“Charming.” Well, he’d told her he’d been shopping. “Not as elegant as a sword, but it’ll do the job.” She hoped he didn’t plan to turn around and use it on her once the demon was decapitated. It could prove a challenge to disarm him. Which was something she’d worry about if she had to. “All right,” she said to the assembled crusaders. “The plan is—Jebel and Santini go in the front—and Helene and I go in the back.”
“Brilliant strategy.” Haven sneered. “You go to military school to learn that?”
“We taking orders from her?” Santini asked Haven.
“The back is on the water,” Haven pointed out. “You going to swim to the back door?”
Char and Helene exchanged a look. “Jump over the top of the boat?”
Helene studied the slight pitch of the houseboat’s roof. “These things usually have a back porch on the water. Let’s do it.”
Haven began to protest, but Char paid no attention. She and Helene moved back to the far side of the street, gave each other a swift look. Then Char ran forward, with the nest leader keeping pace as they picked up speed. Jebel Haven was a blur as she raced by him, gathered herself, and jumped.
“Did you see that?” Santini asked after the women flew by. They weren’t really flying. At least Haven didn’t think they were.
“No,” Haven answered. “Cover me.” He hefted the chainsaw and moved as swiftly as he could toward the houseboat entrance. Maybe Santini should be leading the way, but Haven always took point. He could barely see the magic-shrouded houseboat, but he knew the door was there. That was the important thing. If it was there, he could kick it in.
Damn magic.
•••
“I’m glad I wore my Nikes.”
Char grabbed Helene’s arm to steady her. Helene had a manic grin that was more Santini than staid nest leader. The woman’s breathy whisper was barely audible, but it wasn’t the sound of her voice Char worried about. Their landing on the rear deck of the boat had not exactly been the most silent and stealthy of maneuvers. In fact, Char thought the bad guys inside must think that a herd of elephants had just made an amphibious landing on their back porch. Oh, well, it would serve as a diversion for Haven’s frontal assault.
She shook her head, said, “Shhh,” then kicked in the glass door in front of her. If one was going to make a dramatic entrance, one might as well go all the way over the top. Or through a broken glass door into an unlit room in this case.
Char didn’t need any light to sense the two women on the bed, both very much alive, thank the goddess Char didn’t quite believe in. Body heat, mental signature, and scent pinpointed the prisoners’ location. That, and Della’s whispered, “Over here!”
“Take care of them,” Char ordered Helene. She drew the .22 Haven had loaned her. Tearing out throats and ripping out hearts might be more fun, but she remembered that the point was not to leave any more evidence than necessary of strigoi involvement at the scene of a demon execution. She hadn’t forgotten her reason for recruiting Haven, even if some other details had fallen by the wayside. With luck, no demon would ever investigate this site, but if they did, she hoped Daniel’s mental signature would be strong enough to overlay her and Helene’s brief visit to the scene.
“About time,” Char heard Della say. “Where’s Santini?”
“Careful. Don’t cry,” Helene said. “I’m here. You’re Novak, aren’t you?”
Uh-oh. Char couldn’t remember if she and Helene had discussed Char’s decision to let Daniel’s mother live. Char held the gun at ready but glanced back from the door at the other women.
Which was a mistake, because the door banged open the instant she took her attention from it. She turned, caught a glimpse of gesturing hands, as a ball of fire flew toward her face. Fire was fast, but Char was faster. She dove, rolled, and came up again on the other side of the room.
A horrible growling roar came from the other room. Wood splintered. Maniacal laughter filtered through shouts of rage and pain.
Haven and Santini had arrived.
The sorcerer spun to face her, wild-eyed and mumbling. He was small and bald, scraggly bearded, and an altogether sorry-looking piece of humanity to have caused such horror. Char flashed fangs at him but wouldn’t sink to biting such useless filth.
The sorcerer began to gesture and mumble again. The temperature in the room rose as his hands began to glow.
“Fireballs?” Char sneered. “That the best you got?”
His eyes were full of brash, mad confidence. The energy between his hands pulsed white hot. “What have you got, bitch?”
“This.” Char raised the gun and quite calmly shot him between the eyes.
The energy dissipated, surrounding the sorcerer with a faint, fading glow as his body fell forward onto the deck. Char waited until all the life and light was gone, then nudged the body with her foot to make absolutely sure. Physical weapons were always far more efficient at dealing death than mental ones, which was why there were so many of them. When magic-users forgot that even a small-caliber bullet worked faster than a spell, this sort of thing was bound to happen.
Char kicked the body again, hard this time. “Rot in hell, idiot.”
Della came up and added a kick of her own. Char put the gun back in her belt, stripped off her jacket, and put it around the naked woman’s shoulders. The noise from the other room was deafening and disturbing.
“Shouldn’t you be in there?” Della asked. “Helping fight the demon?”
Char deliberately turned her back on the closed door, just as a heavy body crashed against it. “They’re big boys,” she said. “They can take care of themselves.” It was up to her to deal with Helene and Agent Novak. Oh, yeah, and Daniel. “Where the devil’s Daniel?”
The room had already been a wreck when they’d broken in. The creature hadn’t noticed them for a split second because its muzzle was buried deep inside somebody’s skull. Haven got a glimpse of a naked male body laid out on a dining table. The hilt of a knife stuck out of the corpse’s back. Blood dripped, entrails hung out, and this putrid-green-shit-brown scaled horned thing was feasting on the dead man’s brains.
Then the thing looked up, dripping blood and gore from a face full of yellow, crooked fangs. Glowing red eyes under a forehead bristling with a dozen spiky horns focused on them. The demon bellowed and leaped at them.
Damn, it was fast!
Haven was glad Santini had brought the flamethrower. A sheet of fire caught the demon in the chest and slowed it enough for the two of them to spread out away from the door. Some stuff in the room caught on fire as flames sprayed out around the demon. Smoke and the stench of searing scales filled the air. The demon spun around, grabbed the corpse, and threw it at Santini.
Haven dropped the lightweight chainsaw long enough to pull the shotgun from the holster on his back and send a double blast into the creature after it hurled the body. Santini dodged the corpse, then the table that was thrown after it. The demon turned on Haven, screeching and bellowing. Huge, horny claws swiped at Haven’s midsection. Haven jumped back, barely in time to keep from being gutted.
Fast. Damned fast.
Crossbow bolts from Santini bounced off the creature’s scaly hide but stung it enough to distract it. It turned back toward Santini, diving at his legs. Santini jumped over the overturned table. He fired up the flamethrower again from behind the flimsy barrier of the tabletop.
Haven coughed and his eyes stung from random fires smoking up the room. He snatched the chainsaw and, pressing the starter, ran forward and swung the whirring blade at the monster. It bit through scales, into flesh, down to bone, and through. Green and yellow gore spurted from the demon’s wound. Demon blood smoked, and the drops of it that hit Haven’s face stung like hell. The pitch of the monster’s screeching changed to a howl of pain.
It lunged for him, but Haven kept coming at it with the chainsaw. Damn, it was hard to kill! Haven hadn’t had this much fun in months! He hated it when the monst
ers were easy to kill. This one, now, this one was a challenge.
“Thanks, sweetheart,” he said, and continued to hack the demon apart piece by barbecued piece. After a long, gory, scary time, the chainsaw finally bit into the demon’s throat.
The head was still screaming when it flew across the room. All the severed body parts twitched and moved around for a few seconds after that. But as soon as the head stopped screaming and the glow faded from the evil red eyes, Haven decided the thing was dead enough for federal standards and turned the chainsaw off.
Haven’s arms ached and shook, he had burns and bruises, and the smoke seared his lungs, but he and Santini exchanged high fives and triumphant looks. Adrenaline pumped through him, and he let out a crow of delight. “All right!”
He stepped over demon parts to the doorway to the back of the houseboat. Santini hurried after him. Now it was time to get back to vampire hunting.
•••
Helene knelt on the floor in front of where Novak sat on the bed. She held the woman’s hands, and they were looking deeply into each other’s eyes. Helene spoke to the mortal woman, her voice soft, coaxing. Novak nodded, ever so slightly. A tear rolled down her cheek, but there was light and life in her eyes. Helene spoke again. Novak’s breath caught in a funny gasping sort of sigh. She almost smiled. Helene touched a finger to Novak’s cheek, traced the line of the woman’s tears. The air between them sizzled.
Char looked away, down at the body of the sorcerer. A small amount of blood from the wound pooled beside his head. She wouldn’t have fed it to her cat. She turned her back on him, met Della’s gaze. “I hate amateurs.”
Della moved away from where she’d had her ear to the front room door. “Getting quiet in there.”
The roar of the chainsaw had stopped. The demon was no longer screaming. Jebel Haven would be here in a moment, and all of a sudden her heart beat faster and her stomach knotted with worry for him. What if he’d been hurt? Or wounded terribly? Had her knight perished slaying the dragon for her?
Then the door opened and he swaggered in with barely a bruise on him. Fireworks shot through her at the sight of him. Fireworks and heat, and her worry turned to—
Oh, no, not that!
You will not even think the L word, she informed herself sternly. She did not run into his arms.
Della, however, let out a whoop of joy and ran into Santini’s embrace. This served as diversion enough to pass an awkward moment when Char’s and Haven’s gazes met, and they almost reacted like a pair of lovers reunited after surviving a hell of a firefight. She knew that he thought about it, and knew that he knew that she thought about it, but they left it at that.
“Everybody okay in here?” he asked her.
“We’re all fine.”
He barely glanced at the sorcerer’s corpse as he came up to her. He gestured toward the oblivious Helene and Novak. “What’s with them?”
Char’s face and throat went hot. She blushed, which was something vampires, even shy and semi-innocent ones such as herself, didn’t do easily or often. She cleared her throat. “Them? Well . . . It started out with Helene asking her about Daniel. And, well, the poor woman was justifiably upset, and Helene’s quite good at comforting and counseling and—” Char’s voice trailed off as Novak leaned forward and kissed Helene on the mouth.
Haven cringed and turned away. “She’s with the FBI. She can’t do that.”
“And I suppose Daniel’s the product of a virgin birth?”
“Yeah, but—they’re women.”
“They’re bonded. It happens that way sometimes with us. Gender doesn’t matter when you look into someone’s eyes and—bam!—instant soul mates. The more crass among us refer to it as love at first bite.”
It saves a lot of problems, Char thought. Novak needs to be detached from her involvement with the federal government. Helene could probably use the services of a woman trained in criminal profiling in socializing a house full of unstable young vampires. They could both use the companionship, or they wouldn’t have reacted to each other so strongly, so fast. And this way, if all worked out right, both Daniel’s maternal figures could share raising him.
“This is so . . .”
Helene leaned back and grew fangs. Haven raised his shotgun. Char grabbed his arm, pulled it down, and held it down. Helene bit her own wrist, enough to bring up a bead of blood. She held her hand up to Novak, who smiled and began to suckle.
“. . . sick,” Haven finished.
“Romantic,” Char corrected.
Haven was not unaware that Charlotte was stronger than he was. The hand on his arm was small and beautiful, and it was steel hidden in velvet. And she was smiling, smiling all over, with her lips and her eyes and her body language, smiling in that goopy, scary way women had when they watched weddings and held babies.
Why didn’t she look evil? Why didn’t she act like a monster? He glanced toward the front room. A wisp of smoke curled in under the door. The thing in there looked and acted like what it was. Monsters should all be like that.
He stopped looking at the women by the bed. “Where’s Daniel?” he asked Char.
The woman with Santini—Della—answered, “Gone. The scarecrow took him. I remember blacking out. Thought I was dying. The vampire kid was gone when I woke up. Lots of howling and shouting from the bastards that were holding the kid prisoner. Boy’s waking up,” she added. “Getting over teething. He recognized his mom and wouldn’t touch companion blood. He wanted the scarecrow to get him out.”
“That was what the magic was for,” Char said. “I bet Daniel’s companion made the sacrifice to cover their escape.”
Haven checked his watch. “About half an hour ago.” Was that all? Time compressed when adrenaline flowed. A half hour? He tried to call up a mental map of the city.
“Where’d they go?” Char asked. She released her hold on his arm and rubbed her chin thoughtfully.
Haven said, “Boat’s on fire.”
Char glanced at the door, saw the smoke. “Oh, good,” she said. “Best way to dispose of any evidence.” Then what he’d said sank in. The boat was on fire. Oh. Was that the sound of approaching fire engines in the distance? “Right.” She turned around, clapping to get attention. “Helene! Move it! We have to get these people out of here.”
There followed a few minutes of frantic activity that involved dodging flames and a certain amount of smoke inhalation. They got everyone out through the heat and blinding smoke, and then Char had to draw shadows around them so they could dodge a growing crowd of neighbors and get away from the docks. A fire truck, police car, and an emergency vehicle arrived as the survivors fled the burning boat, which added to the confusion.
When Char finally stopped to take stock and count heads, she noticed that Haven wasn’t with them. When she went back to look for his Jeep, she saw that it wasn’t there. She sighed, aware that she wasn’t the only one who’d used the fire as a diversion.
“What are you going to do?” Helene asked.
Char hadn’t realized the nest leader had followed her. She looked at Helene Bourbon. “It’s all right.”
Some of Helene’s frantic worry returned. “The mortal’s gone after Daniel, hasn’t he? Where?”
“Yes. It’s all right,” Char repeated. “I know where he’s going. Get the others back to my place,” she added. Char left the other mortals in Helene’s capable hands and took off running. She could only hope that her guess was right.
Chapter 25
WHEN YOU LIVED on the street, you learned things. Sewer entrances, where holes in the walls of subbasements could be found, things like that. You found routes and roads underground, places to hide. You always needed places to hide, living on the streets. You needed to hide from everybody. The Disciple knew how to hide. And the Angel knew where he wanted to be. Both underground. They were made for each other, him and his Angel. They’d live underground now, just the two of them. He’d take care of the Angel, bring him everything he needed,
and the Angel would love him.
There was a place he used to sleep, a room made of brick, surrounded by tons of earth and the city overhead. He’d left a stash of candles there, and he lit them all as soon as he settled the Angel on the floor of their new sanctuary.
A stream of water glistened in the candlelight as it ran down one of the walls, formed a pool, and drained away beneath the floor. They’d gotten in down a corridor that had been an aboveground street a century ago, through an opening that had once been a window, half-buried now. This part of the city’s underground hadn’t been opened to tourists yet, though it could be reached from the more public, shored-up, and safer corridors, if you knew just what holes to wriggle through.
The Angel sat on the floor and held his head in his hands. The trip had tired him. The Disciple wanted to make someone pay for that. “I’m hungry,” the Angel said.
“I know,” said the Disciple. He turned to go back through the tunnel. “Stay here.” The Disciple grabbed up the jagged glass remains of a broken bottle. “I’ll bring you someone to eat.”
The one thing Haven was sure of about vampires was that they always went underground. Maybe some were smarter than others, but vermin hid in the dark. The trick was learning how to find and follow their trails. He’d been learning about magic the last few days, learning about when darkness was made rather than being real. He knew that Danny boy had escaped from the houseboat wearing a cloak of darkness. He’d learned a new way to look at the night. The dark magic left a kind of negative energy hanging in the world as it passed. Jebel Haven followed a wisp of black magic away from the lake like a hound on the scent. But he would have guessed where the vampire and the sicko that looked after him went even without the scent that led him through a sewer to a hole in a basement wall and finally into a corridor in the buried part of the city beneath Pioneer Square.
Laws of the Blood 2: Partners Page 20
