The Demon You Know

by Christine Warren

  Abby ignored her and ran faster.

  “Didn’t I teach you not to look back, Ab?” Running with apparent effortlessness by her side, Noah growled the question even as he kept one eye firmly on the Lupine who looked set to launch a hot pursuit. “Looking back wastes time you can’t afford to lose. You’ll get yourself caught.”

  “You’re doing it.”

  “I’m the rear guard. It’s my job.”

  “Abby! Stop! Come back here!”

  Samantha’s shout sounded much too close for Abby’s comfort. She reached down inside herself for another burst of speed. She was afraid it wouldn’t be enough. She was really afraid when she heard Noah curse.

  “Left!”

  Abby veered left without question, even though that path seemed designed to send her running straight into the trunk of a rather immovable maple tree.

  “Down!”

  Abby took a nosedive into the dirt and hoped nothing vulnerable was sticking out and asking for a bad case of road rash.

  “Move!”

  Without even taking the time to catch her breath, Abby rolled several times as if she were on fire and was glad she hadn’t stopped for questions when two very heavy bodies hit the ground exactly where she’d been lying a second ago. One was her brother, and the other had a lot more hair than the kind of woman he normally tried to pin beneath him.

  Abby scrambled out of their way and knelt in the debris at the base of one of the pine trees next to the maple she’d narrowly avoided. A quick glance around told her that everything must have happened fast enough not to catch the attention of any of New York’s famously mind-your-own-business citizens. Plus, the small copse of trees provided just enough cover that once the sun slipped past the treetops and threw the park into shadowy twilight, it got difficult to see much of anything.

  It probably helped that Noah and Samantha conducted one of the most silent struggles Abby had ever witnessed. Neither of them made a sound as they grappled together on the carpet of pine needles. In any other fight, Abby would have counted her brother’s victory as inevitable and moved on, confident he’d catch up with her in a few seconds so they could be on their way, but this was no ordinary opponent.

  In her wereform, Samantha stood at least half a head taller than Noah’s six feet. Her fur-covered limbs rippled with muscle, and her movements were so fast, Abby could barely make her eyes focus on them. Her brother clearly had his hands full.

  Abby looked around for a weapon. She didn’t want to hurt Samantha, any more than she’d wanted Noah to hurt her, but Abby needed to make good on this escape. Now that she’d begun, she felt pretty much compelled to follow through. If she could find a tree branch or a big rock or something, maybe she could knock the Lupine out, and she and Noah could make their getaway.

  Unfortunately, the landscaping company charged with maintaining this particular park appeared to be meticulous in the execution of their duties. She couldn’t find so much as a twig or a pebble to suit her purposes.

  “What the heck happened to the wild and untamed beauty of nature?” She growled her frustration. “Does everything in this part of town have to be manicured within an inch of its life?”

  “Well, I don’t know about manicures,” a rough, grating, thoroughly unpleasant voice growled from somewhere over her head. “I’m more of a manacles sort myself. And I’ve got a pair with your name on them, little human.”

  Later Abby clearly remembered the sound of that voice and the sickening, unnatural gleam of glowing red eyes, but just at that moment Lou reared back inside her and yelled, Holy fucking sonofabitch shit! at the top of its uncouth and hysterical little lungs.

  Then everything went black.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Rule didn’t know what made him more nervous: the tingle in the back of his neck that told him that the current situation was about to go very wrong or the fact that the Vircolac employee who seemed to think Missy and Samantha had everything well in hand.

  “The Luna and Samantha took the girl for a walk,” the member of Graham’s security staff said. “Just to the park down the street. Apparently, she was feeling a little restless. They should be back in twenty minutes or so.”

  It would be dark in twenty minutes. At the moment, the sun had already gone down far enough to make Rule seriously anxious.

  It took every shred of self-control he had ever possessed not to reach out and snap the burly Lupine’s neck like fireplace kindling.

  “Which way?” Rule demanded instead through clenched teeth.

  “South,” the Lupine said, taking a wary step back. “Next block down, opposite side of the street.”

  Rule didn’t thank him. He just ran.

  Almost straight into Missy.

  The Silverback Luna had a plastic deli bag in one hand and her cell phone in the other, but she wasn’t heading back toward the club. She was dashing across the street and into the park, and her normally pale skin looked as white as tissue.

  Rule felt his gut clench. “What happened?”

  “She bolted. Just now. That way.”

  Not bothering to cast blame—there would be plenty of time for that later, he would make sure of it—Rule followed the direction of Missy’s pointing finger and took off again. Part of his mind noticed that the human Luna seemed to have little trouble keeping up with his breakneck pace, but the greater part of his mind was already firmly fixed on finding his runaway charge and planning how in the name of everything holy and un- he was going to keep from blistering her ass as soon as he caught her.

  “To the left,” Missy shouted. “In the trees. I can smell her.”

  Rule immediately veered left and broke into a strand of trees. He spotted Abby just in time to see her eyes roll back in her head and her body throw itself ten feet to the side. Then he saw why.

  Standing in the space where her body had just been was a tall, human-looking figure with medium brown hair, a remarkably average build, and eyes that glowed with fiendish evil.

  “Seth!”

  Rule roared the name, immediately recognizing one of Uzkiel’s minions. The fiend heard him and turned, the lips of his human host curling back in a feral snarl.

  “Stay back, Watchman,” Seth warned, stepping toward where Abby had landed and was already trying to scramble out of reach on all fours. “You’ll never reach them before I do. And it would be such a shame to break the pretty little human before I got Louamides out of her.”

  At the sound of the voices, the two forms wrestling near the base of a nearby tree stilled. Two heads turned toward them, one an unknown human male, the other, Samantha. The man swore and shoved the werewolf away, leaping to his feet in one smooth movement. He took a step forward and locked everyone other than Abby in a menacing stare.

  “Everyone better get the hell away from my sister before I get cranky.”

  Rule saw the man’s curse and raised him one. Of course she has a commando for a brother. I was expecting something easy?

  “You are outnumbered, Seth,” Rule said aloud. He kept his eyes on the fiend, but his peripheral senses focused closely on the brother. “Let the girl go. We would be on you before your hand could even fall.”

  “The only hand likely to be falling soon is mine.” Noah let his glare hone in on Rule. “I’ve been on the road for the past eight hours on no sleep, and I swear I think it took me that long to park once I got here. I don’t know a single one of you, and since as far as I know every single one of you could have been involved in my sister’s kidnapping, I’m inclined to take my bad mood out on all of you. Indiscriminately.”

  Rule wanted to tell the human that his show of bravado probably wasn’t proving that big a comfort to his sister, since his sister didn’t appear to be listening. Abby had gone for a quick vacation, and in her place stood—or, rather, trembled—a clearly terrified Louamides.

  The fiend had reason to be afraid. Seth was no lackey foot soldier to Uzkiel; it was the archfiend’s right hand, second only to Uzkiel in cr
uelty and evil. The fact that Seth was here gave testimony to how badly the fiends wanted the solus spell.

  “Abby, come here,” the man ordered.

  Louamides didn’t move, which at the moment meant that neither did Abby.

  “Abigail,” her brother repeated with a scowl, “it’s time for us to be leaving. Now.”

  Before Rule could decide how to break the news to him that the body standing a few feet away from him wasn’t exactly his sister anymore, the man did what humans always did and leaped in where wiser creatures knew enough to hold back.

  The entire area erupted into chaos. The human threw himself forward, intending, it looked, to grab his sister and rush her out of harm’s way like a linebacker. Had the current danger been human, Rule had no doubt it would have worked. The human looked to be built of solid muscle, but he moved with the speed and grace of a much smaller man. Unfortunately, even a much smaller man may as well have operated in slow motion compared to a demon.

  Louamides saw the attack and screamed like a little girl. Samantha saw and howled something in Lupine that Rule figured he was better off not understanding, and Seth saw and grabbed Abby by the hair, throwing her down onto a bed of pine needles.

  “Rule!” Lou screamed. “Help me! You gotta do something!”

  Abby’s brother froze, his frown shifting into something less certain. He searched the face of the sister he’d recognized only moments before and hesitated.

  It was all Seth needed. With a guttural snarl, the fiend fell on the possessed woman, teeth bared, fingers curling into claws. Rule roared and charged forward, but Samantha made it there first.

  The Lupine went straight for the fiend’s throat, but Seth saw her coming and raised a hand to block the savage bite. She locked her powerful jaws around the fiend’s forearm, teeth ripping through the flesh of the creature’s host body and crunching down on bone. The resulting bellow should have raised Revolutionary War heroes from their graves, or at least brought the public running. Unfortunately, Rule didn’t have time to worry about that.

  He halted his momentum a split second before he would have impacted in the spot Samantha now occupied, and spun the energy into a restrained tackle that brought Abby’s brother thudding to the ground safely out of the fiend’s reach. Judging by the curses the human uttered and the series of powerful, well-placed blows he landed on Rule’s solar plexus, nose, and throat, the man failed to appreciate the efforts made on his behalf.

  Grimly Rule struggled to subdue the human without harming him, a nicety he only observed for Abby’s benefit. He finally got the man pinned, twisting his arms up behind him and planting a knee in the small of his back to hold him in place. Then Rule took a look around to assess the situation.

  Samantha seemed determined to sever the fiend’s arm and any other body part it was foolish enough to place in her path. She worried it like prey, attacking and then dancing out of reach, keeping its attention focused on her rather than on the possessed human woman lying on the ground nearby.

  Moving too fast for Rule’s comfort, the last traces of sunlight retreated out of the park to the far side of the street and crawled up the sides of the buildings. No hope of using the fiend’s natural intolerance to the light against it, and Rule hadn’t had time to grab his sword before he dashed out the door of Vircolac.

  He berated himself for the total lack of preparedness. He’d been hunting fiends far too long to make this kind of amateurish mistake. Abby must have short-circuited his brainpower more seriously than he had imagined. As things stood, he would have to improvise.

  Too bad the same thought occurred to Seth at approximately the same time.

  Shrieking in rage, the fiend caught Samantha with a blow to the head and sent her flying. She landed with a yelp nearly twenty feet away and had to struggle to regain her feet. It was already too late. Seth grabbed Abby’s body, cuffing her hard to silence Lou’s caterwauling, and slug her over its shoulder. When it turned to go, Rule heard a sound like a thunderclap and felt the earth move beneath him.

  Abby’s brother bucked with a force greater than Rule could have predicted and managed to free his left hand from the demon’s grip. Faced with a challenge on two fronts, Noah spat out a curse and sent up a fervent wish for whatever shreds of luck fate could see fit to send his way.

  Levering himself off of the struggling human, Rule lowered his head, tensed his muscles, and charged the fiend. Behind Rule, he heard a Lupine howl and two voices shouting. A loud crack echoed around them and he felt a searing pain slice through his left side. He ignored it and poured on even greater speed. He had to catch Seth before the fiend managed to escape with Abby and Louamides in his grasp.

  More voices joined the din, but Rule didn’t have time to wonder who they belonged to. As long as they weren’t more fiends or the police, he wasn’t sure he cared at the moment. His long strides ate up the distance between himself and Seth, but the fiend had a considerable head start and a destination in mind. He also had night vision even better than Rule’s. Seth could see in even the blackest of the deepening shadows and knew where to step to make it difficult for Rule to track it.

  But Rule wasn’t about to give up. He might not have managed to grab his sword before he rushed off after Abby, but he never dressed without at least some other weapon secreted somewhere on his body. A short burst of speed managed to narrow the distance between him and the fiend. Muttering a chant for luck, Rule skidded to a stop and yanked a small, devilishly sharp knife from his left boot. A sharp glance and a flick of his wrist sent the blade spinning through the air straight toward the demon’s heart.

  It burst into a ball of bright golden light just before it made impact squarely between Seth’s shoulder blades.

  The fiend screamed. More important, it stumbled, landing on one knee just inches from the fence separating the small park from the neighborhood beyond. The jarring force of its landing loosened its grip on Abby’s body, and she thumped to the ground, her head smacking the corner of a paved path and knocking both her and Louamides unconscious.

  Rule took quick stock of the scene and moved forward, only to almost trip over the human again. The man didn’t know when to quit.

  Abby’s brother at least had the sense to come in fast and low, but he clearly hadn’t spent a lot of time fighting fiends in the past. He had a weapon in one hand—a gun—and an object gripped in the other that Rule could only hope wasn’t a hand grenade. Noah reached the fiend before Rule could stop him and placed himself between Seth and Abby’s motionless body.

  Rule could see the man’s trigger hand flex along with the muscles in his jaw and prayed he would have more sense than to shoot. A bullet would have no effect on Seth, but it would certainly prove fatal to the fiend’s human host.

  “What did you do to my sister?” the man demanded, his voice cold and fierce as winter.

  The fiend laughed and pushed itself slowly to its feet. “How charming that one worthless human should be so concerned about the fate of another.” Its voice dripped with poison, and its eyes blazed with hate. “I’d like to tell you she fought well, mortal, but they never do. Their souls tear like tissue paper the instant I touch them. Barely worth the effort, but I was feeling a mite peckish.”

  The shot rang out before the last word faded, but Seth had anticipated it. It dodged, not to the side but forward and down, using the most formidable weapon the body of its human host possessed. Hard, white teeth closed down on Seth’s enemy’s calf muscle, sinking through heavy cloth to rend into the skin and muscle beneath. Seth’s fiendish strength turned a nasty bite into a vicious one, and the human shouted as he felt his flesh tear.

  Rule had tensed to leap forward when another burst of golden light flared, not on a weapon this time but on the back of the fiend’s head. It reared back and shrieked, pain and fury clear in its shrill and inhuman voice. The foul odor of burning flesh filled the air, and Rule thought he saw flames when the fiend turned and leaped over the six-foot wrought-iron fence and i
nto the street beyond. Only the feel of a small hand on Rule’s arm—digging into his wrist like iron cuffs, actually—stopped him from launching himself after Seth.

  “It’s gone,” Tess said, her voice clipped and her mouth tightly pinched, “and with that injury, it will be in a new body before you can locate it. Don’t waste our time. Help me get Abby back to the club, and we’ll figure out what to do next later.”

  “You’ll be taking my sister just as soon as I’m laid in my cold, cold grave.” The human’s voice had everyone looking as he struggled to his feet, the uniform shirt he’d been wearing tied around his lower leg in a bloodstained makeshift bandage. He leveled his pistol squarely at Rule’s head. “Now how about everyone takes five steps back and keeps their hands in plain view.”

  Noah took two limping steps backward toward where Abby still lay, unconscious, half on the pavement.

  Samantha crouched at Tess’s feet and growled, but none of them moved. They stood perfectly still, their eyes fixed on Abby’s brother as he positioned himself between them and his sister.

  “I said five steps back.” He raised his free hand to the butt of his pistol and sighted down the short barrel. “Now.”

  “We don’t have time for that.”

  A small hand clutching a very large brick came crashing down on the back of the human’s skull, and the man crumpled to the earth like a marionette.

  Missy dropped the brick and dusted her hands on the legs of her jeans. “It’s getting late. Let’s get them back to the club before someone blabs to Graham that I went out without his permission. I won’t hear the end of it for another pregnancy or two.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  The first thing Abby realized when she woke up was that it was a good thing she didn’t drink much, because she would rather be dangled over the Grand Canyon by her thumbnails than experience blackouts on a regular basis.

  At least, she assumed she’d had a blackout. The last thing she remembered was standing in the little grove of trees in the park watching her brother and Samantha wrestle around in the pine needles. Since the surface Abby lay on felt a lot more like a mattress than a rocky park surface, something must have happened to her between her last memory and her newly conscious thoughts. Judging by the turn her life had taken in the last twenty-four hours or so, it would be asking too much to hope she’d just been knocked unconscious for a few hours. The thing inside her must have taken over again.