly certain they didn’t know what they were talking about. Besides, it was odd that neither the vamps nor the Agency had felt the need to leave anyone here to watch the building. And they were absolutely vehement in their refusal of aid. The whole thing reeked of magic.

  Michael looked at her. “This is a horrible idea. You know that right?”

  “Yes.” She opened the door. “Just like I’ve known it the past four times you told me.”

  He put a hand on her arm. “So let’s come up with a different one.”

  “We’ve been through this. All the plans sucked. This one just sucked the least.” Michael didn’t like the plan because she was putting herself at risk. Since it was the plan most likely to keep Thomas alive, however, it was the one they went with.

  Ben wasn’t going to like it either since it didn’t involve killing her mate. Michael was going to let her boss in on it in about ten minutes. That was if Catalina didn’t get to him first. The vampires had a plan, a marvelous, eleventh-hour plan they had their lawyers working overtime on to keep the Agency from killing Thomas. All this meant nothing if the demon wasn’t actually here.

  “I’ll be fine,” she told Michael, hoping he didn’t pick up on the utter lack of confidence in her voice. She slid her glasses on and headed toward the bar as she fired up her gift. A hot shaft of pain jammed itself through the base of her skull and she was surprised when her nose didn’t start bleeding. When she finished
this job she wasn’t using her cursed gift for a week.

  She stopped directly across the street from the Den and studied the spell shimmering in the air in front of her. Black mixed with lavender-blue, just like at the crucifixion. Demon magic. She raised a hand to signal Michael so he’d know the demon was there. He pulled away in the car, heading to the Agency to take care of his part.

  She took a deep breath and stuck her hand out, touching the spell. The thought that no one else was there, that she should just go away and look somewhere else, anywhere else, and never come back planted itself in her brain. It was so subtle that if she hadn’t seen the magic with her own eyes, she would have thought it her own.

  Knowing the spell was there made it possible for her ignore. She stepped through. The moment she breached the barrier, hoarse masculine screams reached her ears. She drew her sword with one hand and her phone with the other.

  She called Michael. “He’s not alone.”

  “Like he has help?”

  Another scream cut through the night. “I’m going to go with no.”

  “Was that a scream?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why is it that your plans always involve screaming and death or destruction?”

  “This isn’t part of my plan,” she told him. “I’m not even in the building yet.”

  “Whatever you say, boss.”

  “Just have a medical team ready to send through once I’ve got it out of here.” She put the phone back in her pocket. She shut down her gift and put her glasses away.

  She paused with one hand on the door of the Den and glanced down to make sure the ring she’d slipped on earlier was still in place. Taking a deep breath, she braced herself. She could do this. She had to do this.

  She eased the door open and slipped inside. The sour metallic smell of blood hit her the moment she stepped over the threshold. She glanced around the club and grimaced. The bar was a slaughterhouse. Blood spared no surface. Pools of it covered the dance floor, arcs of it covered tables, chairs and walls. Even the six human employees sitting along the far wall had been sprayed. They seemed unaware that she had entered the bar. Either their eyes were closed or they were looking down at their laps trying to ignore the four figures in the middle of the room.

  One of the bouncers, whose name escaped her, knelt on one side of the floor. His hands hung limply at his sides as he stared straight ahead at the massacre before him. Words poured from him in a mumble that were probably a prayer to whatever god he worshipped.

  Lying across from him on the other side of the floor was a mutilated form. A body that was nothing more than bleeding, raw, exposed muscle. Her stomach protested and she forced herself to swallow the bile. It burned her throat and made her eyes water. The poor bastard was breathing. It had to be Altered to still be alive after torture like that. There were some distinct disadvantages to being harder to kill. She didn’t turn on her gift to see who it was. At the moment, she was better off not knowing.

  Tony sat on a chair in the middle of the floor receiving the demon’s attentions. Neither he nor the bouncer were restrained in any way. The demon must have been using their bloodties to Thomas to keep them where he wanted them. It took a long thing blade and sliced a wide strip of flesh from Tony’s chest.

  “I’m sorry, Master,” he screamed, a hoarse guttural sound interspersed with sobs. Her heart ached. As much as she wanted to, she didn’t look away. If Tony had to live it, she could watch it. His arms and most of his chest were nothing more than raw open wounds. She wondered how long this had been going on. From the looks of things, the demon had come here immediately after escaping the office building. He had to have if he’d taken the time to carve one strip at a time from the other victim the way he was doing Tony.

  “What’s he sorry for?” she asked, making her way down the stairs.

  The snarling demon spun to look at her, its face transforming into a smile when it saw her. The smile was worse. Out of place in the carnage. Thomas was fully vamped out with eyes black as pitch and fangs fully extended. Blood dripped from strands of his hair and ran down his face. He was barefoot and every movement left footprints in the crimson pool at his feet which were then slowly filled in by the ever-pooling blood. The front of his shirt and jeans were so soaked in the liquid, it looked like he’d bathed in it. “How nice of you to join us, Hound,” it said in Thomas’s voice. “I was beginning to think I was going to have to call that Spanish whore again and tell her to drag you here.”

  The news that Catalina had gotten her intel from the demon directly and she hadn’t bothered to tell them pissed Juliana off, but it didn’t surprise her. Typical vampire bullshit. Thomas probably wouldn’t be so understanding when Juliana told him when this was over, though.

  The demon walked over to a nearby table, grabbed a bag of blood, ripped the top off and handed it to Tony. “Drink.” Its voice was heavy with compulsion.

  It was keeping Tony fed, making sure he didn’t lose enough blood to fade out. It explained why there was so much of it on the floor. It kept filling him up and he kept leaking it out. The demon kept its eyes locked on hers as it lifted the strip of flesh to its mouth, stuffed it in and then pulled it out slowly, sucking the blood from it. She clenched her jaw, willing herself not to get sick. Not to even show the revulsion she felt.

  It slid the strip from its mouth with a slurping sound and tossed it onto a pile in the shadows. What she had dismissed earlier as a pile of rags was now evident as the discarded skin from its victims. Why didn’t Thomas stop this? If he kept the underlings alive at the office building, surely he could keep the demon from doing this. Maybe he was losing the little bit of control he had. She was running out of time.

  She tore her eyes away from the gruesome pile and focused once more on the demon inhabiting her mate’s body. “Why is Tony sorry?” she asked again and took another step toward them.

  It looked confused for a moment. “Tony?” It looked down. “Oh, you mean him. I’m not really sure. He started apologizing the moment the knife hit his tender flesh.”

  She took another step forward as she slid her sword back into its sheath. Even with all the damage the demon had done, she couldn’t use her sword on him. Besides, if she killed Thomas it would just find another host in the room. Both of her hands were needed to implement her plan, anyway.

  “Perhaps he’s apologizing for not keeping you safe,” the demon said cocking its head to the side.

  “What are you talking about?” She eased forward another step.

  “I believe that’s close enough until we’ve finished discussing some things.” And with those words it dropped all pretense of pretending to be Thomas. The voice was unnatural, cold, feral.

  She preferred it that way. “Talk, demon.”

  “Your file made for quite interesting reading,” the demon taunted. “Some of the things they did to you were quite creative.” It glanced down to look at the nails on Thomas’s right hand and began to clean them with the tip of the knife it still held. She wasn’t sure what good that was going to do given the amount of blood on the blade, but she said nothing. At least its actions were distracting her from its words.

  “You said Tony was apologizing for not keeping me safe,” she said to change the subject. “How was that his responsibility? He was never told to protect me. And it’s not like Raoul announced his intentions.”

  The demon shrugged. “I care not. I was merely guessing his reasons.”

  While they talked she moved closer to her prey. Fire raced up her arm. Stupid her forgot to pay attention to the other vampires in the room and got too close to Tony. His fangs buried in the flesh of her wrist as he feasted. She gave an experimental tug but it was evident he wasn’t about to let go anytime soon.

  The demon shoved her aside, her wrist ripping from Tony’s jaws. At the same time it swung that long, thin blade and sliced through her friend’s throat. Shock took over his features and then his head fell backward, attached with only a few tendons
. A shudder ran through Juliana and she swallowed the scream that threatened to spill from her.

  “My toy,” the demon said. It walked over to the table and laid the knife on it. Picking up a glass it took a long drink. Without taking the time to think her actions through, Juliana lunged at the demon and wrapped a hand around its arm. She used her thumb to twist the stone in the ring. A portal opened beside them and she fell into it, pulling the demon with her.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Juliana landed on her back on the concrete floor of cell seven with the demon on top of her. The breath fled her lungs and she struggled to get it back. They were in one of nine cells located deep below the Agency that contained no window, no cameras and no witnesses. They were reserved for very special guests.

  This cell in particular was designed with demons in mind. A mix of holy water and concrete coated the walls. Two feet of steel-reinforced concrete stood behind the coating on all sides except the front. The front consisted of bars made of blessed metal.

  The demon leaped to its feet and spun, looking for the portal which had closed down the moment after they passed through. It turned back to her, a snarl on its face. In a lightning fast motion, it wrapped one thick hand around her neck and lifted her into the air. Not this again. “What have you done, Hound?”

  She couldn’t have answered even if she wanted to. His grip was too tight on her throat. She wrapped both hands around its wrists to give herself some leverage and swung both legs forward hoping to hit something vital. She didn’t, or if she did, it didn’t affect her captor any.

  “Drop her, demon.” Michael’s voice came from the front of the cell to her right. It was low and controlled but there was no mistaking the undercurrent of anger in it. It was the voice of a man used to being obeyed. Yeah, good luck with that.

  The demon snapped its head to the side and focused on Michael. “Who are you?” The fact that Thomas kept that information from the demon made her laugh, though it came out sounding more like a pained gurgle. The demon turned back to her and loosened its grip a bit. The little black spots quit swimming before her eyes, but she wasn’t sure it was much of an improvement.